Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Very correct.

How are we doing? You guys doing good?

Excellent. You're looking very professional today. I feel like I just disheveled. Oh, fun.

I can see you. Oh, thank you.

Okay.

I may have... Yeah, it's going to be a tough one because you're Zari's component.

You could explain that less. I do not have a description. Yeah. Okay.

Thank you.

We'll find out. We can either party it up or not. All right, you okay? Good?

All right, we're good.

All right, good evening and thank you for joining our June 2nd, 2026 Planning Commission and Architectural Advisory Committee joint meeting. As a reminder, items will be taken in the order they're listed on the agenda. Before we get started, I want to briefly go over public comment procedures for the meeting for those who may be joining us for the first time. Public comments on matters on commission and committee interest and items not on the agenda will be taken during item number three. Comments on the other agenda items will be taken only when that item is called. In-person speakers will be called first, followed by virtual attendees. In-person speakers, please fill out speaker cards like these and hand them out to the staff at the dais to be recognized. If you are joining us virtually, you may use the raise hand feature on Zoom to speak. If you're joining us via teleconference by phone, you may raise your hand by dialing star nine and star six to unmute your microphone when prompted. Please only raise your hand at a time that the item on which you are speaking is called. Each speaker is allotted three minutes, and in-person speakers, there will be a light at the podium to let you know how much time you have left and a buzzer when time is up. Lastly, we know that we each bring different perspectives to the discussion, and we want to be sure everyone has a chance to be heard without interruption. Planning Commission welcomes public comment on items within our purview. Any speaker whose comments are on topics not under the Commission's purview will be warned and then removed if necessary. in order to allow Planning Commission to conduct their business, or our business. Thank you for your attention and consideration. I will now turn it over to staff to call the roll.

Good evening, Commissioners. Commissioner Bott is running just a few minutes late, so we'll let you know when he joins. Commissioner Cornejo? Here. Commissioner Finch?

Here.

Commissioner Hunter?

Here.

Commissioner Robinson?

Here.

Vice Chair Koch? Here. And Chair Sunogoretz?

Here.

I'll just go ahead and read the architectural advisory. Committee roll call as well. Committee member Davidovitz? Absent. Committee member Jenkins? Here. Committee member King? Absent. Vice Chair Stewart.

Here.

And Chair Tanaka Tsubo. Here. Youth Committee Member Paredes. It's also absent. I'm Sue Exline. I'm the Assistant Community Development Director and I'm the liaison to the commission. Tonight I'm here with Rick Jarvis, our Consultant City Attorney. Jeff Schwab, our Community Development Director. Evelyn Garcia, Associate Planner and AAC Liaison. And Cristina Mateo, Administrative Secretary and Meeting Host.

All right. Next item of the agenda is notification of meeting participation by teleconference due to just cause pursuant to Government Code 54953-8-3. Do we have any remote participation notifications or requests from the Commission to consider?

We do not.

All right, let's move on to the next item on the agenda. It's item number three, which is public comments. Public comments on the matters of the commission and committee interest and public, sorry, and items not on the agenda. So we will take public comments for those joining us in person and through Zoom. Excuse me. As a reminder, public comments should be on topics within the commission's purview. If you have joined us in person, please fill out a speaker's card if you have a chance and hand it out to the deus. And if you're logged in through Zoom through your computer, please click the Raise Hand button now. If you dial them, press star 9 and star 6 to unmute when prompted. In order to see how many speakers we have in general public comment, I ask everyone who wishes to speak on the item not on the agenda, please complete speaker's card and raise your hand in Zoom now. I have one speaker's card with no agenda item, so I presume it's going to be not on the agenda. Not on the agenda. It's the Sue, Mrs. Nix. Is it for the item not on the agenda? Right. Okay, perfect. Do we have any other remote participants on this item for the public comment?

We do not. And I'll just note that Committee Member Davidovitz has joined us. Oh, wonderful.

Thanks. Welcome. No worries. No worries. Glad you could join us. All right. So I will now recognize Mrs. Nix to speak at three minutes for an item that's not on the current agenda.

So my name is Sue Nix. I am here in regards for the Reverend Shores Community Association. And I'm just here basically to I guess beg the planning committee to respond to the emails that I've sent. And I'm sorry if you felt that I've been chastising you. But it seems like three or four emails should have some response. This whole Redwood Life thing is very, very, very important to our community. And we really hope that you would please come out on the walk. And we appreciate Maggie responding. And Dylan, who actually came out on the walk. So we do appreciate you, but this is very, very important to us. So if you could please respond to us. I know we're all busy. I just came from a 12-hour day work running down here to get here before the meeting started, because this is so important to us. Thank you.

Thank you.

Seeing there's no other speakers on this item, I will close public comment. We're moving on to agenda item number four. It's a staff report. It's a request for a study session on the proposed draft objective standards ordinance. Jeff Swab, community developer director, will give a presentation on the item.

Good evening, members of the Planning Commission and Architectural Advisory Committee. I'm Jeff Schwab. I'm the Community Development Director and Project, I guess, Planner, I guess, in this case, for this. Project Manager may be a better term. I'm also joined tonight by Matt from WRT. You may remember him. He's also assisting us with the Greater Downtown Area Plan, but WRT prepared the graphics that are in your draft ordinance, and he's also helped us refine the ordinance over the last year-ish, right? So we've been working on this for a little while. I also wanted to thank the planning staff and the legal staff who've spent numerous hours reviewing the multiple drafts to gain input to get us to this stage. Next slide. So tonight, the outline for the presentation is that I'm going to give you a couple questions to think about while I give you the rest of the presentation. We'll give you an overview of the draft ordinance, talk about what the next steps are, we'll receive public input, and then we'll have, I'm sure, a robust question and discussion and individual feedback that you can provide us to help refine the ordinance. Next slide. So here are the questions, and I'll just read them real quickly. Does the ordinance adequately address the built environment design policies of the general plan as outlined in the staff report? Does the ordinance adequately implement the housing element policies and programs? Does the ordinance provide sufficient flexibility in meeting the design standards? And what feedback do you have for additional refinement? Next slide. This is the outline of the ordinance. I thought it was important to sort of just touch briefly on this. The intent, I'm sorry, the intent of the ordinance is to focus on residential development. It really has limited, very limited impact on commercial development and that I'll talk about a little bit more in relation to the gateways. Next slide. So going through the ordinance, just high level, I wanted to cover a few bullet points within each section. The intent is to implement the general plan, built environment and housing policies. And most importantly, also to comply with all the state housing laws. And to the degree that we can, streamline housing project approvals. The terminology section includes definitions of various types of standards and defines guidelines. Next slide. The standards will apply to development as defined in the zoning code currently, which is pretty much everything. But in this case, residential development in large part. Guidelines that are included articulate some desired outcomes, but they're not required. They're just directional, if you will, to applicant, but they could be enforced if an applicant chooses to go through discretionary review versus ministerial review. And the difference between those is ministerial review, we're basically checking to make sure they complied with the standards, and if they do, they get approval. A discretionary review is an option that applicants can choose if they want to vary from those standards, in which case you have authority to condition a project or to require something different in order to meet maybe the spirit and intent of the ordinance. This ordinance will override other provisions or standards when they are more stringent than other sections of the code. It's important to understand this because it's very difficult to fix the entire zoning code in one fell swoop. There are some things that are modeled after mixed use districts but they don't occur in residential districts and we couldn't just go in and fix every district to make it work. So this think of it as a blanket or an overlay of all of the zoning standards. So if the zoning district, say, has a requirement that is more stringent, that will apply. If this ordinance is more stringent, it will apply. It does allow some technical standards to be fulfilled at building permit stage. In many cases, projects sometimes have to do noise studies or lighting studies, and those get to be deferred until building permit because they're more technical in nature. They just have to identify that they will comply with those. And to the degree they can show us in advance, that's great, but it's not required to get approval. And then, as I've mentioned, it creates a discretionary review option for projects that want to have additional flexibility and want to vary from some of the standards. Next slide. The next several sections really just sort of outline the topics within each of the sections. The first one is the sort of overarching section of development standards. This applies to all residential projects and it includes the topics that are listed on the screen here. And I'm going to sort of address head on a couple of the topics that you've heard about in the comment letters. So next slide. So lighting has come up as an issue. First, I wanted to acknowledge that this is the first time we've even proposed lighting standards. There are none. So this is an improvement over nothing. And the idea was to, and I've listed out what the ordinance does do. It requires compliance with Title 24. I think that would happen through the building code review regardless, but it's just important to note. It requires LED or equivalent lighting, which is more efficient. It includes what's called bi-level dimming controls that allow for adjustments in detection range, hold time, daylight sensors, standby periods, and standby dimming so that lights don't need to be on if they're not needed. So if there's motion, for example, lights might come on and they might dim more slowly or they may dim down when there's not activity. It requires a warm range of light, white light though, that's 2,700 to 3,000 Kelvin. That's how they measure color temperature for outdoor common open spaces. And it provides shielding from adjacent properties. Because we've heard a lot about the lighting and the impacts to sensitive areas, there are a few things that you could consider recommending or commenting on tonight. That is, we further reduce the color temperature in more sensitive areas. We'd have to figure out what those are and what range they would apply to. We've also been asked to conduct a pilot project using low spectrum or red type lighting, which has been used in Europe in a couple of cases in environmentally sensitive habitats. I think that's an interesting idea to pilot because it may have consequences that we're not fully aware of. So piloting something might be an option. And then, you know, you could also consider a more robust approach as a future item to consider a dark sky ordinance. Next slide. On the bird safe glass, admittedly this ordinance does not address bird safe glass. It is an ordinance that only addresses residential development. I think, you know, historically we've thought about bird safe glass in commercial developments along the shoreline, but it is increasingly being used in residential developments. So I think the option here is in order to move this ordinance forward that one option is to consider us doing a more comprehensive ordinance perhaps as part of the next zoning code update. Next slide. Again, in the one to four unit development range, these are the topics that are addressed. And then next slide. In the five or more project, slight variations on what's addressed. And next slide. And then in mixed-use development, it's a bit more focused on the facades and elements of the buildings. And then finally, maybe it's not finally, but it's close to the end, gateway areas. This was a general plan policy that really hasn't been implemented, and we identified it as something that we could begin to address here today to try to develop standards for gateways. And since we don't have any design plans for these, we're basically suggesting that the first project in work to create these standards and then the city could choose to use them on subsequent projects that come in. So if somebody picks a street tree for the area, we'd probably use the same street tree. If they picked a street light fixture, we'd probably use the same street light. So the idea is that we would eventually kind of complete those standards as part of the project. But it also has some standards for building design and corner elements of buildings. And then finally, the last section are definitions to help us understand what some of the terms are. Next slide. And a brief overview of the timeline. We're here tonight at number one there, where we're gonna get feedback. We may have to go visit with the Airport Land Use Commission. They like to review all of our ordinances, trying to convince them that there's no density changes or height limit changes as part of this ordinance. But we're still working through that. We would come back after refining the ordinance based on the comments tonight for a public hearing in front of the Architectural Advisory Committee. Step three and hope to get a recommendation to the Planning Commission for step four where you would make a recommendation to the City Council and then the City Council would hold a public hearing and if all goes well by the end of October we would have a new ordinance. Next slide. So our recommendation for you tonight is to receive public comment and to ask questions and have a discussion and to provide an individual feedback. And I think the next slide is just to remind you of the questions. And with that, I'd be either happy to answer a few questions now or come back after the public comment.

