City Council - Regular Meeting

Testing, one, two, three.

Let me know if you can hear it over your cell phone.

There's a 30-second delay.

And then do volume on your phone. Okay. Perfect.

All right. We are going to start our closed session, Rockland City Council meetings. First, we'll do a call to order and roll call.

Good evening. Council Member Janda.

Present.

Vice Mayor Holden.

Here.

Council Member Gallardo. Here. Council Member Broadway. Here. Mayor Bass.

Here.

Thank you.

All right. We are now going to enter into closed session. First to CS1, pursuant to government code section 54956.95, liability claimant Jason Boyer, agency claimed against City of Rockland. Then CS2, pursuant to government code section 54956.9, sub D, sub 4, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation, initiation of litigation, two potential cases. All right. There is no one in the actual chambers, so I assume there's no public comment from the invisible gallery, but we have online. Is there anyone there?

No one on Zoom. Mayor Baster.

Thank you. I'll close public comment. Thank you for keeping us legal.

All right, good evening. Good evening. Now is the time for our general session for the Rockland City Council. We did not have anything to report out of closed session, so we are now calling the general session to order. We'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. Next, we'll move on to agenda review.

I am going to be asking for us to move up D1 right after the consent.

Next, we'll have citizens addressing the City Council. This is an opportunity for the public to comment on matters that are not listed on the agenda. Public comment on items listed on the agenda will be taken as the agenda item is called. Do we have any non-agendized items to be discussed with the public?

Mayor Bass, we do have two comment cards received. The first speaker is Mr. Mark Hoffman.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council, for this opportunity to address you. As stated, my name is Mark Hoffman. I am Community Outreach and Civic Engagement Chairman for Placer Repertory Theater, which is a 501c3 nonprofit professional educational theater company based here in Rockland. Placer Repertory Theater is dedicated to bringing educational, cultural, and life-enhancing professional theater experience to the schools, families, retirees, and general audiences throughout Placer County and the surrounding communities since its founding just before the COVID crisis struck. Although we have no home performance space, we take our shows to various venues, either rented or provided by various entities we serve, such as schools, libraries, senior centers, etc. Um, our 2026, 27 season opening, uh, is next month. We have performances booked, uh, already for, uh, Rocklin in October, uh, Roseville, Lincoln, and Auburn, and, uh, seeking other, uh, uh, venues, uh, to bring our performance. That show, the first show of the season is an interactive melodrama, uh, based on the story of Dracula. Those shows are a lot of fun. They really are. As we expand our outreach and programming, we're seeking to connect with people who are interested in engaging as volunteers to support the arts in meaningful non-actor roles. We're looking for people to assist us with such things as front-of-house support, ushers, greeters, ticketing, event staffing for logistics, educational outreach assistance, technical support, backstage crew, set building, costumes, and administrative and marketing help. Another thing that's coming right up soon is next Monday, this month, the 31st, at 7 p.m., we're having the kickoff meeting for our new works showcase. And actors, directors, theater technicians, anybody who's interested, writers, Are invited to come to that 7 p.m. If they need to contact us for the location, it's placerrep at gmail.com. Thank you so much. All right.

Next comment card is from Miss Betty Jo Smith.

Hi, my name is Betty Jo Smith.

And I was attacked by the cartels. And I almost died when they got me to the hospital. And I had to stay there for three, two months. And when I came out, OK, because I have four retirements here because I was a worker all the time. I worked for the schools and everything. And then I decided to get a small travel trailer at Suza's place. And he... Okay, and I don't have any cartilage down my thing. And he told me from 5 to morning to about 7, I was to trench for everybody in the car in there. And then he told me, oh, you smell, or you do this, or you do that. And I just wanted to go to sleep after being beat so much. And then... Because, you know, in school, I got all A's on everything. And then afterwards, he would tell me there was no water in my place. And I said, how come I don't get no water in here? And he said, just go do the dirt then. And, um... And I did it because I was scared then. But then I said, I'm not scared anymore. You're not going to do that. And then I called the police, and the police came up there because I helped put the cartel into Folsom Prison. A lot, most of them came from me because I told them exactly what they were doing and where they were doing it. And that's how I am. I tell the truth. And he said, Betty, go out of here right now. They're going to even do worse. They didn't catch me because I just floored it out. And then I hid. You know, and when I went into the, you know, I was very sick. They turned my fingers almost all off my hands. And then they beat me so bad it wasn't bad. I just wanted to die. But then, you know what? God was good. For a minute, he gave me one minute to run. And I had my clicker with my dogs in there, my little dogs. I didn't want them to kill. And so I got in it and just floored. I didn't care what I hit anybody. I didn't care. I just wanted out of there. And then I went to this place, Mr. Sousa is his name, and he made me trench from 5 in the morning until about 7 every day to do his work. And it was hard. And I was sick. And I said, come on, man. I'm kind of, you know, sometimes I didn't remember things. But now I can remember. I remember everything he did to me. And it was because I used to get A's in class. Ma'am. Okay. That's what it is. What it is right now.

Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am. I want to let you know that we have people that are going to be able to help you and get services for you. I've asked. for some of our staff to help you.

Definitely you have a story and I hear you. I'm sorry that what has happened to you. Right now the best thing is to get you services and to make sure that what's happened to you is getting reported. I understand and we have a full council meeting.

The best professionals that we can get you in connection with aren't up here. They're gonna be the people that we get you in connected with. Thank you for everything. We have to move on. Thank you.

He should be in prison.

Thank you.

No additional comment cards, and I do not see any hands raised on Zoom.

All right. Thank you. At this point in time, we're going to move on to reports from City Council and City Manager. I'll start to my right with Council Member John.

No reports tonight. Just a brief report. The Western Placer Waste Management Authority met earlier this month, received a number of reports, including the results of our latest audits on diversion of materials, and we're exceeding the state's requirements for diversion of materials so they're not going into the landfill, and good numbers on composting. So that's good for all the jurisdictions here in Placer County. That's it.

Council Member Gildo.

Thank you. A couple things. On the 17th was the Placer Mosquito Vector Control Board meeting. We did have our first case of West Nile virus in Lincoln on a horse. It's a new one for me. The things I learned doing this sometimes. It was unvaccinated. Apparently most people vaccinate their horses or they're being encouraged to do that. It is not transmitted from animal to animal, but from the mosquito bites. So they are doing some extra work. eradication out there in that area. I just want to make sure people are aware. On the 20th was our SACOG board meeting. An interesting quirk in SACOG, you have to have a majority of the cities there, and then you also have to have a majority of supervisors in there to be able to pass any of the items. They had, it was the same day as State of the City for Roseville, so I think some of our Supervisors and certainly some of the representatives from that area from those areas were missing We did have the largest item on there is approving the federal transportation dollars we were not able to do that because We were able to finally get enough supervisors through zoom But you actually physically have to have them a majority in the building and then you can have the zoom people so we were not able to pass that through and Am pleased to say that on the recommendation four of the five placer County projects are on the list to be funded I'm really excited. That's it's been a bit for that to happen But there is still some conversation of following the parameters that were put in place with 35% going for repairs There two of the largest entities did not are not included in that list or did not make a funding list and so I believe there's some discussion about some dissent about that and if they want to try to increase the funding available, which would then shortchange it for the next round. So we will see what happens, but it did get put on until the next meeting. I was honored to be able to adjourn the meeting in honor of our former, our longest serving council member, Peter Hill, who was also an employee of SACOG. I don't know if everybody realized that, but he worked for SACOG. obviously served six years or six terms as mayor and served for nearly 30 years on the council after his many years serving on the school board. A great message that I had heard, Marco Sullivan, who was the lead chaplain for the Placer County Law Enforcement Chaplaincy, I served volunteer on that board, and he shared a story that when he did a, he had invited Peter Hill to ride along with him and At the time, the city was not contributing to the chaplaincy, and he took them out, and one day they had six call-outs. And he said that afternoon, Peter Hill made sure that at the next meeting there was a $5,000 check went to them, and he was very appreciative. So it was just an honor to recognize Peter. The positives on Saturday, we had one of our residents, Virginia, had celebrated her 102nd birthday. I got to be there for her 100th birthday, and this time they celebrated, and Coca-Cola came because she has a Coca-Cola every day. And so an 18-wheeler truck pulled up and dropped off 102 bottles of Coke for her. It was very cool. And it was really nice to see some of our local electeds were there. I saw Kevin Kiley, representatives from Rogers, Also, Nilo was also there. Our supervisor, Anthony DiMattei, was there. So it was really great to see people step up to recognize her, and she is sharp as a tack. And then also on Saturday, Rockland's finest, one of our officers, Guillermo, was representing Rockland at the Republic FC. He sang and played on the ukulele the national anthem at the Republic FC soccer game in Sacramento. So He made us very proud, and I have a great video I'll share with you when you're ready. And then last was on Monday. I'm really, really excited to represent this group at the swearing-in for four new firefighters for Rockland. They are all laterals, experienced folks that came here. We are, as you know, adding nine new firefighters this year, which is just a tremendous opportunity for us. And having experienced folks, I think, coming from Petaluma, Forest Hill, Reno, and I apologize, Allie, I don't know if you remember the other one, but there. One of the benefits in Rockland is you get a full-fledged paramedic if you need it here when you get a call, and that's something so they can do that advanced life-saving. So having paramedics transfer to come here for us also I think was a tremendous boon. That's all I have.

Thank you. Council Member Broadway.

Nothing today, Mr. Mayor.

All right. I do not have anything today. However, I did misspeak because I'm going to make sure that D1 is going to be heard after P1 and P2. I think I said it after the consent. City Manager, I didn't forget you this time.

Thank you, Mayor. So the fourth new firefighter comes to us from CAL FIRE. And we're very excited to welcome them all this week to join the city as the council knows But just a reminder this is because we were successful in receiving a very competitive federal safer grant Which is staffing for adequate fire emergency resources? I'm probably saying it wrong when it's something like that and we it has about a 93 percent fail rate and we were successful in receiving that competitive grant earlier this year or late last year, and so we've been doing our best to hire the firefighters that we can pay for with those. One thing to mention, which is city facilities will be closed on Monday, September 7th, in observance of the Labor Day holiday. Police and fire services will continue 24-7 as usual, and that completes my report.

All right, thank you. Next on the calendar is the consent calendar.

All items listed on the consent calendar are considered and acted upon by one motion. Anyone may request an item be removed for separate consideration. Do I have any motions to move? All right. Then I'll look for a motion for the consent calendar.

Mr. Mayor, I'll move approval of consent calendar items C1 through C11. Second.

We're having a first and a second. All in favor, aye.

Aye.

Nose. Abstentions? The ayes have it. Passes unanimously. Now move on to our presentations. In the meeting, we have P1, Oaths of Office for Incoming Commission Members. And we have City Clerk Aventa Singh. Take it away.

If I can please invite our commissioners to be appointed and reappointed to the floor. Thank you. Okay, commissioners, I'm going to request that you please state your name one at a time. Please state aye, and then repeat your name, and if I can also have you raise your right hand. Okay, we'll start with Commissioner Barron. Please state aye, and then state your name. Do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of California, against all enemies foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter. Thank you very much and congratulations.

I do just want to take a moment on behalf of the city council to thank everyone that it's a job that is obviously volunteer. I know many of the people that were up there, they love this city as much as many of the people in this room and then they put a little extra sometimes every single night to be away from their families and so it's a great sacrifice and we're really blessed to have so many great leaders in this community. So thank you everyone for STEPPING UP AND DOING ANOTHER ROUND OF GETTING UP HERE AND FOR PLANNING COMMISSION AND ARTS COMMISSION, ET CETERA, IT'S BEEN, WE JUST REALLY APPRECIATE EVERYTHING YOU DO. SO THANK YOU.

MOVING ON TO PRESENTATION P2, SUMMER CIVIC CAREER PROGRAM PRESENTATION. WE'LL HAVE ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES MANAGER MEGAN BUSLEY.

Hi, good evening, mayor and council members, and thank you students for coming and parents. So a quick recap of our summer civic career program. The program is also sponsored in partnership with Rockland Unified School District and the Rockland Educational Excellence Foundation. So without that support, it would not be possible. So a big thank you to those two groups for helping get the students involved in this. All right, so quick overview of the program the goal of this program is to introduce students to the impacts of public service and Build their understanding of how city operations work together to serve the community so it's really just to give them a look into what we actually do and how all the departments work together to keep the city running and provide that service and This year, we had interviewed 12 students, and they were selected. We had the two-week program from June 15th through June 25th. And each of the 12 students, we actually have 11 that ended up being able to participate. They were split into two groups, and they rotated throughout the two weeks through the various departments at the city. Throughout the program, they were encouraged to take notes. They were provided a notebook. to take notes on their experience with each department, the activities they did, what they learned about the city, and public service. And at the conclusion of the program, they were asked to complete a final essay, and that was required to get the scholarship from Reef. The highlight, one of the highlights was the State of the City this year. So we had a unique opportunity where the timing of the program aligned with our State of the City. And we were actually able to, on that final week, coordinate an opportunity for the students to all come and attend, which was a really cool experience. And we got a lot of positive feedback from the students on being able to attend that. So hoping in future that maybe that will align so we can keep that tradition going. So for the group, here's our group photo of the students that we had that participated. They really enjoyed the hands-on learning experience. They do complete a survey for us at the end, and they highlighted some of their favorite activities. A couple of their favorites were from fire and police. including the forcible entry demonstration, the fire apparatus. They actually got to climb the ladder. They got to climb up about 70 feet. And many students reported that, you know, fear of heights, but they did it and they were super proud of themselves. So that was really cool. They also did a canine demonstration. So those were the things they highlighted in their feedback, but they actually highlighted a lot of other positives of the program, like the mock city council meeting, going to the state of the city, and then just actually being surprised at what all the different departments do that they didn't realize. So these are just a couple highlights of the activities they did. You can see the fire. They went to Parks and Rec and did some field work. They got to do the DUI driving with PD. Here's them at the city council mock meeting. So really good experience. Here's a perfect example of the ladder. There's one of the students on the ladder. So with that, as I mentioned the survey, overall satisfaction with the program was 100% of students were satisfied with the program. As you can see on our little scale, we tried to visually put it out for you, but 60% of the students were extremely satisfied and 40% were moderately satisfied. So overall, great satisfaction. feedback on the program. And then as far as the impacts on their future career or college plans, the program did achieve its goal of getting the information to the students and exposing them to what the city actually does. And 90% reported that the program actually made them think about their future career and college plans. So that's 100% what we were hoping for. 10% indicated that the program reinforced their existing career plans. So to announce our winners, so the survey also asked the students to rate their favorite departments. There was a tie, a tie for first place.

There's gonna be a mutiny among my team. There's gonna be a mutiny among my team after this, but thank you, Megan.

So the tie was between Fire department and police department so congratulations on your shared victory In third place we had Parks and Rec so overall great experience lots of good feedback Maybe fire and police should have to do something to break that tie That's a great suggestion So that wraps up kind of an overview of the program. It was a really great experience. Looking forward to planning for next year. Just a shout out to some folks that really helped make this program possible. A lot of our department directors, city council, Allie. As I mentioned, Ken Broadway, he's on Reef as a secretary. So he had a big piece in this. Rachel Lund from the school district was also a huge piece in coordinating this. So before we, I'm going to introduce this, call the students up one by one to receive their certificate and checks. But before I do that, I'm going to turn it over to Ken Broadway to say a few words and then Roger Stock, the superintendent from the school district.

Great, thank you. So I want to thank the Rockland Unified School District. I want to thank the Rockland Educational Excellence Foundation, and I want to thank the City of Rockland for putting this program together. Those three groups came together back in 2014 and began the process of developing this program and then providing it to students to take time during what is normally their summer break to engage in learning more about CIVICS ABOUT HOW WE RUN THE CITY AND POTENTIAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR THEM IN THE FUTURE AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR HOPEFULLY BRINGING YOU BACK TO PROVIDE LEADERSHIP FOR OUR CITY. And we have, over the years, had more than 150 students participate in the program. And we've awarded over $75,000 in scholarships through the Rockland Educational Excellence Foundation. So I would like to recognize, first of all, Alex Wright, who is the president of the Rockland Educational Excellence Foundation. If you'd please stand, Alex. And so he was a key part of that. We are going to hear from our superintendent of our schools, Roger Stock, who's standing off in the wings. And then we also have, and I don't know if there's any other members of our school board or trustees here, but I know that Michelle Sutherland, who is also sworn in and serves in a capacity on helping us on the recognition. Commission for our city is here, and also Tiffany Satov is in the back. And so I want to thank the school district. So if we could just give them a quick round. You've already recognized the city staff, but you, most importantly, I want to thank you for your leadership in putting this program together. But most importantly, I want to thank these young men and women sitting in the front of the room for taking time. For those of us who are a little older, if you remember your summers and how precious those were, they took time out of their summer to participate in this program. If you want, please send me an email. I'll be happy to share with you their essays. They are absolutely amazing. And it reflects the time that they had, but the energy and effort they put into it. So I want to give these students a round of applause for their commitment to making our community better. And last but not least, it certainly is a reflection of you parents who are here. You've done a great job raising these young men and women, so thank you. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to our superintendent.

Thank you, Mayor Bass, council members, for recognizing our students in this program and also for sustaining this partnership, which is, as Councilmember Broadway mentioned, since 2014. And also a thank you to our board of trustees. And you can see the support tonight in two of them being available to attend. tonight's recognition as well. And our board has made it a priority, our district has, of partnering with the city and other organizations such as Rockland Educational Excellence Foundation to do whatever we can together. We know we're better together. And so we take great pride in the way we work together and the way we support the youth in this community. And so deeply appreciative of the city for this. And we know it takes extra time out of staff to provide those opportunities for our youth. And for the Rockland Educational Excellence Foundation, they do so many things to support public education in our community. We're grateful for this. And this has really been a legacy program of this. This program has been in existence almost as long as the foundation has. And this is something that we're thrilled they sustain. And then, of course, Mrs. Lund, who organizes and does all the actual work at the school district on this program. We are deeply appreciative of her. and her commitment to this, because she's here in the summer helping make sure and liaisoning with our family, students, and staff. So we, again, are just deeply appreciative. Students, we're proud of you. You really showcase what's best of our youth and our community, our school district, by your commitment. And again, as Mr. Broadway said, parents, we thank you for your great work that you've done raising them and entrusting them to us to educate and being a part of our community. So we, again, are thankful for the recognition this evening.

Okay. At this point, I am going to call each of the students up one at a time. Rachel is going to give you your certificate and the check. Please take your certificate and check and stay up front because we're going to do a group picture with council after.

Do the council members want to come down now as well as any scoreboard trustees and anyone else from the school district to...

Yes, that works.

Perfect.

Okay, I'll wait until everybody gets up here and then I'll start calling the names. All right, so we have Jude Alhendi Layla Beasley. Tatiana Brown. Her father is accepting on her behalf. Mandatory sports commitment. Samantha Fernandez. Anna Namgung. Anika Nanapaneni. Swakriti Narang. She was also parent representative, sports commitment. William Probus. Warren Tucker. Eva Vu. And Luca Wright. All right, those are our participants. Haley is going to snap a group photo.

All right, everyone look at me. One, two, three.

All right, I know it's a school night, so I'm just going to allow a couple of the council members that do want to say something. I know perhaps Council Member Gaeldo wants to, and then we'll take a very, very brief break so that everyone can move on, although we've got a really cool discussion item coming up if you want to stick around. Thank you. Absolutely.

It comes on when you touch it. Gosh darn it. Thank you so much. I am just so excited. We are so ridiculously proud of our schools and having a partnership to be able to have them here. I think everybody knows people come here for our schools, quite frankly, because they're fantastic. And having this ability, and I know you do both double duty, I have to tell you, when my mother-in-law and father-in-law grew up here in Rockland, they had to get the bus in front of the laundromat and ride to Roseville High to go to high school because we didn't have one. And when I get to go out to the schools and talk sometimes, and I ask them, my husband went to Rockland Elementary. Where did he go to middle school? And it's great to see the blank, and then I tell them, He went to Rockland Elementary. It was the only school we had. And then every kid, and I know I've got some Rucolas and some longtime folks here that know, you got on the bus and you rode to Roseville. And when Roseville was full, then they went to Oakmont. And when that was full, they went to Del Oro until we opened up Rockland High in 94, I believe it is. So this just fills us with pride. Thank you so much. I love the partnership. I love these kids. I'm hoping, because nobody grows up, sorry, Ali, but no one grows up and says, I want to be a city manager. Oh. Everybody wants to go fire and PD, I noticed. And, you know, with our parks commissioners here and our planning folks, you see they do such great work, and we're going to have a presentation on our parks. Hopefully some of you lit a fire and said, you know, I could be a parks director. And somebody clearly has got to stand up for public works. Didn't anybody want to go dig in the dirt and do some road construction? But we're just ridiculously proud. So thank you, and thank you to the parents. Spread the word, kids. Get the group out next year. Because what a unique opportunity to see something that maybe sparks your interest. Because I don't know about you, but I was guaranteed I was going to be a highway patrolman when I was growing up. So you might find you want to do something different. Thank you.

