Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, it's four o'clock. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Revenue Planning Commission meeting for March 10th, 2026. We have a quorum present. Are there any public comments on items not on today's agenda? Seeing none from the audience, do we have any on Zoom? Do we have any written comments?

Nominations do not need to be seconded a member may decline their nomination and commissioners may nominate him or himself Him or herself And then what I'm going to do is once you, there's a nomination and the person accepts it or you self-nominate and you have something to say, then we're going to go ahead and allow you to say it. And then we're going to do a separate vote for each person that is nominated so that we ask when you do that because we'll do a roll call each time. So just, unless there ends up being a tie, just vote for one person each. even though we're going to call it separately. I'm going to go ahead and open the floor. I will go ahead and go last. I'm going to open the floor for any nominations. Does anyone have any nominations for vice chair?

I do. I nominate Mark Stanson.

Okay. Are there any other nominations for vice chair? Okay. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to nominate Emily Elliott. Okay. And I just wanted to say that I think anyone that you guys are all doing amazing work and anyone who takes on this role is going to do a great job. For me personally, I've just learned something from Emily from each meeting that we've came to. I really love how she articulates her opinions to her findings, how she will ask the tough questions. make sure that everything is heard. And although it's not required in this field, and I certainly don't have planning experience, I really do respect the depth of experience and the role of planning. And that's my comments on that. Is there any other comments or, Rich, did you want to say something or no?

Just that for the bit of time I've worked with Mark in this position, and then he and I have started doing MEPs out in the field. That's the reason just based from my position on it.

Okay. Seeing no other comments, it has been nominated by Commissioner Stanson, I mean by Commissioner Smith to nominate Commissioner Stanson for vice chair. Do you accept the nomination?

Yes.

Okay. It has been... I can talk. I have motioned as chair to appoint Commissioner Elliott as vice chair. Commissioner Elliott, do you accept the nomination?

I do. Thank you.

Okay. If there's no other nominations, I declare the nominations closed. And now we will vote on each nomination separately in order. So, staff, if you could please call the roll call for Commissioner Stanson.

Commissioner Gellenheimer? Nay or no. Commissioner Dominguez?

Stanson?

Yes. Commissioner Elliott? No. Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

Commissioner Swish?

I'm seeing.

Chair Shaw? No. Commissioner Stanton?

Yes.

Excuse me. I'm sorry, it's Emily's last name? Elliot. Elliot. I'm sorry, that's who I was meaning to vote for. I apologize.

So we're voting for Stanson. So are you a yes or a no for Stanson? No for Stanson. Okay, thank you. I apologize. I did not keep track. I'm not sure if that was my job or not.

We're keeping track.

Okay, perfect. Do we want to go ahead and move to the next vote next? Okay, please.

So, yeah, I have four nos, two yeses, one abstain.

Okay. We will move on. If you could please do the roll call for the election to vice chair for Commissioner Elliott.

Commissioner Gellenhammer? Yes. Commissioner Dominguez?

Yes.

Commissioner Elliott?

Yes.

Commissioner Smith? Commissioner Stanson?

No.

Commissioner Swish?

Yes.

Chair Shaw? Yes.

So we have five yeses and two noes.

Okay, perfect. So Commissioner Elliott will become the vice chair. Right. She received the majority yes votes. Perfect.

Thank you very much. Do I need to do anything else around this or we're good to move on? Okay, perfect. We will move on to item number three, presentations. We have none. Moving on to item number four, consent calendar. Time extension for tentative track map number 20571 for the Madera at Citrus Trail specific plan. B, finding of general plan conformity for 21 North Church Street. C, meeting minutes of February 10th and February 24th, 2026. Are there any public comments on the consent calendar? Seeing none, do we have any on Zoom? Did we receive any written comments?

We've not received any written comments on the minutes.

Okay. Does any commissioner wish to pull any items to discuss from the consent calendar? Commissioner Stanton? No? No. Okay. Do I have a motion to approve the consent calendar?

I motion to approve the consent calendar.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm still getting used to this roll call thing. Could you please call a roll call for the consent calendar?

Commissioner Gillenheimer? Aye. Commissioner Dominguez?

Aye.

Commissioner Elliott? Aye. Commissioner Smith? Aye. Commissioner Stanson? Aye. Commissioner Swish? Aye. Chair Shaw?

Yes. Aye. Okay. Consent motion carries. Number five, old business. We have none. Item number six, new business. Item six A is a workshop on the legal requirements related to land use decision making and the California Environmental Quality Act provided by Todd Leishman. Hopefully I have that right. By Best Best and Krieger.

I just want to preface before we start that we started this training last year. We thought it was a good tool for the Planning Commission to access periodically. And given that we have three new members, we thought this was a perfect time to bring Mr. Leishman back. And he's going to advise you kind of on a broad general umbrella of planning. you know, all the responsibilities related to being a planning commissioner as well as your authority. So after he presents this, feel free to ask any questions you might have, and hopefully everybody will walk away with a little bit better understanding, too, of where their role is and any questions you might have.

Great. Let's see if, first of all, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, great. I've not often been accused of being soft-spoken, but the room is big. I don't know where the PowerPoint is. Perfect. In the meantime, we did do this last year or the year before, but I see new faces. How many of you remember me being here? All right. So there were at least a couple of you. It's nice to be with you. For those of you that I didn't meet last time, I'm a partner at Best Best and Krieger. I get to serve as the city attorney like Yvette for the city of Indian Wells, but I'm special counsel for probably 80 other cities on land use and housing issues in the city. And this is my no offense to Indian Wells and don't tell them I said this, but this is one of my favorite roles is helping people like Yvette and cities like yours on special issues like housing and land use. I sometimes tell my kids, what do I do for a living? I read and write and I'm a dirt nerd. So it's fun to be with you. When we get to the PowerPoint, we can started off. I do have a bunch of slides. We're not going to read every word on every slide, but the information's there if we want to linger. No problem. You're doing 100% better than I could if I were asked to get this started. Is this it? Is this slide The beginning of mine? There we go. OK, so I'll just give you a nudge, a verbal nudge. All right, great. Well, this is what we're doing today. Let's go to the next slide. And this is our rough agenda. We're going to go through the Planning Commission's roles. We're going to talk about adjudicative decisions versus legislative. just in general, and we're going to talk about findings, how to address opposition, and this body's role in CEQA. Thank you.

Was I doing it wrong?

It was turned off. Oh, perfect. Yeah, turn it on. That's always a good first step. Do you remember when we had computer problems and the solution from the IT guy was always turn it off and turn it on? Yeah, I should have known. I should have known. And we're going to talk about some considerations before denying a project. And we'll try to leave some time for Q&A at the end. Hey, it works. I've got it. So first of all, your roles. This might go without saying, but the Planning Commission is not the council. Planning Commission is not the council. The council is the legislative body of the city. The council is the body that makes new laws. You don't. Your job is to advise. For the most part, it is to advise, to give recommendations to the council. But sometimes there are some decisions that the council has delegated to you as the planning commission. In Redlands, it's not always so in every city, but in Redlands, the planning commission is the designated planning agency. Planning agency is a particular term used in the statutes. has real meaning because certain things have to go to the planning agency. For example, the housing element. Before any housing element or housing element amendment can be adopted, it must go to the planning agency for review and recommendation. This is actually pretty common. A lot of cities have a planning commission and a lot of those cities have their planning commission be the planning agency, but sometimes the council designates itself as the planning agency. But that's not your situation, so we'll skip over that. Now, state law says that, and actually I think it's in your code, that the planning commission is the planning agency with the powers and duties, first of all, provided for such agencies by the general laws of the state. So this is your first source of authority, is you have all the powers and duties that the planning agency has under state law. And that's kind of in two categories. This first one all kind of touches on the general plan. Your powers and duties include preparing, reviewing, and revising a general plan amendment or general plan, implementing the general plan. Examples include administration of specific plans, zoning and subdivision ordinances, Your powers and duties also include an annual review of the capital improvement program for consistency with the general plan. Everything kind of comes back to the general plan in this group, right? You're supposed to promote the public interest in the general plan. You have the authority to advise regarding implementation of the general plan and to promote coordination with other agencies. So all that, all kind of, if you connect, you can connect each of those things back to the general plan The statute also says under the general laws of the state, you also have the powers and duties to serve as the board of zoning adjustment and the zoning administrator. So you decide CUPs and variances. This is what I was talking about earlier. You have decision-making authority. over some of these, like CUPs, conditional use permits, and variances, unless the ordinance says otherwise. And I'm not sure about the nitty gritty of the Redlands Code, but I think the Redlands Code leaves this body with the default from state law, which is this body decides a CUP. Is that right? Yeah. And a variance, I assume, follows the same. So that's the first profile of your powers and duties. Now, the second source of your powers and duties comes from, in addition to state law, which we just talked about, comes from whatever's provided by the city ordinance. And it kind of lines up with what we just talked about. So your role is pretty much limited to deciding CUPs and variances, site plan approvals, and making recommendations on general plan amendments. Do you have specific plans much in Redlands? Okay, so specific plan amendments and zoning code. I tend to think of specific plans as just customized zoning for a particular area. So it kind of travels with zoning in terms of your authority. So I've kind of grouped these and color coded them to make it easier for me. In your limited role, this first batch, CUPs, variances, site plan approvals, these are all, as the slide suggests, grouped together as adjudicative or quasi-adjudicative approvals. You have authority for those. What does that mean? What does adjudicative mean? It just means that you sit like a judge. You're going to adjudicate. You're going to sit like a judge in a particular case, right? And so what does that look like? It doesn't look like you're considering a new rule. It looks like you're considering a particular application of a rule to a particular project or application. Not to repeat myself too much. So in this green area on this slide, you sit as judges. That will have implications for how you approach those decisions and especially for what you say about those items that come before you outside of the meeting and heading into the hearing. You don't want to take a position in any public way about any of these issues before you get to the hearing. Why? Because we expect our judges to have an open mind and be fair, right? In our legal system, In the United States, we expect, we have a right to due process, and that includes the right to appear before a judge with an open mind that hasn't made up her or his mind yet. And so you have to be very careful and thoughtful about any of these applications that's coming before your body to decide you need to take care to keep an open mind and not make any public statements even to concerned constituents. You can listen all day, but you should not take a position before you get to the hearing. The second group, the blue group, general plans, zoning code amendments, specific plan amendments, these are legislative. Legislative. What do we mean by that? It's rulemaking. And this body is not the legislative body for the city. The council is. So what's your role? Again, you're advising only. You're giving them recommendations. As the subject matter expert on all things planning, in theory, that's what this body is, the planning commission, you're supposed to give planning recommendations to the council as they consider new planning-related rules. Maybe I should pause there. Any questions? Any concerns about the guy giving the presentation? Okay. All right, so just a little bit more, and some of this we've already covered. On adjudicative decisions, you do sit as a judge. You do need to make sure that you're unbiased. If not, it's violation of someone's due process rights. There's a case called Woody's Wharf that kind of stands for that proposition. And this has specific implications for you. Notice this third line. As the judge, to be a fair judge, You cannot, you cannot engage in any independent investigation. It is not your role to introduce new evidence. It is not your role to go out and gather new evidence. You cannot present new evidence. You are the judge. You are the judge. If you have any ex parte communications, what do I mean by that? Ex parte just means by yourself, right? If you have any ex parte communications with a party to an application, usually that's going to be the applicant. If the applicant approaches you, can they do that? Is that legal? Totally, totally. In America, under the rule of law, we all have a right to appeal to and solicit our elected and appointed officials. That's totally fine. You can talk to the applicant and you can talk to project opponents. But again, you should listen, You should not express an opinion one way or the other. You can if you're delicate about it. You can ask questions, but make sure they're open-ended and not loaded, kind of revealing a bias. Don't make it look like you've made up your mind with your slanted question. And when you come to the hearing, because you have to be a fair judge, if you have had any ex parte communications, if you've talked with the applicant, if you've talked with an opponent, you need to announce that. Is that a bad thing? No, it's a great thing because it keeps everything above board. Right. So what you would do is you would say, before we get into this item, I just I need to announce that I had an ex parte communication. I was approached by the applicant. We talked on the phone for five minutes and give a short summary of what you said. I listened to them about the benefit. What they said were the benefits of their project. I asked a couple of clarifying questions. And here's the key. When you report your ex parte communications. I strongly recommend that you finish your report by confirming on the record, I never made up my mind. I'm here today with an open mind and I look forward to hearing the evidence. Okay? So finish your ex parte report by affirming on the record that you have kept an open mind and you look forward to hearing the evidence. That will really help ensure that they get a fair hearing and you are a fair judge. Yeah, please.

