Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I don't know who you are. Get off me right now.

Yes. Thank you.

All right, so.

yeah. Make sure everybody has. Can you hear me Okay, this is libby. Yeah, Libby, we can hear you. We're going to start in just a minute.

No, that's fine. I'm just going to go off video and go off audio. I just wanted to make sure. Thank you.

Order of the Planning Commission meeting of April 8, 2026. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

Please remain standing. And Chair Kuru, if you might read the statement of values, please.

Statement of values. As we gather, we humbly seek blessings upon this meeting. May we act with strength, courage and will to perform our obligations and duties to our people with justice to all. Let us seek wisdom so that we may act in the best interest of our people, our neighbours and our country. All this we ask so we may serve our community with fairness and respect putting their needs before all.

Thank you. Please be seated. Elizabeth, please call the roll.

Commissioner Botnagar? Present. Commissioner Biagini?

Present.

Commissioner Chiaracuru? Here. Commissioner Wang? Here. Commissioner Boza?

Present.

Commissioner Saleem?

Here.

Chair Crutchlow?

Here.

Very good, thank you.

Thank you. So we have no absences for the quorum. Could you read the declaration of commission procedures, please?

Yes, Chair. Public hearings are conducted by the Chair in accordance with the following procedures. The chair of the Commission directs all activity during the hearings. All comments shall be addressed to the Commission. Any item on this agenda may be continued to a subsequent hearing. Applicants will be allotted up to ten minutes to present and justify proposals following staff presentation of the item. Other speakers will be given up to two minutes. The applicant is allotted up to five minutes for rebuttal of comments. No additional comments will be accepted upon the close of the public hearing, although the Commission reserves the right to direct questions to any speaker on any matter. Special procedures time limits may be applied to any item as prescribed by the chair. Appeal of Commission actions must be filed in writing within seven calendar days.

Thank you very much. Copies of the current agenda and staff reports for each of the items on the agenda are available from the Planning Division office on the Friday afternoon preceding the meeting and available online. Continuances and exceptions. This part of the meeting allows for applicants, members of the public, or other interested parties to request that an item be one, continued without hearing, two, withdrawn, or three, taken out of order. And for those of us, for those of you that are here, I just wanna make sure that last one, if you want something taken out of order, please make the request, okay? Because I know that sometimes we can get into an area, it goes very long, and you're trying to get to the one thing that you're very interested in, so I want to make sure that that's very clear. Thank you. Let's see. Are there any requests from applicants, the public, or the Commission for continuance or exception for any of the items on tonight's agenda? So even with that warning, everybody's good.

I love it.

Thank you very much. If there is a request for a continuous, no, we don't have to do that because nobody's asked. Anybody online would ask?

No, they don't, right?

Okay.

Under public hearing, we need to open the public hearing. So we'll wait until we get to public hearings.

The consent calendar. So there's one item on the consent calendar today. Secretary Chirikuru, could you please read the procedure for the consent calendar?

The procedure for the consent calendar. The procedure for the consent calendar is as follows. Consent calendar items may be enacted, approved or adopted by one motion unless requested to be removed by anyone for discussion or explanation. If any member of the Planning Commission, staff, the applicant or a member of the public wishes to comment on a consent calendar item or would like the item to be heard on the regular agenda, please make your request now. Items listed on the consent calendar with associated file numbers constitute public hearing items. Tonight's agenda has one, which is the Planning Commission meeting minutes of March 11, 2026. Okay.

Elizabeth, are there any members of the public that would like to briefly address the Commission on any item not on the agenda? If you could hold that, Mr. Chair. We have to move.

We need to vote on the consent calendar.

Do we have a motion?

I'm sorry?

Just get a vote on the minutes.

I move that we approve the Planning Commission meeting minutes of March 11, 2026. Second.

The motion was made by Commissioner Kourou, seconded by Commissioner Saleem. Go ahead and cast your vote, please.

I will abstain because I was not here.

