Town Council - Special Meeting

All right, good evening, everyone. I'm going to call this special meeting of the Los Gatos Town Council to order, and we will begin with a roll call.

Council Member Enni?

Here.

Council Member Hudes?

Here.

Council Member Badami?

Here.

VICE MAYOR RISTA. HERE. MAYOR MOORE.

HERE. THANK YOU. SO AT THE BEGINNING OF OUR MEETINGS WE USUALLY BEGIN WITH VERBAL COMMUNICATIONS BUT BECAUSE THIS IS A SPECIAL MEETING AND THERE'S ONLY ONE ITEM ON THE AGENDA WE'RE GOING TO TAKE ALL PUBLIC COMMENTS UNDER THAT ITEM AND SO WE'LL BEGIN WITH THE PUBLIC HEARING AND THEN ALL COMMENTS WILL BE TAKEN. AND YOU CAN GIVE COMMENT CARDS TO THE TOWN CLERKS AND WE'LL MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE HEARD. For speakers, just as a note, speaking time cannot be transferred, seated, or yielded to another speaker, so every speaker will have three minutes to address the council, except for the applicant who will have five minutes. Um, so that brings us to our item on the agenda, um, which is our public hearing to consider a recommendation by the planning commission to approve the subdivision of 1 lot into 12 lots with a vesting tentative map, um, located at 178 twin oaks drive and Aaron Walters. Our senior senior planner will present the item.

Great, good evening, Mayor and Council Members. The project before you this evening is a 17 and a half acre vacant hillside property, again located at 178 Twin Oaks Drive. The applicant proposes to subdivide the property into 12 residential lots, including three below market price units that represents 25% of the proposed homes. The property has a general plan land use designation of agriculture and is zoned resource conservation. The project is being processed under Senate Bill 330 and includes requests pursuant to state density bonus law and builder's remedy provisions of the Housing Accountability Act. Access to the site will be provided off of a new private cul-de-sac from Twin Oaks Drive. An emergency vehicle access easement will connect to Brook Acres to the new proposed private road. And then there will be a separate driveway off of Sierra Vista Court serving lot 10 only. The Santa Clara County Fire Department has reviewed the application and approved the project subject to the conditions that are included in Exhibit A. When the project was originally vested, this site was designated as very high fire hazard severity zone and was subject to PCR PRC 4290 requirements. Since that time, though, in 2025, the site has been downgraded to from very high to high. However, because the project is being processed under SB 330, it's still subject to the very high fire hazard standards and the conditions of approval that the fire department have provided are in Exhibit A. The planning commission first considered the project on December 17th of 2025. They did continue this item to allow the applicant and town staff to provide additional time to respond to questions that the commission provided. In response to the questions regarding biological resources, the town's environmental consultant conducted additional review of the ephemeral drainage feature on the site. And following a field investigation after a storm event, it was determined that a portion of that feature extended into Lot 5. As a result, a recirculated initial study and mitigated NGDAC was prepared to address the impacts and included two additional biological resource mitigations. The recirculated Sorry, MND was circulated for a 30-day public review and this document concluded that the potential impacts can be mitigated to less than significant level through the implementation of identified mitigation measures and the mitigation monitoring reporting program. On June 11th, the Planning Commission received additional information and public testimony and voted 4 to 1 to recommend that Town Council approve the project subject to the modified conditions that are in attachment 12 and incorporated in exhibit A. The applicant is requesting three incentives under the State Density Bonus Law where they would be allowed five based on their project. This includes not installing story poles for the visibility analysis, not providing sidewalks, and not constructing public trails. The applicant also is requesting 58 waivers through the State Density Bonus Law, which includes reduction to lot area, setbacks, gross floor area, development with the LRDA, reduced or exceeding building height, maximum graded cut and fill, swimming pools on slopes greater than 30%, reduced guest parking, and then also not distributing the bmps throughout the site and they are not the bmps are not compatible in size to the market rate units the applicant is also requesting three exceptions under builder's remedy which includes the general plan designation zoning designation and density the council has received two addendums and one desk item and so staff does recommend that the town council adopt the draft resolution included as attachment one with exhibit a In addition to planning staff, public works staff and the town's environmental consultants are here to answer any questions. And with that, I'm going to hand this over to town attorney Wayland. She will be presenting the legal framework for the project.

Thank you, Aaron. I have a brief PowerPoint to go over the four main state housing laws that affect this application. The first one is the Senate Bill 330. The next one is the State Housing Accountability Act. 3rd is state density bonus law. And 4th is the California environmental quality act. And so I'll just, I'll start with a description of how Senate bill 330 affects this planning application. This law authorizes applicants to submit what's called an SB 330 preliminary application to the town. Once a complete preliminary application has been submitted to the town, the applicant vests to the development standards that were in place at the time that that preliminary application was submitted. Next slide, please. Senate Bill 330 also provides that the Town is limited to holding five public hearings on an SB 330 project. This project has had two hearings at the Planning Commission and tonight will be the third public hearing. This project vested to the development standards that were in place at the time it submitted its preliminary application. And the project is relying on both state density bonus law and the builder's remedy. Next slide, please. The next applicable state law that I wanted to discuss is the State Housing Accountability Act. And that provides that local agencies cannot deny, reduce the density of, or render infeasible housing projects that include an affordable component. Next slide, please. Eligible housing development projects under the Act include uses that consist solely of residential units. This project consists solely of residential units and is thus eligible under the Housing Accountability Act. Next slide, please. And also in order to be eligible, a project needs to propose a certain component of affordable housing. And one example is at least 20% of the total units must be available to low income households. This project is proposing 25% affordable units and therefore qualifies for the Housing Accountability Act. Please. And with a Housing Accountability Act project, the town retains the ability to impose objective development standards that will not render the project infeasible. So long as those standards are consistent with the town meeting its regional housing needs allocation are applied to facilitate and accommodate development at the density that's permitted on the site and proposed by the development. Next slide, please. And in order to be an objective development standard, the standard must involve no personal or subjective judgment. And it must be uniformly verifiable by reference to an external benchmark that was available to both the applicant and the decision maker. Next slide, please. The Housing Accountability Act has recently been amended to expand the definition of what will constitute disapproval of an eligible housing project. So disapproval can include an actual vote to disapprove the project. It can include a failure to comply with deadlines for making a decision. And so in this instance, that would mean holding more than five public hearings. It can mean imposing a condition of approval that renders a project infeasible. Next slide please. And the act does define what will constitute a feasible project. And so feasible is defined in the act to mean capable of being accomplished in a successful manner, within a reasonable period of time, taking into account economic, environmental, social and technological factors. Next slide, please. With regard to infeasibility, the town bears the burden to establish that a condition of approval will not render a project infeasible. And in doing so, the town needs to use the preponderance of the evidence standard. And this means that the town weighs the evidence on both sides and concludes that the evidence on one side outweighs the evidence on the other. Next slide, please. Other grounds for denying or imposing a condition that would render a project infeasible are that the town has an adopted housing element and has met its share of the regional housing needs allocation in all income categories that are proposed in the project. This grounds is not available to the town because the town has not met its share of the regional housing needs allocation in all income categories proposed. The second grounds would be that the project would have a specific adverse impact on public health or safety. Next slide please. The third grounds would be if the denial is required in order to comply with a specific state or federal law. The next ground would be that the project is located on agricultural land without adequate water or wastewater. The next ground would be if HCD had certified the town's housing element, the town would be able to deny the project as being inconsistent with its zoning ordinance and general plan land use designation. Next slide. And then if the project were not a builder's remedy project, the town would have the ability to deny it. The Act talks about specific adverse impacts on public health or safety, and so similar to the other definition we just discussed, it needs to be an unavoidable impact based on objective, identified, written public health or safety standards. Next slide, please. And the 3rd state law that applies to this application is state density bonus law. And this law provides that applicants who provide specified levels of affordable housing are eligible for density bonuses. A specified number of incentives or concessions. And unlimited waivers. This applicant is not seeking a density bonus. However, this applicant is seeking to use three incentives or concessions and a number of waivers. Next slide, please. And state density bonus law defines an incentive or concession as a reduction in site development standards or a modification of zoning code requirements and then provides a number of examples. Next slide please. These are other incentives or concessions that are authorized by state law. One thing to consider is that a requested incentive or concession needs to be demonstrated to result in a cost reduction for the project proponent. Next slide, please. And so the State Density Bonus Law does set forth a number of grounds on which a requested incentive or concession can be denied. The first is that the request does not result in identifiable and actual cost reductions. The next is that the request would have a specific adverse impact on public health or safety. and it's not possible to mitigate that impact without rendering the project unaffordable. Next slide. And the third grounds would be that the request is contrary to state or federal law. This applicant is also seeking a number of waivers in addition to the three incentives or concessions. And the current leading case on the issue of what constitutes a valid waiver request is Bankers Hill 150 versus City of San Diego. And in that case, the court held that density bonus applicants are entitled to seek unlimited waivers of any standards that would have the effect of physically precluding the development as proposed. Next slide, please. The fourth state law that impacts this project is the California Environmental Quality Act. And so the town's CEQA consultant did prepare an initial study to analyze the impacts of this project. Based on that initial study, the town determined that a mitigated negative declaration rather than an environmental impact report was appropriate for this project. A mitigated negative declaration is used when any significant environmental impacts can be mitigated to less than significance. And on the flip side, an environmental impact report is required when there are significant environmental impacts, but those impacts cannot be mitigated. And I'll be available through the course of the evening for any questions.

Thank you very much. So now we will turn it over to the Town Council for questions of staff. Council Member Badami.

Thank you, Mayor. The biggest bone of contention tonight is over CEQA. So we have the lack of an EIR. And we have an initial study and an MND in its place and previously recommended was an EIR. So I think you just made the statement that I wasn't certain on who determines whether it's an EIR or an MND. And I think I heard you say the town. So with that, how can the public be assured that significant environmental impacts can be mitigated to less than significant? And number two, how can the public be assured that all potential impacts were studied?

And so we do have the town's environmental consultant available this evening. And so they could either respond to those questions now or we can wait until further in the discussion.

Sure, I think it's fine to answer the council members question now.

Good evening. I can tell you can hear me. Nick Papani, vice president with Rainy Planning and Management. Hello. Thank you for the question, council member. Good evening, mayor, council members. Rainy Planning and Management, our firm was retained by the town to prepare the environmental review for the proposed project. and so i want to kind of cover a couple things and answer to your to your good question and uh i'd kind of point specifically to as you're aware we prepared responses to comments um that were provided on the sequa document and uh that's part of your packet there but response to comment 5-2 is one that really kind of deals with this topic and kind of walks through what sequa would direct or or guide an agency with respect to whether to prepare a mitigated negative declaration, as we've done here, or an environmental impact report. And the first thing we kind of point out in that response is that the state actually encourages mitigated neg decks when appropriate, because it reduces the substantial processing time, substantial costs that are inherent with an environmental impact report. But of course, an MND is only appropriate in certain circumstances. And that pertains to circumstances where there is substantial evidence that whether there's potential impacts that the project would create on the environment, that either the project is revised to avoid those impacts, Or, and 1 way of doing that is through, it could be redesigned. It could be in position of a mitigation measure. So, for example, if there's a potential to impact nesting birds. The mitigation, of course, is to do a Pre construction survey prior to construction. Make sure that there are any nesting birds. If there are then avoidance buffers are implemented on site to ensure that there are no adverse effects. So, if we can bring enough substantial evidence forward that all the project's potential impacts on the environment could be reduced to less than significant, and of course less than significant means we compare to a certain threshold and we identify all those thresholds in the document, then a mitigated negative declaration is appropriate. And one thing that we really want to point out is that the burden is really on the petitioner, for example, to demonstrate that there's substantial evidence in the record supporting a fair argument that the project would have a significant effect even if mitigation measures in the document are implemented. So our point would be that we've provided substantial evidence that with the mitigation measures, there would be no remaining significant impacts. It's not that could there be a significant impact. It's that with the mitigation measures, would all impacts be reduced to below the thresholds? And we believe there's substantial evidence in the document to demonstrate that. And so requiring an NEIR is not then necessary in that case.

Thank you.

Yes, Council Member Hudeaus.

Yeah, thank you. I have a follow-up question. Thank you. I have a whole series of questions about the EIR, but I'll wait until later for them. But the question I had was, was an EIR prepared for previous applications on that site?

Yes.

And so has that been relied upon in any way for this analysis?

A good question council member. I'd say on a limited basis. The 1st, important consideration there is that that that was prepared in 2017 was not certified by town council. And that's a big step. So certification of an EIR says that that document reflects the town's independent judgment as to the project's potential impacts, the mitigations that are required and so forth. So without a certified environmental impact report, we don't place substantial value on that document. It doesn't mean it doesn't have any value, but we don't place substantial value without that certification that the town council has placed upon that document. So while we referenced it to look at the information, okay, go ahead.

I had a couple of follow-ups. One is, has that EIR been placed in the record since you did rely upon it to some degree?

Yes, it's in the record.

OK. And then the second question is, since obviously at that time an EIR was deemed the appropriate environmental document, has anything changed substantially in the physical location of the proposed development that would say that an EIR is not required now?

Nothing's changed substantially with respect to the location is what I understood. Your question was. No, okay. Thank you.

Other questions for staff or consultants. Yes, thank you.

I have a kind of a legal question because. In here, when we were talking about. There was a discussion of how the project still needs to comply with objective standards. And so I'm not understanding why the hillside standards and design guidelines are not being followed here.

So some of the standards that are in the Hill Sign to Sign Guideline are standards and say shall and are objective. And so with those, they're asking for waivers from them. So they can still, even though we have objective standards, folks can utilize these state laws to request to not include them.

Okay, and I guess we might get back to it later. But I mean, was there something about, for example, the homes being stepped into the hillside as opposed to just being decided? I mean, to me, it looks like flat land houses put on a hill not to be negative, but it doesn't feel like it is trying to fit in. Were they able to demonstrate that that would be a more expensive construction technique as opposed to cut and fill and putting.

flat house on there so in their letter of justification they felt that this was the appropriate uh design with this is what they're requesting through their waivers okay and i would just through the mayor suggest that some of these questions also might be helpful to ask the applicant okay i appreciate that thank you

have a question on that topic and then i'll go to my colleagues um uh for you know my knowledge and for the public's knowledge for um the town attorney these incentives waivers and exceptions are requested um we refer to them as being requested but my understanding is they're not really requests so can you talk to the the authority of these uh incentives waivers and concessions

um so the those derived from the state density bonus law and an applicant does need to identify in their application what incentives or concessions or waivers they're seeking and and then once they've identified those they then the town asked them to demonstrate that the incentives or concessions result in cost reductions And then with regard to waivers, how the requested waiver, how that standard that they're seeking a waiver from would physically preclude their proposed project.

And can you talk about what physically preclude means?

So with regard to the case that has interpreted most recently, it means that the project can't be built as it was proposed.

right so which essentially means requested waivers are are uh carte blanche they can they can be applied pretty uniformly because that's what if the applicant has requested them without them the project would be different so state law says that they can use them i mean that's the current state of the most recent case interpreting the statute okay thank you um councilmember domi then councilmember hudas

Thank you. Two quick questions. First of all, I want to make the disclosure that I did visit the site with Senior Planner Ms. Walters. And secondly, I just want to go back to a question that was asked by Council Member Hudes to the environmental specialist. You said that nothing had really changed about the location. But actually when you're developing it, it may be 30% greater density and intensity. Doesn't that kind of alter the environment, the location, compared to the original EIR that was done?

Thank you council member. I understood the question to be has the location of the project change in such a way that it would affect the environmental conclusions. And so I was just kind of looking at it as this is the same site. You know, it's generally similar. So, but I think there's, you know, merit to to your point there. We can explore it further if you'd like.

Thank you.

And just to clarify, I'll ask the whole council for their disclosures right before I open up public comment. Go to council member.

Yeah, thank you. And just as a follow up to Vice Mayor Risto's question about incentives, waivers and exceptions, are those, is it mandatory to grant those if they pose a negative impact on public health or safety? And are some of those evaluations of public health or safety contained in the environmental reports, whether it's an EIR or other reports?

I can answer the first part of that question. So there is stated grounds for denial of a requested incentive or concession in the state law. And one of the grounds for denial is that it would result in a public health or safety risk. And then I'll defer to the environmental consultant on how that's addressed in the mitigated negative declaration.

Sure, thank you. We've evaluated various aspects of that potential concern, whether it's air quality, noise, transportation, of course, the focus is vehicle miles traveled, but emergency evacuation. So if there's any specific questions on those topics, happy to address those.

And were those topics addressed in the 2017 EIR that you relied upon partially?

They they would have been yes, although wildfire would have been different because the sequel guidelines have been amended since that time. And so things have progressed beyond that to some extent. And we use the latest secret checklist for this secret document. Thank you.

Okay, great. If there are not any more questions more generally at this time, I'll look to my colleagues for disclosures. Go to council member any.

