Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

You're on, Jerry. Okay, here we go, guys. City of TAP Planning Commission special meeting agenda, Wednesday, May 7th, 2025, City Hall Council Chambers at 209 East Kern Street, Taft, California, 93268. The City of Planning Commission meetings are being held in person with full capacity seating and are livereamed at https colonwww.youtube.com/user/c cityoftapped. Public comment can be made in person and can also be received per the following. Written comments may be dropped off in the dropbox in front of city hall. Comments may be emailed to the city clerk at city of clerk at pardon me city of clerk@c cityoftap.org made by phone to the city clerk's office at 6617631222. Public comments not made in person will be accepted up until one hour before the meeting. Any comments received will be read into the record. Okay, we're going to have our pledge of allegiance. I'll go ahead and lead that and then we'll have our invocation with Pastor Bella Black. Ready. Salute. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Pastor, bow your heads, please. Heavenly Father, thank you for this planning commission. Lord, bless them as they faithfully come together to fulfill your purpose for the city of Taft. Holy Spirit, give them your wisdom and guidance as they seek to do your

will. I speak your peace, your patience, and your blessings over their families. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. And thank you. Okay, we're on to roll call. Okay. Chairman Livingston here. Vice Chairman Shar here. Commissioner Dowen here. Commissioner Johnson here. And Commissioner Orin is absent with notice. Okay. Citizens request for public comment. [Music] Oh, we're clear. Uh, yep. So, there are no public public comments. So, we will now be moving on to the minutes of the April 16th meeting. Again, it was a special meeting. Do I have a motion to approve? I'll motion. I'll second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Can we please have roll call? Commissioner Daden? Yes. Commissioner Johnson? Yes. Vice Chairman Schz? Yes. Chairman Livingston? Yes. Thank you. Okay. On to number three. Item three is a study session for the city of staff's housing element update for 2023 2031. Um recommendation is the plan director will present a progress report on the public outreach and workshops held for the housing element. Um this is an information item only. Please uh proceed. Uh thank you chairman Livingston. Um uh the update today is uh more so uh because we've gone through two reviews with uh housing and community development at the state level and we've received the second comments and we're technically out technically out for the third review as we speak. Um the um third review was both submitted to or yeah submitted to HCD and then

transmitted to Faith in the Valley which was our lone commenter on the first draft. So all subsequent drafts we transmit to them um through this process. But hopefully um we're close enough to reaching where it could be certified that um um we'll see if it's somewhat of a both formal yet informal process where it doesn't require the full 60-day time periods for subsequent reviews as the law allows with HCD. I think we're close to the finish line where it may be a couple weeks, you know, back and forth type of reviews as opposed to a two-month. But I will go into where we're at and update the overall progress right now. And you should have a copy of the U PowerPoint to follow along. But just to uh go over what I generally mentioned, um the draft housing element was completed in June of 2024. Uh then a um public review uh was made available from June 12th to July 12th which is also um an informal review with HCD. HCD provided their comments in August 19th, 2024. And based on those, we were able to complete the first formal submittal of the draft and submitted to HCD uh for their 90-day review which was between September 5th and December 5th, 2024. Uh thankfully they were um um quicker with their review and that we received their comments in November 27th and then had a um Zoom call with them to go over those comments on December 17th of 2024. Um right before that um Zoom call we were able to have our third housing element workshop on December 12th to go over those comments and what direction we were going to go with those and also take any additional feedback. Um, we took all that um, information and

feedback and put it into the second public review um, which um, requires or as I mentioned um, this one only was transmit made publicly available and transmitted to Faith in the Valley, our loan commenter on the first review and it was a 7-day but we gave a little more than 7 days between February 12th and 21st that should say 2025. I apologize. Um, and then the second formal submittal to HCD for their 60-day review was uh from March 14th to May 14th of 2025. And again, um, HCD was able to get us their comments early on April 29th, which was last Monday. And then uh we have submitted the third review of the draft uh for public review for May 1st 8th but that was submitted both to HCD and to Faith in the Valley uh for their review. Um I'm not sure of the timeline as I mentioned it it should be significantly shorter than 60 days and we'll see what kind of return on it because we received about maybe two dozen comments um with like a half of them needing to be addressed. So, we have roughly a dozen or so that we addressed in this draft that's uh out for public review. And all of this is on the city website under planning and development. Look for the housing element tab. Every draft of these three drafts is there under that housing element tab along with all the flyers and um public noticing that we've done over this process. Um, so the draft housing element sections here, um, uh, I only have the one highlighted red, which is the goals, policies, objectives, and programs because that's the most significant number of changes that have happened since, but I'll briefly go over some sections uh, that had changes. But um most of the ones that aren't part of

