Planning Commission - Special Meeting

Thank you. Thank you. do do do do do do

do do

do do

I'm here to call this to order. This is the Monday, August 17th, 2026 joint meeting, a special joint meeting of the planning commission, as well as the Santa Barbara city council. Would you please join me in the pledge of allegiance? Very good. Madam Clerk, would you call the roll, please?

Certainly. I will call the roll of the City Council, and then I will call the roll of Planning Commission. Mayor Rouse? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Stanton?

Here.

Councilmember Gutierrez, I think not yet present. Councilmember Friedman?

Here.

Councilmember Harmon? Here. Councilmember Jordan, not present. And Councilmember Santamaria?

Here.

And Planning Commission, Chair Boss?

Present.

Vice Chair DeLuccio? Here. Commissioner Barnwell? Not present. Commissioner Bakke? Here. Commissioner Peterson?

Here.

Commissioner Wardlow? Here. And Commissioner Wiscombe?

Here.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Ms. McAdoo, I noticed that on the agenda we have public comment prior to staff presentation. Was that how we wanted the order we want to do it in? Okay, very good. I have a couple public speaker slips here. Let's say in the next five or six minutes, hands either raised online to do public comment or if anybody wants to submit a public speaker slip. And we have three minutes. Does that timer work? Hot dog. All right. High tech. Very good. Then we will begin with public comment and we'll begin with Rob Fredericks. Three minutes, please. On the agenda items, on item one. Yeah, so we'll go ahead and read the item into the record first, and Madam Clerk, then we'll make sure we know what we're talking about.

Very good. Item one, with glasses. Introduction of the city's pathways to yes initiative and initiation of a zoning ordinance amendment to create a better buildings pilot program. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, Mr. Fredericks. Yes, good afternoon, Mayor Rouse, council members, and planning commissioners. I'm Rob Fredericks, the executive director, CEO of the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara. I want to thank city staff for developing the Pathways to Yes initiative and Better Buildings pilot program. The goals are worthy, making housing development more feasible, predictable, revitalizing downtown and advancing the city's climate and sustainability objectives. I submitted a detailed comment letter over the weekend, so I will not repeat all of those items today in the letter. My message this afternoon is simple. And that is for the Better Buildings Program to succeed, it must offer developers a pathway that is easier, faster, and more predictable than the state bonus density law. Developers will not choose the local program simply because its goals are commendable. They will choose the pathway that provides the greatest certainty with the least delay and unnecessary complexity. If the program becomes overly complicated, requires too much negotiation, or adds more hoops to an already difficult development process, applicants will choose state bonus density law every time. if that happens the pilot will not attract meaningful participation or provide the city with useful information about whether this alternative approach works that that is why pathways to yes is so important and possibly more so than a point system itself better interdepartmental coordination firm timelines, consolidated comments and a solutions oriented let's make it happen culture should not be limited to the downtown pilot. Those practices should become the city standard approach to development throughout the city of Santa Barbara. I would also not eliminate the PRT, early coordinated input from the city's various departments is a valuable program and can prevent costly problems emerging later. PRT should be made expeditious, comprehensive, and decisive. I similarly value the input from the city's design review boards. Good projects become better through constructive review. My written letter also identifies the emission of low and very low income housing as our most significant concern, and I ask that it be addressed as the ordinance is developed. We support moving this initiative forward with our recommended changes. Keep the program simple and enough for the developers so the developers will actively use it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Alicia Carlos.

Good afternoon, Mayor Rouse, council members, commissioners. First, this is an admirable endeavor. Trying to solve housing and carbon emissions in one program is exactly the kind of big thinking I want from our city. I'm not still convinced we can do it, but it's certainly worth this discussion and our time. Second, as you know, I've thrown a lot of data at you in a letter I sent over the weekend. I hope staff will take the time to verify it. I'd rather be corrected than wrong. Let me start by correcting myself. My letter says 70 percent of downtown jobs are low-income. That was a county-wide figure from the county's own workforce housing study and I want to just be really clear about that. My own downtown analysis found this, that at least 37% of downtown jobs pay $40,000 a year or less. I measured it two independent ways, once by earnings and once by industry, and both came back at 37%. Of the 18 frontline occupations I checked for downtown, everyone has a median below our very low income limit of $63,750. That's the gap. The program's affordability tier begins, as you know, at moderate income, which is about $99,600 for one person. A waiter's wage would have to nearly triple to qualify. With more reflection, I want to make this point that on privately owned land, we only have so much control. Passing this adds monetary value to every downtown parcel the day it takes effect, whether or not anything is built, and whether or not we get what we're hoping for in return. As drafted, a project can earn 160 points for unlimited density from energy and storm water measures alone, without creating one additional affordable unit beyond what our inclusionary policy already requires. And that requirement is 10% at moderate income. It doesn't touch the very low income levels I described. On public land, we do have control. So my ask is about our sequence here. Before we finalize this program, let's look carefully at what we can control, which is our own public land, measured against our RENA obligation and our housing element commitments. That's where we set the income levels and build for the people who need it the most, the ones that are most cost burdened, the ones earning $35,000 to $40,000 a year and who drive in every morning to keep downtown running. Once we know what public land can deliver, then we'll know what's left over for this program to fill in. Thank you all for your consideration.

Thank you. The next speaker is Craig Lewis.

Good afternoon, Mayor, council members, commissioners. My name is Craig Lewis, and I'm the executive director of the Clean Coalition. We're a very technical nonprofit, and our mission is to accelerate the transition to renewable energy and a modern grid. And I'm here to, in general, endorse the Pathways project. I hope you all support it, and the Clean Coalition hopes you all support it. I'm also here to speak on a personal note. Because my wife and I, we just bought the property at 1221 Laguna Street, which is just outside of the zone. So to the first gentleman's comments, we would love to be part of this. We would love to use our property to show the way for Santa Barbara. And the Clean Collision piece of this, we'll make sure that it is a super green showcase, because that's what the Clean Collision is all about. I'm not asking for any money. I just want to be able to do the things that Pathways is trying to accomplish. And my wife and I, we're ready to, we're prepared to pay for the cost of whatever we do there. And we're just offering our partnership to the city to make sure that we've got another example of doing really good things. So thank you.

Thank you. Madam Clerk, online speakers?

Yes, Mr. Mayor, we have three hands raised by the deadline. And we'll hear from Linda Honigman, then Ted Morton, then Stacy Rebich-Espana. Linda Honigman, please go ahead.

Thank you. I love the title, Path to Yes. And I love the CEC's ecological framework for revitalizing downtown. And it makes a lot of sense to combine the city's housing and climate action goals. But I'm disappointed that it is possible to get incentives without helping our shortfall for housing production units at the moderate and below income level. There's a paragraph that starts to earn the points necessary to obtain these incentives and it lists a variety of community benefits and then at the very end it says or additional affordable housing. So if that or wasn't there, I would be much happier if that was a requirement. And then you add on all these other things. I think it would address my emphasis, which would be doing something about our local housing crisis. But as a program which helps all of our climate actions, I think it's great. So it could stand alone on that part of it. Thank you much.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Next speaker is Ted Morton. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. My name is Ted Morton. I'm Executive Director at Santa Barbara Channel Keeper. And Channel Keeper is one of the local conservation groups working to protect water quality of our creeks, coastal waters, and channel. As a nonprofit executive director, I am concerned about affordable housing and its impact on our attempt to attract and retain excellent staff. Today, we asked for a delay in initiating a zoning ordinance amendment until city staff conducts more outreach with community organizations, especially on anticipated changes to requirements under the city stormwater management program and provide more analysis. We are concerned that the desired regulatory flexibility will lead to an erosion of water quality safeguards, especially post-construction stormwater treatment requirements that will impair our waters and beaches, We're also concerned about how changes would stand up as Santa Barbarans are faced with more extreme storms and coastal flooding due to climate change. In 2021, the City Council adopted significant changes to the stormwater management program. City staff has since reported that the changes made to the program that the changes made the program more flexible, equitable, and effective, as well as easier to understand while also ensuring the city meets the Clean Water Act mandates. Yet today's agenda report does not provide any specific analysis or detail on the effect of the program's recent implementation on housing and development projects in the Central Business District. This is important data that is missing. The agenda report mentions feedback heard from developers on the pilot program, but says nothing about feedback from community organizations. So rather than move forward today with developing ordinance amendment, I ask that you instruct city staff to provide more information and broader community outreach. Thank you.

Thank you for the public speakers.

Yes. Final public speaker, Stacy Robert rabbit has Spania. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for structuring today's work session that allows public participation before decisions are made on this project. I support many of the goals behind this program. More affordable housing and stronger climate performance are both definitely worth pursuing. My concern is that, as structured, the program treats those goals as substitutes for each other rather than asking projects to deliver both. I've submitted a written comment and supporting documents that explain the reasons for my concern in more detail. A couple of the attachments document mechanisms whereby this program is likely to take us backward rather than forward on housing affordability. Because points are fully fungible across categories, a project can reach the program's largest incentive, unlimited density, entirely through climate and ecological features with zero affordability beyond the existing 10% to 15% minimum. A summary of the city's own 2026 housing affordability nexus study shows that That minimum already falls short. That analysis found new development needs roughly 22 to 24% affordability just to break even on affordable housing to meet the demand for services new market rate housing creates. Meeting that 22 to 24% affordable unit target doesn't help solve the existing problem. It just avoids making it worse. the pilot point system as currently described also doesn't incentivize or measure other community impacts such as broadly shared local economic development displacement of residents and small businesses or who actually captures the wealth this policy creates Whether new affordable units are ownership or rental, who benefits when a parcel's entitlement value increases, whether downtown activity flows to local businesses or chain tenants, none of that is tracked. A pilot study framework I've shared proposes adding these as measured categories. I also shared a neighborhood small mixed use concept proposed as a companion to the current vision. It pairs the same ecological incentives with a community land trust and cooperative ownership model, spreading affordable housing, walkable neighborhoods, and the wealth building potential of public investment across many smaller sites and more households. My ask today is simple. Please review these documents and the questions I raise in my written comment before making decisions on this project. Thank you, and I'd welcome the chance to discuss this any further.

All right, thank you very much. Are there further public speakers online? No, Mr. Mayor. Okay, with that, we'll go to the staff report. Here's how we're going to work today. Staff will give their presentation. Then we'll go around and we'll give two minutes each for questions for each of the panel members today. Staff is going to note the questions. We're not going to respond to them right away. Then they'll take the bulk of the questions and respond to them once they're all in. So if you have a couple of questions, which is about two minutes worth of questions. then we'll give them to staff. After the presentation, staff will respond, and then we'll get back into the deliberations, the timing of which for the amount of time for deliberations will be dependent on kind of what time we get done with the questions and the responses. So with that, staff presentation, please. Mr. Parenteau.