Thank you, Mayor. About eight years ago, we were asked to take this project off the Williamson Act. And at that time, I visited the site and looked at the project that was proposed at the time. I haven't really been back to the site since. I was briefly at the large Dodge house when it was rented by the Narchias. but I didn't really go out to the site at that time. That was a few years ago. I have met with Mr. Foley a couple times to talk about this project, including today and some points in the past also. And of course, I've read all of the information and read all the planning commission minutes and everything else in here. Great, thank you. And I guess I have met with the neighbors eight years ago when the project went through then, but nothing recently. Thank you.

uh yeah so i've had a number of site visits uh including um eight years ago when i was on the planning commission i did consider an application at that time i actually spent a couple hours on the site at that time and then earlier today i visited the site again And then I have met with a number of folks involved in this, including Mr Foley, the Fordyce family and a number of other neighbors. That's it.

Thank you. I visited the site twice in the past few weeks and have met with the development team.

Thank you. Yes, I've on my own kind of visited the site from the streets that access it and then had kind of a guided tour with our senior planner, Aaron, I would have walked more of the site, but outside the edges, but was warned that it was full of ticks and decided not to walk through the middle of it. I've met with Mr. Foley a number of times over the last year or so, including yesterday. I would have met with any neighbors if they had asked, but nobody reached out. And I have read everything that we've received, which is a lot.

Yeah, Council Member Budami.

In addition to the previous disclosure that I made that I visited the site with Ms. Walters, I was a planning commissioner eight years ago, and I also visited the site at that time. And I also met with Jill Fordyce at that time and viewed the potential project at that time from her residence. And I did have a phone conversation yesterday with Mr. Foley.

Great, thank you. So we will now move to public comment on this item. So how this works is that we will open the public hearing. The applicant will have five minutes to address the council. The public will then have three minutes for each speaker. and the developer will get to come back up at the end for any rebuttals. I'll start with speakers in the room. Please give a comment card to the clerks if you would like to speak on this item, and we'll go to Zoom comments after that. I will start with Jim Foley, the applicant.

Thank you, Mr mayor and distinguished counsel. Thank you for all of your time on this project in this evening. Um, thanks to staff. I know that it's been a long road here. I think it's coming up on two and a half years. We've been working on this version, um, of the project. Uh, so thanks for all of your time and all the consultants time spent on this. There's a lot of information and I know you guys have put a lot of effort into reviewing it. Um, The Dodge family Tom Dodge years ago started out the story farms subdivision and developed most of it and kind of held this last key piece to be the culminating phase of the development. And that's where we are today. Uh, so I'm here to represent them and answer the questions that you guys might have about the project. We have our whole team available here. Um, we want to deliver a good project. We've heard different concerns from the neighbors. We've tried to engage with them the best that we can, um. And be sensitive, I think that it's a 1st class project we're trying to bring that will. hopefully not impact the neighborhood at all and be a benefit to it as it's designed, as we can take a look at the plans tonight. And hopefully we can get your approval and move the project forward. Otherwise we have the team here for questions and we can hear from any other concerns from the neighbors or the public.

Great, thank you. So I'll turn to the council for questions of the applicant. Yes, Vice Mayor Risto.

Thank you. I'll go back to one of the questions I asked. I mean, when this project was first proposed, was there a consideration of the hillside standards and design guidelines and looking at homes that could actually be stepped as opposed to just put there?

Right without getting too technical and we do have the architecture if we want to talk about that. There's a lot of back and forth on how to approach the project, whether it was a mass grading effort or individual site grading the way that the best layout that we came out and came to in the street alignment. Kind of separates the types of houses. Some are more very much more hillside and would typically be more of like a hillside design standard. Some of them are on the lower lands and the way the street ran through. Um, in order to get the best possible home that we want to deliver that was how the design ended up. So. Which of the standards from the hillside were or not considered, or how we've done grading and retaining in street design. Again, from the technical standpoint from engineering architect, we can get into the specifics, but otherwise to try to marry the hillside to the lower. Lots, that's how it ended up.

Okay, thank you. I guess I have, well, I have a lot of questions, but can you walk me through like what you're thinking and how the conditions ended up with an HOA versus a maintenance agreement? Or, you know, I'm concerned about this is on a hillside. There's a lot of trees. We know from our brush abatement and, you know, weed abatement in town, that that's a serious issue and it could be a large burden. So I'm curious about how that'll get taken care of, who's responsible. and how the burden should not fall too hard on the BMRs who are gonna be least able to afford to do what they have to do.

Right, I'll do the best I can for that. So, um, understanding from a legal perspective is just the difference when is applicable when there's common ownership ownership of common property, which we don't have. In this circumstance, but we have everything else. Um, so if you look in the conditions of approval, there are required, there's a maintenance agreement required for the road for the storm water treatment facilities for other things like that. So there will be. folks that are aboard or whatever, that are the ownership out there and are responsible. Is that better or worse than an individual owner developing their own home on a lot and having their obligation to maintain trees and fire protection and all that? I think it's almost the same. Maybe together they're even better To help each other out with those types of things, if they're all going to do something collectively at once, rather than, you know, any given neighbor in a neighborhood in the hillsides trying to do it piecemeal. So, hopefully that answers your question about kind of the unity of the neighborhood in the board and the management practices of that as far as, like, a financial burden. On the units, we've been looking into that. There's a lot of guidance from the on how that is supposed to work in the calculations and how they're supposed to occur as they apply to putting in place, like, the CC and ours, the maintenance associations. I don't know that we can answer that technically right now. Exactly. My understanding is that. it is more of a balance based on home size, which should offer at least the first level of protection for the BMPs, which are significantly smaller than the other homes. But I mean, we're also, you know, as we get these CCNRs aren't gonna get recorded until later. And when they do, if we need to make accommodations to ensure the protection of the BMP owners, I mean, I think that's valid. I don't see why. We have no intention of overburdening a BMP lot with an unreasonable financial maintenance obligation.

I mean, I think, you know, at 1 point, it was talking about the frontage would be responsible for the roads and I thought, well, the are located. At the end of the road that everybody's going to use, so they'll have the most wear and tear. But my real concern. Is I think it's lot 1 is that the 1st. And that has a really, I don't know if we have any map we can put up, but that has a really large. piece of land and you know personally I know on a very small lot where my husband and I have two very large trees and our neighbors have large trees we work together because we have to go into each other's yards to access it but just like five large trees cost us thousands of dollars every couple years and i would be concerned that somebody is going to get this bmp and then suddenly have acreage of trees that need to be maintained and hit the wildfire standards and that feels kind of strange to me that for a bmp to have that much property

So I think at the planning commission hearing, they addressed some of this and I believe the resulting condition of approval went from a calculation on frontage or the discussion around a calculation based on frontage as a percentage of the total to an even split among lots, which I think is in the existing proposed conditions, I believe. But then further, we're now talking about the ratio of a unit size to the total. So I guess I don't think the frontage is a concern anymore as it relates to lot one, having that long sweeping frontage on the curve. If I'm understanding you, and I'm understanding the way that that it's proposed in the, but whether or not the balance of the unit size to the overall is a concern, or what protections there are through the, I can't answer that. Um.

Okay I mean I guess there's two parts one is you know like the road upkeep etc and if that's based on size as opposed to frontage that's one thing but in terms of maintaining someone's own property if lot one has this acreage I mean can that be put in common area or um egress public access or something else so that it's not theirs I guess someone has to maintain it but It just feels a little unusual.

Yeah, I mean, I think the intent is just to have some nice open and yard space for those 3 units that, you know, they're sort of a row house design. That we put in there intentionally in that area to be able to build it that way and. It kind of morphed over time from from sort of the original design to what we thought was a better design and then. Including that land there, so that's not just a tiny tight. 3 parcels, you know. That was our best proposed design to accommodate that corner of land. I don't know what else could be done and we can't. the way the project is designed now everybody owns to the middle of the road there's no there's no other commonly owned property so it's just not in the project okay thank you it just it concerned me and I think we talked about it and I don't know if there's an answer um and then I think we talked I'll stop for now yes Councilmember Badami

Thank you. Just because you were up there and you said your goal was to deliver a good project, did you address any consideration to reorientating or eliminating Lot 5 to help make the project good for the neighbors?

We did this challenging, I think, at this juncture in the project, we, we've done a lot and we've there were 8 requests for the neighbors. I think we accommodated 7 of them. Lot 5 is still a challenge. It's something that we're going to continue to work on, but there's no, no proposed changes as we stand here. But I think there are opportunities and we can leave it at that.

Thank you.

Questions from council members? So I guess just while we're on the topic of the BMP unit, just to get a perspective from staff on this, what is our understanding of the legal arrangement with the BMP unit owning that large piece of property to ensure that it's not cost burdened? Is there anything that we can do or that is in here about that?

And I think a good place to start would be maybe to ask Public Works to go over the conditions of approval that pertain to maintenance of that road, and then take it from there.

Okay, and I think there may also be other site planning opportunities. Um, 1 that pops into my mind is the market rate unit across the street. You know, the. Property lines go to the center line that 1 of the market rate unit could go across and take a larger expanse of that potentially if the applicants open to that. So that that lots tied to the market rate lot rather than 1 of the B and P lots.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, maybe we'll go to public comment and then Public Works can pull up when we're done, some of those conditions of approval. Yes, Council Member Hudeis.

Yeah, I think you supplied a couple of documents recently. One is titled Twin Oaks Neighbors Requests and Response, and the other is Surrey Farms COA's proposed revisions. I just want to make sure I have the current version of those because I want to go through those in detail later. The COA proposed revisions, does that include number four number seven number nine b and number seventy three correct that current version is those just those four correct okay and um those if i understand that those are requests that you make that are not included in the current coa that's before us correct

Okay.

And then the other question about the neighbor requests, you prepared a document with eight requests. Have you reviewed those requests with the neighbors and do they agree with your response?

It has been sent to them and very recently we have. Comments are discussed with them prior in between the planning commission hearing and now some of them via email. There's been no formal agreement or. You know, varying degrees of acknowledgement, but no, there's been no formal. Okay. We accept 6 of the, or thank you or, but that's what. What we've kind of tried to detail was. around the conversations that we've had what we're willing to do i think one or two of them actually has become a condition of approval other ones were answers and then um as councilwoman badami brought up the lot five comment is just that's number eight that we're kind of in in limbo on i think i'll go through that with the neighbors so Great. And one other question that you had had is, in 2018, an MND was an option. At that time, the applicant elected to do an EIR. It wasn't required. Okay.

Any other questions to the applicant at this time? Seeing none, thank you very much, and we will go to the public. Our first public commenter is Dan Sherbeck, and Dan will be followed by John Witkin.

Hi.

My name is Dan Sherbeck, and I live at 150 Blueberry Hill Drive. I submitted a formal comment letter that should be included in your desk items. My wife, daughter and I have lived in Surrey Farms for a little over three and a half years. We love the neighborhood because it's so peaceful and quiet. It's like a huge cul-de-sac with no through traffic. It reminds me of where I grew up, where I could play safely on the street all day long. In my time today, I want to share a story. My daughter is five years old. We have our own routine where she asked me, Daddy, do you want to visit the kitty cats? And I always reply, yeah, let's go. So she grabs her scooter and I jog behind her to Longmeadow Drive and we stop at a house where two cats live. Sometimes the cats are there and we try to pet them. If they aren't, we talk about what they might be doing, like eating, sleeping or playing. Then we go up the hill to the intersection of Longmeadow and Twin Oaks. When she's ready, we come back down, check on the cats 1 last time and head home. I am terrified that if this project is approved as is. Those father daughter moments will end forever. For those of you who aren't familiar, the estimated 2 years of heavy construction traffic will funnel directly along long metal drive. It'll be too dangerous and dirty for our neighborhood walks. And after construction, the permanent traffic generated by this project will continue to make Longmeadow too dangerous for our kitty cat trips. I say this not just based on a father's worry, but on the applicant's own vehicle miles traveled analysis. The per capita exceeds the town's legal threshold. But to bypass this, the developer or applicant is being allowed to mitigate the impact by building sidewalks miles away from our neighborhood. While this is a convenient way to balance a spreadsheet, it leaves the physical traffic impact on Surrey farms 100% unmitigated. There's absolutely zero real world connection between pouring concrete for a sidewalk across town and the safety on our streets. My request to you tonight is to require a full environmental impact report. We need a localized safety and traffic study to address the true impacts of this project on our daily lives. When my daughter asked me, Daddy, do you want to go visit the kitty cats? I want to be able to say, yeah, let's go for years to come. Please don't let a paperwork loophole take that away from us. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, Council Member Hudtis.

Thank you and I think you provided some documents and one of them that I'm referring to is part of our packet where you make the case for a full EIR rather than an ISMND and you have five points in there and if i could just um understand it it seems to me and you can correct me if i'm wrong that point one which is uh wildfire evacuation hazard, point three, which is unenforceable air quality restrictions, and point five is hydrology and structural stability, that those relate to public health and safety requirements. Is that correct? Correct. And those are things you would like to see studied in an EIR? Correct. and you believe they haven't been studied in the MND, is that correct? Correct. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

We'll go to John Witkin, and John will be followed by William Malayko.

Thank you council members for this opportunity to address these issues. I'm John Whitkin. I grew up in Los Gatos, raise my children here and have been a resident for over 70 years. I understand the pressure this council faces to help solve our state's housing shortfall. But the 1210 million dollar homes on a protected hillside and a zone. It should have 4 to 6 homes is not the solution. It's a windfall for the developers at the expense of our environment and our community's safety. The hillside has been designated Resource Conservation Space since 1975. It's home to 546 protected trees, heritage oaks, migratory birds, deer, turkey, and other protected species, plus a riparian corridor and an ephemeral stream. In November, the developer received a 19-page letter of noncompliance from the Planning Commission. But rather than complete the full environmental impact report, their attorneys pushed for a negative declaration and it became all legal. And some of the issues were backed by young consultants, two 15-minute site visits through two feet of weeds on the hillside, found no soil issues, but this hillside is on a county landslide survey. I don't believe we're getting the due diligence on the site that this sensitive area needs where current homes will bear the burden of the negligence. This project would place over 97,000 square feet of new construction on a hillside that sits on that map in a higher fire zone directly over an ephemeral stream. And one of the proposed homes would be constructed on top of the Brook Acres Creek. The extra 20% runoff, the developer has got bioswales, but these are really just open ponds where mosquitoes and other biologics could fester. And a Hillbrook school is right there along with the neighbors. Anyway, landslide risk, fire danger, water and sewer capacity, traffic, the creek, these are open questions that haven't been properly answered. State law CEQA exists specifically to work these issues out before approval, not after when it's too late. We should be able to slow down for a basic impact review. This is exactly what a completely certified ERI is designed to catch. Please require one before this project moves forward. Let's avoid catastrophic problems in our backyard and in our neighborhood. Thank you for taking the time to consider this.

Thank you. Thank you very much. OK. We'll move on to William Maleko. William will be followed by Lynn Bruno.

Good evening. My name is Bill Maleko. I live at 189 Longmeadow Drive. My backyard directly borders lot five. I'm asking the council to deny the project and require a full ERI. The proposed environmental review leans heavily on the EIR from 2015 and 2017. That town council never certified that project. It was prepared for a smaller, different project. Requiring an EIR is not a denial and not a condition of approval. The council's hands are not tied here. When there is a fair argument of harm, the law's answer is an EIR. The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board wrote a letter to the town in October of 25 saying that the ISMMD's conclusions on the ephemeral creek were incorrect. They said this project would dewater the creek. A state regulator with direct jurisdiction over the site disagrees with the developer's environmental document. The state agency's required approvals should be finalized before, not after, your vote. Drainage from lots five, six, seven, eight, 10, as well as street drainage, all discharged at the corner of my backyard. The ISMND does not analyze offsite impacts to adjacent downslope properties. There's no enforceable maintenance responsibility plan nor an HOA obligation in perpetuity if that system fails. When it fails, I'm the one who's gonna get flooded and who do I hold responsible for it? The project requires pre-construction surveys for six species, stop work protocols, state permits that have not been obtained, and a habitat plan that has not been written, and the removal of 223 protected trees. You can't require mitigation at that scale and simultaneously conclude that the impacts are less than significant. If the impacts were really minor, the mitigation would be low. It isn't. The project requires an EIR. The project requests 153 separate waivers in 58 categories from the town development standards, up to 16 per lot, including grading limits that exist specifically to prevent slope failure and drainage problems on the hillside. When a project needs 153 exceptions to fit a site, maybe the site cannot support the development. please deny and require the EIR.

Thank you. Council Member Hudeaus.

Thank you, Mr. Malayko. I just wanted to boil down your requests. And so in some of your testimony before, you identified three items. One is to require a full EIR. The second is to require that the two agencies complete their reviews before, not after approval. And the third is to require a full explanation of the increase in surface area with updated studies to match, including the impact on some of the elements that are in the EIR. Is that correct?

