Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Oh, test.

I'll go.

All right, well, good evening. It is 6 p.m. sharp. I'm going to call to order our regular meeting of the Murrieta Planning Commission. And then we'll start off, Madam Secretary, with a roll call. If you could please do a roll call for determination of a quorum.

Thank you, Chair. Chair Vrooman.

Here.

Vice Chair Voychek. Commissioner LaPaglia.

Here.

Commissioner Beeman. Rose. Here. Commissioner DeSena.

Present.

Let the record reflect all commissioners are present with the excused absence of Vice Chair Wojciech.

All right, which moves us on to the Pledge of Allegiance as we celebrated our 250th anniversary as a country here a few days ago. Please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Right hand over your heart. Ready, begin. I pledge allegiance.

Okay, moves us on to the approval of the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda, Madam Secretary?

Seeing none.

Okay, I'm looking for a motion and a second to approve tonight's agenda. We'll do that electronically.

Yeah, I'm having a technical difficulty.

You want to do it by roll call? I'll take a... A motion and a second.

I'll make the motion to approve tonight's agenda.

I'll second it.

Okay, we've got a first and a second. Go ahead and register our votes if the...

It's down completely.

Okay, well, we got... All right. We got the motion to adopt showed up electronically. Here we go.

Motion carries unanimously, 4-0.

Okay, very good. Next goes to public comments. At this time, we'll take public comments. Any person may address the Planning Commission on any subject pertaining to city business which does not relate to any item listed on the agenda or the consent calendar. Normally, no action may be considered or taken by the Planning Commission on any matter not listed on the agenda. Speakers are limited to three minutes. Madam Secretary, do we have any non-agenda public comments tonight?

Seeing none.

Okay, thank you. Then we're moving on to the approval of minutes. And tonight we have the minutes of approval, actually past three meetings, April 22nd, May 13th, and May 27th, 2026 regular meetings. So with that, are there any members of the public requesting to speak on the approval of the minutes?

There are none.

Okay, and then looking for a motion, we can do a motion for each one individually or with all three meetings if everyone is comfortable doing that. And if you've reviewed them, then I'll go ahead and look for a motion and a second to approve all three in one vote.

I'll make a motion.

I'll second. I'll second. I'll second.

There we go. I'll wait for it to show up electronically.

Motion passes unanimously, 4-0.

Okay, thank you for that. Let's move on to a business item. We got a minor resolution to determine that a vacation of a portion of Washington Avenue is consistent with the general plan. Mr. Hitch, welcome this evening, and look forward to hearing what you have to share with us.

Good evening, Chair Ruhman and planning commissioners. Don't appear here too often, but tonight I have an item here that needs some attention from this commission. So again, my name is Jeff Hitch, the city engineer here with Marietta. Tonight we have Downtown Marketplace, and it's a right-of-way vacation. The Downtown Marketplace project is the project on the corner of Calmea and Washington Avenue. That project's actually been under construction for some period of time. You've probably seen the building that's being erected there steel structure, actually. And it's well underway. The project was approved as development plan 2018-1741 on February 4th, 2019. It's a 51,000 plus square foot building, a mixture of retail office and restaurant space. It's on a 1.66 acre parcel, again, on the southeast corner of Washington and Calmea. There is a condition of approval that requires the processing of dedication and vacation of rights-of-way as it becomes necessary for the project. And this project requires a portion of the Washington slash Kalmia, I'm going to say, right away to be vacated as part of the project. And we're going to kind of walk you through that briefly. This gives you the overall site plan with Washington Avenue over there on the left side. Cal me running across the top the building itself is indicated their proposed for story retail building. Along the face of it are all on the Washington avenue side, obviously the parking lot is on the kind of on the back side. This is an exhibit of the excerpt that comes out of the downtown specific plan that shows the right of way of 80 feet, which is what's required for Washington Avenue between Cal me and ivy street. So it's a 80 foot right away or 40 foot half with. Notice it has the angle and parking that we that we have in the downtown section. So this is now kind of a revised excerpt from that same overall site plan. You can see the project building there. The different colored lines you can disregard. Those are utilities that needed to be relocated as part of the exhibit. What is pertinent here is that hatched in area that you see there. That is the excess right of way that we have. We currently have a total of 55 feet of right of way along Washington Avenue. The original concept for Washington Avenue was that it was the idea for Washington from the downtown section all the way to the south, all the way down to Temecula, in theory, was to have been an arterial roadway, which would have been 110 feet, which explains the 55-foot current half-width that you have. That has been downgraded many years ago, and the idea of that arterial is no longer going to be especially given the fact that we demoed the Washington Avenue Bridge across Murrieta Creek many years ago. That's not anticipated to be the case anymore, which is why the downtown area now has only an 80-foot right-of-way designation. So this is simply excess right-of-way that's left over an extra 15 feet. And as you can see in this exhibit, in the gray area here, there's a couple of areas that are kind of hard to see. I don't have a pointer here. per se that I can point to, but you'll notice in a couple of dark areas in there within that gray area, there's building columns that are from the actual building itself. So those building columns cannot exist within the right-of-ways, so the right-of-way does need to be vacated the extra 15 feet. So we would be leaving the existing, we'd be leaving the remaining 40 feet of right-of-way, which is necessary for the specific plan. This is an excerpt of the plat associated with the legal description that shows the 15-foot dedication. When I said earlier about Washington and Calmea, there is a sliver of the chamfer between Washington and Calmea that would also be vacated along with that. So that's the actual legal portion of the property that's being proposed to be vacated by the development. So with that, and I think to add to this, the reason this is coming now before you, this planning commission probably has not seen this come before you in the past when we've done vacations. The reason we're doing this is it's been brought to our attention. It's something we probably should have been doing all of these years. And the purpose of this comes out of the government code, where the government code requires the planning commission or the planning body of the agency to determine whether or not a vacation of dedicated right-of-way is in compliance with the general plan or in conformance with the general plan. So what we're identifying here is that this right-of-way is the remaining right-of-way that we're going to have left is 40 feet half-width. That is consistent with the specific plan that is there. So we're committing in this case that this project is in fact in conformance with the general plan. So over the recommendation, the recommended action here tonight is that the Planning Commission adopt a resolution determining that vacating a 3,181 square foot right-of-way easement on the frontages of Washington and Kalmia Avenue, a portion of parcel three of parcel map 7704 is consistent with the general plan. With that, I'm available to answer any questions that you may have.

I'll turn to my colleagues. We'll start at the end. Commissioner LaPaglia?

I have no questions. It seems pretty straightforward. Part of a property that we no longer need, and it's consistent with the specific plan and the general plan, so it seems pretty straightforward. That's all.

Mr. Rose?

I don't have any comments. It seems like I agree. It's just pretty straightforward.

Go ahead. I'm sorry.

I share the same sentiment.

And just a quick question for you, just because I drove through there and took a look. Obviously, the area that's being vacated or proposed to be vacated, there's a sidewalk there anyway. And the building does kind of encroach in there. And there is a portion of there that's a right turn only lane. And that's sufficient for traffic circulation. It doesn't need to go any further. any deeper, any further back. I really can't without changing the driveway that goes into where Anthony's and where this building is right there. So that's sufficient, in your opinion, as far as the right turn.

Let me go back to perhaps this exhibit. So this exhibit, you can see where the driveway is there on the bottom of the picture. That's the driveway that goes in and out of the Anthony's. So we are removing a portion of the Right of way the sidewalk is actually outside of the gray area that we're talking about the existing sidewalk is in the white area to the left of that so that that actually sits within the existing 40 foot right of way that's there. So the back edge of the sidewalk is actually the start of the portion that's being vacated so 15 feet from there on to their property. There were some existing utilities that were there the contractor has the developer has removed all the utilities that were the city's utilities. And there was another utility, I believe, that was owned by Spectrum, I believe, and that utility was also relocated by the developer out of the right-of-way, and the utilities have all confirmed that there is no utilities. That's not really part of what we're talking about here tonight, but just to give you the background, that's all been addressed.

Okay. That's all questions I have. Thank you very much. Now it's not in the script here, but do we need to open it for public comments? Madam Secretary, do we have anybody wishing to speak on this item?

Seeing none.

OK, so we will open and close the public comment. Now I'm looking for any discussion.

before okay motion in a second please I'll make the motion to approve I can read the recommended action shares of the chair so the recommended action as listed in the staff report is adopt a resolution entitled the resolution of the Planning Commission of the City of Marietta determining that the vacation of a portion of Washington Avenue is in conformity with the city's general plan and I will now make that motion to approve I'll second that motion

Motion carries unanimously, 4-0.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Hitch. Thank you. Good evening.

Yep.

All right. Next, we'll have public hearing, the reintroduction of the Hillside Updates, DCA 2021-2396, to amend the Myriad Development Code, Title 16, for the purpose of revising and updating Chapters 16.08, 16.9, point fourteen sixteen point eighteen sixteen point twenty two sixteen point twenty four sixteen point twenty eight and adding new sections. Sixteen point two four point zero eight zero entitled exceptions. Also sixteen. Point two four point zero nine zero entitled reserved. And sixteen point twenty four point one hundred entitled hillside overlaid map. continued from the June 10th, 2026 Planning Commission meeting. Are there any members of the Planning Commission that wishes to abstain or recuse themselves from this item?

Chair, will I announce this now? Carl?

It's up to you. You have no legal obligation to at this point so you can wait until it's voting time to determine how you want to address that or you can deal with it now.

Well I'd like to I guess disclose or say that I wasn't here at the last commission meeting but I did review the very long meeting on video and I've been here for multiple meetings prior to that. This has been going on for some time so I'm very well versed and very well have a good understanding of the hillside ordinance and I think what we're trying to achieve here. So I'd like to sit in on the meeting and give my two cents, my opinions, listen in, hear what the public has to say, hear what the city has to say, and then determine if I'll vote or not. I guess I could do that later. Okay, so that's all.

Okay, very good. Staff, maybe we have a staff report.

