Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Oh, that's weird. I see myself on the screen. Okay. I'm calling to order this regular meeting of the city of Tascadero Planning Commission. Uh, today is Tuesday, October 21st. It's 6 o'clock and Commissioner Pacio is going to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Roll call, please. Commissioner Heath, present. Commissioner Omali,

present. Commissioner Pacio, present. Vice Chairperson Anderson, here. Chairperson Kane,

here. All present. Oh, if you are attending in person or listening to the commission meeting tonight, welcome. Um, I'm going to open public comment. This portion of the meeting is reserved for persons wishing to address the commission on any matter not on this agenda and over which the commission has jurisdiction. Speakers are limited to three minutes. Please state your name for the record before making a presentation. The commission may take action to direct the staff to place a matter of business on a future agenda. Okay. So, seeing none, I'll close public comment and move on to the consent calendar. I will now open the public comment period for the consent calendar items. Okay. I will now ask if any commission members wish to ask any questions about or pull any item from the consent calendar. No. Okay. Moving on. Uh, can we get a motion to pass the consent calendar?

I'll make a motion to approve the consent calendar. I'll second it.

Who made the motion? Uh, Commissioner Heath. Would you like a roll call? Yes, please. Commissioner Heath, yes. Vice Chairperson Anderson, yes. Commissioner Omali, yes. Commissioner Pacio, yes. Chairperson Keane,

yes. Motion passes. We are going to administer some oath of office tonight to our two new planning commissioners, Joey Fel and Tom Jones. [clears throat] that I will support the United States against all enemies and allegiance. I take this purpose. You forgot the part of the oath where they have to laugh at all my jokes. The other commissioners can fill you in on that. Congratulations and welcome um Commissioner Jones and Commissioner Frell. Okay, we're going to move on to planning

commission business. Is there any planning commission business? No. Okay. Well, then we will move on to our star item of the night. We have a community development staff report regarding the draft. Oh, just kidding. We're going to do roll call again because we have new commissioners. Commissioner Heath, yes. Commissioner Omali, yes. Commissioner Frell, Commissioner Pacio, here. Vice Chairperson Anderson, present.

Commissioner Jones, present. Chairperson Keane, here. All present. Thank you. Okay. Now we will do our staff report on the um draft of the 2045 Atascadero general plan. We don't need to do any like expart or anything on this, right? Because you're just reporting this to us. Correct. Okay. Just a management report. No action tonight. So, thank you, chair. Good evening, members. I forgot my signature line. Dazzle me, Phil. [laughter]

Thank you. All right. Anyway, we're really proud as staff to present the next 20 years of planning for the city of Atascadero. I'm joined tonight by our planning manager, Kelly Cleleason. We have our planners here in the crowd as well, Sam Mount, Eric Gomez. So, this is part of this is the majority of our planning team. We're missing Will as well. We've all been working on bringing this to you tonight. Our planning consultant team I think is going to be online tonight as well with MIG and they've helped us along quite a bit um with this as well. But we're now at this spot where we're releasing this whole document and we hope that you've sat and enjoyed some nice reading of the document so far. But I don't expect that you've read the whole thing or that you know this general plan well yet or you're ready to talk about the whole thing. And that isn't the idea. Tonight is our first look at the complete draft and our first chance to comment on it. So, we're going to give you updates of where we've been. We're going to give you an overview of what we're presenting to you tonight. We're going to talk about the next steps and um Oh, good. I I Kelly's running the show for me here. I [clears throat] Well, here we go. We'll just go for it. We'll just jump in. I'm going to follow her lead as she advances the slides because I don't have a little clicker and that's just fine. I'm gonna kind of just improv a little bit. Um, but um, a little bit about where we've been. I love this process map because it kind of shows where we've been. We've been working on this for a couple of years now. General plans typically take somewhere between two and five years to get done. We were overly optimistic in the beginning and thought we could get this thing done in two years. We're going to head into a third year. We will likely be done with this process by spring of 26. But we're taking a milestone tonight by getting, you know, well into the general plan openhouse. We had a great open house today, by the way. Started at 3:00. Had

