Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome everyone to the September 16th, 2026 Planning Commission meeting. I would like to call this meeting to order and lead you in the Pledge of Allegiance. Zoom webinar participation is available for members of the public. The Zoom webinar ID and link are available on the posted agenda on the city website. Can I ask for a roll call?

Commissioner McKelvey-Day. Commissioner Purnell. Commissioner Flores. Commissioner Mora.

Here.

Commissioner Gutierrez. Commissioner Rugg. And chairperson Rocamora here.

He and do we get a staff introduction?

Administrative aid.

Fernando Santillan, chief of planning.

Courtney Gershman, planning manager.

Public comments generally are limited to two minutes per speaker. The chair may further limit the time for public comments depending on the agenda schedule. Are there any comments from the public regarding today's item, or today's agenda? All right, Zoom participants, please use the raise hand feature if you'd like to provide a public comment. Are there any comments on Zoom?

No.

Okay, as we don't have a quorum, Right. We are just going into, we will just be doing the study?

Yes, the minutes will be continued to the next meeting.

Okay, thank you. All right, so ID 26425, the Williams Road, oh, no, is this what we're on? It's the wrong one. Better report. Brenda Newton, is that... Okay, ID 26441, the HUD Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report for Fiscal Year 2526.

Good afternoon, Commissioners and members of the public. My name is Francisco Granvilla. I'm the Management Analyst for the Housing Division in the Community Development Department. Can you hear me now? Okay. Today, I'm going to be presenting the Consolidated Annual Performance Report for Fiscal Year 2025-2026. Now, this report is required by HUD, and it has to be submitted by September 28th. The city is an entitlement jurisdiction and as such receives annual allocations of Community Development Block Grant Funds, Home Investment Partnership Program or HOME, American Rescue Plan through the American Rescue Plan and also Emergency Solutions Grant Funds or ESG. The CAPER is an annual assessment of all activities and accomplishments that happen during the fiscal year. IN THIS PARTICULAR CAPER, THIS IS GOING TO TOUCH ON THE ANNUAL ACTION PLAN FOR FISCAL YEAR 25-26. THIS IS ALSO PART OF THE FIVE-YEAR CONSOLIDATE PLAN THAT STARTED FROM FISCAL YEAR 2025 THROUGH 2029. LIKE I SAID, LIKE I MENTIONED BEFORE, IT HAS TO BE SUBMITTED BY SEPTEMBER 28, 2026, IN ORDER FOR US TO BE COMPLIANT. Now this, the HUD approved citizen participation plan, this process requires a minimum of 15 day public comment period and a minimum of one public hearing. The public comment period started August 26th and will end with the public, and ended with the public hearing on September 15th at the city council. Now, notices informing the public of the ability of the draft caper DOCUMENT WERE ALSO PUBLISHED AT THE HERALD. I MEAN, THE NOTICES WERE SENT TO THE HERALD. IT WAS ALSO PUBLISHED AT THE CITY'S WEBSITE, AT THE CITY HALL, COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT OFFICES, LIBRARIES. IT WAS DISTRIBUTED TO GOV DELIVERY. ADDITIONAL, THE ACTUAL DOCUMENT WAS AVAILABLE FOR THE PUBLIC AT CITY HALL, COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT OFFICES, LIBRARIES, AND ON THE CITY'S WEBSITE. IT WAS ALSO DISTRIBUTED TO THE delivery, our housing distribution list, and it can also be requested via email. This chart up here shows the funding that the city had available during this fiscal year. On CDBG, the city had available approximately $7.7 million, and we had about $3.7 million in expenditures. On the preceding slides, I'm going to go into detail as to all the expenditures that we had and some of the projects that were funded with some of this funding. Home, we had about $4.6 million. We spent about $176,000. Home ARP, there were about $2.7 million, and we spent about $79,000. ESG, 213,000, and we spent about 125,000. Now, CDBG. The city had allocated about $522,000 for program administration and spent about $458,000. We also allocated funds for six public facility projects, totaling about $6.6 million, and we were able to spend about $3 million. Out of those six public facility projects, two were completed. These were the Hebron Family Center and also the rehabilitation of the bathrooms at Natividad Creek Park. The other four projects that are still ongoing are the Chinatown neighborhood improvements, the Alisal neighborhood sidewalk