City Council - Regular Meeting

Ready? All right. All right. We are here for the Rockland City Council regular meeting, 05/12/2026. We'll begin with a call to order. Roll call.

Good afternoon. Councilmember Janda, absent. Vice Mayor Holden.

Here.

Councilmember Gialdo. Here. Councilmember Broadway. Here. Mayor Bass?

Here. Thank you.

All right. We start with public comment on closed session items only. Do we have any speaker cards?

No speaker cards for this.

Okay. And do we have anybody that is here to speak on the closed session items? Okay. Seeing none. Just before we enter into closed session, I do see that we have a number of people here already. We will start our general session at six p. M. I did want to let everyone know we have about five presentations, so this place might get pretty filled. So we're going to try and do our best to coordinate the number of people that are in here. But I just want to let everybody know.

And I appreciate everyone here that's early. We will now enter into closed session. We will be speaking on CS1, which is pursuant to government code section 54,957.6, conference with labor negotiators, agency designated representatives, mayor Bass, unrepresented employee city manager. CS2 pursuant to government code section 54,957.6, conference with labor negotiators, agency designated representatives, mayor Bass, unrepresented employee city attorney. Madam Clerk, are you ready?

Okay. Oh, I can't believe I'm using this. All right. Welcome, everyone, to the city council regular meeting. We have, left closed session, and for tonight, there is nothing to report out.

We are now calling the general session to order. We will start with the pledge of allegiance if you all join me. That was the best pledge of allegiance I've ever heard in

here. Alright.

We're gonna start with agenda review. Anyone? No? No? Okay. The next we're going to move on to citizens addressing the city council. For tonight, the city council will be implementing a two minute rule for anyone that is addressing the city council for this portion. This is an opportunity for the public to comment on matters not listed on the agenda. Public comment on items listed on the agenda will be taken when the agenda item is called. For anybody that is addressing the council on these types of issues, I have to let you know that it's really a one way discussion.

You talk to us and we can listen. We may be able to direct staff to address an issue that's been brought up, but we cannot converse because it is not an agendized item. Do we have any speaker cards when it comes to items not on the agenda for citizens addressing council?

:Mayor Bass, we do have one common card for general public comment from Aria Prakash. :Okay.

Good evening, esteemed mayor, vice mayor, and council members. Namaste. My name is Ari Prakash, and I'm a volunteer with the Hindu Swim Sevaksong HSS, and I'm here to invite you to an event. Hindu Swim Sevaksong USA would like to explore the opportunity to introduce our initiative, Hindu Education Foundation, also known as HEF, to collaborate with the educators in schools. And today, I'm here to speak all of the respected city council members' presence with your family for a heartfelt celebration, Guru Vandana program, on the occasion of Teacher Appreciation Day.

What is Guru Vandana? We're all aware about the profound impact that teachers have on the lives of their student. Their dedication, hard work, and passion for teaching play an invaluable role in shaping the future generation. This event is our way of expressing gratitude to educators for their invaluable role in shaping the future generations. In Hindu tradition, Guru Vandana, meaning salutations to the teacher, honors the deep respect and reverence for teachers.

HEF has been conducting this conducting Guru Bandhana teacher patient appreciation event program to honor teachers in the local area for over years, honoring thousands of teachers. In 2025 alone, 2,000 teachers and many civic officials attended Guru Vandana across a 150 programs held throughout The USA. When, what, and where. The event is hosted at the Ruleka Elementary School multipurpose room in Rockland on Sunday, May 17 from 2PM to 4PM. It's followed by tea and very delicious snacks.

The program features cultural performances by students and a short presentation on Hindu traditions and a special teacher facilitation ceremony. It's a wonderful opportunity to engage with local Hindu community and experience this beautiful tradition. We're hoping that you can take some time out of your busy schedule and be a part of this wonderful initiative. Namaste and thank you.

Thank you. All right. And so this is the probably worst time for me to make this comment because that was great and I appreciate it. But I'm gonna have to say it. So one of the things in City Council is we ask that everyone just allow a speaker to speak and then let them sit down without cheering or obviously the thing we're really trying to avoid is booing, which I dare any of you to have booed at that.

Not just a decorum issue. As we get on in the evening tonight, I'm going to probably reiterate it again. That's simply because we want people to come up and speak and then be able to go back down. It allows us to control point point the we're going get to wonderful presentation but I want to be consistent regardless where whether we're it's a joyful or something else that we're expressing that level of respect. But I do appreciate everybody.

Do we have anybody else that would like to address city council on an issue that is not on the agenda? And this time we will be implementing the two minute rule. Seeing none. Alright. We will now move on to reports from city council and the city manager. I will, turn to my left. Council member Broadway.

Thank you, mister mayor. Just a few quick items. First of all, on April 30, I had the opportunity to attend the Rockland Police Department Honors and Awards ceremony. A number of our police department personnel were recognized for the work that they do to make our community an amazing place to live, work, to play. And I want to give a special shout out to, Lieutenant Jensen who coordinated the event, did an absolutely outstanding job.

But again, to each and every member of our police department team, I want to thank them for the work they do and a special recognition to those who receive awards at the event. On May 5, I participated along with all of you with the joint council planning commission meeting where we discussed the zoning code update. And I want to thank staff and all of the members of both the council and the planning commission for all the hard work that's going into updating our zoning. It's very important to all of us as we move forward in what our community looks like. And so I just want to thank you all for the hard work.

On May 7, I attended the South Placer Municipal Utilities District and those are the folks that handle all of our sewage for us. They had a board meeting. They were talking about capacity charges. Those are the fees that are assessed for sewer services. So when you add on to a home or you expand a business, you build a new structure, that's the fees they charge.

And they're going through the process of determining what type of fees are going to be assessed for that. I spoke on behalf of our residents expressing my desire and hopefully all of your desire to ensure that a thorough review of those fees is completed, ensuring that those are appropriate and they reflect the actual cost for maintaining and providing those services. And then on May 8, I participated in the annual Rockland Police and Fire Golf Tournament that was put on by our Rockland Public Safety Foundation, we're actually going to recognize the former presidents of that foundation today and get a brief presentation about the foundation. It was an amazing event and that foundation raises money that helps enhance the services that are provided by our police and fire personnel here in the city. And so it's quite a fun day.

So it's never a bad day to get out golfing, at least for those of you who golf probably know that. So that is all I have today, mister mayor.

Thank you. Councilmember Galva.

Thank you. Lots. It's been a busy time. On the April 29, I was able to attend representing SACOG, the California Passenger Rail Summit. Several 100 people in Sacramento are looking on some ways to improve transportation opportunities through the rail, especially for folks like us that have those connections here. On the second was the civic Rockland's birthday celebration. I don't know if anyone hopefully everybody that got to go. It was just fantastic. It was so darn much fun. Incredible compliments.

I know it was our first time including and by the way, we had put the message for fireworks. I don't know where else you could have put it other than to hand deliver it every house so people would be prepared. And I only got one of I never heard about it, so I felt pretty good about that. And most of the social media people got on and said, Gosh, it's been literally everywhere. But including the drones, I was really not on board, and it turned out fantastic. People I've got great videos of listening to people saying it's the best thing. They'd ever lost little kids. So thank you to your staff. The Park and Rec just knocked it out of the park. So it was a great way to celebrate our 130 birthday.

So thank you so much for that. On the fifth as well, we did our joint planning commission. I think it's just a great opportunity to have a meeting with our planning commissioners and do some training, so we appreciate setting that up. On the sixth, we had the chamber held a chamber meeting, and our police chief spoke as well as our deputy fire chief, and it was just a really nice opportunity for people to see our response times and crime that's dropped every single year for five years and to be down incredibly low in the single digits and the fine work that both our police and fire are doing and very well received. So thank you for everyone being there.

SACOG held a media training on the seventh that I was able to attend. And then most importantly, there were two meetings for SACOG on the eleventh. We had our Policy and Innovation Committee meeting and then followed in the afternoon by the Strategic Planning Committee. And I wanted to just take a minute and explain to you a little bit about what's coming. As we know, the RINA numbers is probably the biggest challenge certainly that we have had, trying to protect our commercial pieces and dealing with the city that is approaching build out and doesn't have a lot of space left.

So we have spent many months engaging the residents, people that build, the property owners, trying to find sufficient space to identify so that we could remain legally compliant with the state. Interesting because now as we're trying to deal with the numbers we have, they announced that we are now going to be starting phase seven. So new numbers, additional numbers are coming. Very interesting. Basically, HCD is going to provide SACOG with the regional determination of what they've decided that we have to build.

Nothing is taken into account for the fact that I don't have any acreage, we're down to a build out city. So that's the first frustration. And then SACOG will then take those numbers and they'll distribute it basically to all of us and tell us what our specific numbers are and how to meet that. And then HCD will review those for compliance after. But probably the most important thing that popped out yes, SACOG has technical advisory people there to help us.

September 15 is when HCD numbers will come. There is an opportunity for a technical challenge, but basically what they're telling me is that's if you're challenging the calculations, not necessarily the overall where am I supposed to put these or how to comply. Secau staff will assist then in May '27 that will be opened up for public comment, and December 27 the planned adoption for the new numbers they're adding to us. But they've also added two new categories. So we're used to our low, different categories.

They have now added an extremely low category we will be required to comply with, for people with 15 to 30% of the AMI, and an acutely low category for 0% to 15% AMI. So hold on to your jackets and be ready. This is going to be quite challenging.

Can I ask just a question on that? Because I had received an email from, I don't know who else might have received it, there's a group for local control, and they were passing around the South Bay City's Council of Government, and apparently they had written a letter to, I believe, just all politicians out there. And it was basically asking for a completely revamp of Rina. And I'm curious, and maybe we can talk about this more, or even make it an agenda item, to see what the other cogs are doing in terms of a potential shakeup, because what you just described just sounds like an untenable situation.

Especially since we were just in DC trying to fight for some local control. It's interesting, the four big cogs in California have worked together on some legislation on the basics. You want us to build in these infill places, but especially some of the older places don't have sewer, water, we don't have the so it has to be done as a whole process. It can't be, you've got to build this, well how are we supposed to do the infrastructure first? So they are banding together for that one.

Again, we've got to be hammering on our legislators to say, of course, we want our kids to be able to rent and live in the city they grew up in. And we have not been shying away from buildings, certainly from I say, I think when Dan said when he was in elementary school, the population of Rockland here was about 6,400. As we approach 75,000, we've not been shy in my husband's lifetime. So I think we've done a really good job, but we have to have the space. Yeah, we have to have the space. So this will be an interesting one.

All right, thank you. Vice Mayor Halton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Just to mention a few things. Councilmember Broadway mentioned the police awards on April 30 and it was great to have an opportunity to recognize our police officers for their hard work last year. I also attended the Heritage Street Fair on May 2 and just kudos to the historical society and all those that put on some great performances, really brought the old front street to life and brought a lot of people down to the community. As council member Galda mentioned, the civic celebration that night was terrific. And the drone and fireworks show together was really something special.

And lastly, I had a chance last week to attend the state of the county where Supervisor Landon provided a good overview of all the things going on in the county and I'm most excited about the county working on extending Whitney Ranch Parkway west towards Foothills Boulevard and making the Whitney Ranch Interchange accessible southbound for those who wondered why for the last ten or fifteen years it's only been one way. Looking forward to that. Yes?

Do they give any kind of timeline around

I think it's bordering on imminent and maybe Councilmember Broadway, do you have any intel on that?

On the timeline on the 65 Whitney Ranch

The Whitney Ranch Interchange. Sorry. I didn't mean to put you on the spot.

That's okay. I mean, it's in progress. So it's going to be several years for that enhancement to take place. But the problem with our public projects is nothing happens in a short period of time. So I would say if we are fully functional by '27, I will be happy.

Yeah. All

right. That's great. Yeah. So. Great. And then again, that's just the connector out to fitment. So it's a very small section.

Foothills, yeah. I'm sorry, Foothills. Yeah.

Yeah. Well,

went to a lot of the same stuff, so I'm not gonna repeat it. Just really thank you to everyone on staff for red, white, and bluegrass. And I'll move it over to the city manager.

Thank you. I wanted to just start first by mentioning that city of Rockland took on a piece of the Placer Parkway project initially by improving the widening of the Windy Ranch Parkway intersection and installing the traffic signal ahead of the planned county project, we will be reimbursed for that project so that we could increase the safety and capacity of that intersection ahead of the commercial and residential development that's going on in the city. I'm very excited to see that the county is also moving forward so that we can be reimbursed for the work that we did ahead of time. I also wanted to extend my appreciation to the council for your support and then our staff primarily from parks and recreation, but also public works, police and fire, and all of our internal departments for the civic celebration. We went above and beyond this year for the country's two hundred and fiftieth birthday and kicking it off.

But having our small parade between Front Street and Johnson's McReview did create some more fun challenges for us, but I think it was a great way to connect the two events. And then, of course, the event itself was was above all expectations, and I think it was really well received by the community. Couple of other things to mention. We have let's see. Our board and commission vacancies are currently being advertised.

Applications are being accepted until May 22. Interested people who are interested in applying for those vacancies can learn more on the city's website, rockland.ca.us. The splash pads open for the season on May 15. I feel like it got hot a weekend ahead of that, but we officially open for business at the splash pads at our community parks on May 15, they'll be open through mid October. City facilities will be closed in observance of Memorial Day on May 25.

Police and fire services will be operating as normal, but all city buildings will be closed in observance of the holiday. And there's a Memorial Day service at the Rockland Cemetery on May 25 at 11AM for those who are would like to participate. On May 21, and I'm not going get into this one because it will be a part of our presentation, we are hosting the community at our now third annual Meet the Machines event at the city's Corporation Yard. So more information will be provided during, I think, P3. Three.

So I'll leave that for Justin to speak about. And then finally, I just wanted to mention that we have a couple more concerts coming up at the amphitheater on May 21 and May 23. Information about those two concerts and the rest of the lineup for the season, we're up to 19, I believe, is again on the city's website, rockland.ca.us. And that completes my report.

All right. Thank you. So we will be now moving on to the consent calendar. Items C1 through C15 of the consent calendar are considered and acted upon by one motion of the city council unless any of these are going to be pulled. Do we have any request to pull any item from the council? No. Public? C-fourteen. All right. And D-one

I'm sorry. It's just from I think you said the C-fifteen.

Oh, I apologize. Yes. C-one through C-fourteen. Seeing no one that is asking to pull any of those items, do I have a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve consent calendar items C1 through C14.

I'll second.