All right. So we're going to take a five-minute break. I'll allow our school kids and the parents to leave if you want. Or you can stay. And then we'll reconvene in about five minutes.

Thank you.

We're back from recess. We're going to take the next item will be D1. Excuse me. Excuse me, we're going to start the next item that'll be D1. This is a presentation for the Northwest Rockland Community Parks Master Plan. Parks and Recreation Director Veronica Tracy.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Tonight, I am pleased to bring forward the Northwest Community Parks Master Plan, covering three of our community's most heavily used facilities, Whitney Community Park, Kathy Lund Community Park, and Margaret Azevedo Park. This has been a genuinely year-long effort, starting with community workshops in September of 2025, an online survey that ran throughout the process, a second round of both park-specific and MOU leadership group-only workshops that fall, and a draft plan brought back to the community this past spring. What you'll see tonight is the refined result of that full cycle of listening, drafting, and listening again. I want to be clear that there is no funding currently identified for the construction of these improvements. What this plan does instead is turn community input into a clear, phased, cost-estimated design for each park's undeveloped and underutilized space. Exactly the kind of shovel-ready plan that grant funders want to see before committing dollars. Tonight's discussion does not commit us to spending. It positions Rockland to compete for funding as opportunities arise. The plan also brings a real consolidation and efficiency for our sports families, grouping similar uses together so that parents deal with less scheduling guesswork. And every sport currently housed at these parks comes out with a net increase in available fields. This plan directly supports your strategic priorities. It's livable, vibrant, resilient, and sustainable, giving residents better amenities, stronger event and tournament potential, minimal disruption during construction when we get to that point, and a real path to outside funding. With that, I'd like to introduce Sarah Crossley with Melton Design Group, our project manager, and she will walk you through the plan in detail.

Thank you, Veronica. Hello, council members and community. Looking forward to presenting the master plans tonight. Like Veronica said, there is no funding identified, but what we'll go through tonight are master plans that then go with figures for what we may need for funding to go build out these parks. So as she mentioned, it's Whitney Community Park, Margaret Ezevedo Park, and Kathy Lund Park. They're all about a mile and a half within each other. We did a couple different community outreaches. So one in person, like she said, the whole time we were doing a survey and we had 121 responses, which was very good feedback. And we also had really good turnouts in-person workshops, and also our virtual workshops. So we had three different opportunities for people to give feedback, and those went really well. The elements shown on the right are prioritized in order of demand that we heard. So functional improvements, just things like site lighting, more storage, restrooms, ADA accessibility, those types of things. Shade, of course, trees, shade structures. The community wanted to see the balance of the use of a sport complex versus community park elements. Just so if you're not there for sports and you wanted to use other elements like a playground or walking trails, things like that. There was a demand for wellness, walking in nature, more spaces to stay and gather, so picnic areas, more passive areas like that. Identity and beauty, so art and just physically aesthetic things. And then recreational gaps like cricket or other types of sports and to see where those types of things may fit So the feedback per each park this is what they wanted to see per park so as Veronica was saying our main goal was to see where we can fit different fields and things and do a do the best we could on each of the master plans to get the max use. So for Whitney Community Park, it was soccer fields and multi-use open grass area. There's a whole developed side that lend itself to that. Kathy Lund was to maximize softball fields for competitions and tournaments, and Margaret Ezevedo was to maximize the soccer fields. community-driven elements, so sports and recreation, like I mentioned, Different things there, cricket, there's potential location elsewhere, grass volleyball, bocce court, futsal court, multi-use fitness. So these are things that were brought up that we heard the community for and would consider if we can put those into these parks or where we could put them in the future at different locations around the city. So we just wanted to note, we heard you. And we're considering where those might go different nature passive recreation elements like a labyrinth meditation areas Play and family more themed playground areas, which all these parks we have proposed additional theming Gathering and social so picnic tables gathering spaces dog amenities so dog parks and then like I mentioned before the accessibility and infrastructure for best accessibility there. All right, Whitney Community Park. So this is an existing condition. So on the right there, you have undeveloped open space. You have the bike park that was recently put in, a parking lot down the middle, and then you have four softball fields on the left, and then another parking lot beyond that. Whitney High School is directly behind that. So that's kind of what we're looking at. for existing conditions. There's also playground, spray ground, that's a big area, restroom, all those types of amenities. So here is our overall proposed master plan. On the left there, there's proposed to be a renovation as needed for the two softball fields, mainly like a new fencing as we develop behind there, a trail, trees, possible tee ball practice field. What we heard a lot from softball is, oh, well, when we were playing, we need warmup space. We just want to maximize the place people can go if they're not playing. So we wanted to make the best use of that behind there. We added fishing stations behind there and then just a nice connective trail at the back. Here's just an enlarge so we can look at the right side. So the existing pump track, there's already been a future plan, proposed plan for an expansion of that. So we just wanted to pencil out where that could potentially be. We added a whole new parking lot that wrapped around on the south and east side, gaining about, I think, 117, quite a few spaces all along there. Three soccer fields. It would also just be a nice big grass area for different events, used for different things. I think you could fit a full-size football field in there. you could stripe it for different uses. We striped it for full-size soccer, just to kind of show the size there, and there was a need for more soccer, so that's what we striped it for. It would also have a fencing around the pump track and potentially around the soccer fields, just trying to contain the bikes to their area and the soccer to their area, keeping the different uses in their own area. The parking lot has a nice drop off and where it says grass area in the center there. I don't know if I have a laser. I do, but you can't see it. So there's an area where food trucks could potentially come and plug in for different events. There's a staging gathering area, shaded picnic. You can see in the center there, a nice central restroom concession stand for all the areas around it to use, a nice little grass area. Not for sports, but for just regular recreation. We also have a proposed game area, so like cornhole bocce, those kind of yard games. Then different picnic areas, seating, all those kinds of things there. Also the pink stars, those are proposed art locations. So just fitting all the different elements in there. And we would maintain the access from the park to the high school. We know sometimes it's used for overflow parking for games and those sorts of things. And then in the garden that's existing, we would propose to do maybe some art and just add a couple things there. So when looking at cost, we divided the park up into amenity areas. They're not phased. We weren't at the point of phasing the project. It's just grouping the amenities that would chunk kind of the cost down to start looking at the project per area. So in total, it's about 16 to 23 million for the whole renovation of the park. Amenity area one so that would include the soccer fields and the new parking lot with you know renovation of the sidewalk or anything that would need to happen like that in that phase and That one was I believe between 10 and 13 million for that phase Got 10 to 15 for that phase and So that's kind of what we chunked into that group. And then commissioners, you do have a breakdown of cost in the back of your packets to look at later. Amenity area two is that where there is a current parking lot and pump track. So for the extension and the gathering area with the games, the restroom concession, All those types of things would include lighting. Each of these phases includes lighting and the infrastructure and all mobilization, all those types of things.

Sarah, if I might interrupt you for a moment and we can just move through these pretty quickly. I wanted to note for council that the discrepancy in the price is that the contractor has priced out all the amenities using regular turf and artificial. So the high end of the price is artificial turf. Low end of the price is regular turf. I mean, if you'd like to move through the amenity areas, feel free.

All right, amenity area three, that's for the renovation of the fields, the fitness, the trail, the t-ball, and any type of planting and that sort of thing there. Kathy Lung Community Park. So the existing condition on this one is there was five existing softball fields with two soccer fields. There are playground, spray ground, parking lot, paved parking lot, and then a gravel parking lot with an access path around the back. There's also storage for softball and plaza, utility building for the spray ground, and a concession restroom. So the master plan on this one is we wanted to maximize the softball field. So we would renovate the four existing fields and then add four fields. So eliminating two of the soccer fields and then adding three warmup fields, or you could also use it for T-ball. It's mainly just an infield. Renovate the spray ground and then put new tot lot playground and two to five playground, as well as paving the... current gravel parking lot into a paved parking lot. We would also add another parking lot on the south side that would wrap around to the west side existing parking lot. Amenity area one would be the four new fields. Amenity area two is everything you see in blue on the left. So the renovation of the three fields, the parking lot, T-ball field. Amenity area three are the two warmup fields, the plaza renovation, restroom, and renovation of another softball field. Just highlights that on this graphic. Four fields, parking lot, and then the east side. Margaret Ezevedo Community Park. This one, what is there now? There's a lot of topography to this site. We wanted to maximize what we could do for soccer here. As you come in, there's a nice existing parking lot. There is one softball field and then two full-size soccer fields with a playground, a restroom concession, and picnic areas. There's another view of it, so you can see the topography of the site. All right, so in our master plan, like I was saying, we wanted to consolidate and do mainly soccer here, so eliminated that one softball field, so we're able to fit four full-size soccer fields. They would be terraced. The two remaining would be renovated. We'd add the two With plenty of access ramp stairs all those types of things to easily access The soccer fields we extended the parking lot to the south and then also extended it to the north so it would have plenty of parking to support the extra fields. We would renovate the playground and add more shade elements, renovate the restroom, concession. Since this site does have a lot of topography, we could potentially do on-grade play elements, so like a slide in the hillside, some unique elements like that. And we would utilize the upper terrace, again, with the parking, and then some multi-use courts and volleyball, grass area. picnic, maybe some yard games. So just maximizing what we can do here and taking advantage of the topography of the site. All right, here's the different amenity areas. So amenity area one, that would be all the soccer fields, of course, because that would be our big renovation here. adding two fields and renovating two fields, also adding the southern parking lot extension. Area two would be the central hub area, so the playground, the picnic, restroom, shade elements, on-grade place, swings, all those types of amenities there in that hub. Amenity area three so that would be the parking and then that upper terrace area with additional parking multi-use courts yard game elements turf Picnic those types of things Okay, this is the consolidation at a glance. So Kathy Lung, like we said, we got a total of eight fields now for softball. Margaret Acevedo has a total of four soccer fields. And then Whitney Park would maintain the four softball fields and then add an additional three full-size soccer fields. priority and phasing. So as I said, we haven't phased within the parks, but we did look at the order to phase the renovations on the park. So phase one would be Whitney Park because it has the most flexibility. It's just undeveloped open space right now. They can continue with the programming as is now with the sports. Kathy Lung Park would be number two. And then Margaret Acevedo would be third in the phasing. And mainly came up with this just to keep programming as is and to work with the construction and phasing in the best way. And we just want to thank everyone for their collaboration and input. And it was really cool just to see how the community came out and supported and gave their opinion. And we were really happy to be a part of it. Also working with the city. It's been wonderful. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. All right. All right. So I'll just open this up for any questions by council members.

On Whitney Park, in the existing layout, there are two fields that are shown as softball. And I thought they were all baseball fields today.

So Whitney Park. I believe they are all softball with little league baseball. That is correct.

They're little league baseball fields. Yes. He's right. Yes.

So they're baseball.

They are baseball. They are labeled incorrectly here. They're baseball fields.

All baseball. Okay. And we're not proposing to make them softball. No.

We're keeping as is.

Okay. All right. And then, you know, I know there's a big interest in cricket. And I... I don't want that, you know, there's a mention of doing something at Twin Oaks. I just don't want that to fall off the radar by not having anything in three parks, any room for cricket.

We absolutely agree. We are engaged with the local cricket players, and we do want to prioritize finding them a home to play in town. Absolutely. Thanks.

Thank you. Anything else?

All right. Well, I appreciate it. I've gone to a couple of these. I just appreciate your outreach to everyone and giving us a vision, obviously. I guess just to reiterate, there's no funding for this, and we're not proposing.

We're going to be paying for it. This is really just...

to make it so that we have something in place in the event that, like we were just talking about with the firefighters, we go out, we get funding, and since we've got something already, is that kind of the thought process, that we have something to show?

That's exactly right. Most funders of amenities like this like to see an approved master plan before they fund something at this level. So that is the hope, that this is preparing us to go after those funding opportunities.

All right. Thank you. If there's nothing else from council members regarding questions, then I'm going to open this up for public comment. First and foremost, thank you.

Thank you. Mayor Bass, we do.

And just so you know, and I'll make it more known next time, we're going to not do the clapping at this point since we want to just be able to get through everything. But I appreciate everyone's enthusiasm. Thank you.

We do have a couple comment cards. The first speaker is Ms. Liza McQuirk, followed by Mr. Travis Taylor.

Just a reminder, we do give three minutes. That's when the buzzer starts going off, and it starts to get yellow at 30 seconds in.

Thank you, Mayor Bass and council members. My name is Liza McGurk, and I proudly serve on the Rockland Parks Commission. And I'm here tonight to express my support for this Northwest Community Master Plan. And I'm a parks commissioner, but I'm also an active community member and a mom of three really active boys, two of which are teenagers, who love to engage in the parks in our community. They're in lots of sports, and so we use them regularly. And so from my perspective on the commission through this process, I think the department has done a really great job in terms of thoughtfully planning this out and making community engagement a foundation for the plan. They've done multiple public meetings, both virtually and in person, done directed outreach to stakeholders. And so the plan before you really represents community engagement as a basis. And you see a lot of that reflected in the plan before you today. And so I do want to just thank the Parks Department. You have a wonderful parks director and staff. They're amazing, and they do such a great job for this city. So thank you to them for that. One of the things that I very much appreciate about living here in Rockland are our parks and open spaces. And I think, you know, this plan gives the city the ability to continue to plan for the future. And that foundation that will be there should funding become available. Oftentimes when funding is available, it can be limited term. And so now you have a plan before you that was based on community funding. input that you can execute projects quickly if you choose to do so. So again, I support the plan and appreciate your time today. Thank you very much.

Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Travis Taylor. I'm a Rockland resident and a youth sports parent. I grew up in the area and moved to Rockland over eight years ago. In that short time, my family's had more experience with youth sports than we had ever anticipated. Rockland FC, Tri-City Baseball, Rockland Lacrosse, Next Level Rockland, and now Rockland Junior Thunder Football. These programs are driven by volunteers doing what they can with the fields that they have. So our youth have the best experience as possible. The same issue comes up time and time again. More kids, more teams, and more demand for playing fields each season. It's been more pronounced as we've seen with the Junior Thunder. the more conversations that we've had with coaches, other parents, board members, across both Junior Thunder and the Junior Wildcats, the more that we've learned that our youth football and cheer programs need additional space. So today, the presidents of Rockland Junior Thunder and Whitney Junior Wildcats submitted a joint letter to you. Together, they serve nearly 600 kids each fall, the overwhelming majority of them Rockland residents. Their request is simple. They support the park's master plan and the tremendous amount of work and collaboration and openness that's gone into it. They ask that football be included as an intended use at Whitney Community Park with one of the multi-purpose fields sized and surfaced so football and cheer can use it alongside other sports. We understand the configuration is subject to change and welcome the opportunity to work cooperatively to ensure the design can accommodate multiple sports, including football. And as you give direction to staff tonight, we respectfully ask that you include youth football as an intended use in the plan for Whitney Community Park. Thank you. Thank you.

Mayor Bass, we do have a hand raised on Zoom.

Great.

Hello, my name is Brandon Mullins, and this doesn't directly relate to this particular park. Instances, I've been a resident here in Rockland for a little bit over 10 years, have raised three kids here, all adults now. But I did want to put on kind of the radar, there's some space between Rock Creek Elementary School and the Rock Creek development there that is open space. And that particular space is supposed to be off limits, but there's a huge amount of traffic that walks down, rides their dirt bikes, rides their bikes along the fence path there, which has caused damage to a number of the neighbors fencing there, has also created issues with I think, with flooding during heavy rain seasons, with water flooding into the backyards along that strip there. And I was wondering, is there any plans? I know they have put up... post with very flimsy chain that people continue to tear down to walk back there. Is there any other plan to, I guess, either deter that more, maybe offer those residents on that street a wall as opposed to fencing? I think that would be helpful as well. I just wanted to see if there was anything planned.

I appreciate that. And because it's not on the actual agenda, what I'd like to do is just have staff reach out to you to be able to take the concern. And what I'll do is direct the parks director to be able to discuss that with you, as well as maybe it might be a public's work issue. So we'll get your contact information and address it.

Perfect. I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Thank you. All right. Any other public comments? Yes, we do have.

Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. I'm Neil Bullock. I'm on Rocklands Parks and Recreation Commission. I was also on the subcommittee that was assigned to support staff in the process of the development of the master plan. one of the things as a commission that we do is we hear on a regular basis from all the different sports programs that operate in our city and when you think cumulatively it's thousands of kids who are taking advantage of the facilities that we offer as a city so it's fantastic that we're trying to and I wouldn't say we're ahead of the curve because we're already under great pressure for the sports facilities that we have and the intensive use. But by putting in place plans like this, we have the opportunity to prepare for the future and in due course hopefully attract funding to support these developments. I just wanted to offer few thoughts on the process and so forth, but I think you probably appreciate that the consultant came to us already with a very well thought out initial plan that reflected really an enormous amount of work on their part in terms of understanding what our needs are for the city From a sports perspective, certainly, but also the other users of our facilities, there were a large number of public workshops. They were widely publicized, and we had pretty good attendance at all of those. They were well managed. And I think the plan that was presented tonight really reflects the input that was received during the course of the process. I had only two concerns really as we were going through. One was that the large number of ideas that were surfaced during that process, whether they would actually be captured with the opportunity of addressing them. And I was pleased to see in the final presentation that a lot of attention was given to that, that things weren't forgotten. They were identified and flagged as things that hopefully we'll be able to achieve as we move forward. And then finally, Participation by the general public in the workshops themselves seemed low, but we did receive a good number of written comments and so forth. And the consultant told us that actually the amount of feedback that we received was actually quite high compared to exercises that they've undertaken for years. for other cities, which I think demonstrates that our residents are very interested in this process. I'm very pleased with the culmination of all of this, and I'm happy to support it, and I hope that you do too. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comments?

No?

All right, I'll close the public comment period and bring it back to council for any further discussions. All right. I do want to make just kind of a general comment for maybe just the benefit of the record and for people here that one of the thoughts behind this also was, especially with sports complexes, is that what people don't realize is that in Placer County, our number one driver in tourism is actually youth sports. And so what that does is it allows for... A stream of revenue of a tax base outside of our own tax base. And so the thought pattern is increasing the amount of opportunities for kids, but also being able to bring in for, say, competitions and tournaments. And so you have to blend everything that we needed. for parks for our own people, but then also is there an opportunity to be able to bring people outside for those tournaments, etc. So I want to think that we're trying to be balanced in that approach and not just go full-blown on tournaments and things like that. I do want to say that the direction that I do have is, I did speak quite a bit with people that Love cricket, and my mother-in-law is English and lives with us, so I do know that there is definitely a contingent out there. So I'd appreciate looking at that. And then also, and I think in the presentation we addressed it, but the football aspect, and I know that could be a striping issue as well. But I would say, Travis, also, I'd like to get together with you and talk to you about another spot as well. in an area that I'm looking to try and get renovation and working with Rockland Unified on a volunteer basis. So I'd love to talk to you about that. Is there any other direction for staff? All right. Seeing none, I don't believe there's any vote.

No, I want to say thank you to Sarah and the team at Melton Design Group and Veronica Tracy and her team. It has been a long process. And I think many of the Parks and Rec commissioners were also in attendance at every single meeting, providing feedback, listening to the residents. So really appreciate the collaborative approach we've taken. support from the city council this is part of your strategic plan as well and so seeing no major changes what we'll do is we will kind of deem this the master plan and start working on a preliminary approach to work towards these other pieces and cricket has not been forgotten it's just such a unique shape and need as well as that second dog park which may address some of the issues with the resident concern rock creek elementary is adjacent to sonora park so that's something that's been on our mind as well thank you thank you all right uh with that i believe we are going to be moving on to our public hearing is there any request for a break how is staff doing

You're good? Good? All right. We will be opening now. Let me get to my agenda. All right. So public hearings may be reordered by the mayor with the consent of the legislative body. We've done that. We are going to be opening this public hearing. This is Midas Apartments Design Review DR-2026-002 and Environmental ENV-2026-008. We are going to be hearing from Senior Planner Bennett Smith-Ark, but first I'll just let everyone know, lay a couple ground rules, because we have... had a couple of meetings so far, and it's been amazing that we've had a tremendous amount of support and engagement from the public. One of the things that makes that work is that we hear each other. There's opponents, proponents, and some people I think are agnostic. But the most important thing is that obviously we stay respectful, especially if someone else says something that we don't like. And we've had some pretty serious hearings recently. And one of the great things is everyone's just been really respectful. So what I would ask is this isn't to stop anyone's First Amendment rights. I just, for clapping, booing, hissing, we ask that nobody do that. Let's just get through the hearing to hear everybody. And there's two reasons for that. One is first respect for the speaker and differing views in our democracy. And then the other one is it helps us hear everyone because we have to make a decision and it makes a very clean record. It doesn't discourage people from speaking, and we want to be able to hear everyone that's going to speak. So I'm not saying that you're not allowed to have opinions or shake your head and things like that, because there might be times where you might not agree with something that's said. But in order for us to get through and to be able to hear everybody, I just ask that we not do that. And so far, we've had really great council meetings on these types of issues. So with that, take it away.

