Redding Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Okay, sorry for the bit of delay. We're going to call the meeting to order at 4.02, and we're going to start with roll call, please.

Chair Willem? Here. Vice Chair Emanuel?

Here.

Commissioner Belkovic?

Here.

Commissioner Johnson?

Here.

Commissioner Miner?

Here.

Commissioner Ryan? Here. Commissioner Winham?

Here.

Thank you.

And then Jeremy, would you like to introduce staff, please?

Sure thing, Chair. We have clerking for us, Ms. Jennifer Gannon and Michelle Yang. To my right, we have interim city attorney Mary Wagner here with us in person today. Assistant director of public works, Josh Anthony. Myself, Jeremy Pagan, director of development services. Lily Toy is our planning manager and associate planner, Danny Castro, will be giving our presentation later on today.

Great, thank you. Before we move on to item two, I just want to remind, we have some community members here that we have cards if you would like to speak. They're kind of a periwinkle color in the lobby, and you can bring them up to our admin up here if you'd like to speak. Okay, item two, approval of minutes. The minutes for the August 11th, 2026 meeting.

Please. Move approval. I second.

Okay, we have a first and a second. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Okay, motion carries. Thank you. Number three, announcements. No announcements. We'll move on to the public hearing, item 4A1, the Adminment Application, which we've read many times, but we'll do it again, MND 2025-00266, and Parcel Map Application PM-2025-0091 by EP2, Reading Oasis LLC. I will turn it over to Mr. Castro to give us this presentation, please.

Yeah, and before Mr. Castro jumps in, just want to take a quick minute to thank the Planning Commission. I recognize we're in our third hearing for this item, but This commission brings a lot of good, unique perspective, good voices, lots of years of experience. And so I think the questions and comments have been really good ones. And the end result is a much better and more refined permit, I feel, more legally defensible, So I know we're in a third hearing, but I believe it has been time well spent. So thank you for helping staff as we wrestle through some changes and refinements. And certainly thanks to the applicant for their patience as we're working through here to the finish line. And we're able to get the necessary technical information from the applicant between the last hearing and this one. To bring that forward to this commission today, and then last just want to thank staff and our city attorney. It's really been a team effort to try and figure out how to make this work. It is a complex. Permit as this commission knows we're working with 20 plus year old documents and approvals and working to tweak and change the project and still have it fit within those confines. So staff's done a good job getting us to this point. I think today. We have new information to present to the commission and a good recommendation for you all to consider. So with that, I'm going to pass it off to Danny. Take it away.

