Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Can we have the roll call, please? Absolutely.

Sorry. CMAP, I'm echoing. I shouldn't be echoing.

Okay, let's... We're just having a little technical glitch here. Just be a moment or two.

Try to keep it off. Okay. Mm-hmm. I just did that. CMAP, can you try unmuting yourself again and turning on the video through Zoom? Can you turn on your video, CMAP? Okay, awesome. Vincent Ringhaden, District 1?

Present.

Richard Way, District 2? Present. Robert Scaliotti, District 3?

Present.

Robert Gibson, District 4?

Present.

Bobby Thomason, District 5? Present. All commissioners are present. Thank you.

Okay, so the first item on our agenda tonight is unfortunately another departure. This time it is Stephanie who is leaving us. And so if you will join me at the podium. Okay, I believe it's on now. Great. Okay, so Stephanie. The San Benito County Planning Commission recognizes Stephanie Reck, Senior Planner, for over three years of dedicated service in advancing the county's long-range planning, housing policy, and cannabis regulation programs. As lead staff for the 2023-2031 housing element six cycle update, Stephanie successfully coordinated with consultants, state agencies, and the public to achieve planning commission and board approval, and has continued to shepherd the county's residential rezones to get us to HCD compliance. Stephanie also led the initiation of the concurrent safety element update, organizing broad community participation through partnerships with local agencies and bilingual outreach. As housing coordinator, Stephanie implemented major updates to affordable housing regulations, coordinated all state housing reports, and manages compliance monitoring for deed restricted units. She is also processing a 53 unit multifamily affordable housing development intended to serve very low and low income residents. As cannabis coordinator, Stephanie led the 2024 reform of the county's commercial cannabis ordinances, removing barriers to entry and reestablishing a successful program. Her efforts have resulted in the permitting of two commercial sites totaling roughly 260 acres of canopy. Stephanie also provides key support for ongoing policy updates, prepares reports and presentations for elected officials, clerks various commissions, including of course the Planning Commission, committees and ad hocs, manages public inquiries and fosters collaboration through skilled mediation. Her professionalism, initiative and commitment to public service have greatly advanced the county's planning and policy goals. as you take the next step in your professional planning journey with the city of vacaville we express our sincere gratitude for your contributions and wish you continued success your dedication and passion for community empowerment will be greatly missed thank you so much Okay. Thank you. Absolutely.

I'm really sorry to see Stephanie leaving. I've had the pleasure of working with her on a lot of projects, the housing committee, various affordable housing issues and projects, and this is a huge loss for the county. It's unbelievable how hard this woman has worked for us. I've been at lots of night meetings with her and I'm very sad to see her go. And thank you so much, Stephanie, for all the good work you've done for this county.

Thank you. Any other commentary on this item? Yes, Ariel.

So I'm here to talk about, because I got to work with Stephanie for about three years. And not only did I have the pleasure of calling her a colleague, but she's also a friend and a family member. But her dedication in this county was just like untold. She came in and... I threw the book at her and then some, like, you're gonna do this, you're gonna do this. And she just did it with a smile and she did it with hard work. And I'm gonna tell you that your housing element wouldn't be here tonight without her. She literally would go around to every single person, you need this to me today. It would have been, our housing element would still be like a year or two out if it wasn't for her. And that's a benefit, not just, to everyone in this community that having that kind of level of dedication. I mean, the number of policies she helped write. When she started, she didn't know how to write a policy. She then trained others. That's where she was at. Your planning commission packets, the number of hours it took to put together, and it didn't matter how late. There was times we were at the office at 10 o'clock at night producing, planning commission packets to make sure it got out to the public. And not only that, but she fostered just incredible teamwork, making sure that everyone felt included, thought about, I mean, she would throw these lavish things for birthdays, just really making sure everyone felt really special. And we're all going to miss that. I'm going to miss it most of all because I just love her and because she's my family as well as my colleague. And so I just hope everyone knows how much they're losing. So thank you and I'm sorry.

Thank you. Any other commentary on this?

Mr. Chair? Yes. If I may, Abraham? Absolutely. Yes, I echo all of the sentiments from Seth, Ariel, you, Mr. Chair. I remember Stephanie, when she came in, she was one of those also that was new to the career. One of the three planners that came in a little bit over three years ago, three and a half years ago, new to the career. And like Ariel said, it was a part of a training process, but she came in equipped, armed with her master's degree and ready to hit the road running and very efficient on the housing aspects, efficient on cannabis affairs. If we needed her to also help in planning matters, like subdivisions or whatnot, she would not be afraid to move forward and help us with that. always efficient with all of that. And then you mentioned mediation. Planning, as you all know, can be a contentious type of career because of the land use regulatory nature of it, and we have to follow policy, and sometimes that can be a little contentious. But with Stephanie, I mean, whether it be just helping out with a member of the public who had questions or concerns, or full blown out conference room, sheriff's office, full room where we had to mediate a certain situation, which we have done various times. Stephanie would always be there to assist and always making us feel really good. And like Ariel said also, the fostering that just beautiful environment at work, bringing up morale is always a positive thing. So we are gonna miss Stephanie so much and wish her the best. Thank you, Stephanie. Thanks.

other commentary on this okay thanks and thank you again stephanie for all your hard work it has been noted and really appreciated okay moving on to item 5.1 department or actually item 5 department announcements which will include 5.1 Sorry, my phone is going haywire.

Okay, CMAP, if you could please pull up the screen. Okay, we are gonna go over the 2026 calendar for planning commission meetings. So the planning commission meets on the third Wednesday of every month at 6 p.m. So I won't go through every single meeting date here, but here's your calendar for next year.

We have a lot on the calendar tonight, so yeah, I appreciate that.

So I just need a motion to adopt this calendar and then I can set up all the meetings for next year for you.

So moved. Is there a second? Okay. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Okay, motion carries 5-0. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Stephanie. Mr. Chair, members of the Planning Commission, as you know, I usually provide a brief report indicating all new applications that have come in. As of production of the packet, we actually had three applications for discretionary permits that were submitted, but they weren't fully submitted. There were some things that were missing, so we're gonna go back, look, make sure that they were fully submitted, and if they are, we will bring those back to you in December at the next Planning Commission meeting to inform you of those of those projects and then just very briefly as we heard right now stephanie will be leaving us on on friday so beginning next monday the the planning department will be with only one planner for the whole county of san benito as of last monday this past monday our building inspector 3 our most senior inspector he also left to the city of danville and we only have one building inspector for the whole city. The good thing is that we do have Four Leaf who helps us from time to time. They're on call and we can still tap them when we need them to assist us. Just some of the plans that we have right now. We will try to do a budget adjustment soon, hopefully, that has to go before the board. Hopefully they will be able to adopt it and try to transfer some funds from salaries to consultants so that way they can assist us. And we also have a group, consultant by the name of m group m group helps us with planning matters and the good thing about that is that a lot of what they do is 100 cost recovery it's it's essentially paid for by the applicant and or developers so we're trying to make it work as best as possible to try to um to try to keep the departments afloat, and we'll continue to do our best to do that. We do have budgeted positions, and so a goal of the department will be to go before the board and ask if they can unfreeze the budgeted positions and hopefully allow us to hire. So just wanted to give a little bit of an update on what we're doing, but trying to keep it afloat and doing our best, so thank you.

Okay, thank you. Okay, moving on into item number six, which is public comment. And this can be a little confusing. This is not public comment about any of the items that are on our agenda. This is your opportunity to address the Planning Commission on items that are not in tonight's agenda, but are within the purview of the Planning Commission. So if there's anything that you wanna talk about that is not on the agenda, please submit a card if you haven't done so already. And Stephanie, I'll let you run this part.

I have no public comment in chambers or via Zoom.

Oh, well, that was easy. All right. Moving on into item number seven, which is the consent agenda. These items are considered as a whole without discussion unless a particular item is requested by a member of the commission, staff, or the public to be removed from the consent agenda. So the consent agenda tonight consists of acknowledging the certificate of posting for tonight's meeting and approving the draft minutes from the meeting of October 15th. Are there any corrections or additions to the minutes, for example? No, okay. In that case, is there any public comment on the consent agenda?

There is no public comment in chambers or via Zoom on the consent agenda.

Okay, then I think a motion would be in order.

I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda.

Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. Thank you. The consent agenda is approved. Moving on into the regular agenda item 8.1. This is a periodic compliance review between the county of a development agreement between the county and Pinoch Valley Solar. The Well, I don't need to read everything that's on my screen here. Let's just go into the presentation and we'll take it from there.

Thank you. Thank you. The county has currently four active development agreements as presented to you previously, which consists of Santana Ranch, Fairview Corners, San Juan Oaks, and Pinoch Solar Valley. of Pinoch Valley Solar. Your commission has already reviewed three of the four this year for periodic compliance of the development agreement. And today, the Planning Commission will be considering the periodic compliance review of the development agreement by and between the County of San Benito and Pinoch Solar Valley LLC, which was continued from the regular Planning Commission meeting of September 17th, 2025 to a date certain of November 19th, 2025, which is today. The periodic compliance review of the DA is an opportunity for the developer to indicate how they have been meeting the compliance of the development agreement. And I wanna quote the section of the San Bernardino County Code 19.11.012, indicates that the developer shall quote, have the burden of providing compliance at the public hearing before the planning commission. Unquote. And today we have representatives of RWE for Pinoch Valley Solar, including Vice President, Asset Management Region West of RWE, Shannon Amonet, and she will be presenting today. Shortly, Section 1911-12D of the San Bernardino County Code, if the Planning Commission finds a developer to be in full compliance with all terms and conditions of the agreement, it shall adopt a written resolution certifying compliance with the development agreement. Subsection E of that same code If the Planning Commission finds that good faith compliance with all terms and conditions of the agreement has not been demonstrated, the Commission shall refer the matter along with its recommendation to the Board of Supervisors. The project consists of up to 247 megawatts, located on approximately 1,888 acres on an overall 2,506 acre site, and involves the installation of approximately one million photovoltaic panels. As we have heard previously, weed abatement has been an ongoing issue with the project as of the September Planning Commission meeting. The fire department and code enforcement have collaborated on this matter and the notice of violation has been sent or issued to Pinoch Valley Solar requiring weed abatement with the following correction items. One, to mitigate the fire hazard according to adopted state and county fire codes. Two, to enlarge the safety line from the solar arrays to the fence lines. Three, prepare a weed abatement hazard mitigation plan, four, establish a fire safety agreement with the City of Hollister Fire Department, and five, provide proof of the fire service agreement. Since the September 17, 2025 Planning Commission meeting, Fire Chief Jonathan Golding and I have been in communication regarding the fire safety agreement and Chief Golding has indicated that a fire agreement has been reached and it is provided as part of your Planning Commission packet. Fire Chief Golding and Chief Charlie Bedoya are here present to address any questions on the weed abatement and the fire service agreement. At this time, if it's okay with the Chair and the Commission, we can invite Shannon Amonet with RWE to provide a presentation on the periodic compliance with the development agreement, and then if you like, Fire Chief Golding and Fire Chief Padula can present, or can be, who are here present, can answer any questions regarding the fire safety or fire service agreement. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, good evening. Thank you for having me, first of all. So the slide deck that we have provided here, I'll just quickly run through. So this is just a high-level overview of our project. and then we continue through the development service agreement and each of the requirements. So we are fully compliant under the development service agreement. And regarding the notice of violation that we've received, We have gone through and done the weed abatement. We've added in additional measures to make sure that the site is fully compliant, that we don't have issues in the future. And we have established our fire service agreements. We've been working with the fire department in establishing a good relationship there and just trying to be a good business partner. So if we want to, I can walk through any of these items or I'll just open it up for questions on the slide deck here.

I wouldn't mind hearing a brief walkthrough of each of the line items in this chart, and I think there might be one or two more charts. There's quite a few, actually. Well, no, I mean of the things that are related to compliance. But yeah, please go ahead.

So under the development service agreement, the project was required to conserve the mitigation lands, which we have done, and it had to exceed the open space for a nine to one ratio. We had to pay the sales tax payment. And so we've paid 4.25 million in sales tax to San Benito County. It also required supplemental compensation. So paid 2.5 million to the county to reduce the megawatt size of the project. So we have paid that to the county. I believe that was paid back in 2018. The community benefit fund, the project was to pay 50,000 for community selected solar or public benefit projects. And so that was paid back in 2018. The project was to develop an education and research program. And so we've had college students attend at the solar farm and we've established it from presentations for ongoing for education. Then we had the annual pilot payment to the county auditor and that has been paid each year and is current through 2025. For the decommissioning fund payments, we're required to pay 26,500 per megawatt installed, adjusted by the CPI to the fund, and it's due every five years, and that was paid in 2023 and 2024, and the next payment is due in 2028. For annual reports, we provide the annual monitoring reports. I think the last, the most recent one was filed in May, and then we will file again next year. The water conservation, so we were to limit panel washing to conserve water, which we've been doing and limiting the project to. Then we were to control the groundwater. So we limit the amount of surface groundwater and we've complied with that with the county requirements. Then we were to, for credit purchase, purchase credits from a CDFW approved bank and create a permanent conservation easement. So the bank credits were purchased and the conservation easement was established. And I believe this is for one of the last ones is to have general compliance with environmental plans. And so we've referenced some of the plans that we actually have out there, which include habitat mitigation, stormwater pollution prevention plan, surface treatment plan, lighting plan, habitat restoration and revegetation plan, avian conservation strategy and eagle conservation plan, and the wetland mitigation monitoring plan. And so we are compliant with each of those agreements. And then here we've kind of broken up the notice of violation.