Can you just give a practical example about how someone might accidentally, without knowing it, introduce, gather, or present evidence in this realm? What would that look like?

Sure. Well, I saw this in a city once. I think it was a council member, not a commissioner, who was opposed to a new supermarket, went out on his own and started gathering evidence from the internet about vehicle miles traveled and daily trips to this particular brand of supermarket. And in his effort to, sabotage is maybe too hard a word, but in his effort to lead his colleagues to a denial of the application, he started to introduce all the information that he found on the internet. That's inappropriate. That's inappropriate because you sit as judges. You're supposed to keep an open mind. And what does that show about that council member in that situation? It showed... it showed that he was already gunning for a denial. He was acting more as a prosecutor, though that's kind of an awkward fit in that situation. But, you know, it's more law and order. He was one of the advocates and less a judge. Does that make sense?

Yes, and thank you. That's helpful. So in that scenario, it was really obvious, but I could also see how someone could, with good intention and not mean to break that rule. So the example is helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, and you know, There are more innocent versions of that which aren't so problematic. Like, oh, that site is right around the corner from my house. I drive by it every day. I've noticed that that's a problem. That's probably okay, right? But what's really important is that you share that information with everybody so you're not accused of having inside information and that you also, again, on the record, state, but I've kept an open mind. I did observe that. This is what I observed, but I've kept an open mind, and I'm here today to hear. Yvette, is there anything you'd add to that?

I just wanted to share another example.

Please.

From another city, a planning commissioner was opposed to an application by a homeowner to add a second story to his home. And so before the public hearing, the planning commissioner went out to talk to the neighbors, the next-door neighbors and the neighbors down, to rally their opposition to the application, and they all showed up and then said that they were asked to be there from the planning commissioner. Yeah. So in that case, I advised the commissioner, Chip Stain, to step off the dais and sit it out when that all came to light on the public record. But you can see how that activity could also pose a problem on the bias front.

You don't want your judge, who's supposed to be fair and open-minded, leading the charge against you.

I'll add more on the, maybe erring on the side of an innocent comment that could be perceived as bias. I think we've all perhaps encountered or observed meetings where there's a tenant that we're all familiar with or an applicant that we're familiar with in some way, like we may be a customer, and saying as much, is it your opinion that it's better that we remain silent on that matter? Or if we are a customer of a business that's before, should that be disclosed?

Financial interests always need to be disclosed, and

I'm just saying you shop at Target and Target's in front of us. That's not a financial interest for me, but I love Target. I shop there every week and get my groceries and I'm going to approve your CUP now. Is that something that the commission should refrain from?

That's pretty innocuous. That doesn't give me any heartburn, but if you own Target stock, that's different. If you are the landlord for that Target store, if you're the one leasing the land to Target... You should be talking to a vet before the meeting. and this just goes in general, please talk to your city attorney. If you live close to a project site, if you own stock in the company that's coming before you, if your spouse or partner has an ownership share or is employed by an applicant coming before you, all of that should get your spider sense kind of tingling and Yvette can give you really good guidance on whether and how you should consider recusing yourself.

We have prepared 500 and 1,000-foot radius maps for those of you who own property. And so if you haven't received one, I do have yours. But if the rest of you have not received yours, please see Brian Foote. We do have those maps for you. And I have them, staff has them, and you should have them because you should be checking just like the staff and I do You know better what your financial interests are. If you just bought property, we may not necessarily know about that. So you should consult with Brian to get that map.

And just maybe a final thought on conflicts, because it's not super land usey, but it does come up a lot, is whose job is it to make sure that you don't have a conflict and that you recuse? Is it Yvette's? Is it Brian's? It's yours, yeah. And there is no safe harbor. Even if you talk to Yvette and she tells you you're golden, you need to make up your own mind. Because unfortunately, I wish it were, I wish it were not the case, but unfortunately under state law, there is no safe harbor and advice of counsel on this issue. So it's good to play it a little safe.

question with the example that you cited earlier. If a council member has or if a commission member has a commissioner has some concerns, wouldn't it have been more appropriate to ask the staff to prepare the data so that they can be presented? So is that kind of might be the same thing, but instead of doing the research, ask the staff to do the research and present it?

Yeah, that's an excellent question. And that should have been what that council member wanted to do without without staking out a position on that grocery store, that council member should have said, I have questions about the vehicle miles traveled and the daily trips. Staff, can you please do the research and look into that and make a recommendation or share your conclusions with us? That's what you would hope a fair judge would do. That's just kind of a good litmus test, right, for any of this? is what do you wish a fair judge would do when they have a question? Speaking of which, let's look at this last point on the slide before we move off of it. As a judge, when you sit as a judge in one of these adjudicatory decisions, it's really important that you separate out the rule from the case. So as a judge, you're limited. You have to make decisions on particular projects based on what the rules are today. You might hate the rule. You might want the rule to change tomorrow. But you cannot use the decision on the application in front of you right now to... change the rule because the rule is the rule still. You have to follow the rule today when you're looking at a particular project. If you don't like the rule, there's a separate process for that. You can recommend changes to the rules to that other body that actually makes the rules, the council. Does that make sense? You got to know which hat you're wearing. Okay. On legislative decisions, you advise the council, you make recommendations. And that could include recommending changes to the rules. But that only happens through that legislative process. And as I just mentioned, not through your consideration of a particular project. I might have beaten that horse a little purple. So I'll, yeah.

Yeah. question regarding making recommendations. Would that need to be presented in the commission, voted on in the commission, and then presented to the council?