Good evening mayor and City Council. My name is Bennett Smith art with the planning division I'll be presenting the Midas apartments project a design review for a multi multifamily residential community The project site is located northwest to the intersection of Midas Avenue and Pacific Street in the downtown Rockland area The 7.1-acre site is currently undeveloped and primarily consists of annual grassland. Existing sidewalks run along Midas Avenue and Pacific Street. The site is zoned high-density residential in the Rockland General Plan and is zoned planned development residential, 33 dwelling units per acre, within the residential minimum density overlay mixed-use zone. residential zone. The parcel was a part of the original 1893 town map. Historical uses of the site included the railroad yard and a lumber yard. The site has been vacant since the early 1990s. Recent project approvals include the ZL Rockland project approved on June 24th 2008 and the Rockland Gateway project approved on June 13th 2017. Both approvals have since expired. The Rockland Gateway project was a multifamily community approved in 2017. That included a rezone and the adoption of a general development plan for the site. The project expired, but the zoning and the general development plan remains. A general biological assessment was completed for the site. The 7.8 7.1 acre project site is mainly annual grasslands with 23 native oaks and other trees. The project is a request for a design review to develop an approximately 7.1 acre undeveloped site with 100% affordable multifamily residential community called Midas Apartments. Project includes construction of three multifamily buildings containing a total of 281 units, along with a new parking lot, drive aisles, community facilities, playground, and associated infrastructure. The project also includes a lot line adjustment to consolidate the existing parcels into a single parcel. The project consists of three residential buildings, Building 1 and 2, which are Type A, each 64,740 square feet, while building three, which is type B, is 133,168 square feet. Buildings one and two are located along Midas and Pacific Street, with building three being centrally located on the interior of the site. Exterior materials include board and batten siding and cement plaster. Here are the elevations for the frontage buildings. These are the type A buildings. These are the buildings located along the frontage of the site, along Midas Avenue and Pacific Street. The building type A floor plans are linear and run parallel to Midas Avenue and Pacific Streets.

Excuse me. You mentioned the elevations. Can you just go back to that slide? Because I don't think anybody could read anything that's on that slide. I mean, was the point to show how... Which slide right here? Yeah, I was thinking of that one, just what it shows.

A general visual of the buildings, just the overall design, just kind of doing an overview of the buildings proposed. So, yes, you cannot read it just looking at the buildings themselves.

Okay, I just I thought it'd be useful to hear like the heights when when you were saying that elevation I can go into that. Okay.

Yes Yes, so so all the buildings are located are four stories and are 48 feet high Let's see all proceeds with the floor plan I Then this is the Type B building. So this is the building that's located more centrally on the site, also 48 feet, and it matches the architectural of the frontage buildings, the Type A buildings. The project includes one, two, and three bedroom units. They range for 559 square feet for the one and 1,170 square feet for the three bedroom units. It has type A and type B. Exterior materials include a board and batten siding and cement plaster. Per the project applicant, there are three coordinated exterior color schemes that are proposed. An off-white and light gray palette is used on projecting building modules to emphasize articular Our architectural articulation, an earthy sage green provides an organic accent color across portions of the building facade, and a dark charcoal slate gray is applied at the ground level and on select recessed vertical elements to establish a strong visual base. The conceptual landscape plan incorporates trees, shrubs, ground covers, granite boulders consistent with the citywide design guidelines. The areas in green are the landscape areas and the shade trees. The project includes a corner monument at the intersection of Minas Avenue and Pacific to provide a focal point at the entrance of the established downtown Rockland area. PG&E transmission line easement is located at the west side of the project site. The project will be subject to the PG&E overhead power line planting guidelines. Essentially the project will have to plant smaller trees in this area. Parking lot lighting is proposed throughout the site. The light poles are proposed at 20 feet in height. The project submitted a photometric plan in support of the proposed lighting design. Vehicle access to the project will be provided by two new driveways, one on Pacific and one on Midas Avenue. Internal drive aisles would connect these entrances to all proposed parking areas and buildings. On Pacific Street, a full access driveway is proposed. The existing opposing left turn pockets will be reconstructed as a continuous two-way left turn lane within the center median area. On Midas Avenue, a right in, right out driveway is proposed. Conditions of approval include signage and an extended median to prevent unpermitted turns. The project includes the installation of various infrastructure connections to serve the development. The graphic illustrates some of the proposed utility systems. Blue represents water, green represents sewer, and red represents the underground Stormwater detention system the stormwater system consists of a series of 36 inch pipes designed to detain stormwater as a part of the overall drainage design Going into more general details about the project site, the site is served by multiple transportation options for future residents. Placer County Transit has a stop by the property across the street next to the car wash and a couple blocks south of the site there are bus stops. There are additionally bike lanes and sidewalks serving this general area that could be utilized by the residents. So going into parking, the project proposes 381 parking spaces. It was originally proposed at 356 parking spaces, but in July they revised the site to provide an extra 25 parking spaces. The project proposes to utilize provisions of AB 2097, which prohibits the local agency from imposing minimum parking requirements on residential development located within one-half mile of a qualifying transit stop. Tyler Thomson with Cal TLC conducted a site visit on February 20, 2026, the project arborist. A total of 31 trees were evaluated of which 23 are protected by size and species according to the City of Rockland Tree Preservation Ordinance. All of the trees are proposed for removal. The site is identified in the city's housing element regional housing needs allocation inventory as site number 1-16 to help meet state mandated requirements for affordable housing. The project would provide 281 affordable units for households earning between 30 and 70% of the area median income with an overall average affordability of approximately 60% AMI. For reference, the current AMI in Placer County, Rockland area is 124,000 for a family of four and 86,000 for a single person. according to 2026 California Department of Housing and Community Development based figures. The affordable housing development is subject to various housing laws adopted to streamline the development of affordable housing. The state density bonus law allows for certain affordable housing developments to have waivers and concession to objective Design standards the applicant or what is requesting or has applied? Has one concession That's for the with the length of the parking stalls So they won't shorter than we typically allow and overhang into the landscape area to allow for the feasibility of the project I The project was notified through publication in the newspaper, mailed notices to property owners within 600 feet of the site, and posting the public notices on the project site. The project applicant informed staff they have completed neighborhood outreach prior to the Planning Commission hearing. The project was evaluated using a CEQA guidelines section 15183 consistency analysis and checklist to confirm consistency with the applicable general plan and the environmental impacts previously identified through the general plan EIR. Members of the public has expressed concerns including but not limited to distribution of affordable housing throughout the city. building density and neighborhood scale, parking, CEQA, noise, utilities, this includes PG&E and Kendra Morgan, and Midas Avenue traffic and the railroad. STAFF HAS ALSO PREPARED SOME OF THE HISTORIC AND CURRENT ESTIMATED DAILY ALLEN MOTORVILLE TRIPS HAVE THIS IN A LARGER FORMAT IF YOU NEED ME TO COME BACK TO IT BUT IT'S CONSISTENT ESSENTIALLY WE'RE IN THE SAME AROUND 1300 WITH ZL ROCKLAND 1500. Therefore, the Planning Commission and staff recommends approval of the Midas Department's design review, subjects of finding and conditions outlined in the staff report. I'm available for any questions. The project applicant has prepared a presentation.

The applicant can step on up and give a presentation.

Good evening. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and council members. Thank you for the opportunity to present our affordable housing project here tonight. Before we begin, I just wanted to thank staff for all their efforts throughout this process, from the planning department with Bennett, Arwen, and David, to housing department, Elizabeth Sorg, and the city manager's office with Allie and Andrew. It's been great to work with staff, and we're excited to be here tonight. You have our entire project team here today. I'm Oren Hillel, Senior Director of Development with Waterford Property Company. Our co-founder, Sean Rawson, is also in attendance. We are an affordable housing owner, operator, and developer throughout the state of California and in Texas. We have about 6,000 units in our portfolio, majority of which are rent-restricted and a range of incomes. Our co-development partner is Cypress Equity, With Laura.

Good evening, everybody. Good evening, community. Good evening, Mayor, council members. I'm Laura Kirstead. I'm managing director with Cypress Equity. We are a multifamily developer since 2001. We have developed and invested in over 20,000 units across the country and since 2015 have been an active affordable developer with over 2,500 units that we've either rehabbed or developed and we have an additional 2,000 units in our pipeline. I'm extremely excited to be bringing more affordable housing to California, which is our main focus.

And I'll introduce Mary. Hi, everyone. Mary Woltering. I work for HRGA, which is the architecture firm on the project.

So Mary is the lead architect with HRGA. We also have a local design team, TSD Engineering with Chris Schultz, Kevin Leamy with Furman Leamy, who's also here in attendance tonight. EPD Solutions is our CEQA and environmental consultant. We have Connie and then we have a couple other people from the team on Zoom. And then not here tonight, but a big part of the project is Pacific Housing. They're our nonprofit partner on the project and also will be the service provider at the property in operation. So they will be in charge. This will be a large family project targeted towards families. There will be services ranging from all ages. So children with after school teen programs, tutoring, teen programs with leadership skills, and then even adult programs with financial literacy and resume building. So Pacific Housing is a big part of this project. There is a lot of history to this site. Obviously, as Bennett just outlined, this site was previously approved twice, most recently in 2017. The applicant in 2017, a portion of that applicant is still the owner today. We've been working with that owner for about two years now on this project. We really decided to move forward about a year and a half ago when discussions started with Program 10 and the addendum for the housing element when this site was included and identified in the arena housing element. So since then, really kind of late summer of last year after this was adopted in August is when we started to work with city staff hand in hand. We came and presented a few site planning options, talked about feasibility, and ultimately went through the entitlement process starting late last year and early this year when we submitted RSP 330.

Just to reiterate, I know Bennett gave a really good overview of the project already, but this site is, this project is a 281 unit project, is a family mix. This site was identified in the city of Rockland's housing element to be a large contributor to the arena. So this project will be contributing 278 affordable units with three manager units. As mentioned, they're ranging from 30 to 70% of the average median income. That is really workforce housing. That is $30,000 to $100,000 household incomes. So this is really focusing on much-needed workforce housing. The project has about 4,000 square feet of amenities and almost 2,000 square feet of that is the taut lot.

And we'll go into more detail on the next slide here.

So the amenities, you can see the tall lot in the center courtyard. There's also some turf areas, barbecues. There's a community space for residents to gather, hold parties. There is a resource room. As Oren was mentioning, Pacific Housing runs a lot of programming. So there's the space for that. The easements that were mentioned make this site a little bit unique to develop. There's the large PG&E easement up along the railroad tracks. On Midas Avenue, there is a drainage easement. And then on Pacific Street, there is a S.P. Mudd sewer easement as well. So we had to coordinate with all the utility providers in the city, obviously, to make sure that this project was built within those constraints. The corner monument, we're really excited about. We've talked to council about potentially engaging with the historic society. We'd love to do an ode to the past on that corner if possible. We know they have some artifacts that are looking to be displayed one day. So we would love for that to happen here. I want to highlight the storm detention that was placed underground in that PG&E easement area. That is not the most cost-effective way to build. We specifically did that to maximize parking count. I know that there's a lot of concern about traffic and having enough parking on the site for people. We really tried to work with the city to maximize our parking on this site. And we've really, especially with that adjustment you heard, we added 25 stalls. That was that incentive we used to just make the parking stalls as efficient as possible. And we added as many stalls. Typically we would do above ground storm detention system, but that would have taken 20 to 30 stalls away from this project. So with that, I'll hand it to Oren to highlight some more parking history here.

Yeah, on the parking we knew that that was a big piece to this project. That would be a big piece of the community feedback and Aldo has been mentioned. You know this project. Is able to utilize AB 2097. That was not our intention. We've actually increased the parking every step of the way throughout this process, so that we just wanted to kind of compare what was previously approved to today. So previously in 2017, There was 204 units approved with 268 spaces. That's a ratio of 1.3 per unit. Originally in our pre-application last year, we were at a lower ratio than that. But as Laura mentioned and Bennett mentioned, we've continued to increase parking. And today the site plan in front of you has a ratio of 1.35 spaces per unit, which we thought was the best we could do. And hopefully that was appreciated that we continued to maximize it at every chance we got. We wanted to highlight some of the architectural design. So Mary has a couple of things to say on that.

Yeah, so I just wanted to explain our design to you. So our design approach for this project was to create a concept that aligned with the citywide guidelines while enhancing the surrounding neighborhood and streetscape. The project is not located within any of the architectural districts, but we are adjacent to the Corey District, so our design draws inspiration from the Corey District's design language and character. The buildings were strategically positioned along Pacific and Midas with the parking hidden behind them to create a sense of place and pedestrian safety by activating the street frontages with the visible building facades. For the elevation, our goal was to establish a strong visual rhythm through the use of materials, colors, and window patterns. The material palette consists primarily of cement plaster and vertical board and batten siding, which is complemented by a range of off-white, gray, and green tones. Through the use of the combination of materials and colors, the articulation help breaks down the massing of the four-story structure by reducing the perceived scale and creating a more pedestrian-friendly appearance. At the corner of each of the buildings, we've added the architectural feature of gable roofs. This element draws the inspiration from the Cory District, guidelines with the residential character being added to the overall building design. The remaining roof front forms along the elevation were designed at varying heights, which will also help further articulate the facade and reduce the visual scale of the project. Overall, our goal was to design a project that complements and enhances the neighborhood and creates a visual continuity with the surrounding context while also delivering a cohesive, attractive, and pedestrian-friendly environment. I think one more piece I just want to touch on because I know the roof... height question came up during Bennett's presentation. So as I mentioned, along the facade, we have varying roof heights. Majority of the roof parapet is at 46 feet. In the center with the flat parapets, it does vary between 46 and 48, but majority being at 46. And then we do have the corner gables. We just really wanted to create That architectural moment with the gable roofs at the corner.

So those are slightly higher but majority sits around 46 We thought it'd be helpful to outline a project timeline and next steps and we know there's a lot of community speakers here tonight, so we'll go through this a little quickly but We started due diligence, as I said, on the project about a year and a half ago. We submitted a pre-app to the city and worked with planning staff on that pre-application in end of summer of last year. We vested the project with SB 330 in January of this year and then formally submitted our entitlement application thereafter. We've been in the entitlement process since then. We did do community outreach. I know this was a topic that came up. We focused, I personally focused on the Pacific street with the businesses while Garrett, who is my counterpart at Cypress, went to about 500 feet on the residential side. Everything on the other side of the tracks is above that 600 feet. So it was all focused kind of on San Francisco and Midas. um but we did go out there and pass out flyers we received some really good feedback i did especially from the small businesses that are there everybody from lori's little shack to the liquor store to the audio store we door knocked and said hello and showed them the project in the flyer so that was that process then obviously we went to planning commission about a month ago received the recommendation to come here tonight Our goal, if successful tonight, is to submit for SIDLAC and TCAC next month. It's the final round of this year for an allocation of funding. We believe the project will be extremely competitive if we do submit. If not, we are pushed into round one of next year, which is usually in February. But this timeline assumes that we can hopefully submit next month, and that would put us under some timelines to start construction by summer of next year, with an opening projected in early 2029. That's our project timeline. We've also, I think one thing to mention too, on our partnership and on the allocation funding, just one thing I wanted to highlight is that Cypress and Waterford are unique in the sense that we actually contribute developer equity into affordable housing projects. So today, every affordable housing project has a big financing gap where sources do not meet the uses. Construction costs, financing costs have increased. but the sources are not matching that. So there are big financing gaps to these projects. Our partnership is unique and rare for a developer to actually contribute developer equity into these projects. That's what allows us to actually move quickly through these processes and submit for funding sooner than other projects would that have to go through other funding sources. Just to end, this project is a project that delivers affordable housing at the location that it was designated for in the city's housing element. We have truly enjoyed working with staff up to this point. We're happy to answer any additional questions. We have a lot of exhibits prepared if there's anything specific to discuss, but look forward to answering additional questions. Thank you for your time. Thank you. We want to start with questions for the applicant, questions for staff.

We'll do both.

Do you want to start up? Sure. Go for it. So these are questions for, I'll start off with staff. So there's a lot of concern from residents about the traffic on Midas. That's a consistent theme that we hear. If we were TO NOT HAVE A RIGHT IN, RIGHT OUT ON MIDAS AND TURN THAT INTO AN EMERGENCY VEHICLE ACCESS POINT ONLY, WOULD THAT BE OKAY?

So the question is, you want to, so we have the Pacific Midas, Midas becoming an EVA for traffic purposes, just for clarity?

Instead of having it be, you know, an entrance of the complex, just have the one entrance on Pacific.

Just then the EVA, so... With Midas, I mean, traffic, if they're wanting to take, they might just go a different direction on there. We did, throughout the process, my colleagues in fire and public safety did review it. And, you know, if it was an EVA, they would be able to serve the site as well. But likely traffic would funnel if they're going west down Midas. You know, folks might take Pacific and go there as well. Okay. So it wouldn't likely change the trips. They would just have to go around the site there. Okay.

All right. But what you're saying is if we eliminated the public entrance on Midas, that would be okay?

It would be okay with the fire department. And that's typically the baseline is life safety.

THE OTHER THING I SAW ON THE CAR TRIPS, CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE GATEWAY PROJECT, I SAW THE NUMBER OF 1356, AND IT HAD ABOUT 70 PLUS UNITS LESS, BUT WE'RE SAYING THE CAR TRIPS FOR THIS ONE WOULD BE ABOUT THE SAME EVEN THOUGH IT'S GOT MORE UNITS. HOW DOES THAT WORK OUT?

Correct. So for the two, since this one is a 100% affordable housing development, there's a different category in the ITE. That's the traffic manual for this type of data. For affordable housing, it assumes less trips for affordable housing development. So in the traffic analysis this project prepared, they gave the numbers in the affordable housing category. which is lower than the kind of mid-rise market rate.

Okay, so it ends up being the same because of the type of units that are being built. Correct, yes.

Can I ask, because I tried to download the trip generation manual, and obviously it comes with a price. My question is, do you know what the fundamental belief is, or what was the mechanism or studies they used to say that affordable housing has less trips than market rate? Is it just maybe because the type of person that lives there is a... maybe older or income limited, so they just go less places. Does anybody have an answer to that? I'll start with staff, and then maybe I'll ask the applicant. But do we have an answer for that?

I don't know exactly. I'm looking at David. Did you want to?

Sure. David Mullenbrook, Community Development Director. So as Bennett mentioned, the sort of the beginning point of traffic studies is using the Institute of Traffic Engineers manual to determine the number of trips that a particular project is going to generate. The manuals used by traffic professionals, Caltrans, others that do these traffic studies or traffic analyses. The way they get their data is based upon surveys of actual existing locations. So they'll go out and survey a market rate apartment. They'll survey an affordable housing project. And based on multiple surveys, they came up with an average trip generation rate. for the different types of land uses, not just affordable housing, but commercial projects, industrial projects, recreational projects, that type of thing. It's all based on surveys that this group of engineers goes out and conducts, and then they come up with that average number. Okay.

Thank you. You're welcome.

Since we're on the topic of traffic, I did have a couple more questions, and I think maybe it's going to be helpful if we also understand what we're doing here, right, today. So we have, the recommendation is to adopt a resolution approving a notice of exemption, and then the other is approving a design review, right? But we obviously need to address the issues that we think are going to be raised tonight, and when it comes to traffic, what is the considerations that the council has before it versus maybe what People might think of and I'm asking specifically Vehicle miles traveled versus loss of service because I did see many people asking about that And I think it's good for us to explain what it is that the the state has said we have to consider

So the vehicle miles travel, that is a relatively new section in CEQA, analyzing how far a project is from all the amenities you use and places you go. So for the CEQA review, part of the analysis was VMT to make sure the project meets those standards. Being in Rockland, this site is fairly close to everything, so the traffic analysis did conclude that No significant impacts with VMT. For the design review, there are findings to be made. One between is a relationship between the site design, surrounding development, natural features, and constraints, and traffic flows. So there are some findings within the RMC design review relating to the traffic aspects as well.

But when it comes to loss of service, and maybe this is an attorney question, but is loss of service something that goes into our consideration as to whether or not we can deny a project?

So level of service? Did you want to take that one as well, David? Level of service.

From a secret perspective, as Bennett was explaining, the vehicle miles traveled came into effect in about 2020. And it used to be that level of service was the metric for measuring impacts from a development project. It was based upon the amount of delay that a driver would experience at an intersection or on a roadway segment. Mines that be, change that to vehicle miles traveled. And that's the new metric for looking at vehicular impacts under CEQA. I would also note that the guidelines that have been put out by what formerly was the Office of Planning and Research allow for an affordable housing project to be considered exempt from a VMT analysis. So there's that consideration too for what went into the CEQA document and the VMT study that the applicant performed.

Thank you. Just for purposes of the record, I just want it known that I believe it's Public Resources Code 21099-B2, Secret Guidelines 15064.3, that automobile delay LOS shall not constitute a significant environmental impact. That's from Citizens for Positive Growth and Preservation v. City of Sacramento 2019. Anyone have questions about traffic?