All right. So, yeah, good evening or good afternoon. Thank you, Chair. Greetings to everyone. So we are going to go over the Oasis Commercial Center amendment and parcel map application. And I've got this divided into three parts. So I'm gonna do part one, I'm gonna do a recap. I mean, I know we were all here on the 23rd, but there might be some members of the audience who weren't. So I was just gonna try to briefly recap and go through. I don't wanna rush it, but I don't wanna spend too much time on the recap. So we'll go through those. And then part two, we'll be addressing Commissioner Kent-Manuel's suggested changes to the conditions. There was, if you recall, on the 23rd, there was a list of 13 conditions with suggested changes. And so we'll be going through those. And then in Part 3, we'll be going over changes to the environmental. And when we get there, we'll talk about that. So without further ado, Part 1, Project Recap. Yes, so the site we're talking about is in the north part of the city off of Oasis Road up there off of I-5. Right now it's a group of properties off of I-5. And it's zoned RCSP, which is Regional Commercial Specific Plan Overlay. So we'll talk about the Oasis Road Specific Plan in a minute. It has a general plan designation of regional commercial. So You know, relatively large piece of land up there designated for commercial development at the north part of the town. In 2005, no, 2006, the original permit was approved, and it was originally for Costco. It planned a large Costco building with some other outbuildings on the site. They proposed to delete Twinview north of Oasis. So, you know, Twinview would have came through here. Connecting there and there. So it proposed to delete Twinview altogether. It deleted an intermittent creek that currently runs through the site. And it included two phases, a phase 1A and a phase 1B. So with this amendment application, there's also a parcel map application to change the property lines and to create the lock configuration that looks exactly like this. So currently Twinview is this gray area. It comes down and connects through here. And the parcel map would move that right-of-way here to align with Oasis Court, which is, confusingly enough, is not a court. It's a through street, but it's called Oasis Court. So you still have that north-south connection there. The project overlaid on this exhibit would look like this. So whereas previously, this whole area was for commercial development, and they were gonna fill in this creek, now with this amended project, they're proposing to leave this intermittent creek parcel this off for future development that would require its own conditional use permit, and to leave this part of the site, about 13 or 14 acres, leave that for this proposed development. So... See what's essential here. I think I just went over most of that. In terms of the uses, we're talking about a couple hotels, some quick serve drive-thru restaurants, a coffee kiosk, drive-thru coffee kiosk, a sit-down restaurant there, and a gas station. So like I mentioned before, this property is within the Oasis Road specific plan area. And without getting too much into recapping the details, essentially what the specific plan overlay is, is that it's a zoning overlay district that goes over the property that essentially elevates the standards of development for the property above that which is required by the standard zoning code. Some examples of things that wouldn't normally be required of a development like this, but that are required of a development in this area are parking lots, screening walls, some enhanced architectural design guidelines, additional street landscaping. Like this project is bringing in separated sidewalks and a median with trees and landscaping along there, as well as some requirements for public art features and things like that. So... So all that specific plan, overlay, increased standards apply to the project is essentially what this slide was talking about. As for trees and landscaping, like I mentioned, the medians and the fringes would be treed. And there's a mitigation measure that exists already with the project in the EIR that requires tree preservation and replacement. So all trees greater than six inches measured at breast height, which is about four and a half feet off the ground, west of the parking area adjacent to I-5 would be preserved. So do I connect back to the slide quickly? So there's a bunch of trees that would be in here that would be preserved. Kind of these guys in here. There's another couple of large trees up here in the northwest of the property that are already mitigated to be preserved. So those would also need to be preserved. And the rest of the trees that would be removed would all need to be replaced in accordance with the scheme that exists in the EIR. So there's like replacement ratios depending on how big of a tree you're planting, whether it's a seedling or a box tree. how many trees you're mitigating for, but there's a kind of determined scheme that applies to those ratios. So that, in a nutshell, is the project, and I'm happy to answer any questions after the presentation if there was anything that you needed more refresher on. But I wanted to get into part two, which is the proposed changes. So without further ado, so the first one on there, if you'll recall, was a revision to condition number four, and essentially it was asking for architectural review to come back to this body. On the June, I'm sorry, July 23rd hearing, the Planning Commission didn't express desire to add this condition, so in the draft conditions of approval, this condition was not added. in the, I should say, the draft conditions of the newly revised draft conditions of approval is what I'm referring to. Proposed revisions to condition 17b So this has to do with those two oak trees in the northwest corner of the site that I mentioned. And the recommended changes were essentially an updated language. that's more in line with how we would word things today. So it's not necessarily too substantially different. It still satisfies the existing mitigation measure. It's more of a lateral change that kind of updates that language to the specifics that we now use in the city for tree protection. So staff agrees that that seems entirely plausible to change the condition as such. So the draft conditions of approval have been revised to include this updated language. Condition 17 D. There was wording. So the last two sentences of condition 17 D read some tree plantings are to occur within the open space areas adjacent to Salt Creek. The landscape plan shall include the planting plan for this area. So staff's interpretation of the intent of this condition was to ensure that there were some, at least some tree plantings that get planted