Planning - Regular Meeting

Okay. Welcome, everyone, to the Planning Commission for June 12. Time now is 06:32. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance and the invocation.

Ready to begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord God, we thank you for this day, Lord. We thank you for the very breath in our lungs and, being in the city of Asperia, Lord. We ask a prayer for our emergency responders that they work tirelessly, be with them and their families. Father, we ask today for, to be quick, to listen, and to, hear through all these things as we make decisions that we ask for your wisdom to decide upon. Father, please join us in your peace. We thank you. In the mighty name of Jesus, pray. Amen.

Amen.

Roll call.

Chair Roger Abreo?

Here.

Vice Chair Sophie Stino? Absent. Commissioner Dale Burke?

Here.

Commissioner Earl Hodson?

Here.

Commissioner Timothy Ammann?

Here.

Reorganization of the Planning Commission. We would like to or I'd like to move to continue to reorganization on this item to the next regularly scheduled Planning Commission meeting.

Second that.

Motion passes, four-zero.

Wonderful. Do we have any agenda revisions or announcements?

I have no revisions.

Thank you. All right. Right. Presentation for the capital improvement program by Cassandra Sanchez, Director of Public Works. Good evening.

I opened the wrong one. Alright. Good evening, chair and planning commissioners. My name is Cassandra Sanchez. I'm the director of public works and the city engineer here at the city of Hesperia. Tonight, I'm going to be presenting to you the 2526 capital improvement project program.

So I'm going to start by telling you a little

bit about the completed projects that we finished this fiscal year. The first one is our I 15 Lift station. This project was started in 2004 when the city annexed in the lower portion of the freeway down to Oak Hills Road. It was desired to bring water and sewer to the lower portion of the city, and so this was phase two of that desire to move the project forward. It was to build the sewer lift station, which will lift the sewage from the Ranchero Road area, over the railroad tracks. It allows for more development opportunities, and it was accepted by city council 02/18/2025.

Maybe.

Next, we have our CDBG street improvements. This was a combination of rubberized and double chip sealed treatments that were used in our qualifying areas. As we have discussed previously in other council meetings and other planning commission meetings, The community development block grant is administered by HUD, and the focus is on low to moderate income areas. So we do focus on residential areas to try to meet all of those requirements, but the streets do have to be approved by them. And this project was accepted by council on March 18.

Our next project was a well roof repair project. These were repairs per our roofing consultant at four different locations. This had originally started as two locations, but using some ARPA funds, we were able to extend that. Repairing the roofs not only helped to protect the, building itself, which helps to help helps to extend our infrastructure lifespans, but it also protects all of the equipment inside of those, buildings to make sure that everything is, running smoothly and water is delivered to the community. This was accepted by council on May 20.

Finally, we have our Ranchero Road improvements. This was only construction completion, and we have separated at the request of council the aqueduct crossing at this time. We have not fully accepted the improvements, but the construction has been completed along almost five miles of roadway on on Ranchero Road. We did three miles of waterline relocation, and we did build three signals along that area. And this was a partnership project with San Bernardino County.

Next, we have our critical projects, and these are our top priority projects to complete in this upcoming fiscal year. First, we have the Ranchero Road aqueduct crossing. As I mentioned previously, council asked us to remove it from the entire, Ranchero Road improvements while we looked at other alternatives to move forward. City staff will be making a presentation at city council on the seventeenth for their consideration. Next, we have the traffic signal at Main And Timberlane or Main And Sultana.

This was awarded by council in August 2024. The contractor shortly thereafter ordered all of the long lead items. Some of those items are going to take about fifty weeks, but we are currently doing the utility relocations and working with the contractor to get their schedule. So when all of that material comes in, they will get started on the intersection. We are excited to move forward with this intersection, because it will provide additional safety measures for our residents by providing a controlled intersection for crossing, ADA ramps, and designated turn lanes.

Next, we have our annual street improvement project. This is going to take place along 7th And Jacaranda. There will be various treatment types along both of those streets, including select removal and replacement of asphalt, Surrey Seal and Crack Seal, Cape Seal with a leveling course, and grind and overlay. And this is all based on the PCI rating of the asphalt and field review of the asphalt. Plans are complete, and staff is currently working on the specifications, and we plan on advertising for construction soon.

This project, the Maple Avenue sewer line replacement, the contract was awarded on May 20 by city council, and it will be the removal and replacement of 2,400 lineal feet of 12 inch sewer pipe along Maple Avenue. This will help to remove the sag that is along Maple Avenue, and then we'll be following up with a street improvement project. Next, we have our our new CDBG program. This will be one mile of roadway along Oakwood Avenue between Main Street and Mojave Street, and it will be a full removal and replacement of the asphalt in this area. Plans are almost complete, and then we'll move forward with the specifications, and then we will go out to construction.

Here is the Maple Avenue Street improvements that I mentioned a little bit earlier. Plans are currently under design with a consultant, and we will be doing this in two phases. The first phase will be improvements along Maple between Ranchero Road and Main Street, and then the second phase will be the area north of Main Street. And this will be done after all of the sewer work is completed so that we are not tearing up our brand new beautiful roadway. The Main Street traffic signal synchronization has been an ongoing project.

It's between Mesa Linda and Escondido on Main Street. We have installed all of the cameras outside of the Caltrans right of way, and those cameras are functional and currently being used by staff. It's been very helpful because if we do have an issue with one of our signals, they can adjust the timing or they can look and see what the problems are. We will be working or we have been working with Caltrans to install the equipment. When they were doing their improvements on Main Street, they removed our equipment from their cabinets.

So when they close out all of their freeway improvements, which they're currently working on, we will get to put in all of our equipment again and close out this project. We also have the Walnut Street H 01 retention basin. This was chosen to be at the upstream end of the dual 10 foot diameter pipes that are part of the H 01 drainage system. We have a lot of sediment that enters these pipes, which, causes high maintenance issues and costs. So this will help to slow the velocity of the water and allow the sediment to settle out before the water enters those pipes, which will make it easier to clean and reduce maintenance costs.

We also have three tanks that we are going to be, working on to paint and recoat. The first one here I have is Plant 21. I just did them in numerical order. But this one, we have not started work on. We will be working during the summer months because of its proximity to a school.

We will be doing exterior painting only, or exterior coating only on Plant 21, and it's a 3,000,000 gallon capacity tank. Plant 22 is the one that we are doing the most work on because we are coating it on the inside and the outside. It's a 5,000,000 gallon capacity tank. They had to cut a hole, as you can see in that one photo, in the side of the tank to remove the sediment and the sandblasting material they had to do to remove the coating. And that will be welded shut at the end of the project.

We will not leave that open there. But they have already completed most of the interior work, they're they're currently working on the exterior of that plant. And then once they start to fill it up with water before they start to fill it up with water, they will have to disinfect the tank and get everything ready so that they can re reuse it again. Plant 23, they just started working on. This is another one where we're going to only be doing the exterior painting, and it will include the replacement of the old mural.

Next, I have our essential projects. These are projects that we're looking to do in the future at, like, a two to five year plan. This one was asked to be put on hold by council, but plans are designed for the animal shelter play yard. It's about 10,000 square feet of play area and 32 parking stalls for staff with an extended asphalt parking area. And then we had left an area for emergency animal evacuations as things happen in the future.

As I said, the plans are designed, but the project is currently on hold. We also have the Ranchero Road Street improvements, and this will be between Danbury and I. This is the phase four of the Ranchero improvements that we have been doing for the past few years that included the freeway off ramp, the grade separation at the railroad, and the five miles of widening of roadway. Phase four will be about 80 feet in width, and it will go from Danbury to I and include a sidewalk on the southern portion. Traffic signals will also be designed as part of these improvements.

We also have the Cedar Street roadway improvements. This project will consist of roadway improvements along Cedar West Of Escondido. It will be useful to help improve circulation by allowing traffic to get out to Mariposa Road because it's currently a dirt road, so we can get a paved road out that way. And feasibility has begun to determine the, improvements needed for the roadway and the drainage course as well as the project limits. And this will probably be a partnership program with the county since a portion of it is within their jurisdiction.

Next, we have the Temecula Avenue Retention Basin. Much like the Walnut Street Basin, This will be used to help reduce sediment that enters our pipes. This will be at the entrance of the c o one drainage system where we get the most sediment, and it will help reduce velocity and allow the sediment to settle out. And then this will help save costs and maintenance. We also have the golf course trails.

This was looked at as an opportunity to provide outdoor recreation for our community. It will be a walking trail that will be along the northern boundary of the golf course. In total, it'll be about 4.5 miles long, but it will probably be built in phases, just due to the extent of the trail itself. But we felt it was a great multipurpose use for the property and an asset to the community. Next, this is the overall master plan for the A 04 drainage program, and we're always looking for opportunities to build infrastructure within this drainage program.

But I wanted to highlight that just this fiscal year, we cleaned out the Mojave Street Basin expansion, and that was about a twenty twenty acre foot basin. We removed 2,300 loads of dirt. It performed beautifully in the next couple of storms that we have had, so we are very, excited to be able to utilize that to protect the homes north of the basin. Another project we have is the Catawba Road Basin, and staff is currently working on obtaining right of way for this project. It's located in the Oro Grande Wash, and it's to protect the California Aqueduct.

There's a lot of sediment that affects the overshoot that's in this area, and so we are looking to build a basin there to reduce the sediment that is affecting the overshoot and overall protecting the California Aqueduct. This is another project that is pretty new to our essential project list, and it is the H 01 Drainage Facility Section 3 A. It's located off of 3rd Avenue. It's designed to be strategically located downstream of the existing basin that you can see there in the photo. We've obtained some right of way in that area to build some additional basins, and we are going to be doing a feasibility study to look at project limits and size.

And then lastly, we have the aqueduct crossing. It's to widen the bridge at Main Street. This is an area that is identified in the city's circulation plan as a major arterial, which is a three lane in each direction roadway that crossing over the aqueduct would only allow us to do two lanes in each direction, and so widening this area will allow for more traffic. The plans are almost completely designed, but we do need to move forward with the environmental studies and the right of way acquisition before the project can move towards construction. And I'm available for any questions or comments you have.

Any questions?

Yes, there's a few questions here. Sorry, a few questions. On the chip seal, we had this conversation previously that was brought up as to why it wasn't done properly and timing whatever you want to call it as to why we spent the money doing something that we're gonna have to come back on.

Yeah. So this was discussed at our city council meeting. We had some recommendations from a designer, and we found that those recommendations were not good. So we had moved forward with the project kind of on some poor information. We learned a lot and we know how to move forward better and to be able to provide a better product in the future.

Okay. Well, good luck with that because it seems like wherever you drive in the High Desert, chip seal is not the answer. I just saw the county's version of it down Summit Valley Road, another poor job. You know, you waste a lot of taxpayers money on something that should be evaluated, taken care of in the moment. If you're not going to do it right, then don't do it.

It's a big concern with me on that. So I understand some of it, logistics and things. But again, it's just and this has been going on for a number of years. So I just hate to see it. Well, I could go down all these, I guess, but I'm not going to. The roof repairs, that's fine. I made a couple of notes here, I believe. Shoot. The HO-one Basin, I understand that one. Were we here?

Oh, on the bridge widening at Main Street. I know we're going to run into the same problems that you run into at Ranchero with DWR requirements.

That one will actually be different because at Ranchero, we have to demolish the current bridge and I think we are one of the very first bridges to ever be demolished over the aqueduct. So when we were working with DWR, there was a lot of restrictions and things that they had added to that after they had already given us our permit because there's demolition involved, they wanna make sure that nothing's falling into the aqueduct, and there was a lot of timing and turning off pumps and things like that that associated with it. As far as Main Street, we will be adding to what's already out there. We will not be demolishing the current bridge to add to it and they have a much smoother process for moving all of that forward.

Okay. So they're not going to require a difference in the free water, the water board

section? We don't need to do that in that location.

At that location, interesting. So, okay. Well, that's interesting. I'm sure they'll change their minds before we get going. It's one of those. I don't get it. And we already talked, I think, last time when you presented the Temecula Basin, that we already discussed the issue with the fact that most of that debris and stuff is in the county area. I mean, is there drainage course?

Mhmm.

The I know it's within the city boundary, but it's still they maintain that, if I'm not mistaken, unless that's changed in the last number of year a couple of years. And so are they contributing to fix this problem? I know it's we want it fixed because it'll help downstream for all the homes and the residents on the East Side Of Arrowhead.

That project is in the very, very early stages. It's still pretty conceptual. So we haven't really reached out to the county. But as we move forward, we will look to them for partnership opportunities.

Okay. And then the AO4 Basin, that's the one no, it's not the one. I'm sorry. The H01 Basin at third. The existing basin obviously has been a problem from day one, especially again downstream, having to clean the pipe clear up into eleventh and so forth. And downstream, you said you're working on some design Is to take care of it going to go under third?

That would be the goal is to be able to protect third.

Yes. Okay. Get it past third, so that we can deal with it further downstream.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, and we do have enough to build maybe a couple of basins within series to help reduce sediment and other flow that would be affecting the downstream area. That's why we're doing a feasibility study to see what all And it would

we know that once we get movement past the basin that's already there, because that's all that does is collect sediment and just works back up the pipe. So we know the problem we have there.

Exactly.

So, okay. All righty, I think I'll leave you alone for the rest. Thank you.

Sounds good. Thank you.

You did a good job.

Yes, I know.

Just crossing off. That's why I like to get up for

a commissioner.

One question, I guess, it wasn't already asked. Just looking at that walking path going through the golf course there. What type of construction material is the walking path going to be made out of? And also, what do the stars represent along the walking path?

I don't know about the stars. That's a very good question. This was from a conceptual drawing that we had for kind of the location of it. I can find out and follow-up with you on what the stars mean, or present it at city council when I'm gonna be there on Tuesday and let them know what the stars mean. And then for the material, we're still in the very early stages of designing this. So we've been looking at DG asphalt, just kind of all of the different opportunities that there are. We will probably not be doing anything hard because it's supposed to be a walking path. So, like, pavement or things like that are a little bit easier on people's knees, but we haven't determined what that material is gonna be yet.

And then one other question on that. Has there been any planning going into it yet as far as signage, you know, keeping people on the path and not going off into the hazardous area where they could be impacted by a game?

So there's going to be, at least in the very early conceptual plans, there's going to be some netting that's going to separate the people on the walking path from the golf course so that there isn't, you know, the risk of being hit by a golf ball or anything like that, and that will help keep people on the path.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I had a question regarding Ranchero Phase 4. Going along that, is it a demolition and reconstruction? And how does that handle all the homes in Ranchero Middle School that is that I know that they're sometime this year or next year, they're going to be doing their new drop off and stuff like that. So how how does that if you could kinda walk through. I know it's a two to five year plan. But

Yeah. It's still in the very early, early stages. We kind of have more of a conceptual layout so that we can look at what right of way would be necessary and things like that. But we have been very mindful of the existing homes that are in the area. We're trying to make sure that everybody still has access through there as they already do so that we're not putting in curbs or other things where people can't get, you know, in and out of their house, which is why we're still in the very early stages of making sure all of that works and that the drainage works. So we are trying to make sure that we are fitting in as much to what it's already existing and kind of tying into that. Not the asphalt. You know, we'll be improving the asphalt and kind of improving the roadway. But as far as the elevations and what's already existing, we're trying to be very mindful of all of that so we can tie back into everything that's there.

And that's a remove and replace?

That would be the goal at this time. Yeah. Okay. And then as you mentioned, there's some improvements already happening, so we may try to tie into some of those improvements to grind and overlay in that those areas, things like that.