Sorry, I'm sorry. I turned my microphone off without realizing it was already on. Can you go through a couple of, or actually all of the things that were done to resolve the violation?

Yes.

Thank you.

So we have here for the notice of violation, there was fire code vegetation management. And that is where we were to, let's see, We were to have the ground-mounted voltaic panel system be installed within accordance with the section of the fire code 12.5.5. And the panels have been installed per fire code. For vegetation control, we were supposed to have a clear brush of 10 feet around the perimeter ground, so around all of the panels. So we've actually established that plus an additional 10 feet. so we've gone up to 20 feet around the panels. For vegetation management per the fire code, we were supposed to maintain the vegetation under six inches, and so we've actually gotten it down to an inch. Then we were to maintain defensible space for any structure of 100 feet, which we've done around any defensible structure. Then additionally, there was a code reference for any nuisance that is at the site. We've made sure that the site is in clean condition and that we've addressed all the vegetation management issues there. and then for just ensuring that equipment was installed to prevent fires. So we've established a fire service agreement where we're meeting and we're training our employees on preventative measures for ensuring that there's no fires at the site. Then we also have, again, some of this is redundant, but it was to establish the fire service agreement and then provide it to the county, which we've done. And then also just to ensure that around the solar arrays that we cleared the perimeter, which we've done from 12 feet to 20 feet. And then we've actually installed additional measures at this site. So we've installed what we refer to as an owl. So it actually tracks and detects if there is any type of smoke, then we're alerted that there'd be smoke at the site. We also have now what we refer to as a bulldog. So it identifies hotspots for any of the panels to let us know if there's an issue there, and then we can go and take any mitigation efforts before there's an issue. And then we also have installed four water tanks so that the fire department can use those for not just a fire at our site, but any local fires. And the last fire that occurred in Pinoch, they actually used them at our site. So that was actually really good. And then we've also just continued to work with CDFW. That site in particular has had vegetation issues due to the fact that we are under an ITP with CDFW and US Fish and Wildlife. So we weren't able to have it down to regular like any of our other sites. And so the sheep had stopped eating the vegetation. And so we've had to try to come up with other mitigation efforts of how to get the vegetation down. And that is it, kind of covering all the action items.

Okay, thanks. There are questions from the commission for the applicant, not applicant, but for the representative.

Please. Oh, good evening. I have a lot of questions actually. So I didn't see between my old packet and this packet a weed control plan. Was that somewhere in the documentation that I missed?

So we've sent it over to the county and then we haven't supplied, I sent it over to Ariel previously. So I don't know if I need to forward it to you.

Was that part of the packet that I somehow missed?

we can provide it to you after.

Well, I don't want it after. I mean, in September, I made it crystal clear that I wanted to see everything before this meeting. So my assumption was that they didn't do it. So apparently it wasn't your fault.

I can address that, Mr. Chair. I was checking in with the fire department earlier today to see if they had received it. With this turnaround, it looks like they provided to Ariel, but I didn't get it, so I will look into it and review it and send it over to the fire department. because I checked with them and they indicated that they didn't receive it. So it sounded like it was submitted to Ariel, but not to the fire department or anybody else. And so that's where there was a statement.

I wanna make sure that reflects on her employment record. Okay. No, it's okay. So how many fires have there been at that site since 2018?

I do not know that exact number.

Have any of the solar panels been damaged with those fires?

We've had a couple that have been damaged, yes.

It's just a couple? It's not like hundreds or thousands of them that have burned?

Mike, do you want to come speak to that?

I'm asking because I just want to know if you paid the sales tax on those new panels.

So we actually have spares on site, so if there's a panel burned, we're able to go and replace them.

Oh, well, that's very handy. So how many panels were burned over the... Have you had a dozen fires or somewhere in that?

So the most recent fire, we had the back of the panels that were burned. They did not need to be replaced. They are still producing, and we're looking at putting a spray-on back sheeting on those in place so they will not be replaced. Okay, excellent. Thank you.

I don't know. That's it for now. Let me go through my papers. Weed control plan. So if you could email that weed control plan, please. It's better late than never. We have the fire agreement and the fire seems pleased. I did notice that there was nothing in there about notifying the county if that contract ceased. So I guess we have to somehow monitor if that contract falls through, that means you're no longer in compliance and that will be an issue. for the county. So somewhere in there, we need to make sure that we're notified.

We can make sure we notify the county.

Okay, thank you. I think we may be there. We don't have any current pictures of what the ground looks like. You said you can't control the weeds because of

So we're under an initial take permit with the CDFW and US Fish and Wildlife, but we wouldn't talked with both of them and we're working on amending our ITP. So we were able to take some mitigation efforts to get it vote down.

Okay, because I've passed by a couple of solar facilities and they're like no weeds. And I can't say that I go out to Pinoch, so I have no idea what it looks like because I try to avoid driving that road. I'm just curious like what it looks like and if there's, could there be another fire? I wanna make sure that we don't have another fire for a lot of reasons.

Right, as do we. I have some on my phone, and we can email them around as well, of recent photos. I was actually just at the site today and took a couple photos today. But because we have endangered species there, that is why...

there's a lot of rules around what you can do with the environmental group so they don't they don't burn the little endangered species i mean it seems kind of counterproductive to me um have you have you built a helipad on that site no okay because it says and uh yeah it's a safety element that in addition the applicant has agreed to construct a helipad on the site according to APM has dash five. So I'm just perhaps that's something that the county can follow up on it, since that is part of the agreement. And I guess that is all I have for the moment.

And it looks like Commissioner Scaliotti is champing at the bit. Thank you.

Good evening, thank you for being here. I just traveled from here to Colorado, and I went by thousands and thousands of acres of solar panels all through Utah, Nevada, Colorado, and not one of them has a weed under it. They are bare dirt, like Commissioner Gibson said. I wanna know why you can't go up there in the springtime and spray underneath those panels when the green grass starts to kill it off. There's gotta be a reason that will stop the whole problem. You can't allow the grass to grow and then mow it down with a weed whacker because all you do is put dry grass on top of dry grass and it burns. It doesn't make any sense at all. You've gotta figure out a way to keep that grass from growing, period. by thousands and thousands of acres. I keep looking like, there's no grass under these things. And here in San Benito County, we allow it.

There's a problem. So when the project was built, it's part of, because of these endangered species, the environmental permitting that was required and the county actually signed off on, we are not allowed to take the ground to bear it.

Then why do we allow it to get built there? If we can't maintain a nuisance, then why do we allow it to be built?

Lesson learned for the future. Not to repeat the same mistake.

So we are doing our best, though, to keep it as low as possible.

It doesn't matter. The minute it dries, it's gonna burn. The second it dries, you are 99% gonna have a fire. It may be a small fire, it might take the whole thing out, but you will have a fire. It doesn't take much in that country up there when it gets to be 110 degree heat with no humidity to start a fire.

And I could understand the concern there. We also do not want to have a fire. So we're doing everything that we can, working with U.S. Fish and Wildlife and CDFW to see what amendments we can make there. And we're also trying to comply with all the standards.

You probably kill more salamanders with the fire than you would with the spray in the springtime. Okay.

Anything else, Commissioner?

No.

Okay. Other questions?

I have a couple of questions. You couldn't answer, and I understand how many fires there have been, but did we get to the root cause of what those fires were? What started the fire? Have we figured any of that out?

Yes. We have determined we had some anomalies on the wire management, and we have since resolved those anomalies. We've... We're on the book ad, if you will. We've had up to 50 people out there going, inspecting, and resolving each issue we found. When you say anomalies, something shorted out?

What are we talking about?

Yeah, the sheep tend to kind of rub on them and cause them to kind of fray a little bit and get hot spots. So we went and addressed all of those, found those, and cut those out and replaced them.

okay so i was doing a little reading and and i found that the root cause of most fires on solar farms are one poor installation and two poor uh maintenance so that was what the i read may not be true here but let me ask you so how often you said you threw the book out how often does somebody walk through and and take a look to see if there's any frayed anything

We're doing that daily, and as we talked about on the slide, we have a now mobile robot that looks like Wally, if you will, that will go up and down the rows. It's got an infrared sensor. It's got an actual person in a control room monitoring it. It picks up hotspots, put it in a report, and then sends it to the plant technicians, and then they will go back out to those areas and address it. whatever's found. So that's a proactive measure that we haven't had at our other projects that we've brought and deployed here and finding good success. Okay.

Are these monitored online? In other words, can somebody look at it and online determine that there's potentially a problem on this section of panels or any way to monitor that

online yes we have we have a skater control system that we do monitor and we set up some controls on there to kind of monitor more a little bit i'm going to call it deeper into the into the weeds of the of the dc health to see that there's anything that's not uh that's not expected there or or for lost watts if you will Trying to make it simple there, but yeah, we're looking down into the detail to see if there's anything not producing, which would tell us there could be a problem, and then we send somebody out to inspect.

It's actually monitored at two locations, too.

Yeah. Okay. Getting back to this picture here that shows, I think, a fire that took place, and then you can see it's not burned over here. I think that was page 202 of our packet. How did those panels do? If that was a fire, how did those panels do? Did you lose a lot of panels?

No, the fire didn't get high enough. It just was maybe more about eight inches to six to eight inches off the ground, and the heat wasn't high enough to cause any damage to the panels on probably the one you're looking at. The last one, we did have some melting underneath, and that's what we're going to look to recoat. But those panels are still producing. Got you.

And I'm a little, what is the, maybe you can help me, but what does the code say about what the grass level should be under a panel? Should they be zero, six inches? Maybe the fire chief can help me out. What does the fire code say has to be done underneath the panels? Most places, as Commissioner pointed out, that I've seen are dirt and that's it. So I'm a little confused. I know habitat might be an issue, but I'm a little confused. Can somebody tell me what the code says? Should there be one inch? Is there allowable six inches? What's allowable? I believe it's up to six inches. I read something that said zero. So that's why I'm trying to figure this out. In the national NFPA, I thought it said zero. So if it's six inches, that's not acceptable. If it's one inch, it's not acceptable. It has to be zero. That's what the code says. It doesn't call out for salamanders or any, I'm sorry, but it says zero. So unless you can tell me somewhere else where it says six inches, it should be zero. Right? If you're following our fire code, it should be zero.

We're following from the notice of violation, the fire code that's referenced there, what was called out to reduce the fire load.

Okay. Well, I'm just going by what NFPA says, and I think it was zero, so that's why I'm trying to figure that out.

Commissioner Ringhaven? For what it's worth, I just want to interject that I had the opportunity when I was down in Tulare a couple weeks ago to do a tour of the Rexford One solar facility, which is 3,800 acres of panels, and I believe they produce three megawatts, if I'm not mistaken. I must be mistaken. Anyway, in any event, it's a huge facility, and I was astonished to see that it was not bare dirt. uh i don't know how they did it why they did it but it was not their dirt it was a probably at least an inch of of grass so they were not compliant either i i don't know i i guess you're right but i don't know why that's yeah unfortunately you know when when we go to build a house or do anything else we have to follow the code

And so if I would just respectfully say that if average Joe has to follow the fire code and all the other restrictions that we have, then we can find a way to make these panels fire compliant as well. And I'm not sure if that's spring, maybe you have something to add to that.

Yeah, I was going up to a ranch we own in Patterson and they're building brand new solar panel farms just like what they have along Highway 5. They're taking on a little lawnmower orchards and there's not a blade of grass under them, nothing. So the one Mr. Way saw, Commissioner Way saw, must be an anomaly like this one because every one that I saw, Zero, no grass, nothing, just pure dirt. How they're doing it, I don't know. If they're putting down a sterlet on the soil or something, I don't know, but there is no.

So I oversee many projects and in this particular area, This one has endangered species. We don't have endangered species at a majority of our projects and we don't have the same requirements we have to comply with and how it was approved for building. This is how it was processed through, but for most of our sites, we don't actually have the requirements and we don't have endangered species that they're trying to protect either.

Have you checked into spraying underneath those panels? Have you checked into someone to go up there and spray? Because there is chemicals that you can use that are soft on the endangered species. The reason I know that, I'm a farmer. So I know what I can and cannot use in certain situations. And I'm sure there's a chemical you can find to put up there that won't hurt the endangered species and still do what you need to do.

Okay, it's me, Charlie, the fire marshal out there. So there's a couple of different things. We're still waiting for the weed abatement plan. We haven't received that yet. And then we're still waiting for the call for the inspection, but I'm trusting they'll call us out and we'll go inspect it to make sure they're compliant. As far as the underneath the arrays, it's like brush-free clear area. And I'll work with them on that part, but... life safety trumps everything else. So if that's not cutting it to where they have it, then it's gonna happen or they're gonna have to go down to the bare minimum soil, which the code absolutely says. But I'll work with them on that part right there. There is pre-emergence, there is post-emergence that are safe for the water, because we had to go do it and we had to do the CEQA for when we did our weed abatement plan roadside clearances next to the waterways and all the cattle that we were able to. So there is that option too to help keep the weeds from coming up through that too. That's something they could work in, and we could work with them on that part right there.

