Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Call this meeting to order. Welcome, everyone, to the Planning Commission meeting. There are agendas in the corner by the door if you need to follow along. And we're going to start with a salute to the flag.

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

May we please have roll call? Commissioner Scavdahl?

Here.

Commissioner Levy is absent. Commissioner O'Neill? Here. Commissioner West? Here. Commissioner Curiazzi?

Here.

Commissioner McFarland is absent. Commissioner Fulton?

Here.

We do have a quorum.

Excellent, thank you. Okay, and now on to agenda item C, agenda modifications. Director Ford?

Thank you, Chair. There are some supplementals that are on the dais and also on the table there. There's a number of them, so I won't try to read them all off. I do want to point out that we have several items that are all related to short-term rentals that are in Samoa. And what we would like to do is do those together. So under new business, that would be item number three. number four and number five, those will just be presented as one presentation and then each of the actions can be done separately.

Okay, that sounds great. Okay, and this will bring us to item D, public comment on non-agenda items. So we will first take public comment from those folks in the audience. I see folks lining up already for the podium, which is perfect. And while folks are lining up and making their comment, if we have people who are calling in or participating online, if you could please raise your hand now. There can be a little bit of a lag on the video and I don't want to. miss your opportunity to speak on this item or future items. So if you're calling in, it is star nine to raise your hand, or if you are on Zoom, just hit the raise your hand button, and once we get through in-person comment for this item, item D, then we will go to online. Okay, and with that, everybody's going to have three minutes, and there's a timer going, so please go ahead and start.

My adopted name was Kip Swarovski. That's not on. Testing one, two, three. We're good. I'll start over again. My adopted name, I was adopted, is Kent Sawatsky. My birth father was Mr. Sutherland and he went by Red. and I spoke with my sisters, my half sisters, the first time in my whole life and a whole bunch of things became clear to me. So I go by Red now and you can call me Red Sullivan, you can hyphenate my name, but he was a very powerful person in his community. He was a rancher, farmer, environmentalist, loved animals and he was so powerful in his community because he had the only tractor combine dealership in a very large farming community. In other words, everybody depended upon him. I want to follow in his footsteps, and I am following his footsteps. He loved animals and especially his dogs. We have that in common. Good to see Todd Fulton here. I think you know a good friend of mine, Erin McClure, and I think you were involved in getting back a horse that was stolen from her a long time ago by DHHS Connie Beck, so I greatly appreciate that. I don't think that was ever prosecuted. But anyway, side topic, good to see you here. I have problems with... equity and things not being treated right and the environment not being taken care of. Historically, Peggy was here and Noah, but to get the right things done for the environment, we had to go to the extent of pulling every single item off of consent. When you had 30 permits here, you'd only get through five of them. And until we got the generators to be phased out and the water to be not drawn strictly out of the creeks. We did that and that was a form of protest and it was very effective. I hope we don't have to do that again. You don't have much on the agenda, so it's probably not a good tool anymore. But it's a pleasure to see you here. We wish to work with you, but some major flaws and changes need to be done, which some people will point out here. Your CUP process doesn't work. It didn't work twice in the case of the Miranda Rescue back in, I think, 2004, three and four, that wasn't followed through. And then back in 2020, again, it wasn't followed through. And I'll be pointing out some other extremely troubling examples of where these things, your conditional use permits are not being followed through on or gone after and observed. A little later we'll talk about the town of Samoa out there and it's kind of a grievous what's happened out there. So I appreciate your time here, appreciate the opportunity to speak and I hope you listen to a lot of people who are heartfelt here and have concerns regarding the Shannon Miranda ability for him to come in to compliance with no penalty I mean, you're sending a message to everybody in Humboldt County, don't bother getting a permit. Get a CUP, don't follow it. So you have to enforce these things. It has to be a stick. Carrots and stick are how we all live on. Thank you for my opportunity to speak today.

Hi, most of the other testimonies today are gonna be a bit more technical. Mine is just supposed to be a bit personal and emotional. I'm speaking for somebody who cannot speak. I wanna start off by saying thank you to everybody who made this possible and to listening. In January of this year, my best friend was chosen by the sweetest dog because he knew that she would take care of him. She was working in a car shop at the edge of Myrtle Town and he just jumped right into it, right into the open door and subsequently into our hearts. We took turns taking care of this dog and we decided to name him Icarus and call him Icky for short. While we worked to find his owner, we taught Icky tricks and basic things dogs needed to know. He picked up his new name, Sit, Paw, Impressively Fast. Anyone who met him could tell that he only wanted to be a good boy. We eventually found Icky's old owners and learned that he had been dumped. and was wandering around Myrtle all alone and dirty until he came to us. We also learned his name was Marco and he relearned that pretty quick too. In February of this year, after a month of us taking turns taking care of Marco while trying to find him a home, we decided that his Akbash farm breed size and light was being dulled in our tiny apartments already shared with preexisting animals. So we made the difficult decision to give him up. We chose Miranda's because the large size of the property and the location made it more likely to find him a farm where his energy and obvious need to herd and work would thrive. They wanted $500 to take him, which was steep for us poor and working college students, but we were able to crowdsource what we needed, so we parted ways. On March 6th, we received a photo of Marco with his new owner and we were ecstatic. We could finally move on in peace. And once it came out that eight dogs had been found, shot and dumped on the Miranda's property, my friends and I grew a sense of unease. It worsened when we discovered that adoption photos had been forged. We posted online asking if anyone could confirm his adoption, and someone pointed out that the person in Marco's adoption photo had two leashes around his neck, a clear sign of a rescue volunteer. My heart sank. But in the same thread, another woman claimed that she had him and I cried with relief. She even posted photos, but once I looked at the photos, we realized that she did not have Marco, but she was the one who had neglected and dumped him before he came to us. Since my heart fell, I have not been able to pick it back up and I've been begging for him to be okay. He was a special dog, but his story is not unique. We can't let any more of our gifts, of the gifts from the stars in the form of dogs, meet the same fate at Shannon Miranda's hands. Thank you.

Hi, my name, sorry, my name is Jamara Knight. Oh. I'm here today to speak about the special treatment that has been awarded to Shannon Miranda for decades. This is unfair to the members of this community who paid their share and is another example of how the county swept this under the rug. Numerous complaints were put into the Sheriff's Department regarding Shannon's practices at the rescue. How did no one check his permit status? How was this allowed to continue? I think we all know there is no reasonable explanation. This was not an oversight. This was intentional and a way to pat the backs of friends. The local authorities in Shannon are friends and socialize regularly. We have allowed small town politics to convolute our judgments and we are continuing to do so by extending a permit that has never complied. The messaging coming from these actions to the community is the same one that has been sent for decades. Money and privilege talk in this community and became a suit of armor against any allegations towards Shannon. Money is more important than animals. Their lives don't matter. I call on the board to break this vicious cycle our county has perpetrated for decades and start holding everyone accountable. An immediate denial of this permit should be enacted and the closure of his rescue and the safe transfer of animals is critical and beginning to rebuild trust in our community. As a 30 year resident of this community, I believe in this county. The people here are good and love animals. Let's use this terrible situation to show the world we will provide justice for these animals. Thank you.

Hi, good evening. My name is Sue Maloney, and I'm speaking on a different issue, although my heart is totally with that Shannon Miranda's as well. The issue that hopefully is gonna be on the agenda at this board is gonna be about the Q zone in Lower Redway in two weeks, and I'm super excited about that. There's been a lot of false starts and an agenda item that was taken off the agenda right as we were on our way up here to talk in April. And really, I just wanna invite you all to come down and to see this super unique, wonderful, beautiful neighborhood. It was originally established as a summer home for Pacific Lumber executives. And so, yeah, I wanna invite you down to come see it yourself so that in two weeks, you'll have an understanding of why one tree at this point is such a big deal. It's not timberland. It's not like through locked gates and down miles of dirt roads. It's a residential area. and the Queue Zone Ordinance number 2112, which was established prior to 1978, where there's old newspaper articles from the San Francisco Examiner and the Sacramento Bee at the time that reference an ordinance that should have protected the trees when a landowner 50 years ago tried to do the same thing. So many of us are super passionate about redwoods, especially when a law exists to protect them. So I hope that some of you or all of you will please come down and check it out. If you go to Redway, it's just a little bit downhill and then west of town on the way to Shelter Cove, you go down and right before you hit the river, it's on the right. There's a lot that's been, There's been some logging and unfortunately we've lost trees already but we're to the point now where finally it's before the Planning Commission and we hope that we can continue to love our old growth trees in Lower Redway and not have more of them cut because they should be protected by the Q Zone. Thanks so much. Hope to see you down there or do a little self-tour. Just drive by that area on the right, north of Bryson Road. And then if you go to the left, some of the parcels are actually owned by State Park. So it's just, it's an old growth forest with power lines and roads. And then you get to other parcels that have homes on them. So please come down and visit. Thank you so much.

Good evening. My name is Patrick Mulligan. I am also here to talk about the Redway Q Zone issue. I just wanted to urge you guys to follow the Q Zone process. I believe in the beginning of this whole issue, unfortunately, some irreparable damage was done to the lower Redway neighborhoods because the Q Zone process was not followed and several trees that would probably not have been taken down were taken down. I understand the critical issue left right now is whether this last remaining tree is hazardous, imminent danger of falling. I think that that may still be up in the air and may be addressable. The Queue Zone process asks you to involve other agencies when asking for an emergency permit. So I would ask you guys to kind of take a little extra scrutiny this time before you make your decision, and maybe even wait till if, you know, we don't think this tree is gonna fall this summer, so it doesn't have to be a critical emergency to take it down this summer, you know, because the beginning of this process kind of happened unscrutinized and kind of slipped under the wire, maybe shouldn't have happened. Maybe for the rest of this, it would be nice to get some extra scrutiny on this project, because CAL FIRE is currently doing an internal investigation into how this all happened because there was maybe some collusion that happened between one of the foresters and the landowner. We don't know, but they are doing an investigation. It would be great to see the results of that before we went ahead because maybe this is an ongoing crime and we don't, you know, ignorance of the law is not an excuse. to further a crime, this may turn out to be something that was completely improper. So it would be great to hear all that before you guys said, oh, okay, go ahead and cut the last tree. You know, this tree is 400 years old. We don't know if it's going to fall this summer. So just ask, just thank you for your attention to this issue. We are watching it and I appreciate all Mr. Ford's efforts.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Jane Madsen. Just wanted to add my voice to my concerns about the Quezon and Redway, but I live in Samoa, so I'll talk more later, thank you.

Good evening, Lori Barnwell, Chalk Mountain Ranch, here again regarding the ongoing permit noncompliance at the Bridgeville Quarry operated by Mercer Frazier. Despite repeated letters and public meeting appearances, Mercer Frazier Bridgeville Quarry continues to operate without required permits and in violation of the county's conditional use permit for surface mining. Since August of 25, I have asked the county to review Mercer-Fraser CUP for compliance. In February, I met with Director Ford and staff to discuss Chalk Mountain's concerns. Director Ford asked for three weeks to review the matter. At the end of three weeks, no response was received, and follow-up emails have been unanswered. However, the county citizen access porthole lists the CUP processing status on February 27 as teams meeting with MF and attorney RE Access Road. Chalk Mountain Ranch, Mercer Fraser Company, Goat Rock Ranch, LLC, and Cal Fire are engaged in a civil dispute over access rights. I'm not here about the access. My concern is about the regulatory compliance and environmental issues which continue to be ignored. On May 22nd, I contacted Code Enforcement and Director Ford to report that Mercer-Fraser was removing all state-mandated erosion control features from an active timber harvest plan and performing construction and water courses on Chalk Mountain property without permission or permits. Both the Water Board and CAL FIRE sent representatives to the site to do an inspection. The county did not. Mercer-Fraser has not secured required state permits, and according to a letter issued to the county, has not even submitted applications for the relevant to the relevant permitting agencies. At the April meeting, I raised concerns about the quarry's inspection records. Through a public records request, I obtained a copy of the December 2nd, 2025 inspection report, which was exactly the same as the prior two years. Mercer Fraser was temporarily barred from accessing the quarry site pending a court ruling between August 4th and January 20th. How was the site inspection done? John Chivblog reported last week about the quarry's truck scale. Prior to recertification in May, The scale's last inspection was in 2023, even though annual inspections are required. Aggregate materials are sold by weight. How many truckloads has the county purchased from an uncertified scale out of the Bridgeville quarry? The county has not enforced the rules and conditions of its own permit requirements and has knowingly allowed them to operate without state required permits. Immediate action by the Humboldt County Planning and Building Department is necessary. The county's continued failure to enforce permit requirements has allowed Mercer Frazier to damage property, resulting in violations the landowner is held legally and financially responsible for. This is unacceptable. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Jennifer Raymond and I'm here today because I want to see the conditional use permit that is being extended to Miranda's Rescue revoked. And I went to the county code and I discovered that it can be revoked by the Board of Supervisors. And what I would like to do is get this on the Board of Supervisors agenda to discuss the many reasons why this permit should be revoked. I'm starting with you because I know that you can refer things to the Board of Supervisors, and if you want more information about this matter, I would ask that you put it on your own agenda. According to the county code, chapter two, section 312-14.2, a revocation of development permits, a permit may be revoked for the following reasons. The permit was obtained by fraud, material omissions, or misstatements of fact. When Mr. Miranda applied for this permit, he stated that there was an existing on-site sewage disposal system which had been approved and inspected by the Department of Environmental Health. No such system exists, and my public record request to the Department of Environmental Health indicates that there was never an application, an inspection, or an approval of an on-site waste treatment system. His onsite waste treatment system consists of standing in front of the kennels with a high pressured hose and hosing out the kennels. And what this means is that where there are a whole line of kennels right on the property line between his property and mine, I have a dark green slew of dog poo and it stinks year round. and I believe it is a significant health hazard. That waste washes right onto my property. Mr. Miranda stated that he would build a 7,200 square foot indoor kennel for dogs. No indoor kennel was ever constructed, although he raised a substantial amount of money to build one, he never did. In his application, he stated that the Katz were currently housed in a 3,200 square foot Katz condo. No such building exists on the property. There is no building that large on that property. He stated that his operation was a no-kill facility. and having just dug eight dogs out of the dirt off of his property with bullet holes in their heads, I can tell you this is not a no kill facility. The second reason a permit can be revoked. Thank you for listening to me and I'd like to get on your agenda.

Good evening. As many of us here this evening, I want to express my outrage and deep concern regarding the continued, unpenalized operation at Miranda's Rescue. It has recently come to light that this establishment has been operating in direct violation of its conditional use permits for over 20 years. while Shanna Miranda has bypassed the rules that every other local business is expected to follow. Yet despite 20 years of documented non-compliance, local regulatory bodies have issued zero fines, levied no penalties, and allowed operations to continue completely unhindered. This is not a minor administrative oversight. It is failure of enforcement, and it raises deeply troubling questions about the integrity of this department. If an average resident or a small business owner violates city code, they are met with swift notices, compounding fines, and threats of closure. Why does this business get a 20-year pause? We can't help but look at this double standard and ask the obvious question, who is protecting Shanna Miranda and his rescue? When a blatant violation is allowed to persist without consequence, it strongly suggests that political and influential friendships are being prioritized over the public interest and the rule of law. We're here tonight to call upon you, our county and code enforcement agencies to provide immediate transparency. The community deserves to know why this was allowed to happen and who signed off on this hands off approach. Favoritism should not dictate enforcement. It is time to level the playing field. enforce the permit requirements and restore your community's trust because we now are all watching you. Thank you.

Okay, if anybody else in the audience would like to speak on a non-agenda item, now is your time. Please approach the podium. And while we're waiting for our last folks in the room to approach the podium, I want to remind anybody who is online or calling in, now is the time to raise your hand. There can be a little bit of a lag in the video, so please raise your hand now so that I can see you when we turn to online and phone comment shortly. If you're calling in, it is star nine to unmute. And please go ahead.

