Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Does the yellow light?

Recording in progress.

That's what I was looking for. Oh, hi, Shweta. Good to see you. OK. Feedback? You OK? Nope.

No, it's not that.

Try again. Test one, two. Nope. Test one, two. Nope. Hang on, guys. We're getting some feedback. Test one, two.

Do another test.

Test one, two. Test one, two. No, I can hear it. I'm getting echo.

Can we turn off the meeting? Yeah, so basically we'll just do this. Go ahead one more time.

One, two. Test one, two. Test one, two, test one, two. Test one, two, test one, two. That feels okay. All right. Welcome to the Pleasanton Planning Commission. This is a regularly scheduled meeting. It's Wednesday, September 9th. It's just after 7 p.m., We're here in the city council chambers for the city of Pleasanton. Welcome to all those that are in the public that are here with us as well as staff as usual. And I do see a new planning commissioner, planning commission member, planner, planner, city planner. Is that right? Did I get that right? How many more times should I try this? Tracy, welcome. We're glad to have you here. Thank you for your service to the city and all of us. Okay, let's start with the Pledge of Allegiance. Commissioner Jane, would you do that please?

Thank you.

Yeah. Do you want to do roll call, please?

Yes. Commissioners Jago?

Present.

James? Present. Morgan?

Present.

Wedge is absent. And Chair Pace?

Present. We have a quorum. Thank you. Okay. It's like 100 degrees outside. I was sweating getting here, so I'm trying to stay hydrated. All right. Mr. Farmer, do we have any agenda amendments tonight?

No amendments this evening.

Great. So we will proceed with the agenda as outlined and that was distributed to the public. And so the first thing we will do is we will approve the consent calendar. Consent calendar are items that are considered routine and will be enacted in one routine motion unless there are members of the commission or there are members of the public that want to pull an item off to discuss it. So we have the city council actions, we have the minutes from the last meeting of this commission, and then we have two items, one for the reform fitness and one for the I-code school, one on Serpentine Lane and the other respectively on Stone Ridge Drive. So do we have any items that members of the Commission would like to discuss?

Not for me Not for me.

No, okay, and do we have any cards from speaker cards, please on the speaker card to receive great I'll entertain a motion on this one.

I motion to approve consent items

I'll second the motion.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Great. Consent is unanimous. Congratulations Reform Fitness and I-Code School. You're free to stay for the rest of the meeting if you're so inclined, and we appreciate our city planners for being here and helping out on these things. Okay, let's go to items open to the public. You don't have to stay any longer. You're free to go. Yep, thank you. Congratulations. We look forward to having you in our city and thank you for what you do for our community. Good luck to you. Okay, so we're gonna go to agenda item number five, which is meeting open to the public. Do we have any speaker cards for this?

No speaker cards received.

Great, we're gonna close the meeting open to the public. So we're gonna be on item number six. This is the substantive matter for tonight, which is the designation, potential designation of three sites within the city for housing, more dense housing. Who's, Shweta? I'll be... Oh, you're going to do it? Okay. Great. Derek, thank you very much. We look forward to hearing from you.

Appreciate it. Thank you, Chair Pace, members of the Commission, and members of the public. A couple of announcements before I begin. I wanted to introduce the persons that are going to be presenting. I'll be presenting the project. Shweta has graciously agreed to join to assist in answering any questions given her extensive depth of knowledge in housing and the housing element and related matters. We are also joined online by Laura Campion from First Carbon Solutions. Laura's firm, First Carbon Solutions, prepared the addendum for the requirements of CEQA that you have before you. So any questions related to that document, we'll be bringing Laura on. Also wanted to quickly direct your attention to supplemental materials, which were forwarded to your attention earlier this afternoon. Thank you, Tracy. These were requested, one of them was requested by commissioners. This is the actual settlement agreement, the reason we're all here this evening, and this is the text and conditions of the settlement agreement. The other document, attached is correspondence received after the packet went out from resident Christine Lewis in opposition to the project. And so just want to make sure that you have a chance to review those items as part of your consideration this evening. With that, if it's okay, I will start the presentation by basically talking about the purpose and requested actions, why we're here, and that is to consider and recommend the city council amend the general plan, zoning ordinance and map, and objective design standards for three sites totaling about 35.71 acres to allow for residential development to fulfill the terms of a settlement agreement. And I'll get into the details of the agreement shortly. And also to conclude that consideration to adopt two resolutions recommending the City Council number one first adopt an addendum to the general plan 2005 to 2025 EIR and the second resolution is to approve the proposed land use changes for the three sites. Thank you. And Background. Again, this is not the usual project we bring before you that went through the normal planning background. This is a project that is fulfilling the terms of a legal settlement agreement between the City of Pleasanton and an outside housing advocacy group, the Housing Action Coalition, or commonly known as HACC, over a dispute regarding the adequacy of the six cycle housing element sites inventory. So the actual wording in the settlement agreement that you have kind of goes in a little bit more of the background, but basically to summarize it, the city adopted and HCD, which is the State Department of Housing Community Development, certified the housing element in 2023. A little bit later that year, the city received correspondence from the Housing Action Coalition challenging the adequacy of the housing element. Again, this was after the housing element was both adopted and certified. And the city went into negotiations with the Housing Action Coalition to hopefully force all litigation regarding this. And after considerable discussions, including closed sessions with the city council and consideration of some sites, additional sites that were reviewed by the council and by city staff and the Housing Action Coalition. decided to settle basically with the settlement agreement on the three sites. And I'm gonna get into the three sites shortly. But those sites were agreed to by all parties and those are the sites that are in the settlement agreement and before your consideration this evening. One thing, the terms of the settlement agreement stipulate that the city rezoned the three identified sites for high density housing by December 31st, 2026. So we're definitely within that timeframe right now. It's September 9th and we plan tentatively to take this to council on October 20th. So that would be within the terms of the settlement agreement as well. One thing about the limitations, if you will, of what we're considering this evening is that, and I'm going to get into this a little bit more detail, is this is just for the land use changes to the three sites. There is no development proposed on any of the sites or all of the sites at this time whether there is the future is up to the development community and various you know interest rates we know whatever drives residential development at the densities that are proposed so we just want to stress that we don't have anything beyond the changes to the land uses at this time The project site, this is in your staff report too, but I wanted to have this for the public. This is a slide that shows the location of all three of the project sites. A couple of them are fairly close together. They're all within the Hacienda specific plan area. And there's a couple that are there on Englewood and also Hop Yard that are relatively close together. The other site is the Metro 580 site, which is a 4525 Rosewood Drive, a little bit more removed from the other two. The proposed land use changes would include the following, and these are all in the many exhibits to this staff report that we've provided for your consideration. The first would be a new general plan overlay district, and that would be the housing opportunity site overlay. So that would be a new land use designation in the general plan land use element. The second would be a zoning designation. It's not a new zoning designation, but it would be amending chapter 18.38 of the Pleasanton Municipal Code, which is the housing opportunity zones, HOZ zones, to add these three sites to that inventory and in that chapter of the municipal code. And the third is to amend the objective design standards to make these three sites applicable specifically to those objective design standards so that future developments come in when they come in and if they come in will be subject to the ODS. And just to kind of clarify, too, what is before you tonight does not represent any change or amendment to the city's adopted six cycle housing element. So this is not amending the housing element. We're not reopening the housing element. It remains the city's adopted housing element. For a little bit of detail on the individual sites, first site, site A, we commonly call it site A, is Hacienda West, and that's at 3825 and 3875 Hopyard Road. The site area, sorry, it's kind of a little bit blurry picture, is 14.19 acres. It's currently occupied by a little over 200,000 square foot commercial office building, and the proposed density of tonight's project would have a density designation of between 30 to 40 units, dwelling units per acre that would net a maximum of 567 units. Site B, this is a little bit more complicated. This is the Metro PCS site at 4515 Rosewood Drive, right next to the freeway. The site area is 15.52 acres. It is currently occupied by about 167,000 square foot area of commercial retail stores and buildings. Now, five acres of this site was previously rezoned, so what we have before us now is just 10.52 acres, and apologies, I don't have that delineated here, but it's in the CEQA document, I believe, and also the staff report. That would be rezoned this evening. That would net between 30 to 60 dwelling units per acre, and that would be for up to 631 net new units on that portion of the site. The other portion of the site, the five acres, also has 375 units that were already included under the previous housing element update. The third site, 5960 Inglewood Drive, is the smallest one, six acres. It's currently occupied by a 103,600 square foot commercial office building. It is being proposed for a density of between 30, I should say of, a density of 30 to 40 dwelling units per acre, and that would yield 240 units maximum. The project is subject to the California Environmental Quality Act, and so in response to that, the city prepared an addendum to the city's 2005 to 2025 general plan EIR. The city brought on the firm of First Carbon Solutions, which has prepared many previous environmental documents for the city, given their expertise on both the current project and prior project. The addendum is before you as well as all the attachments to the addendum, including the prior EIR that we're tearing off of. The EIR found that there were no new impacts for these proposed rezonings beyond those previously analyzed in the general plan EIR. The addendum also found and concluded that there was no increase in the severity of previously identified impacts. And kind of a side note, a lot of times an addendum will have mitigation measures tearing off of the prior EIR's mitigation measures. In this case, there were no mitigation measures. There was no MMRP. or mitigation monitoring and reporting program in the general plan EIR. So that's why you don't see those kinds of materials in the CEQA documentation, because they weren't there in the prior EIR. So concluding that, the addendum concluded per CEQA guidelines 15162 and 164 that due to these factors, preparation of a subsequent or supplemental EIR is not required and the addendum adequately address the environmental impacts of the proposed project. For public noticing, we did extensive public noticing, and first thing was a display ad, legal display ad, per the requirements of AB2904. And that's a relatively new state law, but it requires additional noticing of 20 days in advance of a planning commission hearing, instead of the usual 10, when there are going to be changes to the physical land uses of a particular site. And in this case, there would be. The city also did extensive outreach to Native American tribes. SB 18 requires that when there's going to be an amendment to the general plan. So we reached out and First Carbon, thank you again for your help with this, to the Native American tribes. We did attempt to have some consultation per SB 18, which didn't go quite as we planned. That's another story. And then we, because we were not able to get that done within the time period. But after that, We have 90 days, basically. But after that, we did voluntary outreach to the tribes anyway. So we did that, which is above and beyond what's required under SB 18. But because we were not able to connect, we did that afterward and just try to reach out to the tribes. In addition to that, card notices to neighbors within 1,000 feet of each site were sent out. And that was done by Tracy a few weeks ago. So that was quite a bit of cards. And we did receive several correspondences. I received a couple phone calls regarding the project. And we also included two letters in your packet and the one in the supplemental materials from residents that are opposed to the proposed rezonings. So the recommendation for this evening is you have two resolutions before you. And the first one is always is the CEQA resolution. So staff is recommending the commission adopt a resolution recommending the city council adopt the addendum to the general plan EIR and find that the addendum has been prepared in compliance with CEQA and has adequately addressed the environmental impacts of the proposed project. The second resolution is recommending the commission adopt a resolution recommending the city approve the project, which again includes amendments to the general plan, zoning ordinance and map, and objective design standards for the three proposed sites. And with that, we are, concludes the presentation, but we are here to answer any questions the commission may have, thank you.

