Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening. On behalf of the commissioners and staff, I'd like to welcome you to the June 11, 2026 City of Roseville Planning Commission meeting. I would ask you to please put all electronic devices on silent at this time. Agendas are on the back counter, and if you plan to speak at tonight's meeting, please complete a blue speaker card and return it to a staff member. As a reminder, Planning Commission meetings are broadcast live, replayed on Comcast 14, 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 Kriz?

Here.

Commissioner Meish?

Here.

Commissioner Pryor?

Here.

Commissioner Unidad?

Here.

Vice Chair Brashears?

Here.

And Chair Hagen-Jones?

Here. I ask you to please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. And Lupe, please begin staff introductions.

Yes. Good evening, Chair Hagen-Jos and committee members, or commissioners. Lupe Nelson, Recording Secretary.

Good evening, Joe Speaker, Assistant City Attorney.

Good evening, Mike Eisen, Development Services Director.

Good evening, Chair and commissioners. My name is Lauren Hawker, Planning Manager.

Good evening, Chair Hagen-Jos and commissioners. Derek Ogden, Senior Planner.

And good evening, Chair and commissioners. Eric Singer, Associate Planner.

The public comment period is a time for anyone who'd 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, since each routine item requires a public hearing, each and every one may be considered separately upon request by the audience, the planning commission, or the staff. Action on the consent calendar shall be considered a public hearing. Tonight's Consent Calendar consists of one item, item 5.1, minutes from the May 28, 2026 Planning Commission meeting. Is there anyone on the Commission or in the audience who would like to pull this item off of the Consent Calendar for discussion? Hearing none, may I have a motion to approve the Consent Calendar as listed?

I make a motion to approve. I'll second.

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

Commissioner Pryor? Yes. Commissioner Hagler? Yes. Commissioner Unidad? Yes. Commissioner Meish? Yes. Commissioner Kriz?

Abstain.

Vice Chair Brashears? Yes. And Chair Hagan-Jones?

Yes. Thank you.

The motion is approved. Thank you.

Next on the agenda is the requests and presentations. Before we begin, I want to review the meeting procedures. First, we will hear the staff presentation. Then I will take questions from the Commission. Then I will open the public hearing. The applicant will make a presentation. Then I will open the public comment, and the public will have an opportunity to speak. Then I will close public comment. If needed, the applicant will be given an opportunity to provide a rebuttal. Then I will close the public hearing. The Commission may ask questions of staff And finally, the Commission will consider this item and make a decision based on information provided in the report from the staff and the testimony presented during tonight's hearing. Item 6.1 is a request to approve a conditional use permit for 5750 Baseline Road. For the record, this is file PL25-0335. This item was continued from the May 28, 2026 Planning Commission meeting. At this time, I believe there are some commissioners who wish to recuse themselves.

I'll be one of them. I'm recusing myself from this item due to a financial conflict of interest related to my investments.

Chair Agnes, I'm also recusing myself from this item due to a potential financial conflict of interest related to my employment.

Eric, may we have your presentation, please?