Okay. Very good. Thank you.

I will abstain because I was not here.

Okay. Very good. Thank you. The motion passed.

Okay. Elizabeth, are there any members of the public that would like to briefly address the commission on any item not on the agenda?

No one in the council chambers and no requests online.

All right. So let's move on to public hearing items. First item we got is continuance of the third zoning code cleanup ordinance and rezoning of properties currently designated TN transit neighborhood to R6 transit neighborhood residential. Staff?

Thank You chair staff is requesting for this item to be continued to your meeting of May 20th 2026 and Per the assistant city attorney's recommendation We'd like you to open the public hearing this evening and then continue to that date The last part you want to open to public open the public hearing and continue to that date certain Let's go ahead and do that so is there a presentation about this that for the public there is not I

I move that we continue the item, third zoning code clean up ordinance and rezoning of priorities, properties currently designated TN, transit neighborhood to ARCIC, transit neighborhood residential to date certain, May 20th.

Second.

The motion was made by Commissioner Cherikourou, seconded by Commissioner Biagini to approve this item, to approve staff recommendation. Go ahead and cast your vote, please. Thank you. The motion passed.

All right. Next item, action on the revised El Camino Real specific plan, general plan amendment for the creation of five new general plan land use designations, creation of the El Camino Real zoning districts, and an environmental impact report and mitigation monitoring and reporting program.

All right. Thank you, Chair. There we go. Okay. So I'm going to start the presentation for us this evening on the El Camino Real Specific Plan. We have our consultants here who will take over the presentation for me, and then we'll go back to comments, questions at the end. We also have our CEQA consultants available in the audience for any questions that you may have as well. So I'm going to do the project background and then we'll go over the specific plan overview and overview of the program EIR. We have a retail market overview for you and trends and best practices and then finally our recommendation. So the project is a specific plan for the El Camino Real corridor. It's a 3.2 mile corridor located in the center of the city. And the specific plan is to refine and implement the 2035 general plan vision for the El Camino Real focus area. El Camino Real is identified as a focus area for future growth in the city and the general plan. It's also a priority development area that's designated by the state and our local transit authorities for higher density transit and transit-oriented growth. The specific plan itself is going to address the required specific plan topics such as land use, transportation, and infrastructure, create goals, policies, and design standards, and then identify specific improvements and actions to achieve the vision of the plan. We also have prepared an environmental impact report to assess potential environmental impacts. So the image you see on the slide here, this is the image from the general plan itself setting up the vision for the El Camino Real to transform the focus area from an auto-oriented strip mall to a tree-line pedestrian and transit-oriented corridor with a mix of residential and commercial uses. The specific plan that we have prepared does align with these high-level policies that were outlined in the general plan. So a little background how we got here. This has been a long time coming. The planning for this specific plan has taken many years. The general plan was adopted in 2010 that identified the corridor as a focus area for additional growth. In 2017, the council provided direction to start preparing a specific plan. Between 2017 and 2021, staff working with the consultant in our community advisory committee prepared a draft specific plan, which we brought to the city council in June, September of 2021 for adoption. However, during that time, they did direct staff to modify the specific plan and reduce densities along the corridor. So, after that direction, we started phase two of the specific plan in March of 2023, where we reengaged our consultant to start work on the revision to reduce density. In December of 2024, February of 2025, we met with our community advisory committee and had a public workshop to gather feedback on that specific revision. And now we're before you today for your recommendation to the city council who will hear this item in June. Just a little bit more on the council direction. They specifically directed staff to reduce density to address the community concerns over residential adjacency of single family neighborhoods and the impact that higher intensity development would have on them, specifically shade and shadows. They directed us to maintain the higher density activity centers along the corridor that are located at key nodes, and then retain enough development capacity of the prior specific plan to support mixed uses. So we went from about a 6,200 unit plan, specific plan, to what we have before you this evening of 4,400 residential units as a potential capacity. Okay. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to our consultant, who has been with us on this ride the entire time.

