City Council - Special Meeting

Hang on, let me double check. Okay, thanks. Reese, are we ready to go?

Okay.

I guess I'll wait for Brandon. I think we're ready.

Good afternoon, everybody. We already initiated the meeting previous to our tour, but I'm going to go ahead and since you weren't here, I'm going to go ahead and start it one more time. Good afternoon. It's Monday, August 31st, 2026. We're at Carmel-by-the-Sea City Hall. I'd like to call this special meeting of the Carmel-by-the-Sea City Council to order at 3.03 p.m. City Clerk, would you please call the roll?

Councilmember Barron?

Here.

Councilmember Booter?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Delves?

Here.

Councilmember Jamal? Here. Mayor Byrne?

Here.

All are present.

Thank you. Before we begin, a reminder to the public that this is a hybrid meeting. You may attend in person, participate via Zoom, or watch the live stream on the city's YouTube page at any time in the future. Nova, could you please read the public comment guidelines for special meetings?

During special city council meetings, public comments are permitted on items listed on the agenda. After each item on the agenda is introduced, the mayor will invite public comment on that item. Each speaker has three minutes to speak unless otherwise adjusted by the mayor. While stating your name is optional, it helps to identify speakers in the meeting minutes. Remote or in-person participants who do not comply with the requirements of the Brown Act will be muted.

I notice we have an echo. Is there something we could do about that?

They're currently working on it. For those that don't know, we actually had a little bit of a issue last week with our board catching on fire downstairs. We quickly put it out, but we have been trying to reconstruct some of the equipment. So the IT team has been doing a fantastic job to get us ready for this meeting again today.

It happened to be a standing room only and actually more than standing room only of the the another area around us with. It was during district supervisor Kate Daniels meeting. So it was not good timing. So well attended meeting to say the least. If necessary, the council is going to take a 30 minute break around 630 p.m. So we're gonna go right to the consent agenda. Items on the consent agenda are routine in nature and do not require discussion or independent action. Members of the council, the public may ask that any item be considered individually for council discussion and or public comment. Unless that is done, one motion may be used to adopt all recommended actions. We have four consent agenda items today and they're up on the screen. If any of you would like to pull one, please track the number that you would like to pull and we'll be asking you in a second. Approval of city council special meeting minutes from July 30th, August 3rd, August 4th, August 14th, and August 24th, 2026, and the August 4th regular meeting minutes. Number two is July 2026 monthly reports. Number three is July 2026 check register summary. Number four is resolution 2026-061 granting Pacific Repertory Theater, a partial waiver of $100,000 in building permit fees associated with the Golden Bough Theater renovation project. Do any council members wish to pull any of these items for comment or discussion?

Yes, item four.

Item four, all right.

I'd like to pull item two.

All right. Anybody else?

I move to approve items one and three in the consent agenda.

Second. I didn't get to the public yet. Anybody from the public like to pull an item? All right, you're good. Nobody from the public? Go ahead.

Motion stands.

All right. Roll call, please.

Councilmember Barron?

Yes.

Councilmember Booter?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Delves? Yes. Councilmember Dramaw? Yes. Mayor Byrne?

Yes.

Motion carries.

All right, so we had number two.

Go ahead. Yeah, so one thing that I really liked seeing in here was the council priorities for this month, which was great, which gives me an opportunity to ask about street addresses and just kind of where we are with that, if we could just kind of get an update. I've had a few constituents reach out and kind of ask where we are.

Sure, I'm going to ask Marissa to come up and give a, she's smiling at me, come up and give a quick update on that because it'll be better than the update that I give you, I promise.

Thank you for that. Sorry, I'm not fully prepared to speak. eloquently about it, but I can give you an update. So we, these last few months, we've been working with public safety, all of our public safety partners, CHP, our own police department, our fire department, to ensure that their systems were updated. And so if they get a call with an address, they're able to dispatch quickly. So again, these last few months, they've been working on that, on updating their own systems. Just last week, I got confirmation that our own police department is ready. They've done their testing. They've checked their systems and they're ready to go. So our plan for this week, was to maybe sit together, right? The team sit together and discuss the rollout and the official notifications from the city, which are also ready to go. We just need to send them out in the mail. So that's where we're at.

Okay, so there's no more county agencies that we're waiting on?

Everybody's ready to go. Yeah, we're just waiting for public safety.

Exciting. Okay. Thanks.

Could I make a comment? I wasn't planning on this, but since we pulled this item. Go ahead. So Brandon and I had our weekly meeting this morning. And so I just wanted to sort of tee this up for Brandon that we are going to be evaluating all the upcoming beach repairs in connection with El Nino. If you could just share with the public what the plan is on notifying everyone and letting everyone know the status of those. Sure.

That was a request. That's a request for the next meeting or?

Right, I think we had initially thought that it would be like a city administrator update.

Yes, I'll give an update tomorrow, my city administrator update, and then the following month we'll do a more formal presentation.

And that will be a much more in-depth look?

Correct.

Correct.

That's right.

Okay, just wanted to keep the public up to date on that.

Thank you. Thank you. Number four? Item number four, was that you, Jeff? Yeah, we...

Yeah, I'm going to be voting against number four, but perhaps you should vote on number two first. Okay. Motion, please.

Move to approve item number two on the consent agenda. Second.

Roll call, please.

Council Member Barron?

Yes.

Council Member Booter?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Delves?

Yes.

Council Member Dramaw? Yes. Mayor Byrne?

Yes.

Motion carries.

All right.

Now, Jeff, go ahead. Thank you. I stated in some depth last month why I was opposed to this fee waiver of $100,000. So I don't feel the urge to go through all that again. So I'll simply vote no. All right. Thank you.

Do we have a motion?

I move to approve item number four on the consent agenda. Second.

Roll call, please.

Councilmember Barron?

No.

Council Member Booter?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Delves?

Yes.

Council Member Jamal? Yes. Mayor Byrne?

Yes.

Motion carries 4-1.

Thank you very much. All right. We're going to just move on to the public hearing. We have one public hearing this afternoon. I believe Council Person Delves needs to recuse himself because of his location in proximity to this particular home.

Yes.

So he'll be leaving and returning. We'll go and grab him after this is over. Thanks, Bob. All right, this is the, I'll wait till Bob leaves. This is the McWhorter appeal, Carmelo Street. Item five is resolution 2026063, consideration of an appeal by Bruce and Linda Taylor of the Planning Commission's approval of the McWhorter project at Carmelo Street, two northeast of Ocean Avenue. The project involves demolition of the existing single-family residence and construction of a 1,555-square-foot two-story residence with an attached garage and an ADU with a rooftop deck. The council toured the property early this afternoon, and we're ready for your staff report.

Thank you. As stated, we're going to be reviewing Appeal 26270, McWherter. So the subject site is a 3,900 square foot lot. The applicant is proposing to fully demolish the existing house and rebuild a new home that will be compliant with floor area and site coverage with a 750 square foot ADU that will be processed under a separate concurrent permit during the building permit phase. Here is a side-by-side showing the two different designs, the existing on the left and the new on the right. So we're going to jump right into the grounds of appeal. I've bulleted them one through five. Generally, the first was on grounds that the project is not categorically exempt. Two is that the site does not meet floor area ratio regulations. Three regards site coverage. Four is regarding volume. And five is regarding the residential design guidelines, specifically view, air, light, privacy, and flat roofs. So I have some responses here. Pardon the fact the slides are so wordy. The first is that the project is categorically exempt from CEQA. Upon further analysis, staff determined it is not only exempt under class three, but also class two. So that would be replacement and reconstruction, which involves replacement and reconstruction of structures with the same purpose. And then class three is the construction of up to one to three new residences in urbanized area. The second response to the grounds of appeal is the floor area analysis. The proposed floor area for the home inclusive of the garage is 1,628 square feet, which is within the maximum allowed on site. That's excluding the 750 square foot ADU. And I think it's just worth noting that this is what's deemed a pipeline project. There's been recent ruling with the City Council regarding how we're going to be processing ADUs in town, and this is one of the projects that was in before that ruling, so it was deemed a pipeline project and will proceed following the California Government Code regulations on ADUs as opposed to the ordinance in the Carmel Municipal Code. With regard to site coverage, the maximum allowed site coverage on site is 387 square feet with the permeability bonus that bumps up to 543 square feet. Currently, the applicant is proposing just over 520 square feet with a 76.8% permeable bonus. Next, we're going to go into volume analysis. If you see on the screen, there's the previously proposed roof deck and the approved roof deck. You can see how the deck itself has changed. Volume on the site is a little bit interesting. The allowed volume is 19,300 and the proposed is 18,540. Now, this does not include the volume of the deck above the roof, above the ADU itself. The PC denied an ADU rooftop deck for the Diamond Project on April 8th, and the City Council upheld that ruling at appeal. The ruling was that ADU rooftop decks do not get the same protections as ADUs with regards to volume and discretion. Really, that was focused on discretion regarding the decks themselves. It is my understanding that if the rooftop deck on the McWhorter Project was calculated for volume, it would fail volume. At the Planning Commission hearing for final details for this project staff raised this concern to the Planning Commission and gave them several options to proceed the effectively the options were to require a new volume study to determine that because they passed volume when the city's policy didn't include including rooftop decks and volume calculations to deem that grandfathered in and determined that any privacy and view concerns were sufficiently addressed with the change to the roof or to require the deck to be removed. The Planning Commission went with the second option, determining that the volume study was grandfathered in and that the privacy and view concerns were sufficiently addressed by reducing the walkable surface of the deck by changing the layout and increasing the size of the planters on site. The last grounds for appeal was design guide analysis as part of the concept hearing for this project the Planning Commission did make a finding that the deviations were minor for the flat roof and determined that it is acceptable and fit the architectural style for the portion of it that is two stories at the front of the property over the garage and then for view air light and privacy the Planning Commission did request that they reduce the size of the skylights at the first final details meeting and And they did so, and the Planning Commission deemed that was sufficient. In addition, the screening and reduction in walkable surface, the Planning Commission determined, sufficiently addressed any privacy review concerns that were had by the neighbors. They had continued the first final details meeting with direction that the applicant work with the neighbors to find a compromise. Over the course of a month or so, they went back and forth, and the applicant informed us that they couldn't find a compromise. The neighbors wanted them to move the roof deck to the front of the property, and the applicants didn't want that because it would be looming over the street, and they had concerns about moving the deck and then failing volume. And where it currently is, they decided to shrink the walkable surface and thought that sufficiently addressed the privacy view concerns. The Police Planning Commission concurred. After writing the staff report, the appellant's attorney reached out with some concerns. So I wanted to make sure I included those and highlighted them here at the request of the attorney. First, that the rooftop deck dimensions, the 23 by 14 feet 2 inches that were shown on the rooftop plans, just covers that rectangular space but doesn't include the area under the arbor or the landing to the staircase. So they wanted to have that pointed out because it seems a little bit misleading about the size of the rooftop deck. And then they had some concerns that they'd not get all the updated plans as the plans were being revised. I sent over several copies, but the last set weren't specifically requested and I didn't send them over preemptively, but they were posted in the agenda packet at the final details meeting. In addition, on Friday, we received some additional correspondence from the attorney. So I've read through and just provided a few responses in there. They further elaborated on their CEQA concerns. Discussion, we already discussed its exemptions. They raised concerns about a determination of consistency for effects to a historic property for the neighboring Taylor's property. Section 1732.120 of the Carmel Municipal Code states that Determination of consistency is needed if there's going to be alterations, remodeling, grading, relocation, reconstruction, or restoration of a historic resource. The current project does not propose to have any physical changes on the historic resource. There's not going to be any alteration, remodeling, grading, relocation, reconstruction, or restoration of a historic resource. So per the Carmel Municipal Code, all aspects of the historic preservation ordinance have been followed appropriately. With regards to the design guidelines, we did talk about this previously. The flat roof was determined to be an acceptable deviation by the Planning Commission, and the rooftop deck, the Planning Commission did not determine had creating any privacy concerns and believed that it did not have a substantial impact on views. floor area we discussed, site coverage we discussed, and then the appellant raised concerns about a lack of substantial evidence for the findings made by the Planning Commission, and it is our opinion that the Planning Commission did make all findings based off substantial evidence. With that, I recommend you adopt the resolution as presented by staff. I'm here for any questions. All right, thank you.