I'll just quickly note, Chair, that we have had Commission Member Bott join us as well as Committee Member King. Thank you.

Thank you, Sue, and welcome. Thank you, Mr. Schwab, for your presentations. Much appreciated. I will open now if there's any clarifying questions that the Commission or the Committee would like to ask the staff at this time. Committee Member Stewart. Oh, sorry, Committee Member Jenkins or Stewart? Thank you.

Okay.

No, okay, I wasn't sure. Your light was on, so it's all good. Anybody else have any clarifying questions for staff at this time? Commissioner Finch, please go ahead.

Yeah, so I had asked these questions over email, but maybe just for here in the public hearing as well. So to me, it seemed like the open space and the common area and amenity requirements were very prescriptive. But it's now my understanding that because these are objective design standards, we kind of have to be prescriptive if we're going to ask for something like an amenity. Is that correct?

Yes, otherwise you don't have a standard. You don't have any guidance.

Right, so we wouldn't be able to just say, like, we want one amenity for every X units. That wouldn't be objective enough, right?

Yeah, it's hard to define what that amenity is, and somebody could say it's a slide or a swing, and they'd be done.

Okay, thank you. And then, I also felt that the standards for single-family homes and up to fourplexes were particularly restrictive, but it's now my understanding that this is based on a residential design guide, which was created from community feedback. Is that correct?

The residential design guide was created based on community feedback and review by all of the bodies. It never was adopted because objective standards came into law. And so it's basically a wish list, if you will, of ideas.

And a lot of the single family home objective design standards stem from that design guide?

That's correct. So what we went through is we went through the design guide and we identified items that we thought were important to continue forward as standards. And so we took out, say, you should do something. We put in you shall do something. We tried to address massing and compatibility of homes because that is the major issue. I don't think the AAC and the Planning Commission get to see many of these. Staff typically handles them and the volume of calls and concerns on each home that comes in is pretty significant. And so, you know, we go through a process of explaining to them what's allowed under zoning, what they can do we try to facilitate you know some privacy issues that come up from time to time and then in some cases you know if they really push the envelope and they hit the that magic threshold of um floor area ratio or three thousand square feet i think it is um then they do come to the planning commission i think you've only had one of those in recent times in

And otherwise it's handled by the zoning administrator?

That's correct.

Okay. Thank you. I think that is all for now. Thanks. Thank you, Commissioner Finch. Commissioner Hunter?

Great. Thank you. So I know that the idea of objective residential guidelines has been around for many years in the city, but I just want to make sure. There currently are no objective design standards. Is that correct? Yes.

For design in particular, I would say they're very few. I mean, the zoning code has some standards in it, setbacks, height limit, things like that. But for design in particular, very, very little.

Right. Will these standards apply to specific plans and precise plans also?

They would to the extent that they're more restrictive or more thorough than what those plans include. So maybe give you an example. If a project came in in the downtown precise plan and there's a standard in this ordinance that is not in the downtown precise plan, they would need to meet this standard.

Okay, so whatever is more, more, more restrictive. So if a precise plan was proposed that had some, some standard that was more restrictive than that one.

So if the downtown precise plan had a standard that is more restrictive than this, then it would apply.

Okay. Okay. That makes sense. Thank you. Um, Let's see, in 60.4, which is for the single to fourplex, it says that within R4 and R5 zoning districts, the R1, 2, or 3 standards can be applied. I wasn't quite sure I understood why, but would that be at the developer's discretion? Or applicant, yes.

The intent here was to say that a project, if R3 and R4 and R5 or R4 and R5 are higher density, but if somebody came in with a project that was a duplex in one of those zones and that fit on the site, they could use the duplex standards and not have to meet the R4 or R5 standard.

okay okay good thank you that clarifies that a lot um and then um i noted that it seemed that townhomes which you know with the same definition of like three or more you know units um they're covered by both 60.4 and 60.5 is that intentional and thank you for bringing that up i was going to include that in my presentation i forgot um we need to clarify that because we've kind of got a little overlap in both and i think we're going to try to focus everybody into one set of townhome standards

Okay, great.

Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Hunter. Committee Member Jenkins?

I'm sorry. I said no, and I have a question. Just glancing through the document, you know, all the graphics seem to be leaning into a very traditional residential single-family home style and design. I'm wondering how much flexibility there is built into the plan for somebody who wants to come in with a more contemporary design. I see it gets more contemporary the more you get into the mixed use section of the document. So how does somebody who wants to do a really modern home kind of deal with this document?

So admittedly, the graphics do focus in that direction. I think that's because that's the predominant example that folks relate to and typically will go to. And I think this has come up, is that what if I'm in a neighborhood that has flat roofs or Eichlers or something like that, and I happen to have a house that has not one of those, and I want to do an addition. How do I relate giving these standards? I think the option there is that you go through discretionary review and you basically say, listen, the context is a little off here. I want to do something that's sensitive. I don't want to be overbearing, but I want to keep my pitch true if I want to do a design or I want to do a contemporary design. And it makes sense in that instance. It isn't. restrictive in that sense of saying you can't do that. It's really trying to address roof forms and massing so that it isn't overbearing to the neighbors.

And does that mean that then that homeowner would go through a different process? They'd have to come through architectural review? They'd have to go rather than the zoning administrator?

I think they would still go to the zoning administrator. Staff would make that determination unless they didn't feel comfortable and wanted to refer it on up. Zoning administrator does have that ability to refer it. That usually gives us a little bit of teeth in trying to get somebody to maneuver in the right direction. But it would be done by staff.

Following up on that question, actually, would the applicant take on any particular risk of choosing discretionary review versus a standard ministerial review in case they do ask for it?

Well, there would be a public hearing. And so we're going to hear from perhaps the neighbors as to what they feel about the design. That may influence it a bit.

Even in front of the zoning administrator, there's a public review?

Yes.

I see.

Not if it's ministerial, right, and they meet the objective standards, but as soon as they want to go outside that box or that framework, then yes.

Okay, so just to make this clear, I think I asked this question yesterday as well, so if the particular block has, you know,

10 Eichlers and they're all flat roofed and I want to have a pitched roof in the middle of that.

I have to refer to the neighbor to the left, neighbor to the right, and two neighbors across the street. And if they all have flat roofs, I'm pretty much locked in a flat roof. So if I want to not do that, I will have to go through in front of the zoning administrator. Is that correct? That's correct. Would that still be a ministerial review or would that be a, at that point, a discretionary review?

I think there may be, you know, you could potentially still meet the standards and not have to go through discretionary review. But I guess it might depend on, you know, what envelope they really were proposing and whether we could find it in compliance with the standards.

So the risk-free applicant will be going in front of the discretionary review, perhaps getting some public feedback, and then being rejected on this particular design, and then have to rework the plan in some way.

Yeah, there haven't been many that have been denied. I mean, Sue, I mean, I'm not thinking there's been...