Thank you, Leslie. And good evening, Chair Kreslow and members of the Planning Commission. I'm Simran Malhotra. I'm a principal with Rameen Associates, and we were the lead consultant on the preparation for this specific plan. So I'm gonna walk you through the, give you an overview of the specific plan by chapter, highlighting the contents and the key elements of the plan. Here's the table of contents. There are six chapters, and as a result of the council direction that Leslie just described, the revisions that were made were primarily to chapters three, which is land use, and chapter four, development and design standards. There were some other minor changes to the rest of the chapters as well. So chapter one introduces the plan, including location, context, purpose, and gives a brief overview of the community engagement that was conducted during the process. We made a few minimal revisions to this chapter, adding in the additional CSE meeting that Leslie mentioned occurred in December 24. Chapter 2 provides the vision, the desired outcomes for the corridor and planning frameworks, such as focusing development at the key activity nodes, respecting the character of adjacent developments and improving multimodal access along El Camino Real. Chapter 3 contains the land use policies, land use map, development growth potential, and open space plan. And I'll go over these in a little bit more detail. So the key changes in the land use plan based on council direction were we added a new lower density land use designation that allowed for town homes. We reduced the density along sensitive interfaces such as direct adjacency to single family homes, particularly on the north side of El Camino Real. We also updated the land use plan to incorporate existing or recently entitled projects that were built over the previous several years. Finally, we reduced the development potential per City Council direction to about 4,400 units. This slide now shows the four new land use designations in the plan the previous draft plan They were the three designations you see on the left We split the previous corridor residential designation into two zoning districts corridor residential and corridor residential low The This last designation is the new designation that allows for low-density townhomes. This slide shows the revised land use plan for El Camino Real with the four designations. There is a fifth, which is the Civic Center where we are. That's a quasi-public designation. This map, although it's a little bit hard to read, does show the frontages where a ground floor commercial frontage overlay is required. These areas are concentrated near intersections and adjacent and across from the activity centers, which are in the darkest red on the map. This map shows the revised, this map shows the changed parcels. So the parcels which you see in a color on the screen were those that were changed from the original specific draft specific plan. So in total we changed about 60 parcels to the new Cordo residential low designation. The light blue lines on the map show parcels that are directly adjacent to single-family homes. As you can see, we re-designated a number of small parcels along the northern side of El Camino Real to where more sensitive neighborhood transitions are needed. Additionally, seven properties were re-designated to corridor residential and corridor mixed use, respectively, to reflect recently approved or pending projects. These are shown with a hatch on the map. Chapter 4 contains the land use table of permitted uses by zone, development standards such as heights, density, setbacks, open space requirements, as well as objective design standards for each of these zones and as required by state law. Some of the key revisions that were made in Chapter 4 include adding development and design standards for the new corridor residential low land use designation. Revising neighborhood transition standards for the north side of El Camino Real to require a 30-degree daylight plane, and I'll discuss that a little bit more in our upcoming slide. We also removed the commercial FAR requirement from the corridor mixed-use land use designation. Commercial is still required for sites which have a ground floor commercial overlay and in the activity nodes. There were minor revisions to development and objective design standards that allowed for alignment with some recent zoning code changes as well as best practices. And we also replaced one of the site plans in the map which we were using as an example. A little bit more detail about the neighborhood transition strategies. A key concern from the community throughout the development of the specific plan was sensitivity to adjacent low density neighborhoods. The plan includes a number of transition standards to ensure that new development does not cause privacy issues, shading, and other impacts on adjacent properties. Some of these strategies include restrictive daylight planes, deeper setbacks, upper story step backs, Orientation of the building where the short side of the building is facing the rear where possible. Smaller scale and step down house form building types such as townhomes closest to those single family neighborhoods. And then orienting windows and balconies away from existing homes to the extent possible and providing landscape buffers. The draft specific plan previously included a 45-degree daylight plane transition in height abutting single-family parcels on both sides of El Camino Real. Based on previous comments received from Council, we undertook some shadow studies and as a result of that modified the daylight plane requirements on the north side