So there is ways to get the burger. There is ways to get it done. So it should have been done already, which would have saved us, the county, a lot of money running fire trucks up there to put a fire out that did not need to happen.

And they did have a fire a couple weeks ago, but we'll go ahead and give them a break because it was due to weed whacking. So we'll kind of break that. And it was contained, though, because they had got it down. So it didn't get too big. It was a one-engine response. So we didn't have to get out there.

Charlie, what's the cost to send a truck up there one time and back? What's the cost to run a truck from station two up there and back?

Well, time and service, I mean, it depends. I mean, it costs a million dollars for a fire engine nowadays. Well, the department tries that out, so. Yeah, it gets a little spendy. Yeah, on our dollar. Yeah. Well, that's why I said we're working with them to provide the service. So as long as we communicate, they have our emails. I haven't got any emails. The fire chief hasn't got any emails that we're ready, but as soon as we start communicating like that, we're good to go and I'll be more than willing to get out there as many times as it takes to get compliant. Like I said, life safety trumps the critters. Life safety for the people, the cattle, that's their livelihood out there and everyone's homes out there. So that trumps everything else. So we do need to make sure we have it contained and we wanna protect their investment too. We don't want them to be losing money for fires. We want them to be making money, paying taxes, protecting their investment too.

It looks like Commissioner Thomason is waiting to say something. Are you finished?

Oh, and real quick. I'm sorry.

That's okay.

I'm sorry. Some of the fires and what we've seen, because we had CAL FIRE investigators, I'd call it at the breaker points, there was popping breakers that was causing sparks on some connectors. I'll just call it like that. It's an easy part. Or underneath the arms, when they rotate, the wire harness would get caught up in the gears, and that would cause the shorts on a few of the fires, too.

Got it, and that's why I say maintenance is so important. Those things track at such a slow speed. It's like watching paint dry. You can't see them move. And if you could imagine a whole panel moving, it's hard. Like I would say, I'd want to really know the root cause of the previous fires. What was it? Was it a solar panel that had a loose wire that was sparking? Was it an actual...

a breaker at a what was it because that's important that's part of the maintenance that there is there was numerous ones and the only reason we would get called and i think they've mitigated this by having on-site robots we'd get called because the cameras would notify cal fire because they'd see the big columns of smoke when the fire's already too big got it so now Their mitigation is early detection from one of them. So we'll be able to catch it a lot sooner now. And with it down, we'll be able to take care of it a lot sooner before that. And they have personnel on site. Yes.

And I imagine that if a sheep or if it, through rotation, gets frayed, that that panel's no longer producing. So is there a way you can look at the monitoring and say, oh, we have some panels not producing? What's the reason for that? Is it potentially a fire hazard? That's what I'm expecting to see in a maintenance walk.

And that's why we're getting the whole perimeter out too, to make sure at least we're getting the perimeter to bear as well too. And the fence line is taken care of too, because that wind is taking that fire and you'll see the fingers going through there. That's because the wind's just blowing so hard through there that it's just pushing it in that direction. So you'll see it, why didn't it burn here? The wind's just blowing it so hard through there. So hopefully we got it down enough. When we go and inspect it, we'll be able to verify it for sure. And you'll let us know. I'll let you know for certain. Thank you. I'll let you know if they're not in compliance too. And then we'll do what we need to do with code enforcement and do whatever we need to do because it's all about life safety. Okay, thank you.

The owl and the bulldog that you had spoken about, those are like the online that you guys detect and all of that. Is that correct? For the smoke, you said the owl and the bulldog for like a hot solar panel. So the people that are on site actually, oh, we got to go out here and check it out. And so you really...

So those are additional measures that we added in. We also have like this data technology, as Mike was alluding to, that we can see if there's a panel not producing, right? And we do have employees on site that are able to go out. We have the water tanks there, right? They're also being trained. Part of the fire service agreement is that our employees are trained to put out the fires and we're working with the fire department. I think we've established a good relationship to where we'll be having these inspections quarterly where they come out and also we share ideas and they're able to walk the site and just make sure that everything is in compliance.

Do you guys, and forgive me, is it a micro-inverter or do you have a big inverter that controls?

It's a utility-scale inverter.

Okay, so it's a full-size inverter.

And then to answer, real quick answer your question about the wires hanging down frayed, we are not replacing the hangers like for like. We have now changed to an all aluminum hanger that will not fray or get from heat cycles that will get brittle. So these things will be lifelong hanging up there now. So that's something different, new technology, if you will, since when that plant was built, common was used plastic strapping. Now we're using aluminum. Good. Thank you. That is an enhancement that we've put in.

Yeah. And we appreciate that. It seems like we can get control of this. I mean, with all the monitoring systems that we have and with technology and even AI, you know, you would think that the fire portion of this would be very minimal.

Yeah.

Thank you. Like Shannon said, we brought the controls in the SCADA to a secondary site so we have extra eyes on it. When the site team is out in the field, we have it passed off and handed off and there's always eyes on the plant. Okay, great, thank you.

And Commissioner Thompson, did you have anything else? Okay. Okay, and as far as questions, yes.

One more question. You said you had water tanks up on the hill to service water? Do you have like fire stations throughout the properties where that has pressure to them? So if the fire department can't get there, do you have personnel on site that could put out a small fire real quick? Do you have little small fire stations throughout the project?

So we have a water buffalo. So they're able to, they're water tanks. And then on each of the buggies, they have water or fire extinguishers so that they can go put it out.

Okay, thank you. The water trailers, you've seen those. Yeah, thank you.

Okay, and as far as questions from myself, one of the perks of being in this chair is I get the benefit of hearing all the questions and answers from my colleagues and they've done an admirable job of sussing out the things that I was concerned about as well. So I don't have anything personally to ask. So I guess let's go ahead and open it up for public comment.

I have no public speaker cards. Does anyone wish to comment on this item? There is no public comment in chambers or via Zoom.

Okay, thank you. In that case, we'll bring it back to the commission for discussion and potential action.

Just as a comment, I'd like to say that I'm teetering whether or not to find them in compliance. I'm extremely disappointed in their past and possibly current performance. I definitely want to say before next year, I'd make sure there isn't a blade of grass. Find a way. Because next year, you may not be in compliance if we choose to find you in compliance this year.

I wonder, are we gonna have, and that seems to be the major issue is the fuel underneath the panels. Is somebody gonna get back to us to see if, maybe I misunderstood, if it was gonna be taken all the way down to dirt or if one inch is acceptable? Remind me where we're at.

or compliance? Yes, Commissioner Van Hayden, we will look at, and one of the things that Shannon mentioned is that there was mitigation measures back in 2010 when this was approved, and because of the endangered species, there is requirements that there has to be a certain amount, but we can try to see what we can do and see if there's a possibility that, like Commissioner Scalia mentioned, if it can go lower or if there's a spray that can be used to allow for that. But the mitigation measures have to be met, and so that's part of what the DAA periodic compliance should also indicate. But in working with the fire department, with Charlie, we can try to see how far low it can get in still meeting the mitigation measure.

for the... And right now you can assure us that the highest blade of grass there is one inch.

I can attest to that. I was there today.

Okay. Let me... What is the species that we're talking? That's the problem here.

There's multiple endangered species. Do you have them offhand? I know there's a leopard, no, it's lizard.

There's the... Hi, I'm Carrie Kaplan, thank you. So there are three endangered species. There's the lizard, there's the kangaroo rat, I believe it's called, and there's a squirrel, and then there's one threatened species, the fox. So there are three endangered, excuse me, one protected or threatened species on site.

Okay, and I'd just like to reiterate what you said, you know, life safety. I mean, I feel bad for the lizard and the squirrel, but I hate to lose a life. And so what's more valuable here?

We agree. And I just would assure the Commission we're working closely with CDFW to try to find, again, these solutions to strike that balance. Human life, top. But we do have these obligations to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for these species. And so we're trying to strike that.

Which squirrel is it? I'm curious. Is it like the common ground squirrel? Don't say that, no. Okay. You never know, lunatics protect everything. Okay. And for staff, I'd just like to note, if there's ever a solar facility that comes forward with a proposal, make sure there's not a single protected species, please.

Okay, further discussion within the commission then? I guess potentially a motion would be in order. Or a motion to find them not in compliance or a motion to continue.

I think we need to remember, and this is gonna probably not be real popular. This was 2010 that it was built and I, 100% life is more precious than some critter. Listening to them this evening, I haven't been involved for very long, but it looks like to me that they are trying to comply. I've driven through Nevada and seen no nothing. They've wiped out the desert, you know, between Mojave and it makes me sick, but I feel like they are really trying to get to that zero and 2010 to now, how can we, sadly we can't,

You know what I'm saying? There's just... I agree with you. I mean, if it came before us now, maybe we wouldn't be so anxious to approve it. But the fact is, it's built, it's there, it's... And we, yeah.

But it's also taken 15 years for them to get a fire agreement that should have been done 15 years ago, as well as a weed abatement plan that should have been done 15 years ago. So I'm sorry, I'm not crying for you. No, I will agree. It should have been done a long time ago. And the fact that the county let it go for a whole host of reasons is inexcusable. I agree. It's the county's fault more than it is the applicant's fault.

Both parties.

I do agree, but I think now that we have the fire and everybody, they are now trying to, he's willing to go out and, you know... i i'm not saying i'm approving or disapproving i'm just saying i think there's now a cohesive we're going to put you and you're going to be held accountable they're taking it seriously yes yes they're taking it seriously how many how many fires would there have been in the in the first couple years to how many fires have there been in the last couple years will tell you a lot about how it's being maintained i don't know i think so Well, no, I don't know the amount, and they don't know either.

That's my thought, that we could take, for example, the first few years, five years, and the learning curve and how many fires were there in the beginning as to compare to how relatively safe has it been over the last five years. You mentioned one, which will forgive him for weed whacking, but how many fires have been started by the panel or an electrical issue with that in the last few years?

And they all were, so... i'm pretty comfortable as the fire department here to go ahead and um accept it tonight you got to remember so and i'm okay with a one inch okay because if you look at the flame lengths what's the flame lengths usually it's one and a half times the fuel and so if it's if it's wind driven how high are we gonna get three inches maybe, flame lengths, if we have that. But I am gonna hold them to that and I am gonna make sure they are down through that. So like I said, you call me up, I'll come down, we'll go inspect it. And if not, we're still gonna hold them compliant. We'll find them annually, we'll find them daily if that's the case. And if we need to pull the CUP, we can always pull the CUP. so i have no problem with that i'm pretty sure they'll be in compliance and i'm we'll work with them the fire chiefs has a good working relationship with them too so if he feels confident i'm confident with them i'm confident we can get to yes tonight

Good, you've given me some confidence.

Yeah. I appreciate your confidence. Just so you guys know, the measure is good faith compliance here. So it's not strict compliance, it's good faith. So that's sort of the determination.

Thank you. I have a quick question for the chief. at what point in the stage of growth in that grass are you gonna start making them weed whack it? Two inches, one inch, eight inches, 10 inches? Where are you gonna start making them hold it to that one inch? So you don't have a lot of growth laying on top of that dry. So at what point are you gonna make them go in there and clean that up?

They have a big job ahead of them. It's not seasonal. It's something they're gonna have to be maintaining all the time. But you get what I'm asking? I am. We have an early rain this year.

So right now, I bet I go up there and that grass has already went as tall. And they have to already start. So they better get on it. They understand that. So the longer you let it get, the more you lay down, the more you weed whack off there, the drier that is.

yeah so it's going to be annual it's not it's not like daily the fire yeah exactly the fire season is all year round now yeah so they're going to have to be maintained annually because if they get it too far behind they're going to be playing catch up then we're going to be having some problems so for us to hold it at the one inch they're going to have to go up there tomorrow and start in then they understand that it's going to be okay it's ongoing just like maintenance just like

Annual maintenance or daily maintenance. Roundup is certified against for animals like you're talking about. They can use Roundup. So if they go up there and start now hitting it with Roundup.

Like we had talked about, there's some safe post-emergence, pre-emergence that are fine. Yeah. Yeah. So we're already 100% better than it was before. Because when I would go out there, there was absolutely a big fight. No, we're not going to do it. We're just not going to do it. And we're not going to do it. Well, I haven't heard that lately. And from what I've seen is I've seen a lot of shaking and rattling and rolling. And the pressure tanks, they have pressure on them. So they flip a switch, kick it on, and we get probably about 125 PSI out of them. So we'll be able to utilize it too. So it's not just a draft, they're not just draft tanks.