I can't think of anything in the past five years.

Okay, sounds good. I just wanted to make sure, because I know we have to have these very, well, objective, but they end up being fairly prescriptive and fairly, how shall I say, restrictive in having to match their neighbors in some way that can, you know, very much shackle the architect in terms of the design choices or styles they can use. Okay, I... I have a question about compliance. If a project that's mixed use or residential qualifies for state-related bonuses because of affordable housing, do they have to refer to this chapter at all? Or can they invoke deviant, not deviances, deviations or what do you want to call it? Waivers. Waivers, that's it. Yeah.

So if a project qualifies for density bonus, which means it's a larger project, right, 19 plus units, they can apply for waivers of the development standards. I think I was at the progress seminar a few weeks ago, spoke on a housing panel with a housing developer and what they said is that while we do ask for waivers, we still look to the city's standards as the framework. And we're not throwing the whole baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. We're basically trying to comply with as many as possible. That said, you know, we could always end up with somebody that really wanted to throw the whole thing out. But again, we're no worse off than we were today.

Makes sense.

Thank you so much.

Any other questions for the staff before we move on to public comment?

I do have one question about the discretionary review. Should the applicant ultimately be denied? Is there an appeal beyond the zoning administrator?

Yes. Okay. And I think if it's an architectural permit, I guess it goes to the Planning Commission. Sue?

Yeah?

Yeah? Okay. I mean, we may stop at the AAC for recommendations. I don't know. On the one that did get, well, got approved, right? It was the one that was over the FAR, got approved, but then got called up by the council. So it wasn't really an appeal.

Yeah, that's correct. And we don't go to AAC unless it's higher than the height.

Yeah. Okay. Committee Member Stewart.

Yeah. The neighbors could appeal too, right?

If it's a discretionary review, that's correct.

Right.

Okay, great. All right, thank you. Thank you for answering all our questions. I will now open the public hearing. In order to see how many speakers I have, please, everyone who wishes to speak on the item, please raise your hand now in Zoom. I have one in-person speaker's card. Sud, how many speakers do we have online? Oh, two? Please pass them to the deus, or you can just pass them to me directly. Either way is good. Thank you, Alice.

Chair, we have two online speakers.

All right, thank you. I think we have time for, well, let's make it two minutes and see how it goes. First speaker I have is Michael Araza-Cruz. Araza-Cruz, I'm sorry. You recognize the speaker on this item 4A. You have two minutes.

Hello, my name is Michael Arusa. I am a Redwood City resident and volunteer leader for Yes and Redwood City. I'm really excited to see the city considering objective design standards since ministerial design review is oftentimes more streamlined and gives a lot more clarity to architects and developers when they're actually designing their buildings in terms of what will be approved versus what will need to go to discretionary review. So super excited that we're going down this route, but the devil is in the details. And when I was reading through the standards themselves, a couple of items did stand out to me as potentially concerning, specifically the requirements for common space scale in a pretty weird way where it's one open space amenity of a certain size per 50 units rounded up with a 1% total construction cost requirement. I'm concerned that that is going to cause... It's going to encourage developers to essentially round their unit count down to the nearest 50, since the penalty for adding five units, even if they would fit very reasonably in the design, if actually... quite high it's a very discontinuous jump in cost i'm also not sure that having a cost calculation be part of the objective design standards well i'm not sure it belongs in a design document since that creates all sorts of weird incentives and it's also probably harder to attribute the cost of the development to a specific amenity than um like Do you count like the floors?

Oh, I'm almost out of time.

Anywho, I also have some concerns around how strict things look for things below four units, and I'm especially concerned about the relative comparisons. We'll especially penalize duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Arusa. Next, I will have Alice Kaufman speaking, followed by Davina Gentry.

Thank you, Chair and members of both commissions. My name is Alice Kaufman. I am the Policy and Advocacy Director for Greenfoot Health. I'm also full disclosure on the Redwood City Parks Commission, although obviously I'm not here speaking on behalf of the Parks Commission today. And I want to... I guess I want to apologize for the fact that we are introducing some of these concerns without having brought in detailed recommendations. We were a little late to the game here, but I appreciate Mr. Schwab previewing this a little bit by talking about some of the issues that we were hoping to be able to work with the city on as part of this process. I'm going to talk about the exterior lighting standards. You know, as Mr. Schwab mentioned, this is the first go at this for the city, so we want to get it right. And we do feel that, well, I should back up. There's growing scientific consensus that artificial light at night, you know, light pollution, has some pretty significant impacts on both human health and wildlife. You know, it disrupts circadian rhythms, particularly when you have Those higher color temperatures above 3,000 Kelvin, that's when you get the really bright white light, the cool light. Sometimes you call it blue light. It really can disrupt sleep patterns and have a whole range of health effects. There's some studies you never would believe unless you had seen them about some of the health impacts that can come. from having this artificial light at night. And so when we're talking about new residential development where you could have light spilling into bedroom windows, the current draft standards allow the light temperatures up to 5,000 Kelvin for parking areas and walkways and up to 6,500 for sports courts. You know, that is like this really bright, cold light that can really be disruptive for health. So we'd like to ask you to reconsider that. And sorry, I'm going to go over just a little bit. We are going to be submitting written comments so that you don't have to memorize everything that I'm saying right now. And we are looking forward to working with the staff on that. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Mrs. Kaufman, for your comments. We have Davina Gentry, and then I will pass it on to Sue Exline, who will introduce the speakers joining us online.

Good evening Planning Commissioners and Architectural Advisory Committee members. My name is Davina Gentry and I am a member of the San Mateo County Board Alliance Conservation Committee. Bird populations across North America and the Bay Area have been declining at alarming rates since the 1970s, with populations down nearly 30%, or 3 billion. Did you know that the Bay is part of the Pacific Flyway? As a critical migratory stop, 300,000 to 400,000 birds land and rest on the Bay Area's shorelines each year. Our marshes and coastlines play a vital role along this route, providing a space for birds to rest over winter. Unfortunately, monitoring programs of these migratory patterns have found that birds, and most notably shorebirds, have had sharp declines in population numbers over the past 20 years. Some birds saw as much as an 87% decrease in population. Scientific research consistently shows that bird collisions with glass are a major source of human-caused mortality. In North America alone, hundreds of millions of birds are killed each year due to collisions with buildings. Collisions occur wherever birds are active, not only in dense urban cores, but also in suburban areas with trees, landscaping, and nearby open space. In these environments, most collisions occur at tree canopy height. generally from ground level to about 60 feet, where birds are actively foraging and moving through habitat. Transparent and reflective glass creates the illusion of open sky or vegetation, leading birds to attempt to fly through or into these surfaces. As a result, even relatively small buildings and common features such as glass railings, corners, and fly-through designs can post significant risk. These risks are especially pronounced near waterways, open water, open space, and hillside areas where activity is concentrated and collisions most likely. There is a growing list of cities that have implemented bird-friendly design standards into their policies to mitigate bird mortalities caused by collisions with building infrastructure. San Francisco adopted nation-leading standards for bird safe buildings in 2011, Oakland 2013, San Jose 2015, Richmond 2016, Mountain View 2017, Cupertino 2021, Berkeley 2023, and most recently Palo Alto. San Mateo County is in the process of updating its design review ordinance to include bird safe standards for glass railings and light pollution. It was recommended for approval by the Planning Commission on May 13 and will be going to the board on June 23rd.

Thank you, Mrs. Gentry.

I encourage you to adopt some design-safe building standards and light pollution standards and not wait while more birds suffer the consequences.

Thank you so much for your comments. We will now move on to online speakers.

Dash leads.

Hello, my name is Dashiell Leeds. I'm the conservation coordinator for the Sierra Club Loma Prieta chapter. I'd like to support the comments that were just made by Alice and Davina. We do support a recommendation adding bird safe design standards language to this document or as a standalone ordinance. And just as a quick example, Mountain View incorporated the bird safe design language from Cal Green's voluntary code as part of their building code update. and not as a standalone ordinance. So it is possible for you to do it as part of this process. That is a pathway for you to consider. Regarding the strengthening of the lighting language, I just want to highlight a couple of quick things while I have the time here. And again, we can follow up with a letter for the next Commission meetings on this. So the current standards establish both a color temperature floor and the ceiling. So there's like a range. And unfortunately, this means that you can't install lighting that's below a certain amount of Kelvin. So like if folks wanted to install a nice warm light, like 2200 Kelvin, 2400 Kelvin, they would actually be prohibited from doing so. And I don't think that is necessarily the intent of the language here. Some of the color temperature thresholds are really high in some areas. So, for example, like parking areas, walkways and building entries upwards of 5000 Kelvin could be allowed. And for example, most dark sky ordinances are about 2700 Kelvin. or at the highest, 3,000 Kelvin. Dark Sky International's 2025 State of the Science Report analyzed glare with regards to public safety. And their conclusions found that when blue light scatters inside of the observer's eye, it reduces the contrast between foreground and background. And this effect makes it difficult to see objects as distinct from what surrounds them. They found that this reduced visibility at night and found that shorter wavelength, i.e. blue light, causes stronger glare than warm light. So even for like parking areas, walkways and building entries, something like 2700 Kelvin is still a great target to hit there and it's actually better for public safety.