Yes. In addition, I'm very concerned about the impact to a down gradient project sites like ours, specifically from the drainage.

Okay, and you provided some information about. The paved and roof surface area. I think that you said that the paved and roof surface area of the project grew by 56%. between the original filing and the updated version that's my understanding from 62 000 to 97 000 square feet and you say that every technical study submitted the drainage model the soil stability report and air quality was calculated on the smaller original number have you had a response to that um

uh in the planning commission meetings they discussed that briefly and it was suggested that that was a clerical error at one point in time but i've never been able to confirm whether the analysis was done on the lower square footage for the higher square footage but those were within the original eir which is a different project okay thank you councilmember rennie

Yeah, question for you. So one of the things Councilmember Hudes just went over and you mentioned was you're concerned about the failure of the whole drainage system. I believe that it's the applicant has proposed a berm along the edge of the property to protect against that. Is that not something that you think is adequate or it's

No, I don't think it's adequate. I don't think there's a true understanding of how much water is actually going to be increased. It's going to be coming down slope because of there's a lot of water now that percolates into the hill and it won't be percolating into the hill, but it'll be draining through now.

So is it a waste to have to have require them to create this berm then?

No, everything possible is going to help. There's no question about it. I mean, we currently, during the winter, our backyard is soggy. I've had increased drainage out of my backyard to keep that from being soggy. The existing catch basin on the corner of my property where all this drains currently runs during a storm at 80% full. This is definitely going to increase and overflow that project.

Okay, thanks.

And then I have one more question for you. Sort of along the same lines, continuing on that, because you border lot five, which is, you know, there's been some questions about, and you're requesting the EIR and more technical analysis. If those were completed, what sorts of things would you like to see to mitigate, you know, the EIR is a analysis tool, and so are there particular things that you think would help mitigate the impacts of the project on your home?

Well, I'm concerned about noise. I'm concerned about the visibility. I'm concerned about looking uphill at lights. I'm concerned about looking at a 50-foot retaining wall that's 10, 15 feet above the elevation of my house within a 30- or 40-foot house above that.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you very much.

No, no, thank you.

I mean, it goes on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll now move on to Lynn Bruno, who will be followed by Lillian Winters.

Thank you, council members.

I want to add my voice to those calling for a full EIR for this project. We're talking about developing one of the last remaining oak chaparral habitats in Los Gatos. 500 plus species, a lot of protected trees, trees that are interconnected and holding up this hillside, absorbing water, replacing just half of them with new trees doesn't seem like enough mitigation. And I'd like to talk about the stream a little bit. Everything that's been talked about for mitigation has to do with diverting it, making the ditch deeper. I don't know if you're aware of groundbreaking research that was done by Yale University in 2024 showing that even though they disappear, ephemeral streams are connected to rivers, lakes, streams, and ultimately the ocean, and they filter sediment and nutrients into those waterways, and they filter pollutants into those waterways. So we're talking about adding potentially agricultural chemicals like lawn fertilizers, glyphosates, things that we know are already destroying our waterways on top of that. So there should be some mitigation to make sure that the stream and the creek are protected from pollution. I also think that... This project requires an HOA. You can divide this into 12 lots, but the kinds of problems that we're talking about here, fire, erosion, pollution, don't respect lot lines and You're leaving it up to 12 different homeowners that the town has to deal with if there's an issue. This is a recipe for disaster for the town trying to administer this and for contention among homeowners. If something happens, whose job is it? You need to have one single unifying body that's in charge of this, that represents the interests of all the homeowners and of the town. And a maintenance agreement or association does not have the rules that an HOA has about architectural standards and control. and many of these mitigation measures like down lighting native plantings etc etc you need that in ccnrs that can be enforced that travel with the land because what's to say that individual homeowners can can't just undo some of those thank you thank you yes vice mayor risto then councilmember hudas

Thank you, Ms. Bruno. I have a question for you about Surrey Farms. Approximately how many homes are there, and is there an HOA?

I don't live in Surrey Farms. Oh, I apologize. My mother-in-law lives in Surrey Farms. I'll save that for another one. But you know what? My husband grew up there. Can I just ask him if he knows?

Is there an HOA?

Or maybe some people who live there know the answer to that. We can have a future comment or answer. I'll save that. Okay. Okay. I don't know the answer. Thank you.

Yes, Council Member Hudeaus.

Thank you, Ms. Bruno. You got into this just at the end about the, I believe that a maintenance association is being proposed. I've not seen that before. I'm going to ask our attorney and staff about that. I've seen HOA and many, many ones. Could you go a little further in helping us to understand the distinction between an HOA and a maintenance association, specifically with regard to the issues of the road, the drainage system, and some of the other things, vegetation management, that are very important considerations?

Sure, my understanding is that the main difference, they both collect money for things that have to be done, but only an HOA has a single governing body, architectural standards that have to be upheld, and any other kinds of rules and standards that have to be upheld. So if we're talking about really protecting this hillside and making sure drainage and erosion are all addressed, I don't think you can leave that to a maintenance association because there's nobody making the rules. They're just collecting money to fix things.

Thank you. Great. Thank you. We'll move on to Lillian Winters. Lillian will be followed by Bobcat.

Good evening. My name is Lillian Winters. I'm an attorney with Jorgensen, Siegel, McClure, and Flegel in Menlo Park. Our firm represents John Witkin, whose backyard will border four of the 12 proposed homes. While we understand that your ability to deny this project is limited because it is a builder's remedy project, based on our review of the evidence in the record, the required health and safety denial finding under state law is met here. That said, if you choose to proceed with considering this project for approval, CEQA mandates that a formal EIR must first be prepared. One of the justifications for denying this project is a finding that it would have a specific adverse impact upon the public health or safety that cannot be mitigated. This project, as it's been said, sits within a very high fire hazard zone. If approved, it will add 113 new daily vehicle trips to the roadways and the surrounding areas that are already subject to gridlock with school and beach traffic. As evidenced in the record and explained in our August 6th letter, which should be in your packet, the increased traffic generated by this project will further congest the surrounding roadways and intersections, which in turn will delay emergency access, hospital travel time, evacuation in the event of a wildfire. This delay will exceed the generally applicable standards permitted for emergency access, hospital travel time and wildfire evacuations, thereby creating a significant adverse impact to public health and safety. That is not mitigated. Accordingly, under state law, denial of the project is justified and allowed. If you choose to proceed with considering this project for approval, CEQA mandates that a EIR first be prepared because there is a fair argument supported by substantial evidence in the record that the project may result in significant unmitigated impacts to the environment. as explained in the letter I referenced earlier, dated August 6th, and supported by other evidence in the record, this project will result in potentially significant impacts to biological resources, such as the ephemeral creek and oak woodlands, to land use and planning and aesthetics as well. Uh, further as explained in the letter we submitted this morning, the does not properly evaluate the project's impact on evacuation in the event of wildfire in accordance with the state attorney general's office. For all these reasons, we respectfully urge you to deny this project. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you. Council member dummy.

Thank you for your letter. We have it. So on page two.

Can I interrupt? I'm sorry. Is this the letter today or the letter from the 6th?

August 6th.

OK. Yeah.

So you talk about CEQA and that governing CEQA law requires an EIR when there is a fair argument supported by any, underlined any, substantial evidence in the record that the project may result in a significant unmitigated impact on the environment. Can you elaborate on any?

Yeah, so I don't know specifically where in this letter we have a case site for, but essentially the law says that where there is a difference of opinion as to the impact, the correct path forward is an EIR to evaluate that, and it's not for the town to decide themselves. I can pull that up in a second and get you the exact citation, but it is in the letter.

I'll take your word for it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Quick question. You made a comment about how the addition of these 11 homes would impede safety or emergency response. Was there a traffic study that you're referring to or just the idea that any additional house will have an impact?

I believe in the ISMND they reported 113 additional trips, which of course will impact roads that the neighbors have reported that are already subject to congestion. And so the impact analysis comes from that. Okay, thank you. Yeah.

Councilmember Rooney, which roads are you referring to that have congestion?

Um, specifically John, what can probably has a better response, but I, uh, just understand it to be the surrounding roads.

So long meadow and the roads into long meadow.

Um, yes.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you.

We'll go to Bob cat who will be followed by Cindy Clark.

Okay, Bobcat Anonymous. First of all, if you would have did the verbal, I would have probably objected to the last minute this morning, what the last speaker said about turning in something that late. I just don't think that's technically right, the last minute stuff. Okay, Bobcat, I was a general contractor. I built a hillside home. First time building and stuff like that, I drove up and I rolled my Bobcat. It landed in front of me, so that was a joke. So I gave you three pictures. And I spoke on this at the planning, you know, I was saying safety issues, the black 1, you know, I wanted. I just said that there should be more access to, you know, not just 1 road and stuff like that. And I hear there's just 1 basic road and a dirt road and the on the black picture, you know, it just is out of place. I drove by there this morning and it just, you know, you're. To go into this big lot, you know, it looks so out of place and, you know, as a builder and kind of architect stuff like that, the second picture with the green. My dad wasn't things. It looks like that road there should directly went into that. You know, you should use that road. You can cut out the dirt and directly, because that's the dirt road. And that should be your main, you know, there should be two roads there. And so you can split up the traffic if you were to do that. Because something probably is going to be built there. That's your decisions to what's to be built there. And then the last picture is, you know, the lots and stuff like that. When I built, you know, I came before, I'm not a public speaker, and I came before things and I had a smaller house and they wanted me to double the size. So it was like, you guys, you have the opportunity to, you know, Lay the groundwork you don't have to you can say we want 3 houses, 5 houses, 10 houses on it, you know, or split the lot. I think that, you know, whoever owns this lot, I guess it's the corner lot. You know, it's that 1, the black picture just looked really out of place that entrance. And so that's my biggest, you know, 1 of my another thing I wanted to say is when I built. you want you want to hide nobody on looking up at the hills want to see houses up there they'd rather see trees and stuff like that because that's what we are all looking at so if you can make sure that they're you know tucked in and not you know not colorful thank you any questions okay bye thank you we'll go to cindy clark who will be followed by mark weiner

Thank you council members for your time tonight and for your service to our community. My name is Cindy Clark. I live in Los Gatos about a mile and a half away from the proposed development and tonight I'll be making three points. So number one, our California legislators have passed bills to alleviate the state's severe affordability crisis and provide homes for working and middle-class families. Yet, this 17-acre development will provide only three token below-market homes and nine giant houses for very wealthy people who will probably be purchasing these as second or third houses for investment opportunities. This project is wasteful and will do very little to meet our housing needs, and most likely not is what our state legislators intended. Number two, the clear cutting of these 17 acres of open space and removal of 223 old protected trees will cause our community to lose a host of vital environmental services. These trees are key to healthy ecosystems as described in our town's upcoming and very popular urban forestry management plan. As an outdoor education docent, I educate our county's third, fourth, and fifth graders as to the value of our oak trees. They are keystone species providing food and home for thousands of organisms under the soil, in the trees, and in the air. One tree can house over 5,000 critters and insects. Many provide insect and rodent control as well as enjoyment by our community. The trees also give us cleaner air and sequester carbon. Removal will cause increased risk of runoff and flooding, dirtier water, and damage the ephemeral stream and its inhabitants. Neighbors and town residents deserve an EIR to determine and address the full impact of these damages and others before permitting. And number three, at the June 11th planning commission meeting, the developer submitted an unsatisfactory response to the commission's request for open space and trail solutions. The proposal consisted of adding two small unused edges of the land from which all the old trees have been removed. These are neither open spaces nor trails, but basically parking strips with no funding source to build or maintain the trails. And I ask that an actual solution is submitted. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Hudes.

Thank you. And I'm quite interested in the trail options for this site. And that was one of the things that I looked at eight years ago. I understand that there is a proposal for an easement for trails. And as 1 of the documents, but it, it seems as though. That easement is just at the edge of the properties.

Yeah.

Is is based on your experiences that where a trail would go.

It's completely useless. It's it's. It wouldn't go anywhere. It's just like a strip of land on the edge. And and so a trail goes someplace. It would, you know, perhaps I know everyone's talking about having more trees between all the neighbors. It would go in the bottom edge underneath the trees. It could be a raised walkway and then it could loop around the whole property and go out again. And it would have, you know, provide the neighbors access and also, you know, if you leave the trees, you would have much more privacy and all the other ecosystem services.

Thank you. Thank you. We'll go to Mark Weiner who will be followed by Craig for dice.

Thank you Mr. Mayor and council. I will be fairly short. I don't have a prepared speech, so I'm just going to share a couple of observations if that may or may not be useful to you. As I think several of, you know, my wife Sue and I live right across the street from this development on 130 twin Oaks. We've been here for 26 years, and I've been visiting in the neighborhood since I had friends from Los Gatos high school around 1980. so we know the neighborhood and. That fairly well, my observation is again very subjective and will be concise here. It was mentioned by Mr Foley as well as by Tom Dodge. This was the intent from the beginning of. You know, the acquisition of this property, and I have notes here from 1950 is 1956. this was the intention to do 14 homes. But again, just did my research here while I was waiting since I didn't prepare comments. 1975 actually Bob and Dorothy Dodge. Put this in working with the town into a land conservation agreement. You know, conservation resourcing in 1975. Do not develop this not a property taxes as a result, not develop this property. We moved in in 2000. I've been visiting since 1980. we moved in in 2000. And from that, until sadly, Mr Dodge is passing there didn't seem to me or us any intention to develop or do anything with that property from when he the hell did this in 1975. Bang things change and this thing came in in 2012, which we, as a neighborhood started addressing back that long before 2017. So, my simple observer, just my own personal observation from seeing it to share with you doesn't help the builders remedy or the restrictions you're under with our lovely state right now. That was never the or not the intention, at least in 75, maybe from 56. Not to 1975, that's marketing stuff and positioning a day job I have for 40 years. So I can tell what that is. I don't believe that has been the intention until again. There was a passing with the family. Merely an observation, so if that's of any use to, I just wanted to share that from personal perspective. Thank you. I'm assuming there's no questions, so thank you.

Thank you. We'll go to Craig for days. We'll be followed by Jill for days.

Hello. Um, we have submitted extensive written comments, identifying concerns with this project. Thank you for considering them tonight. I want to focus on 1 question whether the town can legally rely on unmitigated. Negative declaration when the administrative record contains substantial expert evidence that significant environmental impacts may occur. Under CEQA, the question is whether there's substantial evidence in the record supporting a fair argument that this project may have a significant environmental effect. It is an intentionally low bar. If there's a fair argument, an EIR is required. The evidence in this record supports a fair argument. The Regional Water Quality Control Board has raised concerns about impacts to the ephemeral drainage in the hydrology supporting its riparian vegetation. The Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance and Sierra Club have identified the potential for dewatering and permanent loss of biological habitat. Biologist Patrick has identified potentially sensitive valley oak in Sycamore communities and question whether those resources have been adequately evaluated. As downhill neighbors, we have shared evidence of the existing drainage issues and likelihood of the flooding of our property. The town's own 2018 EIR required proof of adequate water at least five years of monitoring, adaptive management, remedial measures if the restoration failed, and preservation in perpetuity, recognizing that replacing riparian habitat was uncertain and complex. The town's consultants may disagree, but under the fair argument standard, the disagreement does not eliminate the need for an EIR, it demonstrates it. This record has crossed CEQA's deliberately low threshold. An EIR does not mean the housing cannot be built on the property. It does not mean that this project can never be approved. It means that when substantial evidence raises serious environmental questions, those questions must be addressed before, not after the decisions made. Given the expert evidence already in this record, that is not an unreasonable request. It is what CEQA requires.

Thank you.

Thank you.

No questions. Thank you. Go to Jill Fordyce. will be followed by Grant Sedgwick.

Hi, everyone. Craig and I have lived at 191 Longmeadow Drive and raised our five children there since 1999. We love Surrey Farms and Los Gatos, and we love the hill. The stakes here are substantial. This project would transform a steep wooded hillside through extensive grading and the removal of approximately 223 protected trees. It would place 12 homes in a very high fire hazard severity zone with constrained access. It would affect drainage, wildlife habitat, and a documented ephemeral stream. The house on lot five is constructed directly on top of the stream. This nearly 41 foot house is also directly above our home. Yet the staff report concludes that every potentially significant environmental impact can be reduced to a less than significant level. That conclusion depends heavily on future engineering, future plans, construction best management practices, private maintenance of drainage facilities, and a tiny fraction of the requisite replacement trees. It assumes these measures will work without fully examining what happens if they don't. If engineered systems fail, if maintenance is inadequate, if replacement trees do not survive, or individual impacts interact in ways the MND is not considered, An EIR would require closer examination. It would analyze not only wildfire, drainage, grading, erosion, slope stability, tree removal, habitat loss, and emergency access, but also how these things all interact with each other. This is critical. This is an entire ecological system. Removing trees, grading steep slopes, and adding impervious surfaces will affect runoff, erosion, habitat, slope stability, and emergency access. Those impacts should not be considered in isolation. Most importantly, an EIR would require consideration of less environmentally damaging alternatives. Could the market rate homes be smaller? could the homes or roads be relocated to reduce grading could more mature trees be preserved could lot 5 be redesigned to avoid the ephemeral stream could different access or stormwater designs reduce the risks the mnd does not provide comparative analysis instead it asks this community to accept the proposed design based on assurances that every significant impact can be mitigated later Before this hillside is permanently transformed, the town and the public are entitled to reliable information, meaningful alternatives, enforceable medication, and public accountability. The Agoura Hills case, which is cited in our materials, stated, to date, there have been no successful restorations of oak woodlands. The extensive ecological network and soils that make a forest has thus far been impossible to recreate. In other words, there's no going back. We urge the Town Council to do everything within its power to understand and limit the environmental harm that will occur as a result of this project.