a lot of people show up and come in and comment and look at um our maps and look at, you know, some of our initial policy stuff. So, right now we're in this final phase. We call it phase four. And this is the release of the whole document that has all the policies in it. We've got several chapters that I'll touch on tonight. So, it's not just having a pretty color map. It's not just having, you know, what can be allowed where in these place types. We'll talk about that. That's a big chunk of it. But a lot of this, too, is about how we can guide our economy, how we can accommodate the jobs and housing balance that we need in our community. How we can talk about the design of our community and the quality of our community and that we have things even, you know, like child care, things like that. how can we accommodate those things in our city? So over time we have had a lot of outreach um over the last year or two we've had a lot of online and interactive surveys. Um a lot of that was based around what what I can do what can I do on my property. It was also based on state law. It was also based on you know what um our data has told us about our community and what we can accommodate. We have a lot of constraints in Atascadero. We have significant slopes. We've got significant tree coverage. We've got significant fire hazard zones. We don't have a lot of uh ability to serve our entire community with sewer. So, we have those constraints. So, we had to plan around that. So, um, early on we did a very significant existing condition summary and that really laid out the map for how we can proceed forward and that gave us enough to have initial engagement um, that summer of 23 where we really talked about the opportunities. Then we went forward with the city council strategic planning and they came up with what they called true north statements.

[snorts]

Once we got that done, we were able to proceed with really a vision statement and guiding principles and it's basically the outline for what we have tonight. Um what did we want to complete? You know, and then we took that and went further with additional community engagement, held a big open house out at the pavilion um and out at several locations in the community. And then in between that time, we've taken it many steps further, come up with some detailed technical analysis. We've talked to a lot of the other agencies and we've talked to our own team here at the city, our fire department, spent a lot of time with them, our public works folks, our finance team, and then members of the community that provided input to help guide us along. So really, right now, we've got this document. And by the way, you don't see a document. It's actually an e document. So this document is all a web-based document. It's going to be its own web page. Now, we can print it out. We can have it. It's tangible. It's going to be a thing. But unlike the old days, these things are just a web page. And it's really easy to manipulate that way. It's really easy to link everything together. You can look at the maps. You can zoom into things. It's really neat. So, we're currently doing that. So, uh, as we head into the winter, um, we're going to get additional feedback. A week from tonight, we're going to be at the city council doing the same thing, uh, getting their feedback, uh, talking about these topics. All the while, we're working on the environmental impact report. And I'm kind of glad we didn't bring the environmental impact report to you in combination with this document. It's a lot. ERS are like a, you know, the phone book of the old days. There's a lot of information there, but that's something we have to do. That's something the state mandates that we analyze what we're changing in our city to see how it impacts all facets of the

environment. So, that's under works right now. Since we have the general plan draft ready, they're able to get that uh EIR going. Now, if we take a hard turn on these policies over the next few weeks in terms of what we hear tonight, what we hear from the community, what we hear from the city council, they will have to go back and revisit that and tweak it as we go along. So, by early next spring after the holidays, what we're going to have in our hands is a good solid draft general plan, a good solid draft general plan map, and a good solid draft EIR. We're going to bring all those things back to the planning commission and to the city council for certification and hope that all goes smooth and we can adopt it. And then shortly thereafter, there's a whole another little project that we're already working on that we're keeping in our back pocket and that's the zoning regulations and a zoning map. Those are already well underway. Uh we have a consultant helping us with that as well. And the key thing is once you adopt a general plan, you change all of your land uses, you change all of your projections, you change all of your densities in your city, you've got to immediately have zoning ready to match that. So, we've got that going. Uh, and so next spring is going to be busy for us and it's going to bring about a few different nuances in how, you know, residential can be developed. But I think it's all positive and I don't think there's anything here that's really big and really scary. So, the draft plan, what's going on the next 20 years? Let's talk about it. It's so small I can't see it. Um, anyway, let's go to the next slide. So, these are the uh these are the chapters. Um, the general plan, vision, and guiding principles is really the best read in my opinion. Of course, there's an intro to every book, but the general plan, vision, and guiding principles is really the outline for this document. Um, and it has in it a section, I believe that