Thanks for your time.

Ina Magner.

Hi, good evening. I'm a resident of Foster City, and I'm also a member of the Sierra Club, Luma Prieta, and I'm an active volunteer with the San Mateo County Bird Alliance. And I second what Davina Grantley have just said and shared with very accurate details about the very drastic decline of birds that we see along our shorelines. And that includes Redwood City, unfortunately, other cities surrounding the bay. So I definitely am also joining the urge of Redwood City to look into bird-friendly designs when looking into construction, into structure of new buildings, being aware of the fact that any glass collusion is almost a death sentence for birds. when they're flying into glass, they cannot differentiate between, if there's a reflection on those glasses, they basically, that's unfortunately may not end up so well for them. And even if we don't find those birds by the glass, they sometimes end up dying a little bit away from the collusion space. So another point is looking into dark sky lightning standards. and light pollution that Dash just mentioned, as well as the Vena. So in general, I know that there will be more information coming up, but I would deeply appreciate you guys looking into wildlife and the environmental impact, as well as impact on birds when looking into designs of midlings. Thank you so very much.

All right, that concludes our public hearing. Seeing that there's no more speakers online, if there's no objection, I will now close the public hearing, and I will open the meeting for committee and commission discussion. If I can have Mr. Schwab please join us on the podium. I think both commission and committee will have plenty of questions to pepper you with, so better get ready. Maybe I'll have committee member Tanaka Tsuba start us off. Oh, he was...

Go ahead.

So this is in regards to 60.3 standards for all residential and mixed-use development. Item A2 site planning block size. There's a limitation for two acres. not that we've got an abundance of two plus acre sites around anymore, but I'm not sure I understand the reason behind limiting it to two acres. And I can see situations where there might be 2.1 acres. And why do we, what do we do with 0.1 acres, right? Or do we create two different parcels? And all of a sudden it has a serious impact on the design of the project, let alone ultimate tentative map, parcelization, all that sort of stuff. So I'm wondering if, unless there's a real need that this limitation of two acres may or may not really be necessary. So I'm just going to kind of go down through the list. Open space standards. Again, it's based on number of units. I think it's important for the standards to define if ADUs are included in that. For instance, if a If a home has an ADU enclosed within its, let's say its maximum 3,000 square feet, whatever that standard would be, Would they be subject to a two-unit allocation of open space requirement, or because it's enclosed within the same envelope, would it just be an allocation of one? And then again, if it's an exterior standalone ADU in a parcel, then possibly that could that would require an additional open space requirement. So I think it's important to try to define that so we don't, somebody doesn't get confused if they have a project that requires a certain number of affordable units and they're accomplishing that through ADUs and then at that point All right, maybe it's fair to add those ADUs to part of the allocation for open space. But I think there should be a little bit more definition in that detail. There's also the component of 1% of development overall construction cost standards for certain amenities. So I did a really quick review of a project in which the fees for the project, and this is for a 124 unit project, the fees, and this is not in Redwood City, this is another jurisdiction, but I think it's rather common. The fees were over $5.5 million dollars. The construction cost was $65 million for 124 units. So 1% of $65 million is $650,000, I believe. And that's a lot of money for an affordable project. I think the list of possible amenities that could be used towards satisfying a requirement for amenities is really good. Depending on this parcel, the density, how much actual land there is or isn't, there may or may not be specific land allocations to take care of the amenities, but there may be other alternatives such as rooftop amenities. A number of years ago, we had an affordable project that provided a rooftop amenity. I don't know if that would have qualified for this or not in terms of square footage. I don't know if it would have qualified in terms of the dollar amount, but I think there are creative ways given infill situations that we probably have as opposed to acres and acres that can be solved or can be utilized to this type of an amenity. And just as a minor issue, no balcony should be longer than 10 feet. I'm not sure where that came from. And it kind of goes into where I know I've been caught with this before where, oh, we need storage. All right, so we'll put the storage on the balcony. Well, now we have a minimum square footage of private open space. Okay, so the balcony needs to be wider. No, you can't exceed the width. So we have to make it deeper and then it becomes, well that becomes too deep because now we're looking at a eight or nine or ten foot deep balcony instead of a six foot balcony and now we're impacting envelopes and setbacks and all kinds of things. Again, the devil is in the detail, so I'm not sure how that gets resolved. Screening standards for equipment STDs, sound standards, I think there's enough CEQA guideline and building code guideline where I think the standards obviously will be met at some point in the construction document process. I think the general notes that usually are part of the planning guidelines of making sure the mechanical equipment is not exposed or it's properly screened, I think that is probably more appropriate than worrying about sound standards because that becomes a building issue. Personal storage. I I always have a problem with this because there are different ways to handle personal storage. And sometimes it could actually be accomplished within the unit. Sometimes it's saddlebags hanging off the side of the building. Sometimes it ends up becoming enclosed as part of a common area where people have lockers. I'm not objectionable to it, but there might be a number of different ways that we can describe how this could be accomplished without it being restrictive. Remember in the old days, you used to put lockers, plywood lockers in your parking space until we all got vans and big vehicles, and they can't do that anymore. Groundborne vibrations. Again, I think through the CEQA process, negative deck, et cetera. I think it's important to, it could be mentioned here, but I don't think this is something that at the design phase needs to be dealt with unless it's something really severe. I mean, we know that we have seismic issues. We just, yeah, we're gonna have to do something about it, but it's not something that affects the design necessarily. And under 60.4, the discretionary R4, R5 outside one half mile from Caltrain can or may R1, R2, R3 standards may apply. Again, I think the wording should be such that it's completely up to the discretion of the applicant as to whether or not they wish to do that. as opposed to uh well i think you're outside that zone so you know you're really in your next to this neighborhood so you might want to do an r2 it's zone r5 don't want to necessarily box people into that situation and again i these comments are are not meant to in any way impugn the effort that's gone into to two and a half years plus that have gone into this document. And thank you very much for the hard work that you and staff and consultants have labored in order to get to this point, only to be criticized. So again, I think it's a great, great place for all of us to start with. Thank you.

Thank you, committee member.

Uh, community member Stewart. Yes. Uh, I don't know how much you guys know about my practice, but I've been a residential designer for 40 years and the peninsula and I've done a thousand plus houses. So Niles called me and said, I don't even know why I'm on this committee, but, uh, uh, so, uh, This is an issue that is pretty near and dear to my heart. Somebody already mentioned the flat roofs. What do you do if you have a house on either side with a flat roof? Somebody comes and they want a tutor. And I live in Edgewood Park. And the beauty of my neighborhood is every house is pretty much different than every other one. I was on the design review committee in San Carlos And Thomas James came in, and they were doing the same house a block away, the same house three blocks away, the same house. Because you get these neighborhoods where you have a 50 by 120 lot, and you figure out all these standards, and the developers don't want to spend money trying something different. So that becomes a problem, and I rejected that and the city attorney called me in and said, you can't say that. State law doesn't allow you to say that. So that kind of issue doesn't seem like it's addressed by these standards. The 15 foot setback that matches the height of the neighbors, I think everybody's going to end up putting their garage in that 15 foot setback and you're going to have I know there's a provision that if you have a detached garage neighborhood, you have to have a detached garage, which is fine. But if people can't have the garage in the front, they prefer it because then you get a backyard. So let's see. The other things where it mentions matching neighborhoods or neighbors. I mean, you're gonna have to knock on somebody's door and say, can I come into your house and measure where your windows are? Unless the surveyor maybe could locate those things, but that's always a problem. And what do you do if there's a split level home? I don't know how many of those are in Redwood City, but you have a level, half a level, half a level. And it's not only the windows, it's the floor heights. So you have to go inside somebody's house and say, do you have an eight-foot ceiling or nine or 10? And what about a one and a half story house where We'd like to do that in ranch type neighborhoods where you have the second story in the roof and you just have dormers. But that's more of a mitigating factor than matching the height of your neighbors. The whole thing with having a bay window on the front of the house hanging like that and shutters and To me, those are not mitigating things. And balconies, I think that whole section needs to be re-looked at. A lot of times on the porch roof you have a shallower pitch. Sometimes the roof comes down and then you have a curve or you have a four and 12 pitch on the porch and then you have an eight and 12. The railing was kind of not clear to me. Would a picket type rail, a normal, inch and a half pickets at four inches apart qualify? Because it says not less than 50% opaque. So to me that would be not allowed. So that doesn't seem right. And then having your front door always have to face the street. There are times when It makes sense if you have a narrow lot and the garage takes up a lot of the room. And if you go down and you have the side entry, you don't end up with a long four-foot hallway to get to your living room. And I guess it's the safety thing that you're looking into. Right. The two garage doors, usually the doors are eight feet. They're not 10 because the garage is 20 feet wide. So if you had two doors that were 10 foot each, it would be the whole width of the garage. So I think that probably needs to be changed to eight feet. And a lot of times what we do, like my house is this way, It's a double garage door, but it has a fake post in it. And the way the garage looks, it looks like a traditional garage with a post. But then when you want to park your car, the whole door goes up in it. You're not going to hit everything with your car. So let's see. what if somebody wants a colonial house and it says you got to have two exterior cladding materials. So with a colonial, you're only going to have wood siding. You're probably not going to have, unless you do a half brick or something like that. And then we do craftsmen houses that do have boulders. That was another thing. And then downspouts sometimes, We'd like to paint the downspouts the trim color instead of trying to hide the body color. That's a minor point. It seems like you can't have a horizontal window because the height of the window has to be taller than the width. So a lot of times on the privacy side, we'll do the high horizontal window. But to me, it's like if somebody wants to peek into your house, they're going to stand on a box to look out the window. And then gang windows, I think. Niles, you might clarify this with me. You could buy windows where they're already gained together, where there'll be two or three gained together. And I don't think there are two inches in between. It could be an inch and a half or probably depending on the style, too, if you have a modern house, you want to keep that down. And the next section, it talks about no aluminum windows or Windows shall not include mirror glazing, exposed aluminum. But in a modern house, you might want an aluminum window. The whole privacy thing, that's always kind of irked me because, I mean, people don't always look straight ahead. They're going to look at an angle. You know, it's always a problem. And if the second story is six feet, but the first story is only... three or four, there's not a opportunity for landscaping, but landscaping's probably the best thing you can have. I hate the opaque glass, but that's just me. That covers my comments, thank you.