Yes, thank you, Chair Hagen-Jones and commissioners. As previously mentioned, this item was continued from the May 28th Planning Commission meeting due to a lack of quorum. The project is a proposal for a telecommunications facility located on a property at the north side of Baseline Road, east of Westbrook Boulevard. It's within the developing portion of the Sierra Vista specific plan. The current land use and zoning of the site is community commercial, and the site is currently under construction for a self-storage facility that was approved by this body in 2021. It is surrounded by vacant properties to the south as well as a new residential subdivision to the north and east as indicated on the map there. So the project is a request for a conditional use permit. It's to allow the construction of a new cellular transmission facility consisting of a 75-foot tall monopole, equipment cabinet, generator, and associated equipment within a 30-foot by 30-foot lease area. And that's in, again, the aforementioned self-storage facility that's currently under construction. As part of the requirement for all new telecommunications facilities, a radio frequency electromagnetic fields exposure report was prepared for the applicant by Waterford Consultants to ensure that the project complies with FCC regulations and will not interfere with the emergency broadcast system of any public entity, including the city's emergency services. So a little bit of history on the project. During staff's initial plan review, we had asked the applicant to provide a rendering of the proposed facility using a stealth water tower enclosure for the monopole. However, after reviewing that concept, we determined that the proposed water tower design would actually have a more obtrusive visual impact than a simply undisguised monopole. So in response to our assessment, the applicant proposed the current design. They also provided a photo simulation package that represents the monopole as seen from several viewpoints surrounding the site, as you can see above, as well as included an attachment one to the staff report. Ultimately, we determined that the proposed monopole provides the slimmest possible profile in an area with really no surrounding buildings or vegetation that could be used to screen the facility from public view. Other telecommunications and radio facilities in the immediate vicinity have also taken this approach. including a nearby radio tower on the south side of Baseline Road near Willerga and Crowder Lane. That's within Placer County's jurisdiction just east of the subject site. In terms of public outreach and environmental review for the project, early notification was posted on the ARCONA website and the neighborhood meeting was held on February 24th of this year. It was sparsely attended. Only one person showed up in support of the project. And notice for the public hearing for tonight was mailed to a 300-foot radius around the site, published in the Press Tribune, as well as on the ARCONA website. We did receive one letter of support, and in terms of the environmental review for the project, an initial study and negative declaration was prepared, and a public comment period was provided from May 6th to May 25th of this year. No comments were received on the negative declaration. So in conclusion, staff finds that the proposed project is consistent with the objectives and overall intent of the general plan, the Sierra Vista specific plan, and the zoning ordinance, and these are our recommended actions. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you very much. I'm available to answer any questions.

Thank you. Thank you. Commissioners, are there any questions for Eric or staff at this time? I'll now open the public hearing, and I'd like to invite the project representative for this item to address the commission.

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Mark Lobau. I'm with Epic Wireless here this evening representing AT&T. This one's been a long one. We've been working on this site for a couple years now, working closely with staff who did a fantastic job and really good feedback and can't say enough good things about them. Also been working with the property owner, Baseline Storage, who's actually in attendance also. We feel that the use, the self-storage use is an ideal location for a cell site. We do them all over California. Gotten real good feedback. Good, you know, responses from the public when we've located at cell storage facilities. It's kind of an industrialized commercial use and just seems to work well for a telecom use. In this case, we've got the tower put in within the yard. You saw the large wall. FRONTING BASELINE, PROVIDES REALLY GOOD SCREENING. I THINK THE NEED FOR THE CELL SITE IS VERY WELL DOCUMENTED. WE PROVIDED QUITE A BIT OF INFORMATION. YOU'RE PROBABLY GOING TO HEAR FROM SUPPORTERS IN THE AUDIENCE THAT HAVE BEEN ON US TRYING TO GET THIS SITE PASSED, AND REALLY THERE HASN'T BEEN, I DON'T WANT TO SPEAK FOR EVERYBODY, BUT I HAVE NOT PERSONALLY HEARD OF ANY NEGATIVE FEEDBACK FROM THE PUBLIC. The site will also contain FirstNet capability, which is a dedicated band for first responders, really important aspect that AT&T offers. It's just going to be a real win-win for everybody and provide excellent coverage, broadband capability, et cetera, et cetera. The site's been designed to accommodate additional carriers. So once we get AT&T built, you know, T-Mobile and perhaps Verizon will inquire, and if they do, we'll certainly work with them to put them on this tower. So we went the extra height, the 75-foot height, so that we could specifically accommodate additional carriers, very important aspect. If you're too short, then those carriers are going to go somewhere else and have to build another tower. So you're kind of killing three birds with one stone by building a tower that's sufficient height to accommodate other carriers. So I'll just, one last thing I'll just say is that the site will have a backup emergency generator, provide coverage, you know, in the event of power outages. So with that said, I'll make myself available. If anyone's got any comments, questions, whatever I can do for you.