of El Camino Real to be 30 degrees. This approach limits the shading on the adjacent property especially during the winter months. This example shows the site tests and the shadow studies that were created for several parcels on the northern side of the corridor. This example is on the intersection of El Camino Real and Morse Lane. There are currently two hotels on the site, as you can see on the left of the screen, and these are almost built up right up to the back of the property, so they're very close to the adjacent single-family homes. And we modeled a building as to what could fit on the site, and that you can see on the right using the standards in the draft plan. So this slide shows the shadows that fall on the adjacent single-family homes throughout the year for both the existing hotels on the left and the new mixed-use building under specific plan regulations on the right. As you can see, the new building does not shade any single-family homes except on the winter solstice when the shadows are longest. You can see there's some shading in the yards of those homes to the rear of the site, but they are mainly cast by the six-foot fence along the property line. They're about the same as shadows being cast by the existing buildings on the site today. Moving on to Chapter 5. Chapter 5 contains the mobility framework for the corridor, the proposed bike and pedestrian network, sidewalk and public realm standards, parking standards, and the right-of-way redesign for El Camino Real. We made some minor changes to this chapter as well to align with recently adopted zoning code as well as certain public improvements that had been modified. Chapter 6 is the final chapter in the plan. It covers implementation, includes project administration, a section on community benefits, implementation actions, recommended capital improvements, and a funding and financing strategy. Minimal revisions were made to this chapter. As Leslie mentioned earlier, a program EIR was prepared in conjunction, in accordance with CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, to analyze the impacts of the specific plan. The draft EIR found that all potentially significant impacts could be mitigated to a less than significant level, and the mitigation measures are included in the mitigation monitoring and reporting program. The draft EIR was released for a 45-day review period in December of 25. During this review period, four comment letters were received. None identified new or significant impacts already disclosed in the EIR. We have the CEQA consultant here in case there are any questions regarding the EIR. Since this project started about three years ago, we have held a number of public meetings and community engagement events to present and receive feedback on the revised specific plan. Leslie described some of this earlier, including a CSC meeting, open house workshop, study sessions with the Planning Commission and City Council, among some additional public events. This slide summarizes some of the major questions and issues that were received at all these meetings and study sessions, and I'll go over these individually. The first one relates to a specific site designation. The parcels at the northeast corner of San Tomas are designated as lower density townhomes. There was a suggestion to change the designation to a higher density given that these are adjacent to the trail and at an important intersection along the corridor. In our analysis, we looked at the specific sites, and these sites are quite small in size. They're roughly 12,000 to 15,000 square feet, which make it challenging to develop as higher density. So as such, we did not make a change. The next comment was about how the daylight plane was measured. There was a suggestion to measure the 30-degree daylight plain from the lower grade of the adjacent single-family homes rather than El Camino Real parcels, which are a foot or two higher than the street to the back. Again, given the topography, the minimal grade change, and the expected shadows from fences and landscaping, we believe making this change would not yield any changes to the shadows cast, and hence no change was made. The third question was related to how the state density bonus law interacted with local incentives, and based on our discussion with project staff, city staff, There is no issue with stacking. It depends on the individual program and the individual project and what stacking is being requested. So there shouldn't be any issue with that. The last two comments were related to concerns about vacant retail and current market conditions needed to implement the plan and also preserving existing retail. As a part of the specific plan and for the EIR, growth projections were prepared where we identified potential sites that might transition and We calculated what the new growth might be on those sites. The projected non-residential loss is about roughly 289,000 square feet, which is about 10% of the existing 2 million plus total non-residential space along the corridor today. It should be noted, though, that the loss of commercial may be more given that in the current market conditions, projects are not really building commercial in their projects. In response to these two comments, the project team also prepared additional analysis regarding current market conditions related to retail in general in the city and along El Camino Real in particular. Best practices regarding attracting and maintaining retail were also identified. And we have Libby Seifel of Seifel Consulting. She's online to present her findings on that, so I will hand this over to her. Leslie, how do we do that?