Thank you, committee member. Committee member Jenkins, please.

Yeah, I have, I guess it's a similar concern that I stated before. I feel like the ordinance leans heavily into a traditional home design. I'm wondering if there's a way to structure the guidelines so that it's a heightened bulk. kind of approach rather than talking about porches and pitched roofs and bay windows. And I appreciate that perhaps most of the applications lean into a more traditional style, but to kind of penalize a homeowner to go through a more discretionary process because they want to have More modern design that doesn't fit into these guidelines feel it doesn't feel equitable So I would like to see it structured very differently I I like variety in neighborhoods. I think that's what creates a really interesting urban fabric. And I wonder if the majority of the applicants are more traditional because it's the path of least resistance. And we haven't offered kind of a similar pathway for a more contemporary design. So I won't say much. I think that kind of covers it. But I tend to agree with a lot of the things you were pointing out. the necessity of shutters and porches in a very traditional way, window orientation, alignments, proportion. I think there are some very beautiful designs in many different styles, and it would be nice to see it be recognized within a document like this.

Thank you, Committee Member Jenkins.

So in support of everything that my two colleagues have mentioned or have stated, additionally, homes are hard. And the ability of... The street fabric to have variety as opposed to subdivision look I think is really critical. Then it comes into conflict with flat roof, sloped roof right next door to each other, but that is the sort of thing which creates great complexity and also a non-linear conforming street image. And that being said, I think one of the issues here out of Redwood Shores, one of the organizations requires an architect to design any addition that extends beyond the house. and it's had great success in the level of design that is created and this is not to cast dispersions at builders or people who are really good at what they do because they've done it for a long time but there is definitely an issue of sensitivity to design that comes from what we try to legislate This is all trying to legislate good design, which is really hard to do. So flexibility is a double-edged sword because it means that somebody can really go off to reservations, but it also means that somebody can take it and do a really nice job with it. I mean, there's an architect, Q. Newell Jacobson, who takes the modern saltbox traditional form and makes it the most crisp, modern thing you can possibly look at, yet if you apply these standards to it, it would be, my goodness. It makes everything that we're asking for, but it sure doesn't look like a hacked-together traditional design. The discretionary review That is part of the issue of what happens if somebody wants to go that way. It's tough for staff because they have, they got to do this. They got to look at this. And if staff has to go outside of this, it's really difficult because it's, how far do they go before all of a sudden a million people show up at a public hearing and they're all looking at staff. Well, you said, you said, right? As opposed to it going before like the AAC or even the Planning Commission, which I guess was sort of required to take that heat. And maybe that's how discretionary review should work. So as part of what was talked about earlier process. But...

Sorry.

Go ahead, I guess.

Yeah, and I think there's one step further with that. It's not just the staff and the interpretation of the standards. But in some cases, we have community associations which have their own layer of interpretive approach to these standards as well. And I think it creates a hardship for the designers and the homeowners in order to kind of get through the process. I do think there are some neighborhoods where, you know, there's a heightened sensitivity. Like, you know, you mentioned Eichler's. It's like you have these neighborhood of Eichler's and then you stick a Tudor in the middle of that and it's just... is bizarre. But perhaps those neighborhoods have more historic relevance or control that kind of adds the layer that we don't need to prescribe in here. And you think about Eichler, one of his steel buildings just went on the market in San Mateo. He experimented with steel traditionally built in wood there are some homes my friend had one where it was the double a uh roof line um you know so we do tend to kind of fall into this trap of what does traditional mean or what does uh contemporary mean um and i think it it restricts the evolution of design and i was coming into a whole kind of much bigger discussion but um Yeah, I think this is a really important place for us to live. And I do appreciate your challenge here in terms of trying to get to a place where we can put something out that everybody's going to be happy with and not everybody's going to be happy with it. So I do appreciate the effort that's gone into this. But, you know, my biggest concern is I open this and all the pictures are this kind of storybook dollhouse kind of look. And it does feel like it discriminates against a certain style or a certain type of homeowner that might want something different.

Thank you for, oh.

And have we addressed roof decks at all? Have we addressed roof decks, habitable or usable roof space in single family? Because this has come up, this has become a real thing where people are desperately looking for more square footage and they're converting their roofs. to actual patio space.

Like on Long Island.

Regardless of the expense, the fact that it's going to leak next year and everything else, they're still doing it. One of the communities has been having real issues with it because they've been getting a lot of applications where They're taking remodels and basically gutting it and then creating two-story homes with a third story basically being the roof. So not that that's a bad thing necessarily, but it also could be very awkward.

Yeah, I appreciate all the comments, especially coming from such wealth of knowledge and experience. I think maybe what would be helpful for staff, but I'm not going to speak for Mr. Schwab. It's really like, as we said, like how do we balance these two things being prescriptive because as the Commission Member Stewart says, the State is going to say it has to be built because it complies, you know, it has to be with the Floria ratio and you just have to check yes. And how within that context, you mentioned about form and size and an envelope as being a guiding principle. I don't know if there are. jurisdictions on the peninsula who have gone through this process and maybe had a more successful or balanced approach that we can model this particular ordinance on. But I'm looking forward to hearing more opinions from our commissioners. I'll start from over here. Commissioner Butt, please.

Yes. Thank you so much to the committee members on AAC who have much more in-depth opinions on the details than I do. My concern is more general and it was echoed by, I believe, Mr. Arruza. In two different places, both for our common open space and for our common area facility requirements, we effectively create a profit clip on developments at 20 units. We seem to, I don't know where that 20 number came from, but we seem to be heavily discouraging people to build any middle units that are any more than that, because suddenly they have to be spending no less than 1% of their overall construction cost on a list of amenities that doesn't seem cheap already, in addition to a shared kitchen, fitness equipment, pet washing, grooming, and another list that doesn't seem cheap either. I guess this is not necessarily a question, but I would love if our design standards didn't create these profit cliffs for what I would consider as new developments, but still affordable.

Thank you, Commissioner Butt. Commissioner Finch.

Yes, I would also like to echo that. I think that was a great point. I would like to also thank staff for their hard work on this. I think this was a long read, and I'm sure it was a lot of work, so thank you. I wanted to start off with some things that I liked. I liked the standards around trying to create a pleasant pedestrian environment, things like breaking up the large blocks with alleyways and pedestrian walkways I thought was really nice. trying to keep garages to the side streets and the standards to try and keep eyes on the street. I thought that was all great. And then, so then, yeah, to some of my other comments, I think I also have concerns about the prescriptiveness of the amenities in the different amenities lists. So I know we have to be prescriptive because these are objective, but I would be in favor of And I'd like to hear some thoughts from my fellow committee and commission members, but I feel like it might almost be better to just not require any amenities rather than have this semi-arbitrary list. I'm quite confident that market pressure would still encourage developments to include popular amenities, and it might be amenities that we don't even have on our lists. Perhaps we could just keep the percentage cost requirement. I would probably be in favor of lowering it and removing it for affordable projects. But I would, the list of allowable amenities for open space and common area just seems very prescriptive and I'd like to give the development more freedom when it comes to doing those. And then another area where I have concerns around prescriptiveness is is just kind of the form and massing and facade. I think the AAC members brought up a lot of very particular ones where it might preclude homeowners from building something that they want. And I would be in favor of trying to simplify and remove some of these if we can. I know that we have a lot of these for perhaps privacy and community concerns around height. So I think we could totally keep some of those. But I would be in favor of trying to remove or simplify some of the prescriptive stylistic standards. I think the AAC members gave some examples. I think some other ones are I saw one that tubular metal shall be a minimum of one half inch cross section. Again, I would almost prefer to just have no standard on the cross section of tubular metal rather than this very particular prescription for it. And so I would be in favor of kind of looking through this and seeing where we can get rid of some things like that just to provide the applicants or developments more freedom when it comes to realizing their vision for their home. And I think when it comes to single family homes, you know, it's their house and I think they should have a lot of freedom when it comes to trying to express themselves in their architectural style. And when it comes to these larger developments also, I would like to try to give the architects creativity to make interesting and unique buildings. And again, I worry that we're being too prescriptive. And then I also worry, especially for the single family home requirements, which are very long, I worry that it would be very expensive and time consuming to comply with all of this, and that might push them, again, towards that discretionary review process. and I thought a committee member Jenkins brought up a good point about how there are also areas that might are neighborhoods that might already have standards, maybe like Redwood Shores. Maybe it could be interesting to look at just not having any city standards in these areas where if the Redwood Shores Community Association is already kind of setting the standard for what a home should look like in that neighborhood, perhaps the city can kind of just step back and allow them to take that over and set what the requirements should be um and then sorry just a few more comments here um i would i i would also i think just be in favor of getting rid of the extra storage space requirement and yes okay and then the very last thing if you'll entertain me chair i have a picture and a video perhaps we could show the video first And this is with regard, I would, I'd be interested in setting some standards around sight lines for parking garage exits in larger developments. And so I just have a video of kind of showing why the sight lines can be a little dangerous for pedestrians around the exits of these garages. Well, this will be first. I don't think I've seen a video in discussion part.

