Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening. And on behalf of the commissioners and the multitude of staff in this room, I would like to welcome you to the 01/22/2026 City of Roseville Planning Commission meeting. Please put all electronic devices on silent at this time. Agendas are on the back counter. If you plan to speak at tonight's meeting, complete a blue speaker card and return it to a staff member. As a reminder, planning commission meetings are broadcast live, replayed on Comcast fourteen, and available on the city's YouTube channel. I will now call the meeting to order. Lupe, may I please have a roll call?

Yes. Commissioner Hagler? Here. Commissioner Chris?

Present.

Commissioner Mace? Here.

Commissioner Pryor?

Here.

Commissioner Unidad?

Here.

Vice chair Brashears is absent, excused. Chair Hagen Dazs?

Here. I would ask if, commissioner Unitive will lead us in the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

If you would please begin staff introduction.

Yes. Good evening, commissioners. Lupi Nelson, recording secretary.

Good evening. Commissioners Mike Eisen, development services director.

Good evening, commissioners. Joe Speaker, assistant city attorney.

Good evening, commissioners. Greg Bitter, assistant development services director.

Good evening. Lauren Hawker, senior planner for long range planning.

Good evening, chair Haggenios and commissioners. Derek Ogden, senior planner.

Good evening, commissioners. Jessica Lynch, environmental coordinator.

The public comment period is a time for anyone who would like to address the commission on any item not on tonight's agenda. When addressing the commission, please state your name for the record and limit your comments to three minutes. Is there anyone who would like to address the commission on any item not on tonight's agenda? Hearing none, I will close the public comment, period. Next, we have the consent calendar, which consists of routine items that may be approved under one motion as recommended in the staff reports.

However, each item may be considered separately upon a request by the Audience Planning Commission or staff. Tonight's consent calendar consists of one item, item 5.1, the minutes from the 12/11/2025 Planning Commission meeting.

Is there anyone on

the commission or in the audience who would like to pull an item off the consent calendar for separate discussion? Hearing none, may I have a motion to approve the consent calendar as listed?

I'll make a motion to approve.

I second.

Thank you. Commissioner Pryor has made the motion, and commissioner has seconded the motion. Roll call, please.

Commissioner Mesh? Yes. Commissioner Chris?

Yes.

Commissioner Pryor?

Yes.

Commissioner Unidad? Yes. Commissioner Hagler?

Yes.

And Chair Hagen Dazs?

Yes. The motion is approved. Next on the agenda is the commissioner and staff report. Item 6.1, workshop, the planning commission training. This is an informational item and requires no action by the commission. Greg, we please have your presentation?

Yes. Thank you, Chair Hagen Joseph, members of the Planning Commission. I want to start out tonight by letting you know that this training workshop is going to be provided to you by the entire Planning Division staff. So all of us have a piece of the presentation. We introduced ourselves here at the management table, but I also want to introduce Eric Singer, Kenny Schelligo, and Sean Morales, all associate planners. They're going to be providing part of the presentation. We also have our newest planner, Raquel Blandin, in the audience. She's here. She's an assistant planner. She started with us in November.

She mainly works up at the front counter in the planning division. But I thought we thought it would be a great idea for her to be here, meet the planning commission, and and participate in the workshop as well. We have a couple special guests. Michelle Scheinberger, our city attorney. Jonathan Liebe, senior deputy city attorney. I got that right. So I'm not sure why they're here to make sure that we They're

here to watch Joe. They're here to watch Joe. Yeah.

Yeah. They're evaluating Joe. Yeah. But we're but I'm happy to be here, and I wanna I guess we can go to the we can go to the first slide. One of the first questions, why are we doing this training that that I I wanna answer for you is last I don't know, August, September when when former commissioner Jensen announced that he was gonna be retiring in in October, it it I realized that we're gonna have three new commissioners that have joined the Planning Commission since last July.

And we obviously know that Commissioner Bashears, he terms out in in this June, so we'll have another brand new planning commissioner in six more months. So I thought it'd be appropriate to hold this workshop in order to provide a more detailed overview of the role and responsibilities of the planning commission and for planning commissioners. And we typically provide each new commissioner orientation session. Usually it's about an hour, hour and a half, but I'm hope hopeful that this workshop will be a little bit more comprehensive and a little bit more valuable to you. And we really put a lot of thought into this.

We wanted to have it at a Planning Commission meeting so we can have it on our YouTube channel. That way we can use it for future commission orientations, and folks who are thinking about applying to be on the Planning Commission in the future can also reference back this video and have a full understanding of of kind of what you do, what your responsibilities and role are for the city. So I'm gonna get going, and I have a little

a quick

anecdote. Every year, Derek and I, we provide the Chamber of Commerce's Leadership Roseville class an overview of Roseville's planning and development. And during that presentation, we always start the class off by asking what they think makes a great city. And we hear typical topics like, you know, a variety of jobs, housing opportunities, good recreation and parks, public safety, a lot of a lot of typical things, and and a lot of these you'll hear and during the rest of the presentation. One topic that we bring up that I think is very important, that's not a typical topic when you think about what makes a great city, is having a consistent vision, a consistent land use and growth vision, and consistent leadership.

So since the mid nineteen eighties, the city of Roseville has planned for growth with a consistent vision, which has been implemented by the leadership of both the city council and the planning commission. So I'm here to tell you tonight that you, as planning commissioners, play a key role in continuing Roseville's success. So we're breaking tonight's presentation up into four main topic areas: the role of the Planning Commission the planning framework, which is going to be an overview of the various tools we use to manage growth and development The application process, to kind of give a peek of an overview of how we review and process applications from first submittal to the final approval, something a lot of folks don't really realize how arduous that process can be. And finally, an overview of the California Environmental Quality Act and how that is important to the job you all do. And so before I begin, I do want to acknowledge a couple of important sources that we used to make sure I don't get in trouble for any copyright infringement.

I'm gonna

put this presentation together. And the first is the Planning Commission handbook that was created by the Institute for Local Government. So this document is a very comprehensive description of the wide variety of issues the Planning Commissions throughout California face. There are there are planning commissions in other jurisdictions that do different have different roles and responsibilities than the City Of Roseville's Planning Commission, but that document is a very comprehensive overview of everything that a Planning Commission could ever possibly be involved in. The second is a website, it's plannersweb.com, and both of these are linked in your staff report, and I think we have a slide at the end that provides the links to it.

This website provides a really good variety of articles and advice for both new experienced planning commissioners. Some of the articles are a little bit dated, but it's not it's all very relevant. There's interviews with planning commissioners, in fact one planning commissioner from Rockland participated in one of the question and answer sessions on that website about ten years ago. So I'm going to start the presentation off by talking about the role of the Planning Commission. So generally speaking, role of any Planning Commission, any local government in The United States are the following three things, act as an advisory board to the main governing body on all planning and development issues, assure that all land use decisions, including individual projects, are consistent with the policies and plans adopted by that governing body, And finally, and you're going to hear this repeated a lot tonight, provide a forum for public involvement.

So in Roseville, we can go to the next slide, in Roseville specifically section two point two zero point zero three zero of the Municipal Code describes the responsibilities of the planning commission. So you'll see the language in the municipal code is very similar to that of the previous slide. Your specific responsibilities as Roseville planning commissioners include making recommendations to the city council regarding general plans, specific plans, zoning, and other land use policy areas. Reviewing entitlements for compliance with the general plan zoning ordinance, specific plans, and other policy documents. Act as the approving authority on a number of entitlements, which I'll go over in a couple more slides.

And when you are the approving authority, taking action regarding the adequacy and consistency of projects with the California Environmental Quality Act, and again, ensuring the public can participate in the planning and land use process. So your duties first and foremost, the Planning Commission assists in developing and maintaining the general plan. This is the long term land use and planning vision for the city. So the commission does this by participating in public meetings to help shape the plan's content and goals. You follow that up by conducting public hearings.

You make recommendations for the plan's adoption. You recommend how that plan should be adopted to the City Council. And then maintaining that plan, you will oftentimes, and several of you have experienced this, you'll review, hold hearings, and make recommendations on amendments to the specific plan. Excuse me, the general plan. The next item is the specific plan.

This you're gonna hear more detail about in a little bit, but this is one of the most valuable tools that we use to implement our land the city's land use vision. And it's the process that the Planning Commission has and is involved in with specific plan development and maintenance is very similar to the general plan. Through public meetings, you review the contents, you review the land use vision, the guidelines, the development standards that are in those specific plans, and then you make recommend you hold hearings for the public, you make recommendations to the city council, and when developers come in and they wanna amend specific plans, different portions of specific plans, you do the same thing. You hold hearings, you consider that, you consider those changes against the general plan policies, and you make recommendations to the City Council. The next item is something that you do on regular on basis.

The Planning Commission is involved in updating the zoning ordinance, which is Title 19 of our municipal code, to ensure that the city remains in compliance with the ever changing state land use laws as well as to address any issues that we as staff find, with the efficient implementation of the code. If you recall just this last fall, you acted on the zoning ordinance amendment regarding how we define kitchens, efficiency kitchens, and it was something that that we were doing in response to state laws regarding housing. It was very important for us to get that definition in, in order to adequately address future housing applications. Again, you'll make you'll hold hearings and you'll make recommendations regarding oh, excuse me. You'll also hold hearings and make recommendations regarding the rezoning of property.

For instance, somebody wants to change their zoning from a residential use to a commercial use or vice versa, you will consider those items. And again, I think Derek will talk a little bit more about that. And finally, a commission is the approving authority on a number of entitlements. For this task, the commission reviews individual projects for consistency with the general plan, our specific plan the applicable specific plan, the zoning ordinance, other land use documents, community design guidelines, for instance. And these entitlements can include major project permits, conditional use permits, design review permits, tree permits, tentative subdivision maps, and variances.

Something that over the years you all become very familiar with because these are very regular, the meat and potatoes of the Planning Commission's job. So that's the those are the role that's the role of the Planning Commission. How about individual duties of each individual Planning Commissioner? So in order to ensure productive and informed proceedings and decisions, each Planning Commissioner should make the following commitments. Be familiar with the city's planning and land use policies, the plans and regulations.

Be familiar with state laws that impact local planning, such as general plan law, housing law, and the California Environmental Quality Act. And again, we regularly bring you as those change, we make sure to keep you informed of those changes. Attend meetings on a regular basis to ensure we have a quorum and we can facilitate the business of the commission. Provide advance notice of meeting absence to commission staff so we understand how we need staff and how we can make sure that the business gets done in a timely manner. And finally, review meeting materials in advance of a meeting.

City staff typically makes all meeting materials available to the commission and the public the Friday before any of our scheduled meetings. So I think the next slide has a few more individual duties. Understand and comply with the Brown Act and the City of Roseville's administrative standards. So the Brown Act is California's open meeting law, which guarantees the public rights to attend and participate in meetings of state and local legislative bodies. Complying with the Brown Act ensures transparency and accountability by requiring advanced notice and open forms for public business.

And if you recall, I believe a couple weeks ago, I emailed you all a copy. The recent state legislation requires all brand new plan all new planning commissioners or all new board commissioners, regardless of what board or commission you're on, be provided with a comprehensive copy of the Brown Act. So instead of sending that just to to our new commissioner, Chris, I thought I should send it to everybody so you can all have the equal information. And finally, the city's administrative standards, you should be familiar with those because those provide more specific expectations and practices to guide both the city council and all the city's boards and commissions. Those are adopted on a on a regular basis.

They're reviewed, modified. I believe the city attorney's office is currently looking at some amendments to that document now, so you'll probably be getting a refreshed version sometime this year. And that's more specific for how Roseville, the City Council, wants all the boards and commissions to operate. An important one is make sure to follow the Fair Political Practices Commission's filing requirements, including filing Form 700. You'll receive regular updates regarding the reporting requirements and due dates from the city's clerk's office, and it's important to remember that failure to comply with the deadlines and requirements can result in penalties.