All right. Am I too loud? Am I yelling at you? Good afternoon, council members and planning commissioners. My name is Alelia Parenteau. I'm the acting deputy city administrator, and I'm joined here with Ms. Tabusk, our community development director. We're excited to share with you two quickly named initiatives that are getting a little bit conflated in public comment, so I will try to share how they are different but complementary. So again, this is today's recommendation, and we're going to start with the Pathways to Yes initiative. The Pathways to Yes initiative is in response to some things that we know. We know that the land development process in Santa Barbara is slowed by complexity, uncertainty, and risk, and this makes development projects very challenging to execute. We know that applicants experience frustration navigating the multi-departmental review, inconsistent corrections, and late hits. particularly when they are not public safety late hits. Stakeholders require predictability and transparency and clear pathways to success in order to make their projects work. And we have many ordinances that are bespoke in Santa Barbara, including 42 zoning ordinances and additional building and safety and other policies that really when layered upon each other can create difficulty in executing these projects. Additionally, we have climate and ecological goals that we do need to meet, as stated in the public comment period, but that we need to meet without increasing housing costs or delay. So the key objectives of the Pathways to Yes initiative are to improve the customer experience. We want to make sure that applicants are met with really great customer service and can leave the process feeling good about the information they were given. Streamline the navigation of city, state, and federal regulations. There are some things where the city has flexibility and some where we simply do not. And speaking in plain speak to the applicants to really get them that information. We want to empower city staff to find creative solutions. Again, where that flexibility does exist, how can we get to yes instead of defaulting to a no and we don't know the answer? And then enhancing accountability and predictability. So having performance metrics, transparent timelines, and standardized communication protocols being part of that customer service process. So we have a couple of near-terms initiatives. And before I move on to these initiatives, I did want to say, so this initiative is being led by the public works director, community development director, sustainability and resilience director, and myself in the city administrator's office. And so it is a high-level executive team working throughout the city to make these things happen. So our near-term initiatives include a culture shift, really looking to work with our land development team to make sure they, again, are empowered to provide that excellent customer service, provide customer service training, and create this culture of yes. We have created the Creative Solutions Roundtable, which consists of those four executive team members that really address projects that are stuck and find solutions the solutions to get through that stuckness, have some authority to make decisions and then communicate those decisions down to the land development team. We are currently in the process of initiating an ordinance audit, so a list and catalog of all of those bespoke ordinances we just spoke about to identify ones that perhaps are worth revisiting. Do they still serve the purpose they were originally intended to serve? And bring those back to both of your bodies for evaluation later, probably in the next fiscal year. And then the one that we'll be discussing mostly today, the Better Buildings Pilot Program. So I won't go into detail on that one. So again, just the culture shift, really wanting to train and empower, creating a feedback loop so that staff are aware of the experience on the applicant side, and recognizing the staff that find those creative solutions within the legal framework that the city has. Creating a land development team-wide protocol so we are all speaking the same language and offering the same stellar service. And then creating tools to ensure that we are consistently responding. I already went into what the roundtable is, but the roundtable can have projects brought to it by the development liaison, formerly called the ombudsperson. Development liaison, I have a separate slide on, is really a key component of this team. And then again, the land development team, city management, or even the applicant itself can advocate for having this project elevated. We currently meet biweekly, so quite often. and navigate these stuck or complex projects. So far we've had a lot of success getting projects through this process. So speaking of the development liaison, again, previously called the ombudsperson, just making sure everybody knows we do still have it, which is a different title. This person really plays a convening role and a shepherding role, if you will. Katie Mamulski is actually in the crowd here. She is our development liaison. And she is doing a great job tracking projects, making sure that if they're getting stuck, that they're getting the appropriate attention that they need. She is the applicant's guide. translating requirements into plain speak, if you will, so that it's clearly understood what the city is asking for them and creates the roadmap for those applicants. And then provides accountability and feedback back to the team, the Pathways team, to ensure that we are continuously and dynamically improving the processes. So as I mentioned, we're embarking on this ordinance audit, and the plan is to really review this long list of ordinances that we've created over time that have layered upon each other. We want to provide an in-depth analysis to both Planning Commission and Council to show what the original intent of those policies were, what the impact is on development, and provide some potential opportunities for adjustments where relevant. We will seek community input on this because it's the best thing to hear is from the people who are going through the process and where their pain points are and what the lived experience is. And so that is planned for a next phase. Identify areas of flexibility for the rules that we do not want to back away from. Are there places where we can create these flexibility pathways that staff can handle at the counter? And a really important thing we want to handle as part of the ordinance audit is how to handle late hits. If they don't pose a safety threat, is there a way to allow our project to move forward without creating tremendous cost or uncertainty? And then lastly, as I mentioned, we will bring it back to both of your bodies for direction on implementing changes. Again, I'm going to talk about the Better Buildings pilot in a moment, so just enjoy this pretty graphic. and how it all works together. So really, the goal of all of these things working together is that we create these pathways to yes. We get projects through in a more timely manner, in a more pleasant manner, and we get the projects, particularly the housing projects, built for our community. So with that, I'm going to transition right into the Better Buildings pilot program. And before I go into the background, I just want to mention, particularly in response to some of the very thoughtful public comment we received We are at the ground floor of this process. We today are just initiating the conversation, getting direction from you to look into this further. And everything in the existing draft, including the points as they are laid out, is just that, a draft that requires more input and feedback. To date, the feedback we've gotten has been really, really valuable, and I am confident we'll create a better ordinance. So as background, as we know, we're facing challenges in housing production, climate mitigation, we do have a decarbonization goal by 2035 in the city of Santa Barbara, and downtown revitalization, that economic vitality piece. But that also creates opportunities. Tangentially, the sustainability committee, which consists of three council members, has an interest in having the city adopt the ecological framework for a downtown core as developed by the community environmental council. When we looked at this through the sustainability committee framework, a lot of the elements in the ecological framework are already implemented through the city's processes. Not all, but many. And so we really struggled to find a way of adopting the framework as an actionable item. This Better Buildings pilot is intended to do just that, to try and implement the ethos and criteria of the framework while also pushing to get more housing built downtown. It is not the silver bullet solve to affordable housing. I can tell you that right now. And we will require a quiver of solutions in order to do that. but it is aiming to test a theory of change of if the city is willing to create more flexibility in our requirements, do we get more housing? That is what we're trying to prove. Additionally, Housing is climate action. You will hear myself and the members of the Sustainability and Resilience Department say this over and over again. Housing is explicitly climate action and probably the single best thing we can do to meet our climate action plan goals, particularly when it's infill housing. That way you reduce vehicle trips traveled, you use your utility infrastructure very efficiently, you support local businesses and the circular economy. You reduce pressure for outward expansion. As has been mentioned, we have lots and lots of commuting to outside jurisdictions. And you improve the health outcomes and lower climate risks of our community. Additionally, new construction is a double whammy. If we build new buildings without these ecological principles in place. We are locking in emissions for decades to come. We are not building buildings for five years, we're building them for 50. And so we really need to get that construction piece right from the outset. Going back to my comment about the quiver of solutions, the problem we're trying to solve is this housing dearth downtown. In the last five years, we've had 248 units built in Santa Barbara. That is through 10 projects, and it's about 41 units per year, and almost half of those use the state density bonus law. This is significantly below ARENA targets and significantly below the 1,000 to 2,000 units projected to be needed to make State Street Master Plan work. So where traditional approaches fall short is that the current model, again, layers all of those individual requirements on top of each other without really considering how they interact with one another. The Better Building model actually takes a step back and allows the developer to do what's right for their space. Not every project is created equally, and that's why you will see on the proposed matrix that will be changed, That's why you'll see, for example, you can earn points for doing more stormwater, or you can use points to do less stormwater, because again, not every site is created equal. And so really creating that flexible pathway that is based on outcomes, not regulation. We like to say that we're really aiming for a lot of more really good buildings instead of regulating to the perfect building, because that is the feedback we have received from our community, is that we keep trying to add new rules to get just the right building, and therefore we're not getting any. And so again, really considering all of these rules were put in place for really good reasons, but the ultimate result is we're not getting the development at scale that we need. This whole concept builds upon the adaptive reuse ordinance but extends it to mixed-use buildings and extends it to both reuse and new housing. So we're hoping this provides predictable opt-in standards that doesn't overcomplicate the system and that is really our goal is to create something that is flexible, not overly prescriptive. We're proposing a five-year pilot with regular checkpoints within that time frame. What we do anticipate would be highly iterative and dynamic. We don't anticipate that the pilot program we all decide on when we come back will be the pilot program in five years. We're going to have to take what we learn and adapt. It is currently proposed to be the central business district. And I'm sure we'll have questions about that that I'll let Mr. Busk address. And again, flexibility is key. So the idea with this, however the points shake out by the end of this process, is that you would provide community benefits, whether it's affordability or climate benefits, you would earn points that would be based on their actual effectiveness as a community benefit. They would not all be created equal. You could use those points to buy incentives, and the result is that we would get better buildings. Just in case you don't know where the Central Business District is, here it is. It's met.

Can I start here? No, this is still me. Okay, still me.

So we've categorized benefits and incentives in a few ways, really under affordability, climate and energy, ecological and resilience, features like storm water, for example, mobility and public realm improvements, whether you put in a paseo or some bike storage that encourages e-bike for families and residents, transportation, and then circular economy and low carbon materials. A lot of embedded carbon in buildings is in the building materials, so trying to get at some of those. And then some of the incentive categories include density, so more capacity, more flexibility in how you reach your different targets for entitlements, more certainty in the process, and hopefully the result is lower costs. So with that, I will hand it over to Mr. Best.

