Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

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Hello? Okay. Welcome, good evening. My name is Chuck Cantrell and I am the chair of the Planning Commission. Welcome to the Planning Commission meeting. Please remember to turn off your cell phones. I will do the same. All right. The parking validation machine for the garage under City Hall is located at the rear of the chamber. So good evening again. This is our first evening back using Zoom. So understand that tonight is our first meeting with Zoom. Public comment available again. And we welcome those joining us remotely. If you are attending in person and wish to speak, please complete a speaker card and place it in one of the designated boxes at the bottom of the council chambers. They're on either side, and I believe there's one to the side. For those joining remotely, the Zoom link is available on the agenda for tonight's meeting. If you are participating online and wish to speak, please use the Zoom application and select the raise hand feature or press star nine. If you are on a telephone, and press star nine if you're on a telephone, speakers will be called in order. When it is your turn, the city clerk or secretary will enable you to speak and a notification will appear on your screen letting you know that you may unmute and provide your comment. We appreciate everyone's participation and ask that speakers follow the meeting code of conduct so that all participants have the opportunity to be heard and the hearing can proceed smoothly. Conduct that materially disrupts the meeting or interferes with others' ability to participate may result in muting or removal as authorized by law. Okay. Excuse me. So the order, here's a summary of the meeting procedures. If you, I did, sorry. Let's now stand for the pledge.

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

Okay, so the order goes, after staff's presentation, applicants and or appellants may make a five minute presentation. During the public comment period, the chair will call out names on the submitted speaker cards in the order received. And please, I'm gonna try to get your names as accurately as possible, however, I'm gonna make my best attempt, so I apologize in advance. As your name is called, line up in front of the microphone at the front of the chamber. Generally, each speaker will be given up to two minutes for public testimony, and speakers using a translator will have up to four minutes. At the discretion of the chair, the time allotted to each speaker may be changed depending on the number of items on the agenda, the number of speakers, and other factors. Speakers using a translator will have double the time allotted. After public testimony, the applicant and or appellant may make closing remarks for up to an additional five minutes. Planning commissioners may ask questions of the speaker. Response to commissioner questions will not reduce the speaker's time allowance. The public hearing will then be closed. The planning commission will take action on the item. The Planning Commission may request staff to respond to the public testimony, ask staff questions, and discuss the items. If you challenge these land use decisions in court, you may be limited to raising only those issues you or someone else raised at this public hearing or in written correspondence delivered to the city at or prior to the public hearing. The Planning Commission's actions on rezoning, prezoning, general plan amendments, and code amendments is only advisory to the City Council. The City Council will hold public hearing on these items. Section 20.120.400 of the Municipal Code provides the procedures for legal protests to the City Council on rezoning and prezonings. THE PLANNING COMMISSION'S ACTIONS OF UNCONDITIONAL USE PERMITS IS APPEALABLE TO THE CITY COUNCIL IN ACCORDANCE WITH SECTION 20.100.220 OF THE MUNICIPAL CODE. AGENDAS AND ALL STAFF REPORTS FOR THIS MEETING MAY BE ACCESSED ON THE CITY'S WEBSITE. Okay, so we'll do roll call now. Vice Chair Young?

Here.

Commissioner Arguello? Here. Commissioner Bondal? Absent. Commissioner Bickford?

Here.

Commissioner Cowell? HERE. COMMISSIONER CASEY?

HERE.

COMMISSIONER ESCOBAR? HERE. COMMISSIONER NGUYEN?

HERE.

COMMISSIONER OLIVARIO?

HERE.

COMMISSIONER ROSARIO?

HERE.

GREAT. WE HAVE QUORUM. OKAY. Before we begin, I want to remind the Planning Commission members and members of the public to follow our code of conduct at meetings. This includes commenting on specific agenda item only and addressing the full body. Public speakers will not engage in a conversation with the Commission or staff. All members of the Planning Commission, staff, and the public are expected to refrain from abusive language. Repeated failure to comply with the Code of Conduct, which will DISTURB, DISRUPT, OR IMPEED THE ORDERLY CONDUCT OF THIS MEETING MAY RESULT IN REMOVAL FROM THE MEETING. THIS MEETING IS NOW CALLED TO ORDER. PUBLIC COMMENTS TO THE PLANNING COMMISSION ON NON-AGENDIZED ITEMS. IF YOU HAVE ONE, PLEASE FILL OUT THE SPEAKER'S CARD AND GIVE IT TO THE TECHNICIAN. FOR MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC WHO JOINED BY TELECONFERENCE AND WISH TO SPEAK ON ONE OF THESE ITEMS INDIVIDUALLY, PLEASE USE THE RAISED HAND FEATURE ON ZOOM OR A STAR 9 ON YOUR TELEPHONE.

Through the chair, we do have a couple of comments for public comment. The first commenter is Edgar Duenas. Yes, just wanted to confirm that this is not on the agenda. This is for an item not on the agenda. Okay, thank you. Please come to the podium. Okay, then you have to wait until that item is called. And then I have Jose Espinoza who did not specify the agenda item. Are you also here to speak on the glider project? Okay, then please wait until that item is called. Do we have any commenters on Zoom on public comment?

Andrew?

TO SPEAK ON THE GLIDAR PROJECT.

OK. THANK YOU. WE'LL CALL YOU IN ORDER LATER.

PHONE NUMBER ENDING IN 140.

I'D LIKE TO SPEAK ON THE SAKURA MARKET ALCOHOL SALE.

OK.

Scott Reese.

I was interested in speaking on the glider project as well.

Eric.

Erica Valentine.

Confirming that there are no speakers on Zoom for public comment. ALL RIGHT. NO FURTHER HANDS RAISED. NO COMMENTS UNDER PUBLIC COMMENT.

OK. ACTUALLY, JUST FOR THE WORK THAT COMMISSIONER CASEY IS ATTENDING THE MEETING ONLINE AT THE MOMENT. Sorry, there's a little sausage making happening here.

It's not in the right order. OK. It is. OK. Good. Thank you.

OK. STAFF, ARE THERE ANY ITEMS SCHEDULED FOR HEARING THIS EVENING FOR WHICH DEFERRAL IS BEING REQUESTED WILL BE TAKEN OUT OF ORDER?

NO ITEMS FOR DEFERRAL.

GREAT. LET'S GO TO THE CONSENT CALENDAR.

CHAIR, I WOULD LIKE TO PULL ITEM 4D SINCE WE HAVE SOME SPEAKERS ON THAT.

THANK YOU. ALL RIGHT. ANY OTHER ITEMS FOR REMOVAL FROM CONSENT? ALL RIGHT. GREAT. OK. SO GENERALLY THERE WILL BE NO SEPARATE DISCUSSION FOR INDIVIDUAL CONSENT CALENDAR ITEMS AS THEY ARE CONSIDERED TO BE ROUTINE AND WILL BE ADOPTED BY ONE MOTION. So a member has requested that we remove at least one item. That item will be separated and we will vote on the rest of the consent calendar. The public may comment on the entire consent calendar or on the individual item removed. Staff, will you provide an update on the consent calendar? The one item that was removed was...

WHICH ONE?

MOTION TO APPROVE THE REST OF THE CONSENT CALENDAR.

OKAY. SO WE HAVE A MOTION TO APPROVE THE REST OF THE CONSENT CALENDAR WITH ITEM D REMOVED. LET'S TAKE A VOTE. We'll start with Commissioner, sorry, Vice Chair Young.

Yes.

Commissioner Aguilar.

Yes.

Commissioner Bondow is absent. Commissioner Bickford.

Yes.

Commissioner Cowell.

Yes.

Commissioner Casey.

Yes.

Commissioner Escobar.

Yes.

Commissioner Nguyen.

Yes.

Commissioner Oliverio, yes. Commissioner Rosario.

Yes. Yes.

Myself a yes. Great. With one absentee that passes. Excellent.

Can you announce for staff who the maker of the motion was? Commissioner Rosario.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. So Rosario was the maker of the motion and seconded by Oliverio. Great. OK. GREAT. ALL RIGHT. SO ITEM D. LET'S ACTUALLY, LET ME READ THAT ITEM HERE. OK. SO ITEM D. CP26-007 AND ER26-061. CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT. AND DETERMINATION OF PUBLIC CONVENIENCE OR NECESSITY TO ALLOW THE OFF-SITE SALES OF ALCOHOL TYPE 21 FULL RANGE OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES AT AN EXISTING APPROXIMATELY 7382 SQUARE FOOT SPECIALTY MARKETPLACE, SUPERMARKET, SACORA MARKETPLACE ON APPROXIMATELY .9 ACRES ACROSS ACRES SITE LOCATION AT THE SOUTHEAST CORNER OF SOUTH FIRST STREET AND PASEO DE SAN ANTONIO AT 184 SOUTH MARKET STREET, SUITE 120. AND THAT'S IN COUNCIL DISTRICT 3. OKAY. SO STAFF RECOMMENDATION IS THAT We recommend that the City Council take all the follow-up action, consider the exemption IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ACT SEQUA GUIDELINES SECTION 15301 AND EXISTING FACILITIES AND ADOPT THE RESOLUTION APPROVING SUBJECT TO CONDITION AND CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT AND DETERMINATION OF PUBLIC CONVENIENCE OR NECESSITY TO ALLOW THE OFFSITE SALES OF ALCOHOL TYPE 21 FULL RANGE OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGERS AT THE EXISTING APPROXIMATELY 7,382 SQUARE FOOT SUPERMARKET. OKAY. So, staff, do you have a report on this?

Yes. Let me share my screen first. Thank you. Good evening, Chair and Commissioners. My name is Angela Wong, and I am the project manager for this conditional use permit, file number CP26-007. The requesting entitlement would allow an existing supermarket, Sakura Market, located at the southwest corner of Southwest Street and Paseo de San Antonio in downtown to sell a full range of alcohol products beverages for offsite consumption. The off sale of alcohol would be incidental to the market, representing about 3.2% or 107 square feet of the sales floor area. The alcohol sale area is highlighted in yellow on the floor plan shown here. The off sale of alcohol hours align with the store hours, which are 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day. The project was evaluated with respect to the general plan, the zoning code, including the required findings for conditional use permit, off sale of alcohol, determination of public convenience or necessity, city policies, and California Environmental Quality Act. The project is located within Census Track 5008.00. Based on the California ABC License Report and the police memo dated May 15, 2026, the number of off-sale of alcohol locations authorized in this Census Track is limited to two. The ABC license report and the police memo both show that there are eight active off-sale licenses within this census tract. The police memo also stated that the project site is located within a police beat that has a high crime rate, which is defined as 20% above the city average. Therefore, the site is considered unduly concentrated for off-sale establishment. and therefore a determination of public convenience or necessity is required. The police department is neutral to the off sale of alcohol with a type 21 license at this subject location. The determination of public convenience or necessity cannot be made by the planning commission for the off sale of alcohol because the project site is within 500 feet of a public park. and is within 150 feet of two buildings containing residents. Since the project does not meet this finding, the city council has to evaluate if overriding public benefits exists. So although the project site is within a police speed that has a high crime rate, the police department is neutral to the off sale of alcohol. The operations plan includes provisions for trash and graffiti removal, security and safety, and employee training for alcohol sales. Therefore, off sale of alcohol will not present a significant adverse impact on public health or safety. And the off sale of alcohol will be incidental to the market. The inclusion of the full range of the alcohol barrages would reduce the number of additional trips customers would need to visit to fulfill their shopping needs. While the project is located within an over-concentrated census tract, it will not result in a grouping of four or more off-sales of establishments within a 1,000-foot radius of the site. Currently, there is only one active Type 20 off-sale establishment within a 1,000 foot radius of the site. And the other off-sale license, which is a Type 21 license, is the Safeway store located at 100 South 2nd Street. However, this store has been closed since 2019, and the Type 21 license has been on hold. So the subject market would be the only active off sale establishments with a type 21 license within a 1,000 foot radius of the site. Therefore staff recommends that the planning commission make a recommendation to city council to consider the CEQA exemption and approve the conditional use permit and determination of public convenience or necessity to allow the off sale of alcohol at this location. This concludes staff's report. Thank you.