Great. Thanks, Derek. Appreciate that. This is complicated, so I suspect there may be some questions that we'll go through, and then we can go to the next phase and do questions from the public. So let's start with anyone from the dais that would like to start. Any questions? I can start. Okay, great. Ken, please.

We probably won't start thinking about the next housing element for about three years. But when we do, it'd be nice to understand just a little bit from a high level of why the Housing Action Coalition challenged the housing element. Because at the time we put it together, I thought it was somewhat bulletproof. I didn't see any flaws from what I could tell in my position. And so do you have any information that would provide any insights about what it was that they were unhappy with, and why these three sites?

Yeah, I'm gonna turn this over to Joana, thank you.

Yeah, so I guess I think your question is maybe two-part, what the complaint was based on and why these three sites. The fundamental complaint was related to the inventory itself and the adequacy of the sites, meaning that they challenged the fact that we did not obtain property owner approval for all of them, even though we weren't legally required to. The other complaint was that some of them were non-vacant and they were challenging the fact that because they were non-vacant, they were less likely to turn over to housing. And then other factors being, for example, the BART site. The BART work plan at the time did not allocate redevelopment of that site within the six cycle planning period. And therefore, they contended that that site would not actually develop into housing within the six cycle housing element period. Why these three sites I think was the second part of your question. It was really a factor of, I guess, a number of things. In the process of going through the housing element itself, staff had identified a longer list of sites, and we also had reached out to a number of property owners, and not everybody sort of got back to us within the timeframe that was needed in order for us to proceed along in the timeframe that we needed to complete the housing element by. So in order to start the Some property owners reached out to us after sort of the, I guess the cutoff period. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't viable or good sites. They just sort of missed the original or first deadline. And so they were still interested at the time that we were going through the process with the Housing Action Coalition. And therefore, we were able to include them for purposes of the settlement agreement.

But the first part of your answer, is it basically that we either didn't give them as much notice as they wanted, or we didn't explain it in a way that gave them a good enough understanding about what they could gain from being included in the housing element, or was it about something else, the first part of your answer?

From the property owners that were reached out to.

yeah i think it was just a timing thing so they may not have reached out to us with the expressed interest in time to make it into the environmental review and so at that point we had already sort of moved on uh... and establish the first cut of the sites for public and i guess what would the what would the advocacy group wish that we had done differently I don't know that they necessarily expressed in detail what they wished we would have done differently. I think it was more about the adequacy of the sites which we had responded and said we still believe our sites are adequate. The other competing factor I guess in the settlement agreement was the fact that we had projects coming forward by then because the housing element was already adopted and we were looking to sort of true up where the no net loss findings would need to get made. And so it was also a forward looking decision in terms of what's coming next as more and more sites develop. The projected affordability levels in the housing element are not always quite what's actually proposed at the time a project comes through. making up the difference means rezoning additional sites and so that was the other consideration as far as inclusion of of these sites okay

The other aspect that I'm interested in is understanding whether we might get approval from the state about whether these sites may or may not be in the next housing cycle, housing element. And so I'm wondering if you could help me understand if my thinking is clear here. These three sites will, the zoning will get changed and if they come forward with a project and build housing or convert to housing during this cycle, I think by defacto, defacto just based on what actually happens. I think that we'll get credit because we'll be able to say that these sites were built and so they'll be included in the overall assessment of how Pleasanton has done relative to the housing element. What I don't understand is if they don't get built during the cycle, whether we do or don't have the ability to include them in the next cycle housing element because they will already have been converted to housing. So I could see where the state could argue that we couldn't include them because they're already a housing site. So they might just get lost in the shuffle. And so because of that, first, I'm wondering if that's true, if you would agree with that general view. And secondly, I'm wondering whether staff has ever considered whether it's possible to open the housing element for this cycle just For this one issue to consider whether or not they could be included in the housing element without opening it on a broader basis In which case I'm assuming if they weren't built in this cycle, then we probably could carry them forward to the next cycle So I guess I'm just trying to understand whether we're doing everything we can to make it more likely that we'll be able to include these sites in the next cycle of the housing element and

I can take a stab at that, Commissioner Morgan. That was a consideration when the sites were being analyzed and when we were preparing the materials for this project. And it was decided by the city collectively that it was not a good idea to basically reopen, for lack of a better word, The six cycle housing element that these would be basically independent of that process and in terms of the seventh cycle housing element. We we don't know I mean what you're saying is a really good idea in terms of consideration for the seventh cycle, the problem right now is that we don't have direction from the state yet specifically from hcd. about what the parameters are going to be for the seventh cycle. So we are actually hearing from HCD through ABAC, the Association of Bay Area Governments, that we're gonna hopefully be receiving guidance, preliminary guidance from HCD within the next roughly 12 to 18 months, kind of ahead of the game, so at least the different jurisdictions in the state know. what the state's parameters are going to be for the seventh cycle. So I think at that time when we have that guidance and when we start consultation with HCD, we can maybe consider then whether or not these sites would be applicable or could be considered as part of that cycle, but we can't do it at present.