Okay, thank you. Just so that you don't have to hear the same voice the whole time. This is a list of the incentives that we have identified in the ordinance. And as discussed, this is a starting point. We took a stab at identifying incentives that we thought would make the most sense, but it's absolutely open to feedback. And same with the points. We started trying to calibrate points, but that's going to be ongoing as we move forward with this ordinance. So some of the incentives are additional density, reduced open yard, reduced vehicle parking, although because this applies to the Central Business District, there's already no parking required through AB 2097, et cetera. Also, a modified building height definition. Related to density, I know seeing the term unlimited density sounds scary, but with our 60-foot building height limit in the Central Business District, that really does dictate what the maximum density would be. There's only so high that it could go. However, we are proposing to slightly modify the height definition so that it doesn't include the building's roof. So our charter limits us to 60 feet, but it does allow us to define how we measure building height, and so that's where we have a little bit of flexibility there, and we think that could really help to obtain these buildings using conventional construction, which helps keep costs down hopefully will incentivize redevelopment. We could include some inclusionary housing-related incentives. However, until that ordinance is adopted, we don't know what those might be, so that's to be determined. And same with stormwater compliance. We have some options, some things we're looking at, but it still requires additional work with the Regional Water Quality Control Board, as well as outreach to the public. And then also process simplification. not having to go to planning commission for a concept hearing to exceed 45 feet in height and also not mandating the PRT, the pre-application review team and concept review. We still encourage those things because we agree with housing authority. They are a very good thing and it identifies issues upfront, but by not mandating it, um, it, it can simplify the project for projects that may not feel that it's necessary. And then moving on to some of the community benefits that we've identified, additional density, also a potential contribution to the local housing trust fund. Projects could provide an all electric building or ultra high energy efficiency or a net zero building, which would give quite a bit in points. Also, urban heat mitigation. And as mentioned, here we also have stormwater on this side of the aisle as well, because as Ms. Parenteau mentioned, that could go either way, right? Some sites have room for this stormwater retention and some sites have less ability to do so. We also have some bicycle-related benefits, because with no parking, you know, right now we require one bicycle parking stall, but if you have multiple people in a household, you may need more like parking spaces, so you get some additional points for that. Pedestrian-related benefits, such as paseos, which we know are an important part of our historic downtown. Adaptive reuse projects, they are included here, but I do just want to note they already get almost all of these incentives, so they get the density. They don't have to provide inclusionary housing unless they have more than 40 units. But we kept them on this list because that is one of the best things we can do ecologically. And also there may be some other benefit that's in here and we don't want them to miss out on it. So we kept it in here just to be safe. But just so that you're aware, they probably will get most of these benefits anyway. Use of low carbon concrete and use of mass timber construction materials. So we're trying to hit all those categories to really address both affordability and climate action. And then some important questions, you know, have come up of how this relates to state density bonus law. And this is one of the critical things that we do still need to work on. The way that we're seeing this is these are two pathways that complement each other. State density bonus law defines the affordability that you need to provide and the amount of density that you'll get in exchange. But then they also offer development standard waivers and incentives and the applicant gets to pick what those are, and the city has very little say in whether or not we accept them. We pretty much have to always accept them. Whereas the Better Buildings Program provides a menu of options to the developer, and then it rewards not only affordability, but also climate benefits. And is there another one? So also related to that, I did just want to mention You know, we did have some comments about including lower income as part of the affordability component. And our regional housing needs assessment does identify a need for more than 1,400 moderate income units. And that is an income category that we're actually seeing less and less of as time goes on because developers are choosing not to build under the city program, which requires moderate income units. And they're using state density bonus instead. And so they're superseding our moderate income units with lower income units. We know we need all the unit types, absolutely. So this program really just maintains the ability for us to obtain those moderate income units because we don't want to miss out on that income level as well because it is important. So yeah, so this is a way to encourage those units and not lose them. Yeah, as mentioned, the better buildings can incentivize moderate income rental units and environmental performance that state density bonus does not specifically target. One of the things we need to ensure that we do is not compete with state density bonus law. So that's where it's important how we calibrate these points and how we write up the entire program. So that's something that we're keeping in mind as this moves forward.

So we have been to a number of bodies to date on this and have received some very valuable feedback as I mentioned Including those on this list like bike related points are too high compared to the other priorities how to avoid over concentration of one benefit in one particular area What would the appeals process look like would it be to counsel or to? Planning Commission considering historic building buffer zones Car share being a very highly valued benefit to consider. What about landscaping? How we're calculating that inclusionary requirement, and then considering co-housing and community land trusts as part of this. Again, those are likely parts of that larger quiver that are very, very important, but also can we consider that in this? What about a workforce housing component, which does sort of relate to the moderate income? And then making sure to include when we come back to you with our revised points proposal, comparative projects, how different projects would fare going through the different programs available to them. So as I mentioned, we've been to a number of places. We've been to the Land Development Team Oversight Committee. We've been to the Architectural Board of Review and to the Historic Landmark Commission. This is a really good time to say we are not proposing that the Better Buildings projects would not go to those review boards. They would still have to go through their discretionary review process. We then also went to Sustainability Council Committee just last week or two weeks ago. Now we're here today. So based on the feedback we received today, we plan on going and refining the program and the point allocation structure and doing that additional stakeholder outreach that was mentioned in the public comment because we do want to hear back from all sides of the community on this. Then we would come back to Planning Commission with a review of the draft ordinance and implementation framework subsequently ordinance committee and city council after that. So again, here's the recommendation for today and look forward to your questions.

All right, very good. Thank you both. So as we said before, let's go for a round of questions. We're going to limit it to a couple of minutes each. The staff is going to note down your questions rather than trying to go back and forth with them and then we'll do that and then we'll come back again for deliberation. So try to spend two minutes or less on your questions if you can. Mr. Peterson, you're up.

Oh, I'm first. Okay, great. Thank you very much for the presentation and for all the work put into this. Exciting. I have a question. Can you speak to how this is going to interact with the changes that we may be making to our inclusionary ordinance. Um, you know, we, in this program, we are going to mandate the 10% moderate, but on Thursday we're, we were potentially reviewing some changes to that. So how does that work if we make changes to our inclusionary ordinance?

Okay. Once again, no, we're not responding now. We're going to gather the questions that are going to take notes. Right.

And then my second question would be, how did we arrive at the decision to include the geographic area and only the geographic area that we did? Thank you. Okay.

Thank you very much. Ms. Harmon.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I join with Mr. Peterson's questions. Those were sort of my top line questions as well, particularly on the geographic area. And I'm... Maybe struggling a little bit because I understand this feedback to date is still to come, but a lot of my questions I think are really centered in some of these pieces of feedback, so it's hard for me to even formulate questions. And one of the things, so I guess I just put that out there, thinking about location, You know, one of my concerns that I brought up previously was about it's cool that we have this menu going both ways, but how do we ensure that we don't have a concentration of something or an absence of something in one area? And if that's why we decided to do a pilot in a specific place, still how are we answering that? And can we spread that out citywide? So it's sort of just joining with Mr. Peterson's question on the location. I'm really interested in what it could look like citywide, but particularly how it then would relate to this issue of concentrating certain building elements. I think you know what I'm saying. I didn't articulate it very well. And then the other question that I have really is around the very low and low optionality. I know this is just questions, but I want to say not every program has to be about everything. And I strongly agree that we need moderate units. But if the purpose of this is flexibility and optionality, what harm is there in providing optionality for these other alternatives? And I think maybe from your reaction, the answer is there is no harm, but I just am wondering if I'm missing something about why couldn't we offer that? Understanding that especially downtown, it's unlikely the private developers would make use of it, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't provide that and incentivize it unless I'm missing something. So those are my main questions.

Thank you.

Ms. Miscom. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much for the presentation to both of you. Okay, I'm just going to go over what I have here in my notes. Your initiative includes several related actions, and one was developing infrastructure solutions, including potential offsite stormwater improvements that can address requirements more effectively than project by project approaches. So what are some of these potential solutions that are being investigated and where does that stand? The next one is, which I think has been asked at sustainability, but I don't think I got an answer. Is the inclusionary requirement based on base density or additional density and I think that needs to be made clear. And then I question the $50,000 contribution to the local housing trust funding earning 10 points and how is that determined? And how is the incentive of inclusionary housing related to be determined? That's one of your categories. to be actually determined? Are you waiting for a draft ordinance to go through the pipeline to determine that? And then based on Mr. Morton's comments from Channel Keeper who asked for more outreach and you had stated that you're going to provide more outreach, what kind of groups are you going to that you haven't been to yet? I assume Channel Keeper will be one of them, but where else will you be going? to get feedback on this program. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Nedden.

Thank you, Mayor Rouse. I'll be adding to those same questions also that for some of the incentives listed in the tables in slides 25 and 26, so things like energy efficiency, cool roof materials, building materials, things like that. I guess I have a question about why not just require those things? Why incentivize and risk that there would be multiple properties that wouldn't take advantage of that? And I continue to have the question that's been articulated here about individual stormwater versus a stormwater district and if what we're asking for in return Significant enough to be able to manage particularly with State Street being our stormwater Drainage system for the city. So I have real concerns about that and Then I had a question still about if the buying of points could be stacked So, you know, is it just one time? you can buy a packet of points or can you just keep buying points and then buy yourself out of the entire incentive? And then I think we really, I would like to discuss really the question about inclusionary and how specifically it won't be making the imbalance worse. I mean, the Kaiser-Marsden study, We've referred to it a lot of times, but I don't think we've really addressed it, that for every 100 units at market rate, it creates the demand for 18.4 to 19.6 affordable units. So even at 10% inclusionary, we're still contributing to that imbalance, and that imbalance is what creates the need for greenhouse gases. and exacerbates the problem rather than ameliorates. So I think we really need to, since we're putting this forward with the ecological framework, which I fully support the ecological framework, but if that is the goal, why would we have outs for that? I suppose that's the biggest part of my question on that with the affordability component. Thank you. Ms. Moss.

All right. Ditto to all the questions so far. And I really appreciate the framing of this as do we get more housing as an overall measure? And I'd ask that we consider do we get more housing that we need the most? And if so, how do we measure that and how do we make sure that the incentives are aligned with the housing that we need the most? We have a really great housing element that I think this mirrors everything that's in the housing element already. It called for all of the measures and the pathways to yes and the better buildings efforts as well. But the housing element also notes that potential housing development opportunities downtown are prime for lower and moderate income residents because they're located within proximity to employment opportunities and public transportation. So again, how do we or is this program going to generate more housing that we need the most? So I'd ask that that be a significant measure. And then beyond that, how will this encourage or help affordable projects more than the the basic requirement, whether it's inclusionary or other measures that are used, but also how will this help or encourage 100% affordable housing projects. If that's not a goal of this initiative, then I think that needs to be clear because that's not clear to me right now. I assume, again, that we're going for measures that will give us the housing that we need the most. And I think there are a couple questions about state density bonus law already and how this works with that, but I'm also curious about how or if developers could stack different state laws, so beyond state density bonus. I think it's really important to figure out. We have dozens of new pieces of legislation coming out from the state each year related to housing flexibility, incentives, and waiving of local measures. Can they be stacked? Maybe it's not seat density bonus law, but it's six others. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Duccio.

Oh, you go last, don't you? Yes, I do. The mayor goes last. That's the privilege of the office. I think some good questions have been asked already. So I guess I want to just verify here, I'm just going to ask the question, that the inclusionary housing ordinance is coming for planning on Thursday. That will be incorporated into this, just to verify, that will be incorporated into this program. People don't get away from that. They still have to contribute to that. Okay, that's very important. Also, I hear words like this program's a compliment. This is to supplement the estate density And then the ordinance, draft ordinance says either or. So if we can just maybe flesh it out a little bit more and also if you can say how is this all going to be incorporated into what we're doing already, not that we have piecemeal type of ordinances going on. And then when we look at the incentives, I see unlimited density under development related. I would love clarification on unlimited density if I can get 160 points. That can be, that's really, it sounds like a lot. And also, I don't see that we have setbacks on here. We didn't come up with points for setbacks. And then I realized that the geography of downtown is not just downtown, it's more broad. I didn't even realize that. And so does that give us more opportunities for incentives? Maybe we're not as restricted as we would be if it was just on State Street. The $50,000, that just stuck out also. I don't even know where that number came from. And also, we're not talking about any type of low housing performance options here. Maybe that's something else we need to look at. So those are pretty much my top of line thoughts right now. Thank you. Thank you.

Mr. Friedman.