We can keep going.

David, could you come back? Sorry. I just wanted to kind of plain English there. So basically the state says that traffic impacts when it comes to affordable housing doesn't matter.

If it's 100% affordable housing project, you're correct.

It doesn't matter. Yes. They don't care.

Yeah. And I guess there's other exemptions like if you have local serving retail that's at 50,000 square feet or less cumulative, that's considered to be exempt from CEQA 2 because by placing a local serving retail project where there isn't one, you're now shortening trips where people are going, you know, farther away to get to the grocery store. But if you put something closer, that reduces the trip. I think the theory or philosophy on affordable housing is similar to what we were just discussing about in IT trip generation manual, is that generally speaking, you don't get as many trips coming from an affordable housing project site as you would a market rate site.

Just on the question, how many guest spots are there in this parking scheme?

These stalls will not be assigned, so we don't have specific guest stalls labeled in the parking lot.

There will be no assigned parking?

No.

No assigned parking for anybody. If I live there, there's no spot for me.

Yes, we rotate stalls. So we don't have them labeled. It's when you come home, you find an empty stall. So it's not that you can park. Everyone will have parking passes. So you can't bring six cars to the lot and park them there. It's that you'll have a parking pass. And then when you come home, you park in an available spot. So we don't assign specific guest stalls because we do it that way. If we had assigned stalls and you had a number painted on your stall, then we would have to allocate guest stalls, obviously. But it just doesn't make sense. We find that it works better to not have assigned parking stalls.

Okay. And on your tandem spots, are those?

Excuse me. So this is where we start to kind of get back to where we want to be, which is we want to be able to hear the applicant and get through, and then we can get to public comment. Thank you.

Yeah, and this is not unusual. This is what we do on all our buildings. This is very common for service projects.

I'm just trying to understand. The tandem spots then are also not assigned? That's correct. Okay. So, I mean... How do the tandem spots get used? Because if you park in first, you're not going to do that because somebody could basically block you in by parking behind you.

I do think we will need to assign the tandem spots, definitely, for two- or three-bedroom units.

Okay. All right.

Thank you.

The problem is it's also an affordable housing regulation, right? We can't assign the stalls to the units. So that's not even – it's a regulated TCAG-CDLAC issue.

Okay. All right. I'm sorry. It was a what issue?

We can't assign the stalls to the units. It's just part of the bonds. It's part of the rules. So it's not even our decision.

But you will for tandem.

We'll have to figure out some operational requirement for that. But, yeah, we typically don't.

Okay.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. Absolutely. How many tandem parking spaces are there? Exactly. I think there's 30, so we'll just take 30. The concern is, as the Vice Mayor has pointed out, and we don't have an answer, which... I'm being asked to make a decision without an answer as it stands right now, which is hugely problematic for me. So I need to understand if you're going to have tandem parking spaces, how are you going to manage that? Because if I live here and you're telling me that's open parking and I need to go somewhere, I'm certainly not going to pull far in at the risk of someone parking behind me. Again, it would be very helpful for us to understand if there are 30 spaces, they're not going to be used if there's no control and management of those. So it would certainly be helpful for me to understand.

I apologize. That's my mistake. That's my mistake. The tandems will be assigned.

So we do have a parking management plan, and our intention is to absolutely assign the tandem spaces. So for the two- and three-bedroom units.

it's a free for all I jumped in on him so keep going everybody yeah I had questions on parking as well since we're talking about that so thank you for mentioning parking pass so every tenant or at least every unit would have at least one parking pass and then how do you prioritize how many three bedroom units are there

There's about, I would say, I think we have around 80 three-bedroom units. I think it's about 30% of the project. Three-bedroom? 25 to 30%, correct.

Oh, okay. So you wouldn't have any problem filling up 30 tandem spots with 80 units? So who is monitoring? And if there's a car park that doesn't have a pass, how does that get handled?

It will be staff. We would have to hire a parking operation staff member at the project at the site. And do they tow or notify? I think it's usually a notification process. And there's some time before they tow. But I don't have the exact process, unfortunately.

And then what about managing parking off-site? Is there any requirements for the tenants to not park off-site?

No requirements, and that's not part of the parking management on-site.

So the complex is kind of silent? Parking off-site.

Yeah, correct. I don't think that would be Available, you know part of the operation to be able to do that If you reduced the buildings to three-story, how many units would you lose? We would lose We would lose 25% of the project, so we would lose about 60, 75 units. And then how would that impact the parking ratio? Of course, that would greatly increase the parking ratio if we kept the surface parking the same. That would absolutely demolish the financial feasibility of the project, but the parking ratio would be increased.

That's fine. I just wanted to understand kind of how it affected the parking ratio.

We wouldn't meet the density minimums either. We would be down to about 29 units an acre.

Can you please make sure you're speaking into the microphone?

I just did the quick math. We would be under the 33 units per acre required for this site, so we would have to redesign.

All right. There was a mention, and this could be either staff or the applicant, about a PG&E line along that back. parking lot. I think in your presentation, Oren, on the overhead, it showed a pole. And I was looking at Google Map. I don't know how new that is. But it looks like the power lines end. And I was wondering why that wouldn't just be underground.

That is a transmission line, so like a regional transmission line. So it might be, you know, might be to PG&E, you know, might be simpler than just a standard line.

I mean, it's kind of in the middle of the parking lot, so I don't know what the plan is to move it.

Yeah, I think, so Garrett might be on Zoom, who worked closely with PG&E on the Eastman area. If he's on there. Maybe it's the backside of the project. Raising his hand.

I'm here, yeah, if I may. Hello, everybody. Yes, so PG&E has maintained and operated the transmission line for a long time out there. It's been a staple, and they have told us that they have no intentions of undergrounding this line and asked us to work within their existing guidelines and design requirements to construct our buildings in and around the existing transmission towers. So those will remain. All of our buildings are outside of the easement areas, and we've worked with PG&E to make sure that our planting meets their planting guidelines for the area as well. So they have a large easement, and we've worked within those easement restrictions.

Okay, so those poles are outside of the project?

They're within the project, but they are... Right, they're within the project. And we unfortunately don't have any authority to instruct or tell PG&E to underground those. They're allowed to own and operate those at their discretion. And they've told us they don't want to underground them and said that we need to build around them.

I can show you on this cycle. Yeah, so if you look at the Midas entry on the north side of the plan, on the south side of that entry, you come in, there's about three stalls, and you'll see it blocked out with two circles on it.

Gotcha. Okay.

Okay.

All right. I've seen all the TV commercials about undergrounding everything, so I'm a little puzzled why they couldn't underground this, but... Can you, does any, well, I just wanted to ask the question. We got some resident commentary and questions about your proximity to a pipeline and what you're doing to protect your residents from any possible problems with the pipeline.

Sure, I could start and Garrett feel free to jump in too. But we put together a couple of slides on this topic. This was something that we vetted during due diligence of the project. So this is a pipeline operated by Kinder Morgan. It runs thousands of miles throughout Northern California and Nevada. As you can see in this map here, it runs throughout Rockland, adjacent and nearby the tracks. There is, as you can see here, multiple developments, housing, commercial, all around this pipeline. It actually runs directly through a single-family neighborhood right next to Sunset and Pacific, next to the fuel tank facility for Kinder Morgan. We went through a process and here just, you know, Vice Mayor Haldon, here are some of the setbacks to the project. So Kinder Morgan setbacks that they require for nothing to cross the pipeline is actually two feet. We're about 21 feet, a little under 21 feet from the pipeline to our property line. which is the start of kind of our project with some of the infrastructure. You are about 122 feet from the nearest corner of a residential building and then 188 feet from the central building three. Kinder Morgan during our due diligence came out, a field representative came out and marked the pipeline so we knew exactly where it was and was included in our plans. They then reviewed our plans and issued us a no objection letter. So Kinder Morgan reviewed our plans. They are obviously the owner operator. They have been notified of this and had no objection to the project. And then we also, you know, obviously have worked with the general contractor in Gage Brown Construction on the pre-development who also reviewed the plans and the pipeline and had no issues as well or no concerns. That was some of the work that we did. I know this came up as an issue, We thoroughly vetted it during due diligence.

Thank you. So that pipeline, I know it was listed as gas on there. It's not like liquefied natural gas?

I think it's a hybrid pipeline that has aviation and fuel.

Yeah, it's a mixed petroleum line, so I think it goes to the plant. It's used for jet fuel, diesel, an assortment of items.

And gasoline?

Yeah.

Okay. I did have questions on traffic and access. I don't know if anyone else has questions on the other topics. Okay. So it wasn't addressed... How access is going to be modified from Pacific? Do you have any diagrams?

We do, yes. We have for both Midas and Pacific. This is a diagram that compares the previously approved project to our project. As you can see, we are modifying the two-way left turn lane that's currently there in the median, pulling that back a little bit for the entrance into our project.

Okay, so how is left out of the project going to be handled? So those kind of crisscross, it looks like.

It will be past the left end.

That's correct. The top diagram there shows the existing medians now that create two left turn pockets. And the project will remove those and we'll have a right left dual turn function lane installed.

So you basically have cars crossing over each other, those turning in from the left and those turning out left.

Correct. It'll be a typical detail for that situation.

And then what about access to the United Rentals?

That'll also be provided via the new striping of the left and right turn lane.

Do you have another diagram that shows kind of that property? This shows your 30-foot driveway, but the United Rentals is a little further down to the right. I don't see how folks can get in there based on this diagram.

You can see that we're demoing on the top. There's an existing kind of left... turn pocket, I believe, that's created there. So we'll be removing that limiting function, but we won't be revising the general scale or the functionality of that driveway. We'll just be providing more options to also service our new proposed driveway.

Okay, maybe I'm looking at the wrong one. So the lower image... The lower one, correct. The lower image removes all islands, and it's just basically a wide open middle suicide lane for people to go whatever direction they want to go. Yeah, and because I'm concerned about that, I don't know what else can be done, but because of that, I can't imagine closing the Midas side because now you're just pushing those folks, even more cars out onto Midas. ONTO PACIFIC, THEY'RE GOING TO END UP MAKING A RIDE ONTO MINUS ANYWAY. SO I DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE CAN BE DONE ABOUT THE ACCESS. BUT THAT LOOKS A LITTLE DICEY. THAT'S ALL I HAVE FOR NOW, MR. MAYOR. ALL RIGHT.

ARE WE JUST DOING TRAFFIC OR ARE WE HAVING TO TELL ME, OPEN UP ANY QUESTIONS? HOW DO YOU?

YEAH, I MEAN, I'VE BEEN LETTING, I MEAN, I CAN DIRECT IT. THE WAY I WAS LOOKING AT IT IS WE COULD GO OVER. the issues as they've been raised both by the public before the public gets to speak.

Traffic, parking, and access have been where we've been really heading. If there's other questions, the way I looked at it was project design density, character is one of the issues, infrastructure and safety, CEQA, construction. Those are the issues I saw raised. I would say first, if there's any more questions on traffic, parking, or access, let's ask those now. and then we can move on to those. I have some questions as well, but if you want to go first.

You got it. Thank you. At first, I do want to also mention that I had a phone conversation with the applicant, so thank you. I always want to make sure that we have that open and out there. I got a list. Traffic. So certainly on Midas, when we talked about is there a way we can eliminate that exit on Midas and make it for emergency vehicles only, Thinking about that Minus exit, being honest, Minus was never built to handle the amount of traffic that it has now. It just wasn't. It wasn't supposed to be this major collector street. So that's why this is such an issue for our neighbors. One of the things, quite frankly, that I would like to ask this council to do as part of this is reach out to the school district. A big portion of our traffic is Springview, the middle school. Again, there's 1,000 students there. It was never meant to be a school where parents drove their kids to school. Probably, gosh, eight, nine years ago, the school district eliminated a lot of the busing that they had there. I know that every, because I'm a school bus professional, every bus is going to take 60 cars off the road. So I am going to ask council if we could approach the school district. We did, in the industry, we were able to make some changes a few years ago to where they do get some Reimbursement for the cost for transportation. I'd like to see us if we can get some busing back into Springview I think it could make a huge difference for the neighbors if we could get and I know When superintendent stock was at Elk Grove where I was the director We had a school Cosumnes River Elementary that had on Jackson Highway. It didn't have any way for parents to park So we did free busing and it made a massive difference in the traffic on Jackson Highway It's also the safest way for kids to get to school, so I'd like to see if we couldn't encourage them to consider that and help us get some of the pressure off of MIDAS as a whole. Knowing MIDAS and that turn, the reason why I'm interested in not having an access on MIDAS and making it an emergency is simply because if you were in the back and you went to go right, the temptation to flip around you, because not everybody's going down MIDAS. Most people... are going to go out of the city on Pacific. I think that's a very strong temptation there. So I think it's well worth our time to look in to see what would be that impact if we could do that. I think, in fact, you know, if you go, you have the site aerials. On page three of the site aerials, can I get you to go there? And it's hard to see that, but because it's such a unique corner right there from where the tracks. And I say, if you're going to school, maybe you're going down Midas. I think most people would be going out Pacific. So I want to keep people from coming out there, out Midas, and flipping around to get out to Pacific. Because I don't know how. if there's going to be a blockade there. So you can't turn left, so it would have been a right turn only. So you could go down there and make a U-turn. You shouldn't, but I can see that they would do that because they see it all the dang time, to be honest with you. They do it now. Or, quite frankly, people pull into where the mini-mart is, that little commercial center right there. Guilty as charged, I've done it myself, and pull in there and cut through their parking lot to go out the other direction. So I think that's really well worth looking at. If you're looking at the slide on the top right where it says subject property and you see the little commercial center and then right next to it on the left side that little house That's where my husband grew up. I know this neighborhood My mother-in-law lived in that house 70 years and died in that at 94 years old So I know this neighborhood and I'm telling you people will flip a ue because they do They also will go around that back behind there that the railroad access will turn around in there and So I think anything we could do to try and get people off Pacific would be well worth our time to look at. On parking, and I know you said you don't have a parking management plan, but it's really important that we have a parking management plan because that was my thought too. So somebody comes in and says, I'm going to rent this spot, and you go, well, I have 1.3 spots. So somebody says, well, they're all taken. I mean, how do you have a person come in and say, well, two of us work, I need two spots. What do you do with them?

Yeah, it's during operation, it's usually, so more than one spot is for the two or three bedrooms and it's first come first serve. So it's for the one bedrooms, they get one spot and for the two and three bedrooms that apply first come first serve, they get the option to have two spots if they need it.

So what do you tell them to do if they have two cars?

That is a good question. I don't know if we have an answer to that. Usually what we've found in our communities where we do have lower parking ratios that are about one space per unit, there is sufficient public transportation that they take versus cars.

I'm Sean Ross and the co-founder of Waterford. I wanted to just add to that. So your point on parking is a really good question. So we operate, as Oren began our presentation, about 6,500 units. We've never sold an affordable housing project. So to your point, and I'd heard some questions about off-site parking. So the tandems are assigned, and then we work with our management team. What's unique about affordable housing projects is if you look at market rate projects, typically about 60% of the tenants turn over on an annual basis. If you look at affordable housing projects, on average, about 5% to 7% of the tenants turn over. So what you start to see is that unlike in being operators of affordable housing, you see a really strong sense of community in affordable housing projects. So if you go to a market rate community, typically tenants don't know each other. But what happens is that the tenants all stay there long term. Because you think about this, right? You have incomes that are going to be ranging from $40,000 to about $100,000. So our tenants are going to be people that are vested in the community. We're going to have school teachers. We're going to have medical technicians. We'll have nonprofit employees, so people that serve your community. So what you see is that people that have two cars that don't have the proper assigned spaces, then they will either not move in or they'll move out. But when it comes to households that have two cars, If you look at our communities, typically they all have assigned parking stalls. There was a question about off-site parking. So we can't prevent off-site parking. However, what we typically do in our communities where off-site parking is an issue is we'll work with the local municipality Essentially you can prevent off-site parking you can make you can make it an obligation that you have passes to park on-site our management team will work to to make sure and ensure that people aren't parking in places that they're not supposed to offsite. We can't regulate that, though. We can regulate onsite. And if you look at parking, what's unique is, as Oren began the presentation, is that we're parked at 1.35. So we've actually increased our parking relative to what it was previously approved. The last thing I'll say is that when we're building affordable housing projects, as Oren mentioned, you're essentially trying to jam units onto a site without using public subsidies. And so we believe that at 1.35, if you look at our portfolio, and if you look at how we manage our projects, and like I said, we've never sold one of our affordable projects, that this parking ratio is in line with how we would how we manage our current affordable housing projects. So I don't know if I answered your question, but I'll just end by saying that at 1.35, the households with two cars, typically what we've seen in our portfolio, they'll all have assigned parking. And those that don't, We'll move out. But I think a big piece of this is because of the longevity of the people that are living there, this will be a true sense of community. Because as you can imagine, at that income level, call it $38,000 to $40,000 to $90,000, we're going to have a wait list. Typically our communities, before we even get into lease up, we'll have three to four times the amount of people on the wait list trying to rent one of these units. So what you'll see is those people realize that they've won the lottery and they are very good actors. They are working with our staff, our nonprofit service providers, and those are folks that don't want to can't only be bad members of the community because they realize that there's four other people that would love to have their spot in line to get a unit here. So I don't know if I answered your question, but I wanted to make sure that we clarified that.

Well, I'm going to ask something real quick.

Let me just jump in here because I do also think there's context that should be included, and this is kind of a bitter and sweet question. So we'll start with the bitter, which is let's just talk about 2097 and the fact that the proximity to transit so that we can just get this part out of the way. So can somebody tell me the significance of AB 2097?

this project isn't required to have any parking. So we could have zero parking on this site. And we obviously know that's not the right thing to do. And we tried to do the most parking we could. And, you know, when we get asked the question, what would happen if you removed a fourth story, we would actually lose parking because that density would be spread amongst the site and we would lose parking, right? So that comes with that four story height is in order to open up the land mass to have the parking, right?

Okay, and I see staff. Is there anything else?

One thing just on the past, with the general development plan, it does require a parking enforcement study, and they did submit that. I have that here, but it does say with tandem parking spaces will be marked and assigned. specific units upon residential request no RVs things like that so we do have that parking enforcement plan we do have conditions of approval connecting that back right so I joined I wanted to say that but a B so a B 2097 so we have the Rockland transit station which say cog designated as a major transit stop which puts it under the no parking regulations. This site is, I believe, approximately 0.389 miles, you know, one and a half a mile away from the transit station. So it would qualify for that. And another thing I wanted to clarify, the Rockland Amtrak stops twice a day. HCD did produce some additional clarification that Basically any any train stops, so it was there was no frequency on that as well So even if we have to it still applies for the 20 and in fact the statute actually doesn't require there to be any Stops, but it does require stops if it's buses.

I'd love to know who got that carve out there But the fact is that that one because it only stops twice a day. I know because I've taken the train and because of that this project then falls within it. And so AB 2097, like just assume that all the worst things happen. Is the legislature's wisdom that because of that Amtrak station, a developer would not have to put a single parking space there? Is that correct? Yes, that's my understanding. Just real quick, I just wanted to clarify, though, and I appreciate the comments that were made about the community and everything, but the legislature itself, I think we would admit, because they put it in their own... legislative history, part of this is to reduce our dependency on cars and allegedly greenhouse gas emissions. It has nothing to do with quality of life or what it means to impact our community. This is a decision up on high to reduce our dependency on cars. I just wanted to make sure that we were clear that that was literally said. So you want to have a question?

And I think one of the things, just even for our public, because it's really, you're hearing all these terminology, it's kind of a little bit crazy. But basically, if you were following the city standards for this project, you'd have 578 parking spots. You guys are going to have 381. As crazy as this sounds, because it is a workforce housing project that is within a half mile of a train station, you're not required by law to have any. You get to skip our requirements is basically what. what the law is telling us. Please understand, this is not about your project necessarily. It's the same thing we've had with another project recently. The lack of local control is making us crazy. The fact that we have a general plan and we don't get to use it is really, really frustrating. And I think every one of you would know, you can't put a place this big and not have any parking. I mean, it makes no sense. And I have a certain legislator that used to sit on this body that I think I'm going to be burning up his phone tomorrow. We need some help with that. The challenge here is this isn't like a normal city block where you said, hey, the parking's full. I'm going to park on the street. There is no parking on the streets around there. And I totally get you're going to have a parking plan and you're going to enforce it. But in the meantime, where are they going to park? And so that's really For me, the biggest frustration we have is just we're putting a project like this into a spot. I know this was approved long before any of us were sitting here for a project. And I think that's important for the public to understand, too. We're talking about design review. We're not here to approve the project. A multifamily housing project was done 20 years ago. We're trying to make it work. So I think... Even, I mean, I don't know if anybody's even brought it up, but what about two-story parking? I mean, if the building's going to be that tall, is that completely impossible to do? We've got to find a way to not impact the neighbors on this.