Yes, thank you, Commission Chair and fellow commissioners. For those out there in the audience online, my name is Chris Tracy. I'm a senior planner here with our Advanced Planning Division. Some of the requested actions tonight is to reopen the public hearing, accept public testimony, and adopt a resolution. We're going to forward your recommendation to the City Council from there. There's some existing challenges and proposed improvements with this ordinance. The existing challenges we're trying to address here are inconsistent application of standards we've had manual error prone calculations in the past. ambiguous definitions and this led to confusion for customers and staff so some of our proposed improvements here are automated and clear calculation methods precise and modernized definitions better workflows objective data and that sort of thing. What we hope that this will achieve for everyone is just a clear direction for property owners, staff, and the community as a whole as it relates to the hillside regulations. So touching back on May 13th when we last met on this item, on the left side is kind of the Planning Commission feedback, and we also had some stakeholder feedback too. First with the Planning Commissioner feedback, one of the comments was no routing of average slope calculations, and this was also based off a public comment too. So for example, if someone has a slope that's at 24 points, say 3%, we're not rounding down and we're not rounding up, it's just gonna be 24.3%, and that's how it will relate to the hillside classifications. Also, there are some needed additional definitions for developed, undeveloped, and agriculture uses in the context of hillside development. That's kind of describing your staff report, but I'm just noting that here. And then from the stakeholders, staff received feedback under the purpose section of chapter 1624 to replace encourage with reasonably considered in more of an objective manner. So staff concurs with that thinking, and it's reflected now in the ordinance as well. Just some illustrations of developed and undeveloped in agriculture improvements as it relates to those new definitions, as noted in your staff report. For the next two slides, I'm going to walk through these slowly. The Planning Commission can consider any of the parameters to allow further development without a hillside development permit. However, hillside development standards will still be in play. Exempting properties from the hillside area overlay would require further analysis by staff. So if there's a carve-out altogether of a property, for example, that would require its own analysis. For the first portion here kind of the activities flat work pools and similar improvements within a previously developed area If it's less than or equal to 50 cubic yards of earthwork This is essentially the size of a swimming pool It would be exempt from a hillside development permit provided the work occurs in a legally disturbed and disturbed portion of the site Or there's another qualifier in our municipal code that would exempt it such as in our grading ordinance Grading within a developed portion of the site, and it states greater than 50 cubic yards. This is typically reviewed under the city's grading ordinance. Grading permit is required unless the work qualifies for an exemption as determined by the city each year again. And then we also have a third category, fine grade and drainage review. This is less than or equal to 50 cubic yards or earthwork, required only if the grading ordinance mandates the city's engineering review. Sometimes it otherwise would be exempt from a grading permit. However, there's a qualifier with all this. If a property is altering the drainage of the site, it usually will trigger a grading permit. If they're doing like slope embankments or stuff like that, that will also trigger a grading permit. And if it were like less than 50 cubic yards. So those might be some scenarios. Rick Alzaga can speak a little bit more to that, but just wanted to qualify that. The next three categories here are accessory dwelling units. We don't have a size threshold, but it's triggered over 50 cubic yards proposed for a review, such as a grading permit. The grading permit's told in that case until the approval occurs for the ADU. The accessory structures, if it's 1,000 square feet or greater, or equal to, I should say, it requires a hillside development permit, and this mirrors our development plan permit requirements citywide. So for example, if you have a property on Nutmeg in Washington in the flatter portion of the site of the city, and it's 1,000 square feet or greater, it requires a development plan permit currently. And then for agriculture improvements, we don't have a threshold base, but for example, if someone installs orchards, vineyards, grazing, or things of that nature. It's not considered a developed condition by itself. These were some other cities and counties out there that have thresholds relating to hillside grading review. For example, San Bernardino County, if it's 500 cubic yards per lot or 2,000 cubic yards per project, it does require a hillside grading permit review. And this only applies where natural slopes are 15% or greater. and a grading permit's required. City of Moraga up in Northern California, they require a hillside development permit and design review at greater than 200 cubic yards. It starts with a design review board, and then if it's on slopes greater than or equal to 25%, it then kicks up to Planning Commission or Town Council review. Lafayette, which is up in that same East Bay area, for property falls in a hillside overlay district, they have this mapped out throughout their city. it automatically triggers a hillside development permit. If it's less than 200 cubic yards, it's an administrative tract. It goes through a staff level review. If it's more than 200 cubic yards of disturbance, then it kicks in a discretionary public hearing tract. So those are just some examples out there. I just wanted to throw that out there, you know, for comparison purposes. We've kind of touched on this in the past. I won't go into too many details, but this is kind of how many properties we have in different classifications, undeveloped and undeveloped and properties owned by the RCA and that sort of thing in the hillside area. I have these for further discussion when we kind of get into site examples, so I'm just going to skip through that. With that, we're going to open the public hearing, accept public testimony, and adopt a resolution as noted here on your screen. And with that, staff will be happy to answer any questions and go through any scenarios as well. I do have a couple of scenario examples if we need to go there.

Okay. Anything else from any of your colleagues at this point in time? You're good.

I don't know if Rick has any comments or anything.

You don't have to. We can move on. I just wanted to give you the courtesy in case you did.

Yeah, actually, Mr. Chairman, could I chime in for you? Sure, absolutely. Having been through a number of workshops at the city council level and vetting and discussing this particular topic for a while, so I think with respect to the developed, undeveloped question, there hasn't been A discussion at the Council, you know level about it giving any direction to staff and I know your last meeting, where we you know cover this you asked us to massage this particular topic and so what I asked you know, Chris to do was to identify you know standards from other cities. Where. There might be more than or a higher threshold than 50 cubic yards to trigger a permit. And I know the Council respects property rights. You know, staff does as well. I think that's embedded in our processes and procedures. And I think with an eye toward that. The Commission has the ability, you know, tonight to recommend a threshold of when it believes a property owner, you know, should go through an additional review like the Hillside Development Plan that Chris referenced. I don't think there's like a magic, you know, number of how high or low I think the threshold should be. I think the standards that seen from us tonight reflect our current practices with respect to grading plans. But it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to follow that. So other communities, I think, with a nod toward customer service or trying to reduce bureaucracy, whatever you want to call it, they've had or established higher threshold levels. You can certainly do that. One area of discussion I think has been like how much work or grading or land alteration, you know, can a property owner do while kind of staying outside of the bureaucratic process, you know, like through an application review, coming to the planning commission and just kind of really staying at a plan check level with staff over the counter. We would still enforce the standards, but we wouldn't require a zoning application review, which can be lengthy and expensive and and covers them. So, um, if, if you have any ideas or you want to talk to staff about, um, what kind of threshold you might be thinking of, or you'd like to establish kind of what I go back to is like, if somebody has an existing home and they want to do a room addition, what kind of review do you want, you know, that, that person to go through? Is it, you know, administrative staff level or, uh, do you want them to come to the planning commission? So that's kind of, uh, you know, providing a really, you know, brief synopsis. Chris, can you go back to the tabulation slide? Yep. So when we first started to talk about this topic, one of the things that the city council asked us to do was to kind of give them a sense of, you know, properties within the hillside overlay that had been developed, properties that were owned by the RCA or other, you know, conservancy, And so you see that data in front of you right now. So hopefully that gives you a better understanding of the affected areas that we're talking about. There are roughly 319 parcels that are privately owned and developed. And so those are really the parcels that we're talking about when you are discussing a threshold here tonight. If any of those folks want to do an addition or other land alteration, Those are the 300 parcels that are going to be affected by your discussion and recommendation at the City Council. And so there are 51 remaining parcels that are largely undeveloped. And so while there's been discussion about whether or not we actually need the overlay, I think... We've said before that the general plan wants to have oversight over our hillside areas, and what that looks like is why we embarked on this process. So just to give you a little more context, and again, if you have questions about this, thresholds and trying to right-size whatever that is, we're happy to support you in that discussion. So thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chantaransu. That's very helpful. I know this has gone in front of us, gone up to council, back to us, back to staff. And I think the last when we sent it back, it was When I looked at it, there was a word that was in there. It was not necessarily undeveloped, but undisturbed. And so we need to clarify that because, in my opinion, if there's any vagueness or things like that, it's problematic for staff when someone comes into the counter and And they're left to kind of guess as to what things were thought of maybe years beforehand, those type of things like that. So, you know, we're not going to get it perfect, but I'd like to get it close to perfect and make it easy for anybody coming into the front counter going, okay, we know what to do in those, in these instances. So that was kind of the thought behind it. And just, I met with, I think, Mr. Tracy and Mr. Steele after that meeting and brought up some of the concerns that were brought up by some of the speakers last time specifically, both Mr. Longs and Mr. Klein and a few others. And so, okay, how can we make this better and make it a little bit more, have some clarity? And so, let's come back to this point and I think it addresses, better addresses some of those concerns definitions and things like that, so very appreciative. With that, I'll turn it over to anybody else, any of my colleagues. I'll start out with Mr. DeSena, Commissioner DeSena, if you have any questions.

Yeah, thank you so I I do have an some issues kind of still I wasn't there the last one, but I did. There's a very long document which good we need that clarity. But as I see it policy is supposed to give clarity right we need it I think we do need to get a precise you think we need to get accurate so when people come forward they know. So some of my issues with it when I was reading it over was taking citywide policy. and specifically applying it to a few within the map, but some in the map area are going to be disturbed. So that's first question. I'm proposing that as far as something that came up for me, but maybe you can address that.

Well, as far as being disturbed, I mean, are you speaking to 100% disturbed or maybe partially? Because I did do some analysis with some examples that are within the overlay right here. Maybe that'll help kind of with the discussion also. So using our polygon tools that we have with our GIS, I was able to determine, for example, actually this is probably a little bit better illustration. The one on Linnell here, you have about 22% disturbance. As you can see, using aerial imagery, you have a lot of chaparral, natural elements like boulders and things like that. you're at about a 22% disturbance overall for that site, and the remainder, 78% is not. So that would be kind of more of an extreme. A lot of the ones I found were more about 50, 50%, maybe in the 60% range. Example, the one on the bottom's been more disturbed at 42%.

And just to help a little bit with some perspective here, the current ordinance would require these people to get a development plan. Like what we're trying to do is help people with an easier process. That's what's before you.

Well, I think it's more about like we look at like large scale developments in these areas that would be of a concern. So like small property owners are lumped in and add a layer of burden in order to develop. So that's something I saw in there. This is on top of the other constraints that are already present, like MSHCP and so on and so forth that other parcels won't have or don't have. Many lots will not be able to provide grading prior to cityhood permits. They weren't required prior to the cityhood. Permits weren't required for agricultural grading. So I just think it adds an extra layer to it. So kind of where I was looking at it as my recommendation for it is recommending we are clear that disturbed land, including agriculture, under five acres are exempt.

Okay.

As a threshold? Yes. You're proposing five acres or less being exempt from a hillside development permit? Correct. Okay. That's...

I guess, what are your thoughts on that? And I'll share something, too. He's not here tonight, and he was here the last time. Alan Long, he called me this afternoon, and he brought up that same, I didn't know, kind of that same issue. You know, is this, you know, smaller lots, larger lots? And had there been some other consideration with staff over that? Or is that a – maybe you can kind of explain. What are your thoughts or perceptions on this?

Maybe that example from the city of Moraga. Let me go there. I'm sorry, Lafayette. So in this example, if it's less than 200 cubic yards of disturbance, so that's like four swimming pools if you think about it. It goes on an administrative track. It's pretty minor in scope. That's kind of where they landed on in terms of requiring a hillside development permit in that jurisdiction. If it's 200 cubic yards or more, then it's kind of more of a, you know, it goes to a public hearing at that point. So that's kind of where they drew the line as far as kind of those two tiers.

So based on dirt, amount of dirt moved as opposed to the size of the lot?

Yeah, in that example, that was, yeah.

Yeah, and I think, you know, like Lafayette, they obviously set a standard for their city, and, you know, that gives a great example. I just, you know, looking it over, because of the grading permits in the past and, you know, where we were at, you have a lot of homes in that area or that were affected by that, or will be affected by that. So kind of saying that threshold, but before the five are under the five acres, I think would be something that is important to me personally. Well, not personally, I have no stake in it, but reading it over.

And commissioner, as we talk about agriculture, um, is your vision that it would be active current agriculture or it would have been at some point in time in the past? It,

At some point in time in the past, it was that, but now it's been developed different. So these are like small development, small property owners that are in those areas that I see, at least when I'm looking at this, would or could heavily be affected by this.

So just point of clarity again. Properties currently are required to have a development plan if they're in the hillside overlay. So all the properties before you currently have to do a development plan. We're trying to come up with criteria to basically make it easier for the mom and pops and those property owners we're talking about. And we're trying to figure out the threshold of who needs to do a development plan and who doesn't. So I guess your pitch is, if it's five acres, they don't need to do development. Is that essentially what you're saying?

Yeah, essentially, because what I'm seeing is, is like, you're taking this city, like citywide ordinance, or this map overlay, and you're applying it to some areas within it.

Well, right now, it applies citywide. And we're shrinking that down, where it speaks in the general plan of those resources. That's

So would it be something that you can propose to shrink down anything under five acres then?

I'm sorry. I'm trying to follow your reasoning.

So not the reason. I mean, the reason is that you've got these houses on land already. They have five acres or less because there's five, 10 acres or plots of land. And to make it below that threshold of five acres is basically it. So not the four swimming pools you're talking about and

If Chris could show the example, so essentially staff's approach at this point is if you've already impacted an area, so like the example here, if you want to take the one, sorry, either one. Yeah, fine. The one on duster is a good one. I'm on the bottom of the page. Most of that parcel has already been impacted as far as we can tell. So if that person wants to develop within that space that's already been developed, they're not going to need to get a development plan. That's staff's approach. If they're developing, say, up towards the top there, you can see it looks like there's an area that they probably haven't impacted before. That might trigger the need to do a development plan. They still have to do everything else. Everybody always has to come in and get a building permit. They have to get a grading permit. If the engineering team says they need a grading permit, all we're really talking about is whether or not they need a discretionary permit. Currently, that person, if they develop in there, has to come in and get a development plan. We're trying to come up with criteria to basically exempt out their existing areas. which is what stakeholders have been asking for and what was discussed at city council. And so like the examples here and staff's approach would exempt out most of those parcels. And I think Danny Long spoke to this at the last hearing. He said, you know, he really wants clear criteria as to how we exempt out properties. We've brought that to you.