Thank you. I agree with most of these questions so far, so I'm going to try to get through these. So on the state bonus density and the issue of double competing, I want to make sure we need to understand that. So one is at what point do we send this to HCD to get feedback because it's important that we get it to them to find out before we go too far down the road, but we need to go far enough down where we have something to give them. But I don't want us to have an ordinance that gets adopted, we do all that work and then we find out that it's not, that it is competing. On the issue of points earned versus what you can spend it on, Some of the, I'll call them tier one versus other alternatives. Tier one would be affordable housing, that's the priority. So for example, a long-term bike space gets you two points, and that's points earned, and then points required to get 10% bonus density is only 30 points. So the way I read this, and this will be a clarification, is if you put in 15 long-term bike spaces, you would get a 10% density bonus of market rate units, because that's not, the density bonus isn't affordable. That isn't something I think we want to prioritize because then that would definitely, I'd put in 15 other spaces to get 10% more units. And then storm water is a very important one. At what point are we doing the analysis of the infrastructure? Because old, we don't even know what's down there. Electrical, all that needs to come in for these 1,000 to 2,000 units. So we need to make sure that we're making these promises. But if there's major upgrades that need to be, had for the city's infrastructure, who pays for that? Is that part of the developer or is that the city because it's all part of the city? How does it tie in water, waste water, all that? And then I think that I'm getting to the last ones. And then HCD and then also the expansion of the Pathways TES program overall. I know we're trying to relegate it to this program, but some of those, it seems we could do those citywide. So I want to make sure that we clarify that some of those would be citywide. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Wardlaw.

Thank you, and I agree with many of the questions from everyone so far today. Yeah, I would just only reiterate, to me, the biggest thing is the state bonus density law and how this would interact with that. I think that all of us have worked hard on trying to identify how we can address density without it being then doubled down with state bonus density. So I'd really like to better understand that, and then as well, as Commissioner Boss said, how it could also interact with other state laws, because I think that's really foundational to how we then look at the point system. So that would be my first big thing to even move forward. And then I think separately, we've had a lot of conversations on the importance of city-owned assets and our parking lots and identifying those for workforce and affordable housing. And to me, I know that's a separate conversation, but I think it's important for this discussion that we understand how that's coming along, where that sits in a priority bucket because that's critical to then how we move this program forward because if that is the real focus from an affordability lens, that adjusts how I would look at the point system for this. If we're lagging on that or I just want to understand where that is to then understand how much we want to push in terms of adding in low and very low into the point system, as well as going back to the state law issue. If we are competing with state law, if we add very low and low, then that also adjusts how we look at the point system. So those are some of the high-level points. In terms of the pathways to yes, broadly, I mean, obviously, this is something that I think we've all been wanting, is how do we get to a better culture on this? How do we make this more streamlined? I hope that this is applying citywide. That would make sense to me. And then just in terms of some of the specifics around that, I'd love to see and just wondering if staff is looking at, you know, limiting the rounds of comments that go back to developers. I think that one of the things we hear consistently on Planning Commission is that, you know, there's just multiple rounds of comments. And I know that in the late 90s and early 2000s there was an effort to really streamline that by limiting the rounds of comments. So that's something that I would love staff to look into. I also think that, you know, we on the Planning Commission have received a number of projects on lands that could have been for housing. because the underlying zoning allows for multiple uses. And so I'd love for staff to really explore how, if through this program, we could look at really ensuring that if we identify sites that we want housing on, that we actually get housing on those sites. So looking at kind of rezones from that perspective. And then I think others have mentioned this, point allocations, just want to understand the rationale behind that. Council Member Friedman brought up some good points on, you know, how this, you know, you get to 10 percent bonus density because you added bikes, like just want to understand the thought process on that more. Then on another aspect of points, when we're looking at adaptive reuse and especially since this is through the lens of climate, I think it's important that we give more points to folks that are pursuing adaptive reuse projects and that we're actually doing the policy work necessary to make adaptive reuse more viable for people to pursue, like specifically around we have all these, you know, not too many, but we have lots downtown that are narrow. I'm going too long, huh? You're out of time.

Okay, I'm out of time. And it's also questions at this point in time. We will be coming back for deliberation.

Well, my question is if you guys can look into, you know, the long lots and how we could split them in half and make it easier to build housing. And then my last question is why would we only come back in five years? We've won every crowd. Okay. I have more questions.

We know.

We figured that out. Mr. Gutierrez. Thank you for that. What role does AI play in all of this, and can AI be implemented to streamline this entire process? Thank you. Okay. Mr. Malky.

First off, I'd like to second all the comments the council and the commissioners have put before, because I had a number of those. I'll take a little different spin on this, which is, has anybody sat down and looked at the feasibility of this program? Because each of these elements that we are giving bonuses to or points to have costs and also have economic value. And the question, has somebody ran those numbers as compared to what a developer could do using state density bonus? Because this effort, in my opinion, would fail if we don't have something that is a net positive to the development community. So to the extent we can get a feasibility analysis, that would be very helpful. Is there any consideration of adding some kind of objective design standard layer to? This effort to streamline and clarify what we want from the development community We have those for other areas, but it does not include the CBD at least my understanding and has if you sat down and looked at what the possible and unintended consequences of this would be because that's one thing that you know the folks at Sacramento haven't done with the changes to You know removing parking and increasing density is then unintended consequence is Increasing the value of the land so has there been an analysis of? the increase in value of land that would come from this in any discussion about recapturing that increased value of land. The other concern I have is, and it was mentioned by others, which is the State Water Control Board has different requirements in different districts, but historically it trickles from the San Francisco Bay down to us. So has there been any consideration of using their current standards, because it will be here at some point in time. And that's at least some of my list. Thank you.

Thank you. Ms. Santa Maria.

Thank you, Mayor Rouse. I'll just list these. I very much agree with the majority of the questions that have been listed. But I would love for us to take a look, or I'm wondering if we have taken a look at capping certain categories of points earned. So I know Commissioner Wardlow, Mr. Friedman also mentioned, we talked about 15 bicycle units gets you 10%, but also think about 80 bicycle units could get you unlimited density. or bicycle parking, so if certain community benefits and points earned may need to be capped so that we don't end up with those unintended consequences. Yeah, curious if there's any drawbacks to piloting this citywide, and wanting to see how we envision that we reconcile that this pilot could result in buildings that advance climate goals, but they still, the produced units still remain outside the financial reach of the average employee of the city. And so it may not actually cater to our city's workforce. And then along that same route, if the housing built downtown is not accessible to the average city or downtown employee of that workforce income level, how is that going to affect one of our main goals, which is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle miles traveled? And then I think everybody asked a variation of this question, but essentially, how do we see the addition of base density units for low and very low income households working within this framework? Is there something that prevents it? Is there a reason why we didn't include it at first? And how do we see that being integrated with the inclusionary housing ordinance that is coming back?

Thank you.

All right, thank you. Good questions all. I had just a couple quick ones myself. Will there be, out of these efforts, documents produced that are guidelines? For example, if you want to talk to people who are land use consultants, even property agents and whatnot, will they be able to access this information so they can more expeditiously inform their clients of what they're looking at when they come to develop this? Second question is always going to be a touchy one, but since we have a, one of the highest standards of stormwater development, has there been a bang for your buck analysis of where we are versus the surrounding and required agencies, superior agencies to groundwater to a stormwater capture? Because I know that has been a bugger in some of the other projects come along and I'll be talking about it with state street master plan. So I would like to know where we are with that. And then lastly, In all of this, we talked about customer service and one of the biggest things we talk about or don't talk about is initial communication and what can we speak a little bit to how a client or an agent or a land use consultant first approaches a project so they can get as much information upfront as they can possibly to go in. All right, with that, I'm gonna turn it back over to staff. You may choose who wants to answer what. I think it kind of delineates between the two. sections of your presentation and then after that we'll have a round of deliberation.

Hopefully we got them all.

Let us know if we didn't.

I can read that. You were writing feverishly.

I will start and I'll try to hit as many of the zoning ones as I can because I think there's a lot of similarity. So first off, how will this interact with inclusionary? That is to be seen. We hope that once we have the inclusionary ordinance that's been reviewed by Planning Commission, That'll give us some guidance as to where that's going. And then we can consider whether this program should provide incentives beyond that. But to answer the basic question, you still must do inclusionary housing with this program. You cannot eliminate that mandatory 10% that the city requires. So, um, that will still be part of this program. And this program was intended to be for things that go above that. So 10% is our baseline on that. Um, let's see. And how did we decide on the central business district as the area? Um, it's a very good question. We did consider, um, we started with that because the regulations in the CBD are very similar and they're also less restrictive than in other areas of the city. So we didn't have to worry so much about setbacks because there weren't setbacks. And so it, it gave us, uh, a more narrow focus. We did consider expanding it, um, primarily to include housing sites that were identified in the housing element because we thought, hey, that would be a good way to incentivize that. But it just started to get a lot more complicated. Parking is different. Those are in different areas of the city. So it was a lot easier to write up standards when we were focused on the downtown. We also know that with the State Street Master Plan, it felt like a good thing to incentivize housing right there, give us a focused area so that we can see results maybe a little more streamlined. So that's why we started there. But the goal, if this is successful, we would love to expand it citywide or to key areas. So that's, if this is successful, that is the ultimate vision. This could also help inform a local density bonus program. So that could be another outcome of this, but we saw this as a good way to start. Let's see, regarding the very low and low income options. The reason we did not include it to start with was actually we did include it to start with and then we took it out based on our concerns with competing with state density bonus law. However, it doesn't mean that we can't put it back in. It will just take a little more thought to ensure that we're consistent with that. Coordinating with HCD will be important on that and the timing for that, I anticipate that would come after we do stakeholder outreach. after we've developed an ordinance that is ready for Planning Commission, but before we actually go to Planning Commission. So I think that would be the right timing for HCD. Let's see. The inclusionary housing, yes, that would be still based on base density. So, and just to be clear, that's base density the way that the state defines it. So it's really based on the general plan density of up to 63 units per acre. So that is the base that we would be working off of. Let's see. Could the points be stacked? Yes. If I'm understanding the question correctly, yes, they could. We've identified certain things where you could, if you repeated the community benefit, you could repeat the points. but also certain things where we said, no, this is a one-time point value. So I think each incentive will be treated a little bit differently, and that's something that we're going to need to just look a little more closely at. How will this not make the affordable housing imbalance worse? It's a great question, and I think similar to our inclusionary housing ordinance, according to that housing study, it would, right, because we're just not getting there. Um, so I think it's a matter of balancing that study with economics for supply and demand. Um, we still think generating housing is a good thing. Um, even though the study says that the amount of affordable housing it's going to generate is going to be worse than what we're getting. Um, but again, that's part of the experiment to that.

And I think that, um, pairing that, and again, back to the quiver metaphor with the city asset plan, which we can talk about in a second. of building those very low income affordable housing, right? Like trying to find other mechanisms by which we build that because we just need it all at this point. Yeah.

Okay, how do we ensure we get the housing we need the most? That's a great question and relating back to that point is we have different ways of getting different types of housing and so this would just be one of those aspects and that will be part of the analysis. You know, what did we get? luxury units that are only being used as second homes, that's not what we want. So how do we ensure we're getting the housing that we want? So we can also look at, are there things we can write into the ordinance to help us get closer to that? But it will be one of the things we'll be analyzing at the end. Yes, this would apply to 100% affordable housing projects. So any benefits in here we'd want to apply to those 100% affordable housing projects. But that's definitely not clear as it's currently written. So we can confirm that. And can developers stack the state laws? That's really the question we need to look into more closely with our attorneys, with HCD. I think for the most part, yes, they probably could stack those laws. So that's where we need to look at this very carefully and just make sure that we're not having those unintended consequences.