Yeah, so totally valid points, and we understand the frustration on some of the bills. I just wanted to respond to a couple of those. So yes, we understand AB 2097. There's also obviously California state density bonus, minimum parking requirements, which we exceed for this project. So even if we were not using AB 2097, there's minimum standards in California density bonus, which is one space for one bedroom and one and a half spaces for every two and three bedroom. Just wanted to kind of mention that as well. to some of the other comments regarding a two-story potential parking garage. Unfortunately, with construction costs, it's probably not feasible for this project.

You said probably.

That means I'm saying there's a chance. It's definitely not. It's definitely not. It's definitely not feasible to do structured parking here.

Have you looked at it? Have you considered?

We have projects with structured parking in other parts of California. Unfortunately, there's already a significant financing gap to this project, and adding construction costs would not be able to make a move forward.

And one other question. I don't know if you're the right person to ask, but some of the letters that I got, I think people on occasion think that truly the city is building projects because we get income from this. I'm going to assume you're going to file for a waiver and not pay any property taxes to the city. Am I correct?

There is a property tax exemption for some property taxes for affordable housing projects. Excuse me. I definitely want to hear this part. Yeah, and Sean can speak on that. I also just wanted to answer one other question. Okay, Sean, go first.

I'll answer that. There's no affordable housing project in the state of California that doesn't use what they call the welfare exemption. So that's part of the financing package. So it's not just our project. I'm saying literally any affordable housing project. And so the way that works is, as you know and we discussed, we bring in a nonprofit partner. So Pacific Housing is our nonprofit partner. that's part of the financing sources if you will the property tax exemption so I want to be clear because I and I know The community, it sounds like, raised some concerns on that. That's not just, this isn't an outlier. This is every single affordable housing project in California uses what they call the welfare exemption, and that's property tax law. That's part of the financing sources.

I assume that was the case. I just wanted to be very public about it, that there won't be any generating, even any. And you need to understand, I'm sure, like I say, none of us were sitting here when this was approved long ago, But the intent was a market rate place. We're having the same battle with another one over losing our commercial space. We're fighting for our lives to keep our commercial space because that's what pays the bills. We have the best fire and police and parks, as you saw tonight, that you can have. But I've got to make sure we can pay for those in the future. And that comes from property taxes and sales tax. And it's really frightening for us to lose a project that loses the sales tax and then now have another project with no property taxes. But you will get roads and police and fire.

So, yeah, just to the point of this project, this project will pay significant city impact fees once built. So, you know, projected on this project in total, including city impact fees, water and sewer connection fees, public work fees, it's about $40,000 per unit on this project, which is around $12 million, a little under $12 million in total impact fees is what it's projected to generate for different city departments. And then council member on your point about totally understand that this project was approved in 2017 and you guys were not a part of that approval. This site was also designated in the city's housing element last year and adopted in August where it was designated for this type of project. So we truly followed that vision that was adopted last year before submitting any pre-application. I just wanted to kind of mention that as well. Thank you.

I know we've got some other questions. Just to clarify, we don't get most of the impact fees that you just mentioned. We don't operate water. We don't operate sewer. We don't operate transportation. So I don't want people to think that the city is getting $40 million because we're not on that. Back to the parking, you said you give the two bedrooms, three bedrooms, two passes. If you did that, that would be 342 passes. So you're not giving 342 passes to them.

Yeah, the one bedrooms will get one space each.

No, no, I'm sorry. But you have 171... two bedrooms and three bedrooms if you gave them each two that would be 342 passes to those yeah so the we'd start with the one bedrooms alley you know making sure 110 correct and then the rest of the parking space is available that would be first come first serve to the two and three bedroom units okay so so they won't all i mean let's break it down you get 110 I THINK YOU HAVE, WHAT, 378 PARKING SPOTS, SO YOU'LL BE LEFT WITH 260-SOMETHING. SO OUT OF THE 170, MAYBE NOT TOO MANY ARE GOING TO GET THE TWO PASSES. PROBABLY HALF, CORRECT. YEAH, HALF. OKAY. ALL RIGHT. AND I SHOULD HAVE DONE THIS EARLIER, I DID HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH YOU FOLKS BACK I THINK IN LATE JUNE AND EARLY JULY WHERE I TALKED FOR 45 MINUTES, I THINK, ABOUT PARKING. I ALSO HAD CONVERSATIONS WITH MANY RESIDENTS OVER THE LAST 10 DAYS ON THIS PROJECT AS WELL.

JUST ONE QUICK THING ON PARKING, AND I KNOW COUNCILOR BROADWAY IS EAGER TO JUMP IN. AND I ALSO DID HAVE EX PART A COMMUNICATIONS MET WITH THE APPLICANTS FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY ALONG WITH OUR CITY MANAGER. there a possibility to as part of the rental agreement to Require just have the tenant sign that they only have one vehicle or two vehicles based on the parking passes So it's part of the so when we income qualified and qualified tenants We can't mandate

number of cars that they own. So we'll have a parking plan, and we'll have assigned parking spaces, but we can't regulate. For instance, if a tenant goes and buys a car after the fact, we have no ability to regulate that.

Right, but can they attest that at the time that they sign the lease, they only have One or two vehicles based on yeah, they parking passes that they'll receive the time of the lease they can yeah And that that's all I'm looking for.

Yeah, and and the only caveat to that is as long as in I believe that's within fair housing because all of our leases have to To be governed by fair housing, but to answer your question as long as it's within the guidelines of fair housing then then yeah Okay, great. Thank you.

Okay. I'm sorry councilmember broadway

Perfectly fine, Mr. Mayor. So again, we've talked all about the parking and AB 2097, where our legislators in their infinite wisdom have said, you can build all of these without any parking. So my question is, when the 381 spaces are full, where do the residents and visitors park? These are your residents and visitors. Where do they park? Because there's no parking on Pacific Street. There's no parking on Midas adjacent to this housing. So where do they park? So we're providing housing, but there's no parking.

So where do they park? So in practical terms, and I'm just going to answer that question within the context of our portfolio, and then and then try and answer specifically to your question. The demographic and the tenant base will be families, will be largely families at this location. That's the income band. And then when you look at those tenants, a lot of those tenants will be people that serve this community. Because if you look at income bands between that, like we discussed, the $40,000 to $90,000, upwards of $100,000, most of those families are people that... that are priced out of this community. So you have a number of people that serve this community now that are priced out of this because of the high quality of life in schools here. So typically, what you'll see is that those families will self-regulate themselves, especially families that have children, where they're going to know that if they don't have assigned parking, they're not going to want to walk upwards of whatever it is, quarter mile, half a mile, to park their car. To answer your question specifically, though, you're asking a theoretical question where Can I tell you where, if they have additional cars, if they don't have a parking stall, where they're gonna park? No, I can't answer that. However, what I can say is though, from a practical standpoint, if you look at the demographic of our tenants, they are going to want to be able to park within the community because most of those tenants will have children. And if they don't have assigned parking, they won't move in. And we've seen that across our portfolio.

So a concern that I have is, and staff, if you could weigh in on this, if the numbers have changed, but we were somewhere in the area of 70% of our residents leave Rockland for employment. So have those numbers changed? Is it still, is that a close approximation to the number of residents who?

I'd have to look for the reference document. I can do that. Okay.

So we'll just use that number because I know it's a number that's been referenced previously and used previously. So if 70% of our residents are leaving Rockland, they're not walking and they're not using transit because there's not a transit option that works, unfortunately. If we were in downtown Sacramento or we were in Oakland or San Francisco, probably got a good transit solution. We don't have that, unfortunately. And so they're going to drive, and that means they're going to have a car. So that's really concerning for me. And I would hope it's concerning for you, because you want to provide a great residential opportunity for these people. But along with that comes having the ability to get where you need to go. And 70%, let's just say, of those people are going to need to get there. And these partners that are living in these two and specifically three bedroom, but even the one bedroom are likely going to have two cars. And so, you know, that's why normally it's 578 spaces. And I know we don't. necessarily see that any longer because, again, our legislators have decided we don't have to do that. So it's a little concerning to me that we would have full spaces and we don't generally have a sense for where these people are going to park. Has any analysis from staff's perspective been done to kind of assess what would spillover potentially look like from this facility? Where do we think they would go?

We have not done an analysis on that with AB, with, you know, unable to restrict parking through AB 2097. Okay.

All right. So thank you for that. And I somewhat get it because it's very hard. And as you've stated, you're kind of guessing, right? What direction are they going to flow?

What I can speak to is just what we've seen in the context of our portfolio and studying other affordable housing projects. but I can't speculate to where future tenants would park. I don't want to make that assumption.

Sure. And I want to give credit where credit is due because work has been done on your part in adding 25 spaces by looking at landscaping and making some modifications. I guess my question would be, while I don't, like to see just huge parking lots you know this isn't Kohl's where they're going to go shopping this is where they live but they also want to have a parking space are there other potential opportunities for us to reduce some of that landscaping and separation between the vehicles and gain a few additional parking spaces because the more spaces we have the less opportunity there's going to be for these conflicts with the neighborhoods and with these residents because they're going to have to park AWAY FROM THIS LOCATION?

NEW SPEAKER IT'S SOMETHING WE CAN LOOK INTO. I DON'T KNOW, COUNCILMEMBER, IF IT'S GOING TO BE A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF SPACES. IT COULD BE A COUPLE SPACES THAT WE CAN POTENTIALLY ADD, BUT I DON'T KNOW IF THERE'S MUCH SPACE LEFT, TO BE HONEST.

NEW SPEAKER ORIN, IF I COULD JUMP INTO REALLY QUICK. we still have a lot of development to do with the design, right? We still have to coordinate with PG&E and they're going to have restrictions and requirements too. And so what we wanted to make sure we presented and said that we could do in this meeting is something that we think we can actually achieve at the end of that full construction design process. And what we have found, much like the vehicle miles traveled analysis, THAT SHOWED THAT AFFORDABLE HOUSING TYPICALLY HAS LESS VEHICLE MILES TRAVELED THAN A MULTI-FAMILY PROJECT OR MARKET RATE. WE HAVE ALSO FOUND THAT THE RESIDENTS ARE MORE FAMILIES. THEY DO HAVE LESS CARS THAN A MARKET RATE SET UP WHERE YOU HAVE TWO, THREE ROOMMATES IN A TWO-BEDROOM ALL HAVING CARS. AND SO WE'VE SEEN THE PARKING NEEDS FOR THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING BEING LESS THAN THE MARKET RATE. products as well. And to your point about the 70% of people going outside of Rockland, sometimes it is to get those higher paying jobs to afford this wonderful community. A lot of times people do have to commute outside of Rockland for that. And the true intention of this project is to service and provide housing for those within the community that can't quite afford to live there otherwise.

That would be great in theory. I just don't think in reality that that's necessarily what we see. It's going to be the parking for universities and colleges where my kids lived in apartments. And it was amazing how these universities and the planning in these cities, they reduce all the parking there as well. And what do I see? cars parked up and down all the arterial roadways because there's just not enough. So that is a concern. One thing to your comment on the trips, trip generation and parking demand are not necessarily the same thing. So I think they're very different. And while we have a lower number on trips generated for the Housing I could see some of that I don't necessarily agree that there is generally the parking demand is not going to be what we We see because again We know we have a certain percentage of our residents that absolutely are going to seek jobs outside of the city There are many factors that drive that And so I think there's a need for the parking and so I'm very concerned so I would ask that a hard luck be given even if it's five That's five fewer issues that are created for residents potentially should this project move forward that are not going to get pushed off into the neighborhoods and is not going to inconvenience the individuals who are living at this location.

Yeah, absolutely.

We can commit to that, definitely. Thank you. So just as a master of ceremonies type of position that being a mayor is, how many cards do we have at this point? I'M JUST TRYING TO GET AN IDEA OF WHERE WE'RE GOING TONIGHT ON THIS.

15 COMMENT CARDS AND A COUPLE HANDS RACED ON ZOOM.

OKAY. MR. MAYOR, I'VE NOT JUST THAT WAS JUST THE PARKING SIDE. I HAVE OTHER QUESTIONS, BUT THIS HAS BEEN A LITTLE DIFFERENT APPROACH THAN WE NORMALLY TAKE ON QUESTIONS.

Yeah, well, I mean, so here's the way I look at it.

There's broken down, again, project design, density, character has been one grouping, traffic, parking, and access, infrastructure, and safety. We've sort of talked about CEQA. If there's other ways we can approach it, we can. But what I'm going to suggest is we're going to go for a 10-minute break so that we can give staff a break. and I'll figure out a better way to eat this elephant. Take a break, 10 minutes.

All right, so we're going to come back from recess. I want to just let everyone know that we've got a lot of people here. It's not my intention to be here all night long. It is my intention to get through these questions and then get to the public comment and get through that point and then to deliberations. So the way I'm going to start this off is I'm just going to go through with my questions. Some of these are going to be a little more pointed. My questions should not be interpreted as how I feel about anything. However, because I am a lawyer, I look at things from statute and case law. And I think it's important to level set as to what we're dealing with here.

So I'm just going to go through my questions and I'll let the council ask whatever the remaining questions they have. But I want to start. I'm just going to go down the list. Height. And some of these questions are going to be yes or no's because otherwise it's just going to be a Socratic method on this one, okay? So I just want to ask you, so the approximate size is 48 feet, right? It's below what I saw there as the 60-foot minimum. I'm sorry, maximum. Now... Yeah, there's case law out there. California renters v. City of San Mateo, they held a design standard asking whether a builder's height was, quote, in scale and harmonious with its surroundings, was not objective and could not support denial under the HAA. Are you under agreement, at least, that denying anything based on the fact that it doesn't work with the rest of the community violates the HAA?

Yes, that's correct. And we have our land use council as well, if you'd like to hear from them there on Zoom. All right.

Well, before we get there, I also want to note that you haven't said things that would, you know, make this thing worse, which is like because we can. And again, I know that you've been given credit because we have had people in the past that have just come up here and said, We don't have to do this. We're doing it. You should be happy about it. So I appreciate that. And that's one of the reasons I'm just going to ask these questions very directly and not to put words in your mouth. So overall, the height of this project is what would you consider HAA appropriate? There's not really a challenge to it.

That's correct.

Yes. Density. So we have a proposed density of 39.5 units per acre. falls within the general plan designation. Would you agree with that?

Correct. Yes. And potentially could have been significantly higher for the general plan and zoning.

Okay. And that's under the Housing and Accountability Act. And you had already previously mentioned the state density bonus law, government code 65915. Is that correct?

Correct. Yes.

So it's already written into the code what a density for this project could be. Yes.

Yeah. And you could technically use density bonus up to 80% of the minimum density or the base density. We are about 20% of a bonus.

So, yes. The basis of my question, just so you know, this right here is comments. I did try and read as many as possible and synthesize them into the questions that I'm asking you now. Because a lot of people are making reasonable and logical recommendations. requests to decrease the density of this but I want to make clear that the legislature has already stated one we can't get below a certain amount because then we're out of compliance but also that this for better or worse that this project is statutorily allowed yeah and to go full circle on the parking we could technically add a fifth floor to this project and

make the parking ratio even worse than it is right now.

Right. And again, I don't want to put those words in your mouth because I don't want anyone here to think that that's a flex.

Correct. Correct. Which is why we haven't gone there, but just in, in this breath, right. The 60 foot would allow for a fifth floor. And we obviously have density bonus room to add that density. We chose to do what we thought was best and feasible parking ratio for this project. I know some don't agree, but, um, yes.

Right. And I'm also asking these questions because when we're deciding what we're going to approve and not approve, and we'll get into this when we get into comments, but it's because we're already going down a road we don't want to go. And I want to make sure everyone understands why we're taking these things into consideration or what we are not allowed to take into consideration.

Yeah, and I guess in not a flex, if we weren't here today, if for some reason we weren't to build this project, we get denied, someone else could come along and build a five-story project with more density.

And they are out there. Public services, water and sewer capacity, and this might be a joint question also with staff, because we did get questions about water capability as well as sewer. There is mention of South Placer Municipal Utility District as well as Placer County Water Agency. Can you tell the gallery and the people that have raised concerns about those utilities, how does that go about this project?

So the process is when we get an initial application, we send all the plans to all the utilities. So SP Mud, who does the public sewer, then Placer County Water Agency, who does public water, they both reviewed the project and essentially issued will serve letters saying they will serve the property.

And that it had capacity, correct? And they had capacity. Yes.

And just so the gallery knows, there's only one county that's allowed to self-impose a drought. It's Marin County, and they did that, and then they got an exception from certain housing laws. So you have to go to the legislature if you want that. Walkability, does that fall within, would you agree, the subjective judgment that we're not allowed to take into account when it comes to the HAA? That's correct. Cumulative impacts, when it comes to the fact that there's multiple projects going on Pacific, is there, under your understanding, is there any impact on vehicle miles traveled as it relates to anything that would involve CEQA or even a decision that we could even evaluate?

not for this project in specific, no, yeah.

For staff, construction period impacts, do those concerns fall within or without the Housing Accountability Act and Density Bonus Law? The, can you repeat yourself? Construction period impacts, so the impacts of construction over the two-year period, do those fall inside the Housing Accountability Act and Density Bonus Law? I think that's a legal question. It's a no.

Okay. For this type of project, we can impose objective design review guidelines and standards, and it's only if there's an objective design guideline standard that regulates the construction period. The answer is no, but that would be based upon those objective standards related to a construction management plan and period.

Great. Thank you. This final thing is just going to be a statement because I think it needs to be said. I'm not going to put anybody on the spot. I did see there was a number of comments that were made about crime and substance abuse, and I just want to address that directly. Government Code 12955, the Fair Employment and Housing Act, as well as other case law, does not allow us to base our decisions directly. on some of the things that have been raised it might sound logical it might sound like it makes sense but there is case law that states that decision makers own hearing record statements characterizing prospective residents can be used as a direct evidence of discriminatory intent in later litigation so i just want to make sure that I understand that people are free to make the comments about that issue, but this council will not weigh and it will not engage with characterizations of future residents based on their income or housing type. We cannot and will not do it. So with that, I'm done. If we want to start to the left, Council Member Broadway, and then we will work our way to the right.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I greatly appreciate it. You must have snuck up here and read my notes because one of my questions was about what is available because I think it's important we all understand the additional height that is available, how many units that reflects, the fact that essentially, again, the state says you can do no parking. Certainly, even if you did that, you wouldn't have to add parking. We've had the conversation. You're going to look at things, so we appreciate that. Okay. Thank you, because you answered the question without me having to ask it, so that's great. I do want to ask, there's been a comment about the pipeline, and so let me just get to that. The Kinder Morgan pipeline has been mentioned as a concern. Given the combination of the railroad, the pipeline, PG&E infrastructure above, surrounding industrial uses, the 281 residential units. Has any consideration been given in relationship to any type of reinforced wall or something cast in place between that pipeline and the facility to help in the event there was an issue. I know there's an existing, I believe there's an existing wall there, but has there been any review of that, how high would that wall be, the type of wall? If you could answer that.

We do have a retaining wall planned for the perimeter. I think it varies in height.

Yeah, I want to say it goes from like five feet up to nine feet because it's slope site we do have across. But we do have a semi-wall across the entire length of that northern parcel line adjacent to the railroad tracks.

Do you have any sense for the height of that above where we know it's a buried gas line? But the height above where the ground level is below it, because I know it does slope from that area.

Yeah, I think it is at three feet down, right? You can see in that picture, right? It's like dip down, then our parcel line, and then we're grading. So then the wall will be even higher above that.

Five to nine feet above grade.

Five to nine feet. Yeah. Okay, perfect. That's what I was looking for. So thank you for that. I appreciate it. Let's see here. I HAVE ANY OTHER QUESTIONS. I DID WANT TO MENTION I DID HAVE EX PARTE COMMUNICATIONS WITH A NUMBER OF OUR RESIDENTS REGARDING THE PROJECT. IT WAS INFORMATIONAL ONLY, SHARING THEIR THOUGHTS AND CONCERNS. NO COMMITMENTS WERE MADE, BUT I DID MEET WITH A NUMBER OF RESIDENTS RELATING TO THIS PROJECT. I DID NOT HAVE A CHANCE TO MEET WITH ANY OF YOU OR YOUR TEAM. LET'S SEE HERE. I THINK MR. MAYOR THAT Well, let's see here. Oh, the traffic. I did want to ask in relationship to the traffic, we did have a conversation about whether there was a driveway entrance off of Midas. So in addition to consideration of a just removal of that and making it EVA only. I think another option could be making it write-in only, no write-out. You could use kind of a bulb there to prevent people from trying to force their way out to use it as an exit. ELIMINATE THAT CONCERN WITH THE RAILROAD CROSSING AND THEN PUSHING TRAFFIC INTO THE NEIGHBORHOOD AS WELL AS THOSE ILLEGAL U-TURNS BY THE RAILROAD TRACK. SO I WOULD LIKE, IN ADDITION TO CONSIDERATION OF A POTENTIAL EVA ONLY THERE, A RIDE IN ONLY TO BE CONSIDERED. I KNOW STAFF AND THE FIRE DEPARTMENT, THERE ARE SOME CONCERNS THERE, BUT I THINK THAT DESERVES DUE CONSIDERATION. Just again because if you do that you're eliminating some of the cross traffic that Councilmember Janda spoke to coming down Pacific Street and trying to cut across to get into the complex Yes, so a couple things on that Midas Avenue, and we have a diagram To share if it gets pulled up.