When you say most though, when we use the word like most, right?

So if you're disturbing an area and you're under 50 cubic yards, say you're just scraping it, and you're putting in, I don't know, a casita or something in the back, that would get you out of a hillside development permit as what Carl was referencing there. So we're trying to make this an easier process for people. If it were today, they would have to go through this discretionary process for an area that was already disturbed. So we're trying to make it easier is the idea.

Chair, if I may chime in. On that note, on that specific development type, you know, building an ADU or something like that on area that has not been disturbed, that's something I could see we should increase the cubic yard threshold to like 200. Originally, I was kind of thinking it wouldn't make much of a difference, but we're talking about individual small single family lots. You could disturb 50 yards pretty quickly, 200 would be a lot better. We could even increase that to 400 if we want, but again, for that specific example, I would recommend we consider that, but go ahead.

If I may interject, so, As Chris mentioned, my name is Rick Alzaga. I'm the principal engineer. I just want to interject some thoughts from an engineering perspective because I'm hearing discretionary permits, 50 cubic yards. So I want to clarify just a couple items when it comes to us, whether we require a grading permit or not. To address the agricultural, per our code, One of the exemptions is grading performed for agricultural purposes in connection with the raising of crops or animals, but not including grading or building or structures that require a building permit. So it just depends on the project. And to give everyone some perspective, 50 cubic yards, if you can just imagine one of your bedrooms at home, a 13 foot by 13 foot bedroom is 50 cubic yards. almost the right number. Or 11 by 11 by 11, however you want to see it. But that's roughly 50 cubic yards. So 50 cubic yards can happen quite quickly. Now that's just our ordinance. And I see the references to other cities. You know, those numbers, we can discuss those and maybe agree to some other number. But for now, we go by the ordinance, which is 50 cubic yards. And there's a couple other triggers that require a grading permit or exempt you from a grading permit. And it just has to do with what you're doing with the dirt, how you're going to grade it and what have you. When it comes to a building, though, We do not count what's under the building. If you're a mile high and you put your building on top of that, we don't count a single yard. It's what happens around it. And there's other considerations as far as drainage. If you move the land around and now you've altered the drainage courses. So again, there's just a few variables that we look at. And I understand the hillside ordinance and I understand what planning is trying to do. But Even if there is no discretionary permit requirement, engineering has to look at it and determine, is a grading permit required or not? And that is for safety reasons, drainage, you don't drain onto your neighbor, et cetera. And so I just want to provide some input on that, and I'll hand it back to planning.

Well, question, if I can share. Rick, so on that note, like if it were to come across engineering's desk and it was a drainage issue, how would the engineering department handle that? Because that's a serious thing and it should be handled, right? It's hard to believe that someone would want to, you know, improperly drain that would destroy other property or whatever. But I understand that it could happen very well. Is that something that just can be adjusted over the counter or would that need to have... all kinds of, I don't know, engineering done.

So if it's a, quote, drainage issue, unquote, I think that implies there's some grading involved. So we have to look at what is that.

Sure. But you could grade, you could move 20 yards and create a drainage issue.

You could. Generally, they're somewhat minor. And when you're talking hillside properties, they tend to be larger, and people don't, always build right on their property line. They're somewhere in the middle. And again, so every project is unique, but it can exist where you can have a situation where it is a drainage issue. And so what we would do is just isolate it and we look at... So let's just say grading is going to be... Not necessarily exempt, we have something in between, what we call fine grading drainage. And the difference is a grading plan, a grading permit requires a licensed civil engineer to stamp those drawings. A fine grading drainage was created by the city so that residents could get a grading permit without having to hire a licensed engineer. But it still requires some level of information. how does it flow, how steep, those sort of things, and we work with residents all the time on doing that. And then there's the exemptions. So it can occur where they're more likely a fine-grained drainage, and then when there's an impact to the actual natural drainage course and somehow they're altering it, I require not a hydrology report, but more of a hydrology analysis. So again, I just need to see some level of something, what you're doing so that we understand what's being proposed and it's still safe for your property and your neighbor's property. So there's some in-between areas that we are always working with the residents to try and come up with something that is not full-blown hydrology studies or full-blown water quality studies. Because keep in mind, when ADUs get built or even single-family homes, in these remote areas, then you're talking the driveways and all the things that go with that. And we are unfortunately bound by the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit, the NPDES permit that we know of. And when you start doing driveways and the accumulation of impervious area, now we're talking water quality stuff. And it's just another report that it's just the world we live in now. And it is a supplement to the hydrology study. So we have to look at it, we have to address it. And when I say we, it's us and the residents. And those, we don't have a way to have the citizens do it. They all require a licensed engineer to do those. So it's a mixed bag. And when it comes to just engineering, Aside from what's being discussed as far as hillside, how we view a property down on the flatland and even on the hillside, we view it very much the same.

Yeah. Thanks for that insight. I appreciate that. I didn't mean to really get off topic. We were talking about, you know, five acres or less, you know, having having a exemption. And then I just commented about maybe we should increase the yardage that we that we grade that for an exemption. But I can understand where Rick's coming from. Like, you know, you move a little bit of dirt, it changes drainage and that kind of triggers other things.

But can I provide just a point of clarity just because we're kind of getting into two different things. So and I appreciate the principal engineer's position. So what's before you tonight is really an ordinance about whether or not you need a development plan using the development code. What Rick was talking about is there's also other triggers where you need a grading permit. That's not before you, but that factors into the discussion. But you don't have the grading ordinance in front of you. So you were bound by the grading ordinance, and Rick's a great resource, and he'll be able to tell you what's in the grading ordinance. but we're here to talk about when a development plan is required or not within the hillside area. That's pretty much all it's before.

This is probably a silly question, but give us a, give us a definition of what a development plan is.

So it's our discretionary permit that when you build anywhere in the city that, that the ordinance says you need it, then you have to get a development plan. So for example, it used to be almost anything in the city required a development plan, even a single family home. We changed that a few years back. except in the hillside area, you always need a development plan to do development within the hillside area. You also need it obviously to do commercial buildings, apartment buildings, all these apartment buildings under construction in the city, they all have development plan permits. It's a discretionary permit, sometimes it comes to you, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's approved by staff, sometimes it's approved by the Planning Commission. There's various different types of them. Okay.

I think the only thing I want to know, like from you guys, because experts get it, is doesn't it, if we lump them together though, like with larger scale developers and like the smaller individuals, doesn't that cause like an undue burden on these smaller properties as opposed to larger scale development or developers?

I mean, so what I just said is we used to require everyone to do development plan in the city, and that's a fact. We only changed that when Jared and I got here on regular single family lots. But it's something that the city's required in the hillside area since we've had a hillside ordinance. So we're actually trying to make it easier for people right now. We're trying to exempt out areas so that people don't have to do development plan. The way it currently sits, if we walk away tonight and do nothing, people still have to come in and get a development plan if they're in the hillside area. All of these property owners that are wanting to provide input on this, they're still in a crummy situation if we do nothing. So we're trying to help and create criteria that makes it so people can get their areas exempt that they want to develop. So, for example, the ones before you here, If the person wants to knock their home down and build a new home, if you adopt the ordinance that we're putting in front of you, they don't have to get a development plan. They just move on to the building counter and submit their building plans, right? Because they're building within their developed area. That seems to make sense. We've had long discussions with the city council about this. That's essentially staff's approach to this. And that will make it easier for most people. The question really before you is, what do you want to do with the outer areas? That's what I was just going to say. The areas outside, like if you look at these pictures, the one on the top is a good example. You can see that's like a hillside on the right, and it's got a bunch of chavarral on it. Do you want to exempt those areas and just let people nuke them since they are already there? Or do you want to... control that area and say, well, your development area is where you've already developed. If you want to go into that area, yeah, we want you to do a development plan. That's essentially the question in front of you.

And I think that's the threshold that we're talking about. I think it's very clear, and I think you make a great point, and it's very, very clear that the disturbed, previously developed area is a shoo-in. There's no reason that we should have to go through a development plan and go through all the scoops to do that. But it's this gray area where portion of their property's developed, the portion that's not, they want to do something, and like, what's that threshold? 50 yards of grading, 100 yards of grading, you know, development plan, no development plan, so, yeah, obviously that's the topic here, but... To get back on track, go back to your question, and I'll wait my turn for the rest of the time.

No, that's fine. And that's what I was talking about was that little, the other part of their property, right? Because if it equals five acres or less and it includes that hillside of it, well, now they might not be able to develop on that. So creating that under five at least gives them.

Well, they can develop on it. We're just telling them they need to. do a development plan that meets with the criteria of the hillside ordinance, which is why we have a hillside ordinance.

Okay, fair enough. Can you put that Mary Place property back up? Sure. I'm very familiar with that street over the years, so that's actually a really good example. So those homes right there, they're kind of terraced into the hillside a bit, and where they're graded, whether or not they were, how they were graded or whatever years ago, 30, 40, 50 years ago, whatever it was. And so, and it's landscaped below it. And some of the landscaping, you know, below the home, it's a mobile home. And it fits, it's above 25%, you can tell. Now, it's been disturbed because it was part of that. So, but looking at this, you can, in your example here, it's 2.85 acres and then vast majority of that 2.29 has been disturbed. So I'm taking that pretty much everything, probably 80% to the left of the natural hillside is what we're talking about. That natural hillside, if you just say, if you make a, hey, anything under five acres, it would exempt the entire piece of property and they could encroach into the hillside and build whatever it is. And all we're saying by this, if I understand it correctly, is the ordinance would really control that one portion of the property that has, it's obviously never been built on, never been disturbed, and it's above the 25%. And so that would require a development plan. But anything that they want to do, if they want to knock out their mobile home, knock out the, maybe regrade that slope, and maybe they want to put a bi-level home or something like that on something that's already been built, that's not going to require a development plan.

Now, if it's... Well, if it's outside the overlay some of these lots have a split you know lying through their property, I should mention to so. You know if if they're going in and scraping an area to put in another you know room addition or they want to rebuild it, and you know, as it is written right now if they're 50 cubic yards. or less, it doesn't require a hillside development permit. If we want to raise that threshold, that's fine. I think that was just a starting point, but that's kind of how it's laid out currently.

So using this example again, because you mentioned ADUs, let me just throw that little mix in there. So let's just say on this piece of property, somebody wants to put an ADU, and they want to encroach into that area that's never been developed before. So tell me what the process is with that. How would that be different than if they wanted to put and extend some of their primary residence property over there?

Well, if it's going into that area, we'll have aerial imagery. We're going to go through history and take a look at that. It's going to require a hillside development permit because you're in that threshold.

So regardless if it's an ADU or they want to expand their primary residence and the fact that the dirt has never been moved before, it's gonna require a development plan. Everything now requires a development plan, so if they wanted to do something on the left half of their property, it would require a development plan. This ordinance would basically exempt the greater part of the 80% of that out of it and only include that portion on the slope there greater than 25%.

Yeah, and if I may, the idea behind that is that sloped area on the right, and we want to make sure that they do it right. The way they develop it, that they develop it consistent with the hillside criteria. They don't just go out and nuke the hillside, which is what people don't like, driving down the freeway the adjacent city to the south right now, right? So that's the idea is to control the development that occurs on the slopes. That's the whole point of the hillside.

So we're not saying that they can't develop it. It just, it has, obviously there's- Sort of an extra level of review.

Chair, it's gonna come down to economics because if you wanna put an ADU higher than your house, that's a driveway, it's a lot of grading. We're gonna require a 100-foot fuel mod around that habitable structure. You're gonna get in a coastal sage scrub. There's some biological factors. So the economics for most of these mom-and-pops They're probably going to develop in the disturbed areas. Jacinta, you point out the bigger folks. Yeah, they probably want to come in and put some larger buildings. But the constraints that there are in Los Alamos are you have limited water and sewer. You have limited road networks. You have a lot of constraints in the area. So I think everything that you just said, Chair, is absolutely what we're going to probably see is folks are going to go for the easier to develop portions of their property. But I don't see someone, unless they're really have a lot of patience and time and money to put something that far up on their property. It's a significant endeavor to come through us on those types of actions. But we'd be happy to work with folks that use the disturbed areas in their property.