Good evening. My name is Steven Davis from Dale, California. I just had throat surgery, so please bear with me. Like you, I served as a planning commissioner for a number of years in the city of Calistoga and the city of Eureka. And I can tell you that in every community, there are situations where wink, wink, nudge, nudge gets passed along. People with money, people with power, people with long histories and community, get special treatment. That's the way it was there. There, it was oftentimes for personal or for financial things, for new resorts coming in, where the planning commission was trying to put development restrictions on things and constantly getting overridden. So I can understand the frustration that can be felt. I think in this particular case, we're talking about Miranda's, it's not just a financial issue. deal for somebody to make more money. We're talking about a community that had trust and reliance on somebody who promised to do good things for the community. People put time and effort into training animals, making them happy dogs, bringing them a place for a forever home, and were betrayed. Well, that's not the criminal issue we're talking about now. It certainly is a factor in how one might consider looking at the constraints of the use permit. And if they're not being met, why are they not being met? Why are they not being exposed? This is not new information for the county. And I feel very disappointed. that this kind of thing behaves. It's not just, this is not the first case. There've been environmental things, a number of cases where the county looks the other way because of who there is. It's disrespectful, it's unfortunate, and I'm appalled. Thank you.

Anybody else in the audience who would like to speak on this item? Okay, I'm not seeing anybody else approaching the podium, so we're gonna go ahead and move to online and phone comment. As a reminder, please raise your hand if you wish to comment on this item, and I'm gonna start moving through folks who have their hands raised and calling on you. Star nine to raise your hand. Let's go ahead and start with Arda. You may now speak for three minutes if you'd like.

hi actually my name is uh jason mills um i am one of the applicants uh for uh agenda item three for the conditional use permits for the nine short-term rentals located at the tsunami hazard zone uh really quick i just wanted to come on here and i just wanted to thank all of the city staff who've been or the planning staff, sorry, the county planning staff who've been just super helpful throughout this process.

I'm sorry, I'm gonna stop you right there and check in with you. So right now we're doing public comment on non-agendized items, and it sounds like you would like to speak to one of our items that is on our agenda a little bit later. So if that's the case, I would love to have you hold your comment and then we'll come back. It sounds like maybe you are one of the items in our public hearing section. But if you have an item, if you would like to comment on anything that's not on our agenda tonight, now is the time to do that. Okay, it sounds like your microphone got turned off, so I think we are, raise your hand if you have a non-agenda item to comment on, but otherwise we will come back to you shortly in the public hearing section. And I'm going to go ahead and move to. Okay, that was who I was gonna call on next. Okay, so caller 4686, now is your time, you have three minutes.

Thank you so much. My name is Kim Sheeran. I'm the founder of a non-profit in Northern California, Kimmy's Critter's Pet Rescue. When I retired as a peace officer about 13 years ago, I started getting involved in animal rescue. And at that same time, I see your lips moving, and I can't hear you. So are we talking over each other?

We are not. There's just a little bit of a lag in the video sometimes. So we can hear you loud and clear here.

okay so um just um going backwards so when i got involved in rescue i was networking animals for all of northern california shelters the hard to place animals the rescue listed animals and that's when i heard about shannon miranda and i heard people say that he took money for these animals and would just shoot them in the head and kill them and it was almost hard to believe But she had enough credible evidence that I believed her and I never sent any animals to him. Fast forward 13 years later, I assumed he was shut down. 13 years later, I find out they did a search warrant. Just last year, I think pursuant to the search warrant, he admitted to taking in 600 dogs from area shelters. Now, he says he doesn't do anything illegal. However, he euthanizes them. He shoots them in the head to euthanize them. Except for that's called murder because they're young, healthy, behaviorally fit animals that he's shooting. We're talking a three-month-old puppy, two of them. So... the criminal aspect of it may not be shooting the animals in the head because it seems to be accepted um but what about the oh i don't know the million dollars he took in and surrender fees grants and contracts with county shelters um i think last year was over 500 000 and um yeah so These rescues are paying good money to have him trained and take care of them. He's starving them. He's torturing them. He's beating them. And then he shoots them. And then he sends these fake pictures out, adoption pictures, which are clearly not adoption pictures. We're talking last year he took in 600 dogs is what he reported.

I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to stop you right there. We only allow public comment for three minutes for each person, unfortunately. So thank you for your comment, and I'm gonna check and see if there is anybody else who has their hand raised online or on the phone. Okay, I see Leigh Barney, you have three minutes if you would like.

Thank you. Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Okay.

So I live down in the central valley and I'm not part of the big rescue. Um, I'm an individual. It's a big heart. It has a tendency of saving an abandoned dog or dump dog. I invest in the spade and neutering and the vaccinations and the training. Sometimes I board them to make sure that they're adoptable. I have spoken to Miranda once about a little pit bull named Leah, actually. And we had a conversation. I was told that it's an adoption sanctuary. So if they don't get adopted, they have life to live there. He also told me that he wanted $500 cash for her to take care of her. um so on and so forth i explained that she was chipped and all of her shots and all that kind of stuff so me being a one person um i don't know i didn't feel comfortable so i made other arrangements but i guess my feelings are is i don't understand why he's not on your guys's agenda why does he still have access to evidence more evidence that could be recorded on Why is he giving other people a hard time to come get the dogs that they actually brought to him and paid for? I just don't understand where the favoritism is coming through. Not everybody's part of a big rescue. There's a lot of us that are just hardworking people with a big heart trying to save an animal, and we trust in these rescues. And for this to happen, it's just really devastating. So like I said, I'd like to know when is it important enough to be on your guys' agenda so that we can actually have a conversation with all of you on what's being done about the whole situation. That's it.

Thank you. I'm not seeing any other hands raised. Please raise your hand now or we will move on from this item to our next item, item E. Okay, I am not seeing any more hands raised, so we're gonna go ahead and move on from item D and move to item E, our consent agenda. And we had a lot of public commenters in the audience tonight for this item. Thank you for taking the time to come down and speak to us. OK, the consent agenda typically has items that are routine in nature. So all of these items are usually approved by a single vote. However, we do take a moment to poll both the audience and the commission if somebody would like to pull this item from consent calendar so that it can be considered separate from the group. I will name off all of the items in the consent calendar. If you would like the item polled for consideration separate from the group, please raise your hand. So I'm gonna go ahead and read through. So we have item E1, review and approval of the May 21st, 2026 action summary. Anybody on the commission like to pull this item? Okay, anybody in the audience? Not seeing anybody, we're gonna go to item E2, Dennis Grandy Zone Reclassification. Anybody on the commission like to pull this item? Anybody in the audience? And as a reminder, if you're online and you'd like this item pulled, you can go ahead and raise your hand as well, star nine if you were calling in. Okay, not seeing anybody for item two. And item three is the Cooks Valley Special Events 2023 to 2027. Anybody on the commission like to pull this item? I see that we have this item pulled. Okay, and so we have a commissioner that's pulled the item, so no need to pull the audience on this one. This will be considered separately under item F. With that, do we have anybody who would like to make a motion?

Make a motion to approve items 1 and 2 on the consent agenda.

I would second that.

OK. Let's go ahead and have a voice vote. All those in favor please say aye.

Aye. Any opposed. Any abstaining.

OK.

So that brings us to the next item on our agenda, item F, which is items pulled from consent. Commissioner Kiryasi, you pulled item E3. Would you like a staff report for this?

I think, well, I would like to discuss the water testing, the water quality testing piece of it. So that might take some time. We could do it now or we can push it to the end. Either way is fine.

If she wants to talk I think you should let her talk Please Please approach the podium and you'll have three minutes to make a comment. Thank you. I'm sorry about that. I

Really quick point of order. Do we need to amend our resolution?

I think you want to wait and see what she has to say before you make any decisions. Okay, thanks.

Okay, I apologize.

And can you just in the microphone clarify which item you'd like to speak on?

It's for the Arcata IV special permit. It's under...

Item E2.

E2, okay, sorry, I'm sorry about that. Okay, so this is for a special permit for 132 Pepperwood Lane for a short-term rental property?

No, no, no, no, that's a public hearing item.

I'm sorry, I don't know, yeah, okay. Oh, okay, I'm sorry, I heard you.

She said E2, that's F2, I believe that you're talking about.

Run F2, okay. So what we will do is when... So you are here to comment on item G2, the Arcata, for a special permit for short-term rental, correct? Okay, so you did not miss your opportunity. I didn't, okay, I'm sorry. It's okay. This is oftentimes people's first time coming to this kind of thing.

Thank you for being understanding.

So we will get to that shortly, and you'll have an opportunity to comment.

Chair, since you've kind of stopped, well, that's for a different item. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Okay.

So it sounds like we are going to be now looking at item E3, and I heard a request from the audience for a staff report. So I think staff will be pulling up that report for us shortly. While they are doing that, does anybody have any ex parte for this item?

Okay, could we get the screen share?

Okay. Steve Lazar, I'm the planner assigned to this. This is a review of the annual monitoring report for the Mateo Community Center's use permit. The project is located in the Cooks Valley area on the right side of this slide. The next slide circles it. It's south of Richardson Grove, south of Banbo at the county line. Here's a close up view showing property ownerships. The yellow is the County Line Ranch formerly the Demick Ranch. French's Camp was the older Rege site and then the Bowman property is in green. So looking at the property here once again, County Line Ranch, Bowman, and then the Parsons property, these are all the landowners in this little stretch of the river here. And as we look closer at the permits, this is one of three use permits that the Planning Commission has approved in recent years to allow special events to occur. Northern Knights is one that has permits both from Humboldt County and Mendocino County to allow for an event that crosses the county line. The 501 group received a permit a little over a year ago and they're going to be holding their first event in the next few weeks. and then the Reggae on the River event and Summer Arts and Music are the events that the Mateel has held from the site in recent years, although for the last two years, Reggae on the River has been the only event that's occurred on the property that's been operated by the Mateel. Looking at the permit, it allows for several events to occur, but for the purposes of discussion tonight, it's only the three-day event that we'll be discussing in the monitoring report. So the Mateel held a three-day event. They had camping around 2,500. That's an estimate based on what the information they provided. attendance was below the threshold of the permit, which is 5,000. The permit allows a larger attendance if they use the neighboring Bowman property, but that requires approval from the county of Mendocino, which has not yet occurred. And then also 2,500 vehicles, and they gave estimates based on parking passes that were sold of 1,786 cars. So all fall within the thresholds of the permit. And then compared to last year, you can kind of see some increases in the number of camping and also in the number of tickets sold. So looking at the site, this is from the year before, not last year, but I can say from visiting the site last year during it, it largely comports to this aerial photo. And when we compare the photo here to the event map, we can see that all of the permit activities are confined to the Humboldt County side of the line with the exception of some parking in the area on the south end. And then this is just kind of juxtaposing the event map from last year with the current satellite image. So these are photographs I took during my site visit. This is the river stage. This is looking kind of southwest from the river bar. Then we have a photograph looking from the other side of the river at the river stage. There's two different stage locations. You'll note that the stage is focusing the music amplification away from Richardson Grove as one of the permit conditions so they took good pains to make sure that it focused to the southeast. And then here's a view looking towards the main stage that's a little more interior to the property. One of the things that came up during the last annual monitoring report last year was concerns about water quality sampling. That's a permit condition. And we worked with the applicant, and they worked directly with Environmental Health on improving their protocols when it came to water quality testing. In particular, there's two locations where they sample from each year, upstream and downstream from the event. And looking at last year's recommendations from a memo that Environmental Health, they noted deficiencies in some of the protocols they observed. They wanted a sampling plan to be reviewed and approved ahead of last year's event, which was accomplished, and then it was implemented. and they also wanted to have an inspection for harmful algal blooms as a kind of new improvement on the baseline protocols. For swimmer safety is kind of the main concern. So these are water quality test results. These were included in the materials that were attached to the staff report. I've just kind of cleaned them up a little bit to make it easier to see here. There are state and federal guidelines for thresholds for public health when it comes to total coliform and E. coli. Those are the two constituents that are tested for in the water quality sampling. You can see kind of the results upstream and downstream during each day of the event per the condition of approval. and they all fall below the thresholds that are allowed or recognized as safe. And then comparing to last year, you can kind of see there wasn't an issue with the water quality testing at the lab on the last day of the event on Sunday. The technicians screwed up and so they didn't have an upstream sample result because of that, but that was not the applicant's fault. And last year another issue that was identified was that the tests were being run out of the time period, the 24 hours or the ideal time period for doing it after sampling, partly because the lab wasn't open. And so you can see kind of the form from last year where they made note at the lab that this was outside of the hold time. And this year they were able to work out an agreement with a different laboratory, or maybe the same one with a different name, but they were able to get testing during the weekend, which gives greater confidence in the results. And then one of the other issues last year that was brought up at the hearing was the use of a Caltrans right-of-way that also is duals as an easement to a neighboring property owner as an emergency access. We met with Caltrans to find out about the right-of-way. They're very clear that they did not want to see the right-of-way used. That's in pink on this slide here. And we also met with the Mateel Northern Knights and the emergency personnel to talk about kind of whether or not that was truly a necessary secondary access. And it was determined it was not. And in fact, this is just kind of showing you what we're talking about when we say that that's the Caltrans right-of-way, not an easement. The neighboring landowner is the property that's kind of in between the yellow on the north end across the right-of-way from the Cooks Valley property. And so basically they have a special easement they've been given to use the highway right-of-way as their driveway, but that does not extend to other parties. So I think the clear thing is when you look at the kind of circulation routes throughout the event premises, the white is sort of the more interior ones, the red would be the alternate kind of secondary access that exists and is kept open during events and staff, we verified that and met with fire personnel both during Northern Nights and Reggae on the River to confirm that they were happy with that arrangement. So we think that that issue is really not one that the commission needs to further struggle with. We have an appropriate emergency access plan that provides secondary access through alternate routes and consequently that's, That's how we approach that. These are just some photographs from last week. We did a site visit, kind of showing the conditions ahead of the current event season, noting that with an event coming for the 501 organization, keeping the vegetation down is one of the key elements for fire safety. They seem to be doing that. And then also what we noted during our recent site visits, they're continuing to improve on the water storage infrastructure and have added more and more tank storage per the conditions of approval of the 501 permit, which required that they improve the amount of storage. So they've also improved the tank, the pump house, and you'll see there's some, I think, catches up. We just noted that there's a number of different tanks that have been added. It seems to be lagging. I don't know what's going on, but that's kind of where I was gonna end things, I think. Oh no, sorry, you can't see my slide, but I'll just go and finish up. We did refer the project to Public Works, Environmental Health, Caltrans, Department of Fish and Wildlife visited the site just last week with us, and we've had largely positive responses. Some of the issues that are identified in the staff report, go back were related to food safety and the consumer protection division and those are those are you know wrinkles that need to be ironed out but they have a plan for doing that and it seems like uh they'll be continuing to improve in that department and these are kind of outside of the the permit conditions you know the permit conditions don't say anything about food safety in particular but obviously it's it's of paramount importance anytime you hold an event of this sort so the issues were that pressure would drop so that's where the tank storage kind of helps insulate that pressure issue when you have a lot of showers running or people drawing from the pop-up kitchens. So we believe that they're taking steps to do that. The other thing was the amount of refrigerated storage. They have a much larger refrigeration unit they'll be using this year. those are kind of efforts to dial in and address those agency concerns. So consequently, our recommendation tonight is that you receive the report, but there's no further action needed at this time, and no motion or anything beyond that. So I'm gonna end it there.

Okay, thank you. So if we're just receiving the report, do we do a public comment? We do, yes.

Yeah, you should do public comment, but you should also discuss whether or not you have questions or things that are problematic. While the recommendation is to receive the report, you may want to take a different action and there are alternatives that you can take.

Thank you.

Okay, well then we will first do commission questions of staff, then we'll go to public comment if there is any, and then we'll take it back for further discussion among the commissioners. So with that, I think I see Commissioner Curiozzi with questions, and then we'll get to Commissioner Fulton.