I don't but I And we also have Council Member Broadway, our traffic engineer, on the line who can answer additional questions. On Midas, so currently as it's designed, so we have the deceleration right turn only lane off on Midas for that right in, right? For the right out, if you see the location of it, I know a concern is, you know, the queuing before the stop, right? Where that location is, if there was any queuing that was from our project, they would actually be queuing internal to the site. So they wouldn't be able, if there's already a line there, they would not be able to exit to the right. So that is specific how we designed and how it was previously designed. And then to further restrict any left out of there, which I know is also a previous concern, we, after planning commission, agreed to extend the median that's currently on Midas by another 40 feet. So it would fully restrict it to a right in, right out. And we've studied that with our engineers also on the line.

Yeah, I think I'm more concerned about pushing additional traffic into the residential arterial roads as well as the potential for illegal U-turns. So you get just past the railroad tracks and then you make that quick turn. So that would be just a thought and just a consideration.

I think if they had to go up Midas, they would come off of Pacific and come back to Midas. So if they had to go up there for Springview or for Rockland High, but...

Understood we just wanted to kind of tell the story behind the design My next questions are gonna be for staff, and then we're gonna open it up for public comment Thank you And I had previously asked our city attorney a couple of these questions, but can you I Just so we all are on the same page when it comes to this project, potential, if all things go wrong, obviously I have to think about that. We all do. What is, under the current law, the fees, both the baseline and total, for any kind of penalties that the HCD and the Attorney General can wage?

There's been a new law that was enacted and effective in January of this year that gives HCD some additional enforcement authority. If HCD has provided specific notice to a jurisdiction, then based upon the new statute, the Attorney General can bring an action against the entity and the minimum penalties for violating the housing laws is $10,000 per unit. So in the event HCD brings an enforcement action for a jurisdiction improperly denying an affordable housing unit, the minimum fee that would be imposed upon the city would be $10,000 per unit. For this proposal, it's $2.78 million based upon the 278 units. That's the minimum fee. In addition, of course, there's enforcement costs and attorneys. So, again, it's that the state legislature and the new laws incentivizing affordable housing and the housing laws and HCD enforcing that.

Okay. Thank you. All right. Well, at this point, I will be opening it up to public comment. I believe that we will accept them in the end. Order in which Madam Clerk has received them. Again, just to remind everybody, we definitely want to get through these. We want to hear you. So we'll have the three-minute limit. I'd ask for all comments to be directed at the council, not questions to the applicant. If you do have questions, what we can do is we can write those down. At the end of this, we can then ask those questions. And again, please, let's remain respectful. I think there's a lot of really good comments we're going to hear, so appreciate it. With that, first one.

I'll go ahead and announce the first couple of speakers, beginning with Mr. Joff McLennan, followed by Carolyn Hamilton and Bill Hamilton.

Good evening, Jeff McLennan. I think you all know me. I've been here 40 years. I served on the Planning Commission. I've served on other organizations and advisory groups in the cities and the counties nearby. I want to begin by making one thing clear. I support to provide affordable housing. My concern is has this project been thoroughly evaluated, not just by the pipeline company, regarding the hazards surrounding the site. Uniquely, the railroad, high pressure petroleum pipeline, possibly inadequate emergency access if that becomes involved. Emergency access, I asked questions and was given no answers. That began last week. The petroleum pipeline, my more serious concern is the pressurized pipeline. I asked exactly what hazard or consequence analysis. Now a consequence analysis is not a letter from the pipeline company. Specifically, what is the pipeline diameter, the nearest apartment building from the pipeline, the consequence of the hazardous distance analysis performed, and has Rock and Fire evaluated a release and fire scenario? And now we have possibility with the PG&E overhead lines. I received the Kinder Morgan email. Thank you from staff. The operator had revealed construction activities that they usually take. The question is not simply whether the pipeline operator says the pipeline is safe. The question is whether the city independently evaluated the consequences, any pipeline incident, the people who live there and the surrounding neighbors. The railroad and the pipeline together, you can just imagine that would be very difficult. An earlier environmental review, a Phase 2 site referred to a 2006 finding of aviation fuel on the site. You can't get away from that. And there was no analysis then, and there hasn't been any analysis now. Conclusion. You've got all of these people coming on this site. And there has not been an adequate analysis now. In further review in the Bay Area involving a 2004 explosion, the Attorney General of the state required Kinder Morgan that operates that pipeline to work with the local Bay Area counties and cities. And they came up with specific procedures that have been followed in the Contra Costa study. I'm not asking this city to assume that Kinder Morgan pipeline is unsafe. I'm asking this city to form the type of site-specific pipeline risk and consequence analysis. And you can refer to Conocosta's own Kinder Morgan for that information. I'm going to provide this to staff. Thank you.

Thank you.

Caroline Hamilton followed by Bill Hamilton Hi, my name is Carolyn Hamilton and I live on Midas Avenue and right now the traffic for us getting in and out of our driveway is Impossible during school time during traffic time going to and from work Going for walks is dangerous for the elderly for the children it's just a hazard for us to be out on our street at all and And I recommend maybe if you guys could figure out a different site for this place to go instead of on our corner. I'm also concerned about the other two areas that are for sale on Midas Avenue on the other side of the railroad track. What's going to go there? It's a concern for all of us on Midas and we're we're frightened for our lives I mean we can't cross the street if we try to cross the street at the crosswalks Cars are coming around. They're missing the stop signs They're just they're just going if you put in this amount of people and they're gonna go up our street to get to the high school And then they're gonna go up by the fire department and Dan, we can't even get up that road any longer. Anyways, that's my concern and I'm terrified and I think it's a terrible idea to build this apartment complex down there. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor and council members, good evening. My name is Reverend Virgil Nelson. I'm a retired pastor and the chairperson the affordable housing committee for placer people of faith together a neighbor of mine and I am in constant contact with people who are searching for affordable housing a neighbor of mine at Eschaton Roseville has an aide who comes to help him every day and that aide commutes over two hours one way each day and And she is desperately looking for housing in this area that would accommodate her family. A young couple in our church got married. They looked for an affordable housing in this area, including Rockland. She grew up in Loomis, graduate of Sierra College. He works in construction. The only thing they could find was a bedroom that they rented for $875 a month, and that did not include kitchen privileges or any house privileges. Eventually, the only place they could find was in the Arden Arcade. I volunteer at the 50 Tent Shelter in Auburn and met a 72-year-old woman who arrived there. She had been living for five years in the same small duplex on an income of $1,175 a month. She'd been there five years, paid her rent on time all the time. The landlord raised the rent $300 a month. Who can live on $175? For the rest of life, she was evicted and ended up at the tent shelter. Seven times a month, the nomadic shelter in the South County uses our church sanctuary as a place to sleep. and we provide an evening meal for the guests as well as breakfast. This spring, a gentleman walked in in the evening carrying a baby, three months old, with three elementary school children behind him and his wife. The landlord sold the house that they were living in. They could not find another house. and simultaneously the company he worked with downsized and he lost his job. There's an incredible need for affordable housing. I hope you will approve this project. The designs and safety issues I'm sure you can work out with the developer. Thank you. Thank you.

Next couple speakers are Bill Hamilton followed by Bud Davis and Kerry Hamilton.

Mr. Mayor and Council, et al. I'm Bill Hamilton. I've lived on Midas Avenue since 1977. And you heard from my wife a little while ago, the traffic's really bad as it is right now. And you add these apartments, and it's going to be just 10 times as bad and the traffic going by Springview School. And so I'm absolutely clear. I am 100% against those apartments being built at the corner of Midas and Pacific Street. And my experience is that they would do nothing but create a bigger hazard than we have now with traffic and parking and people and if it raises the crime rate. And I think that's all I can say right now unless somebody has a specific question of me. But just as the punchline, we're 100% against that project. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Bud Davis. I want to thank the Council, Mayor. I live on 3rd Street, too, and I'm just a few blocks from that corner, and it could be devastating as far as traffic. Just normal, everyday people working. Affordable housing, that's great. There's a liquor store across the street and a big dry lot next to it, so over-parking is going to happen. But If the city is going to get railroaded into affordable housing mandated by the state, and it sounds like that's what's happening here, flip it. Why have 50 feet up and down on Midas in Pacific? Put it to the back. Make the entry look like a park. That's my wife, because she does not know where I'm at. But anyway. Thank you for that. I got nothing against affordable housing. It needs to happen. There are lots of open lots in Rockland. And my God, you guys are building them everywhere. And to the parks and rec, we need pools also. So every below soccer, cricket, whatever, cricket. So anyway, that's my talk. If you put up the... and flip the buildings to the back and open it up to the street, it won't look so bad. I mean, it won't look like you're walking next to a 50-foot wall on Midas and on Pacific. Anyway, thank you. Thank you.

Hello, I'm Carrie Hamilton. I am a resident of Rockland. We've been here since 2011. We've been off of Midas on Clover Valley since 2019. And I love that Sunset Whitney area and the trails. But I will tell you, I'm a runner and I run all around there. The crosswalks are the most dangerous thing. because there are so many cars. Over the last several years, the ridge was allowed to be built on, which added a lot of traffic to our area. It's like between, what is it, off Mountain, Skyline yeah skyline that added a bunch of traffic with the amazing additions that are happening at the park with all the pickleball courts That's going to add traffic to Midas and Midas was never intended Councilman guy Aldo said it there was never intended to be a thoroughfare Adding something like this with a forced right is going to push all those people down towards our homes towards our neighborhoods where people are trying to walk down the sidewalk and Get into their driveways get out of their their house going up I think one of the other ladies said it when you're trying to go up towards crest your I mean It's even known the kids that live on like the Sierra College area You put it in the maps in the mornings and the fastest way to get to Whitney because those kids are zoned to Whitney is to go across Midas so you have all of those houses on that side of town all using that as their thoroughfare so getting up that hill towards crest if you have to go to that side of town and It's a disaster. If you've ever been there around 810 in the morning, it's all the way out. Adding this much traffic would just be a nightmare, not to mention the parking. Like it's I mean, you guys are very well aware. I've heard you ask all the questions. The arterial streets are the ones that are going to get it. And then if you have to issue passes to the residents so that they're allowed to park in front of their houses on the streets, your enforcement is down to law enforcement to give them tickets, parking tickets. So that adds a weight on them. Lastly, they mentioned something about they're different because they have an equity stake in the project and that bridges the gap of the finance. Well, maybe they can reduce their equity and build that two-story parking structure. They're getting some skin in the game because that's how they're bridging that gap. Maybe they get a little bit less and they put that towards the project to make it successful. My other question that I don't know, and maybe this is just something somebody can get back to me on, I realized that it was zoned as a high density facility years and years and years ago. Does that necessarily mean it has to be this high density where it's the low income and all the other requirements that come along with low income that gets them the federal funding or the state funding? Does it have to be something like that? Because I can see cute little townhomes being still high density, but not where you're bringing in 400 plus cars to the area. That's all I have to say about that. Thank you so much.

John Souza, followed by James Barat and Kim Spear.

Thanks for your time. By the way, I have nothing to do with the second lady that talked that she said she had a problem with a Mr. Souza. I am not that person. I do not know that person and I did not know that lady. I had to bring that up. Of course. Anyhow, my wife said don't say it, but I'm going to say I've been a resident here, an owner and a resident for 40 years, living in the Mission Hills area, Mission Way, actually. And I'm concerned, you addressed it very nicely about asking a lot of questions about the population. traffic, parking, and some of the other issues. One of the things, I have a question, I'm not sure it's been brought up and maybe it has nothing to do with the council here, is the possible extra impact on the schools, the Rockland Elementary School, Springview School, which is already very crowded, and probably Rockland High School. That may be some issues that somebody should bring up. Another concern I have is Midas and the cut-throughs, as it's mentioned. I call them cut-throughs on Argonaut from what I call Old Stanford Ranch and Whitney Oaks and so on. They cut through Argonaut tremendously, and then they go through on Midas to Pacific. Well, this will just add to that problem. Now, the last thing I want to talk about is the safety issue. It's been mentioned about the railroad. Well, the closest track is the number two track, which generally the current of traffic goes eastbound. But sometimes they run against the current of traffic, so you have a train going westbound right near this project, which is a concern of not for me, but I'm kind of concerned about the safety of the people that may be living in the project. And also the other track, number one track, which normally is westbound, has a very steep grade, and a sharp curve there. Why do I know this? I'm a retired locomotive engineer out of Roseville, also a retired auditor accountant, so I was a little unique that way. But anyhow, that's all. I'm concerned about the safety issues, and I just wanted to address that with the council. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. My name is James and I feel like my thunder was stolen because he mentioned two of my main points here. The first one is as a father of two young girls, I am definitely concerned about some information I learned here today, which was the property. if I understood right, would not be paying property taxes, which is a large portion of what funds our great schools. They're not school age yet, but I fully intend to make use of our great public schools. And that is a huge blow. Not only, I was only thinking the impact to the school sizes and teachers and the stress that's going to put on our school district. And now I'm learning that they are not going to be contributing in any way to help the issues that are going to arise with that. So that is something that I do not know if can be taken into consideration at this time, but something that needs to be focused on moving forward. As I said, two young girls. I've been living on Midas between Argonaut and Fifth Street for the past four years. We moved there knowing the middle school was there. Perfectly happy. I know it's a very busy middle school. Very nice school. Hope to send my girls there someday. What I did not realize, which is only going to get worse with this development, is the amount of traffic that has been mentioned. That as our city has grown in the north, the amount of traffic to and from the Whitney area that utilizes the Argonaut and Midas pass-through thoroughfare, whatever we want to call it, Not designed for that, and it is posing a very large safety risk, in my opinion, to anyone walking the trails or the streets. That combined with the parking, I think going back a little bit, people are asking where the parking is going to be when they can't park in the lot. I can kind of tell you it's going to be on Midas. I don't know how to rectify that, but it's going to be on the other side of those tracks. So people are going to be walking over those tracks more and more as they're parking on the north side and walking to the south side. I also think that is a big safety issue that should be addressed. I think that's all I have. Thank you for your time.

Good evening, Mayor, council people, council members. I'm Kim Spear. I live at 4604 Odessa Court. So I live off of Midas, but I'm impacted by Midas. And I've learned a lot tonight from hearing all of you, and you've addressed a lot of my issues with the parking and the zoning. And I just want to stress that the traffic issues that we have on Midas, everyone's addressed, is huge. According to that transportation report, you're going to add an extra 101 cars in the morning and 129 at night peak hours coming to and from. I don't know how they're going to get in and out of Midas. I don't know how we're going to get in and out of Midas at that time. If you can block that Midas side off, make it only for emergency vehicles, that certainly would help us residents farther up. We already have a large impact as a result of everyone who cuts through Midas-Argonaut and goes up South Whitney. And also, with respect to the number of units, it's 39.5 units. Why not 33 units per acre? I don't know why it went up to 39.5 unless that's what it takes to make the numbers work out. I would extremely stress that we look at what's going to happen with the traffic. Furthermore, if the state mandated that we have to have the housing, what are the sites in Rockland are designated for units like this? And can they be put where places aren't quite as impacted as this is at this busy, busy corner already? Pacific Street and Midas would have been the last place I would have designated for this type of housing unit because it's already busy. Put it out where it isn't quite as busy. and doesn't have quite as large an impact on the community. But I think your staff has done a great job on their staff report. Great presentation here, but it's really going to impact us that pay property tax. I know you don't have any control over that, but I really appreciate you allowing me some time to speak. Thank you.

Linda Killian, followed by Joy Sanner and John Wall.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Linda Killian, and my husband Scott and I have lived at 4606 Lemon Hill Drive since 1990. We've raised our family here, as well as now providing daycare for our two grandchildren in our home each weekday. I understand the city of Rockland is under pressure from the state of California's Assembly Bill 712 requiring affordable housing. So we're probably stuck with building some type of housing on the corner of Midas and Pacific. But I'm hoping we could try to compromise on the size of the apartment complex by decreasing the number of residents and cars. Our neighborhood's primary route from our homes to the northwest toward Loomis is from Argonaut down Midas and then to Pacific. This proposed development at Midas and Pacific streets with 281 apartments and 300 plus more cars will severely impact traffic patterns during work rush hours of mornings and evenings, as everyone has already mentioned, as well as during busy school hours for mornings and afternoons. These traffic patterns would occur four times each weekday, complicating the safety issue of both current and proposed residents is the fact of two sets of railroad tracks immediately adjacent to the development. The addition of 200 to 300 more cars to this corner is clearly a safety concern for everyone involved. You guys have done a great job asking all the right questions, so I really appreciate that. One other important safety issue to raise is for the children of the proposed development Grade school-aged children may be directed to the Rockland Elementary School, possibly having their young children needing to walk across Pacific Street. If new apartment residents have slightly older children, they may need to walk across the railroad tracks to our Springview Middle School. They may also have bicycles or e-bikes going across railroad tracks, as our city considered the safety issues surrounding additional pedestrian, and bicycle traffic. I request the city council rethink the proposed development and try to downsize it, the impacts to cars, pedestrians, and bicycle traffic due to high volume of adults and children, as well as the safety issues for everyone involved. Thank you.

I'm Joyce Satter. I've been a resident here of Rockland for 35 years, and my two previous women just pretty much said everything that I need to say. Instead of living on Midas, I live at High and Pine, and I can probably guarantee that we would even still get spillover onto our neck of the woods. But it really does come down to a safety issue for the children. Has there been that impact into our school systems as well? And for the high density plan, it had been mentioned we're at 39.5 and it was zoned for 33. Is there some other unit that we could do? Is there a compromise? save some of the heritage oaks, and instead of it being a seven-acre, maybe it's six acres, and that brings the high-density ratio down. I don't know what you can do with numbers, but really I'm all for affordable housing because my two grown children had to move outside of Rockland, so it's not so much the affordable housing. It's just the fact that we are building a four-story here, And the impact of traffic and child safety is a definite concern that I think you guys all need to consider.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. My name is John Wall. I live on Midas Avenue. I've been there for about 43 years. I had so many notes, but, you know, this council did such a great job tonight in asking the questions that most of them were answered. And I just want to reiterate what council member Jill Gialdo said, because it just really stands out in my mind, is that Midas Avenue was never meant to have as many cars as it has on it. And, you know, I own the cafe and bakery where that record store is for... over eight years. And that was way back when. But I looked at that site every single day. But I also saw all the traffic even back then at that corner of Midas and Pacific was a big problem. And then also, I don't know if anyone remembers that it was a few years back when that bridge collapsed on Midas Avenue there. And it made us all realize that because we couldn't take Midas, everyone had to go out to Sunset. And I was like, wow, the only way to get to a freeway in Old Rockland, in all of that area, is you either take Midas or you take Sunset. That's the only way to get to Pacific Street. And so I remember just in that happening, just with that bridge, you know, that they had to repair it. It was a nightmare just trying to work around that just to get there. So when you have this many more vehicles, you know, coming into Midas and that, I just think it is going to create a real big problem. But anyway, thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Next speaker is Alan Sanchez, followed by Mike Newman and Bruce Lindorf.

Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. You guys will get to know me. I've actually came before you maybe last month, I think, just in regards to I'm new to this. I'm actually new to Rockland. I live off of Jamerson. And the reason why I'm up here is I really appreciate the community kind of stating their concerns. I think one for myself was as we pull out onto Pacific from Jamerson, Because of the development that they have quarry row You don't really have that much opportunity to jump onto Pacific, you know without you know Being careful from both sides, you know as you either merge if you're gonna be turning left from there And so my concern is really around my spouse, you know if she was to get t-boned, you know a lot of times I already think it's all Busy as it is, you know, a lot of the community members have said this but you know just the consideration of of we don't have the infrastructure to handle the volume of units. I was actually looking at California law, right? Each room, particularly even around apartment complexes, is usually two people per bedroom. So that means if we have a three bedroom unit, that's Two people per plus even an additional person. That means seven per. So, you know, just even the numbers that we were talking about to allow one car, if that, on parking, let alone. I come from a multi-generational household within apartment buildings. like an apartment, you know, my family's from Los Angeles, 11 people. I know that sounds kind of crazy, 11 people to one, you know, two bedroom apartment. And so what I'm saying is there's definitely going to be more than one car per apartment. And so, you know, it's just, you know, the consider considering that we already have other developments, 110 units here, just I forget the street just right here in front of like the laundromat. 110 of those, 50% of them are two and three bedrooms per unit. So I don't know if we've even looked at it. We don't even have those places filled, let alone Quarry Row. But we haven't even seen what the traffic looks like even with that. So what do we expect from a 400-plus unit? you know, or almost 400 plus people, you know, that could be living there is just, you know, my thought that, you know, maybe the question is, you know, alternatives, kind of like the young lady here said, maybe something smaller or even, you know, the possibility of rezoning or just being creative of like, maybe we just pay half the fine But in order to maintain, no, I'm saying like find a smaller project and pay half the fine to compromise, right? Make it make sense. So thank you guys very much. Thank you so much.