adjacent to Salt Creek. Because without that condition, there would be no requirement to plant any trees next to Salt Creek. So it's not clear what putting a 50% limit on the plantings would achieve. So for that reason, staff has not included the suggested changes into the draft conditions of approval. Again, as the conditions intent seem to require some tree plantings and putting a limit of 50%, I'm not a biologist, but if it was feasible to do 100%, I don't see why that wouldn't be allowed. But again, this is just staff's interpretation, staff's review, but that's why that change wasn't added to the draft conditions of approval. This one had some discussion on the first hearing. Condition number 40, it was the condition for fair share of funding for a fire department ladder truck. So we did have time to speak with the fire department, and they had time to kind of look into this a little bit. And the Reading Fire Department staff concurred with the suggestion that an additional ladder truck is no longer required to service this development. And so that condition was struck. Condition 49, there was a proposal to strike the condition for bus turnouts to be incorporated into the project with improvement plans. The suggestion was if they're not shown now, then they shouldn't be there at all. I did, communicate with our Robbo representative. And he explained to me that they do prefer to have the flexibility to place those at time of development. It's a little closer to, I mean, it's way closer to when the development's actually going to go in. And at that time, they're better able to know exactly what transportation needs they have at that time, what needs they might not have, and where they might need those bus stops and turnouts, should they even need them. In addition to that, it meets general plan policies for transit. There's a couple listed in the staff report. And... I remember there was one more point on that. But essentially, staff didn't see why it was inappropriate. I mean, there's plenty of things that are conditioned for a time of improvement plans, and this seemed to fit, so staff did not... Did not strike that condition. Oh, I was going to mention, it's also a mitigation measure for air quality standards from Shasta County Air Quality Management District that were suggested to be incorporated into the project to meet SIMS and BAMS. So those are the standard mitigation measures from that agency. So we left it in. Proposed revisions to condition number 55 of the amendment. So the Oasis Road specific plan for major driveways into shopping centers requires a minimum eight foot wide landscape medium that runs the length of the driveway, well that runs 50 feet from the driveway intersection to the street to be specific. The proposed site plan shows one of those. The suggestion was that the other two entrances that are proposed off of the relocated Twinview Boulevard also have this requirement placed on them. And upon reviewing that, it seems consistent with the Oasis Road specific plan. The staff agrees that it's a plausible condition to put on the permit. So we've included the suggested changes into the draft conditions of approval. Condition 59 has some added language to this. Franchise chain stores with prototypical structures shall be modified as may be required. to have thematic architectural consistency with the Oasis Road specific plan and approved architectural details in accordance with Condition 4 of this permit. So essentially, this condition kind of relied on the very first one we spoke about that required architectural review. And because that condition was not added, It makes sense to also disregard this suggestion. So, I mean, unless there's a change and this body wishes to put in architectural review, then I'd suggest revisiting this as a potential. But if not, then this kind of goes hand in hand with condition four's suggestion at the top. Condition 60 N. This one has to do with ground cover. So the suggestion was replacing the first sentence to say that ground cover shall be of live plant material and will be designed and planted to achieve at least 75% coverage at least three years from planting. So the code already requires that plantings reach their maximum ground coverage potential within three years. And the code requires complete coverage. The Oasis Road-specific plan, as far as I could tell and could find, doesn't change that requirement, and I was not able to find any basis for a 75% coverage three years from planting versus full coverage. So it's true that due to state water regulations, there's some constraints on developments to... with regards to their water usage, and so we have become a little more, I don't think relax is the word, I guess it would be strict in terms of with water usage, but we do, we have, We haven't required 100% coverage. We require kind of substantial as long as it looks good and you have the right kind of hardscaping integrated with it to meet state water requirements. We are flexible, but in terms of adding a 75% coverage, it wasn't clear why that would need to be spelled out in the conditions of approval. So staff did not include the suggested changes into the draft conditions. There were some proposed technical revisions to condition 66 and 68 of the amendment and condition 23 of the parcel map. These are just technical changes. A couple of them were changing the words air quality element to natural resources element. That's been done. And then adding PM 2.5 in addition to PM 10, which was also done. There were a couple conditions, again, one on the amendment and one in the parcel map for nesting birds. And so on the amendment conditions, the language that was in the permit was what's in the mitigation monitoring program. The suggested language essentially is kind of updated language. Again, a lateral change that doesn't literally say the same thing, but essentially, in a nutshell, it kind of says the same thing. It's like, do nesting bird surveys per standards. And so we've changed the language of... condition 71 B in the amendment. And then that language in the parcel map actually was literally already in there word for word. So we left that in. So both both sets of conditions now have that updated nesting bird survey language. So that concludes part two. So we'll move on to the environmental discussion. So a little background on that. So again, on July 23rd, the commission had some concerns about the initial addendum with regards to new species. and our approach and our understanding of what was required under CEQA for that analysis and the addendum. So after consultation with the city attorney's office, staff did request that the applicant provide some revised biological and aquatic studies to update that addendum. So the findings for those studies have