Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'd like to call to order the May 21st, 2026 meeting of the Fairfax Planning Commission at 7.05. This meeting will be held in person at the Fairfax Women's Club. The meeting is also being held virtually on Zoom and broadcast on channels 27 and 99 and live streamed on the town's website. Before we call roll, I'd like to welcome our new planning commissioner, Dan Cardoza, who was appointed at the May meeting to fulfill the remaining term of John Baila. Welcome.

Thank you.

So with that, can we have a roll call? Kelly?

Here.

Cardozo?

Here.

Jansen?

Yeah.

Petrone?

Here.

Swift? It's not here. Chair, I'm sorry. Newton? Chair Swift. That's not like her.

Okay, with that, I'd like approval of the agenda. Does anyone have any changes? If not, we have a motion.

Motion to approve to agenda.

Second.

I'm sorry, second was? Got it.

Okay. Kelly?

cardozo yes jansen hi petrone yes chair swift yes and with that i'd like to read the meeting protocol the chair shall maintain order at the meetings in accordance with robert's rules of order and the planning commission has the responsibility to be a model of respectful behavior in order to encourage community participation and citizen input at Planning Commission meetings. The Planning Commission and the audience are expected to refrain from using profane language and or ridiculing the character or motive of Planning Commission members, staff, or members of the public and to maintain the standards of tolerance and civility. All interested persons are invited to participate in public meetings. In order to give all interested persons an opportunity to be heard and to ensure the presentation of all points of view, members of the audience should limit their presentation to three minutes or provide their comments by email, state their views succinctly, and submit any new documents to the planning staff, first directly or via email at planning at town of fairfax ca.gov to be entered into the record and with that i'd like to note that commissioner newton has arrived at 7 10. So now we're going to go on to public comments on non-agenda items. Anyone wishes to address the Planning Commission on matters not on the agenda but within the jurisdiction of the Planning Commission must do so by email, in person, or via Zoom. And we will open that up for presentations. We'll be limited to three minutes. Anyone? All right.

Good evening esteemed members of the Planning Commission. I'll be brief. My name is Todd Greenberg. I appreciate the Chair's clarification that the meeting is being conducted according to Robert's Rules of Order. I'd like to ask for clarification whether any other Rules of Order apply to the meeting. as there seems to be some confusion at town council level. I just, it may be that different meetings are being conducted in different manners, but if there could be an additional clarity point at some point, maybe at a future meeting, as to whether any other rules of conduct apply other than Robert's rules of order in terms of how the meetings are conducted. I would appreciate it. Others would appreciate it. Additionally, there seems to be some ongoing confusion, and I'd appreciate some clarity as to what form the meeting minutes are required to be provided in. There's been debate in the past as to whether there would be summary meeting minutes or whether there would be action meeting minutes. What has been decided and what is the policy going forward? And when were those decisions made? Thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments from the public in the room? Anyone on Zoom?

I see no hands on line, Chair Swift.

Okay, I'm going to close public comments and go on to Also, there are no consent calendar items. I'm going to go on to the public hearing. The first item is 40 Olima Road, application 2607, consideration of a conditional use permit, design review permit, and tree removal permit for a proposed single-family house with an attached garage on a vacant corner lot at Manor and Olima. Can we have the staff report, please?

Yes. Hello. My name is Brynn McKillop. I'm going to be giving you a summary of the site and the proposed project, and then we'll describe which permits are required and why for the project. The project consists of new construction of a two-story single-family house with an attached garage. The house has three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, a living room, a dining room, a breakfast area, and a wood patio deck. The site of the construction is a vacant corner lot at the intersection of Lima Road and Manor Road. The only existing structure is a 168-square-foot shed that will be removed. Areas of the site have crowded plums, privets, and bays in poor condition, which will be removed. Due to the 50-foot legal nonconforming lot width of the site, the applicant is applying for a conditional use permit, and all new houses must apply for a design review permit. The lot size is 2,637 square feet, and the floor area is 2,221 square feet, which puts the FAR at 0.39. The garage is 420 square feet, and the total square footage is 2,641. As designed, the project complies with all applicable development standards for the RD 5.57 zone, as well as specific corner lot regulations. The applicant required a tree removal permit from the Fairfax Tree Committee. Sorry, excuse me. The applicant acquired a tree removal permit from the Fairfax Tree Committee and submitted an arborist report. Due to the 50-foot legal nonconforming lot width, as stated, the applicant is applying for a conditional use permit. The Planning Commission must be able to make the required legal findings in Talent Code Section 17.032.060A-E. Staff found the proposed project preserves and enhances in a sustainable manner the existing characteristics of the neighborhood. It is of a scale and design aesthetic compatible with the general design and scale of other structures in the vicinity. All new houses must apply for a design review permit, and the purpose of this permit is to consider the aesthetic and functional relationship of a project to its surrounding development. To approve the permit, the Planning Commission must find the design of the project complies with the code design review criteria. The project features a modern farmhouse style characterized by roof lines, dormers with both large multi-pane windows and small windows. Staff assess the project's height, building mass, setback and arrangement on site, parking area design, exterior materials, landscaping and screening, and light fixtures for consistency with design review criteria. Staff routed the plans and application to relevant agencies, receiving specific comments from Public Works, requesting the applicant include a sidewalk on Alema Road as a part of the frontage improvements. Otherwise, no agency had project-specific comments. Staff recommend the applicant revise its plan to include the construction of a new sidewalk, curb, and gutter along all frontage sides of the property as requested by Public Works. And as this is a corner lot, an ADA-compliant curb ramp must also be installed at the intersection of Manor Road and Alema Road. Fairfax requires consistency with Marin County stormwater best management practices. Staff recommends the applicant provide a calculation of the infiltration rate of the proposed gravel areas to show they are pervious. I would like to offer some changes to the staff report and resolution that might help the planning commissioners in their discussion. The garage is 420 square feet.

Can you, I'm sorry, can you go just a little bit slower?

Yeah, sorry, thanks for that feedback. So the garage is 420 square feet. On page 5 of the staff report, it currently states 418. The total square footage to be referenced in the first whereas in the resolution should be 2,641. The applicant's plans state 2,651. The reso should be changed for that first whereas on the first page of the reso to two-story, 2,641-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom, single-family residence, which includes an attached 420-square-foot internally connected garage. As it is now, it says with, so I think the language which includes is better and more clear. Okay. That concludes the summary of the staff report.

Does the commission have any questions? Commissioner Newton, we'll start on this and work down.

Thank you so much, Brynn. This was really great. I really appreciate it. I do have some questions and maybe it was Because you did go kind of fast in the beginning.

Yeah, apologies. That's okay.

So the total square foot with the garage is 2641. Correct. And the house square footage that was used to calculate the floor area ratio was 2221. yeah that's the living space okay uh in the garage it's 420 square feet okay correct uh all right there is uh also in the staff report where it talks about how the uh FAR was calculated and kind of, sorry, I'm a little late. So I'm a little discombobulated. I don't have the staff report in front of me, but there's a list and it has the FAR and it lists the number of bedrooms, but it also says the number of bathrooms is two, whereas everywhere else you say two and a half.

So I just want to- Yeah, that's page five, if anybody else wants to flip there.

All right. So I just want to clarify it's two and a half bathrooms because that's part of what we're basing our findings on. And then paragraph 16 of the resolution, which I think, let me see if it's been corrected in the new one. You say, any damages to the public portions of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, Olima Road, Marin Road. And I think that might have been supposed to be Manor Road.

Sorry, could you repeat the page number? Sure. I think it's page six of the new one.

Paragraph 15. I'm sorry, 16.

Yes.

It says Marin Road, and I think it should be Manor Road.

Yes, I think so. Do you have anything to say about that, Linda? No, it's Manor.

Yes, it should be a manor road. Okay. And then it's trees number three and four, which are a long, the trees number three and four are a long manor road. And I think number four was dropped in at least paragraph 41. And there's a couple other typos when we get to that point I'll point out. Thanks.

Other comments?

I just want to be sure that I'm reading the landscape plan correctly. I'm looking specifically at sheet L1.0. I saw in the staff report that it noted the materials of the fence are to be wood. And per the landscape plan, I'm seeing that at no point does the fence actually touch the house. Is that correct? Am I correct in that interpretation? Do you know?

I think I might have the applicant answer that.

Is that okay? I can save that. I can save that for the applicant.

Okay.

And that's it for me. Thank you.

I have one question. I think the conditional use permit is because the lot doesn't have the required size. So in the table, there are other homes compared in size and bathrooms, but how about the size of the other lots in the neighborhood? My understanding is that there are many lots who are smaller than what they should be. Could you, do you have information on that?

The lot sizes are listed in the table on page four. Is that what you're asking about?

That is the lot size, but I think the non-compliance is the width, right? So this one is non-compliant, but how about the other lots in the neighborhood? I think it's when it was laid out in the 20s. There's a lot of them, but could you confirm that?

Yes, they are mostly non-conforming as well.

All right. Thank you.

Go ahead. I'll be last.

Go ahead. Okay. I think Mimi referred to this, but in the resolution, paragraph 41, under miscellaneous, I think there's just a typo. Trees three and four should be. I think four was dropped out.

Anything else?

No, I think that's it.

That's it? Nope. Okay. The staff report On page 2, under zoning and development standards, it identifies the rear setback as 25 feet 1, which the plans show a different setback, 25 feet 11 and 1 half inches. Yes.

Yes, that was a typo. It should be 2511. The applicant didn't round up in their plans, so we just were referencing that to match the plans. But it should, as the rules of measurement state, we round up for that. So it should be as it is in the table, 26.

And for the height, the plans identified 28 feet 2 inches. And the chart says 28. So are we... So if it's less than five, round down, yeah. Okay. It also states that the project meets the 10-foot front setback. However, looking at the plans on A1.1, it shows that it...

doesn't meet it in two places in the front can you address that yeah there's a setback line like a dash line and uh we measured that and it's 10 from the line i think you might be confusing the overhangs which we allow two feet for um so from the line that's drawn on the plans it's 10.

So where on the plans it doesn't meet the 10 feet, that's two places where there is an overhang?

Yeah, that's what I'm assuming you're referencing, but I would need to know exactly where you're pointing to on the plans.

There's the section that allows eaves to encroach two feet into any required setback. And Bryn and I looked at that together and it looks like the walls of the corners are 10 feet, but the shaded part, if you measure from the shaded part, it's less than 10, but I believe that we believe that's the eave overhang.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. Right.

So it's here and here.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't clear from the staff report.