Okay, Libby, you should be able to unmute.

Okay, I'm trying to unmute.

Okay, and we can advance the slides for you.

Okay, great. And I'm just let us know. I don't know if it's working. Can you hear me all right?

Yes, we can.

Oh, great. Terrific. Thank you so much. And I understand you'll advance the slides, but I'm not seeing them right this minute. So let me just get to a different gallery view or something. Are they up there?

They are. Oh, there we go.

There they are. Thank you so much. I see them now. So, as Simran just said, I'm going to talk very briefly about kind of the existing characteristics and give you a retail market overview of the El Camino Real area. Could you go to the next slide, please? That would be great so as the slide indicates the city of Santa Clara has about 38 million square feet of commercial development, this excludes industrial and r&d development. It includes retail office healthcare hospitality and specialty uses about 60% of the city's commercial spaces office and about 17% of retail. In contrast, the El Camino real specific plan area that we're referring to as the El Camino real area has about 2.3 million square feet of commercial development, of which 80% is retail with the remaining uses primarily being hospitality and office. If you could go to the next slide, please. The city itself has about 6.4 million square feet of retail, and about 30% of the city's retail is located in the El Camino Real area. The Valco Regional Mall represents about 25% of all retail in this city, and that is indicated as the Super Regional Mall on the graph. There are some businesses that compete with the El Camino Real area that are located in the mall, but it's a distinct type of shopping center. If you go to the next slide. So most of the 1.9 million square feet of retail in the El Camino Real area is located in community centers or in storefront or freestanding retail that's located along El Camino Real. Community centers are typically defined to be centers with 100,000 to 350,000 square feet. So they're the larger types of retail other than a super regional mall. So as noted on this slide, all of the community centers and the Lawrence Square neighborhood center that's located next to the Lawrence Expressway Plaza are designated as mixed use and activity centers in the specific plan. called out for the larger sites. Go to the next slide. Many of the retailers in the El Camino Real area are focused on daily needs of local residents, such as grocery stores and drug stores. Given its historical arterial and highway character, there are also a large amount of automobile uses. many of which are non-continuous and inactive and can hinder vibrancy and connections. The El Camino Real area has strong clusters of businesses, the Korean businesses to the west and Indian businesses to the east that feature many excellent restaurants. And as I think has been noted in the plan and also I know in some of the comments, the layout design and some of the uses are just not conducive to walkability and desirable retail co-tenancies. And in fact, it's hard to walk and to bike along El Camino Real. which hinders walkability. And the shallow lots and the small lots hinder multifamily infill development in a lot of locations. If you go to the next slide, that would be great. So in terms of trends and best practices, and if you go to the next slide, we compiled information that was prepared for this planning process and for other planning processes in the city, as well as from various retail sources to just summarize the key retail trends that are really affecting the El Camino Real area and the city as a whole. That consumer preferences are continuing to rapidly evolve. You know, we're seeking convenience and we're seeking social connectivity and unique offerings. The retail centers and clusters have to enhance the shopper experience and encourage longer stays to remain competitive. It is really important to have complementary retail uses. And these retailers must refresh and evolve to attract patrons their spaces need to be flexible tech ready and strategically located. and complimentary businesses are critical, and I think many of you've likely seen the increase in fitness and wellness businesses, being a key component of many retail centers and areas. And poorly designed week performing centers will continue to struggle to fill spaces and likely face closure. according to retail experts across the US. Next slide. So what are the key retail success factors? First and foremost, retail likes to be visible. It likes to be near corners and intersections that provide it with both visibility and accessibility. So signage, visibility, transparency, lighting, and design is very important. heights are very important. At least 14 feet clear for small spaces and 16 feet clear for larger spaces. And the space layout needs to be of sufficient depth, preferably 55 feet deep for most new retail with limited columns and inside walls that break up the space, which can be sometimes challenging to accommodate in mixed-use development. For other key success factors are that, you know, custom features and design that really works to the advantage of the retailer that is located there is critical. Mechanical