I'm not prepared to vote in favor of this because I really wanted to see that weed control plan. I mean, that was... pretty critical to me and I appreciate that you're confident, but I'm not as confident. I wanna see the words and I wanna see what the practices are. And I would love to see a video of what it looks like or pictures of what it currently looks like and then be told what your plan is. If I can't read it, I'd like to be told what your plan is because oftentimes people tell us what we wanna hear. And then if you go back and look at the fine print, well, it wasn't exactly that. You know, we're gonna do this and we're gonna do that and we wanna, everyone comes up with stories and then if it's not written down and even when it is, as we've seen with this, even if it's written down, people don't follow through. And if we don't go after it, it doesn't get done. So I would just like to continue it so I can see that weed control plan myself. And I'd also like to hear more about what's gonna happen with the permit and the weeds because to me, burning a rancher's grass is not acceptable. That's their way of life. And if they're gonna have to buy hay to feed their cattle, who pays for it? I mean, do they have to take them to court? And there's been, what, 10, 12 fires? And I'm just not comfortable voting yes to say that they're in compliance at this point. I myself would like to have it continued for at least another month, if not two, to have a chance to get a better understanding of what their weed control plan is. because it could be one inch now and that could be what they say they're gonna do. But if it's not written in stone that I can read and I don't have faith in the plan, then we're gonna end up with more fires unnecessarily.

I would support continuing it. I mean, I would also support accepting the compliance tonight based on what I've heard, but I would be okay with continuing it.

I would like to see it continued until, like Commissioner Gibson says, we have an ironclad, know what they're gonna do and let us know. I mean, this has been ongoing since 2010. There's always this stuff happening. So I would continue it.

I kind of feel the same way. I put a great deal of weight and thought into what was said. But I almost feel like I want to go out there and take a look myself. I really do. Just simply because grass grows fast. It's really hard to stay on top of it. You've got a tough job just for that. And then... I'd like to really see, honestly, a maintenance schedule that shows, because it's almost an all-year-round job to maintain that to a one-inch level. It grows so fast, it's hard to believe.

So we currently have with CDFW that we're trying to get approvals for the herbicide use. And so we'll be spraying. We're trying to get that as soon as possible. So because we are in rainy season, right, to be spraying. We have every executive at our company has been involved in this project, right, of you are important to us. Your county means something to us. And we've literally thrown hundreds of people at trying to be at this site, which, you know, would have taken us months. We've got it down to right now. it is down below, you know, an inch at the whole site. And I have photos on my phone if you want me to show. I didn't get a chance to print them. I tried.

Yeah, and how many, just remind me again, how many megawatts are you producing?

So it's 140 megawatts.

140 watt? Mm-hmm. So that's a pretty good amount of power.

And I also wanted to explain the site wasn't built in 2010. It wasn't built till 2018. There was that in 2015, like a lot of back and forth with environmentalists. And so the site wasn't actually built until 2018. So just wanted you to know that we haven't been dealing with this for since back.

at that time period and maybe actually to expand there was actually litigation from environmental groups against both the company and and the county related to the site and then it was ultimately developed after that litigation and that is part of what has kind of shaped the multitude of layers at this project.

And I would say that our company purchased the land surrounding it and we gave back 26,000 acres so that the protected species, or 2,600 acres so that the protected species could also roam on that part of the land. And we still have the requirements that we've been trying to abide by.

Through the chair. Do you have a sense of when you'll have an agreement with Fish and Wildlife? Is it one month, two months? Because I see no reason to meet again until we have an answer. Because if they're gonna say two or three inches or six inches or whatever is sufficient, I don't see a reason to find you in compliance because I don't really care what they have to say about the frog and whatever else. I'm more concerned about fires. So I don't see a reason to meet until that thing is resolved. I don't know when that'll be, though. Do you have a sense? One month, two months, three months?

We're in active discussions with them, but I couldn't say today when we will have a firm.

January, continue it until the regular meeting in January. And hopefully that's enough time. If not, we'll continue it again. I mean, at this point, we haven't had a compliance hearing for you ever. This is the first one that we've actually followed our own rules. So I don't see a big deal if we miss a year.

And if we do find them compliant, then how long would it be for the next compliance? Another year. Another year. So we get another bite at the apple.

I don't know. Well, it's better than approving it without them being fully in compliance and doing what we want them to do.

It sounds like there's an appetite for continuing. Yep. The question becomes January to win.

Another two months. And if that doesn't work, then we continue it again. I just don't see why we should approve it just for the sake of approving it when it's not in compliance, in my opinion. There's a lot of unknowns and I'm not comfortable giving it a stamp.

I say we continue it until February and they bring it back in February and that gives them some time to push on DFW. Let them push on the Department of Fish and Wildlife. That's gonna be their job to make sure that they can get this done. the power to push on the DFW a little bit to say, hey, we're having troubles here. We need to get this cleaned up somehow. Go to a reputable ag supplier that knows And there are gentlemen out there that know what you can and cannot use around endangered species. You get a good PCA, the Site Control Advisor, that will tell you exactly what you can and cannot use that the DFW will approve in a heartbeat. Cheap? No. Expensive? Yes. But it can be done. Thank you.

I think one good reason for potentially continuing until February is so that we don't end up continuing again for the simple reason that it's an imposition on the public. When we publish that we're going to be considering something and then people turn up, which didn't really happen tonight per se, but... just in general if people turn up expecting to be able to comment on on the project and then we end up continuing it then they've got to come back again potentially and so it would be good if we didn't have to continue it again again yeah well i mean it's an imposition on us too i mean we're hauling these things around and then we have to go and compare the old packet to the new packet and this it's a burden but on on the other hand that's a role that we accepted and i think we need to do our jobs with some some thought so i will make a motion to continue this item until the regularly scheduled meeting of february 2026. second okay all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed no okay motion carries five zero item is continued until the meeting of february which i don't have the date in front of me but uh somebody does

I don't have that calendar.

I do appreciate your saying that it wasn't built in 2010 because that was a huge consideration for me. But now that it's 2018 and I realize I have to agree. We need to get everything in a row. And the date is February 18th.

So thank you. Okay, let me switch screens here and moving on into the public hearing. And thank you for your patience, the public hearing items here. First item is 9.1. a resolution to approve a tentative map subdividing a 36.02 acre parcel into 5.11, 5.18, and 25.73 at 748 Bellato Road. And for the benefit of anybody who may not have attended one of these meetings before, generally the way this works is we hear the report from staff, Then we have any questions from the planning commissioners for the staff. Then we move on into public comment and then we bring it back to the commission for discussion and potential action. So please proceed, thank you.

Good evening, Michael Kelly, senior planner. I'm here to present this subdivision at 748 Bellato Road, BLN 250045. This is I think the third meeting in which it's been agendized. It was here September 17th and October 15th, continued each time for separate reasons, but it seems to have gone through the review, making it ready to be presented tonight unlike the prior two times. So the presentation will be like the usual structure as you see here with these points. This is the location. It's 748 Bellotto Road, which is near Trespinos. If you go down Kinsabe Road to the meeting point with Bellotto Road, you reach roughly the corner of this lot, and the lot extends from Bellotto Road down to Trespinos Creek.

Michael, can you hold up for just a moment? It seems that they're trying to get the presentation to appear. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay.

I should have noticed. I may be more conscious of that. Thank you very much, CMAP. Okay, so there wasn't so much to see quite yet. But anyway, here is where it's located. Like I said, near Trispinos. Moving on. Here is the project where you see the, let me see if I can get the pointer here, you see the, this is subdividing into one, two, three parcels, 36.02 acre parcel into three lots, two of them close to five acres, one of them close to 26 acres. There's no construction proposed at this time. I'll say that before and after this subdivision, the amount of construction that could happen is just about the same because of the zoning, which is not so much dependent on Whether there are lots, it's more dependent on standards like one dwelling per five acres that can be done without drawing lots. The only difference is that accessory units are dependent on lots. So there could be accessory units resulting from this, but otherwise there's no construction proposed. Well, there are road improvements, otherwise no construction proposed. Once again, the site plan, Here you see the, well I'll just say, this parcel and this parcel are proposed to be, they're not proposed for construction right now. There is the existing residence on the larger lot, the 25.73 acres lot. And also down here is Trispinos Creek. There is flood zone down at the bottom, but the rest is not in flood zone. It's again the site plan. If you go to the site, you'll see these images or these scenes. You'll see looking northward, Bellotto Road, as you see right here. You turn to your right, you'll see toward the east, the neighbors along Bellotto Road in the distance. You can't see it, but in the distance, it's near Historical Park, Bellotto Park, the fairgrounds, et cetera. If you turn around to the right once more, you face southward toward Trespinos Creek, downhill. If you turn one more time, you face west or west-northwest toward, in the direction of basically. Now, of course, each of the projects we compare to the general plan and to zoning and what's in there prescribed. And in the land use element in the general plan, this site is agriculture and zoning. This is agricultural productive, both roughly the same, allowing general agriculture and one dwelling per five acres. Zoning sets a five acre minimum for lots. We'll also compare the project to the various policies, all the policies that are in the general plan and see that it's consistent with all those. Policies that stand out are what you see here, you see the land use policy on viability of small parcel sizes. This says that parcels under 40 acres are to be shown to be agriculturally viable. It's typically understood to mean that when a project starts with more than 40 acres and is introducing lots smaller than 40 acres, that's the time to consider the viability of smaller parcel sizes for agriculture. In this case, we have a lot that is 36 acres The policy went into effect with numerous sub 40 acre lots all across the county, of course. So in a way this lot exists on the notion that there has been, there has been a determination of agricultural viability for, or not viability for smaller parcel sizes. So this parcel exists and the time is basically passed for there to be a consideration of viability of such a already small parcel and that extends to the smaller lots also. So the public facilities and services element has this policy on adequate water treatment and delivery. This project was continued from, the first time it was continued, it was in part based on the matter of water quality and demonstrating that there is adequate water quality. That has been submitted to the Environmental Health Division and the review's happened. been satisfied with what they see. So this policy is satisfied. The next policy, the, I'm trying to make my, oops. Trying to make this thing come up. The circulation policy on right-of-way dedication. This project does dedicate right-of-way to Bellato Road. and that's in the conditions of approval. On a related note, the project also performs improvements to Bellotto Road, and that's why this project was continued the second time from October 15th to tonight, because the applicant opted to work out some further improvements have some further discussion with the public works engineers on what the road improvements should be, in part based on our having a somewhat changed subdivision ordinance that has different standards for what improvements are expected of this. the discussion happened and now what you see resulting from that is condition 26 that has a length of a lot of road of 240 feet rebuilt from the ground up effectively near the driveway entering this property. And the land use policy, this land use policy, agricultural land preservation, this, once again, proposes no construction, proposes, well, the amount of construction allowed other than the road improvements and accessory dwellings is the same as what would be allowed before the project. We have to note how this complies with California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA, and whether there are any significant impacts to consider. And in this case, we can see with certainty that there is no significant impact to result. That's the common sense exemption that applies here. As I said, no... increase in construction from before to after other than the accessory units possibly and road improvements which neither of those could really be argued as being something imposing a significant impact as for the road improvements that under sequa is considered There we go. That, under CEQA, is considered an existing facility. This would be no expansion of the use of a lot of road, not like an additional lane. It's just maintenance of what is already there, some degree of improvement to it, but no expansion of its use, so it qualifies for this exemption. And then the whole property is not in sensitive location. It's, if any, if any alteration happens to the land it would just not be in a sensitive place like steep slopes or wetland or uh fault zone flood zone etc so this project can be considered exempt under sequa so staff recommends what you uh see in the resolution um we that you review the staff report, that you review the draft resolution including the findings and conditions of approval, including this condition 26 that I mentioned. We recommend you receive public comment and we recommend you adopt the resolution including the findings to approve this minor subdivision subject to the conditions of approval found in the resolution. We can take questions if you have any.

Thanks, before we move into questions from the commission, I wanna apologize because one of the things that I left out when I was explaining the order in which we do things is we also give the applicant the opportunity to make a presentation if they wish to. And I noticed that the applicant's representative is here. I don't know, do you want to? Okay, well, let's do questions for Michael first and then we'll have the applicant's representative up. Thanks, questions from the commission for staff at this time? Okay, thanks. Go ahead, please.

I do have to say that I did talk to the applicant prior to the first time it was posted. So sometime in September, I had a conversation with the applicant.

Okay, thanks. All right, then I guess if Ms. Hall would like to say anything.

Good evening, Planning Commission. I'm Ann Hall here on behalf of the applicant. And I have one comment, but the applicant is also here via Zoom. He had to be out of town, but I believe he is on Zoom and would like to speak also. So we have worked with the county, had some back and forth, We do not have any real issues with the conditions as proposed, but I did want to clarify in condition 30 about the underground utilities. It says all proposed utilities within the subdivision shall be placed underground and we have no issue with in the future if things are built, all that electrical needs to be underground. But it also says along peripheral streets and I would ask that along peripheral streets, along Bilotto Road, there's a large, there's a pole drop to the Tres Pinos well that I would not want to be a responsibility of this project to Underground, and that's the only one on their frontage, and so I would just request that the word along peripheral streets, which would refer to Bellotto Road, either be waived or struck or reworded. I'm not sure how you want to do that. But again, the utilities within the subdivision, we understand those need to be underground at the point when there is construction. That is not an issue for the applicant. We're just requesting the comment regarding peripheral streets be removed. And do you have any questions for me while I'm up here?

through the chair a couple of questions i didn't see an ag easement an offer of an ag easement for the 25 point whatever acres 25.73 acres was that offered an ag easement with no further subdivision no okay and just uh another where's the blue valve which lot does the blue valve stay with if this were subdivided

The blue valve would have to be adjusted regardless because those are based on size of lots, so that would be something we'd have to coordinate with the Water District. Because it's being reduced from the 35 acres down to 25 acres, we'd have to see if they would allow it to remain in the place it currently is. If it would need to be sized down, that would be something, I believe they have a condition in here just saying we have to coordinate with them and we'd have to work that out.