The plans were not

And as far as the driveway entrance, I asked the question that there was also room on a Lima for a 20-foot driveway as well, 30 feet from the corner, correct? Correct. Right. Okay. Had a question about pervious materials. So we're asking for a filtration rate. And depending on what that comes out to, the lot coverage may change, may exceed what's allowed, or the plans may have to change. So my question is, we've done other applications before us. It's been a while since we've had a new build. But I'm wondering why we're asking for a filtration rate when before we've just identified in the code pervious versus impervious?

Sure. At other agencies I've worked at, there's been usually conditions that relate to the stormwater runoff filtration rates. So I offered that, but if the planning commission doesn't want to have applicants kind of show that proof that it's meeting the stormwater, the Marin County stormwater standards, then we don't need to do that. But it was just a staff recommendation.

And I think Marin Municipal Water District, they have their own lot coverage application that's required. And I think they probably checked that.

Okay. So it's something that we could address.

We can make sure the building department makes sure that MMWD, they've heard from MMWD before they issue a final inspection or before they issue a permit.

Because, and I'd have to go back and look at the calculation, if they wanted to maintain what they have now and it didn't meet that, then it would exceed the lot coverage, I think, because the lot coverage I think was very close to the max. So if it's something that the Water District does, that might be something other than putting it into applications that come before us when we're looking at what pervious and non-pervious. And I don't know if, you know, we're doing a build on a lot that hasn't had anything on it. So that's new, but it was just something that when I look at our code, when I look at what we've done before, this is different. So what else? And I did notice that there was a utility line going from the corner utility pole to the house next door that's going to go, that goes through the story polls. So that's going to have to be addressed at some point with instruction.

Yeah, if that's on something building, we'll take care of it so it gets to that stage. Yeah.

Another thing that was in the staff report was, and I think it's in the reso, number 29 was a requirement for a sewage disposal permit from Marin County Environmental Health. And I've never seen that before in our applications. I did call. Marin Environmental Health to ask what that was. And that seemed to only apply, could be wrong, to septic tanks. Correct.

Yeah, so I consider this a failing of your principal planner because I didn't have a lot of time to help Brynn with this. So she's not really aware of the Ross Valley Sanitary District that deals with sewer systems and stuff. Marin County Environmental Health handles septic systems, right?

And we have had, I mean, we do have areas in town.

That are on septic.

Cascade.

Correct.

One that is not on the sewage, sewer system, but has septic.

Did you receive any comments from Ross Valley Sanitary District? No, I think that's. Yeah. So we should just eliminate, eliminate 29. Yeah.

And I'll have more probably comments or corrections on the reso when we, when we get to that. Um,

chair swift can i have another go at another question thank you um i i'm just looking at the revised resolution i see that the references to the general plan have been changed so previously we had the seven

7.1 7.22 those are gone and uh so i gather that these are the uh corrected based on input yeah sorry i handed those out to the commissioners before you arrived there um these the policies they referenced before were um like boilerplate from the last uh general plan that were in like a template i used so apologies i just hadn't updated them okay thanks

Any other questions of staff? Is the applicant here? And we'll open it up to public comments. If there's anything you'd like to address, you can come up to the, and we may have questions for you. And push the button. Thanks. Good evening.

commissioners, staff members, and our neighbors. My name is Amon Rid, Pakti Dam Rungrid. I'm the designer here representing the property owner, John and Eileen Hines. They're the owner of the Daked Lot at the corner of Olema and Manor Road. As was stated, the proposed project is two stories, 2,221 square feet, three bedrooms, and 2.5 baths, single family residence with 420 square feet attached, two car garage on 5,637 square foot lot. Because this is a new construction, we are applying for design review permit and due to the 50 foot legal non-conforming lot width, we are also requesting for condition use permit approval. I'll try to keep this presentation short and not repeat what have been said already by the staff. Since the design complies with all the applicable development standards as outlined in the staff report, I will concentrate on the design concept of the house. The proposed project is in a modern farmhouse style, blending the traditional rustic charm of steep gable roofline, use of dormers, combination of both vertical and horizontal sidings, and a large inviting cover entry porch with a clean contemporary design of neutral white color palettes with black roof and window frames for sharp modern contrasts. design of the new house thought have been put into minimizing the unreasonable hardship to adjacent neighbors at 34 olema and 23 manor road um if you can go back to the first image um The development combined both single and two-story elements to reduce the massing and scale to fit within the surrounding residence context of the neighborhood. The single-story elements have been placed close to the east property line next to our neighbor at 34 Olema Road. This is showing the green shade there. which allowed the two stories part of the house to be placed further away from our neighbors to the east. Furthermore, at the midpoint of the property where the width of the lot is at its narrowest, the two stories elements have been set back even farther away from our neighbors. This two story element here is the gray shaded area. In addition, we eliminated the need for windows on the second level to maximize the privacy between the two properties. You can go to the next slide, please. The combination of these design elements helped to reduce the negative effect of massing privacy and shadow casting on neighbors at 34 Olema. For our neighbors at the rear of the property, 23 Manor Road, the combination of landscaping, location of the single-story attached garage would allow the two-story house structure to be located 56 feet away instead of the 15 feet allowed by the zoning code. in design of the driveway and the attached garage. Thought were put into reducing the excessive undesirable inconvenience to our neighbors and additional vehicular load at the intersection of Olema and Manor Road. Locating the driveway on Olema Road is not ideal to maintain the 30 foot setback from the intersection as required by the town code. The driveway will have to be placed underneath the canopy of the large I believe it was 45-inch diameter valley oaks at the east end of the property and will require major disruption to the tree root system in the construction of the driveway. The proposed driveway on Manor Road would be located at the midpoint of the property on a lower traffic value away from intersection and driveway of our neighbor at 23 Manor Road. in closing we believe that the proposed project meets the design standards set forth in the town's zoning code and we are seeking design approval for the project thank you does anyone have comments for the applicant or the applicants represented go ahead

Thank you for that presentation. Very helpful. Just the same comment that I raised earlier on the fence line. Does it actually come in contact with the house? Am I misreading the landscape plan? The fence itself, it looks like only is around the perimeter of the site. It doesn't actually bend to touch the house itself?

No, it doesn't bend to touch the house.

So it's not within five feet of the house?

No, it's not within five feet.

Got it. That was my question. Thank you.

Any other questions for the app

I just had a quick question. It's kind of a nitpicky question, but I see that in the landscape plan, there's installation of the lawn in the back. I mean, it's given the footprint. It's probably not a very, I can't tell what the size of that is, but I don't know if there are kids involved or I think the town, you know, likes to promote drought tolerant water conserving planting. So I was just wondering, It's not going to affect my support for the project. I think it's a great design, but I was just curious.

No, we just like to have a little play area for the family. Yeah. Now in the future to have that little play area. We can look into more drought tolerance.

There's some kids involved. Yeah. Okay.

Is the project in a wooey zone?

Excuse me?

Is the project in the wooey zone?

Yes, it is.

And do all the materials comply with that, including the roof?

Yes, we will address those issues at the building permits middle process. That's correct, right?

During fire review, they didn't say anything.

I don't think asphalt shingles comply is my question.

Oh, and before I interrupt, which I'm doing, the board is over there with all the materials and colors.

Oh, asphalt is a class A asphalt shingles, which is allowed, I believe, in the... I can confirm, but I believe that this is class A asphalt shingle, which is allowed in the... um, urban interface zone, but I can, I can confirm that.

Yeah. And I just want to bring, we have some new people here. So I just want to remind everyone that, um, they get us, all the agencies get a second shot at this before the building permits issued. So we have two fire inspectors and they're literally covering doing all the permits for San Anselmo, Fairfax, parts of the County and Ross. And so sometimes they get us back things that are missing things. Sometimes we don't get comments back from them. So, They're going to have a second shot at this, and I think at the building permit stage, if it's incorrect and it's not fire safe, they will require that it be changed.

That's why I made it a question. I'm not positive about the particular product, but we need to check.

Yeah. Any other questions for the applicant? Thank you. Any other comments from the public on this application in the room?

Seeing none, any online? We do have a hand online, Chair Swift. Thank you. From Maggie. Maggie, please go ahead. You should be able to talk now. Hi, can you hear me?

Yes. Hello. So my name is Maggie. I'm here with my husband, Hunter. We're the neighbors at 34 Olima. And apologies if some of these questions are very green. And we don't have the... All the materials in front of us, but we were just curious. I know it's a corner lot. We were looking at setback information, but can you confirm? So the rear of the house will be closest to our lot. And can you confirm what the setback allowance is and what it is for the proposed house?

And what's your address again? Oh.

34. Okay.

That's the wrong one.

Sorry, one moment. 34 Lima. Okay.

The required rear setback is six feet, and they're proposing 26. Okay.

It looks a little like we're just sitting out here now. It looks like with the poles up, it is closer.

That's just confirmed along our fence.

Yeah. So that's like along our fence line. That's 26 feet. Yeah. Yeah. That looks different.

I believe she's, that's 34 Lima. So that would be to the right of the property if you're looking at a Lima.

Yeah. So the required side setback is five and five. So five on either side. Correct, Linda? And the proposed is 10 and five. And combined, that's what I'm, oh. Oh, I see. Okay. I believe it's five. So it meets the requirements.

Okay. And then the structure on top of the garage, is that a porch or can you walk us through what that is? I believe it's a roof. Okay. Is there, that's just the roof, the white section on top of the garage?

Yes. There's no roof on the, I mean, deck on the roof. Okay.

Okay. And then for the landscaping that borders our two properties, so between like the fence and the house, is there plans to have vegetation there? Like right now it's... obviously green outside of all of our windows facing the empty lot. And we enjoy that. So I wanted to see what that landscaping plan is.

The landscaping plan is in the plan set. If you'd want to look at that, it might be better than having me describe it.

Brynn, is there a hard copy at Town Hall? Yes. So it's also possible that the neighbor can go to town hall and look at the full set of plans, which are a lot easier to look at.

Yes, they are.

That are online. And if she wants to make an appointment. With you all, she has the ability to do that, correct?

Yes, you can reach me by email. My name is Brynn McKillop. Or you can, and that's on the town website, or you can come in and request. And you would have to look at the plans there, but we could give you space to look at them.

I'll just note that I think most of the planning commissioners are using the online versions, aren't we? So those are able to be reviewed. There's always one. I'm just saying most of us are not having difficulty looking at the landscaping plan that was provided online.