been incorporated into the addendum for the project, and we will go over the environmental right now. So this is a recap slide. So the EIR, again, the project had a EIR done and adopted in 2005, April of 2005. The EIR did identify wetlands on site and mitigation measures were and are required And this exhibit shows just where some of the wetlands are. And I found this kind of funny. This is a copy error. It is not a giant wetland through the property. This is just a photocopy. So disregard that. No need for alarm. But yeah, so the conclusion is that the amendment is much less impactful on the environment due to not filling in the creek or the intermittent drainage, I should say, not filling in that intermittent drainage area due to just its scope and size being smaller, the off-site, not off-site, but adjacent to the site, the street improvements being smaller. So staff prepared an addendum for the project. So, in terms of the new biological factors... So Madrone Ecological Consulting did prepare a memo, a biological resource assessment, which is VRA, and an aquatic resource delineation, which is the ARD. And they identified seven newly listed species with the potential to occur on site. So we wanted to analyze for newly listed species because that's what would count in terms of assessing whether or not a subsequent EAR or a supplemental EAR would be needed. So we went through that analysis. Spoiler alert, staff feels that we're still in addendum territory. But I'd like to go over those findings briefly. So they identified Shasta snow wreath, which is a shrub, as having the potential to occur on site. Although it's a newly listed species, in terms of its candidacy for endangered species. It was already considered a special status species under CEQA at the time of the original EIR because it was listed by the California Native Plant Society as a rank 1B2 California rare plant. So it was already on the radar and considered under CEQA, even though it kinda counts as newly listed, it was already considered and was a special status species at the time the original EIR was adopted. Out of an abundance of caution due to the age of the EIR, an avoidance and minimization measure for all special plant species identified in the EIR as having the potential to occur has been added to the conditions of approval. Again, the original EIR looked for plants, didn't find them. There were some with potential to occur, but they looked and they weren't there, so they didn't mitigate for them. So the only change is that we're clarifying that, okay, because it's old, we're refreshing and adding minimization and avoidance measures so that we have those pre-construction surveys for special status plants within two years of development. So... It's merely a clarification. There's no real new information there. We're just kind of refreshing those contingencies because the EIR is 20 years old. Next was the grasshopper sparrow. This is a sparrow, so it's a bird. It does have the potential to occur on site, even though no suitable habitat was identified. And for this species, the typical nesting bird survey condition would apply, so no new condition would be required to identify. to mitigate for this, it's basically already mitigated for. So we can go a little slower, Michelle, thank you. Third species, Crotch's bumblebee. So Crotch's bumblebee, there's the potential for it to exist on site. It's a candidate species for listing under the California Endangered Species Act, or CISA. CISA requires protocol-level surveys and consultation with Fish and Wildlife with a positive finding. even for candidate species. So whether or not this project were to mitigate for, you know, were to officially mitigate for Crotch's bumblebee, it's the law that those surveys would have to be done at the state level. So out of an abundance of caution, we've added the avoidance and minimization measure requiring surveys for crotches bumblebee, but it's officially incorporating a new mitigation measure was not necessary since it's actually the law regardless. So we are taking the right steps. The project incorporates those measures, but there was no need to do a supplemental EIR for that because it's already covered under state law. The monarch butterfly, similar story. It is a federally listed candidate species. There's milkweed on site, and milkweed is their preferred plant for eggs and larvae production. So one of the differences between the California Endangered Species Act and the federal Endangered Species Act, or just the regular Endangered Species Act, is that candidate species under the federal act don't receive any protections at the federal level. There's also no guarantee under CEQA that federal candidate species would receive any further protection. Nonetheless, best practices and out of an abundance of caution, staff has moved forward and taken the biologist's suggestion and we've added avoidance and minimization measures into the project conditions requiring those surveys for monarch butterfly eggs and larvae. and we've added those into the conditions of approval. Again, no need to add those into the formal mitigation measures, but out of an abundance of caution, we have strived to do the right thing and added them into the project conditions. Western Spadefoot Toad. So Western Spadefoot was listed as a species of special concern in 1994. And so this species was also analyzed with the original EIR. There were several indications that the species wasn't present on site. And because of that, no mitigation measures were actually incorporated into the project. Again, 20 years ago. So while it's not expected to be on site, even... Even with the more recent analysis, out of an abundance of caution, again, avoidance and minimization measures for the toad have been added to the conditions of approval. And again, I just want to reiterate that these things, they're not adding any new information, really. We're just kind of refreshing the conditions of approval to make sure that we stay in lockstep with that original EIR with the current amendment. Same thing for the northwestern pond turtle. Same year it was designated, 1994, as a species of special concern by CDFW, so its analysis was also included in the original EIR. It's essentially the same situation, so we've added avoidance and minimization measures into the conditions of approval, but no need to change or add any formal mitigation measures. Number seven, the last one, the burrowing owl. So this, again, this has been on CDFW's list, I believe, since the 70s in terms of the species of special concern. It was also analyzed in the EIR. It was not observed on site during bird surveys 20 years ago. And there's a mitigation measure, which we talked about before, mitigation measure A2, which was originally incorporated to