Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Can I do get a roll call, please? Watts? Here. Jewel? Here. Dahlgren?

Here.

Here. Runtine?

Here.

Johnson?

Here.

Alves? Here. Beckler? Here. All right. Great. Thank you. I'd like to welcome everyone, to today's Planning Commission hearing. The meeting is open to virtual, first time today, and in person participation, and also may be observed online through the Placer County website. If you would like to make a public comment on any item today, the Planning Commission Clerk will announce when you are to line up to provide testimony.

For the members of the public attending via Zoom, please raise your hand with the hand icon at the bottom of the page. If you are calling in, please press 9 to raise your hand. Please be prepared to speak at the time I open public comment for the specific item you would like to address, which may also include public comment for matters not on the published agenda or hearing items. Each commenter is entitled to three minutes, and you will only be given one opportunity to speak on each item. Thanks for your consideration, as we do want to work to ensure, each citizen gets equal opportunity to do so.

Please be advised that the hearing is also being recorded and will be available on the Planning Commission's webpage following today's hearing. And now I will move on to our next item on the agenda, which is the consent calendar. We do have one item on the consent calendar under item two, which is the Planning Commission meeting minutes for our 02/12/2026 meeting. So, would any commissioner like to remove an item from the consent calendar?

Yes, I would.

Okay. Alright. Anyone else? Would anyone from the public want to remove it since it's already removed? I guess it's a moot point. Okay. So,

Rick Okay. I just want to make a comment. Go ahead.

But I can just kind of

Yeah. Please provide guidance.

It was on consent. It's been pulled off now. Normally, we'd have a staff presentation if this is an item on there. But it's really just the minutes for last meeting, the February 12 planning commission meeting. And with that then, I know commissioner Johnson wants to say something.

And then would I open it up for public comment after Okay. Great.

Okay. I just wanna make the comment that, I voted yes for the variance for the five foot fence. But in my mind, I voted yes for the five foot fence on the property line as entitled by basically the property owner could have built a three foot fence in the property line. But I approved I was going to agree to a five foot fence in the property line. But at any rate, I did not agree with the extension of the five foot fence into the easement area. And so basically, that's my comment.

Okay.

So I just wanted to clarify what my guess was about. It was for the five foot fence variance on the property line. Because of the unique size of the property and the uniqueness of the size of that property in relationship to the other properties in the neighborhood. Okay. So that's why agreed with that, but not in the easement.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you. Okay. Any other comments from the commission? I'm going to open up public comment. I see there's no one in the room for public comment. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

I see no hand raised.

Okay. And so I will go ahead and close public comment. Can I get a motion for this item?

A motion to approve minutes for the 02/12/2026 meeting. Second.

First and a second. Roll call, please.

Ales?

Yes.

Rantine?

Yes.

Watts? Yes. Jewell? Yes. Dahlgren?

Yes.

Johnson?

Yes.

Beckler? Yes. Okay. Great. I now ask Chris Pahouli, our planning director, to share his report with us.

Good morning, Chair Bechler, commissioners. Chris Pahouli, Placer County Planning Director. You should, be receiving a copy of, the February 26, Planning Director's report. We'll start with, past and upcoming items at the Board of Supervisors. I wanted to first note that on February 17, the board took action to approve the zoning text amendment package that was previously considered by the, planning commission back in December, back on December 18.

Just as a reminder, the planning commission, voted six zero, to recommend approval of that zoning text amendment package. It included 24 amendments, to our zoning ordinance or actually 23 amendments, one amendment to our noise ordinance, that was brought forward to the planning commission. As I noted at your last meeting, one of those provisions was, removed related to digital digital display signs. So the board took up, 22 amendments to the zoning ordinance, one amendment to the noise ordinance and again it was approved on a unanimous, vote of members present. In terms of upcoming meetings before the, board of supervisors that might be of interest to the planning commission on March 10, the board will be, have holding an informational item in a workshop format on the affordable housing and employee accommodation nexus study and, as well as the ordinance.

I should note, that that that same, or a similar type presentation will be provided to the planning commission on, March 19. So following the, board presentation on March 10. On March 24, the, board will be, hearing the general plan as well as the housing element annual progress reports, as well as the long range work program. Those annual progress reports, will be presented to the planning commission on March 19. So prior to, the, March 24 board hearing, it's taken us a little bit of time to get all of the data put together, all the building permit information to, bring that item forward.

So that's why, it's not coming together in one package with today's item. And then I also wanted to note that on April 7, the board is tentatively scheduled to take up the Sheba Estates at Eden Rock project. As a reminder, the planning commission, heard that item back on February 12, and in a series of seven zero votes, you recommended approval of that project, which again is a, rezone, a vesting tentative subdivision map, conditional use permit, and variance for a, six lot planned, subdivision in, in Granite Bay. So again, April 7 is when that item is going to the, to the board. In terms of upcoming planning commission meetings, we have a full, full agenda for you, planned on March 0, nineteenth.

We have four items including, the Estates at Granite Bay, project. It's a small, six lot, subdivision, approximate to the, Granite Bay Golf Club. We are bringing back that Winchester current environment. In in we're

the NEXUS

environment. Study informational item. And So again, agenda for that meeting. I would expect us to perhaps run into the afternoon at that meeting. On March 26, we have a meeting that we will or that we are planning to hold at the North Tahoe Event Center.

I know I've mentioned that on a couple of occasions to the to the commission that we're we were tentatively planning on that location. We do have two items that are scheduled including the Village At Palisades specific plan, and the, Placer Vineyards specific plan phase two East project. So we'll be providing more information about the logistics for that meeting in in the next couple couple of weeks. In terms of looking a little bit further ahead to April, April 9, we have two items that are scheduled. It's a little bit further out, but April 23, have seven items that are tentatively planned.

Obviously, there's some time there and things might shuffle around, but, at least giving you an idea of what's forthcoming. A couple of other updates I wanted to provide as it relates to residential care homes and the ZTA package. Included in this report again the link to the web page that we have stood up for that effort given the amount of community interest. We'll continue to provide you with updates as we progress this initiative. We do we are at a point where we're, making, presentations to the municipal advisory councils.