Right. And the transition. Right.

Mhmm. Okay.

Alright. I don't believe we have any more questions. Okay. No further questions. Thank you so much.

All right. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. All right. Moving into public comments. Okay. Any person wishing to address the Planning Commission should complete a white card and hand it to the clerk.

Comments are to be limited to three minutes and should concern only those topics within the jurisdiction of the Planning Commission. Any person who would like to comment upon an agenda item should reserve their comments until a public hearing or public comment period is called for that item. Please remember that the Planning Commission is prohibited from considering or taking any action on any issue not previously noticed in the agenda. We now open the public comment period at 06:58. And I believe we have a white card.

I have one here as well.

Okay.

But I'm not sure if it's for this one for item two. Jerry, is this for item two? Okay. Thank you.

We're just doing general public comments, not general plan. It's okay. All right. So we still have one card, correct?

Just one card. All

right. Cool. Great. All right. We have one. Robert Davey, if you could come on up for your three minutes, please, that would be awesome. Thank you.

Good evening, commissioners. Gotta edit this because we didn't do a rearranging today. We did not. I'll be speaking a bit on item number two in the pallet yard hearing also. It's been a very long year looking forward to this night and getting to this point. I've spent countless hours researching pallets and pallet yards. I know more than I'd care to know at this point. If I was in college, I'm pretty sure I could write my master's thesis on pallet yards. When I first caught wind of the proposed pallet yards last year, a group of us banded together in opposition to protect our city of Hesperia and our quality of life and for some, their homes. We just didn't do it for ourselves, but for all the residents of Hesperia.

While I've vested a lot of time and effort and research in this, and my wife could verify that, site visits both here and down the hill takes a village as they say, and I couldn't have done it alone. I'm looking forward to getting a chunk of my file cabinet space back because I'm old school and I like to print a lot of documents. I probably get about 20 gigs of hard drive space back on my computer once this is over with. I'd like to personally thank many who have taken this journey with me. All of the residents that have stood by us and supported us, thank you.

A special thanks to Gina Whelan, who's been with us from the beginning, a big thank you. None of this would have been possible without my new friend, Susan Garcia. I can't tell her how much I've appreciated her support and hard work. She might be an innocent looking exterior, but rest assured, she's a bulldog. She's encouraged me when I've been down. She's told me when I'm wrong. She's supported me when I'm right and offered suggestions when needed. When needed. We haven't always seen eye to eye on every issue, but good leaders don't surround themselves with people that are afraid to offer their own opinions. A heartfelt thanks to Susan Garcia, and I'm hoping she'll be my campaign manager next year.

A huge heartfelt thank you and shout out to all the city staff that have your fingerprints on this amended code being presented tonight. I'm sure many have worked tire tirelessly behind the scenes. I'd specifically like to thank director Nathan Freeman, Mary Cruz Montez, and a special thanks to Edgar Gonzalez and Principal Planner, Ryan Leonard. Thank you for putting up with me this last year and all your hard work. Thank you for listening to the residents' concerns and taking us seriously.

I'm not by any means being presumptuous because of this whole as the old saying goes, it ain't over till it's over, but I don't get to speak after your boat. So I'm hoping the commissioner will do the right thing and pass the amendments to the zoning codes that the staff is recommending. And it's kind of an eye opener as I drove to Loma Linda a couple times taking my wife there this last couple weeks. When you drive down the 215 by Davor, that pallet yard that started on fire, it's had babies. It is. It's unsightly. You so much.

Do we have any more white cards?

I have no additional white cards.

Alright. Wonderful. Alright. So, because we have no more white cards, we're gonna go ahead and close public comment period 07:02. Moving on to the next item, consent calendar. Approval of minutes, consideration of 05/08/2025, Planning Commission meeting draft minutes. If I could pause for a moment. Would you like to ask your question about the abstain?

No. It's

okay. Okay. Never mind. We're okay to go. Do we have a motion?

I'll move to make the motion to approve the draft minutes from the regular meeting held on May 8.

I'll second that.

Motion passes three-one.

Item number two, development code amendment DCA 20 four-three, specific plan amendment, SPLA 20 four-five. Commission recognizes Edgar Gonzalez for staff report. Hello, Edgar.

Hey. Good evening, chair and planning commissioners. So today, we have a development development code amendment and a specific plan amendment to prohibit establishment of new or the expansion of existing outdoor pallet yards and indoor pallet manufacturing facilities. The city council this year recognized the need for regulations on pallet yards facility due to their potential negative impacts. On 08/20/2024, the city council adopted an urgency ordinance establishing a forty five day moratorium on pallet yard facilities to allow staff time to study these issues and present recommendations to city council and planning commission.

On later on, on 09/17/2024, the city council extended the moratorium for additional period of ten months and fifteen days for a total period of one year. Again, to allow additional time for staff to study these issues. So just looking at the existing regulations that we have today on our municipal code. Currently, the code allows balayares by right, so in all industrial zones. So we have the limited manufacturer zone I 1, general manufacturer Zone I 2, Commercial Industrial Business Park, CBIP within the main street specific plan, and then we have the general industrial, general GI within the specific plan.

So again, all of these zoning destinations which are industrial allowed pallet yards by right. So there's no specific regulations for pallet yards other than the applicable development standards, which the element standards for outdoor storage kind of requires kind of a screen walk walls, site to be paved, everything to be in the rear side. So there's no specifications for pallet yards. So as part of that study, I mean, the staff researched different cities and looked into the impacts of pallet yards, again, in other cities within the vicinity and came up with adverse impacts that pallet yards bring to the cities and could potentially bring to the city of Hesperia. The major one, again, increased fire risk.

This is just a given. Everybody kinda agrees that, again, pallet yards bring a fire risk to the city. Just looking at other cities, within, again, the vicinity, which is San Bernardino, Fontana. There's been several fires. There been about five different fires from, 2022 to 2024, which had been severe fires that had lasted for hours.

This also had also influenced into firefighters and other staff that has been need to come at those sites to be incorporated. So there's been a lot of resources kinda that has to be implied into fighting those fires that could be, again, for hours. There's was there's one case along, I think, Texas that Oxl had a fire pilot a pallet yard, pardon me, a fire that kind of spread out for days and that kind of went in through other properties and then again, it took a long time, a lot of resources to kind of stop that fire from spreading. So, again, why do pallet yards cause so much fire? I mean, typically you have stacking and separation issues.

They don't really create a separation and stacking limitation on those pallet yards. Pallet yards are usually designated with gaps allowing air circulation, feeding oxygen and flames that create again fires to kind of keep going and burning and spreading faster. That kind of brings to the second item that we have for adverse impacts which is stacking and separation hazard. So these uses are significant for higher and combustibility stack for wooden pallets. Presented the safety hazard due to the high pallets.

Again, this this stack them too high, being too high than the winds that we have here in Zisperia. I mean, they have a potential to fall into employees or visitors or somewhere someone that's within that area. There's there's minimal to no separation between pallets, which there's no access for emergency vehicles to come come in and stop those fires as well. The fire department, which is the county fire department, does have regulations on separation and the limitation of stacking, is usually 16 feet high, 20 foot separation. Those regulations are typically ignored most of the times that we've seen with other, again, cities, other pallet jars down the hill.

And that's where we have those fires going on. That's where we have those five fires that have gone through several years because they're after maybe their CFO or approval of those projects seems like they run out of space to stack those pallets and stack them in the back and it creates those issues about fire and other things. Other adverse impact again is rodent infestation. Having stacked pallets in close proximity, I mean, attracts rodents, creates a home for animals and other rodents. A lack of maintenance in those areas.

Once you start stacking pallets, I mean, can't get to those areas, so there's a lack of maintenance addressing those areas, Chris, trash and debris. Some of those stacked pallets could be in the same location for months. Again, as a manufacturing pallet yards, you create a lot of pallet yards, eventually run out of space, you have it in the back and it could be an issue as to get to those to clean that area off. Decline of property values, that's another adverse impact that we have. The facility is lacking property maintenance.

Again, as I mentioned, contributing neighborhood decline, contributing to illegal dumping and and eventually vandalism. That kind of involves the city too because then you have court enforcement violations and stuff that we had to put resources in to kinda address those items. And I I guess as well other businesses and residents within the area are not gonna wanna be within a a pallet yard just based on the risk that they have for fire, right? So that eventually those properties around that pallet yard if approved, I mean, it's going to decline because it's going be harder to get those businesses or residential properties to be sold. So justification for prohibition.

So why do we want to prohibit pallet yards? Again, to preserve the quality of life of residents within the city of Hisperea, to preserve commercial and industrial, again, neighborhood and businesses as well to reduce the risk of fire and also to promote, again, compatible and sustainable land uses within the city. So within that, again, the staff was recommending the planning commission to adopt PC to 2025 dash zero seven recommending that the city council introduces in place on first reading an ordinance approving that development code amendment and specific code amendment to prohibit the establishment of new or the expansion of existing outdoor pallet yards and indoor pallet yards manufacturing facilities. We did receive four letters of opposition, which are kind of tied into the applicants that we have currently. As you know, the applicants that we have, it was they were placed on hold based on the moratorium that we released.

So those are the letters of opposition that you should have in mind that's for your review. So within that, I mean, that concludes my presentation and I'm available for any questions.

Commissioners? Do we want to do you have any questions?

Yeah, real quick on this basis a little bit. I'm still reading through the documents that were just given to us earlier. And understanding the question and the concerns, has anybody with the issues we've been having with insurance companies of late kicking out homeowners out of their policies. With this issue, we're already talking about the effect it's going to have on the homeowners and acquiring fire insurance when the insurance company says, you're next to a pallet yard, so we're not going to insure you. We get this from being close to power lines.

We get it, you know, just anymore they pick the insurance company seem to pick random issues that hurt the homeowners. So has this been addressed at all as far as the cost of what may happen to the property owners in the adjacent area?

So currently, I mean, again, we're bringing this prohibition to the Planning Commission to prohibit the pallet yards in the future. Currently, we don't have any pallet yards that we have issued a license. I think we the ones that we had were from 2017 and that was the last pallet yards that we have at along the industrial area. So it was never analyzed. I know there's been on a comments about having foreign insurance from neighboring properties that have been increased or been taken off. But we haven't typically analyzed that issue just by the fact that we don't have a current license as of today.

To kind of add a little bit to that, it's my understanding that the insurance rates, they're able to make their own rates based on their own studies that those insurance companies have. And by that, I mean, San Bernardino County adopts a fire hazard severity zone. The insurance companies don't necessarily follow the exact boundaries of that fire hazard severity zone. They have their own fire hazard severities, and they charge their own insurance rates based on their own studies. Could a pallet yard lead to increased insurance rates? I don't know the answer to that, but I would think that insurance companies can raise the rates based on their own analysis.

That's what I'm feeling.

Okay.

Just a question that I have. I noticed the presentation included some models and concepts about existing pallet yards and other areas that are related to outdoor pallet facilities and the resolution does speak to indoor pallet manufacturing facilities. What kind of research was done for indoor?

So for the indoor pallet yards, we did look at some indoor pallet yards. I think they do have some down the hill, but most of the research was kind of down for outdoor. The reason that we included indoor pallet yards as well in there is because it's still some of the adverse effects that we have listed in this presentation also affect indoor pallet yards. So, once you have an indoor pallet yard coming in, let's say everything's inside. Again, I talked about that CFO and that final sign off.

So once that happens, we don't have any control of how many pallet yards could be relegated inside. Usually, you have it again, you should have stacking and you should have separation within that for proper circulation. It's probably harder to determine if they're going to increase those pallet yards inside because we don't have a way of checking that unless again they're they get a permit, they get something through the city, we have authority to come in and and double check all that. But it makes a little bit harder where we can't see what's going on inside.

While you're thinking, you want me to ask my question while you're thinking? Can see the gears. All right. I have a couple of questions. Regarding the indoor pallet yards, so obviously, the outside consideration for outdoor use that fire suppression is only a fire hydrant and a hose, right, requires 100%, you know, firefighters that we are to show up, hook up the hose.

Beyond that, there that that's the only way to suppress a fire on an outdoor. But on indoor, you know, there's no wind so that that you know, it's all contained in a in a structure. So there's fire suppression called fire sprinklers. Right? So I don't know the ratio.

Like, does the fire burn fast enough that fire sprinklers don't matter? But I do know that interior, there is some fire suppression for standard burning items, but I know based on based on constructing several other warehouses myself that there are issues with proper stacking, solid surfacing, and that there's always this mitigation with county fire coming in and making sure there's no solid surfaces so all the water can run through. I just wanted to add that thought and discussion, but there is some fire suppression. I just don't know if it's enough, if the acceleration is just too fast because that ratio would be a concern, obviously. And then secondly, my last or really question, the first one was more of a statement than a question.

Existing, I understand existing pallet facilities right now pallet yard facilities would not be affected, correct? They just could not expand.

So currently, we don't have any existing. So we don't have any business license issued to any existing facilities. We know that there's been a lot of complaints of pallet yards facilities kind of coming out. Those have that have coming out have been reported to court enforcement. They're pretty much illegal facilities there.

Okay. All illegal. Okay. Does that impact the warehouses that are managing their own pallets? It doesn't impact them, right, so standard?

No, correct. So the pallet yards is specific well, this prohibition is specifically where someone manufacturing and storing pallet yards. So a warehouse having a secondary operation of having some pallet yards on-site is not affected. It's only if it's specifically manufacturing and operation of a PELY YAR facility.

Okay. Thank you, Edgar. Have

we done any like what research or data do we have to support what proposing here? I mean, what are other cities doing?

Yes. So we did look at and analyze a number of other cities. We looked at the cities up here in the High Desert area. We looked at cities down the hill. Mainly, we focus on the Inland Empire.

There's a handful of cities in the Inland Empire area that have restrictions in place for outdoor pallet yards. There's not any cities necessarily that have an outright ban on those outdoor pallet yards, but they are restricted to areas that are extremely confined to a very small portion of the city within like one or two blocks in their heaviest industrial zone. With respect to the indoor pallet yards, San Bernardino County does have some standards for pallets in general. And they look at the number of pallets and that determines the fire sprinkler size. I think our concern with the manufacturing of pallets is the fire sprinklers are based on an estimated number of pallets.

And when you're inside a building, you're not able to view it from the right of way. So you don't know if they're complying with those standards or not. If the pallets are stacked all the way to the roof and they initially proposed that they're going to have a very small area or whatever. We don't we're unable to really see that. And there aren't a lot of inspections that take place to ensure that they're complying with those standards. So that was really our concern with respect to the indoor pallet yards. There's not any other cities that we found that necessarily had restrictions or prohibitions on indoor pallet facilities. And the county standards for regulations for any sort of pallet manufacturing indoors is fairly limited.

Which speaks into my question, the concern about having so many that ideally stack to the roofline from the underside that it could be far more than the fire sprinklers can handle.

Exactly. And in the picture that Edgar showed earlier, he mentioned that the county standards, 20 foot separation and maximum height of 16 feet. And just simply driving down the 210 Freeway near Davor, you can see that I'm not aware of any of the pallet yards that comply with those standards. So the concern was if they weren't complying with the restrictions for limiting the maximum height or the separation between those pallets with inside a building, it would be impossible to see or to enforce any regulations.

Right. Other than limiting the structure to not be more than 16 feet tall.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you for walking through with that. I appreciate it, Ryan. All right. Anyone else before we open it up for public comment? Okay. All right. So we go ahead and open it up for, say, at 07:21? So there's a it's this public item, so we're gonna go ahead and open up to the white cards. Correct?

