City Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right, this is the City of Reno Planning Commission meeting. Today's date is Wednesday, August 19th, 2026. The time is 6.01 p.m. We will start with the Pledge of Allegiance. Commissioner McCoy, lead us off. A2, roll call. Madam Clerk.

David Jockman.

Here.

Jacob Williams.

Here.

Alex Velto. Here. Sean McCoy.

Present.

Manny Becerra and Christina Delviere are absent. With that, we have a quorum of the Reno City Planning Commission.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. We will now move to Item A3. This is general public comment. Madam Clerk. Thank you, Madam Clerk.

It should be noted for those in the audience that comments are to be addressed to the Planning Commission as a whole. Comments heard under this item will be limited to three minutes per person and may pertain to matters both on and off the Planning Commission agenda. Please note that the Planning Commission may not take action upon any matter not agendized for possible action on today's agenda. When you're called on for public comment, please state your name for the record and begin speaking. The time will begin when you say your name and you will be afforded three minutes. If you're an attendee in the Zoom meeting and would like to make public comment at this time, please raise your hand. Lastly, while in this room, please be respectful. Warnings will be issued by the presiding officer if there's disruptive behavior and you'll be asked to leave chambers if the behavior continues. We did receive correspondence for this item that were general in nature and not specific to any items on the agenda. These were forwarded to the Planning Commission and have been entered into the record. And I do have at least one public comment card in person from Donna Keats.

Good evening, Planning Commissioners. Thank you for your time. I'm here making this public comment to request that you pull your consent agenda items. Please state your name for the record. I thought I did. I'm sorry. Donna Keats. That you pull your consent agenda items and have a hearing and a presentation for them. I was pretty unhappy to see the applications relegated to a consent agenda. I understand this is a fairly new thing for Planning Commission, as I've never seen it before. particularly item C2, which was hugely controversial along its way for the MGOD housing development. Let's build them there, and now we're moving the water tank. And I think it's a disservice to the public to not have hearings for these sorts of things, and I don't know who decides that it's okay to not have a public hearing for, like, the CUP for the motor, the car thing. You're the last stand, you know? We're going to give them a CUP. requires a public hearing. So how can you just say, I approve five things all in a row the way council does? Council does it for liquor licenses, business licenses, big chunks of things. You've never done it before up until recently. I think it's a disservice to the public. I think it increases the city's liability for things that happen. Like somebody like me would show up in front of an item and then go, oh, hey, there's no hearing. You just don't know. And I think it's a problem. I think there needs to be criterion. So my second ask, one, is to pull those. And I do have comments, should you decide to honor this request. I do have questions and comments and would like to hear a presentation. But aside from that, I think there have to be defined criterion. I don't know who decides, who doesn't care enough, so we'll make it be a consent agenda item. I think that's wrong. Is it the planner of the day? Is it Mike? Who is it? And what are the criterion? And if you're going to do this, you should have defined criterion for what gets to be on a consent agenda, what types of hearings. It's a CUP and a site plan review tonight. So why aren't these people on a consent agenda? They had nothing but favorable comments from the NAV. So why don't they just get to have a consent agenda for their request? I don't understand this. So you need to find criterion. And to be fair, applicants should know what those criterion are because maybe a lot of applicants will try to make their project work so they can take a fast track back door route and not have to have a hearing. I just think it's wrong. I'd like to have a future agenda item. I'd like somebody to request it. I'd like you all to discuss it, see whether you think it's appropriate, not just that somebody's telling you we're now doing it. Do you guys really think it's appropriate? What do you think you should do about it? And I think there needs to be criterion. So those are my two asks for my public comment. So pull the consent agenda tonight. And have a future discussion about what are the criterion and what are you really doing with this? What kinds of projects and is it really in the public's interest to do this? Because I don't think it is. Thank you very much.

Thank you Donna. Next up we'll hear from Ron Falstead on zoom. Ron, when you're ready, just unmute your mic. State your name for the record. You'll have three minutes. Ron, just unmute your mic. If you're talking, we can't hear you. Ron, last chance, just unmute your mic. Okay, Chair, Ron is unresponsive or unable to unmute his mic.

Do we have any other requests for public comment?

Not in person or online.

Do we have any requests to speak in chambers? I will remind you that you will all have opportunities to speak under public comment during every individual item as well. So any general public comment at this time? Seeing none, we will close public comment and move to item A4, approval of the agenda.

Commissioner Williams, motion to approve.

Commissioner Balto, second. We have a motion and a second. We did hear public comment about this. Any discussion? I guess I will say I hear the public comment. We will take a look at better defining how we move items to consent agenda. We do have a motion and a second. I believe I do not have to do that while we approve the agenda, correct? So added discussion to that. We are going to move item D2 up to be in front of item D1. D1 is the Lighthouse Sierra SPD. We have a staff member who needs to get out, so we're going to honor that request and get her out in a timely fashion. So we have a motion and a second.

Chair. have a question yeah the if we approve the agenda does that does that mean we're locking in the consent agenda or do we have the ability or do we need to do i guess right now uh pull any item for the consent agenda if that's our desire you would be able to pull consent agenda items as they come so you're just approving the agenda thank you presenter no discussion we have a motion and a second all in favor say aye aye aye aye

Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously for zero. That moves us on to item B, staff announcements. Mr. Raley.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple quick announcements. I think as most of you know, Commissioner Gonfantini has resigned from the Planning Commission. So the council will be appointing a new commissioner in the upcoming weeks. Some quick council updates. At their last meeting, they approved the One Micah Place zoning map amendment. The Moose Ridge zoning map amendment will be heard at next week's meeting. And the Zero North Virginia Street zoning map amendment will go on September 9th.

Thank you, Mr. Raley. Now, this will be a, we'll move on to our consent agenda. We have heard a public comment requesting one item be pulled. Before we get to that, I will ask all members of the commission, are any disclosures necessary to items pertaining to the consent agenda at this time? If so, please raise your hand. I will say that I received a voicemail on item C2 from the applicant representative. I did not call them back. That concludes disclosures for our consent agenda. Now, can I get a request? I guess we'll take public comment individually. Do we have any questions about the consent agenda? Any requests to pull items?

Thank you, Chair. For the record, Commissioner McCoy, I do have a request based on opposition that we've received in person, as well as I believe something was submitted for item C2. So I would request that C2 receive its full hearing today and allow that opposition to hear the presentation and hopefully resolve the opposition as well, if that is in the cards. Thank you.

Would anyone like to make a motion approving the consent agenda less item C2?

Move to approve consent agenda less item C2.

Commissioner Williams, I second.

We have a motion and a second on favor say aye aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously that concludes our consent agenda item we will now. Move to we will now so we have to make a decision about how we hear the items I have a staff request for D one. we will take items in the following order, D1, C2, and then D2 tonight. So the next item up will be item D1. This is a staff report for possible action. This is case number LDC26-00108. I'm sorry, I'm reading the wrong one. My apologies. We're going to take item D2. That's you, Leah, right? Please disregard what I just said. We will take the items in the following order, D2, C2, D1.

Mr. Chair, considering the large amount of people in the building, I think for D1, can we do C2, which is a pull from the consent agenda last, so that we can fulfill our staff's requirement, fulfill what I believe is public comment and a lot of it, which is great? and then do C2 last.

I'm fine with that. I believe I can make that decision unilaterally. Is that correct, or do I need to entertain a motion for that? Okay, so we will take items in the following order. D2, D1, C2.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Item D2, staff report. This is for possible action. Case number LDC26-00085, MVE tentative map and conditional use permit. We'll begin with a presentation from staff. Ms. Bacardi. Yes.

Thank you. Good evening, Chair, members of the Commission. For the record, my name is Leah Bacardi. And I am an associate planner with the City of Reno Development Services. This evening I am presenting the application for Mountain View Estates 5. This is a tentative map and a conditional use permit. So this particular site is located just south of Parr Boulevard and east of North Virginia, just north of the McCarran Loop. This is a 30-acre site, and the requests before you today are for a tentative map for a 394-lot single-family attached subdivision and a conditional use permit for 100 or more units, cuts greater than 20 feet in height, fills greater than 10 feet in height, disturbance of a major drainageway, and alternative screening between uses. The subject site is located in the multifamily 14 unit per acre zone. The key issues analyzed in this application were overall site design, the compatibility of this particular use with the surrounding development, including looking at that request for alternative screening. um parking and driveway design was important in this we looked at access and circulation grading and slope treatment and restoration of a major drainage way that's on the site that had been previously disturbed so looking at the overall site design again we have 394 attached townhomes these townhomes are going to be developed in two and three unit clusters The MF14 zone allows for 14 dwelling units per acre. The density of this development is going to be around 12.9. Regarding landscape and open space, it is meeting the minimum requirements required by Reno Municipal Code with 20% landscaping and 100 square feet of usable open space per unit. They're also meeting the minimum tree count that's required. On the bottom right-hand side of your screen is the preliminary amenity legend. And what this says is that the amenities will be chosen from this following list. There are 12 amenities listed there. Staff has conditioned that a minimum of seven of those amenities are implemented into the final map. including at least one pet relief area that is not adjacent to the existing subdivisions. The amenity locations will be on the final map. They're gonna have about 13,000 square feet of amenities. We are allowing a little bit of flexibility on that. And should they choose bicycle parking, that will have to be a secured locking bicycle parking. Regarding grading slope treatment and drainage, the map that you're looking at on your screen is a slope analysis. What we're looking at here is how much of a slope is on the property. So you can see those dark red areas. Those are areas with over a 30% slope. The green areas are 0 to 15. The reason that this is important is because hillside standards, which restrict density, are triggered if the slopes are over 30%. on average of 10% of the site. I hope that makes sense. Anyways, the average slopes are 9.9 in this case, plus all of these slopes that are existing were created because of previous grading that went on for the adjacent subdivisions. So these aren't natural slopes. These aren't natural hills. They've been created and revegged throughout the years. So we are looking at an application that is requesting grading that will result in 28-foot cuts into those existing hills and fills of 18 feet to kind of level that site out. As part of our conditions of approval, we have required that they treat those slopes and revegetate. And also down on the bottom left hand side of the screen, you can kind of see that red and yellow area that runs across the green. That is the major drainage way, which was previously disturbed through some unpermitted work not related to this owner or this applicant. And so they are going to go back in and they're going to restore that existing drainage way. Our engineering team has looked at those plans and approves of their restoration. Regarding traffic access and circulation. I know we received a few comments about this So I want to be kind of clear about it and we if we have additional questions, I'll probably bring up Doug buck our engineering manager to answer him But the act there's gonna be two points of access here Lone Star Park will be the primary access and Shaylin Drive will be that secondary access a westbound right turn lane is required off of I think it's Lone Star. Sorry, I don't have that on there. And that is one of the conditions of approval. Regarding internal circulation, these are going to be private streets. They are going to be fairly narrow. So we are going to require there would be red curbs and no parking signs within this subdivision. There are shared guest parking pockets, and each townhome is going to have somewhere between three or four parking. Also, as a normal condition of approval on these subdivisions, we require that RTC Smart Trip materials be handed out with the purchase of every home. There are traffic improvements that are going to be required. including a traffic signal at PAR and Ferrari, which is in that yellow circle up there on your screen. That is going to be required by the time that the 51st certificate of occupancy is issued. And it should be noted also that this development will provide approximately $2.5 million in road impact fees to RTC to continue upgrades and maintenance for their roads in the area. I touched on parking in the last one, but I think it's important to talk about parking because in these subdivisions that really don't have any available on-street parking, we need to make sure that we have sufficient parking not only for the people who purchase these townhomes, but also for their guests and everything else. So they are proposing 1,103 parking spaces. They would require 788. They are far exceeding what is required. They're proposing 533 garage spaces, 533 driveway spaces, and 37 shared common spaces. We are going to hold them to that number with condition number 10. Again, we're requiring no on-street parking, red curbs, shared guest parking in pockets only, and all garages, you guys have seen this condition before, all the garages must be maintained for a parking use, and HOA is going to enforce that. Regarding compatibility and alternative screening, we do have industrial zoning directly to the north of this property. There are the railroad tracks that go in between, so there's approximately 200 feet between this use and the industrial use to the north. To the south, you can see that there are residential uses. There are setback in height limits when you have an increase in density next to something with a lesser density. So because this is MF14 and the adjacent subdivisions are less dense than this, they have to be set back further. So the setback has been increased for all of those ones that are adjacent to the adjacent subdivision to 16 feet. That is a condition of approval. We've also limited the construction hours just so it's not a big imposition on those existing homes. regarding the alternative screening. Generally, masonry walls are required between industrial and residential uses. However, I put a couple of stars up there to show what's going on. So that star on the screen is the cross section of that particular area. And the reason that they're requesting the alternative screening is that there is a pretty significant grade difference here. So if they put in a six foot wall at the property line, it's not actually going to do anything. So they have asked that they be able to place those fences at the top of the slope and that that meet the requirement for the screening. In this particular case, staff is comfortable with that. We think it's appropriate for the use and it'll preserve the views for those homes that look out over that area. Tentative map findings are on the board. All utilities are available. It is an infill site, complies with the master plan policies, meets the minimum Reno municipal code standards, and complies with Nevada revised statutes. Conditional use permit review findings. Again, we have the same use and similar density to the south and east. We have all services and utilities available, and there's not going to be materially detrimental to the public health, safety, and welfare. And honestly, the neighborhoods in that area will be probably happy that they're not using this site for stockpiling anymore and that it's actually being developed. With that, the recommended motion is on the board. I'm available for questions, and the applicant also has a presentation. Thank you.