Thank you. Council Member Kudus.

Thank you. I know you're just speaking for yourself, but you seem to be very, very familiar with this proposal. And so there was a document, two documents submitted by Mr. Foley recently. And I wondered if I could walk through the Twin Oaks neighbors requests with you and see whether you agree with his response. So the first one is to extend the proposed berm all the way to the catch basin. Was that one of the requests? And he says they agree to that.

I believe it's today I received an email saying that they will agree to that.

okay so i can follow up with staff on that yeah yes the second one is to enlarge the open space area and or grant an easement to create space and screen our properties from new homes as discussed during our meeting and the response is we have done what we can on the open space easements given other constraints and happy to continue to make adjustments prior to the final map

I don't know of anything that's been done on that.

Okay. The third one is to plant two rows of large redwoods placed not on the property line, but back towards the houses with the requirement that they be maintained. And the response is HMAS has located three tall evergreens and a new vegetative screening fence per the exhibit.

Yes, I got this map yesterday. And the map, the way I see it, although I'm not very good at scale, it looks like the three large trees are behind the Maleko's home. And our home is just the lot five house. There's no screening.

The fourth one is to wash our windows every 30 days during construction. I agreed to do that. Yes. The fifth one is establish who is responsible for the expense and maintenance of the retention pond and who, what entity will be liable. And the response is that this is a part of the maintenance association and CC and ours. And these documents have been provided to the town. Additional edits within these documents to make sure the concerns are addressed can be handled prior to the recording.

I'm not sure I understand that response and I haven't read all of those documents and that's a primary concern of ours is if there is mud, water, flooding, damage in our backyard, who do we even call other than the town?

Are you familiar with a maintenance association?

I am not familiar with it.

The sixth one is who's responsible for the day-to-day operations and management of complaints during construction and who, what entity will be liable? And the response is this process is contained within the COAs and BMPs and it's straightforward.

I don't know what it says.

Seven is no construction over weekends. We agree to this.

Yes, they said that, although I noticed in the resolution, it does allow for Saturday construction.

Saturday, okay. And then, Number eight is additionally as discussed during our meeting, lot five is the largest and most imposing home of the development is built on top of the ephemeral stream and also looks directly into our yards. We request that lot five be eliminated, moved, reoriented and or reconfigured. And the response is we can continue to work on lot five design modifications through the building permit process, but nothing more can be done at this time as it relates to this application. yes i mean i take that as a no okay thank you um there were also some change uh proposed uh coa revisions i don't know if you've had a chance to review those um i can review those with staff if you haven't um number four number seven number nine being number 73. i am not familiar with those okay thank you thank you

Vice Mayor Risto.

Thank you, Ms. Fordyce. I've read all your input. I have a quick question for you because you live in Surrey Farms. Do you have an HOA there?

No.

Okay. And do you know about how many homes are in Surrey Farms?

I believe 70. 70? Okay.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

We'll move on to Grant Sedgwick. Grant will be followed by David Greenfield.

Thank you Mr. mayor members of council. Um, I might be 1 of a very few speakers on behalf of this project, although I have no involvement in it. Um, some, um, I live in Los Gatos, I know the developer or the proposed developer. Um, I once actually was part of a group that made an offer to purchase this property and among other reasons why we didn't proceed was. The very significant opposition, which was already on record to any development of the property and I wasn't interested in that kind of. Of a of a debate, I guess you'd call it. I just wanted to mention about this SB 330 or builder's remedy, which is really imperfect legislation with maybe a perfect purpose. And from my own experience, I had a. A property in Saratoga, which was zoned for 9 single family homes. and couldn't find the financing to develop it myself and sold it, or sold my interest to another company who was, this property was already zoned for nine, it's called the Marshall Lane property, it's near Marshall Lane, it's at the corner of Marshall Lane and Keto Road. The group that took it over has decided, notwithstanding the zoning already existed and the subdivision for nine homes, now has a project under the SB 330 rules for 110 townhouses. Now, That may or may not be a good use of that property. But the flip side of that coin is I think this is a very responsible proposal. 12 homes on something like 18 or more acres. I don't have any comment on the technicalities. Clearly they've been well debated and well studied about ephemeral streams and oak woodlands. I understand all those issues and they're all important. But this is a very responsible proposal, in my opinion, and I have no financial interest whatsoever. I just wanted to mention, I might be the only speaker in favor of the project that it has to do with what's reasonable. So that's all I, if I have any, if there are any questions, I'd be glad to try to address. I don't have any specific answers though. Yes. Council member.

You don't have to give me an answer. You can give me an opinion. So I want to thank you for your attendance tonight. And based on your background and experience, do you have any comments on the proposal to use a maintenance association versus an HOA? And I know you have experience with HOA.

Well, I do actually have some experience with an HOA. I don't even know both sides of the argument. It seems to me, as I think somebody had already answered, an HOA has more significant teeth in terms of enforcement, in terms of rules, and in terms of management than anything I know of in the way of a maintenance association. There are absolute penalties and... But it's the other good word anyway, penalties that can be used by the authority of the and it's elected board. If people breach the rules, I don't know that maintenance associations provide for that, but that's just. I'm not an attorney either just a developer.

I did ask just for your opinion, so thank you. Okay.

You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much. Move to David Greenfield, David will be followed by an.

Hi, Dave Greenfield, I live on 140 long meadow drive. Thank you counsel for listening to the input. I just want to add 1 more voice amplifying the concerns of the neighborhood requesting the. There have been multiple changes in terms of hardscape seem to seems to have been increased by over 50%. It affects the environmental impact and so simply saying a new report is needed is really important. I'd like to add my voice also the input of the neighborhood asking for a trail in the area as a actual trail, not too little or easements that are disconnected and go nowhere. And I'd like to add the 3rd voice on a 3rd point, which is the. Single entry on long meadow or twin oaks going along now and the impact for emergency vehicles. But also impact on the neighborhood and every vehicle coming up and down that street passing. My house along with every other house on long meadow, and a few houses on is not a 0 impact to the neighbors. And so if there's something that can be done to mitigate that in any way, it'd be greatly appreciated.

Thank you. Thank you. David, I have a question for you, sorry. I'll let you get halfway. So I'm very interested in the topic of the trail and the open space. Logistically, as a trail user, how would you, and you don't have to know the answer to this, but I've been contemplating this, how would you make the trail functional at a high level? It's not very much space, and it connects to two worlds. roadways I think sort of inevitably. And so I have the same interest that you do, but I can't conceptualize what a usable trail would look like.

A usable trail might be starting at the entrance going around the property and ending up at service or ending at the other area. So just going around and allowing the neighbors to enjoy the land that's left. I don't know exactly what it looks like, but it seems like a path that goes either entirely around the. Property or from 1 entrance to a different entrance would make for something that would be usable.

Okay, so so something going from Twin Oaks and Cerro Vista would be, you know, adequate?

Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Go to Ann.

Thank you very much. I wasn't intending to speak, but listening to everyone else, I felt like I needed to voice my opinion and concern. My name is Ann Ortmeier, and my husband is Jim Goodland, and we've lived at 173 Longmeadow Drive in the Surrey Farms neighborhood for about 20 years. The reason we like the neighborhood is because it did end in a cul-de-sac, and our three children who grew up and went to Los Gatos schools I felt really safe that there wouldn't be a lot of traffic on the street, you know, and indeed it was. Beautiful, wonderful neighborhood for the kids to grow up in. My concern with the development primarily, along with the other things that people have said, is fire safety and evacuation routes out of the neighborhood. If a fast moving fire were to suddenly come into the neighborhood over the hill, I believe, and I've always felt this way, that evacuation could be very difficult with only Longmeadow Road and Oldie Drive up above as evacuation routes, as well as one way down Kennedy. I'm terrified actually of the wildfires that have happened in other parts of California, the paradise of people not being able to get out. It concerns me that adding 12 houses that might need to use the same evacuation route would not be good. Thank you for your consideration.

And I have 1 question for you sorry. So, I think wildfire is a very legitimate and serious concern. What would fewer homes satisfy your concerns or what? What is it that would mitigate the concerns on wildfire?

Yeah, I'm not sure of the traffic routes, actually. I haven't studied it enough to know if there's going to be another way into that neighborhood on the other side. I think a traffic study, if it hasn't been done, it probably was way in the past. I don't know if it's been done now. But I think there needs to be different scenarios that say, well, how many cars are going to be on this road? How are they going to get out? Because it's happening. Global warming, the wildfires, they come very quickly.

Great, thank you very much. Okay, that is our last in-person speaker. So we'll conclude our in-person public comments and move on to Zoom. We have three hands raised on Zoom. If you'd like to speak on Zoom, please raise your hand. We'll begin with Dashiell Leeds. Dashiell will be followed by Shawnee.

Thank you. Hello, my name is Dashiell Leeds. I'm the conservation coordinator for the Sierra Club Loma Prieta chapter. Given the sensitive nature of this area, I'd like to reiterate the other comments that a full environmental impact report should have been conducted. At this hillside wildland urban interface site, lighting from residences, roads, and landscaping could affect habitat used by owls, bats, migrating birds, and nocturnal pollinators. Artificial nighttime lighting is known to affect wildlife behavior and ecological processes, and should have been analyzed and mitigated under CEQA. Our preference is for a full environmental impact report to be conducted. Should Los Gatos choose to proceed with this project, I do want to focus my comments tonight on some outdoor lighting mitigations that can be included. The current conditions of approval contain some good language, such as requiring that outdoor lighting be kept to a minimum and that exterior lighting shall not reflect or encroach onto adjacent properties, language which we recommend keeping. But there are two mitigation measures that should be added on top of that, which fill some gaps that are currently in the language. The first would be to establish an upper correlated color temperature limit of 2700 Kelvin. Currently, no color temperature limit exists in the conditions of approval. This is really important because the circadian rhythms of living beings are really sensitive to blue light in particular. So establishing an upper limit of 2700 Kelvin would significantly reduce the amount of blue light that is present in any outdoor lighting. 2700 Kelvin lighting is widely available and has been used in standards in jurisdictions like Palo Alto. Some have even gone further, like San Mateo County and their design review ordinance, which established a 2200 Kelvin limit for their coastal areas. Our second measure that we recommend is to establish a lighting curfew, after which outdoor lighting would need to be turned off or motion sensor operated. It could be written as follows, quote, non-essential lighting shall be controlled by timers or motion sensors to be extinguished by 11 PM or when people are no longer present in exterior areas, whichever is later, end quote. This measure would ensure that lighting is used when it's useful and not overly used when it isn't needed. This curfew language is flexible to ensure that people have lighting when they're outside and they need it, but also ensuring that lighting isn't unnecessarily used when people don't need it. In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that ultimately, I do believe it would be best for Los Gatos to conduct a full environmental impact report in this case. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. We'll move to Shani, who will be followed by Austin.

Good evening, Mayor Moore and council members. I'm Shannie Kleinhaus speaking for the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance. Together with the Sierra Club, we submitted comments on both MNDs and we submitted an additional letter before tonight's meeting. We're very saddened to see development proposed on land that is designated for resource preservation. This site contains hundreds of trees and an ephemeral creek. It's used by many species of animals. It's a functioning ecosystem and habitat, and it's located in a high fire hazard area. We believe that any I.R. is needed for any project in this important and sensitive landscape. The July MMRP mitigation plan states that the final mitigation amounts for impacts to the ephemeral creek will depend on impact determined during the design phase. This means that the ephemeral CRIC mitigation remains incomplete. You, the council, is asked to find the impact less than significant before the extent of the impact and the required mitigation are known. So it's important to recognize that the record does not demonstrate that this impact will be reduced below significance level. And this means that an EIR is needed. Following Dasha's comment on lighting, lighting is treated in the MNDs as a visual or aesthetic issue, but lighting, the most harmful impacts may be on wildlife and ecological function, its biological impacts. And additional protections are needed for the biological environment. Dash listed some of those, but potentially a new alternative analysis is needed in the EIR. In fact, there was an alternative to reduce impact to the riparian ecosystems, and it included fewer homes. But because the analysis did not consider lighting as a biological impact, it may not have done the full analysis that it needed, and it should be re-evaluated through that lens. So again, we do not agree that all impacts are mitigated to less than significant. Given the sensitivity of this location and the ecosystem, we believe a full EIR should have been prepared to further evaluate impacts and especially design alternatives that could reduce the risks to the neighbors and harm to birds and wildlife and to the ecological environment. We hope you request an EIR to be prepared. Thank you.

Thank you and now we'll go to Austin.

Good evening Council and staff. I'm calling in to express my full support for the adoption of staff recommendation and approval of the application. Los Gatos and indeed the surrounding region desperately needs more housing and it matters not if we're talking about luxury market rate or so-called affordable. Whatever arguments about environmental impact, fire, earthquake, flooding risk would also be true for the surrounding houses. And I don't believe anyone arguing against this development or advocating for tearing those houses down to restore habitat or ecosystems. They're just responding to the perverse incentives inherent to Prop 13, pulling up the ladder to ensure their property values remain high in Los Gatos, unaffordable for generations to come. And honestly, who cares about the HOA versus maintenance association debate? Let the residents decide for themselves. it need not be permanent or deliberated on by outsiders if they don't like the hoa they can dissolve it and replace it with the maintenance association please do the right thing skip the full eir approve the application without condition and build more housing thank you thank you

Okay, that was our final commenter. So I will turn back to the applicant team for any closing comments and additional questions from council.

Thank you Mr. just a few things to kind of point out based on what we heard. Thanks to all the comments from the neighbors. I'm sure we're going to talk more about the maintenance association. It's very much the same thing. I think the attorneys present can help make the clarifications, but if you look at. Or had the time to read through the CC and ours, the bylaws, all the. The draft proposed documents that have been available for a year or more with the project. You'd see that all of that has all the typical provisions that you would find in the same governing documents for an. So, there's plenty of obligation enforcement. And as I said before, we can kind of. Work on that up to recording if there are specifics that any individual things, you know, need are missing, you know, if they had looked through that and identified that now we can talk about it now, but it doesn't sound like anybody look through any of those draft documents that have been available publicly. The question on the square footage that was the answer to planning commission. I think that's in the record, but we have our consultants here. If we need to discuss that again, it was. Corrected and rainy's had access to everything through the 6 submittals, accurate information and updates as they occurred through those submittals. The drainage issue we talked about quite a bit. This is now an engineered site. It's going to be managed by a new engineered system. It should be far better than the condition that's out there now, which is. Just take it as it comes on the hillside. I don't think there's any evidence about. The impacted roads out in that area that that was stated we had, um, the traffic was looked at, uh, by Mike Roman and the whole team there, um, there might be off site mitigations, but those can have. Benefit to everywhere doesn't necessarily mean that if we're helping out with that, it's an identified mitigation that's going to help traffic in a lot of areas, including the project site itself. Even though it might be not right at the site. I don't know about a trail at the low end of the property where we've got the neighbors that we're trying to work very carefully with. Also on the Hillbrook side, I don't think they want a trail going near the school. I thought the trail alignment was really good to be able to pick up Twin Oaks, Brook Acres, and potentially connect to other trail projects that might be occurring in the hills later. I think a trail kind of up and meandering through the middle of the project is kind of a trail to nowhere and wouldn't get you anything. The resource conference conservation question goes back a long ways at the time that they put the property into the Williamson act. That was the only zoning available. It wasn't because it was intended to be. A conservancy action is because at the time. When they were doing the Williamson act, I don't think there was an Ag zoning or anything in Los Gatos. So they defaulted to the closest zoning that they could get. So the argument that the Dodge family was intending on conservation on the property is inaccurate. It was due to the Williamson act maneuver. Thank you for the suggestion that Joel made about the BMP land. We think that's a good solution. If that's something that's concerning for everybody.

Thank you. Councilmember Redding. Could you address the screening behind lot number five? I think there was a comment that they're not getting screening behind lot number five.