um section 9 either fed into section 9 for updating the programs or or um we added a couple more um or it was all about um greater public outreach either what we did with the third uh one in December or the ongoing outreach which is a newer program from maybe the last time I presented all of this to you uh sometime last year. So um the first three sections the housing element is introduction rejoin housing needs allocation and the review and revision of previous element. The only section that has a a significant change is section three um uh regarding the effectiveness of the fifth cycle housing element in progress. It's a minor revision there but um I've just highlighted in red for full disclosure. So when uh folks could probably probably follow along if they have the PDF draft open as I'm discussing this if they want to review it later. So um the community outreach and engagement um we added um um a summary of the public review drafts of number one and number two and the comments received and then also um included the uh third workshop that happened in December. on five for the housing section five for the housing needs assessment assessment. There were no significant changes there or at least sections 5.1 through 5.4. Um but on to sections 5.5 and 5.6 we've updated um or added more information per the request of HC regarding the existing housing conditions in Taft. And then we've already discussed a little bit on the farm workers uh housing. There's just a um provision in the law where um if you have agricultural land zoned in your town, you have to have what they lay out

for um farm worker housing uh in that zone. But it actually I think the way we presented it, which it is in the the law as well, it's any kind of employee housing. It doesn't have to be farm worker, but particularly farm worker and a zone land needs to allow it. Um but that's where we have it for now. particularly with the farm farmlands aren't immediately adjacent, if you will, but they're close enough where should someone want to utilize the um loan agricultural piece of land as the last bit of property on the east end of Gardenerfield Road before it goes into crosses the aqueduct into the county. Um and then um moving on to section six under the sites inventory, there's a number of um changes here. the sites inventory. We've been adjusting as they have a separate reviewer that looks at it. We put together a lengthy spreadsheet of all the properties that are identified as the sites and there's little adjustments that they needed and then we made changes to uh and additions of recent development trends, likelihood of non-residential development, realistic development potential of non-vacant sites and government properties. These are some key things that every single city has had to address. Um, uh, in, uh, I think I'm going to cover a little bit later, but the part about the likelihood of non-residential development, the downtown TAP specific plan has a lot of the mixed use zones. There is the potential because it does allow commercial uses, somebody will build something that's has no residential whatsoever. You know, an expansion of the grocery outlet and Dollar General uses, if you will. So uh uh basically what we did there was we discussed that in the the text portion and then um in the with the sites inventory the uh uh percentage number we used of the maximum allowable density. So you know 10 per acre on a 10acre site

you get 100 units. Uh we um uh mirrored both Sha and Wasco that both went 70%. Okay. So if we had a site like that, we'd calculate the number at 70. Yeah, that's easy. So that's what we did there. And to be consistent with what's going on in the county and all that. And then again with the government properties, there's a um uh surplus land act where they're trying to get as many jurisdictions to discharge as much of their property as possible to help with uh housing in their areas. Um continuing on, it is section six. There's no changes to 6.4 four or five or six. So, and then the initial analysis of constraints is 7.1. Government constraints, which is basically the analysis of what your application processes are, site plan review, general plan amendments, zoning changes, things like that. Um, they were good with our initial draft for majority of it. Um but um extending into 7.1 uh there was the processing and permitting procedures timeline. We made a few edits there. Um basically what they're trying to get all jurisdictions to outline um how we would um more assuredly the process procedure and getting to a decision body um to make it more um uh assured for potential developers. basically what the process is. Yeah. Um so that's the only re revision there. On to section 8 regarding affirmatively fair uh furthering fair housing. We actually done pretty good here with this being the the new section if you will that every city's had to address in the housing element. So no changes to 8.1 2 or three. Um but on to 8.4 4 um a new u program which we'll get into in section 9. But