Good evening, Chair Jochum and Commissioner John Kropotek. I'm with KLS Planning representing the applicant who is Northern Nevada Homes.

Are we good to go here?

By way of introduction, our traffic engineer is here this evening. Our civil engineers are here and the applicant owner is here as well if we have any targeted questions to those areas of expertise. So I always like to get through this without a lot of redundancy. That gives you an idea of the surroundings. There were a few things that's pointed out by staff. Actually, can we go to the overhead slide real quick? I have a couple of loose things I wanted to point out. This exhibit shows there's actually two points of access to the north. Staff said two total, and there's actually three combined. One is the primary, which is Ferrari McLeod. That will be the location of the new traffic light. Another one that's a spine road off of that but gets you close to the freeway, which is Benny Lane from Gardella that connects to the project. generally to the site, and then overall circulation, which we've had master planned for about 20 years going south to Comstock Drive and then to McCarran and Virginia Street by way of overall circulation. I mention that because there was a bit of discussion in the public comment and also the letters that I saw that were forwarded from staff. One other thing on traffic, and again, this is just high level. Our traffic engineer is here. You can see the new traffic light at Ferrari McLeod there. Another condition of which we have accepted is the restriping to add a lane going east to the freeway. That's a capacity improvement without widening the street as the right-of-way is there. Wanted to share that with the commission. We do agree with all conditions, the 18 conditions have written by staff, and the staff report is written as well. A few other things about the NAB meeting we presented a couple of weeks ago. Traffic was primarily the concern. It's really about the capacity and the bottleneck at Ferrari McLeod. I mentioned the traffic light that has been a condition independent of the $2.4 million that will be generated in impact fees. This one is the responsibility of the developer. A few comments about WUE. That's a wildland-urban interface. We explained the proximity to the fire station, which is 1.7 miles from the site, a high level of service in terms of response time. And the fact that it's the moderate WUI zone means that there's no further mitigation. We have it covered, as stated. This is basically an infill site in suburban Reno. And then there was also some mention of there, and we always appreciate hearing this because housing is very challenging to make work now, some support expressed for the project concept and the pricing for entry-level project, which is single-family townhomes that's on the table this evening. So there is... The the plan that also staff showed a lot of amenity areas I'll not going to be too duplicative on that the drainage way on the south as staff pointed out We didn't know about the drainage way. It was Graded by accident or actually stockpiled it did some disruption We've embraced the condition the code and everything that goes along with it to make sure that is restored to the condition as required by our drainage way policy and our development code. There's the product that we're talking about, twos and three units, duets and trips throughout the community. A little more about housing product and concept, footprint mapping, probably the biggest issue that really needs to be embraced by code and the community and the developer in this case is the amount of parking because we don't have street parking by intention. It actually becomes a hazard and very difficult to manage on this type of product. So we make sure that we have it covered market-wise with the driveway and the garage space. all private streets and then of course also as mentioned by staff the landscape and amenity areas are all hoa maintained there's the parking and graphically and then of course the um the numbers is the 1103 stated by staff i think what's key to this is the 2.8 units per 2.8 spaces on average per unit versus the code that requires two spaces um Here is a slide on the traffic level of the area of study. The one, two, three, four, five were intersections that were studied. The key point being, again, at the 51st unit prior to C of O, we will have the traffic light installed at the intersection of Parr and Ferrari McLeod. There's some enhancements of the amenities areas. I have four or five. I'll go through these quickly. get the idea there has been a fair amount of discussion about this i respect it the applicant respects it and that is really about without city parks in the immediate area we have to make sure that we have this amenitized for families and different buyer groups and so that's what we've done with our landscape architecture our landscape architect and our development plan you can see here just to go through them quickly picnic area. Some of these are good for community gathering as we all know and that's all part of community design. Pet relief there and then more generous in space and amenity level is a court like that. Slope map staff touched on this is not a hillside project, but we're always dealing with slow, especially with our infill challenges and topography constraints that we have in the region and remaining land. Bottom line, the green is all under 10 percent. That gives you a right to go build. And then, as staff mentioned, it's already disturbed at that little area on the east, which is the 30 percent slope. And so, frankly, with the developed product and the developed condition, the revegetation, the landscaping, and lots of trees. We will have that very well dressed up. On this image, does this have a pointer? Oh, no, I've got to use this.

If I may interrupt for one minute, Madam Clerk, do we have a problem with the online connection?

Yes, I think the Zoom feed cut out. We're trying to fix it. There's a YouTube. The YouTube is working.

It does appear that there's... Commissioner Valto, could you clarify what do you see virtually?

There's been no change in what I see or hear.

Are you seeing...

It appears to be working for me.

You're seeing the slideshow, Commissioner Valto?

I'm seeing a slideshow. I guess I don't know.

Are you on the slide with the words concept for North property in the top left?

I am not. This explains it a lot.

Yeah, if we can just pause for a minute.

Thanks. I was a little confused, Mr. Camponic.

It's all good, sir. We have a pointer here or do I need to just put a script to point to something? Yeah, I don't see them out.

There's no pointer on the clicker. I don't think I think the mouse is gone to the mouse is gone.

OK, so then I'll have to go to overhead.

Alex, are you seeing no signal on your zoom feeds?

Yes, I am OK.

If we're unable to rectify this, Alex and any other members of the public online, open the YouTube feed that's running simultaneously. That's reno.gov forward slash meetings. You'll see that the Planning Commission meeting is live. Click watch live, but we're going to see if we can fix it.

Are we good to go?

Do you want to take a brief recess, Chair?

Would you like one? We're still down, right?

We're still down, yeah.

Okay, we'll take a brief recess.

Five minutes or so.

Yeah, plan to reconvene at 6.35. Thank you.

So we'll be here for questions with any of the team. Thank you.

Perfect. Thank you, Mr. Kropotok. We will now move to disclosures from the commission, then public comment, and then questions from the commission. So disclosures starting on my right. Commissioner McCoy.

No disclosures.

Commissioner Jochman, like similar projects with Mr. Krampadek, there is a project in another jurisdiction of which I am a part. It has no relation to this application, nor do I have any pecuniary agreement with Mr. Krampadek. Therefore, I can participate on this item in an impartial manner. Additionally, I did call Mr. Grimpotic in advance of this once I was notified that we would barely be at quorum tonight, and that is because this item is a tentative map. That's it.

Commissioner Williams, the applicant representative reached out to me. I was unable to return that call.

Mr. Valto, Mr. Kamponic reached out to me. I was unable to get back to him. No disclosures other than that.

That concludes disclosures. Madam Clerk, would you please go to public comment for this item?

Yes, we did receive correspondence for this item that were forwarded to the Commission and entered into the public record. That said, I don't have any public comments in person. Can you check Zoom? We don't have anyone in Zoom with their hand raised.

Do we have any requests to speak in chambers at this time pertaining to this item? If so, please raise your hand. Seeing none, we will now close public comment on this item and move to questions from the commission.

Chair, it sounds like we need to take another recess to try to fix these tech issues.

Okay, we have the clerk requesting a recess. We're going to go to recess. We will again reconvene at 6.45, five minutes from now.

See you.

That was something

OK, we're going to attempt to reconvene again. Commissioner Valto, can you tell me if things look good online?

You all look splendid, OK?

We were just at the point where we were going to go to questions from the Commission. So let's let's get right into it. Do we have any questions from the Commission for staff or applicants? Commissioner McCoy.

Thank you, Chair. Commissioner McCoy, for the record, I looked through a lot of this, and kind of what I saw, and this will be for staff, just to kind of make that clear. The questions that I had kind of came up, I think, most recently. I think... A lot of us have wildfire on our mind right now. And so the question I wanted to really, I guess, get to is understand the evacuation concern. Has fire looked at how residents are going to get out during a wildfire? Sometimes we just look at how does... Emergency services get in and treat residents in place Did they look at the evacuation process and how that would work with the two and then now maybe if we have three but the two entrances And and if one entrance is blocked is the other gonna be enough that kind of thing right

Leah Picotti, for the record. Thank you. That's a good question. So we didn't require an evacuation plan on this particular project. On other projects that have been in more rural areas, we have required those evacuation plans. But fire did look at this and determined that there was adequate emergency access and egress from this site. So fire is comfortable with it.