We have a first and a second. All in favor, aye. Aye. Noes? Abstentions? Board Board of of the presentation is over, anyone that wants to leave, you're more than free to. I just want to give everyone a heads up. That's how we're going do the order of things. Our very first presentation, P1, is a proclamation declaring May 2026 as Lyme disease awareness month, and I'm going to be asking council member Ken Broadway to present Melissa Moa, CEO and founder of Lyme Fight.

All right. So first of all, Melissa, are you with us today? Melissa, could you please join me? So as the mayor mentioned, this proclamation is recognizing Lyme, basically Lyme Disease Awareness Month for the month of May. I want to thank those who have worked to increase the awareness, education, support of individuals and families that are impacted by Lyme disease.

My family happens to be one of those. This proclamation serves as an important reminder about the need for prevention, early detection, and continued public awareness regarding tick borne illnesses. Increased education can help protect our residents and encourage timely diagnosis and treatment. On behalf of the city council, we extend our appreciation to advocates, especially like yourself. Thank you for being here, our healthcare professionals and community members who work to support those that are affected by Lyme disease and promote greater awareness throughout our community.

Now, you probably can't see it because it's really small print, because it's a long proclamation. I am not going to read that today, but I am going to present it to Melissa Moya, and I'm going to provide her with an opportunity to say a few words. Again, Melissa is the CEO and founder of the Lyme Fight Foundation that is working daily to help us fight this disease, to find solutions for the disease, and to help those who suffer from the disease. So, would you say a few words? Thank

you so

much. You bet.

Hi, I'm Melissa from Mind Fight Foundation. Thank you guys so much for supporting us again this year. We greatly appreciate it. May is a great month for us to get out and share awareness in ways that if you have any questions, to let you know that you can go to our website and find some of those questions that you might have. Myself, I have Lyme disease, and I took about three years to find out what that was.

I went all the way to Minnesota to find out what that was. To give you an idea, the testing that you would get at your regular doctors does not accurately test it. It misses about 70%, and an accurate test would cost you about $1,500 Treatment for myself is not covered by my insurance, and the first year costs about $100,000 for my family. And so I'm on year seven. My daughter, unfortunately, we found out she has Lyme as well about a year and a half ago.

To give you an idea of what the cost is now, her doctor is $800 an hour, and her IVs are $600 and she has them every week. And those, again, are not covered by insurance. So it's something that we're working really hard to at least prevent prevention and education to everybody. So hopefully you guys do not have to go through something like that. So again, thank you guys for supporting us. We greatly appreciate it.

Absolutely. And I want to present you with the proclamation, and then if we could get a picture. Recognizing those in our community that are doing things to help, it's worth taking a few minutes to recognize them. So I'm going to put you in the middle. Oh, Because you're the important person. Okay.

Perfect. Thank you. All right.

All right. For this next one, I will be presenting it, and chief I think you're up Chief Rustin Banks. And he'll make some remarks after I'm done. Similar to the last, presentation, I'm not going to read the entirety of this proclamation, but there is a lot of important information and I think everyone will appreciate it. This is honoring National Police Week, May 2026, and Peace Officers Memorial Day, May 15.

National Police Week was established in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy, along with the joint resolution of Congress to pay special tribute to those law enforcement officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty for the safety and protection of others. More than 800,000 law enforcement officers serving in communities across The United States, including the loyal 68 sworn members of the Rockland Police Department who worked devotedly and selfishly on behalf of the citizens of the city of Rockland, regardless of the peril or hazard to themselves. And since the first recorded death in 1786, over twenty four thousand law enforcement officers in The United States have made the ultimate sacrifice and been killed in the line of duty, including Marshall, Sam, Rinaldi, 02/19/1914, and officer Matt Reading, October 2005, of the city of Rockland Police Department. The names of those dedicated public servants are engraved on the walls of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, which was dedicated in 1991 in Washington, D.

C. 03/1963 new names of fallen heroes were added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial this spring, including 109 officers killed in 2025 and two fifty four officers who died in previous years whose stories of sacrifice have been lost to history until now. The service and sacrifice of all officers killed in the line of duty will be honored, and the names of the officers newly engraved on the memorial will be formally dedicated during the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund's thirty eighth annual candlelight vigil, which will be held on the evening of 05/13/2026. Be it resolved, the mayor and members of the city council and the city of Rockland do hereby proclaim the week of May 2026 as National Police Week twenty twenty six in the city of Rockland and publicly salute the service of law enforcement officers in our community and in the communities across the nation. Thank you.

Chief Banks is gonna say a few words. I

just wanna say thank you to you, mister mayor, and and to all the council members for carving time out of the meeting to recognize our fallen officers. This one hits home for us. Like the mayor said, this past October marked twenty years since we lost officer Matt Redding in the line of duty death, and we were able to celebrate that in a pretty pretty great way. This past October, we had a ceremony out at the cemetery. We brought the family.

They live in Nevada now, but we brought them down and got to spend time at the gravesite. And then we did a ceremony at our our police department where I was able to actually present the family, the mother and father, John and Marilyn, with our new badge, with his badge number. And it was just a good moment for for the family, for the department. And I just want you guys to know that something that will remain a priority for us. We'll make sure that officer Redding's never forgotten. So thank you for the time today.

National Public Works Week. This time, Public Works Director Justin Nartker. Yo. I always get nervous when I say your name because of where all the noise is. All right.

This is a, proclamation for twenty twenty six National Public Works Week. The week of May 17 through 05/23/2026, is designated as National Public Works Week to celebrate public works professionals who focus on infrastructure, facilities, and services that are of vital importance to sustainable and resilient communities. These infrastructure facilities and services could not be provided without the efforts of our public works professionals who are responsible for rebuilding, improving and protecting our city's traffic and transportation assets, open space, drainage, roadway, landscaping, fleet operations, public buildings and facilities, and central for our residents. It's in the public interest for civic leaders and residents in the City Of Rockland to gain knowledge and maintain an ongoing interest and understanding of the importance of public works and public works programs in our nation, state, and community. The year 2026 marks the sixty sixth annual National Public Works Week sponsored by the American Public Works Association, and this year's theme is Rooted in Service, Powered by Community.

It acknowledges that the roots of service run deep in public works. It's what has propelled public works innovations that have helped our communities evolve into places where people can lead lives of purpose and possibility. Some work is highly visible, while others' public works contributions are hidden from view, but together, these efforts form the foundation of thriving communities, reminding us that every project, seen or unseen, powers the connection between service and the people it supports. So here we are, May 17 through 05/23/2026. We are in observance of National Public Works Week and our public works professionals, engineers, managers, and employees, and to recognize the substantial contributions they make to protecting our public health, safety, and quality of life.

Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Allow you to have a couple words here.

Okay. Well, first off, I just wanted to say thank you and invite the community to Meet the Machines, where next Thursday we're gonna be opening up our corporation yard to invite the public to come and take a look at the machines and the equipment that we use, on a regular basis for for maintenance and maintenance needs. We have, our municipal partners that are going to be there with us including Recology and Placer County Water Agency and SP MUD. And so we invite everybody to come out next week to the courtyard from nine to twelve to join us and give us an opportunity to celebrate what we do on a regular basis and the effort that goes into that. So thank you very much and we hope to see you then.

Invited Mike from our traffic signals and lighting division and Christian with our streets maintenance to join me today. So thanks for being here, guys.

And we're going to go back to, Council Member Broadway for, presentations four and five. And I will yeah. I'll come down.

I'll bring them too.

Yeah, I'll bring them too. Let me think. Yeah. Got everything. These are recognition of past presidents of the Rockland Public Safety Foundation as well as a presentation for Rockland Public Safety.

As the mayor mentioned, we're going to recognize past presidents of our Rockland Public Safety Foundation. That foundation actually was formed many years ago. Back in 2011, there was a donation that was being made for a police canine to add that to our service that's provided in our community. And with the donation, the process began of, okay, how do we manage these types of donations? How do we coordinate things that are a little bit outside of our normal funding?

And the foundation came together. And between our police chief at the time and the first person we're going to recognize for their work supporting our community and the foundation, They were able to bring this together and build what has become a very successful addition to what we do in our community in enhancing public safety. So I'm gonna bring up, each of them. I'm gonna bring them up in in total, but one at a time so that I can personally thank them. It's important to recognize these individuals, because they're leaders who stepped forward not for recognition but to serve our community.

Their steady guidance, their commitment, and vision have helped strengthen the partnership between public safety professionals, those who are out there each and every day protecting us, and the community. Because of their efforts, critical programs have been funded, relationships built, and Rockland itself is a safer and stronger city. So, we're grateful to the foundation that they've laid for us and the example that they continue to set in our community. So, the first person, again, it was the founder of the foundation who helped pull it together and who led the foundation from 2012 to 2014, and that is Rebecca or Becky Kanowski. How are you, Becky?

This came to me because Ron Lawrence said one day, you know, I think we should have a nonprofit. I said, yeah. Good idea. He said, the next day was our annual volunteer dinner, and he announced it to all of them. He said, I've talked to Becky about mom. God. And that's the way he likes to do things. But he always covered me because he called in an attorney the first the next day, and, that's how it happened.

The next individual helped lead the foundation from 2015 to 2018. And so Rich Valone, will you please join me? The next individual helped lead the foundation from 2019 through 2021, and that is Stu Lehman. Stu, would you join us, please?

I would be here for a long time. I know

you would. But I will say this, I am very proud to be a member of this community. Most importantly, the same community that supports all the police and fire members, staff and sworn. And I'm still an active member of the volunteer program as well. Anybody's interested, please join us.

There are three former presidents of the foundation who were not able to be here, but I do want to just mention them because of their service to our community, and that is, Scott Ewell, Jeremy Capolo, and Braden Bolton. They are traveling on business. They're actually still working and doing day to day work, and, one is in Vegas, and then of them are in, well, one is in Southern California, and another is in meetings in Sacramento. So they weren't able to be here, but I, did want to thank them. And then the the next president who served during the twenty twenty three year, she was not able to be here, but representing her and she actually said we get the benefit of having somebody even better than her being here.

So, representing her is her daughter, Beau, who's gonna accept on her behalf, and that is, Maryella Plattner. So please come on.

I just want to say that not only am I very proud of my mom for receiving this award, but she's beyond honored to be receiving it. And we both, her and I, want to continue to serve the community of Rockland as best we can.

Can we, one more time, just recognize those who have led that foundation?

There's one final piece to this, which is the presentation of Rockland Public Safety Foundation, and that will be conducted by council member Broadway, but he'll do it from the dais.

Well, I I have had the honor of serving as a board member from the time that Becky put the foundation together. She asked me to join and serve as a representative of the community. And as a board member, you know, I appreciate the opportunity to provide an update to council and to our community regarding the foundation's history, its mission, and the ongoing efforts that are being made to support and enhance public safety in our community. The foundation was established through a partnership of community leaders, residents, and our public safety professionals. It was created with the goal of providing additional support for programs, equipment, training, outreach, and initiatives that enhance the capabilities of our public safety departments and help strengthen community relations.

Some of the things that have been done through the support of the foundation has been the purchase of our k nine officers, the purchase of drones that are being used throughout our city, and enhanced materials that are being used by both our police and fire departments each and every day in providing service throughout our community. Over the years, the foundation's proudly supported a wide variety of initiatives. Those have included both the equipment and technology, community outreach programs, youth engagement activities, emergency preparedness efforts, and recognition programs to and including supporting scholarships for our graduating seniors that are pursuing careers in public safety. The foundation's success has always been rooted in strong collaboration between the community, the leadership of our city, the police department, the fire department, our local businesses, and our generous residents who recognize the importance of investing in public safety. As Rockland continues to grow, the foundation is committed to evolving alongside the needs of our community.

Looking ahead, the foundation will continue focusing on opportunities to support innovation, enhance community engagement, assist with emerging public safety needs, and strengthening the partnerships that contribute to safety and the quality of life that our residents expect. Future priorities include expanding fundraising and community awareness efforts, strengthening the partnerships with our local businesses and organizations, supporting youth and community education, and identifying opportunities where the foundation can provide resources beyond what traditionally is provided through public funding. The Rockland Public Safety Foundation remains deeply committed to its mission of supporting those who protect and serve our community while helping maintain Rockland's reputation as one of the safest and most connected communities in the region. I wanna thank all of you for your support. I wanna thank our public safety personnel, and wanna thank the council and staff.

We have an amazing community and I think our recent police and fire reports are indicative of that and I'm honored to serve on the foundation and continue to enhance public safety in the city of Rockland. So thank you.

Thank

you. And is there anything that the city council would like to say on these two items? Okay. Councilmember Gallo.

Well, just thank you. This this and going back all the way to our our public works folks, I I I tell you, always think back when Roy Rukula and it was, like, his 90 birthday and talking about when the, streets plugged up, how part of council's job was to go out there with the shovels and clean the drains to get the leaves out, and I'm really pleased that I've not had to do that in my service. Our public works is tremendous. I know we've got some folks from schools here. If you haven't been to Meet the Machines, a lot of kids will go for the school time.

It's really, really fun. The kids get to play with some stuff that they never get to do, and they add everything from a pile of dirt with little backhoes besides all the great equipment. So thank you so much for what you guys do. You're the ones that get the calls when it's raining and the streets are plugged up and and, things are different at night. And I always get a kick out of when somebody calls and says, that light's out on the street. I can't believe they don't fix it. And then I remind them, we have an app now. You know, we don't just randomly drive the street and see, hey, that light's out at midnight. So drop it in the app. If you see a broken sprinkler, put it in our Access Rocklin, and and we're on it.

And they're on it so quickly. So I I just think they do a tremendous job. But I I've gotta say our public safety volunteers, you guys, I knowing most of you for a long time, you are the best. Thank you so much for what you do. They just add so much for not only the help in the offices and the fundraising and the things you provide, but when you see our little public safety cars going around and you're on a vacation and you want somebody to check your house, they're there. When we're having a run-in Rockland and we're shutting down streets and we've got an event going, you're there. And I I just can't thank you enough. You you are part of what makes being in Rockland so special. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just appreciate everything the Public Safety Foundation has done and really getting to know the leadership and the members of the Foundation Board has been a blessing to me personally. They're just outstanding people who really are dedicated to our community. Thank you all. Great to see you, Becky. And just really appreciate everything you all have done.

And, yep, all those comments, I can't really add much more to it other than to say that I have had in-depth conversations with both law enforcement and fire. I know how much the contributions of the Public Safety Foundation mean to them and the engagement with all of you as volunteers, but just all as citizens that are supporting everything that the city does, more importantly, the people that go out there put their lives on the line. It's great to know that they've got an army behind them, protecting them. And again, Becky, thank you for being here. It means a lot.

