Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

This is the meeting I was not on, but I did review the video. Yes.

I want to thank our consultants and Shanna and Maruha for your presentation. Thank you so much. My first question, you may have already said it, and it may be somewhere that I haven't seen and figured out yet, but who determines what the score is on, say, a facade or a frontage element? or the window, it says something here, the window types and sizes, who's making that decision if we don't have a design review committee?

But, okay, so you're saying, so it's kind of discretionary as far as if the architect says, you know, we have five frontage elements, here you go. Staff can either agree or not agree. Okay. Then from one of your last slides, I don't need to see it again unless the planning commissioner wants to see it. So most projects that meet the ODS won't actually be seen by us, correct?

If we got a project that was elevated, you know, I'm just thinking about like the Thompson apartments that were done, was elevated a couple months ago. Could the Planning Commission change the numbers if they did not agree with them on the scorecard?

Okay, thank you. And then can you explain that now I do need you to go back to a slide on 11, and I think it was 13 again too, but either one's fine. I don't understand on the slides that say points available zero. Can somebody explain that to me?

Okay. Okay, so that leaves me, okay, two more questions, sorry. Maybe three. um so by right um like the sb 335 and 330 those don't apply to mixed use right or do they with if they have affordable housing uh typically no they don't it's strictly for housing projects those laws okay so um it's not like the mixed use or the commercial only basically the residential is able to get like warrants and exemptions and waivers and concessions, correct?

OK, that's kind of where I was getting at. So if they qualify for density bonus and waivers and concessions, they don't really need to meet the objective design standards, correct?

Okay, and then I saw on slide 10 talking about there's no scorecard system as comply with standards and parking was one of those. Is there any way to do something that's not by right, not SB 330 or SB 35? Is there any way to do a design standard? I know that sounds oxymoron, but is there any way to do a parking standard to make them

Thank you. Those are all my questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Zucker. Let's see. On the comments, I don't know if you can bring this up, but there was on the comments, so there was the draft July, I don't know if it was July 11th, and then there were comments from the public. On page 11, one of those comments that talked about item number three, transitional setbacks abutting a single family zone property with interior, rear, or side property lines. Okay. You were talking about there's objective design standards and there are design standards. Maybe I'm not using the right word, but.

Okay, let's see. Okay, so there was a diagram, but the diagram doesn't really give you a sort of a wide component rise vertical versus setback horizontal, and is it from the property line and so forth. I just ran some different numbers just for argument's sake. If you do a 10, 10, 10 ratio, that's one. That's 45 degrees. For example, if you had a rise of 20 and a run or horizontal of 10, that's 2.0. So you have a difference between a 45 degree setback plane versus a 63.4% setback plane. Was there any consideration given for this transitional setback for using a setback plane as opposed to, you

Okay, I have several more questions related to this, but I'll give my fellow commissioners another chance.

Thank you. And thank you for Shanna and the JKA representatives for the presentation. I appreciate it. So I'm trying to get grounded here. And I have a question about the scorecard approach. Ami, you had mentioned it. You called it an interesting challenge for us. And John, in your presentation, you were more explicit Number one, saying or implying that parts of it are in fact subjective and not objective and that this was the first time that JKA had moved forward with a scorecard approach. So is this the first time JKA has done ODS? Oh, no.

Okay. You mentioned, John, that you looked at documents going back to the 1990s. And, Ami, you had mentioned that actually 80% of the the ODS is from existing residential mixed use overlay. So it sounds like part of it comes from documentation already in place, and then part of it, for instance, the scorecard, is kind of being invented from scratch. You alluded to other cities. Some cities do scorecards, others don't. So in addition to looking backward temporally in older documents, what comparisons did you do with other municipalities who have ODS in place that seem to be successful? Did you

It's diametrically opposed to what we're looking at here when city council is adamant we want to be eclectic. We're at complete opposite ends of the spectrum.

Thank you. Let me just move on quickly, ask a couple more quick questions. Can we go to slide 27, please? First of all, before I ask the question, with regard to the scorecard, who is actually doing the scoring when a project proceeds through the process?

So that leads into my question which is the bottom line on this slide. In my mind objective design standards are self-described if you either meet the design standards or you don't meet the design standards. So, Maruja, maybe this question is for you. Last line, Planning Commission would see projects not meeting ODS. Why would a project not meeting ODS even go through the process?