Okay, thank you, that answers that question. My final question is gonna be about the signal. I think somebody, the NAB, some of the public comments dealt with the railroad tracks nearby. I didn't specifically see them in the presentation, but is that, and the potential for queuing. I don't know if engineering looked at whether traffic could possibly back up towards the tracks, or if that's a concern they had at all, but that was just something I picked up on and thought that might be worth asking tonight, so thank you.

I think that's a good question for our traffic engineer. I'll turn it over to Lauren.

Good evening, Lauren Chilson with GCW for the record. Performed the traffic impact study. Yes, we have looked at queuing from the new traffic signal back to the railroad tracks. I do have an exhibit I can put up for you. The short story is the reason that we are restriping the roadway to provide a second eastbound lane is so that we assure we do not back up onto the tracks. That provides two lanes of storage, where today there are only one. We wanted that extra length to be absolutely certain we're not on the tracks, and so that is part of the mitigation measure.

Okay, and that'll go in at the same time the light goes in? With the signal, yes. Okay. All right. Thank you so much.

Do we have any other questions from the commission at this time?

I do. For Ms. Picotti.

Just one.

Commissioner Williams, for the record. Hi, Leah. With the... With how the previous drainageway was disturbed in a non-permitted way, is there gonna be any extra scrutiny about how it gets repaired, considering its history? Or are we just standard and you're comfortable with that? Just making sure if it was messed up, We're going to go back and do it. Somebody may have a couple extra eyes on it. Is that generally what happens?

Commissioner Williams, Leah Picotti for the record. Absolutely. Heightened scrutiny. Anytime a major drainage way is disturbed, especially when we didn't know that it was being disturbed. So yes, heightened scrutiny for sure. They did give us a restoration plan. Our engineering team looked at that and they are comfortable with that. When they move forward for their permits, we'll have many eyes on that.

Awesome. Okay. That was that. And I have one for the applicant. Thanks, Leo. Thank you, Commissioner. Again, Commissioner Williams, for the record, nice to see you. Hey, I always go to parking normally, so I'm going to go there today. Okay. 37 spots for that amount, 37 guest spots for this amount of thing is, depending on when it gets fully occupied, might get tough. Okay. When that happens, it's up to the HOA to enforce that, which is a miserable and very daunting task. Was there any extra thought, considering that all the internal roads are gonna be marked red, to expanding some of those wider areas to allow for additional guest spots? Did you look at all about expanding? I guess what I'm asking is when you did this, did you look at any other alternatives versus just sticking 37?

Keep in mind that, you know, the driveway space is like if I'm having you over as a guest and I have one car, right? Oftentimes, these are two- and three-bedroom units, single occupant. It's part of your market, entry-level housing. you have one or two cars, you say, please park in the driveway. So that's part of the guest parking management plan, right? Driveway parking in addition to the 37 spaces. I mean, I could just tell you we could make a good faith effort and promise you that we'll look for any more opportunities to provide guest parking between now and the final map.

is that you know good faith effort i can promise you that and the team was would commit to that and certainly uh mr fitzgerald would i think you bring up a good point yeah wherever possible it's always something that we could add so i appreciate that and i appreciate the willingness to look additionally down the road yeah thank you thank you very much that's all i have mr chair do we have any other questions from the commission at this time

Seeing none, we will now move to deliberations. I guess I will say something real quick. I've reviewed the traffic study. I'm happy to see this is not a signal coming the result of public comment and is the result of the traffic engineer's recommendations. I don't think this needs to be ratified in a condition, but I encourage staff to work with the applicant as the signal progresses to design to ensure that perhaps the actuation on that approach can be given additional scrutiny to make sure that the queuing does not propagate onto the railroad tracks. Do we have any other deliberations at this time?

No, Mr. Chair, happy to make a motion. I would just need the motion up on the screen, please. Oh, here we go. Okay, don't have to turn. All right, Commissioner Williams, for the record, in the matter of LDC 26-00085, based on the compliance with the applicable findings, I move to approve the tentative map and conditional use permit subject to the conditions listed in the staff report, and I can make all the findings.

Commissioner Valdez will second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, motion carries unanimously 4-0. That concludes item, let me get these right this time, D2. Thank you, Mr. Raley. We will now move to item D1. This is a staff report for possible action. Case number LDC26-00108, Lighthouse Sierra SPD. I get in that order, correct? Is that the next one? Yeah. Thank you. My apologies. For this item, we will have a staff presentation. I am told we have no applicant presentation on this. We will then go to disclosure. We do have a staff presentation, applicant presentation. My apologies. It'll then be disclosures and then public comment. Mr. Foster, please proceed.

Good evening, Commissioners. Jeff Foster, Associate Planner for the Record. The case I'm bringing you now is LDC 26-108, which is the Lighthouse Sierra Specific Plan District. The project site is about 3.03 acres in size on the west side of Talbot Lane, about 575 feet south of South McCarran Boulevard. It's currently developed with a single-family home that was built in 1950 and that is proposed to be demolished. And the request before you is a zone change from large lot residential one acre or LLR1 to specific plan district or SPD. Zooming in, we can see that the surrounding land uses include a private school to the west, ranchera single family homes to the south and to the north and the east across Talbot Lane, you have general office uses. The key issues that staff analyzed are overall development plan and development standards and compatibility with surrounding zoning and development. The master plan land use is suburban mixed use, which is intended to have a diverse mix of commercial and residential uses. And on the screen are 10 goals and policies from the master plan that are in support of the proposed request. The zoning district, LLR1, does not conform with the master plan designation. and the proposed change to SPD with neighborhood commercial-based zoning. LLR1 does not allow for commercial development and is at a density that is inconsistent with this area. The proposed SPD supports a mix of uses, including residential, retail, commercial, and other employment and service-oriented uses, and is intended to promote a gradual transition between lower intensity, i.e., the single-family residences to the south, and the higher intensity development elsewhere around the site. In comparison with other zones that are allowed under the SMU master plan designation, including general commercial and mixed use suburban, the SPD with the neighborhood commercial base zone would allow for a more appropriate mix of housing opportunities and utilize mixed use and residential adjacency standards to ensure compatibility with the residential to the south. SPD districts are intended to facilitate targeted variations from the uses and standards of a base zoning designation in a manner that is more compatible with surrounding land uses. The lot and building standards for the base NC zone and the proposed SPD are listed in the table on the screen. The proposed zone has the same site setback adjacent to the residential to the south as the current LLR1 zone. And the proposed SPD generally has more conservative setbacks than the neighborhood commercial base zone. and the same or lower maximum allowed building height. The overall approach is clearly protective of the interests of the adjacent residential uses. This is the conceptual land plan from the SPD handbook. Several standards are proposed to ensure compatibility with the adjacent residential neighborhood, including allowed hours of construction and hours of operation restrictions, operating restrictions specific to each use category, signage and lighting restrictions, noise standards and required buffering and screening. Multi-building developments are configured to locate the tallest structures to the north of the site, furthest away from the southern property line, which you can see on the screen here. With the proposed SPD development form and operational standards, the zone change from LLR1 to SPD appears to be consistent and compatible with the surrounding zoning and land uses. Here are the recommended SPD zoning map amendment findings. Staff can make all recommended findings. And here's the recommended motion. I'm available for questions. The applicant will now be making a presentation.

Good evening. Carter Williams. I'm a planner with RBI Planning and Landscape Architecture. And before I begin with my presentation, I wanted to give the opportunity for the executive directors of Lighthouse Living Foundation to introduce themselves and their foundation and their mission.

Good evening, Mr. Chairman and Commissioners. For the record, my name is Linda Schaefer. I'm a director of Lighthouse Living Foundation, and I want to thank you for having us on your agenda tonight. I also want to thank all these people who have showed up tonight to show support for our proposal and our project. Some have traveled great distances, and so we appreciate them being here. I know there's a lot on the agenda, so I'm going to keep my comments brief, but I do want you to understand the why behind this project and how that ties in to this particular parcel and why we feel it's the perfect location. There are voices behind me that are much more powerful than mine, so I want to keep mine brief. Just to give you a brief history of the why, my husband and I are the proud parents of three adult daughters. Our youngest daughter is 25 and she was born with cerebral palsy and intellectual and developmental disabilities. That started us on a very different parenting journey than with our older two daughters. When she graduated high school and was in her early 20s and saw her sisters go off to live independently and move away from our home, she had those same desires and had the ability to be more independent. So we started looking at what might be the options for her in our community. And we found out there are none. We started doing research on what is available and realized there is a severe gap in housing choices for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Northern Nevada. In fact, some of the few national statistics I'd like to share with you are that between 75 and 80% of adults with IDD live at home with parents or a family member until those parents or a family member can no longer care for them. About one half of family caregivers are over the age of 50. 10% are over the age of 75. There are great concerns over long-term housing availability and as well as stability. Currently the choices in Northern Nevada are looking at group homes that can house up to three to four individuals, or a shared living situation where there might be several adults that help care for the members that are in that home, as well as those who are interested and able to live out in a city apartment complex on their own with care that comes in intermittently to help support them. There are very few choices that don't lead to isolation. So when we were looking at different options, we knew that we had to establish a sense of community and offer that type of community to our adult children. With that, I'm gonna turn it over to Greg, who will tell you a little bit about the background leading up to this choice of parcel.

Good evening, thank you. We have spent a lot of time researching, going around the country actually, meeting with other organizations that have built housing projects similar to this. In the business world, we'd call it benchmarking. The reality is it's cherry picking. We see things that we like, things that apply to the Reno environment, and we saw a lot of stuff that didn't. So through this process, we've been able to tune and tune and retune what this project is going to be. We're doing this, we're planning to do this in two phases. Phase one would be a total of 44 units. I know this is much more to do with zoning, but the reason behind this and the thought that's gone into this I just want to convey to you has been significant. We've really poured our hearts and souls into this and made sure that we were doing right by our future residents as well as the Reno community at large. When this is completed, this is going to be a jewel in Reno's crown. This is going to be something that Reno is going to be able to point at and say, we've done something good here. We want to give Reno the opportunity to partner with us, and we look forward to hearing your input on the design. Thank you.