White cards or we can do the voice mail first?

Yeah. Thank you for the reminder. Can we do the phone Of course. Phone messages first, please? Thank you.

Chair, we're having a little bit of technical difficulty. Can we do the voicemails last?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Alright. I have a white card here, for Thomas Carcosco. I I I for, I believe, for Diaz Palettes, I believe it's for item two? Okay. Welcome.

Name is Thomas. Located in Corona, California. We've been serving Southern California logistics and warehouses for over fifteen years and have had zero fires in our history. We purchased land not too far from here up north three years ago in which we were told we were able to proceed with constructing the yard to conduct pallets, build, sell, etcetera. And we pour thousands of dollars into that land and it's continually been on pause.

And so that's why I'm here. I'm here to support and advocate for keeping pallet yards legal in Hesperia. As Hesperia grows into a logistics hub, local warehouses dependent on fast affordable access to pallets. DS Pallets provides used new custom and heat treated pallets often within twenty four hours. Without local pallet yards, businesses face higher costs, delays and increased environmental impact from longer transportation times.

Legal permitted pallet yards like the one proposed operate safely under strict city fire and environmental codes such as ours in Corona, banning them risk pushing this essential service underground where there's less oversight and more danger. We're also committed to sustainability refurbishing and recycling thousands of pallets weekly, reducing landfill waste and helping other businesses stay eco conscious, eco friendly. To summarize, pallet yards support local industries and legal operations protect community and safety. And responsible businesses like ours promote sustainability. We respectfully ask that you would reconsider and to allow pallet yards to stay open in Hesperia.

We've been doing this for a long time. It's actually my father. It's our family business. We've had no instances of fires for the rodent problems. We have things set up in place such as traps. We do have a few cats and dogs also on her property that help with that. We do separate the pallets. The fire department is actually on the same street as our pallet yard where our pallet yard is located. And so they do check up on us regularly as well as the city of Eastville. Even though we're in Corona, we're in the middle of both cities.

The city does check up on us every about two to three months or so and they just show up randomly. There's no usually no phone calls. Sometimes they'll just pop in and so they keep track of us. We did have the pallets organized so that a fire truck if need be needs to come in has plenty of space can see all of the the pallets. We have several hoses, fire extinguishers, other things in place in case of an emergency.

And so we are responsible. We've been conducting business for over fifteen years. My father has been in the business for almost thirty years. And we just would like for you guys to ask for you to reconsider this and allow us to continue building. It's been three years and again we poured thousands of dollars into this and we wouldn't want that to go to waste.

And we have been moving ready to move forward with this. We see all of the warehouses that are built or are currently being built and without pallet yards in the area, we have a minimum requirement for delivery. So anything outside of Asperia, you're going to have to send in most likely a bigger truck which would cause more damage to the roads and the streets as opposed to a smaller truck if you're ordering 100 or 200 pallets we could send a small truck which isn't going to do as much damage to the city, the streets, etcetera hitting curbs, hitting fire extinguishers, taking down trees with the semi truck. So again, thank you for your time and I hope that you guys would consider potentially keeping pallet yards legal and open in Hesperia. Thank you for your time.

You very much. Item two, Rachel Colette.

Hello, Chair and Commissioners. My name is Rachel Colette, I'm a resident of Asperia living off of Halinor And 7th Street down there by the BNSF railroad track. Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I stand before you to express strong opposition to the proposed pallet reclamation yards in our city. While reclaiming wood pallets may seem environmentally beneficial on the surface, the negative impacts in our neighborhood's infrastructure, health and property values are simply too significant to ignore. First, let's talk about the neighborhood quality of life. These yards typically operate around the clock. Our quiet nights won't last long once heavy equipment, forklifts, and truck traffic roll through at two a. M. Noisy operations disrupt sleep, they elevate stress levels, and erode the peace we cherish in Hesperia's community.

Second, consider traffic and safety. Industrial operations mean constant semi truck traffic bringing in and hauling away pallets. Our streets, many of which are residential in the proposed area, aren't built for such use. This leads to increased congestion at major intersections, heightened risk of accidents, especially near schools and parks, and accelerated wear and tear on the roads, which then costs will fall back to us taxpayers. Third, there are serious environmental and health concerns.

I point out the health concerns because I am a registered nurse and I take care of our community. Pallets often harbor nails, splinters, chemical residues, and mold. As they're stored, repaired, and broken down, dust and fragments can become airborne. Potential runoff from pressure washing could contaminate soil and groundwater. These factors raise the risk of respiratory irritation and other health issues in nearby neighborhoods. Fourth, our property values will suffer. Homes adjacent to or within sight of such a facility typically see decreased market appeal. Imagine selling your home next to rows of worn pallets, constant truck noise, and dust clouds. Your prospective buyers will think twice, directly impacting your investment in your home. That hurts our long term growth and discourages families from settling here in Hesperia.

Fifth, let's examine land use and city planning principles. Hesperia has carefully zoned areas for retail, residential, and light industry. Pallet yards better belong in a heavier industrial zone, well buffered from homes, schools, and parks. Putting them in proximity to families breaks from best land use practices in such a dangerous precedent. If we allow this, we are sending a message that the health and well-being of our community and community members are less important than industrial profit.

Finally, and this is important, we must address the issue of a potential conflict of interest. If any city official stands to benefit financially or through close personal connections with the operators of these yards, that must be disclosed. The public deserves full transparency. Decisions that affect our homes, our health, and our city's future must be made in the public's best interest, not for private gain. Anything less erodes public trust.

In conclusion, I urge you to consider the full scope of negative impacts from noise, traffic, health, property values, and misaligned land use, and a vote to prohibit the establishment of new or the expansion of existing outdoor pallet yards and indoor pallet manufacturing facilities. Thank you for your time and service to our community. Let's keep this area safe, quiet and thriving.

Thank you. Lisa Portis.

Good

evening. Hello, chair and commissioners. My name is Lisa Portis and I live near Maine and Buckthorn and I'm looking forward to the Hesperia Golf Course Walking Trail. That'll be very nice but we won't have to walk on the street by the golf course. For the following reasons, I would like to encourage the Hisperia City Council to ban the use and sorry, expansion of pallet yards new as well.

One, a significant fire hazard. Number two, rodent infestation. Number three, aesthetics and property value concerns. Number four, until today, a lack of specific regulations. Number five, a potential for significant infrastructure strain, which our roads don't need. So I encourage the Hisperea City Council and the Planning Committee to adopt resolution number PCDash2025Dash07. Thank you.

Thank you. Al Vogler?

Good evening, commission members. I'm Al Voegler. My Hesperia experiences began in 1954, and therefrom, we moved here full time in 1972. In 1979, a very large fire spread from the Antelope Valley Wash area into the yards and onto the houses of dozens of properties in the golf course area, including our backyard. Several homes burned down and people died.

In the nineteen nineties, a similar fire happened in the same areas. Prevailing winds in Hesperia come from the top of the Cajon Pass and below northeast into Hesperia. One of the historic fires spread from the pass all of the way north of Main Street in Hesperia. A proposed pallet facility upwind of Central Hesperia represents an extreme potential fire hazard. Lack of fire suppression, large quantities of dust generated from the facility, and a history of some pallet yards violating operating requirements represents too much risk to public safety and health.

Recent water droughts, five out of six years, have made worse brush fire potentials as has the specter of climate change. Shortly after a Hesperia City Council meeting regarding pallet yards, a pallet yard caught fire in San Bernardino in March 2025 this year. The fire was almost explosive, requiring dozens requiring dozens of firefighters. Research literature is replete with articles regarding historical pallet yard fires throughout the entire state of California. Of personal concern to all homeowners is the growing expense of fire homeowners insurance.

One factor considered by insurance companies in setting policy rates is the overall fire potential in any given area. Please express the wisdom of the commission to prevent any pallet yards in Hesperia, either indoor or outdoor. We, as residents here, need to consider that quite often we have rules and requirements and codes preventing certain types of activities and behavior. One of those has existed for years, and that is the amount of old spare tires from automobiles and trucks. There is a limitation on the number of those that can be stored in yet regularly for years.

Those numbers have been violated, and it takes months. And in the case of one violation involving over a thousand tires, it took way over a year to get that resolved. In the meantime, the hazard still exists. My final comment is I attended the Hesperia City Council meeting some weeks ago regarding this issue, and the developer or his representative made comments. And his comments focused on the idea that they had already spent so much money.

The conclusion then being, therefore, you have to give us an approval. But that same speaker didn't once, that I recall, mention public health and safety. It was simply the money that they've already spent. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Last white card, I believe, that I have is Robert DeVey.

I have additional white cards here.

Oh, okay.

I know he asked to be last.

Okay. Yes, he did.

I have Jerry. Jerry Pike.

Good evening. First off, I was raised in Norco in Corona. I graduated from Corona High School. The weather there is not like here. The first year I moved up here I mean, I'm a lung cancer survivor, so I talk this way anyway. But the first year, so I moved up here, I could hardly talk. You know, the wind would come up. I'd be setting out at the high school and watching my kids in the band or whatever, and I'd go home and I'd be like, just barely whispering. So it's not the same. We're a lot drier here than Corona.

I remember when it was all orange groves. Anyway, I wrote this letter back in August in response to the pallid situation. I'm not opposed to business. I'm not opposed to manufacturing new businesses starting up, but I just put my house up on MLS. I'm in a high fire danger area.

You know how Zillow or whatever range you would fall on? And I'm down here on 4th between Sycamore and Eucalyptus, and my insurance went up. So I'm just gonna read this for the sake of time. Many people are without insurance at this time due to the many fires that have been in our area. Insurance companies are dropping insured, and this was last year, okay, at that time.

Hesperia has had four fires this year. With these facilities going in, it could cause more insurances to pull their coverage due to the increased fire hazard. It could cause financial hardship on Hispanians. It could even depreciate their home values. It could cause financial loss to the city of Hispani if the people move from the city to get away from these places.

Hesperia already lacks enough infrastructure. We don't have proper facilities nearby to help fight any fire that might break out. It could take a while for any fire personnel to get to any fire. We lack the proper amount of firemen and police slash vehicles. I've had three on the I was the neighborhood watch team captain.

We had a fire right over across the street out in the backyard. He has a homeless person living out there. And I called, and they put me, like, on a three way call. And one was saying to the other, I think it was the fire saying to the police, are you gonna go? And then the dispatcher said, yeah. I think we'll go. And so then he said, okay. We'll go too. So a few vehicles showed up finally, and then there was an old truck sitting out there that the gas tank exploded. Then we had so many vehicles on the phone if they would've just came when I first called them.

Okay. There are slow response times. Sometimes police personnel don't even show up if they feel like the offense isn't serious enough. And there again, oh, no. I have the civil restraining order. I've been told they do not enforce those in the City Of The Spirit. So okay. Air pollution would be a factor too. Burning wood gives off different gases, all depending on what they might be treated with. It could cause breathing problems for nearby residents.

And we went by that facility down in Fontana. Sometimes I have to go to City Of Hope. Sometimes I go to Loma Linda. That was a trashy area to begin with. I mean, many times, we just thought, oh, this looks like the pets. And then they had that fire, then it really looked bad. Anyway, though, even if wood is treated, as soon as it reaches a certain temperature, it's going to ignite into a raging fire. And here again, it's very has totally different weather. I remember it was down to eight degrees one winter. Pipes all over the place were bursting.

And then again, you know, and that wood is gonna expand expand and contract. It's gonna split faster than it would be down in Corona or any other place. Thank you all so much. We appreciate you all.

Thank you very much.

I have Susan Garcia.

Good evening, everyone. I really don't even know where to start. The residents have already spoke. Thank you for the staff, Ryan Leonard, Edgar Gonzalez for listening to us, and your presentation is beautiful. Like I said, I even know where to start. But as you heard well, I originally came here because they're proposed there's a proposed six acre pallet yard right behind our homes. There's our homes, train tracks, six acre pallet yards, airport, the runway. Some of you, you know, are very familiar with the airport. Some of you have flown in. Some of you, you you know know the airport.

That is a real concern for our area. Our insurance, we're losing our insurance. We lost hazard insurance. It's hard to obtain insurance. I do understand some of these could be safe, you know, but we're in the desert. Like they said, we're in a fire zone. We are easily catching a fire. We just had the ranch fire, which isn't close to us, but we did have the Hispere fire that was behind us. I don't know who was here for the 1979 fire, the Grave Fire, but it ripped through us. Yeah, it's one of our biggest things is fire insurance. We all live here. We all love Hisperea. That's why we're here. I was raised here. I've been here thirty five years.

I bought my home here. I could have you know. I couldn't have left. But there's a lot of familiar faces and friends that I've made. You know, like I said, this is where I grew up. Are these developers? Do they even live here in Hesperia? I understand, you know, they put out money. But this is our city, and we need to protect our city. We're like a dumping yard. Oh, you know what? Hey, let's go up there to the desert. Let's go to Hesperia and put a pallet yard. You don't even live here. I don't know if some of you live here, but I know some of you don't live here. A quick Google search will show you that some of these pallet yards are not 20 feet apart. These are sky high. It's a danger to all of us. Like you guys said, you know, a pallet yard is ablaze. We're out.

It's just horrible. Summit Valley Road, they're not supposed to use it, but you will know that they're gonna use Summit Valley Road. Summit Valley Road is a tore up. It's our commute, you know, to get up and down. It's just, you know, it's really hard on all of us, and it's not right. It's not fair to put us in danger because someone wants to build a pallet yard right behind our homes. We're all suffering. And you know what? Everyone will suffer. We'll lose their home insurance. What if I want to leave now? I can't because my house isn't going to be worth nothing. I've moved next to airport. Yes. My chances of a train not train.

We're going to to trains. Chances of a airplane crashing. Before I moved there, there was a crash there. There's been a crash a little ways in Summit Valley, Honda Valley. And I moved next to the train tracks. There's a chance that some of those oil containers could blow up. But, yeah, I knew where I was moving. I did not move next to six acres of pallet yards. Those are horribly ugly. And when I go out back, I can throw a rock and hit that warehouse.

You know, I could just I could take my hose and squirt it and probably hit where it's going to be, inside and outside pallet yards, whether inside or not. I'm sorry, I don't know which one of you said it, but we don't know how high they're going to stack them. We don't know what's going on inside. We don't have enough fire trucks. We don't have the lateral trucks. We don't have enough resources. It's just something know, I speak for the community and the residents that's here and the residents that are talking. We do not want pallet yards in Hesperia. We're asking that you do adopt this amendment that we've worked hard on. I'm sorry, that you guys have worked hard on, but the city and the residents have also worked hard trying to stop this.

Like I said, do they live here? You know, are they just coming up here? Hey, you know what, there's a nice area right there. Let's put a pallet yard. No, they're bringing hazard to us. They're putting danger on us. There is going be more throughout the city. I understand that. We have the animal shelter. We have the bus barn. We have the school. Obviously, everyone has spoken, pallet yards are a no. Some of my neighbors, their homeowners insurance increased by the thousands. I have a neighbor that she lost her hazard insurance. No one wants to pick her up.

And I don't know how much more to express that, you know, it's dangerous. We don't have the resources for it. We're supposed to love Hesperia and take care of Hesperia and everyone in it. And pallet yards are not loving Hispani and taking care of his residents. Thank you.

Thank you.

Gina?