Right. But we're used to that as well. So a member of the community has the ability to come look at the larger set of plans. Any other comments online?

from a different there are no other comments online but i'm sorry just for a point of clarification to anybody listening in the audience you are talking about online plans and i believe that is the plans that is online in the agenda at the town website the probably the same agenda you can get this url form you go down lower on that same agenda and you can see a hyperlink to the agenda and packet that was discussed here okay thank you no more hands online

So I'm going to close public comment and bring it back to the Commission for discussion.

Yeah, I'll start. I think this is a typical case. We've seen this before. The zoning requirements are such that it doesn't really match with the layout of the lots as they were drawn in the 1920s. In this case, the lot width is substandard. I think that's the only reason we're discussing this project, because all other components are in compliance, and they're cleverly designed to make maximum utility of it. So To me, that means I am willing to approve it just the way it is, including, of course, all the comments that were mentioned before in the resolution.

And there'll be more of those. Any other? Yeah. Any other discussion?

I tend to agree, but I do have some more typos to identify.

at once, because I've got some in here as well. Any other discussion on the application?

Yeah, I agree with the comments that have been made. I like the design, given the constraints of the site. I like the way you step back the height from the historic one-level house and the neighbor and mask the height along Manor. So I think it looks good to me.

I had some thoughts on the tree permit request where the applicant is having to remove the two large trees on the sidewalk on Manor. And they've already identified that they're going to replace those on the landscaping plans. The tree committee in their recommendation, wanted the applicant to work with the town arborist and the public works director to identify an appropriate trees for that. And some of the thoughts that I had was, on the manor side, you can find kind of the remnants in some places of a sidewalk that was three feet wide, you know, and we're going to have a wider sidewalk going in there. We're looking at putting trees in and having to maintain trees either for this property owner or future ones, um, we're asking to put in the public right away, which then we get into vegetation management and clearance and that type of thing. Um, my thought was, we don't know what that sidewalk's going to look like, where it's going to go, the width, And even though the applicant has identified on the landscaping plan that they're going to replace those two trees they have to take out, I would rather see that perhaps as an option and not a requirement, even though that's what the tree commission is... referring to us and recommending. I don't know how others feel about that.

Well, I don't like the idea of requiring fewer trees, but I wouldn't mind consultation with both the town arborist and, what does it say now? Public works director. The public works director. How do others? Oh, go ahead. Oh, it does say town arborist already. It says review and approval by the Fairfax Public Works Director and approval of the replacement species and size by the town arborist. So I'm satisfied with that language. Okay. Anyone else?

I see no reason to second guess the three committees recommendation at this point. I don't see something significantly wrong.

Everyone else is.

Yeah, I agree with that.

So I, too, like the project. And it tries to do as much as it can with the constraints of the lot, the corner lot and all, putting the driveway on manner, is probably best considering the design of the house already. I do feel that probably, you know, looking at the staff report where the staff report said that Manor was the best and safest place for that driveway. I would probably have a different opinion on that since that's a narrower street. And it's also a bike path to school. And I think it has more use that ideally if this was something That could be started again, perhaps. Maybe a driveway on a Lima would have been, you know, the better approach from that perspective. But, you know, this is what we have. And, you know, I would approve the project as well.

So...

Do we want to go down the list of corrections to the reso before we make a motion and second?

Well, can we address the conditions of approval that were in the staff report? We have applicant must revise the plans to include the construction of a new sidewalk, blah, blah, blah. And where are you? I'm on the last page of the staff report page nine. And I would be in favor of including those conditions.

Does anyone else, because that was a discussion on the filtration, does anyone else want to require the filtration piece to this? I think we had an earlier discussion, too, that that might be something that MMWD is already doing when they look at the project.

Well, now you're talking about just B?

Yes. Sorry. Yes.

Well, are we all in agreement that the condition listed under A would be appropriate to include in the resolution?

I would agree.

Yes.

Yes. And is there a way to rephrase B to acknowledge that MMWD will be undertaking this? Or do we want to leave something similar to this in the resolution? Do we have a recommendation from staff?

Can I just make sure that everybody is looking... I'm confused. On page 8, we have the condition that MMWD always sends to us, which is that any landscaping plans have to be reviewed and approved by MMWD. And I am certain that they check the amount of impervious surface because they have a requirement that any new development or new construction has to maintain a certain percentage of pervious area. So they're going to have to check that before the building permit gets issued. So that's condition 33. And then we've got 36 that says all of MMWD's rules and regulations in effect at the time that there's a correction if should be changed in. At the time of services requested must be complied with. So, I mean, it's, doesn't that cover the... Well, you tell me.

I'm just reacting to the recommendation in the staff report.

Yeah, so to speak to that, I... I did not see a calculation and in other plans, I have seen that before. So it was just to provide a calculation, but it sounds like that's a part of the building permit process. So it doesn't, it seems like maybe it is repetitive to have that if it's already a part of the resolution.

I mean, to me, it sounds like that this is something that would be an MMWD requirement along with all of their other requirements. So I would just as soon leave it out and just leave it to other agencies and what they require when it goes through that process.

I would recommend that we then revise the header on page 8. that we're deleting Marin County Environmental Health Services, MCEHS, and stick sidewalk in as a new header. And then a new paragraph 29, so we don't have to renumber everything. I'm on the reso.

The new or the old?

The new. The new reso, we're deleting Marin County Environmental Health Services, MCEHS, on page 8, paragraph 29. On our written one, it's page 7. Right, but I'm looking at the new one.

Oh, the new one. The redlined one?

The redlined one. And I'm saying... If we delete Marin County Environmental Health Services, as we said we would, we can put a new header in that says Sidewalk. And then we can take... paragraph 29 that we're going to delete and have a new paragraph 29, which will then reduce the need for renumbering, because that's all I care about, to say... Just to clarify, we do have the sidewalk described under the Fairfax Building and Public Works Department section, number 40. All right. Well, then you'll have to do the renumbering yourself. I would just add the... Applicant must revise plans to include the construction of a new sidewalk, curb, and gutter, blah, blah, blah. That whole paragraph, A, in somewhere.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's number 40, if we're talking about the same, the frontage improvements.

On the reso that came with the staff report package, It's 40 on page 8 that deals with the sidewalks.

Okay. It has all the stuff about the ADA compliant curb ramp. Okay. Sorry. The other thing I did spot was in 37, which will now be 36. Okay. A copy of the building permit must be provided to the district, along with and just delete the word other along with the required applications and fees.

Or that oh go ahead.

And I think that might be. This Linda found the other one so that's good.

Okay, I've got some if you're done. All right. So I would like to add to the title of the reso, a resolution of the Fairfax Planning Commission approving application 26-07 for conditional use design review and tree removal permits for a new single family residence. So adding new single family before residence. We haven't been consistent in adding the code references after each section. So under conditional use permit findings, adding town code 17032060, paren A through E. I'm sorry, where are you now? Page one. Page one.

Page one of the Rezo.

Yeah.

And where are you putting the citation?

After the conditional use permit title. The others have it. The conditional use permit.

Oh, I see. Sorry, I didn't understand.

Thank you. Putting the word findings after design review permit on page two. Page 3, number 7, change from Ross Valley Fire Authority to Ross Valley Fire Department. We've already deleted the sewage disposal permit requirement. And we've already mentioned on page 9, number 41, to correct it to reflect trees number 3 and 4. And my other addition to this would be even though there's going to be exterior lighting and the plans say they're dark sky compliant, we always have a paragraph in there addressing dark sky requirements for any additional lighting. So I would like to have that added in there. And I think those are my corrections. Anybody has a motion now?

I will try and make it very simple. Motion to approve a resolution of the Fairfax Planning Commission approving the application of number 2607 for conditional use design review and tree removal permits for a new single family residence at 40 Olema Road. And that would include the changes made by staff in the handouts that we got this meeting, mostly regarding policies, the comments of the commissioners, and the, let's call them typos, discussed during this meeting.

I will second, but I can just add the corrections that the staff identified that aren't reflected in the red line as well.

Correct. Okay. Yes. Yes. Everything that was discussed by you and all the audit commissioners and the staff. Okay. Yeah.

And I will second.

Okay. We have a roll call vote.

Kelly?

Aye.

Cardozo?

Aye.

Jansen?

Aye.

Petrone?

Yes.

Newton?

Aye.

Chair Swift? Yes. Motion passes.

So with that, the resolution passes. There is a 10-day appeal process and information on the appeal process can be obtained at the Planning Department. And with that, thank you and Congratulations. Does anyone want a five minute break?

Might be smart. Might be smart. Let's do it.

Okay. We're going to break for five minutes. So we're going to start the meeting. We're going to start the meeting again. Can I have the staff report for our next item, which is 61 Bolinas Road Planning Commission scoring on a commercial cannabis permit for 61 Bolinas Road. But before we start, I just wanted to make a comment that the Planning Commission has had two applications for storefronts in the past. Both of these were within the approved zones and outside of any buffers. And the application that came to us were consolidated with any required design review permit and sign permit applications. The Planning Commission did their preliminary scoring on the business permit application, as well as heard design review and sign permit. applications and then made recommendations to the town council on all of the above so what is before us today is a little different what we have before us is just reviewing and scoring doing the planning commission preliminary scoring on a

business cannabis business permit application and that's it so with that do you want to give the staff report so the applicant is applying for a medical commercial cannabis business permit to operate a medical use cannabis storefront retail business at 61 bolinas road the project includes interior remodeling to comply with california state cannabis business safety regulations In July of 2025, the Planning Commission approved an exterior color change for the building to paint it black and white with the condition that they also include a third color, which they presented to staff to include some cactus flower pink detailing. And staff did approve that. The application includes the erection of a six-square-foot business identification sign that complies with the town code sign limitations for cannabis business signs. and we'll have the signed copy that reads Marin Alliance, the business name. The location of 61 Bolinas Road is within 600 feet of the Fairfax Pavilion where youth groups operate approximately 75% of the days of the year. site is also within 300 feet of first friends daycare on mono lane both locations do not comply with the town code as a location for a medical storefront retailer to operate due to its proximity to these two uses the applicants provided a traffic analysis by w trans traffic engineering which indicated that the business would generate an average daily traffic trips of 75 and the town engineer concurred with that determination. That does not require a traffic impact permit from the town. The town code requires that a cannabis retail space of the size of 61 Bolinas Road have four onsite parking spaces. The applicant has discussed other ideas for off-street parking at a different location, but none has been secured. And the staff report incorrectly states that there are two parking spaces at the rear of the site, but that is not correct. There's nowhere at the back of the site to access two parking spaces. There's no vehicle access to the rear of the site, even if there were two spaces. The proximity of the site to places where the youth gather the proposed sign and the parking exception will be reviewed and acted on by the town council. at a future public hearing where they will also score the proposed cannabis business operation in accordance with the Town Code. Chapter 5.56 of the Town Code requires that the Planning Commission provide preliminary scoring on a cannabis business permit application and makes a recommendation based on the scoring to the Town Council. The scoring criteria are divided and scored through three following primary criteria. Business qualifications and business plan, 35 points. Quality of the operating plan, 35 points. And public benefit, 30 points. Various sub-criteria are listed under each of the three primary criteria to assist the Planning Commission in reaching a point total. The sub criteria provide a distinguishable basis for rating the three different aspects of the business and determining if an application meets the minimum qualifying score of 80 points out of a total potential of 100 points. The commission scoring, as I stated above, will serve as a recommendation to the town council who will make the final determination. So the Planning Commission should discuss the application for the retailer permit, ask questions of staff, hear from the applicant and the public, and then score the submitted application using the scoring criteria form, which I will hand out when you get to that point, in order to make their recommendation to the Town Council. That concludes my report.