ensure compliance with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which is nesting bird surveys. It may have been a slight oversight 20 years ago because the burrowing owl, it burrows. And so there's some slight differences in how you need to survey to detect that bird. And so just to clarify that and to strengthen up this project's approach to protecting all the birds that the EIR strive to protect and included in their analysis, we've added to the conditions of approval the measure for burrowing owl surveys. Again, this species was analyzed in the EIR and our approach here is that we're clarifying and refreshing those conditions of approval to make sure that we're staying in step with what the EIR strived to do 20 years ago. Aside from those seven species, there was a marsh identified that was not identified 20 years ago. This marsh is actually at the corner of Oasis Road and Gold Hills Drive. If you go out there, I think you can see the cattails and stuff out there still. It's right there in the southwest corner of that intersection. It's kind of far from the project, but the project may be required to bring a water line from Bella Vista for fire water pressure for emergency water only. And there's the possibility that that emergency water pressure line from the Bella Vista hookup over there could run through this marsh. I imagine the project would try to avoid it in the first place. Nonetheless, the existing mitigation measures for jurisdictional waters, waters of the state and waters of the U.S., would still apply to this wetland, and so existing mitigation measures already cover that newly identified marsh. So the takeaways here is that the project is still found to be less impactful in the environment with the amendment, no new major mitigation measures are needed, and clarifications and avoidance and minimization measures added to the project conditions adequately address CEQA without the need for a supplemental EIR. So that was kind of section three, so we're gonna move kind of to the stuff at the end here, the CODA, if you will. So public comments, again, I believe I received one inquiry where somebody was just interested. I think they might have been with some sort of firm or something. They just were curious about the status of the project, but no formal comments, just more questions. so lastly um so as you know uh the last time we met was about a month ago which um to get all this analysis done to get the biologist and to get staff and city attorney and to get the staff report together and to get get all this prepared for you guys um today and that with that amount of turnaround time inevitably there are bound to be some things that needed to be fixed in post So here's the list of recommended changes to the attachments. So if there's a motion made to approve the project tonight, if we could include these changes, would be staff's recommendation. The first thing would be we added an indemnification condition to the permit. This is something that, in working with our city attorney, this is something that... is standard in other jurisdictions for every project. And so we're looking at potentially moving forward, maybe, this is just me, this is not an official thing, but it seems that this might be something we wanna look into doing as a standard condition moving forward for future projects. But so we've added that here and that condition in order to get the in the staff report, it's put as condition for because that's kind of where it belongs in terms of its importance and kind of having at the top. The thing is, is that. when I was doing the PowerPoint presentation, realizing that it kind of threw all the numbering off for everything. So I could either A, go change a bunch of numbers and a bunch of attachments, which could lead to a bunch of problems, or B, just move the indemnification condition to the end of the conditions of approval for the amendment and for the parcel map. So long story short, what I'm trying to say is staff recommends moving the indemnification condition to the last condition in both of those sets of conditions of approval. Number two, in that indemnification condition, staff recommends striking the following language. There's some language in there at the end of a sentence that says, or the applicant's exercise of any right granted under this approval. The applicant took issue with that part of the condition. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't really want to speak to it too much, but we did run this by the city attorney's office, and they... they agreed that it was fine to remove that. And so we're recommending striking that language. And then lastly, embarrassingly enough, there was a copy-paste error in the last sentence of that condition. After it has all the legalese and disclaimers, it talks about building elevations. That was supposed to be a separate condition. So if we could strike the last sentence from the indemnification condition, I will sleep better tonight. And lastly... The applicant had a chance to run our final draft of the addendum. They ran it by their biologist, and there was a suggestion to modify the condition for Crotch's bumblebee. And so I've put the underlined added language there in this slide. Essentially, that condition calls for bee surveys according to a specific protocol. And the biologist suggests that because this is a candidate species, if between now and the time they go to do this survey, if that species ends up becoming formally listed under the California Endangered Species Act, there may be a more recent protocol. So this condition, they suggested changing it so that we have the flexibility to require a more recent protocol if published. And then also in that condition, they suggested specifying that the surveys are looking for bumblebee nests and not individual bees. Their reasoning was that individual bees with the ground disturbing activities will leave the area, whereas nests are there. And so what you're really doing is looking for nests and mitigating for nests. So upon the biologist's recommendation, we've proposed those changes to the draft conditions of approval in both sets. So with that, in conclusion, an addendum to the EIR has been completed for the project. Appropriate mitigation measures remain incorporated and additional avoidance and minimization measures added to the conditions of approval. And staff recommends determining that the findings are in evidence, adopting the addendum to the previously certified EIR for UP 2302, and approving this application subject to the draft conditions of approval with the proposed changes from the previous slide. And I'm available for any questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Castro. I'm going to open it up for commissioner comments, please. Anyone?