In the next two weeks, we're scheduled to, present to the Granite Bay MAC on March 5, North Auburn MAC on March 10, and the Sheridan MAC on March 11. So in total, we we are planning on visiting seven MACs before bringing that item, back to the, or bringing that item to the planning commission for a recommendation. I should also point out that we are, going to be taking the item to the airport land use commission for a recommendation, as as well of consistency given that there may be facilities that are, located or that that the item has the potential for facilities that might be located within compatibility zones. Just a couple of other updates. Wanted to provide a a a brief update on the Hopeway Apartments, to let you know that on February 18, we were notified, that that the class or citizens for neighborhood rights, provided us with a notice of intent to file action under CEQA for the project.

So, we have not yet received, formal documentation of that filing, but wanted to let you know that at least we received a notice of intent. And then a couple of administrative updates, a, several of the planning commissioners as well as, myself will be attending the, League of California City's Planning Commissioner Academy, March. We'll make sure to provide a report back to the full commission upon, return. And then your next quarterly project reports, will be provided to you on on April 23. That concludes my planning director report. I'm happy to answer questions from the commission.

Thank you so much, Chris. Appreciate it. Questions from the commission.

Yeah. A little ahead of the game here. Amber indicated she likely won't be at the March 26 meeting, so I would step into chair. The second item is Vosser Vineyard, which I normally recuse myself from. So how would that work? Can I still chair the meeting?

Yeah. In that instance, then the second vice chair would chair the meeting.

Okay. So I would step aside for that item? Okay. Just curious.

Yeah. And I think maybe we'll talk offline about potential conflicts.

Okay. Thanks.

Other questions? Okay, Chris, two quick questions. I've had a couple people, from Granite Bay reach out to figure out the best way to find information on projects that are approved but haven't, like, moved forward to build, like the Ivy project in Granite Bay? Where can they find information about when is groundwork gonna happen, that kind of stuff? What would be the best way to do that for someone from the public?

Yeah. I for a project that has already been approved, but there's been no subsequent submittal of either grading plans or improvement plans, I would suggest either reaching out to myself or the project planner that was the lead on the project to see if there's any update to be provided. But many times there isn't an update until grading or improvement plans are submitted.

Are actually submitted. Okay. And then similar question for projects that are pre in the predevelopment stage. There's one particular project in Granite Bay. Neighbors received a letter regarding a possible EVA access from an attorney. And so where would they go to find information about the nature of the project that is being proposed?

So if it's a project, that has an application that's filed, or to check to see if there's an application that's been filed on our planning, web page or on our Placer County Planning Division webpage, we do have a, a a map, of active, projects. And it it, it's an interactive project map. It has, information about the project. It also has contact information for the lead planner on the project where, folks could reach out. They'll have information about the project, but they could also reach out to the, lead planner on it.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you so much, Chris. Appreciate it. Okay. Next item on the agenda is Planning Commissioner Reports. Do any of the commissioners have any information they'd like to share?

I have. Mark. Pardon me.

This is Mark Watts. I have one brief item. The, it's of local interest. It's not directly a planning issue, but it's a very important local interest. Colfax Council member Trinity posted on Facebook some really good news for the county and for other areas of the state.

She talks about the, introduction of legislation by the local assembly member Hadwick, AB two six seven nine, which was introduced last week. It's endorsed and pursued by Placer County Transportation Planning Agency. And simply what it does is it resets a floor for the distribution of maintenance money. So instead of Colfax receiving 50,000 over a year, they will at least have a minimum of 200,000, which allows them to they and other like cities to address needs much more quickly within their community. So I just wanna give a shout out to PCTPA because they're a partner in some of our activities here and to the Colfax City Council for pushing for that legislation.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing, Mark. Other commissioners?

I do. I'm just gonna urge my fellow commissioners to really dive deep into the nexus study because it's coming up. And it's going to influence a lot of the policy decisions and everything that we have going forward around low income housing, meeting our RENA goals. The draft is published out on the website currently. It's very technical, but if you dive into it, and you have any questions, are they allowed to call me for questions, or they have to call you for questions?

I would suggest they call staff with questions.

I would say right now I'm the expert on it.

Not create a Brown Act violation.

Alright. But it's really important. And we had the opportunity to look at the draft, which is really helpful, before it gets to the final. So we can ideally, through our questions and concerns, address perhaps what's lacking to the final report. So this is our first opportunity where we've gotten to look at the draft and perhaps influence it for the final. So I just think it's really, really, really important to review that. And now they have other documents out there. They have the presentation, the stakeholder presentation. They have this statement of work, which I highly recommend you read. And, call staff if you have questions. It's a lot, but it's worth it.

I would just note on that too that, NEXUS study will come before the Planning Commission. It is an item that will be, heard as an informational item by the Commission. So for that item, standard Brown Act rules, apply and that you're not allowed to discuss, a majority of

the commission's not allowed to discuss the item prior to that meeting. You can certainly discuss it during the meeting, and that's the intent for the meeting.

Right. Okay. Thank you, Robin. Other commissioners? No? Okay. Moving right along, I will now open it to public comment for any matters that are not on the Planning Commission agenda. And as a reminder, you'll have three minutes to provide comments. I see no one here today in person. Do we have anyone on Zoom? We do. Okay. Go ahead and

yeah. Diane, go ahead and unmute your mic and give your comments.

Greetings, commissioners. I'm Darlene Louise Alessi speaking as a ag rural legacy landowner in unincorporated Christian Valley Park Community Services District in District 5. My family has stewarded our land here for over sixty years, and my son desires to continue the legacy long after I'm gone. I've watched the disgusting state driven policies like the housing element, your tier one, housing action plan zoning amendment, which forces density on communities without addressing real needs. This creates instability and abuse.