the section in there called big moves is in that section. Is that right, Kelly? I think so. And the big moves are interesting because that's really like what are we really what are we really trying to do in a community the next 20 years? Are we trying to grow and burst the seams and be the biggest community on the Central Coast? No, probably not. We're a task. We're we're in the middle. We're a great community. We're a great bedroom community, but we want to also be more. We want to be more for the residents that are here means we want to not have to leave our community to go out for dinner. We want to be able to not have to drive elsewhere to go work and we want our kids to be able to stay here. So on a really basic standard, that's what we were after and that's what's outlined in the general plan vision and guiding principles. How can we be economically sustainable? So the main the main chapter um well for planners anyway in a general plan is also land use and community form and that tells you basically how you're going to zone your city, what population you're expecting to have in your city um and you know what land uses you want in your city and how should those be organized and how should those look. In this particular general plan, we call those place types. Um, and we'll go through some of those and I'll show you some of those. And of course, a very significant component of that is how you're going to pay for all that. So, economic development is critical. It's not just how you're going to pay for that, but how is your community going to continue to grow and how are you going to provide for infrastructure and how you're going to provide for good paying jobs and us to be able to maintain our police and our fire and our wastewater treatment plant and all the things that make our city whole. Now, one thing that we're not touching right now, and as I know this a little confusing for folks, is our housing element. It it's just being carried over. Housing elements follow their own track, and they're updated uh in some

communities every eight years. We already have it. It's already valid, and we're a couple years away from having to redo that. So, we're going to just carry that into this general plan. Um, and it has a lot of statemandated policies already in it and a lot of things that we have to implement. um going forward to provide housing and affordable housing in our community. Mobility, that's really what a lot of communities call circulation. That's about the roads, that's about the trails, that's about the walking areas, that's about the bike routes, how we get around our community. That's the circulation and mobility element. And that ties very closely to land use because they track the same. If you if you have high density areas, they have to have a certain amount of circulation to got commercial areas, they also have to have high corresponding components to them. Now, one thing I'm going to outline too that I failed to mention, and I'll get more of them when we look at our maps, is there's only really a couple areas in this city that are being modified with this general plan. A lot of the city is staying exactly like it is today and will stay that way for a long time in the future. and most importantly our entire west side. Um once you get, you know, outside of the city's core and you head west, the topography of our community, the limited wastewater service in our community, the very high wildfire risk area can't do much with that. So, it's relatively out of the scope of this general plan. Of course, we're going to map it. We're going to talk about it. Um but not a lot of change. And there's a couple other areas in the city that fit the same category. Another required section is we have to have a recreation and open space element section. Um that talks about how we accommodate open space. It talks about how we accommodate parks. It talks about how we accommodate trails, things like the three bridges open space and the stadium park open space and even our

formal parks and you know how we develop new parks and when we should do that and what triggers that. That's really critical. And the other critical one is is public services and infrastructure and how we provide the public services, how we provide the infrastructure like our wastewater treatment plant that we're about to rebuild. Uh things like that. Um and safety emergency very critical. We had a lot of engagement with our fire and police departments to develop the policies that we have in there. A lot of that speaks to fire risk. A lot of that speaks to earthquake risk. A lot of it speaks to flood risk. um and policies that prepare us for that. And when I mention the word policies, I want to underline that as well too. The general plan has a lot of goals and it has a lot of actions, but it doesn't have implementation. It suggests things. It recommends things. It outlines things. And then there's other things that the city can do to actually implement those things. For example, the zoning ordinance and regulations implement the land use and community form element. um there may be other actual directives and implementation tools that implement the other chapters of the general plan as we go forward through time. So it has tasks. It's basically a giant task list for us to try and check off and get through over the next 20 years um through you know whatever methods we can come up with for funding those things and whichever the direction of our city council how they take us. The task provides opportunities for all residents and business owners to thrive. Our community focused culture pursues investments in land use strategies that create a diversity of housing types, support local businesses, improve all mobility modes, and respect our natural environment. Collective community actions improve conditions for current

and future generations. That's our vision statement for the general plan. Um, we came up with that, I think, in in concert with the city council a year or two ago and with uh our community. Um and um that's part of what this Toronto plan is built upon. Ah the big moves we get to talk about that. I mentioned that earlier. Those represent the key land use objectives and strategies. Um and those really began with the council's true north statements. So let's take a look at some of those. I think we have those up here. So one of those big moves is create a mix of housing types. Um, a lot of that's being led by state law, but also it's being led by what our demand is here in our community. Get new industries and new higher wage jobs. Again, that speaks to our jobs, housing balance in our community. We need more of that. We're looking for ways to fit that in. Um, and get improvements to mobility, access, and safety in our community. Um, and um, see how we can forward ourselves. I think we're looking at the intersection of Del Rio and El Camino Rial in that picture and that area is moving along quick. If you haven't been to the new Valley Fresh Center, um there's a lot of new stuff happening there on both sides of the freeway. It's more to come that's been planned out. Address public infrastructure needs. I mentioned the wastewater treatment plant. We're just on the uh uh moment of uh rebuilding our entire fire station number one and adding on to fire station number two and upgrading our police department. So, a lot of changes coming in the community and infrastructure as we do all those things, including wastewater and then ensuring that we can continue to pay for all these things. Now, luckily, I think we're one of the most fiscally sustainable communities on the Central Coast. We've done really well. We do that by operating with a lean staff. We do that by uh managing