With that, if there's nothing else, what I'd like to do now is give us a five minute break in order for us to allow those that are recipients from the hearing, as well as anyone that would like to step out, give them that moment. This is also going to be a great opportunity to turn off cell phones. And then hopefully we'll have some seats up and we can get an orderly return from our break. So thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. Can everyone hear me? Alright. So we're a little bit over capacity, so I would ask that if you're planning to stay for the remainder of the meeting hello? Can everybody hear me? Not not everybody can hear me. Alright. If everyone could find their seats.

I can speak with attention.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. We're a little bit over capacity, so I would ask that if you can find a seat, please take it. We need to keep all the exits and exit pathways open. We are gonna be putting additional chairs outside on the balcony where you will be able to continue to hear the meeting if you need to find a seat outside. Otherwise, we'll ask that you make sure all of the walkways and the exits are open. Okay? So please find a seat as soon as possible.

All right, as we get ready to come back from break, I do see there are some seats around and we also have seats obviously being brought out. A couple of things before we get started. I was made aware that we have a board of supervisor here, Anthony Dimitay. He had let me know that he would be trying to get down here as soon as possible to be able to use his public comment time. He is coming from Tahoe, and I appreciate that he's made it down here.

So for this portion, I'm going to be reopening the citizens addressing the city council for this brief period to allow for a public comment in which Anthony will be able to make that presentation.

Thank you, Mary Bass and city council members. On behalf of Placer County Board Of Supervisors, we are celebrating our one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary. And to commemorate that, we have made these challenge coins for all the city council members and some staff. And so I just want to thank you guys for letting me have a brief second of your busy time tonight. I understand how it is. I just came back one from Tahoe. So again, thank you guys for your time. Thank you for all your accommodations. To the people here in Rockland as a resident, I truly appreciate everything that you guys do. So thank you for your time.

Thank you. Because I've opened this is a non agendized city council, so I will have to keep it open for any public comment. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for the challenge coin, by the way. It's amazing. Yeah. We should keep one and put it in a time what are those called? Time capsule. Thank you. All right. And since I've opened it up, is there anyone else that wants to speak on a non agendized item? Seeing none, I will now close the public comment again. All right. We're going to be moving on first to our first public hearing.

This is PH1 Kennel Ordinance Amendments, ZOA twenty twenty five-two, and Environmental ENV twenty twenty six dash zero zero zero seven. And we have senior planner Bennett Smithart.

Good evening, city council. I am Bennett Smithart with the planning division. I am here to present the kennel ordinance amendments. Starting out with some background. In response to multiple requests for an outdoor kennel operation, staff has initiated updates to the ordinance to provide greater flexibility for business operations and to enhance conditions for dogs.

Staff subsequently prepared revisions to the kennel ordinance. On 05/20/2025, the planning commission reviewed the proposed amendments and recommended approval to the city council. On 08/12/2025, the city council considered the proposal to amend the kitten ordinance to allow for all outdoor dog enclosures. During deliberations, the council expressed concerns regarding the compatibility of outdoor enclosures with adjacent occupants and property owners. Staff was directed to research ways to engage surrounding users earlier in the review process.

Staff revised the application submittal section to add an early notice component. This process

report. The report is

the the In addition to the standard noticing requirements, The any kennel applicant that includes an outdoor enclosure shall require an early notice to be mailed to surrounding properties. The early notice constitutes the final administrative action prior to the city's determination that an application submittal is complete. The notice shall be provided to all property owners of record and to mailing addresses within 300 feet of the subject property, advising that an application has been received, providing a summary of the application and the location where project documents can be reviewed. This notice shall be mailed no fewer than thirty days prior to the date of the Planning Commission hearing. So just to break down the process for the early notice.

Once staff receives an application for a conditional use permit for a kennel with an outdoor enclosure, staff will review all submitted materials including the noise study, operations statements, etc. After confirming all required materials have been reviewed and received and reviewed, staff will prepare and send mailed notices to all properties within 300 feet. Notices will then be sent to the mailing address and the owner of record for each property within 300 feet. The mailed notice includes a description of the proposed kennel operations and will provide a link to the project plans for public review. Contact information for the planning department including email, phone number, and office address will be included in the mailing.

This early notification process will provide adjacent property owners and nearby occupants the opportunity to provide input before the project design and operational plans are finaled. On 04/21/2026, the Planning Commission reviewed the proposed changes. After staff's presentation, the Commission asked clarifying questions, including how future kennel operations would mitigate noise impacts under outdoor operational, scenarios. One member of the public expressed concern that the text changes could result in unsatisfactory kennel operations enforcement, and staff responded by summarizing the additional enforcement measures included in the update as well as existing city processes such as the current provisions in the RMC that allow for revoction procedure for a CUP and the ability for a code enforcement process that would address potential public nuisances. The commission then closed the public hearing and proceeded to deliberation, during which it inquired further about mitigation of noise from indoor only operations and noted that the proposed modifications improved the ordinance expressing overall support for the changes and subsequently voted four zero with one member absent to recommend approval to the city council.

The proposed amendments to sections seventeen sixty four-seventy are exempt from CEQA under sections fifteen sixty c two and fifteen sixty one b three as they will not result in direct or reasonably foreseeable and indirect environmental impacts. Therefore, the planning commission and staff recommend the city council approve the ordinance to amend RMC seventeen sixty four seventy kennels. I'm available for any questions.

Thank you. Now, at this point, with the open public hearing, I will be calling for questions by council members and then asking for staff responses. Questions? None? Councilman Regaldo. Thank

you. Just on the notification, obviously, the legal requirement we had, we doubled it in Rockland, so that we make sure that we get everybody notified. Is 300 isn't it 600? Am I trying to remember? Thought

we Correct. Yes, we do 600 feet for like a standard planning commission notice. The 300 feet is in state law, so we just mimic the 300 feet. And that's closer to the adjacent, users, adjacent property owners. It's approximately 300 feet.

I think that was the only question, is why wouldn't we do 600 for all our notifications? You tell me and we wanted to make sure we give everybody an opportunity to be aware.

Yeah, so I think the main concern was adjacent properties. So typically 300 feet covers the adjacent properties, so that's why we did 300 feet.

Thank you.

No other questions? All right. So at this point, I will be opening public comment. Do we have any speaker cards?

No comment cards received for public hearing item number one.

Okay. And anybody in the audience that would like to talk about our kennel ordinance? Seeing none, I will now close public comment. Any final questions by council members? All right. The public hearing is now closed. If there is no further discussion, I will then ask for a motion and vote on PH1A.

Mr. Mayor, I'll move to adopt a resolution of the City Council of the City of Rockland approving a notice of exemption, kennel ordinance amendments ENV twenty twenty six-seven.

Second.

All right.

We have

a first and a second. All in favor, aye.

Aye.

Noes? Abstentions? The ayes have it. Item passes unanimously. I will now ask for city council action on PH1B.

Mr. Mayor, I'll move to introduce, waive the full reading, read by title only, an ordinance of the city council of the city of Rockland, amending Rockland Municipal Code section seventeen point six four point zero seven zero, kennels, Kennel Ordinance, ZOA2025-two.

Second. All right. We have a first and a second. All in favor, aye.

Aye.

Aye. Noes? Abstentions? Ayes have it. Passes unanimously. All right. We are now moving on to our PH2 item, public hearing item number two. This is the Sierra Wilds Apartments Design Review, Doctor twenty twenty five-five, and Environmental ENV twenty twenty five-eight. And we will be opening this public hearing with principal planner Nathan Anderson. Before you start, I just want once again reiterate, obviously, there's the question of you're going to give a presentation.

We are going to be having presentations from a number of people and questions. I did now want to bring up I do believe once we get to public comment, there was a presentation that was given, and I think now is a good time to address this so that the people that were going to give the presentation have some time to adjust, but I do want to make it known that because of the way our council is set up, at the very bottom, if you see here in terms of some of the rules that we participate with, the audiovisual presentations, if they're on an agenda item, all audiovisual materials must be submitted to the city clerk or secretary at least seventy two hours in advance. And I say that because the procedures for this particular hearing, I want to make sure that we are scrupulously adhering to whatever rules that we've set out. And so because of that, I do believe we had an audiovisual presentation that was given to us at 4PM today.

It was about one p. M.

But Okay. It was

I just want to be completely transparent that we will not have that presentation given. That does not mean that it is not part of the record, and that does not mean that anyone can speak on it. However, procedurally, I want to make sure that we are sticking to every rule that we have on this particular item, regardless of how the council makes its decisions. So I wanted to give that as a kind of front load that. And with that, Nathan, please.

Good evening. Thank you, Mayor Bass. Nathan Anderson with the Rockland Planning Division, and I'll be presenting the Sierra Wilds Apartments project. This is a request for design review approval for a 120 unit affordable multifamily housing project. The site is located at 1800 Wildcat Boulevard in the Northwest part of Rockland. It sits at the northern edge of Stanford Ranch General Development Plan which dates back to 1987. The property was until last month part of a larger parcel that includes the Saint Augustine Episcopal Church. The church and parking lot were approved in 2012 and constructed shortly thereafter. To the north is an open space and drainage area connected to Pleasant Grove Creek. To the Southwest is the Maria Montessori Charter Academy.

A tentative parcel map was approved in 2022 to subdivide the vacant part portion of the project site from the developed church to allow for future development. That map was officially recorded last month. From a land use standpoint, the site is designated mixed use. Pursuant to the general plan, that designation is flexible and allows for residential, commercial or any mix of both. The zoning history here is somewhat more complicated.

The project site was annexed into the city as part of the Rockland West annexation in 1980 and was initially designated for light industrial use. In 1987, the city adopted the Stanford Ranch General Development Plan, which established zoning and development standards for the area. In 1995, the city approved a subdivision map that applied planned development business professional slash commercial slash light industrial zoning to the site. This zoning, which remained on the property for more than thirty years, was essentially a catchall for nonresidential, allowing for uses including professional and medical offices, research and development, large scale shopping centers, hotels, motels, restaurants, bars, liquor stores, manufacturing, among many other things. When the proposal was initially brought to the city's attention in 2024, staff's determination was that the project was inconsistent with the site's existing non residential zoning.

Pursuant to the use PD business professional, commercial, light industrial allowances. However, the zoning also included a use category called multi family integrated with commercial which was never clearly defined in this document or any other. Because of that, the applicant argued that the city couldn't require a specific amount of commercial space to be included with any multi family component. They reached out to the state for clarification. In April 2025, the Department of Housing and Community Development or HCD responded and confirmed that under the Housing Accountability Act, the city cannot enforce undefined or subjective standards.

As a result, the city was told that it must allow this multi family project and cannot require a specific amount of non commercial use. Essentially any amount, even less than 1%, would technically qualify as integrated with commercial. Following that guidance, the city added the site to its regional housing needs allocation, or RENA, inventory. A mixed use 24 plus overlay was applied, which maintained the non residential allowances on the site, but also required that any residential development proposed must achieve a minimum of 24 dwelling units per acre consistent with state RENA requirements. The city council and several members of the public in the room tonight will likely remember the discussions at the meeting last year.

Ultimately, the commission and the city council supported the change to MU 24 plus as it was clear that the Housing Accountability Act would require the city to allow affordable housing on this site with or without a zone change. The implementation of the overlay simply allowed us to count the numbers towards satisfying our state housing requirements. And those housing requirements are robust. While the city's made significant efforts to comply with the state requirements by deed restricting as much affordable housing as practicable during the sixth cycle, to date only fifteen forty seven units have been permitted, representing approximately 27 of the city's total required Rina allocation. Because this project is consistent with the general plan and with zoning on the site, it is being reviewed strictly as a design review.

That means the focus is on-site design, architecture, and consistency with standards, not on whether multifamily development is appropriate on the site. The use itself is allowed. Project includes four three story residential buildings shown in red, totaling 120 units along with 180 parking spaces and a variety of on-site amenities. These include a clubhouse in blue with adjacent swimming pool, a tot lot, barbecue area, and a dog park. Unit types range from one to three bedrooms.

Access to the site would primarily come from a new driveway on Wildcat Boulevard up there at the corner. The existing church driveway will also remain. Access to the school driveway will be gated at two emergency vehicle access points both shown in blue and limited to emergency use only. So, the project would not access through those school driveways except during emergencies. There's a landscape center median located in the middle of Wildcat Boulevard and all turn movements into and out of the project site would be restricted to right in, right out.

No changes to the median are proposed as part of this project. The traffic study was completed earlier this year by W Trans Traffic Engineering Transportation Planning to evaluate the potential impacts of the housing project on local traffic operation The study concluded that nearby intersections are currently operating well and will continue to do so with the additional traffic associated with the project. Even under conservative assumptions, the study concluded that operations would remain acceptable, adequate site distance is available for both the existing and the proposed driveway locations. The project architecture includes three residential buildings, building types and a clubhouse. All buildings share a similar design with some variation to size and layout.

The project proposes one eighteen unit building, which will be located furthest to the Southwest, approximately 90 feet from the shared property line with the school and 110 feet from the nearest school building. The project would also include two thirty six unit buildings in the central portion of the site and one thirty unit building located adjacent to Wildcat Boulevard. Architecturally, the building is designed in a temporary a contemporary farmhouse style. It includes simple building forms, varied roof lines, and a mix of siding materials. The Ground Floor uses darker tones with lighter materials above.

Additional elements include recessed panes, balcony railings, and accent materials, which provide variation across the building elevations. Three coordinated color schemes are proposed, all using neutral and earth tones with dark accents. The clubhouse has been designed to match the architectural style of the residential buildings and is centrally located as a shared amenity. The project complies with all development standards, including lot coverage and setbacks. The three story buildings max out at 40 feet in height at the very peak of the roofs, whereas the PDBP CLI zoning within the Stanford Ranch General Development Plan allows for four stories or up to 50 feet in height, whichever is less.

Parking is always somewhat complicated when it comes to affordable housing projects as reduced parking standards are another state mandated allowance. Local jurisdiction have no choice but to comply with. If the project was market rate, meaning not affordable, Chapter 17.66 of the Rockland Municipal Code would require higher parking ratios totaling two forty three parking spaces for this project. However, state density bonus law requires the city allow reduced parking standards for affordable housing projects. Under this state law, the 120 unit project would only need to provide 153 parking spaces due to its affordability makeup.