Okay, so I'm familiar with some of those projects you're alluding to, so that's a good and fair answer. Slide 28, please. City Council workshop being moved to October 6th. Thank you. Reading this agenda and boning up for this meeting, I was in dire fear that we didn't have enough time to. OK, good, good, good. And finally, let's go to the last slide in the presentation, which we didn't get to, slide 31. Or 30? Well, actually, that's a pretty good representation of slide 31. Slide 31.

It's the light reflectance value chart. And my comment was going to be, so what you're looking at is actually a light reflectance value of approximately 6.5.

So when you say that you set the threshold at 6.5, I was kind of shocked by that because that allows anything up to a charcoal color on the entire side of a building pretty much. So we don't need to talk about this now, but I have a concern about setting the light reflectance value at 6.5 if you're shooting for true light reflectance and lighter colors. So that's just a comment. We can talk more about that later. Thank you.

Thanks, Vice Chair. And again, thank you all for the presentation. Very helpful, actually. Really appreciate it. And Maruha as well, and staff. um i do have a lot of questions so bear with me i'm going to try to really stick to just questions of staff some clarifications and then get into other things as we do our deliberation um okay so i have more questions about the point system so does the applicant have to meet a total point score or do they have to meet a you know per section point score

So they can't meet a lot of points over here and then saying that we're not going to deal with that at all.

Okay, so I'm sorry. One thing I wanted to do before I jumped into that was we talked very briefly on that this came in two parts. One was talking about what Ventura's character was. And the only thing that I heard that came out of that whole conversation was eclectic. I mean, can staff talk a little bit more about what the Ventura character, what came out of that conversation so that we kind of have an idea of steering towards?

I'll go on with my questions. So backing up, I wanted to talk a little bit more about state law. I'm not myself clear on, and Commissioner Winninger asked some really good questions about this, but I'm not completely clear how this works. the if they come in and they're and they're applying state law based on their um their housing then they i mean they're you'll have to remind me there's a number of they get a number of concessions and waivers and some of them are unlimited and so where and but but then it says that they still have to meet ods i mean that makes no sense to me i mean it seems

Interesting. Okay, do we have any precedents on this in other cities where a developer has come in and are refusing to meet ODSs and the state is backing the city on that matter?

Well, OK, and I don't want to get into the deliberation yet. I want, definitely, opinion of the other commissioners on this subject. But I would say that it would be interesting to me to know how city council feels about this. Are they going to be willing to stand up for these ODSs? So that can be a point of discussion. Let's see, what else? Oh, sorry. So I wanted to go back to the, really appreciate the plant palette and that whole discussion. That was really interesting to me and I, you know, Really appreciative of that. I think that's really important. Are we okay with the 2013 USGS establi

I'm impressed that you were prepared to answer that question, so kudos on that. Thank you. So with the 30% designer's discretion, and I can't remember if you mentioned this, so I apologize, but does that allow invasive species in that 30%?

Let's see. Is there any point where an ODS would become a development standard?

I would like to hear it. I don't know how the rest of it.

Sure, absolutely. I'm almost done actually. Okay, my last question actually is back on the LRV discussion. I think you mentioned neon green. So how does the LRV avoid us having to figure out how to deal with a developer that comes in and wants to paint a building neon green?

Well, and this is an extreme example, but, you know, these are the situations that we have to consider. A developer comes in and they have a building color that no one likes, but they're saying, hey, I'm doing, I'm applying state law, so I'm going to paint the building whatever color I want. And so I think that is what we are struggling with and having to deal with. I mean, yeah, I don't think a developer is going to come in and say I want to paint the building neon green but they could come in with some really bright pink which might look really good in the caribbean but not so much in ventur

Okay. So I saw several questions related to what I started out asking about. Let's see, there was questions from Robert Mather, Bob Guthrie. So I'll just kind of ask a series of questions that kind of incorporate their questions in the survey. So we talked about transitional setback abutting a single family zone property with interior rear side property line. So we talked about casting shade and what would be the proper proportions and so forth. I wanted to dig a little deeper. So the first question, and I think I already know the answer, and I think it's already been broached, but can this OD

Mm. Can I ask a follow-up question real fast? So a project such as the SB 330 project that we did at the corner of Victoria and Olivas Park was an SB 330 project. They could've just come, and they came to Planning Commission. They could've just said, we're waiving, we don't wanna do ODS, we're going straight to the Planning Commission because we have a buy right, 100% affordable project, and we're just gonna go to Planning Commission. And we're gonna get, we're gonna do the SB 330 approvals.

