Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Welcome to the City of Goleta Planning Commission meeting for August 10th. Please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Could we get a roll call of the Planning Commission, please?

Here. Next is the public forum. This is the time the public shall have the opportunity to comment on any non-agendized item relevant to the jurisdiction of the city. Do we have any public comments for the public forum?

Thank you very much. We now go to amendments or adjustments to the agenda. Do we have any amendments or adjustments?

We'll go to item A1 of the agenda. Would you please read it into the record?

Comments. Okay. Any public comments for this, please?

Thank you. Can we get a motion to approve the minutes, please?

Okay, can we get a roll call vote, please?

Yes. Now we go to item B1, the public hearing. Would you please read that into the record?

Okay, thank you. This is a continued hearing from June 22nd to 26th on the Anthem Church case, which involves the review of whether Anthem Chapel should be granted city permits to build a chapel and other improvements at 6596 Covington Way. Do we have a staff presentation? Miller? Oh, yes. Excuse me. Commissioner Pennington, do you have anything you'd like to say, please?

Yeah, yeah. I am recusing myself from the public hearing on Anthem Church tonight out of the abundance of caution and to avoid potential appearance of bias in the decision. I will not participate in this item tonight. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Pennington. We'll give them a minute to step away. OK. Do we have any ex parte communications on this matter to report? Seeing none, we will now go to the staff presentation. Thank you.

Thank you. We're going to wait for questions for the staff until after the applicant does their presentation. So you will have a total of 15 minutes to give a presentation and rebut or clarify anything after the public comment. Please reserve time for the latter if you intend to respond to the public comment. The Planning Commission may have questions for you, but your time answering the questions does not count towards your 15 minutes. So go ahead.

Thank you. So you did use your entire 15 minutes just to let you know. Can I ask for another five? OK, we're going to go to commissioner questions now for either the staff and or the applicant. Do we want to start with Commissioner Fullerton? Do you have any questions for either one?

No, I don't have any questions, actually.

A couple of quick questions. There was some conversation around the ability to have a left turn lane going into the property. Was that considered as an option for this project?

Can I ask the applicant if you considered adding a left turn lane and if there were reasons why you chose not to do that?

OK. Thank you. With, I guess, another sort of question towards staff, there was some public comment letters that did some comparisons with other local projects. And some of the ones that they noted as potential mitigation measures with the Islamic Center, there was a requirement that if they had any events that would trigger more parking requirements than they currently are able to accommodate on site, that there's an overflow parking strategy. Has staff considered any type of mitigation measure that if with special events or some of the weddings and funerals and other types of events that wou

Council could tell me if I'm going too far with this one, so let me know. But with the Islamic Center, we had some of those requirements. Was that because that project had less parking or was under-parked in some way on site? I wasn't here when we voted on that one.

had a lot of you know if they had events that exceeded the number of parking spaces that they would seek out other locations okay thank you that's really helpful um and then uh similarly one of the things that i know the applicant put forward was the ability to do check-in after a year which i thought was um really a good opportunity for the community to give some feedback um but i know with the islamic center project they also had a a check-in after one year and also after two years and then also that those check-ins would be at a notice public hearing rather than only with the planning direc

Hi. Thank you. First, I want to say I was not at the last meeting, but I did watch the meeting recording and read all of the materials and public comment. But I do have a question. I can't recall if it was answered at the last meeting. You mentioned about over 100 kids in daycare and preschool. How many employees does that require?

And in other... It seems like the... That building is a lot larger than the actual assembly area? I mean, what is that space going to be used for? How many other people are going to be working in there? 30 total, including all teachers and staff?

Just one last question. So are the same amount of students or kids anticipated to be there from Sunday school as well? Like on the weekends?

No more questions? OK. Commissioner Sirotkin.

I'm wondering if staff could pull up. I think it's the first packet, and it's page 29. It has a transportation assessment that was done, and it shows some of the left-hand turns versus right-hand turn estimates. Is it possible to bring that up?

Might be a little. Okay. Maybe that's more complicated. What I am seeing, and maybe because staff can verify, so like on page 29 there, I'm looking at the assessment that was done to try to estimate the traffic. And it looks like left-hand turns were estimated. And so for like the Northern driveway, it's an estimated of 19 left-hand turns in the Southern driveway of seven left-hand turns. And so it is looking at a higher right-hand turn. So on the southern driveway, it's 48 right-hand turns. The northern driveway is 32 right-hand turns. But it looks like there was some planning, some of the co

I have a question about the monitoring. And I would address this to the planning director, actually, since your name was mentioned so many times. Is that normal procedure, process to have monitoring like that that reports to you and that you need to read reports on certain developments, any development in the city of Goleta. Are you responsible for reading those reports and Doing something about it? Is that part of your jurisdiction under your purview with your particular position with the city?