Does the Planning Commission have any questions for staff?

Can we have that now?

This is the same as in the staff reports, right? Yeah.

Commissioner Newton.

Thank you so much for the report. And we also received a packet of public comment. And I really appreciate the printout because I could not open one of them on my computer.

Did anyone open the one from, what's their name?

Vanessa Laura.

Any of you open that one? You were able to? Okay.

I was able to see it, yeah.

Yeah. I had to convert it to a different format. If you'd let us know, we could have done that and gotten it to you.

Yeah, sorry. I was digging into it and realized I couldn't see it, and I wanted to ask you about it. But now that you've provided us with this printout, It raises even more questions for me in terms of the applicant's payment of municipal taxes to the town of Fairfax, because there are some allegations in here that the applicant is not paying their proper taxes to the town. Is that the way you understood this?

So they pay for their business license. And I don't know that much about taxes because I'm not a property owner in Marin County or anything like that, and I haven't run a business. She pays her business license fee. I think the taxes that are collected are collected through the state, aren't they, and then distributed to the town? I don't even know. I know that we don't have a tax collector in our town staff, so it comes through the county. And I wouldn't know. These are from the federal government and the state government. The town hasn't filed anything about her not paying her taxes.

Well, I'll ask the applicant when we get to that point. But I just wanted to be clear that, I mean, it sounds like I don't know what CDFTA sales taxes, but we've got a whole measure coming up at the primary about sales taxes. And the only thing they don't apply to, as I understand it, is like groceries. So it would certainly seem to apply here. So, okay. Thank you very much.

Commissioner Petroni?

There seems to be some discrepancy in terms of the definition. Oh, thank you. Yeah. There seems to be some discrepancy in terms of the definition of youth center and day care center. for in the staff report as as opposed to the application from the applicant I'm just wondering has the town attorney by chance opined on on this or is it staff yes no no all this has gone to the town attorney and and what was there on the town's position is that she is that the pavilion is a youth center it's used enough of the time to

My brothers played basketball. Their kids are in there all the time, right?

So the town attorney concurred with what's reflected in the staff report.

And the daycare is a daycare. People were alleging that it's a residence in a residential zone, but it got a use permit to operate as a daycare, and it's operated as a daycare and not as a residence for many, many, many years.

Sure.

That's not a question. So, I mean, yeah.

That's all I have. Thank you.

Any other questions of staff?

And I think I know the answer to this, but I want to just ask it. The park doesn't come into play with regard to children, correct?

You know, they don't, it doesn't really bring up, the code doesn't talk about parks. It's like a place where children routinely gather, right? And I mean, I guess there are sometimes kids in that main park, but usually I see adults in there doing Tai Chi and during the farmer's market, there might be some kids, but once in a while there's mothers with babies, but...

Having two kids in Fairfax might disagree with you.

Okay. I mean, I don't see them, but I'm working in town hall, you know, but when I get there at 6 a.m., there aren't kids, and when I leave at 3, there aren't kids, but they're probably still in school.

Any other questions of staff? Okay. Seeing none, what I'd like to do during public comment is ask if the applicant wishes to make a presentation, a short presentation, before we open it up. And then you can have questions from the Commission, and then we can open it up to general public comments. And the general public comments would still be within the three minutes.

First of all, the tax allegations were submitted by my harasser. It's based on complete falsehoods. I've paid all my taxes to the town. My tax attorney has, we've negotiated all the taxes because one of the reasons that is burdened the entire cannabis industry is the excessive taxation. So I'm on a payment plan, everything's fine, the town's been paid. I do have a harasser that brought up a bunch of old stuff that doesn't, and he's been ordered by the judge to stop harassing me and stop submitting stuff like that. So my attorney probably wants to see that because that is part of the harassment. 29 years ago, I came up with this idea to legally sell cannabis. And the Planning Commission of the Town of Fairfax did a historic thing and approved the first license in the world to legally sell medical marijuana. And this, of course, was World News and CNN and everything. And it led to me being sued by President Clinton, and I spent 19 years in federal court defending this license that we approved here at the Town of Fairfax. My historic case stop the DEA and stop the feds from raiding medical marijuana dispensaries across the nation. And we're all safe from that. Now that we've gone to schedule three, there aren't any more raids. But there was, we all started with medical marijuana and that is what I'm an expert in. I've spent decades working with thousands of patients Thousands of products. And that's why I want to focus on medical marijuana. That's what I know. And I'm one of the foremost experts in the world at this point. So my focus is to forget about all the recreational, all that, and work with the people of the community again who are sick, who are elderly, who are disabled, who have a critical illness. We have knowledge and we have products that could really help the people in our community. And that's what I want to do. I want to have a small, quiet, helpful business that shows the love and the compassion that it was founded on in the first place. And we gave birth to it in this chamber.

So before we have public, public comments, if you would want to come up, there may be folks on the dais, commissioners that may have questions for you on the permit application.

Thank you, Ms. Shaw. Really appreciate you being here. I don't know who the person is, but what they are alleging is that You deducted taxes from your employees' paychecks and kept the deduction instead of sending the withheld taxes to the IRS. That's a lie. And it also alleges that you did not pay the CDFTA sales tax of over $107,000. That is also false. Okay, and there's a number of files attached here. I think the most recent one looks like it's dated February of 2026 with an outstanding balance and notice of state tax lien. Now, you're saying you've fully addressed all the taxes?

Also, does anything say the Elshaw Holding Company on it? Because that is the business that is applying for this license.

No, it all, I'm sorry, it talks about Lynette Marie Shaw on all these files. Right. And the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana as well. And some of the older ones. Older and expired. Can you tell me when you resolved the tax issues with the California Department of Tax?

My attorney is an expert in the taxation. Her name is Rachel Gillette. And there should have been a note in the email to the Planning Commission that we have resolved the problem and I'm not in trouble with the state.

Okay, did staff have that? You don't have something like that from Ms. Shaw's attorney?

From Ms. Gillette? Today? Would have been sent today? She would have sent it in yesterday or today. Also, that was the same, when the same harasser submitted similar stuff.

You know, I don't always go and check my junk mail, but I didn't get anything to my account.

She weighed in on the same harasser doing the same thing with old stuff that's been resolved.

Yeah, I don't know whether or not this is the same person that you're referring to because they're actually asking us to approve you for a recreational dispensary. Okay, those are my questions. Thank you very much.

just have one question is the LLC that's listed in the application is that the same legal entity that's you operated the school street no this is a different new LLC okay have you filed with the Secretary of State of course and it was that submitted to the town this articles of organization do we have those my other attorney was supposed to send that did you get the LLC stuff Linda

You guys have everything that we were given I didn't see the secretaries for articles So in the packet, I know that I submitted something to the town about that.

I Think the the town code requires the articles of Organization that are filed with LLCs and the town to be submitted with the application.

This is miss Mendelsohn Lauren Mendelsohn is my attorney that does that yeah, and you did not receive that I

I didn't see it in the packet.

Do you know whose attention she sent it to?

I read all my emails every day, and I don't have either of these emails that you're referencing. We're supposed to send it to you, Linda. I can get her to send that. It's no big deal.

If we could get that, that'd be great.

And then just one other question. We received an email, I guess, from Amy Mounts, who owns Conifer... At 31 Bolinas, and she says that she and a group of other, I guess, business owners along there met with you early on. So I just wanted to hear your perspective on that meeting and whether there was some way that you thought you could reach some accommodation with the other business operators along Bolinas there.

The medical marijuana business is very quiet, but it's about 20, 25 people a day. This is having people, not tons of people, like the recreational is a lot more people, but it's a benefit to the town to have the sick or the elderly have a convenient place they can walk to, and they can also enjoy the downtown. One thing I remember is that they felt that medical marijuana patients wouldn't spend money with the other businesses, which is silly. I'm used to being prejudiced against. I'm used to being a second class isn't because I'm the cannabis girl. And so criticisms and comments like that. I just have to take and strive.

Okay.

Can you tell us what your plan is for those four parking spaces that would be required?

Well, in our submission, we pointed out that all the businesses along Valinas Road do not have a four parking pause requirement, such as Sorella's actually filled up their parking lot with tables. And they have a lot more people that come there than we're anticipating with the Brent Alliance. So we're asking for a variance on that because the people that we are catering to are not drivers and parkers. They're sick people. They're elderly and they're disabled. What's nice about this is wheelchair accessible. And it's also, if they want to take the bus, we give them a discount with their little bus ticket. So we encourage people to walk, get downtown, take a bus. It's not going to be a giant business, but it's going to be an essential support for our community. And that's why we're asking for the variants.

And I know in your previous location, you were much closer to a lot of kids than what's proposed now. You were literally sharing a parking lot with all of our little leaguers.

Yeah, we were 37 feet away from the ball field.

So I know you're used to this issue. Can you just speak a little bit about your perspective on integration in the community with the kids? Sure.

We never had children bother us or try to run in or any of that. They didn't even know that we were there because we were so quiet. And also I think that children, they're not curious about stuff like that helps their grandma. They know that there's a place that's for them and they know there's a place that they're not supposed to go, just like a bar or something, you know. And we haven't had that problem ever. There's never been that problem. And so we'll continue to not have that problem. After 30 years of not having that problem, I see that we can continue not having that problem.

OK. Oh, go ahead.