Thank you. With that, I'll go into the presentation. Jeff represented the project well with his presentation, so I'll try not to be duplicative. As far as the request, this is an application for rezoning to a specific plan district with NC, our neighborhood commercial, as the base zoning. The intent is to establish a supportive housing use, which I'll discuss as what our vision from a zoning and land use perspective is later in the presentation. With this, we also want to utilize the suburban mixed-use master plan and bring that out through the implementation of a mixed-use component to the site that we hope will provide amenities that is intended to enrich the neighborhood. And then as well as implementing standards that go above and beyond the existing neighborhood and residential compatibility standards to create a, I mean, build upon the sense of community that the foundation is trying to achieve. This is the site. LLR one, two, specific plan district is the intent. The underlying master plan is suburban mixed use, which in The master plan indicates that it goes in places where it's potentially suitable for greater than 30 units per acre. In this case, because of the residential adjacency, we were looking to go for 30 units per acre specifically. It also is located along a neighborhood corridor, which drives our interest to produce a mix of uses, not only for the residents on site but for the surrounding community. This is within the LLR1 zoning designation is non-conforming under that Suburban Mixed Use Master Plan designation. Other conforming districts would be fairly intense for this site with up to 162 units with a maximum density bonus. We're proposing 19, which falls between that 21 and 14. That's 30 units per acre, but it would fall within the allowed residential density of those districts. We are also proposing additional setbacks and reduced or additional residential setbacks from the residential to the south and from the commercial from the west and the north. The building height, we're proposing 35 feet, which is consistent with the neighborhood commercial zone, but within 30 feet of the residential, it drops down to 25 feet. That number was selected because that's the lowest residential height that's existing to the south today. So neighborhood commercial was selected as the base zone because it supports limited residential but also small scale commercial uses to implement that mixed use vision from the master plan. And this change would allow for a greater land use mix that supports neighborhood corridor and master plan policies for this area. Here's a conceptual site plan that demonstrates some of those features. A lot of the building mass will be placed toward the north, away from the residential. Commercial activity will be placed towards the street frontage on Talbot Lane to the east, with circulation routes being devoted to the residential, those existing homes. From a neighborhood compatibility perspective, the handbook implements reduced height close to that residential zone, a landscape buffer, which was already required. But we clarified phasing and specific standards that apply to this property. Commercial development is a distance away from the residential to the Northeast. And then there's operating restrictions on specific uses that would be allowed by right. us the supportive housing land use is not something that currently exists within the reno municipal code it is fairly consistent with other communal housing uses and that's represented through the fact that generates less traffic and parking than other residential uses um The small-scale commercial that is being implemented through this PUD, it not only serves to provide that mixed-use activity for the site, but it also provides on-site employment opportunities for the residents. So it is all tied together with the supportive housing use. We believe it's appropriate for this site and would be a boon for the community. um and i'm uh that concludes my presentation um the as the applicant and uh the greg and my death are available for any questions that concludes our applicant presentation we will now move to disclosures uh from the commission starting on my right commissioner mccoy no disclosures commissioner jockman same commissioner william same

Commissioner Belto, I spoke to County Commissioner Garcia about this project a couple weeks ago.

That now concludes disclosures, and we will go to public comment. Madam Clerk.

Thank you, Chair. We have quite a few public comments this evening, so I'm just going to call them out three at a time. When you're called on, please approach the podium, state your name for the record. You'll have three minutes to speak. We're going to start with David Kenzer, followed by Bill Shrimp, followed by Rebecca Harvey.

And for those of you, if she lists your name second in the order, if you would like, you can queue up in the front.

Hello, my name is David Kenzer. I want to live at the Lighthouse Apartments with my friends. I am excited about living there. I will be more independent, involved with the community, be safe, and can learn new skills. I will have great support there. I would like to get a job there too. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Go to Rebecca Harvey, then Bill Shrimp.

I am Becca Lynn Harvey. I am 26 years old. I am an official ambassador for the Down Syndrome Network of Northern Nevada, also known as the DSNNN. I'm also a member of the DSNNN Self Advocacy Committee, and I am the president of the Lighthouse Friends Club. It is this shirt right here. I like the idea of living independently with my friends and not being with my parents. That's my main favorite thing. I like the option of living at the law house property. I played baseball with Esther and Caroline. I also like going to Brave, which is a restaurant place that I go to Mondays with Carly and sometimes with Sammy. Those are all my best friends I've ever loved. I would love this type of housing for me and my friends. I'm also grateful for Greg and Linda to help build this property for me and my friends. Thank you, and I hope you approve the Lighthouse Living Project. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is Bill Shrimp, followed by Roy Harvey.

Hello, good evening. Mr. Chairman, Mr. McCoy, it's good to see you up there. I'm here in my capacity as the chair of the War II Neighborhood Advisory Board. First time you guys have seen me here, and I don't know when you'll see me again because usually I just give you comments in writing, but this one was worth coming. It's not very often that our room fills up. like this, and you receive exactly zero comments in opposition. Even with what is probably a very active community, very adjacent to them, a residential community, we had one member from that community show up and voice support for this project. Additionally, when the applicant was asked, hey, did you talk to the community? What kind of feedback did you get? They talked about actually reversing the layout of the lot and how it's laid out. Originally, I understand the residential butted up against the existing neighborhood, so they flipped it around so that the residential was next to the business and the school and the parking lot to have less impact on existing homeowners. So really good things there. Very supportive. We had eight people register, over a dozen people give comment. And again, not one person in opposition. So that's the report as the Ward 2 Neighborhood Advisory Chair. On a personal level, this lot was owned by the same family for approximately 60 years, probably before at least some of us were born. And I happened to know one of the people, one of the five people that made the decision to sell the lot and was talking to her shortly after these folks came through the NAB and about the dress rehearsal that the Neighborhood Advisory Board really is. It's a dress rehearsal for this. And giving her feedback and telling her how positive it was and how supportive it was in the room amongst everybody who was there and including the council person there. And she just started crying. because she relayed to me a story of they knew they were putting this parcel, three acres, right next to Ranchera. That is some valuable dirt. And so they got a lot of really good offers. They looked at highest and best, and then they looked at these folks, and here we are. So, you know, on a personal level, you know, from where this started and where it's hopefully going to end up, I hope it keeps getting the good energy and the good momentum. So thank you again for serving tonight, guys. Thank you. Appreciate it, and have a great evening.

Thank you, Joe. Next up, we'll hear from Roy Harvey. Kathy Harvey is in favor but does not wish to speak. And after that, we'll hear Evie Heffey.

Good evening, Commissioners. I'm Roy Harvey. I'm the father of Rebecca, who you heard a few moments ago. I just wanted to share my enthusiasm for this project. It's a dream of mine for the family. It mirrors most of everybody in this room. They're also dreams. When we have our children, we want the world for them, just like everybody in this room who has kids, young kids or grown kids. We want them to have the best life possible when they're the same. We have a saying, it's more alike than different. And we're here to support our kids the best way. And this living community provides that opportunity for them. provides an opportunity where they can have their friends do social events easier than they get now. They have opportunities to work. They have opportunities to feel a part of this community and have meaning in their lives that sometimes it's hard to come by. It also provides safety and security for them and us as family members when we are no longer in the picture. This provides a sustainable living community that will carry them through their entire lives. And we really hope that this community supports it. So far, every comment we get when we share our story and this idea has been exceptionally positive. So it fills our heart with joy. And thank you very much for sharing this moment with us. And we look forward to moving forward on this project. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Good evening commissioners. My name is Evie Hefty and I'm a member of the Lighthouse Friends Club. I'm here tonight because I want to share why Lighthouse Sierra is important to me and why I support the project. For me, having and intentional supportive apartment community will be will be really important step toward becoming more independent I would love to have a place of my own and my schedule and my decisions. I would love to thank Greg and Linda. for thinking of this opportunity. Not just for my soulmate, Sammy, but for me too. Thank you all And come in, ma'am, ma'am, ma'am, ma'am, ma'am. Please help prove this. Thank you.

From Sammy Schaefer, followed by Donna Keats.

Hello. Dear Clouding Commissioner, I am Simon Schaefer. I am 25 years old. I graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno, which is Path to Independence program. That's pretty awesome. And I graduated also from Partridge Search. And I have cerebral palsy and intellectual and developmental disabilities. Living in my house would be a lifesaver for me. It would be a safe place to live, learn, and grow. I would love to live there with my service dog and all my homies. We could help each other and watch movies and make meals and also make new friends. I would feel like it would help me with my independence, too, and I would have more freedom. and having help when needed. This makes me feel proud and more independent, and I would also not feel alone and part of the community, and feel like I belong and thanks my parents.

Thank you.

Donna Keats, followed by Caroline Pedraza, followed by Sandra Emmerman.

Hi, for the record, it's Donna Keats. You've just got to love them. So I'm going to take you back to, we've just got to love them. And what these people are doing is just simply fantastic. Go, guys. But to get back to the planning thing, I am a member of Ward 2. They did come and present to us, and I'm glad Bill was here to tell you how magnificent that was. There was a lot of support, a lot of speakers. The Ranchera neighbors didn't show up in force to say, we don't want this next to us. They've altered their design accordingly. They've taken a lot into consideration and worked really hard. to try to provide services for an underserved community that we desperately need. So from the perspective of what you have to look at to make findings, it seems to me that every single box can be checked and this ought to be a go. So thank you very much.

Caroline Pedraza, followed by Sandra Emmerman, followed by Maria Barber.

Hi, Commissioner. My name is Caroline Pedraza. I would like to tell you about this amazing thing that Linda and Greg are doing for all of us. By me being, having my disability that no one has ever heard of, But with my friends, we have a great opportunity to share our experience with you guys of being independent and not on our own. This project that the Lighthouse is doing is really important to all of us. I also am a member of the Lighthouse Friends and a member of the Reno Optimist Club. And they're all, they're looking forward to seeing us have this project brought to you guys.

Thank you. Sandra Ammerman, followed by Maria Barber, followed by Russ Beig.

Hello, I'm Sandra Ammerman. I have my son Nick with me. He's 26 years old. We've lived here since he was two. He is a member of the Lighthouse Friends Club and enjoys that very much. And all of these young adults here, they've really grown up together in this community. through school and other nonprofit organizations that offer activities for them. And the big question for us as parents is what will happen when we're gone. We need to get them in a secure place where they will be cared for, not cared for, but protected from their vulnerabilities that they have due to their cognitive abilities. So I hope that you will really consider this. In my opinion, it's much like a senior center apartment and it would mean the world to us To have it happen sooner than later so that. We can transition them and make sure that you know it's a good fit for them. Before we're gone. Thank you very much for considering the project.

The barber followed by recipe followed by Nancy Baba. If you are online and would like to make comment, please raise your hand as we are approaching the end of public comment in person.

Hi, good evening. I am Maria Barber, for the record.

I am Lila Barber, and I am part of the...

The Lighthouse Friends. This is Lila, my daughter. She is 20 and she lives with cerebral palsy. It's been a really long day, so pardon my emotion. We were told when Lila was one, I shouldn't have wrote this, I wrote this.

How did you all keep it together?

When Lila was one, we were told she was never gonna walk or talk.

Where are you now?

Well, yes. You go to UNR, to the Path to Independence program.

I'm so proud of you. OK.