How can you, with any good conscience, push high density multifamily incentives and rezoning when we lack basic infrastructure? I am a board director for CVP CSD, which has been a potable water purveyor for sixty four years. I can tell you our water is not secure. Example, Placer County Water Agency has faced ongoing reductions since 2024 due to PG and E's damaged infrastructure at Lake Spalding and cuts of 50% dry years that continued into 2025. We're already urging conservation during droughts, yet RINA plans ignore water security and wildfire strained power grids and actual living wage jobs for our local families, let alone new residents.

Wherefore projects will serve letters for high density housing are useless, precarious at best. Housing quotas without these foundations are a recipe for failure that strains resources and devalues legacy properties. We are yelling. Stop enabling the state the state madness. Please stop acting like jackboot lempings who just compliantly hurt us over the cliffs that Sacramento built with our with their failing top down plans.

Furthermore, it's frustrating to hear your assumptions that viable farms need vast acreage. That's outdated thinking. An acre or even a corner lot can feed neighborhoods through micro farms. Look at crop swaps. LA, front yard gardens feeding 80 families in food deserts using far less water than lawns, or Alma backyard farms in Compton, a three acre urban farm yielding over a 125,000 pounds annually.

Why is there no vision in the work plan for self sufficient coops? A a example of five to 10 acre shared plots for livestock to sustain microvillages. Incorporate these into the general plan update. Promote self reliance through FFA and four h building confidence, worth ethic, and skills for true ownership, not endless mandates creating life long served tenants burdened by debt. We demand balanced planning, prioritize microfarming, infrastructure first growth, and youth education, protect rural self sufficiency over this draconian state overreach.

Our communities deserve sustainable futures, not forced instability. Truly safe neighborhoods come from when people have real skin in their local game. I thank you, and I yield.

Thank you, Diane, for your comments. Do we have anyone else on Zoom?

I don't see any other hands raised.

Okay. Alright. I am gonna go ahead and put close public comment. We'll now move to our only hearing item for today, which is item one, the long range work plan for fiscal year 2026 through 2027. It is an informational item, and therefore, the Planning Commission will not be taking action on the item today. The staff presentation will be provided by Principal Planner Emily Setzer. Good morning, Emily.

Good morning. Thanks for having me. Emily Setzer. I lead our long range planning team within the Planning Services Division. So I'm here today to talk to you about the work that our team will be doing, over the next six months, but also bridging into the next fiscal year.

So just an overview of our Planning Services division. We are broken into three different categories, which you probably are aware of. But we have long range, which is my team. We focus on things like general plan, community plans, our natural resource programs, a lot of housing and the housing element, things like that. We also have the current planning team, which is responsible for processing entitlement applications, any of the new businesses or subdivisions that want to come in.

And then we have our code enforcement team, is in charge of compliance for land use and zoning regulations. So that's how we fit in to our overall planning services division. I do want to highlight some of the accomplishments our team has been able to achieve over the last year. We, every year, do submit our general plan and housing element annual progress reports. We also completed a very large effort for the housing element rezone and amendment.

So that was a big effort for that team. And that was approved by HCD this past summer. So our housing element is in compliance with the state. We also coordinated with the CEO's housing and economic development team to create a housing action plan that really bridges all of our work, even work related to housing that lives outside of our housing element. That was approved by the board this summer.

The big goal of that action plan was to create 1,300 new achievable housing units by 2029. 2029 is the end of our housing element cycle. And by achievable, we pretty much mean anything except single family housing. So multifamily ADUs, whether it's affordable or affordable by design, those types of housing units. We also have been working continuously on Placer 2050, which is the general plan update.

And so the board approved the vision statement in October to get there. We had significant public outreach as well. And building off of that vision statement, we are now looking towards identifying potential opportunity areas across the county that could hold some different land use areas, like housing, commercial, mixed use, while maintaining, trying to protect and preserve our rural and our ag and high forest or sorry, very high fire hazard areas. So we will be moving forward. You'll see us come forward and do more work on that in the next year and a half to talk about those land use change areas, and to also talk about how we can create more efficiency with our community plans, and potentially shift some of that content into more efficient manners, and really retain the community plans where we think there are higher opportunities for business needs, housing needs, things like that, land use pressures.

We also amended our Tahoe Basin Area Plan. We've been doing some pretty frequent amendments to that Area Plan because we are in coordination with TRPA very closely on changes that affect the entire basin. So I serve as vice chair on TRPA's Living Working Group, which is focused on trying to figure out ways that we can make housing more financially feasible throughout the basin. So in November, we did approve housing amendments for the Tahoe Basin Area Plan. There may be a third set of amendments coming up.

We're working with them on that next round of potential changes, and we'll assess if that will result in any amendments to our area plan as part of that process. We also just got approved, or the board approved, the code cleanup zoning text amendment that Lucy Rollins brought forward, so that was just approved by the Board. And then we have two zoning text amendments that Chris mentioned earlier regarding Housing Element Programs forty one and forty two, which apply to emergency shelters and residential care homes. We are targeting adoption sometime in the summer. We might be making some adjustments to that deadline of June, but sometime this summer.

We do plan on getting those two brought forward to Planning Commission and to the Board. We have also expanded an Achievable Housing Development Assistance Program that used to live just in the East Placer Tahoe office, and now we're expanding that to county wide. That's a free service we'll provide to anybody who's interested in building multifamily housing. So it's a free thirty minute consult. We can walk them through high level what's allowed on the site that they're interested in, talk about any funding that may be available, really just gauge where they are in the process and help direct them to the appropriate next steps.

We are continually also watching our RENA and, in particular, trying to look out for a no net loss scenario. So I'll go into that a little bit later. But we've been updating that tracker to make sure that we are always up to date on where we stand for our arena as projects do come forward and may impact that. We've also been doing some administrative tasks like updating historic properties, conservation easements, housing element inventory sites to all of our maps and to our Acela internal database. So that has been useful for everyone in planning.

And then we also will be beginning an accessory dwelling unit ordinance to bring our code up to date with state law. We are targeting, hopefully, completion of that by 2026. That will make it easier to build ADUs across the county, and that will bring our code up to date with state law. So just as a background on this work plan, we do this annually. It does help us organize our tasks.