So if it is technically feasible, I'm more than willing to entertain that particular part.

Thank you.

Okay, so here you can see perhaps I'm a car here exiting this parking garage, and then boom, there's a pedestrian. Here it's just my reflective jacket, but you can see it's because of the very sharp angle of the parking garage and the sidewalk being right next to the exit of the parking garage, it's very hard to see that someone is there until you're right up at the intersection. I've also noticed this at the exit of like the city parking garage, the Jefferson parking garage. And it's just it's I do not blame car drivers who are coming out. It's just very hard to see. And I think we could maybe set a standard around just kind of cutting off the corner there, just giving a little bit more visibility to the to the people walking on the sidewalk. And I think you don't need to show the picture. I think that was good. Thank you.

Flashing lights. I mean, there are many ways either to warn the pedestrian or the driver of the conflict. Thank you for your comments, Commissioner Finch. Before I move to the next commissioner, I do want to touch upon your comment about allowing people who want to express themselves personally in terms of architectural stars, especially for single-family homes. I agree with your sentiment. I just want to bring an example of there are – people and applicants whose first design choice is that this is my lot, and they go to the architect and say, what is the largest number of square feet you can squeeze into this lot? And then say, OK, it's going to be 5,000 square foot home. So the maximization of per-square living area in a particular lot, especially because of the market conditions of our neighborhood or region, sometimes really guide the design choices to either cookie cutter or these boxy designs, which may be you know, mostly driven by economic sense or other profit motives rather than design or aesthetics or personal expression. So I think that the hard part here is really to allow the staff to have some kind of tools in their toolbox to be able to, I guess, massage or guide the candidate to a particular, you know, maybe a more pleasing design while still complying with state law. And I think this is where we really have a difficulty of balancing the both. Commissioner Robinson, the floor is yours.

Hello, thank you for this excellent presentation. I am in banking, so looking at some of these small diagrams is challenging for me. I appreciate the difficulty to do something like this for a city like ours, where we have very diverse neighborhoods based on the era that they were built out. Some are all you know, custom, semi-custom, some are tracked, some are in HOAs, that type of thing. So I'm trying to envision how some of these standards would work for the residents in those different types of scenarios. And I could see it would be very different for, let's say, Woodside Plaza versus Mount Carmel. So I'm somewhat surprised by the linkage to adjacent lots, for example, and I'm speaking specifically to the single family duplex, triplex, fourplex on page 25. But then again, if we're trying to set a standard YOU KNOW, TO FIT EACH UNIQUE NEIGHBORHOOD, THAT DOES SORT OF MAKE SENSE. I WOULD SAY ON THE FRONT FACADE HEIGHT, AND AGAIN, YOU KNOW, THIS IS NOT MY AREA OF EXPERTISE, AND I'M A PRO HOUSER, NOT NECESSARILY AN ARCHITECT, THOUGH, THAT'S FOR SURE. WHEN I SEE THE FRONT FACADE front facade height, that's the middle of page 25, within 15 feet of the front setback. I'm envisioning this meaning the second story would have to be 15 feet back if I'm interpreting these diagrams correctly. I would just suggest that maybe that be revisited or if we have any actual real life examples because I've seen this in the neighborhood where maybe that's not necessary. If you have a setback but not necessarily an entire 15 feet, you lose a lot of square footage on the second floor. And if we're trying to give people the opportunity to rebuild or remodel with an ADU or something, 15 feet seems like that could be a lot and not necessarily works with every design. I have thought through how the Thomas James effect has impacted my particular neighborhood. We know which houses those are. But they have, I think, at least done, they have a variety of elevations. So I think it's really important that a Thomas James-like model would likely want to go through these standards because of just sheer efficiency and economics. So I think it's very thoughtful that all the time we're putting into this to get it right. I'm not entirely sure I understand what's at the top of page six, the upper story bulk for single family dwellings. And it shows like this three foot notch. on the upper left-hand side of the facade of the home, but not on the right-hand side. So I'm not sure exactly what that is trying to accomplish. And I know these, again, are intended to be like almost generic kind of designs, but I would maybe appreciate some clarity on that to understand that. And I share my colleagues on the architectural side concern about the diversity of housing in the community and making sure that we have enough flexibility built into this for the look and feel. So neighborhoods that have largely, have a variety of very interesting styles can continue to have that. And then I think I just had one other maybe comment or question. Or that may be everything at this point. If you'll just bear with me. Oh. So this is one on bottom of page 17. And again, this could be my lack of expertise on trees. and how big they grow. But it says, landscape strips shall be comprised of trees that are spaced not less than 20 and not more than 40 feet apart. I thought maybe 40 feet was too far apart. Maybe we could go back to something slightly lower. But I would defer to the experts on trees on that. Don't worry, we'll get to that. But it's just something that stood out to me. Yeah.

Thank you, Mr. Robinson. Questions and comments. Thank you. For your comments. I have a list of comments related to trees, but it's, what, like 15 minutes of minutiae, so I'm wondering at what point do I torture both committees to listen through my questions, but we'll go to that, no problem. I will yield the floor to Committee Member King for your comments, if you'll please.

I agree with a lot with what you just said. Putting the restrictions on adjacent sites for heights, the roof heights and the floor-to-floor heights, it's going to be kind of hard to do for like the split-level homes on Farm Hill, say. How would you go about doing that? Is there a section in here, maybe I missed it, on the split levels? Because like every house is going to be a different level as you go down the street, right? So how would you compare it to the next door neighbor's height or across the street height when you're in the hills? That's another thing maybe if I don't know maybe there's a section that I missed in there and is there a section on like shadows like if you build a big house are you gonna put a shadow on the next door neighbor's house anything like that because a lot of cities you have to do a shadow you know patterns to see where the Sun goes and if you're gonna be in shadow all day long or not. I guess the other thing is I agree that there should be a lot of variety and when you're building houses. I've dealt with cities where I went in and they said, every house in this area has to have a Spanish tile roof. And I'm like, well, isn't that going to be a boring community? If everybody has the same red style roof, what is that? Yeah, very blah. But then on the other hand, I have a friend that has a historical landmark in Redwood City and a lot of historical homes all around him. And then I saw a couple homes that were built that are just way out of character, that are almost an eyesore, to tell you the truth. They're nice homes, but just don't fit in that surrounding. So it's a hard thing to do, balance. So I take my hat off to trying to put together something like this that is going to have a balance between the two.

All right. Thank you, Committee Member King. Commissioner Cornejo?

Yeah. I just wanted to echo what you were saying about the balance. I agree that there should be variety and flexibility for people to build what they desire. But in my parents' home in Friendly Acres, they live in a cul-de-sac and the homes are flat and very old. But our neighbors right in front just built this beautiful, luxurious home that really just, it just looks odd. There's only, I think there's like 10 homes in the street, and that one right across just, I don't know, it almost makes us feel out of place, but they should feel out of place, because they're the ones that are coming in. So I'm just like imagining, and maybe that wouldn't happen if we had more variety and just flexibility to... to build something. But like the garage is see-through and it's just very over the top. But anyways, that's just, I just wanted to say that. The importance of balance. And I can't stop thinking about the comments that were said about the birds. I don't know what would need to happen to make sure that WERE NOT DOING HARM TO ANIMALS OR JUST IN THE FUTURE, BUT I JUST WANTED TO VOCALIZE THAT.

CURRENTLY THERE ARE SOME THINGS IN PLACE ALREADY FOR BIRDS. I KNOW THAT THE GREEN BUILDING STANDARDS, YOU HAVE TO GO THROUGH THAT. John knows, too, that we've worked on high-rise buildings together, and having to deal with the bird situation has always been one of the top priorities, getting through design with that.

I mean, I do have a follow-up question for staff. Whether these Bert Flindy design standards should be part of EIR if it's a larger project in terms of mitigations, or is it a design standard that should be included within this document perhaps for residential, or is it something that should be part of the building code as a different part? So maybe clarification for us whether they should be addressed versus, I mean, there's so many different entry points to enact what most best action is.