But they would avoid all the ODS altogether because they're SB 330.

But, okay, so they'd have to actually get a concession for that?

Okay. I think I, I'm hoping we all understand that now.

Oh, go ahead. Okay. I have two more questions on this same topic, and then I have other questions. I'll wait for another round or another time. But I just want to drill down on this just slightly more. Okay. Could there be an ODS standard regarding transitional setbacks that is written or worded in such a way that it would be acceptable under density bonus law or not conflict with it?

Okay. Let's see. Then I'll go to my last question on this topic. It was comment number 40 on page 17 of that July 17th draft. Citizen wrote, there were no sections written for ODS regarding building mass and scale. I might be misinterpreting this, but it says no section for building mass and scale, including pedestrian scale. Just wanted to see could pedestrian scale and I don't know if that includes sidewalk width sidewalk widths in relationship to heights of buildings and Whether that's a development standard or as could that be an objective design standard I?

Will we be able to ask some of the speakers questions?

Thank you Chair, Vice Chair, Acting Chair. I just have a couple questions. Mr. Jordan, I've known Mr. Jordan for a long time. He is somebody that's very well versed in Ventura landscape architecture design. Have you testified before or gone to some workshops before and have you given your suggested plant list and everything to the landscape architect team here?

Would you be willing maybe to submit in writing some of your, I believe, Eric's suggestions about the Mello and the fire standards, which is huge. I'm sure the... Our consultant knows about those too. But I think it would be helpful to have a lot of that technical expertise and technical plant lists and those types of things that are tangible and technical. in a letter form or whatever for a suggestion.

OK, thank you, Paul. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. Also, I was going to ask the consultant staff and our staff, was the neighborhood doing the ODS by neighborhoods, because we are very much neighborhood centric in Ventura, was that ever considered?

Okay, thank you. And then one more comment. I believe it's Mark that had a question for staff about the difference between the ministerial and the administrative. I can't remember exactly what the question was, but could he get that answered? Correct.

I think 31 was the dark one, the dark web.

Thank you. I kind of wanted to know the answer myself, so thank you for that. And I'm done.

Thank you. Mr. Jordan, I have a quick question for you. We'll only take a second, probably a yes or no answer. So you submitted a letter to the Assistant Community Development Director on this subject. And within that, you proposed a paragraph that you would like to see in the city landscape standards. Yes, I did. OK. I'm making inference from the prior conversation here that you would still like to see that.

Okay, thank you, thank you. So now Gary, I'll put the spotlight on you. And I think again, this is just kind of a follow up to the conversation that was just held. And so Mr. Jordan's proposed wording in our landscape standards, which you may or may not have already seen, goes like this. Let me just read it quickly. The approved tree and plant palette is intended to serve as a guidance document identifying preferred species for use within the city of Ventura. Alternative plant species may be approved when proposed by a licensed landscape architect and demonstrated to be appropriate for the sit

Okay, great, thank you. So one more question about the tree and plant palette. And Eric Berg brought up a point which I noted too in my review of this, and I'd like your comment on this, and that is, I'm a layman, but what I noticed was the eucalyptus trees are on the invasive tree or invasive plant list, which means they're totally off the table. So is there some conceivable way to reconcile or to start a talk about reconciling the monarch butterfly, habitats with our inability to ever plant more eucalyptus trees? Or is this a place where an exception can be made? Or do we not want to go down

Okay, good, thank you. Eric, please, if that's okay.

Thank you. I do have some other questions and comments, but I'll later. Save them for later.

Thank you. I wanted to ask Mark Sirota to come up with some questions. Thank you, Mr. Sirota. Let's see. I just want to say quickly what I think I heard you say. You said ODS is one way to retain some local control. Projects should reflect what the city wants to see, and that implies in given areas of the city. ODS, you also said ODS is important even in the context of density bonus law. The thing I did want to zero in on, though, is you talked about ODS categories. You said right now we're being presented with a system, a scorecard that's one size fits all. That's your comment. You mentioned

Okay, all right, thank you. I wanted to ask Bob Guthrie some questions. Bob Guthrie, can you come forward, please, to the mic? Hi, Mr. Guthrie, thank you for coming. I'll just say real quickly, you mentioned scorecard system could not be waived per the state. Housing and Community Development Department. Density bonus, you mentioned half of the standards could be waived. I'm sure that was a generality. You said we need to construct a scorecard to possibly add additional elements via amenities or some other point system that allows identified things that could be tradeoffs. If you give up this,

OK, thank you. I did want to ask staff. Maruja and Mr. De La Vega, how would the state law view looking at constructing an ODS that would take some of these ideas and is that something that could be helpful or is that something that would be prohibited by state law?