We have a long list of tasks that many people would maybe prioritize in different ways. So we are trying to create a cohesive and organized approach to determine prioritization of those tasks. Our long range team is full now. We have just hired a third senior planner. So we have me, three senior planners, one assistant planner, and right now one intern.

So that is great news for us in moving forward. When we talk about prioritization, we did divide our tasks into four different categories based on urgency and staff availability. So those four categories are either being worked on right now and will just continue into the next fiscal year. They also could be things that we do annually or on an ongoing basis. For example, we monitor our Placer legacy easements on an ongoing basis every year, so things like that.

We have some newer high priority items that have risen to the top of our task list for fiscal year 'twenty six-'twenty seven. And then we have some that we're marking as low priority, and we will shift as needed. But we're trying to acknowledge that those are on the list, but we may not have the resources or the urgency needed to complete those right away. Additionally, we've added three tiers. So tier one is those tasks that are underway, they're annual or ongoing, or they could be legally required, like bringing our codes up to state law or the board directs us to do something.

Tier two result from board direction or planning services initiatives. These are aimed at maintaining and updating our codes and utilizing mitigation funding. So, we are collecting mitigation funding for things like greenhouse gas emissions and Oak Woodland impacts. And so we do have some tasks that are related to things like that where we want to provide more detailed program guidelines or clarification on those goals. We also have Tier three, which are tasks that would implement or update goals or policies, such as goals or policies that may live in our general plan or housing element, but may not be required under a certain timeline.

And so due to our limited staffing capacity, we are at full team, which is great. But we also still have some thresholds there. So we do recommend addressing these projects if we can get additional resources to open up and become available. So I'll start with priorities continued from this current fiscal year. So we are continuing work on our general plan update.

Like I said, we'll be talking about land use change opportunity areas and various approaches to our community plans in the next year. We are also working on a Placer Legacy Program update. That update, we've been working with a consultant to identify any gaps in easement areas across the county or specific types of easements that we're looking at. They have identified some potential funding sources as well. And we are developing ranking criteria so that when we have external or internal ideas for how to use those Placer legacy funds to acquire land, that we have specific ranking criteria that we have all agreed upon.

And so that way, we can view potentially competing resources. We also are bringing forward an update to our sustainability plan. This will be a five year update. That will show the progress that we've made and the implementation measures of that sustainability plan. That does span a lot of departments across the county, so we are working with various departments to get updates on that right now, and we will be bringing that forward, I think, this winter.

And then we are also working on fee policies that would implement our housing element programs. So Crystal Jacobsen is leading a Cedar fee update. We're also coordinating with the Housing and Economic Development team and CEO on their nexus study fees, so we will be looking at fees that would implement our housing element programs. For tier two, we have begun work on a wildfire risk reduction program outlining the work that could be done under that program. That is really targeted at helping to harden low income owned properties.

And so, we are identifying right now if there are potential resources for funding available, and other stakeholders or groups that we may work with on a regular basis who could help us implement that. So right now, we're just outlining the program, and should funding and resources become available, we can move into implementation phase.

A question about that.

Sure.

Yeah. You're saying it's to help, harden low income. So, basically, I guess, what would be the planning department's role in that?

It is a it is marked in the housing element that the Planning Services Division would lead that effort for that program. So we are organizing framework of a program and trying to identify potential funding. We are trying to move forward with first, identifying if there is funding available. It's not a mandatory program, it's one that we should look at doing. So we're looking to see if there is funding available.

And then two, if there are partners or stakeholders across the county who could help us implement it. For example, fire districts or any other kind of groups who may already be doing that work. So really, we're outlining a potential program. Planning services would not be in charge of hardening folks' homes, though.

Okay. I was just wondering. Because it seems like that would be a task.

A little out of our real house. Yeah.

Yeah. It would be a task that some of the fire folks would be handling.

Exactly. Yep.

Thank you.

I mentioned that we are expanding our Achievable Housing Development Assistance team. So we're really trying to kind of concierge some housing projects forward, especially some of those smaller infill projects often involve people who are not necessarily experienced developers, so trying to help them through the process. And then we are creating an ADU team for East and West. We have assigned unofficial titles of ADU Guru to somebody in the East office in Tahoe City and somebody in the Auburn office to coordinate with our staff as we move forward with the accessory dwelling unit zoning text amendment. And then also just to make sure we are staying on top of state law and that we have at least one person in each office who is really up to speed on all of the details of those laws and can assist members of the public.

I'll give a little more detail on the sustainability plan update. This sustainability plan was adopted by the county in 2020. The goal is to create a framework help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen climate resilience. So as part of this process of the five year update, we will be evaluating our progress on implementation of that plan and identifying actions that have been completed, that are ongoing, or that have risen to higher priorities. And this is really to help inform future policy or funding direction.

So next steps, we did begin with a technical advisory committee that consists of staff from a variety of departments across the county. We will be collecting the data into summer and then drafting that report, and then sometime this winter, providing an update on that report. Now I'll talk about priorities or work tasks that we do annually or ongoing. We, every year, create our Housing Element and General Plan annual progress reports. Those need to be approved by April and submitted to the state.

We do bring forward this annual work program every year to talk about work that we'll do and priorities for the next fiscal year. For our Tahoe Basin area plan, we have an implementation report that requires tracking and monitoring, and we do that regularly. We also annually monitor our Placer Legacy easements and go out and check those properties. We provide air quality planning assistance to the current planning team in evaluating air quality impacts from projects. And then we are continuously tracking our RENA, or Regional Housing Needs Allocation, to make sure that we are maintaining a surplus of land that can accommodate lower income housing, in particular.