Thank you. Please. I have a question. Mark, is it?

Yes, sir. I understand this is your business, but I'm curious. The letters seem to indicate that there's a bigger need than just one cell tower. How come you're not here asking for two or three?

So the way this business works is they assign me a search ring, which is basically a dot in the map. And this thing started out two years ago way north, right in the heart of all that sea of residential up there. There was nowhere to put it. And I literally beat my head against the desk trying to find a location for a cell site. We talked to the HOA. We talked with City Parks. We came up with, I was just throwing stuff, trying to get something to stick. There's just no place to put a facility north. We also approached SMUD, WAPA, all those huge high tension power lines, none of that. They said, nope, we're not doing those anymore. There was just nothing north. Honestly, this is kind of a last resort going this far south because the coverage objective is actually north of where we're building the site. This site will accommodate all the future development that will go out there, but right now you've got a lot of folks to the north that are really upset about not having cell coverage, and this will hopefully address a lot of that. In answer to your question, there may be additional towers coming down the road, but for now this is the one site that we're working on.

What you've got to do is build a church and then put the cell towers, the cell equipment in the towers.

Right. Oh, now I just remembered. Okay, touche, yeah.

Not knowing much about cell tower design or effectiveness, so you're talking about higher height, so the arrays, they're not nested together, so if another carrier comes in, they would go above or below?

They'd go below.

Below, so the photo sim that is shown shows your array in there, so it would have a bigger array. a bigger visual as these other carriers stack below yours?

So I talked to staff when we first started this thing. I don't know how long it's been now. I lose track. I want to say we started out at like 85 feet and actually we brought it down a little bit. trying to make it closer in conformance to your zoning ordinance, settled on 75 feet. That's kind of just where we ended up.

So this is probably more for planning. So if you negotiate with somebody to come in with an array, they would come in to permit that to give a different visual on that?

same tower my interest go ahead i'm sorry i'm sorry no not at all so a co-location on an existing facility wouldn't go through the same public hearing process however we do have discretion to review the application as it comes in to make sure that there's no essentially detrimental visual impact that it complies with all our city regulations zoning ordinance regulations as well as fcc regulations

Basically, to add on to that, basically another carrier would just be adding antennas below their antennas, probably about 10 to 15 feet below.

But the visual would have a bigger clump at the top of the tower, right? Exactly.

It sure would.

Yeah, okay. Because they're not nested together in the same perimeter. No.

a center line is what we call it. You've got the AT&T center line, then you'd have another T-Mobile center line and so forth. Now, if somebody was to come in and say, we want to increase the height of the tower, then they would go to Citi and they'd have to go through this whole process, I would think, for a whole new conditional use permit.

For an extension of the tower, I believe it would be a modification to the existing use permit.

Yeah, and there are certain regulations that allow an extension. I think it's up to 20 feet above the current, whatever's approved. So they could have potentially...

It wasn't the height as much as the clump, for a better word, so...

In terms of visual impact?

Yeah, the visual impacts of the antenna arrays that are up there on top, yeah. Right. Okay.

Anything else? Okay, thank you. Thank you. I will now open the public hearing. It's already open, sorry. I will now open the public comment period. Is there anyone from the public who would like to come forward and address the Commission on this item? I do have a blue speaker card from Kate. Are you Kate Rosenlieb? Okay.