Was city council expressly involved in the decision about whether or not to consider opening up six cycle housing element to add these sites or was that something that staff largely had concluded?

I'm just going to jump in here. I don't mean to take this away from you, Derek, and just say that because of the way this is agendized tonight, we're really focusing on whether the commission would recommend approving the general plan amendments, the zoning amendments, and the objective design standard amendments for these three sites and sort of not going back into housing element discussions, which we may have other members of the community who would want to participate in. So I'm going to try to shift us back a little bit onto these immediate three sites for tonight.

So the decision about whether or not to open the housing element to include these sites is outside of scope for tonight's meeting?

That's exactly right. It wasn't agendized to discuss that. And if you would perhaps have other members of the community who'd want to hear about that, it wasn't on the agenda tonight. So I just want to make sure we're keeping in the confines of the Brown Act.

OK. And so with that, I don't have any more questions for now. Thank you. Thanks, Ken.

Commissioner Jane.

Yeah, I think thank you, staff, for bringing this forward and sharing also the settlement agreement and releasing it for our review. So I went through it quickly. I didn't have too much time. But it seems like what you have here is aligned with what's in there. I think my questions are twofold without looking at all the details. Does it satisfy the requirements, all the requirements in the agreement? You feel confident that it satisfies? We do, we do. The second question is, are we opening ourselves up for another threat for legal action by approving this? And I'll give an example. So there was a site just south of one of these sites, I think site B, on Las Positas Boulevard. And they initially came with a proposal. It was a commercial site, and they wanted to put housing there. And this commission and the council rejected that proposal from them. And at that time, they said they might take legal action against that decision. I don't think it happened yet. And I heard there's some more progress on that side since then. But in general, are we opening ourselves up for another set of litigations? Where are we going with this approval?

I'll start with this and maybe send it over to, this isn't city attorney in a bit. Right now we do have a development application on that subject site that you're asking about. So that's pending, that's under staff review right now. But, um, you know, want to caution that again, the, you know, what's before you right now is just concerning the 3 sites that were covered in the settlement agreement. So what we've done before for you this evening for consideration is prepare the planning packet and the sequel. packet for you based on what came out and what was agreed to in the settlement agreement, but it only concerns what's being proposed in terms of the land use changes on those three individual sites.

I think it is relevant because making a decision here and approving it, first of all, if it was agreed, why does it have to go through this process? If council approved it, why is it up for discussion here?

Thank you. So the city council's approval of the settlement agreement is not a substitution for the process that you all are going through. Under the state planning and zoning law, in order to amend the general plan, amend zoning, and adopt new objective design standards, the city still has to go through the process where the planning commission reviews the action and provides a recommendation to the city council and then the city council takes action in two hearings. A first hearing to introduce the ordinance and a second hearing to fully adopt the ordinance that would implement some of those changes. So this is all part of that process. One is not a substitute for the other.

Sure, and I think the reason that exists is to exactly have these kind of discussions. So it's not just about these sites, it's generally about what we want to see coming in our city. Are we opening ourselves to more threats like this where we yield to some of these parties. I think the second question I had is, and I believe this is still relevant, you may say otherwise. The SCD numbers, if we did not consider this side, Are we able to do a comparison like how much additional HCD units by each type will be added as a result of these additional zoning?

Yeah, yes, we do some additional analysis. We're going to wait until we see what happens to the council, you know, next month. But we will be, you know, updating all of our internal planning documents and housing documents accordingly based on the actions of the commission and I and the council. Yeah. Okay, yeah.

Yeah, so if I just do my math. So let's say at a lower end, we're adding at least 30 units on every site, and 30 dwelling unit per acre. And the sites vary from, I would say they're about 15 acre each. So 15 times 30 is the minimum. So about 650 additional units. And would they be classified as low income, moderate income? What would they be?

So I think for purposes of the housing element, the city is allowed to classify them as very low and low because they meet the minimum 30 dwelling units to the acre threshold. When the development application comes in, if it comes in, I guess the variability and the affordability levels can be different than what we assume in the housing element, and that's where the delta has to be made up for, resulting in the no net loss findings. It's 30 to the acre right now, very low, low. Could be the affordability classification, but the development application could result in something different than that.

And would they qualify for bonus in case they come with an application with very low mix?

They could apply for a density bonus if they met all of the state law criteria, yes.

So potentially it could be much higher than the high number here. Okay. And the other question I have is they still have to follow our objective design standard. Just to make sure we're on the record here. And as per our documentation here, we are updating the ODS to include these sites.

That's actually one of the three major components of the project is to amend the ODS to specifically include these sites.

Cool. So I think I feel if these sites were to come forward for development, we'll see something which we have put together as an ODS, or Objective Design Standard, for the city, which we all worked hard on, including a lot of days and months from the city staff and the commission. In terms of the other question which Commissioner Morgan asked, for seventh cycle, are we able to count these sites or not?

We will not know yet. It's too early to tell because, again, we don't have the initial direction from the state about the parameters that are going to go in to the seventh cycle. When we do, we can hopefully make an educated decision regarding that.

Okay, thank you.

Commissioner Diego?

I don't have any specific questions, thank you.

Okay, so... Oh, please, go ahead.

One more, just a quick follow-up. Are you planning to document what we could do differently for the next cycle to potentially avoid this type of a challenge, or do you feel that's already been done?

So let me, yeah, and let me maybe pick that up, because that's kind of the gist of my point. So we... went through a process with the city where the state said to us, you must designate a whole bunch of sites in this city for more dense housing. That wasn't an invitation, that was a command. And they didn't change any of the requirements that the city must go through from environmental impacts and other things like that when they said that. They didn't change the burden that they put on the city. When they did that, they simply said you have to designate a whole bunch of sites to do that. We went through that process. It took the better part of a year To do that, the staff and us spent a huge amount of time working with various community groups, the community, landowners, and others to try to identify these things. We submitted that. We got some feedback. We changed it in light of the feedback. So far, this is an accurate recitation of the facts, right? Yeah, okay, and the heads are nodding yes. Okay, now we have an unelected guy sitting in San Francisco, you know, Corey, whatever his name is, who's like, you know, putting himself up as like advocating for housing, who's not a member of the government, who's decided to threaten to sue us to make changes that weren't required by law. That's what we're facing here, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So his contention is that it is required by law. The city disagrees strenuously, but nonetheless, the council opted to enter into a settlement agreement to essentially rezone and redesignate three sites that had been selected between the parties. So yes, otherwise I agree with your statement.

So we're being, once again, we have someone outside the city who doesn't understand the city, what the city's values are, what the priorities are, who has come in and demanded we make a bunch more changes to our city, which is gonna impact from the letters that we got from the members of the community that have reacted to this, and certainly as we've gone through, there are several years of going through this, Almost everyone is frustrated with this impacting their neighborhoods. So that's my recollection of what's happened over the past several years. So my concern is related to what Commissioner Morgan just asked, which is, you know, there could be a lot more quarries out there, right, that are threatening to sue us. And so I just want to make sure I'm understanding how we're trying to – There's no blame to the city staff on this. We realize you guys are responding to the direction you're getting from the city council, but how do we do the best we can to try to protect the city from these outside groups that are trying to ram these changes down our throat and not living here and not helping to make this easier for us? How do we try to protect ourselves from that given what's going on here?