improvements, the acquisition of Victory Mission, and uh yeah and also we also allocated for uh funding for housing for chispa in order for them to rehabilitate the vista terraza project for that particular project we not only utilize cdb cheese funds but also we usually utilize home funding there were two public service that were also funded with this this this this is the VG fans this where the Salinas outreach and response team and and even even counsel for housing for open opportunity Now, CDBG-CV, this was a one-time allocation that we received through two separate rounds through the Home Care Act. This was part of the funding that we received when the COVID pandemic was happening. The total funding that the city received was about $2.4 million. This year, the city spent the final $11,000 that we had remaining for this particular program. HOME, THE CITY RELEASED A NOTICE OF FUNDING AVAILABILITY IN JUNE 24, 2025, ANNOUNCING THE AVAILABILITY OF APPROXIMATELY $8 MILLION. THIS INCLUDED $4.4 MILLION FROM THIS HOME FUNDING. to be used as cap financing for affordable housing projects. In November 18, 2025, after the application review period, City Council approved preliminary awards for various proposed affordable multifamily projects. This includes the rehabilitation of Vista La Terraza to Chispa, the construction of a new senior housing development for St. George Apartments to Chispa, and a new housing development at 200 Cassantine Street in collaboration with Milestone Housing and the Housing Authority of the County of Monterey. In total, the investment will rehab 40 housing units and may produce up to 124 new affordable housing units. Now, for Home ARP, in 2023, HUD approved the Home ARP allocation plan, which described how the city would allocate approximately $2.9 million. This one-time allocation of funding was part of the American Rescue Plan Act. Aside from the administration, the city had planned to allocate $2.4 million for the operations of two home key properties. One of them is 1030 Fairview Avenue and 180 South Sanborn. But only the 1030 Fairview has been completed. Now, as stated, this fund is intended to provide rental assistance to participants that will move into 1030 Fairview after it was acquired by the housing authority. But after consulting with HUD representatives, the city confirmed that home art funding could not be layered with project-based vouchers. On May 12, 2026, the City Council authorized the reallocation of home ARP fundings to support the Salinas Outreach and Response Team and while authorizing the National Opioid Settlement Funds to support the Fairview operations in the amount of $1.1 million. Home ARP funds Allocated to sort or expected to start spending in the third quarter of office career 26 27. That's the reason you see zero expenditures right here 1.2 million dollars that has not been allocated to specific project now the city is actively communicating with these partners to find suitable projects to utilize these funds ESG program, this funding is geared to provide services for unhoused individuals or households. In fiscal year 25-26, the city had a total of about $213,000 and allocated them to two programs. That's the Salinas Outreach and Response Team, or SORT, to provide street outreach and also rapid rehousing services, and Community Homeless Solutions to provide rapid rehousing at the Chinatown Navigation Center. In total, 125,000 were spent within these two programs in administration, which assisted about 225 persons, 226 persons. And with that, I conclude my presentation, and I'm open for any questions that you may have.

Okay, thank you. Are there any questions from the commissioners to the members of city staff regarding this presentation? Okay, let's see, Commissioner Mora?

Yeah, thank you so much for the presentation.

I was just, sorry. I just had a very serious snack here, a sour skittle, and it got down my throat. I think, while I appreciated the presentation, I'm curious about the timing. We did have a meeting during the September 2nd, which would have been during the window. Was there an advantage to presenting now after, or...

NOT NECESSARILY, BECAUSE THE, LIKE I SAID, I MEAN, WE HAVE TO NOTICE WHEN THE ACTUAL PUBLIC HEARING IS GOING TO HAPPEN. USUALLY THE PUBLIC HEARING HAPPENS AT THE CITY COUNCIL. SO THIS PRESENTATION IS JUST A PRESENTATION SO THAT AT LEAST PLANNING COMMISSION, THEY KNOW SOME OF THE OTHER ACTIVITIES THAT WE ALSO DO IN THE HOUSING DIVISION, PARTICULARLY IN THE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT, RIGHT?