Yeah, and we can appreciate that and also the timing of our kind of back and forth responses, uh, with the neighbors that we've been trying to engage with, uh. To be clear, we did trade some emails and it's email and who knows and who has time to read water when it got read and some of the items. we right away responded to and other ones we were working on more as it relates to the exhibit and the specifics for as far as like HMH is concerned, and particularly your question on screening, the species, the location, the constraints, because there's a public utility easement that goes through there, the berm that we're trying to design through there. So some of them took a little bit longer than others. And unfortunately, yeah, that ended up being last week or early this week or today. But some of the items actually had been- Looks like the clerk might have, Something related to this, if you have the exhibit, you can put it up and then we also have, I believe we have the landscape architect available. Um. Yeah, but so, yeah, the request that's great. So it started looks like 1 of the layers is kind of off there that. Full trap is away underneath there. That's better. So, we're trying to thread the needle here and again, this is a, we're in a planning stage document. I mean, these. There's opportunities to make revisions to this over time. Anyway, those 3 tall evergreen trees were what we intended to be the biggest and best that we could do. I don't know as it relates to the property line of the 2 neighbors on plan view West there, where they actually line up. And then so, in addition to that, on the plan backyard area, as you can see, we depicted the screening on the. Defense with landscaping to try to pick up at least a buffer over all of that for whatever neighbors are on either side. we continue to want to work with whatever they want to look at right so this time we're just trying to put together some exhibits to say hey let's work on this here's some suggestions and we'll do what we can to be sensitive to them and so what you're suggesting here is something that runs along the entire back near the back edge of lot five that looks like about a six foot fence with

Things growing on it, and then some trees that are taller than it.

Yeah. And that's on a step stepped up on a retaining wall already. So that that's an example image, but the way that it that where it would be installed would be already on a retaining wall. And I'm not sure the elevation of the retaining wall, but it's higher up. So it would provide. A good amount of screening because we can't fit in the tall mature trees in between the easement areas and where the backyard backyard area is. Kind of the brownish area there. So that's why we move the trees to the. Upper part of the plan there, and then put the screening in on the fence. Okay. Thank you.

Council member.

Thank you. I wanted to talk about the trail for a minute. Um, I believe that you've asked for that a waiver and exception to not actually construct the trail, but instead to just provide an easement. Is that correct? Correct. And what was the basis for that cost?

Um, the project is. Over budget, and we're looking at, you know, how we can continue along and the notion of trying to construct that design permit. You know, even the easements that we've already agreed to, which we at 1st, put in the bundle of. We'd like to not and use a waiver and exemption for that has a cost to it that we're going to take on. now the actual construction of it i think you know in the discussions that i've had with most of you has come up i've thought a lot about it i mean i think it's got to be approaching seven figures to be able to actually design construct and install a trail all along there grade and everything else probably tree removal i don't know i have not built a trail but um that's that's a big issue

So if I could, I guess the grounds were the cost and that would make the project infeasible. What is your best estimate of the cost? I mean, it would seem if you're going to Say that the cost makes it infeasible. You need to. Say, have some idea about what it's going to cost.

Well, I could, but it's everything at this point, because the project is already over budget. So if it cost 1 dollar, maybe the 1 dollar puts it over the budget. But you're I know what you're asking and it's hard to quantify because I haven't built a trail. But as I said, a moment ago. I do think it's close to seven figures when it comes to permitting, design, easements, construction, tree removal, tree relocation, whatever it happens to be up there, it's an undertaking. So it's more for an agency Like, they've discussed, and which was a great recommendation from the planning commission that wants to spend money on these types of things that can come in and support the effort where we can provide the container to do it where otherwise. We still feel we have the option to not. I think that we've come a long way to go ahead and provide all the easement area and spend the dollars on the engineering and the plots and everything that it's going to take to put easements across all of those parcels.

So I just wanted to follow up on a couple of points related to that. It seems as though one of the issues with the trail that you've proposed or the easement is that it doesn't connect to Cerro Vista. Do you have an idea or solution and we might wanna actually put up the site map that shows that portion of where that construction ties into Cerro Vista. I had a question about the supposed easement there. At any rate, do you have an idea about the solution for making that connection

If you scroll the map, it'll show the green. Yep. And then going to the, pulling it over to the left, or the cursor on the bottom to the right. Yeah, I think all the way. Thank you.

I think if you go further, it actually calls the easement out.

Yep.

Okay, so I'm talking about the area above that green on the right hand side of the diagram.

Yeah, this area, there's an existing easement for the benefit of the town. Through that hourglass shape between the property line and the edge back of curve of Sarah Vista that we've been debating for a while. Um, so our position as it relates to connecting to the trail is that should be available for connectivity. Um. We, we had to purchase a separate. He's meant for that driveway there because. We're not successful in convincing. The town that that should be available for our use where, in 2018, a different group of folks did think that that was available for our use. Um. So, I mean, as it relates to the trail, I, I would certainly think something that the town has easement over for the benefit of the public should be utilized for connectivity.

Okay, and then I guess the last thing on this is the cost and getting this trail actually built and connected. Would you be open to a condition that I don't think is in there now that says applicant agrees to assist in the process of designing and developing trail concurrently with housing development? And that might involve, you know, going to a nonprofit or foundation dedicated to providing open space access.

Yeah, that's something we could take on and make that a part of it.

Okay, that's all I have on the trail.

I have some other yeah, and i'll just continue on the trail briefly. Um, so my main concern is the I understand we have the the easement the town's easement. Um that connects the open space to the lot 10 driveway But it only connects it to the lot 10 driveway um, and so are it how what sort of control do you have over the the land beyond that i mean because to me it would seem if you just had you know 10 feet to the if you're looking at the map to the right of the driveway that would connect the trail to cerro vista um but otherwise it would seem that there would need to be some sort of condition that that lot 10 here the homeowner permits people using their land to get in and out of the trail. How are you thinking about actually connecting the trail?

So I guess let me see if I can explain this or follow it. So each of the lots that have The trail and the open space easement, which are probably 2 easements, but almost identical. They're going to have to be easements for public access because that's the trail. So that gets you to the property line at the property line. The town has an easement. Between the property line. And the back of the curb to the public right away, so our suggestion is use that. To connect not through the new. Easement that we purchased, it's a private easement for the driveway to lot 10. Okay, I know what you mean, but I think it's much better the way it's located because the lot 10 driveways way down plan South or whatever. sort of the plan view direction, not what the real direction is, versus if you go up there and you drive up on service in C, I think it's a much better kind of drive up and there's like kind of a flatter or nicer land connection up there yeah where that is where that triangle piece is above the green where it makes a lot more sense to i don't know you can maybe even put a parking space there or something like that and like worcester park or to pull in there and get onto your trail access point okay so everybody could walk down to the neighborhood if that's what everybody wants yeah it looks like staff has an answer on this but just while i have you on this um and then on the other side on the twin oak side um the

easement connects to the emergency access easement, and you would be improving that to be able to be, the developer would, no matter what, improve that for use.

The emergency, oh yeah, I think that would be, I don't know if we have a section on that anywhere in there.

I'm sure you do.

Typical, yeah.

Okay. Gabrielle looks like you had Oh, I did.

I wanted to give Public Works an opportunity to describe the nature. My understanding, it's an offer of dedication to the town at this point, but Public Works has more information.

Okay, James Watson, senior engineer, land development. It actually isn't an easement. The town has it was as Gabrielle mentioned an offer of dedication for the town if they were going to construct a through away. So that would need to construct an offer through away. But this project did not do that. And that's why they were unable to use it for access to lot 10. So there is an easement offer of dedication, but it's never been accepted. So there is no easement.

And so if this project were to be approved, the developer would offer the dedication of the easement to the town and the town would have the option to, no.

The developer does not own that parcel. That parcel is owned by a separate property owner. So, the, the parcel that's off Sarah Vista that has that weird triangle shape that looks like it might be town owned, but it's not an entire parcel is a private parcel that Mr fully approach to purchase the, the easement that they did get in order to use their land to cross their land to provide access to a lot 10.

Okay, that was my understanding is that that triangle was not owned by the town of Los Gatos, but so I'm the, the road, the thing that is labeled road easement. Um, what is the current status of it? It's on the map right there that connects between the green to lot tens driveway. What is the status of that land?

If I'm looking at the, there's a 20, you know, the developer put on the plans, the 20 foot 26 foot access easement and mentioned the document number. That's the 1 that Mr fully acquired. Okay, so yeah, please, Aaron.

Thank you, Aaron Walters. The Planning Commission did add a condition of approval that would extend that green open space on lot 10, take it over towards the private road for lot 10. And then there was that additional condition that said that for the developer in good faith to coordinate and try to get an easement with the private property for the folks that own the adjacent private property.

Okay, that makes sense. That's very helpful. Thank you. And so for our purposes, the green now extends to the driveway.

That is correct.

Great. Thank you. And then last question on this. If those negotiations fail for whatever reason, you can't acquire the property, would you be open to using the driveway as an access point on lot 10?

i think we need to think about that i think 26 feet seems to be able to accommodate it it's just we have to think about what other impacts there are i mean what kind of say in theory i think so in theory i think there's a number of solutions here i know we haven't studied it the right way and james reminded me about that and you know can the sound the town just go and accept the dedication then what does that mean and then if it's for throughway does that mean it's a vehicular throughway could it be pedestrian throughway because now we do have a through way all the way down to the other side. So maybe you can use it, but I don't think we're gonna solve that sitting here. Um, but I think there's a solution up there to getting that figured out.

Okay. And I, I would just say that's important to me because if for whatever reason the, you know, you as the developer are not able to, get an easement, then it truly is a trail to nowhere. It ends in this person's driveway 10 feet from Cerro Vista, and that would make the trail pointless.

Defeats the purpose for everything.

OK.

Thank you.

To the chair?

James, yeah. Maybe a saving grace there is a that was dedicated when they created the service to area. A 10 foot of 11 foot public utility easement that was dedicated during the service to subdivision that does connect service to into the property. Uh, that I was unable to find it in the brief minutes before this meeting, but, uh, the may allow and, um, a dual use if it doesn't impede the use for the utility. So there is a potential that that could be used for a trail connection point to Sarah Vista. Thank you.

I'd like to add that if that is possible, the way James is describing it, this current development does not show a public trail easement that would connect to that existing PUE.

Okay, thank you.

I was gonna say this is really important because it is very frustrating to hit trails to nowhere. And all over this town, we have cul-de-sacs where we really, if we had been planning in the future, should have had bike and pad access through there. We've got so many areas where people could get out of their cars, walk someplace, or get someplace easily, and they're cut off all over the place. So I wanna make sure that doesn't happen. This may not be a nature trail for hiking, but I imagine people that live on any of those roads, can connect easily, and I've come across a lot of locked gates in my hiking. So I think somehow, I don't know how we'll get the conditions of approval, but I think we need to make sure that one way or another, that there's not a gate there, that the owner can't block off the driveway if that's the only way through, or the public utility doesn't fence it off or something. So thank you.

Council Member Hudtis. On a different topic, condition number seven, which has to do with the timing of construction and the timing related to the construction of the BMP units. Could you explain what your request or your revision is?

Yeah, I think if you look at seven and I think it's seventy eight, which has to do with final map, um, it looks like they're the, it's attempting to require the below market price units to just to be built all at once. And then there's some additional work, including, um, grading and paving, uh, just the general site improvements and the offsite improvements and stuff. And it all together appears to be front loading the project with a lot of cost. Before we get to a point where I think, well, in the one condition 70, it's the final map. So, I mean, in order to be able to. Developer or sell lots typically in the housing projects, especially luxury of this nature when they're. Expensive you like to kind of phase it and sequence it. You don't go build. 9, 8 to 10Million dollar homes all at 1 time. Right? So. It'd be better if we could phase it in a way where we tie the. The release or the certificate of occupancy for the units to be sold for sale. Commensurate with building each of the so that was the suggestion and the desk item was to say, okay, if we're going to design and plan and build and get a CFO for 1, then can we equate that to also concurrently building 3 lots. That also has to do with a lot of outside pressures. What could be for project financing the economy, the market, you know, what happens there? And then if we, when we choose to move forward and make the submittals for the following lots, we would also have the next to be MP in the sequence be built and then triggered to the point where, when that 1 becomes available, then the next 3 homes could become available for the market, which seems to be a better cadence for just the project overall and more typical with what we find in other jurisdictions.

I had another question about the choice of building to the center of the road rather than making those streets a common area, which is what I'm much more experienced with seeing private roads through a development that has multiple homes treated as a common area and then treated under the auspices of an HOA. What how does that actually work if each property owner owns to the middle of the street? Does that mean that, you know, whatever time down down down the road? Will each homeowner. Um, repair just their part of it and there'll be like a line down around. The homeowners portion, how does that actually work?

It's governed by the maintenance association as a whole. So, yeah, you wouldn't have a patchwork road. Of I just chose to improve my front edge, you know, repave it versus somebody else. So, the underlying goes out to the middle of the road, but then within. Each each parcel is a member of the maintenance association and is bound by that through the recorded on the property that they have to abide by what the maintenance association. Votes on or stipulates as a body as far as upkeep and repair, or, you know, prohibited rights to go paint my road yellow. Great. So so that's all governed through that process. Very similar to the just there is no commonly owned parcel. Everybody owns. All of their property to their property line.

And maybe you could just explain why it was done this way rather than what I think is typical and that's to have commonly owned roads.

I think we're finding it more typical in development these days to do it this way. And it seems to take a little bit of a level of complexity out of it and just eliminate all commonly owned parcels and property. For future and everything else. I mean, there's been a lot of debate and discussion about this usually on the other side about the enforcement and the obligations. But what happens if it if it does break down in the future, you still have an underlying property owner that owns everything. And it has the responsibility rather than some common property that. May not ever get addressed if. something happens in the future. So we think it's a cleaner way.

One more question about this. And because this is a high fire hazard zone, and by the way, the distinction between very high and high, we really don't distinguish in terms of the requirements here. They still have the same building requirements. How will this address and how will vegetation management be addressed on this road? We have a real problem with vegetation management, vegetation being the major safety issue with wildfire evacuation. We have a major issue with that on private roads. who will be responsible for adequate vegetation management in this hazard zone?

I believe it's in there. I was gonna see if I could look at my version of the draft COAs, but I mean, I would look at it all the same way, right? There's a CCNRs recorded on the property that establishes, call it the association for everything. They have bylaws. Establishes which properties participate in which way it would be all of them. And then within that. Actually, I'm sorry, I think it was in the as separate documentation, but in the end, it ends up being 1 package and whether they're all separately recorded documents or their exhibits to 1 CC and ours. I don't know that yet, but. it outlined the Road Maintenance Association, the Stormwater Treatment Facility. So it's anything that needs to be governed in that way. And if there's inadequacies within that, we're happy to add The maintenance and, you know, um, defensible space or whatever it is that you're concerned with. I think generally it's all going to be subject to. The town code requirements on maintenance and defensible space that we have in place town wide. Just like any other residents.

Thank you. Council Member Rennie? Okay, thank you, Mayor. Do you have any issue with the two mitigations requested by the Sierra Club? I guess those would end up in terms of approval. There was one that the lighting temperature be below 2700 Kelvin, and the second one was lighting would be on timers or motion sensors set to 11 or until people are not present.

I don't really have any experience. The way that you spoke and they spoke, it seems okay, but I really couldn't tell you if that's like an onerous or objectionable thing or costly to put on the project. We can discuss it and we'll see if anybody on the team here has an opinion on that. I would wager to say it's probably fine and typical and what they're expecting elsewhere, but we just kind of need to find out a little bit more about that.

Okay. Thank you.

Vice Mayor Rizzo.

Thank you. Yeah, to follow on. I mean, that doesn't seem really onerous to me. Sometimes people, for whatever reason, like really bright lights. And I can certainly look across the valley and see homes that are lit up like Christmas trees. And that is really in opposition to living in a natural area. So I think that is a reasonable request for the temperature. And then the other thing is with the lighting curfew, certainly in environmentally sensitive areas we don't do this in los gatos and i would like to see us get there with the hillside but they've certainly stayed on beaches in florida where anybody facing the beach has to have you know red lights basically and the lights have to be out of 10 for turtle migration and so i think given um if this project went forward, giving people the privilege of being able to live in this wooded area, there should be some mandatory concession to where they're living and treading more lightly. So I think I would like to see that accepted.

We're open to being friendly in that way. And I think if you know more than I do a little bit about what that was, and it's not an onerous requirement, I think there's no problem complying with that.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, I think those are all of our questions. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, yep.

Sorry, I'm sorry 1 more question. I mean, I think you and I discussed it and you were getting some information back to me, but given that. Certainly the have no guest parking at all. I wanted to really ensure through you and through town staff that there is street parking. That the road is wide enough and that there is parking on the street because. I know traversing some of the mountain roads around here, there's lawn services, there's delivery, there's guests, and people often park on streets where there's no parking, and that could be a fire hazard.