And the vineyard on Welch's property, I'm also, because I know at one point they were trying to get everything that was there certified organic. None of the other people have livestock on the Welch property. I didn't see an offer to putting like a buffer to protect that, whether or not it's still organic, I have no idea, the vineyard on the Welch property, to put a buffer that's free of livestock so that it doesn't affect the continued operation of that vineyard.

I don't know that there's any intent to put livestock on this property. It's still vineyard.

Well, they ripped out the 17 acres of Chardonnay But on the other side of the road, the other side of the driveway, rather, to the south, I'm just worried that if houses were built and they decided to put livestock, then you have an issue with food safety.

I again the applicant will be speaking next and I'm sure he can speak to I don't believe he has any intent to disrupt the ag use in the area I think that's something he can speak to as to how he might want to work with that but I don't see that there's any intent to make it harder to farm in the area if that's your question so that's my concern yes the the ag easement with no further subdivision on the remaining 25 point

seven three acre parcel and then the bumpers this is not a cluster zoning there's no requirement for an a easement correct but we we did do it with another project off of fairview road and uh we they agreed to put an ag easement on the remaining parcel otherwise we have the um where it just continues to get subdivided and we end up with another stone gate which I do not want to see that side of Trespinos go from Ag to buy Baker McMansions. And I know that the applicant says it's for their children, but we get told that all the time. And then lo and behold, it's for sale. Some short time later, like 90% of the lots that come to us for subdivision, everyone says it's for their family. Then a year later, there's a for sale signs. I don't know if they got rid of their kids or what happened, but just because somebody tells us something, we can't actually believe it. So I'm nervous that we're gonna start a trend on this side of Trespinos that once one person says, oh, here's five acres, well, why don't I do that too? And then all the vineyards get ripped out. Kind of like Vineyard Estates at one point, that used to be an Almaden Vineyard, and now you go up there and there's maybe four of those parcels still have vineyard and they're not horribly active. So we're seeing everything disappear. Our ag appearance disappear as we become San Jose's bedroom. So I have some concerns with this subdivision, actually in all subdivisions.

Well, I did. And I understand that, but I think the applicant is complying with the zoning, which allows subdivision. So I'm not sure how to address your concern when he's doing something that's allowed under the county ordinances.

It also says that they underground the utilities. So I mean, you're asking for us to look the other way on one of the rules and then offering nothing in return. So I guess we'll have to see how that goes.

Undergrounding rural utilities on the main roads is something you've waived on pretty much every application I've brought before you in the past year. So I don't see that that's necessarily a new request.

Every project is independent.

Okay.

I will let the applicant speak to some of your concerns. Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, Vince, you've been allowed to unmute yourself. Um, we cannot hear you if you're talking. Hang on, let me try something.

Can you hear me now? Yes. First of all, in terms of the, You know, the food safety requirement that, you know, when neighboring are having livestock, there's not our intention to have livestock, but that relates to vegetables.

There's no food safety requirement on wine grapes.

In fact, no pathogens can grow in wine grape and wine. So it's very, you know, very safe. So what you're referring to absolutely matters to vegetable, that does not matter to wine grapes. So is there any questions on that?

Well, when we had certified organic for our walnuts, we couldn't have any livestock. So I don't see why that would be any different for grapes.

Well, again, wine grapes, there's no requirement there. But I'm not sure what the requirements are for orchards. I know walnuts can carry listeria and things like that. But again, those human pathogens can live, survive in wine. so anyway that's not it's definitely not a requirement uh for organic and the ground is organic um so there's no no setback or anything like that between wine grapes and any requirements like the leafy green vegetable association that's very uh the the uh group that says that limited to have a setback between livestock and it doesn't have to be organic but just any any kind of vegetable production So I'm sure there's no setback required for wine grapes, I'm quite sure. I'm not sure how you can verify that, but that's not an issue for sure. So again, I'm sorry I'm not there in person. I'm a human in Arizona. We just moved our farming ag operations here, our vegetable operations for the winter. And it was important for me to be there. It's important for me to be there as well. That's why I'm on the Zoom call. I do, I mean, I have a lifetime's worth of ag and farming experience. You know, let's stop saying I'm smart. It's probably quite the contrary. But I love it. You know, I love agriculture, I love farming. I'm one of the residents out there in Vineyard State that has a productive vineyard. And honestly, if it's not, I do it, you know, kind of for the love of doing it.

It's just...

I'm lucky when I get my, you know, my whole growing cost back, but love and enjoy doing that. And our chances to do the same and live out here on this property as a family and do the same, keep it, you know productive uh as we reasonably can without you know taking too much risk you know and that's the best use of this ground and it's certainly not viable for vegetable farming Certainly not because of where it's at and you can just look at the neighboring properties and see what's going on. I understand the first hand economic challenges and other challenges farmers face, including the economic viability, the most really important thing. This really just parcels a tough piece of dirt to farm. You can look at the neighboring places, like I said, most are fallow. Our place and the Welsh property are farmed together, using water from our property primarily. And, you know, even so, the downside is, I guess why it's a tough piece of dirt, you know, it's hilly, thin topsoil, very hard well water that's rocky, you know, it's remote, lots of deer, pigs, rodent, birds you can contend with.

I mean, you see the starlings out there.

You know, the reason that we... we pull the chardonnay out, again, there's just absolutely no market for it. And very tough with the bird situation and everything like that. i wish i wish it was different but but it's not it's uh you know it's it's really best agriculture they're not interested in it i've tried We're lucky we're doing that. The 18 or the 12 or 14 acres that are left of the whole vine cab right up on the hill, there's somebody interested in that and they're still going, but we're hanging by a thread and he's going year to year. And that's just a little bit with everything I have going on, it's a little too much for me to handle on my own. And I wouldn't have a market for it as well. although we would try my best. But hopefully, I really, really want to keep those grapes up on the hill, around the existing house there and productive. It's very similar to what I'm doing right now. In fact, my grapes get combined with this block, the ones from the Indian state. They're very similar, get blended in with these. So unfortunately, wine consumption in the U.S. is in decline. I think you probably all know that by what's going on in the county. Young people aren't just drinking wine, they're drinking other things. And it's currently oversupplied and will be oversupplied for years. You know, to plant a vineyard, you have development costs, probably costs. I haven't even looked at them lately because all my grades are old, but has to be probably $20,000 a flat plus 7,000 acres, 7,000 bucks an acre to grow for three years before you get any returns.

So in a market like this,

you know, or there's just nothing is going to get planted anytime soon.

There'll be no contracts out there anytime soon.

And if consumption doesn't change and it continues to fall, it's going to be, you know, oversupplied for a long, long time. So what I'm getting at as far as this parcel is going to be a labor of love, more so than a sound investment. And I already do that. I'm on the parcel on that. And this is... The best thing that we can do to keep it in a productive bag, in my opinion, is to allow people to live out there with, like, kids, so they choose what I hope they do when they own this property and partnership, and let us share in the workload. You know, I don't want to see it be fallow. Like I said, you know, I love it. You can just look at where I'm at and what I'm doing. You go, I'm looking at Google Earth, I'm looking at my vineyard.

I might have to pull that out too because I'm losing the buyer on it. But not maybe pulling out, but just myself.

Unfortunately, that's the state of the wine industry right now. But long term, we'll find something to keep it productive. I'll figure something out. I'm already talking to somebody about producing vegetable seed there because it has some nice isolation.

And like I said, it's not suitable for vegetable crop, but for vegetable seeds, yes, potentially.

But again, that's a small market and I'm working on that. Again, our best focus, in my opinion, is to allow us to live out there together. And we have absolutely no intention of selling off. I mean, I could have applied for, you know, four or five big parcels or something. All we want is to, you know, live there. And our kids, hopefully, live their lives there as well.

And we just have a lifelong residence in San Diego County. And that's where I hope to stay the rest of my life. I'm not far away from there as it is.

keep that thing as productive as possible. It would drive you crazy to see it follow. I'll figure out, you know, something one way or another. But again, look at the neighboring marshals, and that's where this would be headed, the way the market is, unless you have somebody who wants to do it as a labor love. I'm not that person. So I appreciate your consideration.

Let me know if you have any questions. I do. I have a follow-up. So would you be willing to put the 25.73 acres in an ag easement that disallows further subdivision of that parcel?

I'm not sure. You're just approaching with me that right now. I don't want to further develop it, but there's also value in that, and in terms of selling it into an amusement, and I just thought I'd have to think about that and talk to my partner, which is my family.

I have a question, the applicant. Instead of breaking it into three parcels, why don't you give your family undivided shares? So they all have a share and they can build a home without splitting it up. and then it stays a complete old parcel of 35 point something acres.

Yeah, mainly because of financing and if they wanna build homes there, I'm getting closer to retirement, they're younger, we're just in different parts of life and I don't want to encumber the whole thing with debt.

Would you be willing to put deed restriction on the five acre parcels that can only be sold and built on by family members?

Again, I haven't thought about that. Maybe I'd have to consult on that.

Okay, thank you. I don't think that's necessary, but anyway. Well, it's necessary in the sense that it gives the planning commission the confidence that it's not gonna be sold off like another commissioner just said. In the meantime, it gets broke up and it's not what you said it'd be. If it does exactly what you said it's gonna be, then it's a family thing, family run, be cool, plant a vineyard back in it. But without that on there, there's nothing that says you guys can't sell it.

Any other questions for the applicant? Okay, let's go ahead and open up for public comment then.

Okay, Jason Noble, you've been unmuted.

Hi, did you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you taking additional public testimony at the meeting this evening. I had forgotten about the meeting. My wife and I are currently in Bozeman, Montana, and I was reminded about the meeting. My wife and I, Carolyn, live across the street. We own 755 Malaga Road and we own 955 Malaga Road. We personally have no objections with the subdivision of the property across the street. I can speak from experience that the Brigantinos have been who have been tremendous, wonderful stewards of property in San Diego County for decades. I have no reservations about them having purchased the property across the street or wanting to subdivide the property for the benefit of their two sons.

I agree with Vince and I think the questions posed by Commissioner Gibson and Scaliola are fair questions,

I also disagree with the request for those to be considered as part of a restriction against the subdivision, even for reasons that Vincent mentioned that you then impact the value of the remaining property. This is something that I hope you guys will remember when Board of Supervisors brought before you the request to consider rezoning much of San Diego County. I stood before you that evening arguing that this was bad, that this was not good for San Diego County, that the attempts to down zone the property hurt the property that the supervisors reported it to benefit. And then we brought many, many people to the Board of Supervisors meeting following the Planning Commission's approval of that to move it forward. It does not help farmers and ranchers. It burdens them. It hurts the value of those properties. The other request of considering doing it under undivided shares, as Vince had also mentioned, that burdens private property rights for the examples that he gave as well, that if his sons wish to go and borrow against the property to build a home, Lenders are not gonna like undivided interest. They have a separate parcel. It is much, much easier for his sons to be able to borrow to build their homes and live there. I just, again, want to reiterate that we live there. We have no objections to the subdivision of the property and the two five-acre parcels for their sons. Thank you very much. Have a good evening.

Thank you.

I have no more public comment. Oh, yes, I do. Seth Capron, please approach the podium. You'll have three minutes.

Thank you for the time. Death by 1,000 cuts is what happens if we continue down this path of allowing five-acre parcels. There's ample language in our general plan that you can hang your hat on if you don't wanna approve this parcel. Purpose, let's see. The intent of the AP zoning designation is to facilitate diverse agricultural activities as articulated in the general plan. It allows for limited low density residential development while prioritizing the preservation of prime farmland. And I think particularly, I don't, with all due respect to the planning department, I love you guys, but the interpretation of the section of the general plan that was quoted here, this policy expects that project applicants seeking to subdivide agriculturally zoned parcels must demonstrate the ongoing feasibility of lots smaller than 40 acres for commercial agriculture operations. The applicant has not done that in their application. it's hard when we hear the testimony of the owner and i certainly sympathize with the owner wanting to move his family onto the property with him i think we can all relate to that but in talking about the ag possibilities on this land i don't think he foreclosed the possibility that this land could stay productive in agriculture also um In the general plan analysis in your staff report, it talks about cumulative effects and it names a number, I think four or five other subdivisions in the immediate area where five acre parcels were allowed. And I think to me, that tells us that there is a cumulative effect of continuing to allow these five acre parcels, because we know what's gonna happen. Ag is no longer gonna be viable in that area. We saw what happened over many years in the area east of Fairview Road, the Spring Grove area, and there's talk now on the ad hoc ag, about looking at areas like that and removing that AG designation because they aren't viable anymore, which might be the right course, but do we wanna continue to take other areas that are still being farmed and allow subdivisions on them that we all know If you create a five-acre parcel, it says there's no construction plan. Well, the reason for creating a five-acre parcel is because it basically entitles you to build a house on it. And it is different to build separate houses on separate lots. In the long term, that's gonna be a residential lot. It's not gonna be part of a farm. It's a lot less likely to remain part of a farm anyway. So I think this is... This is unfortunate bad planning. I mentioned earlier that, thank you very much for your time.