electrical plumbing, particularly for restaurants. and food-related businesses is critical. As I mentioned, sidewalks and walkability is important, and also the presence of plazas and parklets, as shown on this picture, and accessibility, customer access, delivery access, garbage, and parking, location availability and access to customers. These eight factors are really important to retail, and they're important to retail with respect to either independent retail spaces or if they're in mixed use. If you go to the next slide, we'll just focus on the trend in retail, which is to actually embrace mixed use spaces. As hybrid work has shifted to retail demand, to residential and workplace adjacent areas, there's become more and more an emphasis on live, work, and play. so areas that are conducive to encouraging local residents and workers to come together and frequent retail spaces and so the success factors that mixed use has include finding the right mix of tenants the high foot tracking and walkability and plazas and shared spaces that build community so if you go to the next slide sort of echoing all of what i've just been saying Location, location, location is critical. Excellent design is critical. Adequate lot depth and building height and building depth along with the lot depth. And I've just articulated all of these before. And the other point I just want to make is that often side by side horizontal mixed use can be easier to accomplish than vertical mixed use where you're stocking ground floor retail underneath other uses because that can be more difficult with the column spacing, with parking access, et cetera. So in summary, if you go to the next slide, the mixed use retail recommendations that are actually mirrored in the plan as well is to promote success with desirable vibrant retail and only require retail where most successful and minimize vacancies and allow other types of uses to activate the street. The plan actually has addressed the retail success factors that I articulated earlier in terms of setting out guidelines with respect to building height and with respect to building depth and access, etc. The second recommendation is to focus the retail on well located larger site focus on deep sides of corners intersections and allow housing on shallow and mid block properties. The specific plan specific focuses on the activity areas and these mixed use centers largely around the Community centers, as I mentioned earlier. which is really appropriate because this is where retail will be most successful for mixed use development. And last but not least, it's to encourage sponsors to engage retail experts, to assess the market, to recommend the right tenant mix and requirements, and to customize the design to address retailer needs and some of the recent applicants for developments within the area have brought in retail consultants and i know the city has been working with retail consultants and if you go to the next slide which is the last slide i just want to thank the many data sources that i referred to to prepare this analysis particularly costar that provided a lot of the key existing supply data that I shared at the beginning. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you, Libby. So in summary, the specific plan in front of you today for consideration achieves the following. It implements the General Plan vision by transforming El Camino Real into a vibrant, mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented corridor. It responds to market conditions by focusing retail in key nodes while allowing for flexible mixed-use development to support long-term economic viability. It balances growth with neighborhood compatibility by reducing the overall density to 4,400 units. It introduces a townhome designation and it refines land use transitions near existing neighborhoods. It also strengthens the design standards with tools such as a 30-degree daylight plane and other measures to reduce visual and privacy impacts on neighboring properties. And finally, it invests in mobility and public realm improvements through enhanced circulation, open space infrastructure upgrades, and a clear implementation and funding strategy. And with that, that concludes our presentation and we'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you. Very good presentation. So I will open it up to Commission, Commissioner Wang.

Yeah. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, I think reduce the north side of El Camino really makes sense. But I also noticed that reduced the number from 6,600 roughly to 4,400. So my question is, is it possible to increase the density on the south side of El Camino maybe can compensate the loss of the numbers? I mean, so you can increase the height on the south side, right, because our communal is wide. So then we can reduce the loss. Yeah. Thank you.

So, through the chair, you could. However, the council direction was to reduce the total plan to 4,400 units. So that is what we have proposed. But yes, you could.

Yeah, if we have a shadow analysis, right, say we increase the south side by how many feet and then probably no impact to the north side of our communal. So I think maybe it's, I mean, just my two cents. No, thank you, correct. Thank you.