I think Pleasanton did a phenomenal job in the process that the city went through to develop its housing inventory for the sixth cycle. That being said, I can think of dozens if not hundreds of cities across California that have faced challenges from housing advocates who questioned the city's respective judgments in the creation of their housing element sites too, right? So Pleasanton has not been alone in this fight. Many, many cities have been questioned as to the adequacy of their sites. I think we do an excellent job of showing our math in our document and demonstrating how we believe that our existing sites are sufficient to meet the state's requirements. But we can't stop someone from bringing a lawsuit against us. We can just deal with it when it gets here. And so we join our sister cities in doing our very best to demonstrate how we're meeting the law.

If you do a learning look back, is there anything we would have done differently just to add in extra precautions and extra protections?

you know i wasn't here and i know this provides context we are getting again so far away from tonight's particular all i can say is that with regard to tonight's particular sites uh... it was agreed between the parties that uh... they would provide sufficient uh... representations to both sides that these sites would be likely to develop with residential projects within this cycle and that the challenger who was threatening to sue us believed that some of the other sites that the city had identified in the inventory were not likely to develop into residential uses within that same period. Shweta, you may have a different take.

So it's a matter of their perspective of whether we chose the best size.

They decided that it wasn't what they thought was right and sued us.

Exactly. Okay, all right. So do we have any other questions for staff? Okay. All right. So at this point, let's see if we have any speaker cards on this item.

No speaker cards were received.

Okay. So we're going to close the public hearing. And so now we'll get the opportunity to kind of, as this group, to kind of work through these recommendations and what we want to do. I know there's a lot of strong feeling on this, having lived through this with all of you, as I think all of you were here with me when we were doing this housing element three years ago. Not me. Okay. I'm a newbie. Yeah. So anyway, do you want to start, Commissioner Jago? Any thoughts?

Yeah, I think when I looked at it and I did enough history looking to know what kind of went into this. So I think how I'm looking at this is, we, the planning commission and the city staff are not the ones who came up with the fact that this is what we're doing as a city. And what we're here to do is, okay, we may not agree with this, but if we're going to, these are the three sites that we would like to select. And in looking at the sites, I went out, looked at them, I know the areas really well, and to me, they're perfect sites for kind of what we're looking for as opposed to other ones, especially the old coal site up against the freeway is a great site. And looking at letters, none of these sites really are in single-family home residential. They're within the Hacienda Business Park. and if we're going to need to pick three sites and we are required to, these are three great sites to do it. So that's why I didn't really have any questions because I assumed we can't ask all the questions you guys are asking. We're just like, hey, if we're gonna pick three sites, these are the ones we have to vote on. So if we're gonna vote on just these three sites, I approve them.

So that's kind of where I'm at. Thank you. Can I just ask staff, If we don't approve these sites, does the staff have to go back and try to renegotiate the settlement? Or what's the process, the outcome if in this hypothetical the sites aren't approved?

I can start, Chair Pace, with the answer to this and maybe defer to Katie shortly. There is in the settlement agreement, there is a subsection three for alternative sites. And it does mention that if during the legislative or environmental review process, there is an issue with these three sites that there is with the agreement of all parties, potentially is a discussion of alternative sites. We've gone through the environmental review process for these three sites. There are no significant environmental considerations to preclude high density housing on these three sites. So that kind of takes care of the environmental review process. And that's part of what we've done for you. But I think that in terms of, you know, additional discussion and potential reopening that would, and this we're going to turn it over to Katie, because I want to make sure we're covering this accurately.

Sorry, writing. Derek's correct. There is a mechanism in the settlement agreement whereby the parties could come together and discuss alternative sites if these were not approved by the city ultimately. There is a deadline for compliance with the settlement agreement, which is December 31st of this year. So we are keeping that in mind because this is a three-step process. First it comes to you and then it goes twice to the city council. These were the three sites that were agreed upon. If the city is going to propose others, the settlement agreement gives the other party the right to require a discussion with them and sort of negotiations there. So I don't know how long that process may take, just being mindful of that deadline.

And I have a couple more follow up questions. When we were going through the housing element, Staff had compiled a list of potential sites where property owners had expressed interest. And I don't remember how long that list was, but it might have been 35 or 40 sites or something greater than the number of sites that we ultimately narrowed down to. And I believe we narrowed down to about 24 sites or something like that. And maybe that's not super important how many it was. But we started off with this many sites. And then after a lot of discussion within staff and Planning Commission and City Council, we finally narrowed down to the final list. And I don't recall any of these three sites being on the list of potential sites that were brought forward to the Planning Commission. Is that true?

That's correct with the exception of site what's being referred to as site B in tonight's agenda report So you'll recall that five acres of that site was included in the housing element for six

But it was only five. It wasn't a potential for 15. So the part I'm still struggling with is these sites weren't brought to the Planning Commission as potential sites for housing elements because some of them look pretty good just on the surface. But given that they weren't brought forward to the Planning Commission, that suggests to me that the property owners did not express interest at that time of being included in the housing element. So I'm still trying to understand how it can be that they received letters and they were given an opportunity to nominate themselves for the housing element. They chose not to, at least for the deadline, and then we narrowed down the list and selected a list, and now they come back later and they want to be included. So that's the part I'm still struggling with is how they would not nominate these properties and then later on insist that they be included in the housing element.

I mean I'm not in the position to speak for the property owners but you know dynamics change market dynamics change leases and I mean there's a number of different factors that could have contributed to a change in mind or you know change in property management so I mean I like I said I cannot speak on their behalf but there may be you know other reasons beyond simply missing the deadline for for city purposes that resulted in them expressing their

interest so they didn't express their interest at the time that we were making the decisions but then later on they wish that they had of so then they found some other areas of the housing element where they feel it may or may not have been done properly and they created a challenge to the city with the intent of then getting their three sites added in here or was it different than that I I think me oh I'm sorry

Maybe there's two different threads there if I can. There's the contention on behalf of the party that was suing the city, right? And they were contending that the inventory itself, all of it together was not adequate.

Okay, that I understand.

Okay, and recall there's sort of different components to the inventory. There's sort of the pending projects, that's one bucket. There is the existing zoning bucket, meaning there are those sites that have residential zoning but haven't been developed with residential development, so there's a latent capacity that hasn't been realized yet. So that's the second kind of bucket. And you put those together, does it meet your RHNA? If it doesn't, then you need to rezone, which is sort of the third bucket. in order to meet all of the state requirements.

So the first element of all of that was just an expression that the housing element was inadequate. It wasn't necessarily with the intent of adding these three sites. That only came later, that somehow these three particular sites were brought in later.

Correct, yes. And so the party that was threatening to, that was saying that the city's inventory was not adequate was essentially sort of poking holes at a number of different sites. Some of them were non-vacant sites but had residential zoning. And they said, well, this seems to be a viable business. It doesn't look like it's going to turn over to housing anytime soon. You shouldn't be counting those units in that particular category. And then some of it was related to other factors like the timeframe within which, for example, the BART site may or may not develop depending on BART policy. So it was sort of a number of different things. And then these sites were sort of kept in mind because we knew at least some of the property owners may have been interested, but weren't included in the original environmental review. So we were able to include them after the fact for this purpose. And again, and just to remind the commission, it wasn't, I mean, there was the forward looking aspect of it also for the no net loss purposes. So as projects come forward that had received the rezoning and the housing element, maybe they did not meet the same income criteria as was assumed, the city would be in the position to rezone in the near term, irrespective of the settlement agreement.

So the Housing Action Committee Coalition challenged the adequacy of the housing element, and then later on they proposed adding three sites here, changing the zoning on three sites that where the property owners at that time did not request that they be included in the housing element. So this was after the fact. The first we ever heard of these three sites having an interest in developing higher density housing was long after the housing element had already been approved.

Sorry, can I ask a point of clarification? Who proposed that these three sites be added? Was it the person threatening to sue us, or was it something that the city worked through to try to figure out and then propose those back to the person threatening to sue us?

It was the latter. We worked with the group that was threatening. Okay.

Can I ask a question? We haven't talked about the three sites. Everybody's asking questions about anything but the three sites. Are we talking because we're against those three sites? But no one's actually asked a question about what we're here to vote for.