I was looking at that section. I think that the road is 26 feet with six-foot aprons on either side. Do you know? Yeah.

Do we know what's mandated by fire for a roadway with, just in general, without parking on it? And can you describe to me what an apron is?

Just like as the AC section or whatever stops, then I think it's, I don't know what we call it, if it's DG or what it just ends up being, like it's just a shoulder area, like an unimproved.

Okay, so it's paved, 26 feet wide, and then six more feet, which?

I think on either side of 24, and then what?

Does staff have information on that?

This is pretty important.

There's no parking on the street.

There's no parking allowed on the street?

There's no parking on the street.

So I'm having a real problem with the fact that there's going to be three houses at the bottom that don't have big driveways, only have garage parking, and are not supposed to ever have anybody come to their house by car?

I don't know the design of the street as I see it looks like you could park on the side of the street, but that's just, I don't know if the town is going to put no parking signs up or what? I don't know.

Okay. If the developer were to improve the aprons, would that be considered parking? Could it create parking?

The driveway aprons?

Yeah, whatever they're referring, they're referring to six feet on either side.

So it looks like there's 11 foot PUE on either side. That doesn't really tell you what is within that or how it's improved. Two foot bench. I don't know. There's a section here on one of them.

I mean, to be clear, I'm not all about mandating extra parking when it's not needed, but if there's no parking on the street and there's no guest parking on the property, that feels like a serious oversight. I don't know if the road can have wider sections. I mean, it's impossible.

A fairly wide road. I mean, it's 24-12. I'm just thinking about what the requirements were for FD. I feel like that they're much narrower than that in general.

All right. I guess we'll get back to staff with that. But right now, there's not any planned street parking, it sounds like.

Councilmember Redding? So looking at the map, one looks like it has an opportunity. We talked about it having a larger yard and the other ones don't have it. Rather than dedicating that to that BMR, make it common space for all the BMRs and put some extra parking there. Would that be possible?

I like the theory of it. I just don't know what the grade is like there. And I think there's like a bioswale planned in that area and stuff like that. I see the bioswale.

So maybe to the left of the bioswale, that um and again don't don't attach it to one we're all worried about number one having more land to take care of make it all three of theirs kind of thing and you could add a little parking left of the swale

We can take a look at the plans here and see kind of what the intent was through there. But I mean, yeah, open to suggestion on that, if that's a better purpose and there's a way to accomplish that via a pop out or whatever on the road design to put some of that there. I know we've seen that condition in other places. Other places I usually see it empty.

Yeah, with that larger lot, is there the possibility, have you explored the possibility of an ADU or SB9 unit on that larger lot?

On the lot that's attached to lot one? Yes. No, we haven't contemplated anything like that because that's a BMP designated lot. I don't know if that's possible.

I have a question for staff on that, so.

Okay, any more questions for the developer? Seeing none, I will close public comment. Thank you all very much.

Thank you.

Yeah, so unless there are any burning questions, we've been going for about two and a half hours, so we'll take a 10-ish minute break. We'll do a 12-minute break to 7.35 and come back then. All right. Good evening. Everyone. Um, we are reconvening this meeting of the low scatters town council. Um, and so we've concluded our, uh, public comment portion of this meeting. And so now we will get into more staff questions and deliberations, um, traditionally, um, or, or. YOU KNOW, STARTING THIS YEAR WE STARTED A NEW PROCESS WHERE WE MAKE A MOTION BEFORE WE START TALKING. BUT IT SOUNDS LIKE THERE ARE STILL MORE QUESTIONS FROM THE COUNCIL. SO WE'LL GET THROUGH SOME OF THOSE QUESTIONS AND THEN WORK TOWARDS A MOTION.

COUNCILMEMBER RANNEY. SO I'M GOING TO ASK THIS QUESTION SINCE THE TOWN MANAGER IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROOM AND HE PROBABLY CAN'T THROW SOMETHING AT ME. that the the question is why couldn't this be a landscape in lighting district where that town takes over you know we already have a mechanism in place where we assess properties in a light landscape in lighting district and then you know in those cases we take care of the landscape and so forth but The town is already going to have to do some inspections to make sure that the whole hydrology system is taken care of properly. We're going to have to check the incisions on the ephemeral stream. So there's a lot of inspections we have to do. I realize we don't usually do road maintenance, but the town is going to get a better deal probably from road maintenance contractors. And if we are cost recovery on it, then it shouldn't cost the town anything. It's just one more district. So it seems like there's synergy there instead of is it an HOA which they don't really want? Is it some kind of maintenance something if they instead was a landscape and lighting district like we already have a process for it might solve everything and there's that synergy of we need to be doing the inspecting anyway. Please.

I understand that perspective, but what we have here is private responsibility and under a maintenance agreement or HOA, it falls to the private property owners. I think the concern with those two options is ensuring enforceability, the resources are there and not having to deal with 12 separate property owners. Since the obligation that occurs across the parcels, the obligation that's on each specific parcel is the responsibility of that parcel owner. If we move to an LLD, that responsibility to take care of that now would fall on the town. So any exposure, any failure still is on the town. So while I understand that the town can more properly maintain it, if we just take responsibility for it, does the town really want to take a private interest that's a private entity's responsibility for which we can tighten the language to make sure it's enforceable against them? Or do we want to take it as a public obligation? My recommendation is not to take another public obligation but to allow staff to re-look at the language of the conditions based on the comments presented here today and to determine is there any tweaks that need to occur either on the conditions or on any maintenance agreements or subdivision improvement act agreements. And so that's why I asked when he was far away.

So if I could switch to another subject, I think there's probably going to be lots of questions. If I could start with a couple of the EIR ones. This is probably for the consultant, but Several things that were said that don't match completely with my understanding of the EIR. Several people have said it's required that we do an ER instead of an MND. And the use of the statement was there's a significant effect we must do an EIR. And my understanding was We must do an EIR if we can't mitigate the effects. And so in that case, I don't think those statements were correct. Am I correct in my understanding, and are we able to mitigate all the effects?

Thank you, Council Member. Again, Nick Papani with Rainey. I appreciate the question because there is a misrepresentation of when an EIR is required. I've heard some of those statements tonight. And the statement is that if there's a substantial evidence supporting a fair argument that a significant impact could result in EIRs required. That's not true. If there's substantial evidence supporting a fair argument that a significant impact would remain even after the mitigation in the document, then an EIR should be required. I would submit that I don't find any substantial evidence that there would be a remaining significant impact after the mitigation. We can talk through any example. I'd be happy to do that. I've heard wildfire evacuation. I'm prepared to respond to that in terms of addressing that. So yes, the requirement would be only if there's substantial evidence supporting for argument that even after mitigation and that the NER would be required. And I don't believe that's the case and happy to talk through any examples.

One other thing sort of off from the examples is it was it was suggested that it's not really the ephemeral stream issues not really mitigated because we have to have a permit in order to mitigate it and that we should get permits first but I think I've seen in the planning commission transcript that they won't even give us a permit until the EIR document or the mitigated neg deck, the CEQA doc of whichever one it is, is done. So that's impossible to go that way. Do you speak to that?

Sure, and if we want to get in more detail, Rick Hopkins, principal of Live Oak Associates, is with us here tonight. He was our biological consultant for the proposed project review. But that's correct. So if the project were to be approved, then the town would file a notice of determination with the county clerk's office. And that is something that's required by the regional board before they would issue a permit for the proposed project.

And then the other sort of glaring area was in the middle of it, there was, I guess you did a document and then we came back a few months later and the stream had gotten larger or something or now we've figured out it's on lot five. No, that's not what it was. It was the surface area mistake, which is part of the hydrology calculations, so maybe this isn't for you, maybe this is for the, I'm not sure, the hydrology people. The question is when we discovered we had the wrong surface area, did we redo the calculations to make sure that we have an adequate hydrology system?

Do you want us to start with that? I'm going to have my colleague, Angela DeRosa, our division manager, address that. And then if staff wants to supplement, we can do that.

Thanks, Nick. Good evening, Mayor, Council Members, Angela DeRosa with Rainy Planning and Management. Yeah, so it was identified after the original ISMND was circulated that there was a calculation error in the impervious surface area. And that was actually corrected through an errata sheet before the first Planning Commission meeting. So, when we needed to do the recirculated, those revisions that were included in the sheet were pulled into the recirculated and essentially what is stated in the recirculated is that. All of the plans, calculations, and supporting documents associated with that impervious surface area were corrected and the accurate information is included in the recirculated ISMND. Public Works did review those updated calculations and reports and confirmed that it did meet their requirements.

And maybe a related question, one more, and then I'll let some other council members have a chance. So the developer is offering a backup berm on the side of the property in case this hydrology system fails. Is it your opinion that this backup berm is needed?

Hot potato. James Watson, Public Works. The berm itself, I've not seen a hydrology report that shows a flood elevation that would require the berm or not require the berm. So I'm not prepared to answer about the effectiveness of it, having not seen any flood-related documentation.

But the berm was not part of the hydrology solution, correct?

So, yeah, it wasn't part of the hydrology solution. We're in the hydrology solution. We're looking to size things for water treatment and also for hydraulic modification to make sure that the site doesn't exceed the Pre development flow rates coming off of the site. So, the burn wasn't really considered part of that. It's more of the sizing of the basins, the sizing of the pipes and the hydrology running through those systems.

And so you say we want to make sure we're because of the extra impervious areas that we want to get back to the same amount flowing off. But we had before water flowing into the neighbor's yards. And I think one neighbor talked about water sitting in his yard and probably more than one neighbor. So is that the hydrology system that's been designed going to still allow water to flow into the neighbors yards are we solving that problem.

Well, if they put a berm in the path of that water, then that should resolve the issue. Unless if it's a groundwater elevation issue, which I haven't seen the geotechnical report identify the groundwater that high in that area. So I suspect the berm itself would prevent water from flowing into the neighbor's property.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Hudas.

Thank you. I have a number of questions that may not have been addressed in the staff report regarding the environmental work that's been done. I wanted to come back to a point that Council Member Rennie raised about the paved and roof surface area of the project. And I understand that there's some correction that was made, but I want to specifically address the point that was raised by Mr. Maleko. His point was the paved and roof surface of this project grew by 56% between the original filing and the updated version. from 62,000 to 97,000 square feet. Every technical study submitted, the drainage models, soil stability, air quality was calculated using the smaller original number. Is this true? And if it is true that it grew, why are these analyses still valid?

Angela Durosa with Rainey again. Again, just to clarify, the amount of impervious surface area didn't increase. There was just a mistake in the calculation. So it wasn't like it started at this and became this. There was just... A miscalculation in the amount that was anticipated as far as the rest of the analysis, the analysis throughout the is not. Generally based on the impervious surface area, rather the majority of the analysis is primarily based on the overall development area that disturbance area. The number of trips, for example, the anticipated population. Specifically for air quality, the modeling for construction was based on the overall disturbance area. Hauling trucks based on the amount of soil import export anticipated. Which would not be affected by the imperfect impervious surface area. The operational air quality modeling is primarily based on the land use type, the number of units, vehicle trips, similar for noise analysis. So really the only environmental analysis that was based on the impervious surface area was for the hydrology and water quality analysis. And again, those analyses were updated for the actual impervious surface area expected.

And I just want to go back to what I asked, which is, did the report say 62,000 and then it was updated to 97,000?

Yes, that's correct. And those revisions are shown in the recirculated ISMND.

And the drainage model, soil stability model, were they based on which number finally?

The hydrology analysis was based on the amount of impervious surface area.

Of 97,000?

Sorry, the higher amount of impervious surface area.

97,000 square feet?

Correct.

Okay. I did have a number of other questions about EIR, mostly referring to the letter that we received. Let's see, this letter from one of the speakers, Mr. Sherbeck, are you familiar with that letter? Yes. Have those issues been addressed in writing?

Yes, they have.

Where in the document have they been addressed?

In their respective sections in the initial study based on appendix G of the sequel guidelines. So the number one would be in the wildfire section section, twenty VMT would be in transportation section. Air quality is in the air quality section and biological resources and hydrology. So, so forth. But if you have any specific questions about the comments, I can certainly address those.

I'd like to walk through the, I believe, five areas that he pointed out. The first one is wildfire evacuation hazard. And are you familiar with the recent guidance from the Attorney General about analyzing and mitigating wildfire impacts of development projects under CEQA?

Yes.

And in that document, there's an interesting, well, there's quite a bit in it. One of the statements in here, it says an EIR that boldly concludes that certain project design features or mitigation measures will reduce or eliminate all potential wildfire risks without first describing those risks fails to fully analyze the project's impacts. Then it says compressing the analysis of the impact and mitigation deprives decision makers of a full description of the project's adverse impacts And then it goes on to say that the project EIR should first analyze the increased wildfire risks and evacuation impacts and then consider feasible mitigation and alternatives to avoid or reduce those impacts. I'm very interested in whether evacuation impacts were analyzed here.

Yes, they were council member, though not to that degree. I would submit to you that that guidance is not to be applied to every single project. I've never seen any jurisdiction apply that guidance to every project in a very high or high fire hazard severity zone. i think there's there should be a test of reasonableness to requiring that level of modeling which can exceed 50 to 60 000 to do traffic modeling to assess the amount of increased evacuation time that would result from additional trips on the network the case of the proposed project we have 12 units here most of the wildfire evacuation studies assume one to two vehicles per house One of the commenters made the statement of 113 trips for evidence that this project's gonna gridlock the street network. That is an estimate of total daily trips. Clearly there wouldn't be 113 trips instantaneously evacuating from the project site in the event of a wildfire. The estimated number of trips that would be evacuated from this site would be 21 vehicles if we assumed about 1.75 vehicles per house. So I think there's a reasonableness that 20 additional vehicles having to evacuate this area is not going to gridlock the street system. It's not going to impede emergency vehicles from being able to access. So requiring wildfire modeling in a very sophisticated manner doesn't really seem warranted in my professional opinion here based on the size of the project.

Okay, so no wildfire evacuation traffic study was done. Essentially, because it would be too expensive to do it.

No, that's not what I said, because this project is a very small scale project and would generate 21 trips instantaneously in evacuation. And we didn't feel on our professional opinion that that merited, um, sophisticated traffic evacuation modeling.

Okay, and would you agree that wildfire evacuation hazard is an area that could impact public health and safety?

If it was an issue, absolutely.

Okay, I wanted to move on to another one, the air quality restrictions. And again, would you agree that that area could impact public health and safety?

Adverse air quality could, but that was not a finding of this analysis. The project would not result in adverse air quality effects based on comparison to the air districts thresholds. The projects emissions are below the air districts thresholds.

And the point that was raised in the letter was about the developer's construction schedule. And I guess saying the town cannot guarantee continuous daily monitoring of the developer's construction schedule over the two year build out. So is there any way for that to be legally enforceable?

Sure, if I may, Council Member, I'm gonna have Angela DeRosa assist.

Hi, Angela DeRosa with Rainy again. Yeah, the mitigation measure for air quality is related to construction emissions in particular. There was an impact identified when on-site construction would occur simultaneously with the off-site construction of the sidewalk paving off-site. So the mitigation was either to disallow or restrict those two components from occurring at the same time or for the offsite construction improvements to use tier four engines only. As far as enforcement, The mitigation measure states that the applicant is required to put a note with these restrictions on the improvement plans and the construction contractor would be required to comply with those. Restrictions. So the contractor would be in charge of enforcing the mitigation. The requirement would be clearly noted on the project plans. CEQA assumes compliance with the laws, so assuming otherwise would be considered speculative.

Okay, I have one last one that I think would be good to get on the record, and that's number five in this letter, which is hydrology and structural stability for lot five. This, again, would you agree that this could be an area that impacts public health and safety? That hydrology and structural stability could impact public health and safety?

If there were merit to support that claim, yes.

Okay. And so the question uh... is the late discovery of the ephemeral stream and uh... while mitigations were added to address the filling of this aquatic feature the geotechnical assumptions for this location must be re-evaluated the EIR must determine if the original soil stability and lateral spreading calculations correctly modeled the hydrologic realities of placing a 40-foot structure and retaining walls directly atop an active ephemeral stream channel. Is that something that was evaluated? And what was the conclusion if it was?

I think what seems to be it, this is just my kind of reading of the comment is that there's an understanding that this is kind of a regularly flowing aquatic feature that has marketed hydrology in the soils. And this is an ephemeral stream that only flows during storm events. And so it seems like the, the, The basis of this comment is that this is a regular feature that has hydric soils that are marked by by hydrology in a in a regular basis. And that's not the case. So I don't see a lot of merit to to how I'm understanding this comment.

Well, I think, again, based on my own observations on site, several years ago, there's water flowing there, and I don't know the distinction or the line between ephemeral and intermittent, but there's clearly a stream of water that I observed flowing down that hillside. And so I'm just asking, did the environmental work determine whether and correctly model the realities of placing a 40-foot structure on top of an active ephemeral stream channel? Yes. Okay. That's all I have on environmental. Thank you.