No?

Okay. Good job. Looks like there are none at this time. So now I will open up the public comment.

Are there any cards for that?

Seeing that there are none, okay, we do have someone who would like to speak. If you could give us your name when you get to the podium, please.

I sure will. Thank you. I'll keep it brief. My name is Michael Schumacher. I represent the ownership group and serve as the manager of the LLC that owns the property. Good evening, planning commissioners and city staff. I just wanted to take a moment to express our gratitude for the time and effort that you're putting forward to hear our project tonight. And also to recognize all of the effort and energy that has gone into getting us to where we are today. So I want to just say thank you. I know it's a. And a big lift along the way, so we're looking forward to hopefully being approved for this project. It represents not only an advancement for the property, but more importantly, it brings to the neighborhood and the region. much-needed services to this part of town that don't currently exist. So we are looking forward to hopefully taking the next step and continuing to work with the city and advancing the project and moving forward. And I'm here to answer any questions, and I'm here with my team as well. They're easy questions. I can answer them potentially. If they're difficult questions, that'll be my team. So thank you for the opportunity to say a few words.

Thank you, Michael. Are there any questions for him before he leaves the podium? Okay, thank you. And seeing that there are no cards, I'm going to close the public comment. Do we wanna bring it back to commissioners for any comments?

No?

Do we have a motion from any of our commissioners? It's gonna be a long one, because we gotta reference back to the slides, so.

With permission of staff, I'd love to have that recommended changes slide put back up because that'll make it a very easy motion. There you are. I move approval of the staff's recommendation with the recommended changes to attachment slide as articulated by Danny. That's it. Everything else is spelled out.

Okay, we have a motion.

I'm happy to second that motion.

And we have a second. All in favor? Aye. Do we have any opposed? Okay, thank you. Motion carries. Good job, Mr. Castro. I know that was a long time spent and three planning commissions later, so. Item number five, public comment for any non-agenda items within the city's jurisdiction. And we don't have any for that, so I'm going to close the public comment. Bring it back over to Item 6, Commissioner comments. Yes, Commissioner Miner does.

Yeah, I just wanted to say, and this is about the 4A1. But just wanted to say thank you again to staff for the hard work and getting that across the finish line. Also for working with the developer and whoever else came up. I know it was a big lift and there was a lot of things that were put your guys' way. So really appreciate it and appreciate the comprehensive response to all the items. So greatly appreciate it.

Thank you. Okay, Commissioner Manuel.

Yeah, I think I'll just follow up with that. The path of least resistance, I think, for staff would have been to require a new permit on this, but certainly the tactic they took was appropriate. It saved the developer some time. It certainly saved some money. It was a bit of a struggle, as Luke pointed out, with the 20-year-old documents, trying to make sure everything fit together. I think we're all glad that it did, and we can move forward. Congratulations on your project. I hope it's successful.

Thank you. Any other?