Mr. Chair, if I could just add maybe some color to what Commissioner DeSantis is commenting about. So Chris had the kind of like the summary table of like the developed and undeveloped properties. 90% of the properties that are developed are five acres, less than five acres. So what would happen is 90% of our hillside areas would go outside of the existing overlay zone, which I think would create some issues with the city's general plan. And I would suggest that the better approach is trying to find a way, where is the threshold that could be set where property owners aren't necessarily penalized for being in an overlay zone, but how much buffer can we give them, so to speak, so that they can develop without having to go through this bureaucratic process as long as they meet the hillside standards that we can follow administratively.

Does that make sense? Could you just explain for a second, when we talk about development of a property, I understand an ADU, I understand tearing down someone's mobile home and building a new one, but what's the development part of that?

So with our hillside zone, it's going to be residential projects. So if it's an undeveloped lot that can't be subdivided into more parcels, the expectation is that there's going to be a single family home. If they can figure it out, they could do an accessory dwelling unit as well. For for larger properties that you know that that are over 5 acres there's a potential for you know subdivision into more parcels if they can meet emergency access and utilities. And some of the other criteria was mentioned you know habitat you know issues so like we we do have a few projects right now that are in hillside areas that are processing subdivision maps. So they'll take a larger parcel and subdivide it. I think one of the projects is 10 single-family lots. So that's the type of development we're talking about. It could be one single-family home, and then depending on the property size, it would be multiple single-family lots.

We're not talking about hundreds of development units.

No, the majority of the properties in the Hillside Overlay are zoned RR, which is our least dense zone. It's 2.5 acres to one unit, so... We're not talking about significant development within these areas compared to what folks are seeing out there just down the street, right?

Any more questions?

Yeah, I'd like to hear some public comment. I'll save some questions after that. But actually, while we have staff, can you go back to slide number two, I believe, where it talks about like an auto-calculation? automated and clear calculation method. That just kind of seems like it blankets everything, like, ah, the calculator didn't spit out the right number, so you're done. Can you elaborate on that?

We're using GIS, and we touched on it numerous times, and I apologize, I should have been a little bit more specific there. We have GIS and mapping tools, and we have that CAD-based alternative if there's a disagreement, so an engineer can provide their own data

um you know through autocad and and rick's team would take a look at it with us and we determine okay you're you're either you know at that threshold or not okay all right that's all i have can you uh maybe share that just for the public benefit of what you uh what what you're able to research back obviously we can go back in city records since we incorporated back in in 91 but you know, obviously a lot of that history and some of these hillside areas go well beyond cities and corporation. And what information can you get from the county and how far back records, and maybe you can kind of share some of that process, that if someone were to come in and into the front counter, because again, trying to eliminate red tape and the easiest answer is always no, right? So how can we say, okay, yeah, we're going to go ahead and research this parcel, this piece of property, and then what What tools do you have available in order to find the answers for somebody?

So I'm going to help a little bit, and then I'll let Chris respond. So I used to work for a county, the adjacent one. The county has a lot of records. So every county has a county assessor. There's a county assessment record. As a property owner, you can go get your county assessment record. So all of us that are property owners, you can go to the county, ask for your county assessment record. That will show you when your buildings were assessed. Oftentimes it has a permit number on there from when your building was built that's on your property. There's a lot of good information there. The counties also have aerial photography. They typically have a GIS department that you essentially just have to go ask them. They'll bring out the old plots of their aerial photography that they took, in part because they were always snooping to look and see what things people were building, right? That's what counties do. So there's a lot of good records at the county. Obviously the county was also in charge of subdivisions here for a long time. And so there should be the old subdivision map should be there if we don't have them county should have them they're still a county record, even though they exist in our county so there's a lot of really good records of the county. Oftentimes when we get into these types of discussions with property owners it's a matter of explaining to the property owner. You can go to the county and get this information now it's up to them to go get that we the city don't ask them for that that's this the property owner would need to do that research and i'll kick it over to Chris.

Yeah, just along the same lines. I mean, there's also historicalareals.com. There's other, Esri has a bunch of resources we can use as well. There's just so much data that's out there that we can help reference, you know, in making that call, you know, if it's been disturbed or not. And, you know, we want to help the homeowner get there with the, you know, with the right information.

Chair, I've done a lot of research. I was at the same organization. I love looking through microfilm because a lot of building permits back then weren't technical. It was just a half a sheet with a box checked and an address. We would take that as evidence of record. So very simple information from the 1950s to the 1980s, but I've always been able to rely upon a building permit record, which was a very simple document. I think that's the beauty in those old records. It's not like an EIR where you have to sift through a lot of documents. I've been really happy with some of the stuff that I've been able to use. In addition to historicalarrows.com, that thing's a treasure trove. Especially in this city, we found some stuff from 1936 that helped us understand that there was an agricultural runoff ditch. It wasn't a river. It was just a ditch that some farmers created and that helped us get to the right place. But we do like to do that research as planners. If the county doesn't have it and we don't have it, there's other ways to get to the bottom line on that.

And if I may add to that, just one from an engineering perspective, what Jarrett was saying, the simple documents that people would get to go build something. So we kind of got the short stick on that one because when it comes to engineering grading plans, we've, we really don't find them, the old ones. People want to do something on their home right now, and that home has been there for 40 years or more, and we ask for, do you have the original rating? It doesn't really exist, and even if it did, what was required back in those days is not what is required today. So it's very lacking in information. So we're challenged that way from an engineering standpoint. As far as from the surface, it's great because you can see vegetation, it was there and now it's not there, that kind of stuff. But when it comes to grading, obviously that's more, there's depth in that and it's very difficult to get that information from the old drawings. So I just wanna mention that as well from engineering standpoint.

Yeah, I'm sure, you know, back in the day, there was a lot of people that just bought a piece of property and did their own grading, and nobody really cared, right? So it is what it is. Well, thank you for that, you know, kind of that history there and what you can get, because in hearing from my colleagues here that, you know, a lot of the concerns are really that Joe Homeowner, under five acres, wants to do something, make some improvements to his property. That's one thing, as opposed to, you know, somebody wanted to put something on, make it look like the Hollywood Hills and up against the steep hillside there, and that's something completely different by a large-scale developer, right? So, okay. I'd be interested to hear what speakers have to say. So at this point in time, we'll open up public comments at 7.05. Thank you. Madam Secretary, do we have any public comments stating with proponents, opponents, and then those neutral in that order?

We have Dan Long.

Mr. Long. Welcome again.

Thank you, Chairman Vrooman and members of the commission. I appreciate you taking the time to hear me out today. A lot of things to cover here. I'm going to try to do it as succinctly as I can. First again, I think we've come a long way I'm a little exhausted. I almost didn't come today It's just it's wearing me out, and I'm not even doing the work so Chris and staff. I just commend you for your work on the same token I I still think we Still can prove and approve improve upon it the last hearing I ran out of time and I gave a picture of the infamous Great Wall of Murrieta that we're all aware of on the corner of Murrieta Hot Springs Road and the 15 Freeway. This is where my frustration comes in at. I was a part of the GPAC going back in the early 2000s, and there was a lot of things in there that really didn't get enforced. I'm gonna go ahead and say I don't think we really carried out, the city where we are today didn't really carry out the vision of that general plan. You look at that project there. There was no slope along Mira to Hot Springs Road. That was manufactured. They built that wall and then backfilled dirt into it, which is about a 40 foot wall, and then a four story building on top of it. So all the city can see it when you drive by. It's terrible. I'm not gonna mince words, it's terrible. We have several lots that are two and a half acres that are up against the hill at Hogback. If you measure that from Los Alamos Road, which is a rural county road, it's about a quarter of a mile. And you're talking about a two and a half acre parcel. You're not going to be able to see it if they develop up into the hillside. There's going to be a retaining wall. It's going to be much minor than a huge development. I'm not sure how large the Gray Star project is. I should know because we actually own that project, my company, at one time, and we're proposing a development on it. And I can tell you we were not proposing a huge wall along Mira to Hot Speakers Road. In fact, we had commercial at street-grade level trying to work that project in. It didn't work. Gray Star took it over, and God bless them. They're building a project, and I support that. It's just frustrating as a homeowner and a landowner that we're getting held to a standard that is really not fair is what I'm trying to get at. So Commissioner DeSanto, thank you for mentioning the five acres or less. I support that. Commissioner LaPaglia, the 200 cubic yards, 400 cubic yards, I support that. I'd like to see us give as much flexibility to us homeowners. I'm not a big corporation. I own 4.6 acres by myself. My family and I, we share a lot that's about 2.5 acres. That's it. I used to own the hogback on the top of it. I don't anymore. I have no equity stake in that. So I have no stake in the game on the top of the hillback. I want to be very clear about that on the record. But I do own a home mid-slope on the hogback. And I may want to build a new home on it one day. And I want some flexibility. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Chair, I just wanted to add, though.

OK, next speaker.

There are no more speakers.

Okay. We'll go ahead and close the public hearing, 7-09.

Mr. Chairman, I usually, if I could interject real quick. Yeah, sure. So I usually don't want to... comment after the public has commented, but I think the context of the terraces project where the wall was referenced is important. So I always appreciate being able to kind of criticize the state for its poor policies. And that's what happened in the case of that particular project and why that wall wound up being so high. So the state has preempted the city's ability to limit density on projects. And with that particular project, they had proposed some affordable housing units. And so that basically gave the developer the ability to essentially waive the city's development standards. And so that's why we wound up with a wall like we did. It's the city's obligation to let affordable housing developers and develop property to the maximum density. And the only way they could do that was through the construction of that wall to raise the grade on that site. And unfortunately, that's the level of intervention and lack of local control that the state has given cities to control development in their cities. And I know that's a reason why the city council last night a constitutional amendment to reestablish local controls to try to prevent those types of things from happening in communities that just disrupt and make the community less attractive.

Yeah. And thank you for sharing that. And I think that's on the same lines of what I was talking about, which is the large people coming in that get to take advantage of these state things that you guys are dealing with headaches of, they're going to get the stuff approved. They're going to be able to do it. We can't stop the state per se, or at least, We're trying to, but we can't at this point. So then you have these property owners who are raising their families. They're just, you know, trying to do it. They're going to be held at a standard, which, okay. But if somebody comes in, that's large, they get to just do it. We do have control at our level to minimize as much as possible because then once we were, then we're being held to the standard as a landowner, right? To say, OK well the state says they can do it they're going to be able to build this wall that we're talking about to put high density on it. But what can we control we can control what we do with the individuals ourselves right.

Yeah absolutely and I think you know the hillside ordinance is a measure of local control. where the planning commission and the city council get to set policy on what hillside development looks like within the city. And whether or not the comparison to larger developers, where that fits into the discussion is for the commission and the council to sort out, not us. So you've got a tough job, and I appreciate the way that you're going through it.

So let me ask you, since you brought that up in theory, and of course I brought it up several times, everybody hates that wall, right? And because it's the entrance of our city, we get off the freeway and this is what you see. And this is why I brought up several times about making sure that the landscaping on there is gonna grow and it'll mitigate it somehow. But let me ask you this, if this ordinance had been adopted, let's say prior to that project, Would that project have looked any different as far as could it have been, or would we have been able to terrace it back further, more of a step, more steps to where it would have pushed back the buildings further and it wouldn't be such a steep hill?

No, to what Director Shantanakshi was talking about, essentially density bonus law trumps the city's code. So once they invoke the density bonus law and they're doing affordable units, they can exempt or waive city's requirements, whether we have them adopted, we had them, or we have the new ones, they could have exempted themselves either way.

Even a steep hillside like that, they can manufacture that and request that.

If they're doing an affordable project and they're utilizing the density bonus law, which that project was.

Even these changes that we're proposing today, somebody could, if they wanted to come in and build, and they qualified for that density bonus law, could go get around some of the things that were in there.

And that was my next question. So, This protects to some degree, but doesn't protect to every degree.

There's one exception in there for public safety where we can put up a fight. We did that last year with a developer who was proposing a road that was in violation of our standards, and we were arguing that it was a public safety risk, and it was quite a fight, and HCD got involved, and So the developers are trying to squeeze every concession they can get, and the state is, for the most part, coddling and allowing that. We're a little stuck, but we do have that one argument.