Alessandra? Thanks, Jake, for that presentation. I have a two-part question for you, and it's about the orange netting and the story polls. So the first part of my question is, are these put up by the applicant's contractor or subcontractor just routinely?

They hire a third party to install the story polls and then to provide an affidavit certifying the story polls are accurate to the plans.

Okay, and then my second part of the question is, does the city check them once they're up or is it a good faith based on that document that they sign?

We go and look at the story polls to make sure they seem correct. These have been up for a little bit, so I have to admit when we were there today, they looked like they'd been worn a little bit. But we take the affidavit of the professional because they're signing a legal document certifying that it does match the plans. So unless we're going out with a tape measure, it's hard for us to verify. So we have to take the word of the affidavit and the professional.

Okay, thank you.

Jake, just to confirm, the professional is typically a licensed surveyor? Yes. So it's a person with a license who has a stamp that they certify that it's a certain height? Thank you.

Any other questions?

Hunt?

Thanks, Jake. There was an appeal that the appellant's attorney mentioned, the Carlson appeal. And they mentioned 175 square foot rooftop deck. And apparently, city staff at the time said, quote, decks are included in the volume calculation. Do you know when that staff report was issued? The Carlson appeal or the McWhirter? The Carlson appeal. I wasn't familiar with it, but it's referenced in the appellant's attorney's comments.

There we go. It shows appeal for DS15327. So just based off our, this is long before my time, but based off the numbering, I would assume it's 2015. And our code does state that decks that are more than three feet above the ground are counted in volume calculations. And then if it's a second story deck, you go from the base of the deck to the top of the railing to calculate volume. So it does specify that decks are included in volume. The reason this deck was excluded was because it was over the ADU, and there's been some change in how we're processing things.

It sounded like this one was an ADU. I'd have to go back to the letter, but that was my recollection.

Councilmember, I'm sorry. I'm looking at the letter. This is before my time as well, so I apologize. We can look it up when Jake sits back down, but I don't see anything in the letter from the attorney that this was for an ADU, but we can look that up for you.

Okay?

Jeff? What's the logic that was used in not including DEX, volumes of DEX on top of ADUs?

I think it's a kind of multi-pronged thing with ADUs having state protection and the fact that we were trying not to restrict the development of ADU based off of state law. I think the rooftop decks for ADUs got caught up in that, especially for something like this where it's a flat roof where the parapet of the ADU itself is the top of the guardrail for the deck. So there's a weird kind of overlap between what would be the volume for an ADU and what would be the volume for a deck. So after further discussion with internally as the team, we determined that the decks above an ADU don't have that same kind of protection. So we made sure that going forward, that's something that will be included. But it seems to be just in the change in policy to try and make sure we're following state laws regarding ADUs. That seemed to be an oversight in planning ahead for that.

But it was internal in the planning department where that discussion took place?

Yes.

Not at the planning commission? Yes.

Okay. Yeah, Mayor, this is, if you remember our conversation last month at City Council, this was one of the things, volume along with, you know, floor area, all those things that the council has a new policy now. And, you know, staff talked about at the time all the laws came out so quickly that from the state, you know, saying protect ADUs, get them through the process, that we just, we didn't realize how much power LCP actually had at the time.

Yeah, in terms of power here at the planning, we're not the planning commission, we're the city council. I'm going to give a statement later about this whole thing and how it's happening, but just to make sure, I want to verify before we go into starting our discussion. Putting all the volume calculations aside, does a council have independent authority in this situation? under the existing residential design guidelines and municipal code to require removal of the deck because of privacy scale or neighborhood compatibility tonight.

Yes.

At this meeting. I just want to make sure. It said that in the meeting. I want to make sure. Because if we go down this, I don't want us to come up with a decision that we can't do. Just so everybody knows, we could do that if we chose to. All right. Very good. Thank you. No other questions? Let's take it out to the public.

Mr. Mayor, I just want to, if I could, I've... Our staff is so wonderful. I just got a message from Evan confirming that the Carlson roof deck was on a second story, was not an ADU. It wasn't an ADU. Okay.

And before we have you, you can sit down now. Does the appellant have a representative or would they like to speak? I'm going to give you 10 minutes total.

Okay.

So for both this and the rebuttal, if you choose to, so you can spread it out.

Oh, it was my understanding from Ms. Roberts that it was 10 minutes and five on the rebuttal and my 10 total.

I can do that. No one spoke to me about it.

Okay, I would appreciate 10 and then five.

We can do that.

Thank you. I feel like I'm going to have to move pretty quickly through this.

Are you going to be the only speaker on your side?

I'm sorry?

Are you going to have any other speakers for the appellant?

Yes.

Okay. All right. I just want to know what we're going to do.

Yeah, the appellant is going to stand up after me.

Okay.

And then I think there are some public comment speakers that will be here as well. All right.

Go ahead.

Great. Good afternoon, mayors, members of the city council. My name is Krista Stoich, and I represent the appellants, Bruce and Linda Taylor, owners of the historic Fraser Home. The Fraser home is historic not only for its architectural style, but also because it was the home of the very first mayor of the city of Carmel. The home is listed on the city's inventory of resources. The appellants really appreciate your time today and just want to make clear, they are appealing the rooftop deck. That is the concern here. Jacob did a great job of presenting the project and going through our five issues on appeal. I'm not going to have time to address all five of those. I'm happy to answer questions about any of them. I'm going to kind of hit the big points today as I already submitted a comprehensive letter. As Jacob showed, the size of the deck is important because it's a pretty large deck. It may be between 325 and 375 square feet, but it's a large active living space. And an active living space of that size invites use. What kind of activities do we see in active outdoor living spaces of that size? I think it's common to see hot tubs. It's common to see a barbecue. umbrellas, heaters, and lights. If you're going to have a rooftop deck on that side, you know, why not use it? And those are some of the things that we see in our jurisdiction, and quite frankly, others that have a lot of rooftop decks. So activities like that have impacts. A barbecue creates smoke. A hot tub gurgles when it's heating up. Sound from people enjoying the deck, the views. Active living space will now be on that large deck in close proximity to my client's historical home. Now, right now, as you saw there today, there's a rooftop. And for the past almost 100 years, that Fraser home has sat there with that historic view of Carmel Bay, the view that is mentioned in the state historical documents recognizing the significance of this property. And that view is going to be disturbed. That spatial relationship is going to be disturbed amongst these properties. Now, the McWhorters acknowledge that there's some privacy concerns from this deck. And the reason we know they acknowledge it is because they added the privacy screen. And while that may mitigate some of the concerns, it's not going to mitigate all of them. It will mitigate some of the visual impacts of neighbors looking directly at each other. And so that is one thing. But from the plans, it appears like it's a slatted partition wall. So whether or not it's going to impact much sound, I think a lot of sound is probably going to still get through there. At nighttime, that wall is not going to protect from light impacts that I know the city takes very seriously because I hear meeting after meeting how skylights are such a concern for that reason. that wall is not going to do much for it. It's not going to do anything to stop smoke from a grill or going over to the other side. So there are going to still be privacy impacts. But the biggest impact of that partition wall is that, as you saw in the plans, it is seven feet high and over 30 feet wide. Now, That's a big wall. After the last hearing, the tailors just wanted to make sure that everything on the story polls were accurate. And so they hired Salinas Valley surveyors who prepared their own survey and report. And they said, you know, mostly these story polls, they look really good. That the one issue that they did found, and I've blown it up out of the letter here, is that the flagging they found only came up to six feet. And actually, what was approved was seven feet. Now, I know there's been a lot of changes in the plans over time. And so I'm not trying to say that anything was done improperly. But I just think that it doesn't appear, according to Salinas Valley, that those story polls are accurate. So that information from the surveyor was then conveyed to Borley Construction, who created this This graphic, so you'll see on the left hand side that this is the views that the historic Fraser home currently enjoys. This is from the bottom floor, an average size five foot seven inch person standing on the deck like you probably did today and this is what they can see. On the right hand side, this study took the survey information and depicted what it is going to look like when the partition wall and vegetation is there, and also inserted one standard size umbrella. So you can see from the right hand picture that the beach view, there's currently a small beach view where you can actually see the sand, is going to be 100% blocked. The historic Fraser House will no longer have a beach view. You can see that the primary ocean view is gonna be about 40% blocked. And you'll see the secondary ocean view, which is the view through the trees that has been highlighted, is about 27% blocked. So a home that sat there from 1931 and has managed to have these views is now going to have a significant change in the view of the ocean. The reason that house built on the hill was the view of the ocean, and that is gonna be significantly changed. Now, I've talked a lot about the impacts to the Fraser home. What are we getting on the flip side? What is the McWhorter project gain by adding this rooftop deck? So I know you guys saw the site plan. You may not have had an opportunity to study it. But in that site plan, you will see that the McWhorter project was already approved for a view deck. There is a large deck on the front of the home. And I believe that there's roll-up doors. I could be wrong on that. But it's a very large front view deck. There's also a private courtyard in the middle of the home. It seems like a perfect place to have hot tubbing and different private activities. But there is other outside space. By approving the project as the Planning Commission does, the McWhorter project gets an optional rooftop deck. This is not essential. This is not living space. This is not additional square footage. It's simply outdoor living space for a house that already has it. Now, why is it important that this rooftop deck is located on the ADU versus over the main structure? I think there's two reasons why this is really important. One, if the city hadn't been forced to abide by the state's ADU laws, this structure would be restricted to only being 1,755 square feet. Because of the lot coverage rules and because of the maximum floor area and because of the way the street runs in front of a very narrow lot, If you couldn't build this ADU, even though the rear set back would maybe allow you to build that far, in practicality, you're never going to get a house that's going to be built that close to the Taylor's property line. And the reason it is, is we don't build long and narrow corridor houses. And that's how it would have to be to have a 1755 square foot house that stretched all the way to the rear of the property. That's the problem here, is that deck is located so close to the Fraser residence. As you saw today at the tour, there's also an elevation change between those properties. Whereas if the properties were side by side, the impacts would not be as great as with the Fraser residence being located above the McWhorter property. The prevailing winds come from the ocean, sound typically in our neighborhoods travel that way, light and air typically comes from that way. This deck is going to impede in all of those things. Secondarily, why does it matter that it's an ADU? I think you've already hit on it because for some reason this rooftop deck is being treated differently. It was not included in the volume calculations. Now I understand that a lot was coming down the pipeline for the state and the city quite frankly was trying to keep up. But I have done a Public Records Act request and the only policy that the city actually has on volume study is is the policy that clearly says that rooftop decks are included in a volume study. There is no differentiation for ADUs. I have included both the Public Records Act request and your own policy in there. While there may have been some confusion as to city staff, there was never any policy regarding volume calculations on ADUs. Should have been treated like every other project has. So thank you for the reminder. I am going to briefly wrap up and say that the CEQA issue, while we're not debating that this could be considered an exemption, because of the historical status of this building, there is an exception to the exemption. And an actual analysis should have taken place before deeming this property to be exempt. In sum, We know the McWhorters have been going through this process for a very long time. And it's unfortunate that it has taken that long to get here. But all we are asking for is that you deny the rooftop deck. It is not a redesign. It is not going to add additional costs. It is not going to add any additional time to the McWhorters project. Please deny the project. Respect the historic structure. and recognize that it is not worth damaging this resource for a rooftop deck. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Does the applicant want to make a statement? Are they representative?