I think, unless I misheard, there's a third business name mentioned in the documents. That's Elshaw Holding Company. Is that the official name of the LLC?

That's the official name of the LLC.

That is the official name.

DBA, Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana.

All right, thanks.

Okay, I have some questions going through the application. that we had, how many managers will you have? Myself and one other person. OK. So you'll be considered a manager as well, and one of you will be on duty in the store at all time. You say in your application that you're in the process of obtaining a home equity loan. Yes. Are you still in the process or have you received it? The application talks about a board of advisors, but it doesn't identify a purpose, who they are, or what the role would be. So can you speak to this board of advisors? Mm-hmm.

Well, for example, our friend, Dr. Chris Nyland, who left Kaiser because they wouldn't allow him to just bring medical marijuana to the hospice. He was tending the sick and the dying. He's now a private physician that does hospice here in Marin. And he was supplying the sick and dying with our cannabis because it was the best. And he's had a lot of experience working with his hospice patients. And he's going to be our medical director, one of our medical directors. We're also interested in having seminars so people can come in and talk to the doctors who have experienced medical marijuana. And our staff is very experienced, but also someone like Dr. Nyland, who's there with the families.

Okay, so... You've now identified someone that's going to be a medical director for you. Going back to the Board of Advisors, has that been created? Has that been staffed? Do you know how many there will be in there, or is it just all things that haven't been formed yet? I have...

A list of advisors. Once we are actually finished with this process and I actually have the permit, then they're interested in working with us. We're sort of in between. So I definitely have a wonderful bunch of experienced people that want to help.

So number of employees. The application says that your busiest times are 12 a.m. to 3 p.m. And then 5 o'clock on. And I am assuming that by 12 a.m. you meant noon because you want to be open 9 to 9. Right.

Is it a.m.? It should be, say, p.m. Typo.

So you identify that you would have three employees from noon to 3 and four employees starting at 5. Mm-hmm. How many employees will you have from 9 in the morning to noon? Two. And who will be providing the state-mandated training? State-mandated what? State-mandated training for your staff.

Well, the staff that I'm bringing back have all been trained. They've been working with me for eight years.

Okay. But if you have new employees, who will be providing their mandated training? Oakland University. And can you explain to me on training, you mentioned in there, use of diagnostic tools and medical modalities. Can you explain what that is?

Well, I have someone here who probably could explain it better than myself. Can I? Well, that's okay. Can we bring in Patrice now? I have Patrice Bryan, who's one of my advisors. She's on the line. Yes, please. Yes.

Patrice, you have been unmuted. Please go ahead.

Hi. Can you guys hear me? Yes. So I am committed to being on the board of advisors for Lynette and Moran Alliance. I think one thing that everyone needs to be clear on is that Lynette is only operating a medical dispensary. There's no delivery, there's no adult use. So it's very different than what you've approved in the past. And in terms of parking, I actually lived above Lynette's dispensary. when it was at School Street. And there was absolutely no issue with parking. As Lynette has said, most of her patients walk, or they come with public transport, or they come with home health care aides who drive them and then take them away. So it is kind of perplexing to me why Lynette should have to have different parking regulations than all the other businesses on Bolinas Road. And I know that Lynette has mentioned Sorella's, but I'll actually call out a couple of others, like Nave's, Gestalt House. No one has these onerous restrictions. And if you could ask that last question, I would be more than happy to answer it.

I've been trying to take- Patrice, we already addressed the parking. The question that I had was the application, talks about training using diagnostic tools and medical modalities. Can you explain what that is?

Absolutely. So the difference between adult use cannabis and medical cannabis is adult use is basically you're over 21. you can buy it, right? Medical cannabis is for patients such as myself who are licensed. So the modalities are designed to treat pain. I was a college athlete. I have a lot of knee pain. I've had three knee surgeries. I actually use medical cannabis to treat my pain so that I'm not using opioids. Many other people do that as well. I'm not a doctor, but I can tell you that there are different modalities that doctors who prescribe cannabis and who prescribe other modalities focus on. And that's what Lynette is doing. So if you walk into Marin Alliance, and let's just say you're me, right? You're somebody who's been playing soccer since they were six, and you're now 55 years old, and you're bone on bone in your knees. Lynette will sit you down and actually talk to you about treatments that can help your pain and alleviate your inflammation and solve your problems. That's a medical modality. Does that answer your question?

It does. Thanks. Going back to Lynette. What is the inventory process? Who does the inventory process? And what I'm seeing in the packet are some inconsistencies. So the packet in one place says that inventories will be done every 14 days. So explaining who does that, how does that work. Somewhere else in the application, it talks about daily inventory. So can you address your inventory process?

My inventory master is a man named Paul Coleman, who's been with me for eight years. He's brilliant. And the state requires every 14 days to do a total inventory of every gram and every product in the place. So we do that. But daily, we also do a pre inventory so we can see how much that was sold to see if there's any drift, which there hasn't been. And so there is constant inventories with the state required full inventory is twice a month. But we do daily to keep our internal numbers correct.

Okay, thanks. What type of products will you have? You mentioned in the application that most of the products will come from small, local, organic farms. Yes. But can you talk about packaged products, the types of products you will have?

Well, everything under the California cannabis laws, everything has to be prepackaged from the joint or gram or... or an ounce or whatever, we don't just provide the smoke. We provide tinctures, we provide the edibles, we provide salves, we provide pills. We have RSO, which is Rick Simpson oil, which is a very, very concentrated oil that apparently reduces cancer tumors very well. We've had a lot of people survive cancer with the help of the RSO. And it's an essential tool against cancer. And it's also compatible with any Western medication. We're not substituting cannabis medical knowledge for Western medical knowledge and Eastern medical knowledge. It's an adjunct. And it's been very effective. We've saved a lot of lives. We also have the salves you put on your skin. Don't get high from putting something on your skin, but it can reduce the swelling and the pain of arthritis and of injuries. There's the salve that goes in for internal injuries. There's the salve that heals the skin. It's pretty amazing. There's a long list of these products. But we want to support the local organic farms, which have been having a tough time through this whole period. Everything is tested and prepackaged before it even gets to town. That's the law. We don't package anything. It's already packaged up, sealed, childproof when it comes to us. And I guess that's it.

Okay, thanks. You mentioned in the application that you recycle aluminum cans and cannabis vape cartridges. Yes. So my question is, I was under the impression that used vape cartridges are considered hazardous waste.

Yes, it has to go to a company. So we dropped it off with the company that handles it. Okay. Sometimes they pick it up, but it's not that much because it's a small business, you know.

Okay. Okay. And you've got security cameras inside. Can you tell me how long the videos are maintained?

The videos, by law, it has to be at least 90 days. Ours goes 120.

And then somewhere else in the application, when I looked at... the different input in the package said that there was a board with one member.

So does... We're still building the board because we don't have our permit.

So that's a different board with one member, or that's referencing your board of advisors. Are you talking about the holding company board or the board of advisors? I'm not sure because it wasn't real clear in the packet, so...

because all right yeah okay and as far as can you explain what your complaint process is going to be well it's that's as we always have if someone has a complaint we have a complaint form that's available in the waiting area also they can come up and talk to any of our staff members and they'll take notes if it's something urgent i if i'm not there i get called immediately I'm the one who usually solves the problem because that's what I'm pretty good at is solving problems. It's immediate response to complaints.

Okay. And you mentioned in the application that complaints are documented in a system. So can you explain the system? And my other question would be what you've talked about are folks coming in to the dispensary and making a complaint. So if there's somebody that doesn't want to come in to do that, is there a phone number to call? Yes.

There's an email you can contact, the Marin Alliance Club at Yahoo, or you can call the phone there at the club or call me directly on my private phone.

Okay. I think those are the only questions that I had for the applicant. If go ahead.

So I know we're just scoring you, but you know, somebody had asked about the Marin Alliance gas station and had that confused with the Marin.

It says Fairfax Alliance gas station. But then when they first installed that gas station, their printout said Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana on their gas receipts. Now, our receipts never said Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana because nobody wanted a receipt that said Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana. And so we went to the gas station and we called the supervisor and we called the company. And they said, eh, ha, ha, ha, sorry about that. It'll get fixed eventually. So the Fairfax Alliance is not the Marin Alliance. That's the gas station. Now they don't say Marin Alliance for medical marijuana on their printouts for the gas receipts, which is nice.

Okay, so you're saying that we see part of the application just going to say Marin Alliance. Okay.

Yeah. Craziest thing ever.

Any other questions for the applicant? Okay. Thanks.

Thank you.

Now I'm going to open it up to pump comments from the room and that'll be three minutes and then we'll go to zoom. Thanks.

Hi, Mark Bell, Fairfax. I just wanted to voice my support for Lynette and for the Marin Alliance. I don't have to deal with the minutiae that you do, but as far as the impact on the neighborhood, because I do live within 300 feet of it, it'll be a lot less impact than a lot of other things that are going on in town. I'm not concerned about it. As far as the daycare center, technically it's within 300 feet, but if you go down and take a look at where the daycare center is, it's a totally different world. they won't even know that there's a Marin medical storefront in town if that's all they're dealing with. Also, I'd like to say that, you know, the times that I have gone to a dispensary, the security is very, very strict. You're not just walking in there and going la-di-da. If you're not even close... to being what they would consider legally visiting the place, you're going to be escorted out. And I know this from being in Cotati and other places and also places I've gone to in Oregon. You know, security is taken very seriously. And obviously the track record of the Marin Medical Alliance at School Street Plaza proves how seriously they dealt with any issues like that as well. So like I said, I just want to come and give my support for this project. I see very little negative impact anywhere, and I think you should vote as well as you can. Again, I don't have to deal with the technical aspects like you do, but I'm in support of it. Thank you.

Thank you, Mark. Next.