I'll just say, Staff Salazar, I apologize for forgetting your title. Lazar, I called you Salazar, I apologize. Anyway, you answered my questions, thank you.

I just have a brief question for you, and it's not just this one, but I've seen it many other times. You used the term qualified entity. where is it defined or what is your definition of a qualified entity i've seen it on many reports that come this way and i've never seen the definition coming from the county of what meets qualified entity or qualified person

So that is a perennially popular title. I think in the context of this one, it would really be best directed to our colleagues at Environmental Health who are actually here tonight to address the water quality aspect, and they were the ones who wrote that into their recommendation in terms of the protocol improvements.

If I could, just to make it simple, rather than specifically identify every single professional that would be involved and what licenses may or may not be involved, some specialties require a license, some a certification. you know, to be qualified to do what they're being asked to do, they have to carry the qualifications to do that. And maybe it would be better in the future, and we can take this as an action item, to simply say, well, who we want the report from, not just a qualified blank, but somebody who has this certification, if that helps.

Yeah, it was just a question of what meets the standards of qualified entity on almost all of our summaries that we get is my big question. I mean, because I guess I could say that I'm qualified, not knowing we could be told that you're qualified. And then looking at the staff report just a little bit ago, apparently somebody dropped the ball on the water testing about not knowing that the lab was open and getting samples and stuff like that. So that was my question. Thank you.

Okay, seeing no further commissioner questions, we're gonna go ahead to the audience. Traditionally, we invite the applicant up to speak first if they would like to. And they have an opportunity at the end to respond to public comment if they would like to as well. So I just wanna note that. But if the applicant would not like to speak, then we'll go ahead and open it up to the public. We're gonna open up to the room first. If you would like to speak on this item, please approach the podium and line up at the podium so that I know how many folks are gonna speak. And if you are online watching via Zoom or calling in, please raise your hand now so that we can get to you shortly.

Ken Swarovski, Chair West, yeah, anything that's agendized, no matter what, if it's on the agenda, we get public comment on it. I think you can look at that. Because I do this all the time. To some people, so Ken, also known as RED. I think that of something of this large kind of a project, and you're getting an annual report, and that's a condition of your CUP that you have it, that shouldn't be on consent. I think that should be brought forward. As a person from the public, it's been mentioned that you have other experts in the room from water quality. We would like to hear their comments. And I guess my main question is this particular project, and I guess you have, it sounded like you have three CUPs on this one, or in that area or something. I assume that staff's gone ahead and done a cumulative effect for all three of those, rather than them being separately. In CEQA and everything else, you're not supposed to split things up, you're supposed to have a cumulative effect, and that's a major effect. This has a major effect on the environment. Also as far as your outreach on this thing, I would hope that as far as a condition is anybody that's within whatever the thousand feet of this project or whatever the thing is notified each year and given a letter saying do you have any comments. pro or con. I mean, that kind of makes sense because some people are afraid to speak up and just something, do you have a problem? Well, give them a chance to speak without having to come here tonight and speak. I probably will be the only one speaking. I don't have complaints because I'm not in the neighborhood, but it's just a courtesy and transparency. I feel that particular thing should be in a CUP of this nature. I did notice when you said that the Caltrans access could not be used, that that was a continuation of a road. And as far as I'm concerned, a condition should be that where that road branches, that you don't have any non-secondary access off that little portion. It's a small portion of road. But I see no reason, from what we've seen in Fire Paradise, all these other places you have a fire, every single parcel, and it's the same when you're doing subdivisions or something. You have to have a loop through it. And I'd hate to see some kind of a fire develop there and people perish because they couldn't safely exit during that one section of road. So the rest of it looked good. You had circular things. Again, I would like to hear if there are comments. The people took the time to come here. I would hope they would be willing to make any comments, either saying that they're happy with the project or any concerns they might have. These projects have a major effect on the environment. and I think the necessary oversight to protect the environment and all the critters out there should be taken to its fullest extent that we can. So thank you for allowing us to have a public hearing on this and for us to get a report.

Any other members of the audience like to comment? And as a reminder, if you are calling in, please hit star nine to raise your hand. I'm not seeing anybody in the audience approach the podium, nor am I seeing any hands raised online and phone. I'm gonna give it just one more moment. Please raise your hand now if you'd like to comment on this item. Okay, I'm not seeing anybody else who's interested in commenting, so we are gonna go ahead and take it back to the commission for discussion. Commissioner Curiazzi.

I would just like to say I appreciate the Mateo Community Center for their compliance with the conditional use permit, and they're continuing to improve their operations. I think it seems like they're doing a great job. I also really appreciate staff making this annual report as part of this conditional use permit. I think it's extremely helpful to have these kind of regular updates. And just one request to staff in the future, I think the summary tables that you provided in the staff report were super helpful and they would have helped answer a number of my questions while reviewing the agendized items. So maybe requesting in the future that that type of comparison table be provided.

I'll just make a couple comments on this. I do believe that when this first came to us for approval we brought all of these permits came together and were evaluated together also this is not the first time we've had this annual report we've had it in the past and we've had more commenters in the past which have led to some of the improvements that were, and changes that were noted tonight, the emergency access, the water supply, and the more rigorous environmental testing on water quality, which came up last year. So I will presume that, that this year's event was more satisfactory to some of the neighboring properties as they're not here this evening, but I can't assume that's the case, but it appears to be. And I think the material does an excellent job on submitting this annual report, I appreciate that. Unless there's any other comments, I make a motion that we accept the report.

I'll second.

Can we please have a roll call vote?

Commissioner Scavado?

Yes.

Commissioner O'Neill? Yes. Commissioner West? Yes. Commissioner Curiazzi?

Yes.

Commissioner Fulton?

Yes.

Motion passes. Thank you.

Okay, and that brings us to G, public hearings. So as a reminder to the public, we have quite a few items on our agenda. public hearing docket tonight, and there are five to be specific. We are going to take numbers one and two separately, and then we will be grouping items three, four, and five as one staff report and one public comment period. So we're gonna kick it off with item G1, Walsh Coastal Development Permit. And while staff is pulling up their report, do we have any ex parte communication about this item? Seeing any, so staff whenever you're ready. Oh, it looks like you might have a public comment. So traditionally. I'm Walsh. Oh, you are the applicant. Okay, so traditionally I believe we're gonna do a staff report first and then we'll have some commissioner questions and then I'll call you up to talk, yeah.

Good evening, commissioners. Michael Kine with Humboldt County Planning. I'll be doing the presentation for the coastal development permit for Tim Walsh. This project is at 2027 Irving Drive in Eureka. So this property is in the Humboldt Hill area. It is due east of Fields Landing. Here is a site plan of the project location. I do want to note that the property to the northwest, which is the upper left-hand side, is also owned by the same property owner. This is a slide of the project itself. You can see that is a two-story property. It is an approximately 3,519-square-foot, two-story single-family residence. There will be a three-car garage on the first floor, which is below the grade because it's set on a hill, and the top floor is living space, which will be equal to or level with the road. The property is accessed via Irving Drive, and the parcel is located at the end of the road, which is on a cul-de-sac, and the road is county-maintained. The project was referred to the Northwest Information Center and the Bear River Band of Ronerville Rancheria and the Riyadh Tribe. The Bear River Band responded and requested that due to the sensitivity of the parcel that a tribal or archeological monitor be present during groundbreaking of the project and that has been a condition set forth. Since this project is in the California Coastal Commission local jurisdiction, it is not appealable to the commission and a public hearing could be waived with a notice, a notice of intent to approve had been sent on April 27th, 2026. And on May 5th, 2026, we received a request for a hearing by one of the neighbors. The staff recommends that based on county code that the planning commission make all required findings for the approval of this project and adopt the resolution approving PLN 19417 CDP subject to the recommended conditions of approval.

Okay, thank you. Do we have any questions from commissioners? Okay, I'm seeing no questions. We're gonna go ahead and move to public comment. First, we will invite the applicant up, and you will have up to 10 minutes to address the commission. After the applicant addresses the commission, we will go ahead and invite anybody else in the public to make a comment in person or online, and then at the end of that public comment, we may call you back up if you have questions. some responses to public comments or if we have questions for you.

Sure, no problem. It's pretty straightforward. Just want to put up a house on the property we've owned for many years and I'm currently storing my tractor outdoors there and I just want to put up a house. There are steps gonna be from the garage up, but we currently live down the street. We have lots of steps going up into our house. We're of an age where it's getting to be pretty old, so it'd be nice to be able to enter street level, which we plan to do. There are no other structures on the property that we're gonna modify and the home comes as a kit. It'll be put up in about a week or less once the foundation is put in but it's built into the hillside and I think that the person who was concerned in the neighborhood had the wrong piece of property in the first place and they were under the impression it was gonna be three stories. It's one story at street level so that's my comment.

Just one quick question. It's a fairly large parcel. It's like six acres or something. Eight. Eight acres. Yeah. But your development is only maybe a quarter or half acre?

It's just the footprint right at the end of Irving Drive.

Yeah. So the rest of the property is going to remain undeveloped?

Way down the hill, undeveloped, right. Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you. I will check in with you at the end of public comment. Okay. Would anybody like to address the commission on this item at this time? If you would, please approach the podium. If there are multiple folks who'd like to comment, just please line up behind the podium. And if you are online or on the phone, now is the time to raise your hand for this item. Just as a reminder, this is item G1, Walsh Coastal Development Permit. If you're coming in a little late, raise your hand now. Star nine if you are calling in. And you will have three minutes to address the commission.

He answered some of my questions. I'm a neighbor that lives in that area and I wondered how soon they were gonna start the project and how long it would take. My other concern is it's a big house. There are no houses that size in that neighborhood. I don't know if that's gonna look out of place or that's just my feeling on it, but he said it's gonna go up pretty quickly. So that was what I was wondering. what the timeframe was. So that's all I had to say. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else in the audience? And as a reminder, please raise your hand if you're online or calling in. Okay, I'm not seeing anybody else here in the audience, nor am I seeing any hands raised online. I'm calling in, so I think we will go ahead and bring it back to the commission for discussion. I actually wanted to check in with the property owner. If you had anything else to add before, okay, wonderful. Commissioner Kariazzi, did I see your hand raised?

I have a somewhat tangential request to staff. I'm okay with this project, but I did notice, and we seem to do this in general when we're documenting public comment, that we're including the full information, phone numbers, addresses of public comment, and I'm wondering if there's a way that we can redact that information.

Yes, we will absolutely redact personal information from the public comment in the future. Thank you.

Okay, thanks.

We will redact the information that is allowable through the Public Records Act.

While they're working that out. Yeah, go ahead. I just, to the chair, to staff, the building square footage, I think it was three, is that both floor plates? That was both, yes. The garage and the upper floor are the total, so it's about a 1,500 square foot upper floor.

40 by 40.

1,600 square feet. So it's not gonna appear quite as big as you might think, a 3,000 foot single story house. And the upper floor is going to be at street level. Correct. So you drive down around and into a lower garage, as I understand it. OK. Thank you.

OK. I'm not seeing much in the way of discussion. Do I have a motion?

I'll do it. Okay. Let me find my place. So adopt the resolution, attachment one, which does the following, finds the proposed project, complies with the general plan and the zoning ordinance, and... finds that the project's exempt from further environmental review pursuant to the project is categorically exempt from environmental review per section 15303 new construction or conversion of small structures of CEQA guidelines and that there is no substantial evidence that the project will have a significant effect on the environment and approves the Walsh Coast development use permit subject to the conditions of approval in attachment 1A.

Okay, I have a motion from Commissioner O'Neill.

I will second.

Second from Commissioner Fulton. When you have a moment, may we please have a roll call vote?

Commissioner Fulton.

Yes.

Commissioner Curiazzi?

Yes.

Commissioner West? Yes. Commissioner O'Neill? Yes. Commissioner Scavdahl?

Yes.

Motion passes. Thank you.

Okay, and that brings us to item G2, the Arcata Forest Special Permit for Short-Term Rental. So we will take a staff report on this item and then the commission will have an opportunity to ask questions of staff and then we will go to our public comment section which will include both the applicant and the general public. So with that, let's go ahead and get rolling on our staff report.

Good evening again. Michael Kine with Humboldt County Planning. I will be doing the presentation for the special permit for short-term rental for Arcata Forest. This property is at 132 Pepperwood Lane in Arcata. That's PLN202619503. The location map, you can see that it is just outside of the Arcata area. It actually borders the city limits to the east of the city limits, so the city limits are to its west. And it is near the intersection of West End Road and Erickson Way. general plan it is residential estates two and a half to five acres it's part of the Arcata community plan and it is zoned agricultural general The current STR ordinance allows parcels and resource zones, in this case, agricultural general, between two and a half acres and 10 acres in size to seek an exemption with a special permit. In this instance, while the property is zoned for agricultural use, it is not located in an area that is utilized for agricultural production. The property and surrounding area is heavily forested and the property itself is immediately adjacent to Arcata city limits. There should be no expected adverse impacts to the community or to public health and safety under the good neighbor guide. This property also does not have any other short term rentals within at least 600 feet of the property. A notice of intent to improve was sent on April 27th, 2026, and a request for hearing was received on May 5th. The current concerns centered around past noise complaints of the short-term rental, and the number of guests they had in the recent months. As of today, we received three more comments. Those concerns mentioned had to do with vehicle access, road maintenance issues, since it is a private lane, excessive speeds, and the possibility of attracting bears and wild animals due to potential garbage or waste not being removed correctly. Staff recommends based on the code that the planning commission make all required findings for approval of this project PLN 1 9 5 0 3 and adopt the resolution approving this project subject to the recommended conditions of approval.

Thank you. Okay commissioners do you have any questions about this item for staff this time. I'm not seeing any. Okay, we'll go ahead and move to the public comment portion. If the applicant is available, we will have them speak first. They'll have up to 10 minutes, and then we'll move to general public comment. So if you're in the room, we'll call on you first after this. But if you are online or calling in, please raise your hand now. As a reminder, there can be a little bit of a lag with the video, so raise your hand now so that I can be sure to see you when it is time to go to public comment for you.

hi there i'm amy gonzalez i'm the applicant for this particular permit and i am the owner operator of a local vacation rental management company called humboldt retreats we manage about 70 vacation rentals in the local area and i have been the one since the beginning of this particular property to be responsible for the management I just wanted to come up here and talk about a couple of things. We feel that we have provided responsible management and oversight of this property since the beginning of, beginning, sorry, I'm a little nervous. I am very hands-on, actually. I deal with a lot of the guests and I deal with the neighbors if they ever have issues. I am the one usually that they call, that they text, and I am, you know, readily available and have responded to... Like one of the things you guys mentioned, the trash. For instance, it was originally with Recology. I had a neighbor complain that a bear had gotten into it and we took care of that. My husband does the dump runs now every week at least two or three times. We have a lot of trash and it's always locked and inside the garage. We are constantly available and willing to work with anybody who has complaints. including the one neighbor that i believe is here that has corresponded with me regularly not regularly but numerous times regarding noise complaints which i have correspondence copies of you know texts emails all that good stuff where she's indicated that you know there was some stress on her end regarding the noise from parties at the, not an actual party, but like people that were there at the unit, where I immediately was responding to the guests, letting them know, hey, we're totally uncomfortable with this, you need to shut it down, and they did, and the neighbor in text and in correspondence suggested that yes, it had quieted down, I had done my job, I respect that, the neighbors and I want to make sure that we are working together at all times to make sure everybody's happy and we're in compliance. And like I said, even up until, I think it was a week ago, I had one text where she had asked me to, you know, just please ask the yes to tone it down a bit. And I did and it was, you know, assuming everything seemed copacetic between us since then. So I'm here just to say that I'm here. I'm so sorry, I'm so nervous. Oh my gosh. I, want to work with everybody. I have put disclaimers in the check-in instructions, in the listing. I have done everything I can to make sure that we are abiding by the noise compliance and the Good Neighbor Guide and making sure that if there's ever been a complaint past the 10 p.m. noise compliance rules that I have handled it. And I believe that's been three different times I've had correspondence about that. So regarding the trash, oh, and the road pave, the paved road situation, the owner pays, I actually pay an expense him for it on a regular basis for road maintenance, and I have only had one neighbor suggest that she would want us to step it up and pay more for because she believes the road is being impacted more by our guests for regular road maintenance, which we have said we would comply with. So I'm just here to state that we are doing everything we can, and we feel that we are responsibly managing this unit, and I'm totally willing to continue to work and stay in correspondence with anybody who might take issue with anything that's going on there. Other than that, it has been a great success. Many families from out of the area have come and utilized it as a gathering place. It does have four bedrooms, two and a half baths. Most of our guests are larger groups. That being said, as you could have seen in the map that was provided earlier, it's a large property on over two acres and it's backed into the Redwood Forest. So there's plenty of room to, you know, we ask guests, like for instance, at the 10 p.m. deadline for noise, we say go inside or I've told the neighbor before that we're willing to move the outdoor patio area even if it's bothering them from their side of the fence. Everything has been documented and I have tried my very best and we, like I said, want to reiterate that we are willing to work with and make sure that everybody is as happy as can possibly be in this scenario and that I understand as a citizen myself of Humboldt County and somebody who owns vacation rentals but also is a resident in a neighborhood where there is a vacation rental that There are annoyances at points or not knowing who your neighbor is is unsettling for some. However, I wanna say that I am not a corporate entity. I am a local operator and I intend to continue to ensure that I am working with my fellow neighbors to make sure that we're all doing the best we can to make sure everybody's happy and that the guests understand there are rules you know, that need to be complied with. So I think that's pretty much it. Other than that, we have been in compliance paying our transient occupancy tax. We have done everything that we are aware of that we should be doing as far as continuing operation, and that was part of the reason we applied for the conditional use permit. We feel that that we should continue to be able to run and that I'll be here to answer to anybody who doesn't agree. I have a question.