Anyway, I'm going to try to rewrite this in my head. She is learning how to be independent in many ways in her life at the moment. And we'd love for that to continue with this community and giving her the ability to live more independently and freely within the community that she's grown up in, born and raised in. I work at UNR in the Nevada Center for Excellence in Disabilities. under the project called the Family Navigation Network. It is my job to educate families, advocates, educators, individuals with disabilities about what we all call transition. Transition consists of all the things necessary to move an individual with a disability from youth to adulthood. One of those is independent living. And when we in Nevada look at what independent living looks like for our kids, there are lots of really large gaps. So this gap for individuals with IDD, which is intellectual developmental disabilities, so it's no longer called mental retardation or handicapped, it's called IDD. So safety is the largest priority. One thing that I educate families on is that 86% of females with IDD are raped, molested, and taken advantage of.

when they live in the community.

This is the piece. By themselves, right, which we all talk about inclusion and we all talk about what, that that's necessary and how important that is and it is. Their lives will be fully inclusive throughout each and every day. Work, movies, gym, all community activities with Ranchara at the Makerspace and that is really important that they can come home and let their hair down and live with their friends. Thank you. Thank you.

Russ Beig, followed by Nancy Podwillis-Baba, followed by Victoria Fong, and Kimiko.

Hi, commissioners. My name is Russ Beig. A lot of what I wanted to say has already been covered tonight, so I won't take a lot of time. Speaking as a parent with a child with disabilities, one of the things you really worry about is what is going to happen when you're gone and you can't care for them anymore. And looking around Reno, that's been a big concern for me and my family because there really hasn't been any place that could accommodate her. So you can imagine how excited we are about this opportunity. Carly would love to live independently. I'm 70 years old. So I'm getting on. And at this point in my life, that's a big concern. So this certainly helps address that for us and for a lot of the families here. It's just really, really important. Right, Carly? I just get emotional. I've been doing a lot of work out at the site with Greg and Linda. I mean, this is just phenomenal, and I hope that you're getting a sense of what this means to this community. Please approve it. Thank you.

Nancy Podwils-Baba. I apologize if I missed your name.

No, you got it pretty close. Hi. Hi. Commissioners, my name is Nancy Potowals-Baba. I live in Ranchera in Reno. And I came to this meeting because I had no idea what was being proposed for that site. We didn't want, you know, some kind of big structure. We didn't want something that we didn't want a data center, even if it would fit in that space. I had no idea. I'm also a clinical social worker by training, and I've worked with people with disabilities. This sounds like a really exciting opportunity We moved to Ranchera from Bird Eye, previously from another part of Reno, because we wanted to be closer to our doctors and wanted to be closer to cultural opportunities. There are a lot of very convenient medical facilities across the street from where they're talking about being, which I find very helpful. I think it's an opportunity for them to have hopefully independence as well as a a safe place to be, and for people in Rancheria to realize that whatever preconceptions they had about people with disabilities may not be true. We need to embrace everyone to be part of this community and to make it strong. And I can register you to vote. I feel ready to start if you're interested. Thank you very much.

Victoria Fong and Kimiko Chung, followed by Danielle Dolan online.

Hi, I am Kimiko, and this is my daughter, Victoria.

Hi there. But I could really go by Via. Sorry, hold on. Okay, so here's what we wanted to say before we just do our own thing that's going to happen in the future. Well, for me, living in the lighthouse project and it got me included and all of that would make me more independent and having like an apartment here definitely has to have me more independent than ever. But then all of a sudden, there's a lot of silly things going on, like there's changes and other hippy-dippy crap going on.

Why don't you tell them why you like this opportunity?

Well, the thing is, what I like about What I like about this opportunity is that it got me excited to live independently with my friends and everybody here in the community. And as somebody with autism myself, I've always got to get out there and not be stuck in my shell forever. Okay.

So, Victoria was born just down the street at St. Mary's, so she's been born and raised here. Victoria was diagnosed with autism. She was nonverbal, but now she speaks beautifully. She's kind of nervous. you know, gone through elementary, junior high, and high school here, and she participated in the Path to Independence program at UNR, and she also has lived in the dorms for a year. And when she came back home after living in the dorms, she's like, Mom, I want to move out and have my own apartment.

Exactly. Because...

So... So... This opportunity and this project is, I believe, such a contribution to Reno. We don't have anything like it. We want our children to stay in the community that they've been born and raised in. They have a lot to contribute. They are excited. They want to be part of the community. They want some of them work. They go to college. She's currently going to Truckee Meadows, TMCC. And I just want to say that Lighthouse really would set the example of what an integrative society living is. it would show the best in humanity and that we are accepting of individuals that are different from ourselves who have disabilities but can contribute. So thank you.

Thank you.

We'll go online to Danielle Dolan. Danielle, when prompted, just unmute your mic and state your name for the record.

Hi, my name is Danielle Dolan. I am a new member of the Ward 2 NAB and my first official role had this come before us. I have my comments submitted already in documents that you guys have with you. I wanted to just point out one thing that came to mind over and over when being presented with this project was that it is exceedingly thoughtful. And I want to congratulate the team that put it together for what they had done. And so as a NAB member, I wanted that comment registered. But as a community member, I wanted to just congratulate all of them and let them know that this is exactly what this process is supposed to be able to produce. So thank you.

With that, we do not have anyone else registered for public comment under this item.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. I think this is the most emotion I've felt on any item since I joined this commission. It's great to see. Does anyone have any requests to speak in chambers at this time? This is a great opportunity to speak publicly. If you're nervous, go ahead and raise your hand now. It's your last chance to speak on this item. Okay, okay, please.

Please state your name for the record. Because everybody here has already said how we feel, OK? This is Tanner, possibly a future mayor of Reno, OK? And what cooler place to live than at that community, OK? And it's just about giving them the freedom and the chance to be with each other. all the time because right now we all sign up for as many activities as we can for our kids so that they can be together. And if they're in a community together, They can do things when they want to, hang out with each other when they want to. Hopefully there is some continued education opportunities there for them. That's it. And I'm getting nervous.

Good job. Andrew, would you like to say anything?

Do you have something you want to say? Oh, he wants to talk. Hi, guys. Hi. How are you? Anyone else? Seeing no hands raised in chambers, we will now close public comment and move to questions from the commission.

I've got one.

Thank you, Chair.

Commissioner McCoy.

Go ahead.

Commissioner McCoy, for the record, I want to commend everybody in the room tonight, and I really appreciate you hanging out and waiting through the first project to get to yours. It's not easy to sit and wait your turn for anybody, especially in these meetings, and so I really do appreciate and respect that. Having been promoted, if you will, from the Ward 2 NAB, I'd also like to say that Ward two is obviously the best nab and I really appreciate having so much representation Because that's that's you know, just so so important to what we do here on the Commission. I Think this is an amazing project. I've got personal, you know connections to family members with IDD and and Nothing I heard tonight came as a shock to me. These are all things that are known. So I'm just amazed at this project. I did watch the NAB presentation on this and I can tell you that it is totally different to hear it in person. And so I really commend you for coming in because it is so different to hear your stories in person. And it's... i don't know i'm kind of losing words but i i'm getting the feels tonight and uh as chair said this is the probably the best presentation any public hearing i've ever experienced so well done to everybody here i don't want to lose sight and this is just because it came up um believe it during the NAB question that this is an SBD handbook so I do have a question maybe for for staff just to just to make sure the record is clear because I don't want anything to come in the way of this but because we're approving an SBD the basis for finding for it just it i want to get it clear that what we're making the finding on here isn't this project that nobody has a basis for right it's my understanding that the spd will run with the land and so whatever the finding is that we're going to make has to apply to any potential project is that right or am i is the project enough alone So, and I'll, if I can make it easy for you, the finding of the staff report specifically that we're looking at here is finding four of section 18.08.304E. Handbook addresses a unique situation, provides substantial benefit to the city. This project does all these things, in my mind. I guess what I'm looking for, just to clarify. And I think you did it through brevity, just trying to get through the project quickly. So I just wanted to make sure we go back so you have the opportunity to just spell out, this is why this project. And I don't want to put words in your mouth. I can do it, but I just want to make sure the record's clear.

So Jeff Foster, associate planner for the record. So you're asking about the bottom, the last one at the bottom, correct, in the table? Yeah.

Yes, that's correct.

Okay. Yeah, so the whole intent of an SPD is that it does address a unique situation, it provides a substantial benefit, and I think that's been abundantly clear, made abundantly clear tonight what the benefit is, or that it incorporates, and or that it incorporates an innovative design layout or configuration. And I think the SPD handbook that runs with the land and is the official zoning for this parcel if it is approved tonight and ultimately at the city council. checks all three of those boxes. It's a unique situation in that the supportive housing use is not in code currently. And so we're officially establishing that use through the SBD handbook. It provides a substantial benefit, again, that we've seen here tonight. And that the overall design and layout of the land use plan combines the transitional facility for the supportive housing, the mixed use development that allows uh neighborhood supportive uh amenities um for the the overall neighborhood but also as a place for um the folks with idd to work at potentially um so that it's that combination of uses and layout uh and um and the new use the supportive housing that's not in code that the overall SPD handbook allows all of that to be wrapped up and runs with the land for this parcel.

Is that? Thank you. Thank you very much, appreciate that. That's the only question I had, Chair.

I got one. Jeff, for you. The 30 space entitlement for parking. Is there, what mechanism is it that we're holding for that? Because I think by math it requires 90, right, in this space, which obviously that can't hold. Is this a, when we approve this, that entitlement for parking is gonna continue with this district forever, correct? Correct. Okay, so is there anything, like what mechanisms is there Annual reporting, is it a deed restriction that would just continue, or is this just going to, if Lighthouse doesn't come to fruition, which I pray it doesn't, this now stays with that forever. But it might not always come with this permanent shared transportation service disclaimer, right?

So, Commissioner Williams, I want to make sure I understand. So you're saying that if, maybe the whole supportive housing concept goes away and instead is replaced by something else. So the parking, and Carter, I don't know if you want to speak to this as well, but the parking is, the 30 spaces, the one per three, is predicated upon the supportive housing use, right? Yes. So other uses that could, in theory, be developed in place of the supportive housing use would require, would default back to NC zoning standards in terms of the parking and those kinds of things. So. Okay.

I was gonna call him up anyways, because it's been a while. Yeah, I knew it.

Carter Williams, for the record. The other thing, too, with that supportive housing use is if they fall with any use, any user comes into that category, the shared transportation element is a required element of the code. So they have to meet it in order to get the reduced parking.

Okay, that's exactly what I need to hear. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff.

Any other, do you have one, Art?

Yeah, for Carter, since I was gonna call him up anyways. It's completely irrelevant, but what's, based upon your applicant and the relationship, can you just tell us what the timeline is for this?

I might actually bring the applicant up there, because I know the phasing, but you might have the timing of development. Timeline.

Come on up real quick.

So... The timeline going forward, assuming that we are able to obtain the proper zoning for the parcel, we would start the process of pursuing different funding options. We have roughly half of the funding already in place, and we will be looking for the private public partnerships that make these sorts of projects go we've been in contact with the appropriate people within our community that help facilitate this and we're really kind of being held up right now on the zoning side it's hard to go get funding when you don't have it zoned properly got it

If you had a hope if past Sony are we talking 2829? Just curious.