Hi, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Mike Newman. I'm on 3rd Street. I've been there for 26 years. Spoke with a couple of you. I appreciate you reaching back out to me. Um, I'm up here today because I was at the planning commission meeting when it got pushed through to you. And I heard the developers say that they'd done community outreach, which was, it was absurd. And that compelled me to have a flyer designed and sent out to 4,000 people and walk my street to bring awareness to this. And as you can tell, you're welcome. There's, there's a lot of folks against it. And I'm not naive enough to think that this project is not going to be built. That said, 281 units if you take one and three bedrooms split that now that's 560 people More than likely they're gonna have at least one car probably two Where are those extra 180 cars gonna go? I know they're gonna go into my neighborhood. They're gonna go across the street They're gonna get pushed down the road If we could do the EVA access from Midas perfect that eliminate some of the traffic, but we've still got this monolith We've got a 50-foot tall building that's overpopulated. You've got 560 people at minimum crammed into a square block. And when you mentioned that reducing it to three stories would, what do you say? Destroy the financial feasibility of the project, I beg to differ. Because it's been presented as an altruistic project. Coming in, by all means, we need affordable housing. We need affordable housing here for sure. That said, this is not an altruistic project. endeavor. This is an opportunity to endeavor and all that they're glad handing and saying, you know, we're going to do it because it's going to work and we don't need to have, we can have this many, but we're only doing this many. It's just, it's kind of a slap in the face because I know that the city council has been getting beat up by one developer in particular, but I know there's more coming down the pike. I'm not naive that this is a projects enough to think that projects are not going to be built. But what I'm saying is, Three stories versus four stories is going to make an immense difference in regards to the impact it's going to have on our community. I'm sure the project will survive. I'm sure they'll make more than enough money. It'll be fine for them. I'm saying that I'm going to be doing it myself. My brother's an attorney. I'm going to be looking into that about what our options are and say, okay, look, we appreciate the idea, but we do need to scale this down because all of our, 99% of our constituents are, are looking for something smaller. Because a 50-foot building on the corner of that spot is going to destroy the character of this part of town. And it's not fair to us to be beholden to some L.A.-based developer wanting to come in and take full advantage of every aspect of the law that they can under the guise of, we could be doing more, but we're going to do this just for you guys. So that's what I've got to say about that. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. If you're around later on, I'd like to talk to you. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Bruce Lindorf. And everything he just said. You get to pick the winners and losers. That's what it comes down to. Are the people in that neighborhood going to continue to lose? Yes. If this goes forward the way it's designed, they win. The city doesn't even win. Everybody knows about the parking problem. We've laid it all out. We've all heard it. Okay. If it has to be built, it would be nice for a smarter property. But if it had to be built, okay, make all the units one unit. You know, one bedroom. Then the building could be smaller. Then they could have more parking on it. And then you would actually have a ratio where the cars wouldn't be spilling out all down Midas. Why not do that? If you have to approve this, if you have no choice to move it somewhere else, why not do that? Thank you. Thank you.

One comment card remaining, and there were a couple hands raised on Zoom. Okay. The speaker is Mr. Jeff Stambuk, but not certain if he's still here. Jeff Stambuk. Okay. I can go to the comment on Zoom.

Please.

Jamal.

Yeah, thank you. Can you guys hear me okay?

We can.

All right. Well, thank you guys for letting me. I wish I could be there, but I wasn't able to attend tonight. I appreciate the pressure you folks are under to get something like this approved. I'm fairly new to the neighborhood, so I'm not up to speed on everything. But, you know, when I heard about this, I was pretty bummed out. I mean, I love living in this area. It's a great community. It's a great neighborhood. But definitely have some concerns on this project. But, you know, I was reading through a few things and know that on the city general plan, you know, the design review board has to include the compatibility of height and scale structures and their criteria for approval. Doesn't sound like a four-story building is very compatible with the area. There isn't really anything that size around. Part of that same criteria is meant to include the preservation of oak trees and parking guidelines. Sounds like those are going by the wayside too. And it sounds like you might be under some pressure to do that. But, you know, I was reading that in the general plan. So it would be nice to see if we could kind of stand pat on what we're trying to do in this community because it's such a great place to live.

There's 171 units planned to be two or three bedrooms.

You know, a lot of those are going to have two or three drivers, you know, especially considering 70% of people are commuting out of the city to different places. They're definitely going to have two to three cars per unit. And you just can't deny that. It's absolutely going to happen. You know, once that parking lot is full, people are going to start parking in neighborhoods. It's going to become more congested, unsafe. You know, I heard one of the guys from Waterford kind of hint That, you know, you put that on the city to kind of manage. Right. So, so now what, since we live in the neighborhood, we're gonna have to buy parking passes. You know, this is going to turn into East Sacramento. And I don't, I don't want to buy a parking pass to park my neighborhood. You know, there was 36 tandem spots, but that's 72 parked vehicles, which means there's not a clear plan plan for almost 20%. of a very scarce and very important resource for this complex. Someone made a comment that removing the four-story would lower the parking spaces because you'd have to spread the fourth floor across the property. But, you know, why do you need to build 280 units? Maybe there's a reason I don't understand, right, because I'm so new to this. But do you really have to? And how can it not be financially feasible if you don't have to pay property taxes on this. I mean, property taxes are easily 25 to 30% of operating expenses for a property like this. So if you're not paying property taxes, you can't tell me it's not gonna be financially feasible You know, the plant structure is a little bit too big for the infrastructure. Adding 281 units, it's already over-congested. Minus is pretty jammed up.

Thank you. If you could finish up, we have a three-minute time limit. But if you could finish your thought, I'd appreciate it.

Yeah, well, the only thing I was going to add is just the – Those two main intersections are already projected to be over the level of service of C. They're going to be level of service E and D in no time. And adding this is just going to make that even worse. It's going to be level of service F in no time in those two intersections. So anyways, appreciate the time, guys.

Thank you. I don't know why I look up. Are you there? Next.

Mr. Jeff Stambuk.

Hello, Mayor and council members and staff. My name is Jeff Stanbuck. I live in the Clover Valley area, which is down by the old golf course. The two things with infrastructure that I keep thinking about that are not mentioned is you have a 110-unit complex being built right now on Pacific about two blocks down from this proposed complex. That's low income. And you also have, I think, a proposal for low income over by the Kmart, old Kmart, which is a Walmart. I'm all for low income housing in the right place. I think by cramming this much low housing in an area on this side of the railroad tracks is a bad idea. Where we're at, I've been in my house for, I've been in Rockland 45 years. I've been on one side of the railroad tracks and now I'm on the other side. Traffic will never support what you're trying to build here. Never. Five years from now, you'll look back at this and you'll go, wow, did we mess up. You're ruining the whole culture of what Quarry Park is by trying to put a monster like this on this piece of property. I worked for the railroad for 45 years, and I also was a general contractor. And as a general contractor, I don't think you have to be an engineer or a rocket scientist to look at this and go, wow, this doesn't fit. This doesn't work. You're never going to be able to increase the infrastructure, period. I mean, the way it's built. So I'm completely opposed to this. The other thing that was one of my concerns, as the other gentleman mentioned, to work for the railroad, I've been out there, 45 years I've been with the railroad. I'm retired now. I've been out there many times on the main line, on both those main lines, cleaning up derailments, hazardous spills, things like that. If you ever had a catastrophic spill in that area, Everybody's gone. We ship all the hazardous commodities they can't ship by truck. LPG gas, chemicals that will kill you if you breathe it. So that's one of my concerns. You're putting a high density of population near a railroad track. If you look at all the other establishments that are around most railroad track right-of-ways, they're mostly commercial, industrial, because they have a low population. So I'm just, my own peace of mind and what I see Rockland turning into, I don't want to see this happen to the Quarry Park area. I think there's lots of other areas you could put this out towards where you're talking about putting some of these parks or places. And the other thing is there is no infrastructure, no matter what anybody says about bus stops and the rail train. People that are living in these units will not be using the train commuting back and forth and work, so. That's a mute issue as far as I'm concerned. Thank you for what you guys do, and I hope you look logically at this and realize that this is a nice project, but it's just not going to fit on this piece of property. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Do we have any other comments? Yes.

Good evening. My name's Matt Weisenborn. I live in Mission Hills. And I think I wasn't going to say anything, but I was just listening to all the comments that were made today. And it just seems to me that at the end of the day, either the site itself isn't suitable for the proposed project or the economics just don't work out for the applicant. To the extent that the council considers parking and traffic to be a health and safety issue, Councilmember Gallardo suggested, hey, why can't we have a two-story parking structure to accommodate the additional vehicles? And the answer to that was, it's not financially feasible. OK. As many people have said, those additional cars, they're gonna end up in the neighborhoods. It's gonna end up with additional foot traffic, probably additional conflict with the residents, and certainly additional enforcement action to the extent that people decide to park at commercial businesses, which is gonna put a strain on police. Perhaps the most concerning safety issue is the new traffic patterns that are going to be established. I heard it earlier, they call it a suicide lane for a reason. That's a legitimate safety concern and it's going to draw both on the police force and the fire force, to the extent that they're responding to medical. And the additional foot traffic is another issue that, especially over those tracks, that can create a safety issue that needs to be considered. Those issues, and then the one other thing, and this may have already been addressed, but to the extent that the construction is going to involve pile driving, drilling into the ground close to that pipeline, I would hope that that has been addressed and considered. So thank you guys for everything. Thank you.

Anything else? Okay. If there's no further public comment, I will now close the public comment. Yes, we do. All right. We're here for it.

First, I want to say thank you and good evening for all the thoughts that you put into this. And as far as neighborhood notification, I don't know if I missed it or not, but I got the fire that the gentleman sent out because I live north of this, and it seems like the only people that were really surveyed were south of it. And everybody that spoke before me has very good comments. I tell you, I have a little sense of fear, and I'll tell you why. I worked with emergency management for 10 years with a state. And I'm concerned about all the hazards that have been mentioned. The pile driving, those last comments, really kind of drove a place home. The threat hazard identifications and risk analysis, has that really been done thoroughly for this site? They mentioned them. But I'm wondering on what level the state we could bring our concerns to, too, because I realize you're pushed into having some low-income housing. I grew up low-income. I think it's great to have some decent housing. But the threats that are here by the railroad tracks and Kinder Morgan and for all the kids going to school, I don't even see kids walk anymore, maybe two or three in the neighborhood. Everybody else gets driven and that's a bunch more kids getting driven to school in areas where they've already said it's a problem. And I'm wondering what happened to the proposed project that was set up for, I believe you said it was Kmart or Walmart at Sunset and I believe Woodside. What happened to that? It seems like it's better. At least there's signals there. There's two-lane streets. That neighborhood would be impacted too, but there's not these serious possibilities with the railroad track, their hazards alone, and the Kinder Morgan track and people walking around there. Everybody else has covered all the other comments, so that's all I had to say. It really concerns me. And if there's an accident and a derailment, everybody is impacted, north of there, south of there, east and west. It's... I'm just going to leave it there because it's terrifying. Thank you. Thank you.

Is there anyone else? All right.

Now I will close public comment. I'm going to bring it back to council at this point. Further clarifications, or I can start asking. I just want to identify two issues that were raised that I think we could answer today. right now specifically is there was the question of can the density of this be reduced?

The zoning of the site is a minimum density of 33 units per acre. So they are over that, so they meet the minimum requirements. So they objectively meet the requirements.

Objectively meet the requirements. Is there a caveat at all to that in terms... I understand the feasibility aspect of it, and we can get into that if somebody wants to talk about... When making determinations and making requests, we technically can't make something that is financially unfeasible unless there's a specific standard and it's written and objectifiable and verifiable. But without sounding too much like a lawyer like I just did, I get the 33%. And obviously we're here at 39. So is there a plain language way to explain how that plays out for us?

I need help with the turning on my mic. Hi, Deanne Gillick, Assistant City Attorney. There is a requirement for this application. If the council wished to condition the project other than how the applicant has proposed it, certain findings must be made. And I'm going to read the statute because it deals with some of the mayor's questions. It says, for a housing development project, which is this project, the council shall not disapprove the housing development project or condition approval in a manner that renders the housing development project infeasible unless it makes written findings. And the infeasibility goes to the affordability. So when you continue to read the statute, the requirements go to the affordability. So there is a concern that if the council is interested in imposing conditions other than how the applicant has proposed it, that there must be findings that those conditions do not make the project infeasible.

I can make some comments about that. I don't think we need to get into the case law and everything, but as for the Kmart project, can there be some information given on that? I think that the reason it's relevant as it relates to this hearing as well is because of the questions that have been raised about where can you place other affordable projects, and there are a number of projects that just haven't been built, so can we get some

Correct. I can provide just a little bit of information on the Kmart project. So that received its approvals from the city council, I believe in 2019. So it's been a long time before that project came before this body, different composition to be approved, and it has never moved forward with its plans. I know there was a lot of conflict for a while between the property owner And Walmart over the shared parking, I don't know if that's ever been addressed. So, what, pardon? The project is, it got extended. They got a... Yeah, it's still active. It is still an active project. As far as they've gone, as we've talked about, is to go through the demolition of the former Kmart building. They still haven't come to the city to process the rest of the plans that would be required to move forward with building permits and things like that. So that's been seven years-ish since it was approved by the city and city council at that time. That parcel, I don't believe, is one of the parcels that the city was obligated to identify that could be potentially for lower incomes under the area median income that was required as part of our current housing element. The housing element required the city to find enough zoning to produce approximately 5,000 units of housing, of which approximately 3,500 of those would be available to families making incomes lower than the area median income. So the whole process, and this is an obligation required by state law and multiple statutes, and the regulations are very onerous if we don't comply. So this parcel, because it had already been residentially zoned, in the past was identified as one of those potential unit parcels that could be considered for higher density. We established that minimum density, but if the project is meeting all the affordable criteria under state law, then they can ask for more, which is what we're talking about here. But that's one of the reasons you see projects like this on some of the sites in downtown is because we are obligated to find space by state law for more than 3,500 units. Some of those units are currently under construction, and we're thrilled about that because we do need a mix of housing types in our community. They are also dispersed throughout the community. It's coincidental that we have two projects going right now along Pacific that are really close to each other, but the locations are dispersed throughout the community. It's just we're talking about those two in kind of a short period of time. Okay.

Thank you. QUESTIONS? I WILL START ON MY RIGHT.

QUESTIONS? WE'VE GOT COMMENTS. WE'LL GET TO THOSE. QUESTIONS?

MR. MAYOR, I DON'T KNOW IF STAFF WANTS TO SPEAK TO THIS, BUT THERE WERE A COUPLE OF REFERENCES TO THE IMPACT ON THE SCHOOL. And I know from the school reports that the school numbers, they've actually declined the past four years. So the impact on the schools actually would not be a negative with this, given that the school attended this number of Actual students in our schools has declined the past four years.

I believe that was recently shared by the school district itself You're correct councilmember Broadway recently when the school district went through a process to Surplus a property that they had identified for a potential third junior high site. A lot of the discussion and decisions around that were based on the fact that their projected enrollment was declining, and so they believed they could accommodate the future growth on the two existing junior high sites. I believe this happened maybe two or three, two years ago, something in that range. I'm gonna defer to either Bennett or perhaps David for specifics, but my understanding is when our general plan is developed and properties are zoned, one of the impacts that is taken into account at that time is school projections. David is nodding, so if you want more detail, I'm sure he can stand up, but it is taken into account when the property was originally zoned.

Got it, got it. And I say, we don't speak for the schools, but just have just enough knowledge to be dangerous about it. As you mentioned, after COVID, our schools, we did lose some kids. We had some declining enrollment. Before we built Whitney High, Rockland High was at 2,700 students. I think it's now about 1,900. So yes, they won't get the property tax. They still would get the attendance, the ADA from the state. So I think as far as housing, I think the schools are likely fine. We'll certainly CONFIRM WITH THEM. I BELIEVE THEY HAVE AN IMPACT FEE AS WELL. YEAH. SO HOPEFULLY THAT WILL HELP RESOLVE SOME OF THE WORRIES ABOUT THE SCHOOL PIECE.

OKAY. ANY OTHER QUESTIONS? ACTUALLY, MR. MAYOR, I DO HAVE ONE QUESTION. SO ONE OF THE SPEAKERS BROUGHT UP KIND OF SAFETY AROUND THE RAILROAD AND ADDITIONAL PEDESTRIAN TRAFFIC. IS THERE ANY REQUIREMENT BASED ON HOW MANY PEOPLE WITHIN An intersection of a train, anything that needs to be done, additional signage, striping, some lights, you know, just to make pedestrians aware.

So you're saying the pedestrian infrastructure near the railroads, making them aware that this is a railroad.

Right, right.

I can't speak to that particular project and I don't believe we have anyone representing Public Works here anymore But the city of Rockland as you may know has a quiet zone designation at all of our railroads So I do believe we have enhanced signage already at each of the railroad crossings the at grade crossing So basically everything but sunset which is one of the reasons you don't hear train whistles nearly as prevalent through Rockland because we've gone through the process we get certified on a regular basis and To ensure that we have the right Signage and markings on the crossbars and the the the lights the flashing red lights I'm not an expert, but I know enough to be dangerous so I don't know if the project is requires anything, but we do that as part of our designation Does the applicant have any input on that anything that you're aware of that you're required to do I?

No, no, okay.

All right, thank you, Mr. Mayor. All right, well, this is the point of where we give our final comments. So I will start to my left. Council Member Broadway.

These projects are always challenging. And unfortunately, we're not given... A LOT OF FLEXIBILITY FROM THE STATE. AND WHILE WE TALK ABOUT PARKING, OUR LEGISLATURE HAS DECIDED TO PASS LAWS THAT BASICALLY SAY THERE'S ACTUALLY NO PARKING REQUIREMENT. SO THE APPLICANT HAS MADE A CONCERNED EFFORT TO FIND PARKING AND IS GOING TO LOOK AT POTENTIALLY ADDITIONAL. AS IT RELATES TO THE DENSITIES, meeting the densities that are part of this project. And as our city attorney has stated, we would have to have findings that essentially would not negatively impact the ability to construct this. We could all have our personal opinions on whether we believe this would pencil out or would be able to be built based on a reduction in essentially what is being proposed. But we have an organization that this is what they do. They're saying that it can't be done. And what we're required from the state is to demonstrate that if we make a change, that that change isn't going to make that untenable. And so I don't know that we can say, based on the information that's been shared, that We have anything to, at least from my chair, to say we're going to require a reduction in the number of units and be able to stand by that. And then for me to say, well, we'll take on the financial responsibility of the state applying fines to us and basically having court action taken and then potentially even having our decision making stripped away because those are tools that our legislature has given to the state and the housing to use against cities if they don't comply with the requirements for affordable housing. So we find ourselves in a very difficult position relative to this project. It's a very large project on a fairly small parcel. Does it meet the requirements that have been set relative to densities and the density bonuses that are provided by the state, the parking? It actually does. I think if this project can address the concerns that I expressed relative to the ingress and egress on Midas, and I think it's either EVA only or write-in only, no write-out from the property onto Midas, I think that helps address a significant amount of the concern relative to traffic onto Midas. I think if we can look at finding some additional parking spaces that eases some of that. I don't think we're going to be able to ease all of it. So as it stands, am I excited about a project of this size and this scope being built on the site? No. Do I feel that I have the ability to present a defensible Requirement to modify this project. I also don't believe so and therefore I believe that we've had a project presented to us That can be based on what's been approved are been presented approved and so at this point I would say I will support as presented by staff Thank you Thank you I think part of me feels like