You can wrap up your thought if you want to. You mentioned earlier that.

Earlier I had mentioned to you that at the Ag Stakeholders Group that I've been going to their meetings, they were talking about looking at changing the zoning minimum parcel size, because it doesn't comply with the goals in the general plan. because it's too small. And they were talking about changing it to 20 acres. So it's hard to argue that a 36 acre parcel is inherently not productive. So I think they haven't met this specific requirement of the general plan to show that these five acre parcels are gonna be agriculturally productive. And I think we all know that they won't be. Okay, thank you.

Okay, I have no more public comment in Jamers or via Zoom.

Okay, then bringing it back to the commission. Discussion, possible action?

I would have to agree with the last speaker I think people cherry pick the parts of the general plan that suits their purposes and five acres of as we've seen throughout the county unless my own eyes are lying to me it's not productive agriculture they end up being abandoned orchards fire hazards people seem to collect broken down RVs and boats and box trucks and It is an ag and the general plan, the part that says that it's helping with the viability of smaller parcels is a lie. It's completely incorrect. There's nothing truthful about it. It might be a pipe dream. We're one of the few counties that has such small ag parcels and it's to our detriment. and the board, I haven't really followed what the board's been doing for a host of reasons, but they were supposed to have an ad hoc to discuss changing the minimum size and I don't know where they are or if they'll actually come to a conclusion. but every five acre parcel, whether or not people believe the general plan says that they're allowed everywhere is up for, I guess, interpretation because it isn't preserving ag. It's destroying it five acres at a time. I'd much rather stick houses on 5,000 square foot lots than five acre lots myself. So I'm open to one of two things, bringing it back with findings for denial. or continuing it until the applicant has the opportunity to discuss with his family whether or not they're willing to put an ag easement on the remaining parcel that disallows future subdivision. At least we'll know that that 25 acres won't get further subdivided down the road.

I would tend to agree with Commissioner Gibson on those items. Go ahead, please, Commissioner Scagliotti.

I agree with Commissioner Gibson wholeheartedly. Why can't you put an egg easement on it if that's what you want to keep it in? The applicant said he wants it to be egg, then put the egg easement on it. Not to see it get put on all three parcels. you keep it an egg. If people are gonna break this up, then you keep it an egg. Personally, I'd like to see it kept as one big parcel in undivided shares. I understand you can't borrow against it. I get that, but that way we keep these parcels whole. So maybe we do should continue it until the applicant decides what he wants to do. Thank you.

or actually sorry one more thought or actually all these subdivisions until we the the board clarifies what we're going to do with their their whatever the name of that ad hoc is where they have farmers and ranchers on this ad hoc supposedly that will come up with a new greater minimum parcel size I mean, we're continuing to accept applications, I think, because we have to, but there needs to be some thought put into this while we're in the middle of changing how we view things, because I've disagreed with these subdivisions for seven years, and there was always a hope that we're gonna do something, but I'm stunned that the government hasn't done anything more quickly than seven years. But if we continue down this road, look at morgan hill and gilroy well and look at san jose it used to be orchards and like i said we're the only county that has five acres most are 40 some have 20 for the most part and it's just wrong to continue down this path

I just wanted to, I'm a little torn at the story of him wanting to bring his sons to help with some of the work. I totally understand that, but getting back to the five acre thousand cuts, it's true. I mean, we can't continue to break it. Five acres is not agricultural productive. I mean, I don't know. It's a really tough one here for me.

Other thoughts?

I would like to ask the applicant if he would like time to consider and discuss with his family whether or not they even wanna consider the ag easement with no further subdivision or if their preference is just to bring it back with findings for denial at a time that gives staff, our remaining staff time to bring it back.

Would you like to hear from the applicant now?

Yes.

Vince, you've been allowed to unmute yourself again. Yes.

Okay, so your question is whether to bring it back or, so I would say yes, we need to bring it back. Maybe you can ask your question one more time, sorry.

So the reason to continue the item would be to give you an opportunity to discuss with your family whether you would consider putting an ag easement on the 25.73 acres that disallows further division of that land. I mean, if you're willing to ponder that, I'm willing to give you time to ponder it. If you're not, then the motion would be to bring the item back with findings for denial. But I would like to defer to give you an opportunity to basically pick what your preference is.

don't sound like there's too much of a choice there so sure yeah we'll continue that um and um you know that you know like i said it's you know you guys i'm not sure exactly i know you know uh commissioner scalioli you uh have firsthand farming experience um so All you have to do is look at those neighboring parcels and what's going on. I guess I'm obviously disappointed and I feel like I'm getting a strong arm to do certain things. I mean, it's, anyway, it's, I wish some of the people that would come up, the kind gentlemen, I'm not sure what your background in agriculture is, but it's a lot of risk and a lot of work. And I know this is the right thing to do to keep it going. productive that doesn't mean uh you know i should get a strong arm to take something of value away um you know for the future when you buy something you know it's like buying a house you know a three-bedroom house and then somebody comes in and says hey you know use two bedrooms um you know i just that's not my intention but i still don't uh you know i don't feel like there's a big need to do that i guess continue it and then we'll uh i'll discuss with my family and um i hope you guys you know think about it more as well anybody anybody would like to lease it i'd be happy to release it what is it

Okay, thanks for the explanation. And I believe Commissioner Ringhaden had something? No, I don't. Okay, sorry. All right, then I guess under the circumstances, a motion would be in order.

I move to continue the item until December 17th, our regularly scheduled meeting to give the applicant an opportunity to have that discussion with his family. Second.

Second. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, motion carries 5-0. Item is continued until the December meeting. Thank you. Let's see, it is now eight o'clock and we've been going since six o'clock. I wouldn't mind taking a five minute break if that's all right with everybody. So let's go into recess for, well, let's say 10 minutes, thank you. We are in recess.

It's funny. Thank you.

There we go. Okay, we are back in session at 8.09 and the next item to be considered is item 9.2.

Oh, sorry. What's the procedure to change the last?

So you can bring it forward to amend your motion or to redo it.

Okay, so the last item, the applicant will actually be out of the country on December 17th. So if we could reopen that item and do we have to?

You need to vote to reopen it. So you raise it and then you need a majority of the Planning Commission to say yes, we will open this back up. Okay. Thus it's over.

so i would like to to reopen that item i would like to continue the item if the will of the planning commission to the regular meeting of january don't we have to reopen it first and then ask for public comment the vote correct okay okay yeah so first people to reopen it vote to reopen it now okay then it's open okay so is there a motion to reopen it yes i'll make a motion to reopen the item

Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No, the item is reopened. So I guess you can make your comments.

So the applicant requested that we continue the meeting until the regularly scheduled meeting in January of 2026, because they will not be in country for our meeting in December. And I certainly think that we should do that for them.

I'll make the motion we do that.

One second, because public comment, is there any on changing the continuing state?

Ann, do you have any comments? We have the applicant's representative.

Yes, the applicant let me know they're actually going to be out of the country for a wedding and they would I respectfully request this be continued to January rather than December. Thank you for taking the consideration.

Okay, thank you. So the motion would be to continue the item until January 21st, 2026. Is there a second?

Second. Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? No? Okay, motion carries 5-0. Thank you, and I apologize. We're moving into 9.2 because Commissioner Gibson had just told me moments before that he needed to do this, and I just spaced it. So, anyway. All right, moving on to item 9.2, conduct a hearing and review written and oral comments, approve resolution recommending approval of a general plan land use element and map amendment and approval of subdivision and zoning code and map amendment to the Board of Supervisors. This is with regards to rezoning of the 12, I think it's 12 parcels to move us back into compliance or help get us back into compliance with the HCD. Correct.

Mr. Chair, thank you, Mr. Chair. Appreciate that. Before I call up Bryant from Kimme Horn, just wanna indicate that back in 2022, there was a similar situation at the RMA planning where there was a lot of staff turnover. And then I came in, there was two planners, I believe. I came in in April of 2022, same day as Stephanie, April 4th. shortly after we got Victor, then Jonathan, and we started kind of going and noticing that we have some big projects such as the housing element that we needed to get updated with. So right away, we did the request for proposal. We ended up getting Kimberly Horn to be the consultant that was gonna help us for this housing element project. And they started the first part of 2023. And then with that, we had multiple meetings. We met every other week, sometimes weekly. Since then, we've had multiple town hall meetings. Some of you have been to some, or if not all of those town hall meetings here at the board chambers, and we've had them at Pains, at the epicenter, both English and in Spanish. had invited members of the community and had good turnout, good feedback. We've had multiple planning commission meetings with all of you and we've had multiple joint planning committee, planning and board of supervisor meetings and we've also had multiple board of supervisors meetings on this topic. And on April 1st of this year, we got a letter from the state of California Housing and Community Development basically indicating that that County of San Benito has met the statutory compliance for the housing element and we can now adopt. And so we went forward and scheduled a special planning commission meeting that same month on April 30th and brought this item before the planning commission. Planning commission recommended the item to the Board of Supervisors and on May 20th, the Board of Supervisors adopted the housing element. Before compliance, before essentially certifying the document, HCD wanted to make sure that the county implemented program 3.2, which is the upzoning of 12 parcels that have been identified within the housing element and so, At the May 20th meeting, the Board of Supervisors also adopted a resolution to do a general plan initiation to start that process. And six months later tomorrow, essentially, we have an environmental review pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act. that has done the review for the uploading of the 12 parcels, and we are here before you to present that for recommendation to the Board of Supervisors. So with that, I will have, I will ask Bryant De La Torre, our consultant from Conejon, to please provide us with that presentation. Bryant?

Thank you, Abraham, and good evening, commissioners. My name is Brian, I'm with Kimley Horne. As Abraham mentioned, you've seen me a lot. We've had a lot of meetings and workshops and whatnot, so this is really a culmination of that. If all goes well, this is the last time you'll see me for a long time, hopefully, and I think, yeah, if we get on here, Abraham mentioned these already, but the housing element was adopted in May of this year. So on the 20th, that housing element was compliant with all statutory requirements. So the letter that ACD provided us, this is the exact quote from from that letter um is that the housing element is you know it meets the sexual requirements however the housing element cannot be found in substantial compliance that's another word for it can't be certified um until the county has completed that program 32 which is the item uh that we're discussing now and it's not that they want to make sure that we implement this it's it's a requirement uh per government code section uh on the board there So the letter that we received back in April, this letter here, April 1st, 2025, what it says is your housing element as is is compliant. Your strategies are compliant. So long as you approve it as is, all we need to do is confirm that you adopted it as is and you're certified. So we've gone over these a couple times. But yeah, the consequences of non-certification of the housing element, which we're in now, is it limits access to state funding. For example, the HOME Grant, which funded Riverview V2, PLHA, local health and trust funds. So there's many funding sources. I think the biggest one is the CDBG Grant, though. One of the main things that make you eligible for that is having a compliant housing element. and lawsuits, so HCD at any time can come in, if stipulation or lawsuit, which requires the county to come into compliance. And I think, in my opinion, the worst one is the builder's remedy that kinda just takes away local control and allows very specific developments with criteria to have essentially non-discretionary approvals. So at the beginning of the housing element, we analyzed various sites and determined we have really two options. It's really identify a couple hundred of sites and give one or two units for all of those sites or consolidate all of that development into smaller parcels. So the latter is what we went to. We originally started with, I believe it was 19 parcels that we were considering. Through these public hearings with both this body and the Board of Supervisors, we trimmed that down to 12 parcels. And as part of this proposal to rezone, it would rezone all parcels from a couple zones which I'll go over in a second, but it'll amend both the general plan and the county code of ordinances. And this zone has the title of residential high, just taking the same theme from the existing residential zones. So this is the details of the zone itself. So it would increase the density of these 12 identified parcels from 220 dwelling units to 45 dwelling units per acre. It would amend the land use designation. There's 10 parcels that are currently have a land use designation of residential mixed. And then there's two parcels that are currently identified as agriculture. So all 12 of those together would be amended to be residential high. Similarly, their zoning district, 10 are rural residential currently, and two are agricultural productive, and all 12 together would be under the residential high zone. So there's both gonna be a land use designation and a zoning designation titled residential high. And the zoning designation is an implementing zone. of the land use, kind of like a nesting doll. Another amendment would be an amendment to the land use map and the land use element to update and have the language related to this residential high, as well as the zoning map itself. Gotta update it to show and reflect these changes. There's also a new section within the municipal code that would describe exactly the regulations and requirements within the residential high zone, so similar to all other zones. The amendments are specifically to Title 23, Chapters 27, 31, and then Title 25, Chapters 3, 5, 7, and 8. And these changes are meant to implement this residential high. So the reason it's across a couple different sections, a couple different titles and chapters is because it kind of referenced throughout to make sure that it's all internally consistent. We went out and looked at our Stephanie while I'm at it too. It's been a pleasure working with Stephanie. She's really pushed us through, made sure that her team in the county is making sure we're pushing that through and also holding us accountable, making sure we keep doing that. So thank you. All these images were taken by Stephanie and just to show local projects that really kind of fit within this density already, but weren't allowed by right. So there's Buena Vista Apartments. You can see it's two stories here. We have, what is this, 41 units on this one. There's Gateway Palms. This has a density of 21.2 acre, 22.1 dwelling units per acre. And again, this is, I believe, three-story development here. And you see it kind of abutting a single family there on the right side. Yeah, if you look at the right one to the right, you see that blue structure there. We have Santana Ranch. This one is essentially 24 dwelling units per acre. It's mixed between a couple different buildings, but some are two-story, some are three-story, and also abiding single-family there. we have the senior sunrise apartment this is by far the highest density there's almost 60 dwelling units per acre but it's fairly small as you can see but we do we do have 49 units here also you can see it kind of meshes with the single family character This is Vista de Oro. This is farm worker housing here. And this is 20.5 units per acre, also surrounded by single family housing. And the intent of the zoning code and the design standards are so that these developments don't impose on single family housing and are really just meshed within it. This would be considered, it's a term in planning called middle housing. So it's really in between that super high density and that single family. It's kind of like that gap. Pre-World War II, this was commonplace. We don't see it too much. We see really more large developments, but it's kind of coming back into development. These are not specific projects, this is just illustrative just to show what a potential project can look like. Everything would look much different, everything pencils out differently, but just to show this is kind of what something may potentially look like. But again, this is not a development specifically. So this specifically is on a smaller lot, something like half an acre to an acre. This is a bit larger. This is something you can see as kind of a courtyard apartment type style with some open space in the middle, some shared open space. And then you have that parking kind of wrapped around. Very similar, just I think a little more different design elements there, same with parking either tucked in or tucked around. There's really a couple different ways you can pencil this out. And then this is on the larger end. So this is something that would be very large, something that we're not expecting but could be a possibility with this zoning ordinance amendment. Now we have the 12 sites. So the 12 sites in the green, those are the rezoned sites. I will zoom in a little bit so it's easier to tell. These here are one, eight, sorry, are one, seven, eight, and nine. Those are all right next to each other. They're split by San Benito Road. In our housing element, what we identified is one being subdivided and one side being developed. The other one, the existing uses can remain. any any development can happen there you can replace or keep the existing um we have some that are county islands like r2 up there that's an island within surrounded by the city of hollister which we identified as as a potential candidate site uh just because it's already served uh by utilities we have r4 which is still kind of abutting the city We have these kind of more on the east side, closer to like Santana Ranch. Santana Ranch, there's P2. We have three parcels here. And then we have the remaining two here. So R12 is kind of hard to see up there in the corner. That's by the two new hotels, a little up north by the Holiday Inn Express at Fairfield. It's kind of like on the backside. And then we have R6 kind of there to the northwest. And then I have my colleague here, Rita Garcia. So she led the environmental analysis for the ISMND and she's gonna speak a little bit on the takeaways from that.