And occasionally, I can say that nobody in this room right now has been the subject of this, but occasionally I have been asked by the city clerk to help them remind commissioners to get their form 700 in a timely manner. So it is very important, especially with penalties penalties associated with not getting that done.

Thank you for the reminder.

I believe we all probably have a deadline to get that done here pretty soon. The next item is understand the priorities of the City Council. So the Council has an annual workshop where they discuss their goals and priorities for the upcoming year, and the outcome of that workshop is then packaged up and adopted by the Council as their annual strategic plan. So this year,

on February 23, the

City Council is going have an all day workshop session talking about their goals and priorities. So then you can expect sometime expect sometime in the spring, the results of that will be packaged up into a strategic plan, so it'll be the twenty sixth, twenty seventh strategic plan. I think it'll be we'll make sure that you get a link to that or or a copy of that somehow. I think that'll be good for you to understand what the council's vision So I think I have a couple more items on here. Obviously, Obviously, review review and and make make decisions decisions based based on on the the city's city's general general plan, plan, zoning zoning ordinance, ordinance, and other applicable planning and land use policies.

It's very important that we have evidence and we base it on our adopted planning documents. And finally, commissioners all commissioners are required to comply with the state's requirements for AB twelve thirty four ethics training. Again, this information and the deadlines are provided by the city clerk's office.

I think this is every other year Mhmm.

The commissioners are typically required to take this training. And this leads me into the next slide, which speaking of ethics, this slide provides a very short summary of ethical considerations that commissioners can model. So we know that all parties appearing before the Planning Commission, applicants, community, consultants, are entitled to a fair, ethical, and accountable government process. And to provide this process, when you as commissioners are acting in an ethical manner, you're going to comply with both the letter and spirit of the city's laws and policies. You're going to be independent, impartial, and fair in your judgment and actions.

You're going to prioritize the public good and avoid any appearance that you may be using your position for personal gain. And finally, you're going to conduct public deliberations and processes openly and in an atmosphere of respect and civility. So I think that's the role of the commission, individual roles, kind of some ethical information. Now talking about how staff how we support as staff, we support you and your work. And I think it's very important for you to know that you can always rely on us to support you.

That is our job. It's in my mind, that's one of our most important jobs, if not the most important job, is to support you as decision makers in your role as planning commissioners. So planning staff is always gonna be present at commission meetings, and when I say always available, I mean pretty much always available to me at any time to make sure that you as decision makers have all the information you need to feel comfortable in your recommendations to city council, and when you're about to take a final action on a project. In addition to planning staff, the city attorney's office is always present and representative meetings, and they're always available to answer your legal questions. And then finally, we typically have our development engineering staff at meetings to answer any technical issues that you might have with the project, engineering, traffic concerns, and we make sure that they know that during Planning Commission hearing weeks, they need to be available if you guys have questions and need help, so that you're as prepared as possible when Thursday night comes.

So it's our job to advise you on our planning activities, any what our ordinances are requiring, any possible changes to our ordinances and policies. We're going to be providing you information on changing state requirements that impact local land use and development decisions. And finally, our job is to really support your work by providing our planning expertise, background and information and research on projects, preparing plans and reports for you, making recommendations and answering any technical questions you have. And all this is why I think it's critical that we are available, and when you need assistance, we're going to be there for you. So the next slide is kind of a more detailed list of our responsibilities, and I can go through the whole thing, but we make sure you have an orientation session when new commissioners start.

We make sure all our meetings are legally and properly noticed. Responding to your request for information in a timely manner. Making sure you get your agenda packets in time so you have time to review them. Highlighting key issues and data in our staff reports and presentations, I think this is important. You know, we always try and bubble up any significant issues in a project is right on the first page of our staff report, so we can highlight what we think is the most important thing for you to pay attention to when a project has the potential to be controversial.

Making sure that you're all equally informed, that we're not providing information to only half of the Commission, making sure that you know that we're reviewing our applications for completeness you're going to hear a little bit about that in a little bit updating you regarding state legislation, and finally acting in a fair, ethical, and consistent manner. So the final slide for my part of the presentation talks about the relationship with the commission and staff. And it's been my experience at the city that the relationship between the city staff and the Planning Commission has been very strong, and has had a positive impact on maintaining Roseville's vision for growth and development. I've always felt that we've treated each other with mutual respect regarding our respective roles as commission and staff, and some of the ways that you as commissioners can maintain and strengthen that relationship, And again, I'm gonna repeat some of what I've already said is come to meetings having reviewed the materials that we've prepared for you. Ask us questions in advance, and let us know if you have any concerns that you wanna raise at the meeting so we can be prepared.

And we have that information, we have answers to your questions, so you feel comfortable making those decisions. Something I'd like to really highlight, if you disagree with a staff recommendation, that's perfectly reasonable and not necessarily unexpected. But when you do disagree with something that was part of our recommendation or part of our analysis, it's very important for you to state your specific reasons. This helps us to understand your rationale and determine how to review future projects. So simply voting no or stating I don't like the project isn't enough information for us to understand what we could change or how we can improve our evaluation in order to help you improve your decision making process.

So that's something that's really critical, think, is we you know, I think a couple slides ago I mentioned that it's important for you to understand the council's kind of vision and goals and priorities. It's also under it's important for us to understand you how you think about projects and how you think about evaluating projects. And if you just don't say I don't like a project or vote no without telling us why, we don't know how to evaluate the next project down the road to make sure that we bring something else to you, we're not getting in this we're not kind of falling in that same trap. And finally, clearly communicate to us what you need in order to make well informed decisions. If you need more information, if you need different information, we're always happy to make sure our staff reports and the information we give you makes you again, I want to emphasize this makes you comfortable when it's time for you

to vote on a project.

So that's kind of my overview of the role of the Planning Commissioner, our relationship with each other. So I'm gonna turn it over now. I think Lauren is next, and she's gonna talk about the planning framework along with Eric and Derek.

Hi, everybody. Alright. So my first slide covers a little bit of what Greg was just talking about, the common themes of great cities that we hear all the time. And what we get to with all of those things that are common in great cities is what Greg was talking about, having consistent vision and policy making. But how? What framework do we use to create that? So moving to the next slide. We, Roseville, are what's called a planned growth city, and you might think everyone is a planned growth city, but especially back in the day, older times, even the infill area of the city was developed on a more ad hoc basis. Right? But for most of the modern planning area, the city of Roseville has been a planned growth city.

And plenty of other cities do that now too and have for a long time, but we lean into that a lot more than some other cities do. So what does that look like for us? So we've got multiple layers of planning documents that we're going to talk to you about. The first layer, that 30,000 foot level, is the general plan, and that establishes sort of the overarching vision and goals and policies for the growth and development of the city. The next layer down is the specific plan, and that establishes much more detailed policies and plans for a specific defined area within the city.

It's sort of shown on the materials to the left. I'm gonna talk about that in a second. Next level is the development agreement, and that is a contract between the city and the landowners within the specific plan that clearly defines how that specific plan is going to be built out. And then finally, that bottom layer is the zoning ordinance, and at that point, you're getting down to parcel scale regulations on setbacks and the height of buildings and permitted uses. So these images to the left here, that top one is the transportation diagram in the circulation element of the general plan, and that's just showing you all the major roads in the city and their designations.

Like, here's a freeway. Here's an arterial road. Well, in that pop out area up there, that's the Amaruso Ranch specific plan area. You can see there are three roads shown. One of those is Westbrook.

That north south is that south is the Westbrook Boulevard will go up there, and then those two spine roads that will connect eventually to planned uses in Placer County. Below that is the transportation diagram for the Amaruzo Ranch Pacific Plan. I've circled in red the roads that were on the general plan circulation diagram, but you can see there are a lot more roads shown. That plan is now showing all of the major roads designed to connect all of the major land uses within the plan area. So this is what we're talking about in terms of how as we move down, drill down into these planning documents, how the level of detail goes up and up and up.

So having sort of established that, let's talk a little bit about the general plan. So, again, overarching framework for land use planning. Our general plan was last updated in 2020, and it is called the general plan 2035 because that's the planning horizon of our general plan, which means it contemplates growth and development through the city to the year 2035, which is when build out is anticipated to occur by in the general plan. On this slide are all of the elements, and that's the technical term for a chapter of the general plan that are included in our general plan. Where there's a star next to an element, that is an element that state law designates as mandatory.

You have to have this in your general plan because the minimum contents of a general plan are established in state law and there's a whole guidelines book about it. The ones without a star are so called optional elements. These are just elements you can include if you think it will be helpful for you to manage growth and your policy and vision. I'm not going to go into great detail on any of these, I'm just going to go into a handful of them because there are some key components of these that you will be dealing with in your regular work as a planning commissioner. So for the land use element, for example, there are three key things that you'll be seeing a lot of, which is first of all the land use map, right, that is part of the general plan.

Second is that general plan land use map, all of those land uses on it are defined in the general plan. So that's where it says that low density residential means 6.9 units to the acre or less, and it's for these kinds of uses. Right? And then the other thing in it is a land use compatibility matrix that tells you what land uses are allowed to be or are compatible next to each other. The next element I want to talk you about is circulation element, one of the most that one, it establishes, like we said, like here's a map of all the roads we expect that are existing and planned, but it also talks about transit, bikeways, pedestrian pathways.

The policy you're most likely to see most often is the city's level of service policy. That's where that lives, is in this circulation element. The city's level of service policy is that 70% of roadway intersections in the city need to operate at level of service C or better on an A to F scale. The next one you'll see some is from the safety element. That covers hazards, earthquakes, fire, floods.

So sometimes what you might see is there's a project that is related to the flood plain. The city's safety element defines the city's regulatory flood floodplain, which is based on the cumulative floodplain at build out of the city and of the surrounding areas in that watershed. This is different from the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA floodplain because that is based on existing conditions only because it's for insurance policy reasons. So it's usually more constricted, smaller floodplain. So sometimes you will see a project and you will see that our floodplain boundary is different from the FEMA floodplain boundary and that's why.

The noise element is the last one, I'll talk about housing in a minute, is the last one. The noise element identifies and assesses noise sources in the city and identifies mitigation for those, or ways to mitigate, I should say, those noise impacts. So you may see a CEQA document, California Environmental Quality Act, that references the noise standards of the general plan when it evaluates noise. So those are coming from the general plan. I have a slide on housing, the housing element, in a minute because that one is unlike any other element of the general plan.

So when it comes to general plan implementation

I'm gonna I'm gonna interrupt Lauren just for a second. I was remiss when I began my presentation. If you have any questions along the way don't feel that you have to wait until the end of the presentation to ask questions. If you have questions along the way, please interject. It's perfectly fine.

I'm going to say that too. Yes, because you may have forgotten by the time you get there or you may want an important clarification as we're going on, so yes, workshop, not just us talking to you. So if you want to ask anything, please just let me know. So on implementation, one of the major underpinnings of a general plan is in state law, the general plan is required to be internally consistent. All of the documents below it are required to be consistent with it, and all projects you approve are required to be consistent with it, which is why in many of your staff reports, you will see the finding on the screen or a finding like it.

You're finding that the proposed use or development is consistent with the City Of Roseville general plan. Most of the time, there's not a detailed analysis of this in your staff report because that layers of consistency, we've already made sure that all of our plans are consistent with each other and with the general plan. So if the project before you is consistent with the land use and all the standards of the city, then it is, of course, also consistent with the general plan. So usually if you see a more detailed evaluation from us, it's because the project includes a proposed amendment to the general plan that we need to evaluate. Speaking of amendments, question?

Question. So what's running through my head, you mentioned the plan was in 2020 through Verizon through 3035. What do we have a sense of when the the next updates

come out? To that. Yes.

Okay.