um um based on the the properties that we identified um on the sites inventory one uh they wanted us to make sure that any kind of effort and work towards getting more housing is done equitably throughout the city. But particularly because Central Taft has some of the AFFH uh metrics that tend to put up a red flag that something needs to be done. It but I think it tends to be uh central is because of the it is a lower income area but it does also capture um Heritage Park which is a lot of seniors living on social security probably because their rents are extremely low. But it also we included West Half which with all the um housing left to complete for Sandy Creek they also wanted that address because it's housing is supposed to address everything from low income to moderate to above moderate. So any effort for urban design things like the trail that is out there should be done everywhere else as well. you know, ensuring there's bike trails, adequate sidewalks, landscaping, good urban design, those type of things is what they were pushing for there. And um we'll get into that a little bit into u section nine where there was no changes to the four goals which were three of them were somewhat carryovers with slight edits from the prior h housing element. And then uh um goal four was the addition. There is no changes there. But getting into some of the um housing goals and policies um on the programs, we um started with nine programs and then there's kind of sub programs beyond that. Um we've added a 10th as I mentioned. We'll get to that one, but in section one here we have the acquisition and development of cityowned property. As I mentioned before, government owned property. The state's really pushing for all government

agencies of every kind, even special districts and others. So, school districts, they're trying to get them to discharge as well. So, we addressed that. And then it also because we broke up uh some of the um adequate sites list to include what we're calling large lot property. So, a lot of the lands on the east side of 119 and then the remainder of Sandy Creek Estates is large. Um uh we uh it's basically addressing every form of housing or properties that we found our role as the local government for acquisition andor helping the developer develop that property. So, city- owned property, federally owned property, large lots, cuz they're um also um most of the large lot properties exceed what might be considered a uh a size that would uh attract a developer. Some properties are too small, some are too big. So, if it's like 100 acres plus, a lot of developers don't like touching that. they want somebody else to chop it up into like 10 to 40 acre pieces because that could be in like an 80 to 200 lot range of uh development. So uh that's why the large lot ones were included. And then non- vacant sites. Um that one's uh uh I think the majority of our non- vacant sites is uh central tap particularly. But a lot of the infill properties somehow either a front residential unit burned down and the rear one is the only thing that's still standing still standing. Uh or vice versa, you know, front without the rear type of thing. Um, so there's a lot of single unit, maybe potentially two units of development on these infill lots if they add an ADU type of thing. That's more of these non- vacant sites. So, it's not uh uh, you know, trying to put housing on the Albertson's shopping center type of situation. It's purely we

have a number of individual lots that have a residential structure of some sort um, that are addressed in the uh, adequate sites list. So, we will move on. There are no changes to program 2 A through D. And then um program three and four um are the HCD was good with how we drafted those. And then now getting into program five, which is the um good chunk of um or there's just a longer list of programs and you may recognize a number of these as we've addressed. Pretty much all the ones that are in black on the list are ones we've uh probably reviewed a draft u uh zoning ordinance amendment. Um the red ones are the new ones. Um well 5 um was water and sewer priority, but we've put reasonable accommodation in there. Again, that's addressing um uh handicapped persons needs um in a housing per the law. Um so that's in there. water and sewer priority just got moved down to 5P and then objective findings were added in 5Q and then um 5R is public participation which I may have mentioned um back in December or January but what we're going to do is you'll see a lot of these changes in a number of those programs and even on pro uh program ones where um Faith in the Valley requested a housing committee be formed But a committee doesn't intend to restrict people out. But if you see a committee, it's five or seven members. They get selected. There is a public process in a sense. But the way that the three uh workshops I think worked out well for this process, I think continuing that where there's no formal member, there's not a

a city council member could show up as long as we don't have a quorum. Mhm. A commissioner can show up as long as we don't have a quorum, but we want to hear from everybody. And sometimes our process here and even committee processes can unintentionally not get good attendance, people speaking one way or the other about whatever the issues may be. So, um, program 5R, it's a bianual public meeting regarding housing. And what I'm hoping to do is to bring a lot of the folks we weren't quite able to get into the stakeholder interviews. You know, get the director from the uh mission of Kern County to just discuss with people and answer their questions on their successes and struggles in dealing with all of homelessness in Kern County because they do come out here. I'll keep talking. Don't worry, I'll have to try to talk over um for$1 or5 in the can. Whatever. It's $5. Uh right. Uh but um the mission, everybody knows about the mission. They do very well, but they're always full. When they get a bed vacancy, it fills right back up with somebody local, maybe somebody from Taft. But uh to have him speak about homelessness as a whole, uh maybe even have somebody from PD that can talk about it locally. Um and then if I can get some of these homebuilders or maybe even the homebuilder association president, folks like that. I would have a guest speaker and then an open forum of what are we seeing? I'd give an update on uh permit issuing progress of new residences because we are doing one to four max five without Sandy Creek Estates building. It's really like very singledigit uh development. We're getting a few ADUs u applied for and uh built. So that's a good thing. It's kind of becoming a thing locally, but we're gonna have like five or less a year unless somebody starts building Santa Creek states again. But I'll be giving