Thank you, staff. Is there anyone representing the project here? No, okay.

I'll make a motion to approve that.

Actually, we have a public speaker.

You can still make a motion, all right?

Okay, thank you. Okay, so we do have one caller online. Let's go ahead to, is this the one?

No, we have two commenters online.

Oh, okay. So that's not the one. Okay.

Caller ending in 140.

Yeah, I don't think there's any reason to deny people the sale of alcohol in a market like that. You look at where you're trying to create some economic vibrancy. You're going to have to be able to sell alcohol to people. There's just no need to be restricting so many things. I mean, this isn't Ogden, Utah. So, you know, there seems to always be some strange kind of thing with this city and selling alcohol during certain times or near certain places. They've sold it there before. It's a safe way that went out of business, unfortunately. But keep in mind, that's the only market that's downtown and for the residents to shop at. And we just make it a lot more convenient. I mean, it'd be nice to get sushi to go and a bottle of Sapporo or some kind of Japanese beer to bring home with you to eat. So I don't see the reasons why they would want to stop doing this or prohibit it or limit it.

It seems a bit restrictive.

And there's already enough rules with alcohol beverage control. I mean, you have to live under those rules. They're very strict. I don't see why the city needs to have more input than what the ABC already puts a business through licensing-wise. And once again, it generates sales tax. I mean, the city would benefit from taxation of beer, wine, and liquor. And once people buy beer, wine, and liquor, they also buy other foodstuffs, thus generating the economy. I don't know what would be the reason to make it so you couldn't buy alcohol in the downtown. There's bars and restaurants down there, too, that you could go to. There's 7-Eleven somewhere in that downtown, but maybe not near there. Like I said, I just don't see the reason to prohibit the sale of alcohol. They sell marijuana in the downtown area. There's a a cannabis store there. Why a Japanese store, you know, that sells specialty?

Okay, thank you. Are there any more callers online? Rob?

Yes, hi, good evening. Can you hear me?

Yes, go ahead.

Good evening, my name is Lili Gurdama, so with Liquor License Agents, and I'm actually the consultant, Liquor License Broker, excuse me, and I'm actually the consultant for this item today. Sakura Marketplace is an existing specialty supermarket, as already stated in the staff presentation, approximately 7,382 square feet in downtown San Jose. And the market already provides a broad selection of Japanese groceries, fresh produce, frozen produce, specialty products. The request before you does not involve a new liquor store or a new alcohol focused business. It's simply allowing this existing supermarket to offer a full range of alcoholic beverages for offsite consumption as part of its overall grocery operation. There's also a very important distinction between the technical census tract concentration and the actual availability of comparable off-sale alcohol establishments immediately surrounding this market. As staff already identified, this is currently there's only one octave off-sale establishment within 1,000 feet and the other type 21, the radius belongs to a Safeway that has been closed for a while. For these reasons, we do respectfully request that this conditional use permit is considered for approval, and I am available for questions of any. Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you. Since you are representing the applicant, if you wanted some additional time, you can have an additional three minutes.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much. As already stated, the alcohol sales will occupy only approximately 209 square feet, which is 3%, 3.2% of the supermarket sales floor, making the alcohol clearly incidental to this primary grocery use. And then, of course, I do want to reiterate the hours of operation, which are limited. Their operating hours are 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. So, again, it's an existing market. They're not proposing any type of expansion of the building or change in the underlying commercial use. The addition of this off-sale alcoholic beverage will provide an additional convenience to the existing customers by allowing them to purchase these products as part of the same grocery trip other than traveling to another location. AND ONCE AGAIN, I'M HERE AVAILABLE FOR QUESTIONS IF ANY. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

THANK YOU. I APPRECIATE IT. CAN YOU MAKE SURE JUST IN CASE THERE ARE QUESTIONS FOR THAT CALLER, THEY'RE STILL UP ON CUE. OKAY. ALL RIGHT. SO COMMISSIONERS, ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS, THOUGHTS, CONCERNS?

I SECOND COMMISSIONER OLIVARIO'S MOTION. OKAY.

ARE THERE ANY OTHER COMMENTS FROM THE PLANNING COMMISSIONERS? All right, great, then we shall take a vote. All right. Vice Chair Young? Yes. Commissioner Aguayo?

Yes.

Commissioner Bondal? Commissioner Bickford, I assume that's a yes? Yes. Commissioner Cowell?

Yes.

Commissioner Casey?

Yes.

Commissioner Escobar?

Yes.

Commissioner Nguyen?

Yes.

Commissioner Oliverio, I assume that's a yes.

Yes.

Okay. Commissioner Rosario?

Yes.

Great. All right. Well, that one, all votes yes, one vote absent. And myself. And myself, yes, and that is approved. Great. All right. Let's move on to items of the day. OK, SO GENERALLY THE PUBLIC HEARING ITEMS ARE CONSIDERED BY THE PLANNING COMMISSION IN THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY APPEAR ON THE AGENDA. HOWEVER, PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT THE COMMISSION MAY TAKE ITEMS OUT OF ORDER TO FACILITATE THE AGENDA SUCH AS TO ACCOMMODATE SIGNIFICANT PUBLIC TESTIMONY OR MAY DEFER DECISION OF ITEMS TO A LATER AGENDA FOR PUBLIC HEARING TIME MANAGEMENT PROCESSES. Great. I'm just going to, this item has a lot of interest, so we're probably going to limit this to one minute response, by the way. My apologies. I hope you'll have some time to adjust your comments. Thank you. All right. So, staff, do you have a presentation?

Yeah. Give me one second to get it up. All right, good evening Planning Commission. My name is Jason Lee. I am the backup Planning Project Manager for this file, doing this for Alec Atienza, who is the Planning Project Manager who is not here tonight. With me are a large group of staff from Planning, Public Works, the Department of Transportation, and Parks, Recreation, and Neighborhood Services. My fellow presenters tonight will be Bethlehem Tailhoun, the Environmental Project Manager, and Manjeet Ben-Wade, Senior Transportation Specialist from the Department of Public Works Traffic Team. So the application before you tonight is located on the northwest corner of Cozy Drive and Glider Drive on land occupied by the former Glider Elementary School in the city's Council District 10. The application includes a site development permit submitted under the Housing Accountability Act, builder's remedy for the construction of 80 single family houses, 64 detached and 16 duets, 11 units, 13% of the total reserved for low income households, the construction of a 0.6 acre privately owned publicly accessible park, demolition of the former glider elementary school, removal of 48 trees, including 18 ordinance sized trees, And there are state density bonus lot incentives, concessions, and waivers. The project also includes a vesting tentative map for subdivision of the lot to 81 lots, 80 residential lots, and one common lots, including two public streets. And the project requires an environmental impact report, including a statement of overriding considerations for greenhouse gas emissions and transportation impacts regarding VMT vehicle miles traveled. The statement of overriding considerations requires planning commission recommendation and city council approval, which is why we are here today. And Bethlehem MNG will further cover the SOC later in the presentation. So I know this is not Planning Commission's first Builder's Remedy, but it's always important to provide some context on a Builder's Remedy application. So what is the Builder's Remedy? The Builder's Remedy is defined by Section H11 of the Housing Accountability Act. as a project which provides a certain amount of affordable housing to extremely low, very low, or moderate income households. In this case, the project provides at least 13% of the units for low income households, which is one of the options that qualifies a project for builder's remedy. A Builders Remedy project must have submitted an application while a city did not have a substantially compliant housing element as certified by the State Department of Housing and Community Development, HCD. This occurred for this project and I will explain that further in the next slide. The project must be within the minimum and maximum density provisions as defined by the definition of a builder's remedy project. For this site, the maximum allowed density is 8080 dwelling units per acre, and there is no minimum. This project proposes 8.41 dwelling units per acre. Lastly, the project cannot abut a heavy industrial or Title V industrial use, and the subject site is not adjacent to any such uses. So because it meets all of that, the project qualifies under the definition of a builder's remedy project and therefore the city cannot deny the project based on inconsistency with the general plan and zoning ordinance. Additionally, the Housing Accountability Act prohibits cities from denying a qualifying builder's remedy project unless the city can demonstrate that the project will cause a specific adverse impact to the public health and safety. So further on Builder's Remedy, for this project, this is the timeline for eligibility under Builder's Remedy. So for this project, the SB330 preliminary application, which is used to lock in zoning, ordinances, fees, et cetera, at the time of submittal, including the Builder's Remedy, was submitted on June 2nd, 2023, and a formal application was submitted on October 23rd, 2023, within 180 days of the SB 330 preliminary application. The city's housing element was certified and found in substantial compliance on January 29th, 2024, which is after both the preliminary application and the formal application were submitted. And then this project invoked AB 1893 on December 13th, 2024. This allowed changes to be our projects compliant with H11 per the previous slide, H11 of the Housing Accountability Act per the previous slide, and allowed changes to the affordable percentage and income level Prior it was a 20% low income housing threshold and for low income it changed to 13% under AB 1893. So what does this mean for project review? So in short, as I said, the city must treat the project as if it meets the general plan land use and requirements of the zoning district. And the project does not require approval of a general plan amendment or rezoning and shall be deemed consistent with applicable plans, programs, policies, ordinance, standards, requirements, redevelopment plans, implementing instruments, or other similar provisions for all purposes. Therefore the city must evaluate the project for compliance with objective health and safety standards. And basically a project can only be denied if the city can demonstrate that it will cause a specific adverse impact to the public health and safety. So despite this, staff did review the project for consistency with the following here. Inconsistency with the requirements are highlighted in the draft permit for the project. So just in short, with regard to the general plan designation, the project is not consistent as it has a PQP designation, which only allows permanent supportive housing. But again, the project must be reviewed as if the project is consistent under builder's remedy to the designation and all policies. For the zoning, the project was reviewed under the R18 single family residence zoning, residence district, because this was the zoning district at the time of the SB330 preliminary application. The project is consistent with the allowed uses of the R18 zoning, and the applicant has requested waivers under state density bonus law for minimum lot area and setbacks. The project is consistent with relevant portions of the subdivision ordinance with the exception of requested state density bonus law waivers for reduction in lot area width and frontage. And with regard to public outreach, City Council Policy 6-30, on-site signs have been posted on the project frontage, and a joint EIR scoping community meeting was held on October 15, 2024, at the Santa Clarissa Branch Library. The hearing was also noticed at a radius of 1,000 feet, and all interested parties were notified of the hearing via email. So now for CEQA, I'm going to turn it over to Bethlehem.

Good evening, Commissioners. Bethlehem Tavajon with PVCE and the Environmental Project Manager for this session. So an environmental impact report was prepared for this project. The EIR identified potentially significant impacts of the project related to air quality, cultural and tribal cultural resources, hazardous soils and materials, and noise. With the implementation of identified mitigation measures, these impacts would be reduced to less than significant. The EIR also identified potentially significant impacts related to greenhouse gas emissions and transportation due to the project's location in an immitigable VMT area. The project would exceed the city's impact threshold of 11.39 daily VMT per capita. The project would incorporate several VMT reducing measures including a school pool program, voluntary travel behavior change program and an on-site TDM coordinator. With mitigation, the project's impact would be reduced to 17.04 daily VMT per capita, which still exceeds the city's thresholds. Per CEQA guidelines, if an EIR identifies significant unavoidable impacts, the decision makers approving the project are required to adopt a statement of overriding considerations that explains why the benefits of the proposed project outweigh the adverse environmental consequences identified. Should I go next slide? So the city received 54 written comment letters from the public during the public circulation period. The main environmental concerns raised included increased traffic in VMT, impacts to biological resources, impacts to utilities and service systems, and impacts to open recreation space. These comments did not raise any new significant CEQA issues and did not result in any changes to the conclusions of the analysis in the draft EIR. Therefore, recirculation is not required. Our response to comments and text edits to the draft EIR are included in the final EIR, which was posted on August 14, 2026. All commenters were notified of the posting. I'll pass it on to the next person.