The applicant is proposing to construct 180 spaces, which is 27 spaces above the state mandated requirement and represents a middle ground between state and city standards. As the project exceeds state parking requirements for projects of this type, staff has no option but to support the reduction. The state says we must allow the reduction to occur. The landscape plan includes a mix of trees, shrubs, and ground cover, helping with both aesthetics and functionality. Staff does best to work with the applicant to screen the boundaries of the project with landscaping wherever feasible.

It's important to note that this project has evolved considerably since its first submittal, particularly along the school boundary. The original design, shown on the left, placed the 18 unit building directly adjacent to the property line with minimal screening within the act landscape easements. While that design complied with development standards and required setbacks, the 40 foot building would have loomed over the over the property line. The revised middle has been modified so that building is pushed back to nearly 90 feet from the property line at its closest point. The main project access points are not gated.

The project includes a combination of tubular steel and solid wood fencing along with emergency access gates. Leading up to the Planning Commission hearing, staff had received several pieces of correspondence from both the adjacent school and residents located northwest of the site that the open or northwest of the site across the open space citing privacy concerns which could be allocated to this project. To provide additional screening, staff recommended conditions of approval which would modify both fences to be six foot tall wood with additional two foot of lattice on top. So, eight foot total to provide additional screening. In addition, there was discussion of the Planning Commission hearing regarding the grade differential at the parking lot overlooking the playground.

At the Commission's direction, the solid wood fence with lattice has been relocated to the top of the slope to better screen vehicles from the playground below. A tubular steel fence would be installed at the bottom of the slope with landscape trees planted between the two as shown on the screen. The project design has been reviewed by the Rockland Fire Department to ensure compliance with required standards. Based on the review by the Deputy Fire Chief, the project currently meets applicable fire standard requirements related to all fire apparatus access within the city, emergency vehicle access, and fire and life safety standards within the Fire Department's authority. First Carbon Solutions, or FCS, has prepared a CEQA document, a CEQA guideline section 15,183 consistency checklist for the project, which has been included in the project packet.

This checklist and supporting documents evaluate the project's consistency with the city's certified general plan EIR and subsequent addenda, and whether any project specific impacts exist under CEQA. The analysis concludes that the project is consistent with the general plan and is within the scope of the prior FEIR and addenda therefore, additional CEQA review is required under Section 15,183. The consistency checklist demonstrates that the proposed project does not include land uses, densities, development intensities or site characteristics that differ in a manner that would result in environmental impacts peculiar to the project or its site. As previously discussed, this project has been zoned and designated for more than three decades for all kinds of commercial, business professional, and even light industrial uses. From a CEQA perspective, construction and operation of a multifamily residential complex is not expected to exceed the impacts of several of those more intensive uses.

The project does not introduce new land uses, densities or site characteristics that would result in impacts unique to the project or its location. The project would not result in new or more severe off-site or cumulative impacts as it would fall between within the development anticipated in the general plan buildout scenario. A notice of exemption has been prepared in accordance with CEQA guidelines section fifteen thousand one eighty three. In an effort to further reduce impacts of the site during construction because staff heard a lot of concerns about construction during the planning commission phase of the project, at the direction of the commission, a new condition of approval has been added to the project requiring submittal and approval of construction management plan prior to any site grading or construction. This plan would, at a minimum, address construction scheduling, site access and circulation, staging and parking, noise and vibration control, dust and air management, pedestrian, and student safety, and coordination with nearby property owners.

The developer is is conditioned to work with the city in good faith to develop and implement reasonable measures to reduce potential impacts. As discussed previously, the entitlement request is a design review. Based on section 17.72 of the municipal code, any decision by the council on a design review application shall be based on consideration of several items shown on the screen. Design review decisions must consider how a project fits with its surroundings, including site layout, natural features and traffic flow, as well as building scale, orientation and energy efficiency. They also evaluate aesthetics such as materials, colors, light, signage, and landscaping along with parking design and access.

The project, as submitted, complies with all development standards for the zoning district, as well as with the citywide design guidelines and objective design standards that staff uses to evaluate architecture. The city must also consider the Housing Accountability Act as previously discussed. The government code states that a city generally cannot deny an affordable housing project unless it can make specific written findings supported by substantial evidence. These requirements are shown on the screen. Absent one of these findings, the government code says the city must approve the project and cannot impose conditions that would make it infeasible.

Based on the foregoing, the project is consistent with the general plan, zoning, and arena objectives, and would construct housing on a on a vacant site which has been designated for development for more than three decades. On April 21, the Planning Commission voted three to one with one member absent to recommend the project for approval. Accordingly, the Planning Commission and staff recommend that the City Council approve the project. The applicant team is here tonight, available to answer questions. Staff is as well. This concludes my presentation.

Okay. Thank you. So first I will turn to my council members for questions as well as staff responses. I'll start to my right. Vice Mayor Alvin.

Okay. So I'll at least get started with questions. I might take a second turn on this, so I don't go on too long. So on the right in, right out, is there a right turn lane in or a right turn lane out?

Let me go back to that. They do not have a designated right turn lane. If you mean like a lane of refuge, no. It's just a simple right turn in and

out. So, it's concerning to me. I live in the neighborhood. I walk the neighborhood a lot. I see the traffic at Maria Montessori in the morning. They need a right turn lane. They need a right turn lane out. And so I think this idea that we've allowed a church and a school to be built without those right turn lanes, speed limit on the road I think is 45 miles an hour. Like that doesn't give the drivers time to stop when you have a string of cars backing up. So sorry, I asked a question.

Sorry, wandered into a comment. But I think that's of concern to me that we don't have a dedicated right lane into this. And as I've said, I think there should have been one for the school when this was built, unfortunately. The emergency access, I'm going to call it by the hammerhead, Has that whose emergency access is that for?

It's emergency access for both the church property, which is now this subject, project property, and the school.

Okay. Has the school approved this as a suitable emergency access?

The emergency access would have a gate in front of it, but the fire department has said that it will the emergency access is available and would not be So

the point has been made to us that this doesn't meet the state department of education and state architects' requirements for an emergency access for a school, which I think is it's presented to us as different than standard emergency access. So I guess, does this meet the requirements for a school? Has the school signed off on it as a proper emergency access?

Based on my conversations with the fire official, his job is to review it for consistency with city standards, the state architect reviews for new schools. The deputy fire chief feels confident that fire access can be provided by all city fire apparatus through this emergency access. That's all I can say.

Okay. All right. So I mean, it does seem counterintuitive that the state architect would approve it for a new school, but when a change to the school's access is made, that it wouldn't require the state architect's review.

I can't speak to that. Just Okay, know that

alright. I think it's just an issue for us to consider among the many issues that we have to consider here. I think I've got more questions, but I think I'm going to hold them until the other council members have a chance to ask questions, and they might be directed to the applicant as well.

And that's fine. To my council members as well as to everyone in the audience, this is obviously a very important situation. So we're just gonna go back and forth with, if we have questions and if somebody else reminds us of a question we wanna ask, because every single thing needs to be asked. So we can go out of order as well. Councilmember Galdo.

Just a couple questions. I appreciate all the detail but just getting it right at the meeting. I on? Is my light's on. Can you hear me? No. Yeah. I don't know what I'm There's working. Oh, now I hear me. Now I hear you.

It got better. Like I say, appreciate the work doing this, but I need to get it obviously before the meeting so I can spend the time to really deep do a deep dive. So I would encourage a little bit earlier besides the day of the meeting so I can make sure that I give it all the due that it deserves. I'm just going to follow-up with you. With DSA, I think that was one of my concerns, too, is what burden does it put on the school because it would actually be the school that would have to comply with DSA requirements.

I don't think it's something that we look at, but it is certainly from thirty years of working in school district, I know that that is something that they would do, but that could be an undue demand on the school to become compliant if there's a change. Think that's one of our questions. One of the other ones I have and I should I need to point out that I have had ex parte. I've been out to the site three or four times, including meeting with staff and parents at one time. I've also had ex parte with the church members.

I have never heard from the developer. I don't know if you're out there or who you are, Very disappointing that I've never heard from the developer to have that conversation and review some of those questions. It's not how it's normally done here. But I will do also wondered about the driveway for the students. I went out in the mornings a couple times. Just so you know, my background is thirty years in school transportation. So visiting school drop offs has been my life, and I went out several times to see. I did learn. I didn't see any kids walk to school, quite frankly. It's not a neighborhood school.

I did see a couple kids on bikes leaving in the afternoon at one time. But I also noticed that the school is using the church parking lot to drop off. So if you're familiar, they drop off a large I mean, there's a large lineup of parents, but there's also a group that are dropping off at the school and then walking there. So when that is not available, do we know what the plan how's that drop off planning to be?

The church will continue to be the church, if you mean this I don't have a mouse, but if you mean the area with that central entry point that goes through the church parking lot, that's not going anywhere.

Yeah, because they're parking there and then just kind of walking across the dirt down to the school, some parents are, for pick up and drop off.

Well, dirt won't if this project is constructed, or any project is constructed, the dirt won't be there anymore, but the church will remain.

Right. So I'm just wondering about an access for how if the church is still allowing them to use their parking lot as a drop off? Will they

Again, there's a representative for the applicant here who could probably answer that better. There is a walking path that's shown that allows students to walk towards the school, but I don't know if the church would continue to allow them to utilize the church parking lot for this project. That's a question for the church.

Thank you. One of the ones that first came up was the garden issue. And I understand that the garden is built actually on the not on the school property, but on the property adjacent. I know that one of the things we talked about is behind this area is actually our park for an alternative for the garden. Obviously, would have to be a public access, because we don't lock things up for but has there been any conversation with our team on would that be a viable option for them?

Staff has had some internal conversations to identify whether or not this is something that we could do, but we need council direction to determine whether or not it's something to move forward with. There is space at Margaret Acevedo Park, but as you all know, Margaret Acevedo Park is currently under part of a three park master planning process. And so we would seek council direction as part of this process if you wanted us to engage in conversations about relocating the garden to public property.

Thank you. Think questions wise, I think that's all I have for now. Thank you.

Councilmember Broadway.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, I did want to state I had ex parte communication both with the principal for the school as well as a group of individuals who wanted to share their thoughts regarding this project with me. It was information gathering only. No commitments were made. But I did want to share I had that meeting. And I appreciate them reaching out because it provided me with insight into their concern relative to this project itself. I was not contacted by the church or by the actual applicant. So a few questions. Mine are primarily on the environmental side.

This project relies so heavily on section 15.183. And that only applies cleanly if there are no project specific peculiar impacts. So I'm listening to the history of this site and the different zoning, the changes that we've recently made, your presentation, I actually listened to the council meeting and through the packet. So this site is it's a site specific infill project. It's directly adjacent to sensitive receptors.

Okay? Those are homes, a school, a park, and a creek. And so what analysis was completed, what updates were provided and or review was initiated to actually look at, review, and take into account the impacts that are or can be peculiar to this site. Because you have traffic access and in general it's a single driveway. You have school proximity and safety issues, and you have interface with an existing church use.

So can you help me? Because I've gone through the materials, and I'm seems peculiar to me. But that's, you know, Ken's definition. So how how was that determination made? What where is that information? Because I would love to have it so that I could say it was reviewed. It wasn't just simply a stamp that, bop, section fifteen one eighty three applies. We're good. Move on. So where is that information so that I can sit here and I can share with the folks who are here with us and the rest of our community that we've done our thorough analysis and we've assessed this and there are this basically, it's clean.

There are no project specific peculiar impacts.

Yeah, excellent question. So I think to help answer it, I'm going to reach out to a couple of people here. First being David Mullenbrook, who's our environmental coordinator and community development director, to kind of explain the overarching what the fifteen thousand one eighty three analysis is, the checklist, the studies, how that works. And then I really think that some of these project specific questions are really better directed towards the CEQA consultant for the project who is available to speak tonight as well. So if you don't mind, I'm going to pass it over to David first.

Okay.

Thank you, Nathan, and good evening, Mayor Bass, members of the council. David Mullenbrook with the Community Development Department. With respect to the fifteen thousand one eighty three consistency analysis, a checklist approach. It's provision that's allowed and has been created through a court case of 2024 that allows for a checklist approach to go through the fifteen thousand one eighty three questions and make a determination if there are impacts that are peculiar to the site or that are greater than previously identified in a prior environmental review or if there are new impacts based on new information that's received or known. With regard to this fifteen thousand one eighty three checklist, within that checklist in the air quality section, the biological resources section, the noise section, and a traffic section, those discussions include references to project specific studies that were prepared based on this specific proposal.

The fifteen thousand one eighty three analysis tiers from the Rockland City Of Rockland General Plan EIR, which is a program level EIR. As a program level EIR, it looks at the development of this site absent a specific site plan. So we know in the general plan EIR analysis the project site is going to be developed because it has zoning and land use designations that identified this site to be developed, but we didn't have a specific proposal at that time like many other areas of the city in 2012 that were included in the general plan EIR. So there are certain impacts that are analyzed under CEQA that irregardless of the type of development project, you know those impacts potentially occur. I'll give an example of that.

There's a lot of impacts that will happen on a site depending upon the resources of the site, no matter if it's a commercial project, a residential project, an industrial project. We know through the general plan EIR analysis that the city of Rockland has biological resources throughout the city. It has wetlands, it has vernal pools, it has federally protected state and state protected threatened endangered species and what are called species of special concern. When development goes forward, the general plan EIR assumed that development would physically impact a site and then it prescribed policies and mitigation measures to address those site specific physical impacts. The other category of impacts are not necessarily site specific, meaning they're not tied to the development footprint of a specific site, but they're more tied to the specific of the proposal itself.

An example there would be air quality. Air quality impact is different for a commercial project than it is for a residential project. But the general plan EIR provides us policies and mitigation measures that require us to do studies to further assess those impacts once we have a project specific, a site specific development proposal like we do here.

So David, I think my challenge is I'm trying to find in all the information that's been provided where because as you you talk about general without a specific plan and then you talk about, well, there's a requirement that when you have a specific plan, have to do more analysis. You have to specifically look harder. Well, I'm trying to find where that look harder is, and I'm not finding it because we refer back to a checklist. And it sounds like a pretty basic checklist. It doesn't sound like there's a very high bar, yet the requirement for using it is ensuring there's no peculiar impacts.

So where are we?

So within that 15,183 consistency checklist, the studies that were performed, the air quality, the biological, the noise, I believe there was air quality biological noise traffic. FARA was the other subject. Within those subject areas, within that one hundred fifty one hundred three checklist, those studies that were conducted are summarized within that section, reaching the conclusions of either mitigation measures per the general plan EAR need to be further applied to the project. For example, under biological resources, the mitigation measures that came out of that analysis consistent with the general plan EIR are to do the studies. Now the studies have said here's the things that might be occurring on the site and here's the other steps that you have to take.