And just building on that as well, because one specific concern with that came up regarding the density bonus itself of whether a project could go through better buildings, get a density bonus, and then reset its base density and then go through state density and get additional. So where we're headed with the attorneys on this one is setting base density. It does not change. It cannot change whether you participate in one pro project or program. and another, it would remain that same per acre density that's saved by our general plan, and then you would be limited in your, they're not cumulative bonuses beyond that.

Let's see, when will we do the analysis of infrastructure? You can talk about it from the stormwater perspective, yeah.

Oh, for utility infrastructure? Yes. So from stormwater perspective, we are currently doing that analysis on State Street as part of the master plan. It actually answers Commissioner Wiscombe's question about these other options for stormwater as well. We're really looking at in lieu or alternative compliance programs. particularly in the downtown where we're lot line to lot line. It's very challenging and not always a great idea to be building in stormwater in these sites. And so looking at having sort of an off-site compliance. State Street is our first that we're looking at. We will be bringing that analysis with the State Street Master Plan on September 1st for what that's starting to look like. But we want to look at all the watersheds and trying to expand this benefit outside of the CBD as well.

And then related to other types of infrastructure, we've done the analysis citywide that we do have, you know, enough water and wastewater capacity to serve these housing units. But then we do also do an analysis of each site to make sure that the pipes running to that site are adequate to carry the flow. And so that will continue to happen for each individual project. the property owner will need to upgrade as needed to ensure that their project works. Let's see. Is the Pathways program citywide? Yes, it absolutely is. Can we limit the number of rounds of review? It's something we're definitely working on. It's ongoing training with staff as to what's a completeness item versus what's a policy consistency item. And so we definitely want to limit the number of rounds of review, but it's just an ongoing effort. How do we get housing on the sites where we want housing? We want housing downtown. So that is why this program is focused on the downtown to start with. Yes, there may be sites downtown that are slightly more desirable for others. There were some identified in the housing element. But just overall, downtown is where we want the people living. So that's why we started with that area. Let's see. How were the points established? It was just some internal back and forth trying to just run samples like, hey, if this project did this, how much does that get them? So to answer Council Member Friedman's question, yes, the 15 bike parking spaces could get you that density bonus. And so we did get feedback that maybe the bike parking incentives are too high. But those are the things we're gonna continue to look at, the gives and the gets to see what's appropriate. One of the first conversations we had was, is it acceptable to get more density if you're not giving more affordability? If you're only giving ecological benefits, should you get that density? Our internal decision was that yes, because this program is about both things. But your feedback on that would be helpful as well. Let's see. how to make adaptive reuse more valuable. Yeah, that we're continuing to work on that. We have had some success with the new ordinance, I'm happy to say. We've had projects already using it. And this relates to why are we coming back in five years? Development just takes a long time. And so sometimes, really, five years is almost the cycle you need to understand if something is being effective. So that's why we came up with the five years. yeah, we're continuing to work with adaptive reuse applicants to see what can help those projects be more effective. Let's see. Do you want to jump in? I'm going to let Kelly jump in.

Hi, everyone. Kelly McAdoo, City Administrator. I just wanted to particularly to Commissioner Wardlow's question about what are we doing on city-owned land and sort of how does that dovetail with this? We are embarking on sort of a comprehensive evaluation of um, parcels, particularly in the downtown that the city owns. But, um, we're planning to come back in January with a work session for the city council to give staff direction on how to move forward with those. And so I think there will be, I think there's a lot of options that we have with those parking lots. And so I think we want to explore all possibilities. Um, I know that the housing authority has done some analysis on some of the city on parking lots. And then I think there's some other things that we want to look at and also not just the parking lots but the former police building site. And so we want to bring back sort of a short list of those parcels for staff to really focus on in the near term, the ones that are going to be the easiest to think about in terms of developing housing. So that conversation is coming forward. And so I think these are married together because I think we can't think of them separately. They're all part of. a package to create more housing in downtown. So I just wanted to share that in terms of the timeline for what we're thinking in terms of bringing that back for initial conversation with council and direction.

Okay, and then going back to the beginning to get the ones that Mr. Buss did not get, how do we make sure we don't have an overconcentration of a benefit? In one area, Council Member Harmon asked that. And I think that though this is a five-year pilot, it would have very regular checkpoints, annual, biannual, where we are checking in on what's actually coming through and have go or no go or pivot moments at that point. And it would adjust points accordingly, right? If we're getting too much of one thing, clearly it's not, the incentive balance is not accurate. The $50,000 local housing trust fund contribution, how is it determined? Again, sort of trying to figure out what we're needing to get at through this program, and we'll come back with a further analysis on that. Why not require things like energy efficiency and cool roofs, for example? Again, just trying to make this ultimately flexible and not create too many rules, but could look at if you do a pairing of different incentives, you automatically get something. We could look at that, but didn't want to over-regulate on this program. for stormwater really concerned about State Street. Again, that's hopefully being addressed through the State Street Master Plan, and so feeling a lot better about the stormwater infrastructure there. And also, to be clear, we're not eliminating stormwater compliance. We're suggesting that for these projects, they can purchase the right to go to the Central Coast rules, which still create a backstop on stormwater compliance. How will we encourage or help more affordable projects? As we talked about, this does have some points. We'll work on those points to try and encourage more affordable projects, but also really focused, as Ms. McAdoo said, and beyond even the city assets. We're working on an entire housing action plan that will outline that quiver. all of those elements will go to our many stakeholders, including the housing advocates, the environmental groups, our development community, and just our community at large. So in answer to your question of who will we go talk to, that is the plan.

Did you define that? Unlimited density? Just defined by the 63 units per acre. Is that it? So I guess I don't understand the question.

The question was whether we could clarify what unlimited density meant.

Unlimited density just means there is no numeric limit. You could do 1,000 units per acre if you can fit it. As I mentioned, though, with our 60-foot height limit, that's what constrains density. I think the biggest reason someone might choose to use what we would be calling unlimited density is in order to do micro units or something like that where it's a different housing type. Otherwise, the reality is it's tough to do more than a 50% increase or maybe 100% increase on the density that's already allowed.

Then can we come up with points for setbacks? And we will look at that. Can AI be implemented to streamline the process? In a separate effort, we are exploring how AI could be used more in the pathways conversation, not so much the better buildings. So more to come on that. Have we looked at the economic feasibility? Today we're just trying to get a go or no go and then we will come back with the economic feasibility once we've further finessed the point system. Obviously this will only work if there's an economic incentive to the developer to do so and so that is our goal. Objective design standards that does exist in the Central Business District.

Correct. Our existing odds program still applies downtown, and so any developer could choose to use it even with this program.

Have we looked at possible unintended consequences? As you've heard today, we've batted back and forth all of the different goals and sort of limitations of the program. We will continue to do that. Again, we're really trying to take a bit of a risk here and try something different. And so can we anticipate every unintended consequence? No, we cannot. But that's where that annual review and go or no go really kind of comes in and is very important. Can we cap certain categories of points? Yes, absolutely. We can do that, I think. How do we reconcile this to provide more units but not affordability? Again, try to address affordability through that multi-pronged approach. Will documents be produced to provide guidelines? Yes, we can do that once we've defined the program. Have we done a bang for your buck analysis of the stormwater program? When we have spoken with the development community, we heard three things, limit development, and they were consistent across the board. And that was... Um, the process, the development process through the entitlement process, uh, it was time, time is money and stormwater were the three limiting factors of why developers aren't building more. And so, um, we understand the stormwater is very expensive. In fact, we're hearing as high as 30 to 35% of a total project cost. And so we are looking, that is why this program looks to provide relief there, and we are looking, probably the first thing of the ordinance audit that will come back to your group is a review of options for the stormwater program moving forward. And then customer service, so we will just continue to work on training for customer service, potentially even bring an outside trainer from an industry that is very good at customer service to try and create this culture of yes in our organization.

I think also having the development liaison gives a point person for any new developer coming in as a place to reach out to.

So that's critical.

I think that was all of them, all of the questions.

Well, very good. That was great. Now, what I'd like to do is we're going to go through and have everybody give a deliberation with a limited time. But first, would you... Give us an illustration. It says initiate a zoning ordinance amendment for the program. Can you tell us exactly what you think, how that's going to be put together before we deliberate and give you our feedback on that? What are the steps that are going to be to go? Obviously, we're not running an ordinance today, but how do you think, how much of a structure is that going to be? Is that going to be building a department to the legal department, building a department to the ordinance committee? How do you see that happening?

So we will take all the feedback that we've heard from all these groups, you know, design review, this joint meeting, and we will meet internally to kind of knock out some of the things that we think are issues. We will go to the individual departments, talk through the different point levels, and make sure that internally we feel good with it. We will coordinate with the city attorney's office as well. Stakeholder meetings will also be held. You know, we'll be reaching out to people that we got public comment from as well as, you know, general stakeholders. And ultimately, you know, we'll have to do additional work with HCD, with water quality control board to ensure that, you know, what we have is solid. So it will take some time. Then after that, we will go to planning commission with a draft ordinance.

All right. Very good. So what I'd like to do is go back to everyone with a five-minute time budget this time. and have you give your feedback and deliberations about what we're doing. And if you can then see if you can answer basically any questions about moving forward, if moving forward is in fact what you think we should be doing. Direction to staff, in other words. You don't want to go first, do you, Mr. Peterson? I can go the other way. Actually, I can start with Ms. Santa Maria. We'll go the other way. Give you a break.