So as it relates to commercial development, you have discretion. And so when a project comes up, say, in the shoreline area, as an example, you could require it without anything. Residential would be difficult without a standard. Sometimes, and I think was mentioned earlier, environmental review allows you to impose mitigation. Given all of the state laws that deal with housing, many housing projects are now statutorily exempt or exempt under infill development, which means there is no additional CEQA review, so you don't have that layer of protection. mentioned tonight I think was the option of doing a building code amendment under Cal Green. You know, that's something we could explore. I do think that a more comprehensive ordinance dealing with, you know, bird safe glass and maybe, you know, lighting standards is probably in order because we don't want to just single out residential development. It's not as prominent as the commercial development along the shoreline in Redwood City anyway. There aren't that many sites left to develop. So I think it's something that we should think about. And I think the question ultimately is how much can we do and get something done and have something on the books? and what do we need to do as follow up? So I think it's a little bit of a balance, you know, as I'm listening to a lot of the comments tonight, just trying to figure out, well, how do I thread this needle? How do I put something down that is acceptable to most people and then figure out, well, what can we follow up on because it's gonna take a lot more time?

Yeah, I'm aware of a comprehensive new ordinance made five years down the road, maybe even a decade. So if you were in the situation, we have the opportunity with these objective design standards to put something on paper that seems reasonable. Is this a good time, or would this be a reasonable time to implement such a measure?

I mean, your housing element says we're supposed to have had this done. So we're a little kind of on the edge of not complying for residential development. And the question is, well, how much can we do? When I started this three years ago, I thought it would be very simple. We'd take some shoulds and make them shalls. We'd experiment a little bit and we'd come back and we'd refine and adapt and try to figure out how do we address either different neighborhoods or more contemporary design. And it's just been really hard. I think you mentioned that there are so many different neighborhoods and they're different in character and this is trying to synthesize that down to a formula, which as a background in design too, very, very difficult to do. So I don't know what the answer is offhand. I think the comments are all good. I think they're all on point. And we have looked at a lot of other jurisdictions as well. They tend to be full gamut, very prescriptive to the you got to have everybody's got to use a tile or a slate roof to you know not much so you know we have to figure out what's you know what's the best approach for us for sure yeah i agree with that i think i think my question was specifically about you know these these carve-outs for bird-friendly designs uh yeah no and i and i think you know the points well taken i think you know number of jurisdictions have done it I actually looked at our general plan. It does speak to light pollution, but in the terms of energy conservation, not in the terms of, you know, environment and things. But I think we all recognize it. And I think it's something that, you know, needs to be done. It's just, you know, we have to fit it into all the other things that need to be done. Sure. Sure.

Thank you. Commissioner Koch.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Schwab. This is an amazing piece of work, and I know how many years you've all been working on it. Just a couple of things I wanted to ask. When you're going through and hopefully reworking just a little bit the lighting standard, is it a possibility or do you already work with our local county chapter of the Bird Alliance or the Audubon Society just to get their input?

Well, when we started this out, we weren't thinking about this being that topic, but clearly all the organizations have now come forward and seen, because we put lighting standards in there, probably triggered in their mind this was an opportunity. So, you know, of course we're going to continue to work with them, see what we can do. As I mentioned, as one of the options, we can lower the light temperature, we can start with that, we can agree to do a pilot project. We could agree, you know, if the commission thinks ultimately to recommend to the council that we do more, we could do more.

Okay. Thank you. I agree with everything our esteemed committee members over here from architectural committee had to say. It is very prescriptive as we talked about yesterday. I understand we don't want blocks of chaos. So to some degree I think it has to be. I know, I mean, I was thinking about when you mentioned the rectangular windows or like a rectangular window. A couple of years ago when we were discussing building ADUs and then it came up some ADUs with a second story. And people were very unhappy with the thought that an ADU in the next door yard could look over the fence and into their backyard. And one of the things people mentioned was, well, You could think about putting long rectangular windows down from the ceiling instead of right in the middle of the wall, just for light source, but not for. So this would leave out anything, I guess, like that, or having the opportunity to have something like that designed. I don't know. I think. I don't know. I know it's just, it's a lot. It's huge. We have to have our guidelines. My question was the lighting, and you've already answered CEQA will not be part of the lighting because we're basically going to be doing infill. This is basically for infill. Yeah. And so there already was a home there to be replaced with a home there, which is why we don't have to do CEQA. Correct? Just in a...

In some cases, yes, that's correct.

Overly simplified.

But even in infill developments under five acres, a multifamily project could be exempt. And now under AB 130, a lot of housing is exempt.

Sure. And then the only other thing I was going to say was I also agree with everyone else as far as the 1% for the amenities. We've been working really hard. I know as a city and all of our various committees, to do what we could to try to shake loose some of the builders from so many projects that we have approved over the last couple of years. But building right now is unaffordable for a lot of those developers. So hitting them with another fee, I'm like, oh, you know. If it could be lowered, if it could be lessened, we could do it another way. I don't know, but I just feel like it's just adding more dollars on top of it, and we don't want to do something to dissuade someone from wanting to come and to build here.

Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Koch. I'm going to have to take this opportunity to put in some of my comments. Talking about windows, actually, I have three comments about windows. One is about privacy on the second floor when facing a neighbor's backyard. I'm not sure if we have any standards for that right now, whether frosting or making windows high closer to the ceiling so they're not visible through. That's something to consider. I'm not sure what the best recommendation here would be. The second question is about the shape and size of windows. My house has a partial basement. It has hopper, sorry, awning windows, and they would be not allowed under these particular ordinance. There are case studies that sometimes you may need to use such windows. I think being overly prescriptive will not allow that. And the third one was there's a section that talks about two square feet of transparency through glass on the door front door or right next to the front door. So I'm not sure if this is like a safety-related component for like fire to be able to see if there's occupants inside, you know, or smoke or whatever it may be. You know, I haven't seen that many houses with such large openings, probably for security reasons, but I'm just curious whether this is out of the ordinary or not. Maybe I can ask community member Stewart, since he's in single-family housing space.

We'll have a side light next to the door. And sometimes, you know, you'll have a window in the door. But I don't know. A lot of people don't like that. They'd rather have the peephole. Peephole, right. Yeah.

But is the impetus behind it for safety reasons, to be able to see whether, you know, maybe someone's inside? Or is it just for...

I don't know. I've never seen that requirement anywhere else.

Okay. Thank you.

I think it's a security issue having somebody case the house. They can look through the side light. It's a little bit less of a concern with ring doorbells and everything, but you still have that happening where people happen to come by and they're able to look inside the house and saw the door. It precludes them from doing so. If someone wants to get in, it doesn't take much to break the glass and just reach around and open. It defeats the purpose of a deadbolt.

Got it. I also have a similar comment with Commissioner Finch about personal storage space. 80 cubic feet, I tried to look online what it is. It's actually a small shed for each dwelling unit on these smaller or fourplexes, multiplexes. And I feel that we're just feeding the addiction of ourselves to give more space for our stuff. I think Americans in general have the largest personal storage space industry in the whole world in terms of how much material components they have. So I think having it as a part of a general build, not having it carved out as a special space to be dedicated for personal storage, rather than being like how many closets or whatever it may be, rather than being that prescriptive, just having it open or not having the personal storage requirement may be better. That's just my opinion. And then the other comments I have are all related to trees. So bear with me. There'll be another 10 minutes worth of tree comments. So first part is about... Trees in public right of way. So on the streets, I think it was mentioned about five foot planting strip. There is many streets in Redwood City have monolithic sidewalks. So there's no planting strip. And we don't want to shortchange those neighborhoods with zero trees from there. So I think there should be some... The space behind the sidewalk will become part of the... I guess what is it called? Public right-of-way. It goes behind the sidewalk, basically. So I just want to make sure that the design standards reflect the fact that in case you have a sidewalk, it goes right against the curb. The space behind the sidewalk now serves as the planting strip for the tree. It's a public tree because it's probably easement that's owned by the city of Revo City. Second part is mentioned by Commissioner Robinson about spacing of the trees. It's 20 to 40 feet apart. I think you should scale with the size of the tree at maturity. You don't want to put 40 feet apart these tiny trees that are 10 feet in size because you'll have basically lollipops or bushes that do not provide any community benefit shading or air filtration. Next question was about tree grating, tree grates and allowing for deviations when they need to be four foot wide sidewalks for ADA access. I think, generally speaking, I think we should discourage tree grates use anywhere in the city because it looks nice when you install it, people forget about it, and then they kill the trees that are inside. And I've seen now multiple examples around Redwood City that this happens, so I think, you know, there are maybe high traffic areas within the downtown core that may, you know, require tree grates, but they need to be When one needs to expand that area, someone has to come with a blowtorch. And you can see how many man hours from public works is required to blowtorch a bunch of tree grates. So I would prefer softer materials, either DG bark, There's a lot of other options to be used in that particular situation. I would also prescribe that the minimum size of planting of a tree should be a 24-inch box. Anything less than that has been, instead of California, including CAL FIRE, recommended as a non-viable size. So a 24-inch box should be minimum for any plantings within the public realm. And the next part about this is about trees on the private lots. Redwood City has been trying really hard to support urban forest, but the data from the CAL FIRE says that between 2018 and 2023, Redwood City lost 2%, so it went from 15% urban forest to 13% urban forest. So we are actually losing trees. And the fact is that half of the trees in Redwood City are in people's private property, either in the front yard or the backyard. And I think we should have some kind of a prescription or explore the ability to ask whether we should require at least one tree per lot on private property. You know, there are street trees that are maintained by the city itself. We plant them, the city waters them, and it's within the responsibility of the city. But, you know, I have seen a lot of multi-family developments that do lot edge to lot edge development with zero, not a single leaf anywhere. in this particular development. So I want to reference the city of Burlingame, which actually has in their ordinance and design standards to require a single tree eater that's publicly facing so that every lot contributes to the urban canopy of the city. Now, you can talk to legal how this will be implemented, but I think it will be something to at least look into. All right. I think that's it on the tree-related standards. Commissioner Robinson, I will yield now to you.