Good evening. I'm Kate Rosenlieb, and I live at Heritage Solar, and I have provided the Commission an extensive amount of information, four pages of information that I wrote up and 18 pages of a PowerPoint presentation. I'm representing a number of people in my neighborhood. We're very supportive of this project, and I've waited way too long to be able to have that opportunity to say that to you. And we're trying very hard to raise everybody's awareness about the plight that we have in West Sacramento. I'm sorry. Thank you. Two years I've lived in Roseville from Sacramento. And I came to Roseville because you have a reputation for incredible planning. I love my neighborhood. I love West Roseville. But I have third world cell phone coverage. And it's not safe. And it's been shocking. I spent $800 to put up, and it was hard to get HOA approval to put up a booster on my house. And it's still too far. You know, it can only boost the signal that you get. And we're simply located too far away. The church is 1.2 miles away from us. That Verizon tower is over 80 feet. It doesn't reach us. We're blessed in my neighborhood. We have an expert, antenna expert. who's been able to tell so much about what these plans are really going to do. So when Verizon put their array up on the city's communication tower, everybody, including the city, said, oh, no, it's going to help our neighborhood. They came and tested immediately after it went live in late April. Didn't do a thing. It's too far away. You heard the applicant. You asked a great question, Commissioner Mace. Where else? Why aren't you putting them elsewhere? There's not enough sites. We're waiting for churches or we're waiting for storage units. And I personally, I think the city could have done a better job, but, you know, hindsight's great stuff 15, 20 years later. But we all need to be doing a better job because it's really challenging for us out there. It's just too hard. So thank you so much for all you do. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to address the commission on this item? If not, I will close the public comment period. Commissioners, are there any additional questions or comments for the applicant? I actually would like to make a comment, and I just want to thank you, Kate, for the materials that you presented that we received in the staff report. Those were some of the best materials that I've seen a member of the public present to help us with our thoughts. So I just want to thank you for your effort. It was obvious you put a lot of effort into it. Thank you. Please. So I'd just like to ask Lauren a follow-up question.

Do we... What, if anything... I realize the city's not in the job of providing cell service, but I think we are in the job of planning so that cell service can be provided by somebody. So what's happening here? Are we limiting or...

What I would observe is that we have it's a good question. What I would observe is we have commercial sites and that's commercial sites and other non-residential properties is typically where these go in. Right. And so there are commercial sites out in those areas that aren't developed yet. And so a cell tower isn't going to be able to go on a site that hasn't been planned out yet for the buildings and everything else, right? So we do have some of those sites that now have applications in for development, and so they may open up opportunities for cell providers to locate a tower in those areas.

Thank you. I would just add, too, that our IT department is actively working with carriers to find sites that work, right? So we do have city-owned facilities where we encourage carriers to look at if it makes sense and if it's economically feasible and all those other things, operationally feasible. So, I think the city is, you know, doing its part to try to get self-service out there. It's probably not as fast as the residents would like. And, you know, we can certainly look at other potential sites with our IT department. But ultimately it is, you know, a private development type of ‑‑ I understand that it's private development.

I just, you know, and so I'm, I guess, comforted. I'm not sure that's the right word. I'm happy to know that we've planned for the possibility, but you've got to have the development to bring in the infrastructure in order to be able to leapfrog your way out. Okay, thank you.

Any additional questions or comments? I will now close the public hearing. Are there any additional questions for staff? If not, would anyone like to make a motion?

I would make a motion. That we adopt the telecommution facility initial study and negative declaration and that we adopt three findings of fact as listed in the staff report and approve the conditional use permit for this project on Baseline Road.

Chair Greg Musil. Second. Second.

Chair Greg Musil.

Commissioner Mace has made the motion and Commissioner Unidad has seconded the motion. Roll call, please. Yes. CHRISTIE WOODARD.

Yes. CHRISTIE WOODARD. Commissioner Nash.

Yes. CHRISTIE WOODARD.

Commissioner Kriz.

Yes.

CHRISTIE WOODARD. And Chair Hagan-Jones.

Yes.

The motion is approved. There is a 10-day appeal period for this item. Do we want to get our two lost souls, bring them back? Thank you, Roger. They'll figure it out. Lost souls. You know, the person I follow teaches me to leave the 99 and go find the one.

Welcome back, gentlemen. Thank you.

Next on the item is the commissioner's staff report. Are there any reports from staff?