Very good. A moment. After amendments. So there are text amendments and land use map amendments. Usually, you're getting one or the other, though sometimes you may get a combo. Text amendments are usually coming from staff or from city council direction, and it's usually related to new state mandates of some kind. You know, if there's some new program, some new law, some new policy that requires some new diagram or some new text in the general plan. So you'll see some small iterative updates. Land use amendments are usually coming from applicants, and those are usually in response to some kind of change in market conditions, right? They're trying to respond to the market.

Now land use amendments do require some evaluation because, you know, again, this land use map was designed at the general plan and specifics plan level in a sort of comprehensive way to provide a balance of uses. So if we're going to change that, that could have ripple effects that we need to look at. And at the strategic goals workshop last year that Greg was talking about, City Council gave us direction that for the next couple of years, they don't want to entertain any commercial to residential conversion projects because they're concerned about that balance of land uses between commercial and residential. Now when is this updated, not in these little amendments, but as a whole? What state law says about it is that it should be updated periodically.

There's no defined timeline for this. However, since we had just updated ours in 2020, and it costs it's very intensive and costs millions of dollars to do a comprehensive update, we don't really intend to update it anytime soon. It would kind of depend on external factors, whether or not there was any kind of need to or, you know, it starts to get to ten years, and we're starting to think we need to update our policy and vision for the city. But now we talk about housing elements. And I may be relying a little bit more on my notes for this because there's some stuff I really wanna make sure to hit on, and I don't wanna miss anything.

So I'm sure you're aware over the past decade decade or so, there's been a lot of focus by the state on housing as an issue. We get significant new housing bills each year, and you've probably seen in the news periodically some city or county is getting in trouble for violating housing laws or going to the court for violating housing laws or being alleged to violate them. So we don't have time to get into this very deeply today. We could talk about this for a very long time. However, there are some things I wanna talk to you about because, you know, you look at that, the housing element is 2021 to 2029.

That's a long way off, except we will probably be initiating the very beginnings of that update next year because it takes a good amount of time to do. And you're going to see issues related to these new housing laws coming up with reasonable regularity, so I want to make sure you're familiar with them. So statute requires the housing element, starting with that first, be updated every eight years. And in fact, when we updated our general plan, we did not touch the housing element because that is on a statutory update timeline. So that didn't get updated until 2021, the next year, because that was the adoption cycle for the housing element.

And the housing element is subject to extremely detailed regulations about the contents, standards, outreach, public review, and state review. In fact, statute gives the state really broad authority, and the state is the Housing and Community Development Department, or HCD, and specifically says that if HCD says that your housing element doesn't comply, then it's presumed not to comply, and you would need to go to the court to say otherwise. So this is unlike any other element. You know, if we wanted to update our land use element, we would do that, and we don't need to send it anywhere else for some other agency's approval. So what happens if you don't don't comply?

What if your housing element is non compliant? Well, so the state can take us to court and subject us to a court takeover of our land use authority so that you and city council would no longer be making the land use decisions. We can be subject to significant daily fines, and we would be subject to what's called builder's remedy. I don't know if you've heard about that in the news, but it basically means that our zoning no longer applies. So if a housing developer wanted to propose an 80 foot tall apartment building on a site designed for neighborhood commercial, they they could do that.

So those are all dire consequences we aren't interested in, and the city is in compliance and has always been in compliance. Our housing element was adopted on time, was found to be complete, we have been on time with the implementation of all of our programs, and in fact, we have what's called pro housing designation, which is an award basically confirming that our policies support housing production. And that gives us and developers in our city extra points on grant applications. So we are in good odor, and we would like to remain that way. So moving on to housing law, what you're most likely to see is housing projects where the staff reports are going to go into how housing law affects your discretion and the findings, specific findings you would make need to make to approve or deny a housing project.

When that's the case, the staff report will explain all of that to you in detail. It'll discuss the law in question, how it affects the project, and what findings you need to make. The other thing I have on here is that depending on the housing project and on the laws in effect, the city may be restricted to imposing objective standards only, which is why we brought that project to you in the fall to adopt infill objective design standards, which council then did approve in December. There may also be laws affecting whether we can apply even certain objective design standards. These are usually for affordable housing projects, but it may even limit our ability to apply setbacks or other objective standards.

What you'll most often see is what I was saying is that there's a housing project, it's consistent with the general plan land use designation, and therefore, by law, can't be denied unless you make specific health and safety findings supported by substantial evidence. And a lot of jurisdictions that you see getting in trouble, it's because they have denied a project based on a safety impact that they didn't support with that substantial evidence. And in those cases I'm so far unaware of any case where a jurisdiction has won once that lawsuit has been brought on that basis. So I realize that sounds all very dire, but I just want to make sure you know when you see this stuff in the news and you hear this stuff going on, we are doing great. We are in in good we are set up well, and we will always let you know what laws are affecting what you can do.

Do you think as the city gets closer to full build out, it'll be harder for us to with the housing element? Or

It will. It we'd have to get into a lot of details, but when you are given when we go through the housing next housing element process, the amount of units we are told we need to be building will be based on our growth projections. So if we are anticipating less growth, and it's SACOG who does that calculation, but if we are anticipating less growth, then we will get fewer units, but it still does make it more difficult when you have less sort of undeveloped area to work with to identify where those units could go. Okay. Eric's going to get up and talk about specific plans and development agreements.

Thank you.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you. Thank you, Larry.

Good evening, commissioners.

So as

Lauren mentioned, I'm going be diving a little bit more into specific plans. So we start big picture. We're drilling down one more level to the specific plan level. Why are they important? Why do we use them? Well, a specific plan, by definition, it's a comprehensive planning document that guides the development of a defined geographic area. It includes a mix of uses such as residential, commercial, industrial, schools, parks, open space. Those are the typical land uses you'll find. Simply put, they're one of our primary tools for guiding development in a given area of the city. The first one we adopted was the Southeast Roseville specific plan that was back in 1985.

That's the purple one you see in kind of the Southeast corner there of the map. Since that time, we've basically been using them to guide the majority of city's growth and development. And the only area that's actually not within a specific plan is the gray area, the infill area there. That's because that was already built by the time we started to use this specific plan process. So what's in a specific plan?

Well, they typically include more detailed information in the general plan, so again, about land use, about traffic circulation, maybe affordable housing programs, resource management strategies, development standards, and a comprehensive infrastructure plan. Also like a general plan, they include a land use map. So again, every time you have to amend the specific plan land use map, say a developer is wanting to build something that was not originally forecasted to be built in that area, you also have to make sure that you're amending the general plan land use map for that internal consistency that we've been talking about. So drilling down a little bit more, a specific plan has to include the following components. Again, land use designations that are within the specific plan boundary.

You're going to have the major components of an infrastructure master plan, so that's streets, your sewage, your water drainage, solid waste energy, and any other essential facilities. You're going to have detailed design criteria for things like streets, landscaping, as well as for the built environment, for the commercial and residential buildings that are going to be in the specific plan area, sometimes that are uniquely tailored to that specific plan area. There's going to be standards for parks and open space conservation where applicable. And importantly, there has to be some type of a program for implementation measures. That's So going be regulations, programs, public works projects, and financing measures that would be necessary to carry out all the provisions that are outlined within the specific plan.

Unlike a general plan that has to be adopted by a resolution, a specific plan can be adopted by resolution or an ordinance or a combination of the two. And in Roseville, in particular, our specific plans are a little bit more prescriptive and detailed than other specific plans you might see in other jurisdictions in the region. So I'm going to dive into even more detail. I promise this is as granular as I'm going to get in this discussion. But this is the next slide is an important distinction that we make regarding how we allocate specifically housing units within our specific plans.

So there's two basic approaches to planning for residential capacity in a specific plan. There's the specific unit allocation method, which is what we use on the left there. Or you can use an allocation range, which is what a lot of other jurisdictions would do. It basically means that every single large lot parcel in a specific plan in the city is allocated a precise number of housing units. So an example, let's say you have a 20 acre parcel in the Amarusa Ranch specific plan area, and that has a designation of medium density residential 8.6 or MDR 8.6 is how we would shorthand that.

It means it has a housing density allowance of 8.6 units per acre. So if you do 8.6 times 20 acres in total, you would get exactly a 172 housing units allocated to that particular parcel. Other jurisdictions that use the range method would have a designation more along the lines of MDR seven to 12. And so what that does is it gives you a wider range of potential housing outcomes. You can get as few as a 160 units on a parcel.

You could get as many as 240 units on the parcel. You don't really know until a developer brings that housing application to you with a specific number, and then you're making that determination during the entitlement process. What's the advantage to using the specific unit allocation method? Simply put, it's a little bit more streamlined for a developer. So by the time the developer wants to build their project, they typically only have to provide us a subdivision map and sometimes go through design review, in most cases go through design review process.

The developer has a much more accurate forecast of the cost for their share of infrastructure improvements specifically because they know exactly how many housing units were originally allocated to that parcel and what our expectation was for the cost of infrastructure improvements related to the build out of that parcel. In other jurisdictions, depending on what that final unit outcome might be, a project might have to do additional infrastructure studies, additional CEQUA technical studies. Ultimately, the funding for maybe additional infrastructure improvements that weren't originally forecasted would fall entirely on that developer's shoulders instead of being more fairly distributed throughout the entire plan area.

So and you may be talking about this a little bit later. I'm not sure. But I just it seems like a good time to ask this question. So when a developer comes in and is maybe looking to do something that requires a shift or an amendment in in the the specific plan, all of that stuff is put into the packet for us to consider, and there's an opportunity for public hearing so that the public can weigh in as well.

Correct? Absolutely. Any time there's a change going on to one of the specific plans, one of the entitlements that is wrapped into the total package. So a developer comes to us with an affordable housing project. They're proposing x number of units on a particular parcel that didn't have that many units allocated to it in the first place.

We're making sure that we're doing those allocation, essentially swaps, or we're making sure that the number of units that were allocated on that parcel are gonna be accounted for somewhere else within the specific plan area. We're ensuring at the end of the day that we're not losing housing units because obviously we wanna remain in compliance with the state, making sure that we're, you know, meeting our fair share of the housing obligation. But also that, you know, the developer is well aware at the very get go, this is exactly what this process entails. It's a little complicated at first blush, but the developer understands and appreciates the clarity that we provide saying, this is what you're gonna have to do. You're gonna have to ship these units over here in order to make sure that we can build x number of units here, essentially.

Does that kind of answer your question? Yeah. So lastly, development agreements, and this is getting into even more kind of project specific bases, we do these for specific plans. We do these for large areas. I could do an entire lecture on development agreements, but unfortunately we don't have the time.

The very basics are as follows. A development agreement is a detailed contract between a developer and a local agency, us, that spells out the rules of development for that particular plan area or a project in very, very specific terms. An example of which you see inset there talking about who's going to be responsible for actually paying for the roads that need to be built, what timeline they need to be built by, how that's going to get phased out, the funding for all of that, what are the financing mechanisms, etcetera. So what are the benefits of a development agreement? For local agencies, for us, one of the main advantages is that it defines the financing and the phasing of those improvements.

Additionally, a lot of the time a developer will agree to maybe additional conditions. Maybe there's additional park land, school facilities, other public infrastructure improvements that we may not otherwise have been able to ask for during a typical entitlement process. And on the developer side, a huge advantage is that they lock in their entitlement with whatever regulations were affected at the time that the agreement is signed. They don't have to worry about subsequent laws, maybe negating the development standards, or their ability to build their project, which means that they can accurately financially forecast and have a slightly easier time to get things up and going. So with the obligations of both the city and the developer detailed and in writing, the project area is able to develop smoothly with hopefully fewer obstacles.

Development agreements, though, they can be amended, right, and changed?

Technically, yes. It can be fairly administratively cumbersome to do so. You need to have, obviously, the buy in from both sides to ensure that that's going to happen. And it would be a more detailed conversation for another time, but the technical answer to your question is yes.

And Eric, if I could

jump in.

Yeah, jump in.