Thank you. As a follow on to Mr. Guthrie's comments about the scorecard and implementation of the point system, I'd like to ask the JKA team if you have any initial gut reactions Two, the proposal of weighing the required elements very heavily instead of setting them at zero. And for the reasons I think well articulated, the reasons behind perhaps making that change. Your reactions right now?

Good, that's good to hear. In my mind, I'm envisioning perhaps a meeting between your team and Mr. Guthrie to flesh things out, if that is workable. I don't have any more questions. When the time comes, I'll have some recommendations as feedback.

I appreciate that. I do want to remind everybody, too, it is kind of a workshop. I mean, I know we're on the dais here, but it is a workshop. We're still working this through. So I don't think this is a hard and fast, you know, this, this, this, or what we, you know, want or not want. I did want to say that I always think it's funny with objective design standards because they're kind of subjective and so it's kind of ironic. But with my developer's hat or my planner hat, I really like, again, should we retain the scorecard system? I really like that system because I've actually ran into this

Thank you. The staff recommendation on this project is to provide feedback on the draft ODS. So the comments that follow are gonna be my feedback. On one of the very early slides we were presented tonight, It listed that 113 total comments have been received to date and 14 public comment letters as of August 7th. What has been very, very effective in previous endeavors I've been involved with, such as the General Plan Advisory Committee and review of extensive environmental impact reports, is when the time is taken to actually take every single one of those comments and address them specifical

Thank you, Vice Chair. I apologize, I'm gonna actually start mine with a couple questions I didn't wanna ask them during the public comment period, so I have a couple more questions. I did want the contractor to respond to Mark's question regarding the smiley faces and how that informed, if you could speak to that really quick, how that informed your decisions.

Right. That was going to be my next question, actually.

OK, thank you. I want to shift to the landscape architecture and the planting plan. So there were a lot of different ideas thrown out how to make it better. I think one that stands out as a recommendation to the city as you guys move forward is definitely expand that the allowed list. And maybe is it possible to add a non-native list that works with the environment here that could be utilized but then would be acceptable and that we can trust is still beneficial to the community and we're not gonna get into any unforeseen consequences, right? Because that's what we're trying to avoid. So that

That's really helpful, thank you. So my comments around that are, I would hesitate to reduce or change the 70-30. I agree with those statements, but maybe the city's goal does need to be redefined. But I think what's being unsaid, and I could be wrong, so I apologize, but I think what's being unsaid is that if we don't protect that then then while while we clearly have really good landscape architects in the room right now and and do care about their work and are going to make good decisions that doesn't mean all of them are and we have developers who are cutting corners and trying to save cos

OK, so it doesn't it doesn't speak to if you have a scoring system, this is how you handle it. No. With state law. OK, so we're is are we assuming like what? What are you basing the fact that they could come in and use waivers to to like what?

OK, that's really helpful. I guess my recommendation would be that we I think the city probably needs to figure out how we're going to handle it. Like, you know, let's have those discussions up front. Let's ask city council how they're going to stand by these these standards. And but but, you know, like How are we going to deal with that if they request a concession on the points? What does that look like? And I think having that before we approve all of those would really help definitely me and the public feel a little more confident. What I'm hearing from the public is the standards are... W

agreed but but what we are hearing as a commission on every project when we don't like something is the city's not going to be willing because the onus is on them which we understand so where is that line or it's it's still going to be on the city right to to fight and so is the city council going to be willing you know you know can we provide an example where they would be willing to be like no we're going to stand up to this or do they or do they feel comfortable enough with that just those kinds of discussions

can i can i sure since we're kind of um the way i see it um is i see a developer coming in and saying they want to get they want a waiver or concession for the traditional setback or the shop front design or the building breaks or the building wall link and since they have to use that waiver or concession they're going to have to meet that the total of six because they're not going to be able to use their waivers and concessions on these other things because they've already used them on the building breaks and the traditional stuff back and all that so i see this as a kind of almost better tha