Yes. Do we want to do the... Okay. We'll do the regular part first, as it were. So for our regular part, we don't have any items so far for the first meeting in July. We may have an item for the second meeting in July. This is all tentative. And just as a reminder for you, whenever we have that first meeting in July, we will be voting for chair and vice chair, and you will have a new member. And now we can move on to the special presentation.

Where will that meeting be? Will it be here or across the room? Yeah, there we go.

That's an excellent question. So tentatively, it sounds like we may be able to move back into council chambers for July.

Don't hold me to that. I'm not in charge.

Okay.

Chair Hagen-Jones, I'd like to add something to the staff comments at the end of the meeting. Greg Bitter, I'm the Assistant Development Services Director. I'm glad to be back. Sorry I missed the last meeting. It was a barn burner. Good viewing. But I'm here to just let you know, I know you'll all be happy to hear that tonight is Commissioner Brashear's last meeting. I don't mean happy that he's going to be gone. I mean happy for him. But we'll be happy that he's gone. No, but I just want to say a few words because Eric was appointed to the Planning Commission on January 18th, 2017. So he's been a Planning Commissioner for nine and a half years. I didn't go back and try and figure out how many meetings we actually had versus how many we had to cancel. But I know you've been in that chair well over 100 times, probably closer to 150 times over the years. And there's been a tremendous amount of work that this planning commission in the city has done in the past nine and a half years. And I just wanted to point out some of the big items that the Commissioner Brashears has worked on. You know, we did a comprehensive general plan update in 2020. That was a big lift. You know, we really had a lot of policy work that, you know, several meetings with the Planning Commission to get feedback before we took that on to City Council. Following that up in 2022, the general, 21 or 22, the housing element, It's 21, yeah. Which was a significant effort by the city, you know, that's complying with the city's housing policies, the affordable housing, the regional housing needs assessment numbers that the city was given, which led to rezone programs, led to the corridor planning effort that Commissioner Brashears also participated in with lots of public participation. Lots of these big policy efforts that hopefully will bear fruit in the coming years for the city and really have a big impact on our urban infill areas. You know, we talk about this with you. Some of the newer commissioners, you haven't heard this, you will hear this every year. The state continues to pass legislation that makes us update our zoning ordinance. We like to say annually, but it seems like it's more than annually now. It's more and more frequent all the time. You know, we're kind of, we talk about here in Roseville about why does the state keep taking away local control? We don't want them to take away local control. So we try and do the best we can and bring information to the commission where we comply with state laws, but we try and make sure that they're taking away as little local control as, you know, we're We're hanging on by our fingernails every time a new bill is passed, and the Commission helps us make those decisions. So there's been significant zoning ordinance amendments, subdivision ordinance amendments over the last nine and a half years that Commissioner Brashears has participated in, and he's heard us talk about, you know, I know you all eventually will be sick of hearing the State did this, the State did that. But it's true. I couldn't guess how many specific plan amendments we've done, how many tentative maps, how many thousands and thousands of subdivision lots that you participated in the mapping process on. One of my, I think one of my favorites, the way it's turned out, projects that you worked on, Campus Oaks commercial site has been a big, and the whole Campus Oaks development has been a pretty significant project for the city of Roseville. Our medical profession, we talked about our medical profession, huge expansions at Kaiser, Bedtower, Sutter Hospital, their emergency room, the Kaiser Medical Office building, yeah, the Kaiser Medical Office building on, yeah, Kirby and Sunrise, or not Kirby and Sunrise, Kirby and Riverside. Riverside.

Riverside. Riverside.

Very complicated, large projects had pretty significant impacts. So I think, you know, I just want to say, and I saved this for the last, made it through COVID. All of our virtual meetings. Chair during COVID. Chair during COVID, yes. I have that on my phone. You were the chair during COVID. And, you know, as staff working with the Chair, it's very important we have a good, close relationship because planning these meetings and making sure that, you know, when there's controversial items coming up, how to handle the meetings, how to make sure that the public gets to participate as fully as possible and everything's fair and the process is fair. It was a real challenge during COVID with the phone, the virtual teams meetings. So you had the video on camera, people could call in. It was just a real struggle for everybody. And I really appreciated Commissioner Brashears just that whole time, the patience, not just you, but the whole commission. Absolutely. You had to be there. You were kind of at the forefront of that effort. And I still have visions of one of the meetings and you're in your camper camping somewhere.