Yeah, I just had one. I'll echo that same thing without repeating it. The other area that I would say should be put on for consideration is if we're going to bring in indemnification language, and start making that part of our standard practice, we should very quickly move towards bringing it in as part of our standard conditions of approval. Thoroughly vetted with a bigger group than this looking at it, attorneys representing developers and implementers looking at it to make sure we've refined that as carefully as possible And then it should be vetted all the way through to where it becomes approved standard conditions of approval like the other standards. Because I think it's way too important to be just an ad hoc item. And I'm confident that there'll be other situations where every word matters and on how open-ended is it in terms of an applicant being, at some point an applicant's responsibility has to end when the project is built. and it's an operating right-of-way and that sort of thing, they still remain responsible for their own development, but they should have no liability for public right-of-way and public facilities. And the language is a little open-ended-ish. I know from my former career, the attorneys that reviewed contracts before I was allowed to sign them would have expressed some opinions. So thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Johnson, did you want to say something?

I have a couple, just a couple of things with regard to the process. I also appreciate the time spent, and I was grateful. I think we all were nervous how long will it take to get the updated report and be able to come back here and move forward for the applicant, but appreciate the the consultant and also the staff that put in the time to help us get here. For my own education, I am curious about, because we referenced the, we called it, did we say the original EIR or the old EIR? So maybe there were 28 year plus. I am curious how the 2023 to 2045 general plan EIR, why that might not have been tiered off of that, or would the project not tier off of that as a new environmental document to reference? Because they would have maybe looked at that site and seen if there are any additional mitigation measures that we could have used. Or maybe that would have helped the city feel a little more cozy about this amendment. So I am curious about that, just because I was looking through the documents and I just couldn't see the reference to it. But I did look up, there was a case called Bowman versus City of Petaluma and And it does defer to the lead agency's factual findings unless the record lacks substantial evidence. And so it seems like the indemnification is helpful as a stopgap at the end of the day. I do appreciate what you're saying, that there has to be, at some point, it has to come back to right of ways and we need to relinquish the liability on this. on the developer at some point in the future, so maybe working on that. But I guess what I'm trying to understand is how we can, I guess, maybe avoid something like this if other future projects come up that are aging and they might come up again? Can we utilize documentation or environmental reviews that have been done and maybe have been updated to help us and to feel better about an application? Obviously, this one shrunk significantly in size, which is really helpful. Obviously, if it was the other direction or maybe remained the same, maybe it would have been a whole different scenario altogether um so that was the only other thing and then the other the other situation with um it seems like we answered everything i i came in with a little more questions but i appreciate the the deeper dive and and the description and i just like okay this is This is really, really thorough, and it protects the developer in the end, because I'm pro-property rights and allowing development of property within the general plan in accordance with the general plan, and this developer is doing that. And we don't want to hold them up, but we also don't want to set them up for failure in the future to be unnecessarily resisted because of some, you know, Aging documentation. So I think the process that the commissioner manual, what some of his suggestions, it was at first it was like. But I feel like we worked it out. So thank you for for that. So if I can just go back to the question, just the, you know, the tie or tearing off of the general plan. Is there a reason there wasn't reference to that?

Yeah, I just I would keep it high level. for this discussion, but we are tearing off our new EIR. You've seen that with some previous approvals with our 15183 exemption and utilizing that new environmental analysis. I think in my opinion for this one, the path of least resistance was looking at the EIR that was certified and approved, it made sense to pursue the addendum in this case. Now that's a smoother pathway. I recognize it still took us a few hearings to get here, but it was there, it was legitimate. There was just a few holes we had to fill. So it made sense from a staff perspective to take that approach. But we are starting to leverage the new general planning EIR already on some recent approvals and we'll continue to tear off it or use exemptions as necessary to help streamline approvals. And then with regard to this particular permit, it's kind of unique that we have this old of a use permit on the books, at least in my opinion, because newer use permits have a three-year clause and then a one-year extension, and then those entitlements will expire. So it's pretty unique to have one that's this old. When it comes to subdivision maps and the like, you can get extensions and get up into the, the six to nine year timeframe for approval. So those can get a little bit older, but I don't anticipate us. I maybe I shouldn't say this on the record. I don't anticipate seeing this kind of a, an approval in the near future. It is pretty unique in that way. So hopefully that gives you some high level answers to your questions.

Yep.

Thank you.

Okay. Any other comments from commissioners? Okay.

With that, we're adjourned. Thank you.

I really.