Okay, and so a couple other follow-up questions since you brought up, and it has to go with Commissioner Paglia had brought up, and of course we're bringing up cubic yards, and it's not my area of expertise, and moving dirt, those type of things like that. and we've got other cities that do what they do, but by changing that or making some modifications to what we're looking at tonight, we have established code, do we not, that if we were to somehow make modifications to that, would it be inconsistent with the code that's already adopted by council?

So I would defer to Principal Engineer Alzaga, but essentially... like I'll bring you back to the starting point again. You're just looking at the development plan side. So you can't change the grading ordinance. So as Principal Engineer was talking about, there's still gonna be a criteria for a grading permit that will get triggered either way. You're just looking at when you think the development plan permit should be triggered. Maybe you're comfortable with the scenario that Yeah, someone's doing 100 cubic yards. The grading ordinance triggers a grading permit according to principal engineer Alzaga. So someone's going to do a grading permit, but you don't want them to get a development plan. So you say 100 cubic yards, we don't think that needs a development plan. But they're still going to come get a grading permit. They're still going to do their building permit. They just don't need to do the development plan in the hillside area. Or as I think Commissioner LaPaglia said, a threshold of 200 cubic yards, you thought looking at the other cities, maybe that was reasonable. You could throw that out there, but you're still, all you're doing is telling that person, whoever that is, they don't have to get a development plan permit, But they're still going to have to get everything else. They're going to have to get a grading permit. They're going to have to get a building permit. They're going to have to do all the other things. It's just the criteria of when they need the development plan permit.

Right. And that was a little bit of my premise. There's other mechanisms to trigger the building, like developing a safe building development, ADU, whatever you want to call it. Then that doesn't require, that doesn't really... require you to have a development plan you're still going to have to get a grading plan you're still going to have to have proper hydrology you're still going to have to be building and safety like all these things are in place to like make sure that someone doesn't build you know a an unsafe you know terrible looking uh adu on this hell in the hillside so that was a little bit my point with that um i want to just throw this out there and look get some feedback from commissioners and staff like could we could we draw a line that um excludes single family, like single parcel, single family home additions or developments. Like if, like if Mr. Long or whoever owns a property over here is in a, has a previously developed home and wants to add a garage or an 80 year or whatever, that they would be exempt from the hillside ordinance. still applying it to somebody that wants to come in and build a multi-home, multi-family zoned property or something like that.

So I go back to that photo, the overhead of that merry place. So I guess if they put the garage or they put something on that portion that has been undisturbed or undeveloped, the issue is... by what you're asking, then they can do whatever they want on that portion of it, or are you saying, yeah, if we want that portion protected, then the ordinance applies. So it really goes down to what they want to do on that, the small property owner, on the existing portion of their property that's been developed and what they want to do versus the portion of the property that falls greater than the 25%

You know that one little sliver there on the right hand side of the screen there so I guess just a point of clarity like Chris was saying earlier remember these put the entire parcel may not be in the hillside overlay right. Like the example of the Mary place, which, you know, the chairman's familiar with that neighborhood, the lower part of the lot may not be in the hillside overlay. It may just be that upper right side. So you want to be careful. You're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, right? Like if we're trying to protect the hillside and the only thing that's on the property that's in the hillside overlay is the undeveloped area, you know, to get back to what Director Chandragupta was saying. That's kind of what we're trying to protect. Understood.

So what I'm saying is if you want to exempt, if you exempt it, then you exempt the whole piece of property and then they can do whatever, and they can encroach into that hillside.

They can't do whatever. They are just not held to the hillside ordinance.

Yes, with all the conditions and the aesthetics and those type of things like that. Correct. You want those aesthetics in... Or do we want those aesthetics and those other type of restrictions in that one little portion of that property? Or do we not? That's really what it boils down to.

Well, I think we talked about in a previous meeting that when we develop, right, if I've got this correct, it has to meet certain criteria. Like it has to look a certain way, natural.

Yeah, it can only be so tall.

So tall. So we're talking more, I think, when I look at this. So yeah, the sliver or whatever it is. When we look at like single family homes who just want to develop on their thing because some of this these houses these grading the undisturbed the disturbed land happened many many years ago so if we want to give them that sliver that's what i'm proposing that that's what i'm in support of and i am saying that uh is like giving that portion to the landowner because they still have to meet all your guys's criteria that's there just they don't fall under the hillside ordinance

Well, some of that criteria is in the hillside ordinance. I think we're intermixing the concept of the hillside ordinance with the development plan permit. The development plan permit is a subset of the hillside ordinance. The hillside ordinance contains some of those objective standards for development on a hillside, and I don't think we're talking about getting rid of those. I think what this conversation has been, with some confusion, is about whether or not an applicant has to come in for a development plan permit, which is the discretionary approval part of it. The objective ministerial stuff, the grading permit thresholds, the height restrictions, all of those are in play whether or not there's a development plan. The question here that we've been discussing is, at what threshold do you need a development plan? And the development plan is what's going to put it before this board, or before the director, depending on the threshold of it, to review and make sure that some of those less objective criteria are being met to prevent things. For example, this wall that we keep talking about next to the freeway there in Hot Springs meets all of the objective standards of how to construct a wall and the technical requirements and health and safety requirements and all that, but we don't like the way it looks. That's a discretionary component, and that's the thing that got taken away from us by the state in that. We still have that here. The question is, at what point does somebody have to come in and get that discretionary approval? If they're on that parcel that you're looking at, if they're moving, you know, if you say that we're going to exempt the development plan from the hillside,

Yeah, I don't actually think if you listen to my recommendation with under five, I'm establishing that point correctly is that where do I want that line to be? Under five.

under five acres, right? But five acres has nothing to do with what's being built or what, so you're not even gonna look at what's going in on a four acre parcel at all. It doesn't matter how much dirt they move, how much they cut into the hillside, as long as it meets objective grading standards, we don't wanna look at it, which is fine, but I'm saying that's where you're going. The hillside ordinance, which is what made me interject here, Exempting from the hillside ordinance is a whole different thing, which I would not suggest you're talking about. I want to focus back on the difference between development plan permit, exempting from a development plan permit, versus exempting from the hillside ordinance. And those two terms have been used interchangeably during this conversation, and they mean very, very different things. So I think what, Commissioner DeSantis, what you're getting at is five acres exempt from the development plan permit, right? Not exempt from the hillside ordinance.

No, I disagree with you.

You want the, okay, so what you're suggesting would mean that if you have less than five acres, you don't have to comply with any of the standards in the Hillside Ordinance?

Yes.

Okay, so that's what you're suggesting.

What is already there, like the habitat and all that other stuff, that's already in place in what you are explaining.

So we're clear on that. Those are different things. I think he's made his position clear on that. It would exempt all development under five acres from anything in the hillside ordinance whatsoever.

Correct.

Any of the requirements. Heights. Amounts of dirt, I can't even get it.

Chris can address it if you want. MSHCP, consistency. Any of that. Habitat.

Which my legal suggestion would be absolutely not. I would not recommend that. That creates a whole host of other problems with the code. If you want to go that way, that would mean revisiting a lot of things. It certainly is a direction you can head in, but I do have to caution that's very different from exempting from a development plan permit.

Commissioner, were you under the impression, as I was, like, you know, just because they were exempting or proposing to exempt the five acre or less from the hillside ordinance does not exempt them from everything that city attorney just talked about. Like, they still have MHSTP problems and everything else. Not problems.

The same rules would apply as to a non-hillside. They would just be a regular parcel.

Which I actually said when I read it.

Anything having to do with a hillside would be gone. It would just be regular parcel standards. But hillsides are different, so that does change things. There are some things in there you may want to keep, some things in there you may want to exempt. But throwing the whole thing out would just say if you build on a hillside, it's the same as if you build on flatland.

Right, which just seems already heavily regulated.

But it's not the same thing, right? A hillside is different from flatland.

If you think about it, the city to the south of us has a major development on a hillside. Do you want that situation everywhere?

No. I just don't see, like, of the 391 parcels or whatever, like... how likely that is. Of the 371 parcels that this applies to, or whatever the number was, how many of them are A, never gonna be developed, which I know in 40 years from now, we want to protect this, this is what the portion of this problem is, but how many of those are gonna turn into commercialized developments like we have down the street in Temecula? I just don't know how many of those, and you guys can comment on that. I think David, you had, you had a number that you said earlier about how many parcels were single family lots under five acres. So how many of those are we vulnerable to, to becoming some massive, you know, ugly development that would scar the hillside?

Yeah. So the, the, the universe of lots that the hillside overlay represents, currently applies to is, I think it's roughly around 380, 290 of those are under, or five acres or less. And so I had mentioned when I made my comment that one of the problems that we're gonna have to deal with that the city attorney alluded to is we're gonna have to, it's gonna cause a problem for the general plan, which has policies about hillside preservation and protecting slopes.

I would add just a comment here. The commission may recall from our training, you can build multiple ADUs now. It's not just one. And there's a bill, I believe, in front of the state right now to allow a duplex on every single family lot in state. So there's potential that somebody could build five or six units on their single family lot, whether, whether or not that's doable. And that would be terrible requirements.

That would be terrible. But let me ask you this, if that's the case, would this block that from happening or are our hands tied like they were with, you know, Mount Rushmore.

So what's before you, like we talked about is essentially within the area that they've already developed. They'd be able to do that. They'd be able to build within the area that's already developed.

Sure.

But if they're going to go try to nuke the side of the hill, like the Mary place example, if we exempt all five acre parcels, then they just roll in and they're like, well, cool. I get to keep my old house and I get to build five units into the slope. Right. Yeah.

Which is a concern because, because commissioner just, you know, like, you know, we have to think longterm here, 10, 20 years from now when the, this property, these properties become more valuable and people start moving out here and the density rises. And it's just, it's just, you know, I want, I like to think we can try to prevent that with some of these policies. And I feel like that's a big purpose of, you know, having some of these policies is to prevent that happening in the future.

And we're on the same page, but to clarify, they can still propose it.

Sure.

And they, they would go through the development plan process and we would review it and there would be discretion and we'd want to make sure that they meet the standards of the hillside ordinance, that they, design it like we talked about when we had the workshop with you a year or two ago, design it appropriately. Are we landscaping it? Are we doing berms? What are we doing to make sure it blends with the hillside, the grading techniques that Chris talked about, right? But if we just throw it all out and say anybody under five acres, then they don't have to do any of that. And like we talked about, they could cut the hill, build a gigantic wall, you know, whatever it might be, right? So we're trying to control that development, that's all. We're not saying they can't do it. We're just saying, and we have existing standards. We have an existing ordinance that's in front of you. We're not creating it out of thin air. We want to regulate that type of development, and that's what the city decided 30 years ago, right?

So in your example, if under that scenario, they want to come in here and do five ADUs on there, But by having the hillside ordinance and having some checks and balances, at least in the portion of the property that it applies to, they might say, we can only put two of them in. And so it would limit the amount of ADUs instead of five, it might be only two based upon the ordinance.

That's possible, or it might steer them to develop in the area that's not already developed, so at least we preserve the hillside, I guess is what I would say, right? So at least we, maybe in the Mary Place example, they build down below And they don't build up on the hill where all their neighbors can see it even more, right? It's more in their face. Maybe it's down below. Maybe they landscape a little bit better. And maybe it's not as disruptive to the neighborhood. But they're still going to be able to do it because the state's passing these laws, right?

But can we be more specific with it? Like within this proposal, can we say like, you know, if you want to build into the hillside, for instance, like we let that go. Can't you say, okay, you can only build this into the hillside, whatever this ends up being? Because realistically, what we're doing, at least it seems like to me, and city attorney, you can correct me again, is that we're saying that their personal land, their property, they cannot touch it. And if they want to touch it, they have to go through this whole process.

That's not what we're saying, and I'll let the city attorney chime in. That's not what we're saying at all. There's currently a hillside ordinance that applies everywhere in the city, full stop. It applies to everybody. We're creating standards that apply only to the areas that have the steep slopes, which is simplifying that application, and then we have standards that apply within that area. So they can develop, they just have to follow the hillside development standards.

All right, fair enough. I understand now.