Thank you for clarifying. And then more broadly, I know we talked about the first slide, the minimum requirements for noticing but i'm wondering whether there's an opportunity in the last meeting we talked a lot about the importance of public outreach right and and unfortunately around the the realm of housing and uh supporting people who are unhoused there's this perception of the cities and this is not unique to salinas it's all of us right that are perceived to be uh inactive and then there's some really wonderful outcomes here that i'm wondering whether there's an opportunity to do something similar to what the city already does with the budget where there's like, you know, the published budget and then there's the budget in brief, right? Which is a little bit more accessible to the general public and we can celebrate some of the accomplishments here so that the general public who may not have attended some of the outreach opportunities that occurred can still maybe glean some of the activity that the city accomplished in that fiscal year, 25, 26. So just a recommendation, hopefully more people, we can do more storytelling, right? I think they were listed in the other slide, the funding, and then the amount of people that were supported. And I think that's wonderful to see.

Yeah, I think that's one of the things that we need to SHOW THE PUBLIC, OKAY, THIS IS SOME OF THE ACTIVITIES THAT WE, SOME OF THE PROJECTS AND ACTIVITIES ARE FUNDED WITH THIS TYPE OF FUNDING. I THINK IT'S MORE FOR US TO, YOU KNOW, ANNOUNCE SOME OF THOSE ACCOMPLISHMENTS, YEAH. AND THEN WE DID HAVE SOME, I MEAN, ACTUALLY, WE DID HAVE, I MEAN, THIS MORNING IN ORDER TO START TALKING ABOUT, OKAY, HOW DO WE PRESENT ALL THIS TO THE PUBLIC, YOU KNOW, THAT WAY THEY CAN, THEY'RE AWARE, YOU KNOW, WHAT THE CITY'S DOING.

And that was it for me. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Commissioner Rucks?

Yeah, I do. I do. Thank you. Thank you for your report today. I appreciate it. I would like some hyperlinks and the website. I went to the website. I saw something that said, you know, take a look at this. I went to the website. I could not find it. I spent 15 minutes. I could not find it. When you say you can find X, Y, and Z on the website, X, Y, and Z should be a hyperlink, so it takes you right to it. So people don't have to dig, and I think that's part of public outreach. Don't make people dig through the website for something. Give them a hyperlink, take them right there. Thank you for that. Rapid rehousing, 177 people served. Served with what?

So some of those... some of those households or some of those persons will either provide services to get them in the path of housing. Like I said, this funding is allocated for those that are unhoused. So in the case of community homeless solutions, some of the programs that they have is that they try to put some of the persons that they're serving in a path to housing. Out of those 177, there were about 57 that were actually permanently housed. So it's not just providing that, that path for them to get into housing. Because not many of them are actually ready for them to be in housing. They have to choose to be in the housing. And their job is to connect to those individuals and then offer them that path to housing. Once they decide to, yes, I want to be housed, then the next step comes in where they may utilize some of this funding to help them with finding the actual housing and pay for some of the upfront costs to get into some of the housing.

OK, thank you. I think I think you may have answered this other question, but excuse me in the beginning, the very first slide, if you can go back to that for a second, if you wouldn't mind. Oh, way back there, yeah, yeah. Oh, oh, oh. No, I'm sorry, where the numbers started. Go back to where the, right, right, right, right. Okay, so there are a lot of expenditures, but not everything's been expanded, and that's because things are ongoing. I think you answered that in another slide. I just wanted to make sure about that. Okay, that really is all my questions and comments. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Pernell.

Thank you, and I apologize for my tardiness. I do have a question about the SORT team. I think it was one of the second to last slides. The funding that's allocated to SORT from this pool, what does that cover the cost of? I imagine SORT is an expensive endeavor. So what is that?

The entire budget for the Salinas outreach and response team is about $1.8 million. And that covers, obviously, salaries and benefits and also some of the expenses that they need in order for them to do that outreach to different encampments.

Okay.

So this is a small, I mean, this is a portion of some of that funding that they're gonna need for this fiscal year.

And is this funding dedicated towards staffing and benefits or what is it?

It's mostly staffing and benefits, yes.

Okay, and how large is the sort team?

There are, let's see, eight, no, 14? Yeah, the core team is eight, plus we have another two, no, four, no, three housing navigators, too.

Okay, and these are all FTEs?

Yes. Okay.