This is, yeah, there's a lot of detail in this. And I know for even the terminology sometimes there's probably somebody like, what are you talking about? What's the HD? What's the, so just kind of simplify. Rockland and every jurisdiction, Roseville, Rockland, Lincoln, Loomis, everybody, the county got assigned numbers. And it was based on where we, the size we were. And then they said, you've got to build this many units. If we were Lincoln or we were Roseville, I got acreage up the gazebo. I can build anywhere. It's not a big deal. We don't have very much space, and it's a real challenge. So we had a group set down for over a year and brought in all kinds of stakeholders and said, where can we find zoning? And we don't have to build the units, but we have to put the zoning that says, if you want to and you sell this, it can be multifamily workforce housing. So they came up with that list. And then some of you remember because on one of those was the piece at the end of Argonaut that everybody's like, eh, don't do that one. Okay. I mean, a lot of people were here saying don't do that one, don't do that one. So we got down to the numbers. And while we were doing that, for just a little bit of time, we didn't match the numbers that the state told us we had to have. So we were considered noncompliant. And we immediately got the nasty gram, and we immediately got what is the fearful positive. For me, and I think probably the rest of us There's a term called builders remedy and if we aren't compliant with the housing plan We lose our ability to zone and we got a project that came in an application in there What were you three weeks that we were out of two weeks? We were out of compliance and they came in and put in a project that we wouldn't get to have any control over again I've never backed down from a fight in my life. I'm not gonna lie But the risk is And please, applicant, please don't take this personally because you guys have actually tried to work with this way better than I can say for others. But the risk is if I'm noncompliant while I'm fighting this, I don't get to zone my city anymore. They'll build it while we're battling. It's not like everything stops and we do that. So that really is the risk. the worrisome piece for me. As far as the projects, overwhelmingly, if you go out by Whitney High and you look at the condos, that's where most of the projects have been. We've been doing them. They're going. This is the first time down in this area. And I shared before, this is my area. This is important. When my mother-in-law built her house, Midas didn't exist. It wasn't there. If you go by her or her house, I came to this council before I was serving to say, I can't let her get killed backing out of her driveway. It's a single lane driveway. And everybody coming around Midas is going 100 miles an hour. And they don't expect a car to be backing out of her driveway. And it was really scary for me. I get your worries about this area. What I do know is something's going to go in that lot. Do I take the risk? I'm not approving the project. It's the design of the project. Do we take that risk and have Builder's Remedy jump in or a much worse project? If you go out on Rockland Road right now, right across from Sierra College, we're building our first, or I say we, they are building our first low-income for seniors project. And there were some houses that weren't really excited about that vacant lot. And I had to go out and talk to them and say, I get it. But we're doing seniors. There'll be less traffic. They're not likely going to be as noisy and as much of an impact. And instead of a house right on your fence line, it's going to be back 100 yards or more than that, I think it is. So we're kind of doing the same thing. What can we do to make it a better project? Get it and a couple people said you know you wanted it I don't think anybody here wants to build this project or not I know that it was zoned to be a market rate smaller Apartments and it made sense when we were doing that the businesses would be happy because businesses won't come until we have some rooftops but Unfortunately, and there's not the infrastructure our legislature doesn't seem to care about They're flat out don't care that the infrastructure's not there. I mean, literally, this is a group that said we could build this without any parking. I think it makes zero sense, but I've got to sit here and go, is it worth the risk? We do, and as you probably know, we've had just at our last meeting another project that's next to a school that's not happy about a project getting there. And the same thing, that was supposed to generate sales tax. Just like our churches and our schools, these won't generate any property tax or sales tax. We're in that same conversation of what can we do to make it better. But meanwhile, the night before that hearing, we got a letter from HCD, and the last line in it basically says, if you don't comply, we refer you to the Attorney General. Are we willing to take that risk? And that's where I'm sitting here. Now, can we make it better? I am going to ask you, go look and see. How much would it cost to make a two-story parking garage? Is it feasible? Is it something you can do? Definitely looking at Midas. I just don't think exiting on Midas is a great idea. So I think that's one to look at. But I hope that people understand. We're earning our $623 a month right now up here. We're your neighbors. We want to have a good project too. This isn't what we were hoping to have there. We've got to try and navigate this so that the city isn't at risk. The fines, I say, it's not the fines. I mean, they're stupid fines, but it's the zoning and the loss of local control. You guys have been great about sending letters. I'm going to ask you to send those same letters to your legislators. They're the ones that make these rules that we're getting stuck with. Let the people that live here make the decisions. Let us have some local control for our own city. I think that's all the comments I have.

Councilmember Holden. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I've got a lot of things in my head. First of all, I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight and probably learning more about what the state, the straightjacket the state tries to put us in. So, you know, today I got 28 notes from residents. Yesterday, 31. In total, more than 100. And, you know, the residents are pretty clear. They don't want this in its current form. I appreciate those people who stood up tonight with maybe like a compromise idea. And, you know, we sit here tonight. We're not approving something for three years, five years. It's for 40 or 50 years this is going to be here. So I think, you know, we want to take it slow. And I sit here and maybe piggyback a little bit on what Councilmember Gallardo said said, I think these folks who want to build this want to be a decent neighbor in our community. But what I would ask them to consider is could they scale this back a bit? I'm going to save you some money by not making you redo Midas, but maybe you could scale this back a bit. It is 33 units to an acre. which would work out to roughly 231 or so at 7.1 acres, so they could get a little extra there. And consider whether you could work with the community to do that. I know you did community outreach, but you didn't, You certainly didn't tap into this feedback that you're now getting and we're getting in a big way. If you scaled it back a bit, it would have the added benefit of improving the parking situation. And I speak for myself here. If the parking is as much of a mess as I fear and your residents start parking in the neighborhoods I'll be very willing and quick to put parking by permit only. And it's just going to force your residents farther and farther away from this apartment complex. And I think that's fair to our residents if people take up all the parking in front of their house and they have no place to park for us to not make them go walk far away to park. My view, and the last thing, I just want to make sure people understand, we're not building this. We don't build any affordable housing in town. And so people who own property have a right to do something with it, and that's what is happening here tonight. And so we can't move them to another piece of property because they don't own it. if they wanted to do that. But what I'd like to see is these folks, again, we're talking about a 40, 50-year development for Rockland. I'd like to see them. They've heard all the feedback tonight. They've heard all the feedback from the council to just take a brief pause and see if they can improve this project So it's better for the community. We've seen today we have under construction 116 unit affordable housing complex and 180 unit affordable complex. I would think building 230 or 240 unit apartment complex might be financially feasible. That doesn't strike me as something that inherently wouldn't be feasible. So, you know, do you have to do this? I'm going to say this. You don't have to make a single change because the state has given you all kinds of power over Rockland. Should you make some change? I think you should. And I think you should work with us because you don't want to be the pariah in the neighborhood forever. WITH ALL THESE PEOPLE DISRUPTED, WHEN SOME MODEST CHANGES COULD MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE. COUNCILMEMBER BROADWAY AND GAYALDO, I'M DEFINITELY ON BOARD OF NO OUT ON MIDAS. I'M INDIFFERENT WHETHER WE HAVE A RIGHT IN OR DON'T HAVE A RIGHT IN. BUT I THINK THAT WOULD, MY FEAR, AND COUNCILMEMBER GAYALDO DID A GREAT JOB OF TALKING ABOUT What could happen with the write-out on Midas? U-turns, let's do this, let's do that. There's just no reason to put people on a path down Midas who might not need to be there. If they're going to go to Springview, they're going to go down Midas to get there. I'd just like to see us give the developer, having received feedback from

You know 100 residents and the council a little more opportunity to improve this and be a better project for our community Thank You councilmember John Donne Thank you I Want to start just by thanking everyone that not only sent letters I did read them all but even more so it takes a lot more effort to drive down here sit for five six hours and listen to a lot of dry talk, and then get up and make your comments. But I really do appreciate that. I think someone said we're picking winners and losers. Well, we don't want to pick winners and losers. We want winners. We used to be able to work with developers and the community and design great projects that are compatible, that everyone could support. But You know, unfortunately, there's a supermajority in the state of California that's governing over this state, and they pretty much do whatever they want, whether we like it or not. And this is a direct result of that one-party rule. So we can no longer make decisions based on traffic, density, parking, size, scale, compatibility, safety, or anything. We really can't when it comes to an affordable-type project. You know I don't like it, and I know the rest of the folks up here. Don't like it You know a denial You've heard could be you know several million dollars in fines You know plus attorneys fees and at the end of the day the project would still go through the state would take the Decision away from us, and they would allow it to go through so we we'd be going through that process Paying all that money which impacts the community and our services and the project would still be built and saying no to what we know about and have in front of us, if we say no to that, even outside of the fines and impact from the state, we're saying yes to something down the road that we don't know about. And you've heard they could design it without parking. They could design it with five stories. There's other projects in the state where the community was against one project and another project I remember coming through that was way worse way worse and way more impactful. But again, it fit the rules and the law that we need to follow. So we need to be a little bit careful of that. Most of you probably don't agree, but the applicant has worked with staff to make concessions and to make this as less impactful. They have 379 parking spaces. They could have zero. They decrease the density below what they're able to do based on state law. They could, like I said, go to five stories. They're making off-site improvements on the roadways, and that's not required by law either. Again, the property is zoned for this type of product. It's in our housing element. It's required by the state. Again, you've heard the rest of the folks say up here, it's not a perfect project, it's not what we like, but there's really not a whole lot we can do about it. We need to make decisions based on law and not emotion. I know that's difficult for a lot of you to hear, but unfortunately, that's the situation we're in. Thank you.

Thank you. So I forgot to do my disclosure. I did not speak with the applicant. I have spoken with members of the public. That said, I want to address just a couple of the things that I think have been raised that I understand why someone would ask, for example, pick another place, right, just not this spot. And I understand that. We can't require that. And to the extent that anyone finds this interesting, so we've obviously been here a couple of times, and multiple times people have said, go put housing on the old golf course. We've obviously resoundingly rejected that, right? But that is a frequent place where people have asked us to go put something. This is the same council that also threw money to make sure that Clover Valley was saved. Obviously, that's important to a lot of people in this room as well. So there are times when we maybe pick winners and losers, but this is not that situation. Those times we did, and it was the exact same neighborhood that's being affected by this now. I want to thank everybody that's here. I agree. It's harder to come down here than to send an email, though I appreciate the emails and I appreciate some people just can't get down here right. But everybody being here is important. I also actually want to thank KCRA for being here because I think. getting as much media on these issues is extremely important. And so I'll ask for another copy, because I want to take this home. But KCRA, if you want to see the public comments, I'll give this one to you. I think it's important to see what the council sees. I just want to say that I've heard a lot about health and safety. And I think it's important that people understand that I care about that greatly. There is a subsection within the Housing Accountability Act that specifically addresses health and safety. And the legislature stated in sub A3 that health and safety conditions arise infrequently and regularly occurring planning issues do not rise to the level of a specific adverse impact. And I say that because I think that a lot of the issues that have been raised that are very important about public safety have been minimized by our legislature. That does not mean that we get to minimize them. But it is important for people to understand that even within the legislative history, the legislature mentioned its intent to establish a very high threshold for a local agency to justify denying or conditioning a housing project for health or safety reasons. And the main reason is because that was used to deny so many of these projects, and the legislature wanted to stop that. So the type of burden that we have to be able to say just flat out no. is extremely high. And I think that there are some people that just want a no. There's others that would ask us to create so many boundaries that it become infeasible. And then there's the other way, which is to ask for just these little tweaks. But then, of course, we ran into feasibility. And I think the legislature's thought that through because of how often this happens. But I don't think that that doesn't mean that we don't ask. I think that these are the right questions to be asking and to have an honest conversation. I too, I'm going to join in and say that as an applicant, you know, I grew up kind of don't hate the player, hate the game. Right. And, but in this situation, I got to say, at least you've come, you know, trying to help in terms of giving parking spaces. And I just want you to know, I really appreciate that. If we're asking for more, I think that it's just our good faith effort to keep things going. I don't know how everyone else is going to vote and what we're going to offer, but I think it's important for everyone to consider the fact that this could be a lot worse. So I appreciate that. I know that the idea of a builder's remedy and understanding what that could look like is kind of hard to imagine. You put seven stories. If anyone thinks that's not something that somebody would try, you're probably wrong. There's a lot of people that would love to come into Rockland and put as big a building as they can and make as much money as they can. And the minute that we give them the opportunity, they will. Um, I did just want to mention I understand the pipeline issue. I was stationed in the military right next to that explosion around that time. I understand that it's a very important issue, and I understand that drilling can cause that. Obviously, that San Bruno explosion happened because PG&E was highly negligent in their weld. There's a lot of ways to be able to make sure that that pipeline does not end up in the same exact situation where that tragedy occurred. I'm not saying it can't happen. I'm just saying that there's a lot of technology out there to make sure that the area is safe. All that said, it doesn't mean that I like the project, and it doesn't mean that I'm going to vote one way or the other. But I do think it's important that everybody here understand what the law is. But just because we're bound by the law doesn't mean we're gagged by it. So everyone here can say exactly what they want to their legislature, to us, and we can reply back, and maybe our vote doesn't make sense. But it's very important everyone here knows that regardless, a four-story building on the corner of Midas is a crappy project. period. And I didn't like it from the beginning and it has nothing to do with the applicant at all. That's just my own personal feeling and obviously everything else that comes from the legislature. Talked enough. I think at this point I'm going to be asking for some level of a motion or if there is going to be a further suggestion, I will take it. I got five leaders up here. I'm going to See where everyone wants to go with this.

If I just might offer, I've heard some feedback about desire for condition of an EVA on Midas or the right in, right out. Based on the feedback we had received from individual council members about what they might want to see earlier, we have prepared. A CONDITION THAT IS SPECIFIC TO AN EVA. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO HEAR IT WE CAN READ IT TO THE RECORD SO YOU CAN HEAR IT AND THE APPLICANT CAN POTENTIALLY HAVE A CHANCE TO RESPOND TO THAT AS WELL.

NEW SPEAKER Let's have it.

NEW SPEAKER IF I COULD JUMP IN. I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE A MOTION TO move this item to a future council meeting and to ask the applicant to come back with any improvements that they might be able to make to this project.

You made a good point when you talked about this is a 50 year project and I appreciate that you guys have written up something but I'm going to second that motion because I don't want to rush this I don't want you to be writing this at the 11th hour in a few minutes' time. I want to make sure we have time to look at it and hopefully that the applicant could also then respond on a couple other items we brought up.

Is that a second? If I may, Mr. Mayor, do we want to, if we're going to move this motion forward, provide at least some direction to the applicant so they have an idea of what you're looking for rather than just a broad change to the project.

So what I'd say is we have a first and a second, and then we're asking to modify what the first is.

Modification to further define the motion.

Okay. I'd be happy to define it. I mean, maybe what we should do is just a motion to continue And then we could have a discussion, because I don't know that the five of us would agree on what changes could be made. But I also don't want to be too prescriptive, lest that get us into trouble.

I think the two that jump out to me that I'd like to have looked at is... I'm not saying that we don't but look at the option about an emergency vehicle only on Midas tell us what that option is and then I would ask the applicant and I know it's a ton of work but if you can give us something to say because I know you're hearing how important the parking piece is if I'm gonna ask you to look again and sharpen that pencil and then look and see is it possible what is what would make it feasible or not feasible day if you had to do a multi-story way to do it and I think from the city We need to look and see, looking around the area, where are they going to go if we have that parking piece. I'd like us to really look at that and see what we think. I'll go park there and figure out where I'm going to walk. Let's go look.

And from my point of view, after hearing from residents, to me, if you took a look at maybe trimming back the number of units, maybe THE STREET FACING BUILDINGS CAME DOWN TO THREE INSTEAD OF FOUR. AGAIN, IT HAS THE BENEFIT OF ADDRESSING THE PARKING ISSUE AT THE SAME TIME. AND I'M JUST ASKING YOU TO TAKE A LOOK AT IT. AND I DON'T KNOW THAT I'M NOT LOOKING FOR AN ANSWER RIGHT NOW.

YES, PLEASE. No, we've closed public comment.

This is just specifically for the purpose of understanding what kind of direction that we can give based on the motion that's been brought forward. If there's more substantive information, whether we can take that into consideration. It sounds to me like right now we're not going to be making a decision tonight. I don't know how that's going to end up panning out. Am I correct here?

You're correct about the public comment period. We do have a motion and a second on the table, so we'll just see where it ends up and if it moves forward. Okay.

Mayor and council, first off, I want to say thank you for the comments tonight. You know, I do not want to pretend that we've not heard the comments, we've not heard the community. I wanted to give a little context and then I want to let Oren, from our team kind of address some of the specific design comments. But one of the things I wanted to make clear is we don't enter into communities lately. We've done over 32 public private partnerships throughout the state of California. And I say that to say that It's not good business to enter into a community and not be open to recommendations, to listening to the community. Councilmember Hallidon, your comments, I appreciate everything that you said. So one of the things I wanted to do is say, look, we are committed to working with you. There are certain things because I've been doing this for a long time, for over 20 years. And so when you have a continuance, if you don't bookend and just candidly say what's feasible, what's not, then you enter into candidly, I think, a zone that just isn't good for either side. And so what I want to do is say that, are there things that we can work with you on to improve the project? And Oren can speak to that. Yes, we absolutely can. Are there just certain items? And this isn't me flexing. Like I said, we don't enter into communities flexing. That's not how we do business. We have never sold an affordable housing project. What we like to say is that when you get us, hopefully you get us for life, because we want to be good stewards of the community, the project, and the community. And we have a reference list a mile long that speaks to that. That said, I've heard a couple comments. So there was a comment about structured parking. I will say that when you start talking about structured parking, now all of a sudden you enter into an element where your costs go up at least 10% to 12%. There was a comment of, well, if you're making more profit, can't you just underwrite that into the deal? The reality is we're lowering rents. And so when you start to look at the economic feasibility of a project like this where you're lowering rents and your construction costs are going up, you're out of equilibrium. You can't make that math work. It's not feasible. There was a comment about density is that when we... this piece of land was on the market. So you have a seller that is trying to sell this. We just happen to have a long-term, long-standing relationship with the seller. There were other multifamily housing groups at the table. I'm not going to speak for them, but knowing who was at the table, they're not here listening to the community. They're saying we're going to build higher density. And again, this isn't me flexing. So what I'm telling you is we have certain constraints. We have a seller that is selling the land. And so we've underwritten this project in a way that is feasible. In terms of looking at ingress, egress, parking, I think that's all on the table. But what I want to do is bookend and tell you what we can and can't do. So structured parking, it's just not going to work. When it comes to lower density, again, what's making this project work is that the size of it, it's allowing us to spread the costs of it and that's what's making this feasible. Now, we've looked at all the different ways that we can less less than the community impact so traffic density all that so i'm i'm hearing this and i'm a pragmatist i'm i've always looked for ways that we can meet in the middle so i'm i'm hearing your comments saying what can we do but i also want to be realistic and and tell you what we can do is i i don't think that we can go to less density it's just the math doesn't work Can we build structured parking? The math doesn't work. That said, when it comes to ingress egress, Oren, I know you've got some ideas, so you can speak to that.

Well, so there's two things going on right now is because we're hitting the witching hour order, if I know how to read a clock right. So I need a motion to be able to go beyond 11 o'clock. Do I have a first?

If you want more time, I would recommend withdrawing the current motion on the table so that you can...

I'll withdraw my motion. Can we go to 1115? I'll make a motion that we extend our time to 1115.

Okay. I'll second the motion. All in favor, aye. Aye. Nose. Abstentions? Ayes have it. Passes unanimously. We'll go to 1115. I appreciate what's being said and... But I want to return first to counsel. My fear right now is we're going to start reentering a public comment issue or just comment in general. And I'm not taking into consideration anything that's just been said other than to understand that there's a likely no. can units be trimmed down and parking with a two-story structure and Then we're asking about Evie access is is it my understanding that if there was a motion to be brought it would be Can the units be trimmed down parking whether there's a two-story? Regardless of whether we know the answer is most likely no and then for the Evie access Are those the three main things?

Yeah. So I just, I think for a motion, and I'll make a motion again, just that we continue this item to a future meeting. I think we want these folks to hear the things that we're talking about, but I don't know that we want to make that part of a motion. It's within our right to continue it.

So it is feasible to do a motion to continue and then for the council to deliberate on the items that you're interested in hearing back. If you wanted to do it that way in order to make it a manageable motion is what I'm hearing council member Holden suggesting.

Make a motion. Someone can second and

I'm not sure I know what the motion is. My motion is to continue this item.

Yeah, I think it's to continue this item to a future meeting.

No second.

We need a second.

Do I have a second?

Yeah, I will second that motion.

Okay.

All in favor, aye. Aye.

Aye. No.

No. No. There's three ayes, two noes. The motion passes. This will be continued. Is that to a date certain? Or a date uncertain since we didn't give a date?

Yeah, it's the option. It's been continued. If the council wishes to set a date certain, you may with second motion. I don't know if that's feasible, and I don't know what your concerns are.

Would you like a date, please? If possible.

kind of based on our calendar.

The next possible meetings dates are, well, at this point we didn't have any items on September 8th, and I don't know if that would give anyone enough time to do the research. The next meeting would be September 22nd, October 13th, or October whatever, 27th.

I'D RECOMMEND OCTOBER 13TH. NEW SPEAKER I MOVE THAT WE CONTINUE DATE CERTAIN OCTOBER 13TH.

NEW SPEAKER I'LL SECOND THE MOTION.

NEW SPEAKER ALL IN FAVOR, AYE. NEW SPEAKER AYE. NEW SPEAKER NOS. NEW SPEAKER NO. NEW SPEAKER WE HAVE FOUR AYES, ONE NO. MOTION PASSES. Having no other further items, is there anything else for a future agenda item that the council would like?

No? I don't know if it needs to be agenda item, but I would like to see if we could send a letter to the school district and ask about considering reinstating some transportation in that area.

Okay. And then I want to thank everybody for being here. We will adjourn. A moment of silence for our longtime council member, Peter Hill. Thank you. Meeting is adjourned.