It's not always a unit it can't be unilateral, right? So the development agreement amendment we have to consent to and we wouldn't do it unless there was some benefit to the city in that. But a developer the landowner doesn't have the ability to unilaterally amend it and change it. That's kind of the benefit to both parties is that it's going to stay the way it is and it's not very easy to change, but it is doable so long as we consent to it. And again, we wouldn't do it if there wasn't a benefit to the city in doing that.

And conversely, we're not we're not able to unilaterally change land use or or any other obligation of the landowner without a consideration on the landowner's side.

Is that something that would come before us if there was a a suggested change?

Yes.

And then

So then

there would be opportunity for the public to weigh in as well. So in other words, I'm asking, there's nothing that, like, happens behind the scenes that it all comes before the public.

The planning commission makes recommendations to the council on approval or not approval of development agreement amendments.

So it will come before you and then to the city council. Right.

So that wraps up my section. Any additional questions on specific plans, development agreements?

No? No. Thank you. All right.

Thanks, Eric. Good evening again, commissioners. Tonight, I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about zoning, everybody's favorite topic. But

first, I

just wanted to give you a little background on to how zoning came to be in The United States. You know, if you can imagine, you've probably seen a picture like this in a movie or a book from the early nineteen hundreds. This is New York City. It's kind of a tenement development. You know, many neighborhoods in this time and place were not a very nice place to live.

You had unsanitary living conditions, apartments built on top of one another. And these conditions and neighborhoods are what gave rise to building and zoning codes. So zoning at its basic level is a set of detailed land use and development regulations that really guide development in our city. Generally, it divides a jurisdiction into a set of districts or zones that provide the regulation for intensity of development, uses of land, and also design details. Zoning designation is typically assigned to every parcel in a jurisdiction, And then you have an accompanying map similar to a land use map that Lauren was describing earlier.

We have zoning maps that allow citizens, commissioners, and also staff to know where the boundaries are between zone districts and understand which uses can be permitted in those zones. The zoning ordinance is an implementing ordinance of the general plan and the zoning ordinance must also be compliant or consistent with the general plan. Zoning typically works to ensure that neighboring land uses are compatible. Residential uses, for example, are generally not compatible with heavy industrial type of uses. So typically zoning ordinances contain several different things and do have several different purposes.

The first is to divide a jurisdiction into various zones like we just discussed. Those are zones such as heavy and light industrial, commercial, residential, open space, parks, all those things we've been talking about in our specific plans. The second is that you can also divide them by design characteristics such as our downtown specific plan down here along Vernon Street and Old Town. Those districts are a little bit different in that they're divided up into what a design characteristic that we're really looking for, the intensity of development, how the building form is supposed to be. So a little bit different way of organizing districts downtown here.

Zoning ordinance also lists permitted uses within each designation. They provide for conditional and accessory uses. They also establish development standards, which we're going to talk about a little bit more, such as setbacks, building height, lot coverage, parking standards, those kind of things. And they also provide for administrative procedures for processing permits such as variances, conditional use permits, design review, and also zone changes. First, just wanted to talk to you a little bit about the permitted uses versus a conditional use.

A permitted use is allowed by Wright. Those are allowed in the zoning district and subject to the restrictions of that district, including any requirements for design review. However, these uses that are allowed by Wright really leaves the planning commission and city staff. Our review is really limited in scope to just the design of the project. So when you have something that's permitted by right, there's not a lot of discretion that we have.

Conditionally permitted, those we have a little bit more discretion over the particular use in a zone, showing that use will comply with all the conditions and standards of the zoning ordinance and would be authorized through a conditional use permit or CUP. Typical zoning ordinance allows the city or county to grant a conditional use permit when the proposed use is in the interest of the public and is not contrary to public health, safety, or welfare. Common conditions of approval include limited hours of operations, security measures, noise mitigation, additional landscaping requirements, parking requirements. All those kind of things are conditions which could be placed on a conditional use permit to really make sure it's compatible with the surrounding land uses.

Would you be able to give an example of security measures for a conditional use?

Yeah. For instance, if we had a gas station being located on a parcel and we wanted to limit the hours of operation or video surveillance type of requirements, I know other jurisdictions tend to use that more frequently like Sacramento, Sacramento County, but we have looked at some of those measures for uses such as that where there would be a security concern. Yeah. So next slide. Some questions to ask when reviewing conditional use permits.

We always go back to the general plan. Is the proposed project consistent with our general plan policies? Because that is one of the required findings you need to make. We also want to make sure the site's appropriate for the proposed use. For an example, if we go back to the gas station use, we do require a conditional use permit to locate adjacent to a residential zone.

So we want to make sure that lighting, signage, hours of operation are all consistent for that make sure that that gas station would be compatible with the surrounding residential uses. So those kind of items are things we should be looking at. Also just looking at any environmental effects going back to the gas station example. If we had that next to sensitive residential uses we'd want to make sure that air quality impacts are looked at. So we do what's called a health risk assessment to analyze that.

So those are the kind of questions that we need to be asking when we're looking at conditional use permits. Most

of the projects that come through are conditional use permits and permitted. What would be an example of the principally permitted? And how often do you see those, The ones that have less Yeah. Latitudes?

So those type of applications would primarily be like your major project permits or a design review type of applications where we have the use that's allowed on the site. Really, we're just looking at the specific design considerations like driveway access points, traffic in and out of the site, parking requirements, and those kind of things.

So an example of that might be if you have a community commercial zoned property and land use, you have a grocery store, that's principally permitted use and community commercial zoning or retail in general is principally permitted use. So the use itself is principally permitted. But to Derek's point, we're looking at the design of the building, the placement of the building, lighting. Parking lot layout, interior circulation, lighting, all of those things we're looking at. As opposed to and you could have in a shopping center a grocery store and a gas station. Well, the gas station component or a fast food component, if it's adjacent to residential, would be subject to a conditional use permit.

For just that element of the project. Correct.

Yeah. Mhmm. Any other questions? Yeah.

Once the city gives or awards CUP, does it expire or until that establishment maybe violates the conditions then

the CUP takes it?

Yeah. That's a good question. So conditional use permits actually run with the land. So as long as that use continues to operate under the parameters of the permit, it would run indefinitely. But there are options to review. If they were out of compliance with the permit, we could bring that back to the Planning Commission to review. So there are kind of off ramps for for reviewing conditional use permits.

Thank you.

So then what I was gonna ask then is there's a business that runs and it has its conditional use permit. They decide they're gonna shut the business, sell the land to to some or sell the building to some other use. If it's not in compliance with the conditional use permit, they have to come back and and re and get a different conditional use permit.

Yeah. In in essence, the permit does run with the land, but they need to be in compliance with all the conditions of So we would have to basically initiate a proceeding where we would say, hey, you know, we've received complaints about this particular They're not operating in accordance with their approved plan. Commission, do you agree that, you know, we need to modify the condition or do we need to impose other things? So it would have to be something like a compliance review. Okay. Yeah. I don't know. Anything to add to that?

Well, I was going to ask, Cliff, is your question about maybe the subsequent user of the site wanting to

Yeah.

Do the previous. So in that case, right, you've got maybe another gas station where you come in and operate. For that tomorrow. They could potentially operate under the same conditions like Derek mentioned that were outlined in the original conditional use permit. So that's gonna pertain to things like hours of operation, lighting standards, performance standards, things like that. What you'll see often in

that case is that no come

back for conditions, minimum modifications. Mhmm.

And maybe amend some of those conditions of approval to better fit their operational standards within, obviously, the purview of the hearing body.

And another distinction is if that use has to operate continuously, and if there's a break of more than six months of Okay. Of continuous operation, then that conditional use permit becomes null and void. They'd have to come in for a new one.

Okay.

So if the gas station wanted to exempt for example, add a fast food outlet to that gas station, they'd have to get a new

conditional modification.

Get a modification.

Correct.

Any expansion of the conditional use triggers that. So Right. And what triggers that expansion is obviously going to vary on a case by case basis, but it could be something like that. And so it's that even though it's still being used as a gas station, if they expand that use to something beyond that, more than that, they add another layer of canopies or something like that, that could trigger that as well.

Okay. Increase the number of pumps. It's also important

to note that conditional use permits and modifications to conditional use permits always require planning commission approval. So there are some entitlements, design review permits, for instance, even major project permit modifications that can be modified at administrative level via staff. But when it comes to a conditional use permit, mods and the original conditional use permit are planning commission level entitlements only. Okay. There's no staff action.

K. I think that covers conditional use permits. So we'll move along to special zoning situations. Here, just wanted to highlight a couple. One is a variance. We talked a little bit about that. Greg mentioned it, I think. But this is a limited waiver of zoning ordinance standards for use that's already permitted in the zone. So variances are usually considered when the physical characteristics of a property, such as the size, shape, topography, etcetera, pose a challenge that make it near impossible or impossible to fulfill those basic zoning requirements. For example, a very small or oddly shaped parcel may need a variance for a setback requirement in order to be developed on.

A variance can only be granted in special cases where the strict application of the zoning regulations deprive the owner of the uses enjoyed by nearby properties. So the variance should not grant a special privilege to this particular property. In addition, economic hardship alone is not justification for approval of a variance. And I did put an example here on the slide of a recent variance application that we approved. This was in the Riverside area, kind of the Lower Riverside area.

It's an older area of town where you have various different zonings and property characteristics. In this particular case, they were looking for a reduction in the side yard setback for a proposed addition. And in this property, the existing home already had the reduced setback, and other homes in the nearby area had similar setbacks. So we were able to grant the variance in this case because of the unique circumstances of the area. Also, kind of wanted to touch on nonconforming uses or legal nonconforming uses.

These are grandfathered, a lot of times referred to as grandfathered uses. These are uses that were in place prior to the adoption of the zoning code and they are considered legal and permitted to continue to operate that use as long as they do not expand that nonconforming situation. Illegal conversely, illegal nonconforming uses that were built after the zoning ordinance requirements or after any amendments that have taken place, those are obviously illegal and not allowed to continue.

Yeah. An example of illegal grandfather's use? Yeah.

For instance, I think, you know, we have a lot of I think

Lambert's funeral home, Derek, I think.

Lambert's funeral home. There's a lot of different situations where we have older uses such as

guess Hotmails.

Grocery. Was the question legal nonconforming?

Or Yes.

Exam is

there John Adams Academy that you Oh,

there you go.

Twice last year was a was a was a school located in the business professional zone. And when it was originally put in, being a charter school, was considered public. And in that particular in the business professional zone at the time, private schools were not allowed in business professional, whereas public schools were allowed. In 2020, we amended the zoning ordinance to combine public and private schools into one category, and that made made the business professional zone doesn't allow either public or private schools. Obviously, a school district with a school board, they can they can sue they can they're not required to comply with they can make findings and not and are not required to comply with city zoning ordinances so they can build schools anywhere they want, really.

John Adams Academy would still have to comply with the city zoning ordinance. So by the fact that schools are no longer allowed in the business professional zone, when they came to expand both last June and then this past December, they needed a conditional use permit to expand their legal nonconforming use. Because before we made that zoning ordinance amendment, they were they were an allowed use. We made the zoning ordinance amendment. They weren't an allowed use, but they were considered legal nonconforming. Grandfathered in. Grandfathered in. Exactly.

And I think, another example I just thought of is there's several different auto sales, uses kind of in our downtown area. And prior to the downtown code being adopted, that was a permitted use. And so after the code was adopted, those uses have continued. There's an automotive sales business at the corner of Washington And Maine. And so that has been there for decades. And so those are the type of things where you have these kind of remnant uses that predate the ordinance that was put in place. That's kind of what we mean by the grandfathered uses. So

And similar to the conditional use permit, I mentioned that six month break. If there's a six month break in that legal nonconforming use where they're not conducting that use for a period of six months or more, they lose their legal nonconforming status. It's no longer permitted. If they

restart have to actually initiate a proceeding Right. Right. Yeah. Mhmm. To do that. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions on grandfathered uses or variances? Okay. I'll move all along to some of the limitations we have in our zoning ordinance. Statutory limitations on zoning controls. We have lots of state regulations, as Lauren kinda mentioned to you, with housing law. And that's what a lot of a lot of this is, geared towards. You know, the first one I wanted to kind of touch on were the accessory dwelling units, ADUs or granny flats.