Thank you, Mr. Oz. Yeah, Mr. Peterson, you just got saved by the bell. Okay, well, thank you so much. This is clearly a long time coming, and I think the The goals of this are admirable, but I think we do need to reconcile if what we are aiming to accomplish is actually what this framework, as it's laid out, is actually going to accomplish. There's going to be a lot of amendments, and it's very encouraging to me that all of the majority of the feedback and questions I've heard from all of my colleagues here all sort of point in a very similar direction, that we need more housing, but we need housing that is of the income levels That are needed here. It does include moderate, but it is going to have to also include low and very low income. There's a lot of things that are that are going to be intersecting right? We have the inclusionary housing ordinance coming back and we have. I think we have a good opportunity to streamline this, but if we are streamlining majority market rate or majority units that are built outside of the reach of your average employee here, they may just sit empty. And my biggest concern with this is that we may be accidentally encouraging the building of housing that is not necessarily conducive to relieving our housing crisis. And when we talk about the supply side of resolving the housing crisis, it needs to be reiterated over and over that it can't be any kind of housing. It can't just be market rate housing. We do need to meet our RHNA numbers, and thank you to our staff who's always on that. I would say yes, we should be moving forward, but I think the point system needs some serious revision. My recommendation or suggestion would be that we tailor the points to give us what we're looking for. And what I mean by that is if we are okay with a developer you know, making the building or the new development completely green and, you know, extra bike racks and all these things, and we're okay with that being a trade-off for no housing of the income that we're looking for, if that's what we're doing, then we need to lay that out, right? But if what we want is, Housing of a certain income level, then that needs to be 1 of the priorities. It should be easier to develop that. But also, it should not be as easy to tally up points that do nothing for affordability, but allow you to get this ultimate density. My concern is that the way that this is laid out right now really just. increases the value of the properties for where this is going to be implemented, at least for now. I think a public comment even mentioned that even without anything being built, the fact that you could qualify for this and limited density is going to make these parcels worth a lot. And that's great, but that benefit is only felt by the owner of that parcel and the owner of that existing property if it's there. we don't really feel that benefit. So I think if we can dive deep and take a look at the benefit of the developer versus the benefit of the community, they don't have to be mutually exclusive, but they both need to be taken into account. The benefit of the developer to be able to more feasibly build the units that we are in dire need of needs to be balanced with the needs of whatever our workforce is. I would really like to see when we bring this back, if we could bring back an analysis of the average wages in our city and in our downtown in particular. If this is going to remain as a central business district pilot program, then we should take a look at how that's going to affect the folks that are working downtown already. I'm sure there's plenty of analysis out there about how many are commuting in versus who is already living in the city. And so if we're trying to reduce those greenhouse gas emissions through the vehicle miles traveled, how do we, how do we, how do we make sure that some of those, at least some of the units that are built can help those folks that live out of town live closer so that the folks that keep the city running can actually be in the city. I think if we have that as a north star of how do we get the employees that are always commuting to be able to live here, the people that keep the city running, I think that could be a good way to sort of center us on what it is that we need so that we don't accidentally end up creating really green and beautiful buildings that ultimately are too expensive for our workforce to afford. So, thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Bauke?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I don't have any big picture thing to really stress other than say that we don't want this to fail because the alternative, and that's what I want to talk about a little bit, is what if we don't meet our 8,000 arena note? knowing what's going on in Sacramento, what could that mean to the city of Santa Barbara? Could we lose control? Could the state start saying, well, that's nice you have an HLC and an Architects Review Board. We don't care. You've got to build buildings. And we see something created here in our CBD that isn't Santa Barbara. So I think our key thing is we need this to be something that actually works and is something that is feasibly a better path for a developer to take. than the State Density Bonus, because the State Density Bonus does not have a height limit. And you can waive a lot of things, even things that are important to our community can be waived through the State Density Bonus program. That's pretty much my biggest interest, that we need to get into the nitty gritty of this. And from a master developer, which is what my Professional jobs been for years We really need to look at the central business district from a Master development point of view in what the city itself in the community want our downtown to look like Especially if we have to meet 8,000 housing units in the city in this cycle and question is what is it going to be in the next cycle? so we really need to get into that and I heard good things from Allison and about that you're starting to look at the system-wide things. And the question is, where are those trigger points? I mean, folks make a lot of big statements about State Street and all the cost of the State Street master plan, but a lot of that has to be, is the infrastructure portion, the stuff that people don't see. It isn't the bike path, it is the storm water. and other improvements. So I definitely want to see a big picture look at our CED as part of this program so we know what we're going to get at the end and be very intentional in the development. That's my comments. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Gutierrez.

Thank you, Mayor. I want this to be a trendsetter, hopefully for other communities. So that would mean that we'd have to take risks and do things that no one else has done. So I would ask city staff and my colleagues to be a little more fearless and experimental when it comes to these policies that we're going to be deliberating on pushing forward. And let's embrace the future. I know AI is a controversial issue, but if we could use it to our benefit, I'd recommend that we lean into it as opposed to trying to play catch up. Thanks. Ms. Wardle.

Thank you so much to staff. This is a great effort, and I really appreciate the work that's gone into this. I am very supportive of using all the tools in the tool chest to address our housing challenges, and that really means addressing housing at all income levels. As I shared, I think that the biggest piece that we need to understand is around how this will interact with state law in order for us to really dive into the details of how we approach the point system on this. I'm very encouraged by Administrator McAdoo's comments that This program is married to the program that we're also pursuing around our city-owned assets and affordability on those. Because I think these really need to move in conjunction with each other. When I read this, it's very much viewed as this is a market rate program specifically. And that's okay, but we must be doing the other piece as well if that's the way this is going to go. And then if we learn through understanding where we are with state law more, that we can encourage low and very low, then we should do that. But I think it's hard to weigh into the details at this point without that information. So again, really appreciate that these are moving simultaneously because I think that's very important. I also think that one thing I wanted to ask was just about primary residents, that as we're talking about this from a points perspective, I'd love that to be included in the points, that you're getting points to ensure that if you're building market rate, that these are going to people that actually live here and we're not creating problems. you know have party pads for people from out of town um and then i also think that it's really important that we ensure that when we're talking about getting the right uses downtown i know you said that we want housing downtown and i agree we all agree with that but on planning commission we are receiving projects that are going on lots that could be for housing that were identified in the housing element and i think it's important that we do the policy work to make us actually get those preferred uses around housing. So I just want to reiterate that. Love hearing about the one point of contact to get through the process. Really happy to hear that you're working on the comments, like limiting the amount of comments going towards developers. Because again, to your point, time is money. Time is one of the big reasons why this isn't, you know, we're not getting more projects. And then the stormwater management piece. That's obviously extremely critical for the success of all of this. So I appreciate the work that you all are doing on that. That's it. Thank you.

Mr. Friedman.

Thank you. So first I want to thank all of our community partners that brought these conversations forward. They started out in one direction, and it's taken quite a time to get here, but it is something definitely worth the conversation and worth moving forward. So I want to thank everybody that's come together from the ecological side, the housing side, and then our staff for also being creative because at first it didn't seem like this would even be possible. So the staff has put a lot of time into this, and there's still a lot of unknowns right now. But we are to a point where it is worth pursuing it and figuring out the answers to those questions. So I just want to start with that. So this is a complex policy, but we do need to move it forward for a lot of reasons. Downtown revitalization is one, just housing overall. But we need to also recognize that there's, in my opinion, there's two top priorities that we need to not lose sight of. And one is the incentives for more affordable housing than what's currently here. But the other is that we don't make this so regulatory burdensome that the developers would then continue to use the state bonus density. And that's a very fine line by how many regulations you put in versus that, because there already is a state bonus density. And we're trying to get there. We're closer today than we were, I think, a couple weeks ago. But there's a lot to be said in there. And then on top of it, the other concern, I'm not 100% certain. that it won't be able to be stacked up with state bonus density or that's incompatible. One of the concerns that I would have is they go through this process, they get the permit and then they could take that to the state and say, can we use state bonus density on their own? So they, they could maybe try to, there might be ways. So we need to double check that there isn't ways around where they get the incentive for us and then they go to state bonus density. And, um, The other is on some of the incentives going forward. We need to look at, it gets to prior reservations, but caps on them. Uh, the issue of the bike parking spaces, you know, 30, 30 gets you 15 or you could get all the way up to unlimited density for 80. That's, that's not a trade off. I think that's in the best community interest. So we need to look at the incentives and I think we're going to be doing that. And then of course the stormwater, when that's such a big part of a housing project, especially downtown, I know we're already analyzing a stormwater banking project potentially. So let's see if individuals or is there a way where multiple properties can come together that capture it in a certain way so that it takes the relief off one property but communally we're investing together. And it's important that we have conversations earlier on with our partners such as Channel Keeper who have been from the start part of the discussion on stormwater management and they spoke today. So it's important that we reach out to them earlier on that process. And then the other is the discussion about ecological benefits versus just housing. It is both. So how far do we go? So limiting some of the ecological benefits for me is somewhat problematic because there's missed opportunities such as rooftop gardens or open spaces because if we're having more density downtown, we're going to need places for people to go. So let's re-look at the ecological benefits, solar, those types of things that make buildings more resilient and see if they fall within that point system or not. I know they were limited in the staff report to make it simpler. Again, that kind of contradicts what I said earlier, but I wanted to find where that balance is. And then I'll wrap up with this. How far out beyond the current proposed boundary It might make sense if it crosses the street like one of the public speakers earlier. But as we start expanding it out, and you spoke to this, staff, that the regulations change, so it makes it more complex. But when you get up into the upper, I see Fred Sweeney out here, outer State Street area, it's even more problematic because of Lacumbra Plaza. And any regulations or anything that changes and up zones or allows for more density in that area, Right now it can't handle anymore until we know what's going on with the 1200 units up there. So if this project were to expand, we'd have to very fine tune it. But the upper outer state street area would definitely need to have special consideration because of all the units that are going in there in the next five to 10 years. So I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lucio.

Thank you. I want to thank staff, all the work you've done on this already and, Also, I followed you, you went to all the commissions, a couple of the design boards rather, then you went to sustainability, and then you came to us, and also the letters that were submitted, didn't have an opportunity, they came today to really study them as much as I want, but those were really some good letters that came in to follow that input as well. And as Eric mentioned, I was thinking about this, incentives. One incentive would be open space, and there's not a lot of open space in what we're talking about, But maybe, again, the rooftops, those can be the open space, those gardens, and you can put that into your point system as well. And I do like the way we're going to marry the sustainability in with the housing. And also storm water, that's really key here, and that should be the really big incentive. But again, we can't lose sight of the housing. And I know we're going to have market rate housing, but really we need the affordable housing, and I just don't want to get away from that. But I do see how this program can hopefully won't stack the state density, but I like the way it could supplement it. So I'm really enthusiastic about this. I came from another city where, man, we did all this stuff all the time. And we did points. We had a program, for example, we had a green point program for landscaping. And this can be even a weighted type of program where you weight the points. And one thing I did find confusing, first we're looking at points, then we're looking at the performance options. I was reading it the other way around. First I was looking at the performance options, then the points earned. and then what you get with the points. So I just want to throw that out. But I want to thank you for all your work, and yes, yes, yes, let's proceed with this. CHAIRMAN BRYANT L. Thank you. Ms. Moss. MS.