As an example, there's a feature on the site that may be a jurisdictional wetland and the mitigation measures to do an analysis as to whether that is a jurisdictional wetland and if it is, then you would have to coordinate with the appropriate resource agency if the project's impacting it to get an appropriate permit as well as to mitigate the impacts to that resource if it's in fact determined to be an eligible resource. But those reports themselves are all summarized within that one hundred fifty one hundred eighty three checklist document.

So, you know, I hear a lot in relationship to general plan EIRs and absence of initial projects and what you look at. And then when you have a specific project, Sue, we had a prior EIR, and I think we had an update, correct, to the EIR. How did it analyze this specific intensity and configuration of residential on this project?

Without going back into the files of general plan EIR, I couldn't tell you what was specifically assumed for this site, but I would confidently tell you development was assumed for this site. So looking again at a big picture level, the general plan EIR assumed the development of all the lands designated for development within the city based upon the general plan land use designation and or the zoning. So through the analysis, let's say the general plan analysis assumed 5,000 additional housing units would be built throughout the city, and those numbers were then used to perform the air quality modeling and the other subject areas that require site specific information. In this case, because we don't have site specific information, assumptions were made as to the level and intensity of development at a worst case scenario. So for example, if a site was, you know, had the ability for different types of land use or development, you would often take the worst case scenario development in terms of the amount of emissions that were generated, the amount of traffic that was going to be circulated by the project, and that would be the basis of the general plan EIR analysis.

But it's a very broad paintbrush look at future development in the city. There's not lacking any specific site plan for all the vacant sites without the city. You have to make some very broad assumptions.

Sure. And I appreciate that. And I thank you for the description. I think for me the challenge is, and this is not my expertise, I'm looking to understand how one arrives at a point where they can say that, you know, we're okay, we could use a checklist, this is fine, when from 1980 where this was light industrial to 2025 where it's mixed use. And we've had all these little things, but I hear there are assumptions that are being made.

And there are things that concern me because I'm looking to understand and find how we have determined that there are no peculiar impacts to this. So we are justified in using this checklist and applying it and not requiring or showing, first of all, that the analysis has been done, but if it hasn't been requiring it. So we've done thorough analysis to understand this impact, this specific project, on this specific parcel and the surrounding area. So that's kind of a concern that I have right now even with your explanation, though I do greatly appreciate what you've shared. So thank you for that. I think I'll end there for now.

You're welcome.

I'll probably come back and have some additional questions, David, but I do appreciate the insight. I want tap into something that the vice mayor questioned, which was ingress and egress and circulation for this. It it appears to primarily rely on generally a single point of access from Wildcat. But the vice mayor referenced the fact that there are no acceleration or deceleration lanes proposed. Was that ever discussed?

If it was, why is that not included in this project? Because I agree with the vice mayor that that seems to be something that is absent that makes no sense given the speeds on that roadway, given the proposed amount of traffic, and given the fact that we are going to increase significantly the amount of traffic that occurs. And you have a school site, which we know during a fifteen to thirty minute period of time, you have a significant amount of traffic ingress and egress. So can you help me understand that?

I can. Thank you for asking. So a traffic study was prepared for the project. When the traffic study came in and said that these term movements would be safe, the city engineer and staff reviewed the traffic study and said, well, this really would benefit from a diesel taper at the northern driveway there where it says extended tubular steel fence up in the far top right corner. Diesel taper for cars to slow down and have that diesel lane.

The traffic engineer at the time said that that would create a conflict between the existing bike lane because the traffic that's pulling into that decel taper would have to cross the bike lane, which could be potentially dangerous, and they recommended against it. It was kind of one of those things where both engineers were talking to each other. They had different opinions, and the applicant asked where is the standard that says that the decel tapers required here. We pointed to a standard that the city of Roseville utilizes which per a a certain number of of trips, a deceleration taper is required but that's not an adopted city standard while we're working on adopting new standards which would require things like this. It's not something that's adopted now.

So, the applicant declined to put in the diesel taper. Again, I believe their traffic engineer is available to speak with directly, but that's kind of the story behind the scenes on it. Okay.

A little disappointed that they declined because it doesn't sound like it was the desire. And it's amazing to me how many projects we've had where we've actually worked with applicants and we found safety issues like this. And you have two council members up here who have already expressed concern about it and I know that staff expressed concern about it. So that's a little troublesome but I I appreciate the explanation and letting me know that, you know, that was recommended but declined. So let's talk a little bit about the health risk assessment.

I was reading through that and it concludes that impacts are below thresholds. But it appears to rely on modeling assumptions, construction timing, equipment, those different things. But it doesn't seem to really account for real world construction variability, right? I mean, it appears based on assumptions, not really what we generally experience in real world construction. Is it correct or did I misread?

Well, with regard to the way the assumptions are made, I hate to keep pointing at other people to answer questions, but that's probably something that's better answered by their secret consultant. But I will tell you that based on the direction from the Planning Commission, staff is very interested in getting a construction management plan that addresses many of these items. Often these are not determined at the project level stage during entitlements. They're determined during preparation of improvement plans and grading plans and when they actually get out onto the site. So prior to any grading on this site, staff will work with the applicant on a construction management plan to try to reduce any impacts to the school or nearby receptors to the greatest extent practicable and we understand that it's still going to be a development project.

There's going to be noise. There's going to be, you know, people are going to be moving dirt around but you know, perhaps move the tiller closer to Wildcat Boulevard and farther away from the school and maybe work at certain times of the day and you know, when it for the the noisier jobs, things of that nature, we would work with the applicant on that. So if you have specific questions about how environmental studies came to the conclusions they did, I would ask you to direct that to the applicant team.

Okay, great. Thank you. So the next first question is an easy one. It's closed ended. It's a yes or no. So the prior general plan already identified significant and unavoidable impacts in air quality, traffic and noise? Yes or no?

Yes, yes. Yes, did. Okay.

All right. Thank you for that. That's what I was interested in understanding. So Section fifteen thousand one eighty three doesn't eliminate the need to consider whether a project adds meaningfully to those impacts, correct?

Add meaningfully to those impacts?

Yes. So it basically doesn't fifteen thousand one eighty three doesn't essentially say you don't have to consider whether or not it's adding more to those impacts.

The checklist states that those impacts are consistent with the impacts that were analyzed as part of the EIR. I mean, that there are certain levels, certain thresholds that must be maintained to stay below a significant impact. And what the study is concluding that the development of this site would stay within those levels.

Okay. So the document appears to conclude that the project is below thresholds. And so I'm a little confused because the information provided, and this is based on my understanding, again this is not an area of expertise for me, but I can read the information that's provided, it seems to understate the cumulative contribution, especially given this is becoming a built out corridor. Am I misreading the information that's there or missing information?

I don't believe so, but again, I'm going to pass you on to David on this one. Apologize.

Again, David Mullenbrook, Community Development Director. When the general plan EIR was prepared, it assumed development citywide, and it also included a cumulative analysis that not only addressed citywide development but also assumed a certain level of regional development through the horizon year of the general plan EIR. The significant unavoidable impacts that were identified in terms of air quality, transportation, noise, aesthetics, there were a handful of impacts that were identified as significant unavoidable when the development of the entire general plan was taken as a whole. When you look at site specific projects and site specific reviews and you conduct the individual analysis for that project in and of itself, those thresholds are used for example, the air quality thresholds are promulgated by the Pus County Air Pollution Control District. So you use those thresholds to evaluate individual projects and when the analysis was done it didn't trigger any of those air quality thresholds for individual project level.

Does this project still contribute to the cumulative impacts were identified as significant unavoidable impacts in general plan EIR? Yes.

Okay. I feel given what's here, my understanding of what has been reviewed, I need more information. I think I'm missing something. I don't know if it's just an absence of the information here or if it's a need for me to sit and meet with you and meet with the folks who have done their analysis on this. But I'm looking at this and I'm seeing a mixture of things.

Well, look at no specific project and then we look at a specific project and then, you know, these there's no combination of facts here for me that I'm missing it and I'm really struggling to understand how we're arriving at this checklist being acceptable given the project that's before us. So again, I apologize. Mr. Vice Mayor, I'm kind of following your lead and starting to discuss. Okay, so the no new information finding in the document.

So it says there's no new information of substantial importance. So we had the original EIR in 2012, but there have been a number of changes. Now of course we had the modification, we had an update. But since that, we've had changes in climate policy. We've had changes in the air quality thresholds. We've had changes in our movement from LOS to VMT and even the VMT standards. So how have those changes been included and where is that data for reference?

I don't need to introduce myself again. CEQA has a provision with respect to new rules and regulations, new provisions, new legislation that are enacted where a previously prepared CEQA document does not have to go back and revise based upon changes in rules and legislation. So you don't have to retroactively go back and comply with a newly adopted rule regulation or standard if that didn't exist at the time the original analysis was conducted.

So in our state's infinite wisdom, we think it's important but not important enough to update.

It's there's a

This is directed at you.

No. No. I understand. But that's part of the CEQA guidelines. I I if you give me a second, I can look up the CEQA guideline and

No. That

I cite that.

I want these people to stay awake, so I don't want you go through that.

I appreciate that.

Well, okay. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. There was a question I have, and I'm going to shift and you're probably going to chair now because I'm going to shift away from the environmental side. And I want to talk a little bit about the project itself. Again, as I mentioned earlier, I had an opportunity to visit the site and speak with the principal and I had a tour. What we have up on this can can they see what's on the screen?

The site plan, they can't

Yes, okay. So when you look at that site plan, the area of ingress and egress for the school, there's a it says fence and it points to the fence to the right. But there's a dotted line there that essentially would suggest a pathway for ingress and egress into that area behind the school. Correct?

The hammerhead?

Yeah. So you see that where they you have a square there that appears to reference the building, the existing building there. And then you have that dotted line, the hammerhead, that shows that would suggest ingress and egress. A challenge I have, and I I had shared this, is this doesn't appear to be accurate in its reflection because there's a structure next to this dotted line structure that's there that would appear to be in direct conflict with that ingress and egress. Has has that been reviewed?

And if so, is there no conflict? Is there sufficient ingress, egress? I'm just a little concerned because when I was out there and I I looked at these plans and then I look at that, you know, the square this drawing and I'm like, okay. Well, that looks great except that building, there's another structure behind it, but it doesn't appear to be reflected here.

On the school side of the property?

Correct. Okay. So But and the reason I asked that is this project is suggesting that they will have ingress and egress. But if they don't have ingress and egress to the back of the school, that to me is a huge issue. I would suspect if we brought the fire chief out here, it would be a huge issue in order for them to gain access to the back of that facility and just for maintenance purposes. They had, you know, HVAC work that needed to be done. So do we know why that's, why it doesn't reflect the actual structures that are there and has that been taken into account?

What I can tell you is that the deputy fire chief, when he reviewed this, reviewed it based on the design that was given and he said that all fire access can be provided. If the school developed a building inside of an EVA, that's really more of a conversation with the school on why that happened. Mean, what are

the Excuse me.

Don't want stop.

And and I know that we've had a couple of laughs here. The reason I'm I'm doing this now is because objectively, we wanna be able to hear what's being said and then not distracted because we're making a record of everything. And so it's really important that this conversation is heard by all council members, and I apologize if I jumped on it too quick, but I would really just ask that everyone allow for this conversation to be had. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I lost my train of thought but the the the the EVA has been reviewed by the authority to review EVAs which is the fire department and they've said that it's they can provide the safe movements. I spoke with the applicant earlier today because this point was raised in a very recent letter that they feel like they're not going to be able to get around this building that was constructed inside the EVA on the school side. And the applicant has agreed that if necessary, they can move that fence back. And again, I don't have a mouse, but there's a fence at the corner there that could be pushed back 10 feet or so into the landscaping to allow a wider berth into that actually, got a picture of it right here, if you give me a second, because I had a feeling this might come up. Sorry, I've got a lot of slides.

Right here. So, that fence could be pushed back a bit where the red is shown to allow them to make that turn movement to get, you know, to allow more access into the EVA. But, you know, with regard to how it was prepared, I got to defer to the applicant on that.

Okay. So, Nate, I I just for for clarity though, when when you say it being built in the area of access, that this wasn't the original. The EVA? This EVA?

It is the original. Was recorded on the it was recorded long ago.

Okay. So so everything that you have here, so what is the EVA that's listed over to the right? What

This hammerhead easement is on title for the project.

Okay. But that goes that goes away. Correct?

No. The EVA is still there. There's going to be a gate that's installed so that the fire department can get through and provide that that that access. But the EVA remains.

Okay. And the but the fence so you're talking the fence would move. But as and again, I haven't seen this. So as the the fence would move back to allow for the actual because when you talk about the EVA, this solid black line actually impacts that EVA?

The solid black line is the property line. So the fence was designed to be coterminous with the property line. The EVA was reviewed by fire even with this fence here and it was determined that the term movements can be made by all of the city's fire apparatus, whatever. If that if if necessary, that fence can be bumped out as shown on the screen into the landscape area to allow for further turn movement, but it doesn't really change what the review was, which was that the fire trucks can already make those turn movements.

Okay. Yeah, I would be concerned just given you know you talk about the the property line but that's also the fence line.

Yes. The fence was put on We

can call

it whatever we want. It's a black line. It's where the property line and the fence line are. Yes, So what I'm talking about, that's what's what I'm referring to is. So that definitely to me would create a concern relative to that access.

So that movement back, okay, that I appreciate that. It's just it's a concern of mine when I'm looking at this and I see a drawing that doesn't account for the structures that are actually there. And again, because we're supposed to make decisions and this would have an impact on that and it would concern me if there was an impact on the access to the back of that facility. But it sounds like that fence can move that will potentially address that.

Yeah, that's the thinking. Again, mean, the applicant probably should address many of these questions because they can speak to what they saw on the ground when this was drawn up. You know, I think that's really a question for them.

Okay. Then you mentioned the wood fencing at the top of grade that basically separated the parking area from the school playground at the bottom.

Yes.

I'm just trying to think of any of our schools that are adjacent to residential or commercial, most of them have cinder block type walls because that protects when the person steps on the accelerator rather than the brake, or if you have a tractor trailer that's there, you know, a vehicle with a moving vehicle that happens to steer off, a wooden fence doesn't provide much protection, especially when you're talking about ant gray. Why a wooden fence?