That's a picture of kind of a granny flat. We're probably all familiar with that. These qualifying second unit applications are not subject to discretionary review by the city. We're very limited in what we can look at. The setbacks are kind of established by state law for detached accessory dwelling units.

We're only really allowed to look at the minimum facilities within the structures. And so we don't have a lot of discretion over ADUs. In addition, we have density bonus laws that kind of tie in with the affordable housing component that Lauren was talking about earlier. So local agencies must approve development density bonuses when you have residential development that is a level 25% higher than the zoning ordinance when the developer agrees to make a 25% of the pre bonus units affordable to low income households. And this is kind of a sliding scale.

So the more affordability a project provides, the more of a density bonus they receive from the city per state law. So so we're very limited in in that too. And not only can they ask for a density bonus, but they can also ask for relief from other city requirements such as setbacks, building height, things like that to make the affordable housing project more easily built. So next, I just wanna touch on group homes and childcare facilities. We're limited, in the way that we review, daycare facilities and also care homes for six or fewer residents within those facilities, those are considered a single family home, and they can locate it in single family or multifamily type of zones.

In addition, residential facilities serving six or more with a day care facility, we used to be able to require a discretionary permit and administrative permit for large family day cares, but the state law has changed in that regard. So now those are looked at as single family homes as well. And those go up to, I believe, 14 children within the day care home. And then the last item to touch on is just traditional and supportive housing. These are considered a residential use of the property again and subject only to the restrictions that apply to other residential dwellings in the same type of zone.

What's an example of transitional and supportive housing?

Supportive housing. You could have, like, people that are coming out of substance abuse issues, things like that, transitioning back into, you know, regular living situations.

Yep. So the city has no ability to say this would not be appropriate in this area?

If if there are fewer than fewer than six

More than six residents.

Residents. We don't have a lot of discretion over those. So

And the reason the the reason we don't the state has taken away the city's, ability to regulate those is because every city would heavily regulate those, and they would have a hard time locating anywhere. So there was a a determination, think it's probably in the eighties or '9 or early nineties at least, that the local governments

Treat those.

Shouldn't shouldn't have the ability to regulate those because they Do do state

regulations have anything about distances from schools or anything like that?

For that use?

They they do have some proximity regulations for some of those uses that they they they can't they can't be located a certain distance from each other. Yeah. So they do have over concentration regulations. I don't know about schools necessarily, but typically they they try not to they they don't allow two to be located within 500 feet of each other. So you can't have multiple homes next to each other. They try and spread it out. Yeah.

I have a question regarding ADUs. Sure. I know that the city doesn't have much control over ADUs apart from setbacks and stuff like that. Can residents still request variances if they can't meet the setback requirements, if it's an obvious shaped site for example?

Well they have to meet state law with regards to an accessory dwelling unit that's separated from the home. They would have to meet there's a four foot setback from the side and rear property lines. And then they have to meet front yard setbacks, I believe, as well. So I don't believe there's a process for them getting a variance. In certain circumstances, do we are limited in what we can look at, but I don't believe there's a variance process for that.

All there is is there's something called a mandatory minimum ADU. If applying all of your standards would mean you can't have at least an 800 square foot detached ADU, then you have to provide some flexibility. But it's not a variance process. That's just enshrined in the state law.

Okay. So moving along, development standards. So we have standards for residential, projects. Those include things we've already talked about, setbacks, lot coverage, height, landscaping, parking. We have design review for medium density projects.

And then we also, for multifamily projects, require design review. And we really rely on the community design guidelines for multifamily projects as well as commercial projects. So the zoning ordinance doesn't have a lot of standards for commercial zones. We really rely on the flexibility for the community design guidelines and specific plans in looking at those because we want to cite the use depending on the particular piece of property and looking at the constraints of that and how, you know, we can best fit commercial project on a site. So Yeah.

Actually, have a question. I'm kind of asking this so that it's out there for the public to know. But when when somebody comes in and they are they have a project that is meeting the development standards, we are not in a position where we might like the project, we might not like the project, we might agree with the neighborhood that doesn't really want something to happen. Some somebody is putting an addition onto their home that the neighborhood doesn't like. As long as they're meeting the development standards, we're pretty much need to give grant approval to that, correct?

Correct. Yeah, right. So for design review type of applications, you're really limited to how the project fits in with neighborhood and the required findings, making sure that there's no impacts on infrastructure, those kind of things. For the other type of permits that we talked about earlier, conditional use permits, there is a little more discretion. But yes, you're correct.

I ask that because it just has come up in various applications.

Kind of finishing off this slide, just wanted to kind of talk a little bit about the difference between the building code and the zoning code. It can seem like a lot of times they're similar and there's a lot of overlap. But in essence, the building code is established at the state level. They're looking at items such as construction, the use of materials, electrical, plumbing, and heating specification, those kind of things. Whereas in the zoning ordinance, have a lot more discretion over at the local level on how we implement our zoning requirements.

We're looking at land use in terms of the use intensity and location of land uses. Also, there's just a lot more flexibility we have with the zoning requirements versus the building code, so I just wanted to mention that. And last, the last slide I have here is the rezone policies. The city does have an adopted set of rezone policies for nonresidential uses. And I believe later this year, we're gonna be seeing an update to that nonresidential set of guidelines that we have.

But I want to talk more holistically about the rezone questions we should be asking and some of the items we should be looking at when you see these applications coming before you. And so I think, you know, we're looking at kind of how does the rezone really relate to the surrounding land uses and the relationship to the community as a whole. Is it consistent with the general plan? Again, going back to that universal question we kind of always ask, is it consistent with the general plan policies? Is it incompatible with established land use patterns?

Would their proposed change alter the population densities, increasing the load on public facilities such as schools, sewers, streets, those kind of things? Also, have we do we have any basic land use conditions that have changed since the original code was adopted or the original zoning was adopted on the property? For instance, we've been seeing a lot of changes in the retail development, retail business community over the last several years with online shopping, right? Everybody uses Amazon and whatnot. So how does that play into our commercial land uses and what is appropriate?

Those are kind of things that we're seeing as trends coming along. The last thing I think we need to consider when we're looking at rezones, how will the change adversely affect any of the neighborhood living conditions? Will traffic patterns be impacted? Will we have development of adjacent properties be impacted? We need to think about the surrounding properties, and will this change in land use affect the neighboring parcel.

For instance, when we talk to industrial large scale users, we hear from them a lot that when you place a sensitive use next to an industrial area such as allowing a school or a church through a conditional use permit to come into that zone, it really affects the way that they do business for those large scale industrial users. So that's something to consider when we're thinking about rezones. There's all these different things at play that we need to be thinking about. So with that, I'm gonna end my part of the presentation. Yeah.

So the brain power in here, are you guys the ones that analyze this and say, yes, it's a good idea and no, it's not?

So ultimately, we're providing a recommendation to the planning commission to make the decision because you are the impartial body. We try to provide informed evaluation against all of the policies that we have in the general plan, any other development agreements, specific plans, all of those kind of things we evaluate a rezone against and then make a recommendation to you. But ultimately, the Planning Commission, is the recommending body to the city council to to make that that decision.

So you give us the the pros and the cons and then

along with the recommendation. Yeah.

And you'll very rarely see a situation, I mean it happens very, very rarely, where something would be before you and it isn't before you on the recommendation of staff that we believe you can make the findings that you should approve it. Right? So when an item comes before you it's because at the staff level everything has been analyzed and they believe all the findings can be made for you to be able to approve that project. And like I said there are very I can think of maybe once or twice that we've had a situation where someone has come before you and we're recommending you deny it, you know. But generally speaking,

when it

comes before you it's because staff has believes based on their analysis that you can meet the findings and you can make approvals.

When we don't when we believe we can't make the findings, we're pretty successful in having the applicant withdraw their project I was going rather than come before the commission and have a denial recommendation or be denied. We have had we have had the planning commission deny a project for a conditional use permit or excuse me, for a design review permit, and we have had the planning commission make a recommendation to to the city council to not to not support a rezone. And in both those cases, staff also was recommending to deny the request. So it's rare because most of the time when we're not when we don't support something, the applicant will withdraw their project and decide to spend their money more wisely in another pursuit.

But in the cases that they don't, we're duty bound to bring it forward. And there are permit streamlining requirements, depending on the entitlement, that we are obligated to bring it forward for consideration.

All right. Thank you for your time. I'm going turn it over to Sean. He's going to talk to you about the subdivision act.

Thank you.

That was a thrilling part.

Good evening. So I'm going to finish out the planning framework section of our presentation with a few slides about the subdivision map act.

We knew this.

It's actually a California state law, but we also have the subdivision title 18 of our municipal code related subdivisions so they kinda tie together. It's an important thing that we look at. So the first California mapping laws were established in 1893, and the current map act was enacted in 1974. Prior to 1893, mapping was often done without regard to topography, community needs, community resources. And I included this original plan of the town of Roseville here just to show you the lack of detail that was included in some of those original plans.

And just for reference, we're sitting right now where that yellow star is. And keen observers will note that this is not really how Roseville looks at all today, but it's just that original plan they did when they first built the railroad. So the purpose of the MACP Act is to encourage and facilitate orderly community development, coordinate planning with the established community pattern, and ensure proper improvements are installed. And it does this by vesting local governments such as us with the power to regulate and control the design improvements of subdivisions and prohibits the sale, lease financing, or improvement of any parcel without going through that public review process and getting recorded. So the MAP Act is a 200 page book with many nuances, but in general, mapping is done in two stages.

A tentative map is submitted during planning entitlement review, and it's when we consider things like the number and size of lots and other features I call out here, such as the grading elevations in relation to each other as well as surrounding properties, utility connections, walls, other features like that. And then a tentative map is either brought here to the planning commission or to the planning manager for approval depending on the scope. And after approval of that tentative map, the property owner can go has the right to go to the final map process with our engineering division. As you can see, they're no longer looking at all that contextual information that's all been discussed during the tentative map period. They're really just looking at the details of property dimensions down to a hundredth of a foot, as well as the degrees of curved lines and things like that.

So this is an example of the tentative map stage before they even knew what the street would be called to the final map that got recorded with the the county assessor county recorder. Another important distinction in the Map Act and city code is the difference between a tentative parcel map versus a tentative subdivision map. The parcel map is for four fewer lots, subdivision map for five or more lots generally. In the parcel map example on the left, a commercial lot was proposed to be subdivided into two parcels. That tentative parcel map considers all of the same things we looked at on the previous slide.

But due to its smaller scale, it can be approved by the planning manager at a staff level. And the tentative subdivision map, such as the example on the right here from the Amarusa Ranch specific plan, which is actually unintentionally the area that Lauren was pointing out earlier with Westbrook on the right third of the map. And this is kind of the final look of that thing that was originally in the general plan, then the specific plan, and then mapped out here through the tentative subdivision map process. And that one created 300 single family lots, parks, streets, other uses like that. And due to the complexity of these types of projects, all subdivision maps must be approved by the Planning Commission.

Go to the next slide. So then we'll go into section about application review. Now that we laid out the framework, we'll go over the application review process that happens at staff level, give you a little idea of how the sausage was made before it becomes brought before the commission. So the city went to 100% electronic plan review in 2018. So all applications are submitted in the online permitting services portal here or OPS.