Mr. Taylor wanted to speak. Would you like him to speak after?

Do you want to just make a public comment? I'll just speak after Eric. Okay, go ahead, Eric. I'll give you two minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you all for coming by the house to take a look at it today. Lynn and I appreciate that. We've enjoyed this house for 25 years. And it has been a labor of love for my wife, who's an interior designer. And we've maintained the historical character of the house and respected that for the last 25 years of our ownership. Thank you also to the folks at Love Carmel who might be here talking on our behalf today. So we really appreciate that. A couple of things. Michael LePage at the Planning Commission, his very, I guess, very strong conclusion was that the roof deck would have no impact on the tailors. That was his conclusion. And I completely disagree with that. There wouldn't be a privacy wall if it didn't have an impact on the neighbors. When you sit at the breakfast table, which we've done the last 10 months, we've looked at orange netting that blocks our view of Carmela Bay. We sit at our dinner table, which I asked Hans to take a seat there and sit at the dinner table and see what happened. It blocks the view of Carmela Bay. So it significantly changes the nature of our house, the nature of our ability to enjoy our house and enjoy the views that we currently have. So it's important to us. It's also important for the Carmel community to respect your historic homes. Secondly, rooftop decks. It was interesting. At the council meeting, Chairman LePage referred to the rooftop deck as a party deck. And he said that was a pejorative statement. Well, that tells me that Michael wouldn't like the idea of a rooftop deck. So it was just interesting that he and Mel didn't like that characterization, which implies they wouldn't like it being a rooftop deck. It is right there next to us. You saw the cutout there. That's the cutout for the hot tub, which is right against our fence. So you've got that noise and those mechanics going on. It's just not an appropriate place. A year ago when we first heard of this, Eric Miller designed our house in Corral de Terra. And I went to Eric and said, Eric, what if we just offered Scott McWhorter a million-dollar profit to take the money and go buy another house that's more appropriate? He's got five people in his family. He's building a one-bedroom house. That doesn't make any sense, right? You have a one-bedroom house, you have a 380-square-foot roof deck to go with that one-bedroom house. I said, we'll give you a million-dollar profit, and you go find the house that fits your family better. And he was going to look at a realtor, and he had a realtor look, and I guess hasn't found anything yet. So that's, we're happy to talk afterwards, answer any questions, but thank you for your consideration in this appeal. Thank you. All right, Eric.

Do you have any other speakers?

No, just myself. Okay, all right, thank you. Go ahead. Can we have the PowerPoint? PowerPoint. of the PowerPoint. It's interesting that everyone's talking about a potential party house, barbecues, patio furniture. Does that mean that the Taylor house controls all of the properties around them so that nobody can have barbecues, nobody can have furniture? And by the same token, I don't think Bruce and Linda are going to have a big barbecue, but they might have one, you know, on 4th of July. They could sell the house to somebody else and there could be giant parties there. Carmel has ordinances against sound. So the whole point is if there's a noise and sound violation of the ordinance, then you can call the police. And, um, So I don't find that to be a reasonable argument. By the same token, because they say their house is historic, which it is, does that mean every house around them can't change and can't have any kind of a new or different addition or be a new house? I think that's not correct. So I think just because they're there doesn't mean they control the entire neighborhood.

Trying to get it to show up.

OK. Is that ready to go, I guess? So we've been working on this project for quite some time, 500 and let me see if I get the laser going here. Yeah, so over 500 days. So we spent day 279, we got concept approval with the rooftop deck. And so we've been struggling with the whole process ever since. So can we go to the next slide? Yeah, I got it right here, yeah. So the same attorney that claimed that we couldn't build within the rear yard setback on this new project said there was no rooftop decks in Carmel, so we've showed these at least four, there's a lot more. I would like to point out, originally we thought we were gonna do a two-story house with a reverse floor plan on that upper part of the lot, which we could have done, but before we even knew the Taylors owned the house, we decided not to do that because we thought it would be unfair to block their views and gain all the views ourselves. So knowing the design guidelines, I recommended just a one-story deck. If we'd done a two-story house out there, we could have put a deck outside of it and it wouldn't have been considered a rooftop deck. In fact, the deck is really more at grade than on a roof looking down. So we did work with staff, made some changes, made some adjustments, reduced the skylights, and Planning Commission approved it. So here's the deck that we had approved at Planning Commission. So you see this hedge is our hedge. This hedge is a Taylor hedge. So this deck is quite a bit smaller. So we are only asking for 393 square feet. So when the Planning Commission recommended that we reduce this deck, Michael LePage, and it's a 255-57 timestamp, he recommended that we do a 15 by 30, so 450 feet. But we went to 393 feet from 588 feet to get it 33% smaller. These planters can really never be moved. They're structurally supported. This one weighs 2,700 pounds. This one's more like 3,000. They're just going to be permanent planters. When you walk up the stair here, you're tied up against this hedge and the fence behind it. So you'll have complete privacy from the first level of the Taylor house. So the Taylor House is this compound right here. You see it's quite large. So I presume they don't control this house, this house, our house, this one or this one relative to barbecue, furniture, noise, or historicity. You can see here's the Taylor House. It's looking over our house completely at that ocean view. So again, This is view one. That's that lower view where you were sitting at the table, Hans. And we all looked from that lower deck. This is view two. This is Linda's bedroom. So the day I got there, this was the hedge. So that hedge, I had surveyed. I know exactly how tall that hedge is. And we surveyed it so I could design to that hedge, because I didn't want to change their lifestyle or change their view. So this is from the lower floor and this is standing up in her bedroom. This is their original hedge. So see the time expires doesn't help me because I'm trying to show this, which is this is your guideline privacy. The whole privacy is so you can't stand on this deck and look down on people. Well, we're being looked down on. So it's really designed to let everybody have some privacy. So this is the hedge that I saw it. And this is after they cut it down. And I asked my landscape architect how long you think that had been growing. He thought it was at least two years old because of the size of all these branches that were cut off. So I don't care if the tailors cut their hedge down completely. This was my benchmark. And so our new privacy screen is at this height. So you can see this is the flagging that was fallen partially down today. So this is the part we would block. And then this is with their hedge cut down. So if they cut it all the way down, that's OK. We'll still have a hedge, and it'll be back to its original location. So in your policy, they say use screening in active areas. This is more like a neighbor or a neighboring fence. So we could build the fence right on the property line and have the house within three feet if we didn't ask for an ADU. But we've actually got the deck 10 feet away from the property line fence. So we're further back than you usually are with a deck like this. And so if this is the cut down hedge, this is the hedge that I saw the first day. Their experience in this house would be no different than they lived with for years. So this is the cut down hedge here that you saw today. This is the netting that was up. So you see clearly that 3.7% of their ocean view is blocked. That's this little piece right here. And the entire view, they get 99.9% of the view that includes sky and ocean. It's shared views. It's not one person gets all the views. So you can see how difficult the McWhirther project is. See how it's down so low? The hedge is up here. This is the top of the fence. It just doesn't seem reasonable to have the McWhirthers get nothing and tailors get everything. you know, it doesn't seem like a fair approach. So here's the stair that comes up here, and then you turn right here against the seven-foot fence. Now, we told Bruce, if you want it to be a six-foot fence, we could do that. But this is more like a neighboring yard than it is like a rooftop deck looking down on them. And so because it's like a neighboring yard, It could have a fence right on the property line, but this edge right here is 10 feet back from the property line. So we do think this is reasonable, and it balances everyone's right here. So this is the view from her upper bedroom. So you can see they get 100% of the view here. So that flat roof was meant to be a roof garden to give a softer look than just having a roof down there. So this is the front grasses. This is our hedge. Bruce's hedge is this one that's cut down. And this is this privacy screen.

Can you summarize?

Yes. Well, at the end of the day, this is what you would see if we built the project the way that we're proposing. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Any questions? Let's get public comment first, and then we'll have questions afterwards. Do you want to do your rebuttal now or do you want to wait until after? I'd wait until after public comment because you'll know what the totality is at that point.

Yeah, Mayor, we should do rebuttal after public comment. You want to do it now? That always goes at the end.

I agree.

Yeah.

Who knows what's going to come up? How many people are going to speak tonight? And thank you for being here, by the way. It's important. All right. I'm going to give you three minutes each. Come on up.

Can we get six because we're two? We're each going to take three.

Well, you can each have three.

It's important for us to be together.

You can stand there if you like, but you each get three.

Thank you. Good evening or good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. It's an honor to be here. I'm a neighboring resident on Camino Real. My name is Julie Culver, and I'm supporting the appeal by Bruce and Linda Taylor concerning the Planning Commission's approval of DS-25019. I'm here today with another neighbor, Linda Yelich, We are concerned about the project's potential effects on surrounding properties and more broadly about the precedent this approval could establish for residential development in Carmel-by-the-Sea. I have a particular perspective on this matter. I previously served on the Carmel-by-the-Sea Planning Commission. I'm familiar with the city's planning and appeal processes. I'm also a retired Superior Court Judge of Monterey County. I mention this not to suggest anything I say should receive any special consideration, but to explain why I take seriously the importance of a fair process, a complete administrative record, and consistent application of the city's established standards. The principal concern is this large rooftop deck proposed above the state mandated ADU, at the very back of the property. This is not a minor architectural detail or incidental outdoor space. It's a substantial elevated outdoor living area covering approximately 10% of the property and materially changing the relationship between the proposed residence and the surrounding properties. The rooftop deck raises significant concerns regarding privacy, views, light, noise, visual impact, and just the neighborhood character. This type of elevated rooftop outdoor space appears to be an extraordinary feature, not contemplated or addressed by our residential design guidelines, nor is it mandated by the state ADU legislation that has allowed this project to cover virtually the entire parcel. The absence of guidelines addressing a feature of this nature should not be treated as an invitation to create an exception one house at a time. If the city approves this large rooftop deck without an established standard governing such a feature, it risks creating a precedent for future projects. Other applicants could reasonably point to this approval as justification for similar rooftop decks potentially changing the character of Carmel. Carmel is a unique beach community and should value the precious character it has fought long to retain. Carmel-by-the-Seas residential neighborhoods have for many years been characterized by a distinctive scale and relationship between homes, gardens, landscaping, and neighboring properties. An elevated rooftop deck of this size, a few feet from the rear property line, changes that relationship. It creates an outdoor living area above the normal level of surrounding residential and garden spaces creating direct lines of sight into neighboring yards and homes. Carmel encourages outdoor use of private gardens and spaces, not ones such as included in this project. The historic context of the Taylor's home is significant. They've allowed their home to be used for tours, for the public to come in. That shouldn't be ignored. They have been wonderful members of the community, and the potential impact is of great concern. Thank you.