If I might, staff, Bethlehem, I think you commented that there would be an onsite TDM coordinator, but I just want to make sure for the record that there will not be.

Yeah, for the record, there is no onsite TDM coordinator in the sense There is no onsite TDM coordinator. Commissioners, if you have questions later, we can go over it, but there is a condition in the public works that says TDM coordinator, but it is not a TDM coordinator in the sense that they are coordinating the TDM. It's more for paperwork purposes. So there is no onsite TDM coordinator in the sense that there is no person specifically designated to coordinate TDM. Are we throwing it to Manjit?

Good evening, Commissioners. Manjit Benwit with the Department of Public Works. So like Bethlehem mentioned, the project is within an area that's immutable for vehicle miles traveled per capita and therefore results in a significant and unavoidable impact under CEQA. Council Policy 5-1 does offer pathways to achieve overriding community benefits for projects located in these type of areas. Projects must meet the following requirements under Council Policy 5-1 for mixed income residential projects without a general plan amendment. They have to be consistent with the general plan land use designation, demonstrate overriding benefits to the city as determined by city council, and be consistent with applicable area plans and policies. Next slide. And so as a result of the VMT analysis, the unmitigated VMT is 19.52 per capita. The project, like Bethlehem mentioned, is implementing programmatic TDM or transportation demand management program measures to reduce the VMT. So after those reductions that were taken, the resulting A VMT that's not mitigated by the project is 5.65, and as a result, per Council Policy 5-1, the project will be paying approximately $4 million to the city towards transportation system improvements that will improve system efficiency and safety within the neighborhood, enhance non-auto travel modes, and promote citywide reduction of VMT. These type of improvements will be identified and implemented by the Department of Transportation, but can range from traffic calming, bike improvements, signal improvements, any type of really multimodal improvements directly back into the community. And also just wanted to flag that the $4 million figure does have an escalation that's tied to it every year, so that amount will increase January of each year. And I'll turn it back to Jason. Thank you.

Bethlehem actually.

So as mentioned per CEQA guidelines, the approving body would need to adopt statement of overriding considerations.

Let me pull this up.

So as mentioned, the EIR identifies significant and avoidable impacts and as such the decision makers approving the project are required to Acquired to adopt a statement of overriding considerations for the impacts, the significant and unavoidable impacts identified for greenhouse gas emissions and transportation from VMT. The proposed project would not be consistent with the VMT design element outlined in the Bay Area Air District GHG threshold under criteria A. The proposed project's VMT impacts would be, would conflict with the state's scoping plan and BACMD plan Bay Area, which are applicable state and regional plans adopted for the purpose of reducing the emissions of GHGs. The proposed project's significant VMT impacts would not be consistent with the state and regional climate goals. No additional mitigation measures were identified to reduce the impact. Therefore, the proposed projects incremental contributions to GHG emissions would be cumulatively considerable. The proposed projects VMT would remain above the city's threshold of 11.39 VMT per capita even with mitigation. The significant unavoidable impacts resulting from the project require a statement of overriding consideration under CEQA section 15093 in order for the project's EIR to be adopted. This section of the CEQA guidelines provides that the decision-making agency, the city in this case, must balance as applicable the economic, legal, social, technological, or other benefits, including region-wide or statewide environmental benefits of a proposed project against its unavoidable environmental risk when determining whether to approve the project. If those benefits outweigh the unavoidable adverse environmental effects, then the adverse environmental effects may be considered acceptable for approval of the proposed project. IN THIS CASE OVERRIDING BENEFITS PROVIDED FOR THE PROPOSED PROJECT INCLUDE DIVERSE INCOME HOUSING OPTIONS INCLUDING THE RESTRICTION OF 11 HOMES PRICED FOR LOW INCOME HOUSEHOLDS. THE PROJECT WOULD PROVIDE 80 RESIDENTIAL UNITS TOTAL HELPING THE CITY TO INCREASE HOUSING SUPPLY IN AN ALREADY DEVELOPED AREA. TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENTS IN THE FORM OF PAYMENT OF THE VMT OFFSET VALUE WHICH WOULD fund transportation improvements benefits at the intersection of Santa Teresa Boulevard and Snell Avenue, and construction of a 0.68 gross acre privately owned publicly accessible park to be maintained by the HOA.

All right, thank you. So with that, to conclude, staff in the course of our review did not identify any specific adverse impacts to the public health and safety for the project or for the project site. So therefore, staff recommends that the Planning Commission recommend that the City Council take the following actions, which are to adopt a resolution certifying the EIR, including adopting a statement of overriding considerations, and a related mitigation monitoring and reporting program in accordance with CEQA, adopt a resolution to subdivide the lot as requested, and adopt a resolution to approve a site development permit as requested, including a request for extended construction hours on Saturdays from eight to five. Thank you, and the applicant is Yvonne Chiedes from, sorry if I pronounced that wrong, Oak Grove School District, and Kelly Ruchino from True Life.

So you have five minutes for your comments.

Good evening, Chair and honorable commissioners and staff. Thank you for your service to the city of San Jose. I do appreciate this opportunity to speak with you all tonight. I am Dr. Ivan Chaidos, the proud superintendent of Oak Grove School Districts, and I'm here to ask you, for your support for the proposed redevelopment of the former Glider Elementary School site at 511 Cozy Drive, and to recommend approval to the City Council of San Jose. This project is much more than 80 new homes. It is about taking the vacant, underutilized public asset and turning it into a lasting investment in our children, our schools, and our community. Oak Grove serves approximately 8,375 students and their families across 18 schools supported by approximately 1,000 dedicated employees. Our families, educators, and staff understand that strong schools require responsible stewardship of every public resource entrusted to us. They support moving this project forward because they understand what is at stake, the ability to invest in classrooms, technology, student services, safety, and the programs our children depend on every day. The glider site has been vacant since 2018. During that time, the district has spent approximately $8,000 every month simply securing and maintaining an empty property. That is money that could otherwise support our students. The proposed sale is expected to generate approximately $26.6 million for the district. Those resources can help us modernize our schools, retain our excellent educators and staff, strengthen student support services, and preserve opportunities for children across our entire district. And this project is not simply fiscally responsible, it is a thoughtful land use decision to benefit all of our community. The former school had between 600 and 450 students. 600 and 450 students, parents drop them off, pick them up, and that generated significant concentrations of traffic during morning drop off and afternoon pickup. The proposed 80 home development will distribute vehicles throughout the day and eliminate that intense school zone surge that once occurred at that location. The project also proposes 159 new trees. helping create an attractive and established residential neighborhood. We also recognize that housing is an urgent need in San Jose. This project provides new housing with hopefully more students that can attend our beautiful and thriving schools. Commissioners, we respect your responsibility to conduct a careful, independent review, and we appreciate that responsibility that you have. And this project will allow us that benefit to move forward. In closing, I have here a joint letter of support from eight superintendents in the Eastside Alliance. You should all have this letter in your packet. All of our eight school districts feed into the Eastside UN High School District. and we're all being impacted significantly by declining enrollment and have had to close many schools recently. Tonight, I respectfully ask you to vote yes, recommend approval of the Glider Housing Development Project to the City Council of San Jose, and on behalf of Oak Grove's 8,375 families and approximately 1,000 awesome employees, Again, I want to thank you for your service, your consideration, and your commitment to the future of San Jose. Let us turn an empty property into homes and transform that value of that property into an opportunity for thousands of our children. At this, wow, one minute, one second. Again, thank you to all of those here that are present, that are going to speak. And since you're here, if you are in support, just please rise. If you're in support, please rise. Thank you for your time. Thank you for being here. At this time, I would like to pass it over to Kelly Ruchina from the True Life Company, who will be presenting.

I am so sorry. Thank you. You're out of time for now. However, there will be another five minutes after comment. Okay? Thank you, sir. Okay. Great. Okay. So we mentioned earlier that there are quite a few of you here today, and there are probably more online. Do we have a total online as well?

If you're looking to speak on the glider project, please raise your hand if you're online.

If you're online, sorry.

We have three hands raised online.

Okay, great, great, okay. So at this point, we'd like to take public comment. So we're gonna read names. And what I'd like you to do in order to try to expedite this a bit, I'm gonna read five names, and if you could come and line up in order to speak, that would be fantastic. And then we'll take a break, do that again, and then we'll go to some callers online after that, okay? Joseph Espinoza. Edgar Duemas, I apologize if I did not get that right. Moe Hussini. Carissa Gonzalez. And Chris Stasi. Can you all just kind of line up on the stairs behind the microphone if you can? Okay, so in the interest of time, we have one minute.

Thank you, everybody. Commissioning panel, thank you for having me. My name is Edgar Duenas. I'm the Director of Maintenance, Operation, and Transportation for the Oak Grove School District. I'm also a resident of San Jose. But today I speak as a concerned citizen. There's been so many instances through the past few years I've worked with the Oak Grove School District where I have to meet SJPD because there's a break-in. There's even been a couple instances where SJPD has to discharge a smoke bomb device to get the suspects out. Every time I show up at 3 a.m., 4 a.m., I'm in such fear that I'm going to have to call my superintendent to tell him that a suspect's been, you know, shot or worse. And long story short, it is such a huge financial impact to the district that we're spending about $13,000 a month just in security fees for this site. Thank you.

Edgar?

All right. Good evening. My name is Mo and we live on Dunn Avenue, which is the next street over from Cozy Drive where the project is going to happen. And I want to respectfully share my concerns about the proposed 80-home glider project. I understand this property cannot remain vacant and I recognize that its sale and development can ultimately benefit our community. Both of our daughters attend Oak World School District. So we understand the value of having this property put to production use. However, we do not believe the project should proceed in its current form. The city's own EIR identifies significant and unavoidable impacts from additional vehicle travel and greenhouse gas emissions. I ask the Commission to consider reducing the number of homes, creating more public open space and requiring speed humps or other traffic calming measures on Don Avenue and surrounding streets. I am also concerned about the proposed Saturday construction from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Finally, I hope the Commission will give particular weight to those of us who actually live in the immediate vicinity.

Thank you. And some of these are out of order, so if you could state your name first, that would be great. Thanks.

Good evening. My name is Carissa Gonzalez, and I am, too, a parent of two students who attend Oak Grove School District and a longtime resident of District 10. I'm speaking tonight to express my strong support in developing the former Glider Elementary property to enable new residential housing development and to support the Oak Grove School District. While it is always bittersweet to transition a neighborhood site, the reality is that our district's demographics needs have evolved. Leaving a surplus school site vacant leads to vandalization and does not serve our community's long-term needs. Transforming this unique parcel into new housing is forward-thinking use of public land and directly addresses San Jose's urgent housing crisis. Bringing new housing to District 10 offers several key benefits, such as supporting our local families, our employees, and does revitalize the neighborhood. San Jose needs thoughtful housing solutions, and that makes an efficient use of available land within existing neighborhoods. Thank you for your time.

Actually, it'd be great if we could hold our applause. I appreciate it. Thank you. I understand your enthusiasm. Okay, so go ahead. Actually, while we wait for the next speaker, I'll go ahead and call ahead of time. I believe this is Ray Moskolas with a Z. Thank you. Jason Sarayan. Gustavo Okay, great. Okay, please.

Hello, I have lived in this neighborhood all my life.

Could you state your name first, please?

Chris Stasi. I have lived in this neighborhood all of my life and I have seen significant changes. I have owned my home here for 30 years and we are being forced more and more high density housing. like a four story project going on within a quarter mile of this high density project on Snell and Santa Teresa. And I feel like these, it's a lot of homes, it's a lot of people, it's a lot of noise and traffic and parking spaces and pollution. and it's changing the quality and character of our neighborhood.