Thank you, is that? Yeah, that's it. Okay, I didn't want to interrupt you.

Oh, no worries. So is there a road association and are you a member? Is that what you were saying when you were contributing to the road?

I am not a member of the association. It's the owner himself. Since I'm the management company, the owner himself, Emmanuel Vayner, is the one who is the member of the road association.

And he pays their dues?

Yes, yes. But I pay. The neighbors ask me to pay this particular person who comes and services the road, and I pay it, and I have receipts of payment to that person.

And on average, how many...

days nights a year do you rent this facility well um i would consider the high season uh may from may through september october on a good year i would say we're between 75 and 85 percent occupied um the months of july and june oftentimes higher like 90 probably occupied and then the shoulder season or lower season months, which can extend anywhere from October to March, April, it's usually between 50 and 60%, I'd say, occupancy, sometimes lower. We are interested in midterm rentals for work crews in the lower season, and we have pursued that option. We don't necessarily want to always run it as a short-term rental. We like to have that option. So what we have, you know, we are definitely interested in It not always operating on a regular basis in the short term and having less impact on the neighborhood in that regard.

So it would be up to the road association if they wanted to change their rules that if there's a commercial operation, they would have to increase their fees for the road maintenance because of an increased usage. Is that true?

I actually don't know if, I'm sure the neighbor that is here would know better about the road association in particular. If it's an actual road association or just a neighborhood coalition, I can't say for sure. I just know I pay the bill, so.

How much do you pay?

It's $60 was the last time I paid, which was about two weeks ago. And that has occurred, I think, three different times in the time that I've been managing it, which is, I believe I started managing in May of 2026 or 2025. Yes.

That's all.

Yeah.

We'll check in with you at the end of the call. Thank you. Okay, and now is the opportunity for any other members of the public to come ahead and address us.

Hi, it's my turn now. Thank you for your patience. So my house has the unique experience with 132 that our parcels might be 2.5 to 5 acres, but our houses are literally a stone's throw away from each other. the acreage backs up on the opposite sides. We share the same exact driveway. So our house literally goes directly uphill from this house on a nightly basis. I can see upwards to five to 10 cars per visit. Sometimes for this rental, I experienced people playing beer pong, staying up all hours of the night. I do text Amy, trust me, I do. And I really appreciate her help, but, it's continuous. No one is following the guidelines of the good neighbor book. No one is like everyone is up all night. Like I got home from work at 10 30 last night and people are hanging out in the hot tub that backs directly up to my home. I have two little girls that need to wake up for school that have their bedrooms that face this patio. I can't even open their window at night because of the noise. Um, my husband and i bought this house because it's beautiful it's set back we really put everything we had into it thinking that this was just going to be our beautiful serene spot and now this is what we're dealing with on a regular basis it's a large house it's rented for upwards to 700 a night so with that being said that's really not that common for a single family to rent this house. I know my family afford can't afford $700 a night for sure. So typically this house is bringing in large groups of people. When large groups of people want to rent a house, they're usually hanging out and having a really good time. And I get that. I want to have a good time too, but this isn't like the neighborhood for that. Like we, there's somebody directly next door to them. I mean, to us it's just been causing a complete nuisance. My fellow neighbors have complained multiple times about the traffic in and out, in and out, how fast they speed. The road maintenance is truly only that they have put forward is cutting the lawn on the side. It is not for the road itself. My husband goes and gets loads of gravel on his own with his trailer to fill potholes because they are that significant. The amount of traffic coming into our neighborhood, a small private road with six driveways on it, has been significant. I mean, I don't know what else to say, but it's been a nuisance. Amy has been very responsive. The owner of the house, on the other hand, has not. We just want to enjoy our home that we've established in the serenity of this neighborhood with my kids. That's about it. Thank you.

Genselowski or Red, this clearly is not working. The guidelines you set up for this kind of permit is not functional. Additional conditions should need to be put on this and each project should be looked at separately and we're gonna have a few more of these I think tonight. Setback requirements, a house of this nature, and this is part of the problem when you have somebody managing 70 houses with an out of area owner, it is just about impossible to be responsive and really be neighborly, your process. I manage, I have houses down in Mexico, and I don't know if you know how the Mexican people party, but if I'm gonna be responsible, I'm switching them all over to long term because the neighbors had so many complaints. The only way I've been able to manage this is to put a cap on people, a cap on cars. You have four bedrooms. Eight people should be the most people there. This is where they're to be. They're not to have it for a party house where you have another 20 people showing up and the cars coming and going. There's a difference between a vacation rental and a party house. And I think you really need to step back and look at some of these things. I think you need to put additional conditions on here. The good neighbor policy is not working. The people are, by nature, coming there to have a good time. And it's not their backyard. I mean, it's not their bedroom. They're going to do whatever they want. And that's a fatal flaw to having these kind of rentals in these kind of areas under these circumstances. So I think this, as they have a special permit, not a CUP but a special permit, I think that should come back up for reassessment and they should come up with further mitigation that would enable this person to have a quality of life which they deserve to have people come and live here in Humboldt County to enjoy this thing. There's no reason somebody's life should be ruined by a commercial use of this magnitude. I'm in the business, but I wouldn't do that to my neighbors no matter what. I manage my own and have competent management, manage just a couple houses. And they're down there. Mexico, we just turned the power off. They're too noisy. That usually quiets them down. You probably can't do that here. You do need to do something that they should come back before you as far as another item or else tonight hash out some further mitigation that's required. And if you continue to have complaints from the neighbors, then the special permit should be revoked. Thank you for my opportunity to speak.

Anybody else in the audience who wishes to address the Commission and as a reminder folks online are calling in Please raise your hand if you would wish to speak on this item. We are currently on item G to the Arcata for a special permit for a short-term rental Not seeing anybody in the audience and I'm not seeing any hands raised online. I Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and check back in with the applicant if they had Anything else to say regarding this item, please approach the podium We can give you another three minutes if there were specific concerns you heard that you wanted to address But please address your comments to the Commission and not to specific people who may have commented Yes, I just wanted to address a couple of things the

We do have it's four bedrooms two and a half baths. We have an occupancy limit of eight people We only allow people that have had Five star reviews or you know that are that have a track record a good track record is what Airbnb calls it We have the disclaimer that sends out as soon as somebody books that indicates It's a long paragraph. This is not a party house. We will be in touch and your reservation will be canceled and you will not receive a refund. If we hear that there is any kind of partying going on or disrespect beyond the quiet hours and the house rules that we have instated, We have cameras on the property, the front driveway and sides of the house. And we have not had indication that there are 10 cars. I mean, it would be hard to believe that there's 10 cars could even park in that driveway, although it is big. We have not had any indication that there are people parking. we've not had any indication that there are people beyond the people that have been on the reservation themselves there, and beyond that, the $700 a night, maybe on Cal Poly grad weekend, I wish we were making that much money a night, but typically, I'd say right now, we're making on an average somewhere between $279 for the accommodation fare for the actual nightly rate, not including the cleaning fee, a night, that's how much it costs. So the $700 figure is a little inaccurate. yeah in the high season we are charging i believe around 400 a night in july um but we are it's it's nowhere near 700 a night and that being said when you are looking on airbnb it's the total cost including the taxes and the cleaning fee and any other extraneous fees additional guests etc so I just wanted to clarify that that doesn't seem like a fair representation of what we're actually charging and receiving. Other than that, I do appreciate that the neighbor suggested that I have been, like I said, easy to reach out to and communicate with and that I want to reiterate that we are willing to do what it takes to make sure that any concerns are handled appropriately. Other than that, I can say that even at 70 properties, I actually do take quite a bit of pride in the amount of correspondence that I take from neighbors and guests, and I do feel that I am really hands-on with the business, and I will continue to be so, do that from here on out. Anyway, thank you so much for hearing me out. Thank you. And actually, if you could stay up, I think we probably have a couple of questions for you.

Yeah, sorry. So to a couple of the things I heard, we heard both comments about road maintenance. Have you been asked for money for road maintenance beyond the $60 for the, it sounded like maybe the side of the road maintenance, but actual maintenance for the road itself? Has anybody ever requested money for that?

Yeah, so I just had one of the neighbors talk to me. I think within the last month or so, she had texted me with the bill that I owed to this other person, the one I had said I paid $60 to. She said, here's the bill. And she said, we would like to discuss, because I'm kind of the middleman between them and the property owner at this point, I guess, they would like to discuss him paying $100 higher portion towards road maintenance because they feel that the roads are being impacted by the guests. And I said absolutely in our correspondence and I did message the owner as soon as I had talked to her and I let him know and he said there's no issue there. We're happy to provide more funding and whatever is needed. But I didn't get a solid number and I, you know, I work, I'm just kind of assuming that somebody will let me know what needs to be done since they're the ones who have been taking care of of that road maintenance from the beginning of my management.

I'm gonna check in and see what other questions we might have for you.

It's hard to tell from the property maps the orientation of these two homes, It is a two and a half acre property, it sounds like. And you said something earlier about perhaps relocating. Is it possible to have to limit the outdoor activities to the side of the house? Yes. Farthest away?

from the neighboring house and the fence between the properties yes as of right now the hot tub is on the back patio which does you know border liz's fence line or not sorry i don't i don't i'm sorry i shouldn't have addressed her her fence line um and the owner has said to me that he is willing to put a breaker and move the entire patio to the front part of of the property that's completely further away from the bordering property. Basically, he's been willing, he's just waiting on whatever needs done, but essentially, I've been in correspondence, like I said, with this particular neighbor who has the noise issue, and I've said all these things. I said we could put the video camera back on the back deck, and we could have a disclaimer about there's a video camera and we're watching you, although I hate to do that. I think that that is an invasion of privacy. But we could be watching more closely as far as people out past 10 p.m. I've offered plenty of different options, but the last correspondence I've had with this particular neighbor, she suggested that it's fine, that she appreciates what I've done as far as shutting down the noise as soon as she corresponds with me. But we're willing, absolutely. The owner and myself, we've been discussing. It's definitely something that we're open to.

I'm sure you recognize that shutting down a noise as soon as she corresponds with you means that there's problems and somebody's making too much noise, right? We're trying to figure out how to mitigate it so that she doesn't have to correspond with you. Yeah, I understand that.

Yeah, that being said, this particular neighbor has been on our property multiple times yelling at guests and taking it upon herself to cross onto property lines and let people know how they feel. I have never taken issue up with her about this. I understand she's been frustrated, and I have always been willing to work it out. So other than that, yes, I do. I understand.

Thank you.

Any other questions of our applicant right now? Okay, thank you for coming up and answering our questions. Yes, thank you. Okay, so at this time, we're gonna bring it back for commission discussion on the item. Commissioner Kerriazzi.

I've got a just clarifying question to staff. I'm a little bit confused that the owner of the property is not the applicant. Is that correct? It's this management company that is the applicant?

They were the ones who put in the application, yes. So they were the applicants. But the owner is listed here as the applicant.

Oh, the owner is listed as the applicant. Yes. Okay, got it. So any conditions of this is essentially put on the owner, not on the management company? Correct. Okay, cool, thank you.

To follow up on that, typically though, the owner authorizes an agent, and so the person speaking tonight could be considered speaking for the applicant, correct? Yes.

If I could just clarify that a little bit more. The conditions would be on the permit, which runs with the land.

Commissioner O'Neill.

As a homeowner, I think you are very responsible. You sound like a responsible management employee. I would be If I had to go out every night and yell at people and call you and text you and this continued and you were still waiting to find out what you needed to do rather than being proactive and having already done it, I think there's something to be said there. I mean, just running some numbers, I know that they're probably bringing in an excess of $70,000 a year on this facility. at least, if not more, you could have already limited the number of cars. I think that was a good suggestion. I was thinking the same thing in my head, which would limit the traffic. Paying $180, three times $60, to me it's just, it seems like the owner's doing a minimal amount of effort and waiting to be told what to do, even though it's been brought to their attention that they're interfering with homeowner's harmony in their life i wouldn't want to have to have people having in the hot tub at night and my kids even seen that so i i don't think this is appropriate i think that the owner should have done something a long time ago i don't know how long they've been operating already but they've brought in enough resources that they could have already built this deck they could have limited the cars they could have said i'm going to pave the road whatever needed to be done just to make sure that um so i don't i don't see them as being very responsible i think you are you know you sound like you are but it seems like you're just having to react all the time and that's not proactive thank you

To staff, these permits are, if I'm remembering correctly, typically three years?

No, these are approved for a two-year period, and they have to be renewed every two years.

Could we condition a permit for a shorter period?

Absolutely.

So we could commission a permit for a year? Have an annual review. You have an annual review and subject to revocation if we have complaints?

Yes.

I understand that's substantiated complaints in some way. I mean...

The ordinance is actually written pretty strongly that if the permit's found to be with a lot of complaints and a lot of sustained complaints, that it doesn't necessarily have to be extended. Right. So I don't know that it has to be revoked. It just wouldn't be extended.

It just wouldn't, it'd just end. Yep. Okay. Can we also condition a permit for a location of outdoor activities or amenities like hot tubs and decks and things like that? Or are we getting too far into the weeds?

Well, I think that probably we'd want to do a little work on the findings that there have been or has been, you know, information presented by a neighbor and really sustained by the property manager. that there has been a hot tub close to the property and that has a lot of outdoor activity going on on that side of the house in order to minimize or reduce that or address that and protect the character of the neighborhood, it's important to move that activity area to the other side of the house.

Yes, you can do that. Yeah, and it sounds like at least through the agent, the property owner is amenable to that. But maybe needs a nudge. Those are my comments, thank you.

I think in a similar vein where I'm inclined to, I think, try and add some additional levels of conditions or scrutiny to see if we can't find a compromise in this particular instance. But it is unfortunate that the owner hasn't been more proactive about the concerns that have been heard because we may not be in this position having to make additional considerations when they are a little bit more proactive about this type of thing. But we are here tonight, so we will figure it out. But I am also in the similar mind of you of thinking about how we try and nudge the owner to reduce the noise issues that the neighbor is experiencing and think about a shorter timeline. Please, Commissioner Fulton.