So there are three reasons. And originally, staff pushed for a CMU wall similar to any residential versus non residential and the first reason is that the municipal code requires a wall to be put on the property line when two zoning districts are conflicting as in residential versus non residential zoning. These actually have the same zoning. So, the way the code is written now, it's not a requirement. You know, as part of the new update that that you mentioned earlier for the the code update, it's going to say zone or use but it currently doesn't say that.

It just says zoning district. The second one being that the applicant stated that walls are expensive and that you know, in this very tight financial and again, I this really should be directed to the applicant but they would prefer not to construct a wall there and that that for affordable housing projects, state density bonus law does allow several concessions that an applicant can get in order to basically go around code requirements. No code requirement here, but the applicant requested that this be a wooden fence and not a wall. The third one, the applicant, and this is probably better coming from them, but they said that they had spoken with the school and the school did not want the the the feeling that it looked like a prison wall. So, a wooden fence was designed at the top of the grade.

Well, originally at the property line but it's now been moved to the top of the grade And then an additional two foot of lattice was put on top of that wood fence, so it's eight feet instead of six to provide as much screening as possible. Okay.

I appreciate the answers. I'm not excited. But and I keep hearing things about required versus and it's amazing having been in the planning commission and then now as a council member, how many times I've had projects come before us where applicants actually work with us to enhance what we provide in development to our community. And that doesn't seem to be happening for some reason. Okay. And I think at this point in time, Mr. Mayor, I've taken up enough, and I'll open it up to the next.

I a couple more. I I also wanna disclose that I had communications with representatives of the church, the principal, as well as many parents and neighbors of the project. The residential neighbors of the project had phone calls, emails, lots of communication over the last six months or longer. I'll just put that. And as councilmember Gallardo said, I had no communication with the developer on this project.

I had a little bit of a question on the elevation difference between the school's property and this development. Let me start with where they're putting the parking lot where the garden currently is. Will there be a retaining wall? Because it looks pretty close to the playground right there.

And done. Done. And a great question to for them to bring the project applicant into the question and answers. And

the on the screen that's right in front of us right now, it shows a real gradual difference in elevation. The preschool that's right there, the first building when you come onto campus on the right, when I stand next to that, there's a pretty dramatic increase in the elevation right there. What happens to that? Does that get smoothed out there? How

No. So that's basically what we're looking at here on the lower right hand corner is there's that hillside. So, that's the reason why the fence is being put up there for that that hillside. So, there's going to be a a tubular steel fence along the property line on that lower elevation and then the eight foot tall, you know, six and two along that higher point. But then as has been explained to me, as it gets further to let's call it the north, even though that's not exactly right. As it gets further to the north, that elevation change gets less and less, and then it becomes more of a two to three foot grade differential as it makes that turn there.

Okay. Was there any conversation about the height of these buildings, or were we okay with 40 feet?

The code allows it, is what I can say. It allows taller buildings up to 50 or four stories based on the zoning that's been there forever.

Yeah, okay. I'm just remembering, I think it's called Sierra Gateway at Rockland Road and Sierra College Boulevard, how the residents were concerned about the height, and they brought those buildings down to actually, like, 30 feet with just a little pitch

over over next And Those were two different general it development plans with two different zoning standards. This one, the height is 40 feet. It came up a lot, the height of the building, when that Building 18A was only 15 foot off the property line. When they moved it 90 foot away, it was less of a concern.

And I watched the Planning Commission meeting that night and rewatched it. And there was just a I thought it would be useful to maybe kind of just provide some context for people, because I heard a lot of people talk about the need for affordable housing. I think everybody agrees there's a need for affordable housing. But can you give everyone a sense of how many affordable housing units do we have in the University Avenue Wildcat corridor today?

I can. So there are three projects in that corridor. Whitney Ranch apartments, which is 156 units, Terracina, which is two eighty eight, and Vicara, which is two fifty. So that's, what, about 700 plus or minus total. The University Avenue Apartments project, which is now called the Francis I believe off of University Avenue is entitled but it is not yet constructed. So altogether there's about a thousand within

half we'll

of

So just back in the envelope, we probably have at least a thousand, maybe even close to 1,100 affordable units already approved by the city in that University Wildcat corridor.

If you're counting approved and constructed, yes.

Yep, yep. Okay. Alright. And then citywide, how many income based units do we have?

Constructed, we currently have about 1,400, but that doesn't account for the Pacific Street Apartments project, which is 110. The Francis, which was the Sierra College Senior Apartments, which I think is one. Oh, that's a Steven. I apologize. That's what I meant though. I think that's 180 units. Quarry Row has an affordability component. There's another affordable housing project that is proposed on Midas and Pacific, and also the Saint Anton project where the Kmart site is. I don't have all of those numbers written down but it's probably

But there are others that have been there for decades that aren't included in those numbers, right?

No, the 1,400 is our currently operating affordable units. And then what Nate was just discussing were the ones that either have been entitled but not built or that are currently working through the entitlement process. Okay,

all right. Thank you. Okay.

I'm going to ask a couple questions and we'll go back. Consistent with my other council members, the only expertise that I've had have actually been with members of the school, but I also did have an expertise conversation, if you want to call it that, with the superintendent of schools based on the 05/07/2026 letter that I received. I did call Gail Garbolino Mojica to understand the letter, including that both the California Department of Education and Division of State Architect have conducted site visits, and I may ask a couple of questions about that, but I understand that that is an issue that is tangential. I actually want to get first more of a level setting, and I apologize some of this is a little Socratic and our city attorney loves this part of the night. But our role today is to make mainly is to make findings.

Is that correct?

Mayor Bass, yes. That's correct. And I'm gonna quickly add, there's two action items. Both require findings to be made.

As to the notice of exemption, one of the first things we're gonna have to make, I think, four findings. The first being that we have to conclude that the proposed project would not result in significant impacts that were, one, peculiar to the project or the parcel on which the project would be located. Is that right? Yes, that is correct. And then the second, I'll just go through all four, because I just want to make sure we're on the same page.

We're not analyzed as significant effects in the general plan EIR with the, which the project is consistent. And three, potentially significant off-site impacts and cumulative impacts which were not discussed in the general plan EIR. And four, we're not previously identified significant effects in which as a result of substantial new information that was not known at the time of the General Plan EIR was certified were determined to have a more severe impact than discussed in the General Plan EIR. Is that accurate? Yes, that sounds accurate. Okay. And so what is the checklist supposed to do? What's its function here?

The checklist in this case? I would say I believe Mr. Muldbrook has provided a fair representation of that, but it's intended to be a document that is part of the record that will provide the explanations for why in this project for this particular project no further sequel review is required. Thank you. Now

as we're talking about SQL review, I know that there's we've been here before multiple times and we'll hear confusion as to what SQL used to do versus now. And so I like to ask a couple of questions about what we cannot consider, right? Just so we can get this out there. So property values is not something that we get to consider today.

I agree with that, yes.

And then, this isn't a this isn't me characterizing something as good or bad. I just want to make sure we get it out there. Neighborhood character and aesthetics is not something that we get to consider today.

For purposes of CEQA, your CEQA determination, no.

And of course any opposition to affordable housing, we can't consider.

Not for purposes of that decision, no. Now,

what was this project before we rezoned it? What was the zoning? Actually, I'm going to move over to other staff members. Don't want you to ask this one. It

was planned development business professionalcommerciallight industrial.

Alright. So, that it was still that type of project, assuming we'd maybe still be having these conversations, but there's always something that was gonna be there.

Yes, and it I would like to clarify something. It still has that zoning. The MU24 plus is an overlay which requires that if it is constructed with residential, it meets those minimums for our state RINA standards, but it still has the PD BPCLI zoning on it. So all those things that were previously allowed are still allowed on the site.

Okay. So and we would still be having discussions about probably construction management plans because it's right next to a school. We'd be building, Or we wouldn't be building. We don't build anything except for bridges these days. And so the zoning changes, correct, to also add this residential aspect? Or not purely residential, I should say.

The residential aspect was always built in. This multi family integrated with commercial. When this first came to staff, staff said, okay, this was probably intended to be historically a possibly mixed use where you can have commercial on the bottom with apartments on top or something of that situation. But because that's subjective, we weren't the Housing Accountability Act says that we were not allowed to apply any minor stand, any any minimum standard of of commercial. So, we had to count it. We have to allow multifamily residential based on the previous zoning, giving it the overlay just allows us to count the numbers for our arena sites.

Right. And so I wanted to clarify, though, the term that it was subjective wasn't necessarily subjective to anyone up here. It was subjective to the Department of Housing and Community Development.

HCD said that giving it any minimum number of commercial would be subjective. So if it wanted to do 100,000 square feet of residential with 100 square feet of commercial, it is therefore multifamily integrated with commercial and must be supported.

Okay. And then to anyone that can answer this, and maybe we do go back to the city attorney, just assuming we get this wrong and there is litigation, do you know what the penalty is per unit per day under the current laws?

I wish I could tell you precisely what it is. I'm certain I could look it up. I would tell you that just generally speaking, there's been an absolute flood of ongoing legislation in this realm. Right. And almost, I would say much of it carries a series of consequences that are held out as the negative outcome if a jurisdiction does not comply.

Right. So hypothetically, if it's $10,000 per unit per day and we have 120 units, the back of the envelope on that.

Yes. 10,000 is a seems to be a number for whatever reason the state likes to use. It's used in a number of circumstances, and it may well be this one. So

now I want to actually ask some questions about the CEQA issues. The first is going to be the interplay between some of the studies that were done versus the checklist. And to the extent that there are any studies that were done that showed difficulty in excavation or anything like that, how do we look at those studies and then make a determination that they're not as relevant anymore? I'm trying to be overly broad because I don't know all the scientific terms.

That we do not run the studies ourselves. So the assumptions, the actual modeling of the air quality analysis, as an example, is something that's done by the applicant's consultants. That would be a question better posed to them. Okay. And then

how about issues like the wetland issue? Like, happens when there's this jurisdictional issue? And are we supposed to just kinda be in a wait and see posture as opposed to finding out ahead of time?

This project, like other project sites within the city of Rockland, has the potential, has a drainage ditch running across it that the biological study said this may be jurisdictional, and it could be jurisdictional under the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, under the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Regional Water Quality Control Board, any or all of those agencies. But in order to find that answer, what would have to happen is a wetland delineation would have to be prepared. They would actually go out, look at the soil, look at the vegetation conditions and the presence of hydrology, determine if certain criteria are being met under the guidelines and direction of those resource agencies. And then, you know, check the box if it is or is not jurisdictional feature. If it were to be a jurisdictional feature, then the secondary component of the mitigation is to obtain a permit and then mitigate for the loss of the resource by either compensation or purchase of credits, whatever the particular agency who has jurisdiction allows.

And from a timeline perspective, is that something that could be done before this approval process?

Or it goes approval, then we find out, and then there's a separate

Most projects in our city will do the delineation after the fact. So they seek their entitlements and then comply with their mitigation measure to go do the studies, find out if it's jurisdictional, and if it is jurisdictional, go pursue the necessary permits. So there's not a requirement that that information be known ahead of time prior to the project being brought before the decision makers.

And did I hear that you said sometimes? So sometimes we do it beforehand?

There there have been projects, and I don't necessarily understand the whys of why some people do and some people don't, but there have been projects where we have an environmental document and a delineation has already been prepared and verified by the Corps of Engineers. I suspect it's probably something that is calculated into the pro form a of the project in terms of wanting to have a better understanding of the costs if you do have jurisdictional features and what that process is going to be and how much it's going to cost for you to get a permit and to mitigate.

Okay. How about any wildlife, anything that lives in vernal pools that we have to be concerned with?

The biological study identified that the some of the resources may have special status species, and there's a mitigation measure that has been applied to the project as a condition of approval that requires surveys for potential vernal pool species.

Is there any particular time period where that should be done?

Yeah. It's the the US Fish and Wildlife Service who has identified those vulnerable species are threatened or endangered has specific protocol regarding the timing and the conduct of those surveys. It used to be a two year survey. I I don't know if that's still the case. Not not for the entirety of two years, but two years two years worth of survey data, but but only during certain periods of that two year window.

And so are we essentially being asked to defer that survey for the approval process today?

I I wouldn't say defer. The the the the The answer to that will be known through implementation of the project's mitigation measures. Again, where we have projects that have potential vernal pools, they don't necessarily do those surveys in advance. Some will, some don't. Yes.

Just to follow-up on that. So while those surveys are being done, does nothing happen on the site?

Correct. Those mitigation measures are triggered upon prior to the issuance of a grading plan. If that if you know the project were to receive approvals, they could not go forward with any construction activity until all those required mitigation measures are implemented, including the preconstruction surveys. And those surveys could take, I mean, they take two years? Well, again, that's what I recall being the prior protocol. I don't know if that's the same. Their CEQUA consultant may have a better understanding of that.

Okay. And we'll I hope that the CEQUA consultant I'm sure you got a long list of responses, but we can circle back in a couple of minutes. I just want to ask a couple more questions. Actually, rest of this is going to be more basic zoning stuff, separate and apart from CEQA, because I just want to clarify a couple of things. Because I do know that we've, you know, we've gone back and forth about a discussion about the school and impacts there.

But I don't want to make sure we're not conflating the SQL analysis that we talk about, as well as maybe the impacts on the school. Just to make sure and make clear we're not mediating an issue between the developer, the school, and also call it the church right now. That's not what the point of this is, correct?

That's correct.

Okay, however, I wanna ask the question of when we're doing these, you know, the approvals and everything, what is the engagement when we have, for example, an easement dispute? What's our role as a city?

It depends on the type of easement, but for like an emergency vehicle access or EVA easement, we typically defer to the fire department to ensure that they can utilize that for emergency vehicle access. Many of the issues with this project, as you pointed out, are conflicts between two property owners. They're more agreements than easements. Real really the only easement that's recorded is that hammerhead. That that's that exists currently.

It's existed for a long time. So, that those are the ones that staff ensures that we don't block that. You know, we you can see on the on the figure on the site plan on the right, there's going be no parking striping over that to ensure that even though we could pick up an additional probably four parking spaces there, it's very important that that's not blocked. So that's the level of review for easements. Staff Well,

I'm glad you brought up the parking. So I'm going to really switch it up on you now. You'd mentioned density and the density bonus. So you'd made a comment about the fact that the staff was forced or the city is forced to accept a lower density or I'm sorry, a higher density of housing to what we would expect for parking. So our I believe we're looking at 2.1,

correct, spaces? As proposed, it's 1.5. It's 180 spaces.