I want to leave with some information question is we hope to break ground within 18 months. We hope to be operational within three years.

Great.

Thank you so much. That's it in a nutshell, OK?

Thanks, Carl. That's all I have for you. Good to see you.

Do we have any other questions from the Commission? If not, we will move to deliberation. Commissioner Valto.

Oh, no, no questions, but I'm happy to get started deliberation.

Go ahead.

Sorry, one second. I just got my headphones in. Can you hear me now?

Yes, sir.

Okay, great. It is not often that we get a room full of support for a project. I love this project. I'm so thankful it's happening in Reno. I really wish I could have been there in person tonight, but I'm also glad I'm on Zoom because I was falling apart at portions during the public comment. You know, one thing I want to just point out is there's a lot of really good parents in this room. My brother has cerebral palsy and his whole life my parents have been loving and supportive. So just seeing the support in this room is awesome. So I just really thank you all.

Commissioner Jochum and I'll say something next so yeah second everything that Commissioner Valto said this is the most emotion I've felt on any item and we have a lot of impassioned speakers come into these into these chambers One thing that as you proceed in your process, one thing that we have, one tool that we have at our disposal with these type of applications are we can add or remove conditions. And so when you're in communication with staff, sometimes if there's something that's difficult that you're dealing with in your process, in your development process that is coming up, Personally, I want to see this actually be built, right? And we get a lot of applications that sometimes see too many conditions or other constraints that make your project not come to light. So we have the ability to help with that. Sometimes when staff, you know, they may push back or be rigid in their interpretation of what it is that you have to do, particularly on the parking one, they'll look at multifamily. I can instantly see this is not necessary to have that many parking stalls and the fewer parking stalls that are required, the greater project that you'll have. And I can just see that right away. So as you advance to city council, work with your uh with mr williams he's very knowledgeable in this space and um if there's any conditions you think are worth adding or you know there's one i'd probably not worth removing but take some time to think about that so that it can benefit your project so that this thing actually comes to fruition that's all i'll say

Lastly, for me, I just think this is a perfect use of the SPD tool, and I'm pretty impressed by how that came to fruition between these two organizations. So just super pumped. With a full heart, I would kick off a motion. Please proceed. Can we get the motion up for me? Oh, I got it right here, Kelly. Commissioner Williams, for the record, based on the compliance with the applicable findings, I move to recommend that the City Council approve the zoning map amendment by ordinance... Commissioner Williams, can you just confirm the case number? I'll start over again. Commissioner Williams, for the record, in regards to case number LDC26-00108, Lighthouse Sierra SPD, based on the compliance with the applicable findings, I move to recommend that the City Council approve the zoning map amendment by ordinance subject to condition one.

Commissioner McCoy, I second and third and fourth the motion.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, motion carries unanimously. Congratulations. Congratulations. you go in front of city council make sure they take a photo with you so thank you that concludes this item we're a lot less fun to take i feel like you have to stay in chambers it's perfectly fine to leave we'll wait for a minute while folks clear out

We're doing a photo, okay.

That's about better right now.

All right.

Get in, everybody. Tune in a little bit, please.

Alright. Can you get us all in?

All right, are we ready? All right, here we go. Oh, oh, still rearranging. All right, good job. Thank you. Thank you! Oh my god. Unbelievable.

Alright, you ready? Yeah. Come on! Oh, yeah. um yes

Do you know that Yeah, I need some of that up here.

okay we have staff in position i think we can continue we never did a recess apologies for that the next item is item c2 this is a staff report for possible action case number ldc26-00106 Tumwa, Santerra, Quillacy II water storage tanks. For this item, we will begin with a presentation from Mr. Foster.

All right. So just as a note, on these consent agenda items, we are setting them up for abbreviated presentations. So You are correct, Commissioner McCoy, that I was going through that last one even faster than normal just because of the amount of time. But these presentations, you're not going to be seeing a typical full presentation like we would normally do if it was not on the consent agenda. But anyway, just a little bit of context. So this is a 4.23 acre site that is a portion of an overall 243 or so acre parcel. It's currently undeveloped. The request is of course as listed on the screen a major site plan review for hillside development grading with cuts and fills greater than 20 feet and 10 feet respectively grading within the parks greenways and open space zone and non-residential development adjacent to residential zoning. You can see that the current the surrounding land uses are none. They're undeveloped currently being graded and developed for residential. The key issues that staff analyzed were project design and hillside development and grading. Master plan land use, PGOS, and single family neighborhood. Six goals and policies that are in support of the proposed request. The zoning district is PGOS and single family nine units per acre. Here are the recommended findings for a major site plan review. Staff can make all recommended findings. Here's the recommended motion. And I know that this item was pulled to address the public comment that was submitted today, I believe in large part. So be prepared to answer the particulars on that. But that's where I'm gonna leave it at this point in time.

Thank you, Mr. Foster. I believe we do not have an applicant presentation, but they are available for questions. We do have one. Okay, please proceed.

Good evening. For the record, Dave Snellgrove, planning manager with Bowman Consulting Group. With me in the audience tonight is Michael Friend, who's project manager with Tumwa, and also Austin Collar, who is project engineer, who's been working on this project. They're here to answer any of the technical questions that you may end up having. I can go up to a point, and then I Then I say, okay, that one's on to you. Jeff, for doing an abbreviated presentation, covered quite a few things. We do have major site plan review for multiple items. Grading, and that's also grading, that's grading for cuts and fills, that's grading within the PGOS area, hillside development, and then residential adjacency, and I'll go through each of those. What this provides for is a replacement tank site from what was previously approved as part of the Sunterra Quill C subdivision, the tentative map approval. I'll go through what, why, and where that is as we move through the presentation. This is a very small portion of an overall larger property of 243 plus or minus acres. We're disturbing about 4.23 acres of it. Properties at the south end of the Quillacy Ranch area. I don't think there's any I think that's really good. Within the overall subdivision, there were three tank sites approved. The one at the south end in the blue circle is the one where it was determined that the road grade going up there, if you were just to follow the existing road, the existing road's at 14%. Tummo has a requirement. They can't have a road over 10%. That cuts across a very deep side slope. In order to get a 10% road, you're gonna have to zigzag up the hill, which would create a lot of grading. And this site, it became, it was determined that the other site was infeasible, and they needed to find a new location. That's when Tom was stepped up and said, this is our facility to serve this. So they came forward with the application in relocating the tank site. This basically shows where it is approved in the orange. The green area is where it is proposed currently. It's approximately 1,200 lineal feet of different distance between the two. They stay on the same elevation, because with water tanks you do have to get elevation to get the appropriate pressure. So this site met, and it's The roadway's not as long. The grading impacts, while things weren't really shown in full with that orange road, that was going to need to be modified quite a bit, and there would have been a lot of grading in association with it. So these are some photos of the site. One of the reasons that this was chosen, there was some scarring that had already been done in the site. You can see up on the top picture that there is a serpentine road going up. And the proposed tank site, while it's not been graded out to the full extent to where The tanks can be put there. There will be more grading. It's necessary We do have additional grading because the roadway width has to be widened out Doesn't follow a perfect alignment, but it is close. So we are working in an area that has had disturbance prior Master plan and zoning Jeff went through that and The site plan, so these darker green areas, those are areas where we're going to have some cut sand or fills going off the site. And a lot of those are going to be rip-wrapped. And the rip-wrap, there was a comment in the letter that was received today, and I'm very appreciative to get that because it lets me know where some of the questions or concerns may be. You know, that exposed rip-wrap rock, which we're all familiar with, the proposal within the application identified that we would be putting material over that and revegetating. We did a baseline vegetation study on the site, so there will be vegetation that comes back that matches in with the surroundings. So over time, this won't appear as riprap. So that was one of the concerns that came out of the letter that, letter or email that you received today. The reason that we're where we have a residential adjacency issue, is grading is considered development. And we are within 300 feet with grading in association with the roadway. The actual tank site itself is over 475 feet away from the residentially zoned property of SF9 to the north. But the grading actually does go, and the roadway access will go into the SF9 area. So that's why we had the residential adjacency issue. The tank appearance. We've worked on a couple tanks, or a few tanks with Tomah over time, and they've had some different colors, but they're, one of these colors that they're selecting is Olivine Green, which that is one of the existing tanks on the site. That's the tank that's over farthest to the eastern side of the Sunterra-Coalesce subdivision. From this location, where the proposed tank site would be, so you can associate what color that is up on the hillside. It'll be well removed down to the south. This is a close up and a view of the olive green. Because water tanks, pump stations, things like that fall under the Department of Homeland Security requirements, there are fencing requirements. So we've got an eight foot tall fence. We've got barbed wire on the outside. This is considered to be critical infrastructure. We do have a request in for cuts and fills. The green areas are areas of fills that exceed 10 feet or more, and the red areas are areas that exceed 20 feet or more of cut. Those are the two thresholds within the City of Reno zoning ordinance. The areas are relatively small, 1600 square feet is associated with the cut of 20 feet or more, and we've got a little over 10,000 that's associated with fill in excess of code, typical allowances. The slope map, now we do hit hillside ordinance. If you had a few projects here tonight with hillside ordinance and slope analysis maps, one of the things that actually is positive about a tank site, you do want and you need elevation. So if you look around at many of the tanks around the area, you can look at the topography that they're generally in and it tends not to be the flattest property on earth. So the fact that we have a high percentage of 30% or steeper on this site is not surprising. It's actually beneficial because it allows us to get the tank closer to where the service area is, which is a positive while still obtaining that elevational gain. Jeff went through the legal findings. There's different aspects. We did take a look at this project and in the application we covered it and reviewed it under the Mortenson Garrison Overlay District, the MGAD, part of the review findings are in association with that. We believe that all aspects of the findings can be made, additionally grading within the PGOS area. I will point out one of the comments that came up In the letter today, the email was that, you know, this is a PGOS area that's supposed to be left as open space. Keep in mind, again, that we're replacing a tank. Can I switch over to the overhead? We are replacing this tank in the purple line here with the tank in the green line. And I'll supply a copy of this. I mentioned before that the slopes, generally, in the area that we're working now are actually better than the slopes were in the other one. And that roadway going up is just not going to be suitable to meet some of the standards. goes in a little bit closer. You can see the steepness of the slopes here. I measured that off of Washoe County GIS and did a slope calc on it, and generally speaking, it's about 45% plus or minus slopes there. It's over 30. We have a lot of areas that are over 30, but going from top to bottom, On the site that we're proposing right now, it's plus or minus 25% slope. So we do have a better area with which to work. We have the opportunity for a safer road. You are gonna have to incorporate some switchbacks into that purple road that was previously approved with the tentative map. And I do wanna point out very clearly that in 1802-603-C6E. This is protected open space as part of the MGOT overlay district. Identifies permitted uses, and one of those identified permitted uses, installation, maintenance, and operation of typical utilities. So we are allowed use within this area. I know that came up as part of the email that was received. With that, I'll close my comments. If there's any questions that you have for Michael, Austin, or myself, we will be happy to answer those.