You have no voice except as a member of the public, right? You can always show up. You individually can show up and speak for, what is it, three minutes at the council? You can speak for three minutes at the council like anybody else in the public, but When it comes to the planning commission, you have one voice, and that means a majority vote. So somebody can float a motion, get it on an agenda, it can be discussed. If the body, the majority votes to make a recommendation of a rule change, say, to the council, then it can go forward as a planning commission recommendation and not a commissioner, because you don't really have a voice as a commissioner. Yeah, great question. Thank you for the clarification. And Yvette is gonna throw something at my head if I misspeak, but I'm pretty sure that we're good there. Now let's talk about findings. This is a big part of your job, right? This is a big part of your job. You have to make decisions based on findings. These are findings of fact. And what does that mean? You have to explain You have to explain your conclusion with facts. And that goes both ways. Why are the findings? You're supposed to be able to make certain findings in order to approve a CUP, a variance, in order to recommend a zoning code amendment. And you need to explain, you as a body, need to explain on the record why those findings are met or why those facts are so important. And conversely, and this is especially important with a denial, and by the way, how many findings do you have to have for an approval? If there are five required findings, how many do you have to have? Five. How many findings are sufficient to justify a denial? One, yeah. If you can make four findings in the affirmative but you can't make a fifth one, then you have to deny. You have to deny. But either way, you need to explain yourself and you need to weigh the evidence as you... And I just recently had a city where pickleball, it's all the rage, right? Some people love it, some people don't. And when they were looking at the same finding, different members of the body reached different conclusions. And so they had to articulate using fact why it was or wasn't, they were or were not able to make the finding of, I don't know, was conducive to a safe and harmonious existence or something. Pretty squishy, but they needed to, each side needed to reach for facts to explain that. So they have to be substantive. They can't just be reciting or restating the finding. So no conclusory statements. Do you know what I mean by that? Well, we're going to get into some examples, so I won't belabor the point just yet. You need to explain why it's consistent or not. You need to provide specific examples of policies that are supported and consistent with the project. So not this. This is a bad example. The proposed development is consistent with the city's general plan. Might that be true? Totally. But is this a good finding? No. Why? It just states the conclusion without any support for it. I am not gonna drag you through this word for word, but you can see that this, and you can read the slide later, you know, when you really wanna fall asleep late at night, but this is the kind of in-depth, fact-based explanation that you need to make a defensible finding Why do findings matter? If you do a poor job with a finding, if you do one of these conclusory statements, what's the risk? Who cares? Yeah, if you do a finding like this that's just a conclusory statement, what's the risk to the city? Yeah, because you don't actually have legal justification for the decision. Do you think this provides more support? 100% more support. As a lawyer that represents cities in disputes about findings, I tell you, I want you to give me this. I can do a lot more for you. And Yvette would love to get this and not this. Okay? So again, not this. The proposed project does not comply with development standards in the zoning code, but something more like this. The proposed project has a peak height of 32 feet. Under section blankety blank, the maximum height is 30. Therefore, it doesn't comply. It's like an A plus B equals C, like painfully obvious. Do the math out loud. Connect the dots. Because when you make your findings, you're really thinking about that judge that has very little time. She has a heavy docket. And you want to spell this out. Or you're thinking about the average juror who We're told when you approach a jury, you should be speaking as though you were talking to a smart sixth grader. Right? Like, spell it out. Do the math. A plus B equals C. That's the kind of finding you want. Not this. Here's another example. The project is consistent with policy blankety blank of the general plan, or even it's consistent because it preserves and incorporates natural features and amenities. No. You want to get into the details. It incorporates the San Luis Creek into the common area and incorporates greenbelt designs. Yada, yada. Not to invoke Seinfeld, but... Your findings need to be definitive. Take a position. Don't be wishy-washy in your findings. Make sure that they're certain, exact, unambiguous. So, what's the problem with the first one? Could potentially. That's the landmine there. Why? Because it doesn't actually take a position. It's too squishy. It's not legally sufficient. So you take out the could potentially and you say it does. It does offset the traffic demand. If that's what your conclusion is, then say it. Own it. Let's talk about this for a second. You hear this term thrown around, an abuse of discretion. You do have discretion often in these situations when you're considering an approval. But it is an abuse of your discretion if your decision is not supported by findings or if your findings aren't supported by the evidence. That's the real problem with that conclusory kind of finding is that it's an abuse of your discretion.

I have a question. Yeah. So a perfect example that I would love to explore on this one are traffic studies. So there are a lot of times when our day-to-day lives don't support the traffic study. However, we know that these are professionals and they have a way of doing things. But walk us through why you can't just say the traffic study is incorrect because you've experienced more traffic there. Like, I'm being... Simple in my... No, I get it. So this comes up a lot in our city, so I would love to have some examples on how to handle traffic studies when what we see in our day-to-day lives don't match up with the study.

That's a great example. It happens a lot, doesn't it? You'll have a project. There will be a traffic study. It'll say traffic is at an acceptable level already. But then you might have 20 people showing up with matching T-shirts saying, we hate this project because we go through that project every day, taking our kid to school, going to work, and so do you. And everybody kind of looks at each other and says, we all know that we have to wait three turns of the light because it's always jammed up. Yeah, both of those are evidence, right? One is expert evidence, and the other is anecdotal evidence. Both of those are evidence for your consideration. It's really hard, though, to blow out an expert study with two or three loud people. or even your own individual experience. But your own individual experience and the questions from two or three loud people could very well justify you questioning the study and asking staff to stress test the study, get a second opinion. But you follow that out, right? And if you end up with two or even three independent expert opinion saying, no, it really isn't below the acceptable level of service according to your standards, then you might be stuck with it.

So in that case, if it's a big project and it's really of huge concern, whether it's traffic or something else, and we ask for a second opinion, then that would continue that project, correct?

It could. Okay.

So these are really important decisions to make, but that's a great thing to know because we've never been, well, We now have the opportunity to be provided examples on how to deal with stuff like that. So thank you.

Yeah. And at the end of the day, it might be that the evidence really does show that the traffic is at an acceptable level. The problem is people don't like the acceptable level. So what's the problem there? The problem is, is that your rule, your threshold of acceptableness is your threshold of significance, if we're talking CEQA, your policy level of acceptable traffic, it's just too... What would it be? Too low? Too high? It's too much, right? And so at that point, you might have to be in that situation we talked about earlier where you have to make your rule, your decision on a particular project based on what the rules are today and the thresholds and the acceptable levels today. And if you have... multiple evidentiary data points that say it is acceptable, even if you don't like how you've experienced it, then you might have to begrudgingly approve that project. But then at your next meeting, you could move to make a recommendation to the council that they can They consider lowering or raising whichever direction you need to go, changing the level of acceptability so that the experience lines up more with a rule. Is that fair?

I just have a quick question. Is that then like partnering with our staff and like having those opportunities of learning? Since I am a newer commissioner, a planning commissioner, having those opportunities to speak with staff, And like understanding, like even these traffic studies that are near like sensitive receptors, does that matter? You know what I mean? Versus like where a marketplace is going to be put versus like where a warehouse is among sensitive receptors, like a hospital or school, you know? So just like kind of unpacking that, like it's just best to then sit with.

Take advantage of your relationship with your staff. They're here just like you advise the council on a lot of things and you sit as decision makers too. These paid professionals are here to advise you. Take advantage and don't wait until you... Please, help them help you. Don't wait until the meeting to unpack your hard questions.

Yeah, and actually that's a perfect segue to what I was going to say, especially when it comes to technical studies. You know, very rarely, you know, we'll do our best in a meeting to help interpret it and bring up an expert, but if you can bring questions on technical studies to us ahead of time, that gives us the opportunity to have it vetted by the technical professional. So we're in a much better position to give you a solid response in that setting than at the meeting, as well as, I'll say, the consultants and the applicant and whatever team we have present. So especially on environmental studies, traffic studies, technical documents, it's a huge advantage to bring those questions to us ahead of time.

If not, it just ends up being kind of pointless.

And I have a question. Chris, in that vein, let's say a project's coming in and since we're on the idea of traffic study, when the project comes in and they say, hey, we've done this project, we've done this traffic study, does staff vet that study before it gets to this point?

Yeah, absolutely. So there's two ways we obtain studies. Either we'll independently obtain them ourselves through a funding agreement, so it'll be a city study, or in select cases, if the applicant provides a study, we'll have a peer review conducted by our own expert.

So let's say a project comes forward, and they're rattling off some numbers out of their study, and let's say I myself go, I don't believe that. By the time it's being told to us, his staff vetted it, and can I sit here and say, I don't believe it, but staff has already vetted it, and I'm going to go with the staff recommendation.

Absolutely you can. However, if you have those thoughts, I would still encourage you to contact us ahead of time so that we can go back to our technical experts and vet your concern and get back to you with a more technical answer than just staff vetted it. I mean, we do.

But I wouldn't know I have a problem with it until the night of the meeting.

In the case of that, if you don't know you have it until the night of the meeting, yes, we always will either have those studies independently procured or we'll have it peer-reviewed by somebody else, and we review it as well.

Okay. So by the time a project's coming to us, staff's already – we're not taking their word for it.

Yeah, but I do want to make a distinction that in a lot of these cases, we're not necessarily the technical experts. We're not traffic engineers. We're not air quality engineers. We're relying on people that we validated as qualified to do that to provide us with information to provide you a recommendation.

Okay. That's a great question. I'm so glad to hear this body thinking this way and asking that question of staff. It's really helpful. Sooner is better, but if you don't hear about it until, there's no way you could hear about it until the meeting, then, yeah, staff never believes the applicants. That's just a little inside baseball. We never take their word for it.

If I could add to your point, and this is a little bit nuanced, and I love that our studies are peer-reviewed or prepared by the city to retain that independence. But even when they are peer-reviewed, all of the technical rigor could check all the boxes, but somewhere there's an assumption about the project. And that's probably more what we're going to be calling into question. And that's totally fair to bring up during the meeting of what assumptions are driving this process. technical work, right? Yeah. I think it's totally fair to ask.

Consultants can make mistakes too. You know, we review things, they base their conclusions on evidence that they've gathered, but it's completely within your purview and appropriate for you to bring questions to us about those if you see something.

Well, and like the gentleman said, you know, staff never trust the applicant. But I've seen over the last couple of years where an applicant's come forward that the city's done business with multiple times. And I've seen this body say, oh, you've always done right by the city. And I'm thinking, okay, so is there any time when a staff's like, hey, this is the 10th project. We know this guy's good.