I'm not against the three sites. I think they look pretty good. I'm just trying to understand.

But why do we need to know that? Because it's in front of us, we either vote for it or we don't.

Let's say that five other sites come to the city and they say, hey, we want to be in the housing element now, too.

But that's not in front of us right now.

But let's say, I'm trying to understand what the criteria is for getting additional sites rezoned.

But that's why we're here tonight. The other parties outbound of us that we're not a part of have picked these three sites. Everybody that's picked them says these are the three best sites that are going to alleviate this issue. It's our job to vote on these three sites whether we like them or we don't. But all I hear is a bunch of questions that have nothing to do with what we're supposed to vote on.

Yes, I'm struggling. One reason that's complicated for me is because we're not talking about adding them to the housing element.

But that's not part of our vote.

Yeah.

So I think we need to focus on do we want these three sites, yes or no? If we don't, if there's an issue with one of the sites, then we have a big discussion.

I think the point we're trying to make is how these sites were picked and what process was followed. But that's not part of what we're talking about. No, it is. I don't agree with that. That's why it is in front of us.

Why don't we talk about these three specific sites? We're not doing that yet.

Yes, so I personally would have preferred an input from the community when these three sites were picked, not after they were picked and agreed upon that it's coming to us. We don't have a choice in that. No, we did have a choice. The city picked these sites. We don't have a choice right now.

So we can either agree with them or we can vote no and then we get to go through all of this again.

Well, it's also about the process and transparency.

So was the community... We're not here to vote on that. But so, okay, so Dave, I understand your point. Like, we have to decide kind of what we're trying to vote on, but part of the process, part of the reason why we're here is to create transparency for the community about what's happening because we are trying to represent the community in kind of making these decisions. And so I do think there's value in understanding kind of how this decision-making got made. And then if there... needs to be future, heaven forbid, future opportunities. I mean, we're going to have the next round in three years. And so if there's ways that we can learn about what we did here that would influence how we're going to do something in three years when we're going to have to go through something like this again because the state doesn't, seem to kind of have a way to fix this other than just kind of throw it. I think that's what we're trying to figure out. So I agree that we haven't spent a lot of time on the three sites, but I think what you're watching trying to happen is people sorting through the immense amount of work that this group, the staff, and many others in the community kind of went through, and now a change that we had very little control over is getting rammed down our throat. So that's what's getting worked through. Okay. But I do think kind of in the future when we have to go through this again in two years to approve the next one, I think there's some value in trying to understand that process to help get it, you know, better, quote, unquote, for next time.

Because we spent so long discussing and evaluating all of the sites that were proposed where the owners expressed interest trying to get it right and get the right mix of sites.

Which I agree. I mean, I wasn't a part of that, and I think this is terrible that we're having – that this is happening to the city, and I wish – even though we don't have a part in that i wish we we wouldn't have settled and on and unfortunately all the cities could stand up against citizen action groups um because trust me dealing with that in in other terms with you know accessibility people just walking onto sites and suing for anything and everything just to get stuff i think it's it's horrible but unfortunately That's the action that was taken and so I I It's it's hard for me to go It you know all of this work was put in by you guys. I think I don't think we should be getting sued but unfortunately somebody decided that this is we're gonna settle so we have to do our best to come up with the best answer in this settlement and And so, I mean, I understand why you guys are frustrated and everybody else here is frustrated. But unfortunately, it's kind of like that's happened and we're at this point and do we do this or do we not?

Yeah, but I think it's also an opportunity for lesson learned, right? So why was there not a public discussion on selection of these three sites? so why this did not so that's not a question for you like that's just a transparency question like if we put so much effort in picking every single site for scd and on the other hand someone can come and have this back door where the staff or i don't know who picked these sites and what public opinion inputs were received this just you know, damages the whole process we have in place for transparency and the community inputs. So.

Well, staff did notify people within 1,000 feet, tribal groups, et cetera. So and then I guess they could be here tonight to oppose or support the rezoning of these three sites. So is this the public hearing for that?

Yeah, we had the public hearing. We did not have anybody here. I spoke to one person on the phone who did submit a letter that was part of your packet. So we had three letters that were submitted.

But I'm not talking about right now. I'm talking about when this agreement was reached and these three sites were picked.

Oh, I see.

It is too late now, right? Right now, there's a process failure here. So there was no public input in selecting these sites, no input from Planning Commission. Someone just picked these sites out of the hat, and they probably picked more than these. They're like, hey, you have a complaint against us. We're pretty much showing them multiple sites and saying, hey, does this satisfy, what would satisfy your demands? That's what happened, in my opinion.

So I'm sure the settlement procedures are confidential, so we're not going to be able to get into that process. But I think kind of one note on this would be the effort by this group to try to make it as transparent as possible to our community when the community is going to be impacted, which this will do. because we're going to have to give away something here to avoid a lawsuit, a very expensive lawsuit, over this issue if we don't get a settlement done. And so I think what you're seeing is this group that is working really hard to try to figure out how do we do the right thing for this community where we've got these groups that clearly don't care about the community, their interests are elsewhere, and they're just kind of I'll say the word preying on this community to get a bunch of changes done for whatever their agenda is versus someplace else in the state. So I think that's kind of what the process is. And I think we've provided some feedback about what we can hopefully try to use for the next time around when this comes up. Whether it's the seventh cycle or something else, hopefully there isn't anything else and it will just be the seventh cycle. Not that any of us want to take on extra work given how much work went into the sixth cycle. I know it was more than a year's worth of time by all of you, but there is obviously what we have uncovered through the course of this process is notwithstanding all the work we're doing, notwithstanding us going to the state and getting it done right, people still get to come in and cherry pick and do things later. And so the work that gets done in advance to try to get as much community feedback as we can get, I don't know how we get more, but The efforts to get more, I think, are going to be important as we go through this again, knowing that these same characters are probably going to be out there doing that again the next time around, given, according to Katie, what you said about the number of states. I think that was, excuse me, the number of cities within the state. I think that was a very useful metric, is that While we are being picked on, we are not the only one being picked on, and so Misery doesn't love company, but I guess we're in good company. All right, so I think we probably have kind of made that point, so I think we need to talk. If people have kind of specific comments about these three sites, who spoke last? I don't know. Dave, you want to go?

I was just going to say specifically, I think we're all... And I could be wrong, but the Metro 580 site, you know, the Coles and the building, a lot of that other than the Halloween stores is fairly vacant. Since part of that site was already approved, expanding it to that group, I've always thought, you know, driving by it all the time that that'd be a perfect site for, you know, higher density and everything that comes with it. And the other two sites, you could argue, well, they're pretty close to each other, but they're on a larger street. They are set back a little bit from the area. They are within a school and all that kind of stuff. So when you look at the sites themselves, I think each individual site does on merit stand on its own fairly well, but that's why I was kind of excited to talk about how you guys felt about the individual sites, because I didn't see any negatives to them.

One thing, can I just ask, as part of the design review process that we would go through if a developer were to come in and say, they've designated, this is a question for staff, that a developer comes in and say they want to try to develop one of these sites, it would still go through the process that we've done with, I'm just, this is for a matter of public record, it would still go through the process of there would have to be a traffic review, there would have to be some of those other things, correct?

Correct. And we'd have to take a look at how the application comes into, you know, if it's, you know, under one of the Senate bills or assembly bills and all that, you know, with their own specific requirements about processing and all that, they usually don't accept a site from environmental review. So we would be doing whatever environmental review is required at the time we receive an application. And again, the three sites will be subject to the objective design standards.

For the sites and the housing element, I don't think they go through traffic review because I think that was already done as part of CEQA. Would these go through traffic review? And could they be declined because they caused Pleasanton's traffic standard to fail? Could that be a reason for declining them in the future?