Okay, sorry. Yeah, that's time. Sorry. Thank you very much. Just to make sure. Edgar? Is Edgar in the room? Oh, you were. Okay, you did speak. Okay, great. Thank you. I appreciate it. Oh, sorry. Okay. Okay.

My name is Ray Moskalat. I'm a resident. I also live around the area. I've been there for 30 years. My concern is that our community is, there are people, you know, I feel for the people that, the employees of the school and stuff like that, but our community, I think we should invest more in the community service in the sense of Gladiator should be kept how it is and used as People that have businesses for children, we could use it as a community center to bring our community together. I noticed that we are losing that with this high housing density around our neighborhood. And you guys know for a fact There's all around Santa Teresa, there's been building homes, apartments, all around. So with the issue with the homes that are being built and you're saying that we have a problem with housing, look around you. Costco, all over those apartments at IBM, the housing and stuff like that.

Sorry, thank you.

Good evening. My name is Jason Sorich. I'm the principal of Rita Ledesma Elementary School in the Oak Grove School District. Supporting the proposed housing development at the former Glider Elementary School site is about far more than buildings. It is about securing the financial stability of the Oak Grove School District and directly supporting our children's future. Approving this project delivers essential resources to protect academic programs, retain exceptional teachers, and keep vital student services running across all 18 district schools. At the same time, it helps address San Jose's pressing housing shortage by welcoming new families and community life into the neighborhood. By voting in favor of this housing development, you are choosing to invest in our neighborhood, provide stability to our public schools, and give our students the resource rich education they deserve. Thank you for standing with our kids and our community.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Gustavo Gallardo, and I am here tonight because our neighborhood deserves to be here. We understand that San Jose needs housing, but building 80 new homes without fully addressing the impacts on the people already living here is not responsible development. My biggest concern is that many of the issues raised appear to have been minimized through general agency reports, but our neighborhood is not a general report. We are real families, real streets, and real children who will have to live with the consequences of your decision. I have three simple questions. First, the power. Can the existing electrical infrastructure serving our neighborhood truly handle the initial demand from these homes? Because that's what the report says, but it's a general report for the city of San Jose, not our neighborhood. Second, sewer. Has the city specifically demonstrated that the sewer infrastructure in our neighborhood has enough capacity for this?

I'm sorry, you're out of time. Thank you. I appreciate it. Okay, as we wait for the next speaker, I will call Christine Loper, Leo Gallman, Lara, please forgive me, Fig Gilawa, Janie Ingner, and Carol Branford.

Good evening. My name is Talvia Harrigan. I'm the principal of Frost Elementary. This is a wonderful opportunity to expand the housing supply here in South San Jose. Our community and our citizens want and desperately need more housing. Housing with our own four walls, housing with a small yard, housing with a park to play in with our children, and to walk with our pets a place that has 159 new trees new oxygen for us to breathe 20 years from now those of you who approve this will be the heroes that have made it happen our families deserve this our students need this and our district employs you to move this project forward because this is the type of development that we want in our communities not high density high rises, but single family homes, medium density with open spaces for our children. Thank you for supporting. Thank you.

Can we go ahead and take a caller online now?

Lillian, you are unmuted. Yes, this is Lillian. I live in District 3. The last lady who spoke about heroes and open space, I know for a fact that many other schools are going to be closed. And if we start building on one school site, what do we do the open space to the other school sites? When the superintendent does not address climate issues, tree issues, carbon issues, environmental issues, which we talk to our students about all the time, And when teachers in that area are dealing with these issues with kids in a classroom, and yet we are taking out our trees, 40 or more ordinance trees, non-ordinance trees. San Jose has a policy with the tree canopy and they are desperately trying to save tree canopy. We are under a certain percentage. with tree canopy in San Jose. And by removing more trees, stating we're going to plant 159 trees and sacrifice those 40 trees is not- Okay, thank you, Collin.

We'll take one more on nine.

Andrew, you are unmuted.

good evening chair and commissioners i'm andrew bryan i'm a resident in the area i do not recommend approval of the glider residential project replacing community school with with 80 homes boxing by single family streets is the housing version of a middle seat on a full flight technically it fits but everyone's miserable we're repeating the same exact sighting mistake being made with the 49 new apartments on san teresa boulevard two things worry me the most first it's traffic the study shows daily trips on glider nearly triple and dunn jumps to over 2100 Calling this minimal relies on flawed data collected while the school was closed. Their fix relies entirely on unenforceable voluntary behavioral changes. Second, infrastructure. We already endure frequent PG&E outages. Our local grid and sewers simply cannot handle 80 more homes. Finally, keep that $4 million offset fee in this neighborhood. Put it partially towards maybe a local magical bridge playground. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Okay, next speaker, public speaker.

Good evening, I'm Christine Luper. I am the very proud principal of Baldwin Elementary in the Oak Grove School District. And also more than that, I am a homegrown Oak Grove student myself and I raise two kids in our district as well. Hopefully we'll raise grandchildren there too. I'm just here tonight in support of this glider project. It will help our district be fiscally, financially stable, and hopefully will stave off further school closures. I know firsthand what school closures can do to a community and to an individual. I did go to Minor Elementary, and I was a teacher, literacy coach at Minor when Minor closed, which closed at the same time as Glider. And that is a hardship that is really hard to go through. And if this can help support our school district be fiscally, financially stable to stave off further school closures.

Thank you. Can you remember to state your name first?

Well, my name is Leo Gelman, and I have lived in my house that borders Glider School for 38 years. I urge the Planning Commission to work with the Glider community to adopt a resolution that lowers the density from 80 units down to 62. That was originally proposed by the Planning Department. And I also would like to I urge the Commission to say no to requested exemption to minimum house setbacks. High density will block the sun from our backyards. Lower density will reduce the amount of imposed shade on our backyards and will provide more privacy. Do not allow work on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in addition to already extended 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. hours on weekdays. Please consider Glider community residents' request. We simply want to continue enjoying living in the city of San Jose. We don't want to experience a degradation of our quality of life. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Laura Fujikawa. I'm a retired teacher and I live in a house that I've been in for 38 years that borders the glider school. I have three major requests of you as commissioners. One is to lower the density of the houses from 80 to 62, which was an option that was presented by the planning department. I would also like to request that you lower the VMT. Four million dollars that the planning commission has proposed a developer pay to ignore the VMT consequences doesn't make sense to me. Plans to spend this money on changes at the Santa Teresa-Snell intersection where the high school is located indicates that the planning commission or department acknowledges student safety is jeopardized by this project. So reduce this adverse effect, scale back the housing density, increase park space. What you have set aside is not enough for a real park. I also want to say that we would like True Life Company to actually work with the residents of the neighborhood.

Thank you.

Hi, thank you. My name is Jenae Enna and I'm here to share my support for the Glider Residential Project and to respectfully ask the commission to recommend approval for this project to the city council. I have had the privilege of serving Oak Grove School District for more than 20 years as a teacher, a coach, a principal, and now assistant superintendent. of educational services. I also call the district community home. I live about two and a half miles from the Glider property. I'm raising two children in the school district and my husband's a teacher in the district. So when I think about this property, I think of it as a neighbor, a parent, and a dedicated school leader. Behind every budget and every budget line, there are real students and thousands of whom who don't have someone to attend the planning commission meeting to advocate on their behalf. These are often the students with the least voice in conversations like this one, and the ones who stand to gain or lose the most depending on what is decided.

Okay, before the next speaker, I'm gonna call Jason Hutton, Amy Bowles, Maria Casselly, Frankie Rodels, And Mia Cruz. Go ahead.

Good evening. My name is Kirill Brantford, and I lead the Business Services Division for Oak Grove School District. I am speaking tonight to ask for your recommendation to approve the proposed development of our surplus school site. In business services, my priority is ensuring our district remains fiscally sound so that our classrooms have the resources they need to thrive. However, like many districts across the region, we are facing the reality of declining enrollment. Every year, as our student numbers shrink, our state funding, which is directly tied to student attendance, declines along with it. This proposed development represents a vital opportunity to stabilize our fiscal future. Approving this site development is critical to protecting our schools. These funds will directly support our ability to preserve essential instructional programs, protect teaching and support positions, and maintain low student-to-teacher ratios despite shrinking state revenues. Without strategic property decisions... Go ahead.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Jason Hutton. I'm a sheet metal worker with Smart Local 104. I'm a business representative, lifelong native to San Jose and a combat veteran. Tonight I'm representing the skilled trades and the working men and women who help build projects like the glider development. I'm asking you to support this project. Glider project is an excellent example of how San Jose can address its housing needs while also creating good family supporting jobs, long-term economic opportunities for local workers. the matter because we are not simply talking about building houses, we're talking about building careers, apprenticeship programs, giving local residents the opportunity to enter a skill trade without the tradition of the burden of paying for a five-year program. The project also fits well within the existing character of the area. With low density housing, significant open space, the fact that developers have listened to the community input process through process demonstrates a supporting

Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Amy Bowles and I'm speaking tonight as the Associate Superintendent of Human Resources, a proud 28-year employee of the school district of Oak Grove, a former district parent and resident. In my role leading HR, I support the recruitment, hiring, and retention of nearly 1,000 dedicated staff who show up every single day for our students and families. I'm here tonight to respectfully urge you to recommend approval of the Glider Residential Project to the City Council. Since my hire in 1998, our district has experienced a decline of between 3,000 and 4,000 students. Even if conservative estimates of a 3,500 student loss is put into perspective, that represents roughly 140 teaching positions over the last 25 years. This isn't just numbers on a spreadsheet, it carries a deep human cost. Over just the last three years, I've personally walked into schools, including Taylor, Sakamoto, Indigo, Hayes, Edenville, Steemit, Stipe, Baldwin, and Ledesma at the start of the year to release 11 teachers.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Frankie Robles. I'm an Oak Grove School District employee. I work in the Maintenance and Grounds Department, and I'm here to ask for your support in moving this project along. the glider property is draining our district of resources monthly, daily. I get calls, emails, texts from residents in the area saying, can you guys come please fix the fence? Someone cut it down again and turned our blacktop into a dog park and the smell is annoying us. It's Our glider property has become TikTok famous and became a point of break in and a challenge to see which next social media user can get further than the one before. We've seen the roof broken into and poles used as sliding poles to get inside to the school and just cause damage. So I'm asking you to please help us move this project forward and support our district. Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Maria Casillas. I'm a homeowner and also a Glider neighbor for 20 years. We chose this community because we want a better future for our children, a safe place to raise our family, to build a home, and create a legacy. I understand that the city needs housing and its obligations under the building remedy. I also understand that the final ER report addresses many concerns through environmental analysis and mitigation, but reports are numbers. We leave a reality behind those numbers every single day. We already experienced significant congestion in Santa Teresa High School and another residential development is coming directly across the street. Please look beyond whether an impact is technically considered significant. Consider the cumulative impact of all of the developments happening in our area and what it means for the people already living here.

Thank you. Before our next speaker, I'll call up Luis Velasquez, Bob Perula, Dr. Ivan Chiavetes. Oh, sorry. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Jose Rivera and Cole Davis. Thank you. Sorry, please go ahead.

Good evening Chair and members of the Planning Commission. My name is Mia Cruz and I'm from the Oak Grove School District. I serve as the principal of Taylor Elementary School. I am here this evening to speak from the perspective of a school leader whose campus may welcome future students from the proposed glider residential project. Taylor Elementary is a welcoming school community and we want families who move into this future neighborhood to know that their children will be receiving with care, support, and a strong commitment in learning. Our teachers and staff work very hard every day to provide a safe, nurturing, inclusive environment where students are known, valued, and encouraged to do their best. At Taylor, we believe educating the whole child. That means supporting students academically, socially, and emotionally. If this project moves forward, Taylor Elementary stands ready to welcome future students and families from this neighborhood. We look forward to being part of their educational journey and helping them be connected to our school community. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. And before you speak, I want to take the, is there one more call? Go ahead.