If we know they're good, it's because we know we can call B.S.,

What that probably means is that in practice, we've seen them deliver good products in the past, but that does not mean we ever make an assumption that something has checked all the boxes. I do want to kind of sensitize you to...

to a gamesmanship tactic that is not uncommon, and that is there have been extensive studies, they've been peer-reviewed, and at the hearing, opponents to a project, sometimes opponents with, maybe it's a business competitor, maybe it's a union that's mad that the applicant hasn't unionized yet. There are lots of different motivations, but sometimes a project applicant will show up with two or three bankers' boxes and will make a big show about dropping them right here and say, look at all this information. There's no way you can make a decision today based on this study that you say has been peer-reviewed when it's never had the benefit of all of these boxes of data. That's just malarkey. That's just a total 11th-hour data dump that's meant to paralyze you. Right? And in those situations, I would encourage you to ask staff, has this study been, was it independently conducted? Yes. Has it been stress tested? Yes. Great. Thank you. And just move on. Don't let them scare you into paralysis. It's really, I think, disingenuous when that happens. It's probably just a bunch of blank pages. Okay, let's go, let me see. We talked about abuse of discretion. Here's another example of findings. This one's specific to a variance. So don't do this. There are special circumstances applicable to the property that justify granting the variance. What's the problem with this? You don't know what the special circumstances are. because it just parrots the statutory language. It identifies no actual physical circumstances, and there's no explanation of how those circumstances deprive that property of privileges enjoyed by others similarly situated. This is better. Again, I'm not going to drag you through it word for word, but you can see just by skimming it that they really get into the factual circumstances. It's this many feet wide. It has this percentage of a downslope. It's this big and it's going on and on. Do you see, are you starting to get a feel for kind of what a good finding looks like? Could you recognize the silhouette in a dark alley? I think you probably could, right? Here's another example from a variance. Oh, I'm sorry. The good one, that good example is better because it identifies concrete physical constraints, quantifies the impact, explains the deprivation relative to similarly situated. So there's a comparative element to a variance finding, and it connects the facts to the statutory element. Here's another one. Granting the variance will not constitute a special privilege. Why is that bad? It's in red, so you know it's bad, right? I kind of gave it away. Because it's conclusory, because there's no comparison. You have to have that comparative element in that variance finding. This is a lot better. It's fact-based. It compares it to other places. Yeah. Again, this is a lot of detail. I'm not going to drag you all through it. Here's another one. From a CUP perspective, the project will not be detrimental to public health, safety, and welfare. Could that be true? Totally. Have we had a good finding? No. Why? Because it's just conclusory. We're just stating the conclusion without support. Well, there it is. It's because it's conclusory. There's no reference to evidence. Oops, sorry. This is better. You know the old joke about law school exams? They throw the exam down the stairwell, and the one that's heaviest makes it the farthest, and they get the A? It's a little bit like that with findings. Longer is usually better, as long as the length includes facts and connections and analysis. and plainly stated conclusions. Okay. I was asked to give you a lot of examples.

So does this mean that each member needs to make all of the different conclusions? Or if one member is making it, I mean, and we kind of agree with it?

Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that question, Commissioner. Who does most of the work of putting together these most excellent findings? Staff. That's what they're paid to do. They're the paid professionals. They think long and hard about the required findings and whether or not they can be made. They're making a recommendation to you about whether they think they can be made. And if they think that they can or they can't, they're spelling it out. They're taking the laboring oar on this. But you need to understand that they're not going to waffle, right? Their job is to give you a recommendation. And so they're going to give you in their staff report, in the resolution, they're going to give you findings, right? If you don't think they've done their job well enough, like, hey, I think this finding could be more fleshed out, that's an excellent thing to talk about at the meeting or in your individual briefings before the meeting so they have a chance to fix it before the meeting. But either way, staff is going to do most of that work. But Has this ever happened? Staff comes with a recommendation, maybe of denial, maybe of approval. They've got all the findings to support their recommendation in the staff report, but when it comes down to this body's discussion and the vote, the majority might be pointing in the opposite direction. What do you do? How do you support that opposite direction? Because the only thing you have in the record so far is what staff had, what staff wrote to support the staff recommendation. If the majority aren't persuaded that staff has it right and they want to go the opposite direction, what do you do? You can't use staff's findings because they pointed the other way.

So what we've been doing in the meetings is articulating to the best of our ability why we're going the other direction, and then they come back to the next meeting and help us prepare those findings for denial.

Chair, that is spot on.

But again, does each commissioner need to make findings, or is it the group's findings that we're all working with?

That's a great point. That's a great question, because who has a voice here? It's only the commission as a body. That means the majority vote. So if you have reasons A, B, and C, and D, E, and F, and so on down the line until you've got reasons X, Y, and Z, and there is no overlap, you guys have a long road before you can make findings as a body because you have to agree, at least four of you, at least four of you have to agree on the findings, even if you might have other reasons individually, that lie outside of that Venn diagram of agreement. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I think what he's trying to ask, and if I have you wrong, let me know. I think what he's trying to say is if Commissioner Gillenhammer says, I agree with this project and she gives three great examples, does every single person need to say that same thing? Is that what you're trying to say?

Or have other examples to go along with those examples?

No, no, it's enough. It's enough for one person to articulate it and everyone else to... Agree. You can say, I move staff's approval. That's a beautiful way to go. If you really do agree to staff's approval when it comes time for the motion, move staff's approval, and you just move on. You don't have to restate it. If you want to add to it, because I agree with everything that staff said in their staff report, and P.S., I also think it's worth approving because it's beautiful, it's appropriate, whatever.

Thank you. Otherwise, you would have just given us a five-hour meeting.

Yeah. Yeah, no.

We also have discussed conditions, right? You know, so, like, that's also, like, a safeguard for us, too, not just to be, like, let's just motion it. It's because there's four of us. We're also heard in the examples, you know, if there should be conditions for a project.

Yeah, and staff. And we'll get to, well, there's a part of the presentation on conditions, too, so we'll dive a little more deeply into that. But, again, even with conditions, who can decide the conditions? Four of you. So at least four of you need to agree on what those conditions are, how they're worded, what they do. And staff, again, staff will do most of the work of the conditions, usually. They will draft conditions for your consideration. If you agree with them, great. Just move staff's approval. If you disagree with them, say why on the record you disagree with them. And you do have more work to do on the dais. If you are inclined to go in a different direction from staff's recommendation, You need to articulate as best you can on the record why you disagree, what other facts you're relying on, and connect the dots on the record. And then it's still the best idea if four of you want to go a different direction from staff. Don't try and do it on the fly. Push pause. Say, we'd like to continue this item with direction for staff to write up everything that we said about our reasons for going the other direction. Give them a chance to come back with a revised reso.

Is that fair? Now, that's only if the majority of the body, an individual who disagrees with something, they don't need to articulate it. No, no, we don't care if you're in the minority. I'm sorry, but.

It's great that you share your thoughts. Please don't soak up all the air in the room by talking too long about your thoughts. If you see which way the vote is going, just say your piece in 30 seconds and be done. Respect everybody's time. Enough said about that, probably. Maybe too much said.

You can say whatever you need to say to feel comfortable with articulating your decision.

Chris is better about it than I am. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah. Especially with a denial, that's always a situation where we're going to recommend a continuance so we can come up with the appropriate findings to support your conclusion. Why are you going to care more about that with a denial? We want to make sure it's legally defensible.

Yeah. Yeah. And so far, if staff recommendation is approval coming into the meeting and the body, I won't say goes sideways, but goes in a different direction, right? You really need to bolster, to have some pretty solid findings to support denial because what, why? Because you already have in the record a whole bunch of findings to support approval. So help staff help you if you decide as a body, as a majority to go a different direction from staff's approval.

Good?

All right. Oh gosh, I think I have way too many examples in here. The project is compatible with neighborhood character. That's not, I mean, you can already tell, right? It's no bueno. All right, subjective, no definition of character, no factual comparison. This is a lot better. We're gonna skip that. Subdivision map, we could do this all day. We're like Captain America.

Just so you know, I'm the one that pushed for the millions of examples. I probably should have been more specific. It's more about the practicality of things that come up, like there's too many coffee shops in Redlands. That's not a finding, those kind of things. So I appreciate this, but yeah.

Okay. And if we don't touch on the too many coffee shops example, feel free. We can handle anything.

I think we already covered it. Okay. It's a... It's not that coffee shop's problem. That's a discussion for later about a legislative review, and it's not a reason for denial. Either is saying I drive down the street at 8 o'clock every morning and it's too crowded there, therefore I don't agree with your traffic study. So those examples have been very helpful. So thank you.

I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on the public health, safety, and welfare finding, given the nature of housing approvals. where that really is the only finding that we can make on a denial of a housing project. And if you could talk us through what that really means, public health, public safety, public welfare in that context.

Oh, yeah. So do you remember in Sesame Street or Electric Company, if you remember Electric Company, like two of these things are not like the others? Yeah. And public health, safety, and welfare are Two of those things are not like the other, right? Public health and safety, those are immediate concerns. Welfare, that's squishier, right? That gets into, is it just awesome or pretty a lot of times, right? That's a broader scope. And you'll find that with the housing laws, I think that's probably what you're thinking of, increasingly in recent years, we've seen the legislature in Sacramento kind of restrict local discretion to deny or... restrict housing developments unless it would cause some threat to public health or safety. Note, they leave out welfare. Why? Because you don't really... Sacramento says we don't get to think about is it pretty, is it awesome when it comes to housing because we're in a housing crisis and we need housing and we're so desperate. So you only get to say no most of the time now if it's not safe. We're not healthy. What would constitute a legal denial? Well, our hands are pretty tied because the state laws, the same state laws that say you can't deny unless there's, the key phrase is, there's a specific adverse impact. That's the phrase in statute. And it has to, you have to point to... some violation, I'll call it a violation or a failure to comply with a specific written objective standard of safety or health that was already in place on the day that they applied. So think building code, think fire code, think thresholds of significance. You can reach for... Yeah, I mean, the city might develop its own. I'm trying to think of a situation where it wouldn't be in the building code and fire code. Sequel thresholds of significance, I think, play into that discussion. The state fire marshal, but that's kind of fire code. Wildland fire interfaces. There are a lot of sets of standards that are already out there in the universe that are objective, that deal with public health and public safety. But just know that it's not public welfare. Like in the good old days, in the days that most of us kind of grew up in, we could say no to a project because it was ugly or just annoying. We can't do that anymore. Okay.

Health and safety is always tied to some sort of written law, so it's not, that's in a high-fire zone, I don't want houses there. It's the law states there's no more than 34 houses in this area, and there's 50, so that's dangerous.

You have to tie it back to a written, objective, already in effect when they submitted rule. And so it's good... Like in the past, we could rely on just a rule that says it has to be safe and appropriate, right? And then we would decide often on a case-by-case basis, exercising discretion, making subjective determinations if it was safe or appropriate. But now that the state has tied our hands, essentially when it comes to housing in particular, we really have to rely on objectives. So we can do a lot of that same thinking now. Like, what do we think is safe? What do we think is appropriate? Well, let's do that thinking when it comes to setting new rules, new objective standards, and let's get those written down so that those can be applied to a housing development project.