Yes, I'm more inclined to end the permit and request that the applicant resubmit once some things have been put into place, maybe the hot tub moves, some sound stuff in the house to keep it a little quieter, and then resubmit for another application. But I am in agreeance with Commissioner O'Neill at this point.

Yeah, I think likewise I'm leaning towards Commissioner O'Neill. I feel like maybe this particular... I like the solution that you put forward, Commissioner Fulton. I think that's appropriate. I feel like we might have a situation here where the chosen location just isn't the right location. It's not a good fit for this particular spot, and I also feel like county staff probably have a lot of other permits that need attention.

Director, did you have something you wanted to add?

Not at this point. I will in a moment.

Well, I hear we have two minds. Do we have any proposed motion language if we don't have any more discussion?

I'd be considering moving to deny staff's recommendation, but I guess, Director Ford, did you have some thoughts?

I do have some thoughts. I would like to have an opportunity to make some draft findings language to support where the commission wants to go. perhaps I could ask that if you were to have a motion that could be passed, that you would give us a little time over a break to draft some language for the motion that you're looking to make.

Absolutely, and we are at break time, so I think it's a perfect time. How much time do you think would be sufficient?

We can probably do it in 10.

Okay, let's go ahead with a 10 minute break and come back at 7.58.

We are ready and I'm going to ask Mr. Johnson to.

Can I ask a couple more questions before we go there? Absolutely. At the chair of REES.

Yes, please, yes.

Thank you. I just want to make sure I understand. This is an ongoing business that was in business before we adopted this ordinance or not?

No, this is a permit for new. It's a permit for new? Yes.

but it's been operating. Yes. And absent the fact that it's on agricultural zone property, it would have been a counter-issued permit.

if it were on a piece of prop if it had an agricultural use on it yes well no it's here because it's not here because necessarily it's a new permit it's here because of the zoning on the property the zoning on the property is ag yes and so if it were a short-term short-term rentals originally in the original ordinance were only allowed on ag properties as farm states.

Correct.

And then we modified the ordinance because there were some smaller properties that were zoned ag that had no agricultural use. And so we allowed that with the special permit. And the special permit is why we're here tonight. Correct. right so absent the requirement for a special permit it would have been a counter no there there's no way that this one would be approved as a counter because in an agricultural zone on the the size parcel it requires a special permit

Could I maybe, I think I understand what's happening. Uh, so if, for instance, if it was a farm stay, it would not need a special permit and that would have been able to be approved administratively over the counter.

Okay.

Also, if this was a smaller parcel, um, the ordinance allows for those to be approved without a special permit. So that also would be an over the counter permit. But keep in mind that once these come up for renewal, a history of complaints are, uh, reviewed and considered for renewal and also if complaints were filed with the planning department the planning department can take action once even after approval of a administrative permit okay i guess um this looks like it's headed in a particular direction and i'm trying to understand it's an ongoing business that's during this time of year 90 occupied

So it's booked for the summer, I'm assuming. So if one were to presume that this permit may be denied tonight, what happens to that?

So if it were to persist and we were to receive complaints, it would become a code enforcement action.

OK. This is why I was leaning towards some sort of a runoff period, whether it be one year or six months. with perhaps some conditions for moving some of the outside activities to another location as perhaps being one solution. But not issuing the permit is another, so.

so i mean one of the other things that you could discuss you talked about a runoff period is trying to really reduce the length of time the permit could be operated for maybe down to six months uh specifically condition the number of people that could be there. The operator said it was eight. I think the ordinance would allow ten. You could limit the number of vehicles that come and go from the site.

Okay, thank you.

I have a follow-up question. So when we're working on these kind of permits and they have a time limit, and so if it was conditioned down to six months, the next step for the applicant would then be to reapply?

Correct.

Okay.

It's not reapplied completely. The way we've worked these out is that there is a form that is available for operators to come in and say they intend to continue to operate. And then we would do the review to see whether or not all the conditions have been complied with.

And if there are...

If I could just... You could also condition it that it comes back to you.

That was going to be my next question. Okay. Because if there are, but I think my particular question was, so when you have a reapplication up and you're reviewing it for approval again and you have complaints on it, does that then trigger commission review or that just triggers staff review?

The way the ordinance is written is it would trigger a non-renewal.

Okay.

and then once something is not renewed, then they're welcome to reapply again and?

Correct.

Okay.

Commissioner Kiriase?

Yeah, I appreciate these points and being sensitive to the business that's currently happening. I GUESS I FEEL LIKE SHORT OF, YOU KNOW, WE DON'T HAVE TIME TO SUBSTANTIATE COMPLAINTS THAT HAVE BEEN MADE. IT FEELS LIKE WE'RE PUSHING OFF WHAT, IF WE WERE TO GRANT A SIX-MONTH PERIOD, FOR EXAMPLE, WE WERE JUST KIND OF PUSHING OFF WHAT STAFF WOULD BE DOING ANYWAY IN SIX MONTHS. UNLESS I GUESS Unless I guess the owner does suddenly become quite proactive and address a lot of these issues and those complaints cease. But I feel like that could also be the case if we deny today and they come back at a later point after they've worked things out with their neighbor.

I have one more clarifying question. If I remember right, so we have a cap on the number of short-term rentals that can occur in the county, but I believe your last report said that we were not close to our cap number, correct?

That's true, yep.

I think I'm still interested to hear what staff came up with for a motion, if that works for commissioners.

So what we were hearing was the possibility of motion to deny this application. And so there would be two findings, and one would be that it's exempt from CEQA, pursuant to section 15270, which is projects that are not approved. And the second one is that the short-term rental would result in significant adverse effects on the quality of the neighborhood. and that is a required finding. To approve a special permit, you have to find that it would not result in those impacts. So the evidence for that would be that the short-term rental is currently operating without a permit, and evidence has been presented by a neighboring property owner of repeated noise and hours of operation that have been outside of normal residential neighborhood expectations and have adversely impacted their quality of life. And secondly, incidents of these complaints have been confirmed by the property manager. And those are the only two findings that you would need to make to deny this permit.

Commissioner Kariazzi.

Can you repeat the evidence items again, please? Sure. Evidence, we came up with two. So the first one is that the short-term rental is currently operating without a permit and evidence has been presented by a neighboring property owner of repeated noise and hours of operation that have been outside of normal residential neighborhood expectations and have adversely impacted their quality of life. And then secondly, that these incidents of complaints have been confirmed by the property manager.

I would make that motion.

Okay, I have a motion on the floor.

And I would second that.

Okay. We have a second from Commissioner Fulton. May we please have a roll call vote?

Can we discuss?

Oh, yes.

Thank you. I think – sorry, I'm having a frog in my throat tonight. I still would entertain some kind of – ONE OR MAYBE EVEN AS LONG AS TWO MONTHS, RECOGNIZING THAT UNFORTUNATELY THIS OWNER HAS DECIDED TO COMMIT TO OTHER PEOPLE'S VACATION PLANS, AND THIS IS GOING TO IMPACT PEOPLE THAT HAVE SORT OF STRUCTURED THEIR OWN SCHEDULES AROUND IT, SO I WOULD BE OPEN, DEPENDING ON HOW THIS VOTE GOES, OPEN TO SOMETHING ALONG THOSE LINES. But I think six months or a year, I think, is granting too much.

So I would offer an idea that rather than taking action, you could continue it to a date not to exceed, say, August 1st or August 15th the Commission's discretion with the direction that concerns of the neighbor be addressed by the applicant and that efforts be made to undertake relocation of the outdoor activity area and that there be no further complaints about noise, hours of operation, that sort of thing.

So we have a, I'm asking for a process guidance. We have a motion and a second on the floor. Do we need to see if somebody wants to amend their motion or retract it or just take a vote and see how that goes?

The first thing that you would probably do is ask if there was interest in reforming a motion. And if there's not, then you would take the vote.

Thank you.

OK. Well, so I will ask that. Is there interest in that? I'd like to take a vote.

OK. I have a question on the motion. I guess on the condition. If we pass this motion as stated right now with these findings, that's pretty hard to walk back from no matter what the applicant brings at some point in the future. That's not allowing the applicant to come back in with another proposal. If we find that, at least the way I heard those findings, that would be hard to walk back from.

It would be through the chair. It would be hard to walk back from, but not impossible. It would really require that the property owner make significant strides to address the concerns that have been articulated.

Okay, I understand. Thank you.

Any more discussion before I call for a vote?

I just want to say, and I don't even know if this is appropriate.

Maybe you can refer to it. Can you speak into the mic, please?

We have a person that lives in Humboldt County that owns a home and pays taxes. And I don't feel that we should put the priority of someone from out of the area who's making money on the process and interfere with our local residents' quality of life. When you invest in a home on that many acres in that area, it's not cheap. I think we should not be catering to out of town people who are just taking resource away from the area and not wanting to put it back unless they're forced to. This is my opinion.

I would just like to add to Commissioner O'Neill's things that are already operating without a permit, correct?

That is correct.

I want to remind everybody of that. They're operating without a permit, and had they gotten a permit to begin with, most of the stuff probably would have been addressed in the permit.

Okay, would we please have a roll call vote? Commissioner Curiazzi?

Yes.

Commissioner Fulton?

Yes.

Commissioner Scavdahl?

Yes.

Commissioner O'Neill? Yes. Commissioner West? Yes. Motion passes.

Okay. That moves us on to the next items in our agenda for folks who have been following along since the beginning. We are now moving to public hearing items G, three, four, and five which staff is going to take together as one staff report and then we will also do one public comment period for since they are all interrelated. And so while staff is pulling that together, I'll go ahead and just read off these particular permits that we are going to be considering. So we have item three, which is the conditional use permit for nine short-term rentals located in the tsunami hazard zone and special permits for six short-term rentals for exceptions to neighborhood concentration standards. And we have number four, which is Sandy Toe's conditional use permit and special permit. And then we have number five, ocean view, conditional use permit and special permit. Do we have any ex parte communication about these items? Okay, well staff, whenever you are ready.

Good evening chair West commissioners. My name is Kathleen Johnston. I'm an assistant planner at the Humboldt County planning and building department. Um, tonight I am presenting on 11 short term rentals in the tsunami zone. Um, I have them all listed here. They are in the areas of Manila fair Haven King salmon and Samoa. and there are a couple different types and also a concern about neighborhood concentration that we'll get to later in the presentation. Eight of the short-term rentals presented today exceeded neighborhood concentration standards from the ordinance. Nine of the short-term rentals are considered pre-existing as in operating prior to October 26, 2023. Two of the short-term rentals today, and this is agenda items four and five, are considered new and did not operate prior to that date. All are in the Humboldt Bay Area Plan, and there is no development proposed for any of these projects. So a conditional use permit is required for any whole dwelling short-term rental within the tsunami hazard zone. The California Geological Society created the tsunami hazard area assuming worst case scenario. And what we're trying to support here is that approval of these permits will not adversely impact health, safety, welfare, or quality of the neighborhood. I brought the tsunami run-up map here just to show you the 100 and 500 year events and most of the at least nine existing short-term rentals are outside of the 100 year and 500 year elevations. All of the short-term rentals are conditioned to provide safety and evacuation plans and distribute their good neighbor guides to their neighbors within 300 feet of the rental. So I'm going to start with the couple permits that do not have any neighborhood concentration concerns and are just receiving a conditional use permit for being in the tsunami hazard zone. We have Bayfront Getaway, which is a one-bedroom ADU about 3,000 feet away from the closest tsunami hazard evacuation area. This was... sort of found through the tsunami working groups, um, evacuation maps that they've made and worked with the applicants on identifying those areas. Um, the other one is the mills residents. Um, and it is about 980 feet away from the closest evac area. And these two permits are more than 600 feet away from each other. There's no other concerns other than being able to walk safely to an evacuation area and provide those plans to guests. This is the one permit we have up for Fairhaven. And this is actually the evacuation map the applicant made with instructions about where the closest site is. It's about 900 feet away. Also, in Fairhaven, there is a concern about inundation. It is below the 100-year, 500-year tsunami run-up area. PREPARING GUESTS FOR THAT IS CONDITIONED IN THEIR PERMIT. SO LASTLY, AND THEN THIS WILL START OUR TRANSITION INTO THE SECOND PART OF THIS CONVERSATION IS KING SALMON. And we have one permit here for an existing rental. King Salmon has ample signage and a very distinct point of evacuation for the entire area. This is the Vista Home. It's a three bedroom and it's about 800 feet away. also likely to experience inundation, but it's a tsunami-ready community that is, and all of that information will be provided and conditioned. So I'm going to jump into sort of some definitions here. We're talking about HBAP and the CAP. We have these two distinctions of the permits tonight between existing and new. So existing would have had to submit their applications within two months of the approved ordinance and That was November 24th, 2025. And they would have had to submit proof of operation that they operated prior to October 26th, 2023. Being a existing rental makes them exempt from inclusion in the 2% cap in the Humboldt Bay Area Plan. As a new operator, ESSENTIALLY, THEY WOULDN'T HAVE SUBMITTED THEIR APPLICATION AND THEY WOULDN'T HAVE PROVIDED PROOF OF OPERATION AND THEY ARE INCLUDED IN THAT 2% CAP. JUST TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF WHERE WE ARE IN THE CAP, THERE'S 79 POSSIBLE SHORT-TERM RENTALS ALLOWED IN THE HUMBLE BAY AREA, WHICH IS A PRETTY LARGE AREA. WE'VE ONLY APPROVED 15 SO FAR. So I just pulled the whole list up today. Agenda items number four and five are the two on the bottom, and those are our new permits versus the other nine being existing. Yeah. So in King Salmon, there is a special permit requirement for exceeding neighborhood concentration. At the planning commission meeting on May 7th, the commissioners approved a new development, a coastal development permit and CUP to allow a short-term rental on the property indicated in blue. The lot right next door on this street is an existing short term rental. So we're recommending approval for this one because of its status as existing and the fact that it is built compared to the undeveloped lot next door. These are also the only two in King Salmon that have been approved or have applied for it. We're going to jump into Samoa here, but first just talk about their tsunami plan. As part of the master plan for the town of Samoa and the EIR and that whole process in the subdivision, they created a tsunami safety plan and evacuation map in 2013. All of the short-term rentals are conditioned to have this displayed in their home, and this is what that looks like. So, Here's a breakdown of the short-term rentals that we're speaking about tonight and two others. So numbers one and two here have already been administratively approved. They are not in the tsunami hazard zone. They were less than 10 percent of the block of the access road and they were over 600 feet away from each other. So numbers three through seven are existing rentals operating prior to October 2023. And agenda items four and five are number eight and nine considered new. And there's a typo there, but number three through nine are the ones that are up for decision tonight. So this is the 600 foot radius from the already approved administrative permits. And so you can see that all of the existing STRs are within that 600 feet, which triggers a special permit for neighborhood concentration exceptions. If we approve any of the existing short-term rentals, that would change the 600-foot radiuses. That would result in pretty much the entire town having to go through a special permit discretionary process, regardless of tsunami hazard zone, to get approved. So the second part of neighborhood concentration is that only 10 percent of the houses on the access road can be used as short-term rentals. These are the four streets that we analyzed for, sorry, these are the four streets for all of the proposed rentals that are colored here and you can see That there are impacts, there are percentages that are over the allowed amount. Vance Avenue and Sunset Court will both be exceeding their percentage if we approve existing. If we approve the new as well, Samoa Vance and Murphy will be over at capacity. Because if there's only, say, four houses on the block, you're allowed to have one. Yeah. We have concerns about short-term rentals in the town of Samoa in terms of neighborhood concentration. The US census data shows only about 88 houses in Samoa. Approving the existing ones would be 80 percent of the whole town. Approval of all of them would hit right at 10.2 percent. Using data from Zillow, we looked at the last two years median sale prices of homes within Samoa, Eureka, and Arcata, finding that Samoa is about 370,000 compared to 400,000 and 450,000 in those other two communities. We're concerned that neighborhood concentration, we're concerned that the housing units sorry, the housing units for local residents will be lost and short-term rentals will drive out affordable housing, converting communities primarily into vacation communities that are unavailable for local workers and residents. There's one last thing I wanna talk about here though is that is our definitions in existing and new. And we talk about the finding about adverse effects to the quality of the neighborhood. As an existing rental in this case, we would consider them contributing to the quality of the neighborhood and therefore sort of baseline in the town already. And so since the existing ones we're considering baseline, the new ones would then have adverse effects to the quality. So staff recommendation is to adopt resolutions to approve the conditional use permits and special permits for the existing rentals that is in attachments two through 10 in the consolidated staff report. And the other recommendation is to deny agenda items four and five, because they do not meet the neighborhood concentration standards. Alternatively, the commission could elect not to approve any of the projects. They could elect to approve the two new. And there's also a possibility of establishing some kind of special mitigation specific to this MOA area. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, so similar to the other hearings that we've done tonight, we will start with commissioner questions to staff, and then we will go to public comment, starting with our applicants, and then to the general public, both in person and then online. Since we have so many different property locations and three different agenda items, when you are making comments, if you have concerns, please help us and make it very clear which addresses and hearing item number you're referring to if you can, or multiple if you are, to help us track your concerns and make sure that we are understanding them appropriately. And I think we will probably take applicants in order of how they are on the agenda, just so that you know. So we'll hear three, and then four, and then five. So with that, let's start with commissioner questions. Commissioner Chiesi.