Thank you. I am equally excited about this. I think the Planning Commission every other week says, what's going on with the housing element? We have these programs and policies. What's going on? And now we know that you're making really incredible progress. So thank you for the work that you've put into this, and I'm looking forward seeing the measurable results. A few specific things that are really important to me, affordability focus and emphasis, especially for the people who already work downtown, that was detailed in the housing element and Council Member Santamaria just mentioned it as well, that if it's not working for the people who work downtown, then it's not serving downtown more broadly. As far as points go, I think it would be helpful to get a better understanding of the points and then also consider additional points where I think Commissioner Wardlow mentioned primary residence. I think during the sustainability meeting, I think it was Mayor Pro Tem Stead mentioned points for native plants. So not just getting an understanding of how the points were developed, but are there other things that could be factored in? Community benefit definition. I think council gave direction on revising the community benefit direction maybe eight years ago. So if we're going to revise it as part of this initiative, it would be great to make that change. And that change was specifically right now, I understand that community benefit is just any housing. And the direction from council was to make it affordable housing. So while you're changing it, now's a good opportunity. And then finally, measuring success. So again, creating the housing that we need and focusing on the climate-related efforts, that seemed to be of importance. And I don't want to downplay it in this effort. So one of the public comment letters recommended adding two metrics to the pilot's performance framework. One, units produced by income category measured against the arena proportions. So that's easy to do if it's citywide, but how can that be done if it's just downtown? And I think it can with some of the tables that were already in the housing element. And then second, estimated vehicle miles traveled in greenhouse gas reduction attributable to new downtown housing that corresponds to worker's income levels. So the program can really only be justified on climate grounds if the housing is being built matches the people who are already working downtown so that we're reducing the the vmt and greenhouse gas so again really excited and looking forward to this moving forward um during this arena cycle thank you thank you um so happy um let's see committee member council a commissioner boss

that you mentioned the definition of community benefit. I think that is something eight years ago, and that's where I want to sort of center my comments is that, oh, sorry, I always miss this part. Thank you, thank you. This is incredibly creative work. We were setting about to really integrate in the ecological framework is incredibly creative, and a lot of work has gone into that, so I wanted to say that first. So a little bit in the sort of co-definition of community benefit and ecological framework, because I support both. And in ecological framework, you're talking about the whole ecology of the system, which includes biodiversity. And part of biodiversity, if we're looking at housing, is having the full range of housing needs met. I mean, that's really a very basic principle of an ecological framework is that you're not skewed toward one or the other. And that's not just having to do with plants. I mean, it has to do with people. And if we're really going to be the vibrant downtown that we're all Working towards that is part of it not skewing towards one type of housing over another so I'll start with that but on the pathways to yes, I I mean, yes, we've all been saying this for forever. We need consistency, transparency, predictability. That is where the majority of the cost of a project comes from, is how long that takes. So absolutely for the pathways to yes. And I agree it sort of conflated these two together. And that should be citywide, as you described. So the cultural shift of creative solutions, so happy that the ombuds position or the development liaison position is underway and performing well. And I've already heard really positive feedback about that too. So on the ecological framework part, been a big supporter all along. Yes, I would actually like a lot more of these options to be required. I think there are some that are really central to the framework that should be prioritized as required. And I think an important part of this too is that recognizing that not all housing is created equal. So to that definition of community benefit, it's not all market rate housing is housing and is equally valuable, especially in the core of our downtown. So I'll refer back to that Kaiser-Marsen study again and again. because it laid out that for every 100, we would need between 18 and over 19 units. So at 10 percent inclusionary, we are exacerbating the housing imbalance. And if we continue to exacerbate that, that increases our greenhouse gas emissions and is sort of out of balance with an ecological framework in terms of people living downtown. So to be a true community benefit, if we're going to give all the rights that go with community benefit, I think it absolutely has to have that inclusionary. And maybe it can't be built on site, But I would go for 20% inclusionary or paid out as an in lieu fee into the local housing trust fund for housing development downtown specifically. I think this is really important that if we're measuring what our inclusionary buyout is going to be that we base it on the 20% and not on what would make it exacerbate it. And I want to make sure this isn't a workaround for inclusionary. I mean, you know, if we're going to use state bonus density, then at least there's some inclusionary in there. So I don't really want this to be a workaround for that. And as you mentioned, this needs to be, you know, it's for the, I mean, you build housing is for the next 50 to 100 years. So let's really make sure we're building in the sustainability goals into that and not have that be something you can just kind of trade out for easier things like bike racks. So as mentioned for everybody, the point system, I think, needs to be refined. And I think with that in mind, that affordability needs to matter too. Let's see. The range of incomes... Um, yes, I think the program needs to be checked every year. Um, you know, really, so it can be, um, responsive to that and really needs to, um, have the low income in there. Um, and if there's a way to give higher points for primary residents, um, if we can do that, I think that's really important and really important in those unintended consequences that we're not incentivizing demolition instead of adaptive reuse. Um, I wouldn't want it to be that that somehow becomes. easier, better, and more profitable. I'd like to keep the pre-application review. I think it really does make better projects. And to the HLC comments on that, too. I also think there's nothing in here for ownership housing, and that would be something to consider. And I think city-owned properties should have 100% of everything, 100% affordability, 100% of the ecological principles in them. I mean, we own the property. Let's see. I see you. Okay. All right. Okay. I completely support the comments from the HLC, the extraordinary letter from Lisa Carlos, comments from Cass Ensberg, very well laid out. And from the Housing Authority, Rob Frederick, that's maybe the easiest way to say it. Bottom line, I fully support the ecological framework. And part of that healthy ecology is a range of affordability, especially if we're looking at greenhouse gas emissions. I really think this needs to go to Planning Commission for a deeper dive on balancing the points system. I think that's where this goes next and for multiple iterations and working with community members as well. And then just very quickly, the unanswered questions still. the stormwater, the parking. And one more comment on the ordinance audit. What's my one chance? This won't come back until January.

Well, you have to thank Mr. Balke for donating his time, I think.

Yeah, once the ordinance audit comes through, I think it's going to be really important that if we change things like stormwater, then all of a sudden those point values are going to be drastically different in this framework. So each one of those ordinance audits is going to have to be correlated back to the point system. Thank you.

Thank you. Ms. Wiscombe.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Excuse me. Thank you to... Ms. Parenteau and Ms. DeBusk for the excellent work on this. And also, I want to thank Ms. Carlos and Mr. Fredericks and Ms. Ensberg for your wonderful letters that really were thoughtful and thorough. I want to start with the pathways to yes, just by making one comment. should not have multiple bites at the apple for project reviews and that's been a consistent problem i think i've heard about it in my years on planning commission um and sometimes it's the review is done the building plans are done and then the inspector goes out and does something different and says no you're required to do this and it's not and it's a surprise so i i just think that we need to solve that problem make sure that we don't have multiple bites at the apple, that they can go through the plan check and get it done. And then I'm just going to go through what I have written down here. We should have substantial community benefit points for low and very low income units to promote diversity downtown. I really believe that. I think that's very important that we have those opportunities to do that downtown. And Councilmember Harmon talked about we don't want to end up with six blocks, contiguous blocks with no open space. So my comment on that is that the ordinance, the key to this ordinance has to be flexibility. I think there should be a review of the program that takes place perhaps annually on what works and what doesn't work. And the ordinance needs flexibility to make changes as needed, really, as immediately after council approval. I really believe that. So when adjustments to the points system may be necessary, flexibility is the key. And the program also needs a sunset date, just like the AUD program had. So let's see. What else? Oh, the ordinance audit timeframe. It may be useful to complete this before initiating the pilot program. Are we planning on doing that, the ordinance audit? I know that's a question, but I thought that that might be useful in terms of before this pilot program would go into effect. And I think Mayor Pro Tem just said city-owned projects should have 100 percent affordability. I believe that to be the case. The program is based on outcomes, not mandates. So we have to really be careful about that and the outcomes again are the flexibility and really really keeping an eye on it to see what's going on. Council Member Friedman talked about capping incentives, and that, again, is part of the flexibility. We need to be able to do that, so that will be part of the exploration process. tailor points to what we are looking for. I don't know which commissioner said that, but that's really what are we looking for? What are our goals? What are our priorities? And then we need to tailor the points to work that out. Commissioner Bauke talked about a big picture outlook. I think that's very important too. And one thing that I thought about, and Commissioner Wardlow brought it up, was the primary residence. I don't know how you deal with that, but we don't want these units, this program to be doing units that are, you know, party houses or secondary units for people that just pied a terre for that. And I think that's all my comments. Thank you again, and there's a lot more work to be done, but I think we're getting there, and you guys have done a great job. Thank you.

Ms. Harmon.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. I echo the thanks. I'm strongly supportive of this program, almost full stop. I think this is incredibly creative and it's an important shift in the way that we think about development in our community and from a city perspective. support it very strongly. I appreciate the comments from all our colleagues around the importance of affordability, and I share that concern, but I do want to say that I think we have to be careful not to view this framework in a vacuum, as if a developer's options, particularly in the CBD, this program or go through the traditional city pathway. That's just simply not true. I mean, Commissioner Wardlow, I think, was alluding to this. And maybe it was too polite to say it. But I'll say a developer could choose to build a hotel here. And there's no housing in a hotel. There's no ecological benefit with a hotel. And we talk a lot about the Kaiser-Marsden study, and we should, that it does point out that the impact of market rate housing on the need for affordable units is 20%, 30%, something OK, well, it's incalculably more when we build a hotel. And so I think we do have to contextualize this conversation, or they can choose. And I know we are explicitly not competing against state density bonus law. And for the record, I am not implying that we intend to or are, but it is. That was for you, Mr. Duenas. But it is a reality that a developer, if they choose not to build a hotel, could choose that pathway. And while yes, that comes with some affordability, the negative externalities, I view them as negative, are quite extreme. So I just want to make sure that we don't totally miss the forest for the trees when we put together this program. Affordability is key, but so too is ensuring that we don't get a hotel downtown when we could get housing. What's worse than no affordability? To me, it's a hotel. So maybe the answer is to think seriously about changing zoning authority downtown. But until we do that, I just want to be very careful that we don't encumber this program so intensely that it's just not interesting to folks. It's not useful to them. When there's other alternatives that are easier and more financially sound from a business perspective. So I think we need to really keep that front of mind at this point. For me, it's actually really hard to give feedback on the points allocation. I have a very sort of gut reaction that is based in nothing except my own anecdotal experience, which is limited essentially to what I have on the dais, until we have very clear illustrative examples of different types of projects and how those projects could make their way through the various pathways, and that includes state law, whether or not we can stack the state law. To me, I just don't, I can't really give you meaningful feedback on the points except to say I do think that we should keep density and unlimited density as an incentive. If we remove that, I don't totally know why anyone would choose this project. That's just a baseline reality. And then, of course, we should absolutely include very low, low units, and I think give really good and high, I assume, points for that. I wouldn't want to get rid of the other options for the reasons that I started with, which is then you would just choose some other path to get what you want. So I think providing optionality is where you guys were going with this, and so I fully support it, and I think throw it in there. I do want to close just by saying that this concentration risk issue that's been brought up a number of times continues to really concern me. And maybe it's less, as I'm looking at this map, maybe it's less of a concern where this pilot is. It's manageable. But I think we need to think seriously about it. And I appreciate that the ability to change and pivot on this points allocation is sort of how we're going manage this, but the other side of that coin to me is it gives no assurance to developers. If our response is that, like, don't worry, it's so flexible that we're gonna change it every year, well, that's, I mean, we started this conversation by saying it takes projects many years to be planned and to get through, so we need five years, but by the way, we're gonna change it every single year. Like, nobody's gonna use this, and so we need to find, this is a problem that can't, I think, ever be fully accounted for, and I recognize that, and I I do not want the perfect to be the enemy of the good. But I think we need to really think about this and maybe there's some other way to get at avoiding concentration risk that is not simply saying we'll just change it every year. Because if it were me and it were my parcel and I was planning a project, well, I would go to the thing that I knew was a sure bet, not the thing that I thought could be changed by the time I submit my project. So all that to say, I really do love it, and I'm sad that I won't be voting on it, but I will definitely be submitting comments, and I'm excited to see what you guys put together, and I think this definitely portends good things for downtown. So I'm really grateful.