Good evening. Obviously, I didn't plan on speaking tonight, but I am. Wonderful presentation. Thank you. By the way, if you do go down Eucalyptus from Santa Fe towards I Avenue, you will see a pallet yard there inside and out. It's a hot mess. You may want to go check it out one day. I drive by it every day in my school bus. I'm totally opposed to it. Everybody in the community is. It's about the quality of life for people, but life in general. There are pallet yards that are going to be planned to be put in residential areas, and then there was one on Darwin behind the animal shelter and my bus barn and maintenance for the Hillsborough Unified School District. You know how quick school buses catch on fire? Very quickly. It's a hot mess.

It's horrible. Bad planning, bad idea. And we don't need that stuff in Hisperea. Maybe somebody's pockets do from getting it from the people who want to come up and put their businesses up here. Keep your businesses out of Hesperia for pallets. We already know it's a danger. And we know that we're prone to fires. Yes, the great fire of seventy nine. Actually, my grandparents were here in '72, so when that happened, they were here. I know many people who helped fight that fire, lost homes, and that was my grandparents' friends.

And yeah, that was a ways back, but that can still happen. I mean, look what happens when there's fireworks going off. House to house, embers burn, we have a lot of trees. Pallets are a no go. It should be a no go for the city. Please think about the residents, not your pockets, not anything like that because there's a lot at stake. And believe me, those animals in the shelter, they're behind padlocked cages. So if that pallet lure went up on fire, they wouldn't make it out in time. I can guarantee you that. And I really don't want to lose my job because there's no school buses to drive either.

And they don't want to lose their houses when that Paleo catches on fire because things do happen. No matter if it's inside or outside, things do happen. That's all I can say. Thank you.

Thank you.

Alejandra Ruiz?

Good evening. Oh, is it on? Yes. Good evening. My name is Alejandra Ruiz, and I'm the statewide climate justice advocate at CHERLA. And I'm here in support of the community members of Hesperia that urge to ban new and expanded pallet yards. And thanks to Susan Garcia for keeping me and keeping us informed. And as you've already heard, these facilities increase fire danger. They bring more truck traffic and create air and noise pollution. That's especially concerning as Hesperia faces hotter, drier conditions and more fire risks.

These wooden pallets are highly combustible and have already caused significant fires, as you've heard, in the surrounding areas Fontana, San Bernardino and Riverside. And so it's important to make land use decisions that prioritize the public health and safety, especially for communities already dealing with high heat, poor air quality, and limited resources. So I urge that you please move forward with this ban and keep his area safe and livable. Thank you.

Thank you.

I have no additional white cards. Do you wanna try the voice mails again?

Yeah. Let's see that. I almost forgot.

Hello. My name is Danielle Howard. I live near the pallet where the proposed pallet storage is going to be made. I back up the the airport. I oppose it because of the amount of that are going to increase in this area because of the pallets and the wood storage. That's that's it at this moment. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Barbara Walton, and I live in Hesperia. And I'm calling regarding the pallet yard. I vehemently oppose anything like that in our city. Hesperia tries so hard to rise above the rest of the high desert cities, which you understand what I'm saying. I believe it's a big eyesore. You know? What they say and what they do are two different things. If you just drive down the freeway, you'll see what happens. Besides the fire hazard and the high pile storage, they never seem to get rid of even if they say they recycle them.

I don't believe that for five seconds. But it will reduce the property values of any the homes in the city and especially the ones nearby. And I don't think anybody up here deserves to have a business like that anywhere within the city limits. There's plenty of places out in the middle of nowhere they can store that junk. So anyhow, I appreciate you taking the time to listen to this, and I wish city of Hesperia the best of luck.

Thank you. Yes. My name is Kelly Preston, and I would like to voice our opinion on the palate, is gonna happen on that. We really don't want it. We've been up here for so long, and it's a fire is you know, the the fires are deep whatever. Anyway, we oppose the palette to the whole city. Thank you.

That's the last. I believe you have one more white card.

I do. Robert Davy. You are the last one, sir.

A lot of this, I should learn my lesson on doing a can presentation because by the time I get to it, everything's been said or I've thought of some other things I need to say instead. But the residents don't want palace. I've talked to firefighters and fire officials that I've been out and about this last year that I haven't found one that wants it. So we're asking for a yes vote. We can go ahead.

While fire hazard's gonna get all the press, it's not the only problem. You've got environmental impacts. You've got health hazards, rodents, toxic smoke, and a lot of them are chemically treated. So if they do go up flames, you got that toxins going in the air. For the company I worked for, I went to a warehouse in Boston. They got rats the size of cats. And yeah, he says they got traps and yeah, they had traps, but it was disgusting. And they get in the pallets. The aesthetics, pallet yards are ugly. That it does you know, we talked about that. It takes down your your value. You got noise pollution. I hate noise. The council knows I hate noise. Forklifts, backup beepers, machinery, saws, nail guns, hammers.

We can go to the next one. We've talked about stacking. You you also have propane. You're gonna have propane explosions, stress on the infrastructure. We've talked about Soma Valley Road, Ranchero Road for the airport location. Insurance would be a problem. We go to the next one. The reason idle pallets provide ideal conditions for fire, they're relatively easy to ignite. And the one reason they're so easy to ignite, is because there's spacing. You can stack these things from top to bottom.

You've got air that's going to go all the way down through. You got air that's going to go through sideways and it rolls around and it's almost creates a venturi effect. So they're very difficult to put out. They're very quick to start on fire. I've had people say, why don't you go shut down every Home Depot? It's a little different story. You stuck with four by eight foot of plywood. You don't have oxygen going down through the plywood, and you don't have the ignition source. I'll get to one here that'll show you how easy they are to start on fire. And pallets sitting there in the yard, arsonist assist their kid in a candy store.

Most pallet yard fires end up being arson. So the airport location, you've got Hallador Street on the one side. You've then you've got the Santa Fe, one of the busiest rail tracks in the country. Then you've got the pallet yard. Then you got the airport. But then what you got what's left of Santa Fe Avenue, it's not much of a road anymore. And then you've got the airport runway, then you got residents on the other side. What could possibly go wrong there? Mercy Air a station there, they don't want it. You've got the fuel storage for the Mercier and the tanks.

You know, Mercier was already sabotaged there not too long ago, so they don't need palace burning them down. I've heard the arguments from the developers about we don't go by NFPA standards. You know, I've lived in California long enough. If you go by California standards, they're usually more strict than national. So either way, pallet yards quite often end up being three or four alarm fires.

And so we don't have the resources to go to that. How we're we have limited, we have one ladder truck here in Hesperia, Victorville has one possibly two, Apple Valley has one and we just don't have the required resources to go to a pallet yard fire if that happens. What five minutes is

supposed to ask.

Let's go. I want to go to I mean, we've got all the different locations that you've got the packets in front of you. But one particular one in Chicago that I've studied extensively, it took 300 firefighters, 85 pieces of firefighting equipment. It was windy. It was 95 degrees and and the wind sound familiar to here. Okay. So if that happened today at 01:30PM today, humidity in Chicago was 70%. You know it wasn't Hesperia? It was 18%. That's a formula for disaster.

Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. No more no further white cards?

No further white cards.

Alright. So go ahead and close public comment period at 07:58. All right. So commission discussion.

Thank you for taking the time everybody for speaking. This is a great opportunity for your voices to be heard. I think we heard from both sides. So I think that's an important thing to hear up here. The final presentation was a little bit shocking knowing that the Hesperia Airport isn't quite long enough to do any kind of logistics cargo.

I don't understand why we would put a pallet yard on the airport. However, it's my understanding that Barstow is moving into the logistics in a way that Hesperia likely never will with the Barstow International Gateway and BNSF doing a gigantic logistics hub up there. It seems like that's going to be a prime location for needs and pallets. One of my questions is just understanding I think one thing that staff said was that existing warehouses are able to do pallet work on their existing property. Is that correct?

That is correct.

Okay. Are there restrictions when it comes to subcontracting any of the work for on on-site on their existing warehouse properties for keeping up with their needs on pallets?

So as of now, we don't have any restrictions for them. I think, again, this kind of whole prohibition is specifically for manufacturer or outdoor storage or pallet yards. So we see that as a kind of, I guess, a use or secondary use of the operation, which is not mainly the full operation. I mean, you're going to have some pallets in there, but it's not going to take out the whole warehouse. So even if they're stored outside, it's not going to be the main portion of the outdoor storage.

Yeah. That being said, I mean, I understand the need for attracting business and keeping Hisperea beautiful, at the same time. So, I kind of feel like the Barstow International Gateway is, BNSF's investment out there is really going to change the High Desert, the logistics that they're trying to cure with trucking and transportation along our thoroughfares and highways is the purpose behind the Barstow International Gateway. So that's at top of my mind.

Okay. I'm not opposed to the concept of a truss yard or I mean not a truss yard, a pallet yard in Hisperea. But I think it needs to be in an area that is not conducive to homes and those type of situations in that location. You're right in between. It's not a I don't think it's a viable or a good location.

I think it would be more viable up in the industrial area because we as I was my mind was going into trash yards because we have a number of trash yards that carry wood and deal with the day to day like building pallets or anything else. Deals with the wood that we need to build the homes around here. So we'd rather see I think stuff oriented from generated from our area than having to bring it up from down below or anything else generate the revenues. If there is a revenue base, I don't know what the revenue base is for pallets in this situation. So but I feel that if it was in a different location in the industrial area that it would be viable because we have a blight up in E Avenue North Of Lemon, it's been there for years and nobody's addressed it that I'm aware of.

Going back from way back, it started out as a I believe firewood, then it was it collected trusses that were no good. So and it's still sitting there and it's probably one of the worst fire hazards I think it's probably has, if it's still there. I haven't been up that way in a bit, but I'm sure it's still there. And it is a blight as far as I'm concerned for many, many, many years. So we can preach all we want about fire hazards and so forth, we're ignoring what's already in our backyard in certain situations that need to be addressed.

So it's kind of a dilemma for me. I'm not a big proponent of these type of moratoriums or whatever you want to call it, because this is not only you did the moratorium for a year to do the study, and now we're at this point discussing to get rid of them altogether. And I don't think that's, guess again, in my view a knee jerk reaction to something that could be resolved in another manner with looking at other locations, if that's feasible. So that's kind of my view on it. Thank you.

I agree. It's we've heard from both sides. I agree with that. And it's been good. I think, along with Dale, I kinda share the same thing. It seems like this whole thing is more stemmed on the proposed location by the airport. I don't necessarily think that that's probably not a great spot either. I think the McKinley's had that building originally. They've been there for as long as I remember.

Nick Nick Welco. Nick Welco.

Yeah. Jim McKinley and his wife, they've had that business there. And, I mean, torches and welding have been going on there for well over what I know, well over forty seven years. So, and I've been here my whole life. So, and to my knowledge, they never started any fires. Now pallet yards, are they a fire danger? Yeah. Absolutely. I can contest that personally. I do I do think that maybe we I feel like that we should be looking at this at a different angle and possibly thinking, okay.

That's not that shouldn't be zoned. I think we we don't have any current regulation on them now, and that's why somebody's jumping on the opportunity because it was an open space. So they they acquired it. The center area of the heavy industrial section of Hesperia is underutilized. And, I mean, maybe this is an opportunity for us to look at it and come up with some ideas to help a business have a business here.

And, yeah, to your point, there there's gonna be an opportunity. And I'm not saying pallet yards are it, but pall pallets are gonna be needed with the railroad depot going in. Maybe it's you know, some of this stuff I didn't even get to see until tonight. So I just kinda feel like I'm not I'm not, like, excited about pallet yards because of the way they look. I think we've all talked about that.

But I think there's a possibility of maybe having a conversation of, you know, does there have to be a certain specific area zoned for it, a certain height, spacing, fire suppression? But, again, I I I'm not sure if if suspending it altogether without spending a little more time on a location with specific qualifications behind it. Does that make sense? I think that's where I'm at. But I I don't I don't I do not think that over by the railroad is a good location.

It's too close residential. I don't think that it should be anywhere near residential. It should be in a I two heavy industrial location, I think. Correct? Is that correct? I is that I 2?

Correct.

Yep. And what's allowed in I too?

Like I said, on the current regulations, it allows polyureths. I mean, it allows manufacturing facilities, warehouses, it allows outdoor storage. That's what current regulations are now.

And is that along Santa Fe north of Yeah.

Think you have it between, like, Santa Fe and I, and you see, like, there's, a bottleneck portion of Hisperia, which that's where the I 1, I 2 is at. And closer to Main Street, that's where you get the Business Industrial Park and then you have Main Street, which is commercial.

And just for clarification, the zoning next to the airport where that pallet yard was proposed, the zoning

for that is I1. I1. Yeah. So that but because we don't have anything currently in place, they acquire a property, and they assume that because they're in industrial, they can have a pallet yard. Is that what I'm understanding?

Yeah, that's what I would understand.

Okay. So I don't know. I don't know if I'm not sure. I just don't I don't think that that's a I don't think that that's a location that pallet yard should be. I think that that that's a area that for it's too close to residential.

So I don't know if there's a discussion about changing the motion to possibly have a discussion about some sort of, ordinances. And, I mean, the other problem is gonna be policing it because we all know that we don't have the manpower to police it. And maybe that maybe that's just it right there. If we don't have the manpower to police it, then we have to put a no on it. I don't know if that's if that's accurate or the avenue to go. But,

yeah,

I think that's all I have to say about that.

All right. I see the gears turning. So I wanted to say that we hear you, residents. Thank you for, you know, as Commissioner Almond said, that Almond said that having both sides of this discussion is important, but it's a it is a discussion. It's it's we all live here.

And so I am torn, as well. Not that I I too. I I do not like the idea of pallet yards at all. I do not. But I think that possibly there is a cracking and a conversation with heavy industrial far away from and what that determines what it would be.

It should not be anywhere near residential, should not be anywhere near light commercial, should be. So I don't know if those but because as we just got done talking about, there is some heavy industrial areas nearby residential, and that that is not okay.

Could be it could be a minimum too. I mean, it could be a conversation of having a, you know, a certain number. And so if, you know, if it's

liquor license kind of concept, meaning there's only a certain amount.

Maybe, like, the city of Asperry only allows two or one. I don't know what that number is. I'm just saying maybe it's a maybe it's a number that we cut it off. And then once that business is done, that opens that up to another Another pallet yard. Another pallet yard to be a pallet yard. I don't know if that's that's an option. I you know, one of the things that stands out too is, you know, all the all the negatives that we're that we're considering, you know, along with the fire, you know, propane was talked about. I mean, we have propane tanks all over this town that don't blow up. I'm not saying that they can't in a forklift, but

Right. And the concern about the chemicals in the pallets catching on fire is 100 heard, understand.

Yeah, absolutely. They burn hot. You've seen them personally. Absolutely. It you know, there could be there could be some there could be some certain regulations on what the pallets are made out of also. I mean, there's a there's

How would how would you police that? That's because that's the big decision.

That's probably that's probably the hard part. You put all these things in place, and then how do you place it? I don't know.

Mister chairman, would it is it possible to ask Does he need

a white card? Public hearing to be reopened?

Mr. Jensen, public comment is over.

I just thought I'd ask if you could reopen public hearing for comment.

So, staff, I think some of the discussion we're having here in the commission is policing. That is code enforcement, correct? And how many code enforcement officers do we have in the city of Asbury?

So correct. The police think of it would be code enforcement. There's a conversation to be had with San Bernardino County Fire if they do annual inspections or

not Sure.

Or if they would be able to. But those would be the primary two departments that would do those inspections.

And we only have a handful of code enforcement officers to handle all of us, Barry.

Correct? I don't know the exact number, but it's somewhere in the neighborhood of eight or nine or

Right. It's we're not dealing with an army of them, obviously.