Okay, we also want to bring to the council's attention a concern regarding the handling of written public comments concerning DS 25019. On January 20th, 20th, 2026, Julie Culver personally hand delivered a letter to the planning department, setting forth concerns regarding this project. I also hand delivered a similar letter to the planning department on that same date. On review of the documents provided for the planning commission hearing, it appears that neither of our letters were provided to the planning commission. Both letters contain significant concerns regarding the project and its potential impacts on neighboring properties. It appears the commission may not have had the benefit of all the written public comments submitted. Given our professional history, Julie is a judge in my leadership position in education, we both understand the importance of ensuring that decision-making bodies have before if all the relevant information and public comments submitted for its consideration. A complete administrative record is particularly important when a decision is subsequently appealed. We raise this issue respectfully and not to assign blame. Our concern is that the council review of the appeal should be based upon a complete record. In summary, Carmel's planning and design standards serve an important purpose. They provide a consistent framework for evaluating individual projects while protecting the character and livability of the community. The proposed deck is precisely the type of feature that warrants careful consideration of its precedent setting effect. The question should not simply be whether this particular applicant desires such a feature, but whether allowing it is consistent with the city's established approach to residential design and whether the city is prepared to apply that same principle to future applicants. For all of these reasons, I respectfully ask the City Council to, one, grant the appeal filed by Bruce and Linda Taylor, two, overturn the Planning Commission's approval of DS 25019, and three, deny the project as currently proposed. As long-term residents of Carmel, both of us living in this area for over 25 years, we fully support reasonable and appropriate improvements to residential properties. Our concern is that the proposed rooftop deck very near the rear property line represents an extraordinary departure from the character and framework of Carmel's residential neighborhoods. and that the approval of such a feature where it is not contemplated by the current residential design guidelines could establish an unfortunate precedent. Carmel-by-the-Sea has responsibility to preserve the qualities that make its residential neighborhoods unique while allowing appropriate property improvements. We respectfully urge city council to uphold that balance by granting the Taylor's appeal and denying DS-25019 as currently approved. Thank you for your careful consideration of these concerns and for your service to Carmel-by-the-Sea Community.

All right. Thank you.

And we've brought the letters that were omitted, I don't know how, from the planning department.

Could we identify who the author of the letters are and the date of the letters?

Yes. Julie Culver, January 19, 2026. I hand-delivered it here to the front desk of the planning department on January the 20th.

Understood, but just for the record, we're trying to identify. Yes, exactly.

And the other is Linda Yellich. The date of her letter is January 20th of 2026. And I believe that was hand delivered as well.

Are these letters submitted to the council in connection with these?

That's what I'd like them. I'd like to provide them to you now.

Were they submitted in advance? Were they previously submitted?

After our last experience, we haven't submitted anything in writing. We intended to, or there was some conversation about submitting a letter for this, and it was like.

So you did not submit them for this particular hearing? So my advice.

So I brought them today.

My advice, Mayor, is that we take a very short recess. Have the city clerk make copies of these letters. Have them distributed to the council. have extra copies put on the city clerk's desk in case somebody from the public wants to see it. This is a de novo proceeding. So what that means is that the council would be able to consider these letters. I have no knowledge of why they weren't included with the planning commission if in fact they weren't. That's my advice.

So there are six copies here.

Okay, well, maybe we could make six more, Nova, and in case somebody from the public wants to see them. Can we continue public comment? Yeah, we can go to the next speaker.

All right, we'll get the copies. We'll finish public comment, and then you can tell us how to proceed.

Yes, you can do that.

All right, next speaker, please. Let's keep this moving.

Good afternoon, evening, honorable mayor and council members. I'm David Armanosko. Carmel runs through my blood. I'm a River School, Sunset, Carmel Middle School, Carmel High School brat, and still love Carmel as much as I did when I was growing up here. So thank you for this opportunity. Who is Alfred Parker Frazier? Born in 1873, Alfred Parker Frazier was a member of Stanford University's very first graduating class in 1895. Alfred Parker Frazier received his law degree from Harvard and later, with his wife Bernice, moved to Carmel. Alfred Parker Frazier built his first home at the corner of Camino Real and Ocean Avenue. On October 31, 1916, Alfred Parker Frazier led the effort to form a city government, resulting in the incorporation of Carmel as a city. Alfred Parker Frazier became the first mayor of Carmel and served until April of 1920. Carmel has continued to evolve now over 110 years. However, we must constantly be aware, respect, preserve, honor, and protect our history. The issue before you, a rooftop deck on top of an ADU portion of a proposed home on Carmelo directly in front of the Frazier House, is a threat to one of the most important historic homes we have in Carmel, the Carmel Mayor's House. Carmel's own residential guidelines state that a home should organize functions for a site for reasonable privacy for adjacent properties, balance and share views of the natural features and landmarks, and produce projects that are sensitive to neighboring properties. Roof decks and then the imposition on privacy are new to Carmel and not in the character of our town's history and certainly do not fit the design guides of Carmel. I formerly served on the Tor House Foundation. And on that Torhouse Foundation board, I became even much more aware of the importance of history in our area. Robinson Jeffers obviously was important to our community and the nation. But Alfred Parker Fraser, our first mayor, should be remembered locally in the same fashion for the incorporation of Carmel-by-the-Sea. Alfred Parker Fraser's home is part of Carmel's architectural and cultural heritage. The Taylor family have been responsible stewards as owners of the first mayor's house, opening it up for tours during the Bach Festival, hosting dinners for charity. The Taylor stewardship includes preserving the interior decor as well as the outside appearance of the house to reflect the era of Carmel's first mayor. So rooftop decks are not what you find here in Carmel. You may in Manhattan Beach and other Southern California areas, but we have always enjoyed patios, decks, courtyards, and balconies. And that's more in keeping with the Carmel lifestyle. So now you know more about, if you didn't know before, Alfred Parker Frazier. Please don't forget that our first mayor and the town that he helped start and the house that he built. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you.

Next speaker, please.

To deck or not to deck? That is the question, but I'm here to talk about the process that could help us have the right answer when it comes to deciding such things. My name is Christy Ramers, and good afternoon, everybody. I'm asking the Council to consider the proposed CEQA exemption for the McWhorter project and uphold this appeal. I understand that McWhorter House was historically analyzed and found to be ineligible for the register, which would make the proposed CEQA exemption here valid. However, this house sits next to the Alfred P. Frazier House, which is on the register. One of the exceptions to this exemption is whether the proposed project may cause a substantial adverse change in the significance of a historic resource. And the wording is specific here. It's may cause, not will cause. The historic resource analysis needs to be completed before the city has a factual basis to rely on this categorical exemption. We have a special little city, and much of what makes it special to residents and visitors is our historic character and resources. We have a heritage economy worth protecting, and we can preserve it only if we are willing to protect these resources, not consistently rely on exemptions. A historic analysis is important because when the city relies on an exemption, the public, our boards and commissions, and the council often are not given the expert information needed to make the best decision. Instead, we're left trying to become experts ourselves, and most of us are not. And then a guessing game ensues on the dais. In looking at the city's DPR 523 for this house, the analysis done when the Fraser House was put on the register, it makes clear why this current required analysis matters. It calls the Fraser House one of the best larger examples of early craftsman design in Carmel, notes that it sits on three large lots, and most importantly, specifically states that it takes full advantage of the Carmel Bay views. There's also a deeper historical reason why the Fraser House's setting matters. In 1892, Abby Jane Hunter marketed Carmel-by-the-Sea as an ideal summer resort, promoting its beach, natural beauty, and lots for summer homes. The city's historic context statement confirms that early buyers came specifically seeking homes in this setting. So the Fraser House and its relationship to its large site and the bay is part of the historic story of why people came to Carmel and how they built here. That is precisely the setting that needs to be considered before placing a new residence next door. The Taylors have become stewards of this home because it is on our register. It doesn't really belong to them. It belongs to our community. They have a full understanding of that, having opened their home many times to all of us in the form of showings and home tours. I ask that you, the council, please protect our heritage. I ask that you do the thing that is required by law, that we hire the experts because they will give us all the information we need to make the best decisions to protect Carmel-by-the-Sea so that we will retain what makes us unique. Thank you.

Thank you. Could I ask you a question real quick? A little bit out of sequence, but exactly in like 30 seconds, what are you asking us to do?

I'd like to ask a basic question. So contrary to what Eric Miller just said about, well, this prevents building from all around this house, it doesn't. It just gives us the information. So we're not playing this guessing game. So something can be built sensitively instead of just everybody guessing who doesn't really have the expertise. So that's what I'm asking. So as far as the deck goes, I'm not the expert, right? So a historian may be able to say, well, this need, you know, this actually does affect it, or this doesn't.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Who's the next speaker?

Good afternoon. I'm going to talk a little bit about the process today.

Could you give us your name? I know who you are.

Oh, Chuck Najarian, Carmel resident. Thank you. Protection of historic resources should obviously be one of your top priorities. But unfortunately, your permitting process seems to be the greatest threat to Carmel's historic structures. The Carmel Art Association is a case in point. It's ironic that the city exempts literally every project from the very statute that could protect historic resources, including this case before you today. I'm referring to the California Environmental Quality Act. I've observed that you, the Planning Commission, and the Forest and Beach Commission speculate, debate, and argue from the dais about what amounts to the potential for adverse impacts and the need for what amounts to mitigation measures, and then exempt the projects from CEQA. But the problem here is that once you try to mitigate impacts from the dais, you've established there is potential for adverse impact. And therefore, an exemption is not an option. That's exactly what the Planning Commission did in this case. Notably, pursuant to CEQA requirements, you cannot mitigate your way into an exemption. Court cases have affirmed that lead agencies cannot identify potential for significant adverse impacts, require mitigation to eliminate them, and then declare the resulting project categorically exempt. When you have an historic resource adjacent to proposed development, it should trigger special care and handling in line with the importance of historic resources in Carmel, including the applicability of CEQA. In this case, a valued and impressive historic resource in our village dating back decades has been shortchanged and deserves better from the city. An exemption is not applicable here. The permitting process, especially changes required of the project at each step, should be scrutinized as to the relationship with CEQA. The HRB should be consulted for this. and any other proposed project that has potential to impact historic resources. You should grant the Taylor's appeal. And I'll just close by saying, I think that from what I've seen in anything I've looked at with regard to permitting, the city I think tends to unfortunately downplay quote, unusual circumstances, and they also downplay construction impacts. And, you know, from my experience, construction impacts are where most of the actual adverse impacts occur, particularly when you have certain sites and what's particularly surrounding a site. So I'll just close with that, and thank you for your time.