Scott, you are unmuted.

Thank you. Good evening. My name is Scott Reese. I'm a business representative for UA Local 393, representing over 3,200 members in Santa Clara and San Benito counties. I applaud this developer and how they've engaged with the community and want to provide much needed affordable housing units. I ask that you approve this project and help to ensure that our local skilled and trained workforce has the opportunity to actually work where they live. Using skilled and trained workforces can provide that projects will be done efficiently, done to Santa Clara County building and plumbing codes, and on time. I ask you to approve this project again. Thank you for your time and your consideration.

Let's take one more online.

Erica?

Hello, thank you, commissioners. My name is Erica Valentine, representing UA Local 393. Again, with 3,200 workers in the Bay Area working and building these projects for over 100 years. Today, we're asking that each one of you support this project so that workers are able to live and work in the same area. We're also asking that this developer be recognized for their leadership in this area, for reaching out to the community, reaching out to the local community to ensure that we have local jobs. And we thank you for your time and would appreciate your vote of support. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Okay. Next speaker.

Good evening, Chair Cantrell and members of the Planning Commission. My name is Luis Velazquez, and I serve as the president of the Elk Grove Educators Association, representing more than 400 educators who serve the students and families of the Elk Grove School District. We're here tonight and respectfully urge the Planning Commission to recommend approval of the Glider Residential Project to the City Council. For our educators, this project is fundamentally about students. The approximately 26.6 million proceeds associated with the Glider property can help O'Groove project lower class sizes and preserve the programs and services that make a meaningful difference in students' lives, including counseling, libraries, music, the arts, electives, instructional support, special education services, and support for multilingual learners. Those resources also help protect the teachers and staff who deliver those services every day. Like many school districts throughout the region, Oak Grove has experienced enrollment loss, which places additional pressure on the district's ongoing revenues and its ability to sustain staffing, lower class sizes, and student programs. At the same time, we see the housing proposal glider as an opportunity to welcome new families into the Ogrove community. Families with school-aged children will have a wonderful nearby public school option at Taylor Elementary and Sakamoto, both of which have room to welcome additional students. Ogrove currently serves more than 8,000 students, and the decisions made about this former school property Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Good evening, members of the Planning Commission. My name is Bob Prolla. I'm a teacher in Oak Grove School District and the vice president of OGEA. We all know that education is chronically underfunded in California, and we also know that the governor recently blew a hole in the Prop 98 funding guarantee in this state. We have an asset in Glider Elementary School which could be sold and is currently costing the district tens of thousands of dollars. It could be sold, bring in $26 million to support students and services. We also know that San Jose is in dire need of more housing, and we also know that this project would bring in skilled jobs, local jobs to support our community. So as far as I'm concerned, that is a win-win-win situation. Please support this sale. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, good evening. My name is José Luis Rivera. I'm a business representative with District Council 16. We represent over 3,000 members and more. We're here in support of this project. And also, please include project labor agreement to this project that will protect all workers. And we have the next generation of workers for our future partnership programs. And if you've got any questions, need any assistance, please reach out. We're here always to support and work with you guys. Thank you for your service.

Thank you. Before you come down, I'm going to go ahead and call the next set of folks and also ask if there's anyone who hasn't spoken yet who would like to, to please go ahead and fill out a card. Okay. I'm going to call Andy Marrakezen. Sorry, Andy. Lori Sharp and Jean Innocente.

Hello, thanks for having me. My name is Cole Davis. I'm with DC16 and the Finishing Trades. I'm not going to talk on construction on that portion of it because, honestly, I grew up in this neighborhood. I've seen developments right off of Allen, Cahalan, where nobody really took any thought about building there. There's no backyards. There's no area. There's nowhere to park. This one, clearly, somebody took some thought. I would have put 200 houses here probably somehow, and they only put 80. Any other development would have been huge. So clearly somebody actually took some time to think about this. It's going to put more students in Santa Teresa High School where my sister went. And please support this.

Thank you.

Hi. My name is Andy Murchison. I'm a research scientist in energy. I think about the future every day. All right? You have a tremendous responsibility. You've got to deal with the present and the future. If you sell this land to this developer and cannibalize that school, the city will never get that land back again. You must think also about the future. Our children, 25% of the population in San Jose is over 55 years old. That means there's a lot of young people in the city that will produce children. They're going to need that site. All right, that's all I've got to say. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks. Hi, my name is Lori Sharp. I have been a homeowner since 1990, so I've been over 30 years. And my home sits right direct in the center between Glider and the new project you have that's gone on Snell. and Santa Teresa. I am absolutely upset behind the fact that there's some things that are not being considered here. One is there's only two entrances and an exit to get to the properties. Right now that is going from Dunn And snow. There's already a lot of traffic coming and going. People mentioned that when the school was in session, when Glider was open, that there was a lot of traffic in the morning and the afternoon. Have we even considered how many people are going to be driving? There's another problem. You're getting ready to get rid of this particular project. It's going to reduce a lot of other things for me. And that is the quality for...

I'm sorry. Your time is up. I'm sorry. Thank you.

Hello. Good evening. My name is Jean Dinocenti and I am a resident across the street from Glider Elementary. And I've been listening to what the Oak Grove School District staff has been saying and I just want to shed some light. We've been suffering because of the poor decisions that the school district made. We advised them to lease it to a private school that was interested in leasing the school, and they said no. And we've been asking them from the very beginning that that would be a better decision because that would generate money for the school district, hopefully to alleviate some of the stresses that they're undergoing. So I just want to put out that we're here because of the school district's poor decisions. And also, we do have low-income housing coming to Santa Teresa and Snell, so we already are fulfilling our duty to accommodate some low-income housing. And so maybe once that's done, re-evaluate what's happening at the glider property.

Thank you.

Good evening, Planner Commissioners. My name is Jose Espinosa.

I'm the business representative for the painters and the tapers, Local 507, representing over 950 members. I'm here in support of the glider project. The reason being is because San Jose has become the most expensive city in the world, and we need more affordable houses. And I saw this development, and it makes sense to me. And not only is it going to bring affordable housing for my members, it's going to be providing new opportunities of work. So I'm here to support and I ask you to please vote yes on this. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Gaurish, and I live on Glider Drive, right opposite the school. I'm speaking here tonight to see if you can approve the alternative for 62 units instead of the 80 units that is proposed. I mean, it basically adds housing to the San Jose, as well as keeping density compatible with our neighborhood, preserving more open space, as well as reducing vehicle trips to on streets. The VMT remains elevated at 17.04, as the planning mentioned, and I request you to have three specific conditions for approval if you do so. First is to earmark any of the offset fees for immediate traffic calming on Glider Drive and Susie Drive first, as against sanitaries and Snell Avenue proposed. Ban weekend constructions and rustic weekend hours around sanitaries or high school commute at night times, and also require realistic data-backed participation assumptions for the carpool program. We're not asking you to choose between housing and community, but we're trying to ask you for a better balance to look carefully at the ramifications of the decision and to do the right thing.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Are there any more folks online? Great. Okay. So has the applicant had some additional time? Did you have an additional speaker?

So good evening chair and commissioners. My name is Kelly Ruchina and I represent the True Life Companies. Thank you for this time. I have a brief presentation I'll share with you. A lot of it staff and our superintendent had already highlighted so I will kind of go through this as quickly as possible and hopefully this will anticipate some questions you may have and provide answers. Okay, and we're off. This is the glider residential project, as you know. We can go to the next slide. Thank you. So at the core, the proposal transforms this nine and a half acre old school site that is not being used into a family-oriented ownership community centered around a park. Next slide. Right here we have 80 ownership homes, 64 detached and 16 attached with the 11 affordable units that will be deed restricted. This project site has a density of 8.4 dwelling units or homes to the acre. Next slide. Jason already touched on this, but I'm just going to reiterate that at the time of our application submittal, this site was zoned for residential uses. So this wasn't an arbitrary formulation of how we came up with the site design. The city had residential zoning R18, which is in alignment with the surrounding neighborhood Community response, the Oak Grove School District before entering into an agreement with the True Life did their own due diligence in meeting with members of the community and the neighborhood to solicit feedback regarding their concerns. And so I can go into what some of those were that they were heard. Next slide. Maintain neighborhood scale. Include meaningful open space. Address neighborhood parking. Create compatible streetscapes. Excuse me. So as you can see, we did try to incorporate those elements. eight units to the anchor. These are single family homes. We did not stick a high rise in the neighborhood as some other developers may have done, right? We've got the park that will be open to the public, but privately owned and maintained by the Homeowners Association. This parking is plenty. There's ample, there's garages, there's driveways, then there's street parking. So there shouldn't be any concerns about overflow into the neighborhood. Next slide. We've got your trees. where we'll be removing 48 on-site and six off-site, so it'll come out to 54 in total, but we've got 159 that we're proposing, so for every one that's being removed, three are being replaced. We've conferred with the fire department regarding emergency access, hydrants, and connectivity. The city will oversee all the construction activities, the traffic, the hours, the noise, the dust. All of that will be under city supervision. And the park, as I mentioned, is going to be privately owned but open to the public. Next slide. So this is how all of these elements were incorporated into the design. Next slide. Varied roof lines, warm palette, beautiful streets, landscaping. This is not going to be some wild one-off neighborhood. It should blend in appropriately with the neighbors. Next slide. Homes designed for family living. These are three and four bedroom homes with two and a half to three bathrooms, 1,233 square feet to 2,234. Private garages, and it should be on there, but backyards. Here's our park, 0.68 acre park connected to sidewalks and public streets that are going to be open not just to the residents of the development, but the adjacent neighborhood. Next slide. Here's the amenities. We're going to have a playground. There's going to be grass. There's going to be trees, lighting for safety, picnic tables, park benches, bike racks. So we have the whole gamut to kind of give opportunity for the residents to enjoy an open space. Next slide. I hit on the trees pretty good, so I think we can go to the next slide. Parking, 144 garages, 144 driveways, 100 on the streets. So that should cover the residents and their guests. It shouldn't be any kind of a burden to the neighbors. Next slide, please. I think I covered this already with the emergency access the fire department has been conferred with. The 11 deed restricted homes, this is going to be at 80% AMI, so available to lower income households, not moderate, lower. And this will be for a term of 45 years, which I think is, this is going to be such a great opportunity for families to be able to participate in home ownership and have the opportunity of, you know, equity, just like market rate homes. Next slide. The EIR projects has been studied and has been expressed greatly by Bethlehem regarding the impacts related to vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas. We are going to mitigate to the extent feasible and then we also would be offering the voluntary contribution.

Sorry, that's your time. No, I appreciate it. Okay, so before we discuss this, I just want to give the commissioners an opportunity to mention any other communications they've had with residents or developers.

Yes, I had a Zoom meeting with the developer.

CHAIR, COMMISSIONER CASEY. I WALKED THE SITE WITH THE DEVELOPER FOR ABOUT 20 MINUTES JUST TO GET A LAY OF THE LAND AND UNDERSTAND HOW IT FIT INTO THE NEIGHBORHOOD THERE.

I HAD A MEETING WITH THE DEVELOPER AND THEN ALSO I'M THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE DISTRICT TWO NEIGHBORHOOD LEADERSHIP COUNCIL WITH OAK GROVE BOARD PRESIDENT FRANCIS HERBERT AND I'VE BEEN ATTENDING CAFE CON JOSE SINCE MY SON WAS IN KINDERGARTEN.

AND MYSELF, I HAD A LISTENING SESSION WITH THE DEVELOPER AND FORMER SUPERINTENDENT OF THE DISTRICT. OKAY. GREAT. ALL RIGHT. SO, COMMISSIONERS?

GOOD TO GO.

THANK YOU, CHAIR.