Okay, that makes sense. But what about for traffic monitoring, parking monitoring? Have you ever had to deal with something like that?

OK. And then it would be up to who then to resolve the matter, to fix whatever the issues that come up, who's responsible for actually fixing it so that it doesn't continue? And what are the repercussions if it's not fixed? The building, the construction's already there. The parking lot's already there. The business or the church is already operating. I guess it's just so many what ifs. I'm just wondering, is this agreement, so to speak, written out in such lengthy terms that all of these considerations can be dealt with. At a later time, when you get these yearly reports, monthly reports, bia

Okay. You're done, Commissioner Sirotkins? Okay. I think we'll go to public comment. So do we have how many public, how many slips do we have, in-person slips do we have?

Thank you. So we would ask for applicant rebuttal, but you ran out of time. So I just wanted to tell you that. So now we will go to the commissioners. Additional questions?

Comments? No, we're just doing questions right now. Yes. No, no.

OK, and I don't have any more questions. So we will now close the public comment portion of the hearing. We will now go into deliberations. So now we can make our comments. If you want to start, Commissioner Fullerton. OK.

I have a lot of comments. And please excuse a lot of them are actually very similar to what we've heard in the public comment tonight. But I do want to voice. um these so overall i just believe this project is not compatible with the neighborhood there's not enough parking and i do believe the accounts that people have done at the current location where it's clear there's a lot more than 100 cars and the applicant one of the applicants admitted he said in his own words that this is not the best option that there would you would prefer another option but you looked and you couldn't find another

I do find that this project is consistent with the transportation assessment guidelines that we've given to the project and to the parking requirements that we've given to the project. In reviewing this, I have found some places that I'd like to consider changing our zoning ordinance for future projects. But in terms of this, I think it's important that we can And be true to what we already said. I think, you know, Commissioner Srotkin asked a couple of times, who set that? And I said, I did. Like, we did. We set that here on Planning Commission. We wrote that zoning ordinance. And we might no

I just want to say I appreciate the applicant coming forth with some concessions and some ideas, some creative ideas on how to answer some of the concerns that both the planning commissioners had, that the public has with the traffic and being able to call somebody when something goes awire. I think that that's very much appreciated, certainly by me. However, And given all that, it still just doesn't convince me that this is the right place for this project. It's just for all the reasons that I spoke about in the first meeting, which I don't want to have to repeat, they're all there and they'r

I will make a motion for. first one. So after considering the evidence presented during the public hearing, adopt Planning Commission Resolution Number 26- entitled A Resolution of the Planning Commission of the City of Goleta, California. Denying the proposed project for Anthem Chapel and adopting the notice of exemption for the development located on lot two of parcel map 32072 at 6595 Covington Way. APN 077-160022, case numbers 24-0005-COP, 24-0009-DP, an applicable portion of 24-0030-DRB. So do this one separately.

So do we have a second? I'll second. OK. Can we do a roll call vote, please?

Oh, no, I didn't close the public hearing. I closed the public comment. You're right. I would like to close the public hearing. Thank you. Okay. Can we now go make a... Can I ask for clarification on number two?

Yes. It looks like number one was to deny the project. Number two was to approve the project. Do we need to vote on two if we already denied the project in one? Or am I missing what the second resolution is?

Thank you. That helps me get clarity. I appreciate it.

Okay. Do we have a motion for item two, for resolution number two?

OK, thank you. Do we have a second? I'll second. OK. Roll call vote, please.

OK, thank you. We'll go to planning director comments, please.

OK. All right. Let me give Commissioner Penniman a chance to come back to the dais. Okay, sure. And we'd like to open it up to planning commissioner comments. Does anyone have a comment for this evening? Okay, Commissioner Peterman.

Thank you, Chair. I might find my notes here, but given the public comment that we've received, I'd like to suggest that the City Council... I'd like to suggest that the City Council consider directing staff to explore a sensitive business location ordinance. Goleta already has objective separation standards for certain land uses such as cannabis retailers. It may be worthwhile to evaluate whether similar content neutral location standards could be adopted more broadly to certain categories of land uses with unique compatibility considerations based on objective planning criteria. The goal wou

I would just add that I would also be interested in that policy discussion. And so as we're giving feedback to city council, I'd like to say that I would also have an interest in that discussion.

Count me in. Anybody else? Yes. Me too. Yes.

Okay. Okay. And I don't know what there is to do about the current situation that the public is, you know, has been bringing up. But, yeah, I don't know if there's any recommendations or anything that can be done at this time for that. But... Not something we can discuss tonight.

Yes. Thank you. OK. Can we get a motion for adjournment? I motion to adjourn.