Good evening. Todd Greenberg. I think if you come to know me, you'll know that I'm speaking on behalf of a lot of people in Fairfax trying to bring the fair back into Fairfax. And while there's concerns that are legitimate concerns and matters of debate about the Ms. Shaw's business, but there's those same matters of debate about other businesses that have recently been approved and waivers were granted and Ms. Shaw has been doing business in this town in closer proximity, as it was pointed out earlier, to kids than the current site would be. That being said, the concerns that people have are legitimate. despite those legitimate concerns, it's my experience having interacted with Ms. Shaw through various social groups and seeing some of her comments online that she's always been very concerned about kids to the extent that she's helped clean up what was a dangerous, drug-filled, meth-wafting homeless encampment. with people that were causing problems for kids. So I can speak to her character that I've observed and it appears to me to be a good one. She appears to be wanting to help people and she appears to be a good citizen in Fairfax. Not that I've known her for that long. Aside from that, the person who just said something in written form painting a picture, and there's a question of what was submitted in writing to the town, prompted me to go to the California Secretary of State business lookup. And Elshaw Holdings Company has certificate number 202-462-411-478. And it says standing Secretary of State, good. Standing Franchise Tax Board, good. Standing Agent, good. Standing VCFCF, which I don't know what it means, good. California Limited Liability 61 Bolinas Road. So you could make a further inquiry with the acronym that Commissioner Newton was naming earlier, which is CDTFA. That's the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, which I had occasion to write recently because the town of Fairfax clerk who was recently sued and lost It's the appointed elected clerk, Linda Kenton, and the five real parties in interest that wrote the rebuttal against Measure J. It was determined that they, town in that rebuttal argument or the authors of that rebuttal argument had erroneously stated that that the town would have a gap in tax collections that would commence in March, when, in fact, it wouldn't happen until April. Todd? It wouldn't happen until April.

Can you wrap it up? And that's like not applicable to.

Well, it is to point out that there are errors that are made even by town officials is the point. And it's been determined in court that an error was made. And I'm showing you right now that it appears that the person who wrote in has made an error, whether it was intentional or not. All right. Thanks.

So no more public comments from the room. We'll open it up to Zoom. Anyone on Zoom?

Yes, Patrice would like to speak again.

Okay, and Patrice would have three minutes.

Go ahead, Patrice. Thank you for letting me speak again, and now I'm just speaking as... a citizen of this world. So cannabis is a plant. You guys have already approved Lynette having a dispensary license and you were actually pioneers along with Lynette. She's the first licensed dispensary owner in the country. That's kind of a big deal. Fairfax is on the map for that. And I think that her being on Bolinas Road is actually a benefit for Bolinas Road. many of the businesses on Bolinas Road are walking businesses, and a lot of them are now shuttered post-pandemic. She's going to bring some street traffic. I mean, these people who are patients may not frequent the other businesses, but I think that you'll see the herd mentality, right? You see one person go somewhere and And you just walk down that street. It's the way it happens. And I just don't want you guys to not allow Lynette to continue to operate a business that she's already been operating in the town of Fairfax for 30 years. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else on Zoom?

I see no other hands online.

Okay. So hearing no other public comments, I'm going to close public comments and then bring it back for discussion. And if staff can explain how you want us to do this, do you want us just to do these individually and turn them in based on? All right.

If you could turn on your mic and say that into the transcript.

Yes. Filled it out. And I will come up and collect them and I will give them to the planning director who will total them and then average them and come up with a score.

But we're going to discuss it first, right, chair?

If you wish to discuss it, you can discuss it or it can be individual. It's an individual rating on all of these. So.

Well, I have thoughts I'd like to share with the planning commissioners before everybody gets around to putting their numbers down on the paper. Um, because we've gotten a lot of comments and, uh, You know, people have raised a number of concerns that I've been trying to... I mean, I've been thinking seriously about as we got ready for tonight. And we had quite a lot of time because we thought we were going to do this a couple months ago. But... On the parking issues, my thought is it would not be fair to score this application lower because of the lack of parking on Bolinas Avenue because... This is our main downtown. No business that entered into that shop would be able to provide the kind of parking that somebody might want. And that's the way it is. We have also sort of a contradictory complaint that it's not going to be open to the general public. So the applicant kind of... Either way, she loses if it's, you know, oh, there's too many people, oh, there's not enough people. You know, it seems like a catch-22 if we basically, you know, give real credence to the idea that it's closed to the general public and shouldn't be on Bolinas Avenue for that reason. Like, it's, like, going to be a ghost town or something. And in my mind... That's just not realistic. What we're talking about is a medical facility that would be open to people who have medical licenses. And the fact that other people would not be allowed in is precisely what people concerned about underage people who don't have medicinal needs getting recreational or this being sort of somehow not an issue about compassion. And I just want us all to keep that in mind when it comes to having a medical dispensary in downtown Fairfax. The fact that I agree with Mark Bell, that the fact that it's a certain distance from a daycare center, the first friends preschool is just totally irrelevant as far as I'm concerned because of the circuitous route that any preschooler would have to undertake to get from one to the other. It's absurd that that distance would be prohibitive in terms of our ranking. And then I feel similarly about the youth center distance, because again, this is downtown Fairfax. This is where everybody goes. And, you know, the fact that you've got kids going to events up at the pavilion would potentially, they would be impacted by something at the general store just seems again, really kind of extenuated. And I, I don't really see it. I also sort of resent the idea that this would be like opening an adult bookstore in downtown Fairfax or a gun shop, I think one of the commenters compared it to. Again, we're talking about a medical facility that's designed to provide a service a compassionate service to people in our town and anywhere in the world who come to our town to get their the medicine that they need and the advice and the services that they need. So maybe if this was downtown Ross, maybe if this was hoity-toity downtown San Anselmo, I'd be a little worried about it. But this is freaking Fairfax. And downtown Fairfax, I think, is the perfect space for this type of compassionate business.

Thank you.

Can I make a comment just through the chair just real briefly? This is Jeff, by the way. I'm over here. Yes, please. I think this is useful, and Mimi said a lot of things that are relevant to what I'm about to say here. But when we actually get down to the scoring, I would just say go to page five of the staff report, and Linda's kind of prepared that. helpful bullets under each one of the scoring criteria to help guide the discussion. So kind of like if you have, as you're going through your comments, you may want to kind of think ahead towards how you're going to score it and what, about what your opinion of this application kind of weighs into these bullets. Like for example, I mean, not to pick on parking, but two, if it's a big deal for parking, that's one of the bullets under there because it's the quality of the operating plan is demonstrated by, or if you don't think that's a big deal, then that wouldn't factor into your scoring. So anyway, so just at the end of the day, it just always all has to relate to the scoring. So that's- Yeah, thank you for that.

Now, if I may, because I have something that's important. I think we're skipping a step here. No, I'm going to be in so much trouble. You can discipline me. You have a button there. Sorry about that. But I think we're skipping a step. We can't score yet because we haven't established that we are going to agree with the exemption. So we should complete that discussion. And I think Commissioner Newton has started that, right? Because we need the exemption because staff has established that it's closer than 600 foot. That's number one. And then when the commissioners agree that that is something we look for exemptions to, the scoring is going to determine if we make it. Unless I understand this incorrectly.

Yeah, the town attorney and the mayor, they want to decide on the exemptions. That's kind of... So anyway, so they are asking the planning commission to just do the scoring and then let them make the decision on the waivers or the exemptions.

So to that point, and I started this item with the little introduction that the last two applications that came to the Planning Commission came to the Planning Commission as being in the correct zones to have a storefront. They were outside any buffers, whether it was a state buffer or a local buffer. So those weren't issues. We also had at that time a design review permit and a sign permit that we looked at. And that was part of what we made recommendations along with the scoring that was sent to the town council. Parking, they met the parking. Parking wasn't even, as a waiver, wasn't even, I'm not sure it's been looked at, but It wasn't something that in the ordinance in the initial code we were looking at for parking. So they met parking requirements. So we are here now, and to Commissioner Newton's comments, her comments were referring to the fact that We have a business permit application to score, and that's the only thing before us. We're not being asked for recommendations on changing the buffer or changing the zoning. We're not being asked for recommendations on any parking changes.

Yes, we are.

But we're asked to score about the parking.

We're asked to score about the parking, but we're not asked to look at... variances or changing the requirements in the code that are there that identify what the parking requirements are and again if for the other two applications that we had before us those weren't issues because they were within the zones and They were outside the buffers. They had the parking. We had the design review permit and the sign permit. So this is a different situation and we're being asked only to score the business permit application on its own and not think about those other issues because those aren't before us.

Okay, understood. Yet I think I still want to say two things. The... There are approximately three bars in the same distance to the youth center, which sort of gives you the character of downtown. I looked at the plan that's proposed. What I really like about it is there's this little waiting area in the front before you go through the security. So the street presence is, I think, well thought out how that works. So those are things that make me feel that it actually does fit in that location. Anyway, and it's unfortunate we can't make a recommendation. I just want to say it for the mic anyway. Thank you.

Can I just make a... Let me go to this side and see any other discussion points, comments on this side.

I do want to make a couple points. I think with regard to the parking and the requirement for it, it... It should be disregarded as far as I'm concerned with regard to this particular location in our town. As it's been noted, a number of different businesses will cause much more of a parking congestion problem than this, except, say, the delivery van. Is it a danger? to have a controlled substance walking down the street because there's not parking right in front. Um, that could be a safety issue, not, not because it's going to be spilled out onto the street, but maybe there is, you know, are there, it's going to be an armed armored vehicle. I doubt it. So what does that do to our neighborhood? I would just want to mention it and it's a little bit of a hyperbole, but it's a different situation than just a restaurant with a lot of patrons. So we should just consider that. And with regard to the kids, I have a lot of personal experience with, well, currently kids in the neighborhood. Previously, kids right next to the previous facility at the ballpark. And I think that my perception of the rule, it's interesting how you said that and how it was explained in the, in response to my question about kids coming in. I've always thought about that rule about patrons going out. And the, you know, this is where I want to get into admitted hyperbole. But I think the story is, you know, people stoned out of their head, coming out of the place, walking down the alley towards the daycare, right? That's the hyperbole that's not really true, but that's the story that people are imagining in their head.

But that's for like a consumption lounge, not a dispensary.

I can tell you from personal experience then that that's not what happens because there's more... pot smoke around the little league ball field than you could ever imagine in probably anywhere else in America. And from what I could tell, it's never done any harm, but I think that's the story. And I wanted to say that, that I, that's all how I've always envisioned it as far as being a danger is the other way around, not kids coming in. It's what happens when, you know, Reef for Madness happens on the street afterwards, right? So I just wanted to say that also as far as a perspective. But I do want to also say that my view of the park is a front yard to the pavilion. And kids that come out, a basketball game that comes out of that pavilion comes into the park. All those kids filter through the park. That park has a direct view of the storefront. I want to make sure that that's on record and that we all hear it and think about it. And I think that lends itself to the business model and the ability of the business to cooperate with the community and the other businesses on the street. Because I think that that has something to do with what we're assigned to partake in here. And it's, you know, it's a holistic understanding of the business in relationship to the community. And whether it's viable, whether it's good for the community, etc., I think we should be considering.