Yeah, and if you want to go to a five-acre exemption, it really means going back and redoing the entire thing. Because everything that's considered in here, think of things like setbacks. There's different setback requirements from the toe of a slope. There are different requirements for retaining wall heights. And some of these are technical and required because it's on a hillside, having nothing to do with, and they're required now and they always have been. and they have health and safety impacts and requirements that are unique to hillside development. So I don't think staff is ever going to recommend eliminating everything from there. However, there may be other parts of this, and where this conversation started for example, the development plan, which is something you may want to exempt people from to make the process easier, right? But you're not gonna necessarily exempt them from, you're on a hillside, your slope is this, you don't have to meet slope requirements for a retaining wall. You can just meet flatland requirements for a retaining wall, which are very, very different things from a technical standpoint. So the concept that you're proposing would require kind of a wholesale review and starting over of this, and coming back to you and identifying those specific sections that we really can't, or the staff really can't, and engineering can't agree to exempting hillsides from. They're here now, they always have been, and probably should always be, versus the things like a development plan permit, Maybe we can exempt or reduce the requirements or figure out that you don't need to do to ease the burden on the property owner. But we're not creating new burdens on property owners here. We're actually easing them or proposing easing them. Removing all properties under five acres from the Hillside Ordinance as it exists today and as it's proposed to exist creates a whole host of other issues. And for that reason, I mean, you're just making a recommendation at this point, but I highly suspect that if you do that, we're going to be going with a mixed recommendation to the council, which is not something we ever want to do. Staff's going to be pointing out all the problems with doing that, kind of tipping on the things I suggested, but going in more depth on that to the council, and then we're just back and forth again, and we still have the old one. I'd really like to encourage you to hone in on the things that can help a developer without throwing a baby out with the bathwater and saying they're exempt from the whole thing.

Okay. Yeah, I guess, and thank you again. I'm understanding it, so I'm not trying to disrespect or step on anybody's toes. I think for what in my head I thought, okay, they still have to go through the same procedure as far as going to engineering. And the engineering can say, no, this isn't good. This doesn't meet the requirements. Even if we don't adopt the hillside ordinance, they still fall under that.

That would be the plan. If we exempt them from the plan, that's what would happen. If you exempted them from the ordinance, then what would happen would be they'd be going to engineering, and engineering standards would be different. They'd be the flatland standards, not the hillside standards. Again, I'm not supporting one threshold or another. You guys can decide whatever that is. I just want to make sure we're all in agreement and understand what the implications of those things are. So if you choose to go in a certain direction, here's the natural consequences of that. But if that's the policy decision, that's the direction we want to go.

Thanks for the information. I do appreciate it. And just a point of clarification, when you're using the term developer, it also is inclusive of the single-family homeowner falls under that. Yeah, we could say applicant, whatever you prefer. I just wanted to make that clear that it's not a big home apartment developer, that type of thing like that.

Although it could be. That's the point that Steele was suggesting, is that there are some things we don't have control over as who will develop the property in the future.

I get it, but just when you use the term of a developer coming in, And we're friendly towards the developer. I want to also be inclusive of the Joe homeowner also fits in that. We want to be helpful to that person as well, too.

And it falls under rural residential, correct? That area?

Most of the properties are in the rural residential. Some of the hillside is in open space as well, which is a different zone. But most of the property is in the rural residential zone.

Can the state force apartment complexes and rural residential?

I don't work for the state, right? I work for the city of Marietta. I'm asking for your advice. I mean, the state legislature... I'm saying currently. They've done crazy things, as we've talked about. I have to come... Unfortunately, I have to come to you every year with all the new bills, and I know you guys roll your eyes, and it's a bummer, but... I don't roll my eyes. I like that. I do my best. But yeah, unfortunately, the state's doing a lot of really alarming things. And I mentioned the one that's in front of them now, to do a duplex on every single family lot. So not only are they wanting to encourage ADUs, but wanting people to do duplexes on every single family lot in the state. So this is the stuff they're doing. They're trying to cook up more ways to get units on single family lots. They've said it at the legislature. So just be cognizant of what they're doing.

Let me, I wanna make something clear for myself. I want this hillside ordinance, it's so complicated, it's so hard to, difficult to really understand. I want it to be easier for homeowners like Mr. Long here to build an ADU or a garage on his property, on his two acre parcel, on his 10 acre parcel. I don't want him to have to spend, him and all the other homeowners, to have to spend more money, more resources, more studies, more crap to build something that meets city standards, aesthetically looks good, is safe, all the other things. I do want it to be harder for someone to come in like the people that built this ugly wall over here. I want it to be extremely difficult for them to affect our hillside. So that's my position. I don't know how we read that into the recommendation. If a developer comes in and buys a bunch of parcels, they should be held to a very hard standard for our hillside ordinance. But if these people on Mary Lane or whatever want to build something, as long as it still meets All the requirements I've talked about, I don't want it. I don't want them to have to go through another ordinance review and spend more money to have to do something like that. So I don't know how to like make that happen. And it's so complex and confusing for me. So that's just my position.

Chair, that's a theme that you've had this entire time, where you want to make sure that there's not requirements that can't be satisfied, right? Legal lot and history of grading. You want to make sure that the type of permit is affordable and is compressed in a timely manner. But those things are in front of you, and you can provide those as recommendations through us.

Yeah, I think that's the ordinance that's in front of you. That's what staff's recommendation is. We've had this discussion with city council at length at multiple workshops. So we had a lot of discussion about this developed versus undeveloped and coming up with criteria. We've done that. We had a discussion about it at the last meeting. So that's what's in front of you is essentially that approach.

If you have a development plan requirement, you have a discretionary review, and it comes before you to make a decision and make those determinations. And, you know, this is ugly, this cuts into the wall, this doesn't fit that, I don't like this. That's all part of that process in a development plan. It would be unconstitutional for us to say that property owner A has to follow these laws and property owner B has to follow those laws. The Supreme Court has found that corporations are people. It's the same, they're the same, whether we call them a developer, whether we call them a homeowner, whether we call them an applicant or an individual, the law doesn't see them any differently. So we have to treat them the same under the law. So the way we do that here is to propose that If you're making a disturbance of a certain size and a certain portion of the property, the undeveloped or undisturbed portion, then you need to come in and seek our approval for that.

And just to follow on to that, that may mean that there's a public hearing and that project comes before you, and that may mean that project goes to the city council, right? That's part of the public process. But if we just exempt... blanket exempt areas that won't happen right so I so what's in front of you is what you just said so if if if a developer were to come in and buy a bunch of these parcels and then try to develop within the hillside area. There'd be a discretionary permit and if people still didn't like what they were proposing they could ask for hearing and we would have a hearing here and you would see the project. That's what would happen. So if you throw that away, you don't have that.

Well, there'd also have to be preemptively a change in zoning, right? Not necessarily.

If they get enough land, they could do it, right? They pull a bunch of parcels together. Like Director Chancharachsu said, we have a couple subdivisions in process that are within the hillside overlay. So it's true. You know, I don't know why a developer would want to do it, but developers do crazy things sometimes. Maybe they really want to build a subdivision with a view of Marietta, right? And so they get a bunch of parcels together and they say, I like to build duplexes with four ADUs on each slot, right?

All right.

Yeah, and that's what we want to prevent. Right. Or make more difficult. We want to review. Prevent was aggressive.

Yeah. Review. Question, Mr. City Attorney. Do I have the authority to reopen the public hearing for the purpose of allowing somebody who has not spoken before to speak?

Yes.

We have not yet passed that point. I see somebody who's about ready to jump out of his seat. I'll reopen the public hearing at 7.42 for the purpose of somebody who hasn't spoken.

I'm disappointed in myself for not coming to this the original ordinance, right, protect the view shed from the 15 and the 215 and the major roadways, right? And how we got here going way back, I mean, it's gotten way convoluted, right, was my project on Jackson and Nutmeg that you could not see from any of those protecting a view shed. And what did we do to try to prove to the residents is we did a line of sight study and you could still see the roof, right? So let's go back to the very beginning and why are we making this citywide and protecting hillsides that cannot be seen from the roadways of the original plan? You follow? So in the original general plan, in the original ordinance, was protect hillsides that you could see from the major thoroughfares. So if Danny Long's property is up a hillside, even if it's 25%, if it cannot be seen from the major thoroughfares, it should not be governed by the ordinance. It's that simple. It doesn't matter if it's five acres, two and a half acres, or whatever, but we've gotten so far down the path, and not because of staff, right? It was, well, I'm gonna exercise the better part of discretion. So let's bring it back to what the goal is, is to protect its hillside preservation, right? So it seems to me the simplest thing to do to protect the original general plan goal and private property owners is if you can demonstrate through a line of sight study that your parcel and your development cannot be seen from either of these thoroughfares, you're exempt. Doesn't matter if you need a development plan, a grading plan, throw all that BS out. It has nothing to do with the hillside ordinance or hillside preservation because that's a blanket across the city. It's not only city or state, it's federal water, as Rick talked about, all these things. And I'm sorry, I'm frustrated because after six years, and I think this is probably the eighth or 10th, And I appreciate the questions you're asking. I appreciate, Paul, the direction and clarification you're giving, Carl and staff. Appreciate all these things. I'm frustrated because we've gotten way far afoot from the original goal, general plan goal and policy, And we need to bring it back and simplify it. And this is the easiest and most simple way for a landowner, whether it's a single parcel, a corporation, whatever, and for staff to figure it out. And someone doesn't have to come in and file an application. They can go to the general plan, look at the hillside overlay. They don't even have to do that. They can hire an architect to do... and pick a point on these thoroughfares and produce a line of sight, come into the counter and say, hey, am I exempt or not? It's that simple. And that would be my recommendation to you to make the recommendation, to add that recommendation that if you can provide a line of sight that you are not seeing from the thoroughfares, it doesn't apply. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Klein. We'll go ahead and reclose the public hearing at 7.45. Okay. You gave some historical information here. I'd like to give an opportunity for staff to respond to that.

Before staff does, I just want to make one further clarification to clarify even my prior statements. We talked about the hillside ordinance. This is, we're talking about this ordinance, which is making changes to several different sections of our code. So whatever direction we go when we talk about exempting, I think it's very important that we talk about what we're exempting from. because there is no hillside ordinance in that it's one chapter of our code, everything related to a hillside. Some things are in the grading, some things are in the permitting section, there's different.

It's peppered throughout the entire ordinance.

Right, there are some consistent ones that are together, and probably what most people think of as the hillside ordinance. There's some sections that are specifically about that. But there are sections that are scattered about and completely different. So I just want to make sure we understand the terminology when we're talking about the hillside ordinance. We're just talking about what's before you today. There are hillside-related sections that are not in this ordinance because they're untouched. They're currently existing, and they will remain to be existing. that part of my concern about exempting from this ordinance doesn't necessarily exempt you from all of the hillside-related things we've talked about. It's only the things that are being changed in here. So it's a broader discussion than just that, depending on where you end up focusing your attention on what you want to exempt from.

Yeah, Mr. Chairman, you asked for or gave staff the ability or opportunity to comment, and As we went through this re-evaluation process, part of our research was looking at some of the original source documents, planning documents from the original general plan and what's called typically the existing setting conditions. And what that document tried to do was to frame up the issue of the hillside ordinance for an ordinance to be developed. And for better or for worse, I mean, we've heard plenty of comments over the course of the last few years of misinterpretations, misapplications, things like that, and the direction that we guide from the city council was go clean it up. And so that's been our focus is to not make wholesale changes to the hillside ordinance, but to try to clarify, make it easier to understand. And the hillside overlay map, if you don't remember the story, we had a map that was hanging up in our office that nobody knew what the source of it was, who drew it, where it came from. And so it created a lot of confusion. You heard Mr. Klein's story about his project. And so we've tried to remove the ambiguity out of the ordinance by developing the overlay map, which Chris is showing. on the screen now. So we're talking about kind of greasing the wheels. We've taken the mystery out of the evaluation process for property owners. If your property is in this overlay zone area, you don't have to do a survey. You don't have to do a total map. We've already done it. And if you disagree with it, we've given a process or provided a process where they can provide their own information. We received testimony through the process that the approach that we used wasn't always accurate. So we're like, great, we'll give property owners the ability to do their own evaluation and have us consider it. So our guiding point has always been the general plan and looking at the back of the policies. that originated in the first year old plan that got carried forward. And essentially, and I'm paraphrasing a lot, the goal was to protect slopes and have preservation on hillsides for aesthetic reasons. We've talked about the city to the south and what's happened there. People aren't liking the way it looks. You know, Commissioner Lopaglia, you were talking about, you know, the number of properties that we have in the city and how you don't think it's going to happen until it does. And then we're all going to be looking at each other saying, how did we let that happen? And that's what we're trying to avoid. And so I think, you know, we haven't, like I said, we haven't interjected any new standards. We're looking for ways to be, you know, creative and trying to help our property owners, you know, get through our process. And we think the best way to do that is to establish a threshold, whatever you think is, you know, the correct one where they get to work with staff as opposed to having to go through a bureaucratic process. So that's our position. We think that's consistent with the direction we've been given. originally, and so you've got our recommendation, and however you want to establish that threshold for creating a development plan permit at a certain threshold or not.