And then we do have staff that are providing guidance and assistance to projects and current planning staff regarding emergency preparedness and evacuation plans. We also have been coordinating with the Tahoe CEO's office on a Tahoe Development Rights Prioritization and Allocation Manual that is a mouthful that is to prioritize how we give out development rights in the Tahoe Basin. So again, every time you want to build in Tahoe, the TRPA has categorized everything as a development rights. You have commercial floor area, residential units of use, tourism accommodation units, things like that. So as part of the Tahoe Basin Area Plan policy, one of the next steps was for staff to create a prioritization manual so that we are giving out development rights in coordination and in alignment with the Tahoe Basin Area Plan and the TRPA Regional Plan.

I'll talk about some new priorities for this next fiscal year. I did mention it earlier, but we will be embarking on an accessory dwelling unit zoning text amendment to bring our code into alignment with state law. The state law has recently changed in the past couple of years, has made it easier to build accessory dwelling units. We also will be updating our multifamily and mixed use design guidelines and doing a zoning text amendment regarding design review that will bring us in alignment, our code in alignment with the Housing Accountability Act with the state. And we really want to make sure that the design requirements that we are imposing on multifamily housing don't make it so that multifamily is not financially feasible to build.

So we're trying to encourage different types of housing uses across the county. So we will be looking at that zoning text amendment package. We also have some remaining housing element programs that need to be completed by 2029. HCD is checking in on us every so often. They have had discussions with staff about the status of our housing element programs.

They've also talked to us about how our ADU ordinance is out of date. So we will be coordinating with HCD going forward, but we are on track to complete a variety of housing element programs through a zoning text amendment that we will begin this next year. And then that should get us on track for completion prior to 2029. We also will be updating the safety element part of the general plan because OAS is doing an update to the local hazard mitigation plan. And as part of that, we have to coordinate an update to the general plan safety element as well.

And then we have been collecting greenhouse gas emission impact mitigation. And so we will be creating program guidelines to really clarify how we can use that funding source, What kind of projects can those funds contribute to that will help offset greenhouse gas emissions through the county? And then I put this next one in italics with a question mark because as part of board comment when we brought forward the Housing Action Plan to the board, we did receive some board comment about whether or not we should consider doing another housing element amendment in order to help boost that RINA surplus. So as you probably remember but I'll give you a refresh because I'm sure you're not looking at state RENA law before bed we are required to accommodate a certain number of units through this housing element cycle, 2021 to 2029, through planning and zoning. So we have to have a certain number of parcels set aside that can accommodate a certain number of lower income, moderate, and above moderate units.

We are doing Okay on the moderate and the above moderate. We are seeing development come in at those affordability levels. We are seeing less development come forward at the lower income levels. And so, as part of the housing element, we have a housing element sites inventory, which is the list of all of those parcels. If projects were to come forward on any of those sites where we were anticipating they could accommodate lower income, but say they want to build market rate, that would be a loss to our RINA surplus.

So we are continually tracking that. We do have 3,400 lower income units as part of our RINA that we do need to accommodate. If we were to drop below our surplus, if a couple projects, or two or three projects came forward that were of substantial size and dropped they wanted to do market rate, where we were anticipating lower income, and we no longer had a surplus after that point, then we would have one hundred and eighty days, as you may remember, to complete a housing element and rezone sites, or add sites to our housing element inventory. So we are going to be asking the board for direction on what approach they would like us to take. Right now, we have a surplus of 85 units for lower income, so it's not a lot.

We do have, for example, one project right now that will probably be approved within the next year that may be a subtraction of 70 something units from that 85. So in order to stay ahead

Which project is that?

That is the old Auburn Apartments project that has had a predevelopment. In order to stay ahead, we can count the lower income units that have been built. For example, we have a housing element policy that says accessory dwelling units under seven fifty square feet, we can count as low income. So we've had 60 something accessory dwelling units built in the last year that count as low income. So we can add that to the 85.

And then we're expecting a project room key project in Auburn that would be very low income units. We're expecting property 1A and Placer Vineyards to build some low income and pull building permits in the next six months or so.

Quick question. Can unlimited ADUs if 100 applications came in for ADUs, can you count all the ADUs, or is HCD going to put some kind of we think put some kind of limit on the number of ADUs that we

Through this housing element cycle, we can count any ADUs that come in that are smaller than seven fifty square feet. I don't know if we will be able to get that policy into the next housing element, though.

And so if I may, commissioner Dahlgren, is just a little bit more supplement to what miss Setzer was mentioning. We're able to count any units that are in excess of what was identified in the in the housing element or in the residential land inventory. So she mentioned, two two projects, property one a, the, affordable housing project that we've talked about at the commission at commission meetings in the past. If you might recall from that, conversation, the number of units that are being built exceeds the number of units that were identified in the in the residential land inventory. So we are able to count that delta of units as excess or adding to the surplus.

Similarly, with the ADUs, we had identified, as as this commission recalls, we identified nearly 400 or 500 ADUs as part of the, as part of the inventory, and HCD approved that, that credit of units. So to the extent that there are more than what we identified, we are able to count those to offset any, any any, decreases that we might find from other sites that are on the inventory.

If you had a crystal ball, how do you think the pendulum is going to swing for the next cycle on that topic?

My thoughts are that we would not be able to count that we wouldn't be able to count ADUs in terms of, the inventory. I do suspect that we will continue to be able to count them when they're constructed, but not get not have that offset what our inventory needs are.

Thank you for that. So when we count or try to forecast ADUs and projects that may be building low income units, and that the county will issue building permits for, for projects that were either not in the site's inventory or are building more than we anticipated. We do believe we could get closer into the high 200s this year, as far as the surplus goes. Granted, if you have a couple projects that come forward that are around 100 something units that are wanting to build market rate instead of affordable, then we could come back down pretty quickly. So we will be talking to the board about two options.

One, we're calling option one, is stay the course. And we're just going to try and hope that the anticipated projects that are building low income that are coming forward will give us enough to continually replenish that surplus so that we can get to 2029 without having to do a housing element amendment. This is a little bit like trying to predict the future, though. So we can do so much with the information we have available right now. Option two would be to do a housing element amendment and try to increase that RENA surplus with either sites that meet criteria and could just be like they're already zoned appropriately, and we could just add those to our housing sites inventory.