Do we have other environmental questions on the EIR? Yeah.

Thank you. I had a question along the lines, was a comment made if an eir were done typically within eir there are shown alternatives that would be less impactful and this might actually be a question for our attorney if there were alternatives indicated and the applicant said that doesn't allow them to build what they want to i mean does builder's remedy override that or Because it seems like I've seen cases where there's options and somebody still picks the first option.

The environmental impact report does need to set forth alternatives to the proposed project and then it would also usually include some analysis as to why one alternative is preferred to the other alternatives. There's not Like CEQA doesn't provide a way to mandate selection of one of the other alternatives. The tools that the local jurisdiction would have would be its zoning code or its planning guidelines to require someone to choose one of the other alternatives.

OK. So even if alternatives were given, we could not mandate that?

um well it'd have to be analyzed under the test for the housing accountability act the test would be would application of the objective standard render the project infeasible and then with regard it would be the standards we talked about for denial of a requested incentive or concession or a waiver under state density bonus law okay

And I would just add, just for a little bit of background, we've run into this issue over the years because even though mitigating negative declarations weren't required technically, applicants chose to do EIRs. So what you had was projects with no significant unavoidable impacts, all impacts being mitigated to a less than significant level. Then you go through the alternatives analysis, which is generally going to be less density. One of the state laws doesn't allow us to reduce the density. and I'm trying to recall off the top of my head, so I won't say it out loud, but I'm highly confident that the previous EIR for the previous project had no significant unavoidable impacts.

Okay, that's helpful, thank you.

And so it, you know, it, it makes a lot of sense to me why the, the neighborhood would be very interested in analyzing all of the environmental impacts. But what I'm hearing is, even if we performed an, it's unlikely that the town council could force the developer to change the project. Is that correct?

I am hesitant to conjecture, but, um. I want to say, I wanted to say really the question before the decision makers in requiring an EIR is, is there substantial evidence of a fair argument that there are significant impacts that are not mitigated? And when substantial evidence of a fair argument has been presented, then an EIR is required.

Okay. Thank you.

Councilmember Redding. I guess I wanted to ask the question, so I'm trying to understand if we had an EIR, what more would we get? Clearly, you get alternatives analyzed. Unless we had a health and safety issue that one of the alternatives allowed us to mitigate that couldn't be mitigated otherwise, then we might be able to use an alternative on this project. But because Builder's Remedy says we can't just change things and make it infeasible, alternatives don't seem useful to me. There's been a lot of discussion about we need an EIR because of this, that, and the other thing. My understanding is we've done, in order to get to whether there's a mitigated NEGDEC or even a NEGDEC needed, you have to do all the analysis in all of the areas. So all the concerns have already been analyzed. And I mean, it seems to be people implying that if we do an EIR, we get more analysis. Do we really get more analysis? I mean, I guess you would need more analysis if you had unmitigated, unmitigatable analysis. significant effects from it. So again, my basic question is, if I ask for an EIR, what more do I really get than what's already been done?

Thank you for that question, and essentially you're correct. You would get an alternatives analysis. There's a couple other kind of public review requirements. At the front end of an EIR process, you know, the agency's required to release a notice of preparation, which basically just says, hey, we're preparing EIR, here's what we're planning on studying, what do you think? So that's just kind of an extra public step. And then there's a 45 day review of the public document versus a 30 day as in the MND. But content wise, you addressed it. It's an alternatives analysis. And I think it's important if I could just to emphasize that there's been some statements that we relied heavily on the 2017 EIR and that's not true. We performed updated technical studies in most of the categories because we don't want to rely on an eight-year-old document. And so we wouldn't really perform any additional technical analysis, that's been done. So I do feel that there's somewhat of a misunderstanding of what that EIR would bring because we would basically be repackaging the information already in the MND and putting it in the form of an environmental impact report. Okay, thank you.

Council Member Hudes.

Yeah, there's been a lot of discussion about what would an EIR bring. How do we know that if we haven't done an EIR? How do we know what the results of the EIR would be?

Sure. Fair question. It would address all the same topics. It's still based on Appendix G of the CEQA guidelines, which includes all the various topics. We've already done the technical analyses that we believe are sufficient, so we wouldn't be performing additional technical analysis to present in that document. So I don't see how we would arrive at different conclusions if we're basing that analysis on the same technical information.

Council Member Badami.

I'm kind of struggling with why we were required an EIR eight years ago and not now for an even more intense project with all the knowledge that we now have on wildfires. You know, what's changed?

Erin Walter, senior planner. So the town didn't require any IR for the last development that was voluntary by the applicant. And so they went through the IR process and found that everything was mitigated and they could have performed a mitigated magic.

Thank you.

Any council members interested in trying a motion or, um, uh, pointing us towards conditions of approval or changes? Yes. Council member.

Um, those were sort of my questions on environmental. I actually have questions, um, on a number of other areas.

Yeah, let's get, let's get through all the questions so we can get towards, uh, action.

Okay, I wanted to come back to the question about the easement through the triangular property. And there were some things that were said, and I'm not sure it was entirely clear, and I don't think it's written anywhere. So does the town hold an easement through that triangular property at the extreme northeast corner of attachment 002? What was the answer to that? Does the town hold an easement or what is the resolution on that?

Corvo Sparks, Parks and Public Works. So if you're referring to the spot where the current access, private access easement is, no, we currently do not have an active easement there. There is an easement that's offered to us for dedication, but we didn't accept it. And so we don't have an active easement through that spot.

Council Member Rennie. So following up on that, the Planning Commission already added to the conditions of approval additional easement to get to the driveway. Does Parks and Public Works have any assessment of whether that driveway can function as both a driveway for the house and a trail, the beginning of a trail basically to get that's short distance from Saravista to the edge of the property where they then, the easement starts and a trail at some point starts. Is there any reason why that? I think it was, you said 26 feet wide driveway? Yeah, is there any reason a 26 foot wide driveway can't be used for both cars and trail users?

Thank you for the question. It's the town stance that based on the easement language of the most currently required easement and the one that's offered for dedication, there's no public access. And so we wouldn't be able to, it wouldn't be able to be used or double as a trail access easement as well.

So it would not be, we'd have to change that easement. Is that what you're saying?

It would not be able to double, it would not be able to provide access to the public the way that the easements are written.

okay so then if we continue on to the utility easement that i got the impression it might be the other side of the driveway is do we know if that easement allows i think there was a question about whether it allowed uh not just utilities but uh people passing through it

James Watson parks bubble works the map actually that recorded that the owner statement didn't define the particular parameters around that easement. So it's vague. And when I did some research online, I found that a public utility easement could be used for trail use as long as that use did not impede the use for public utilities.

the answer is yes then i believe so i would probably want the opportunity to confirm that because i you know it the law is so vague with i mean it's complex with regard to the use of public utility easements and so i'm sure james's research is valid i would want to confirm that

And the second piece of completing that is where does that easement come through onto the property it is it come through to where we're adding in our conditions of approval and easement or we need to expand those to get to that spot.

uh aaron walters senior planner we would have to expand that to get to the uh the easement the public utilities easement so we'd have to expand across the driveway of lot 10 on lot 10's property and continue down um almost to the corner of lot 10 and lot 7. okay thank you

And so on the trail, one of the other questions I had was, I mean, I think it's really important that we get to a point where the easements are meaningfully connected and we have access, but that does not get close to solving the problem of no one has agreed to develop this thing. I think traditionally an organization like Mid-Peninsula Open Space Authority would develop this sort of trail. I haven't seen this on any of their maps. And so I think there's a... I guess for the council a legitimate. Question about, you know, could this be developed? I think the, the philosophical challenge I'm having with this is that I think this trail, as we've discussed would really only serve the immediate neighborhood. And so. To me, it would make a lot more sense for the developer. to develop the trail than to ask the town to pay you know a million dollars to develop a trail that'll be you know uh uh used by a slim number of people it's more of an opinion than a question um councilmember hudas

Um, yeah, I had some questions for staff about, uh, the, um, the homeowners association versus the maintenance association. Do we have other maintenance associations operating in town? Significant number of them.

i don't know if we have other maintenance associations so i'll defer to public works for that answer but my understanding is that homeowners associations and maintenance associations are both non-profits that are responsible for maintaining property but that maintenance associations have a more limited purview And so they can be formed for the purpose of only maintaining the streets or the sewer facilities or something very discreet rather than common areas. And then with regard to the question of whether there are other maintenance agreements or associations existing in the town, I'll defer to Public Works.

Corval Sparks, Public Works. Yeah, we would need a little more time to kind of look into that because we don't have that information on hand. And we're not aware of any.

Yeah, I'm not aware of any either. So could you describe what the differences are between a maintenance organization and an HOA with regard to the specific issues in this project? And some of the ones that come to mind are street maintenance, vegetation management, and dealing with the water issues on the property and maintaining the water systems?

I would probably need more time to delve into the concept of a maintenance association, but my understanding is that they have a more limited purview than a homeowners association. And so if there are elements that the town wants to ensure get included in the whatever document forms the maintenance association, I recommend that the conditions of approval be very detailed on what needs to be included in the document that forms the maintenance association.

Is staff willing to provide that expertise? Because I don't feel like I personally have that.

Of course, I think we are not prepared to address that this evening though.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, if I could follow on with Council Member Hude's questioning, one of the things I was trying to understand is it seems like in an HOA, the HOA kind of governs and enforces the rules. So I know that, for example, these hillside homes have to have certain color palettes that are darker, that don't show up, and that we would have that kind of on the deed. But that means code compliance has to do the enforcement, correct?

So code enforcement enforces anything that's a violation of the town code. We don't currently enforce private CC&Rs that are part of homeowners associations.

So who would enforce that? I mean, it seems to me with an HOA, somebody does something they're not supposed to, the HOA comes down on them for better or worse.

That's right.

If we have a maintenance district or we have all these other CCRs, who enforces that and how does that get into place?

There's two different animals. So our normal hillside home, as you mentioned, excuse me, they do a deed restriction, right? There's probably a condition of approval that these also have deed restrictions. So if someone calls and says, hey, my neighbor painted their house white, we look, do you have a deed restriction? Planning contacts them or code compliance contacts them and then we work through it from there. But it wouldn't be any different in this case than it would be for a regular single family home.

Okay, and then an HOA wouldn't really, okay, so we've already got that going on. I was just thinking about, you know, does an HOA provide more protection or more mechanism to make sure that everything gets done up there without people having to report it to the town and going through the process?

But that's different.

The problem is we don't know because we have not processed the maintenance agreement, sorry, maintenance association to date.

Okay, got it, thank you.

Council Member Hudeis and Council Member Rooney. One of the questions was about approval from the Water Quality Control Board and maybe another agency as well. And one of the requests of the residents was to obtain written verification of certification before ground disturbance begins. And that isn't saying before approval of the project, but the question to the resident was how can the town approve the project if there's a primary issue that has not been resolved? So could you expand a little bit on how that process would work so that the project would not proceed if the control board did not provide certification?

Rick Hopkins, Live Oak Associates. You can't get a permit prior to a CEQA document being approved because part of the application for, in this case, the Army Corps of Engineers would not take jurisdiction over the seafoam mill drainage, so you would be getting a waste discharge permit from the regional board via the Porter-Cologne Act. That requires, when you fill the application out, it asks explicitly what type of CEQA document have you done, CAD-X, MND, EIR, et cetera. It then asks that you provide the NOD, notice of determination, and the environmental filing fee. those are all requirements of the permit application so anyone who suggested that you get a permit first has never done it because it the regional board won't allow it so that's you know just try and make that point

if i could follow up on that recording recalling my days on the planning commission there were times when we would consider the environmental report first and then certify it and then consider the application is it an option to approve the ism and d tonight and then consider the application after the water quality control board has certified

That may be a question for Nick, but I'm not aware of that ever happening.

It's an option. The only thing is that once the town has adopted the environmental document, that starts a deadline for the town to either approve or deny the project. And so the more common practice is to approve them at the same time so that that deadline doesn't get triggered.

How much time is that?

I'd have to look it up if, I'll look it up before I say, and I'll get back to you.

If I could continue on this one.

So what I thought Mr. Hudis was leading to was we go through the process, we approve it, they go apply for the permit and our MND says, you must do a one for one or one and a half for one removal of the culvert and some incise, however you pronounce it, added to the creek. But then the control board says, we don't like that. We don't want to let you do that. And I'll give you a permit if you do something else which doesn't completely mitigate the situation as the M and D has envisioned is that possible or would they follow our M and D and make sure that there's a one to one mitigation.

I have never found that the regional board asked for less. So if anything, the regional board would push the applicant to do more if they did anything different than the MND. Wouldn't be less. That's never happened in my. 35 years of experience, so what you end up getting typically is a project gets the secret documents get certified. The project gets approved the applicant then moves forward because they have certainty as to what they're what they need and they sit down with the regional board, submit all the. Permit applications and all the other information that the regional board requires that you submit. With that, and then you start. Negotiations, I mean, the devils in the details, that's the most classic example. And so then the regional board will come back. Well, we want to see this. We want to see that. We, we like that part. We don't like that part. And so it's a, it's a back and forth typically with the regional board. To under, you know, to get to a point. Again, the framework is the, in this case, the, that would be the framework. Of of how it would work, but the ultimate outcome. It's going to be slightly different. It's probably going to be a little more. That's why the says a minimum of 1 to 1. It does not put a ceiling on it. It puts a floor. And so those are the kinds of conditions that the MND sets up is it establishes that you need to do monitoring for five years. There's The impact area is about 122 feet of swale, 24 feet of incised channel. So there's plenty of opportunities to create additional incised channel on the site because of the 713 lineal feet of the swale, There's only 306 feet of incised. So there's this culvert you could remove. The regional board loves to see culverts gone. So you could remove that, establish an incised channel there. You could connect other aspects. And these are all mitigations that we have done multiple times with the regional board that they've accepted and approved. Because creating incised channel in an ephemeral drainage is one of the simpler mitigations we do for aquatic systems. seasonal wetland impacts, true riparian impacts, those are more complicated and take more energy and effort. When you're impacting an ephemeral channel, creating additional ephemeral channel in that swale is technically fairly simple to do. So it's really a matter of how much the regional board and what section they may have a different idea. You may say, well, I think we want to do this section. They go, well, I would rather you do this. And so that's the kind of details that I'm talking about that you get into. And then there'll be success criteria. You'll need hydrologically to evaluate that over that five year period of time to make sure that it's functional and operational. If you planted any woody vegetation, you'll have to talk about what the success criteria did at the end of the day. Did you end up with a seventy percent cover that you said you would get? So those are all the kinds of things. And then if you missed the target, you have remedial measures. to maybe extend another year or two of monitoring. That's not atypical. So you've got all these different measures that they will track when you submit your annual report. How good are you doing? So that's the process of getting the permit and then following it over time.

Okay, so it sounds like I can feel, in summary, rest assured that the control board will make sure this is mitigated. Thanks. Yes, I think you could say that safely.

And through the mayor, part of, I think, Council Member Hedis' previous question was whether or not we would allow disturbance of the site prior to issuance of the permits. The answer is no. The conditions are clear on that.

Go ahead.

So I wanted to talk to staff about the two documents provided by Mr. Foley recently. The first one is the conditions of approval, which has a number of requests. And I wanted to find out, first of all, whether those were accommodated in the current version. or whether staff is recommending changes. So the first one was number four and in the document provided entitled Surrey Farms COA's proposed revisions. You're familiar with that document? And so number four, the response is this is not typical and not a benefit to the town or the developer. And we're not sure about the legality of a condition like this. The staff have an opinion about whether this, I believe the request is to remove it. Yeah, it is to remove it and whether it should be removed and whether it's legal.

So I won't speak to the legal part, leave that to Ms. Whalen. But this is a unique situation. So we were trying to cover our bases, whether it's this one or I think the next one is a phasing of BMPs, which is a little atypical from what we do. So in a typical plan development, for instance, they'll come in, get a plan development, get architecture and site approvals individually or sell those lots off. here because they have to construct the units. We're looking for ways to make sure that we didn't end up with half of the improvements done and people building houses. And then we'll talk about the BMPs later, but similar scenario. So this was our effort to do that. This is unique. This is one of a kind since I've been here. And so I will turn to Ms. Wayland for legality.

So the proposal was to remove the condition of approval requiring a master developer. And the correspondent says, we're not sure about the legality of a condition like this. So I received this correspondence at 10 o'clock today. And so I have not analyzed this request.

I assume you'd like time to do that.

That's correct.

Okay.

Um, could I follow up on that? Um, I, although I read through the planning commission minutes, I don't recall what did they add this? Where did this come from? Why can you give me any history on why we want, what's the advantage? Why do we want a master developer for the whole thing?