So

a question because I don't know nature of a question. So as we continue to have discussion, our city is always evolving, right? So this does not mean it's the end of the discussion today. We can make a decision today. What would it look like for a pallet yard or a series of companies when, over time, can propose to come back into something that's heavily more regulated industrial zone If we do approve this adopt this resolution tonight, is there an undue, if you will, under special provisions, variance, conditional use permit, something to that effect that is could be more heavily regulated far away from residential areas, things like that.

So if this code amendment were adopted or it could be changed in the future. That would just be another development code amendment that could be changed, and it could be changed again and again. That's just a series of different development code amendments. This isn't set in stone. I do want to remind the Planning Commission that tonight, this is a recommending body. So ultimately, the final decision requires City Council approval. Tonight, the Planning Commission could recommend a different alternative, if that's what you choose. The City Council can consider that alternative along with the recommended action in the staff report.

Heavy industrial only. Far away. I don't know what far

away Yeah, to establish once we need to establish guideline, I'm not comfortable with this.

The term far away from residential is the ambigual term. So we would that would have to have a distance requirement for but it would be in heavy industrial, correct?

Is that Well, mean, industrial over here, there's no residential around other than on the west side of the railroad track. So there's plenty of there's plenty of buffer between homes. I mean, we we designated that area for businesses like this. We did. I don't think that anyone planned on pallet yards infiltrating because they're being booted out of other cities, you know, or highly regulated in other cities. We It I think it needs to be worded different.

Excuse me,

chair. I believe our city attorney wants to weigh

in. Okay. How do

I turn on my mic?

Please speak into the mic so that everyone can hear and it gets recorded. Also, know, depending on the direction you want to go, we can assist in helping prepare a motion if there's an agreement among the commission.

So I think some of the discussion at the microphone was not for everyone to be heard. We're brainstorming, so sometimes you get wrapped up in your own thoughts because we're not looking for wide open by no means. But we're there is some consideration on limitation as just a few licenses through the city of Asperia, like two or three, something to that effect, in heavy heavy industrial zone. The term that we are seeking, and we don't have the answer up here at the commission in this body currently, is what is far away from residential. Well, we do understand the concept that there's burning embers.

We all see the wind up here in Sperry that always what was it? A couple Sundays ago that was completely ridiculous. And fire in a circumstance like that is is absolutely not okay. So I think that's where we're kind of stuck. I don't know if we can continue this and have some feedback maybe to kind of help guide that far away, but that's kind of where we're leaning. But we are, I don't know. Anyone else want to say anything? Commissioner Allman?

Does the current prohibition that's in place on this, when does it expire if a decision isn't rendered tonight and brought back as

a recommendation to counsel? So the existing moratorium would expire in August. Any extension of that moratorium would require the counsel to extend that moratorium for an additional period of a year or whatever it is. The maximum they could do is a year. With respect to distance limitations that you're describing there, the I-two zone, if that's what your intention is, the I-two zone is generally you have it's not I Avenue, but you're probably two properties in from I Avenue is where the I-two zone starts, and it's generally North of Spruce Street.

Then it borders the railroad tracks. So the western boundary would be Santa Fe and then you have the railroad tracks and you have residential on the opposite side. You would probably be looking at a buffer of somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 feet that would get you a couple properties in from the railroad tracks. And so that'd be centrally confined in that I-two.

That's what I was thinking a 1,000 feet.

1,000 feet.

And from any adjacent within that boundary, because that's what knew it was going

to be speaking in the mic, so I can hear

your mic. Yes, virtually is what we're talking about is what we classify as the industrial area between I Avenue, the railroad tracks, Bear Valley Road and you said Spruce.

Yeah, might not be Spruce. More Hercules or something. Correct, It's the northern portion of that.

Right. Okay. And that's and then if we discuss the 1,000 foot then that would put it into a tighter grouping.

What's the distance from old I call it Old McWelco, sorry, I've been here for a long time. So old McWelco building to those residents, how far is that?

Don't know, do we have a measuring on that? I'm sure it's

got to

be less than that's got to be less than a thousand feet.

Unfortunately, the Internet is this computer is not connected to the Internet. I can't pull up. Because I

think even crossing the railroad tracks and hitting the residents over off of Eleanor is probably less than a thousand feet. Maybe. So that would provide, it's about 400, 300 feet. Okay. That's what I was thinking. It's not that because they're right up against the railroad. The tracks has a 100 foot right away. Then you're into McWalco property, which is right there. And then the airport, I don't know how wide the airport is. It can't be all that wide off Santa Fe in there.

So I think the thousand feet would be a starting point adequate to facilitate finding something that would both provide a mechanism for business if they so wish to do so and protect the property owners.

Well, I'll make sure that we look at like I Avenue, like what Ryan is saying.

I already said I Avenue was like two lots in. So from

I Avenue, you have commercial industrial business park generally located along I and then you have a heavy commercial along I. Then you have I-one, the property that is one property in from I Avenue. So that fronts, I believe, G Street.

G, yes.

And then on the other side of G is where I-two would start.

What

I that's the zone that's the area I'm comfortable with in that area. I think that is, yeah, the interior.

Interior of

the IT zone, yeah.

All right. So as we discuss, to limit the amount of licenses, to limit the amount of lots allows for code enforcement to have a more robust ability to police as opposed to having it everywhere.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, mean, if we're talking about the limitations, I mean, I would be in favor of, you know, out outdoor fire suppression, and it has to have foam, a foam system. So And this is in my experience from extinguishing these pallet fires before. Right.

What would that look like, though? Well Good, commissioner. That fire suppression system.

Well, I would say that if, you know, it could be something, and I'm just throwing it out there. You know, sick anything six feet and higher has to have an outdoor fire suppression system, and you can't go over 12 feet, period, exterior. And then I'm not I'm not entirely sure on the interior, but fire suppression systems, interior or exterior, are not necessarily meant to put the fire out as they are to, like, in residential or commercial buildings to allow the people to have time to get out. So I don't know what that suppression system would look like. That's over my pay grade.

But Sure. But I think that I think that there's there's several ideas I think that could be tossed around that someone someone could, come up with these regulations that we could place on this and then put it in a certain area, certain distance, and a certain amount of permits that are allowed to be given out.

Right. Because we're also fighting with free will. Right? So as as several people that have spoke tonight said, you know, if you have an indoor, which is absolutely correct, and this is part of this conversation so you guys get to see how, we're more chatty tonight. Thanks to you guys. But, you know, if you have a 20 foot tall building, they're gonna stack it as high as they can, you know, whether it's intentional or just people get busy and they and they they don't get enough of the pallets out. So they're gonna stack it as high as that structure can go.

Well, I believe you have to be 19 feet below or I'm sorry, 19 inches below a, fire sprinkler.

You are supposed to. Yeah. You're supposed to. Right?

Okay. So you yeah. You know? Per capita fire. Yes. Okay. So yeah. You're You're supposed to. So that goes back to the policing. Right. I don't

know if this is a hard slippery slope. So I don't know other than how to move it from here.

I'd like to vote tonight. I think we need to make a motion at this point if we're open for that with the guidance of our lawyer to I don't know the actual wording but to provide for additional study to allow this type of business within the guidelines of the what would you call it the

I2 zoning. I2 zoning

with the additional information of not any closer than 1,000 feet from any residents. Is there any other verbiage that you think?

Like current possible fire suppression looking if there is any possibility of that?

Height and spacing requirements.

Yeah, there's already have Yeah, they have hydrant spacing requirements already under the fire guidelines.

Well, can we we can put a can we put additional height regulation on it within the city beyond what's already out there for the fire department? I mean, we can set a we can set our own height requirement, can we?

Did you said height or height Height. Height. You can set whatever height limit you wanted to.

Height then. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

That's what keep the fire

from getting crazy. Yeah. You're talking about height of no more than?

No more than, you know, I would say, I mean, in my opinion, maybe 12 feet.

12 feet. I think that is, is that the existing somebody had mentioned that in a in

The existing fire regulations from the county 16 feet. I'm not sure that's what I read. I think that's outside. Outdoor, I'm not sure what the regulations are inside.

I think for safe for

for safety for personnel and for for fire and for the visual aesthetics, 12 feet is a

12 feet outside?

12 feet outside. Yeah.

Okay.

I was saying height limit of 12 feet for exterior.

Exterior, yes.

And that would help with safety and with visual.

Correct. Yeah. And we just got to incorporate that in the verbiage, right?

Correct. Do you want to take a stab?

Yeah. So I want to make sure that we're moving forward in a progressive way here. It sounds like just from my vantage point that we have a we're moving towards a motion that would recommend to the City Council not to adopt the development code amendment, but rather to limit pallet yards in the city to the I2 zone with the caveat they'd be located within 1,000 yards away from any residential. Thousand feet. Thousand feet, excuse me. I also did hear that there was a comment about potentially limiting the number of licenses for those pallet yards in those respective areas. Have I encapsulated kind of the sentiment of the Planning Commission? I believe so.

Tim, did you want to speak to that?

Yes. It would be the cap. I'm sorry, for clarification, the cap. Do you have a recommended number on the cap?

I mean, I don't speak for everyone on here, but I would say in our small heavy industrial area, too. And I also, in the verbiage, another thought. And I mean, they could speak to how many. How many. I would think that before someone spends money on going through this process, after we put this in place, there should also be verbiage in there so they understand, you know, we don't wanna put this next to, the old I think it's flyers now. Is it or it was Goodspeed dates me again. Right? I'd never keep up with the new businesses.

But corner g

and Yeah, know what I mean? So, right. And so, we do have flammables there. So, let's not put a pallet yard next to that facility. I think there's plenty of other spaces. So, maybe they're including that 1,000 feet, we need to make sure that there's verbiage in there for

That would already be compromised in what you stated previously with the because that's located on I and well, it's actually G, it could fit in there, it could be close enough. So that might be incorporated in the 1,000 feet to encompass that. How would we phrase that?

Maybe they need to be within 1,000 feet of any other existing flammable

operation. If I'm hearing the commission correctly, it sounds like we want you guys are envisioning some common sense restrictions beyond just the 1,000 feet. I mean, this is so nuanced we could be up here all night identifying every potential issue. So I think common sense restrictions would be a good start.

Yes. Thanks, Nathan.

And just also to point out, they listed a few other zoning locations where these pallet yards could possibly go in besides the I1, I2, I believe that it was also the GI, the General Industrial area, is that correct?

Yes. So the General Industrial generally is kind of located North Of Main Street. It's a buffer before the I1 and I2, if you will, from Main Street. So it's a little bit lower classification. But that's that area north of believe it's Spruce.

I'm sorry, I'm not looking at a map, but so the I want or the General Industrial, like I said, that is just North Of Main. I think it's between Spruce and I don't know the name of the street to the north, Hercules maybe. I'm just kind of ballparking it. Then the Main Street or the Commercial Industrial Business Park, that's generally located on the West Side of the city. So that's where you have a lot of our industrial warehouses that allows for more limited commercial office uses, industrial business parks.

Thank you.

So, Chair, my staff also just informed me there is a school in that area as well. So when we're talking about common sense restrictions, including sensitive uses such as schools. Yes.

So we got the verbiage on that okay to make a motion?

Do you want to repeat it again?

If I can remember that. So as I understand, the Planning Commission, again, as the recommending body, would be recommending that the City Council not approve the Development Code Amendment, but to restrict pallet yards to the industrial two zone prohibited within 1,000 feet of residential and sensitive uses and incorporating other common sense restrictions. And again, for the audience, the Planning Commission is a recommending body. Ultimately, the city council has the ultimate authority on what gets approved or denied.

I make that motion.

There was a height restriction.

And a minimum height restriction.

And a cap. I'm sorry.

A A cap. Yes. Okay. So

I'll make that motion.

Do have

a second? I'll second.

Motion passes four zero.

All right, item number three, general plan update. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.

Chair, may we possibly get a five minute recess for a quick break?

All right. We're going to go ahead and take a five minute recess if we could.

Yes. I'm going to pause the meeting for you.

Yes. Thank you.

Chair? Are we ready to go?

We are ready to go. Alright. We are ready for the general plan update. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Thank you. Sorry. A little too excited. Thank you, guys. It's great to be back. It's been longer than we thought. Just as a reminder or refresher, my name is Corey Witter. I'm a senior associate with the consulting firm, Placeworks, who's been who's had the pleasure of helping the city with the general plan update over the past year and change at this point. I'm joined by Jolene Hayes, a principal with Farrand Piers, a transportation contractor and working with us on this project for the circulation element.

And we are very happy to be before you tonight to review the final draft version of, four of our elements of the general plan. And so just a quick refresh. I know we have one new commissioner with us this evening. It's nice to meet you, and we have three returning. So this should be a refresh for some of you and maybe a refresh for you as well if you've seen general plans before. But if not, we wanted to make sure you had just a little bit of background before we jump in. So a general plan really is kind of a overarching 10,000 foot document. It really outlines and kind of describes the city's long term vision for itself. You know, what do you wanna be when you grow up? How does Hesperia see itself developing over the next twenty to twenty five years?

And it's largely composed of goals, policies that implement the goals, and then maps that help obviously provide that visual interest, but also, as kind of our land use discussion went earlier this evening, can help frame some of the discussions that happen in the Planning Commission and City Council when it's time to take action. And ultimately, it boils down to a set of next steps implemented through action matrix, specifically thinking for safety and environmental justice, circulation, obviously, as well. And Cassie did a phenomenal job earlier presenting some of the end products ultimately of previous planning efforts in the capital improvements program. So it all kind of ties together at the end of the day. Ultimately, a general plan is not a zoning document.

So while it does obviously address land use and what can be you know, what can occur on a given site, it does not specify development standards. It does set, density and intensity standards, generally speaking, such as, you know, dwelling units per acre for residential use, or floor area ratio or lot coverage, for a nonresidential use, we aren't looking at things like setbacks, height. That is all implemented through the zoning code. It is not design guidelines. While design is certainly a topic a general plan can address, that is oftentimes handled again through the municipal code.

And as a parallel effort to the general plan update, the city is also pursuing the adoption of objective development and design standards for all residential all new residential development in the city. And so that looks at it much more from an aesthetic perspective rather than the physical dimension perspective. It is also a general plan is also not a guarantee for project approval. Many times, a general plan will include forward thinking projects that are in the development pipeline or kind of being considered. And while we may evaluate those projects for their potential impacts as part of the larger update, the Council Planning Commission and Council will still have to take action, specifically if it's a discretionary action.

Obviously, if it's a ministerial by right development, that's not something that's so much for up for debate. And so our general plan or the city's general plan currently addresses seven topics, but an eighth topic is being introduced by way of the environmental justice element. And so you can see the primary topics and their corresponding elements are land use, circulation, housing, open space, conservation, safety, noise, and our bonus eight. But as part of this update, we are only looking at four, land use, circulation, safety, environmental justice. The city recently adopted its certified sixth cycle housing element through HCD, and so most of our work through this process was looking at and implementing housing element compliance, specifically program 14, which I'm sure you read in preparation for this meeting, looking at the c two and r c zones and the R3 zone for increasing housing capacity through a variety of measures, which we will cover later tonight.

In addition, an update to the housing element triggers a necessary update to the city's safety element, and this actually timed up quite nicely as you'll see a little bit later when we get into the discussion of fire safety, obviously another topic that's on the front of mind for many Hesperia residents. And an environmental justice element is triggered by an update to a safety element. So you can kinda see it's cascading off, all starting from our best friend, the housing element. And a couple other reasons that it's a poignant time for Hesperia to evaluate its next twenty to twenty five years. The element or sorry.