Or we could go back out to the public, or to people who were potentially interested in rezoning and chose not to during the most recent rezone effort, and see if anyone has changed their mind. We think there may be at least a couple property owners that we've heard of that might be interested in doing it now, but they weren't then. So that could obviously increase our surplus even more and potentially get us into the $400 $500 range. So we will be asking the Board for direction on whether they want us to pursue a housing element amendment or to try to stay the course and avoid doing one at this moment. So the reason I put that in italics is, if we do need to do that, that will obviously shift some of our staff's resources over the next fiscal year.

I have a question about that. Depending on the board's discretion about how they want to do that, there were a lot of challenges with methodology that was used in the rezone. We all know it was a big mess. Besides going back to the ones that were identified that said no, is there another strategy, a more statistically valid strategy that could be used? Is it in the works? Is it being talked about? What methodology can you use to really get landowners to be amenable? Just not going back to the old one.

Again, I think the thought process around our cycle six, and then as we've been discussing, beginning in 2029, we'll be into cycle seven, and beyond, is that, you know, that more comprehensive look at growth and and, opportunities is going to happen with our general plan update. So the conversation that that we are going to be having with the board is really this this interim period, this three year period that we need to get through to until the end of this housing element cycle. And so doing that more comprehensive look at at, at potential areas is is happening and it and will be more systematic as it relates to our general plan update and those conversations. But again, in terms of this interim period, it's a little bit more a little bit more, our options are a little bit more limited given that we won't have much time to really approach it comprehensively or systematically. And it really is, as as Emily mentioned, looking at properties that either have already been rezoned and are appropriately zoned to be able to be included on the inventory or are sites that have already been evaluated, as potential sites.

And there might be some others that might be, available for consideration. But again, that more systematic conversation is going to be part of the general plan.

And I'm comforted by the longer range planning strategy. Think that's fantastic. I think that's where we missed the mark and the rezone. I'm troubled by the short term strategy, but that's just my opinion.

But refresh my memory, going through the process, there were a number of property owners. They were all voluntary, right? Those that you identified? So you do have we did have an excess of voluntary interested parties. Correct?

Yeah. Let me, maybe just to refresh the memory of of of the commission. Originally, we identified 72 properties that, either were previously identified as part of the housing element. There were a number of sites that were identified as candidate rezone sites in the housing element that was adopted in 2021. Wanna say that might have been 30 or close to 40 of the 72 that were identified.

The others were, identified as part of a economic, analysis that was done prior to the housing element being adopted, and then even additional properties were identified just by staff that were working in certain communities as potential sites that might be appropriate for higher density housing. That list of 72 included property owners that were interested in participating as well as property owners that weren't interested. And when, when we went to the when staff went to the board, early in the process, there was direction that the board provided to staff that that we only wanted to pursue voluntary participants in the program. There was not a desire to force rezone any property. So as we started to work through that list of 72, there were a number of property owners at that time that said that they were interested, and they were removed from consideration.

I should point out there were a number of property owners that were interested in participating. They were voluntary participants. But for either one reason or the other, as we went through, workshops with the board to vet through, the list of candidate sites for a rezone, they were removed, either because of community, opposition or concerns about the site. They were removed from consideration. So, in terms of of the conversation that we'll be having with the board, in terms of that list of 72, it it really wouldn't be ones that were, or at least what we'll be suggesting if they did want to look at any of the those properties.

It really wouldn't be any of the any of them that were interested but were removed, because the the board had provided that direction. It really would be ones that that were not interested at the time, that might be interested now.

And a follow-up question, so for projects that are in the current candidate or in that inventory, like the one on Old Auburn Road, I know at the time when the RHNA process was approved by the board, there was no additional restrictions put on, meaning to avoid this issue of they only build 20% affordable and the rest are market rate, which was I think concerned by a lot of people. So does the board have discretion today to enforce a higher level of affordable units if a project applicant comes forward that would sort of drain the the account of affordable units, if that makes sense. Like, does the board have that discretion, or is it now back to the current policy, which is 10% and or you can do equivalency? Is it like, what discretion does the board have?

There is state law that those projects need to be processed, by ride or without a use permit if they do meet that minimum percentage of including affordable housing.

Which is 20 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thanks.

But getting back to what you said, Chris, if you had people that were interested, because there were a number, I remember, people being upset that they weren't included. At this point in time, because they were rejected due to a neighborhood opposition or whatever the means, they would not be, someone that would be looked at or maybe prioritized to be investigated and see if they are still very willing?

Again, we we'll we'll bring that up when we meet with the board. I would suspect that since there was a vetting that was done and they were removed from consideration that there would not likely be support for re looking at those properties that were intentionally removed from by the board.

But I know some of our betting was simply to get to a number at our level. I don't know about the board's level, but it was remember taking the whiteboard and figuring out remove this, add this. So I wasn't real comfortable that that was the determination and someone that was very interested. I get the adamant neighborhood opposition and all of that. But just for numbers sake to arrive at the needed number, I would hope that would be addressed with the board. There might be some out there that would still have an interest.

Could we also suggest or recommend because there have been some changes in my area specifically with some of the willing owners and some next door development that's happening on some of these properties that would potentially make it more amenable to the board and I can give you specifics later were properties that were taken out not because the owner wasn't willing, but because of what was around it. And now what is around it is changing to be more amenable to housing. So I don't want to get in trouble, but I can share with you that later.

Okay.

Okay. I'm gonna move on. Some additional priorities for the next fiscal year are creating oak woodland program guidelines. So similar to our greenhouse gas emissions, we do collect oak woodland mitigation fees. We want to create some program guidelines that clarify and provide clear direction on how and when we can utilize those funds. For example, should they be used for planting? Should they be used for preservation? And when and where? And those types of criteria. I also mentioned we're tracking the TRPA.

This is their third phase of basin wide changes for housing, so they're calling it the Culture Evading Community Phase. So we're tracking that closely and working with them to see if that will need to result in any amendments to our Tahoe Basin area plan. And then we will be submitting an application to try to retain our county's pro housing designation with the state. So we were one of the first counties in the state to earn that designation. We did have to apply.