It may. I'll caution that it may. But again, we prepared the addendum, which at a programmatic level, from just the unit count. You know, these sites are suitable for the densities that are being proposed and there are no new environmental impacts at the rate the densities are at. So, you know, again, At the time we receive an actual physical development application, the staff will work with the city attorney's office and also the applicant team to review any and all areas for the specific development to see if any additional environmental review is required at that time.

Were any traffic reviews done for these?

These were under the traffic counts that were analyzed under the general plan EIR, and they were found to be, no new impacts from these sites were identified that were not already identified in the general plan for the actual unit count in that general plan, which had a overall higher build out.

So we've already analyzed a higher level of cars and traffic than what these will create? Correct.

Okay.

Anything else? I think it's a comment period, right?

So I think there are a couple of comments I have. Actually, three or four. So first comment is, These sites remain to be in between some commercial sites, so especially the Inglewood site as well as the Hopyard site. So you have a commercial site adjacent to it. And this is not something new, but it's not a purely residential neighborhood, but it will be a mixed neighborhood. Like there will be office buildings, there will be residential buildings on the same street. And we have some of that in other parts of the city. So that's comment one. The comment two is I think I would... like to share my personal perspective just zoning a site doesn't create units and this is a flaw in a city's process and their accounts while city can rezone things we don't build these units so the actual construction and pulling the permits and stuff like that is always with a private party a developer And we cannot just rezone a site and expect those units to be built in time for the housing HCD cycle. So just on the premises, this whole lawsuit is filed and I was hoping the city would defend our HCD more because we cannot build housing. Even if we wanted to, build housing units which are required by HCD, it will cost us billions of dollars which we don't have as a city. So there is a disconnect in just how the state and HCD has put these numbers on the city. pressure on the city so that's the second comment the third comment is on the process how these sites were selected not at this time but when the agreement was being negotiated with the with the complaining party I would have expected that to come to this Commission with a list, not at this time when everything is signed by the council and it's just a rubber stamp at this moment. Because that's when you can actually pick and choose which sites you would like to see. Right now, I'm sure like staff made an informed decision in council with the city council, but it's without any inputs from planning commission or the community. When this list was created the fourth comment I would make is We are 2026 2031 it is very close I Understand what the complaining party is contending and but there's very less feasibility of like city doing anything to force these developers hand or the homeowners or landowners hand to actually build these units so no matter how much rezoning we do, ultimately it's not something which city can do to meet HCD requirements. And HCD requirements are very clear. You count the units when the permits are pulled, not just rezoning. So you rezone at the beginning of the cycle, but when they actually look at end of the cycle or midpoint, they're actually looking at number of permits being pulled and actual units being delivered. So I just want to express my opinion that this whole process is... Just flawed both What we are seeing here anyone can come and challenge You know because as a city we don't have Certainty on how many units will be built and that's exactly their argument in this case and Those are the main four arguments. I have thank you. Thanks. I

And I would say that on the surface, I don't have any reservations about these three sites. In fact, I'm confident that Metro 580 is a very good site to expand that. The other two, on the surface, they look like pretty good sites to me. But I'll just add that when we were reviewing the sites for the housing element, there was no absolute standard. There wasn't. standard where we say if you are better than this you're approved if you're worse than this you fail what we were doing is we were looking at 35 sites and trying to decide of all those sites which ones were the best ones so it was a force ranking whereas this is not a force ranking we don't have other sites to compare it to so there's no way to assess whether these are better sites than what some other alternative might be and so So for me, what that means is that when we approved the housing element, we had some sites on there that if we had known about these sites, maybe we would have left some other site off the housing element and we would have chosen one or more of these instead. So for that reason, it's not really a very objective process. It's kind of all or nothing. This is what is in front of you now. And so for me, the focus is on trying to understand whether or not we could get um credit for these in the housing element so what i would suggest is that for the when it goes to the city council that that that topic be agendized so it can be specifically reviewed with city council at that meeting about a decision or recommendation not to include thing in the housing element unless they've already made that as a part of the DISCUSSIONS THAT WERE NOT PUBLIC. AND IF THAT CAN'T HAPPEN NOW, THEN I WOULD REQUEST THAT WE HAVE A FUTURE AGENDA ITEM WHERE WE DISCUSS THAT TOPIC ABOUT WHETHER WE INCLUDE IT IN THE HOUSING ELEMENT. SO I THINK THERE SHOULD BE A DISCUSSION WITH THE CITY, CITY COUNCIL, PLANNING COMMISSION ABOUT WHETHER IT SHOULD BE IN THE HOUSING ELEMENT EITHER AT THE UPCOMING CITY COUNCIL MEETING BECAUSE IT IS AGENDIZED OR IF WE'RE NOT READY FOR THAT, THEN AS A FUTURE AGENDA ITEM FOR THE PLANNING COMMISSION CITY COUNCIL. And I'm wondering what other people tonight, other planning commissioners, think about that concept.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. I just want to caution that once we rezone a site as housing, it's permanent. It's not an eraser, which you can erase that zoning back. So once you grant a certain zoning, especially when it comes to housing in California, Like, there's a lot of things which the landowner can do by right. And I think it's a permanent change without much time or consideration to what other alternatives exist. And we were not part of that process, unfortunately. And I think that's a mess.

I agree with everything you said there. I am wondering whether other people think City Council should have expressed opportunity to make a decision about whether to include it in the housing element, unless that's already been done.

You mean for the- We can't agendize the City Council meetings so we can we can recommend we can we can make a recommendation obviously uh i certainly am supportive of making a recommendation but it'll be up to the city council to decide yeah kind of what what they agendize or not but i i to your point i can't believe the city council would want to approve this without it getting credit in in the housing element like i but but you know like we did kind of when we did this a couple weeks ago and there was a different item you know, we can make this, you know, kind of a focus item for them to kind of make sure they can work on. Obviously, it'll be up to them to decide what they want to do, but I'm certainly supportive of making sure we do everything we can to get credit for this as part of the next housing element.

I bring it up because we're told it's not an appropriate topic for tonight's meeting because it's not agendized, and I just want to make sure that the City Council has the opportunity to discuss it at their upcoming meeting, or that we set up a future meeting to where the City Council Planning Commission have the opportunity to discuss that.

I think we can make that as part of our recommendation when we vote to say, you know, we would recommend that this piece be agendized. You could do that as part of a motion.

That's what I'm suggesting. Thank you.

Okay, anybody else? Okay, so it feels like we have a consensus. So does someone want to make a, oh, can I ask one more question? Go to the four recommendations, please. No, there was a different page, a different page, no. This one, what, I don't understand what the housing opportunity site overlay is, what is that?

That is the amended land use element of the general plan, and that's one of the attachments before use. So what that would do is it would create a new land use designation in the general plan, and that is on page 2.24 of attachment. There's a lot of attachments. Exhibit B to attachment one, and if it would help, Chair Pace, I can briefly read it. It's only a couple seconds.

Do we have a way just to put it on the screen? Is that possible?

And how is it different than the sites that were rezoned for the housing element?

It's only a couple sentences. Yeah, why don't you do that while we're seeing if we can get it out. So in addition to identifying the three sites, which you already know where those are, this is the text, and it's really brief. Housing Opportunity Site Overlay, and again, this is the land use element of the general plan. The Housing Opportunity Site Overlay identifies properties that are intended to provide additional opportunities for residential development beyond or in addition to sites identified as part of the sixth cycle or any subsequent housing element. As an overlay, the designation permits non-residential uses in accordance with the underlying land use designation for the site, as well as residential development within the density range as follows. And that's the density range that you have for each of the three sites. So this is an overlay. So nothing happening there now, the non-residential uses now, are affected, and those non-residential uses, if for some reason the property owner or developer wants to work on or expand those non-residential uses, this doesn't preclude them from doing so.

This sounds like it's a way to add housing zoning without taking away the existing zoning that they have.

Yes. That's a good way to summarize it. And again, this is just the top entitlement. More of the actual permitted uses will be in the zoning ordinance designation, which is 18.38. Again, that's not being amended. Just the addition of the size is being included in that existing zoning definition. It looks like city attorney.