Thank you, Chuck. Cindy, and then Ian, you're next. Okay. Okay.

Good afternoon, mayor, council and city staff. My name is Cindy Lloyd. I could go on and tell you all about my bio and history in Carmel, but I'll refrain from that. Although I will say that a previous speaker was in the class at Carmel High School when I was the secretary. I was helping the librarian secretary, asked for secretary for certain hours of the day, and he and his friends would come into the library, so I'm a little bit older than he is. But at any rate, it was good to see him. I just want to say by saying I do not know any of the parties involved in this appeal. I did watch the videos of the planning commission hearing twice in order to understand it. What I don't understand is that the majority of the commissioners did not favor a rooftop deck, but they passed a resolution favoring it. So I've had a hard time figuring this all out, but I chalk that up to the fact that I'm not a lawyer. Well, I do understand that ADUs were originally proposed, actually they were foisted on us by the state without any opportunity to determine what they would be, but they were to increase housing. A rooftop deck doesn't include, it does not provide housing, it provides recreation. If you have a hot tub on top of a rooftop deck, that noise of the motor heating the water is going to carry. I know, I have a hot tub, and when it decides to heat up the water, it annoys me when I'm in the garden. The fact that the Taylor's house is historic, I'm glad has been brought into this discussion, and I'm very appreciative of the fact that they have taken care of it so well over all these years. In conclusion, I will say it's difficult for me to understand everything I read and everything I listened to, and I leave it up to you to make a decision because it will be final. Thank you.

Thank you, Cindy.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and everybody. My name is Ian Martin. I'm a resident and former planning commissioner. So viewed from the street, Eric Miller's proposed design makes for an attractive house that will be a fine addition to Carmel-by-the-Seas built environment. He is a gifted and innovative architect, so I'm confident that he can change his design so that his clients will have a beautiful home that meets their needs while not antagonizing the neighbor's and especially the Taylors who live behind them in a very important historic resource, the home of our first mayor, Alfred Fraser. Mr. Miller can design a house that does not undermine the integrity of the Fraser House, which, according to its DPR, was built to take advantage of its views of Carmel Bay. Of course, this will require more design work, but here in Carmel, that is not unusual, especially with proposals like this one that try to pack a large amount on a small lot. This is brand new construction on a lot that is small, but not especially challenging. A solution that satisfies both the applicant and the neighbor should not be out of reach. So please, uphold the appeal.

Thank you, Ian. How many more speakers? So Nancy's the last speaker. No speakers online. If you want to speak, you're going to speak? Okay, so we have Ken, or... Mayor White in the chamber, and we don't have anybody with their hands up. If you'd like to speak online, please put your, there they are. Professor Beach. All right, we've got one online, Nancy. We're nudging. And Mayor White.

Nancy Toomey, resident of Carmel-by-the-Sea. I just have a handful of quick points. I hope to be way under my three minutes. I would like to see the view-related aspects of this project be addressed with a firm surface, not with a growing... of fence lines. because they can grow, they can be trimmed, they can do all of what growing things do. So dealing with identifying exactly what the view lines are and how they're impacted should be based upon a firm surface, in my opinion. But I'll leave that up to you all as experts. But in general, I agree with the engineering study results that the appellant has provided. I also would acknowledge, like probably everybody here who attends any of these meetings, that we're in an unfortunate situation where we don't have a fully updated ordinance and land use plan that does all this harmonizing work that I know that you talked about in your previous meeting. And you also declared in that last meeting in August that pipeline projects would carry the then relevant guidelines and directions that you would provide. So I think the other point that I would make is that I am not a fan personally of the roof deck on an ADU. I hope that that would be embraced in that if such a project like this occurs in the future when we have new guidelines in place that a rooftop deck, whether it's on an ADU and or as a part of the primary residence be included in the volume study so that it embraces the full property in the aspects that we're looking to provide some rigor on so that they are replicatable for other requesters in the future. So, and one more PS beyond that volume study being embraced across an ADU and or the primary residence, that I would like to see if this project continues, which I'm not advocating for, but if it does, I would like to see more granular detail on, you know, with and without the ADU, what the floor area ratios are what the site coverage are because in the work that I saw in the documents, it's really fuzzy and it's not detailed enough for me to really understand even without the ADU if they're in compliance. So I'm not questioning necessarily the work of the planner that was assigned to this. I would just like to see more detail provided on those aspects. Thank you.

Well, Ken White, resident. I'm not here to repeat any of the great arguments, pro and con, on this issue. But I would respond that Mr. Romanowsko, my great-uncle, was on the first city council also and probably went head-to-head with our former mayor, as most people do. Thank you for having this hearing. Really good report on both couples, and it's too bad that we get into these situations. I read the report and you gave me, this is it, over 200 pages. You gave me a couple of days of homework. And I won't report what's been said already. But I will say one thing, that the shielding should be in the plan before anything happens in that property. And... The whole reason is you should have a permanent shield if that's what this council decides. Think of it, that house could go for three, four more years, another buyer would buy it. If you had vegetation, ivy walls, et cetera, the new owners move in, somebody doesn't like vegetation, they tear it out. And either you're gonna have to have a policeman looking after a special dispensation you put on a plant for shielding view, I'd suggest you not go to vegetation. That's it. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Victoria, you're up next.

Thanks for that warm welcome. I wanted to just start off by saying that it is very easy for all of us to fall into the trap that this is a private property dispute and spend a lot of time negotiating what one party wants and the other party wants. In this particular case, though, we have a very clear... legal issue, two of them in fact. I don't know the Taylors. I would never come here to speak just on behalf of a private party on this matter. This is a house, as others have said, that belongs to the community. It is a cultural and historic resource. It is not CEQA exempt, as others have said. There's a California code, state law, and exemption shall not be used for a project which may cause an adverse change. This does not mean, as others have said, that change cannot happen. It means that you cannot exempt a property from study to see if a change would hurt a neighboring historic resource. Somehow, the analysis here, we've left out that part because the analysis stopped at the property line. The CEQA Act, which the E and the Q are quality of the environment, has to do with the environment, not the property lines. That needs to be corrected because the deprivation of that information from the Planning Commission caused them to not have the full understanding of what was at stake and really would have helped their debate. I don't think we'd be here today if that step had been followed. It needs to be followed now. It's against the law not to follow it. Another error that has a wonderful happy conclusion is that the staff has noticed that the calculation for volume had not been done properly in the past. We've been talking today about how there's some kind of policy change and does it apply now or should it apply later or can you retroactively do this on a de novo, etc. There has been no policy change. Jake astutely pointed out that anything over three feet above the property grade counts as volume massing and needs to be measured into it. What's happening here is that the deck is being kind of hidden, almost like cloaked. by an ADU, which you cannot consider when you determine whether the DEC has presence on that lot or not. It doesn't get to sneak in on top of the ADU. It has its own regulations. And those policies have been in place in the Muni Code, as Jake stated, for as long as any of us can remember. This is not a change in policy. We are bound by that policy, and we need to evaluate the DEC separately from the ADU. So in conclusion, I just want to say that I uphold the appeal. I recognize this is entirely a legal matter. All we need to do is follow those two laws, the CEQA law and the volumetric law that has been on the books, and this whole thing will be solved, and you do not have to debate the details of how to mitigate this particular situation that we're in.

Thank you. Thank you, Victoria. All right, last chance. All right, seeing no hands going up, either online or in the chamber, we're going to end public comment, and I'll give you a chance for your rebuttal. You ready?

Thank you. I will be brief. We appreciate your time, and I know there have been a lot of comments on this, but I just wanted to address a couple of points. First of all, Mr. Miller pointed out that the planning commissioner, Chairman LePage, had given some guidance on what would and wouldn't be okay for a rooftop deck. There is no specific size that is okay, that is just generally acceptable. If you make a rooftop deck of this size, it is permitted. This is a case-by-case basis. And where in some instances a 300-square-foot rooftop deck may be appropriate, you know, I know one of the decks that he showed, one of the rooftop decks the city has approved, it borders on a commercial district. It's right across the street from a bunch of restaurants, shops. It may be more appropriate to have a rooftop deck when there are no other residential uses around it that would be impacted. So this is not a meet a certain size, you get approval. As we've said over and over again, the city actually doesn't have standards regarding the size of the rooftop deck. So second, there was a comment that if you uphold this appeal, the tailors will be getting everything they want and the warders will be getting nothing. I just want to bring your attention back to the fact that this is a 3,900 square foot lot. Under the city's code, a maximum square footage of 1,755 square feet under the city's rules should be permitted. This is a 2,300 square foot structure. And we understand. We're not contesting that. But to say that by denying the rooftop decks that the McWhorters are not getting anything, it just seems not to be supported by the evidence. They're getting the exact home that they have proposed to design. They're getting a 2,300 foot home on a 3,900 square foot. The only thing they wouldn't be getting is that extra active living space on the roof. So upholding this appeal still lives the McWhorters with the very beautiful project that they designed and they chose. Thirdly, I just want to reiterate what Miss Beach said. There never was a policy change. regarding calculation of the volume of the rooftop deck. The only policy the city has ever had was to include it. You do not need to wait for new guidelines to deny this rooftop deck. All you need to enforce is the municipal code that is on the books. that requires any rooftop deck to be included in the volume calculation. And along those lines, and as I set forth in my brief, it's similar to log coverage. If you're not gonna count the ADU, which we understand for this particular project, we're going along with the state law to then say that you can have a 300 square foot roof on top and just pretend that doesn't have any other lock coverage when any other similar cantilevered roof would be included within the lock coverage that takes you over the limit you have the city has regulations on the books and if the city council applies the volume calculation, the lot coverage, this rooftop deck would not be allowed. So we would ask that the city denies the rooftop deck, upholds your own municipal code standards as well as your residential design guidelines. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

Thank you. Eric, do you want any time? Go ahead.

So the only solution I'm hearing from the tailors is to pay McQuarrie a million dollars more than they paid for the house and then make that into a tailored guest house.

That's enough on that.