That designation expires in January 2027. And if we apply again, either before then or after then, get that if we get accepted, then we would permanently retain. It will no longer have an expiration date. It does open up potential funding sources. So we have applied to pro housing related funds with the state for housing applications so far, and we plan to continue to do that, particularly for some of our county led affordable housing projects.

We have not been awarded those funds yet, but we figure it's we've gotten board direction to apply when we presented to them about the housing action plan. And it doesn't hurt to apply and try to get the application done and to earn that status because it does open up potential opportunities for funding. So some things that are not prioritized as a high priority for the next fiscal year but that are on our list if we were to get more staffing or something else were to shift off the list, and we can shift our attention to some of these, are development standards for the wildland urban interface areas Redoing our sign regulations in our zoning ordinance, so that would be a zoning text amendment. Sign trends do change over time, and we've had some projects come forward and want to do different things that may not be allowed under our current code. We've also been looking at a potential Woodland Conservation Zoning Text Amendment.

Our Housing Action Plan discussed trying to form a housing advisory group that if we were to begin work on that, that would be done with the CEO's housing and economic development team. We have on the list a ridgeline protection ordinance for Forest Hill. We also have a large scale solar zoning text amendment on this list and some updates to our winery and farm brewery ordinances. And then, Surface Mining and Reclamation Act or SMARA, as you may have heard it called, would require some changes to our zoning text amendment as well.

I have a question about the Ridgeline Protection Ordinance for Forest Hill. Were we able to define a ridgeline? I think we had this conversation and we didn't actually have a definition of what was ridgeline. Did we get past that

and I missed it? I'm not aware if we have that, but I could certainly That was

a question. Was Rich had brought it up that we never really had a definition for a ridgeline. There's definitions for all other things. Sure. And that was one of our challenges in the decision we were trying to make. So I'm assuming you'll define it if you're going to develop a protection ordinance. I just didn't know if you'd already defined one.

I'd have to check. I I'm not aware of a definition right now, so you may in fact be correct there. But, as part of that ordinance, we would for sure have to define ridgelines.

And then on the large scale solar, are there any current projects that you're aware of that are coming forward? I know the one project got approved, but are there other large scale solar projects coming forward at this point?

Yes. Yes? We have one project, one filed application, that is, adjacent to the, project that has been approved. That was the SMUD Country Acres project. There's an another project that SMUD is also sponsoring that's directly to the west of that that facility. This one's called Curry Creek Solar. It is a filed application. We've also had a predevelopment meeting for another solar facility in the Sunset Area Plan area.

The one that was approved, that was out of Baseline Road?

Correct.

Correct. But

that was on land zoned for future development, and it was, like, the interim use. Right? Isn't that the conditions it was approved under?

It it it was. It was, yes. It was.

Okay. Okay.

Thank you.

So you have a question with regards to the Winery and Farm Bureau. I was wondering, the, county has a entertainment center zoning text, And, it's much more restrictive than the winery and brewery zoning text. And I was wondering if you're thinking about when you do the winery and farm brewery, bringing the entertainment center text in, you know, into concert with with those two.

I think that's a very valid suggestion, and it's something we could look at when we do get to that. I'm not aware of details. I haven't really dove in personally into the list of items that that zoning text amendment would include, but definitely could be something the county could look at.

I remember back when we worked on that that particular text for zoning, but basically, it's so rigid that, I don't think you have any proposals coming forward. But the winery ordinance has really been changed a lot since then and probably has a lot more flexibility than the entertainment center. And so it's just so that they're compatible with each other would be would make sense to me. Yeah.

That's a valid point for sure.

I believe in the city of Loomis and the city of Auburn, that's a really hot topic right now is the entertainment zones.

Well, this is entertainment. What do you call it? A community center?

Right. Like a zone in a It's

not it's not a zone. It's a community center. Like a

Oh, like an actual facility? They

used to have them for the what do you call it? The farm areas had

Event centers. Event centers.

Event Event centers. Like what they used to call them. They have one out in your area. Just it's different

from a zone.

It's an entertainment center for yeah, like you have a

Like an event Okay.

Chair back Not to

what you're talking about in the harbor.

Okay. Gotcha.

If I might add, as it relates to the winery and farm brewery ordinance in the ZTA, when we went to the board previously with our work plan. There was, a lot of conversation about it, particularly from the Ventnor's association about interest in in amending, the winery and farm brewery ordinance. Bit remiss in not mentioning, earlier that, one of the other initiatives that planning is participating in, but not the lead on, is, the county did receive a grant to prepare an agricultural plan for the county that we are going to be working. Our division will be working with the agricultural commissioner or agricultural commissioner in their office as well as our economic development, division, to prepare an ag plan that will then, feed into our general plan update. And so, the thought behind maybe the winery and farm brewery ordinance not being a high priority in our current work program is that as we move forward with this, preparation of an ag plan that one of the implementation actions of that ag plan is very likely to be some modification to the winery farm brewery ordinance and other modifications to our zoning ordinance as well to support, you

know,

the policies and and programs that might come out of that ag plan.

Yeah. The entertainment thing, now I remember it was, it used to be Granges in the rural agricultural area. And it was a community center then, but the zoning text was changed to an entertainment center, which really is a little broader.

Got you. Okay. Great.

So on top of all of those work programs, are also we do coordinate regularly with a slew of other departments and agencies and stakeholders in the region. So we have a long list here, but we do keep track of agenda meeting agendas for meetings with all of these groups. We participate in a lot of these regular meetings. We divide and conquer, so our staff kind of have different areas of expertise. But we do try to keep in close coordination with all of these groups so that, we are aligned moving forward.

Okay, yeah, I have a comment on that.

Sure, I'll go back. Or maybe I won't. Did I just turn

it on?