The general plan was last comprehensively updated in 2010, and quite a bit has changed. And with significant growth anticipated in the High Desert, we are hoping that Hesperia can be prepared and enjoy the fruits of that future growth. So making sure that the community today is prepared for, you know, tomorrow. And then just a quick recap. As I alluded to at the beginning, we've been working with the city for over a year now, and we really kicked things off back in the 2024.

We hit community engagement pretty hard towards the beginning, and that informed quite a bit of our technical analysis, making sure we came together alternatives that incorporated community feedback and were responsive to their needs primarily and then also incorporating wants where possible. And ultimately, that feeds into the elements, their goals, their policies, the implementation actions and then making sure more recently, that the documents are compliant with the California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA. And so we will address, our documents' approach to satisfying state requirements on the environmental side a little later as well. But that is kind of what has taken us through fall or sorry, winter, I guess, the first few months of 2025. And now here we are at the beginning of summer, with adoption hearings.

I always forget about my animations. That's why I should just not do them. Yes, here we are, adoption hearings. And just a quick recap again, as I mentioned, we hit community engagement pretty hard in the early going. Within the first four or five months, we had four community meetings and a online survey that collected over 300 responses, which is a tremendous response rate no matter where you are.

So we were very encouraged by the participation from the Hesperia community. In September, we came before you to give you an update on where things stood, which doesn't seem that long ago when I think back to it, but looking at it on a calendar, wow, time flies. And then we presented a similar presentation to the city council just before the end of the year. Any initial questions before I jump into our first Element topic? Wonderful.

Alrighty. So this map may have been useful a few moments ago before we took our recess, but this is the city's current and proposed general plan land use map highlighting the distribution of various uses throughout the city. You can see predominantly residential uses. Our friend, the I2 Zone, is sitting up in that northern area, just east of the railroad alignment and South of Bear Valley Road. And the large gray chunk in the middle is the Main Street Freeway Corridor specific plan, which technically, its general plan designation is a single name MSFCSP, but we do break it down in the element sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself into its more specific districts, and I will get to a map a little bit later.

Obviously, it's such a significant area or portion of the city, understanding at the general plan level how uses are, you know, anticipated to to continue becomes important in the discussion of the community fabric. So we thought it was poignant to include. So talking about amending land use designations, as part of the housing element program implementation, the R3 multiple family resident zone currently permits housing development between eight and fifteen units per acre, so actually, you know, fairly low density multifamily use, all things considered. As part of Housing Element Program 14, the zone will be amended to increase maximum permitted density to 30 units per acre. And this is a companion to the general commercial designation, and you'll see why in just a moment.

But general commercial right now, you know, kind of as the name implies, does not allow residential development either by right or through a conditional use permit but will be amended similar to R3 to allow that same density range, eight to 30, and also permit for the development of mixed use projects to, again, kind of acknowledge its commercial under kind of base. It will also allow 100% residential development. So the reason we introduced these as a kind of a pair is due to their colocation on the very northern extent of the city, primarily along Bear Valley Road and then extending south from Bear Valley along Hisperia and Santa Fe or sorry. Nope. Just Hisperia before it reaches kind of that that not merge because the railroad tracks bisect it, but coming down Hisperia Road.

And so with the with very limited exception, I would say 99% of the cities R3 and C2 are located within this green boundary. There are a few small intersections where C2 is on corner parcels primarily to allow for existing gas station uses and kind of incidental food service for local residents, And we would not anticipate those areas to be ripe for redevelopment just given that they are not consistent with the surrounding uses. They're quite established at present. So that's why these have been introduced kind of as a pair. They're adjacent to each other and their ultimate development potential is in lockstep, say for the difference of the potential for mixed use and commercial uses in the C2 zone.

That does not disappear. The larger change, I would say, if we're going, you know, ascribing some magnitude of difference is to the RC zone, which is a district within the Main Street freeway corridor specific plan, which the RC right now is limited along kind of the I 15 on both the east and west side and really concentrated around the Main Street off ramp. That's kind of the main area where the In N Out and the larger shopping centers are. So right now, obviously, it's intended to serve a broader market, hence its location along the 15, and we will be and it currently permits residential development in a as a excess or not accessory use, as a paired use with commercial, so it's a mixed use, you know, residential only, up to 25 units per acre. As part of the amendments to the general or sorry, to the land use element, this designation will allow now 100% residential development, so no longer paired with the commercial use.

And it will be increased from 25 to 30 units per acre. I wish I had that bullet point a little bit higher. The two between it, at present, I will actually skip to the next slide because it's a little bit better graphic. Right now, the green area, the bounding box shows where that residential is currently permitted. It is within that immediate area around the Main Street intersection with the I 15 Freeway, and so it's in that, you know, 878 acres with a theoretical capacity of almost 22,000 units.

Again, theoretical capacity. And right now, there is oh, this okay. So the the the final bullet point relates to our changes more closely. And so as part of this, we are amending or proposing an amendment to the geographic location for permitting the residential use and removing it from the West Side of I 15. We are expanding south of the original bounding box to the furthest extent of that kind of peninsula of the city's boundary all along the east side of the I 15 corridor.

This actually increases the total amount of acreage that residential is permitted in, so we do not have any issues with what is commonly referred to as just SB three thirty no net loss. So a city cannot make a change to its land use or zoning that reduces overall capacity. If it proposes a down zone in one area, it must, as part of the concurrent action, increase density to offset whatever is lost. So we are net adding. It's not a tremendous amount, but since we are also increasing the maximum density up to 30 units per acre, we do get kind of that extra 100 acres plus five units per acre, so 500 additional units.

But in totality, looking at just shy of 29,005 units of capacity, obviously, a good chunk of what's of that land around the Main Street off ramp is developed and unlikely to turn over given how recent some of those developments are. But ultimately, HCD and the state are concerned with capacity, and the city, through this, is able to demonstrate that we do have the capacity to support the arena. And really, the one of the driving factors behind this shift is that fourth bullet point, and you can kind of see that light red halo around some of the areas on the West Side, some of the RC areas around the West Side. That purple is the general industrial designation, which is, you know, I know 2,500,000 square feet is the Amazon facility that's going over here. And so in an effort to alleviate future conflict between residential, which I think common sense says that's a sensitive use, and a significant industrial logistics facility, it's in the best in the city's best interest and the community's best interest to really keep our residential uses separated.

One thing that this graphic does not show is that on the west side of the 15 Freeway south of El Centro, which is probably can't read it, but it is where that last piece of red or that first piece of RC zone sits beneath the general industrial. We are proposing that residential is allowed as a conditionally permitted use west of the freeway. This would largely fall on the developer to demonstrate, you know, kind of consistency and ability to properly mitigate adverse impacts from co locating in closer proximity to industrial. But as you can see, there is no industrial South Of El Centro. The hollow spaces are predominantly occupied by auto sales commercial as a designation, which, I will let the market decide whether or not they would like to live next to an auto retailer.

But otherwise, in terms of potential conflict, of less concern relative to being adjacent to a logistics warehouse. And so that's kind of the thought process on why this change is happening. Ultimately, the city is taking credit as part of their housing element in RHNA, satisfying their RHNA allocation, taking credit for sites within the RC zone and as part of, again, that Program 14 committing themselves to amending the zone to allow for increased capacity in the future. And this should have benefit moving forward through subsequent housing element cycles as the city would not necessarily need to pursue rezonings to accommodate future RINA allocation quantities, which hopefully makes the certification process more smooth moving forward. Before I go to goals, are there any questions about those three changes?

I know that was a lot. Happy to answer anything. Hearing nothing?

I will We're good.

I'll just ask one question. Please. Yeah. Did you, was there consideration or concept given in the zoning to, the potential for Brightline West moving through there?

Was it considered? Yes. You want to answer? Yes.

Yes. And so also with respect to the Brightline West, the Brightline West is actually going in the industrial zone there. So it's going to be in the CIBP, the southern portion of CIBP. So it's not really conducive to surrounding residential development because it's zoned industrial. But there will be access to Brightline from the Joshua Street Overpass on the 15 Freeway.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Cool. I will continue. So we're yeah, sorry. So to help kind of implement and guide the city as it, you know, adopts a lay you know, adopts its land use plan, really, the goals and policies are intended to help guide decision making when an applicant comes before the commission and council requesting a general plan amendment.

Right? That is probably the most common implementation or most likely reason you would look to your general plan goals and policies for guidance. And so the first one, and we're just going to cover goals in a few select policies tonight, but we can obviously answer as many questions as you have, the first one being an arrangement of compatible land uses that protects and maintains attractive and safe neighborhoods while providing opportunities for commercial and industrial uses. You can really see this kind of manifesting in that RC example, making sure that the city is providing suitable space for both to thrive. The second focuses on residential development, making sure that we're taking care and being good stewards of our existing residential neighborhoods but also looking forward to ensure that there is ample opportunity for residents to enjoy housing types and lifestyles of all shapes and sizes.

Our third is looking specifically at commercial development, acknowledging that local serving really the lifeblood of the Hesperia community, but then also making sure that there's room for regional economic growth being located on the I-fifteen Corridor. Fourth is looking at industrial development, which is making sure that the city has a strong tax base and through collecting those taxes is able to provide high quality public community services to the residents. And, in addition, making sure that the industrial uses do not bear an undue burden on some of the sensitive and daily life activities of the Hesperia community. The fifth is looking at those high quality public facilities. So obviously, the school districts and parks are not administered by the city itself but through the school district and the Hesperia Rex Park District, I believe I got that in the right order, but making sure that we are, we being the city, coordinating with those entities to ensure that, you know, education and access to recreational spaces is kept at the forefront of our minds in the planning realm.

And this also extends to utilities and infrastructure, of, again, manifesting in what Cassie presented as part of the CIP program. And two more. Almost there. Finally, making sure that we're looking at, the city's sustainability long term, making sure that it's an attractive place to live, and that the city is taking care of itself in all of the ways that it needs to. And finally, kind of tying back to our first goal, a balanced mix of uses that provides for the fiscal sustainability and provision of goods and services to the community.

So again, also kind of tying to five. As you can see, quite a bit of interplay between these, and the policies go further to kind of flesh out more specifically what you can look to as guidance for some of your decision making moving forward. So we have selected a few of what we would consider to be some of the more consequential additions, really, to the land use, element. By and large, city's existing policies set a solid foundation and have served the city well for the past fifteen years. So in discussion with staff, there was little need to make wholesale change.

And so most of what was done was fine tuning, kind of working and making the policies work better for the city. But a few we're highlighting tonight is policy 1.3, which is preserving undeveloped nonresidential areas West Of I 15 for commercial and industrial uses to promote land use compatibility and maintain the economic viability of the planning area. And this, again, kind of looks at our example of CR being on the West Side Of I-fifteen and conditionally permitting residential in that southern portion. But obviously, the commercial use is the predominant use and then also making way and ensuring that the general industrial uses do not get infringed upon by encroaching residential, which oftentimes is kind of the death knell for successful industry in an area. Another one we wanted to highlight, in in discussions with staff, you know, thinking of areas where growth could or maybe should, depending on where you sit, be prioritized is is really facilitating to the city's ability development along Main Street.

Obviously, Bear Valley is another strong commercial corridor and gets a lot of Victorville kind of influence as well, but really Main Street kind of being the identity of Hesperia's commercial centers. And so trying to encourage future or new businesses as they come in to consider Main Street. And this also ties in with some of our circulation goals to really create that more cohesive environment down along Main. The next one is actually funny enough oh, no, sorry. The next one.

Again, we're kind of revisiting that industrial discussion on the West Side Of I-fifteen, making sure that we're pushing the logistics, specifically facilities, to that location and trying our best to discourage them from moving into the center of the city, into that, area that has been of of discussion recently. And that that kind of ties into our next policy, which is exploring ways that the city can, you know, activate or reactivate industrial core between Main Street, railroad tracks, I Avenue, and then Bear Valley to the far North, which was, you know, obviously a big discussion point for tonight, and really, you know, beyond just the uses of of pallet yards and and seeing what what other industrial light, heavy depending on the zone it's in, what might be most appropriate, how city can spur development in those areas. And then finally, this one we kind of alluded to previously, but coordinating with Hesperia Parks and Rec to protect and improve parks and ultimately, you know, looking to enhance the community's quality of life. This also has ties to, you know, circulation, has ties to environmental justice. So you'll see this theme kind of reemerge, as we move through the presentation tonight.

And then I think this is the last one. Sorry. Prioritizing growth that furthers a regional balance of jobs and housing and reduces vehicle miles traveled, which Jolene will get into a little later, and increasing job opportunities and household income and improving quality of life. So this is kind of looking at that holistic perspective of making sure that as we add more residential, we're also providing opportunities for residents to work locally, and really, you know, trying to make sure that, you know, a, the benefit is reducing traffic on the 15, but also, you know, kind of ensuring that that Hesperia is that whole city. You can live, you can work, you can play, and call Hesperia, you know, home and home on all of those fronts.

And that is our final, you know, kind of highlight policy for discussion. At this time, I am happy to answer any questions you may have about what was presented or anything else included in the housing element that that you, reviewed prior to tonight.

I have nothing. Amazing.

I'm going to invite Jolene up to the podium or, I guess, the table and, let her take it away.

All right. Good evening, everyone. There's one thing that Corey brought up about well, the last time that we all met was September 26 and just about four days a pretty significant California state policy came into play called Assembly Bill 98, which is one of the reasons why we are being very sensitive to the industrial protection now because of the additional buffers and truck routing requirements and everything that were associated with that. So, just wanted to bring that up. I was trying to remember if that had happened before or after we met with you.

But that's part of you were at the perfect time. Being able to make sure that those separations were in place will protect your development plans going forward. So, real quickly, just the considerations for the general plan update related to the circulation element. It's really a coordination. So, circulation got brought into this when we started looking at what these shifts and where the housing units were going to like where we're going to place them and do we have enough capacity within our roadway network.

And as we were going through it, there were some other statewide policies that needed to be incorporated that had happened over the last decade. So, in short, we went through the capacity discussion. We looked at the other pieces of it, which were pedestrian and bicycle enhancements. So, some of the specific plans like what's happening over with the Silverwood development, making sure that those were all incorporated in. So, we have four main goals within the circulation element.

And similar to what Corey was saying, there aren't any significant changes. So what I'll go over with the policies that are changing are the ones that were significant enough. We discussed them all at the last meeting, so I don't think there will be any surprises. The first one really had to do with that additional access to the 15. So that coordination with SBCTA, County of San Bernardino and Caltrans to improve the segment of Summit Valley Road between the city and the 138.

We don't have a similar policy like this, so this was a new one. The other one, this one was a slight modification to the area around the airport. So, we went back and forth, had a lot of discussion to get the language right. Ultimately, we landed on changing just the underscored piece of 2.4 where it's and explore opportunities to activate the airport for community benefit. For the third policy change, it was prioritizing the improvements along Main Street that facilitate a more pedestrian friendly environment.

This was really to activate that commercial area. And the last one was really associated with the transit network, support the development of a regional commuter rail. So this has to do with the BrightLine station and making sure that we're providing that connectivity to BrightLine so our residents have an easier way to get down the hill. The circulation element plan, and I am going to point out one error on this. There is not going to be a crossing and we're not sure exactly how this bridge got put on here, but at Sultana, there is not planned to be a crossing over the railroad tracks.

The others are proposed. So, Eucalyptus is a possibility. Lemon's a possibility. We have the existing ones at Main And Ranchero Road. And then, we have the proposed interchanges along the 15 that are being considered, some existing, some proposed.