STAFF. AS THIS CAME IN, WHAT WAS PLANNING DEPARTMENT'S MAIN CONCERNS? YOU WERE KIND OF STUCK WITH BUILDER'S REMEDY AND YOU HAD THE R18 ZONING OVERLAY, BUT TYPICALLY THERE IS SOME CONVERSATIONS WHERE THINGS ARE PRESENTED AND THEN CHANGED. SO HOW WOULD YOU SUMMARIZE THAT EXPERIENCE?

I will say this is a little tough because Alex is not here, but the genesis of this project is actually well before that. I believe the school district had put in for a general plan amendment prior to this and were politely told that we would not support that. So when Builder's Remedy came in, that's when this project came in. Obviously, it's R18 zoning and they've I think I can say fairly that they've done their best to respect that R18 zoning. IT WAS BUILDER'S REMEDY AT THE END OF THE DAY. THERE WAS A LOT OF CONFUSION AT THE VERY BEGINNING AS TO WHAT WAS GOING ON. WE REVIEWED THE PROJECT AS IT CAME IN. LIKE I SAID, THEY DID RESPECT THE ZONING OF THE PARCEL AT THE TIME OF APPLICATION.

ARE THERE OTHER SCHOOLS THAT HAVE AN R18 ZONING UNDERLYING THEM RIGHT NOW IN THE CITY?

Chair, I'll clarify. So I would say prior, like 10 years ago, a lot of the schools have R18 zoning when we, as a charter city, were not required to have our general plan and our zoning district completely aligned. JUST BECAUSE THEY'RE TYPICALLY IN SINGLE-FAMILY NEIGHBORHOODS AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO ALIGN A SINGLE-FAMILY HOUSE COULD IN THEORY GO THERE. SINCE THEN, WE'VE KIND OF CLEANED THAT UP. IF YOU'RE A PQP, WE TYPICALLY HAVE REALIGNED IT. I DON'T THINK IT WAS THE INTENTION TO ALLOW A LOT OF SINGLE-FAMILY HOUSES ON A GENERAL PLAN PQP SITE. IT WAS JUST CAUGHT US AT AN OPPORTUNITY THAT WE HADN'T HAD A CHANCE TO CLEAN IT UP YET.

got it and as we covered recently under the general plan update there'll be a some type of uh you know discussion and or research on pqp on what the city really wants to have happen so this might not be an example but again for historical purposes the request was to do housing planning said no city said no BUILDER'S REMEDY APPLICATION CAME IN, COULD NOT SAY NO, AND SO HERE WE ARE TODAY. AND THEN WHEN IT CAME TO THE CONCEPT OF THE PARK AND THE INTERIOR VERSUS ON THE EXTERIOR FOR EVERYONE, WAS THAT EVEN A DISCUSSION?

WE DO ACTUALLY HAVE PARK STAFF HERE WHO CAN SPEAK ON HOW THEY LANDED ON THE LOCATION OF THE PARK.

GOT IT.

Good evening, commissioners, Rebecca Ross, Parks, Recreation, and Neighborhood Services. We were not able to negotiate for a turnkey park in this location, so we were supportive of the privately owned publicly accessible park. So the location is part of the private development design subject to the planning division, planning department review.

Okay, lots of acronyms. So let's be, was there a park, there's typically a park requirement, or at least a park fee, and there's an in lieu, but does builder's remedy interfere with that, or no?

No, the park obligation, the parkland obligation still applies. So they still had an obligation to give us land or money. We didn't, once we figured out how much the credit they would get for giving us land, there wasn't enough money there to be able to design and develop a park. So we asked for the fees instead, the in lieu fees.

Got it. But, and then, so then technically the This is privately maintained open space, right? Not a park. As they mentioned, it's going to be privately maintained, right?

It will function like a public park, but it will be privately owned, publicly accessible, but privately maintained. So the operations and maintenance of the park will not be a fall on the city to fund.

Got it. And then for staff, whether they said 59, 62, 91, whatever number of housing units, does the city have any discretion on that question?

So the numbers that they were referencing were sequel alternatives that they were proposing, but it has up to 80 dwelling units to an acre with no minimum. So the number in terms of the proposal is the discretion of the applicant.

Right, so it could have been seven, it could have been 79, et cetera. Yes. Okay, thank you very much.

I think Commissioner Casey is online.

Yes, thank you, Chair. I had two questions for staff. The first one is about the setback question, and just want to make sure I understand the terminology in there. It says there won't be a limit for the internal setbacks. Does that mean that the external setback, if I take that to mean the homes that are backing up to the existing neighbors, will those still have the required minimum setbacks? It's just the setbacks between two new homes will be smaller?

um so no this is a builder's remedy project so there are no zoning requirements at all there are health and safety requirements so there is a requirement if you're building single-family houses obviously you have to have a setback between the houses that the fire department has to approve But otherwise, there are no setback requirements because there are no zoning requirements because this is a builder's remedy project.

But within the notes, it specifically mentions rear interior setbacks. So I'm just trying to understand why we'd call one out specifically versus the setbacks for the existing, between a new home and an existing home.

Okay. Rear interior setback and rear corner setback are... Yes. Yeah. So a rear interior setback is the rear setback for an interior lot. So if you are not on a street corner, you are in an interior lot, and a rear interior setback is the rear setback for that lot. A rear corner setback is the rear setback for a corner lot. uh they're called out separately because it's not the case in r18 r18 they're both 20 feet normally but in some other zoning districts there are there are different rear interior and rear corner setbacks okay so rear interior does not mean just interior to the new development it also means one of the new homes backing up to the existing residents there's not going to be a minimum there either Under builder's remedy, correct. There's no zoning requirement at all.

So I'll clarify. So under builder's remedy, whatever they propose is deemed consistent with our zoning code. If our zoning code requires 10, they provide four, it's consistent because of builder's remedy.

Okay, may I asked the developer, then to let us know what the setback is that they're proposing between a new one of the new homes and one of the existing residents in this neighborhood.

Hi, Commissioner Casey. In response to your question, it's going to vary by site, but I think the minimum that we are proposing is 10 feet.

Okay. And what is the, back to the city staff, what is the, if this wasn't builder's remedy, what would be the setback required, minimum setback in the rear?

The typical minimum rear setback in R18 is 20 feet. I will just add, even notwithstanding Builder's Remedy, this project does provide affordable housing and therefore is a density bonus project. And you can also reduce rear setbacks, side setbacks, et cetera, using density bonus waivers. There is reference to that in this project as well. But typically, if there were no state laws, it would be 20 feet. Thank you.

And sorry, one follow-up question then for the developer. In terms of the trees, is there a plan? Because I understand the concerns of the residents with the new, and I appreciate it's only a two-story compared to three-story or something could be allowed. With the two stories being so close to the lot lines, is the additional trees that you've talked about planting, are those going to be just in the front yard? Are there going to be some mitigation steps taken to mitigate the closeness to the existing neighbors behind the new homes?

Yeah, our planting the trees will only be in the front. We won't be doing the tree planting in the backyards.

Okay, thank you.

Actually, before you leave, I see you go back up and down. Are there any questions for the developer? Okay. Okay, great. You may just want to hold on. Okay. Commissioner Escobar.

Yeah, can I finish?

Please, go ahead.

Thank you, Chair. And for the city, the Saturday construction required, why was that something that's being provided in this case as opposed to the typical Monday through Friday? Again, just trying to mitigate the impact on the neighborhood.

So that's an option of the applicant, whether they want to request the Saturday construction. In most cases, it just helps them speed up construction if they get that extra day to pour or do any work specifically. It's just not atypical for a lot of the projects coming in for residential requests, extended construction hours.

And is that something under Village Remedy we have control and say over? Or is this something that Village Remedy also removes our ability to say no to?

And the attorneys can correct me here, but it is in the zoning code, so I would say I'm not sure there's much discretion in terms of that request.

Okay, is that the final answer?

Final answer. All right, thank you.

Okay, so I mean those I am in district 10 I know this area well I drive down Santa Teresa often and I hear from the residents and I've seen firsthand the traffic in front of San Jose high school. Definitely, you could do a whole video on parents behaving badly as they pick up their children from Santa Teresa. I also live very close to three different schools, and I actually, even though I don't have kids attending there any longer, I know the bell schedule because I avoid the area during that time. But on the flip side, I would understand with Glider, if it was an open school, I believe traffic would be even worse than the new 80 residents in this particular neighborhood. I did tour the property. It is a blighted property, fenced off. There's no fields being used. The buildings are in disarray. I think it's overall relatively reasonable density. I do have concerns about the setbacks, but I understand there may not be too much we can do there. I do appreciate the adequate parking. We often hear from residents the impact of putting in developments like this and not having adequate parking. Majority of the units having a two-car garage and confirming that the driveway depths are deep enough to accommodate vehicles as well, meaning they could put four vehicles on their property. The other units that have a one-car garage can also fit one additional in the driveway. So I did appreciate that particular piece. Two stories as opposed to what's at Snell and Santa Teresa. I think it fits well within the neighborhood. There are other school properties in the area. I mean, I used to ride my bike past this school when I was a little kid. I understand the area. There are other schools, Sakamoto, others for future students, accommodations if necessary. So I think overall it is a good use of the property in the area. the development looks to be quality from the designs um and i think it'll enhance the the area overall but i yeah i do have here the concerns on the traffic and i have the concerns about the setback and the saturday construction um so i guess if we could just verify on the saturday construction one more time i would appreciate that but that's my overall take on this development thank you

So Commissioner Casey, this is Daniel Sesueta, City Attorney's Office. So yeah, as John Tu mentioned, the construction hours are listed in our zoning code. And since this is a builder's remedy project, THE ZONING CODE DOES NOT APPLY. IF THIS WERE A HEALTH AND SAFETY ISSUE, WE MAY BE ABLE TO MAKE THAT POINT. HOWEVER, THERE'S NOTHING PREVENTING YOU FROM REQUESTING THAT SATURDAY CONSTRUCTION NOT HAPPEN. JUST SO THAT YOU KNOW, UNDER BUILDER'S REMEDY, THE ZONING CODE OF TITLE 20, WE CANNOT APPLY IN THIS INSTANCE. Okay.

Well, I would just ask the developer then to be as respectful as possible for the neighborhood, then at the Saturdays to when it's truly necessary to stay on schedule and coordinate as much to get done on certain Saturdays, as opposed to using every Saturday throughout the construction period, wherever possible. I would appreciate it. And I'm sure the residents would appreciate it as well. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Sorry. Commissioner Escobar.

My question of applicant was also about the Saturday hours and understanding what we just heard. I will have a challenge to this in that I currently live across the street from a seven story building that is going up 118 units and there is Saturday construction. There is also Sunday construction, which I know is not compliant. I will challenge the health and safety of this in that I have almost been hit by cars because there are no, for lack of who to identify, construction workers, staff workers, manning the roads that when they're unloading lumber and there's more traffic on a street on a Saturday of people trying to get out of driveways, I've been trapped in my driveway for four hours because they parked a truck and didn't want to move it on a Saturday. So to the end of health and safety, is that detriment to my health and safety? It could be. It can be. They've removed one-way signs and not put somebody there and then blocked it again with a cement truck. And it sits for hours. So if this is not something that we can mitigate on a Saturday where there's more traffic throughout the day in and out. I would ask if it is possible to put in a noticing provision in this that if you are to use a Saturday to do additional work that you notice your neighborhood of the hours of the type of construction or if there are cement trucks being parked that are blocking and the safety nature of manning the streets. I still have probably another year left of this. I can't go to work some days in the morning, have to turn around because there's only one way out of a garage, and work from home until the street is clear. So I do understand the impact of this. I also do understand the schedule of building and the financing, and the sooner you finish, the faster you make your payments, the faster people can move in. We can get more families in the neighborhood that have children that will go to the existing schools, which that is a systemic problem that we don't have children for the schools, so they close. SORT OF IS A CIRCLE. BUT THAT IS SOMETHING I'M TREMENDOUSLY CONCERNED FROM THE STANDPOINT OF EXPERIENCING IT PRETTY CONSISTENTLY FOR THE LAST YEAR. SO I GO TO HEALTH AND SAFETY ON THIS TO FIGURE OUT HOW IS THIS DONE BETTER, AT LEAST ON A SATURDAY WHERE THERE'S MORE IN AND OUT TRAFFIC BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE BUSY ON THOSE DAYS. SO THAT'S MY ASK ON THIS ONE.