But hasn't the state further tied our hands with that? Isn't it tied to state law, not local ordinances?

Not always, no. Cities have... It's kind of a, it sounds like an oxymoron. Cities still have discretion to adopt objective standards and increasing, there is a big push. In fact, HCD, the Department of housing and community development has made a big push in the sixth housing element cycle to encourage cities to help streamline housing development by developing robust. Well, they probably wouldn't say robust, but by developing appropriate, appropriate, um, sets of objective standards so that people can look it up, see what the standards are, design their project to match and come in and rock and roll. That's the state's goal, right? Um, The problem comes if we haven't done that thinking yet, they come in and they say, here's my project, I designed it. We say, we think it looks ugly. They say, but you don't have any objective standards that say that it has to look any different. So I'm going to push my point and I want to rock and roll and you've got to get out of my way. And then the neighbors hate it. And maybe we don't like it.

I have a question regarding public health. If there are new developments that have not been adopted into law or code. So for example, when we had the COVID pandemic, one of the concerns was density, air circulation, different things like that, that now are more relevant than they were before. Things were not yet adopted into code or law, but yet the proposed development does present a risk of health. How do we address it in a situation like this?

You really can't. How do you address that? If you see it coming as quickly as you can, adopt an objective standard, get it written down so that it'll apply going forward. Recommend it to council. Heaven forbid we have another pandemic and we're all thinking about contagion again and air circulation again. You would probably want to proactively adopt a standard about that. But it can't all... Well, maybe enough said about that.

So would it be appropriate to propose holding off on a decision until we propose something to the council?

Well, the thing is, is that that rule won't apply to that project unless it was written down on the day they submitted their application. So by the time you see it... It was submitted a long time ago and you can't go back in the past and make that new rule. So you really, it's weird. They're kind of an inadvertent consequence of Sacramento's effort to kind of clear the way for development is that now we have to do a lot more thinking up front and our lists for what they have to comply with are getting longer and longer up front when some of them would much rather have just come in in the old days and said, hey, look, we think it's safe for these reasons. And if they convince us, they're golden. But now we have to do all that thinking up front and they have to design to that up front.

So generally speaking, the date of the submission becomes relevant to whatever- Absolutely.

With housing in particular, their rights vest when they hand you a complete application or just a preliminary application. Actually, that's a really good point that we should talk about. When it comes to your roles and responsibilities, one of the things you're going to have to be is disciplined. Because you're going to need to choke down legal fictions from time to time, right? Like the legal fiction that the world was frozen in place on the date that they died. that they gave you their application, they submitted the application to the city. The universe of rules that applied to their project many times will be frozen in time. Your rules might have moved on. You might have had major general plan amendments and you don't want that for housing at all anymore. You want it for open space or vice versa, right? The world in your mind might have changed significantly, but the legal reality that you're going to have to choke down is that the world... their rights might have been frozen in place and nothing after that date is relevant and can be brought up. You can't make a decision based on anything that happened after that date. So you're going to have to be really disciplined and it's going to take courage. I'm not going to lie. You know, like the JFK profiles and courage bit, you're going to have to just be brave sometimes and face the politics. We'll get to that in a few minutes too.

Well, and I'll just add, too, that the housing example is the most extreme right now because it's the most constrained that you're able to make decisions on. But in general, this does apply. Whenever you see a project, we're held to evaluating that project based off of whatever the code allowed and the standards allowed at the time they submitted that application. So that's an important distinction for all the projects you review.

Can I just add, Commissioner Swach, what's really worked for us in the past, and it doesn't mean we can use it as a 100%, but what has worked with us in the past is the applicant is up here and it's like, hey, I know this is not the current standard. What would you be willing to do to work with us on blah, blah, blah? Normally, they're willing to do something for the most part to kind of meet us halfway somewhere.

That's a great point. You can always ask. but you can rarely insist. But if you were an applicant, wouldn't you be motivated to go along to get along to a degree?

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm just going to breeze through these last couple of examples. You get the point. So if there's kind of a checklist that you might want to keep handy when you're thinking about findings, Your finding is usually going to be better if it, number one, addresses each required element separately. Don't do a mashup. If it identifies specific evidence in the record, so point to evidence. And again, staff is going to do most of this work for you. Most of the time, it will be staff doing this. But if you want to do something other than the staff recommendation, you need to be thinking about these five things. Use objective facts, measurements, comparisons, refer to studies. Explain why the contrary evidence was rejected, especially for denial. If you don't think that a particular piece of evidence is convincing, is credible, explain on the record why you don't think so. I think that traffic study, while it was prepared by an expert, is flawed because, not just because I drive by it every day, but because it was from 2017. I think our community has changed a lot. I'm going to weigh that evidence a little bit less because it seems stale to me. And then demonstrate your reasoning path from the facts. Just connect the dots. Timing. If you're... The ideal timing, really, is to have the findings prepared before the meeting, presented by staff, and you've asked questions of staff in your individual briefings. And if you're OK with those findings, their support, and their conclusions, then you're ready to move staff's approval and you move on. If you want to do anything else, state it on the record at the meeting during deliberation. Like I said, the best is to refer to the pre-drafted findings in the staff report. I move staff's approval. If the decision differs, make sure you continue. We talked about that. Give them a chance to write up whatever other direction the majority wants to go. And if you really have to act that night, and sometimes there are situations where you don't have any more opportunities left because Sacramento gave us a clock or a limited number of meetings, then Take time on the record. It's going to be painful. But do it. State it on the record. Have somebody write it down word for word as the chair. Your job is to repeat the findings, to repeat the motion. And if everybody agrees, then you would maybe say, we're going to take a 10-minute recess to send staff and the attorney off in the other room to write up what we just said and bring it back to us. They'll read it back into the record. We'll all take a vote. It's I won't lie, it's kind of a pain. So if you can punt to another meeting, it'll be less painful. But if you can't, you can do it at night. Anything you guys would want to add to that? Good? Okay. Now, conditions of approval. Different from findings. but kind of similar too, right? It's a close cousin. A lot of times when, well, when you've got discretionary approvals, you will often have authority to condition the approval in a way. Now, why? Why would you condition, why would you impose any condition on a project? Yeah, to ensure compliance with the general plan, all those policies, objectives, goals in the general plan, maybe with requirements in the specific plan, the zoning code with your standards generally, but but your conditions always have to have a nexus and proportionality. Nexus is just a big word for a connection, right? They have to be directly connected to the problem you're trying to solve. For example, if the project comes in and you think, hey, this is gonna generate a lot of car trips, so we're gonna condition it on on a lane widening and a left-hand turn arrow. Does that kind of seem like it's connected? Yeah, it does, right? But what if you say, this project is going to generate a lot of car trips, so we need you to contribute to a dog park? Right? I love dog parks. And everybody might love dog parks, but can you get a dog park for traffic impacts? No, because what's the... Did the traffic create the need for the dog park? No, that's what you have to ask yourself. How did this project create the need for this condition? If you can't connect that dot, you cannot ask for it. And then once you do connect the dots, there is a traffic impact that doesn't create a need for dog park, but it might create the need for traffic improvements. That's connected. That's directly relevant. That's got a nexus. It still has to be proportional. What do we mean by that? The term, we're going to get to it in just a second. You can't have them pave your entire street. Yeah. Because your project adds 2% more traffic to this street, you have to pave the entire city. That's a good and very extreme example. This is Redlands. This is Redlands, right? So this just gets into, in more detail, which you can read later tonight when you're wanting to fall asleep, These two, and I mention this because the nexus and proportionality couplet, if you will, comes from two different cases. The nexus comes from the Nolan case, right? That's where this term essential nexus comes from. A house was going to block the view of the ocean for the public, and the condition was, for them to dedicate some of their land for a public beach path through their yard. They objected. Why? Because a loss of a view isn't connected to walking through my yard to actually get to the beach. And the court agreed. The court agreed. They said loss of a view doesn't translate to physical access. And then the other half of that, the roughly proportional, came along a few years later in the Dolan case. So we get this nice Nolan Dolan couplet. It's easy to remember. You're going to hear that a lot, probably. Nolan Dolan. Does this satisfy Nolan Dolan? Yes or no. And that case said it has to be roughly proportional. And there, they were going to expand their store and pave their parking lot. And the city said, well, now you have to dedicate a good chunk of your property for a floodplain easement. And we want a bike path. And the court said, well, that's actually kind of connected, the floodplain at least. But it's way out of proportion to what you're doing. Now, the extra paved area and the floodwater that that creates is a way smaller problem than this cartoon mallet-sized solution that we're demanding. OK? Question on that. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. If the general plan calls for some improvement, like the bike path, and if there is a nexus, right, if it's related to the project's impact, then you would probably want to, before the meeting, hopefully you see that question coming up, you'd want to talk to Yvette and staff and say, hey, I'm concerned about making a rough proportionality finding.

Excuse me, Commissioner. Sorry. If you don't mind when you're talking, just be sure to turn your microphone on just so we can catch it on Zoom. Thank you.

But in that situation, In looking at rough proportionality, you wouldn't necessarily put the entire burden of that improvement that the general plan calls for on them. You would want to scale the exaction, the demand, to the project. And so that might mean instead of giving us all of this land, maybe you give us a little bit, or maybe you give us some of the land and we buy the rest, or maybe you just pay a fee, or...

So that's why we would see in our conditions applicant to pay their fair share toward whatever the improvement is.

And ideally you've done the work to figure out what that fair share is so you're not just living with a squishy standard or expectation.

So is there, and maybe this is a more Redland staff question, is there, do we have code that tells us what proportionality is? So how do you, there are times when I've wanted to say, Okay, so there needs to be this light here, and we're told, but that's too much to require of this applicant. How do you say, but how did you determine that, and maybe I disagree with you and I want that light put in?