To staff, have staff received any complaints on any of the existing STRs in the Samoa area?

No, we're not aware of any.

If we were to limit the number of STRs in the Samoa area to that allowed for neighborhood concentration, how many would that be?

Can you pull that map back up?

Wouldn't it be the staffs of 10.2% of all of Samoa? Yeah. So I think actually at this point, the only...

We have two neighborhood concentration standards to consider. One is the 10% of the homes on an access road. The other is no more than one within 600 feet. And so the interesting thing here is that one of... So if we go back to this one right here, you can see number nine may actually be... outside of the 600 feet might be the only one. Number nine is one of the proposed new, but number nine along with all of the others that are in red there on Samoa Court would be exceeding the percentage of 10% on that access road. So to say if we were to not approve anything that exceeds the neighborhood concentration standards, I think at this point we're talking about not approving any of them. Okay, thank you.

Commissioner Kariazzi.

I guess I'm similarly confused. I would think that we're just approving one less for the samoa community but then we have this 600 foot uh oh is it 10 on the access road yeah it's 10 on each road got it it's 10 is not the community it's the access road got it thank you

Okay, I'm not seeing any additional commissioner questions. Okay, so why don't we, we don't have any more commissioner questions, so let's go ahead and start moving through our hearing from our applicants. So first I'm gonna check in with applicants on item number three, the conditional use permits for nine short-term rentals located in the tsunami hazard zone, and special permits for six short-term rentals for exceptions to neighborhood concentration standards. So just to, I know there's a lot of moving pieces in this so I'm gonna just kind of repeat myself to make sure that folks are following along. So I'm going to check in with the applicants for each of the three different items that we have in front of us and then we'll do public comment for each of the three in front of us. So first I'm looking to see if we have applicants who would like to address the commission for item number three, either in person or online, and maybe staff can help me if they know who is online. Is our item number three applicant in the room? Let's start there. Applicants will each get 10 minutes. However, since everybody's robust, if you can keep it short or you're gonna get a gold star from us. So do we think our applicant for item number three is online? Do we know? Do you guys know if applicant for item number three is online or do you know if they're in the room? We have a couple of hand raises, which is why I'm asking.

Jason Mills, who chimed in at the beginning of the meeting. He's one of the applicants on this item. Thank you. That's helpful. Thank you.

Okay, so first I'm going to call on Jason Mills, which I think you are ARDA under. There we go. And if you're calling in, you can start nine to unmute yourself. I think he just disappeared.

Uh, I'm here. Oh, okay. Hi. Yeah. Uh, my name is Jason Mills. Uh, I am, am, uh, item three attachment number three. 19-431, the Mills draft resolution there, attachment number three, the one in Manila, 1740 Rainier Drive. I'm going to be really quick. I really just wanted to, you know, take this time to thank staff. It's been a very long process. I've been, you know, sort of going through it from the very beginning when this whole thing started, I think in 2023 or 2024. So, you know, first it was because I was in, You know, in the coastal area and then now because i'm in the tsunami hazard zone, so you know it's sort of been just moving through the process. But you know i've tried to be very you know as cooperative as possible filling out everything and being as timely as possible, you know. I really care about this, obviously, and also to I really just want to say, in addition to thanking staff and. You know, I talked to Kathleen, I think, this week, too. You know, they've been super helpful. And, you know, I think it's important to point that out that, you know, as someone who's moving through this and I want to say to you, like, I'm you know, I'm the owner operator. you know, I only have one, like, this is my house. You know, I don't have multiple properties that I manage. This is just one. And, you know, in addition to, so having someone who's like very knowledgeable and helpful and they've just been great, you know, helping me through the process. And then at the same time, you know, I love the area. I love sharing this area. You know, I'm very passionate about Humble, you know, anybody who knows me and, not just sharing the area with my guests, but my family and my close friends, you know, as often as possible. So I'm very appreciative of this opportunity to speak and to just say all of that. And, you know, I really hope to earn my gold star. So thank you again.

Thank you. Okay, and so do we have any other applicants that want to speak as part of item number three? The other hand, no, okay.

I'm sorry, I think this is like the Vance Avenue, like number three is like Vance Avenue and King Salmon Ring. I am an applicant for a few of those. Um, is it okay if I speak please? Yes.

Okay.

All right. Um, so yes, so I have applied on behalf of, um, a few owners for, Yeah, conditional use permits in Samoa and King Salmon properties. And I'm just going to keep it very succinct. I'm sure you basically already know what I have to say as far as I feel that we have been responsibly managing these properties for some of my owners at least four or five years at this point. We have had no complaints from the neighbors that I'm aware of regarding partying or any kind of issue. If anything, especially in the Samoa community, my clients have been outstanding as far as caring for their homes, remodeling, and making just the neighborhood overall, the beautification of the neighborhoods due to these rentals, I think has been... just wonderful. I also have a personal attachment to Samoa in particular. My parents actually just bought a house. My husband remodeled it for them and they live there. Many of my friends live there and a lot of those people are the people I manage these units for. Very collaboratively working to make sure that everybody is very hands on. The owners for those units in particular are very hands on. Yeah, and we have been, like I said, in compliance as far as trying to get the permits as soon as they were available, paying our quarterly taxes, and just maintaining responsible management. And I think that that's a good start. We did have correspondence, I think with... Yeah, and I believe that their main concern in the correspondence we received was the affordable housing aspect, which I'm not sure, I don't really necessarily agree with in the sense that many of the people that I manage that have recently bought were in the $400,000 range, not the three high threes, and then they had to remodel in order for their units to be in good enough condition to be rented out, and I'm managing them responsibly. They're using them as second homes regularly, on vacation homes, and I'm trying to think here. Oh, and just a couple of other things. I mean, there's a lot of improvements and stuff going on around Samoa that I'm sure you're aware of. The roads in the main thoroughfare, Vance Avenue, are not even set to be paved. They're like gravel at this point for the next two years. There's ongoing water shutoffs, power outages. There's quite a few things that also should be considered as far as if you're going to want to put long-term tenants in that area and consider it affordable housing that should be mitigated in my opinion before that even becomes the main factor of why we would deny. vacation rentals. Also, the utility bills have been skyrocketing for my clients every year. Some paying anywhere between 500 to 700, $800 a month for electricity. I don't think that that is within the means of an affordable situation either. So I just wanted to voice my opinion on why I don't agree with that particular sentiment. And I think that's pretty much it. So yeah.

Thank you. To make sure I'm tracking, you're representing folks who are a part of item number three and you don't have any that are parts of items number four and five. I do. You do have items four and five also? Yes.

But I won't, I'll... It's pretty much, yes, as much as I have to say about it.

That's great. I just wanted to make sure when I'm taking into consideration what you're saying, because not all of the properties are slated for approval. So I was tracking that. Some of your properties that you're representing are being recommended by staff to be denied, correct? Yes. Okay, thank you. And we may call you back up at the end. Thank you for coming. And it looks like I still have one more applicant that wants to speak, correct?

On Zoom, yes.

Okay, thank you. Are you also an applicant? Yes, I am. Okay, I will take in the room first, and then I will move to on Zoom. Okay.

My name's Mark Burchette, and I'm actually number five at the house at 127 Sunset. So a couple of comments before I talk about that house. One thing, I'm actually also the broker that's represented all the sales in Samoa for the past three and a half years, so I'm very familiar with the town of Samoa, very familiar with all of these STRs that are being proposed here. One thing I wanted to correct was there's actually, when reading the staff report, you mentioned there was 88 We haven't formally met. I know we've emailed a lot, so nice to meet you. But there's actually 99 homes there in Samoa that are existing, and there's another 12 single-family lots that'll be built as well in the house. There's actually 111. That's just in the town itself, in a residential. So there's 111, or there will be at some point 111 units there in town. Another point I'd like to make is we're pretty heavily dominant in two-bedroom homes and small three-bedroom homes. There's a few larger homes there in town. And one of the benefits I see of that, and we've certainly seen it in operating our STR, which we've been doing for almost three years now, is it doesn't attract big crowds of people. I mean, we basically limit ours to four people, and mostly it's like two, maybe with one or two kids. And so they're small groups of people. We haven't had any issues in the three years that we've had with any complaints of neighbors, there hasn't been any problems that I've been aware of, and I'm pretty sure that I haven't heard of a lot of problems in other SDRs that I'm aware of that are in town. I was also a little confused about the whole tsunami question, and Kathleen and I kinda talked about this the other day, because if you look at the elevation on our house, we're between 37 and 43 feet in elevation, And we're outside the 500 and the 100-year inundation lines. And according to the GIS map, when I look at that, you can literally walk out my door and walk about 60 feet this way and you're outside of the tsunami zone. Because there's a good portion of that upper sunset area that runs just to the east of our house down past the Samoa Women's Club that's out of the zone. There's also an area down at the end of Samoa Court that's out of the zone. Then the evacuation area is up behind the school, which is up Vance, which is where the signs lead you to. So anyway, but I'm here. It's a special permit. So we were hoping that we weren't in that zone because they've already approved two that are down the street on Sunset that were supposedly outside the tsunami zone. So that being said, I mean, we've Been operating for three years, no complaints. It's been working really well. We take really good care of our property, and most of the people out there that I know that are running SDRs are taking care of their properties. I mean, I'm out there almost every day. We've actually closed 74 sales out there of the 99, and so we're kind of hitting the home stretch here. We have one in escrow at the moment, and they're just slowly getting them ready, and we sell them as they get the houses finished. There's also quite a lot of work going on out there. Amy mentioned about the utility bills and the power and the water and all that's in the process of being done. I mean, they're right now working pretty heavily on the sewer system. But as you know, there's a new water plant, new sewer treatment plant. At one point, the utilities are all being upgraded by PG&E. That'll kind of come at the end of the utility phase, then the paving of the roads. And so the whole town is kind of going through a metamorphosis, you know, from what it was to what it's going to be. And it's going to be really nice when it's all done. But anyway.

That's basically all I had to say, so if you have any questions, you have the answer.

Number five, it's 127 Sunset, but it's number five on your sheet there. It's like it says Burchette. There's not an address on it. Okay.

Yeah. That's a two-bedroom house, two-bedroom. Got it. When you said it's not the fifth agenda item, it's number five in section three.

Yeah, if I could jump in. It is not number four or five on the agenda. It's actually number six as the attachment, the resolution is attachment number six for this one. Was I looking at the wrong list? Yeah, we're happy to try to keep you guys straight on that because I know there's a lot of different stuff going on.

I was looking at the property list. Thank you. I got it.

So his property is being recommended for approval currently? Correct. Okay, thank you. That's helpful because I had a question about that.

That's it, unless you have a question, thank you.

Thank you. Okay, and then I'm not seeing any more applicants in the room. I'm going to go ahead and I see, I believe Dan has his hand raised and is an applicant online, correct? Yes, okay. Dan, when you're ready, please address the commission.

Yeah, hi, I'm Dan Shaheen, and I believe I was lot property number six on the map, one of the ones recommended for approval. Just wanted to let you know that our experience with this process has been a little difficult. It's taken a long time and caused a lot of stress, but we're happy to be engaging with the process and eager to get fully permitted contributing more back to the community. Besides the community, besides improving our property and improving the look and feel of the neighborhood, we've been able to take a portion of our earnings from our property and give them directly to the Peninsula Union School District. We're raising money for playground equipment of which they are sorely lacking. And we've been trying for a long time to get some action on some of the environmental hazards we're seeing in and around the area, particularly on Cadman, court um and have not had a lot of response from that um but we're hopeful we've been working with the county and we're hopeful about improvements and we're hopeful that this combined with the new uh heavy lift marine terminal project coming in of which i'm on the steering committee uh for the town of samoa uh we hope that all this can come together and transform samoa into something really really special and do a lot to improve the lives of those kids that go to the school there that live at the phyllis rex town homes who uh really could use a little extra hope and love uh from all this development that's going on around them Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, I believe that wraps all of our applicants. Let's go ahead and take folks from the public. I'm going to take folks in the room first to speak, but if you are online, please raise your hand now. So if you're calling in, it is star nine to raise your hand. We always have a little bit of a lag in the video, so raise your hand now so that I make sure that I see you when the time comes. And you have three minutes, sir.

So I have two major concerns. I basically go with staff recommendation on what you're doing here. The concern I have is, let's go back to the CUP process. I've mentioned to John a little earlier that the Danco Company and their Danco Housing Project is totally out of their CUP. If you go down there, and I had confirmation it hasn't changed from people in the audience, there's a sign that says tsunami safe zone. It's a vertical hill like this, sand covered in berries and plants. There's no ADA accessibility. I don't want these people to be held up. Nor on the other side, if I recall, behind the school. Is that ADA accessible? So you have a developer here who's making a lot of money, and I don't want to hold them up, but I hope, the staff will go forward and force those particular conditions to happen. Wherever you have a tsunami area, safe area, that needs to be up to snuff, and I don't want to hold up what you're doing here, that's a side topic, but I think that hopefully that will be taken care of and within a few days hopefully notification will out to Mr. Dan Johnson of Danco, especially in those areas to bring that up to snuff. Historically, you should know, there's a big concern about losing long-term properties and that's part of the concern that was here. Well, I had friends and they had contracts with Mr. Dan Johnson probably to get those houses for their own use for a couple hundred thousand dollars and now they're selling for 450 because he reneged on his contract. They do not have any problem with him being forced to follow through with his CUPs. Again, we're talking about all kinds of money coming in with the vast majority of the houses. The safety is one of my biggest concerns. It always has been and And of course, losing our housing stock. I think that's the one thing we're trying to do. This is a perfect place for this, but you've had a lot of people come in on spec, and the people who are donating to the school, fantastic. Those are the people we want to have here, not some person out of the area who just sucks the money out and takes advantage of Humboldt County. And I strongly recommend anybody, whether they're with a management firm or whoever they're with, talk to their clients and say it would behoove them to do such donations to the community since they're taking care, and of course we can't force that, but I think that's something that can be taken into consideration. I agree with Peggy up there that sometimes Sometimes good deeds should be rewarded, and people who are just greedy should not be. That's my opinion, and I look forward to those tsunami safety zones being corrected. I don't agree with the maps. Also, you'll find that the lower areas, people can't get out of that area. I mean, if that comes and wipes out the road, nobody's gonna get out there for weeks or months because it'll take out a good share of Eureka and Arcata, too. So I have concerns about that, and it wasn't actually an appropriate place for additional housing. That was my opinion, thank you.