Right. But our normal requirements.

Yes. That sounds about right. It depends on the number of bedrooms. If it's one bedroom, it's 1.5 spaces per unit. If it's two bedrooms or more, it's two spaces per unit plus 25%. So it's not really a per unit number, it's per bedroom per unit.

And then the when it comes to this density bonus, is it kind of a correct way of saying it that the density bonus is there in order to encourage builders to increase the amount of people that can live there, and at the same time, they can decrease the amount of parking spaces in order to increase the amount of living space?

It's to increase the amount of affordable housing that can be Affordable housing, okay.

The theory being that this density that's increased while decreasing the amount of vehicles, that the people that live here will have less vehicles?

I believe that's the theory, but you'd have to ask the state about that.

Right. And I understand that. And this is where we get to a point where regardless of the rules and the laws, we are gonna have reality. And that is that this is going to have more vehicles. And it's going to be, for example, and I guess I could ask, although I don't want to ask our chief to pontificate on what happens when you have too many vehicles and not enough parking spaces and then where do those vehicles go, Then what happens when you have vehicles on the side of a road or something like that?

It's called smash and grab if anyone's wondering where I'm going. The issue is that then we also have a school right here and then we've, you know, we have the church with parking spaces. So, did we negotiate, try to negotiate with more for more parking spaces based on what we have in our code?

It's a very unusually shaped site as you can see. Staff worked with the applicant as much as possible to squeeze as many parking spaces as they could, but there's also requirements for landscaping and shading and all these other, you know, typical requirements. So, yes, we worked with the applicant as much as possible to get as much parking. I believe Ali wants to say something.

I did. Just wanted to clarify, and I won't speak to safety or how many vehicles will actually be on the site. But typically with multifamily affordable housing, there's a general assumption made that because the requirements for occupancy are pretty stringent, you have to be a family unit. There's an assumption made that these are typically going to be families with children as opposed to potentially roommates who are sharing, you know, a two bedroom place so you have two adults or couples that would have multiple cars. So there's an assumption that's baked in that it can accommodate fewer parking spaces because you're talking about families with children.

That doesn't necessarily mean that's what it's gonna be in reality, but that's one of the assumptions that's typically baked in when when we look at affordable housing and density bonuses. So I just wanted to clarify that.

And and I appreciate that because it that's the assumption we're being told is it is one of the reasons why they have these the the less parking Correct.

And it's it's not just this project. A lot of it has to do with the financing and and the deed restrictions on the units and all of that. Now it's not perfect and it is yeah. You can't enforce everything, but that's how the prod the process is is typically established.

Right. And one of the assumptions that they haven't made is that these are two income families still scraping by and therefore they may need to go to two different places to go to work. That's not an assumption that's being made. And it's not on us. This is part of the law.

It is definitely part of the law. And I guess each family unit is is comprised of a different makeup of of humans. Right.

And I think this will be later for comment, but one of the things that I'm curious is when we have to deal with what the reality of the situation is, how does that impact the greater area? And that's something a city council does rather than just what CEQUA does. And I'm, again, not conflating what our job is today, but in a broader sense, what we are here to do in general. So I'm gonna take a time out here for myself. Anybody else have questions?

You. Leitha, do you mind going back to that list from the zoning that showed what was allowable? You had a long list. Certainly. And it went by so fast that I may have caught it. And recognize this is before, and I believe any of us here as our time. So two questions. When the school and the church were built, did they have to go through the vernal pools and special species? Did they have that same review?

You know, the school, I actually went back when this project came in because I was curious if the school had a conditional use permit on it. And I found a determination that was made by the community development director from when the school was constructed that stated because it was a public school, it was exempt from city requirements. So maybe somebody from the school could speak to this better. It was before my time. But typically schools are the design review is the Department of State Architect. They review it. I believe they would be required to comply with CEQA at that time, but I'm not entirely sure how school sites work.

And that was my other is I don't unless I'm seeing it fast, but how did a school get built on this property? If it's light industrial, commercial, how was that allowed?

I don't know. I wasn't here at the time. It it was it was allowed because that's where they wanted to locate a public school.

Even though I'm not gonna say am I blind? Am I not seeing it on the list if that was an option? I'm just curious how that happened. I say I think it's before all of our time, so.

It was determined to be exempt from these standards because it's a public school. Why the rationale was made at that time, I don't know the answer to that. It's a one line thing I found in an old document because I had the same question.

Yeah, yeah. As you know, as we're trying to zone for appropriate places, that's part of the conflict with this kind of property. Thank you.

At this point, I'm going to ask if there's not any further questions for staff. I would be asking for any questions for the applicant.

I think the applicant may want to make a brief presentation of the appropriate. Council before your questions? Okay.

And Mr.

Merritt, do you mind? And I know we're

Yeah,

We've been at that's

a this for almost

four hours. Could we take a

Yeah, we can take a

Since we started anyway.

Yeah, know. I know. We'll take a ten. Five?

Yeah.

Can we do five? Yeah. Good. Okay. Consensus is five.

Motion passes. Alright. In return,

gavel it. I

gonna gavel it. There we go. There's some participation. Thank you. By the way, I hate using that thing, so I apologize. Alright. So we're returning now to give the applicant a moment to or or the proponent, I should say, time to present. At this point, would anyone from the proponent side like to step up to the mic?

:Hello. Good evening. My name is Lauren Alexander. I'm the project manager for the applicant. Staff did a very thorough presentation. I know that you guys have a lot of questions, so my thought here was to just let you know who's here and available on our team to ask questions of. So you have me, our civil engineer on the end, JD Christensen. Next to him is Lance Cornell, who's our architect. Next to me is Sam McCallgraves, who is our attorney. And then we have a few people joining us by Zoom that you can call on for questions.

Mary Bean is from FCS, the CEQA consultant that prepared the CEQA document. She has an air quality specialist with her as well if any air quality questions come up. And then we have Mark, I'm so sorry but I cannot remember his last name right now, from W Trans who performed the traffic study. So you have a full panel here. Happy to answer any questions. And wherever you'd like to start, there was a lot there.

Right. I think I'll start this time to my left. Councilmember Broadway?

Yeah, hope there's not a need to repeat them. Hopefully someone on your team was taking notes. Do you have someone who wants to speak to the environmental questions that were asked that staff deferred to your team.

Do you want to start with CEQA then? Yes. Okay. So I think what we'll do is I'll have Sam come up and just talk at a high level about CEQA and this specific approach on this project, and then Mary is on Zoom. I hope you guys can connect her in, let her in. Okay. And can talk more specifically about the studies that were performed.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Evening. Sam McCall Graves from Stoll Reeves. I'm a land use attorney and a CEQA attorney, on behalf of the applicant here tonight. So, I wanna start with, one five one eight three, the CEQA exemption, because I think there are a lot of reasonable questions about how this analysis works, what this exemption is. So one five one eight three applies when you have a general plan or another planning level document that has already gone through a CEQA process.

There's been an EIR at the plan level. What one five one eight three then dictates is that when a project comes forward that is consistent with that prior plan level document, it doesn't need to go through additional environmental review unless it has project or parcel specific impacts that fall outside of that envelope of what was analyzed in that EIR. So sort of the predicate threshold criteria that you look for for whether or not a project is gonna be exempt under one five one eight three is if it's consistent with the general plan, if it's consistent with the general plan EIR, if it's consistent with zoning. If those things are true, then it is a very good candidate for one five one eight three because only if it falls outside of that envelope, there are project or parcel specific impacts outside of that, does additional environmental review get triggered. Of course, you still have to confirm that that's not the case, and that's where fifteen thousand one eighty three analysis comes in.

So there is the typical form of that analysis of the checklist, which is that term is a little bit misleading because it's not just a checklist. It is a long document that checks those boxes but also supports that with additional technical analysis, including in the checklist itself, which is a robust document, and then technical studies that back up the analysis. So that's what was done here. To the extent that you have questions about the specific impact areas of the technical studies, I'll defer to Mary and the team that prepared that analysis. But on a broad level, the one five one eight three exemption applies because it's a project that is consistent with the general plan, consistent with zoning, consistent with the general plan EIR.

Not only that, but in addition to the plan level environmental review, this project has the benefit of having gone through a site specific environmental review process prior to the one by one a three analysis. This happened last year when the city rezoned the site. It did an addendum to the EIR. That addendum looked at this specific site and development on this specific site and considered it for residential development. So all of these things support the analysis and support that there are no project or parcel specific impacts. So I'm happy to answer any questions about one five one eight three, how it applies, the scope of that analysis, if there are any.

Well, I have some air quality questions. Do direct them to you or to somebody who's not here?

I will probably defer to Marion, our air quality experts on that. But I'm happy to hear them I if you want

want you to explain how you did the air quality analysis and the special things that you looked at given the sensitive receptors nearby. Yeah.

I think if Mary is on the line, she would be a good person to speak to that.

That should be Jackie.

Or Jackie.

We also have Jackie Hi.

Hi there. Can everyone hear me?

Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. Hi. My name is Jackie Winkle. I'm a senior air quality scientist with First Carbon, and I'd be happy to answer your air quality questions. So just on a broad, just to explain things broadly to start with and then we can answer specific questions.

The air quality analysis was conducted in accordance with Placer County Air Pollution Control District guidance and recommended methodologies. So the construction related emissions were estimated based on applicant provided information that did include construction duration and equipment to be used consistent with the specific attributes of the project site, including difficult geologic conditions. The operational related related emissions emissions were were estimated as well in accordance with air district recommended guidance and methodology. The emissions were then compared against thresholds of significance as recommended by the Placer County Air Quality Management District, and it was determined that emissions would be below thresholds. As it relates to the health risks, an air dispersion modeling was conducted, which took the construction related emissions that would occur across the entirety of the site for the duration of the construction period, which was estimated to be approximately eighteen months.

Those emissions were then estimated in a dispersion model, which takes into account site specific terrain and site specific meteorological data to derive concentrations at locations around the project site, including at the school, including at nearby residences. Those concentrations of air pollutants were then translated into health risks using health risk methodology as recommended by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard and Assessment, as well as the Placer County Air Quality Management District. That accounts for the developmental sensitivity of young children from their developing organs and their increased breathing rate, which increases their dose. Health risk factors of 10 are actually applied to young children starting at the age of of infancy to reflect those developmental sensitivities. And still, the impacts and the potential health risks from the construction of the project were determined to be below the health based thresholds of significance as established by the air district.

K. What what kind of time exposure did the analysis include?

It assumes exposure based on the construction duration of eighteen months.

But

Five days a week. Mhmm.

What Five

days a week, Monday through Friday.

What I'm after is does it assume that the kids are outside for six hours a day, one hour a day, twelve hours a day? Is there

That's a good question. It assumes that it actually accounts for the overlap in construction that would occur at the same time that the students would be at school. So it assumes a construction is occurring Monday through Friday, roughly nine to five, and it assumes that the children will be at attendance at school at that same time period for eighteen months.

Okay. Inside or outside the school?

Outside. There's no there's no additional, factor to adjust for, you know, filtration or the additional health benefit from being indoors. So in fact, indoor exposure would be reduced from outdoor exposure because there's filtration and, an indoor protection from being inside a building.

K. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm not sure who I'm directing it to, and I'm a little more basic. Who are you?

Oh, my name is Jackie Winkle. I'm I'm a consultant with First Carbon Solutions. I

apologize. I'm looking at the crowd. I know nothing about this developer or I have not a clue. So if somebody would like to maybe tell us who you are, where you came from, and give us a little background would be helpful.

Questions. So I represent the Pacific Companies, Pacific West communities specifically. We are a multifamily developer specializing in affordable housing, been around for just about thirty years. And we've developed over 300 affordable housing projects. About 75% to 80% of those are in California.

We develop all over the state, doing urban projects, rural projects, anything in between. The company is based out of Boise, Idaho. I'm local. I live in Sonoma County. And we I don't know how much you know about affordable housing, but we're owner operators, so you have to, with tax credit financing, keep your projects for at least fifteen years. So when we develop a project, we hire third party property management companies to do leasing and management of the property, but we own it. I'm happy to answer any specific questions other than that, if you want to know more. I really was just trying to move to your

questions. :I'm about to throw these out the door, I'm not going to lie. Have you built anything in Placer County?

I personally have not worked on anything in Placer County. We have at least three that I know of, one of which is in Roseville that was completed late last year, I believe, that's being leased.

Can I ask which project?

Well, don't know the name of it. We do about 30 projects a year. I don't work on all of them. I only work on about three to four at a time. So I can't name them all.

I'm currently serving as the chair of SACOG, so I have a pretty good grasp on the concept of what you're doing. SACOG is our six county region here in Sacramento. We've never, in the time that I've been here, I've not had an applicant go directly to the state and skip basically our process. Can you explain to me what was the thought behind that and why they thought that would be a successful method? Skip what process? Literally go to HED to get approval for this project without going through the project of working with our staff and working with our folks and then planning commission and council. That's a very strange way to go.

It's not exactly how that unfolded. So I looked at this site about two years ago, and at the time I contacted the city staff, which is pretty normal for me. If I find a site that I think will work for housing, I check zoning and all sorts of other things. At the time, the staff member that I was put in contact with I think is no longer on staff. I checked zoning.

I had found the multifamily with commercial, which was buried in three documents, so they had to do some due diligence and came back. We submitted an initial SB330 pre application with our proposed project that included some commercial, and we received a response back from city staff saying that it was not they couldn't deem it complete or consistent because there was a difference of opinion about how much commercial was required. We had a series of conversations about what that meant. I met with the then city attorney, different than the one now, and we couldn't come to an agreement. We had a difference of opinions on what that meant and what that looked like.

And that is when I went to HCD for their opinion and their guidance and housing law, which is a pretty that's their purpose. They have an enforcement unit that's there to help both jurisdictions and applicants interpret housing laws. They're very complex and changing all the time. So that's a fairly normal process when we have a difference of opinion with a jurisdiction. They gave us technical assistance, and then it's their procedure to also meet with city staff, which they did, weren't involved in. I don't know how many times they spoke, but then they sent in a letter, which is what is in your packet, that first letter.

So it was staff. So the one they talked about, they had you had a meeting with our previous city attorney, and that was where you decided that disagreement, you were basing it on our city attorney's conversation?

We had a well, we had conversation with staff first, and then, I conferred with our attorney, just had a difference of opinion. And then we met together with counsel. And at the time and I'm reaching back in my memory here, but we had the conversation. And at the time, the city wasn't willing to change its opinion, and we just couldn't see eye to eye an agreement. And that's when we went for technical assistance.