We do have some changes to some of the roadway classifications. So, when we went through after looking at where these housing units were being shifted to, we went through and ran the model and started looking at the future. Do we really need all of these roadways to carry as much as we think they need to carry? So in some senses, especially in the downtown area, like Sultana, downgraded. We realized we don't need that type of capacity, we could reduce the rights of way and allow for more development along those corridors.

So, that happened in a couple of locations where we were able to reduce the amount of improvement that were needed on those roadways to handle the future traffic volumes. Now, the other thing that we had a pretty lengthy discussion about last time had to do with maintenance of the parkways and the way that the streets were designed. So the existing general plan shows a parkway on the major arterial, a planted parkway. There was some concern that because that is actually maintained by the private parcel owner that there's confusion with whether or not those are whose responsibility it is to maintain it. So, the suggestion was just to shift it to the other side and have the curb.

So, you can see the proposed is to have the curb and the parkway paved adjacent to the roadway to eliminate that potential blight that could occur if people aren't maintaining that parkway. So, it makes it much more clear whose responsibility it is. This is the only roadway segment classification that we changed. The others remain intact. We've just altered the type of landscaping.

So, instead of having showing the trees, we went to showing some of the more natural vegetation that's more drought resistant for the city and less maintenance overall in this. So, we did that for two of them that we show in here, but throughout the whole plan, we went through and we updated all of them to be reflective of the context of the city. Bikeway facilities, this is where we just incorporated what we know is out there. There will be additional work done with the city received Safe Streets for All grant. So, will be some additional work done on making sure that the bikeway designations are safe.

As that process moves forward, more recommendations, I'm sure, will come up with potential changes to the bikeway network. For truck routes, this is one thing that did come up out of Assembly Bill 98. So, part of one of the requirements is that any proposed logistics facilities have to be accessible by a truck route. So, there will be we don't have them shown on this map. But within all of those purple areas, even those smaller local roadways will be designated as local truck routes to make sure that there's no issues with entitling those projects as they come in for approval.

But right now, main improvements on the truck route map are just making sure that we have access to the existing industrial areas that are zoned, so all of those dark purple areas that were shown on the map, making sure that we have adequate truck route access to those facilities. The blue are just the state routes, so all state routes and federal or the interstate highway, so I-fifteen. Those are all automatically designated at the national level as truck routes. And that's it for circulation. Any questions? Okay. Back to you.

Alrighty. Okay. Back to safety. So, Jolene's mentioning, the state legislation that changed regarding circulation. There were also some changes after our our meeting in September and even after the city council presentation in November relating to fire hazard severity zones, and the city council recently adopted the updated CAL FIRE fire hazard severity zone local responsibility area map, and so we wanted to make sure that that was obviously reflected.

We went through our Cal Fire review process in advance of the maps being released, but Cal Fire one approved our element as drafted even with the old maps but with the understanding that we would be swapping in the new maps because why would we not? So that's one little thing that we'll get to. But so the safety element, really, our first four goals we'll see a couple at a time, are looking at height seismic shaking and other kind of, like, earthquake geologic hazards and making sure that the city is prepared and also limiting to the extent practicable development in areas prone to seismic shaking. And you can imagine a a similar goal of goals and policies leading to the prevention and limitation of damage due to flooding and inundation hazards. Obviously, Hispari in very recent memory has had significant issues with flooding from the intense rainstorms coming through.

Also looking at number three, wildland and urban fires, similar, making sure that to the extent practicable new development is located outside of fire hazard severity zones and that actions are taken to limit damage or, you know, improve response times in those events. Similar goals and policies related to hazardous materials contamination. Right now, hazardous material uses are limited, I believe, to the city's I-two zone, so pretty restrictive in terms of geographic extent, but making sure that moving forward, new uses are located appropriately and sensitive uses are also not located so close that it becomes a problem. Really, goals five and six are two newer additions, number six particularly, but the two kind of walk hand in hand. Number five focuses really on the city's ability as an institution to prepare and help the community prepare for hazards, and respond and be resilient to those, to those hazards and events when they do occur.

And finally, six, kind of building on to that, acknowledging that climate, you know, climate change, as it's shown there, events are being exacerbated by dynamic climate conditions, I guess, is another way to put it with, you know, drier, hotter, fires become, you know, really so much more volatile. And also, you know, on the flip side of that, heat putting more moisture into the air and then being released as, you know, Pineapple Express, I think is what that term is called when it's a, you know, just a massive deluge for days seemingly on end. So making sure that in those when these events that are really stimulated by additional additional forces, the city is prepared to handle those as well and has the infrastructure in place to respond. So as I mentioned, regional fault zone or sorry. Seismic hazards being regional fault zones primarily, we're gonna run through a a handful of maps kind of interspersed with some of the policies, but regional fault zones being one of the primary.

And what those icons on the map are are critical facilities or sensitive uses, and obviously making sure that moving forward, facilities and sensitive uses are located in such a manner or constructed in such a manner that they are more resilient to shaking events. And as I kind of alluded to goals sorry, the policies supporting our seismic shaking goal really look towards, again, siting of of new facilities and then making sure that existing facilities are hardened against against earthquakes, etcetera. Our second goal, focusing on flood hazards, we've mapped with the best available FEMA data, one hundred and two hundred and five hundred or sorry, one hundred and five hundred year events, and they are showing up in, you know, I think unsurprising places following the Mojave River naturally and then larger flood channels. But obviously, from anecdotal experience, we know that it's not just limited to natural, paths of travel, and, some of our impermeable infrastructure also suffers from flooding. But some of the recent efforts by the public works team have done a great job addressing that with the retention basins.

So the city is is actively addressing flooding concerns. And then, you know, obviously, with the the lake up in our hills, dam inundation becomes a concern. Fortunately, the Mojave is is really able to to handle most of most of any issues should should something go awry. So the the community is is largely safe. And again, just kind of a quick bullet summary of the policies supporting our flooding goal.

The first four, as I kind of alluded to, are all although they address different events, you know, fire, flood, earthquake and hazards, all kind of setting up the same policy guidance to ensure, you know, to minimize the the effects and to prepare an effective response. So oh. Sorry. I I am 98% sure I put the new map on here. I have a version with the new map.

I will pull it up after this. But really, I would say the main difference is that the entirety of the Silverwood area falls within the very high fire hazard severity zone. And so I I think you can use your imagination just it's red all the way to Ranchero Road, just about. So that southern area really Cal Fire held off on releasing their Southern California maps writ large. All of our counties were delayed by about a month because of the the fires earlier this year in in Los Angeles.

And so they they were probably a little conservative in their extent, just making sure that no area was left uncovered. So that is the the major difference between this older version and the newer version, which is, I promise, included in the Element, and and on a presentation slide that is apparently not this one. But, yeah, the difference being the Silverwood area being, you know, shown as fully within the very high fire hazard severity zone. And then our supporting policies, again, you you get the gist of what we're what we're trying to do. And then looking at hazardous contamination sorry, or hazardous materials contamination, we don't have this mapped, but, you know, all again relative to critical and sensitive facilities kind of being the primary concern, making sure that we're not creating new friction points or or exposing residents to a future hazard.

And this is just a a simple map of the critical facilities, and each of these icons is is carried throughout each of the maps, obviously getting an understanding of where the hazards and facilities are in relation to one another. Another portion and another important piece of this update is looking at evacuation constrained parcels and updating the city's evacuation routes. And so you can see in this this diagram, specifically looking at residential uses, so existing homes or or the location of potential future homes that have only one egress point leaving their community. So these areas being of primary concern, you know, and and if there is enough advance warning, and a potential action the city could take would be to provide advance notice to residents of these areas so they have additional time to evacuate. Obviously, that would be outlined by an emergency operations plan, but the analysis performed in support of the general plan and, obviously, the goals and policies adopted within kind of go to set that foundation.

So that's a pretty tangible connection between goal policy and implementation action for you. And then fifth, we don't have maps for Goals five and six because they are kind of that preparation and response planning. Again, something also that gets folded into an emergency operations plan and actions taken to help the community harden themselves and be more resilient independently, but then also making community facilities available for shelter centers, for example. Obviously, the city not being the manager of the parks and rec facility school or the library, it would require coordination between county, Hesperia, Recs and Park District, and the school districts to make sure that those facilities are accessible. City hall is a is a resource, but, obviously, it is one of, you know, one of a number of potential community facilities that could be activated in a time of need.

But, again, coordination would be required. And so goals and policies kind of setting up to to allow for that to occur. And then similar for our resiliency, looking at ways to address, you know, not only water supplies, but also looking at, in, you know, Hesperia particularly, extreme heat, in ways that the the city can provide relief to residents who may be experiencing, like, a broken air conditioning and they can't get it fixed because everyone's air conditioning is broken. Cooling centers is really kind of the term used in our policies. But really looking at those ways the city can help the community in severe weather events.

Okay. And before we move to healthy communities, is are there any questions related to safety? Cool. Okay. This is the home stretch, folks.

Thank you. Alright. So our discussion of health and environmental justice, healthy communities, the topic is rolled into the is sorry. It's partnered with the safety discussion as part of a health and safety element. But ultimately, it really gets down to the discussion of environmental justice, which is prompted by in 2011, the state's adoption of s p 1,000 or 2016, the state's adoption of s p 1,000, which is requiring cities to address environmental justice if there are census tracks designated as disadvantaged communities by a variety of criteria.

And and, obviously, we're addressing it because there are those those areas within the city of Hesperia. So generally speaking, what we are hoping to reach towards is a is a situation where residents have that equitable access to a variety of different services that the city provides and coordinates to provide. The city has a history of actually supporting similar efforts, even going back to 2010, the Healthy Hesperia effort, which was in partnership with a larger county wide push for improving health and yeah. Health, education, and economic outcomes, which really kind of form the three key pieces of kind of the social equity component. But then there is also a a piece that is the environmental pollution kind of exposure to harm component.

And so as you can see, kind of our definition of environmental justice, it's a condition where all residents are treated fairly and no group is subject to a disproportionate number or severity of adverse environmental conditions. Really, as kind of outlined here, we're making sure that everybody has access to create a healthier Hesperia. And so similar to the safety element, the work for the healthy communities topics are informed by a litany of research and best practices. And ultimately, you know, additionally, the community survey actually did have some specific questions related to community health and wellness, and those informed the goals, policies, and implementation matrix that accompany this element. And so kind of some of the key areas, and we'll focus really on, I guess, the purple.

Actually, we'll start with the green. So the green are census tracts identified as disadvantaged communities according to CalEnviroScreen. And so it's limited primarily to that kind of northern piece west of the railroad track, south of Bear Valley Road. But you can see also under the purple area, covers a significant portion of the city, is a lower resource area and which makes it eligible for tax credit allocation. So investment additional resources for stimulating investment in these areas.

On the West Side Of The 15 Freeway now tracks at risk of cumulative pollution burden. Obviously, this is you know, this piece of information played a large role in our informing our decisions to kind of reserve those areas for commercial and industrial development, acknowledging that we do not wanna be exacerbating these conditions and that there's, you know, ample opportunity and capacity East Of The 15 to support, you know, future residential growth. So, again, you know, as as we have kind of alluded to throughout the evening, a lot of this is interrelated. Environmental justice does touch quite heavily on land use, obviously, adjacency to, you know, sensitive uses to potentially harmful uses. And you will also see very shortly how it kinda ties to circulation as well.

And so our goals, again, to reiterate, the first one is minimizing exposure to pollution. Again, that really manifests as kind of a land use decision both from the mapping level and the policy programmatic level. But then getting into kind of our parks and recreation open space, ensuring that residents have equitable access to an outdoor amenity. Right? And looking at the distribution of how they are of how existing facilities are located and then allowing that to inform where a future facility may be best located to serve new residents or better serve existing residents.

Our third one is looking at healthy food, and the city previously had sorry. Has helped, has partnered with organizations, throughout the High Desert and, you know, obviously, down the hill as well through county wide through county led initiatives, to help with healthy food choices, and the city also has an active tobacco, ordinance. Right? Yeah. Thank you.

Sorry. Has active, regulations for for tobacco and, for tobacco use. So, even prior to this specific discussion to meet legislative requirements, the city has been actively involved in in helping the community with healthy, food choices. The fourth one is, safe and sanitary housing, equitable access, to to suitable options, and largely, the housing element addresses most of these concerns, which, again, the city had adopted and certified in 2023. But it it it appears, you know, as a relevant topic in just about every other element of the general plan and environmental justice or healthy communities particularly.

In addition, again, another excellent tie back to our land use element, looking at equitable access to public facilities. And this would obviously be a little separate from parks and rec spaces, but looking at, you know, the county library, for example, and making sure that there are the the kind of social service, yeah, access to those social services. And then sixth, and this one is yeah. A little deviates ever so slightly, I guess, from our conventional, you know, kind of planning topics, but, public engagement is a is a huge piece of environmental justice, making sure that communities that have historically not been engaged with or involved, whether intentionally or unintentionally, are invited to the table and their opinions are heard. And I think tonight is a excellent example of the city's commitment to honoring and respecting the community's perspective and and giving them the the opportunity to provide their insight, you know, and and opinions and using that to inform decisions moving forward.

So something, again, that the city has already been doing, you know, as a as a natural course of action. And so just kinda to to quickly run through a bulleted summary of of what some of the policies are in support of the the goals, you know, looking at, again, separating and buffering sensitive uses, you know, skipping down a little bit, looking at renewable energy, reducing, you know, kind of, I guess, yeah, illegal dumping trash disposal. And then the fourth one, which or sorry, the fifth one, which ties to a larger discussion, obviously, is trying to increase softscaping to reduce particularly, you know, I think the most the one that maybe most comes to mind is urban heat island effect where, you know, your your paved concrete asphalt surfaces just hold heat and and can exacerbate high temperature days, you know, when it's also coming from beneath you. So looking at it from that perspective. Our second goal, again, kind of the second bullet point really sums it up, and, ties back to our our land use plan, coordinating with HRPD, making sure that although the city is not the administrator of parks and rec spaces, but doing what it can to advocate for the increased provision.

And obviously, there's the operational or logistical challenge, where HRPD collects its own fees, and so the city doesn't necessarily have its own pool to draw from, but where feasible, the city supporting HRPD's efforts to expand those opportunities. For the third, really, again, as not necessarily the operator of a food bank, so to speak, the city's, you know, strongest ability is to you know, collaborate with those organizations, inviting them in, asking, you know, how can we support you? Again, acknowledging kind of the operational realities of what the city can and cannot do, but obviously not standing in opposition to their operation. And that's not something the city is currently doing, but moving forward, making sure that those folks have the support they need from the city where it is available. The fourth one, again, as I mentioned, really addressed by the housing element, but kind of that fourth bullet point is one that's a little bit more unique, which is directing place based improvements to lower resource neighborhoods.

So if you think back kind of to that multicolor map in that northern portion kind of opposite the tracks from the I2 areas, if the city is looking to make an investment and has the resources available, maybe starting starting your investigation in in those areas, saying like, hey. You know, this is an identified area of need. What can we do? How can we deploy resources? Let's start here.

Our fifth one, public facilities. One of the things that was one of the main topics that was discussed actually through our our community workshops was access to health care, and a lot of folks having to leave Hesperia, whether it be as close as Apple Valley, which obviously given the, you know, crossing opportunities, sometimes that means going around. But trying to attract and encourage health care providers to to locate a facility, whether it be in just a small outpatient center, but but asking them and engaging with them to see what it would take to get their services up to the city. And I know a lot of folks have to travel down the hill, know, again, kind of thinking holistically, reducing the burden on Hisperia residents to get to that important health care. Actually, I I do wanna wanna mention the last one as well.