I'm Jane Madsen, I live in Samoa. and I had a procedural question to raise and perhaps request a continuance. I received notice because Samoa does not have mail delivery. We all have to go the P.O. Box. I got my notices, multiple, in my P.O. Box, but the mail person mentioned to me she had to send the bulk of the notices back because they only had the street address on them. I checked with two of my neighbors, they did not have notice of this hearing tonight. So there may be some procedural problems to be considered in terms of how many old ladies you would have in this room if things were different. That being said, I have no objection to the existing short-term rentals that are there. Mr. Burchette is correct, we haven't had any problems. They're good people as far as I can tell, but the recommendation is also correct, right to our eyeballs in short-term rentals. The housing that has been purchased by people who actually live there is an interesting mix of young families and old ladies with dogs. and we all feel safe there. We like to walk around the neighborhood. I never feel worried about where I am or what I'm doing. I've also lived in McKinleyville and Lolita, so I kinda like it in Samoa the way it is, but I think we've reached our maximum short-term rental capacity, and I would ask that you take that into consideration when approving any new rentals. The new rental, on Bayview, I believe, is right next to the homes next to it. Our yards are small, and that has particularly small yards, so I don't know if it's gonna be a compatible use, but that's all I had to say. Basically, I'm not sure everybody got noticed. I do have concerns about continuing to approve short-term rentals out there. It will change the character of the neighborhood. Thank you.

Okay, as a reminder, if you are online or calling in and you would like to comment on this item, please raise your hand now. And if you are in the room, now is the time to approach the podium. Okay, I'm not seeing anybody in the room approach the podium, nor am I seeing any more hands raised online or calling in. So I think we're gonna go ahead and take it back to the commission. Before I do that, we traditionally let applicants respond to comments that were made in public comment. So we had a series of applicants come forward and a little bit of public comment. Is there any applicant that would like to further address the commission on what they heard on public comment? Raise your hand if you do. Okay, I'm not seeing anyone, so we will move back to the commission. And I think, first off for staff, I just have a clarification point to make sure we're all tracking correctly. Okay, so we heard from applicants for hearing item number three, and I apologize to everybody when I ask for numbering. did not track that we had numbers up there in addition to our hearing number items, so thank you for saying which property number you were, but I just wanted to make sure that we've heard from applicants from each one, and if we haven't, just note that. Okay, so we heard from applicants in item number three, and then Amy, I believe, is representing both items number four and hearing item number five, correct?

Correct, she is representing, she's listed as agent for I think all but two of these. Okay, thank you. For many of them, but it does include four and five, yes.

Okay, thank you. It's helpful when we start thinking about details and asking questions, so thank you. With that, let's take it to the commission.

Well, I'll just say what I always say. I don't think any place is safe out there. And I think that it's one thing, I guess, if you choose to live out there, you know what the risks might be. Now you're bringing people in from outside the area. So we've got a map. Good luck. You know, my knowledge of tsunamis you're not going to be safe out there and these high spots are not going to save you it's just false but that's my opinion and someday maybe i hope we're never proved i'm never proved right through the chair director ford um can you respond to the comment about noticing

Yeah so we send notices to both the property owners and to the occupants. The occupants obviously do have our Addressed at the site of the particular property We have not received a bundle of mail back showing that it wasn't that they haven't been received Thank you Commissioner curiosity

Thank you. To Commissioner O'Neill, can I clarify, do you see any of the proposed locations as being outside of the tsunami area that you would consider?

I don't think if you're out on that peninsula anywhere that you're really safe. If you look at what's happened in other areas, fortunately we, and even the presentation that we had didn't reassure me because it was based on you know, averages and all that. And the reality is, is if a big one hits, the whole peninsula is going to be gone. But, you know, I'm not gonna try to scare everybody, but I just don't feel like it's safe. And I've already expressed that before.

So I guess I'll add some of my thoughts right now. I understand the hesitation with tsunamis and it's a hard one when thinking about planning and where uses go and also property rights and I think balancing, there are always some hazard that could potentially hit a property and where, how do we thoughtfully mitigate for and make sure folks are safe, but also not just not do anything most everywhere. Or drive costs so high, mitigate so much that costs are so high that nobody can afford to do anything. We have had this conversation before. Folks in the audience may not have heard our conversations before, but we've had a couple of presentation, we had a presentation on tsunami hazard area, and that is our best available science. And they did note that particularly the Samoa Peninsula was held to even higher standard than some of the rest of the county in terms of how they developed the the hazard area and some of the safe sites. And there's more planning that's been done out there than I've seen in most other communities. So while I don't think that anybody can say there is no risk, I think that this community has done a fair amount of due diligence to ensure that, and we've conditioned a fair amount of due diligence into these permits. to try and support balancing that, to balance both the hazard and the fact that folks are, they have structures out here, people wanna recreate out here, people wanna visit out here. So all that is a long-winded way to say that I feel comfortable moving forward with what we have in place for mitigating tsunamis personally.

One thing we did learn from the tsunami training was that people shouldn't jump in their cars on a tsunami warning. And then we're hearing about ADA concerns about accessing some of the evacuation routes. And I know we're putting education materials in the rental notices about tsunami evacuation maps, but perhaps we should also include in there some advice or make sure people understand that people with mobility issues might be particularly concerned about renting short-term rental in a tsunami hazard area because they're They may have to travel some distance to get to the tsunami evacuation area. And not all of these tsunami evacuation areas are going to be ADA accessible. So I would support some sort of at least making sure the materials include that type of information to the renters so they can make their own judgments about their safety.

Yeah, I think that would be an appropriate condition to add just as kind of a warning so people can make their own choice knowing what the difficulties may be. It's not a prohibition. No. It's information. It's information.

I can support that. I think it was part of the conversations we've had before. I think folks who are visiting... Luckily, we have a higher level of understanding of the hazards that exist with earthquakes and tsunamis, but folks visiting may not, and the clearer we can be about that, the better.

So with that suggestion, I'm prepared to support staff recommendation for... actually for all three of these, for approving those properties in item three and denying item four and item five.

So to clarify, you're making a motion to go with staff's recommendations for items three, four, and five.

I don't know if I can do that in one motion, but...

As long as you're clear about what the motion is. So if your motion is to approve the short-term rental applications contained in Agenda Item 3.

for the nine short-term rentals?

For the nine short-term rentals and then to deny the, or adopt the resolution, make the findings for item number three and approve the nine short-term rentals and then adopt the resolutions for items four and five and approve or deny, I'm sorry, items four and five. I think you can do that in one motion.

That's my motion.

With the additional?

Language for the tsunami hazard area.

I have a point of order. Yes, the people out here are very confused. We don't feel we've spoken on four and five and all of a sudden with all the numbers you've got going, the person I spoke behind me said they may wish to make comments on that. So I don't know if you had clarity on that. It has been very confusing even with you and ourselves. Just thought I'd bring that out there if you're gonna not allow specific comments there or with understanding they were to be made, you may wish to avoid that process because it might taint the decision.

So it's at your discretion, Chair, if probably the safer thing to do would be to act on item three and then act on four and five separately.

Unless you opened up the comments on the other two.

I'll amend my motion to address only item three. So I'm going to move that we find the projects are exempt from these nine projects. So we're going to adopt resolution attached 2 through 10 with the modification regarding the tsunami hazard areas and ADA accessibility. Find the projects that are exempt from environmental review. Make all the required findings for approval of the conditional use permits and special permits based on evidence of staff report and public testimony and approve the conditional use permits and special permits as recommended by staff.

I'll go ahead and second that motion. Okay, so we have a motion and a second. And for folks in the audience, we are, per the suggestion, we are taking a motion for item three. We're going to finish out considering that item and then we'll make sure that we address any additional comments and discussion and take four and five next. So with that.

Can I do a quick discussion?

Absolutely, yes.

Thank you. I think my one challenge that I struggled with is the two administratively approved new STRs that were approved prior to bringing forward the existing STRs because it's such a small town that one or two more has a notable impact on this decision process. But I think those have been approved. We can't go back on that. But I wanted to throw that out there, and I'm leaning towards yes on this.

through the chair yes so your point is well taken i think the thing that we had to respond to was we had two administrative permits that were outside the tsunami run-up zone and so could be approved administratively they complied with all the criteria And so it's really hard to hold back two permits that completely comply when the others need additional discretion.

Could I jump in real quick, too, and just say that I'm not sure that those were new. I believe at least one of them was existing as far as, you know, predating the ordinance. I'm not sure about the other one, but it's possible that it was existing as well.

While we do our deliberations could you potentially look into confirming whether that other one was existing or is new. OK. Any other further discussion on this motion. OK. And then may we please have a roll call vote.

Commissioner Curiazzi.

Yes.

Commissioner O'Neill.

No.

Commissioner Scavdahl.

Yes.

Commissioner West. Yes. Commissioner Fulton.

Yes.

We do have motion passes.

Thank you. Okay, so for folks in the audience, I apologize if it wasn't clear. I thought I had opened up the public comment for all three items at once. But all public comment is very valuable, so I want to make sure that we circle back around. And if there were folks that didn't comment and they wanted to comment on items four and five, And so this is item four, Sandy Toews Conditional Use Permit and Special Permit, and item five, Ocean View Conditional Use Permit and Special Permit. I'm gonna go ahead and open up the floor for both of those now. And if you could please approach the podium. If you are an applicant, I'm gonna give you first priority, but if you were just a public commenter, then, do we have any, we don't have an applicant, We have, I believe, Amy as the applicant, so you are just a public commenter. I'm the owner. You're the owner, okay, so you are an applicant. Okay, thank you for helping me clarify that. So you will have 10 minutes to go ahead and address the commission.

Thank you. I'm Margo Gray. I own Sandy Toast Cottage, a tiny two-bedroom cottage on Murphy Ave in Samoa. My childhood dream has been always to have a beach house that perhaps someday I could retire to. And part of that dream was to be able to vacation rent it to help pay expenses on it. I've had my eye on Samoa for years knowing that the long term plan was to make it into a really cute little beach town. And when they started doing renovations, I came over here, I walked the town, and I found a house and I bought it. When it was in escrow, I went to the building planning department and I asked them about short-term rentals in that area and I was told that the short-term rental permits were not available yet, the process hadn't started yet. And I said, well, when will that happen? She said, probably somewhere between six months to two years from now. I asked if I could be on a wait list for short-term rental. She said, no, we don't have a wait list. I asked if they could call me when the process starts. She said, no, you just have to keep checking back, which I did. So when the processes started, I applied and I was told that in order to get a short-term rental, I had to first get a conditional use permit, which would be $6,500. So I paid the $6,500 and there was no indication anywhere that I was going to be rejected for a short-term rental. And now I've been told that, you don't want to give me a short-term rental. And I just feel like the question is why did you take my $6,500 if you knew you weren't gonna give me the short-term rental? I think there's been several things that haven't been done well in this process. I have tried really hard to communicate really well what my intentions were. I've had my rental up and running. I've had no complaints from the neighbors. I certainly don't want to get into a legal battle. I love Samoa. I love the community. I love my neighbors. I want to be here. I'm here every month for a few days to a week. I love the community. I want to contribute to the community. I need to be able to afford to do that with a short-term rental. I also think the community of Samoa has plans to put in several small businesses, and I think short-term rental people would be really a plus for creating successful small businesses. So that's, I think, all I have to say. Do you have any questions for me? Yes. Commissioner Scapto.

How long have you owned the property?

I bought it in September 24. 24.

Okay. Thank you.

And just to make sure I'm following, you have Sandy Toes? Thank you. Okay.

Anything else?

Okay. We may call you up at the end.

Okay. Thank you.

Hi, are you also an owner of one of the rental properties? Okay.

Yes, I am. We are the other one. Thank you. Yeah, 68 Smart Court 2, and looking at the Venn diagram, it looks like we're the one that's outside of the circles down there too, so maybe that's an advantage, maybe not. My name is Ron Kelly, this is my wife Barbara. Prior to buying the house up here, I served with the Navy SEAL team, then I'm a retired educator. My wife has started her own business, a women-owned business. So we wanted to be here tonight to just let you know, we're not this, we live down there, but our whole goal is to move up here and become part of this community. We've always wanted to be on the beach. So that's kind of our plan to go. Unfortunately, not as bad as Southern California, but boy, it's pretty expensive to live up here. And so until we can retire, we were hoping you guys would grant us an exception so we can short-term rental it. We've put a bunch of money in for us and the family too, but it seems like the people that have been there loved it. And much like was pointed out earlier, it's been just couples and a couple of kids and stuff too. A few dogs, you know, chewing up their furniture and stuff too. Without that, we're not gonna be able to be up here. We come up every month, but that's still gonna leave our place empty a good portion of the year, too. A house should never not be lived in. It's not gonna help the community not to have people coming here, paying taxes, seeing this gorgeous area, too. It was also mentioned that SMO is gonna go up to it looks like 111 pretty quick. And while I was a history teacher, 111, 10.2 is not gonna, that's not even gonna budge those numbers too on that. So I just thank you very much for listening to us on that, appreciate it.

Hi, I'm Barbara, his spouse. Anyway.

We're not, what's that?

So we're not like a big company or anything like that. Like you said, we've always wanted to have a beach house. When we came to Samoa and checked out some of the places that were for sale, we fell in love with the town right away and we knew we were gonna buy. we've met a lot of the neighbors we just love the feel of it and we like the vision that is we can see the vision of the town and how it's going to expand and just get better and better all the time um we come up as much as we can um as soon as we retire we'll be able to come up more and more We don't have any complaints. We do our best to make the house very comfortable for people and we bring in the old history of it as much as we can. It's unfortunate that, in a way, our road, while long, there's only houses sporadic and on one side, so it makes the concentration more difficult for us. But I don't feel like we're a detriment at all. I feel like we do all we can to make the town beautiful in ourself. And I don't know, I just feel like we deserve a chance. I mean, we love the town, we plan to be there more and more all the time, hope to retire there. And I don't feel like, I feel like the people that you approved aren't any different than us. I mean, we had the same conditions on both of us and it's, I don't know, hard when these people get it and these don't and they're not any different, really. So anyway, I hope you consider it. We'd like you to, of course, but thank you for your time.

Could I just ask you the same question? How long have you owned your home?

We bought it in, well, closed in August of 25.

Okay, thank you.

Yep.

It closed, but the first day we were up here, though, our real estate agent, showed us and we made an offer that day you know we were so taken by the whole thing too it was no you know didn't even have to think about it at that point in time we had no thought to short term oh sorry we had no real thought to short use as a short term rental it was just going to be as often as we could get up here until we could retire and move up here too it's just the time went on too you know like anything you do some improvements on the house you know stuff like that just costs money and then once again those electric bills and stuff are a little bit You know, guess PG needs the same university as down by us.

And one more comment, sorry. So for my job, I do commercial property management. And I'm sure you know, vacant buildings or houses are not good to have. So if we're not allowed to short-term rent it and we can only come up once every couple months, that leaves an empty house that's set up for damages. So like he said, I think houses are better to be lived in and enjoyed and shared. then set vacant and left for unfortunate situations to possibly happen.

Thank you. It doesn't look like I have any more commission questions at this time, but we will call you up if we have more.

Thank you.

Mr. Sawatzky, are you interested in addressing the commission again?

I am, Chair West, I share Peggy's concerns, self-proclaimed autistic savant psychic. I see, I have visions of what happens out there when all these people drown, so that's part of my reason. I rarely come before a thing and hear testimony and do a 180. I was gonna come out strongly against these particular projects. I think they should be welcome to our community. I think they're the people we need to have. I think they have responsible management here. And in fact, that's just about unheard of where I come in and change my mind on something with testimony. I'm hoping you folks will do the same thing, at least consider this. If not, put them in the queue for some other thing, if somebody fails in their thing. But I really would like to see those two be approved. I think they're the kind of people we wish to have in Humboldt County, and again, I agree with Peggy, nobody should be there, but these people, I think, it would be sad to turn away people that are having a success, are not having complaints, and I really don't see a negativity, and I do understand having property, having it vacant, it's not a good thing. It's not a good thing for us, our economy. It's not a good thing for anything. The decision's been made that they're gonna own these properties. And that's my opinion on this. Thank you for my opportunity to speak.