housing updates twice a year. Um I'll probably time it either before right before or right after doing the um annual progress report for the housing element because I'll be assembling the data information on it so I could report out, you know, April or May after getting that to the state by April 1st. So that's uh the biggest thing is the outreach part and doing more um engaging with the public and and producing reports and putting on the city website. So the housing element site will probably once we're uh certified or probably convert to more of information update. I'll put all the annual progress reports here so folks can access it without having to go through um planning commissioner uh city council uh agendas, things like that. So that's the big one is Fiverr and it kind of spreads everything out uh to other programs regarding public outreach and making sure the information of uh uh all things housing and Taft is out there uh for f folks to ask access. Out of curiosity, what did they expect the housing committee to do? Well, like most folks, uh, with any kind of public process, uh, most everybody's hoping to get the solutionary answer right there in that that meeting or somehow it would be worked out in that forum, if you will. Mhm. It's we're behind the the scenes and it's really on getting developers here. That's the biggest thing. No city has built really a single stick of housing in probably 40, 50 years when they were what people might quote unquote call the projects, if you will, right? It's been funding ever since. It's been right supportive funding through uh the redevelopment agencies uh uh pairing up for particular grants or co-signing on probably whatever would be the uh um what do you call it? The uh uh tax breaks or whatever that process is. I've only processed one in my career

and they don't produce a lot of housing uh development in the state as a whole. But uh uh but anyways that that's where I think because we're trying to be uh have more interaction with the public people of Taft others that may be concerned with Taft or the residents here whether they're in the city limits or in the county we're kind of somewhat all 93268. Uh but to have that kind of forum I think would be more effective to get input from the public than more formal forum like our public meetings here or a committee meeting. I'm actually the reason I was asking is it's been my experience that committees tend to close off comment right make it harder for people or or they think oh well the committee is going to take care of it. Well it's an action group. It's council members, commissioners, and three members of the public that have some kind of stake in the game hopefully um or are active enough to have input on economic development or when we did the logo updates and things like that. Yeah. Um where that that's but this with the housing because it could reach so many different people, you want to open the doors more. Plenty of room at the transit center. It's out of city hall. It it invites more people to show up. I'd rather we work on recruiting as broad a group of people as possible, which is what you've done with the um presentations and and Faith and Valley provides some of the connection to um a lot of the non-English-speaking community that's here. So, um they provide that link by having that venue, that forum, if you will. And uh u it seems to work well. It's a good idea with HD. They didn't comment too much on this other than making sure whatever outreach or efforts don't hyperfocus on one location or the other whether it's a low-inccome area or an area that's presumably going to be above moderate. So right it's more of you know take everything into

consideration and um any efforts made should be somewhat equally to each corner of the city especially for since the city is not going out of its way to um decrease the amount of housing. I mean we're we want housing and it's it's not like working in some other jurisdictions where opposition to housing is high. Here the question is can we get more and how do we get it? And I think that having a good broader group is better thing. Yeah. And then uh to round out nine, where are we here? Here we go. And to uh programs 8 and nine under section 9.2, too. Um, we have some minor um, edits and it's similar to what I've been saying before, but regarding the multif family housing project and 9A, 9C for the self-help housing, 9D for senior housing project, 9G for development disabilities, and then 9 farmworker housing is either related to the code changes in program 5 or it's uh, more regular reporting of um, what's happening in those areas or the public outreach. So, um it's pretty consistent there. And then the newest programs, program 10, uh Central West, uh TAF Neighborhood Revitalization. It's combining a number of um I think I have it in what I provided you here. I'll try to read it as quick as I can. It's right at the end of um the chapter 9 that was in your staff report where um for both central and uh west and actually we'll call it southern there's uh some properties along highway 33 that are um eligible but um we're emphasizing