Okay, that concludes the applicant presentation. I believe we already did disclosures. Okay, yep. So now we'll move to public comment.

Yes, I have one registered in person from Donna Keats.

Hi. For the record, Donna Keats. Thank you for your presentation and your patience for after having gotten axed to getting out early. Okay, so I have technical concerns about this when I reviewed it. I don't have fundamental objections to their moving their road, although it's confounding to me why you couldn't look at the topo map in the first place and figure out that you couldn't do that first road, but here we are. So I have some questions. I'm a geologist, hydrogeologist, work for engineering companies, about a 45 career at this. So when I looked at this information and I looked at their geotechnical borings, and I looked at what they're saying the rocks are and I looked at what the geologic maps are and the locations of earthquakes and how wide the faults are on the quaternary fault maps and how that doesn't mean anything about where they really are on the ground. I'm deeply suspicious that they're actually building on or right adjacent to a fault zone on their tank area. I have technical reasons for making that statement, not enough time to educate you about that. nor do I have the props, but that makes me wonder, since there's some earthquakes historically that have happened anywhere from a one to a 5.0 magnitude over time on these older faults, not too far away from the tanks, makes me wonder what's gonna happen if there is movement on a structure and the tank fails. What does 400,000 gallons times two look like coming down that that flow to me it looks like a neighborhood gets wiped out by the water tanks I don't know about the engineering medication or whatever. They're talking about building on top of a landslide area. That's of great concern to me. Some parts of the application refer to it as shallow, which means it's excavatable. All of that's put on the contractor. There's no reference to geotechs being on site to verify that, anything like that. Just the contractor's going to move that rock. But based on what their borehole logs said, I think they've got a lot more to move than they think until they hit the stable part of the slope. So I personally am not entirely happy with most of the geotechnical work coming from 2020 and not applying to this project that they're currently, this moved area. I'm going to look at the location and distribution of the boreholes in the trenches. And the most recent work was done in 2024. It was not a lot. And there were only two holes up in the tank area. And reading those logs and having done these borings myself a thousand times, I'm deeply suspicious about there being a structure on or adjacent that could create problems. So I don't think there's a geotechnical background to justify this at this moment. And this is all future speak solutions. Contractor will move the landslide materials. Great. But they came up there. Oh, are they going to come down again? We know what landslides look like. okay so we'll stabilize the area but hey what about up there so question in my mind they don't have those problems on the other side so i think some of that stuff needs to be addressed before it makes sense to approve this and i don't think saying we'll deal with it in the construction phase isn't is an appropriate answer because then you have no other choice and you're going to get what you get thank you very much we do not have any additional public comment registered for this item

Do we have any requests to speak in chambers at this time? If so, please raise your hand. Seeing none, we will now close public comment and move to questions from the commission.

Commissioner Williams for Mr. Foster.

Commissioner Williams, do not ask me to speak about geotechnical issues. I am not going to do such thing. I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn last night.

It would not be appropriate. Can you lightly inform the Commission on why this was put on the consent agenda?

So it was put on the consent agenda because there are certain application types that automatically cannot be on the consent agenda, i.e. a zone change. So the Lighthouse one, for example, had to be heard. And if something is not controversial, and seems pretty straightforward as this request does to city staff, it was a good candidate for being on the consent agenda. We had no controversy, no public comment until the 11th hour today.

If I may interject on that too, I don't want staff to have to own this. I provided the direction to staff to consider looking at a consent agenda as a result of discussions that I had with the former chair of the San Francisco Planning Commission. as it is very commonplace to have these in many other jurisdictions that's largely outside the scope of this item so i plan to detail that further when we get to future agenda items but but i don't want staff to have to defend that position because i did provide that direction

Yeah, I understand that. I was just from staff's position, the history of this, we're just talking about changing locations. Does... Mike, did you want to say something else?

I was just going to say, generally speaking, if we receive any... Public comment that is not in support in other words against the project or for example If there's negative comments that come from the nab or significant discussion in the nab this would not go on a consent agenda We had as Jeff mentioned received absolutely no public correspondence whatsoever until this afternoon on this project

Awesome, thank you. Does anybody want to not talk about geotechnical, but talk about what happens with water tanks that are in vast supply in our Reno area when earthquakes happen? Does anybody want to touch that? That does sound like a geotech question. Where I live is surrounded by big tanks and we have lots of earthquakes and so I'm sure this is something that you guys have done in the past and probably have a decent idea of how this all relates.

Yeah, Mike Friend with Tumwa. Yeah, we have almost over 100 tanks in our system, and a lot of them are elevated. I think some of our tanks are over 60 to 70 years old. and have been through a lot of these earthquakes. Some of them have been up on the hills. We haven't seen any settlement or anything from our tanks. And for these new tanks, they will actually fall under new D-100 standards. A lot of our older tanks didn't build under that. So these newer tanks actually get seismic retrofitting. And we actually go around retrofitting other tanks that were built in the 60s, didn't have those type of standards now, and so we bring them up to those standards, which would hold the tank better in place in case a large earthquake does happen. Even in an instance, a lot of the tanks would hold together. We haven't seen a tank failure in this area ever, but in other areas that might have seen it, the tanks don't fall apart. They may start to leak a little bit. And then that's when we would drain them and then go and repair them. So the standards really do prevent them from a catastrophic failure. But we have not seen any in our system, to the best of my knowledge, of any kind of even leaks or anything after our guys inspect these things once a week. So we would know immediately if something were to happen.

Interesting. Okay. That satisfies my question. Thank you so much.

Commissioner McCoy, for the record, someone might want to come back up. I just wanted to follow up on that question about, just to make it clear, we're not moving old style. Are we talking new tanks that are going to meet those new standards that you're talking about?

Yes, that's correct. There's no existing tanks up there. These are brand new tanks, and they're going to fall under. This area is in a seismic condition. There's different areas of seismic, and this does fall in the higher seismic area, so this is going to be one of our newer tanks that will have that seismic retrofitting. And not a lot of our other tanks have these, so we are taking the extra precaution to make sure that these tanks are properly designed and in the right area.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Chair, if I may, one more question. I am not a geotechnical expert, and I don't even play one on TV, and I don't know if anybody here can kind of address some of that. But generally speaking, my question is just this. We had it raised in comments about there being two borings, kind of checking, I guess, the groundwork out, you know, maybe a couple years ago. Can staff or can somebody talk to me about why that's enough? in this process today, and what happens if, I'm assuming there's gonna be more work done, and what happens to the project down the road if more borings are done, if you find some other issues, what happens at that point?

Yes, we've actually kind of addressed that already. We had CME, which is a geotech firm, come out, because we had these concerns with the fill and designing mostly the walls up there. and making sure, because they are going to blast and move past that. So we had CME just this past, in the past three to four months, go up there and they performed a study. They did several more boranes, and that's what we based the most recent design off of. And if it would have come back and said, this isn't workable, we would have moved it to a different site or told Toll that we can't have it here. But with their recommendation, they have recommended to have the walls to be built. We do have to go with more stringent walls than what we're used to, probably soil nail walls, which are expensive, but they're more robust. And I don't know if you want to talk anything more about the geotech. You might know a little bit more about it. But we did spend significantly more time and effort to go back up there. I mean, they were just up there a few months ago with the more borings and everything, and we just got the report probably three, four weeks ago.

Austin Collard, for the record. I'll just say with those borings that were done over the past, the earth doesn't change enough in that time frame, and what we do is create a surface based on that material that's there, and we... With those borings, we can determine a rough area. There will be adequate details in the plans to have the contractor confirm the material, if it is that landslide material or what have you. But we create a surface that we can then identify how much needs to be excavated and then replace with structural fill.

Okay.

Thank you.

Michael Friend, I'd also like just to add, because I did hear about the comment about just the contractor going up there. TUMWA is kind of unique in that we have our own inspectors and our own construction engineers, and they will be up there full-time. And TUMWA also takes on the, and Toll reimbursed us for this, that we have our own independent third-party inspector up there for materials testing, which would likely be a CME or anything. We haven't hired that out, but So we have our kind of independent watching over the contractors and that's reports to tell more that doesn't report to toll or report to the contractor themselves. So it's kind of a backup, if you would say.

Commissioner Jockerman, I guess. And yeah, I don't fully understand these as well. But the I think what I'm hearing is that. are am i correct in understanding that the what we should be reviewing in this application is different in scope than what you tamwa will review when you sign off on the water tank and you'll be looking at that or no uh if i understand right i mean we we are we're currently overseeing the design right now ourselves with our consultant loomis and then we'll oversee the construction

Ourselves and we buy off on every part of it and review internally Okay, thank you does that make sense Or did I hear right?

Yeah, I yeah That that answers my question

If I can provide maybe a little more clarification, what you're reviewing tonight is the proposed grading and the grading impacts that will have to be proven out through the geotechnical studies and whatnot. So you're not necessarily approving the geotechnical analysis tonight. You're approving the grading design.

Thank you. Okay. That's helpful. I appreciate that. I get a little confused because you know, Tom was the applicant here, but you're also an agency with author authority, and so I'm trying to understand that where the things fall. Do we have any other questions from the Commission? Hearing none, we will move to deliberation and attend or entertain a motion should one be made.

Commissioner Williams, happy to make a motion. In the case of LDC 26-00106, based on the compliance with the applicable findings, I recommend the Planning Commission approve the major site plan review subject to conditions, and I can make all the findings.

Commissioner Valto, second.

We have a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, motion carries unanimously 4-0. That concludes item C2. We will now move on to item E, business items. Mr. Raley.

Nothing this evening, Mr. Chair.

Okay, item F, Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Liaison Report.

Mr. Chair, there isn't a report today because I think the commissioner in attendance had resigned. And so if we can defer to the next regional, we can do maybe a combo.

Sounds good. And I believe our next meeting will be on August 27th. That's next week. Unless I'm mistaken, that'll be held at the RTC. That concludes our Truckee Meadows Regional Planning Liaison Report. Now moving to item G, future agenda items. This is for discussion. Commissioner McCoy.

Thank you, Chair. Commissioner McCoy, for the record. Yes, I would love to place for a future agenda item the consent agenda. I think we've had a lot of discussion a little bit about that tonight. This is kind of something that's fairly new. I am fairly new to this board, so I don't even know where it came from or how it generated, but I do think it's worthy of a future agenda discussion so that we can talk about what it should look like, what it should not look like, and how we would go about changing it. I don't know if it's a bylaw situation or what, but I do think we would definitely benefit from having a full-throated discussion on that topic.

Mr. Chair, if I can piggyback onto that, our agenda management team is working on a future agenda item that I think will encompass that. So if we could maybe get Callie or Tyler to elaborate on that.