Yeah, and just while we're on this slide, maybe we can put something to rest and give you a little comfort here. Just because these three sites are not being proposed to be included in the housing element chapter of the general plan, that doesn't mean that they won't be in the general plan, right? The changes are being made in the land use element. and it doesn't imperil our ability to seek RHNA credit for any housing that's developed on these sites. It doesn't have to live in the housing element to get that credit. What we have right now is a certified housing element, And as you know, that protects us from things like builder's remedy projects that might be submitted to the city. It protects our ability to make our own decisions locally on whether to issue building permits. It gives us all sorts of legal protections. Cracking open a housing element and asking HCD to go through the process of certifying it again and having that back and forth with the state, that takes time and sort of obviates that protection that we enjoy right now, right? So there are lots of reasons why something could live in a different chapter, and I wouldn't want you to think that that hadn't been considered. I think there are lots of ways to skin this cat and the manner that's being proposed to you is something that staff feels very confident about.

The potential shortcoming I was thinking about was the situation where it's not included in the housing element, and then when we develop the next cycle, not knowing whether or not it could be included in that housing element, because it can't be a carryover from the sixth cycle, because it was never in the sixth cycle, and it's already been rezoned. So can it be in the seventh cycle? housing element if we don't put it in there now.

Yeah, I hear that concern and I think what Shweta said and I like the buckets analogy was one of the buckets that HCD will look at is whether your existing zoning is sufficient to provide for those opportunities. So if this change was made now, this would become part of our existing zoning that provides those opportunities. So it isn't simply sites that get rezoned that we get re-accredits for. It's also sites that have existing capacity or have existing ability. I don't know if that helps.

Yeah, so I would like to make a motion to approve these with a future... agenda item for discussion on inclusion of these in seventh RENA cycle.

Sorry, let me just be clear on what you're asking. Are you saying you want to make a recommendation that the City Council consider these in the seventh cycle, or are you making a

Recommendation that we come back and consider that at a future date that we consider because right now I don't think we have enough information here about seven arena cycle So we what I'm seeing some excitement over over with our friends there on the right, so let's let them respond I

I would just say that I think Derek made a very good point, which is that we don't know what the state is going to be asking of us for the seventh cycle yet. That's not clear. What we do know is that there's going to be a whole bunch of new rules and regulations that we're going to have to comply with. And we'll go through the whole process again that you went through with the sixth cycle, where you'll have this full list of things to look at. So staff will absolutely come back to you with that whole process all over again. I don't know in terms of tonight's action if including that makes a lot of sense in terms of what you've been asked to do tonight. I hear the interest, I definitely do, and I want to assure you that we'll come back with a very robust seventh cycle process for you, but tonight's really about a general plan amendment, a zoning amendment, and objective design standards.

Ideally, I would have wanted general plan to be updated, and we are wasting our time on someone's lawsuit. How many hours we have spent.

I think you got strong alignment on that point at the DS. Maybe I'm interested in making a substitute motion that we approve staff recommendations for CEQA and also for this settlement, and that we also include in the city council agenda a discussion about whether or not it should be whether or not the six cycle housing element should be amended we we encourage the city council to agendize whether or not it would be in the sequa

Can we do that?

We can certainly include a recital saying the Planning Commission would like the City Council.

Encourages the City Council.

Encourages the City Council.

To consider whether or not it should be included in the sixth cycle housing element.

We can include a recital to that effect. We've taken a lot of notes on your concerns here, including the fact that that you want there to be robust discussions about these items that allow for public input. So we can include those things in the resolution if you like.

But what will it help with the sixth cycle? I'm not sure. If you add them to sixth cycle, how will that help?

The way it would help is if they don't get built out during the sixth cycle, it might be easier to carry them over to the seventh cycle, similar to what happened on the last cycle.

But they can always be added to seventh cycle?

That's what I don't know, legally, if they can, if they've already been rezoned. That's what I'm hearing from the staff.

She just said that if it was rezoned, then they get to .

What I thought the sixth cycle was was a list of properties that the city was going to rezone to meet the requirements to rezone 5,900 units for the sixth cycle.

Which we did.

And so if it's rezoned now, I don't know if we can count that as the 5,900 units that might have to be created during the next cycle.

So it might be useful to just lay out maybe for a moment This is exceedingly complex, but could you just lay out maybe for a minute kind of how the state will look at what the obligation would be? We don't know what it's going to be yet, but just like how the state kind of comes up with that I think would be a little bit useful.

For the next cycle, assuming nothing's different. and whether or not this could count for the next cycle, assuming everything is done the same as what it was done for the sixth cycle, because for me, the sixth cycle was the city's commitment to rezone enough new sites to allow for up to 5,900 units of housing.

Let me see if I can try to explain this, and you guys can correct me. The city had a certain number of pre-COVID residents six cycle and you know going back in time as well the state would look at the number of sites that the city had designated as potentially developable for housing and then the state says We want, we expect communities to develop a certain number of sites and so if you community, in this case Pleasanton, don't have enough sites according to our judgment, we are going to mandate that you have to designate some new additional sites. Is that, so far am I correct? Okay, heads nodding yes. Okay, so the point of the sixth cycle was to say we, the state, don't believe that the number of sites, whatever that number was, in the city you had already designated as kind of the ones already designated was enough, and so we're forcing you to designate plus or minus 6,000 additional site units. And so I think what the staff is saying, please correct me if I'm wrong, is So let's call those, for the sake of this conversation, bucket A, the stuff we've already done, and bucket B, the stuff the state's ramroading down our throat. And now we've got a bucket C, which is what this litigation is doing. But what I think I'm understanding the state, the staff to say about this is, with these three sites, if they're not included in bucket B, because they're not part of the planning cycle, part of cycle six, they're still gonna be in bucket A, and so we would still get credit for it.

Did I say that part right? But I have some additional information that might change your view on that.

Let's just make sure we've got that right. Is that right? That's the way I understand it. Okay, all right, so now.

The way I have been led to believe it works in the past is that the state determined at the overall state level how many sites needed to be rezoned for housing for the next housing element. So for the sixth cycle, I believe it was 400,000 sites, something like that. And then they had some process where they allocated to each area how many of those would carry over, would be, would be carved up, the pie would be carved up. And so for the Bay Area, there were a certain number of sites. I don't remember if it was 80,000 or it was some number. And then there was a group that got together that included Ellen Clark and others that I think was associated with the ABAG, Bay Area Government structure. And so they took that number of units and they had some metrics based on how much traffic how many freeways you are close to, public transportation, how much land you have that hasn't been developed. And so they had some calculation where they then determined of those sites, 6,000 of those would be Pleasanton's responsibility to rezone that number of sites to allow for up to that number of new housing units. I don't think it was related to what the zoning is of the current sites in Pleasanton. I think it was a separate analysis to carve out the 400,000 sites.

I don't know. I wasn't part of that process. We can ask staff to see if they have it.

Would it be okay if I share some numbers? Maybe that might help. So the overall RHNA for Pleasanton was 5,965. So that's the total. If you were to factor in the number of ADUs and pending and improved entitlements that we had at that time, that's one bucket, right? Once you subtract that out from the 5,900 and some change, you had 5,054 remaining. Then the second bucket that we had referred to was that latent capacity, so sites that have the existing residential zoning. So once you factor all of those in, we were left with a shortfall of 3,264, meaning we had to rezone sites to accommodate 3,264 units of the 5,965 total RENA. Plus some buffer, right? Plus some buffer, yes.

So I think I would not touch sixth cycle at all at this point because that's said and done. I'm a little concerned about this settlement though because it says they will not come after us for this cycle. But it doesn't stop them from coming after in 2031 when we put up. So I think this is going to be a perpetual loop with these litigators.

That's a foregone conclusion. There's nothing the staff is going to be able to do to help us with this. But yeah, we're going to get to play around with these characters again. Okay. So we have a couple of different motions. We have...