constrained but working things out. And I think that we've had great success there. But we've got to ensure that continues and ensure that we can continue to pay for these things um and address all of the continuous um asks from our state. I'll say that in summary. So um land use and community form uh it's one of my favorite chapters in the general plan. Um I think I'm a planner by nature. So looking at this and developing our place types has been a really fun activity. What we tried to do with this, these aren't images of a task I don't think. Um but what we tried to do is evoke imagery uh that really reflects what we'd like to see in each of the districts. And we call them place types by defining what that land use is there and what the character of those things are. Um and we had a lot of community input on doing these. Um, and there's different types. Some innovation flex area is basically a light industrial area where we can have rollup door spaces. Um, and we can have employment centers and even entertainment and micro breweries and coffee shops. Um, you know, Tin City is evoking of that kind of thing. Um, Moral Road is already transitioning into a medical and office focused corridor and continuing to focus that and and really try and get more medical office uses in that zone and maybe shift the downtown into more of that retail, restaurant, entertainment area and that's already happening naturally and I think the downtown enhancement plan is even boosting that to happen and then really refining industrial um to get better employment. Uh we don't have big space in Atascadera. We're not like a lot of communities where you've got big flat land where you can do big industrial parks. So our industrial is

few and far between. Um you know our community developed alongside the Selenus River. The railroad track is there. Outside of that you've got a lot of topography. We don't have the big flat land. We've got a few small industrial parcels but that is going to be our probably our our most needed use in our city. So that's why we had to focus on a mixture of different things to really accommodate that piece of the economy. And there it is. And this is a draft land use plan. We talk about it as though it's it's almost approved. I mean, the council did endorse it. Um, actually, is this our this is our old one? This our existing one or a new one? I'm trying to see. I guess it's hard to see that I'm looking at the the multif family zone in the north end. Oh, it's harder to see. Okay, Kelly is telling me it's outlined. So, it's harder to see at this at this scale. Um, but generally, and I'll tell you kind of a summary of what really has changed. As I mentioned earlier, the entire west side staying the same. The area with the nice stripes right there is in our sphere of influence. And a sphere of influence is what um Laughco sets for us. And that's a potential annexation area. That's Eagle Ranch. Are we going to annex it someday? We don't know. That's all dependent on the property owner and how that moves forward. The rest of it really, we have some multif family and commercial along the El Camino Rial spine. We have some multifamily surrounding the downtown. And generally what we're seeing is lower and lower density the more you get outside of downtown. What we're seeing is some additional density also in between the area where you see a Tascadero Avenue and you see the area between Mororrow Road and Kerbral and and Highway 101 call the triangle. So that area is going up in density a bit as well. Um and there's some areas that bump up in numbers. Does

that mean that those areas are going to suddenly change to high density projects? Probably not. Um and probably not quickly, but some of these areas will. And this zoning map and this new general plan map is the first step in doing that. But of course, there's still project review and this doesn't get down to that level. This doesn't give you a detailed plan. It gives you more of a general plan. Economic development is a key component with this whole general plan. We are really looking for a full range of goods and services. We definitely want to attract new development and enterprises. Um, and there's a lot of work we can continue to do on that. Um, generally along El Camino Riala is our biggest opportunity. We do have some areas that spur over to the um, other side of Highway 101. We do have a project called Barrel Creek that is going to hopefully be part of that economic development effort um, along Del Rio. And we have some areas to the south end of the city that have some of that as well. And there's a little bit out there on Sycamore Road out along the Selenus River. But really what we're looking for is can we get higher wage jobs in our community? Can we attract some of these smaller companies to establish in Atascadero so that we can have a piece of that here in our community and create a whole community and slowly it is building and we're getting a lot of different things just in the last few years. It's been really nice. Next slide. Mobility. Let's dial down into that a little bit. I think the biggest mobility changes in the city have already happened downtown. It's pretty neat. Um what the city's been able to do with El Camino Rial. But it also means can we actually plan out our streets and other