Okay. I have a question for the city attorney. You... advised, suggested, whatever, against the lot acreage of five acres, which I could agree with that it covers too many properties. I think it was like 90% of the properties.

I thought- I did not advise against that. I did for purposes of exempting from the Hillside Ordinance. If you wanted to exempt lots under five acres from a development plan, I'm not advising against that. I'm just noting that what that would mean would be there'd be no discretionary review of anything on that parcel. So if what they built, whoever it was that built, future property owners, whoever could build, would have no discretionary review. And if that's the direction, I have no opinion on whether or not that's... Good policy, I'm just making sure we're clear on what it meant. But I was opposed to or advising against a wholesale exemption.

Okay. I want to try to find the finish line on this thing. Like, I really don't want to see this continued again tonight. Like, it's ridiculous that this has been for eight years. I remember Mr. Klein's project. I was on the planning commission when that got shut down, repealed, whatever happened to it. But what I was going to ask was, you know, we're kind of like, we were kind of trending towards, well, if we increase the cubic yardage allowed, but then we started talking about grading permits and all this stuff. But what would, what would your thought be on like a square footage requirement? Like anything over, let's just say 10,000 square feet of a building pad or something over 10,000 square feet would trigger the hillside ordinance.

So there are that's that and grading cubic yardage was as Chris alluded to, there are other standards in the development code where discretionary permit is already triggered at a smaller size. So accessory structures throughout the city over a thousand square feet require discretionary permit.

So we're talking about the hillside ordinance anywhere.

Okay. This is a different code requirement. Okay. It's anywhere in the city. It's, it's up there in the second, um, level there. So that's the same throughout the city and in the hillside ordinance. So saying like, oh, you can do 10,000 square feet, problems for those people that wanted to do an accessory structure because they would still need to get a development plan permit. So it really doesn't help them out.

Okay. So that's fine. And that's the answer. I was just trying, I'm trying to come up with an idea that we can get a resolution tonight. You know, I don't know if it needs to be modified or what needs to be modified. It seems like we have some unhappy people about it, but overall what you guys are telling us, it sounds like, you know, we've done a great staff, done a great job and you know, this is going to be simpler for everybody.

It's hard to thread the needle, right? We're trying to help people. I think a lot of the people that are concerned about this will probably have most of their properties exempted once they look at it, right? Once they look at where it's been previously developed and they look at their aerial photography and they show us and they come in and propose something, they'll likely probably find. It's going to be the areas that no one's ever built anything. That's really where the question is. And we've talked about that at length. And that's what we're really mainly concerned about.

I think if you want to get it across the finish line tonight, you have to focus on those individual areas. Or say we don't like it in its entirety and suggest as we were starting to head that we need something that exempts completely, which would be a whole redrafting. But if you want to work with this and try to get it done, you need to focus on individual points. Development plan, what's the threshold? Is it square footage? Is it ton, I'm sorry, grading? Cubic yards. Cubic yards, thank you. Is it acreage of disturbed land? What is it and what's the threshold? You can focus on that decision, debate that and come to, Something if there's another specific point we don't like this setback distance or we don't like this retaining wall height and you want to discuss that that's certainly something that you can make tweaks and recommendations on but if we're headed down the path of there's a consensus here to try to exempt everybody from everything.

Or everybody under 5 acres or whatever the threshold that would that would negate all the rest of that right and and and require a wholesale revision and start over and just a reminder the commission already took a position on this ordinance we took it to city council we went through workshops of the city council we came back to you because we changed a number of things in the ordinance and so we want to make sure we get your recommendation mainly on the things we changed. The Planning Commission has already recommended the ordinance to the council as staff drafted it, what was it, a couple years ago, three years ago. We've made some changes. The changes are before you. We think the changes are good and help the property owners and the applicants that will come in that will want to develop, especially the ones that already have areas that are developed, right? So we've kind of addressed that at the direction from the council. So we're not really looking to overhaul the ordinance anymore. Yeah, I should be clicking for staff. We're looking to bring back what we had before you before and show you the changes we made and then bring that back to council.

Yeah, I should be good. Staff isn't going to if you if you voted tonight, you know, unanimously to say we want the wholesale exemption thing. So I wasn't going to go back, redo that, do all that work, come back to that with the commission with that. What's going to happen procedurally is. will proceed to the City Council with your recommendation not to go forward with the current ordinance and describing what you do want and staff would put in their recommendation and the City Council would weigh in on that. It wouldn't go back here and come back here again before going to that. So we're not stopping the train to do that even if that's your decision. It just changes your recommendation.

Chair, what do you think? Commissioner?

I know I'm probably bothering you all on this, but...

It's a messy process. You're fine.

So when Mr. Klein came up, he talked about the general plan currently, and I want to make sure this is accurate, stating about line of sight when it comes to building in the hillside. Is that still a part of the general plan? Yeah, it's...

It's still in the general plan. It actually speaks to it in several areas. There's other areas in the conservation easement that speak to preserving different hills. There's a couple different policies. We covered this a couple of meetings ago at that. But yeah, it's currently still in place today.

Okay, would this, what's put in front of us right now, would that affect it in any way?

It shouldn't, because what we are doing, well, let me go to the map, because...

I think it might be more procedural. The way I heard the speaker state it was that you would do that analysis first, bring that to the city, and then request an exemption at the counter, per se. That's how I heard that related. We don't have a difference of opinion on that process. But I would say that those hillside areas are viewable from many, many street systems. So I don't want to create a new argument. I would like for us as staff to look at that on the way to city council to make sure that that is an existing, reliable exemption to focus on. But I think the misnomer is that we don't have a bunch of 10 story buildings everywhere in the city. And so I see the hog backs in other places quite often from secondary streets and like that. But I want to maybe truth that out if we're asked to bring that to city council. But he's right. If there's an existing exemption, that's the right of these applicants.

To Mr. Ramirez point too, and he processed one of the recent annexations, the size of the city has changed since the general plan was written. We've added a lot of space to the city. We've also added streets to the city. So the context is different now than it was then.

Yeah, and I clearly remember Mr. Klein's project and what I always thought that the base premise of this hillside ordinance was for was to protect the ridgeline view so it wouldn't impede on... views of the 215 15 like you said and i thought it was and major corridors whatever that means clinton keith whatever else um have we have we just evolved away from that like because it just seems like it's crazy complexed and you know we haven't really even discussed ever in the last couple of commission meetings about like the view of it like the ridgeline So can you comment a little bit on like that, I don't know, I guess that criteria and why we've gotten away from that?

Let me take a swing at that. Mr. Chairman and Carl can chime in if he wants to. So, you know, in terms of the layers of regulations, the general plans like our constitution, right? And the planning commission, city council, you know, the way that they implement or plan Pick programs and policies that fulfill the general plan is through the zoning code and and so for the hillside goals and policies that were identified or written in the general plan the the mechanism that was chosen to get there to achieve those goals was the hillside ordinance. And so the city attorney has indicated to you that if you go through this maybe alternate approach, we have to go back and undo 20 years of policy and rewrite this hillside ordinance. So we're basically getting off the boat that we've been on for the past 25 plus years with this ordinance, and we're going to have to rewrite it. to go with a different approach that you've been talking about. And so, as far as continuity is concerned, this approach keeps that continuity. If you wanna consider a different approach, City Attorney described the process that we would probably need to use to get there, where the City Council will have to decide Do they want to go back and explore the approach that Mr. Klein was describing or some other approach? Or do they want to keep on with the current ordinance with the revisions and the updates and ideally the clarifications that we made? And I also want to just touch on Mr. Klein's suggested approach. I mean, it's got merit, but we don't have any analysis or backup to support that. And one of the things that we have to do is provide substantial evidence to you. We just can't say, oh, yeah, that's a great idea. Let's go do it because it exposes the city to some of the issues that the city attorney described. where you can't treat, you know, person A and person B differently. You know, the goal, one of the main goal, and you're right, we have gotten, you know, far away from it since we started, was to try to clarify the map and get rid of the formula that's the antiquated formula that's in there right now to try to determine average slope. And so by creating a map, we've taken the ambiguity out of that process. I'm a little concerned without doing any analysis that the approach that Mr. Klein is suggesting without further analysis, that it's going to reintroduce that objectivity that we're trying to get away from. And if we want to spend more time doing that, I think that's a decision that we're going to have to take to the city council and let them decide. You know, do they stay the course, keep the hillside ordinance, and clean it up? Or do we go back and reinvent the wheel and basically start over?

But the line of sight is in our city constitution already, in the general plan.

Well, there's the language about the viewshed, you know, generally. And so, like I'd indicated, the vehicle that we chose... to do that or to implement that is through the existing ordinance. And so there's no specific references to places within the city where, you know, hillsides, you know, should be protected, although there was a specific reference to bridge lines.

I'm sorry, just to interject. Protected from the view, right? Like, that's what we're trying to protect.

We're trying to protect the view. Well, if you look at the purpose of the ordinance, there are about five or six objectives, you know, that are in there. And I don't know them off the top of my head, but Within the hillside policies, it's trying to maintain the views from the valley floors below. So you're looking up from the valley floor below, and that's the language that's used. You're looking up at the hillsides, and that's the viewshed that the general plan is looking to maintain.

Maintain the aesthetic. And I'm all about that. Like, me personally, I'm all about protecting that view, 100%. I do believe that once the Temecula development is all built out, it won't look as bad as it does right now. It's so bare, and there's no buildings, you know, blocking the scar on the side of the hill there. So to their point, and to going back into the archives of, you know, this... ordinance the last eight years however long it's been if and i'm not talking about if somebody builds something it has to meet our code it has to be structurally sound it has to have proper drainage all that stuff has to be met but if you can't see it from a main road or a main corridor like i know where mr long lives like i've never been to his house but i know right where he lives i can't see his house from the freeway i can't see his house from los alamos So if you can't see a development into the hillside, I don't mean to say, I don't mean to be like, what do we care? But it's really not, I don't really see what the problem is. I want to prevent stuff from happening where it's extremely ugly from the view shed. I want to prevent that by all means. But That's where I'm just trying to find like, how do you draw a line? And it sounds like you guys have put things in place that are making this mechanism easy to do. I just wanna make sure that that is what we're voting on tonight or that whoever's voting on it tonight.

Well, I think you've heard plenty of testimony from staff and where we pointed to areas where we're trying to improve the ordinance to reduce ambiguity and make it easier to work with and understand. And so the original task, that was our original task from the council, make it better. It wasn't go back you know, reevaluate the hillside ordinance and replace it, you know, with something different.

It was taking it from the citywide to certain sections, correct? I'm not sure what you mean by that. Like geographic areas? Yeah, like geographically it covered the entire city of Marietta. The hillside ordinance covered the entire city of Marietta, and now we've shrunk it down to these focused areas.

Yeah, so with the story about the map that I described, you know, we've taken it from this, you know, innocuous document to... The overlay area, which is now, you know, it's no longer citywide. It's focused in those areas that have.

It looks like it takes up 15 percent of our city as a whole.

I think it's about 900 acres, something like that.

Sure.

And also just one thing I like to bring up. We've we just brought back to you the objective standards. Right. Three years after we adopted it. This isn't like begin all end all, it's the end of the world. We do need to get an ordinance in place. Just my two cents, we've been working on this a long time. Chris has put a lot of work in this. We need to get an ordinance in place to at least start helping some of the people who want to develop rather than have the current scenario. So there is a win here of just getting an ordinance in place.