So my motion is just in simple terms, approve, but have a discussion for seventh cycle, inclusion of these sites in the seventh cycle. When the time is right. When the time is right and not touch our approved certified sixth cycle at all.

Okay. And your motion is? My motion is to give city council an opportunity to weigh in on whether they want to amend the sixth cycle or not. Okay. By agendizing the items so that they have the opportunity to discuss it at their meeting. And I'm not saying they should include them in the sixth cycle.

I just want them to be able to make a conscious decision about whether to include them in the sixth cycle.

Okay. And not have me or staff or somebody else be doing that, making that decision.

So both motions are to approve the recommendations of staff with different exceptions. Derek, did you have something?

Apologies, Chair Pace. If I could just interject, could the commission please take action on the first resolution, which is the CEQA resolution? That's the one recommending the council adopt the addendum.

Can we go back up there?

Sorry, I thought I was up there. There we go. I probably hit the button.

So we have two pending motions.

Yes, and if you're talking about, you know, having amendments or additional recitals, I want to make sure that those are clearly on the second resolution for the project so we can get the first, unless the commission has issues with CEQA, if you could take action on the first.

Okay, so we have two pending motions, and now Mr. Farmer's asking us to kind of consider a third, so... So we have to do the first one.

So I'll make a recommendation to adopt a resolution recommending the city council adopt the addendum to the general plan EIR.

Okay, that's the sequel one. Okay, do we have a second on any one of the three motions that are pending?

I'll second the one that Commissioner Jago just made.

I think I know how this is going to go, so all in favor? Aye. Aye. So that was unanimous. Okay, so you have CEQA, check. So now we have two pending motions. Do we have a second or further discussion on either of those two pending motions?

Dave? I don't want to second either one of them.

Okay, do you have an alternative motion?

I have an alternative motion adopt a resolution recommending the city approve the project as is.

Okay. So I when the I'll ask a question and then I'll figure out which one I'm going to second. When this goes to staff all three motions are looking to approve these three sites. So something's going to end up in front of the city council in in I guess the first time in October and then the second time in November, December, whenever it happens. When that occurs, will the discussion of what happened here and kind of the issues that were discussed here, will that be shared with the city council for purposes of considering whether or not to approve this?

We will be including the discussion. We'll have a staff report for the council, which will include the summary of the events and resolutions adopted this hearing in the staff report.

Okay. So I. and reluctant to open cycle six because of the builder's remedy that we literally just experienced issues on when we did the site that was next door to the transfer station and the, I don't know what the name of the site is, but the site that's out there on Bush Road, and the fact that we had someone come in on county land and jam something down our throat that we didn't like very much. So I'm worried about reopening sixth cycle. So for that reason, and given the fact that this conversation will at least in summary form, and I trust that the staff will relay our concerns about the kind of the arena issue, I'm gonna second Honorog's motion, Commissioner Jain's motion. So we have a motion and a second on, at some point, looking to see if we can get conversation for this group when the time is right to get these sites put into the CEQA Series 7 when that comes due, which probably won't be for a little while, but that's the pending motion that we have a motion and a second on.

And just to be clear, I think that motion and what Commissioner Jago is making is pretty much the same. So it's just something which staff will do irrespective, right? So when you're looking at sites for the next renal cycle, you'll consider these. Is that correct, or do we have to specifically make a motion for that?

So my understanding is that your motion is to adopt a resolution recommending the city approve the project as proposed tonight, and in the future, when staff is preparing the seventh cycle housing element update, include these three sites for discussion at that time. Is that right? Correct. Okay, thank you. And is that the motion you're seconding, Chair Pace? It is, yeah. Thank you.

And I can see that my motion's gonna fail, and so am I able to withdraw my motion just to make it simple? You don't have to it hasn't been seconded And I guess it's just one other comment before we vote on the other motion which I am in support of of approving this for many reasons I Will just add a comment that recently a couple of housing sites were added to the six cycle housing element and so what I didn't know or don't know is whether there is a way to I open a small element of the housing element without broadly opening it. And that's the part that's got a lot of legal aspects of it.

Which sites were added to HCD? The two church sites? They were added not to the certified HCD. I don't believe so.

Not being added? I don't think they're added.

I mean, the head's on the... Because the state had requested they be rezoned, but they're not going to be added to the housing element. Is that true? Shveta? Shveta?

Yeah, that's correct. It's not necessarily added to the inventory for purposes of HCD review. It's implementation of the housing element. So they do have the residential zoning designation, but it's not necessarily to... formally amend the Inventory of the housing.

So yeah, I certainly wouldn't want to open the housing element if it if it meant that everything else could be subject to challenge So I would only want to even consider it if If it could only be done specifically for these sites and I'm assuming the staff is already thinking about that and and would probably already bring it forward to City Council if there was an easy way to do it, so I I I don't have any more comments about my motion, which is probably not a good idea at this point.

So I think we've got a motion and a second on the one that I think, Katie, you articulated better than we did. So let's do all in favor of that. I think we know where we're going to land. So all in favor of that, of Honorog's motion?

Aye. Aye. Aye.

All right. And so that was unanimous. So we've passed this. Derek, do you have anything else on this from us at this point?

On this item? Yeah.

No. Okay, great. Thank you for the work. This obviously gets lots of attention from us and likewise from our citizens, fellow citizens here. in the city. All right, so we're going to move on to item seven, which is reports from meetings attended. Commissioner Jago? I did not attend. Commissioner Jane?

None to report. None to report.

I'm sorry. Okay, great. Future planning calendar. Thank you, Shweta. Mr. Farmer.

I have to find it here. Yes, for a future planning calendar, we will be having a meeting on the 23rd of September. Items on that are as follows, and these are subject to change. Right now, we have an application for a CUP to operate an indoor recreational facility with a maximum occupancy of 80 at any one time. I believe that's for table tennis or pickle, but one of those two. We have an application for a PUD for minor subdivision on the Brzozowski Hill Lane area for three new homes and three new lots. And that will be on the agenda for September 23rd. The third item, which is the PUD for a project site across the street, I believe, is gonna be heard at a later date. It will not be heard on the 23rd. But P260164 for a CUP for a private school of up to 40 students, that will also be on the September 23rd calendar.

Where is that one? What's the geography?

That is on Santa Rita Road. I wanna say towards the freeway, like close to the freeway. I'm sorry, I don't have the exact.

All right, thank you. All right, any matters to be initiated by commission members?

No? I think I would just like to know if we have any plans to update our general plan. I think it's overdue. Sorry, which plan? The general plan. The last revision has been years old. I think the last one we did many, many, many years ago. So is there, like last time we were told there's a budget constraint or something, but is that something which we are thinking about doing in the next?

Here's a safe answer. That is definitely on the consideration of the city council and of the city manager's office and our department. I can't provide any more details, but it is something that we understand needs to get done and it is on our radar.

Could we just get an affirmative update at the next meeting or the following one?

As soon as I can.

Thank you.

All right. Anything else?

I had a couple of... Yeah, please. At the last meeting, there were a few questions from commissioners. Shweta just left. We were going to talk about... I believe Commissioner Morgan had a question about ODS. about the guest parking, I believe, and that's something that we're considering, and the ODS, we were gonna try to bring that earlier, like in October, that will not be happening. We're still working on some details of that, but hopefully we'll have that back to you very, very early in the coming following year. And then, Chair Pace, you had a question, I believe, about the Stone Ridge properties, and I confirmed that The 300 Venture Group has purchased the Nordstrom site. They're also the owner of the JC Penney site. So that should hopefully speed up the Stone Ridge Mall redevelopment process.

Thank you. When does the extension end? Is it like February or March?

I don't know off the top of my head, but I can confirm that and get back to you.

I think that's when it is.

That sounds right.

That's when we talked about it. Okay. All right. Anything else, guys? Okay. Then we're adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Appreciate Derek, Katie. Appreciate, as always, everything. This was a lot of work. Tracy, it's going to be fun to work with you.

Thank you for explaining the item.