And tell me what kind of meetings you've had with the school and with to have these conversations to try to mitigate their concerns.

So I met with the church, and while we were entering into a agreement with the church, I was conferring with staff. That's typical for me. And then also the school. At the time, when we enter into purchase contract, have to pull title report because it's our job to know what can we do with the land and what can we not do with the land as buyers. And at the time, not everything that we now have was showing up on title. So one of the first meetings I had was with Brent Boothby. This was very early on. We only had a site concept. We didn't even have a site plan yet. So I met with him.

I think that meeting was probably about 45 to an hour. We discussed the various concerns he had. It was very early, and, you know, so he didn't have anything to reference. How long ago was this? Two years.

It was right when I, you know, was starting the project, because I knew that they were going to be impacted by this, and they're really the only adjacent neighbors. So we had that conversation. He followed up with us an email or a series of emails, I think it was filling in gaps that we didn't have on title. So the easement rights agreement, which basically codifies all the things that we're talking about here, the EVA reciprocal parking agreements, things like that, for some reason didn't show up on title. So he sent it to us.

We confirmed with the church. We found all those documents, and he outlined a list of things that they were concerned about with the school. At the time in that conversation, I was really hopeful that we could try to figure out a way to keep the garden. And like I said, all we had at the time was a site concept, so it's something that I said that I would look at doing. Affordable housing is a really tricky thing to build. It costs a lot of money to do. It's hard to find land. I heard you mentioning that. It's like all you have left at these infill sites. Most of them are developed.

So usually what we're working with is tricky land. It's tricky to build on. There's tricky configurations, neighboring uses, and it costs money. You know, we're paying for every square foot of the land. So we went back and we came up with the initial site plan that Nathan had pulled up that showed side by side, and we just couldn't figure out a way to make the project pencil without that large piece of area of the property that was owned by the church where the garden is.

And we found the lease for the garden. We checked that to make sure that there wasn't an existing lease, and then we had to design without it there. And then there's a number of other kind of back and forth conversations. Over the years, I don't have a list of dates and times and things that we talked, but we've had at least three phone calls or meetings and then email exchanges. And then we hosted a community meeting, which we talked a little bit about some of the issues with the schools.

And, you know, it's a little tricky because these venues, it's like when we have a community meeting or we come here, we come to Planning Commission, it's not the forum for private land agreements and conflicts because it just really wouldn't be appropriate nor is it everybody's, you know, it's just a difficult thing to do. Same thing with a community meeting. So we did the best that we could to kind of address questions, and I think that there's still a lot of misunderstanding, including with the EVA. I was listening to your questions, Council Member Broadway, but I'm happy to address those. I think there's a lot of misconceptions about what it is we are and are not doing, and I'm happy to walk through those.

When you say community meeting, you had a meeting at the school. Can you give me when was this or who was this?

Had a community meeting. Church was kind enough to host it at the church. We sent out a letter, an invitation flyer to everybody within a, I think it was 600 foot radius or a 500 foot radius. It's typical for the was it five? It was five. So that, you know, the general kind of people who own homes, businesses nearby would know about it. And they came and we co hosted it, the church and the developer.

And I just picked up on and you're saying that it's been two years that the school was aware that you had this project? I felt like it was something more recent.

No. We've been doing we've been working on this for quite some time.

I think that's all the questions I have. Thank you.

Go ahead. I'm just going to piggyback on a couple of things. So at the Planning Commission meeting, you made a comment that there's a misunderstanding of the project as a whole. What do you think the misunderstanding is?

I don't remember saying that over the context, so I'm not sure.

But okay,

all right.

Well, I just mean the context. Don't know.

Let me ask, I was taken aback when you said there's only one adjacent neighbor, the school. The people on Redmond would be surprised to hear that. I'm curious, what did you do to engage the people on Redmond?

By adjacent, I just meant directly touching property lines.

Okay. But overlooking the property, I'm sorry, that's just a that's wild to me. Did you ever, over the last two years, send a representative to knock on doors on Redmond? There's only about 15, No? No. No. And before your February meeting, what did you do to engage the community so that they might have had an impact on the proposal?

I mean, besides the school? You mean other

than Besides the the school.

I did not contact anyone.

Nobody? No. Okay. Is that normal? Not to contact neighbors?

Every project is different. And usually I'm just I mean, I'm saying me because I'm a project manager, I do the front end of these. Usually what I'm looking at is anybody that's when I say directly adjacent, I mean sharing a property line. And if there we almost always do a community meeting where we kind of introduce the project. It takes a long time from the time that we find the property and start talking to staff to get to a place where we have a site plan that's far enough along for people to actually engage with.

That's what I would say. So we most always have a community meeting of some sort where we present the site plan, we share what the plan is, we introduce who we are, we talk about affordable housing because a lot of people don't know what that is. And that's what this meeting

was for.

I mean, I think the misunderstanding really was fostered by eighteen months of no communication with the general public on this. When people contacted me, I told them to call you. And not you personally, but the company up in Idaho. Just a few kind of general development questions. In your letter to the city, you said that you had reached out to Mr. Boothby on April 27 after the Planning Commission suggested that you get with the school to work out issues. How's that going?

I sent an email to Mr. Boothby on that Monday, it was the twenty seventh. In that email was a proposal for modification to the existing easement rights agreement and two new easements that I did not receive a response directly until they retained counsel and we heard from counsel and I think that was on the seventh.

On the seventh. Okay. So do you guys have a meeting set up or like what's the communication right now?

The communication from their counsel, really the only substantive thing that they asked was whether we would pull, consider pulling the project from tonight's agenda, which we didn't think was necessary or appropriate to do. So we offered to meet with them the next day. I'm forgetting the dates here. So the seventh would have been, I think, a Thursday, and then we responded on the eighth, which was a Friday, so we offered to meet on Monday. We never heard back.

Okay. Alright. So you haven't met with them yet?

No. And we remain open to. I mean, there's no refusal on our part.

Okay. Alright. I mean, just for a reference point, down the street, a complex opened up with two eighty two units. Nobody was here when that happened. And I think it's because there was community awareness and it didn't you know, it was a big piece of land and they put in two eighty two units. So this is unusual for us to have this kind of community reaction. I think I'll hold off now.

Across the street from school. I

want to just get some additional insight on Councilmember Gallardo's question to you. Sue, what initiated your communication with HCD?

We had a different interpretation of how much commercial square footage was allowed to be required in our application.

Okay. Because you found what?

Because the zoning allowed multifamily integrated with commercial, but there was no explanation of integrated with commercial.

Right, because it was some small statement buried deep inside of some language that was written quite a while ago, and that both the community if I'm understanding what you've said, the community development department personnel and the city attorney didn't agree with you. So because the personnel who are here to try to make decisions that are in the best interest of our community, you disagreed with. So your decision was then, well, let's go to HCD and let someone outside the city of Rockland make a determination.

I called on HCD for technical assistance interpreting the law, yes.

You can parse it however you want. I just was looking for that, so I appreciate it. I'm just trying to understand that process for me because in all my years, whether it was in planning and working with the planning commission as a planning commissioner or having the opportunity to serve this community as a council member, there's always been while we may have disagreements, there's always been a sense of collaboration. And I'm not sensing that on this, so that's why I wanted to ask those questions. It just seems like an odd approach to take when you're trying to work with a community.

And most developers that I've had the opportunity to work with work to build something that is great for the community. And the community embraces and enhances what's in the community. And normally, doesn't occur when you choose to go outside and in conflict with both what city staff and the city attorney had suggested. And now you have a council chambers that's filled with individuals that aren't real thrilled either. So that's a little challenging, but it just I appreciate the additional clarity on how we arrived at that piece.

So in relationship to the environmental piece, because that's really where I have my concerns on this primarily is peculiar to the site. How have you arrived at, with all these changes, finding a little piece of language that you're going to tie yourself to to allow this to be developed, even though the zoning really, if you look at the zoning, isn't really was never really intended for what's being built here, the original zoning. And so how can you say that this project doesn't present any type of impacts that are not peculiar to this site?

Are you asking about the zoning or about the CEQA?

I'm asking about CEQA.

Okay. So I mean, I'm not a CEQA expert, so I would call on probably Mary. Mary Bean, do you have her there? Might be helpful, and I think Mary can probably hear me, but it might be helpful if we define peculiar impacts, because that sounds like that might be the first place to start. Would that be helpful? Because it's technical distinction. Sure, you would like to do that. I'll say, because Mary Mary? Okay.

Can you hear me? Yes?

Good evening?

We can barely hear you.

Oh, goodness. Let me turn my mic up just a second. How's that? Now it's at full speed. Is that better?

Yeah. Much better.

Okay. I wanted to go back to biology as an example, and your general plan as others have pointed out earlier. Your general plan identified the fact that, yeah, there are resources broadly across the community. And so each individual project needs to look at its own, within its own boundaries and see what might be existing there. And so you have a policy in your open space conservation recreation OCR, policy 39 that says, you know, go ahead and and look for what might be existing on the site, and then to the extent you can, mitigate for it on-site or off-site.

So in following that general plan policy, we looked at what was on-site. We identified the potential for certain species and and habitats. For instance, Swingsen's hawk could be nesting on the site. So depending on when they start construction, there might be nesting going on. If you start construction in the fall or winter, you avoid the nesting season, and then you don't have to do preconstruction nesting surveys.

So it's kind of conditional. Similarly for, wetland or for, fairy shrimp, I believe the applicant has already engaged biologists to be on the site in doing those surveys. So she can provide some more information about what has been determined. I believe the fairy shrimp surveys done pursuant to the protocols of the federal government, were negative. So they did not find fairy shrimp.

And the jurisdictional delineation, that's where you're looking at wetlands, It has to be verified by the agency, so that step probably still needs to occur. But perhaps Lauren can give some more information on the status of that. But that's an example of how the general plan, the previous analysis, said, sure, there could be things on any number of sites across the city. So it's important for you to to look and see if there's anything there that rises to a level that can't be addressed as discussed in the general plan policy. Does that help?

Yes. Thank you. So I just had a I'm going to go back to this SB three thirty application just because I have questions. When the SB330 application was made, there was actually was it 2,000 square feet dedicated to commercial use? I'm sorry, can someone I just want to make sure that we have an affirmative answer.

Nodding my answer. Yes, that's correct.

I think I always see records, black and white. So at the time, there was some level of commercial in the when there was an application. The rest of it was affordable?

That's correct, yeah.

Okay.

Do you remember what the it was just 2,000 square feet somewhere on the property?

Yeah, was 2,000 square feet in the building that's parallel more or less to Wildcat, where you would want to put commercial if you're gonna have that so you could see

it. Okay. And at that time, the project still penciled out with that 2,000? Mhmm. Okay. And so you'd mentioned that this was pre current city attorney that there was this disagreement over the word integrated with?

Well, I can't speak to the internal discussions at the city level, so I'll

Oh, no. I meant between yourself and the city. And yourself, I mean the applicant.

Yeah. When we came back with our SP three thirty preliminary application, at that point I was working with Nathan. And so I was told by Nathan that the internal conversation about integrated with commercial meant that was being interpreted to say that there needed to be 50% commercial, which is our I mean, it was a subjective assessment from our point of view. And we went back and forth quite a bit talking about what different ways could we have that work and not have it be 50%, because that certainly wouldn't have penciled. There's no way that we would have been able to do affordable housing there.

And

we had back and forth, and I think between the two of us, it was probably best to have our councils on the call because then you start getting into questions of Housing Accountability Act and how do you interpret zoning codes so that they're objective instead of subjective, you know, in an attempt to work it out at a city level. But we came out of that with not a lot of clear direction. And with when you submit and forgive me, I am not an attorney, but when I submit a preliminary application and it comes back inconsistent, you know, the two choices are to change it to match what the city or jurisdiction is saying would make it consistent, which would be 50%, at which point we wouldn't have had a project or to just pull the application. So it's my job to find out a way to make something work, and so we worked together with counsel and didn't come to any really like conclusion other than we disagreed and had different interpretations. Is that

Yeah, what you're no. So, you know, just for peace in the valley, I would just give you a hypothetical. The idea was, like for example, Building five, which is the one that is right up against basically the school, If the monopoly pieces were moved, is it that that just can't happen even if you had all of the density that you would want but the, you know, park and everything else was moved farther down the the center, the the community center. Is that something that anyone ever thought? Is there a is there a way to to get to peace between yourself, your company, and the school?

Or is it just that that building has to be exactly where it's at?

Are you talking about the building at the back of the site that's closest to the school? And your question is, if we were able to move it farther away, do I think that we would come to an agreement about?

I'm just curious if anyone thought that maybe this there's movement of just the pieces on the board that makes something tenable. I'm just curious.

I I think we did that. I mean, the original site plan had the building the way that the site grading the site the existing grading of the site. It made sense there's a flat area where the garden is that like is a building pad spot, meaning like it's level. So we did have a building there, but we moved it back and put parking there instead. So we did move the buildings around.

Do I think that there's more to do? I mean, I guess you could always say yes, but there's just a lot of constraints. We have to go through reviews at all the department levels. You've got storm water drainage, you've got sewer, you've got water, you've got electricity, there's fire. You know, you really have a lot of parts you have to satisfy.

So with regards to I noticed that I'd heard about some of the issues that we addressed, and I appreciate it from the person online for the CEQA issues. Is there other things that you think that we should be aware of regarding the application that have not been addressed?

I was taking notes when you guys were asking questions of staff that I don't think we've covered all of those. Do you want me to address some of them? Yes. Okay. I went in order of your speaking.

So the EVA Hammerhead, can we pull up the sheet that shows that? Councilmember Broadway, I was confused while you were asking questions about which lines you were talking about, so I thought it might be helpful for me to kind of explain more how this site plan is set up to work. So on the right of the screen, you can see Wildcat, and you can see the footprint of the church, the existing church. And they have a driveway that comes off of Wildcat. That's their only entrance there.

That's their primary entrance. And then just planned south of that is the school's entrance. And then that drive aisle goes all the way to the back where the school is. Our project is proposing two access points, one that's new, that's north of the church's access point at the top right corner of the screen. And then we're sharing the church's driveway.

So there's two points of ingress and egress from our project. That's the main way people who live in the apartments will get in and out of the project. We don't have any way to access our property through the school's entrance. At the back of the site, there's an existing easement that's recorded against the property for a hammerhead that allows a fire truck to enter the school's property, turn right around that playground, go back kind of where the garden right before the garden, and they can do a turnaround. And half of that turnaround is on the church's property.