Thanks. And to your comment about the parking, you had the same thought that I did was deliveries. So the parking for this size of storefront would be four parking spaces. But again, I see one of those parking spaces would have been the parking space that the delivery vehicle that brings the product down, goes into to park to provide the product. So when I look at a storefront that has no parking, I wonder the question of where does a delivery van park or double park downtown to make a delivery? And is that a concern? So I did have the same thought as far as the parking on that.

Just a few thoughts. To my mind, when you look at the factors that go into the scoring consideration on business plan and the nature of the operations, the best evidence of compliance with this in the application we have is almost 30 years of successful operation by the same operator at another location in town. where there's been an actual track record of conformance with all of the factors that we have to consider. I mean, I haven't seen anyone, I haven't heard any testimony or seen any evidence that there's been a problem with any of this at the current location over 30 years. So if we had a new applicant, somebody new coming to town, who would be making representations about their intentions to operate, then I think we'd have to look really carefully at all the documentation and so on. But here, I mean, we've got 30 years of a successful track record. And on the parking... You know, I agree with some of the other comments that were made. I mean, this is a downtown urban location. You know, the other businesses don't have parking, dedicated parking. And, you know, people will... Customers will have to park at the parkade or on the street or what the other businesses, you know, customers have to do. On the delivery issue, I guess... that's a function of the nature of the product because the other businesses get deliveries of their products and whatever supplies and so on. So I guess it's a function of the product is what you're raising concern about. And maybe we should at some point ask Lynette to respond to how she plans to deal with the deliveries. And the other thing is you can't have – there's no use on site. So – People, I mean, I would be surprised if there's a big problem with a bunch of stoners hanging out in front of the storefront and people stumbling out. Like you say, I don't think that's been a problem at School Street. I mean, I've never seen it myself. And I've been around there a fair amount. So I don't know. I mean, that. It does seem a little bit over the top to be concerned about that. And I do agree that it seems like a use that really fits in with the character of downtown Fairfax. So we have the parking and... Oh, and then the distance... The original source of the concerns about an adult-use cannabis dispensary, a busy dispensary next to a middle school or something, those kinds of concerns at the beginning of all the regulations were understandable. But as has already been said, it's pretty attenuated to think that the first Friends preschool where it's located is going to have any relationship to this storefront. And same with the pavilion. I mean, I don't see how the operation of this storefront would in any material way affect the access or risk of kids in town. I just don't see it. So, I mean, to the extent that there's any markdown of scoring, it would be because of this particular site Inherent at this site is a problem with parking and that it's going to require waivers from the distance on preschools. So I don't know if it's fair to knock it down. You could maybe reduce because this is not the ideal site from a parking and waiver point of view. But other than that, I mean, I don't see any... factor on here that I would mark down based on a very long record of successful operation and an operation that's in conformance with all of these factors.

I just wondered if I could make one more statement, and I appreciate what everybody's saying. The In addition to the business qualifications and business plan relevance with respect to our community, there is a bullet in our scoring sheet that talks about innovative or boutique business models consistent with the Fairfax community. And I can't think of a single business that is more innovative and more consistent with our community. But under the quality of the operating plan as well, the last bullet there talks about additional operational procedures, demonstrating safety, commitment to community welfare and community responsiveness. And there, I think she scores the, the business applicant score as well, very high as well because of the longevity of her business and her, um, You know, I don't know. I just think that it fits within this community. I think she's respectful of the community. And so I think on that point as well, I wouldn't reduce the scoring based on any of these factors that we've talked about.

So if there's not any more... discussion are folks ready to score all right so we're just going to fill these out and hand them in yes No, we're done. Let us go ahead and score.

Can we just turn these in? Yeah.

Okay, the results are in. Drum roll, please. Yes, thank you. Business qualifications and business plan, 30 out of 35. Quality and operating plan, 26 out of 35. And public benefit, 27 out of 30 for a total of 83.

And then do they need to adopt the resolution? Yeah.

Yeah. And then so we'll add those scores into the resolution and then we would ask that you consider adopting the resolution.

Yeah. I'll move to adopt. Oh, where is it? What does it say? I have it here.

No, I have it.

Thank you. I will move to adopt resolution number 202609, a resolution of the Fairfax Planning Commission providing scoring on the commercial cannabis business permit application for Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, proposed to be located at 61 Bolinas Road.

I'll second.

Okay.

All right. Kelly?

Aye.

Cardoza?

Aye.

Jansen?

Aye.

Petrone?

Yes.

Newton?

Aye.

Chair Swift? Yes. Motion is unanimous.

Is there appeal of our ranking?

It's going to the council anyway.

I know. So nobody would be appealing our ranking. I think so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm sorry. Thank you for that. We're now on to item number three, discussion.

I could make a suggestion that we could, we handed out the application form for your review. I could make a suggestion that if you don't want to go through it this evening because it's late, you could take it home as homework. Or we could go through it now. It's up to you.

I just thought we turned in our homework.

Oh, yeah. I'm a tough teacher. That was math. I mean, if you want to go through it now, I'm perfectly prepared to go through and entertain comments. But if you would like to study it and have thoughts, or if you've already collected your thoughts, we can do it. Go ahead.

So, Chair, I did, as I promised last time, I did prepare something I'd like to share with the Commission. Just review observations from looking at it. We can postpone it, but that would be good to take home as well.

Okay. Well, why don't we just have a... preliminary discussion on it, and then we can have it, have it spread over two meetings that it might be more.

And I have not had a chance to review it. So I'd love to postpone that till next time. So that would be great.

Okay. And just to say a few things, just up, up the top. So there. The reason that it is so detailed is that we do have state requirements that kind of impinge upon us that if we don't give applicants everything that they are required to submit at the very beginning, then we can't ask for it. So that's one of the reasons why it's so long. But if there's ways to clarify or simplify, we're all ears.

And can I say something? I really feel like, so this is what happens. People come in and they're like, we don't understand what this means. I'm not an architect. I'm not a designer. If we had a set of like, really clear let just like generic plans that showed everything that we could hand out to people and say this is what this means this is what it looks like i think it would help a lot of people when they read what we're asking for they don't really know what we're looking for and so if anyone wants to volunteer their services to create a set of generic plans for like an unknown piece of property somewhere that we could use to hand out. I think that would really go a long way to helping us get complete applications and not going back and forth with everyone using electronic, they're using computers to do the plans. And I swear to God, they'll have stuff in there and it'll look good. They'll be missing one or two things. They'll put those in and other things that we need will go away. So it's like, if we could just have a picture, you know, we could hand out that, that I think would help us a lot.

I'm glad to help with that. And that's, Not atypical. That's a pretty typical way for jurisdictions to get what they want.

And so when I think about it, you know, because when I think about trying to find a perfect set of plans to cross out the address and, like, give it to people, they're never perfect because there's always something missing. You know what I mean? So if we had a perfect generic set, I think that would help applicants a lot. And I think it would help staff, too.

Sure, yeah, that's a thought. I know that often in codes they try to avoid that because the template's plan is neither perfect. So typically laws don't do that for that exact reason. But anyway, that's a whole different story. I did study some of this. So I looked at the other applications in towns around us to make a comparison. You know, in general, what we're asking is not so different as what other towns do. You know, if you look at the total volume, we have 20 pages, San Anselmo has 21 pages. San Rafael is only 13 pages. They're pretty concise, but you know, that's a thing. But in general, these are all the similar things. And if you look at what we are asking, there's nothing particularly onerous about it. But it is, and there are two observations there. I think it's very different for a commercial business or a developer for a multi-family property, to look at all this and discuss it with his architect versus somebody who wants to add one bedroom to their house. And I think that's where we have a problem. And that's the interface. That's how to represent it. So because for somebody who doesn't do this for a profession, you start reading, it's overwhelming. And so the interface we can change, and I'll have a few pointers to that. Then another thing that I noticed that some of the codes use, instead of being fully in words describing it, they use a matrix where you have the different kind of applications, and it's a matrix with little crosses. That's very concise. Typically, if an applicant goes there, they go look where they want to be, single family residence. That's a thought. Another thing that I noticed, and I'm at risk here again to get disciplined by our chair, almost all other municipalities require submittal by PDF only. Paper applications are no longer legal. In my profession, I don't see them anything either. There is, of course, a benefit to that because we have issues sometimes that the PDF doesn't match the plan. And, of course, dealing with PDFs is a lot simpler than a lot of paper. But anyway, that may be somewhere in the future. That could be a consideration. It's definitely where the world is moving to. I think for the rewriting, I think very early. So in our planning, in our submittal, you start on the third page, you get your typical normal things, address, all those phone numbers and all those things. That's pretty clear. then it immediately jumps into specific data, and that goes into the number of parking spaces, the height of the building, and then FAR calculation. So that is a sequence that I haven't seen anywhere else. Typically, and I would recommend that you go that direction, as I said early on, it's basically the same information, but you organize it differently. Typically, you have a general introduction that gives you name, address, and all the fun things. Then it quickly summarizes what you need to do. Plans are just basically one line. And then it refers to a different section, section two, where it becomes more – which describes – what the essence is of that, and then Section 3 has very specifics. So in our planning submittal, that's a little, it goes all over the place. So if you start reading at the beginning and you go through, you start somewhere with an AFR calculation, and then it goes back to lot coverage, and then it flips back to submittal requirements. So there's no logic. So I think that can confuse people. So if you take the same information and we rehash it, it might become much clearer. The second part to that, which I mentioned before, I think we should split it or make it clean if you are a single-family residential or multifamily business. And it is stated, of course, but I think it wants the other way around. It wants to be, if you're a single family homeowner, you only go to that stuff and you read only that stuff and you can skip the rest. And maybe we can figure out something about minor versus complete new construction, but I don't know how that works with the code. I did, regarding those PDFs and paper, there actually is a blatant conflict in what is stated in the submittal requirements, because it says the sheets shall be in one PDF, suited for printing by 11 by 17, and then down below it comes that it wants seven sets. And then there's a very odd entry about the scale that is required. So that's something that you might want to look at either way. Oh, if I point it out to you, that is on page four and at the very bottom, first bullet point, portable document format. So it requires a single PDF. And that must be optimized for printing on 11 by 17, which we don't do. So that is odd. And then if you go further down to the third bullet point.

So let me just explain. The 11 by 17 is because we do keep that in the permanent. Well, we're getting rid of paper files. But right now we keep the 11 by 17 in the paper file. And then we need the PDF because that's all we can load onto the town's website. Right.

Yeah. No, no, but it's confusing. There's like three things here.