Eric, let's stick with the subject. So it wasn't my idea. Never thought we should sell it. But Bruce brought it up earlier. And the reality is there's no choice but to get rid of the rooftop deck. The rooftop deck is really at the level of a yard. It's lower. It's not like a rooftop deck looming over something. It's more like a yard. And you have to look at the screen as like a fence that's 10 feet back from the yard. So I just think there's been a lot of things said, like I'd love to hear The appellant's attorney described why their view is 46% smaller. I have proof mine is done with a polyline and a computer. I have proof that that's that way, but she gave all these figures about how I'm blocking this view and that view. I couldn't follow it because she also said that we couldn't build a house that close. Well, if you do a one-story, you can build a house within three feet of a backyard fence, and you can put the fence right on the property line. So there's a lot of stuff that's been said that doesn't seem fair to me. Also, do the tailors control every house around them? You can't build anything at all without checking with the tailors first. I mean, can anyone else have a barbecue or patio furniture? Can anyone else build anything and be consistent with the vision the tailors have of their historic house? And as I showed you in my presentation, the hedge that was there the day I got there, would have hidden every single thing we did behind it. They cut it down on purpose to make it look worse. But the hedge would look exactly like it does today. And I also, like it did the first time I saw them, and they lived with it for at least two years because you saw the thickness of those branches they cut. I also said to Bruce and Linda, if you want, I'll drop it from seven to six. Scott said, fine, but they didn't ask us to do that. So we did a lot of stuff. I feel, you know, like people are, you know, sort of getting more concerned with the future policy, but the city council already made a decision on future policy, but that's exactly why we're in the pipeline, right? Because I've been working on this for over 500 days, and we were told that the rooftop deck and the rail didn't count as volumetrics, period, and that they were allowed. So if we wait long enough, maybe the rule will change again, but That's why there's a pipeline statement, and that's why the city council wisely put us into that category. So if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Are we going to ask a question? I'll let them ask questions after we get started here. I'm going to take a bio break. We're going to take a bio break now. We're going to come back. We're going to start our deliberation. And if we have questions, I'll have you come back up. Mayor, what time do you want to come back? Ten minutes. Okay, so ten minutes.

440 is when we're coming back.

All right, we're back in session at 4.40, just as we said. And before we get started with our deliberation, we have another speaker. Brian, do you want to introduce him?

Yes, my partner, Steve Velivas, is attending the meeting. And Steve has substantial experience with CEQA issues, and he's prepared to respond to questions you might have, I think. Brandon, did you want to formulate the question?

Yeah, I think if we could just have Steve speak to some of the comments, raise the very good point. What's the nexus for CEQA? What does it look like for a property adjacent to another property to create the potential for a significant adverse impact on an adjoining property? How is that determination made and how does an exemption work? So Steve, if you can just kind of give like a high level of that context for council, that would be great.

And if I'm not mistaken, Steve has been listening.

Steve has been with us the whole time. That's correct. And he actually worked with Jake on the project at the planning commission as well. So he's very familiar with this project.

Thank you, Brandon. Good evening, Mayor Byrne and fellow council members. Yes, I have been working with staff. I've been participating and listening to this entire meeting. So let me just give you, I think what you're looking for is, first of all, when folks say that the city staff or planning staff hasn't done CEQA just because they're determining a project meets a CEQA exemption, that's not true. The staff is supposed to stop with its environmental review if it finds that a project falls under one or more exemptions. And so here, staff in the staff report clearly lays out and provides analysis and evidence why it believes this project falls under two categorical exemptions. The class two exemption for replacement or reconstruction and the class three categorical exemption for the construction of new small structures. So staff did that, demonstrated that, and stopped there and recommend that you find the project exempt. Interestingly, the appellants do not challenge either determination that the project falls under the Class 2 or Class 3 exemption. So the question is, in their late letter, in the appellant attorney's late letter submitted a few days before this hearing, not with their appeal documents, claims that the historic resources exception essentially negates those findings that the project is exempt under the Class 2 and Class 3. But the burden shifts under the law, under CEQA. The burden to demonstrate whether an exception applies is not the city's, it's the challenger's. And here the appellants simply claim that the project is going to impact the historic Taylor residence by blocking views. But that's not the legal standard. I'm looking at CEQA guideline section 15064.5. And this is specifically all about determining the significance of impacts to archaeological and historical resources. And so there's two ways to have a potential impact to a historic resource. The clearest way is to have physically demolish, destroy, relocate, or alter a historic resource. That's clearly not happening here. This McWhorter project is... on a separate adjacent parcel and it's not touching anything on the Taylor residence or its property. There is another way in that you could have a project that demolishes or materially alters in an adverse manner the physical characteristics of a historic resource that convey its historical significance and that justify its inclusion as a historic resource. But I'm looking right now on my other screen at the DPR form that the appellant submitted, and it notes that this house was determined to be eligible as a historic resource for two reasons. One, under criterion two, because of the contributions of Alfred B. Fraser, the first president of Carmel's Board of Trustees, and as you heard from a speaker today, had a significant role in the city's founding or incorporation. The second reason why this home was determined to be eligible is under criterion three for its decorative features and characteristics of the craftsman form. including a low-pitched intersecting gable roof system, overhanging eaves, rafter trails, triangular knee bracing, all of these physical characteristics of the craftsman form. And again, this project isn't materially altering the fact that Alfred B. Fraser was the original owner or isn't touching or altering any of those architectural elements that make this home significant for its craftsman style. Yes, this DPR form does note that this house sits on three lots that have Carmel Bay views, but the views, that's the only mention of views, and they're not identified as a reason why this house itself is eligible for a historic resource. And even if that were the case, my opinion hasn't provided any substantial evidence that this project will materially alter in an adverse manner the views. Normally, the law does not protect private views. That's why people... purchase view easements over their neighbors' homes to protect their views. They essentially buy the airspace. So long story short, in my opinion, I don't think that there's substantial evidence before you today demonstrating that this project may have an adverse impact to the Taylor residence because views aren't identified as a reason why it's eligible as a historic resource. Now, that doesn't mean that it's not a relevant issue. It does. Your design guidelines do have provisions and policies in them that require projects to take into account views of their neighbors and to locate buildings so that they will not substantially block views enjoyed by others. That's not a CEQA question. That's a consistency with the design guidelines question. I've spoken a lot. I'll stop and see if you have any follow-up questions.

Any of you have questions for Steve? I'm not seeing any Steve, thank you very much. You're welcome. All right, let's continue. Do any of you have questions for any of the appellants, the applicants, or Jake? I don't see any. All right, so I'm gonna kick this off with a brief statement. I think, and some of the speakers have said this, and I appreciate that you did, Nancy, I think you were one of them. I think we're seeing why it's important that we get moving forward on our design guidelines, the ADU, or if there's layers on top of layers, and these things are gonna keep coming to us, and we're happy to do it, but Hopefully we don't have to. It's probably not going to come in the lifetime of my mayorship, but hopefully by the time next year happens, we can move forward with some of those. But for now, we have to continue with this hearing, and this is a de novo hearing, so it's what we heard tonight that we're basing our decision on. Who wants to kick it off with any comments? Jeff?

Sure. Sure. I'll cut to the chase. I do think that the deck has adverse impacts on the neighbor. So I will be voicing that support in a few minutes. But I would like to go through some other issues and how I feel about some of the issues that Mrs. Stoich referenced. And so I'm going to use your most recent email to just sort of go through them. The first one is the city failed to analyze the impact of the project on the historic Taylor residence. And there's been a lot of talk of CEQA and the historical part of CEQA. And thank you, Stephen, for your analysis of this. I've spoken before about the use of CEQA as sort of a project killer, and I don't really support that. CEQA has a purpose, and I think we've started to see CEQA warping the decisions, or we've started to hear people pushing on CEQA to try and warp the decisions that would otherwise be made by the city in reference to its own code, and we talk a lot about We talked a lot about state overreach. You know, in this town, we talked about the state foisting ADUs on us. And another thing that the state has foisted on us is CEQA. And so I find it strange that some parties, and I don't mean to single out Mrs. Stoich or Mr. or Mrs. Taylor, that we have some people that talk about state overreach and then try to use CEQA to kill projects or alter projects. So CEQA is a state tool and its reliance to sort of muck around with the way that we interpret the Carmel code I find misguided. I also think there's been some talk from a lot of the people here about CEQA's reference, about CEQA's use of the historic exemption. And I find it odd that we, you know, that some people believe that we should reach into a DPR and pull out 10 words that have to do with a view, 10 words that are sort of, you know, auxiliary to why, as Stephen pointed out, why this house is on the historic list, I think it would be a poor choice of the city to start evaluating homes or houses or homes in the context of their relationship to other historic properties and requiring staff to, as a As one speaker said, evaluate the use of the word may cause substantial adverse effects to other properties. I think if we sort of start loosening that door and go down the road of having staff evaluate the use of the word may, we will have CEQA analyses, complex CEQA analyses done because of the removal of this exemption. complex CEQA analyses done on half of the houses that are done in town. And it will drive a housing production and housing approval to nothing because projects will take 10 times as long having to get through the CEQA process and all that. And so that to me is not consistent with how we should be doing business and I think it's a bad policy. Another thing that is raised by the appellant is the use of the location of the rooftop deck violates residential guidelines 5.0, and I'm talking about view impacts. You know, the Carmel residential design guidelines state that views are shared. And we have specifically not included in the municipal code of this town or the design guidelines that views are protected 100%. This is something that we have literally not done. Views change. So for example, trees grow and views change. And I find it particularly odd that a large two-story house is talking about the view impacts of a one-story house in front of them. So I will grant, you know, Mr. I can't remember your name. The architect.

Miller.

Mr. Miller. Sorry, Eric. Mr. Miller talks about, you know, he says it's 3%, and the appellants say it's 40%, and it's, you know, even assuming it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% or whatever the view impact is, You know, my belief is that the municipal code allows some view impacts. Like, you are not grandfathered in. You know, you do not have an absolute right to the view that you have when you bought the house. You know, the design guidelines talk about changing views and all that. So I'm not, you know, I leave that to the planning commission to decide whether there are substantial impacts or not. large adverse impacts to view. And I agree with the planning commission's analysis here. The appeal also talks about flat roofs Flat roofs quotes the design guidelines flat roofs may be used to a limited extent on smaller one-story structures You know we have seen the Planning Commission approve flat roof flat roofs as architecturally appropriate for for houses and so I Find that that's without merit and with with the diamond appeal and then last month use have been really shifting a substantial amount over the course of the past eight years and they have been shifting more than the city has been able to more Coastal Commission provided guidance that allows us to so before before a couple of months ago we were submerging the importance of our municipal code in favor of the state ADU laws and And the Coastal Commission allowed us, the Coastal Commission guidance allowed us to reinvigorate the amount of thought that we were putting into our local municipal code. And as a result, parts of our municipal code that have not been effectively implemented over the course of the past five or seven or eight years as the ADU landscape has been changing, have now come back and are now being implemented. And that was the guidance that the city council gave to staff and the planning commission last month. That's the specific guidance to bring that municipal code back, to bring that municipal code back and start enforcing the sort of standard 1800 foot limit and the volume metrics and whatever else is included in that. But we made a decision last month when we were having that discussion that as the staff report calls it and as Mr. Miller calls it, projects in the pipeline, in order to avoid projects in the pipeline being caught by the changing winds, that projects in the pipeline would be evaluated based on the guidance that staff was providing before last month and new projects were to be evaluated according to the guidance that the city council has now asked staff to do. So this project is a pipeline project, and as a result, the maximum floor area and the volumetrics and stuff like that, we are supposed to evaluate based on the old guidelines, based on the way that we have been interpreting the law of the city for the past five or seven years. The Carlson appeal, as Jake pointed out, was it Jake? as Brandon pointed out, the Carlson appeal, which comes from 2015, was clearly done, was clearly, not clearly, but was apparently decided 11 years ago before the states, before we started interpreting our ADU law in a different way. So I find that that's not relevant. Finally, to the last thing, the know the impacts the impacts of the impacts of ADUs the impacts of you know things that might be provided on the ADUs with respect to use the words out of here privacy of neighboring properties now that has always been something that the Planning Commission is considered so I don't believe that there has been any change in the way that the Planning Commission considers the privacy of decks. And I agree with the appellant that the deck provides a privacy impact to the tailors. And I'm not sure what to do, I'm not sure exactly what to do with that. But my and I think it's I think that the privacy impact is significant. So I'm not sure what to do with it. But at this point, I would be amenable to removing the deck out of the project. Thank you. All right.