It's an individualized determination. You can't make those decisions categorically with a code standard.

Okay.

And in fact, here, let me skip ahead a little bit.

So that's a discussion with staff, like, hey, I see that you want to charge a fee for this. Where did you come to the determination and how, you know, this is a concern of mine. How do we work to not have that traffic like 10 years from now when there's 10 projects around it?

Great question, Chair. And as Brian just alluded or said, we do a nexus study. There are people that are paid to think about that and provide support for it.

And during the meeting, as you've seen in the past, if there's conditions that you come up with and we feel like they may be veering away from the realm of what's legally defensible, then we'll advise you at the meeting. Or we'll tell you we have to look into it.

Yeah. I mean, that's often what it is, is if you come up with a condition that maybe staff didn't anticipate, Nobody's done the thinking yet. There isn't a nexus study yet. So we'll look into it is the most common response if it's a novel suggestion.

I have a question. In a situation where the Commission has already made a decision, the project was presented, it was approved. Yeah. And then on a following meeting or in another way, evidence was presented that presents risk to health and safety. That is quite considerable. Where does the legal burden fall on? Is it to the staff, the... The council, the commission, who needs to take that into consideration or not take it into consideration because a decision was made? How does that connect?

Your job is done when you make a decision. You can't reopen that can. That'll happen sometimes, right? A project will be approved one week. Two weeks later, when you reconvene, somebody that didn't like the project will come in with a couple of bankers boxes full of stuff and say, look, this is radioactive. You know, there's a glow in the dark radioactive barrel like Homer Simpson used to play with. It's there. And here's the evidence. Your job is done. It. I don't know what can happen. A lot of it depends. That's kind of a tricky question because have their rights vested? Have they gotten a final approval from the council? If after it leaves, has the appeal period ended? That's another important consideration. If there is an appeal period, if somebody has evidence, like let's say tonight you were to approve a project and tomorrow somebody pops up and says, I've got all this evidence of how crazy it is to approve that project. Well, there's an appeal period. They can appeal that decision and present that evidence on appeal, and it can and will be considered. And if it's right, if it's credible, then it'll probably be overturned. And that's how it should be.

So if it's within the appeal period, that appeal will be presented to the commission? No. To the council?

Yeah, if you approve it. Mm-hmm. then somebody pops up later and doesn't like it, if it's within the appeal period, they would file an appeal of the planning commission decision, and that appeal goes to the council. The council will hear it de novo in almost every case. Yeah, I think it's crazy these days if it's not. And so that means it'll be a brand new hearing.

That's the same thing in reverse, right? If we've denied something, they can... That's right.

If you deny the project and the project applicant in that case is going to be the aggrieved party, they can say, but I want a second shot, right? I want to make my case to the council. So they would apply for an app. I'm sorry. They would appeal within that period.

So the appeal period has elapsed. Yeah. But then there is, I'll take your example, there is radioactive material in there and that will present serious health risk, right? Where does the legal burden fall on?

It's not on the Planning Commission. It's not on the Planning Commission. At that point, if there's real evidence of, to take my extreme example, a glow-in-the-dark radioactive barrel, you should talk to your city attorney.

That might be a code matter, a code enforcement matter. At that point, if there's something radioactive on a piece of property, it can be addressed in that way, maybe outside of what decision you've made.

Yeah, your role is finished in that decision, but there might very well be very significant options for the city to pursue with CERCLA, with state agencies, with cleanup obligations, with enforcement agencies, the EPA, et cetera, et cetera. The list is long. In my extreme example, I mean, half the federal and state government would come flying off the bench to get involved. But sometimes it's just somebody pops up later and says, but here's my evidence that there are going to be more vehicles miles traveled than what you considered. Well, I'm sorry. Like, should have been here yesterday, like they say when I go to the beach and try to go surfing and it's flat. Should have been here yesterday. Nolan Dolan, just a couple last thoughts on this. There have been a couple of cases. So Nolan was from the 80s. Dolan was from the 90s. In 2013, there was a Kuntz case that clarified that this applies to monetary exactions, not just when government is demanding use of your property. And then more recently, there was a Sheetz case, which kind of put cities in, well, kept them up at night because it said that it called into question whether the Nolan-Dolan test applies to legislatively imposed fees. For a long time, there was the understanding that when we legislatively adopt an across-the-board fee, like an impact fee, that that's exempt from Nolan-Dolan. And the court decided, no, it's not. But follow-up, when it was remanded back to the... That was from the U.S. Supreme Court. When it was remanded down to the lower court, like, hey, you have to look at Nolan Dolan, the court upheld the fee. And it said, well, actually, there's a nexus study. There's a really good nexus study that shows that there is a nexus and it is proportional. So, I don't know. That's the stuff that keeps me and Yvette up at night, not you. What are the details of the Sheets case? The Sheets case is from Northern California. I want to say it was from around Grass Valley. It was, I think he had a mobile home or a prefab that he wanted to drop into, you know, an acre or two of land. And it was very small. And the traffic impact fee was like 30 grand, right? And the property owner said, are you kidding me, right? Like, sure, maybe there's a nexus. My little home is going to have somebody living in it that has a car or two and we're going to drive. I get that. But 30 grand of impact from my teeny tiny house and my teeny tiny cars? And it went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and I think it was the county. The county at the time was saying, we don't have to even think about Nolan Dolan. We don't have to think about nexus and proportionality. And they were saying, no, you do. You have to think about And your problem is with the rough proportionality element. And the court said, no, you've got to think about it. And then on remand, the county said, well, here's our nexus study that shows the nexus and the rough proportionality. And yeah, it's only 400 square feet, but he still drives two cars, and it's x miles away, and the VMT, and here are the assumptions we made. And the court said, yeah, you're right. There is rough proportionality. So you're golden. Well, I mean, hey. Mitigating impact of development is expensive. If we truly burdened all development with the actual cost of their actual development, it would blow your mind. Just think about parks. How expensive is it to buy an acre of land to make a park? And then you divide that by the number of units in a 25-unit or a 50-unit complex. It's really expensive. It can be tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars if we put the true value of the mitigation for that impact or the offset. So most developers, even with $30,000 a door, are getting off pretty easy. Because if an economist were asked to quantify the actual impact of development, it's usually six figures or more. And we wonder why housing is expensive.

Before we move on from conditions, we've had a scenario come up, or I would like you to talk about performance conditions or conditions that require monitoring. And recently, we had a project come forward. It was actually a mitigation measure, but I would like to apply this question to conditions where they were to do a traffic management plan and some other ongoing activities, presumably in perpetuity. We asked for a condition that there's some way to verify that those activities are actually occurring. We're not just saying like, okay, you said you're going to do it. Goodbye.

Yeah.

And so could you talk about what our role is with that? What latitude do we have to apply monitoring or check in conditions?

Sure. Again, It sounds like you're talking about when this body sits in an adjudicative role, looking at a specific CUP or variance or something, where you're the decision maker. You're not just recommending. Let's talk about mitigation measures versus conditions of approval. And I know we were kind of borrowing from one to talk about the other, but they are different. They have different sources of authority, different triggers, and different monitoring. So let's talk about that. Mitigation measures, that comes from CEQA, right? And the trigger is whenever there's a significant environmental impact, you need to mitigate. The law requires it. It's a must. The purpose is to reduce those project-specific impacts. And you must require mitigation to the extent that it's feasible to avoid, minimize, substantially lessen. Now, let's look at conditions of approval. They have a different source of authority. It's not based on CEQA. It's not based on environmental impacts. It's based on police power. That's much broader, actually. It's much broader, though it's not exclusive. Your police power does cover health, safety, and welfare. And that can be environmental impacts, too. Your triggers, like I said, they're not limited to CEQA. You don't have to identify a specific environmental impact. But your triggers can be compliance with design standards or infrastructure requirements or operational restrictions, like we're talking maybe, or public improvements. And the purpose is to ensure regulatory compliance or just to implement policies like in a general plan. And that's a may, right? So how much can you do with that may? Let's get down to, let me see on this slide. It's probably the fourth row down. Mitigation measures under CEQA, they require monitoring. There has to be this MMRP, a mitigation monitoring reporting program. Thank you. We live with the acronym so long. There is no automatic monitoring with a condition of approval. Often those kind of... I tend to think of conditions of approval being in two categories. One is to create the project in the first place, just to get it built, right? In order to get it built, you have to comply with these conditions. But sometimes we have kind of ongoing operational conditions. Once you get it built, you must always... It's lights out at 10 o'clock. It's quiet hours from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. It's, you know, there are operational aspects of it. And some of them might, or it might be a condition that for the next 55 years, at least X percent of these units have to be rented out to households of, you know, this level of income. And usually we want to secure the compliance with those operational ones. Like with affordable housing, we do that with regulatory agreements. Those are contracts. And if they breach the contract, we can go to court and force them to comply. When we don't have a contract as an express tool for enforcing that condition, that ongoing after it's built condition, then we kind of have the same tool. The city's option is to go to court. And a violation of a condition of approval is essentially a violation of your code. So your code enforcement will get involved, right? The city can issue administrative fines, citations. You can pursue at least civil remedies in court, like getting an injunction, a court order commanding them to go back to renting it to affordable houses or shutting down at 10 PM or whatever it is. The law doesn't preclude the city from having something like an MMRP for just a condition of approval as well. There is a cost to that, right? And you just need to kind of think through the logistics. What is this body's role in that? Well, you can think about the need for monitoring. You can discuss it if a majority of you want to... either recommend that as a condition of approval to the council if it's going to them, or if you are the decision makers, you could vote on that. If you are thinking about monitoring, though, I would strongly encourage you to get to staff before the meeting, well before the meeting, and bat that idea around because they're thinking hard about those same issues, and they might see things that are potential obstacles. Like, who's going to fund? An MMRP always comes with funding, right? Somebody has to pay for that perpetual monitoring. And so that needs to kind of come into the calculus. Does that help answer the question at all?