Thank you and good evening. Yes, my name is Rita Garcia and I did serve as project manager for the environmental analysis for the project. As you may be aware, we conducted an initial study for the proposed housing element implementation project. We looked at about 20 resource areas, environmental resource areas, to, at a programmatic level, determine the project's impacts. And the analysis found that for the 20 resource areas, compliance with the regulatory framework, local, regional, county, federal, would mitigate impacts except for seven resource areas for which we recommended mitigation. And those are outlined in mitigation monitoring and reporting program that is a part of your package. The initial study was circulated for a 30-day public review period. During that public review period, we received two comment letters. They're part of the final, the responses to public comments in your package tonight. The comments in those did not require any modifications or change the findings that were in the initial study. we concluded that none of the impacts that were disclosed in the initial study increased in severity and there was no new impacts that were determined as a result of those comment letters. At this stage of the CEQA process, the next step is for the Board of Supervisors to continue to consider and review not only the findings of the initial study, but also the findings of the comment letters and the responses to the comments. And with that, we are available for questions should you have any.

Thank you.

questions from the commission sorry i have two two more slides sorry sorry about that um very quick um so just next steps um as i mentioned uh as hdd mentioned um you the next steps would be to certify the housing element in order to do that you need to drop both the housing element which is already done um and then the reasons which is what we're considering today um And then the timeline, so we have November tonight, which is a consideration to recommend adoption. And then on December 6th, the meeting is sensibly scheduled to consider adoption of it. As soon as all the signatures, If the Board of Supervisors adopted, as soon as all the signatures are on paper, we can send that to HCD. And HCD has 60 days to review the final package. All they're doing is a consistency review, is looking at what they previously approved. Is it exactly the same as what was adopted? If they are consistent, they send over a letter. We can expect that within 60 days, they've been pretty quick to respond to that before the 60 days are up, just because it's not a new review. It's just really a consistency review. But given the holidays, again, we don't know exactly how long that will take. And then implementation is really throughout the whole cycle. Staff has already regularly been implementing. Not all implementation requires public hearings or zoning code updates or anything like that. Some of them are just like programmatic. And then I'll pass it over back to Abraham to read the recommendation. And again, we're available for questions.

We don't need to. We can read it.

I actually have a quick question for you. Is it true that this is kind of an all-or-nothing situation? if we cherry pick individual lots and say, well, we like this one, but we don't like that one, we're kind of back to ground zero, aren't we, with regard to HCD?

Yeah, that assumption, yeah, that's correct. So anything that is revised within the housing element within the rezone strategy would need to be updated within the housing element itself. So that would have to be sent back to HCD, has to go back through public review period again to be considered, yes.

Okay, thank you. Other questions from the Commission?

Yes. So I had a phone conversation with Mr. Dassel about this, and we've also received numerous emails from the SIWAC family. I have a question about the process. Forgive me for not remembering when we started this. It seems like an eternity. My time also on this commission seems like it's been an eternity. When did this start? When were you hired and when did you actually begin work?

I believe the contract was executed in August. Sorry, August 2023. And then within the month of August was more data collection. And then, yeah, next month after that was really when we kicked it off. Okay.

And can you explain the process for reaching out to the 12 parcels to the owners? What method did you use to reach out to them to let them know what we were up to? And when did you do it?

Yeah, so every public hearing, every workshop, every study session was publicly available or notified for regular processes for public hearings and whatnot. And then as part of a rezone process, there's that noticing. So every parcel owner and parcel owners 300 feet from the properties were notified, which is what staff handled.

when did that happen that the property owners and everyone within 300 feet was notified? It sounded like it was just a general here's a meeting and that's your notification. When were letters sent to the property owners letting them know what our intentions were?

So state law requires that those notices go out 20 days before the scheduled public hearing. So they were notified I believe October 31st. Of? Of 2025 of the public hearing.

So two years into this, we decided, hey, by the way, we have these grand plans for your property?

Oh, that was for just the rezones. So for the actual official action of this action. For the housing element, it's been just regular notifications as publicly noticed as normal property.

Is that a standard process that you go and you're going to change somebody's property and don't even have the decency to send them a letter to say, hey, this is what we're thinking? Do you have any input that's not done?

Yeah, that's best practices. We try to get as many people involved as possible. whether your property owners came out or not is out of our control.

That's what I get for assuming. You know what assuming does? I feel like that right now. I was under the assumption that these people were notified at the time that we started discussing these particular parcels, because to me, that's basic decency. So at this point, I'm not comfortable going forward, and it's unfortunate that we're at the 11th hour and the 59th second, it's unacceptable that it wasn't done in August of 2023. And I hope when we do this again, that we have the decency to write a letter, several letters to these people in the future that, hey, this is what we're gonna, we have plans for your property. Because now we have two people that are extremely upset and three, I'm upset for them. And like I said, I just assumed that we did what I thought was, something very basic, and I'm embarrassed and upset that I didn't ask, because I just, again, assumed that why wouldn't we have done that? So I cannot support this at all.

Okay, well, we're still getting questions for the staff. Excuse me, Chair. Yep, go ahead.

Through the Commissioner. I live within 60 feet of one of these property, and I never got a letter to say what they were gonna do with that property across the street, because that would've come unglued. So I never, ever received it. So you didn't do your job. That was a staff function, sorry. It's public noticing. Well, then somebody didn't do their job.

There's, yeah, there's a mailing list within that, radius maps and whatnot. If there is, I wanna see it.

I have a question through the tip. Please. So you start a process, I own property, you start a process that can say you're gonna rezone my land.

Correct, that's correct.

And I have no say for however many years, and then you say, oh gee, guess what, here's your letter. And I'm, oh. Nice. So for however many years, two years, three years, now I'm getting told, oh, you can build houses here.

Yeah, yeah. This has been going on, yeah, two years. Notified, we've had tons of outreach and people join our meetings and we try to let residents and stakeholders know, please invite your neighbors, invite everyone to be involved in this process. So that's best practices doing this outreach. Yeah, we've gotten a lot of outreach in this process, so.

Excuse me, Chair, you consider that best practices?

Definitely, yeah, we try to get people out, and if people don't show up, it's definitely hard.

Like I said a minute ago, I'm between 60 feet of one of these properties. I never got a letter, never got a phone call from the county, from you, from anyone. And now, like Commissioner Gibson says, we're in the 11th hour, and you drop this on these property owners and all the neighbors?

We'll work with staff to identify why that letter wasn't received, but it should be received.

Can I just interject something that might be way out of line, but I have to raise it as a question. When you said you live within 60 feet of one of these properties, Does that cause any sort of issue with regard to being able to participate in the discussion and so forth? I'm kind of asking Sean and Commissioner Scalioti.

If it applies generally enough, then no, right? If it affects enough of the community, then no, and I would generally think that that's the case here.

Thanks, thanks, I just wanted to double check.

So you're saying that these folks were all notified though that they could get their land designation change Right, you said they were all.

Yes, per state law, the county was required to notify all those property owners and 300 feet from those properties.

They were notified two years into it after we'd already basically made many, many decisions after many public hearings and workshops to put the burden on the property owner to watch what the county is doing. To me, that's not acceptable. Going forward, I think we need to either fix the, we need to fix the process. They need to receive multiple letters if we don't hear back from them and say, hey, we have a brilliant idea. What do you think about it?

And you said within three, so his place falls within that category. You're saying that Commissioner Skagley should have gotten notified.

Commissioner Scagliotti was on the notification list. If he didn't receive a letter, it might have been a mailing error, but staff did not receive his letter back via no available delivery. So, sir, respectfully, you were on the noticing list, you and your, I believe, brother?

How are those mailed out?

Stop, stop, stop. My brother does not have his name on the property that I own across the street from the property I'm talking about. So then it didn't get sent to the right address.

If you would like, I can show you the list and we can confirm, but it went to two Scaliotes. Two letters went to two Scaliotes.

What's the address?

You don't want me to say that out loud, do you?

No, that's fine. They're coming loose.

Okay, let's further questions from the commission. Okay, let's open it up for public comment then.

Okay, James Dassel, please approach the podium. You will have three minutes.

this one right oh if you already got them yes i just want to make sure you did thank you so much all right good evening uh now you got your packets um that's uh a letter that was developed by uh land use council that uh I had to get to help navigate the legal ease that's in this packet because it's far beyond me. I want to thank you for the opportunity to discuss this and my thoughts on the proposed changes to the county's general plan, subsequent rezone of the property that I own on Cienega Road. It's a property that I care about. I have a lot of sweat equity and time and energy invested in it. And the truth is I'm disappointed that I'm even here tonight kind of in an adversarial value because I know basically everybody here cares about the county. But I also understand you're under intense pressure to come into compliance with the housing mandates from Sacramento. I appreciate the fact that some of you are working diligently to find an amiable solution, but unfortunately, I think this proposed rezone is unrealistic in terms of density, incompatible with the neighborhood, and provides no guarantee of access to city services if this were implemented on folks like myself. I think this is something that You know, my comments are kind of modified now that I saw the presentation and what I'm seeing here because I never did get a hard notification. I mean, I have a busy life where I work a lot and I'm involved in a lot of things and if it was in the paper, I just didn't see it. But as far as the letter or certified letter to the extent of a change of land use is something that I just wasn't aware of and I gladly would have taken part of it had I known. um but i think uh this is gonna have real world consequences particularly for folks like me um it's clear the county's in a bind and as a fifth generation resident i i sympathize um and but that said i just don't think dumping a bunch of housing requirements level of impaction in this area is the way out. But what I can say is I hold this property dear and I encourage staff and commission to find another way that doesn't include stripping some personal property rights and value from select parcels. And at a minimum, you could let them know that you're in the process of trying to do it so we have a chance to participate. So thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Okay, Carol Gonzalez. Hi, Carol Gonzalez, 710 Neal Drive. I'm the property owner of a duplex at 860 Apricot Lane. And I call BS. I did receive a notification from a LAFCO meeting in February of last year, 2024. The notification that I got was recently like in October for this meeting, I have not received anything as a property owner from anybody else and I'm very diligent about my mail. And I explained to the board at that time or whoever the members were, including my sister actually, was that go walk the area that i'm specifically talking about is in the 800 block of powell i believe and it's an acre eight acre plot it backs up to ro harden and they wanted to designate that as a high density unit and they were talking about 60 units per acre and it was going to be three stories and they only limited to three stories is because that That's the tallest that the fire department's ladder could go. Otherwise, they would go more. And I told them at the time, go walk that area, go walk it. You have R.O. Hardin School, you have the academy there, you have the high school walking by there, you have... the preschool and the Head Start, it's already a zoo with traffic and now to even be talking about rezoning it because apparently this property falls within a land or an infill. So it's considered a county property, even though it's completely surrounded by city property. And I guess the only reason why it hasn't been resolved yet is because there's some sort of a tax a tax, let me look at my notes, but there's some sort of tax issue, a tax sharing agreement. So that's the only reason why it hasn't been already passed. And just like if you're gonna make Vince come up with some sort of plan, like, okay, designated this, if it's designated city property then and it's annexed into the city, then say that, listen, single story homes belong in that area. There's no two story homes. They're single story homes. It's zoned for R1, keep it at R1. And I even talked to the owner of the property back in February of 24. He's willing to put in residential homes so that the characteristics of the neighborhood stays the same. And what frightens me more is since I've read that Governor Newsom has passed some executive emergency order designating San Benito County, one of 15 counties to basically cut through the red tape so that they can, develop the land further to just because we have to meet these you know requirements like put it in your own backyard but like let's be reasonable so that's all i have to say is um you know if it is designated or a zone to the city that it has to stay within that r1 so thank you very much thank you julie julie glaze