IS THAT A QUESTION FOR THE APPLICANT?

It kind of goes to both sides in that I'm saying staff, is there a way that we can create some version in here of they need to notice on Saturdays the schedule, even if it's a month out. If they don't use it, that's fine, but if they notice it, notice it so communities are aware that there's an impact in their neighborhood, but also at the same time that there's additional measures being taken. If you're blocking streets, put somebody there to direct the traffic, things of that nature. but also to the applicant, what is the likelihood that you're going to use this every Saturday? Is it we'd like to, but we don't know until we get started? because the nature of the construction, the materials, I get that part. I'm looking to lessen some of the impact to the existing neighbors that are welcoming you. They don't want you not to do this, but I don't want you to be the bad neighbor coming in, so to speak, just, again, from the standpoint that I know what it's like. I'm happy that there's 118 units coming online, but I'm not happy having to endure this part. So that's where I'm coming from in this. Thank you.

Okay. Applicant.

Please say your name.

Commissioners, hi.

My name's Tim Wolosh, and I work for the developer, True Life Companies.

Great comment. In my experience in doing other projects in the city of San Jose, what I've seen work is that part of the conditions of approval require that there is some coordination in advance of the construction project to occur between the the the contractors and their trades and the community as well as and then there is also a condition in there that'll say that there's there are certain staff uh for the trades people who are designated as the the kind of the neighborhood outreach person there's typically a a cell phone number has that not worked for you in the past yeah

None of that is happening, and I don't want to say who the builder is on public record.

And I'm so sorry that that's happening. I mean, I think that the systems are in place to accommodate this, and we can certainly make a commitment that we will engage the neighborhood and... so that, you know, there are opportunities for people to provide feedback. I can't speak to the 118 unit project either. This project, you know, it's a little bit larger too. There's going to be internal roads and I don't want to over promise anything, but there is an opportunity for a lot of the construction activity to kind of happen on the inward portions of the site too, which is not always, you don't always get to do that with higher density infill sites.

Chair, if we can clarify a couple different things. Typically for those bigger projects, they don't have an interior street location to typically on-stage those trucks. For this proposal, there are two proposed streets where that would mostly take most of the staging off of the other streets onto that. So there probably will be that in addition to that. Staff here can also reference some of the mitigation measures as well as conditions that already exist to kind of minimize the impact of the construction.

Thank you. So the project would be required to implement a mitigation measure for noise, which also includes requirements for notifying the neighbors, including information such as the hours of construction, the noise and vibration mitigation measures that would be included, and posting of the construction schedule. In addition, there would also be that noise disturbance coordinator that the applicant mentioned that would be posted, that their contact information would be posted on the site so any complaints could be received.

Also, for the building near your house, if you have any residents that are there, feel free to reach out to our code enforcement department as an anonymous complainer about the project just so that we can get our applicants properly in compliance. Sorry, I wanted to add one more thing.

We do have a condition for construction outside of seven to seven Monday through Friday. We will require a construction noise mitigation plan. So that will be required for Saturday hours in addition to the notification that's the mitigation measure and the CEQA and the disturbance coordinator.

Can I just sneak in a question here? So who actually polices this problem and how do they respond to it? What would happen if a developer makes people's lives miserable?

So there's conditions related to the project so miserable isn't necessarily a condition that I can force But it definitely if there's a disturbing coordinator that is not responding to them We can definitely do a stop-order order by the building department so they can't continue construction So those conditions are in there to be enforced Thank you.

Okay. Are you?

I'm done.

Thank you so much. Okay, Commissioner young Thank you, Chair.

Kind of like to get to the two main points of this project, which haven't even been discussed yet. Number one, San Jose is now the most expensive city in the United States of America to purchase a home. We have a severe housing shortage here, which means that our kids, our grandkids, new friends and neighbors are not going to be able to stay here, which is not a good thing. So that's number one. Number two, we have a school district that is in difficult financial straits. That's not unique to Oak Grove. That's true of probably every school district in the United States, but particularly those in San Jose, because in San Jose, Because it's such an expensive place to live, guess what? Working families and families with children are moving out of San Jose, which is resulting in enrollment declines. And that makes it very difficult on the school districts. I'm also... taken aback by the fact that the school district is spending $14,000 a month just on security. That's sad. So I'd like to thank the residents of the neighborhood that came tonight. I want to let you know we appreciate that you came and we heard your concerns. I want to address some of those that I heard. The first one is traffic. As some others have mentioned, I live very close to an elementary school, which I love, but the traffic in the morning on drop off and the afternoon pickup is really bad. It's tough. Compared to the traffic that's going to be generated by 80 homes, it's going to be very minimal. In fact, I think it's going to be a much better traffic situation than when the school was open. Some folks had questions about why is the Oak Grove School District doing this rather than leasing, et cetera, et cetera. That's not up to this commission. We trust the superintendent and his staff that they've made a accurate financial analysis of what they need to do. And we are not here to question that. So just wanted to mention that. And let's see, number three. This is probably the biggest one. You're concerned about increased density. Increased density is happening throughout the city. It has to happen. The only way we can create more housing, more multifamily units in the city is by increasing density. So I wanna let the neighbors know you are not alone. IS HAPPENING THROUGHOUT THE CITY, AND IT'S GOING TO BE HAPPENING MORE, BECAUSE IT'S THE ONLY WAY WE'RE GOING TO BE ABLE TO MEET OUR HOUSING NEEDS THAT THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA HAS ASKED US TO DO. WITH ALL THAT IN MIND, AS I LOOK AT THE PROJECT, I REALLY LIKE THIS PROJECT. IT PROVIDES 80 HOMES, 11 UNITS FOR LOW-INCOME HOUSEHOLDS. AGAIN, TO THE RESIDENTS, I WANT TO TELL YOU THAT BECAUSE THIS IS A BUILDER'S REMEDY PROJECT, THEY COULD HAVE COME IN WITH A MUCH LARGER PROJECT. Okay, they could have come in with a four or five-story multifamily apartment building, but they did not. Part of that, I think, is, you know, kudos to the Oak Grove School District. They held meetings and they considered your situation and decided to go on a lower-density project. So I just wanted to give you that for perspective. A park, which is very nice, and the fact that the Homeowners Association is going to Maintain the park is really great because our our parks department is in really tough tough straits as far as that goes And they're planting 159 new trees so I'm kind of puzzled why anybody would think this would have a negative impact on as far as the Canopy so I'm gonna make a motion that we approve the staff recommendation on this project second Is the second

Thank you. Commissioner? Okay. There we go. Okay.

Commissioner Rosario, didn't you?

No, I think you were next up actually. Okay.

First, Commissioner Young, I commend you for getting to virtually all the topics that I had written down that we needed to address. I think density is one that I'm actually pleasantly surprised at this density because I do think it is still single family homes in San Jose, which are getting harder and harder to come by as we build higher in order to just pack more people into the limited amount of space that we have. So I commend the builder on finding a way to put single family homes and duets in this plot. There was a gentleman who mentioned the school land, and I think we would be remiss as a commission if we didn't specifically say we are in tension and conflict sometimes about how we handle PQP and the land that we have for schools. We know that when it gets used, we're not getting it back. And for the gentleman that brought that up, 100%, we agree with you. And this is a hard decision. And at some point we do have to honor what's happening in our schools. I don't know that we can sit here and say, we know that kids are gonna come back and those schools are gonna get repopulated. I don't know that it's gonna happen in San Jose. And even if it does, it is going to have to be the next generation's problem because we won't be here. And we have an obligation to maintain enough school land to support the kids that are going to be here in 25 and 50 years. So I don't want anybody to think we're being cavalier about this at all. And I want to make sure that what Commissioner Young said about the superintendent and being conscientious about what they're doing in supporting their district is hugely important to us. If you hadn't seconded this, I would have. I have one final question, though. It's something two different speakers asked, and that was about the sewer and other infrastructure. So a school property has a specific sewer and utilities set up, and I have to think that serving 1,000 kids or something and having 80 homes, we have the sewer capability in the area. And I see some folks nodding their heads. I just want to ask that question and be very clear that both sewer and other utilities have been thought of in this plan.

Thank you, Chair and members of the Planning Commission. Michelle Kimball, Senior Engineer with the Department of Public Works. I'm only going to speak to the sanitary sewer capacity specifically for this project. And yes, you are correct in terms of there has already been capacity just based on the school's previous use. However, to address the specific comments that members had, the project plans did show a connection to the existing sanitary sewer main along both Cozy Drive and Glider Avenue, which flow into a 12-inch main on Suisse Drive. A sewer model analysis was completed for these main segments. Although the model identifies some possible surcharge under peak wet weather conditions, there's still sufficient freeboard within the manholes. The sewer analysis results show that the existing mains have sufficient capacity under dry weather conditions to support the additional project sewer flows. Further, sewer design will be subject to final review and approval by Public Works to ensure adequate conveyance capacity.

Thank you, Chair. I'm done.

Before you speak, Commissioner Rosario, I just want to make sure, I think I took Commissioner Cowell out of the queue. If you want to go back into the queue, please do so. Okay. Commissioner Rosario.

Thank you. Uh, glider elementary has been a long time coming. I've been waiting years for this night actually. Um, The site's been shut down for years. The letters are falling off the buildings and I'm happy to see that things are finally moving forward with it. As I mentioned, I'm on the D2 NLC and my son was a student. I'm also on the board of a high school and we are dealing with declining enrollment and trying to right-size that high school has been difficult for us to do because there was one point in time where the state said and the county said that the amount of students in the area is going to come back, the amount of kids is going to come back around the year 2036. But since then they've adjusted their, what they believe is going to happen and the kids are not coming back. It will continue to decline throughout 2045 I believe is the projection right now. So, well, just to answer Commissioner Bickford's questions, Most signs are pointing to kids not coming back to San Jose. So it's a changing city. Whether we like it or not, it's the most expensive city in the country, and the neighborhood's just far from being alone and seeing denser housing that's coming to District 9 to District 10 to District 1 to District 4. It's one of the things the city needs to do to keep things affordable. And what we've told the state that we're going to do I think it's rare we see a project like this where we're seeing additional housing coming to the city as well as a project that is going to help students. As I said, my son was in the Oak Grove School District. I went to back to school nights there. I know that they could use additional teachers, translators, daycare, you name it. So I'm glad to see a project come through that will both add housing to the city and increase the

Ability for the school district to serve the kids so I'm happy to support this motion Thank You Commissioner Commissioner cow First of all, I want to thank everybody Who attended to provide comment to us this evening? all of you in person and those on zoom and also want to take a moment to thank all the commissioners for your really thoughtful comments and questions um i will not repeat those you know the questions and the conversations that we've already had but just want to build on it just a little bit as someone on this commission here with a one-year-old, there are increasingly fewer and fewer of folks like me with families, building families at this time. It is so ridiculously expensive and I've shared this at least on one occasion to this commission, but just for those of you who are in attendance, yeah, if I didn't have rent control in District 1, I probably would be elsewhere in San Jose or out of San Jose completely. My wife and I, it's not like we do poorly for ourselves, but it is so darn expensive and you tack on things like, school debt, childcare, and with a couple snaps of a finger, you can quickly see how this would break my back and my wife's back. I wanted to bring that perspective because there are tens of thousands of folks in my shoes who are in this city, and even more who are not in the city anymore because they could not afford to live here. I want to take a moment to share with you all that there are many folks who wish they could be here tonight to speak about the housing affordability who are not here, and there are many empty seats in this chamber because of that. for reasons of what they're working or they're just not engaged civically engaged or they weren't aware um I want to take a moment to speak up for those folks and to represent those folks and we do need the housing here I definitely agree with that sentiment we don't have enough for the residents in the neighborhood who spoke up about your concerns please know that i hear them please know that this commission hears you all and that there are some serious concerns with you know that the oak grove school district has brought up and all the folks from the school district who are here speaking about the need for housing the need for balancing their finances. I want to take a moment to thank the Oak Grove School District, all of those who are here today, and all of those who were not able to come but provided public comment, written public comment. Thank you so much for your thoughtfulness, for your participation, and now getting this project through to here this evening. AND SO I WILL PROUDLY SUPPORT THIS MOTION ON THE FLOOR. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, COMMISSIONER. OKAY. COMMISSIONER, AWAYA.