Any other questions?

Okay. A couple questions. First off, were the studies on shadowing things, also including other aspects of our infrastructure, power, water, well, traffic, of course, but even things like cell coverage and internet capability through comcast or some other cable supplier because as you increase the densification the load on these systems increases equally and i'm not sure that we're investigating the impact of the density increase against the aggregate effect across multiple developments, all adding density. Individually, I'm sure these are not a major impact, but when you start lining them up down the street, you may have to reconsider The supply side of the infrastructure and make sure that we're supplying sufficient for everybody That just should be at least a some part of the axis of the investigation is to go and look at that and then Well, I think that's going to be enough for right now. I'll come back with other ones.

Commissioner Selim, did you not forget our favorite subject, cell phone towers? He mentioned wireless. Right on top of that. Awesome.

Sure. The EIR did look at utility impacts, water, sewer. We did a water supply analysis with our utility and there was no impact identified through that process. We did not look at wireless. That was not one of the things that we looked at of whether or not there was adequate wireless coverage along the corridor for additional residents. But there is a handout in front of you that I provided that has some additional details on page two about the infrastructure capacity and what the EIR looked at specifically. And there is a description. It is a little blurry. about some of the upgrades to sewer and water improvements that will be needed. These would be done by developers as they develop along the corridor.

Okay. Well, that actually does lead into the second half of the question. I'll get that in now.

Silicon Valley Power, though, is still something to be- Correct. Silicon Valley Power would review individual projects. In general, residential has very little effect on the power. Mostly our industrial office users are very heavy power users. Silicon Valley Power did review the CIR and didn't provide any such comments that there was not capacity.

So I did see at the end some suggestions about how to get the mixed use and other organizations of retail with commercial ‑‑ I'm sorry, retail with residential together. Recommendations. But have we as a city looked at other cities for examples of working solutions, places that have done some of these suggested approaches? And are they succeeding at it, or are they finding difficulties? Because rather than guess and move forward, it would be helpful if we could at least review that others are also pursuing the same ideas and whether they're getting any success out of it. So that was more of a comment than a question, I guess.

OK. That's it.

I assume those are the questions. You wanted to go last, right?

Yeah, I'll go after her.

I have three questions, thank God for copilot. One, I saw the CEQA document, very well done again. It gives me much more clarity than, of course, all the other No, you've extrapolated. How are we showing the Calabasas and Stevens Creek activation? I did not see on your land use plan an actual park or an activation, while the goal was to have something for public access to the creek or pedestrian, I mean, basically an amenity, like a park around the creek areas, and I did not see that in your land use plan.

So for Calabasas, that's a channelized creek. The plan does, you know, does lay out for park. Park is tricky because we can't designate parkland exactly where it's going to be. But the plan does lay out some guidelines on, you know, what is desired. And it would be at the individual project stage that staff would have to work towards.

But it doesn't show on the land use plan. Like, where would they know that you are required to?

Right, it's just the land use plan just shows, yeah, like a dot in the general area of where the city would like it.

And Stevens Creek? And Stevens, yeah, I think we have one there, too. I just found that as a huge gap, it is not showing. You wouldn't be able to implement, even with the developer, if you don't know that that was the original goal 15 years from now. By the way, I heard this, or read that this was implementable 2055. God make us live that long. for our children, I did not see how we would actually have a viable creek or an arboretum or a walkway along any particular path. It could be in meets and bounds. It doesn't have to be the entire stretch. I didn't see it as an active choice in the land use plan.

Correct. This plan does not designate doing any creek trails.

But it is on the...

But we do want open spaces near them should that be possible to take advantage of that additional space that is there. But the plan itself does not propose any creek trails.

So how would we ensure? It is an active plan to activate. So in your CEQA document, and thank you again, it does say that you want to keep Calabasas and Stevens Creek as pedestrian accessible amenity space. But I didn't see how you actually met it. Right. Yeah. Is there an actual walk path?