Thank you, Alessandra.

Thank you, Mayor. I clearly think that the proposed design of the rooftop deck on the ADU will negatively affect and impact the privacy light air views that are enjoyed by the historic Taylor residence. In the letter from the appellant's attorney to the city on August 28th, there was also an appraisal which was included and it was very thorough and it showed the impact that it would have specifically on the property values. causing them between a $1 million to $1.25 million reduction in value. We toured the home today and both levels of the home, clearly on the first floor, the breakfast room, and the dining room. The reduction in ocean views are premium here in Carmel-by-the-Sea, no question about that. The proposed rooftop deck fails to adhere to the design guidelines regarding sensitivity to neighboring properties. Code Section 17.58.010 to promote residential design that respects privacy, solar access, private views of neighboring properties. There's going to be a significant impact to the beach view and the primary ocean view. Certainly a large outdoor living space will impact neighbors in ways we heard, including sound, privacy, light, potential smoke from barbecue. And I do agree that the rooftop deck must be included in the site coverage calculation. And when it is, it certainly exceeds the volume calculation as Victoria and others said in the comments that we heard today. So I would grant the appeal and deny the rooftop deck for the reasons mentioned.

But just the rooftop deck portion. Correct. Same with you, Jeff, right? It was just the rooftop deck portion of the appeal. Okay. Hans?

So I want to start by kind of describing the evolution of how the city has handled these new state ADU laws. And Jeff touched on it a little bit, but I have a slightly different spin, although similar. I'll try to simplify it into kind of three phases. The first phase I would call, as soon as these ADU laws started coming out, I'd call it like the total acquiescence phase. So basically ignore our LCP and our local zoning and kind of slavishly follow state ADU law. So No square footage limitations, no application really of design guidelines. Applicants even could build within the setbacks in certain instances, so pretty laissez-faire. I think an example of that would be the one at 13th and Monteverde, where it's built right up to the corner inside the setbacks. And then there's this evolution in terms of how the staff was applying some of our local rules. And so phase two, I would consider sort of partial application of local rules. The city started enforcing the setback requirements. It also at some point started enforcing rules related to the removal of significant trees. I have a friend in my kids class who wanted to build an ADU and then we had this whole question going back and forth with the city about what are the rules with the trees, do those apply because it's an ADU. Now based on my conversations with staff, You know, my understanding is that the city also started subjecting rooftop ADU decks to review by the planning commission to evaluate them against the city's design guidelines, at least when it comes to issues relating to privacy and those types of impacts. So just to respond to some of the public comments that were made, To Jeff's point, these rules have always been there. They've always been there in our local coastal program, protected by the Coastal Act. Everything in our zoning code, the design guidelines, etc., the thing that's changed is staff's interpretation and application of those rules. And so as a result of that, the guidance given to applicants has evolved over time. And that's why Jeff was talking about over the past two or three months and specifically codified, like in our last meeting, I think on August 4th, the council took this position to say, Look, we are going to nod to the fairness considerations here and say, if you were in the process and already submitted an application under a regime where you got a certain type of guidance from the staff, we're gonna basically grandfather that in. So the piece that I'm interested in is kind of what was the staff interpretation at different times, right? So staff tells me there are at least two examples of the planning commission and the staff really digging into questions on a rooftop ADU deck relating to privacy, et cetera. And so that's the Diamond ADU and also the McWhorter ADU, this one. which is the subject of the hearing tonight. And in these hearings, if you go back and you look at the tape, and many of you actually lived through this, the Planning Commission is there actively debating these issues, right? So clearly, at the time, this was a live discussion. It was something that was being applied to this project in particular. So hold that thought. Phase three is basically the reassertion of our local coastal program, right? So after we had this discussion about the Diamond ADU, initially we had a conversation about square footage limits and saying, look, let's reassert the city's square footage limits. And Brandon can correct me if I'm wrong, but my recollection of where we landed was basically, look, the whole kit and caboodle, everything in our local coastal program, Chapter 17, Title 17 of our zoning code, the design guidelines, all of it, we are going to apply to ADUs for the reasons that Jeff outlined. And so, you know, that timeline is important because it has important implications for this case. You know, the Diamonds were told that building an ADU that exceeded our local square footage limitations was okay. And they invested, you know, probably tens of thousands of dollars in architectural fees based on that guidance. So then, you know, let's apply that to this project. So in terms of square footage, the project clearly exceeds the allowable square footage, right? Like nobody's disputing that. It's like almost 2,400 square feet versus a maximum allowable of 1,762. But at the same time, as we've said, that part of it is, we said that's a pipeline project. They were advised at the time of the application that this was the way the city was interpreting this. And so we said in our last meeting that this would be a pipeline project for that purpose. So I agree with Jeff on that, that we're considering this one a pipeline project. With volume, again, I agree with the public comments that that it fails the volume analysis, and that that has always been there in our documents. But that's not the interpretation. That's not what people were being told. And so we took a position out of a fairness consideration to say, look, we're going to base this on what people were being told based on the staff's interpretation. And so again, on volume, I would say based on a similar logic, this grandfathering logic, that this is a pipeline project. That brings me back to the application of the residential design guidelines to rooftop decks above ADUs. So as I mentioned before, in that sort of messy middle phase two partial application of our LCP phase, prior to the reduction we gave last month, the staff and the Planning Commission were applying at least some of these residential design guidelines, those relating to privacy views, noise, et cetera, to rooftop ADU decks. So put another way, reviewing rooftop ADU decks for compatibility with our design guidelines had already been occurring. So in my mind, there's no issue with us reviewing this ADU deck for compatibility with the design guidelines. There's no logical inconsistency with where we landed on the grandfathering. The question is, do we agree with the Planning Commission's determination The Planning Commission had these discussions on the Diamond ADU. They actually asked the Diamonds to remove the roof deck. But on the McWhorter ADU, they determined that the ADU roof deck was compatible with these relevant design guidelines. And like Jeff, I disagree. I find that the, and like Alessandra, I find that the proposed roof deck on this project is incompatible with our residential design guidelines. And I'll specifically mention guideline 5.1, which requires that a homeowner quote, organize functions on a site to preserve reasonable privacy for adjacent properties. Organize functions on a site to preserve reasonable privacy for adjacent properties. And I just think that putting this roof deck, I don't think you're organizing... I don't think that you're organizing the functions on this site to preserve reasonable privacy for adjacent properties. And... It goes on to say on this same guideline, position a building to screen active areas of adjacent properties when feasible. And I think it's feasible here. As was mentioned, there is another deck on the west side of this property facing the ocean. And my understanding is there's some indoor-outdoor space. I don't know how the doors open, but my sense is that the doors open. And so... To me, it's very feasible to, as was said, this is essentially an optional addition that doesn't have to be there. And so I would support removing the rooftop deck and granting the appeal on that basis. I had one final comment on the... the comments relating to, um, the historical analysis. So, um, I take the, you know, the city's CEQA attorneys points, which, which are fine. I think the difference, the one part that he didn't talk about was that the city actually has a higher standard than what's embedded in state law, right? So the city, uh, the city actually asks you to do, it requires you to do a determination of consistency with the Secretary of the Interior standards, which my understanding is that's a Carmel thing, right? And that's just something in the Carmelian Municipal Code. So when the CEQA attorney starts talking about how this applies to state law, that's all well and good, but we also have laws here in Carmel, and it basically says that, let me find it, Carmel Municipal Code Section 17.32.120 requires a determination of consistency with the Secretary of the Interior's standards be conducted anytime a party is taking action that could directly or indirectly alter historic resource. That's a kind of a paraphrase. And when you go to the purpose section, of that part of the municipal code, it states that one of the purposes of the ordinance is, quote, protecting the design character and context of the residential areas by maintenance of an appropriate setting for historic resources. So it's clear that this is part of the purpose of this part of the city code. And so, you know, again, the standard is is it possible that there's an impact to this historic resource? And clearly, I think there should have been a determination of consistency with the Secretary of the Interior Standards done here, which would have, again, provided us with, right, the city's sort of going above and beyond. It would have provided us with additional information to look into the questions that were brought up here, right? Like the 10 words in the DPR, I don't know. Do we think that it actually impacts the, is it, is it a significant adverse impact to the historical significance of the property? You know, does it matter that if you have two ways that a property is historically significant if the, One of those still exists. Does it matter that the other way that it's historically significant was adversely impacted? Doing this analysis ferrets all of that out so we don't have to sit up here and guess at the answer. And so I would just say, in the future, I would like to see us be doing those things, doing those analyses. But yeah, I would grant the appeal, again, based on... the privacy impacts in the design guidelines, which is something that the Planning Commission has been applying. So it's not a departure, and I think that's a way to kind of square the circle with the pipeline projects and the grandfathering that we've been doing. Thank you.

If I could add one more element to the history, which was excellent, I thought, is This really started with Jeff bringing up the issue of water. And I think that was missing in your history, if you want to fill out your outline. And Jeff has been instrumental in all of these discussions. And I think it's something that he noticed more than most people in the city, that there were all these inconsistencies. But I'm not going to repeat what's been said, because as I constantly say, I'm pretty amazed at quality of our council here and the research they do, all of us. And I would just like to bring up one other idea. If you attended the last session where we talked about ADUs, it became clear that this council was interested in the rooftop decks and getting a policy on it. No matter how this turns out tonight, that's not what we're doing. This is just this appeal. I just want everybody to know that we are not setting a policy that has to be agendized, and it's likely to be, but that's not what we're doing tonight. But the whole concept to me of ADUs, and we can't talk about the house. It's basically a one-bedroom, one-bath house with an ADU on the back, and we can't talk about the ADU. But if we can't talk about the ADU, then it basically doesn't exist the way I look at this rooftop deck, which means the rooftop deck is really sitting on the ground, which puts us over the allowable lot coverage for this project. So there's all kinds of different ways you can look at this, but we don't need to look at all those ways to turn down this rooftop deck. I think that Hans summarized my feelings of it pretty well, so did Jeff, so did Alessandra, that the privacy issues and the other related things I think are enough to do this. And I think we know how this is going to turn out at this point. But this is an important issue, and we need to do the work. with this council. I'd like to do it before I leave the council, which is going to be the first meeting in December. I'm going to turn it over to whoever becomes mayor, because I think we have done some good intellectual capital studying on this subject, and I think we should continue that as soon as possible. We also have people like Nancy and the AHA group who have done a lot of work on this. And it's important to this city that we get this right. ADUs are critical to us meeting our housing Requirements and we've we've sort of muddied the waters in a number way now, so I think we need to bring that all together I think squaring the circle of whatever you're saying was I think that needs to be done and Again, thank you for everybody that's been here tonight, and I think we're ready to do a motion before you do that And I'll ask Brandon if he wants to weigh in on this the resolution That's in your I was going to ask about that before we did the motion is to deny

the appeal. So my view would be that the motion would be to direct staff to return to you at your next meeting with a resolution to grant the appeal with respect to the rooftop deck consistent with the comments that have been made by council tonight.