During application intake, we make sure we have all the documents we'll need to review, such as background documents like owner signature approvals, billing agreements, title reports, as well as the actual project materials that will eventually be brought before the commission, such as site plans, grading plans or other operations descriptions for a COP, for example. Once we have all the materials and most importantly, the submittal fees are paid, we distribute the project for review. On the right is a screenshot from our back end project management program, Acela, where we're deciding who to route a particular project to. We always have internal reviewers, which for a full service city like Roseville includes many departments, building, engineering, fire, electric parks. They're all within the city.

And then we route to external reviewers such as PG and E, local tribes, school districts that may have an interest or even jurisdiction over portions of the project. And then every project has a three week initial review, and all sub subsequent submittals come in for a two week review. Often, the project will go three or more review cycles before it is in a state that staff can support and bring to you before the planning commission. So that's when we're doing all of our staff review. And then during this planning staff review period, we consider whether a project meets all of those planning documents we discussed before, the general plan, specific plan, zoning ordinance, community design guidelines to to make sure we can make the findings for approval for any particular entitlement.

And next, Kenny will come up to discuss plan review in more detail. Thanks. Unless you have any questions, though.

I have a quick question and maybe a very general question. I don't know if you can answer. What are is there an average for submitting an application for fees for the city?

Fees, it really depends

on administrative permits.

Was one of our smaller permits. It's around 2,000. You have development agreements, specific planning, and all that could be up in

the tens of thousands.

Time and materials for, that's full cost. So it's the actual labor time, and overhead that we spend processing a project. We bill that on an hourly basis.

We do an estimated deposit that we take in, and we bill our actual time. They can either have to pay us more money or we give money back

to pay.

Yes. Staff time is. Alright.

Good evening, commissioners. I'll be touching on what staff during looks for when reviewing project plans. This is an example of a site plan for the Plaza Blue Oaks Commercial Center, which provides a bird's eye view of the project. We review the overall building layout and design, looking at whether buildings are laid out sensibly and if they interact with the street. For example, here, the buildings are situated along the street along Blue Oaks Boulevard with parking areas located away from the frontage to minimize views of parked cars.

If a site has existing oak trees such as this one, we work with the applicant to preserve as many oak trees as possible. We ensure zoning ordinance parking requirements are met. And if the site meets vehicle access and circulation requirements, providing adequate turning radii for emergency response vehicles. We also look at whether a project promotes walkability and provide sufficient pedestrian access, and if it provides access to nearby transit stops and other alternative modes of transportation. And, also, we look at whether loading areas and trash enclosures are screened from view, and does the project provide adequate storm water management such as bioretention basins.

Overall, projects should further the goals of the general plan and contribute to the development of complete and integrated neighborhoods. The building design and architecture is reviewed against the community design guidelines and any applicable specific plan design guidelines. Questions to ask are whether the scale and mass of new structures are compatible with, but not necessarily the same as surrounding structures. Are the facades varied and interesting and carefully detailed, especially at the pedestrian level? Are high quality long lasting materials used such as tiles, stone, stucco, or wood?

Does the roof design add to the buildings and conceal roof mounted equipment? For example, in this project, the building is well articulated through the use of building projections and recesses, trellises, and awnings. The main building entry areas are defined by forward presentation, variation in the roofline, and aluminum storefront windows. The building parapets are tall enough to adequately conceal roof mounted equipment, and there is a mix of colors and high quality materials used to help create visual interest. We also require preliminary landscape plan, and this is an example of one for an apartment project.

Staff pays particular attention to how focal areas are treated such as street corners and site and building entrances. We verify whether landscape setbacks are provided along roadways as required by specific plans. So for example, this project was required by the creek view specific plan to have a 50 foot landscape setback along Blue Oaks Boulevard. Also, the community design guidelines require parking lots, to be shaded at least 50% by trees, so landscape plans should include shading calculations. Other things to consider include whether local conditions are taken into account, whether landscape plan complements the architecture, if the planners are large enough for their intended plant material, and are elements like pavers, benches, fountains, and stamped concrete incorporated.

Projects are also required to provide a lighting or a photometric plan, which identifies illumination levels throughout the site. The community design guidelines establish minimum illumination levels in the drive aisles, parking areas, entry driveways, and pedestrian walkways. Lights should be aesthetically pleasing, compatible with the building design, and must be shielded from shining onto adjacent properties or buildings. So for housing related projects, we look for a variety of housing types, densities, prices, and rents. We look at whether there are any affordable units being provided.

For example, a specific plan will designate some parcels as affordable, and so they are is required to buy a certain number of affordable units. Lastly, if the project includes higher density units, are they organized around usable common space? Now signs are not approved at the design review level, but instead we do place a standard condition approval requiring a separate sign permit through the building division. Sign permits are reviewed for consistency with the city's sign ordinance. And what does happen during the design re stage is determining whether a master sign program or a planned sign permit program as we call it is appropriate.

A PSPP will establish specific sign criteria to ensure consistency among building complexes shop such as a shopping center. A PSPP is a separate entitlement and is typically approved administratively unless a public hearing is requested. Signs should complement the building architecture and be in proper scale to the site and buildings. Illumination styles are also considered, and we typically prohibit illumination if signs are directly facing residential uses. And a PSPP must be consistent with the sign ordinance unless a sign exception is requested for unique circumstances.

So in regards to citizen involvement, we have several different resources we use for community outreach. Within the past year, we have implemented a new requirement for projects requiring a public hearing where the applicant is required to post a sign on the actual project site notifying the public of the proposed project. This sign is required in order for us to consider the application as complete. Staff also utilizes the Roseville Coalition of Neighborhood Association's website to post all of our planning notices, and this website is a great resource for residents and can be filtered by neighborhood association. The types of notices include early project notifications, which are posted whenever we receive a new application.

It allows the public to request more information on the project or even request a neighborhood meeting. Also for projects that do have potential to attract a lot of public interest, staff will preemptively require the applicant to hold a neighborhood meeting prior to us holding any public hearings. This allows the applicant and city staff to consider any public input in the early stages into the design of project. Another resource we have is the city's projects of interest website, which showcases projects that may have a lot of public interest. And lastly, as required by the Brown Act, public hearing notices are published in the Roseville Press Tribune, and we also send them to a 300 foot radius of the project site, and we post them on the Arcona website.

And we have a similar process for sequent notices for public review period of an environmental document where they're mailed to a 300 foot radius and posted on the Arcona website.

Can I ask a question? Yes. Because this has come up from time to time. At a neighborhood meeting, should we be identifying ourselves? Or what what what's the best practice for a commissioner who wants to go to a neighborhood meeting and hear what's going on, which ultimately could influence how we're making decisions?

So that's an excellent question. And I think part of it kind depends on what your intention is when you go to the neighborhood meeting. Right? You're a citizen like any other citizen. You have the right to partake in any neighborhood meeting like any other citizen. If you're going to that neighborhood meeting and you're intending to go as a planning commissioner, right, then I wouldn't hide the fact that you're a planning commissioner. But if you're going to that meeting and you're there to listen and you're there to hear, you're entitled to do that. You don't have to stand on the pulpit and tell everybody that you're a planning commissioner. But at the same time, like we've talked about being fair and impartial, it's good to go, it's good to inform yourself, always keep your mind open when it actually comes time to the final decision. So I would say if you're going to go to one of those, make sure you listen, but you're still keeping that impartiality and you're still keeping your mind open.

But again, it really kind of depends on what your intent is in going. And there isn't an obligation to announce yourself as a planning commissioner, especially if you're there just to listen as a as a citizen to that. But there's, you know, there's no reason to hide that.

I guess I guess I wanna take it just a little bit further and ask because sometimes the the neighborhood meetings then there would be opportunity for people to weigh in on questions and comments. And if you wanted to to offer some sort of comment to the neighborhood, is it would it be good practice to identify yourself?

Yeah. I mean, you're gonna do that, I think that's fine. And again, keep that comment to the point of maybe informing Right. About process, whatever without identifying how you're gonna vote or anything like that. But yeah, think that's absolutely appropriate. And you know, it's also appropriate if you're at one of those meetings and someone starts to pressure you. Well, what do you feel about this? And it's completely acceptable to say in that moment, I have to be impartial. I'm here to listen. I'm here to hear what has to be said, but I haven't made my mind up yet, and I'm not going to make my mind up until we get to the final hearing on this and whatever. And it's completely acceptable to kind of, you know, not answer those kinds of questions when they're posed to you.

I would also

chime in, Joe, that it's typical for staff to attend those meetings as well, and we try and portray what we hear in those meetings in our staff report. And I think it's something that we didn't talk about, but it's important for you as commissioners. If you hear information that when you come to the deliberation, to the public hearing, and there's there's information that you've been provided either through a community meeting, a one on one meeting with the developer or applicant that we don't have that isn't recorded in the staff report or presented in the public testimony or our presentation, you should you should disclose that to the other planning commissioners that, you know, there was this concern. For instance, if there was a concern about right turn movements at a corner, and we didn't include that in our staff report, and nobody got up to speak about it, but you heard about it and you're thinking about that as as something that that is affecting your deliberation. I think it would be appropriate for you to disclose that that at this neighborhood meeting, somebody brought up this issue that I haven't heard anybody address.

Okay. Or or, you know, odds are that we're gonna catch everything. Odds are that that there's not gonna be a a critical issue on a project that we're gonna miss in the staff report or our presentation. But I think that's important as well is that you make sure that that your fellow commissioners that you don't that you don't think that there's some issue out there that's concerning to you that you that you don't think has been presented to your fellow commissioners.

Which I think also I wanna ask about is from time to time that we may get a project that comes before us, and, I may feel the need to to go out and just look at the land or look at the Yeah. The the property. And if if there's things that I see there that are influencing how I'm going to decide, that's something that I should disclose during the hearing process.

And I will reiterate part of my presentation is that would be wonderful if you do that to let us know that I was out at the site, I saw something, because it's possible we can address it. If you see something or if you have a question, or if you hear something that you think the rest of your commissioners haven't heard, and you let us know ahead of time, we can always talk about that in the presentation. And we can put that issue in our presentation. If it's not in the staff report, we can put that in the presentation. And then you don't necessarily have to disclose that because, you know, we disclose that for you so that everybody is acting on the same information. Okay. Thank you.

And ultimately, the point of a public hearing is transparency.

Yes. Yeah.

And it doesn't hurt to bring, you know, those questions or that information It to certainly enlightens the conversation.

Yeah.

Okay. And on that note, public hearings do provide a forum for public comments. It's another avenue for citizen involvement. And as planning commissioner, after consideration of public comment, you should be able to answer the following questions in the affirmative, including whether the proposal is consistent with the general plan, does it meet zoning and subdivision requirements, are the environmental impacts reduced or eliminated by mitigation measures, or are there overriding considerations? And lastly, is the commission's decision supported by findings of fact based on substantial evidence in the record. And so that concludes my portion of the presentation. I will hand it over to Jessica. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Now it's time for everybody's favorites, the California Environmental Quality Act, also known as CEQA. So all projects requiring discretionary action by a decision making body, such as this planning commission or the city council, require some kind of CEQA action. Though the actions that need to be taken vary, and we can talk about those options in a moment. But going back to the beginning, one of the key purposes of CEQA to keep in mind is disclosure.

Disclosure to the decision makers and to the public and public agencies. It is intended to provide an objective analysis of the potential for impacts on the physical environment that may result from a project. It's not to pass judgment on the merits of a project, whether it's good or bad. It's to provide the decision makers information about what could possibly happen to the environment if a project is approved so that you can take that into consideration when making your, vote on whether or not to approve the project or to recommend approval to the city council. CEQA also requires that project proponents make reasonable efforts to reduce mitigation potential reduce and mitigate potential impacts where possible.

When mitigation is not possible, the decision makers are made aware of that so that you can acknowledge that the benefits of the project outweigh the impacts. When analyzing a project, we need to first determine if it is considered to be a project as defined by CEQA. Of course it's a project, it's here before you, but CEQA has a very specific definition of what that is. A project, CEQA determines that a project is a discretionary action taken by the public agency. If there is no discretion, there is no project.