And then my last question, kind of in alignment with Commissioner Ruck. I know CHS does amazing work in the community, but do we measure, like, the sustainability and efficacy? So we have 177 folks served. Do we know and monitor, kind of, does their placement find them permanent housing in there, or do we track? what that 177 leads to, or is that just sort of ticking the box that we've served that many? And in terms of follow-up, what does it look like?

No, in the case of homelessness, there always has to be some wraparound services, right? That way that person can be successful in keeping that housing that they get, right? Obviously, like I said, not many of them, not all of them are ready, right? But for the ones that are ready, there's those wraparound services, and also there's other agencies that provide different services. That way they can keep that housing. They can be successful in that.

And do we keep demographics on those 177? So do we know who?

Yes, yes. I don't have those numbers on top of my head, but yes, we do. All those numbers get reported to HUD.

And do we see a disproportionality in terms of access? Do we see our Latino-Spanish speakers accessing the same as non-English speakers? Or is it an equitable distribution of those 177?

I think it's an equitable distribution, because most of our unhoused population are Hispanic. So obviously, they're the ones that are going to receive most of the assistance. But yeah, the assistance is available to everyone. Like I said, that is ready.

Thank you.

Thank you. Most of the commissioners already answered most of my questions. I just want to echo like we do with the past meetings on community outreach on what you guys put out there, more accessibility, easier accessibility. As you know, there's a lot of stuff going out there in social media already about the city. They talk about the city not being transparent and You know, I think there has to be a website or a link where we could go and see everything that, you know, the average person could see everything that we're seeing. That way they could see, you know, talk about numbers and they see it right there. Instead of you get these bad actors out there giving false narratives. And that's what causes a lot of, you know, divide between the city and the residents.

Yes.

So are we working on something like that for accessibility? Yes.

This is going to be our goal for this fiscal year to find a way for us to communicate to the public that these are the programs that we're actually working with.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, because like I say, there's a lot of people on Facebook, on Instagram, you know, just giving links to this, you know, what we did. And you just have to press on to it and it brings up everything there. You know, that way, like I said, there's no false narratives going out there. You know, and that's what's going on now. And we need to stop that. And that way we could get the people to back, you know, to support the city of Salinas. There's too much stuff going on right now.

Yes, I think we do a lot of good stuff, but I think it's that next phase.

You need to move forward and start getting better on that, better communications with the residents so they don't hear it from someone else instead of hearing it from the city themselves.

I do agree with you.

Okay, thank you. Okay, we will now open for public comment on this item. Are there any comments from the public regarding this item? Yes, we have none. Zoom participants, please use the raise hand feature if you'd like to provide any comments. None? Okay, we will now close this public comment on this item. Are there any additional questions from the commissioners? Commissioner Mora?

No additional comments or questions.

Okay, Commissioner Ruck?

I have no further questions. I want to say thank you very much for your presentation and hyperlinks, hyperlinks, hyperlinks. Any Commissioner Pernell?

No questions or comments.

Okay, thank you. I don't have any additional comments. All right, so moving on to the next, okay.

Chairperson, I don't know if you want to go back to the minutes, but since Pernell's here, we can take a vote on that.

Go back to the minutes, okay. Thank you. Okay. Okay, ID 26443, minutes of September 2nd, 2026. Can I get a motion to approve the minutes of September 2nd?

I'll make a motion to approve the minutes.

I'll second.

Got a motion from Commissioner Mora and a second from Commissioner Ruck. Okay, can we have a roll call vote?

Commissioner for now. Yes, Commissioner Mora. Commissioner Rock. Yes, Commission Chairperson or Camara. Yes, motion passes.

Thank you everyone. All right. All right, Commissioner comments and reports. Commissioner Mora.