areas where we have deficiencies. Can we really link our higher density areas and create more connections to reduce traffic? Our biggest constraint in Atascadero is the fact that they built a highway through the middle of our community and built all the overpasses all at one time in the 1950s and they're all out of date. They're all undersized. Very constraining to go back and forth across the community. For a community of our size, we have an incredibly large amount of overpasses. That cost of doing any work on those is really uh really challenging. And so over time, we're going to have to lean on the on the state. We're going to have to lean on grants. We're going to have to lean on methods to get that done because that really can't be put on the burden of city of Atascadero or development. It's just too much money. But when talking about mobility, that's probably one of our biggest constraints in addition to seeing some better connectivity in our multif family areas that we're wanting to increase density on and wanting to, you know, ensure that we have the right improvements in the right areas, sidewalks when we need them, trail connections when we need them, and um especially serving our commercial, industrial, and higher density residential areas. A lot of policies on that. And of course, recreation and open space, it's a key thing to keep community quality, but it's also a state required mandate that we have these components addressed in our general plan. And there's actually ratios in which a city is supposed to have an amount of parkland per the amount of population and within a certain distance of where these folks live. Right now, we all know that we're desperately needing more soccer fields. We're desperately needing more of these parks where you can do sports activities. Um, we do, we are fortunate that we have our trail systems that we do and I think in the near future we'll have opportunities to

expand those if if parts of Eagle Ranch annex in and if there's other um advancements that occur. But we're also lucky to have the treasures that we have of Atascadero Creek, Graves Creek, and Selenus River. And those are areas that we can enjoy uh for low-key recreation. public services and infrastructure. Been a lot of improvements in infrastructure in the last few years. The new bridges that have been constructed uh via bridge, the bridge along San Lucia. Um there's improvements that are happening in Atascadero Lake Park. There's the wastewater treatment plant which is the biggest infrastructure improvement that this city will see in recent history and that will be ongoing in the next couple years. They're choosing firms to develop that now. um we've been talking about that for a couple of years and we're having to restructure our fees to try and get there and do a lot of bonds to get there. So that um master plan for that really responds to long-term growth objectives. Um and it responds to the state's water quality control goals. Um the biggest issue now is if we don't do something with that, we're going to be at a moratorum. We're at that level where our wastewater treatment plant's at capacity. So that's a big piece of the puzzle for a task at Arrow that we don't have a choice, we have to do it. Um, so that's happening as well. And then of course I already mentioned earlier, we're rebuilding our fire station into a beautiful emergency operations center uh to spring us forward for the next couple of decades to serve this community. That's going to happen at fire station number one. And um right now they're proactively moving fire station one out over the next few weeks and they'll be temporarily housed over at the armory site while they demolish this building that you see in the image here and rebuild it. But that's not what tonight's about. Tonight's about

developing policies and talking about the next 20 years, how we can deal with safety and emergency preparedness. Um especially the wildfire risks, flood risks. Um, we had a lot of practice with flood risks and storm water management over the last few years. Luckily, we haven't had a significant amount of practice with wildfire. We've had a couple small ones, but we haven't seen what we've seen in other areas of California, unfortunately. But we have to be ready for that. We have to be ready for all of these things. And so, this is what this part of the general plan strives to deal with. So, what's next? So, a week from tonight, I mentioned we're going to be at the city council. We're working on the draft EIR. We're going to have a draft of that here soon and we'll be pouring through that and we have to read it before you do and respond to it and get that ready. Our fiscal analysis is happening now. And so, that basically looks at our general plan, what we're doing with our city in terms of changing zoning and changing things and how that affects us fiscally. Hopefully, it's positive. Hope that comes out good. Otherwise, we got to make some tweaks, right? Um, public review doesn't start now. It doesn't end now. It started a while ago. It continues now, continues next week, continues the week after that. It'll continue until we're done. But the best time to get additional public review in is between now and the next couple of months because as this thing becomes more and more gelled and as it becomes more and more finalized, it's going to be harder and harder to change because the EIR is going to start responding to these things and so is the fiscal analysis and you know the repercussions of changing it too dramatically in a couple of months are going to be too substantial. So now is the time. We're going to do some more um community engagement. Um and that might not mean what we did today in the lobby. It might be

something else. We might um I don't know. You have any suggestions for that, Kelly?