Ministerial actions are not considered to be projects. A project must also have a direct and reasonably foreseeable indirect impact on the environment. Once the action is determined to be a project as defined by CEQA, we then need to determine the level of CEQA required to address it, and there are several paths available, which we'll discuss in the next slide. So this is a very simplified flowchart. We have to ask ourselves a few questions to determine which CEQUA path is needed.

The first question, which we use a lot here in the city of Roseville, is whether or not the project has already been analyzed in a prior CEQA document. This is referred to in CEQA as subsequent review and also streamlining, which has been mentioned before. We see this all the time for projects located in our specific plan areas, and it's one of the things that makes Roseville able to really build housing and projects very quickly because we don't have to go through this large sequel process each and every time a project comes forward because so much of it is already done. And if it addressed in a prior document, there are a few paths that we can take depending on what that project what the project is being proposed, and we'll talk about those in more detail in just a minute. But if we move on to the next section, which is exemption, we have to determine if the project has not been identified in an existing CEQA document, is it exempt?

By this, there are certain types of projects that the state considers to be exempt from CEQA, and they do not require a full in-depth analysis. For these projects, we will prepare what's called a Notice of exemption or an NOE, which would be included in your hearing packet if applicable, with some of the information about why the project qualifies for this exemption. If the project has not already been covered by an existing CEQA document and it is not exempt, it will then need to be used analyzed using one of the three different document types listed here, and that would be a negative declaration, which is also referred to as a neg deck or ND mitigated negative declaration, also called an MND. And I'm trying to there's a lot of acronyms that fly around, so I want to try to help familiarize in case we slip into those sometimes. And there's also an environmental impact report or an EIR.

The initial study is not the CEQA document itself, but it is the tool. Yes?

Can we go back a step for a Could you give an example of an exemption?

I have a slide coming up where we're gonna talk about the the exemptions, and all of these we're gonna go into more detail. I'm just, trying to show you where the different paths that we take. So the, initial study, which is also called an IS, is a checklist document that addresses a series of questions to determine which of these three documents you're going to prepare. Though it is required to come to the negative declaration or mitigated negative declaration conclusion, It is optional for the environmental impact report. There are some projects that we know are just they're going to be very large and very likely have significant impacts, so sometimes that skip is stepped.

Though it can be very useful to help scope a project to determine, to help facilitate that, environmental impact report. And now we'll talk about them in more detail. Okay. So next slide, please. So subsequent review or the projects that are previously analyzed.

For those projects, we ask ourselves the following question: Is the project being proposed different from the assumptions that were evaluated for that area in the prior document? If the answer if the project is the same, you can rely on the same CEQA document, and no additional CEQA evaluation is needed. If there are slight changes that have been made to the assumptions, but those changes do not change the outcome of the analysis, result in greater impacts, or more mitigation, then you can prepare what's called an addendum. If there are major changes that have been made to the project or major change in conditions that has occurred that may result in new or increased impacts or additional mitigation, then you must then you may prepare either a subsequent or supplemental ERR. We're not going go into the differences because they're very nuanced, or you can just start all over.

And now we'll go to exemptions.

So is this where lawsuits begin? Yes. If

they don't like it. The whole thing. That's why I'm going to talk a lot on that. We'll talk a little bit about the, statutes of limitations, there's very prescribed procedures that we have to follow in terms of, public review periods and what what we can and can't do with the exemptions because, yes, any it's CEQA has a very low barrier to entry for litigation. So that's one of the reasons that we tend to focus on it a lot.

And we'll if you have any other questions moving along, something you see have something specific, free to ask. Okay. So we'll talk about, the exemptions. So a project may be exempt from CEQA under state law or regulations for policy reasons. For example, infill housing projects that meet certain conditions do not require environmental review.

Usually staff will determine when an exemption applies. Sometimes they ask me, but it will always be identified and you'll always be told what the exemption is and why the project qualifies for that exemption. There are two types of exemptions, statutory and categorical. Statutory exemptions are created by the legislature and are written directly into state law. This is one of the areas where we've seen the legislature making a lot of moves, recently.

In 2025, we saw some new exemptions statutory exemptions created for infill projects and community serving and certain types of infrastructure projects through Assembly Bill one thirty and Senate Bill one thirty one. Statutory exemptions are absolute and fully exempt from CEQA. There are no exceptions, no criteria. If it's exempt, it's exempt. It's much more difficult to challenge.

Now categorical exemptions on the other hand are created by the Natural Resources Agency and are found within the state's CEQA guidelines. We refer to the exemptions as classes, and there are currently 33 categories or classes of categorical exemptions. Unlike statutory exemptions, categorical exemptions are not absolute. They have caveats where you must meet certain criteria to be used. For example one example that we've got recently for additions to public buildings, like the current remodel of our of the Civic Center for the council chambers are exempt.

But the caveat is as long as you don't exceed 10,000 square foot in size of an addition, and a few other things, but that's one of the more easier ones to grasp, I guess. In these projects, if these projects don't meet the criteria, they're bumped up to a higher level of review of CEQA analysis. And all the staff reports will explain how the projects meet the criteria. This is a very, very abbreviated and simplified list of the types exemptions that you're probably most likely to see here and that we use here for public projects in the city, a lot of the ones that you will see include lot line adjustments, minor land divisions, and infill developments. Okay.

Any questions? Okay. Let's talk about initial studies. So now the initial study is not the actual CEQA document, but it is a tool that is used to systematically and comprehensively evaluate potential issues. It is a checklist with a series of questions on 21 different environmental topic areas, the number of topic area changes with state law from time to time.

Some of the you can see up here where you've got the check boxes, these are all of the required topic areas that we discuss, stuff like aesthetics where we evaluate impacts on views and visual character air quality where we address pollutants and odors biological resources, where we deal with species habitats, wildlife, etcetera and wildlife corridors, etcetera and how the project would affect each of those resource areas. Each question in the checklist and on the bottom you'll see an example of the questions that are asked for each topic area. Each question must be answered with an explanation using thresholds of significance and appropriate criteria. Lauren mentioned using the noise standards from the general plan, and that would be an example of evaluation criteria that is used to determine whether a project would exceed the standards for noise analysis. So if after doing this evaluation it is determined that a project will either result in no impact, a less than significant impact, a significant impact, or impact that can be reduced to a less than significant level with mitigation.

For projects that you can answer all of these questions with no impact or less than significant impact, you can prepare a negative declaration. For projects that have significant impacts but they can all be reduced with mitigation, you can prepare a negative declaration. If the project can't reduce impacts with mitigation, or if we don't have enough information at that time to determine that, you must prepare an EIR. We'll go to the next slide. So very quickly, a negative declaration.

As I said, there are no significant impacts and no mitigation is required. It's basically the negative declaration itself is basically a form that is signed by the staff member who is asserting and briefly describing why a project will not have a significant impact. This form is attached to the initial study, and this is we refer to this as an ISND or initial study neg deck, something like that. Unlike an exemption, the negative declaration must be reviewed by the public for a minimum of twenty days, though this shortened review period is usually is rarely approved. That's usually for projects that are of local significance only that do not require any sort of review by a state agency, and the state has been very stingy about allowing us to do that, saying that all of the state agencies want to look at our projects.

So most are reviewed for thirty days. The negative declaration is nearly the same. It's the same forward form, you just check a different box. But again, the initial study shows that the environmental impacts can be reduced to mitigation and the applicant must agree to do that. If the applicant does not agree to the mitigation at this stage, we would be forced to move on to the EIR stage.

Also, same public review periods apply here. Next we'll move on to everybody's favorite document, the Environmental Impact Report, also known as an talk about this for days, so I'm going to be very brief. I'm going to try to make it relevant to what we what you're going to see. There are if there are any impacts that are likely to be significant or cannot be mitigated, then an EIR must be prepared. An EIR is the most thorough level of sequel analysis, but it's not necessarily appropriate for all projects.

A big project does not necessarily mean we need to do an EIR. They're usually long, complicated, expensive and very time consuming. This here is a quick overview of the basic elements of an EIR and how the process requirements differ from the process of the negative declaration or the mitigated negative declaration. An EIR requires the preparation of of excuse me, the preparation of a notice of preparation, or NOP, which is a document with a short project description, maps, and basic information about the being processed, just to let everyone know that we will be preparing an EIR. Let us know what your concerns are.

This allows interested individuals, parties, and other agencies with interest in the project to assist in the scoping of the analysis. You must publish you'll also need to publish a draft EIR with a longer review period than a negative declaration or negative declaration with a minimum of thirty days, but most often we see them done at forty five to sixty days, even longer. With an EIR, you are required to respond to all public comments that are received during the public review period. Those responses and public comments are included in a second volume of the EIR, which is called the final EIR. We'll talk about that again in a minute.

After the EIR is completed, it is included in the information packet provided to the Planning Commission and the decision making body must certify the EIR prior to approving a project. And next we'll go over a very basic flow of how the process goes. A lead agency, which would be the city in this case, the agency that is taking action on the project, must publish a notice of preparation, circulate that for public review, publish a draft EIR, circulate that for public review prepare a notice of completion and a notice of availability, which are more forms, that announce that the draft EIR is being circulated for public review and provide information about how and when to provide comments for the EIR. We have to respond to those comments and make needed changes to the draft EIR document. The Planning Commission and or the City Council, depending yes.

Sorry to interrupt. In responding to those comments, is there a time frame that they must be responding Yes, with

must be done. No. Sometimes it can take there are times when there might be a lot of comments that come in. And sometimes that may result in changes, to the project or maybe we go back and we look at, one of our analyses or something like, this person brings up a really good point, let's go look at that. And if it's if we look into that and determine that it's not anything that changes the conclusions, can go ahead and publish the final EIR. If it's big enough, we might have to go back and do it over. But there's no required time frame that it takes. I've seen it take over a year to go from draft to final. So yeah. Okay.

So then the Planning Commission and or City Council must certify the EIR before a project can be approved, and that depends on who's making the final actions, the final entitlement decisions. And if the project is approved, the lead agency must file a notice of determination, or an NOD, that notifies everyone that the project was approved. Filing this document is what limits the statute of limitations for challenges on the EIR. As we mentioned, there's a very low barrier to litigation for EIRs. By filing that NOD, think it's like a fifteen day statute of limitations.

If you don't, it's one hundred and eighty days. So it's in our best interest. It does cost money, but it's in our best interest to do that. And one of the ideas that I want to emphasize about the EIR is that basically with the state mandated public review periods for both the NOP and the EIR, there's at least two to three months just of public review for each EIR. That doesn't take into account the time that it takes to actually prepare the document, any of the supporting studies or documentation, and the EIR process can easily take a year that's actually pretty quick and even multiple years.

Next slide, please. So we talked a little bit about how an EIR is different from a negative declaration or mitigated negative declaration in initial study, but the CEQA requires that an EIR drill down a little bit deeper into some topics that are not addressed in lower level CEQA documents. That includes analyses explanations of significant effects that cannot be avoided, irreversible environmental changes, growth inducing impacts, cumulative impacts, and alternatives to the project a reasonable range of alternatives that we are required to look at to make sure that this project is the best idea that it could possibly be. And since one of CEQA's primary goals is disclosure, the EIR will disclose all reasonably foreseeable impacts that the project could cause within the physical environment, good or bad. When deciding whether to certify an EIR, the decision makers must acknowledge the significant and unavoidable impacts and make a determination and adopt findings that state that the benefits of the project outweigh the effect on the environment.

Yes.

I I I just have to ask about growth inducing impacts. It seems like when they first invented CEQA, it was considered to be bad, but now, of course, we've got requirements for growth.

So

is it you know what mean? Just tell me something about that.

How do we deal with that?

Yeah. How do you deal that? So because we are a growth we are a planned growth city, like Lauren said, we have our EIR. One of the things that the EIR will do is it's planning our growth. And it is saying that we are going to grow, we're going to grow in this manner, and the EIR includes an EIR.