Just very briefly to anyone who may be watching the California Youth Empowerment I hope I got that right. It's a statewide commission. We'll be here in Salinas on Friday. They're gonna be at the epicenter hosting a Youth Voices for Change event. So again, that's gonna happen this Friday. It's not every day that we have a state commission here in Salinas. So just any youth who may be listening or any adults who know youth, please help us spread the word. The event's going to take place Friday, September 18th from 3.30 to 5.30 at the Epicenter here in South Salinas. And then second comment, there was a lot of conversation about an additional Starbucks that's being built, right? And it's like... They always tell us, don't read the comments. And I, of course, read the comments. And someone said, fire the Salinas Planning Commission. And I said this to a bunch of my friends. I'm like, we're volunteers, first of all. But it does, I think... speak to the need for ongoing education, public education, and the need to make these things more accessible. I'm also under no impression that we're going to get half of the city here on any given day. It's a hard sell. The nature of participation is changing. And I know that the city has done a lot of really wonderful work to begin to adapt to Communicating with the public online on social media through newsletters and that work isn't lost on me. It's. It's really wonderful, but there really is still an ongoing need to make these processes more transparent and accessible to the public. So they understand the city's role in issuing permits that they understand that. There was a lot of accusations of corruption facilitating some of these permits. I think to me, I see that and to me it's a need for ongoing education and engagement because people clearly care. That's why they're up in arms. I think as we realize our shared vision of creating a great city, I would love to have more voices at the table who clearly care. you know the table may look very differently so that's just an ongoing comment about the need to make uh our work more transparent again right now there's no members of the public and i don't think there's anyone online but how do we ensure that the very meaningful work that's happening in this space makes it out to the public so that they have an opportunity to opine and they don't just feel resentful when they hear that what's at the 17th starbucks is going to open in town and that's it for me hey commissioner mora commissioner ruck

I have none, thank you.

Commissioner Pernell.

I just wanted to acknowledge, I know city staff and an amazing cohort of volunteers managed to pull El Grito within less than a month, and it was a really special event. So just to acknowledge, I don't know the intricacies of who planned it, but I know there were thousands of people out there, and it was really, the city had to do some magic, I'm sure, on their end to get the streets closed and do it. So acknowledge the city staff and the volunteers who put it together. And I think much like Commissioner Mora, I don't know if it can be a future agenda items, but social media being what it is. There's a lot of conversation also about the vendor process for food permits. So I know that there was a, I don't want to say battle, but an online courageous conversation between some folks about how do we support our local business and maintain our downtown vibrancy while still supporting the entrepreneurship of our local food and mobile vendors. So in terms of future agenda items, if we could get kind of a better understanding from our permit folks, that would be a great presentation at some point if we've got nothing on the agenda. And that's all. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Pernell. And that's a good point that you have there. And I know as a business owner too, it's good to know instead of people talking out there, everybody has their own. It's even getting more so because we are in election year. So you're getting a lot more people giving false narratives out there. So, you know, the city, I believe, should be... putting it out there and just uh... letting them know like uh... commissioner pernell said you know how the system works because people uh... make up their own narrative of how it works and then that's what divides city of salinas and we can't grow as a divided city we need to work together and i think uh... more transparency uh... will come upon this once we figure out how we could get that on social media where nobody will be uh... going out there and making up their own narrative it's right there playing black and white if we could get that Yeah, I feel the same way as everyone else. We work stronger all together than dividing the city. And hopefully this election coming up, even with the United States, brings everybody together. And it's been getting worse every time, every year, with divisiveness. We should be all working together to grow. And hopefully we could work on housing and get these housing going, you know, built so we could bring up the numbers and it'll bring down the rent and we won't be arguing about rent control. So that's one of the main things I look at, too, is we just have to start building, and that's the main thing. People should focus more on working together to get the city to start building, working with the developers to start building, get more houses on the market, and it'll eventually bring down the rent. And that's all for me.

Mr. Chair, may I? Yes. Piggyback on your comment there. Does the city have a PIO?

We do. We have a communications department, and the PIO is within that department.

Okay.

Our I believe her name is Sophia Rome and so she she puts out most of the city's communications go through her office.

Okay, well, on that note, too much is lacking, okay? I'm just going to say it. I'm just going to be blunt. Too much is lacking. There's just way too much lacking. And I don't know what's actually being put out there by PIO, but there's too much information lacking.

Thank you. Okay. Do we have any future agenda items?

October 7, we're working on another presentation. I haven't got the details quite yet, so we're still working on that for October 7. The next meeting, however, October 21, we're going to be bringing back the, I believe, the Quick Quack project.

Great. Great. Okay. So the next regular planning commission meeting is scheduled for October 7. Who will be able to attend that meeting?

Yes, I will be here.

Thank you. All right. So at this time, the meeting's adjourned. Thank you, everyone.