Party. She says a party. Party would be great. Um and then finally um adopting this document being done with this project in the spring with EIR with the fiscal analysis with the new general plan map with all these policies and then we'll come right back a few weeks later with the zoning map and zoning regulations and um we um can then move along with other stuff in the city. It's been busy. So, a great place to get involved is go look at our website at taskader2045.org. There's a link to it on our main website of our city. Um, we pass out coasters all the time that have a QR code on it. That's the same QR code that's on the screen. Um, a lot of ways to get involved, a lot of ways to provide feedback and a lot of information updates there. Uh, so it's not just here tonight, it's not just council next week, it's all around you. It's our community. So, be part of it. Thank you.

Thanks, Phil. So dazzled. Um, no, but thank you for putting the website up there because one of my questions was going to be how do people find out information? How do people read it? And how do people are you guys going to post events for community outreach on that website as well? Yes. Under the get involved? Yes. Great. Yes. Thanks. And I think today's outreach people found out about it somehow. So whatever we did seems to have worked a little bit. I got an email inviting me specifically, but it's probably because I'm chair of the planning commission. So if you're on the email list, we'll send it out. Yeah, Lauraai did a great job of that. She

helped us out with that and so it might have been from her.

Um, so uh, okay. So, I'll move to the commission for asking questions, but I get to go first because I'm chair. So, we got a couple public comments. One is the letter that 16 pages that apparently has been submitted before. I just want to make sure that y'all have gotten that. And it um refers to the environment. So, I wanted to point out that they can find information about the Selenus River in the section called the Selenus River in the section called uh chapter 7.

Thank you. And chapter 7. Chapter seven. Open Facebook. Oh, is that Wait, which one would that be? thought that was No, I was hoping it would appear on my screen, but it's I'm just looking at me up there and that's it's weird, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. Um, but there's definitely um information about the Selenus River and our plan for that. So, I just wanted to address David Broadwater and to look at that. Yes, I we we've acknowledged that we've got that comment. I figured. And just to just to note, most of the Selenus River is not in the city limits, but we do impact the Selenus River by the development that we do near it. And so I'll say that.

Okay. And then we got another public comment regarding child care. So does the general plan address child care specifically and what section would that be in?

There should be policies and references to it in our economic development section. Now, I heard those same comments today and we're going to double check to make sure we have it adequately covered because I'm not sure that it is and I think we do need to address that. It's a big part of not only economic development, but it's a part of our community that's a necessity. We're fully aware of that. And so, I we've taken that comment already today and we hope that um that's either been accommodated or we will accommodate that. As we're sitting here, I'm gonna gonna try and go on the document, too, as we continue discussing tonight to see if I can find those policies.

Okay. Yeah, it's going to be hard to get high paying jobs if people don't have a place to put their kids. So, um Okay, commissioners, any other comments, questions, or anything for staff? Just use your hand. Commissioner Mlly. Yes. Um thank you for sharing all those highlights with us. I did have a question on community engagement. I know you're going to continue to do so. Um could we offer something maybe on a weekend um so that others can come. I know some people couldn't make it because of work constraints for this one.

Yes, great idea. We've done that in the past and we're happy to do that again. I think thank you for mentioning that. I'd also like to see something at the Colony Days, maybe a little booth or something like that set up to share information. And I and that's that's been I've been thinking about that. And the Colony Days has changed this year. It's now part of Fall Fest. And I went online the other day to go look for a booth spot and I couldn't find where to do that. And my wife was doing the same because she wanted a teacher booth. And um I've got to figure that out. But if worst case, we always have our city hall. And what we've done in the past is we've done a popup popup booth out front at city hall during the colony days and it's been really successful. So maybe I can get um Sam and Eric to spend a day out there with a booth. Would you guys want to do that?

Yeah. See, that would be great. They're into it. [laughter] On that note, winter the winter fest as well. The winter I missed that comment. I said on that note, the winter one we do winter wonderland. Wonderland. Yes. And we have to check. Now, I can't guarantee you we can get into these spots. I've got to I've got to pull some strings to make it happen, but I'm taking these suggestions down. And I think they're great ideas. You let me know, Phil. I know people. Thank you. Uh Vice, are you I'm sorry. Are you done, Commissioner Olly? Okay, you're good. Anybody down here questions, comments?