I know I live one foot, I mean I live an inch from the power street I live right that it backs up to my house and I never have ever received anything except the exact same to she's received and our area is so impacted. right now with just what you said, the traffic, our street, you can't even find a place to park. Can imagine somebody putting a three stories behind my house. I don't think so. If they wanna go put them by somebody else's house, why don't you ask somebody if they're willing to rezone instead of saying, you're gonna do this. because it's not okay for you guys to just go ahead and tell people what they have to do because the governor wants to have more houses. And I don't know what all this stuff means, but when I do know what it means, the impact in that area will be astronomical, okay? And whoever looked at that house, this is houses, this is schools, single story houses, single story houses, single story houses and schools. Are we gonna put 300 units in there? No, that's all. Please don't let it happen.

Thank you. Additional public comment?

I have no public comment in chambers or via Zoom.

Okay, bringing it back, pardon me, back to the commission then for discussion and potential action.

Well, I know we have to meet our requirements, and that's super important for us, for funding and everything else. I'm just a little bit shocked that there was... It seems like there was a lot of folks that weren't notified, and I would think that if you're going to affect their livelihood in such a way, that's super important. I don't know how we... how we continue saying this is okay without knowing that everybody was notified and everybody that was in 300 feet, if that's accurate, that they were also notified. It's a tough position for us to be in.

Excuse me. I don't know. Stephanie, how are those letters mailed out? Are they just general mail out to the public or are they certified? You have to, how are they mailed out?

The state code just requires that we mail it out with via regular mail and the addresses were pulled via 300 foot radius on our GIS system.

Thank you. If we don't agree with this, does it really have to go back to ground zero and start all over again?

Assuming the county has the money to spend to start over, which I doubt. But at the same time, we can't go ahead with something that's wrong. So I think we need to put it in the hands of the board. This is just a recommendation anyway, right, to the board? Ultimately, it's their decision, and if they wanna do what they think is right, then they can find the money to start over.

Is it, Stephanie, maybe I, Is there any way to verify that all these infill locations and all these locations, is there a way that you can tell us that you heard back from 100% of them and that you know that they all know what's going on?

they're not required to respond back to the letter. So we have heard from a few property owners and I've spoke to a few today as well and explained that this is an action just to rezone, that development is not being forced upon anyone and the property owners still maintain their property rights.

So is it actually true though that this is just a recommendation? I mean, part of it is, but the rezoning, okay, the general plan amendment, I believe we're making a recommendation, but the rezoning were, or have I got it backwards? One of them is a legislative action and the other one is a quasi-judicial, Sean?

I believe they're both legislative and that this is just a recommendation.

Okay, they're both legislative and they're both a recommendation, okay, thank you.

I would recommend that they were up to, my recommendation would be as an individual that the board would recommend rethinking this and starting over and notifying the people what our intentions are at the get go and not two years after and assume that they got the mail. I mean, we should at least have the decency to get a response from these people. And if we have to send 10 letters, send 10 letters. And if you have to get a signature on the envelope, do it.

it's not that difficult and if the county doesn't have the two bucks to get the signature then maybe we shouldn't be going forward with it do we know what other counties uh i mean i understand that we're complying with state law with regard to notifications without without regard to whether some of them didn't get delivered but um do we know what other counties and surrounding us do with regard to this are they are they only complying with state law are they going above and beyond

Yeah, so we're also the housing element consultant for the city of Hollister. So just when it comes to general outreach and general turnout, they've had maybe over the same amount of events that we've had for the county, they've had maybe 50 total. The county's had, I would say, I don't know, 500 people come out.

That's not really what I'm asking. Yes, but yes. About the mechanism of notification, like for example, does the city or do other surrounding counties send out certified mail in a situation like this or?

Every county, every city does it differently.

So you don't know actually, basically?

We don't mail. We're the consultant. It's always, yeah, the jurisdiction of.

Stephanie, do you know? I do not, sir. Okay, thanks.

Oh, Ariel, as a member of the public, would you like to address with your history? Oh, sorry, Sheriff.

It is not required to go out certified mail. Only AB 52 consultation is required to go out certified mail. However, you can request that going to the board that those notices go out certified mail.

I mean, it would be quite shocking if you found out that, oh, by the way, they're going to redesignate my land. And you didn't know about it.

I mean, that's... The fact that the county spent $100,000, $150,000, $200,000, whatever this whole process cost, the fact that we've gotten to this point, we're at the end of the road after spending all the money, and then we're, oh, the property owners didn't know, huh? Well, that's fantastic. It's just... That can't happen again. Whether or not I'm on this planning commission or not, it shouldn't happen again. We should be ashamed of ourselves. I'm disgusted. So my recommendation would be that we send this to the board with a recommendation to not accept it and to start over and do things the correct way. Do we have the time for that? We'll make the time. I mean, that's up to the board. If the board wants to do it, I mean, that's obviously their decision.

Well, the other option, of course, is however we rule, the aggrieved party or parties has the opportunity to appeal, but, you know.

It's just a recommendation, right? They can't appeal to us. Oh, that's true. That is true. It's a recommendation. Recommendation, you're right. Yep, sorry. but they have the option to sue the board if they don't like the board's decision since there's nobody to appeal the board to. But I don't think we need to bring it to that point. So if you're willing to take a motion, I'll make a motion that we recommend against accepting this item and that the board go back to the, the board of supervisors return to the drawing board and start over and notify property owners from the get go what the intention is.

Okay, so we have a motion on the table. Is there a second for that?

Yes, a friendly amendment to use certified mail and make sure that we get a response from the property owners and not just assume that they're kosher with it. And if it takes more than one, or if you have to go to their door at this point, do something to get a response. It's not acceptable that we don't. What about the neighbors? Then, well... I thought we changed our notice into 1,000 feet. I mean, that may have been after October of 2024, but currently, wouldn't it be 1,000 feet?

It is not adopted into our code. Our code says 300 feet, so does state law. Okay, well...

The motion would be with the friendly amendment that we use certified mail. And I would suggest that we keep mailing people and contacting them in every possible way, including knocking on their little doors to get a response from each of the, however many parcel owners are affected. It really isn't that much work. And if the consultant has to do it, I mean, that's probably part of why we're paying you in my estimation. I don't think we can leave everything to staff, especially now we have one staff member. We might need your help if you remain on the contract or whatever the board chooses to do, because this is not acceptable.

Okay, so we have a motion. Do we have a second for that motion? Second. Okay, I'd like a roll call vote, please.

Can I get a quick clarification from county council? Because the resolution's written to recommend the board approve this. Do we need to come back with a updated resolution for the board to not approve this?

No, I don't believe so. No, they can still recommend the other way.

Okay, Vincent Ringhaden, District 1.

I'm a little confused now. So I'm gonna say yes. to go back to including that amendment to notify all folks and go back to the supervisors.

A yes vote means to start over and to do it more thoroughly and correctly. Unfortunately, yes.

Okay, Richard Way, District 2.

I'm going to vote no on that just because we've put so much time and effort into this. It is so crucial that we get this done. And, you know, we have to do what's best for the county, even when certain individual property owners are obviously going to be disadvantaged. There's nothing you can do that's going to satisfy everybody in the county. So I'm voting no. Thank you.

Robert Scaliotti. Yes.

Yes.

Robert Gibson?

Yes.

Bobby Thomason? Yes. Okay, that's a four one in favor of recommending the board deny the rezones and that certified mailing be included in the process. Thank you.

Thank you all.

Okay, moving on into item 10, then future agenda items. I have one. It's come to my attention that back in the May timeframe, don't quote me on the exact date, but we had a situation where somebody wanted to potentially operate a kennel, a commercial kennel, in a parcel that was owned agricultural, actually AP in this case, and... We had apparently come to a consensus at that time that the omission of panels as an acceptable use for those types of parcels was inadvertent in that other uses that were very similar, bed and breakfast, things like that, I don't know to what extent the bed and breakfast is very similar, but in any event, bed and breakfast for dogs, I guess, would be acceptable. Anyway, long story short, because of the fact that the Title 25 updates are taking much longer than anybody anticipated, and there's an ad hoc apparently looking at some of the items within Title 25 even now, It's time, I think, to start bringing back pieces of Title 25, and I mentioned this at the last meeting, and I realize that staff is really short-handed, but if we could at least get the the kennel situation straightened out because we do have an applicant who's wanting to bring commerce to the county and basically can't and it's because of something that we may not have done intentionally. We should at least be discussing that, I think. So I'd like to add that as a future agenda item.

I second that.

Sound okay? I think we just need a consensus. I don't think we need a motion.

And not just, I mean, I'd like to bring back chunks of the non-controversial and get it passed through so that they can go to the board. I mean, bringing back 1,000-page stacks is not helpful to anybody. We tried and it failed, so I'd like to just move through what we can as quickly as we can. Because I'm forgetting what the board hasn't adopted. I'm assuming, I'm not remembering, I'm just thinking of what we did and assuming the board did it, and I don't think they adopted any of it. So my memory's failing me.

It's taking too long for us to remember. We pass it, then the board doesn't do anything with it.

Yeah. Sometimes that does happen, yeah. Okay, so that was my future agenda item. Other agenda items to add?

Is there a policy change that we can implement to require that when we go out and do these little things that we actually get notification with property owners? Whether it's in-person phone call, email, certified letter. I'll knock on their doors. I mean, we need to fix this ASAP and permanently, please.

Do you mean like for neighbors to contact us to verify that they have received?

Yeah, for housing elements or general plan, anything that affects a parcel, we shouldn't just say, well, the general public is notified, therefore you're not, because people don't pay attention to the government. Why should they? It's a train wreck at every level. So they need to be notified. The parcels that are affected by what we're doing, they need to be notified. And it's unacceptable to say that the general public was notified. Because it's not their property that's affected as much as the particular parcel.

Good point, through the Chair, the code does indicate, as Stephanie stated, that it be notified for public hearing, which was done, but it doesn't state anything about confirmation that the general public has received the 300-foot notices. that would have to be a policy change, I believe, that we get some type of confirmation, but it is common practice that it's sent out, notification sent out, and then we start receiving phone calls and we hear out, but there's not a requirement that we confirm that everybody has received. Can we make it a requirement? I think we, yeah.

bring back whatever Ordon said. Yes, can we at least discuss bringing it back? I know we can't throw too much more on Michael or we'll be losing Michael. But at some point in the future, if we can try to get that fixed sooner rather than later, it would be nice.

I would support that as a future agenda item, absolutely.

Thank you.

Okay, other agenda items? Okay, commissioner announcements, I guess is next. And so are there, I have something, but does anybody else? Okay, so I think I mentioned being in Tulare a couple of weeks ago and I was down there for the California County Planning Commissioners Association Conference. It was a two day conference, got a lot of great information from that. In any event, I had hoped to present a PowerPoint on that tonight and it didn't make it onto the agenda. I didn't finish the PowerPoint and it turns out it's just as well given the fact that it's already nine o'clock. But I will endeavor to get that done by the next Planning Commission meeting. And the other piece of news is the conference for next year. The president of the organization gets to decide where the conference is held each year. And it's a conference of planning commissioners, potentially from all 58 counties, although we don't always get representation from 58. more than a handful, maybe a dozen. In any event, I ended up being elected president for next year, which means that I get to decide where the conference is gonna be held. And my current thinking is that the conference will be at the end of October in Hollister. So just FYI. So please be thinking about things that we might want to showcase in our county. This would include not just the county, but also the incorporated cities. So that's all I had. Okay, I think the next item on the agenda is adjournment.

I move to adjourn.

Okay. All right. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. Hearing none, we are adjourned at 9.04 p.m. Thank you all very much.