Well, thank you. I think we've had a lot of discussion on the large multifamily, the single family, which is my lived experience in single family neighborhoods with individual homes. And we're fortunate at Redwood City, we've produced a lot of housing in apartments for rent, many coming online, many currently going vertical, hopefully more coming. But the for sale and ownership housing, especially in infill, which is likely what we're to see for ownership housing is townhomes. And so I haven't, I'm having just personally having a hard time visioning some of the renditions here. I would just say it may be more tangible for those that are going to review and approve it in the future. If we had any, say, for example, examples that were recently built or projects like the City Ventures project that came to the Planning Commission, would that... Since this will be a standard, we hope that it's successful so that builders will do some ownership housing here in our city on a more expedited basis. Will this work for them? And that's just kind of my just natural reaction to say I'm not sure how I, as a layman, can see how this would work for them. But I know we recently looked at a city ventures project nearby. Would something like this work for those builders that are doing that. Just a suggestion. So, thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Robinson. Commissioner Hunter. Great. Thank you. I don't have many comments that haven't been said already. The one recommendation that I would add has to do with missing middle housing types. And I was looking at my reference guide here on missing middle housing, and there are two types that I want to make sure that these guidelines here would still allow. There's cottage courts or bungalow courts, which are kind of around an interior courtyard. And I think the standards here under the 5-plus developments would allow that but uh we just you know one wants to have to make sure that those would be allowed under these standards and the other type is courtyard buildings um and i don't you know when i look at things about street frontage and all um i don't know and i don't have the you know detailed um professional knowledge to know whether a courtyard building would qualify under under these but i would I would like the standards to be flexible enough so that they would accommodate those kind of buildings. And the only other general comment I have is I think that this, I'm very positive on what you've done. And obviously there's tweaks that will need to be done. And the comments, I think, of my companions here are right on. But I think this is a very, very good project here. And it says in the section here about building single to fourplex. You're really trying to do two things. Encourage respecting the established scale and character of neighborhoods while promoting infill development to increase housing opportunities and the pedestrian experience. And I think that these standards do an outstanding job of threading that needle. And yes, I think there's a lot of ways you could have done this, and I think you have come up with a masterful job of threading that needle. Probably not the only way you could have, but that is one. And I think they are prescriptive, and they lean toward... toward buildings that are consistent with the neighboring structures. But they are still flexible because if you do a Thomas James in a Nykler neighborhood, well, that doesn't mean you can't do it, but it just means you have to go through the architectural permit procedure, which is flexible. And in my experience, When the Planning Commission had more things come before it regarding single family homes, by and large, things were approved under the architectural permits, even though it's a more flexible standard. Proposing a building that is different from the neighboring buildings isn't precluded at all. It just means... you're going to have to maybe have to have a public hearing. And if the neighbors really object because it's way out of character, then that will be part of the public hearing and hopefully involve some compromises. But overall, I think it's a very good job of dealing with both of those two objectives.

Thank you, Commissioner Hunter. Commissioner Finch.

I just wanted to echo, I love those missing middle shared courtyard houses, so it would be awesome to make sure that those are not discouraged by the code.

Thank you, Commissioner Finch. I mean, responding to your comments and also going back to the very beginning to Committee Member Jenkins about the size and form, I remember seven years ago, before I joined the Planning Commission, there was a movement to enforce more strict floor area ratios, especially in historic neighborhoods. I think in this case, it was Mount Carmel that was in question with super large size homes being put in, you know, in historic context. And I wonder, was that part now of the zoning code in those particular R? I think it's R2 in terms of where is the FAR specified? It's not part of the design standard. It's part of the zoning code?

It's part of the zoning code. Okay.

Would that by itself already give some kind of an envelope in terms of the volume that a particular house would...

It does. It encourages a limit of floor ratio or 3,000 square feet. If you go over either of those thresholds, then you go to discretionary review before the Planning Commission. And as you may recollect, there haven't been too many. So it's been relatively successful. I think there's... folks that still feel that maybe that's too much in the context of homes that are surrounding it. I mean, the old homes tend to be very small. And when someone invests in a major remodel, they tend to be pretty large. So, you know, those are just, that's the conflict.

And that's applicable across the whole city? Yes. Okay, great.

right well there was a lot of input and discussion are there any more comments from the commission committee member jenkins beat you to it um yeah i would just advise caution i think it's a good idea with lighting and bird safe building design to have a broader ordinance and not just specific to residential i work in commercial architectural design and most of those projects have these blanket requirements for bird safe building design. And so we've deferred to using consultants and subject matter experts to look specifically at our building and our location. And in most cases we've found in one case it was like you don't need to do anything at all. And so if we'd have kind of gone through the prescriptive process we'd have had fritted glass on the whole thing. And in another case it identified very specific corners of the building that we needed to treat and not just the zero to 60 kind of big swath around the whole building. the financials of kind of going out and getting a subject matter expert to look specifically at your project and make a determination is in the context of a large project, is not a big deal. But in the context of a single family home development, it can be pretty cumbersome. And so I would hope that we can kind of find some middle ground there. I think it's important to think about wildlife and what development is doing to wildlife and the environment. It can be very cumbersome when we put all these standards on a relatively small development in the scheme of things and the burden of additional costs to kind of get to a place where we've addressed particular things. So I just wanted to kind of share that. There are very good ordinances out there. San Francisco was one that we referred to. most often because it was the only really comprehensive site-specific bird safe building ordinance that was around. But it is very contextual. You know, the flocking behavior and the migratory patterns are very specific. And it can be about bodies of water adjacency, more than an acre of open space. There are some kind of general rules of thumb. So it's a lot to unpack and I think it's probably better as a broader citywide ordinance than belonging in this particular document. But I do agree, it's like we should consider every development and the impact and not just commercial if there's a way to do that in a meaningful way.

Thank you, Committee Member Jenkins. Committee Member Tanaka-Tsuba?

I'm going to suggest that I'm going to put my colleague here, John, kind of on the spot, and throw out to staff if the possibility of having the local AIA chapter maybe do a workshop on testing, kind of doing a dry run on testing, how these ordinances look if they're given a program saying, this is a basic single family addition. What does it look like with this? This is a bad addition because it's going to leave one wall making it an addition, but they want to build it to the max. Maybe some different scenarios and have a workshop where members of the local architectural community can step forward and say, I've looked at this, I've had this before, and this is what results from it, from the prescriptive point, and this is how we manipulate it, just to see how it flushes out in real-world terms.

Yeah, I'm on the board of directors. I have been for most of the 40 years, and I was president in 2010.

Were you ever president? No.

No. Okay. We've got to change that next.

I was the originator of the charrette. You were? Yeah, back in the late 70s.

Right. Downtown and San Mateo. B Street, yeah. We're always looking for opportunities to help communities. So I'm chairman of the housing committee. So I can set that up. So just let me know when you want to do it and how we can help. Thank you.

Thank you. I think the staff is the one probably who would be the most appropriate body to act on this. Commission member Finch, sorry.

Yeah, maybe like just similar to that, I would be just interested in like if some recent projects that have come through that like one would expect they didn't, there wasn't a lot of community opposition, like if those were assessed by these standards, would they have passed? I think that would be, maybe that's something that that group could do, but yeah, that'd be interesting.

To get this straight, so you would allow architects to come up with the most, I guess, varied versions of housing they can build within the context of these prescriptive standards and what kind of variety can come out of it. Got it. That makes sense. Or not. Or not. Okay. Or cookie cutter. Okay. It's going to be a bad thing. Right. Any other comments from the Commission or the Committee? I know we have made Mr. Schwab stand for a good portion of an hour and a half, so it was a good workout. If there's no other comments, I guess I will close the Committee and Commission discussion and move on to the next item, which is matters of Commission and Committee interest.

I'll keep it brief. We have our next meeting scheduled for June 16th, and that's really all I have to report.

Great. Eddie, any updates from the commission members or committee members?

Do we have any... Schedule AAC meetings coming up in the month of June already or in July.

It got canceled in July.

Yeah, no upcoming meetings in June or July or this summer. Yeah. I will share an update if anything gets added to the agenda.

Thank you. All right. That concludes the items for tonight's agenda. The next planning commission meeting is scheduled for June 16, 2026. All right.