Yes, thank you, Mike.

Sure, Madam Clark, please.

Yes, we are planning on bringing an item next meeting to review the Planning Commission bylaws. So I think that's an appropriate time to look at the consent agenda. I'm not sure if it should be a separate item, the consent agenda and the bylaws, because ultimately the consent agenda should be in there. the way that we were planning on structuring it is Putting it on the agenda as commissioners. You can review the bylaws beforehand They're available online on the Planning Commission page at Reno go forward slash boards under the documents tab So like I said, you'll see that when the agenda is posted next week but I would recommend looking through those bylaws and I think they were adopted in 2023. So think about what changes you'd like to see. We have some administrative changes that we'll bring forward next meeting as well, but we can have that initial meeting. And then if you direct staff to move forward with making amendments to the bylaws, we'll come back with a new version. You can review them. And if you approve them at that meeting, we'll take them to city council for adoption by the council as well.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. So it sounds like there's an appetite to explore changes to the bylaws. There have been various questions raised as it pertains to bylaws. Obviously, this is one of them, and I share that concern, so I'll just own the process as to how this came to be. I provided that direction to staff that they look at a consent agenda item, Obviously, there's been a budget crunch in the past year, so I've been looking for ways to make the meetings less cumbersome on staff. And that's the process behind it. The former chair of the San Francisco Planning Commission gave me the suggestion that we use a consent agenda like many other places, as it's commonplace. And so we're a little bit behind the times. She kind of made fun of the fact that we don't. And that said, I think it would be very appropriate to have the bylaws govern what goes under a consent agenda. And so I strongly agree with Commissioner McCoy that we should undertake that process, perhaps as a whole review of the bylaws.

Mr. Chair, can I confirm with Madam Clerk? At the next meeting when we are going to review the bylaws, are you looking for our comments or proposed changes in just those segments that you wanna like to see or as a whole document?

We would be looking for any potential changes you would want to see ultimately those would have to be approved by the body in a in a motion to You know get those to City Council but anything I think among the board when we get to that item you can discuss it anything that you You know that you think of there are certain like I said administrative changes I think in the bylaws it might be City of Reno Planning Commission, but we've kind of adopted Reno City Planning Commission so yes you'd be welcome to bring anything out even outside of what we're talking about right now wonderful thank you i do have one question commissioner valto yes

It would be possible to get a copy of the bylaws email to us. I just tried to find it on the website and I tried the other day and I know I've seen them in the past, but I couldn't find them.

Yes. I'll email them out just for point of information. The Reno planning commission pages and all of our other boarding commission pages have moved over to our boarding commission hub, which is reno.gov forward slash boards. So that's, you won't see anything on the reno.gov website unless it's an older site, but I'll send them out. Yes, thank you.

I have one question as we undertake this process and it may be for legal so. To ensure that we do not that we comply with open meeting law and undertaking this process. If Commissioners have various suggestions for changes to the bylaws, should they be presenting that in written correspondence prior to this next meeting? Should they be making those comments on the record at that meeting? Please inform us of the process so we do not make a misstep.

Yes, Jasmine can correct me, but I think putting them on the record at the meeting is the best way. I think we can follow up with written correspondence if there's a certain way that someone wants it to be written, but I do think they need to be stated on the record at the next meeting and included in the motion.

For the first time, not provided as public comment or anything prior to the meeting?

Yes. Jasmine made it for the record. I believe that you can email your suggestions ahead of time, not copying the other commissioners. They would only go to Callie and Tyler. But in addition to that, you would put them on the record. And that way, whatever she brings forward can incorporate some of the issues that the commissioners have identified.

Okay, so to Callie and Tyler, and perhaps copy legal would be appropriate?

Yeah, you can certainly copy legal. Just don't copy your fellow commissioners.

Understood. So then any members of the commission can provide suggestions to them. So that way in the meeting, I'm just trying to make sure that that meeting occurs in an orderly way where anything that's being discussed is also... clearly on the record going into the meeting, so.

okay thank you for that commissioner yeah i just just from my point as well i think that's the better approach i we may have public comment and i what i don't want to have have happen is we discuss the issue we propose an amendment for the first time at the meeting and vote and move on without the community having an opportunity to digest that so i do think that if we were going to be modifying anything at our next meeting our suggestions really should be a part of the public record going into it that's just my preference i'm not saying that that's what's going to happen but that that would be my preference that it's a part of the public record ahead of time so people are put on notice that the change that we're considering is even something that that they need to worry about i completely agree so i perhaps in the in in that note then we i think we would need to provide any of those comments prior to the uh agenda being posted

and then that way the public will see all the comments that come in from any members of the commission. I'm not sure who to look at here, if it's legal or the clerk. So those are the subject of discussion, and the public can also provide comment on any of those, such that the scope is limited at that time.

Is that an appropriate way?

Commissioner Valto, yeah. Sorry, I don't want to jump in too soon, but why aren't we treating this as we would like a text amendment? Like why doesn't staff come to us with suggestions and then we provide comments and feedback and do it over the course of a few meetings? I'm just concerned about us like me sending an email. It's like, here are the five things I want to change. You know what I mean? I think it might make sense for it to come from the city. Just a thought.

So we're kind of in deliberations here and we're not really following proper structure, but the... Mr.

Chair, can I just quickly address the proposed process? Tyler Shaw, agenda manager for the City of Reno, for the record. So to Commissioner Valto's point, very well taken. That's exactly what we are imagining. So the goal is to bring forward an item at the next Planning Commission meeting initiate a rules amendment. Staff is planning to present some of the administrative changes that we've seen related to the functionality of the meeting. And at that time, we'd be looking for feedback and direction from the commission as a whole about things you would like to see for changes to the bylaws. You can, to City Attorney Mehta's point, you can feel free to email them to Callie and I beforehand if you would like. BUT IF WE PURSUE THIS TO MEETING PROCESS, ANYTHING THAT YOU ALL RECOMMEND AND INCLUDE IN THE MOTION, WE WOULD THEN DRAFT AND BRING FORWARD A RED LINE VERSION TO A FUTURE PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING WHICH WOULD BE NOTICED GIVING MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC AN OPPORTUNITY TO SEE THE PROPOSED FINAL VERSION WELL IN ADVANCE OF IT HEADING TO CITY COUNCIL IN ADVANCE OF YOUR APPROVAL.

Okay, so thank you, Commissioner Valto, for pointing out that typical process. So legal, it sounds like there's no objections there to the process that was just outlined as to how we would undertake this, two meetings, to first state any proposed changes on the record at that first meeting and follow up after that.

No, there's no objections to that. In fact, Callie had mentioned that, so that's what I... thought that you all were under the impression that we were going to do as well.

I think I derailed that, so my apologies. I think we have an understanding of how the process will proceed.

I'd just like to clarify one thing. Commissioner Williams, for the record, in regards to Commissioner McCoy's suggestion that we submit our thoughts or changes into public comment, I feel like that sets a precedence, because that's not how we operate as a commission. What are our comments are for the public and they're done in a public space so if we're now submitting our thoughts Prior to an agenda item for a public comment that goes in the record I just on future agenda items is that set of precedents that now That these packets that go out and the agenda is that our public comments are going to be expected and so that would be my only challenge to submitting them that way I'm not worried about how they're going to take my comment or my suggested changes. I'm just saying I don't know if I'm completely in line or want to set that precedent or feel like we are going to.

Commissioner McCoy, for the record, let me ease your mind there. My concern was because I thought we were talking about making changes at the next meeting. And so I wanted there to be enough time for the community to see what we're thinking instead of springing it for them at the meeting and making the change at that point. Given that we have a two-meeting process proposed, and that's the idea, I'm... I rescind my preference and suggestion that we submit, you know, anything. I mean, obviously, if you want to do that, great. But I think given we'll have an opportunity to present our ideas and our thoughts on the record at the next meeting and then a vote will happen after that is perfect for me. Great. Perfect.

Thank you to all my legal friends in the room, Commissioner McCoy and legal and Commissioner Valto online. So we will follow that process. Do we have any other requests for future agenda items? Okay, hearing none, we will move to Adam H., public comment.

We have final public comment from Donna Keats.

Hi, Donna Keats for the record. You know how I am, and if I have to sit through a whole meeting, I'm going to go ahead and use the extra time since I'm here. This thing, Commissioner Giacomo, I never say your name right. I appreciate where you're coming from. I don't think we're San Francisco, and I don't think it's prudent to adopt consent agendas for this planning commission at the expense of public process. There are things in our code that require, like CUPs, require a public hearing. You can make your little tiny, these staff presentations for this consent agenda are absolutely unsatisfactory. They have four things listed. I had to go to a lot of places just to find out that Ward 5 NAB members did actually make comments and concerns. You're all talking as if there were none. But I found them when I finally found the NAB comments, which was no easy feat. And I don't believe that it's appropriate to cut the public out. So this two-meeting process, that's how council does it. Commissioner Valto, I appreciate your comment on that, because it's like, wait a minute. Bring it back to home. We have a meeting. They present something. You all talk. We know what you're talking about. Then it comes back. If you don't like the changes the way it comes back, it comes back a third time. And it's all done in the public forum. But this thing about the consent agenda items, now, I want to state publicly, I am not the only person that's concerned about this, that noticed this recently. I'm simply the only one who came to spend the entire night with you guys, because I like you so much. But I'm not the only person. There are other people who are concerned about public process. The city has this thing going on about transparency all over the place. This is supposed to be some big special thing, yet now we're gonna take three things in a consent agenda, say nobody cares about them because they didn't send in a public comment. A lot of people don't, they just come to the meetings. So that's kinda not fair. So now we're gonna take three things just to wipe them out, say, sure, I approve all of them. and cut the public out of the process if they chose to come. Granted, a lot of times people don't show up for things. That's not the point. The point is that we, the public, have to know that we can because it's not transparent to do it that way. I couldn't find staff reports that were meaningful for consent agenda items. How would I know? I had a lot of questions. I wouldn't have approved that road without them telling me they're not building it on a fault, which I'm pretty sure they are. So, I don't know, my comments on the technical side are not useful to you at all, but it gave me an opportunity to get blown off, so that's fine, but don't cut the public out to save a nickel of staff time, okay? There's lots of other ways to do it, and I don't think it's right, don't think it's fair, and I think it sets a bad precedent, and I don't think it's a transparent process, which is all you hear from the city, and so many times it kind of makes me want to just Stop listening as soon as I hear about transparency, because this isn't transparency. And I appreciate your efforts. I'm not being mean or anything. I'm just saying as you go forward, if you're going to do this, people will figure out how to get on your consent agenda. And then we're really not able to speak to a problem. So thank you for listening to me yet again. That's my thoughts on that. Thank you.

We do not have any additional public comment.

Okay. That concludes item H. We will now move to aye, adjournment. Commissioner McCoy, I motion to adjourn.

Commissioner Williams, second.

Motion and second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Meeting adjourned.