And I'm like, oh, my God, I hope the Internet still works. But it did, and we made it all the way through.

That was pretty interesting. We had, you know, it's not a lot. We don't have a lot of controversial projects in Roseville, but when we do, they're good ones. And so I know that that's always been something that you've been, or Commissioner Brashears has really been good at, is making sure that the community knows that you all are listening to them. I think everybody that's been on the Commission since I worked at Roseville has shown that characteristic and proven that to the community. Whether you vote the way they want you to vote or not, you do listen to them, and it does make a difference. So I just wanted to get up and say, you know, we talked about it. In fact, there was a few years ago, we weren't sure which one of us was going to be gone first. I made you promise you'd stay. So he made me promise to stay longer. So tomorrow will be my, no. Tomorrow's your last day? Not tonight at midnight? That's not true.

But I just want to say we appreciate you.

We have, and you have to come back. I will. I'll tell you, John Martin and Tracy Covington, they both promised they would come back, and then they moved out of state. We have to ship their gold. We have a nice plaque with a gavel, your term on it, a nice little thank you, appreciating you for all your service to the city of Roseville. And so I was telling Lupe when we ordered, I said, I guess if we order this, does that mean he's looking for relocating out of the state? Because that seems to be the latest. Good. Okay. So we're going to make you come back to get your plaque. Yes. I just want to put that on the record. On record. I will be back on my plaque.

Yes.

So I just want to say I appreciate you being on the commission for the last nine and a half years, and you've made life easier for us. So I just want to say thank you. Thank you, Greg. Thank you. Thank you.

On the record, off the record, doesn't really matter. But at this point, because I'm done. But I'll take a minute just to say, Thank you. Thank you, Greg. Thank you to staff. I've known some of you for nine and a half years. Some not quite as long, but gotten to know. I've lived in Roseville 25 years. I haven't done this anywhere else. But I can tell my fellow commissioners, especially those who are new to the commission, this is bar none the best staff you will ever, ever work with. They will take care of you. And we do the best job in this city. I volunteered other ways and this has been my favorite. I'll miss planning commission. We've seen a lot of incredible things over the last nine and a half years.

COVID was a challenge.

That was fun for all of us. I was thinking about it. So chambers, trailer here. So three or four different places that we've served the city. But I want to sincerely thank every staff member here. You guys mean so much to me. I'm going to miss this. I didn't know if I would, and I absolutely will. You're talking about July. I won't be here. I won't be at those meetings, and that lands. But having this opportunity to serve this community where I've raised my children, it's meant everything. So thank you all. I'll miss you all, and I will be back for my plaque.

I'll still call you at 628 to freak you out. Where are you? And I'll still walk in the door to freak you out.

I'm right here, two minutes early. Thank you, everyone. I appreciate it. For those commissioners I'm leaving behind, you are in the best hands. Run this city well. Have a great time. Enjoy.

If I really miss this, all you have to do is wait six months and reapply. Reapply?

Or is it a year? Don't scare Laura.

Pull me back. Eric, I just want to add, because I've been with you now for five years of your nine-and-a-half career, And I just want to say thank you. And I want to just recognize that a lot of the comments and questions that you asked were not only helping the people, the public know things, but they were also helping those of us on the commission to be thinking about the projects that were in front of us. You did a wonderful job of helping, especially when I was a newbie, understanding what this was all about. So thank you.

Thank you. OK.

Any other questions or comments? Otherwise, may I have a motion to adjourn?

I'll make a motion.

Is there a second? You know, if we don't second it, he gets to sit here forever. Commissioner Scheer has made the motion. Commissioner Pryor has seconded the motion. All in favor? Aye.

We are adjourned. All right.