Yeah, I want to ask Jeff a question. Do you think this is the kind of thing that should be done by, like worked on by a subcommittee and then they bring the final application to us? Because for the whole commission to sit here trying to...

Well, this is a summary. This is just really, really the only thing that I wanted to point it out. Looking at all this, I did not create a template or something. I think in general, I would suggest take a look at Sarah Phelps' application. It's concise in its way, and it has that organization. It starts at the top, and it becomes more detailed as you go. But I think just to close out my comments, I think in general, the thing that we should try to achieve is that you make that split. Somebody who just wants to add a bedroom needs to have sort of a small, good, understood submittal versus a very big project which needs all kinds of other things. And we could consider, do you need a certified survey if you add one bedroom to your house? I don't know the answer to that. I didn't go into any details. Anyway, thank you for listening.

So it's kind of similar. I think what you're saying with that is because we do have a simpler application process for ADUs, so we could maybe follow something like that for simple additions.

That would be, I think, helpful to address the concerns that we've heard from the public, and it would be helpful for staff because it is simpler, easier to enforce.

So being not in the business... And I'm looking at this as somebody that would come in and want to do something, right? My first question for you all is if I'm an owner or I'm an applicant, do I initially get a sit down meeting with somebody to discuss this and answer questions.

You can submit what we call preliminary plans that you can do on like graph paper showing what's on your property now and what you want to do and you pay $175 and a staff person will review it. write you a letter about what they see the issues are, what the permit process you're going to have to go through, and then we'll meet with you to discuss it. But we don't just meet with people because they're all over the map. You have to pin them down. We don't have the staff to spend like an hour with people when they just bought the property and they've got all kinds of pie-in-the-sky visions for what they want to do. So that's the process that we have set up right now. Very simple plans, you know, kind of showing you don't have to be an architect, showing your orientation of your house to the property lines. You know, you don't have to have perfect measurements. You just kind of show us what you want to do and then we'll check the code, process it and issue you a letter and then meet with you. But that's not.

And that to me. Could be overwhelming. Right? So let me finish. So is there any kind of, I know one of the concerns is on the application, you want to make sure everything's on there because it's got to be complete, right? You've mentioned that whatever is on here is what's going to go forward. It has to be a complete application.

which is why this is so all-encompassing.

But there's no ability for somebody to come in and say, I just bought a parcel. I'm thinking of like a Lima, right? So I just bought this parcel, and I'm thinking of building a house on there. Can you just kind of discuss with me the process in general, without me giving you something with a drawing on it and paying money?

Yeah. If people come to the front counter and they say, what am I going to, what permits am I going to need to build a new house? We will refer them to the code sections in the code that they can read online that will help, you know, let them know about setbacks and conditional use permits. Yeah. We'll tell them that. I thought you were trying to get into like, they already have all these visions for what their project is.

We, well, that doesn't mean they don't, but right. Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. Cause I think to your point, just seeing something like this. And again, it's capturing everything you need. But if I look at this, I don't have a clue as to what applies to me or doesn't apply to me when I look at a complete application like this. And it doesn't necessarily, like you said, have explanations or simpler to start the process with. OK. Yeah.

So, like, as Linda was suggesting, did we want to form a subcommittee? Do you want me just bring this back to a future meeting? I can start with some of the input that Robert came up with and use that as a starting point. We can look at San Rafael. Coming back in a couple months.

I think you're going to get further along with the subcommittee, but maybe we create a subcommittee when you come back and then run with that. Because if you've got recommendations based on what you see with Sam Raffel, based on what Robert has mentioned, I just think that a subcommittee... and I'll be blunt with our two architects, would be very helpful. Like, I'm not going to be good at helping with this process. I'm happy to because I'm a total control freak and I'm funny, but you guys are the pros and this is your business. So I think, you know...

I agree with that process and I agree with doing it at the next meeting because that gives the rest of us more time to look at this and kind of form... formulate maybe from a different perspective the customer end, right? And provide some input that way from, you know, what I see and questions that I would pose that may help you all kind of develop something that explains it better and puts it into a better context for the average Joe, right? So And also, I think today there was, were you going to have some kind of a PowerPoint? I saw that somewhere.

No, I abandoned that idea. I did say that.

Okay.

Yes.

All right. Good. So, yeah, I agree that we bring this back next month. And then. Well, you still want to do a subcommittee though, right? So if I bring it back next month.

I could put together a simple staff report that kind of summarizes what we discussed here today and the recommendation for a subcommittee. Right. I think we technically have three architects, don't we?

Three.

No, two. You're not an architect? You don't count yourself? You're a designer. Aren't you a designer? Okay.

That or a lawyer. Right. Right.

Okay. Okay.

There's a developer that works with architects.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. But that would be good, I think, for us non, for us lay people to look at this and provide some input and then the subcommittee runs with it.

Okay.

Can I recommend that we bring the minutes back next time?

We pushed one of them. Or could we do it last so that those of us that weren't here don't have to sit through the minutes?

If you viewed the meeting, you could provide input. there's no there's no proof that i viewed it just saying okay do you want to do minutes and then planning commissioner comments comment yeah through the chair i have a few comments on the minutes which one

uh both okay um just minor comments on the march uh meeting minutes on the third page i was absent for the march meeting but i am listed as seconding and voting yes on an item

Clever how we did that. I know.

You're not going to sneak that by me. And then for the April meeting on the first page, in the heading, my first name is misspelled. It only has one L. And that's all I have.

So I provided comments on the April ones. Does this take those into consideration? To you?

Corrections, was that to the March minutes or the April minutes? You both gave me, that was March?

I'm sorry. You're lucky if I remember what I did yesterday.

Cindy, I've been doing this for a long time. So when you say you sent me corrections, did you send them corrections before I copied this?

You need your mic.

Was it before the preparation of the packet? If you did, I missed that. Then I missed it because I thought you were sick and I didn't get it.

I did. I sent you for April and I didn't do March.

I missed April somehow. I looked for them. I kept looking for them. So April does not include your comments. If you would like to wait, I don't have a problem. Just don't wait longer than one month because I know I won't be here to correct them.

Okay. I don't have them in front of me.

Were there a lot of them?

Could I suggest we approve March and push April off until next month?

Yes. Let's do that.

i'll move to approve the march minutes with the corrections by commissioner petroni i'll second do you want me to say they're all call the roll okay kelly hi carzona cardona i can't read your name anywhere oh you can't yeah that's yeah you weren't here and he wasn't here thank you for reminding me jansen

Aye.

Petrone?

Yes.

Newton?

Yes.

Chair Swift? Yes.

Yes. And we're going to move the April minutes to next month. Okay. Planning Director reports?

I have nothing further to add.

No, you do. There's a very important announcement that nobody has said except maybe under their breath. I will make the announcement.

So as most of you are aware, there is a principal planner that works for Fairfax whose last meeting will be next month. So anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You started when you were eight? And it hasn't been 40 years yet. It's only been.

When I leave, it will be the end of my 40th year.

So anyway, so the conclusion of my report is that Jeff will be very sad when that happens because Linda's irreplaceable.

But anyway, can we bring cake? She said, yes, we can bring cake.

Any commissioner questions, comments? Go ahead.

I have one. I would like to propose something for consideration. So the way that we typically conduct the meetings, if we have public comments, we take the comments and then we discuss the items and then it comes back to the commission. And there's one exception, and that are the public comments that are not on the agenda items. So sometimes there's a lot of useful comments and useful concerns. they never get an answer unless somebody remembers it to weave it into something in the later discussions so what I would propose for consideration is that after we take public comments for non agenda items that we bring those comments to the Commission that we quickly discuss them because then we get feedback and I we can't do it I don't know if we can we cannot do it I will tell you why okay

because we need to notice the subjects of our deliberations. And if somebody comes up and talks about something that's not on the agenda, and we then talk about it, the public has had no notice that we're gonna sit here and deliberate about it. So that's why we don't respond to those non-agenda item public comments, and we don't talk about them. However, I would recommend instead that maybe as part of the agenda, we review any outstanding prior comments that may, and this would I think come in the director's report. So for example, in March, there was a public comment about the draft formula business ordinance. And I would like an update on where we are with the draft formula business ordinance. So I think that might be a better way to kind of weave in follow-up, but it would be on the director to have to kind of include it in his report.

Right. Well, I think I understand that. I think the solution would be good, right? We could do then a section prior public comments, and then we could bring it back. So I have two observations.

But you have to be very specific about which one.

I watch planning commission meetings in different towns in California, and some of them, they totally interact. It's quite amazing. They would immediately give it back because sometimes those are questions that people have. It doesn't mean it's legal. I don't know that, but I see that happening. So the way we are conducting it is that should probably be researched to what degree that's legal. The other thing is we do sometimes respond to it. I have multiple times noticed that any and all of us sometimes refer back to something that was brought up in the public comments, which seems, from a human standpoint, a good thing to do. They are here. They have a concern. So maybe then the request would be I would want everybody to consider that if we can do something with this, purpose being that the public gets some sort of feedback that their concerns are acknowledged.

I think it depends on the public comment itself. So sometimes somebody may come up during public comment and have maybe a question about a process, right? Right. So we're not going to address it there, but that doesn't mean that that gets noted. And at the next meeting, depending again on what the subject is, the planning director can maybe answer the question or give clarity to what was being asked here. And I think then the member of the public gets heard And there is a response. So it's not like you said, you know, and it happens sometimes at other meetings where it sort of just goes into this dead space and it's never brought back or addressed or answered. So I think that's appropriate if somebody has a question about a process, whatever, that it might be something that can be brought back with the planning director's report. And that's going to be depending on what the public comment is. But that, I think, is a good way to go to make the member of the public feel heard, that they're coming in as they should. If they had a question under our jurisdiction, that they're bringing it up. It shouldn't just go into this dead space. Thank you very much, but it might be something that would be appropriate for the planning director to come back and answer.

Yeah, I mean, I also think that we as commissioners, we have our own comment section. And so we can make specific remarks like you just did. And I'm about to, which is I'd like to hear next month about the status of the formula business ordinance. And I'd like to hear next month about the pedestrian bicycle and pedestrian master plan that you said we were going to be looking at in June or July. So it sounds like something that is on the agenda for the coming months. And I think with the formula business one, we're going to have to step it up over.

Any other commissioner comments, questions? OK. Seeing none, do we have a motion to?

Motion to adjourn.

Second? Second? I'll second. And the meeting concludes at 10 PM. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

You can start with me again. Okay.