Yes. Uh Commissioner Jones. on sir Jones either I perfect

so thanks for the thorough presentation I really appreciate the work that staff's done in council have done I'll also just comment my second stint on the planning commission and I really applaud the staff for the changes in accessibility for public information at the website I was here 15 years ago and it was um the equivalent of starting a fire with flint and a and a mat or stone at the time so it was really nice to see how accessible the information is that's before the council and this commission. So, thank you for that. Um, I I kind of put out there to challenge the staff that between now and the end of the year, we should probably have a comprehensive community engagement plan given the importance of this document. There was a lot of good suggestions here, but I think the staff has used tools that have been successful in addition to those things. So, I think we should have an arc of those opportunities. I thought there was a great visual at the beginning of the presentation that showed columns of opportunities over the three-year window, but I think those that's more of the strategy, but I think we should build off the tactics and call upon people to help with that outreach. And then my specific question, Phil, for you is that um is there do you envision a separate uh workshop for the EI? think that complex document is also more subject to legal challenge and that it's much more complex I think of a document than the general plan that's aspirational and visionary and people understand those concepts. So, I'll pause there for

Yes, that's a great point and I think I failed to mention that in our presentation that we'll have there's a required um comment period when you release an IR and we do plan to have an open house during that time where we'll be able to hear people and we even have a I think we're going to do a a planning commission hearing during that time during the open comment period as well just for the IR. So, those are part of our strategy. Great. Yeah, take credit for that in your outreach plan. I think that that's very comprehensive and appropriate. And then there's time frames available. I don't know if the council's given direction for minimum or if we're going to go on the longer periods for those comment periods. It hopefully be a little longer to make sure we get it right. There is options to extend. Yes.

And then some of the language um on the public infrastructure period. I would just challenge the thinking to be public and private infrastructure. when we see the way things are going um in the way we think about mobility know car charters on businesses are going to be private infrastructure but we should be incenting those types of things so some of the language seems limiting and also on the economic element that would just challenge us to be thinking about not just jobs some of the staff language right now and the language I review talks about jobs for people that live here and growing those opportunities I I think we should be thinking about how we become a job magnet for the north county right so just a tad more aspirational that we can attract ract things. We have a lot of advantages in our proximity between San Losspo and Paso. So, I just felt some of the language could be a tad line. We should be more aspirational when we think about the employment opportunities that balance out our bedroom community status and create more economic opportunities to fund the things like open space, emergency services, and things like that. But I thought it was a great document. I was very pleased with it to see how far it's come and how it sets our community up for success for the next couple of decades. Thank you. Very, very helpful comments. Um, I've been writing notes. If you see me looking down, I'm taking tidbits. Thank you very much. Okay. Are there any members of the public that would like to speak on this item? Please um approach the podium. You'll have three minutes and you can state your name for the record. No. Okay. We'll go ahead and close public comment. Um, I think that's it. Okay, unless anybody else has any comments. Oh, comm vice chairperson Anderson.

Uh, just one quick question. Uh, in your efforts to attract businesses, I hear Nvidia and Apple are looking for new headquarters. So, just keep that in mind. Maybe Tesla.

We we tried for some some of interesting subsidiaries of some of those things actually. And um you know Tesla just just even to get um a spot where they do their service center. We tried for that for a long time and they almost consider this spot for that because just where they have their service centers which are a little tiny place. They actually dispatch and sell their vehicles from those spots too because they don't have a it's unusual in St. Louis where they have a big lot but a lot of places aren't a big lot. They're just a little service center where they reprogram your software but then it's also a pickup spot for purchases. So that was a key thing that we had thought about and tried. Well, they're self-driving, so [snorts] kind of eliminates the purpose.

Okay. So, we'll move on to commissioner comments and reports. So, this is a time when a commissioner can um comment or report on something of their own initiative, a brief announcement, or a brief report on their own activities. Okay. Uh oh. Oh yes, Commissioner Melly.

Yes, I was able to attend at the Central Coast Zoo. They had a little get together um for some of the recent, I guess, projects and donors and it was really great to get an update about all that's going on there. They just got another grant. So, I think that's a really great, you know, again, highlight of our community and and something that's growing. Even though it's not part of this plan directly, it's it's part of what brings people in. So it was nice to see that going well. Thanks for sharing. Yes.

On November 7th, the Central Coast Economic For forecast will occur where Beacon Economics does the year ahead look for our region and opportunities. So that'd be a good opportunity for commissioners that are able to attend and also staff members of the public. So believe it's at the Madanian Center, but it's Friday, November 7th. It's about a three-hour presentation on the updated economic analysis of our region. Thank you, Commissioner Jones. Director, any reports?