So the EIR is addressing that. What these individual EIRs will get at is whether the project is resulting in direct or indirect growth inducement that was not planned. So we have growth management policies that kind of get us out of that, and you're absolutely right, when CEQUA was adopted, it was a very we were moving into the NIMBY 1970s, So yes, that's very, very true, but we have very good growth management policies that kind of get us out of those discussions. So we have growth, but we know about the growth, and we've studied the growth, and we know what's going to come. Okay.

And then lastly, let's talk about the final EIR. What's in the final EIR? I've included a couple little screen captures of what it might look like. It includes a list of commenters, copies of their comments, text revisions to the draft EIR if necessary, embedded in responses or in a Rata chapter, or track changes in the full text of the EIR. There's a few different ways you can do that, but basically you usually have like a you can see on the top left you have strike through and underline, which is often used when we're showing in text changes that we made in response to a comment.

And then we have responses to comments on a draft responses. You can't just say, No, I don't agree with your comment. You must use substantial evidence and refer to the draft EIR where applicable. It's worth noting that there is no separate review or comment period for the final EIR. The only requirement is that it must be completed at least ten days prior to its certification.

Written responses are all provided to any agency that comments. It's very normal to get a letter from, like, the Water Board or the State Department of Fish and Wildlife, and we'll provide them with a response. And anyone that comments, we send them. Here's our responses. Did you have questions?

So I just wanted to ask. This is something the final EIR that we would get to be evaluating some project contains all of that stuff. The comments and all of that.

Yes. And so it will include all of the, sometimes there are so during the NOP public comment period, we're required to hold a meeting, it's called a scoping meeting. So it may include, usually people write out their comments and they'll say, well, I think you need to look at traffic. I've heard that the, the groundwater well over here isn't doing well. We need to address that, and so we have to address, we have to evaluate that.

And then when we get, so any of those letters, we have to address that. When we get to the draft EIR, any of the letters that come in, any oral comments that we get, emails, phone calls, we should be recording those and including those in this record. And so you have a record of what it says, of what they've said and what their comments are. We really want to and this one's kind of tough because the we really want comments that are based on the analysis and the contents of the EIR. But of course when people have strong passionate opinions about projects, lot of other stuff comes up and it kind of bleeds together and they're not bureaucrats, so they don't get the differences.

So it's always possible that somebody may have, like, a different opinion, and we don't address their opinions, but we do acknowledge them, and that that would be something that, you know, we got 14 letters that were concerned about traffic on this EIR. We're going to address the comments and then the 14 people that were really that I hate this, there's going to be too much traffic, that'll be described in your staff report. So we'll tell you that, you know, these people there were a lot of people the 14 people were concerned about traffic. So but we're trying to stay really objective in this. And again, like someone might write in with a suggestion to use a certain methodology for this type of analysis, you should have looked at this, you should have done the traffic study like this, and we don't necessarily have to agree with what they said, we don't have to do an exhaustive research project on every single possible way that you can evaluate an impact.

But what we do what we would have to do is explain why we used the approach that we did use and base it on substantial evidence. So with traffic, obviously the city has a vetted traffic model and that's what we use, and we vary from that. Again, comments should be focused on the analysis and its applicability, not the project itself, and when those are germane we let you know. We don't need to and we should not be defending the project in any way or making any sort of judgment in the EIR or the final EIR. It's objective and supposed to be based on substantial evidence.

And again, we're just disclosing the impacts possible impacts, I should say and clarifying making clarifying statements in the final EIR so that everybody is on the same page and it makes sense. And with that, that's your quick introduction to CEQA and how it's used by the Planning Division in Planning Department or Planning Commission. Thank you. Any other any questions? Okay. Great. Thank you.

So I think that's it. Appreciate your time. Appreciate your patience tonight, because I know two hours is a long Planning Commission meeting. But I think we were as we did the run through and we put this all together, I figured you probably got about eight hours of different presentations slammed together in two hours. So I know it was a lot of information. So if any questions come up, again, your staff report has the links to some of the resources we used. But if something comes up along the way, we are available.

So I do have one question that I wanna ask because when I was I mean, I'm in my fifth year now doing this, but when I was first starting, people reached out. They knew I had just been appointed. And members of the public, developers, etcetera, on a project happened, and they call and they say, we wanna meet. I think I called Joe and asked, is it okay that that I do that? So I just wanted to

Yes.

So Yes. You can meet with you can meet with the proponents of a project, the opponents of a project. You can meet with city you can call us and come in and meet with us if you wanna discuss some of your concerns. I think gathering the you need to figure out the the best way on an individual basis to gather the information that that when you're sitting there and and there's a motion on the table and you need to vote, that you're comfortable with with the direction you're going. Obviously, you want to make sure that that is based on all of the information you've heard, that you haven't, you know, made a pre decision before you've heard some type of public testimony, and that all of your fellow commissioners have the same level of information. But yes, you can you can

talk to folks. The one thing we can't do is get together with each other and talk about it because that's a violation of the

Ron Act.

Yeah. That's one reason why I will always blind copy you on emails. When we have you'll get the packet on Friday, something will come up, some additional information. We'll revise a condition, something will come up, and I'll send it out to the commission, and I will blind copy you. So in case you hit reply all, you're safe. Got it. But yes, you can, you know, it's you need to gather the information to make informed decisions. And that's important to us. And that's part of our job is to make sure you have all those resources.

I just want to say this has been very informative, and I want to thank all of the staff for putting this together. It's really, really valuable.

Thank you. We appreciate it. I'm glad we were able to do this. The opportunity finally hit the with the new makeup of the commission.

Can I also just add on what John said? During my time on the the commission, I just wanna say thank you to you, the whole staff, the whole city staff. I mean, you guys do a fantastic job. You you really do. And there's never been a situation where I haven't had the information I need to to make a good decision.

I think we all take it pretty seriously that what what our job is is you you guys are you guys are voting. I'm not voting on anything. You guys are voting, and and it would just it would I think it would we'd all would feel horrible if you if you thought you had to take a vote and you didn't have a piece of information or we didn't analyze something properly.

So I'm

kinda saying this because I want all of you to hear it, but I also want the public to know how what an excellent staff city staff exists in this city. So

so I

do have a few other items after the workshop.

So hang on. Okay. Because I've got Oh. I got my script

here. Yeah.

So Lupi was just about to throw a penalty flag at me if I didn't do it this way. So planning staff, thank you for your presentation. Commissioners, are there any other questions for staff?

For a comment.

Go ahead.

I just wanna echo the two of you. Thank you to all the staff here for making this, workshop or giving us this workshop because, like they said, it makes us do an informed decision when when those days or nights come as far as, voting is concerned. So thank you. I appreciate everything. So

I will now open public comments. Is there anyone from the public who'd like to address the commission on this item? Seeing none, I will close the public comment period. Are there any other reports from staff?

Yeah. Just really quickly because I know it's getting late, but, we will have a meeting on February 12, and, you'll have a couple conditional use permits and, I think what the other item is. The permit modification. So some real world experience.

You will

also and we're gonna put it on the agenda, and I'll defer to you. But one of the one role that we didn't talk about tonight is the Planning Commission also participates on the Design Committee. So the City Design Committee can take action on a certain level of design review permits. It's a three member body. The chair is always a representative from the Planning Commission, and then there's two appointed positions.

So we always have a chair, a design committee chair, and an alternate. And Commissioner Jensen was the alternate. We didn't fill his spot because we figured we were gonna we were gonna wait, so we need to and chair Hagenjoist is the chair of the design committee as well. And I know he's mentioned to me in private that if anybody else wanted that job, he'd would fight you

for it.

Yeah. But we will put the alternate for design committee on the agenda. And so if anybody is is looking for a now now, because commissioner Hagen Djos is the chair, you probably won't have to do because he's always there. But

Well, it's part if I could just explain, it's because my schedule allows me to be there when the the The hearings are

meetings are the third Thursday of every month at 04:30. So it's it's more informal. It's it's in a Meetings Room 1 And 2 at the Civic Center. It's a it's really a very informal 04:30.

Thirty. Four And

and I just wanna make clear that, I mean, I'm happy to do it. I enjoy doing it. But if there is someone else who would want to step into the chair, position, let Greg know because then we can put it on the agenda. Yeah. And I will happily resign if there is somebody who wants to step forward in that role, and I won't be offended at all.

So I know we've been we've been thinking about putting it on the agenda for the alternate. I'm like, well, we we don't have any design committee items coming up in the next couple months, number one, and then we haven't had to worry about having an alternate

with chair heading It would be really nice to know what a design committee does.

You heard Kenny talk about how we evaluate design. So design review permits, site planning, landscaping, building architecture, so really the Plaza Of Blue Oaks project that Kenny described, that shopping center, that commercial shopping center, that could have been a design committee level entitlement. We had a the design committee was very active was more active before the pandemic. When the pandemic hit, because we had to go to all virtual meetings, all we just bumped all design review permits to planning commission. All all hearing level design review permits to planning commission, because planning commission was set up to have virtual meetings.

The design committee, it was just too difficult for us to to have virtual meetings with with the way they they met. And so they've slowly been it's there's slowly been more projects that have only required design review permits. So they're only they have a more limited number of entitlements that they can act on than the Planning Commission does. But it's similar to what you do. And I know Commissioner Pryor was on the design committee a few years back.

Is there any possibility that the meeting time will ever change? No. That's

only thing stopping It could get earlier. Yeah. Not later. And then one final well oh, actually, since the last time you met, the city council did approve the resolution for the objective design standard, the infill objective design standards. I think they referenced that tonight.

And when I mentioned the zoning ordinance amendment that you heard in the fall for the kitchen, the changing in the kitchen definitions, the city council did approve that zoning ordinance in December as well. So that's been since your last meeting. And then the final thing is, I believe it's probably going to be March 12, the state is flexible, but we're going give you some real world experience with CEQA and EIRs. We have a project, it's called the Phillips Road Site Project, where the draft environmental impact report is getting ready to be published for its forty five day review period. Part of that forty five day review period is we typically have a meeting where we accept public comment, so the public can come make oral comment on the contents of the draft EIR.

The way we're planning on doing that is having that at a planning commission meeting because it's a little bit more regulated that way, a little more formal. It's gonna be very unique for you all that's that evening because there will be no action taken. There will be no discussion on the project. The only the the only item will be opening a public hearing, letting the public come up to the podium, make their oral comments on the on the draft DIR. We will that we and the applicant and the applicant's consulting team will make sure that that it gets all documented.

Mhmm.

And and once the public has the chance to come up, give their comments on the draft EIR, they'll sit down, we'll close the public hearing, we won't ask you to do anything, but you should know that what we will be doing and the applicant will be doing is taking all those comments back, recording them, and then they will be in the final EIR. Okay. And that particular project will have a couple of entitlements that do it's kind of mixed. There's some entitlements like the general plan amendment, the zoning. You'll make recommendations to the city council for that project, but there are some entitlements that you will be the final decision makers.

So both the Planning Commission and the city council will be certifying the EIR for their entitlements that they're taking action on. So you will get the final ten days prior to at least ten days prior to your action. So that meeting, we're targeting right now March 12. There has to be a little flexibility in there because we're still until the EIR is made public, it's we're a little nervous about that. But that's going be a unique situation, and I'm sure I'll provide a little more information as we get closer to it, and we'll have a staff report.

But you're going to very rapidly see a lot of what Jessica talked about, the EIR process. Okay. So everything we talked about tonight is coming in the next couple months.

Okay. Great.

And that's all I have.

Are there any other questions or comments from the commissioners? May I have a motion to adjourn?

So moved. Second.

Commissioner, Mesh has moved, and, commissioner Hagler has seconded. All in favor? Aye. We are adjourned.

Are you are you noting that was

That's vote. Six zero for adjournment.