Oh, the power went off. Okay. Basically, a third or more of the county is in National Forest, Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Reclamation and other agencies. And historically, you never see any of those agencies listed in the coordination with the planning department. Least I think it should be listed because particularly if you look at the amount of acres in this county that actually are in public lands, there should be coordination because there's private land interspersed without, and there's there's conflicts and stuff that comes up between the various plans that are going on.

At any rate, I'd like to see the Forest Service and some of those agencies listed as coordination or cooperators.

They are included in several of these groups. So there are I'm trying to think of a couple, pinpoint a couple here, but especially fire safe, forest resilience, a lot of the resilience groups, and some of the biomass working groups as well. So Forest Service does participate or sometimes participates in some of those groups as well. I also know that we meet regularly with our colleagues in agriculture parks and natural resources, and they regularly talk with Forest Service as well. So, I think that's a great point, and I don't know that we don't actually meet with them directly, but they do participate in several of these partnerships.

So we are meeting with them by proxy. An

example would be about every two years, we take a look at the rafting on the Truckee River.

Mhmm.

And so the permits that are issued by the county are very restrictive on cleanup and that type of stuff. But the National Forest, people can bring their raft up and park in the national forest, and use the Truckee River, and create trash and stuff. I've never seen where there was much coordination there. You know, 60% of the Tahoe Basin is national forest land. And when you when you look at both Eldorado and and Placer County above Forest Hill and Georgetown, there's a significant amount of national forest land.

So and there is private land, TPZ, and other lands that are scattered throughout. And so, at any rate, it seems like at least there would be a look at more direct Sure. Communication and coordination sometime. And listen them in your coordination plans.

There's two large projects this year that are coming about with the local hazard mitigation plan that you mentioned earlier and also the rewrite of the community wildfire protection plan. Those include all agencies associated with land management, OES, local hazard mitigation plan includes all the cities. I mean that's a five year plan that is a huge effort to bring all these organizations together. Again, the Community Wildfire Protection Plan is really going to bring a lot of new guidance, along with the WUI definitions and those things. OES is leading that effort and, it hasn't been updated for some time, so that'll be a good project that's gonna bring these entities to the same table to to develop their strategies.

Mhmm.

I just wanted to provide some bit of input on this too. National forest land, state forest land, those all are not subject to the county jurisdiction. So a lot of the reasons why we can't impose any requirements or cleanup measures or anything like that on that land is because we just don't have the jurisdiction authority to do so. The Chucky River is one of those unique areas where we actually have some land use authority, and so that's how we can impose cleanup requirements on the river. But a lot of the national and state land is stuff that even if we impose conditions or requirements on, they wouldn't have any obligation to follow on.

Well, I know with Samara that there is is some involvement, right, in national forest. But I guess what I'm thinking about is where you have a private property interface with National Forest land. What the county does can actually have a major effect on the National Forest land. So there needs to be coordination in those cases.

Good point. Thank you.

Okay.

We'll look out for any additional opportunities.

Okay.

And then, quick question on the, I'm glad to see that there's gonna be it sounds like you guys are putting a prioritization framework for the both the Oak Woodland mitigation funds and the greenhouse gas emission funds. I think that's really good. And then for Placer Legacy, does that program receive funds through mitigation dollars anymore? I know now with PCCP, any new projects, like natural resource dollars, go there. But does Plaster Legacy actively get funds outside of, like, general pla- general fund funding through projects or not?

I know it can collect, funds through donations as well. Okay.

Emily's correct. Those are the two. So the board has, in the past, provided a general fund allocation

Right.

To the Plaster Legacy program. There is also, as Emily noted, a small amount of funding that is received through private donations.

Gotcha.

But there's no mitigation Okay. Fees that are paid

into There's nothing actively being fulfilling the Correct. The account, so to speak?

Correct.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Other questions for Emily?

I have one short one. On TBAP, there seems to be a series of amendments and updates. What triggers TURPA to make the update process kick into here in any one point?

Mhmm. The TRPA, I know a handful of years ago, established a living working group because they'd they realized that and this was during COVID, that we were throughout the basin, we were really losing employee housing. So we had a lot of homes sell. We had a lot of homes become short term rentals, things like that. And really hadn't, at least in Northlake, had any new development come forward for multifamily housing in particular.

It just wasn't attractive to developers. So they embarked on this journey to outline three different phases of potential changes to TRPA code that would make it easier to build things like multifamily ADUs. So the last phase that we did, the first phase we did focused on ADUs. It also allowed for conversion of hotels or motels to multifamily. The second phase that just got adopted in November made it a little more attractive to build multifamily housing.

So it removed the density limitations and instead relied on height, setbacks, and coverage. I'd say that, paired with the previous set of amendments that the county adopted and the Launchpad program that the Economic Development Housing team are working on, I think those three things have created a trifecta where we're actually seeing people interested in building multifamily now, which is great. So the next phase that TRPA is looking at right now is largely targeted at things like their fees and development rates, and how do they make that more equitable. How do they disincentivize maybe a really large single family home that's not really utilized much throughout the year versus trying to incentivize smaller homes or multifamily homes, things like that, through their development rights process, through their fees, and through potentially some code changes. So we're coordinating with them on whether some of those changes will need to be reflected in our Tahoe Basin area plan.

And right now, I think we're probably looking at an amendment, but I couldn't tell you exactly what is going to be included yet.

Perfect. That's very helpful. So it started off self initiated, and it's progressing and showing some progress and success. Continue that. Is there a way that I can get more deeply briefed on an ongoing basis, from time to time?

Sure. We can coordinate that.

Okay. Thank you.

Other questions? Okay. Thank you, Emily. I'm going to go ahead and open up public comment. There's no one

in the room. So do

we have anyone on Zoom that would like to make comment?

I see no hand raised.

Okay. I'm going to go ahead and close public comment. Unless there's any other comments that staff would like to make, I think we can

No other comments from staff.

Okay. Just that that was really helpful. Thank you. It's really nice to see what's going coming in the future and things that we can look for and pay attention to. So thank you.

Yeah. And never a dull moment in your world, Emily? Thank you so much. And thanks, everyone, for attending today. The meeting is now adjourned.