that for these geographic areas that we um utilize program 2 housing rehabilitation code enforcement for these areas uh five for the public participation as I was mentioning um under generally under program five for removal constraints, program six for um accessory dwelling units and then um nine for housing production streamlining and services which is again the removal of constraints to accelerate housing production. um in West Taff, which is program 10B. Um it does um reference uh uh utilizing program four for rental assistance and tenant uh production programs, um program seven for fair housing services, eight for homelessness prevention, and nine for the housing production stream laying in. So it it it a lot of it kind of repeats over and over kind of create that uh spiderweb effect of effort to capture the different housing um types um and potential production here in the city of Tap. So u we've added those programs 10A and 10B with that did not exist in the first draft that was reviewed between September and December of last year. And then uh 101 101 and turn this the wrong way. Sections 10, 11, and 12 are unchanged. So for the next steps, um, as I mentioned a minute ago, we did transmit this uh third draft to HCD for review as well. Um, but the public uh, and they should have 60 days to review between May 1st and July 1st of this year. U, we anticipate a shorter review by HCD. And then um should we get a letter in the shorter term that says we're good to go because we are down to down to about a dozen revisions and I think we've addressed what they're looking for. a potential schedule timeline I put up there with um the

planning commission meeting scheduled on July 2nd followed by the city council meetings on July 15th or if we we probably will provide a whole month of review for any follow-up questions or comments by anybody and then uh set up the council meeting on August 5th for the final certification and then sending it up to um HCD for their formal uh approval approval. of the um certification of the housing element and um I will report back when I get that letter from them um on both ends of it. There's basically the one that says this draft is uh shows the revisions are um um such that that you could certify it and then when we send up the formal copy within 30 days we get a letter back saying it is a certified copy of the housing element. So that concludes my presentation. I'm available for any questions that you may have. Question. Any questions? No, I think you covered it. Yeah, I think you've uh covered just about everything. Um, just keep doing a good job and moving it along. So close. Yeah. The closer you get, the more it's like it's just out of reach. No. Yeah. So, I think you've done a great job with this, Mark, and I appreciate the uh the effort that it takes to uh deal with a whole group of uh interested parties. Um it's not always the easiest thing to deal with when it comes to the housing element because there are a whole lot of people with a whole lot of different goals for the city. Um, amazingly, not a lot of them actually live here. Weird. So, I think you've done as good a job as can be expected and just keep up the good

work. We'll um move on to uh item four, which means uh now you get to report on anything else you haven't had to do. Uh well, as you know, I was actually at jury duty minutes before this meeting. So, I usually come up with my report right before the meeting and what's going on. And uh the only thing I'll say is that uh we should have actionable items at our next two meetings outside of even the housing element. So hopefully for June and for July uh we'll have some uh stuff to work on. Um and I'll leave my report at that because I nothing's popping in my head of other than uh I'll go and throw it out there. The um car show I'm sure some May 17th. I'll leave it to you you guys to promote that out. All right. Yeah. But that was last night. We had a lot of proclamations at the city council meeting, Lions Club, building safety month, corrections week, I think there was uh whatever they called it for police officers week and then someone got a promotion the uh oh promotion the nursing staff and nursing week, nursing week and a big give current day where it was yesterday. So um that's my report. Just as a aside from that, I was sitting next to a couple of the police officers and they were questioning why they only get a week and the building officials get a month. [Laughter] Talk to your association. Yeah, I was going to say you just need to have a better lobbyist. Better lobbyist. Um, okay. Then we're on to city attorney statements. Thank you. No statement, Mr. Chair. Thank you, sir. Any comments from our commissioners? Um, uh, scouts were also admin. They said they had a great time. Uh, very informative. They had no idea. So, yeah, it was nice to see some kids enthralled. So, the made them publicly speak beyond pledge. Beautiful. It was great.

Beautiful. Yeah. He he put them on the spot for a few things, including, "Do you guys know how to get rid of a a used up American flag?" Yeah. And so, I guess he's provided them with some stuff to do. Perfect. Yeah. And they got a donation out of it. So, Excellent. Excellent. But thank you. Yeah. Do you have anything else? Uh yeah. Uh Old Dorado is coming out with their calendar. Uh you know, it's partial right now, but there is some stuff on the calendar that you could see at our website. And we're also going to be coming out with the RV parking, like a drawing of the spots and pricing and all that. So, we're not quite there yet, but reservations will be available soon. Uh, I know, uh, h housing here gets crazy during old Dorado, so the hotels get booked up quick and they're expensive, so RV parking is kind of an option. Next option. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Outside that, thank you for all the work you've done on this housing element. It's I know it's a lot. It's taking a long time. Yeah. Okay. Well, I have no further comments than what we've already said. So, let's uh move on to item seven. Again, invocation of a representative to the city council. I promise I'll actually be here in town this time. I'd like to nominate you then. Thank you. I'll take the nomination and we'll move on to a motion for adjournment. Motion. Second. Deal. All those in favor? I I We're adjourned. Okay.