I'LL KEEP MY REMARKS SHORT. I DON'T WANT TO ELONGATE THIS ANY LONGER. BUT I JUST WANT TO THANK EVERYONE THAT SHOWED UP. WHETHER IN PERSON OR VIA VIDEO CONFERENCE. AS YOU COULD SEE, ALL OF MY COLLEAGUES AND MYSELF, YOU KNOW, THIS IS SOMETHING, THESE DECISIONS ARE, YOU KNOW, WE TAKE THEM VERY SERIOUSLY. AND I DIDN'T MEAN TO STEAL YOUR THUNDER. I KNOW YOU WOULD HAVE SECONDED THAT. BUT I COULDN'T AGREE MORE WITH COMMISSIONER CALL. Affordable housing, I have, like yourself, I have young ones. I have a 15-year-old, a 23-year-old, a 15-year-old, a 7-year-old, and a 4-year-old. And I'll tell you, the American dream, the white picket fence, it's slowly dwindling. It really is. At least I don't know that I can look. It's getting harder to be able to look at my kids and say, when you grow up, you're going to be able to purchase a house. At least not in San Jose. I was fortunate enough, I purchased my house years ago when it was still somewhat affordable. And even at that time, it seemed pretty hard, but somehow I was able to make it happen. Looking at the market now, if I were to sell my house, I wouldn't be able to purchase it again. I wouldn't be able to purchase it now. So I commend... the developer for working with the city, with the neighborhood, INCLUDING THE 11 HOUSES. I GOT TO TELL YOU, I WISH IT WAS MORE. BUT I UNDERSTAND AND THANK THE SCHOOL DISTRICT FOR DOING THIS. LIKE THE VICE CHAIR MENTIONED, I DON'T THINK IT'S NOT SUSTAINABLE FOR A DISTRICT THAT'S ALREADY BLEEDING MONEY. TO KEEP BLEEDING ON A MONTHLY BASIS JUST TO BE ABLE TO SUSTAIN THIS. AND HEARING SOME OF THE COMMENTS, YOU KNOW, ONCE AGAIN, I THANK EVERYONE, BUT IT IS THE REASON WHY I SECOND THE MOTION. AND ALSO, I GOT TO SAY, WHEN IT COMES TO THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING, THERE WAS A COMMENT ABOUT THERE BEING AFFORDABLE HOUSING SOMEWHERE ELSE AND LET'S WAIT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS AND BRING MORE AFFORDABLE HOUSING I GOT TO SAY I I COMPLETELY DISAGREE I JUST I HAD TO VOICE THAT BECAUSE IT'S AGAIN SAN JOSE THE MOST EXPENSIVE CITY IN THE IN THE COUNTRY YOU KNOW, WHO ARE WE TO DENY OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE ABLE TO PURCHASE HOME. SO, THANK YOU.

OKAY. THANK YOU, COMMISSIONERS. ANY OTHER COMMENTS FROM COMMISSIONERS? OKAY. I'LL JUST SAY A FEW THINGS. I'LL TRY TO KEEP IT SHORT, BUT I WON'T PROMISE THAT. We talk a lot about the American dream, to own our own home and to raise our families. I'm from the Midwest. I grew up in St. Louis, where the American dream is probably still attainable. That dream for me never included a $2 million house. I don't know that many people dreamed of a home at that level in that home still being relatively modest compared to others. That's what we've built here. We've built an unsustainable housing economy where eventually it will have a diminishing return to scale. It can't sustain this. So we have to build more, frankly. I think this project is actually pretty close to, it's just slightly over what the single family zoning is. I mean, just slightly. And I can tell you also that deed restricted homes are complicated for developers. Let me tell you, it's not an easy process. It puts a big strain on the project. And what that does is make the American dream available to more people. That makes it affordable for many, many more of us. That's pretty good. That doesn't happen very often here. How many times have we seen deed restricted? properties. Doesn't happen. So when we look at projects like this, we have to consider a lot of things. We have to consider an enthusiastic group of citizens coming to us and asking us from different perspectives to support what they want. And we listen. We listen very intently. And then we tried to make a recommendation to the city council that can actually carry our community forward. But we did hear you for certain. We listen to our peers, our planners who do great work. And I do have some questions for you. So this is going to elongate this. But I just want to make it clear that we understand the American dream. And we'd love to see everyone be able to have it. But in the current trajectory, it's not possible. So we do need to make some changes. OK. So questions. The $4 million that the city gets from the concessions, where does that go?

So the $4 million in the override fee for transportation and VMT impacts will go to the Department of Transportation. And then, you know, once the project's built out, you know, DUT has the discretion to use those funds towards multimodal improvements within that area. So it could go towards traffic calming, working with the council district, doing post-occupancy studies to see where traffic calming could be implemented within the neighborhood. When we first looked at this project, we identified improvements at Snell and Santa Teresa, kind of removing Porkchop Islands, squaring up the intersection, doing some transit improvements, making that intersection more friendly for pedestrians and bicyclists in general and slowing down the speeds through that intersection. So again, there's a lot of tools in our toolbox that we can use to use that funding. It is a substantial amount directly help that community in general.

You said my favorite words, that community. Okay, great. Thank you. I appreciate it. Commissioner Rosario mentioned the comeback. The comeback doesn't really happen unless there's people in the community who are having enough children to build back that population. And that's, again, complicated. The park that's being created in the community, though not luxurious, I mean, it's not a giant park, but it is a park. So the condo association will be adequately funded to manage that park, correct, I'm asking the developer?

Yes, the HOA will be responsible

And thereby removing the strain and stress of our overburdened park department, I assume the homeowners are going to be incentivized to have a pleasant park for themselves.

Correct. It's going to be a part of their association fees.

Great. Okay. All right. So with that, I think we'll go ahead and move to a vote. Okay. Okay. Commissioner, I'm sorry, Vice Chair Young. Yes. Commissioner Aguero.

Yes.

Commissioner Bondal is absent. Commissioner Bickford. Yes. Commissioner Cowell.

Yes.

Commissioner Casey.

Yes.

Commissioner Escobar. Yes. Commissioner Nguyen.

Yes.

Commissioner Oliverio?

Yes.

Commissioner Rosario?

Yes.

Myself, a yes. This actually is approved and moves forward. Thank you. Okay. Moving to a little bit of business. DO WE HAVE ANY REFERRALS FROM CITY COUNCIL?

GOOD EVENING. NO REFERRALS FROM CITY COUNCIL, BOARD COMMISSIONS OR OTHER AGENCIES, BUT HAPPY TO MOVE RIGHT INTO GOOD AND WELFARE AND SHARE REPORTS FROM CITY COUNCIL. So really quickly, last week on August 18th, the city council approved a conforming rezoning for the IBM site located at 650 Harry Road. The city council also considered an appeal of a director's decision to approve a 12-unit housing project at the intersection of Kirtner and Cottle Road. that had gone to council on appeal. And then finally, the item probably most of interest to this commission, the general plan for your review was considered by the city council. And for the most part, the city council recommended moving forward with staff recommendation. but with certain refinements, which I'm happy to share out since it was a long meeting. So the council recommended evaluating for the missing middle housing densities of 16 dwelling unit per acre, 24 dwelling unit per acre, addition to the 32 dwelling units per acre as part of the environmental review for the project and also looking at creating minimum parking standards for such housing and excluding such housing from moderate fire hazard zones for the public quasi public lands which I know came up in our last item as a discussion item they recommended moving forward with staff recommendation to create a framework for evaluating when such land should be converted to other uses to preserve, you know, this land for future uses in case we do get a student population back in San Jose. And then also looking at streamlining the process for allowing limited use of this land to be converted through opening up another general plan amendment review cycle. So doing it twice per year instead of what is currently once per year. They also recommended modifying the requirements for permanent supportive housing for such sites, and including minimum density standards, and also changing the Southside Community Center, which is currently public-quasi-public, to transit residential, looking at lowering the fees for certain uses in public and quasi-public lands. and allowing for a streamlined process. Of course, a lot of these items are adding to the scope of the general plan for your review and will probably come back to council as part of the prioritization that they will be doing on October 6th. On the Winchester corridor, the council recommended proceeding with the mixed use neighborhood designation for the sites that were being evaluated and council also recommended exploring housing opportunity sites along West San Carlos Street. Council also asked us to explore looking at allowing limited neighborhood serving commercial uses in residential neighborhoods such as cafes and corner stores. but of course no alcohol or tobacco uses, a local density bonus program, health and safety objective standards, as well as working with the Office of Intergovernmental Relations to explore imposing local objective standards if a local missing middle program is implemented. So these are all items that were added to the scope, and as I mentioned, Some of these were more exploratory instead of requiring or directing staff to pursue. So those will be considered as part of the citywide work plan prioritization conversation on October 6th. Yesterday, the council considered San Pedro social conditional use permit. FOR LATE NIGHT USES, THIS IS A BUSINESS ON SANTA CLARA STREET, VERY CLOSE TO SAN PEDRO SQUARE. HOWEVER, THERE WAS A HISTORY OF CODE-IN-CODE VIOLATIONS AS WELL AS POLICE INCIDENTS AT THE SITE, AND THEREFORE CITY COUNCIL RECOMMENDED DENIAL. THIS ITEM WENT DIRECTLY TO CITY COUNCIL BECAUSE THE SITE HAD ALLOWED FOR MORE THAN 250 PATRONS, IN WHICH CASE CONDITIONAL USE PERMITS GO DIRECTLY TO CITY COUNCIL. For upcoming meetings, on September 1st, the City Council will be considering updates to the city's child care policy. And then on September 15th, I believe the item that the Planning Commission just made a recommendation on will be going forward to City Council as well.

Okay. Any commission calendar or study session?

Yes, we have our next meeting on September 9th. Today was our first foray into allowing for hybrid comments via Zoom. So hopefully, you know, we will settle into that process by next time and provide a better script for our chair.

Yes, thank you. I appreciate you helping my reading in public. Okay, great. Any public record comments from the commission itself?

THERE'S BEEN AN AWFUL LOT IN THE NEWS ABOUT DATA CENTERS AND WHAT THE CITY MIGHT BE CONSIDERING DOING. I'VE HEARD EVERYTHING FROM SOME CITIES ARE PLACING MORATORIUMS ON DATA CENTERS. SAN JOSE HAS SEVERAL OF THEM UNDER CONSTRUCTION. I'M WONDERING IF THERE HAS BEEN ANY DISCUSSION OR INPUT ABOUT taking up some additional evaluation.

Yes, happy to share. So the city manager's office is leading an effort based on council direction to explore additional standards and requirements for data centers. There was a community meeting last week on Wednesday to do a listening session where several members of the community expressed their concerns. My understanding is that as these standards get developed, the intent is to have them adopted by city council in December. So there is that work underway already.

So none of that would come to the commission?

If it results in ordinance changes or land use changes, then it will come to the planning commission to make recommendations to council. But at this time, my understanding is that they're looking at a council policy. Thank you.

Okay, no other comments? And we are adjourned.