Uh, all I'll say is if you have any questions for me about what's happening in the community, I'd be happy to answer those about different development projects you see or different things that are happening. Um, other than that, I don't have anything else to provide to you. You did mention Barrel Creek. Is that where are we on that?

So, we recently approved what's called the public improvement plans here at the city, which is basically, you know, their driveway connections and all of their on-site infrastructure and their grading and drainage and all those things. So, that's ready to go. Um, so they've basically by proceeding with that indicated that they're going to move forward. So, it's really just a waiting game now to see how they're going to proceed with it. And then there was supposed to be like a little camper hotel like in a nook there. Is that ever going to happen?

That's a different property owner and he has not proceeded with that yet. He has the entitlement still. Um, we don't know if that's going to actually proceed, but we do think the other um lodging business might proceed at the corner of Del Rio and El Camino Rial. Um, it's called Del Rio Ranch. And apparently they're going to be proceeding with construction permits on that. Oh, good. Yeah. And then I have one more question. So to the south of the um outlets, there's a big steel structure. Uh what what is that? I haven't noticed that. No, I just the one that blocks the sign.

If you drive north on 101, you can't Well, I was going to ask about the sign, too. Like what what is So what's happening with that? And what what's happening with the sign? So those buildings, metal buildings are being built for um a variety of different purposes as as tenant spaces. I think they're going to do some um is it metal sales in there?

Sheet metal sales in one of them and then the other one's going to be available for different land uses. Um so they're building those out and then both the buildings are in conformance with the current zoning and all the standards. So this is an interesting scenario that you can have happen sometimes. when they built the factory outlet sign many many many years ago, they probably didn't think about what could be built next door. And so even though the building next door is in compliance with our general plan, our zoning, our setbacks and our height, it blocks their sign entirely. And it had a right to do that. And the city couldn't stop that from happening. So we knew about that. And so now it's between those two property owners to work that out. But I think they are working it out and I think there will be a sign built on the property south of that metal building that'll accommodate the outlet signage and they're working on that plan now.

That was less exciting than I was hoping for. Yeah, sorry. Oh well, but um and there's a couple new chicken restaurants apparently that are coming the north end of town. So you've probably seen those in the news, but yes, cannot wait for Chick-fil-A. There's that and there's a I think it's Wing Stop. So, where the GameStop was, they're just crossing the game portion out and putting Wing. Perfect. Wingstop. Okay. So, but for real, like Chick-fil-A is not coming to a Tascadero, is it? It is. We have It is really, we just got plans for Chick-fil-A. I re Look on Facebook. It's been a rumor for a while. It's been a rumor on Facebook, but no longer a rumor. It's reality. And where is And where will Chick-fil-A be going?

So, they will be going at the Home Depot shopping center. The vacant lot as you drive into the center on your left in front of Spring Hill, uh there's a couple vacant lots there. The one nearest the corner is where the Chick-fil-A would go. And their development plan that they submitted comes along with basically finishing out all the Home Depot lots. So, one of them is Chick-fil-A. Another one's really exciting car wash and then another retail space. So, will we see that at Planning Commission? You will. It's it's applied for a conditional use permit. So, you'll see that at planning commission as soon as we're ready to bring it to you. Excellent. So, I like Chick-fil-A. I think one of our planners here might be working on that project. Yes, Eric is gonna bring that to you. And then Wingstop is really going where GameStop was. Yes, it really is.

Excellent. I'm just want I mean you if you read it on Facebook people, you need to confirm it with an actual Atascadero city employee. I just want to make that clear. Chicken is coming to a task. Lots of chicken. Yes. Okay. I think that's all the Anybody else have a question about a project? No. Okay. Well, thank you very much for the presentation. We appreciate all the hard work you guys do for our city. Um, if there's nothing more Oh, uh, when's our next meeting? Are we going to be back in November? November 4th. Um, what else is happening? Oh, that's our You're supposed to tell us what's coming up on November 4th.

Yes. You know, November 4th, I'll I'll mention this to you guys because I think this is important for you to all know. Once a year we do an event called AllIn and it's a leadership day with all the city staff that our city manager promotes and does a lot of and that will be November 4th. So city hall will actually be closed November 4th but we are available for a planning commission hearing. I'm not sure do we have items for the agenda that evening? We do. So our next hearing will be that day but city hall will actually be closed earlier that day. So, okay. Well, then I will adjourn this meeting of the Atascadero Planning Commission until November 4th.