Thank you. Mr. Peterson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And again, thank you, staff, to all your work and for what I think is an innovative and creative project. I echo it. I love it. I support it and it will evolve. First off, yeah, we need to make sure that it's legally justifiable and that we can't, that it's legally justifiable alternative to state density bonus law and that it doesn't compete with the program or that we can't stack it on top of there. That being said, I think my comments will operate under the assumption that this is legal and justifiable and so, That being said, first off, I would support this being applied more than just in the central business district. State density bonus law applies citywide, and if we're trying to provide an alternative pathway to it, I think we could have avoided some headaches in certain places in the city, not just downtown. If developers had chosen our local program, it's one, but here's what I care about most. I think to me the umbrella, the paradigm of all of this is state density bonus law. And this is how the state has thought about incentivizing market rate developments to provide affordable housing. And increasingly the data shows this is what developers are using increasingly each year. And for many in the community, I think we want more community benefits than what those developments provide. And so the question for me is, how does this both, initiative both attracted developers and truly beneficial to the community. And I think we have an opportunity with building back, sorry, building better housing initiative, hard to confuse the two. It was said earlier if we fix our rules, do we get more housing? But I think the question is how do we make our rules more attractive to building affordable housing? And what we're trying to do is leverage the community benefit here. And so I submit that the benefit we need most in this city are homes that our fellow residents can afford, and that's the benefit that matters most. And what I want to singularly focus on is the contribution to the housing trust fund. I think that's the opportunity we have. Under state density bonus law, you actually have to build the units. If we want an alternative pathway that developers would rather use, let's make the proposition both easy to them and a real community benefit to us. And so I'm thinking we could provide the city some real money, and I'm not sure that $50,000 to 10 points is the right equation. I think the smallest amount developers should be able to choose from should be higher than that, and the points should be higher. So if the trust fund gets more money and developers get more concessions for that contribution if they choose this one. And then if that money goes to the housing trust fund, we can leverage that money with Rob Frederick's 10 to 1 and build more affordable units. And theoretically, we could, it's a question, could developers give the housing trust housing trust fund less money than what it would take to actually build the units under state density bonus law? And could we build more affordable housing units with that money than what the private market rate developers would have been able to build under state density bonus law in the first place? So could this equation be better than that? That is the key to me. And so that's what I think we should really focus on here. Um, that's what is most important. What's potentially most feasible and the one that will benefit, I think most people's lives. So that's what I want to focus on. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Well, I think the phrase of the day was said by Ms. Parenteau, which housing is climate action and whatever we need to do to produce housing is probably the most important thing. And the more granular we get in our rules and regulations, the harder it becomes to actually produce housing. This is a, relatively built-out town, and there isn't a lot of there there when it comes to acreage. There's some adaptive reuse that can be done. There's some remodeling and building that can be done, and there's some vacant city property that we could potentially leverage at some point in time. But the actual complexities, every time we make another complexity, we put another barrier up to actually getting where we want to go. So when we do these things, we have to remember that people aren't doing it just for their health. They're doing it because they actually would like to make a return on their investment. And that has to be in the equation. We can sit there and noodle this all day long. This is the soup that there's, you know, 15 cooks in the kitchen. And man, it really came out salty once again. What happened? Well, we all put our stuff in there. So, but it can't be, you know, these things have got to be understandable in this way. I asked about the documents earlier where we can have a template. that can go to people that are land use agents, people who are agents that are dealing with clients that may want to develop and develop housing. And what would it take to be that? But if it's going to look like a set of instructions or that IKEA bedroom furniture you brought home and always missing three of the screws, then we're going to end up where we are. And we've been for years. I mean, we've chased this around for a long, long time. But the big things that I want to say is, number one, like you said, housing. Is in fact what our most ecological thing we can do is develop more opportunities for people to live number one, but number two is Because the customer service and that debt goes back to I had a meeting with our ombudsman and test this morning about just that On different levels, but that whole thing about making the building department not that place where you come to abandon all hope. It's a place where you come to actually get solutions to get to the next step and I think you guys are on the right path, absolutely. So I'm completely supportive of your efforts and I think this is a great start. Ms. McAdoo is gonna give us a little instruction about how to handle the second part of this item.

I hope, we're gonna see. So I think the recommendation is obviously receiving the report on the Pathways to Yes and then initiating the Zoning Ordinance Amendment. I didn't hear from anyone here that you wanted us to stop working on this effort. There's obviously a lot more work that needs to go into it, so I don't know that a formal vote or anything like that is necessary unless there's some strong objection. We'll continue, we'll take all this feedback, which I just first want to take a step back and say thank you to the team, Ms. Parenteau, Mr. Busk, Mr. Damore, who's on vacation this week, Ms. Harris, Ms. Mamulski, a huge staff team that has been working on this. And when I got here two years ago, all I have heard about for the last two years is fix the permitting process, fix it, fix it. And I am so grateful that I have a team that really sort of took that and took the charge from me to say, hey, we need to do something different and creative and have come up with some really innovative ideas. And I think, as I think someone mentioned, like really being a leader on this throughout the state. And I really want to be seen, you know, have Santa Barbara be seen for that in doing a way that respects, you know, who we are as a community while also getting needed housing built. And so I think that's where we've come at this from. So I just want to give huge kudos to the staff team. That being said, I think we'll obviously continue to work on this. Lots of outreach to come, lots of refinement to come, obviously legal analysis that will be done and how do we structure this so that we are not competing or duplicating or letting people take multiple advantages of state law. And then I think that's where we are for this item. And I just really appreciate all the feedback, incredibly thoughtful comments and helpful as we move forward.

Thank you. Thank you to staff. Well done. Nicely done. Good job on the handwriting too. I was pretty impressed.

And I think the second agenda item we have is really just an opportunity for anyone to give suggestions for other topics as we schedule future Joint Planning Commission City Council meetings. Are there topics that you would like us as a team to tackle with this group and what would be helpful? Obviously I think the development on city owned property is probably one where we'll want to have a joint conversation at some point, but happy to really hear feedback on what other topics are of interest to the group.

And just to add to that, I've been cautioned by the city attorney that on this item we shouldn't go into any kind of substance. It should be just a one or two sentence thought, but not into the whys and the wherefores about the subject, because it may in fact be a future agenda item. I don't necessarily think we need to go down the line. Anybody has suggestions about what they'd like to do, please raise your hand and that'd be Ms. Snedd.

Thank you, Mayor Ross. In addition to just how handling city-owned lots all together, there has to be a process and prioritization of use, that kind of thing. Then it just flew right out of my head what the other thing was. Oh. Hotel rezoning, moratorium possibly.

Anyone else? Ms. Woodlow.

I'll just agree with Council Member Sneddon that I really think it's critical that we move forward with identifying city-owned assets and really do a full evaluation of that. I think that's really important for the success of this program that we're talking about because they really need to move together. And then I also agree with Council Member Sneddon on talking about rezoning or how we actually move preference and get housing on sites that we say we want housing on. I think that's really important. So those are the two big things that I really care about. And I do agree, I can't remember now who said this, but I think Commissioner Wiscombe was talking about this, the importance of the comments aspect of really limiting comments and like how we figure that out because I think that's a big, it's the most consistent thing we hear about on Planning Commission of why projects don't come to fruition. So those three things are the things that I would really like to see prioritized. Oh, and Lucille Boss's point on community benefits. We've got to figure this out on the definition of community benefits.

Thank you. Mr. Bauke.

I've got one basic thing which definitely fits into today's conversation, which is looking at what revenue streams we can have to the housing trust fund. I'm specifically thinking of value capture, because the things we're talking about today could lead to significant changes in the real estate baseline value of our community, and this would be a way to take that money, put it into the pot, and leverage that and get more affordable housing that way. So, thank you.

Mr. Santamaria.

Thank you, Mr. Rouse. I'll just list out a few. An overall plan on how, as a city, we plan to meet are RENA numbers, second, identifying a funding source for local housing trust fund, also second, getting together to discuss the plan for our city-owned lots, the former police station, all that. Definitely also second, Mayor Pro Tem's potential hotel moratorium, and then also a vacancy tax for behavioral change or a potential for that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Friedman.

In addition to those, the one I have would be economic development strategies in the future so we can figure out how to broaden our economic base here for everything. Anybody else?

Ms. Wiscombe.

Well, based on Council Member Friedman's comment, I think that exploring, which we did several years ago, quite a few years ago, I think it was right when COVID hit, the blue economy. We really looked at that. But that's been something that's on my mind for a long time. This is a real opportunity for us. We have the tremendous asset here. We can make it bigger. I know that they're working with City College now on some things, but I think that if we can get the community more behind it and get the city staff more behind it, and we can really start to make it a big effort. So I'll stop there. Thank you. Very good.

Mr. Hucho. I think it kind of... economic development is so, so key. That would make such a difference, I think, in what we're doing to help push these programs through. So that's very, very critical. And also, I would say defining community benefits better. That's key to me also. I've been on this commission a few years now and I'm still trying to get my hands around it. And then the other thing is I know that so many state laws are changing now They keep coming down, and is there any way that maybe we can, I don't know if it's getting together as a joint session, but to understand them better. and how we can streamline them. I'm even trying to get my hands around what we have right now. I know. I think I can say that, because I think we all have frustrations with it, and we're all sincere about wanting to do the best we can. I think if we can just understand that a little bit better, I'd appreciate it.

All right. If there are no further comments, I think that's it, and I'd like to... What's that? Oh, a public comment. Is there anyone that would like to open up for a public comment? So I don't have speaker slips.

Can I just reiterate that I really want to, and because I really do believe that most of us agree with this, that the local housing trust fund and identifying an ongoing funding stream, that is super important, and it should be a part of this broader conversation because I think that's how we get to addressing more affordability. So I just want to jump in and do ditto to Commissioner's comment. Council Member Santa Maria's comments because that's super important.

All right. Then we'll go back to general public comment. Madam Clerk, do we have any submitted speaker requests?

There are no hands raised and I don't have any speakers.

There is a gentleman back there I know that tried to turn in a slip.

I apologize.

Would you, sir, like to come up and go to the dais right over here, if you would, please, and for three minutes.

And no online hands, Mr. Mayor.

Right. And this is certainly about the subject we were on today.

Good afternoon. My name is Julius Abanis, and it was heartening to sit in the back and listen to the deliberations and the presentation. A lot of the things I wanted to talk about were kind of covered, but I want to give special kudos to Councilmember Santamaria. We have to keep the main thing the main thing, which is housing. And what troubled me and caused me to come from work when I was listening online was I saw the point scale, but I didn't see the urgency of the housing. It didn't jump out to me. We have a housing emergency, and I think this point scale should be obvious. Either the density should be higher than 5% or there should be more points awarded. And one thing you said about the hotel moratorium, I think that makes sense. Let's take that option off the table.

Okay.

So thank you and have a good day.

Thank you. Are there further requests to speak publicly at this point in time? Okay. If not, we have none aligned. Is that correct, Madam Clerk? Correct, Mr. Mayor. Okay, then we stand adjourned. Thank you very much.