Yeah, I just wanted to say that I don't think that there is much of a difference between the ones that we just approved for three, with number four and five, Sandy Toes and Ocean View, besides the existence, the pre-existence, In general, like I keep saying, there's been no neighborhood complaints. These owners are responsible and they want to ensure quality time for their guests and make sure that their houses are up to par and they do everything in compliance to make sure run and operate with the stipulations that have been put out. And guests have just been thrilled with both of these units. I mean, Barbara and Ron's ocean view is dog friendly, walk to the beach. Although there is one other unit on Samoa Court next to theirs, there's never been an issue. It's two bedrooms, one bath, very small. Like they said, it's usually couples and their dog or a family with kids and I just wanted to reiterate that people are loving their units and they're wonderful owners to work for and they have always just been about improving and making the experience for guests and taking into consideration anything any complaints or any kind of backlash from the community, which we haven't had any of, but they are responsible, wonderful owners, and I'm happy to be managing these units for them, and I really hope that you consider them in your decision to possibly allow them to continue running. So that's all I have to say. Thank you so much.

Okay, and as a reminder for folks, if you are online or calling in, if you would like to speak on this now is your time, raise your hand, and if you're in the audience here, if you'd like to speak on this, please approach the podium. I'm gonna go ahead and see if anybody else in person wants to speak, and then I will move to online and phone call, but raise your hand now so that I can be sure to see you when it is time to call on you online. Please go ahead.

I'm Jane Madsen again. I did want to note there are some written comments that are negative toward the Samoa approvals and my only suggestion would be could we just put a stop to any more at Samoa because it is getting to be exceeds the county's own guidelines in quite a few of these cases. So that's all I wanted to say. If you wanna do this, fine, but I think the next time, maybe that's enough. Thank you.

Okay, and last call. Approach the podium or raise your hand. I'm not seeing anybody who would like to comment, so we will take it back to the commission again. Commissioner Karagazze.

Thank you. I think I am finding it frustrating that we're we're getting short term rentals that are starting up after our ordinance has passed the STR ordinance has passed. So I guess it's unfortunate that I think these homeowners were taking some risk there and I'm not sure they really quite understood what that risk was. I would. but out there I'd recommend, I would agree with Commissioner O'Neill's comment that it sounds like this management company is doing a very good job at managing, but I think maybe they, I would recommend not taking, not encouraging owners to start up this service until they've been permitted going forward. That makes this decision process, I think, difficult.

I'm sorry, the opportunity for public comment is over. I think I do have a question about the testimony we heard from Sandy Toews and it sounded like, is Sandy Toews currently in operation?

I believe they are, yes.

Okay, so they were hearing about the process came forward and did an application but also started operating at the same time before an application was approved. Okay.

So I'm still a little bit confused about what was the cutoff for what were considered existing Short term rentals before ordinance versus.

After. What you said wasn't right.

I'll come back to you in just a moment.

Do you understand my question? Yes, I do. So the October of 2023 was a date that was chosen based upon when the ordinance was being developed because there was a lot of speculation going on. Right. And there was a lot of people starting short-term rentals to get in ahead. And so a date was put into the ordinance so that to stop that speculation.

think remember who did that.

So when someone comes in and pays a permit to the tune of what she had to pay you take it whether you you don't advise them that they might not

I think in these particular cases there was, I've seen the emails that the person that works on the pre-application sent out and advising that this is a discretionary act and there's no guarantee on this.

Okay, I briefly wanna bring our Sandy Toews applicant back up to confirm with them what I was asking staff. So if you could please come back up real quick.

I was actually told from the planning department that people that had their Airbnb up and running would be the first ones to receive the permits. I was told that. at the planning department.

But you started operating after October 2023, correct?

Yes. Yes, okay.

Thank you. I will jump in with my comments. This is a really tough one. We spent a lot of time really considering it at the time and thinking about what vacation short-term rentals meant in these communities and spent a lot of time thinking about the cap. But we also put in this process for exceptions for cases when you can't ever make policies to account for every circumstance. So we do have some discretion here, and I think I'm leaning towards supporting both of these rentals. It means a lot, I think, when an owner comes forth and takes the time, even particularly to come out from out of the area and give us testimony. And to me, it says a lot about the care for their property and we haven't had any complaints that the Planning Department is aware of. So I'm inclined to make an exception in this case.

I voted against the other one because of the tsunami and I feel the same way about this one but I don't feel it's fair that we approve the other ones and we're not approving this one so that's just my opinion. I might vote yes for this one just because to be consistent but after this I don't know if there's any more you have in your queue that you're planning on bringing.

We do have others that have been looking to apply. In fact, we've advised some people to pay close attention to this meeting tonight.

Within the same neighborhoods?

Within Samoa, yes.

To go back to the discussion around the permits that were approved over the counter, there was one that was?

Yes, one was submitted information showing that they were pre-existing before October of 2023. The other did not submit that information. They both did. They both did? I just looked in there.

Oh, they, okay.

Sorry, one of them did submit proof of operation, but it was showing that they started in January of 2025. So that was not a pre-existing.

Commissioner Kiriazzi.

Thank you. With additional short-term rentals potentially being interested, it starts to feel like it's gonna be a short-term rental community. And that's potentially, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but I think, I'm kind of leaning towards, I agree in many ways with leaning towards approving these, but I'm, I feel like, I still feel like enough hesitation that I'm thinking of requesting to continue these and ask staff to do another mailing and request for public comment. Is that enough of a reason to continue?

Well, if you believe that the notice is inadequate, yes. If it's just to try to generate additional public comment, no. I think the thing that the commission should also weigh at this point, given the fact that there are other applicants out there, is what would be the findings that you would make for these to support in light of the fact that they're already exceeding the concentration standards that were set in the ordinance. because if these are somehow truly special, what would differentiate them from those that would come in in the future? Or as Commissioner Curiosity mentioned, this could become a STR community. And that is a very real decision point here.

Commissioner Fulton.

I'm weighing on both sides. I'm inclined to approve these, and the reason why is I'm not opposed to a short-term rental community. I think we're, as Humboldt Countians, we're missing an opportunity for, well, we don't have a whole lot of income here. So you have a lot of tourists coming in that are willing to spend money in our community. You have people that are wanting to move up here, the type of people that we want to live in this community. And at this particular point, they're not able to do that. And I... I'm 100% in agreeance that a home that is not lived in will perish. Lack of use is the worst abuse. And having family members that have long-term rentals, I'm gonna say that 60% of long-term rentals are detrimental to most homes. Um, they're not cleaned as often as a short term rental. So when, uh, the actual owners do get to come home to their home, they would end up having to do a hundred percent remodel of their, of their home that they cherish, that they want to move to, to a community that, um, Samoa has undergone a lot of facelift, a lot of change. I've found that most short-term rentals are very well taken care of. They actually enhance the view shed, if you want to say that, of a community. Me personally saying that, that's how I see it. So that's just my two cents on the deal. At the same time, I can't agree with Commissioner O'Neill that nobody should live there, but it was a mill community for a long time. There's been a lot of people living there for a long time. We just can't walk away and leave the place to look like big lagoon housing.

When I was considering the short-term rental ordinance and was supportive of the cap, I do think that there is a balance with these types of rentals in the community because when they get to be sort of a commodity, you can impact the affordability of housing. what something that you think could be helping the economy could also be a detriment to folks living here. And there's a seasonality to short-term rentals oftentimes in that it has its own impacts on the quality and character of the community. And so I think when we were considering a cap, we were trying to balance a lot of what you were just saying. So typically, I'm surprised at myself that I'm in support of these. I think they're... We're running up on the end of our time for tonight and I wanna check in with staff on that shortly.

So maybe just to cut to the chase. Yeah. If the commission is inclined to support a motion to approve, recommend that you adopt a resolution of intent to approve with direction to staff to prepare findings to support approval. Because the resolution right now doesn't do that.

I think I'm hearing a lot of, and I think I'm on the, I've said that I'm inclined to support, but I'm also a little bit on the fence, I think, when we're talking about some of the concerns about fairness, but I'm also feeling like we don't have a ton of time to unpack that, but if there are commissioners who are willing and ready to make motions, I don't want to impede that.

I just, I want to make a comment.

Yeah, Commissioner Scantler.

Not necessarily a motion. and it kind of maybe came out early with an opinion, thinking that we were through the public hearing, and now I'm on the fence. Maybe I'm flip-flopping like red here. My hangup is this. When we went through a lot of hearings and a lot of process to adopt this ordinance, and we heard from a lot of people, and we set the cutoff period as October of 2023, um, because we didn't want people coming up here, speculating, buying a home on the, on the come on making it a short term rental. We wanted them to be aware and we made sure the real estate community was aware of that and it was published in the paper and it was, it was out there. So, um, So starting a short-term rental after October 2023 was a risk, and people should have been aware. So that's a bit of my hangup, and we set the limits for a couple of reasons. One was to protect the housing stock in the community, and the other was just to protect the neighborhoods from having blocks of short-term rentals. And so that's where I'm hung up. And I was prepared, no, because I hadn't heard from the property owners. And it's easy to say no when you haven't heard from the property owners and the people that are directly impacted. And it's harder to say no after you do. But I will say, if we say yes on these, we'll make an exception for these two. Then the next meeting, we'll hear from all the other property owners. that also bought a house that are speculating to make short-term rental and here we go so that's my hang-up um sometimes it's hard to hold the party line or hold the lines of the ordinances that we drafted and we went through a lot of effort to draft this ordinance and i think for you know and this is like Again, this is the first test of the ordinance, and we're going to waffle on it. Those are kind of my hang-ups right there. So I think in the long-term interest of the community, we have to limit the number of short-term rentals that are going to be out there. And I don't disagree that they're They can also help a community. They're the homes that are fixed up. The front yards have to look nice. I get that, too. But right now, I think I would have to say that I couldn't support going outside the ordinance for these.

Commissioner Scavedal, I believe you I have a very compelling argument. One that, you're right, it's a hard line, but I think it would, in time, cause some grievance later on down the road In other words, I'm beginning to waffle because we drew a line in the sand. I wasn't aware of the information that you put out there up until now. So, I mean, there was awful, it appears there was a lot of time, effort, and thought put into the ordinance itself. And then to waffle on it when it's time has approached, would appear to be a waste of a tremendous amount of time when it was originally drafted.

I have a question. Director Ford, you proposed drafting findings for an approval. Would you be able to do that tonight? I wouldn't be comfortable.

No, it would be a continuance.

Oh, it would be a continuance, I see.

I think where I'm stuck is if you had a property that had a few more complications on it and you had to come in front of us, you potentially sort of got bumped back further in the line on the density. Is that sort of how I'm understanding there was an over-the-counter approval for a property in Samoa that started operating in 2025 that was new?

Could I ask staff a question? Yeah.

Which is the one that was 2025?

so i he may have picked up on that conversation but the uh the question i was asking um miss johnson mr johnson is whether or not the new one would have any effect on the the concentration the Pre-existing units, even though they're in the tsunami, they were here tonight because they're in a tsunami. They're not affected by those two approvals. It's all the others now that affect the two new ones.

Got it. That's helpful. I missed that in the presentation. So thank you. So then that is no longer hang up. So I think we are at the point where we need to take some action of some sort, because we are out of time for the evening. So I would love to hear what the will of the commission is.

I think I'm leaning towards hearing an argument for approval. Because right now I don't see any findings that I think could sway me from Commissioner Skabdall's point. I think I'm aligned with him as well. But I also find it disappointing. So I am willing to entertain hearing what a justification would be for approving these two.

So I guess where would that justification come from beyond the commission? Because staff has already said that they recommend denial.

I guess I heard Director Ford say that staff would work on constructing findings that would justify an approval and bring that back.

Director Ford?

Sorry, that was my misunderstanding of where I thought the commission was going.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but we've heard our testimony from the members of the public and from our applicants, and we've discussed it quite a bit amongst ourselves.

Yeah, I'm struggling to write down findings that would justify approving.

Is that a motion?

I think it is, I think it is a motion to accept staff's recommendation for denial for both G4 and G5.

I'll begrudgingly accept, second that motion and encourage the applicants to move to Samoa.

Okay, I have a motion and I have a second. Do I have any further commission discussion on the motion?

May I please get a roll call vote? Commissioner Fulton?

Yes.

Commissioner Curiazzi?

Yes.

Commissioner O'Neill? Yes. Commissioner West? Yes. Commissioner Skabdahl?

Yes.

Motion passes.

Okay, well, thank you folks for being here tonight and hanging with us through a very late meeting and giving us your testimony. We appreciate you coming. So I'm gonna move us along to our last couple of items. Item H, report from planner.

very quick and just want to say that we put the what we're calling the public draft out for the Humboldt barrier plan this is really to begin a public dialogue which will then really be continued at a workshop with the Planning Commission on July 16th and then moving to a Planning Commission hearing in September so I can I will send you the link to that so you can look at it Thank you.

I saw I had a couple news sites also, so I'm glad to see it out in the public sphere. Okay. Item I, planning commission discussion items.

I have a question regarding some testimony earlier of you, Joan. Speakers allege that there's economic enterprises operating. I think one was the Mercer Fraser quarry and the other one was Miranda's Rescue without a valid permit. Is that true?

No. They both have permits? They both have permits. We've spent a lot of time on verandas. And if the commission would like, I say this hesitantly, I mean, we'll bring a report back discussing our findings. But you will have a room full of people to do that.

I'm not asking for that unless the rest of the commission. I just want a clarification on whether or not that was.

It's been out of compliance. for a long time we discovered miranda's house we discovered it was out of compliance we sent them a letter which is what we always do to educate the fact that it's out of compliance and action is needed we gave them the opportunity to sign a compliance agreement that had deadlines, specific deadlines to get things done. As long as they're meeting those deadlines, they'll move ahead towards compliance. If they don't, other things will need to be pursued, such as a suspension and a revocation.

That's the process you're in right now.

That's the process we're in right now. The problem with the quarry out in Bloxburg is that there is a road that's very much in dispute. And there is litigation going on there. We do not find the quarry to be in violation of the conditional use permit. And I really want to be careful what I say publicly because of the litigation that's going on.

I just was curious because they, you know, I didn't think that you operated. I didn't think you operated that way and so that's. Thank you. Give me when he asks, I want to be able to say no.

Okay, Commissioner Kariasi.

Thank you, following up on that, I think the comment we heard was not about the access, but was about environmental concerns, and so their argument was that there were issues around lack of enforcement of environmental conditions.

The complaints are related to the road.

Okay, any other planning commission discussion items?

I think I would still put forward to the commission if they would be interested in a report on the Bridgeville quarry. Was that of interest to any other commissioners?

All right, so this is a request to agendize. I will have to recuse myself from that.

She has shown up to public comment several times and spent quite a bit of time, as much as I know the planning staff has a lot on their plate, and this is a sticky one, I could support that, because she has spent quite a bit of time trying to get heard more publicly, and I think that, Do we need to vote or what is the process for that?

If you give us a consensus to bring it back as a report item, we'll do that.

Do we have consensus? I think we need to hear from a couple other commissioners

And I think to clarify, I'm not asking for a report on the access road. I'm asking for a report from staff on compliance of conditions that are environmental, or if there are any.

The issues are not with the quarry. I'm happy to bring back a report on that.

I'm not that interested in getting in the middle of a civil dispute or starting to get into a position of directing staff on how to administer permit compliance.

I'm not interested either. I just wanted just assurance that you're doing your job.

So where does that feedback leave you guys?

With a two, two, one.

That's what I thought, but I'm not sure what that means in terms of action. It usually means nothing. Okay.

So if you want to bring it up when you have more people here, that's fine. If you want to come in and talk about it, I'm happy to do that with you.

Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and wrap us up. So it's late. We're gonna go ahead and adjourn and meet again on June 18th at six o'clock.