Also working to you know, kind of as a as a workforce development light not initiative. That that that's the incorrect word, but, you know, thinking of ways either through kind of an economic development lens, looking at higher how to bring living wage jobs or more living wage jobs or, you know, competitive pay jobs to the area as well, again, so residents don't feel like they're forced to travel down to the valley or adjacent communities. Think I alluded to it, just making Hisperia the community where you can truly live, work and play. You know, really really looking for that well roundedness. And then, I think there are two slides here, but the first, engaging residents through multiple forms of media.

And so kinda throughout this effort, we've, we've been distributing notifications on the city's social media platforms and also through e blasts and also physical physical media in the in the reception areas, but also making sure that, you know, through our verbal, you know, communications, trying to expand opportunities to allow folks who are, you know, perhaps hard of hearing or need other communication assistance, you know, exploring ways that the city can help serve them so they can also engage in the discussion. And then finally, where feasible, establishing a program to monitor engagement and also facilitate additional participation through the various efforts that the city kind of undertakes throughout the course of the year. Okay. That was our last slide for safety or sorry, community health. Do we have any questions, related to that topic?

Okay. And now everyone's favorite, CEQUA. So I'm glad a few people laughed at that. So part of our yeah. Well, I guess we'll start here.

So just a just a quick recap for those who may not be familiar. CEQUA is predominantly a information sharing process. Right? So it's disclosures, making sure that the community, be it residents, you know, business owners, visitors, etcetera, are aware of the impacts of a proposed project, be it a plan, a programmatic investigation, or a single site specific development, and how those impacts affect the built environment and natural environment. It also critically, know, really for the EIR specifically, the environmental impact reports, looking at ways to mitigate potential impacts.

For other documents, it's not necessarily a a discussion of mitigation as you'll see for our addendum. And then the general plan EIR, which the city adopted in 2010, also really focuses on or the the analysis is primarily focused as a comparison of what is on the ground today versus what the plan could support in the future. So it's, you know, future minus existing equals your impact. That's kind of what you're looking at. And then, you know, kinda like a general plan, an EIR covers a range of topics.

Really, kinda one of the more common ones is is air quality, but the topic of water and then, oftentimes, kind of biology and wildlife become become critical litigation points as well. So we we we address them all. And so as I kind of alluded to with that third point, looking at conditions on the ground versus, you know, plan for the future, our proposed or sorry, our proposed plan compared to our conditions in 2024 looks to add approximately 52 capacity for approximately 52,500 people, which would be comprised of approximately 30,000 households and an addition of 24,000 jobs. By comparison, the city's currently adopted plan has a lesser capacity for population and household growth, but a comparable projection for employment growth. Really, the difference between the two comes down to our incorporation of housing element sites, which obviously in 2010, there would not have been able to include numbers from 2022, 2023.

So we're making sure that our environmental document appropriately paves the way for their development and our ability to support them as they come through the door. That is a very vital piece of satisfying HCD's requirements is it's obviously having the capacity but also allowing for for it to actually occur. And so I I know I mentioned as part of the EIR description, it's looking at existing compared to the future, but we took the path of an addendum which allows us to look at a plan to plan comparison. So we are not technically evaluating impacts compared to today. We are evaluating our proposed plans impacts relative to the city's currently adopted plan.

And so in that first column and the second column, those numbers should look quite familiar if you memorize them from the previous slide. And in the fourth column is what the 2010 EIR evaluated. So you can see that although we are adding capacity relative to an approximate midpoint of the 2050 or sorry, of the currently adopted 2010 general plan, what was truly studied as part of the environmental analysis including, you know, air quality traffic, noise, GHG energy, impacts to wildlife, was a significant step beyond that, looking at almost an additional 80,000 people in almost 20,000 additional homes and just shy of or sorry. Yeah. About 30,000 more jobs.

So the 2010 EIR evaluated a true capacity in excess of our proposed plan that is before you today. And so because, you know, that is one of the primary reasons we felt comfortable moving forward with an addendum and why an addendum is is most appropriate is because we are, in reality, not proposing changes that exceed what the currently adopted plan evaluated. And so critically I'm gonna skip that. Sorry. Critically, the the the conclusion and findings for our addendum is that the proposed general plan, the project before you, does not introduce new significant environmental impacts compared to those already assessed by the certified EIR, and it does not substantially increase the severity of previously identified impacts regardless of their degree.

And so therefore, the analysis and mitigation measures from the previously certified EIR remain applicable sorry, remain applicable to our proposed project as well. So we were able to kind of piggyback off that, provide supplementary analysis, obviously, where where necessary, but but the 2010 EIR really paved the way for the path forward that we were able to take through an addendum. And so I will go back to this this slide, and this kind of a in a quick synopsis, kind of highlights how that's how that's possible. Our proposed plan is 8% more efficient on a vehicle miles traveled perspective, you know, just one of our many metrics for looking at environmental impact, VMT. The results of this analysis trickle down to air quality, GHG, noise.

So VMT kind of being at the starting point is a good way to just get a quick snapshot of how our plan compares. So at the project level, it's an 8% improvement. But cumulatively, which incorporates looking further than just our immediate vicinity, the plan actually is a 20% improvement relative to the 2010 plan, which is what we would like to see, right? Our planning efforts are resulting in a more efficient way a more efficient land use plan, allowing for residents and community members to navigate the city and engage in daily life you know, in a more efficient manner. And so those are those are kind of the most salient points of our CEQUA CEQUA work going down the path of an addendum rather than a supplemental or a full EIR.

Are there any questions on the environmental kind of clearance portion? Okay. Wonderful. And so that that really does bring us to the end of our presentation.

Thank you.

We appreciate it. We will well, I guess, Ryan, we got some steps to take. Yeah. But the the next event for us, we're looking towards city council, and, obviously, looking for a recommendation. I will let Ryan take over at this point, but, thank you very much. Appreciate your time here and the questions and your involvement throughout this process. And Commissioner Allman, welcome to the welcome to the discussion. Thanks for joining us.

So unless you guys have any questions, as you know, aside from Commissioner Ahmad, we've been involved in a number of workshops over the past year. This has been a collective effort from our consultants, PlaceWorks, the entire planning team. This has been about one years point endeavor. And so and also, Julian Hayes, I can't forget her. But thank you very much for the collective effort from all these parties. If you have any questions, we're available to answer any questions. If you don't, staff's recommendation is that this is a recommendation for the City Council to adopt the addendum that was prepared for the general plan EIR and to adopt the update to the city's land use circulation and health and safety elements.

Alright. So we open it up to if there are any public comments. Correct?

Yes. And I have one white card.

Okay. So we're going to open up the public comment period at 09:48. And we have one white card. I have an idea who it is.

You

warm out.

Hello. My name is Bill Jensen. I'm a member of the Board of REALTORS up here. And I would say collectively, between staff and everybody, poor staff has to make everybody happy on everything and what you guys did tonight on that industrial zone worked out really well. I thought that's going to be fair for the heavy duty industrial.

But being a member of the California Association of Realtors, the National Association of Realtors, and about 1,600 members here locally, We have a thing called the Government Relations Committee. In that tone, I have probably more questions because Ryan has to teach me all the time, Cassie has to correct me all the time, and Andy has to keep me on point all the time. So it's a collective effort between everybody, but we're some of the things such as and I'm going to pick just a radical one, where we had the difference in the plants and the trees that you showed on the one RC. There's an RC change that I really want to focus on the zoning. In the real estate side, we're the front breach.

We're where the Army comes and says, we want to build. We want to build commercial. We want to build business, industrial, apartments. And everybody wants to build where it's best for them, not best for us, but best for them. And I'm caught between the two all the time. Is there any way that we can bring up the map on RC change? Okay. This is an area in this entire corridor that I led the charge on when we incorporated the freeway corridor into the city of Aspiria to prevent Victorville from doing an in run and taking everything on the west side of the corridor, they stopped at Heilig Meijer. And then we've had to deal with a zoning mess ever since. This isn't a bad idea.

I think this is a good idea. I only say, not unlike Eisenhower said, beware of the industrial machine that's coming at you. Beware of the apartment machine that's coming at you. Maybe that apartment complex should provide a certain amount of commercial to keep your sales tax earning on the east side of the tracks here. That purple area up there that went into the Golden Triangle, where Covington Capital built the first big buildings right now, absolutely no complaints.

It's up against the freeways. It's up against a railroad track. It's just in a place where nobody wants to build a Hilton, a McDonald's or anything else. All those guys need the high profile area. But that area in purple, where Covington Capital is about to break ground, that was approved for an Indian gaming casino to do $10,000,000,000 in a ten year period and create 6,000,000 to $10,000,000 revenue to the city, coffers, will never earn a penny other than some tax for your host fees for truck route fixing for Covington in that area.

That inside the Golden Triangle of 395.15 West Main Street at the top, that triangle right there, that is your Golden Triangle. That is the city's income for the next fifty years. Defend it, protect it. Given the first opportunity that somebody like me can bring you a commercial endeavor to convert that industrial back into commercial, take it. Because that squandered 50% of the city's income earning in that purple zone inside the Golden Triangle.

Outside and up north, where it's up against the railroad tracks and the freeway, nobody wants a McDonald's or a Hilton hotel or a Marriott anywhere out there. That makes sense to be industrial. Some of this is just common sense. And again, the market will try to drive it to say, oh, I want my apartment building right where McDonald's goes. No, no, no. That's where Texas Roadhouse goes, they're doing $1,300,000 a year in monthly revenue. Dollars $11,000,000 a month. That's $6,000,000 a year or something for a restaurant, I mean, 13,000,000 a year for a restaurant. That's unbelievable. And don't underestimate the Phelan Road pipeline that feeds that entire intersection of Maine.

Number one, Arco. Number one, Golden Golden Corral Restaurant, number one, just about everything on that intersection, whether it's Shell gas station or it's Target or anything else. That having been said, you're going to have some conditional use permits coming at you for different things such as, didn't Jensen say not to take any more of that commercial industrial? Well, there's a few of them out there that are dead dogs. Number one, it's the sister lot to the Heilig Meier that needs to go back to industrial.

And they're right about AB 98. It is going to kill us. You've got to be 500 feet now from a truck dock door to a residential door. That's the biggest thing I can tell you about AB 98. That's the distance they've created to protect neighborhoods because of the explosion of warehouse terminals and stuff like that. Ten seconds. Ten seconds.

All right, Bill.

The circulation element, everything looks good. Can we get mesquite trees on Main Street? They're great. Stino's got one out front. They're easy to take care of. And I need some trees, man. I'm dying with no trees.

All right. So last of our white cards?

Yes, sir.

Alright. So closing public comment period at 09:54. Commission discussion.

I just have a question on that classification for regional commercial. Is that a concept that has like multi floor residential on top of a commercial business? Is that

what that is? So the Regional Commercial Zone existed before this focused general plan update. The regional commercial zone allowed for mixed use development up to 25 units per acre, and that was in the first slide that Corey showed, whereas in the area around the freeway interchange right there. So that was the area that's the area that allows for mixed use development right now up to 25 units an acre. As a part of the change, we're allowing up to 30 units an acre in the area that's shown in green as well as the red area that is essentially south of the purple on the west side of the freeway, that will be through a CUP.

Thank you. Now the other change though is also that along the freeway corridor, it would allow for 100% residential. That is a requirement in the housing element and a requirement from the state. Currently, it allows for or it requires a mixed use development that is subject to approval of the CUP. What this will allow for is 100% residential that would be allowed by Wright.

Wright and residential right up against the freeway. Okay.

Dumb question. Maybe. The speaking to the trees, because I actually if we can we go back to those two renderings of the proposed? You had one with trees and one without. Where where was where is that proposed again on the major arterial? So I think I noticed I noticed somewhere in here that 7th Street is going to be a major arterial reclassified, and there was a couple others. Am I wrong? I could be totally wrong.

We designated 7th Street as a special street section. There we go. So it's currently a 100 foot wide collector, I believe. And the ultimate right of way stayed the same, but we changed the width from curb to curb. So we changed the width of the lanes and we narrowed it a little bit, so that you're not taking so much of the sort of street segment where properties have to dedicate. And the reason why is because 7th is largely built out. And so any future development, you're going to have to take an additional 10 feet, where you're not going be able to ever have a street segment that would go through someone else's property without taking it from a series of properties to the north or south.

Okay. So which were the ones that were proposed to have the if you go to the rendering again, yeah, which rows were proposed for this?

So that's a major arterial, that'd be 128. If you go back to the circulation map, it's a little hard to see here. The major arterial, I believe, is shown in green and blue. And so Oh, yes, green and blue, okay.

So dark green and blue. So monologue, eucalyptus.

Lemon, well, not really lemon, is it?

So with respect to lemon, I do want to just highlight Lemon Street. So that is something that we are currently analyzing. And we are looking at the potential to reduce the classification of Lemon as well as potentially look at is the bridge over the Mojave River necessary for Lemon. Currently, it's designated as 128 foot arterial. That is something that we're currently looking at and that we will also discuss with the City Council.

But that is something that we are looking at. With respect to any of the other classifications, that's the only one that's still subject to change. I believe there is one bridge that was shown on the circulation plan over Sultana that will ultimately need to be removed that was shown as an error here. The other change, one of the significant changes that we made on the circulation plan was that currently there's a freeway interchange shown at Eucalyptus. We removed the freeway interchange on Eucalyptus and we left it at Mojave. So we prioritized more of a Mojave interchange than Eucalyptus.

Okay. It all looks great. You've done an amazing job. I do like the idea of a little more landscape like versus the other option. I mean, drought tolerant, but with there's trees out there that are drought tolerant. I mean, that'd be kind of nice to see in the city a little more color.

Yes. And so these images here don't necessarily alter or impact our current landscape standards. So any development would be subject to the municipal code ordinance, which requires a certain amount of trees and minimum width of the landscape planner. This is just simply kind of showing what the ultimate right of way is. Then sort of your section of the parkway, your section of the sidewalk, those widths are shown on this right of way. The landscaping is subject to the landscape ordinance.

Okay. Thank you.

And under that, under that, there we go. Alright. The because I I can remember back when we did the underpass at Ranchero. I tried to get authorization to put landscaping down our little desert stretch between Danbury and Santa Fe, which didn't happen. So now if that ever does happen, because there's that would be an ideal place for some nice landscaping or some nice river rock or something like that accent that entire that's a nice place to do that.

And I don't but I see the picture but then it's a nice drawing but I don't think it's going to be relevant or happen not in my lifetime probably.

With Ranchero Road, I'm happy to report there are some trees that have been planted recently. So there's some Joshua trees that have been relocated to that section of the parkway that you're talking about there. Okay, until they fall over. I believe there's a how many of them?

They're seven

trees were transplanted near Ranchero and Danbury.

Oh cool, okay. Yeah, so the drawings look nice and as far as the renditions of what could happen, but I just don't see it happening.

Speaking to that, the sidewalk on the South Side Of Ranchero for the next phase, I think this might been a Cassie thing, sorry. But it kind of ties in with it. Is that sidewalk eventually going to continue from Danbury to Santa Fe? Sorry about

that. We currently don't have any plans to extend it to Santa Fe, but as we grow and develop and we find opportunities, we can definitely look at that. We were just looking at it on the South Side because there's more schools down there, and we thought it would encourage more children to be able to walk to school and be able to get there safely without walking on, like, the edge of a roadway.