So do you want to make a motion that we can vote on or do you need to? We're just giving direction.

I can't make motions.

So one of you would have to do it.

We would like a motion to that effect.

Okay.

Yeah. And then we would come back unless you tell us otherwise. We would just plan to come back and put it on the consent agenda next time.

I'm just saying, could you give us the motion so we don't have to. I'll make the motion. Go ahead, Jeff. You're good at this.

I would like to make a motion to direct staff to return at next month's council meeting with a resolution to grant the appeal with regards to the rooftop deck based on the comments that you've heard by the four of us here tonight.

And to be clear, your motion, when you say grant the appeal, it means there will be no rooftop deck on top of the 80? Yeah. Just to be totally clear. Thank you. And then we'll bring that back next council meeting.

I'll second that. Okay.

Yeah, I'd like to speak to it too.

We've got a motion and a second.

And I'd like to make a comment. Obviously, I have a different take on the historical part than Hans does, and that's fine. But Hans, you did make a comment about moving the rooftop deck to the front of the house. And I want to say that I'm not convinced that that

Sorry, that's not what I said. I just said there's already a deck on the front of the house. Okay. Yeah, I'm not pushing for a move again. Okay.

Never mind. Thank you. I misheard.

All right. Roll call, please.

Council Member Barron?

Yes.

Council Member Booter?

Yes.

Council Member Dramaw? Yes. Mayor Byrne?

Yes.

Motion carries.

All right. Thank you, everybody, for your participation in that hearing. I'm sure most of you are going to leave. We still have some interesting things to discuss if you want to stick around. I am. Well, it's nice to have an audience. All right. Ian, can you help us clear the room? All right, we're gonna continue with the council meeting. We now have orders of business. They're agenda items that require city council discussion, debate, direction to staff, and or action. We have two orders of business this afternoon. I guess it's still afternoon. The next one is the fire station alerting system. Item six, resolution 2026064, authorizing the city administrator to purchase a G2 fire station alerting system from U.S. Digital Designs at a cost not to exceed $174,000. Marissa, you'd like to do the staff report?

is in attendance today to support this request, but also to answer any questions, technical questions about the fire station alerting system. So with that, I'll get started. The purpose of this presentation is to seek council's approval for the purchase and replacement of the existing fire station alerting system. And for council's benefit, the alerting system is a hardwired notification system through the entire fire station, in every single room, every single space, that lets staff know when a call comes through, the nature or purpose of the call, and the location of that call. The existing system is 15 years old and the ComTech, the company is no longer in operation. So it stopped, seized operations in 2022. So the system is no longer supported. Thanks, Nova. And it's just simply impossible to find replacement parts to repair it. There's some pictures here of the existing system I took from the fire station. And the new system, proposed G2 alerting system, simply is a more modern system, has a broader audio-visual capabilities, customizing capabilities, and it allows for increased accuracy, clearer voice announcements for the entire station, visual lighting, and mobile app integration capabilities. Another important factor and reason for the replacement of the system is that it needs to be integrated with the county system, which I believe is the system, right, Chief? Yeah. So the county has this new system and so does our surrounding agencies, PG, Monterey, Seaside, and Marina. So it's just our station left to be upgraded. So in conclusion, we budgeted $200,000 for this project in the CIP budget. We actually have a quote for it for 157,000, 157,785. We've added about 10% contingency cost to that. So we're anticipating that it'll cost about $174,000 for purchase and installation. So the recommendation to council is to authorize the purchase and installation of this new fire station alerting system. And I'm available for questions and so is Chief Moore.

Go ahead.

So the staff report mentions that the city is a member of something called SourceWell, which is apparently a cooperative governmental purchasing organization. So just tell me how that plays into this. Do they somehow source the materials? Or tell me about their role.

I'm going to let Chief Moore take that question.

So as I understand it, it's just a sole source for providing for the system. It allows for a group pricing because you're part of a consortium to get that pricing. And it allows us to not have to go for three business because there really aren't three different vendors that provide the service.

It's a company. which pre-authorizes and goes through the whole process that we would go through with a number of vendors. So if they're in their system, you don't have to go through the three bids and all that. It's already certified. And there's a lot of things. You can buy vehicles, all kinds of things through it. I've looked at that quite a bit. It's a good way to go. Yes. Saves a lot of time.

Perfect.

Is that how we're getting this?

Yes, and that's how we purchased it for the city of Monterey. We replaced the system and the city of Pacific Grove as well.

Is this only for fire? Yes. It has no connection to the police department at all? No, no. It's just for fire department. They have their own digital dispatch system? Yes.

All right, great. So is there any reason we shouldn't approve this? Not in my mind. Part of the issue, too, is all the stations in Monterey, Pacific Grove, and Carmel all had them done about the same time. And Carmel's was the newest. But we started to see the system start to fail. And we started researching how to fix them. We couldn't because the company got out of business. Other companies didn't want to come touch it because of the liability involved with it. So we started systematically replacing the system. So we went through Monterey, Pacific Grove, and now we're before you to ask for the same thing. So this time, ours will be the last to fail. Yeah. We're not on the bleeding edge of this decision. All right.

Very good. Great research, and this sounds pretty exciting to me.

Okay.

Thank you.

I just want to thank you all for providing us the tools and equipment so we can serve the community. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. We appreciate you.

All right. Any questions? Other questions? Any discussion? Public comment? No. public comment. Is anybody here? Is anybody online?

There's no hands raised online. Okay.

All right, good. So we'll bring it back. If no other further discussion, we need a roll call to approve, or we need a motion to do this resolution. Jeff, you want to do it?

Sure. I'll make a motion to adopt resolution 2027-064. I think it should be 2026. I think there was a typo in the resolution. Is it good catch? Yeah. I'll make a motion to adopt resolution 2026-064. Second. Roll call, please.

Council Member Barron?

Yes.

Council Member Booter?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Delves? Yes. Council Member Dramaw? Yes. Mayor Byrne? Yes. Motion carries.

All right. Go get the radios. Great. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. All right, we're gonna go on to number seven, Building Code Board of Appeals Appointments. Item seven is Resolution 2026062, appointing three members of the Building Code Board of Appeals with terms beginning September 1st, 2026. Is that you, Nova?

I didn't prepare a staff report for this, or I didn't prepare a presentation, but I can explain the situation if you'd like.

Yeah, that's fine.

Just go ahead. So the building code board of appeals was originally a five-member board. In about 2018, the municipal code was amended to add two more members, which makes it a seven-member board. It's the city's only seven-member board. But after the municipal code was amended to change the makeup of the board, the board didn't have any meetings for several years. Now we're starting to have meetings of the board and we need to fill two more seats that we didn't realize needed to be filled. So the staff report tonight is to make the membership of the board match what the municipal code says is required. One of those requirements is that we have a general contractor We already have the fire prevention and fire protection. We have somebody who's qualified to be a core member as a layperson. That's Gail Layman. So we want to move her to that core position. And then in the staff report, it says we need one more ADA member. And after interviewing all the applicants, the recommendation was to appoint Jerry Parator as the other ADA member. So the only position that wasn't in the draft resolution in the packet was the contractor because we were still doing interviews at the time the packet was published last Wednesday. So today the motion I guess maybe should come from somebody who interviewed the applicants to say who you recommend, but all of the applications, everybody that applied was interviewed and all of those applications are in the packet so that the council and everybody could see who applied and what their qualifications are.

Yes, and I might add to your list of the five core members is one of them is an architect.

Oh, yeah, and we do have that.

That fills out the whole five. All right, good. So did you mention the person that we selected? Okay. Well, you can go ahead and say who it was, and we'll make the motion. Go ahead.

Okay, I think you mentioned Ethan Hare. Ethan Hare. Was the recommended applicant for the contractor position.

Yes, we interviewed three. I'll just... continue the staff report that we interviewed three and they were all excellent. Bob and I, all of them were excellent. Ethan just stood out as being, having superior knowledge of commercial and a couple other things. I don't think we need to go through all of it, but they were all three excellent. They all three would have done a great job on this, but Ethan pretty much stood out as being the best of the three. And so we're gonna propose Ethan for an appointment to the core group and Jerry Perator for the appointment to the ADA. So if someone would like to make a motion, why don't you make the motion? I'll make that motion.

You should do public comment.

Yes, we should. Public comment, please.

There's no hands raised on Zoom. It's too bad, actually.

So before I make that motion, I just want to say, just so you all know, first off, thanks to Dale for really scrambling on this, that we kind of woke up and realized that this commission had just kind of gone dormant and we need it. And sometimes you don't need it for years, and sometimes you need it tomorrow. And the mayor just really scrambled and recruited candidates. And not just anybody, but really good candidates. So I joined him in the interviews of all of them. And I do agree that the people being recommended are the most appropriate for it. But everybody was really quite good. So I would make the motion to approve. Give me the names again.

You're moving Gail Lehman to the core group. Yes, I am. From the ADA group. And you're appointing Jerry Perator to the ADA group.

Yes, I am.

And you're appointing Ethan Hare to the core group as the contractor representative. Via resolution 2026062.

Indeed. Thank you for allowing me to make that motion.

I'll second that motion.

Roll call, please.

Council Member Barron?

Yes.

Council Member Booter?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Delves?

Yes.

Council Member Jamal? Yes. Mayor Byrne?

Yes.

Motion carries.

Could I just clarify? That motion did include the adoption of this resolution, right? Yes.

Hans filled in.

Yeah, I just want to make sure.

So that's very exciting. We now have, I think, all of our commissions and boards, and they're all full and You can go into next year, after I'm not here, with a full complement of highly qualified people, and that's very exciting. All right? So, that's it for tonight, right? We've got one more. Nope, that's it. Number seven, correct?

You just need the attorney to read us into closed session and take public comments on closed session. Correct, no more business for open session this evening, sorry.

And so I'm gonna go to the city attorney to read us into closed session. We have two items tonight.

Yes, we do, Mayor. The first one is a conference with the labor negotiators. That's pursuant to government code section 54957.6. The agency designated representatives are listed in the agenda, as are the employee organizations. The second closed session item is pursuant to government code section 54956.8. That is a conference with real property negotiators. The property is the first Murphy house and the address and APN number, other identifying features are in the agenda. The agency negotiator is Brandon Swanson. Negotiating parties are the Carmel Heritage Society and the Carmel Chamber of Commerce under negotiation or price and terms for lease. All right.

Anybody have a public comment regarding that? Seeing no one here and no comments, we'll bring it back. And we're now going to recess into closed session. Thank you very much.