Yeah, I think it does. Maybe I'll let you continue on mitigation measures, but I do have questions on you just said perpetual monitoring, and In the case of our rideshare example from an earlier meeting, this is an activity applicant supposed to implement a rideshare program that happens in perpetuity, that they're offering this to their employees to go forward and to mitigate their VMT impact. The monitoring for that mitigation measure was verified at time of certificate of occupancy, so they're not even really in their building yet when we've verified or monitored this mitigation measure and then there's no future monitoring going forward. So what kind of assurance can the commission try to establish to make sure that mitigation measures or conditions of approval are actually being implemented, you know, five years down the road?

You could do a robust formal monitoring program, but they're expensive and they're rare outside of the CEQA context. Honestly, most cities just rely on complaints. If there's a condition of approval that says you have to have a rideshare program, okay, they agree to it, you let them build, they start operating. If you catch wind that they're not, then it becomes a code enforcement problem.

So another question about medication measures. We talked about reducing the impact, right? To what level, because this is one of the things that's also come up, to what level is reducing the impact becomes acceptable? So let's say one applicant reduces the impact by 10% and says, you know, it's really going to be very, very hard to reduce it more than 10%. Another applicant presents and then they reduce it by 50%. Another one reduces it by 100%. It becomes a bit challenging when one applicant will say, well, it's not fair that they got away with reducing it by 10% and then we have to reduce it by 100%. Can you give us some kind of guidance to how we deal with these things?

Sure. And staff is your best resource for that because when we talk about reducing impacts, we're usually talking about environmental impacts and CEQA, right? Right. And CEQA comes with its... Everybody knows where the threshold of significance is because it's formally adopted. It's formally adopted by the city, or maybe we're borrowing a threshold of significance from the Air Quality Management District or somebody else. But there are formally adopted thresholds of significance. And that's where we kind of come back to that idea of... You have to make decisions based on what the rules are today when you're looking at a particular application. So when there's a threshold of significance that's been adopted, if somebody has an impact, like maybe their project would be right above that threshold of significance. Maybe to get below that threshold of significance, they just need to reduce it 10%. Okay, great. All you need to do is knock it down below that threshold. Maybe somebody else's project though, they come in and their project is way up here. They're gonna have to knock it down by 50, 60, 100% maybe to get under that very same threshold. So it's kind of a false comparison, right? Everything's relative to that threshold of significance and the staff can help give you guidance and the CEQA consultants that are advising staff These are great questions to put to staff, to put to the consultants so that they can give you a really well thought out and supported explanation of here's a threshold, here's what the project is, or here's what the project is, here's what they need to do, or here's what they need to do. And that will help you as you kind of, so it's not really an apples and apples. Right.

And also say it a different way. So, and we've already talked about this. Policymaking bodies, such as the city council, establish rules. Your role as a planning commission is to make sure those rules are being adhered to. Yeah. And our job as staff is to bring you information to help you make an informed decision on that. So, when you're talking, again, about impacts, we're basing our evaluation off of established rules, and then we're backing it with studies. And that's what we bring to you to help you make your decision.

Great questions. I love how thoughtful you guys are about all this stuff. Let's talk about weighing the evidence. This will come up when you sit as a judge, right, in your adjudicative role. You get to weigh the evidence, and you're going to weigh it based on relevance. Is this even connected to what we're talking about? You're going to base it. You can take hearsay into account. Like, how credible is this evidence? Is it he said, she said? Or, you know, my brother-in-law's barber said that there are too many truck trips here, right? Versus direct evidence. Anecdotal, you're going to need to weigh anecdotal evidence, maybe even your own. anecdotal evidence, your own experience driving back and forth to your kid's school or to your place of employment versus what's demonstrated with evidence. Yeah, we've already talked about this example at the bottom a fair amount. And a quick note on managing opposition. When the findings to approve are met, when the evidence suggests when the evidence before you supports the findings, you have to approve. You have to approve. If the evidence, like if the finding is, it's, I don't know, I'm just trying to pick an example. It complies with the standards in the zoning code. And the zoning code says it has to be lower than 35 feet. And if it's 29 feet, You have to approve it. You have to approve it. If the findings support approval and you instead vote to deny it, you're now being arbitrary and capricious. How does that line up with the rule of law? It doesn't. It's illegal and for a good reason because we need the rule of law. Now, How to manage that, though, when the findings point to approval, but 50 people show up with matching T-shirts, and they're mad about the project. How do you handle that? Well, again, we come back to that JFK profile and courage moment, right? But it will help if, at the dais, you talk about how the rule of law matters. We are governed by the rule of law. We have to support the rule of law. That's a core responsibility. It's part of our oath. And so we have to make decisions based on facts and the evidence. And if the unavoidable conclusion is that we can make the finding, we can't ignore the evidence, then we have to do it even if it's hard. If we don't like the rule, there's a process for that. And I would emphasize that too up here. If you're faced with having to make a decision that's unpopular, I would encourage you to lean into this is the conclusion we have to reach under the rules today. But... There is a process for changing our rules. It's through the legislative process. We all can appeal to the, or maybe appeal is the wrong word because that has a specific meaning, but we all can approach the council meeting and suggest a change to the rules.

So one thing that we've been doing that I feel has been working really well, but I would love to hear your opinion, and I can't remember, it was a few meetings back, we had this exact situation where We had to approve it even if we didn't like it. And there was a lot of people here upset. And the way that I handled it was listen to the public and really validate their concerns because they are valid, right? Like we hear you. We understand. We think these things. However, our purview is this. Our rules are this. And therefore, we have to do this. And it really seems to calm down the tension in the room and the person that is not wanting the approval. And maybe we don't even. And I don't necessarily say we don't like this. I say we understand. I feel you, hear you. But here's our set of rules in really explaining to them what our purview is. And that seems to really calm the tone.

That's a great approach. That's a great approach. Yeah. Yeah.

I have a quick question. So we were not sworn in, so it's like an assumed oath that we took? I'm just wondering. You should have been sworn in. Did we get sworn in? Because we did not.

Council members for sure are.

No, it was on the agenda, and council did approve. However, like you're saying we took an oath. I did not take an oath.

I would be more than happy. Regardless, you have a job description.

Agreed. But when you say that, you know what I mean? I don't want it to be pointed to on the record because I didn't.

I honestly don't know off the top of my head.

Or is it assumed? I just wanted to ask.

Next meeting you will be all sworn in if there was no swearing in. we usually do swear in our planning commission. Our planning commission too, right? Yes. And so you will be sworn in.

Okay, excellent. Sorry, if I look like a deer in the headlights, it's just because... I just wanted to make sure because you're speaking legally and I'm like, hang on.

It's not a problem. We will swear you in.

We would love that.

But you know, on that, it's more ceremonial than anything. It's not like you take on any new legal obligations. Already in this role, in this job, you have... you have rules you have to follow.

I mean, the swearing-in is really just attesting that you will uphold the laws of the state of California, the city of Redlands, and the U.S. Constitution, and essentially that's what the vote is.

Yeah, it's to help you kind of appreciate the obligation that you already have when you accepted the appointment. I should say that there are situations that you will be in, I'm thinking of ADU laws as one of them, where you will be presented with something and you will have very little room. You'll have very little say, right? Because state ADU law has this poison pill in it that says anything in your local ordinance that doesn't comply with or that's inconsistent with state law invalidates your entire order. And so you don't have very much wiggle room. Your ordinance to stay valid is going to have to be continually updated once or twice a year and it's going to have to be matchy-match with whatever the current state law is and you're going to have a few decisions you can make but not many and you might be very frustrated with that. I can't tell you how many council meetings I go to where the council says, this is absurd. This is a cram down from the state. We don't like this. This is a loss of local control and it goes on for 20 minutes. But at the end of the day, our hands are tied, right? And you're going to have to approve something that maybe you don't like and nobody out here likes. And just know that sometimes you have to do the hard thing.

Luckily for us, the ADUs have just been ministerial, so they don't come to us. So we don't have to do it.

Well, not individual ADUs, but you have to update your ordinance and it has to run through this body for a recommendation. And your recommendation might be, I hate it. Let's not do this, but it's going to happen anyway. Because you don't want to have no rules, right? So OK. CEQA, it's fact-based. It can't be political. You will see CEQA attempt to be used, hijacked, I like to say, by groups with ulterior motives, maybe a business competitor. Maybe Walmart doesn't like Target coming in or vice versa. And so they will try to use CEQA to jam up the new applicant. But you have to, in your role, you have to stay focused on the facts and making recommendations. I'm not going to belabor this point. Sequel just says that you have to make decisions based on substantial evidence. And then there's this bold block down here about how speculation isn't good enough, unsubstantiated opinion isn't good enough. We kind of get back to that notion of anecdotal evidence versus direct, quantified evidence. expert opinions are okay, but even those have to be supported by the facts. And you can question those. Again, this is probably more than we need to go through, but a lot of CEQA is driven by scientific and factual data. And look at this second bullet point. We kind of talked about this. It's based on the agency's own threshold of significance. And that's decided by the council pretty much, but often they will adopt it from an agency with expertise like the Air Quality Management District. And even if it might be a significant impact under another standard, like maybe the city next door has a different standard for traffic impacts or for air quality impacts, you're stuck with your impacts here in this city, your thresholds in this city today. If you think that your thresholds are out of whack, with what other cities and agencies are doing, well then that's a separate conversation about how to change the rule, right? Threshold of significance, we've kind of talked about that. They're not conclusive. You can consider substantial evidence that there might be a significant impact beyond what the threshold, but your burden kind of goes up. There is a strong presumption that comes with the threshold of significance. Last time we talked a bit about an EIR. You can't require and you can't recommend, well, I guess you could recommend whatever you want, but they'll ignore you. Legally, you can't require an EIR unless it's justified. You can't just say, oh, I don't like distribution centers, so I'm going to require an EIR for every single one, even though the general plan EIR already contemplated distribution centers in that very spot with those exact same impacts. You can't drag them through a brand new EIR. there has to be substantial evidence supporting a fair argument that it would have impacts that aren't already covered. An addendum is often used to kind of formally consider whether this project's impacts are already covered by an existing general plan EIR. If it's already been looked at, sometimes we'll use an addendum to kind of... formally look into that and reach that conclusion. This is what I just said. The city is not allowed to require an EIR if there's no evidence of unanalyzed impacts, even if you get 50 people with matching t-shirts saying that this is causing all kinds of traffic impacts. Well, it is, but there's no evidence that those traffic impacts weren't already contemplated and considered under the general plan EIR. we already looked into this five years ago, we contemplated this, and we can't drag them through a new EIR today. Yeah, this last note, it is a prejudicial abuse of discretion, there's that phrase again, to require an EIR when evidence doesn't show that it's justified. So just be careful of that, because you will get a lot of pressure from people that just don't like it. They just don't like it. And so they might say, drag them through an EIR, Well, unless there's substantial evidence showing that they have unanalyzed impacts, we can't. That would be a prejudicial abuse of discretion.