I agree.

I just want to put that out there. And I said it earlier.

I want to see a finish line on this tonight. Like you guys have spent so much time, so much money, so much effort on this.

We as staff are happy to continue to have a dialogue with the council and with the Planning Commission and continue to work with you on ordinances and updates. And we just did that on multiple things recently with you. So this isn't the end of the world. We can get an ordinance in place, start using it, and if there needs to be updates, that could be a request. The Commission says, hey, come back and we'll have an update on how we're doing with our objective standards and our I think you already asked me that. And also the hillside, right? And what development have we had? Staff, can we look at that and talk about that? We're happy to come talk to you about that.

So let me just clarify something just because, you know, for three of us up here, we came in here midstream in the middle of this process. And I appreciate Commissioner LaPaglia has been here since the beginning, since all this basically happened here. And it's been back and forth and back and forth for, you say, eight years, right? Based upon, you know, a piece of property, started the conversation and where are we at? and what Mr. Chantarotsu had said, you know, and how this all basically happened. So, you know, when you go with the line of sight, you'd have to do some more research, and like, okay, is this, you know, how does that affect the general plan, or what's it define, But along the steps has, and you guys chose, or city council chose to say, okay, hey, look, rather than standing at different points along the I-215 freeway and I-15 freeway and standing on the freeway and looking to see what you can see and what you can't see based on development, you came up with this mapping system, basically, that we're in front of us here tonight, right? And that's been going back and forth. At any point in time, And that's the standard that was kind of set before we came up here. Did council ever say, yeah, we don't like that standard. We would rather you find different points on the freeway and or line of sight and any of those type of things like that. Has there ever been a change in like, hey, we don't like the standard of the map. Let me ask that first. Yeah, sure.

So I think it was inferred through public testimony. but the council didn't direct us to change the way that we apply the hillside ordinance.

Okay. So you've been going down this road for years basically. And, and so it's been, and it's gone up to council as recently as several months ago, right?

Yep.

Okay. And in, in that council meeting, the only thing that I gleaned from that or saw it came back was the, the developed versus undeveloped and, or not, disturbed versus undisturbed, and that's what came back, and that was my point of clarification, why I sent it back to staff, or got consensus and wanted it sent back. But prior to that, did council ever give any direction or say, hey, look, we don't want that standard, and we want a different standard, and give you a different direction? Are we... Because we're going back within what the council gave us the direction, is what I'm believing is what's occurred.

Yeah, so there was a time in the process where We talked extensively about the hillside overlay map. And we went through a discussion with them about how we developed the map, the technique that was used, all the technical stuff that we did to basically create the map that's on your screen. And there was no discussion about using a different approach other than giving property owners an alternative to this map. which is to create their own survey and topographic information that they could provide. So they wanted to provide an option to property owners to determine whether or not they were above or below the 25% hillside slope threshold.

So I guess my point is that if that's been the kind of the parameters that's been going on for eight years, and to Mr... Commissioner of the Paglias point, you know, get across the finish line. I suppose if there's a different standard that needs to be evaluated, then that's really, then council needs to be the ones to say, hey, yeah, we don't throw out the map, start all over, redo it. I don't know. That's just my feeling. And what we have is what we have, but that's based upon the parameters set by council who told staff, and we're trying to, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and this is what we've got in front of us, it's basically, they're the ones that kind of set that standard. And correct me if I'm wrong, but you've been here the entire eight years, and you've seen this. And I don't know, and the three of us are kind of newbies compared to your experience on the commission here, but is that, Am I missing something, or what do you think about that, or do we, you know?

Think about what?

Well, do we tell them, hey, look, now let's throw a whole different standard, just do line of sight and throw everything out? No. Or is that council's, that should be council's call to say, hey, look, we're going to do a different standard.

Yeah, I mean, I'm I think, yeah, I don't think that I mean, I would I would want council to make that decision because that requires spending a lot of time, which is a lot of money to restart fresh on this. Like these like staff saying we have to have something in place. This is still going to go to council. This can still be. Mended if necessary, we can we can have a review or an update like like Mr. Steele had said, which I support that it is this has been complicated from day one. It's been so hard to understand. It's changed so much. It's it's difficult. I hate to personally to like have to vote on something that like you fully don't, you know, maybe grasp or understand the implications of it. But I think staff's right where we have to have something in place to like get this to the next step. And if that's what we have in front of us, then that's what we have in front of us. And then city council can handle it from here. But staff's put a ton of work into this. It's, they spent a ton of time on it and it's been to our,

Commission multiple times and I think it's just time to just see this ship sail to council So so then the only other question I have for staff and I go back to that Mary place Parcel that you so let's just say and you say you don't have enough information at this point time and in reference to the general plan But I don't know if this parcel is viewable from Interstate 215 or not. I don't know. But if that property owner came in and said, hey, look, based upon the ambiguity, is it viewable from Interstate 215 or is it not? How would you, based upon what, if we were to pass this ordinance tonight, how would that, I guess it's a theoretical because you don't really know you need to look. How would that factor into the process?

I'll just help, and then I'll let Chris chime in. It's a bit of a far-fetched kind of, like we're getting out of focus here. Right. We don't know what's proposed. We don't know what they want to do with the property. But what's essentially before you is, as Chris did a very general analysis here, but most of the property would be exempt. Only that area, essentially, the scenario we're giving you, the area on the right that's going up the hill, that's the area we'd be like, okay, if you're developing in there, the development plan permits triggered, the rest of it wouldn't, wouldn't need a development plan.

Well, I guess that would be something that, that, you know, if we were to move this forward to council and let, make them take a look at, yeah. And as you're doing your further analysis based upon the points of line of sight and things like that as to the, uh, what we move forward, That would be something, okay, how would that be incorporated or not be incorporated into the process if somebody wanted to do that?

The only thing I'd caution on that, that's a general plan side, and this kind of city attorney can weigh in. We're dealing with the development code. What's in front of you is the development code, not the general plan. We're not amending the general plan.

The short answer to your question, though, is the map. So we're using our overlay map.

We're using the map as the guideline and basically that's the standard as opposed to something that might be a little bit more subjective.

The general plan does not have specific standards in it. The general plan just says there are these beautiful natural features out there And we like them. And currently, I'll even read you the only part that's even close to any kind of regulation in the general plan. It says, the Murrieta Municipal Code establishes guidelines for future development proposed along the city's hillsides. So it gives this broad statement that we have hillsides and we have these prominent features, even calling out some of what those features are, the Hogbacks and the Santa Rosa Plateau. And then it says we regulate them for the municipal code, which is what we currently do. There's nothing in there that says any kind of specific regulation that this is contradictory to or invokes. When we write these, we have to keep in mind that the intent here is to address these locations, but it is not prohibitive in any way.

Yeah, I'll just speak to the viewshed thing. It's a very complicated thing to implement. I worked at a coastal city. We had coastal zones with Usheds that were identified. But it was very defined. And there was always a debate between different homeowners. And it always led to a lot of consternation between what one was blocking versus another and protecting that view. I think this is having the maps a little bit more defensible at the end of the day.

And Chair, I just wanted to say that you heard a speaker come up here very frustrated, admittingly, right? And then you heard Commissioner Paglia reference something that happened at a hearing a long time ago in Jackson. So because of the original error, this thing got bled into our development code so badly that every property got stuck with this. And so we would like to have an ordinance that allows us to have a fair way for developers to come in and develop certain properties that are not subject to hillside policy versus those that are. But I would say with Planning Commission, if you would let us go to the City Council, you would be fixing a big nightmare for our development community. So you'd get us back to a baseline level.

I suggest we vote.

All right. Well, you need a motion. I second that idea, but somebody needs to make a motion before we can do that.

I'll make a motion that we vote on the action, the reintroduction. The recommended action? Yes.

It's the staff recommendation. Would it please the chair? Would you like me to read the staff recommendation? Yes, please. Okay. So the recommended action is to reopen a public hearing, which we did, accept public testimony. And then adopt a resolution entitled Resolution of the Planning Commission of the City of Marietta, California, recommending the City Council authorize the filing of an environmental determination and approve Development Code Amendment 2021-2396 related to Chapters 16.08, 16.14, 16.18, 16.22, 16.24, and 16.28.

I think this is wrong. I think the motion and second is incorrect.

Yeah, we haven't got a second yet.

We just have a motion from Commissioner Rose. Second.

Second.

Okay, and a second by Commissioner DeSantis. So just reverse.

So we just need to switch them. Oh, that's the minutes.

That's showing the old one. So we're not able to say, if you say nay. Yeah, they're going to take it to council.

But we're not able to suggest basically that.

And while she's doing that, I'll just remind the commission that if you have ideas or future implementation that you think would be helpful, you can ask for it to be agendized on a future calendar to talk to staff about and see if it's something the council might be willing to consider.

When do you do that? We're not set in stone. Are you talking in an alternative motion?

No, I'm talking about just like if six months from now, so you have an idea and you want to bring it, you can bring it to Carl.

But the process isn't working and we need to clean this up.

You want to discuss something, you can ask for it to be agendized to reopen that particular topic.

I think, and as we've talked about, we've been doing some trainings with you all. I'm happy to talk about this when we talk about how the ordinances are going. I'm happy to

come back talk about the objective standards talk about hillside we can do that okay so we do have a motion and are still want a second as is okay so we have a motion a second register votes

Motion passes with, let's see. Motion carries. I'm sorry. Passes with 3-2.

It's 3-1.

With the Commissioner DeSena.

Who voted yes and no?

So the Senate voted no. I voted no.

The Senate voted no.

He supported the recommendation, and then he voted no. I didn't know.

So he agreed to have it called to a vote, which was why he seconded the motion, but he voted against the recommendation.

Okay, just wanted to make that.

It's unusual, but it certainly can be done.

It's not showing up on our screen that way, so that's why I was confused.

It was 3-1 with the Senate, nay.

Okay, got it.

Can I... touch on that real quick, or am I not allowed to talk about that?

At the chair, if you want.

Three minutes?

Okay. Three more spots. Yeah, three more spots. So that carries. We're finished with that, so now we have city planner comments.

I don't really have any comments. I don't believe we have anything for the next hearing, so... I just want to say happy 4th of July to everybody this last week, and I hope you're all having a nice summer. And I think we'll probably have another meeting in August, but I don't think we have anything coming up at the next one.

And I appreciate all the work the Commission did tonight.

Thank you.

That's it for me, Chair. Mr. City Attorney.

Nothing from me. Thank you.

Okay. Now, Planning Commissioner comments. Commissioner DeSena.

I just wanted to clarify the nay on it. It was... It was a little bit confusing on my end, and we were going back and forth quite a bit, and I didn't feel like there was things that needed to be added to it or needed to be addressed further than just tonight, like putting it out there and sending it to city council. So I did believe that looking at the general plan, looking at that line of sight we talked about, looking at how that all aligns, which I know you guys do, I'm sure you have done, but taking that a step further, and seeing how that can be incorporated as an exemption to the process of it if it falls under that. So I just wanted to make that clear that I support getting this through the finish line. I support all the work that LaPaglia has done. I just, in my opinion, would like to see the exemptions of certain things if it goes with that general plan and it's there. So that's where I stand with it. Just wanted to let you know that.

uh commissioner rose no comment commissioner i just appreciate all staff's work on this especially you mr tracy i know this has been a long road for you so i hope that you see some success beyond planning commission here and thanks for all your hard work to the entire staff so thank you thank you likewise even though uh coming in the middle of this per se uh

you know, uh, we, we've been there maybe less than half or a quarter of the way that, uh, commissioner LaPaglia has seen this and, and the staff here. And so I appreciate all the hard work, uh, the comments by those that came here tonight. And I'm sure as it goes to, uh, city council, that some of the, the comments that Mr. Uh, Chantaransu mentioned about the general plan and, and also what commissioner DeSanta brought up as well, too, we'll get echoed to council and they'll, uh, They wanna use a different standard, so be it, but that's clearly their call. So with that, looking for consensus to adjourn?

Consensus.

Okay, we got consensus to adjourn. We are going to adjourn 8-27.