Thank you for the question so similar what Mr. Paulson stated is in this case say they vest the property they vest the map they could sell each property off separately and so it's really how do you tie it in so that we get all the housing units that these special state laws require and how they're getting these exceptions and exemptions so how do we tie that in without them parceling it out and it's similar to what Mr. Paulson said if you have one new property owner, you know, developing one piece of the property and you know, the property line goes to the center line. So like, how do we make sure that all works as one?

So if I could follow up, if that's okay, Mr. Hugh, just after me. That kind of ties into item number seven also. And for the North 40, we did exactly that. We gave a condition that the property They can't build beyond some point. We did North 40 phase one and we did something similar phase two. They can't build beyond a certain point until, you know, in some cases it was, I think it was all the BMP units were built. Looks like number seven, they're suggesting And for the phase two, we somehow tied it to if the property was sold, that was still a requirement. You couldn't just go build the tall building on the North 40 until all the BMP units were built or added in there. It seems like we could do the same thing. Instead of needing a master developer, we could ditch that requirement and just focus on number seven, which we write something in that says if the property's transferred, You know, we can't go beyond three units until the first BMP unit has been built. And, you know, they've sold it off to three different people. Well, it's tough. They're going to have to fight over who who gets their first three in there, I guess. But can't can't we do something like that and then just get rid of the item for as they're requesting?

That's up to the council. So if the majority of council is comfortable with that, we definitely can make that work. With relation to number seven, we're comfortable with the proposed language. Most of our other ones are proportional, and that's what they're proposing to do. And this entitlement runs with the land anyhow, so whether it's one developer, seven developers, or 12, these conditions are gonna run with the land, irrespective.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, Council Member Hude, Council Member Aristo.

Yeah, just to clarify on that, so you are saying to keep number seven in as it is?

No, I'm saying we're comfortable with the proposed change from the applicant.

Oh, okay, thank you. I have other ones on the same document, but maybe I'll just stop for a minute.

Yeah, if I can go back to number seven, because I think I'm hearing two things. Differently, or maybe I read it differently. Um, I think the original. Condition of approval was the three get built 1st, and then the market rate homes get built. So I want to make sure I understand 7 because it sounds like council member Rennie said it. You get to build 3 market rate. Then you build the. I'm thinking. you build one BMR and then you get to build three market rate. Then you build the next BMR and you get to build three market rates. So can you tell me which way that goes?

So it's based on certificate of occupancies. So we wouldn't, by the third market rate certificate of occupancy, you have to have the certificate of occupancy for one of the BMPs. By the third one? Correct. and so that's pretty typical because you have market rate basically whether it's this project or any other project footing the bill for a lot of the other improvements um and so that's a ratio that we're comfortable with and i think the code says even more generic about you know building the bmps along with the market rate units unless some other uh approval is is uh received basically through planning commissioner of the council

Okay. I mean, I'm comfortable with this condition as altered. My one concern is just if there's multiple developers and the first two get to build theirs and the third one doesn't build the BMR, I mean.

Well, they just won't get occupancies for all of their market rate units.

Okay.

So I'm going to jump out for one thing because I sort of forgot to ask about that, and that is lot one has a large lot. Is it possible for that property owner to do an ADU or an SB9 on that property?

Um, Aaron Walters, senior planner, um, to speak to that because of the zoning for the whole parcel, it's an RC zone. I'm sorry, the whole property SB nine currently as it's written in our code and currently the waste town state law is written. They would not be allowed to do SB nine, uh, ADUs they could. And I, I can't speak though to the BMP piece.

And then one way, you know, if there's concern about the potential of future development of that site, you know, I only brought up one other option, which was extending from the middle of the road. I think it's a lot across the street into that area so that it, you know, basically restricts that opportunity in the future.

If I could follow up on that. So now that you mentioned that I was worried about the SB9, and I was actually worried about SB9 splits on lot 10 and 8, the really big ones. But now that I think I remember now that you mention it, there's a date that says at this date, if you had certain zoning, you can do SB nine and we had an RC. So forever into the future, SB nine does not apply to this whole RC, right? Because once this is done, it's not gonna be RC anymore, but it was RC when there was a certain date for SB nine. Am I remembering this correctly?

So actually the applicant is utilizing builder's remedy to not rezone and not to amend the general plan. So the zoning stays as RC.

Okay, thank you.

But that does not stop the state legislature from making some other changes in the future. I completely get that.

So, I mean, I would be interested in staff pursuing the reconfiguration of lot 1 to deal with the parking as well as the ADU issue. So that may come up later. Let me move on to 9B and there The request, I think we've covered this. This is the Cerro Vista easement. And I think there's some research that staff will be doing on that, on the public utilities easement. So I don't think we need to address that one. Number 73. And there, the request is that the paving occur at the end of the project. after construction is complete not before the project commences does staff have an opinion about that request corporal sparks parks and public works yes uh for that aspect yeah we would be open to that request

I could weigh in. I'm a little worried about waiting until the end of the project because they could spend the next eight years building all of these houses. I think we should figure out the right, you know, is it after six, seven? I don't know what the right number is. We can negotiate that, but I don't think I like the end of the project because that could be 10 years from now.

Yeah, similar. I think it would be helpful if maybe we, if staff could help us with, I know there's multiple discrete improvements. If we can pick one that is highest on the priority and say that comes after three houses or, you know, if we can break those down because they're not contiguous. Right. And so I would rather see it phased with the housing.

through the mayor. I mean, I think we can definitely speak with public works and the applicant, but I think it's probably really D and E, um, that they want to make sure that they don't have to do first, because why would you repay twin Oaks or Sarah Vista and then bring all your construction up? Yeah. Um, so it may have been written that they want to hold off on all on the other ones. Um, actually the, But there might be a driveway approach. So it's probably really the Blossom Hill and Fisher are the two they probably want to wait on. I'm just not sure that's how it was communicated. And we would have to check with the applicant on that.

Okay. And I would say for us, that's probably the most important that those happen. Okay.

And also COA 104 describes a subdivision improvement agreement that we can enter in with the applicant prior to the final map completion that would allow for them to bond and submit plans for all the improvements and would have a time and all kinds of stuff that could schedule out when they're going to do what they're going to do. So.

Okay, that's helpful.

Did that, um, James Watson in parks and public works, the would require them to be, they would have to carry a bond for the duration of that essay being open. And so the developer would have a carrying cost for that bond. And so they would be incentivized to not carry 10 years to get the work done because we wouldn't close the agreement and release the subsequent bond until that work has been completed.

To follow up, you're talking about all the work Fisher and the roadway paving.

Yeah. So as a condition to record the map, so dividing the property into the separate parcels, they would have to enter into that subdivision improvement agreement, which bonds and obligates them to do all of the improvements. The public improvements and the onsite improvements, the stormwater treatment facility, maintenance improvements, basically everything that we need done.

So how does that impact condition number 73? Like they are asking, they're saying it's unreasonable to do all these.

Yeah. So after reviewing 73, we did realize that we have a few modifications that need to be made in there and we want to make it clear in the condition that we wouldn't require them to build those improvements up front. We would require them to enter into a subdivision improvement agreement obligating their, the developer to build those conditions.

will help us with that when we get to conditions of approval, if we do? Yes. Thank you.

Yes, go ahead.

have a number of questions about the other document from mr foley which is the twin oaks neighbors requests and i wanted to sort of see whether those requests have been incorporated as they've been represented and so i'm going to walk through each of those the first one is to extend the proposed berm all the way to the catch basin

Yes, thank you. The berm would not be allowed to get near the catch basin. It would have to stop short of it. There is a wetlands designation around that far corner. And so that is represented in the exhibit that shows that new berm. But it would not be able to touch the catch basin at the very end. And so that has been proposed, and it is in the exhibit.

Okay, thank you. Number two, which is to enlarge the open space area and or grant an easement to create space and screen our properties from new homes as discussed during the meeting. I think there was some disagreement about whether that had been done. What is staff's opinion about whether that has been done?

So at the last Planning Commission meeting, there was the open space and trails easement exhibit. And there is a narrow easement showing behind lots. I guess we're talking about lots five and I guess is it lot five? So behind lot five. So that is there. And it hasn't been enlarged. It remains the same as it was and presented at Planning Commission.

What about the second part of it, which is screen our properties from new homes?

Staff received the exhibit yesterday that you received as well that includes the proposed evergreen trees as well as the screened fencing.

And there seemed to be some disagreement about whether that simply shields one of the neighbors but not the other, correct?

That's correct, as we heard this evening. That document has not been included as a part of your resolution. If you were to want to add that exhibit to the approval documents, you would have to add that.

And staff hasn't verified whether that adequately screens both neighbors. Is that correct?

We don't have that information.

But I can say with fair certainty that it definitely does not screen all the properties. It's only one portion.

Okay. So this is related, plant two rows of large redwoods, but back towards the houses with the requirements that they are to be maintained. I think that's the same issue about screening, correct?

That's correct. And redwood trees are not a part of our hillside design guidelines.

Right. But they just say evergreen trees here.

So that's correct.

Yeah, I think the applicant's response was the configuration that you saw, and then I think you spoke, if I remember correctly, about the berm, and then it might have been a PUE or something in that area, so there really isn't a whole lot of option currently, but they are still looking into other potential options, such as the living wall or green wall, whatever they call it, on top of the retaining wall.

So that's still not resolved. There's work to do on that one, correct?

applicant indicated they're willing to continue to look at working on that at some point there may be no more options available okay uh wash our windows is that in the that's not in the conditions that would be a private agreement between the developer and the owners um

Now here we get into who's responsible for the expense and expensive maintenance of the retention pond and who, what entity will be liable. The staff feel that it's adequately described in the maintenance association and CCNR documents that have been provided.

So there, thank you for the question. Currently, each property owner would be responsible for each bioretention pond the way it's currently written.

And through the chair, I think we heard some Opportunities potentially and you also spoke with, you know, ask questions of Miss Whelan about specific items that could be requested to be in the maintenance association documents and CCRs CCRs. I think that the two biggest ones are obviously the roadway and then the other is the hydrology and, you know, by retention. uh facilities um and then there could be others such as the roadside vegetation management things like that so those could be expressly included in the conditions as things that you want staff to address and if there's any other okay

Um, the, the next one was established who's responsible for day to day operations and management of complaints during construction. Um, is that, uh, as represented that it's contained within the, um, COAs and BMPs.

So during construction, um, that'd be, you know, contacting the town, whether that's the building inspector or, uh, code compliance. Um, we have, more recently been requiring them to have numbers on site. Sometimes you'll see them on the billboards of, you know, if you've got a complaint, contact this number first. Hopefully they can work something out. But we're always a resource. Should things not be able to be resolved, then we need to come out and make sure that they're following the rules.

And I didn't quite understand the reference to BMPs in the response there. Is that, what does that mean?

Yeah, the BMPs is handled by the town.

I see. Okay. Number seven was no construction over weekends and the applicant says they agree to this, but I think that currently Saturday construction is permitted. Is that correct?

That's correct. And the conditions have not been modified to include this modification.

So that would be necessary to do that. Okay. And then the last one is states that lot five is the largest most imposing home built on top of ephemeral stream and also looks directly into our yards we request that lot 5 be eliminated moved reoriented and or reconfigured and the response is we can continue to work on lot 5 design modifications through the building permit process but nothing more can be done at this time as relates to this application Is that true that the applicant couldn't change the configuration of that home at this time?

tonight before you is looking at 12 different ANS's architecture insights for each home that includes also grading and so modifying you don't typically see this you guys typically see a subdivision and a plan development and then you see the architectural insight applications come in separately so in this case we are approving the architecture insight and the grading

But to your question, the applicant, I think clearly it is expressed that they're not interested at this time in making additional modifications of configuration or otherwise. So that's what I understood from the statement and then the response in this, that they're willing to look at stuff, but they're not gonna be interested in doing a reconfiguration or something like that. But that's something you could definitely ask the applicant.

Have additional configurations been discussed? Staff have any ideas about how to deal with that situation of the way that home is oriented?

So in all of the staff technical comment reports, staff has asked the applicant to try, you know, to meet all the requirements for grading per our hillside design guidelines, as well as meet our height requirement in the hillside design guidelines. And so in this case, they asked for exceptions.

But have you discussed alternatives with them?

Well, we don't design the project, but we ask them to meet our standards.

Okay, so is there anything enforceable in the response that's been provided here?

Not to my knowledge.

Okay.

May I ask something? Go ahead. May I ask something at this point? The reason lot five, the reason this whole question appeared for lot five is because the ephemeral stream changed all of a sudden or something. What I'm not, and so now we're worried about you know could we move lot five so it's not into this new area what i'm not understanding is the ephemeral stream looks like it would cross over the street the cul-de-sac street before it even gets to lot five so aren't we also having a problem with it in the street or is there just we explain a little better did we have some insight incise incisation however we call it at lot five, but we didn't where the street is going, so we're okay putting a street through there? I guess what I'm trying to get at, is it just lot five that's the problem, or is it the street also that's the problem?

The street would have a culvert over it. Probably my recommendation would be an arch culvert so that There's no floor on it. It keeps the natural condition on underneath that would help reduce impacts. So streets typically cross creeks and things of this sort. Those are never those are never issues.

Sorry, we've talked about wanting to remove culverts, but as you just said, it's not a culvert, it's an arched over, so in this case, it doesn't have a negative effect.

Well, no, we calculated the street. We included the street when we calculated 122 feet. So that, that was, we were conservative what the estimate of the impact was. I was responding to your question about, is it a problem to put a street over it? No, it's not. Okay. Thanks.

Please.

Through the mayor, so and correct me, I wanted to let you know that lot five has not changed since we received the original application. So the grading associated with that property, the size of the home, the retaining walls has not changed. So that wasn't due to once they found the additional ephemeral stream incisions that was modified through the mitigation. So the applicant has not changed the proposed house on that property.

Yep. Since you brought up the Arkin site, if we approve that tonight and now we're looking at a project that could be years and potentially multiple developers, what happens if somebody wants a different kind of house there?

So they've been approved, if you approve this evening, you'd be approving these plans and it would be, our first condition talks about having it be, I'm not gonna use the right word, but in substantial compliance with the approved plan. So say someone wanted to move a window over a little bit, that's something maybe staff could work on and that would be with the plans. But if they wanted to tear it down or start all over, do a modern design, different square footage, that is not what would have been approved tonight.

And so what would happen, or it looks like?

Yeah, they could apply for a modification. We'd probably have to see what that actually looks like in the framework of the state laws that they're proposing to use. Right now they have a lot of protections, so I'm not sure we'd have to, and I'm sure we're not prepared to answer that this evening, but see what that would look like for projects such as this that have, are utilizing the state laws, but would technically be looking to make modifications in the future and what options the town would have.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, so, um, uh, I'm hearing, uh, a lot of uncertainty on various aspects of the project. Um, so I'm, I'm more than willing to entertain a motion, um. To approve or deny the project, but, um, it's sounding like perhaps. Where we want to go is providing staff direction for things that we want them to work on with the applicant and then come back. The 1 thing, you know, of course, for us to be aware of that, I think we should think about before we jump into that is there's been discussion of an, which I think is a big pending question and. We, if we, you know, continue this item, we then, the Planning Commission had two meetings on this, and we only get five total, so this is the third, and then we go into the fourth. And so I think when we go into the fourth, we should have a lot of, we should make sure that all of our questions are out there this evening, so when we come back on the fourth, we're ready to make a decision. Council Member Hudus.

Yeah, does staff have a list of items that there were questions that staff said they would like to follow up on?

I can start. The first on my list is can a public utility easement be used as a public trail? The next is what would need to be included in an agreement forming a maintenance association? The third is, is it legal to require a master developer? And that's it for my to-do list.

So I think we can start putting these together as the council. Is anyone looking to... Yeah, I think I have a long list as well. So I think if we want to start making a list, we should... Let's decide we want to make the list before we make the list. Is there anyone looking to make a motion or are we looking to have staff come back?

I would be willing to make a motion, but if staff has been taking notes, I would appreciate their take on the action items first before I propose a list. Is that okay? So I just wanted to continue with community development and maybe parks and public works. Are there other items that you feel there were requests on that you would like to respond to?

From planning, it wasn't that there were any outstanding questions other than what the town attorney brought up, but it would be modifying some of the conditions of approval based on what we discussed this evening.

And then potentially bringing back what the process would look like for future modifications. Could you repeat that? What the process would be for future modifications for this project specifically and other projects similar to it.

Prepared to try a motion. Sure. Can I jump in? Let me add to your possible list. See if the rest of the council members are interested is the two mitigation items mentioned by the Sierra Club, which is the the twenty seven hundred K color limit. That's not a brightness. That's a color limit. And then the second one was for non-essential lights that they'd be on timers or motion sensors and timers limited to 11 o'clock or until people are not present. So that's the way they stated it. I would, if everybody's in agreement, I would ask staff to work on something along those lines.

Yep, in agreement on that. Yeah, Vice Mayor Risto.