What would require an EIR?

Unanalyzed impacts.

I mean, but when would we, can you give me an example of when we would say you need to have an EIR?

Staff will, staff will help you with that. What's an example? Let's say the general plan has an area designated for low-density residential. The zoning is low-density residential. Somebody wants to do high-density residential there. They're going to need a general plan amendment. They're going to need a zoning code amendment. Or maybe state law just gives them a right to punch in with higher density, which is kind of increasingly the case. in most cases where state law punches it in and says, you know, regardless of what your general plan and your zoning say, you have to allow the higher density, it's going to be ministerial, and so CEQA doesn't apply, and you're just stuck, right? But if it's not one of those situations, somebody wants to do something that's more dense, then that's the question, is did the general plan EIR consider the impacts from high-density residential in this spot? No. Why? Because it was anticipating low density there. So... Can you fit high density under a low density EIR or an EIR that analyzed low density? Probably not. So, well, what's the next step then? Well, maybe it's an MND. Probably not. It's probably an EIR or maybe an addendum. Increasingly, the legislature is giving more and more tools for something less than a full-blown EIR. Like if it fits under the general plan EIR except for one kind of impact, then there are some tools now for just doing an in-depth review of that one impact instead of opening up the whole can and looking at everything from cultural resources to traffic to air to aesthetics. So yeah, that's an example. It's any time somebody is proposing to do something that's a discretionary action that has impacts that weren't already analyzed before.

That's something staff would be already attuned to, and they're going to bring that to us.

Yeah, yeah. And if you question that, again, it's best to ask the questions well before the meeting so that you give them a chance to either share their thinking with you or to look into it and come back. There's not a lot that they can do when you ask the question here. from the dais, unless you have the luxury of kicking the can down the road so they can look into it and come back.

And again, oftentimes, I mean, not often, every time we're basing that on technical data that we're getting.

Yeah. Good questions. Before you deny a project, you should be thinking along these lines, can this project be redesigned or modified? So think, Could we approve with conditions instead of just denying? That's something to consider. Do existing conditions mitigate our concerns? Well, we already talked about this. Could you condition it in a way that would make it approvable? Do you need more information? Maybe that's where you ask staff to go off and look into this aspect. Are there concerns with the project that are better addressed through a legislative change? And this has kind of been a theme tonight, right? is, are the concerns about this project based on the rules today, or is it really that you just don't like the rule? And that's worth asking. We've been doing questions the whole time, but

I do have a quick question. So in situations where a commissioner may need to present something or they've already done disclosure and it's a project that they are related to or it's their own project, or if they have an opinion about a project and they feel that they can't make an unbiased decision but would like to say something about it, is it sufficient to just abstain and present? Or what can a commissioner not do or is not allowed to do?

Yvette, do you want me to answer that or do you want to do it? Okay, my view is that if you have a conflict especially, you announce the conflict, you step down, you leave the room. You don't even sit in the audience because why? Because you can sit back there and nod or shake your head or tug on your earlobe or whatever baseball signs you might have. But you can come in as a member of the public and you can stand right there and for three minutes you can talk as a member of the public. But then when you're done, I would tell you, you leave the room because I'm not going to have you sitting back there doing this kind of stuff. Yeah, or...

I believe the comment, if you were going to comment, it would be a comment on how that application impacts your financial interests, you personally, not just it affects the community at large. So there are some FPPC rules that govern, even if you have a conflict, what manner you can participate as a member of the public.

Yeah. Great question. But when in doubt, if you've got a conflict... You should get out of the room. Please don't put yourself in that situation because when you get sideways of the FPPC on that, it's ugly. Great question. Others? You have a fantastic staff and a really good city attorney and trust them. Talk to them early and often. Don't argue with them, but use them for Ask them for their recommendation. If you need more information before the meeting, that's the best time. And just know that they are giving you very well thought out, very detailed. You don't always have to agree with their recommendations, but don't assume that they're blowing smoke up your chimney. Is that fair to say?

We always try to do our thorough homework, always, yes.

That's it. Thank you for your time tonight.

Thank you for your time. That was very helpful. That was item number 6A, and there is no motion needed for that, so we'll move on to item number 7, announcements and commissioner comments. Do we have any?

I just wanted to ask, um, the next time that Cal cities does have that conference opening for new commissioners or commissioners as a body, um, if we can register ourselves or if we can partner and do that. But, um, since it was sold out, we were not able to attend this time, but I would like to ask, um, to be put on like the waiting list, I guess, for the next conference.

We'll certainly watch for it, and as soon as we get it, we'll make all the commissioners aware. And similarly, if you see it, let us know right away, and we can jump on it for you. Okay.

Thank you. Ms. Garcia, is it okay to ask for a public comment on what we just – I think we have someone who would like to speak.

Oh, sure. Okay. Is there any public comment on the attorney presentation?

Mr. Hoder. Thank you very much. I know it's getting late, so I'll try to be –

...have the authority to disapprove, I would... Commission had an issue before it that was somewhat contentious and there was a quite lively discussion and you could see the snowball kind of rolling along until in the end it was unanimous. The commission said, I'm paraphrasing, we don't like it and we vote to disapprove. That issue went to the city council. This is kind of more to the point. Who gets to drive the train here? The city council went over the same material and came to a different conclusion, not unanimous, but they decided to approve what the commission had disapproved. And where this went... There was some resentment harbored into the next commission meeting. And when it convened on a different issue, they had a similar discussion. And when it came time to vote on that issue, there was one commissioner who said, well, which way does the council want us to vote on this? And I thought that was kind of inappropriate, and I don't know if there's some legal aspect to that, whether that was a – should that person have recused themselves, or were they allowed to say that in that way, or was that influential in an inappropriate way on the rest of the commissioners? So if you have any thoughts on that, I'd welcome it. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to defer to you on if you would like to comment or not, or to Ms. Garcia if she would like to comment.

I understood the comment. I was not here at the meeting when that comment was made, but when I did review the video, I took it as a flippant comment, not any comment to influence or show bias. I think it was a flippant comment just because maybe there were some negative feelings about what the council had done at the previous meeting. So that was my take after reviewing the video.

Do you want me to say anything about that? I don't know about that situation, but in general, you know, earlier when we talked about how you're going to need to be disciplined, you're going to have to make hard decisions that maybe sometimes aren't popular. You're also going to need to be tough-skinned, thick-skinned, because your job is to make a recommendation a lot of times. Sometimes you'll make a decision and it'll be appealed, but in either case, you're not the final word. And you do the best you can. You make the best recommendations you can. You make the best decisions you can. And sometimes the counsel will go a different direction. And that doesn't mean that you did your job poorly. Please do not take it personally. If you do, it will start to be a cancer in your service. It will be a cancer in your service. Do not take it personally. And is it inappropriate for a commissioner to... vote one way or the other based on what they think the council wants? I think that's even a weird question to ask of a commissioner to ask, what way does the council want me to go? But, you know, are you by district here? Yeah.

Council, yes.

Yeah, the council's by district and you're each appointed by a council member? No. Okay. Well, sometimes that plays out that way, right? And so it really depends on kind of your philosophy of government and your role. Like, are you here to make the best... Are you here because of who you are? Right? That's kind of the Republican form of government. Not the party, but like, you know, Republican with a small r. Where we elect people that we trust to make good decisions, right? as opposed to the democratic form of government where everything's supposed to be just by a vote. And we don't do that, do we? We don't take a vote on every time you're asked to make a decision. You don't go out and ask everybody that lives in your city what way you should vote. And so I do think that it's not... it's not illegal for you to ask yourself, what does the council, what would the council like? Because you, you are here in part to implement council established directives, but you're also appointed for who you are and how you think and make up your own minds. If I thought that a council was, I think that there are probably real issues with a council directing, while they can suggest all they want, but you have an independent authority to make a recommendation. And your job is not to agree with the council on everything. Your job is to give them the best recommendations you can and to reach the best decisions you can. But then once you do, you've got to let go of it. And to continue to serve the people, you have to let go of your decisions and your recommendations after you make them. So if that was a flippant comment, I think that was maybe not reflective of the best spirit of your role.

Thank you. Okay, moving back to item number seven. Are there any further?

Before we move on, I just want to clarify that we did not receive any public comments on any items prior to the meeting, including 6A. And I've not seen any on Zoom either. Perfect.

We'll get this script right one time. All right. Any other announcements or commissioner comments? Okay. Commissioner Elliott. Vice Chair Elliott.

With respect to the planning commissioner training, the Inland Empire section of American Planning Association will be hosting a planning commissioner's workshop later this – it's usually late summer. So I'll keep our commission abreast of when the date is set for that.

Okay. Item number eight, director's update.

No updates from my end right now.

Item number nine, we will adjourn to the next regular meeting date of March 24th, 2026.