Well, that's the thing. I mean, so there is an opportunity for a developer to come in and say, Nope, I'm not doing it. And that's just what I'm getting at. I just I just want the city to have these conversations and so that the public and the commission can understand, you know, where that line is, you know, because And I'm definitely not saying that these standards are not worthwhile. I'm 100% for them. I'm so happy they finally made it to us. And I think the processes have been great. But I just think these are hard conversations that we need to have. I think my last comment, so thank you fo

All right, this is gonna be a little scatter shot. So I'll just kind of piece different notes I have. 380 foot building length. It's just on the face of it seems way too big, so I would shoot for something more like 150, 160 feet. That's just, I know that's not in context, but that was one of the things that was in there. Okay, let's see. I would definitely reiterate what Commissioner Lagerquist said in her comment just before her final comment. I strongly agree with that. Let's retain as much local control as we can and fight for that. But still, we want to build housing. That's definitely th

Sorry about that. Just one more thing. A couple of things. I do want to say I do echo what Commissioner Zucker echoed Commissioner Abbey's suggestion that a neighborhood character ODS scaling scale whatever these are called, the scaling system, I think would be really great to have a neighborhood scale. And again, it's gonna be subjective. It's not gonna be really objective, but I think with the developer and the staff working through it, I think there could be a point system there. And then Maria went through the mission statement really fast, but I do remember when we were talking about, we

For me, 6.5 is way too low. too many dark, dark colors. I'm on the light side of the spectrum.

If we want a beachy, coastal look, 6.5 in my humble opinion is way too low.

Okay, so that is support for reflective values rather than a color palette. Correct.

But that doesn't broaden it. That narrows it.

I'm fine with whatever the commission wants to do.

So if we were to add that statement, then we would have to define coastal.

Well, are we still, I mean, I'm confused now. Are we still talking about the mission statement?

But wouldn't that be part of the conversation that we're saving for last? Ultimately, so so we can just tailor that for right now. Okay.

Yeah, I'm a little confused on that. So looking at this, It makes sense to me that they're zero. So if someone could explain to me why we would want to make them max scoring.

So my comment was specific to all. I mean, there's more than one ODS in there that could be related to massing. So I just want to make sure all of the massing is scored. And again, the zero versus a high score, I'm still a little confused because I think if we change the zero, then of course we're going to have to up the overall score that's going to be required for that section, right? we're looking into it for sure yeah okay so that is so regardless that's the intent is explore how massing is scored in general within the ods right and then then the follow-on comment is just to make sure that

Thanks. This is an honest question. Please don't take offense to this question. When the meetings originated, when we started the meetings, when the city started the meetings with the public, were the ODSs presented as, was it made clear to the public that these were to actually make the approval process easier.

And then, so the ODSs that are before us, we know that they don't conflict with all those other documents, Because all those documents still stand, right? They're still in, they still have to meet the requirements, but this is a way to do that much more quickly, knowing that these ODSs do not conflict with any of the plans.

I'll just weigh in with my preference. To me, the advantages of citywide ODS are greater than any advantages of neighborhood by neighborhood ODS.

Okay, I hope this is, not to belabor this, but every single project we've ever gotten, or since I've sat here, either the community or even the planning staff, in all due respect, has told us about community character. And Commissioner Zucker is right, you put a Victorian across the street from my suburban home and it's going to be out of character and my neighbors are gonna come out, but they'll probably like it actually. But so I don't know if we need a point per se, but maybe a one point, like an F. But maybe we could talk about it in the ODS that we encourage, um you know a neighbor you kn

Thank you. I just want to add, I mean, I feel like the intent of doing this process of making the objective design standards is to make the process easier. But the intent of the ODSs themselves are to preserve the city. And I just want us to remember that. And so I really like this conversation and agree with the approach. But we just want to remember that the whole point of having these objective design standards is to protect the city, the city's appearance and the communities and things like that.

Can I express a thought? So if we were going to go to neighborhood ODS, that would mean we would not only have to define the city's different neighborhoods, we would have to, somebody would have to define the characters of each of those neighborhoods. My own opinion, I would feel offended at somebody else defining the character of my neighborhood. That's my initial gut feeling.

Yeah, I mean, I think those definitely would require public comment as well.

I just want to thank everybody for coming and staying all night. I'm just really, it's really nice to see everybody so committed to the city and also to staff. All your work is, and the consultants, but all your work is not missed. I know you're going to have to show up tomorrow at 8 o'clock in the morning, so thank you.