Yeah, so along Moonlight Shopping Center is one development site, but there's actually a street that is between the creek and the development site, right? So it would be great if they could put open space facing that way. That's always a nice amenity, but there is a street that that trisects that, bisects that, right?

I didn't know that, and I live by Calabasas, so I'm saying is there an actual path?

There used to be two lanes each way. That's one way, which I hate because people are constantly going the wrong way, whatever. But it's now a single lane road with a bicycle, huge bicycle path, which unfortunately people tend to want to walk that. So if you're on your bicycle, you have a little bit of fun. That is there, but I don't see where you could actually put anything else.

That's my point. Across the street, it's already developed.

Your vision and goal talks to it. I would love for it because I just went through. Second question, smart infrastructure, parking. How are we actually enabling demand parking? responsive parking? And are we actually looking out for a future in your plan with housing where the parking for retail slash commercial would be? And what would be the strategy?

There's several recommendations with regard to parking. One of the major recommendations is that the on-street parking from El Camino Real over time would be removed because it will become a boulevard, so to speak, dedicated transit lanes, protected bike lanes, as well as a wide pedestrian sidewalk amenity area. Most of the parking would move off street and be accommodated by the development that would provide the parking that's necessary. It would have flexible drop-off and pick-up areas, ride-share hailing areas demarcated on it near transit stops and areas of high pedestrian activity. Those areas would be designated and designed to indicate that very clearly that these are the areas where you would go for picking up your ride-share, et cetera.

So we do have parking and loading design standards in Chapter 4 as well that gets to some of what Summer is talking about.

So is there no, like other cities do, city required parking for commercial? Yes. Versus allowing the developer to come in to say,

Correct. There are the standard city parking requirements for all uses. However, this is a transit corridor, so we can't require any parking, but we do have them.

Okay.

Okay. And the plan does have standards about how to design for good accessible parking for commercial.

They're more aspirational than regulatory at this point.

So AB 2097, my favorite. Your favorite bill. Favorite bill. Comes into play, right?

Yes, and because we changed our code, should a developer come in with a proposal where they propose no parking or insufficient parking, we then have 30 days to do our own study to determine whether it just won't fly. We have not yet done that on any specific project, but as parking continues to be an increasingly dire issue. I foresee a day that will happen with an El Camino development. We will have 30 days after receiving an application to say no to a proposal for zero parking. That being said, a lot of developers tell us It's not financially viable for us to provide zero parking. We can't make the numbers pencil if we don't put a place for our clients to park. Hopefully, we won't get the zero parking proposal, but we're prepared if we do.

What you're saying is what I'm hoping will happen is if we go look at the parking situations and say, In reality, we know how many parking spaces people need. Here's our suggestion. Let's work together on it. Right now, that's probably the best that we can get away with. But if somebody did come up and say, we're not going to do it, then I agree with you. I think that developer, I would have like, did they have a bank account? Because that would be crazy that somebody would offer that. So I think what would be good is just to be prepared. And maybe we have some guidelines. so that we can give the developers an idea like, hey, listen, this is what, you know, even though there's this law, but here's a guideline because if you don't, it will affect your income.

And it's that sort of reflective of the process for development waivers that we already engage in for tons of projects. Developers come in and say, we're not following any of your development standards. And then we spend weeks going back and forth with them, explaining why, no, actually, you really need to do some of these standards. And we usually compromise somewhere in between. But yeah, I could foresee a similar process for parking as this builds out.

Let's at least keep a target to make sure. I say with, I was, and my last comment is related to what I'm going to say on the retail and commercial viability for a future state. I was at Main Street, Cupertino. It is thriving. So I don't know what this report says. It is a fascinating place to hang out and just chill. I miss that in Santa Clara. Why do I need to go to Cupertino or Mountain View or Palo Alto? There isn't anything that really draws our residents towards a space. You can make this transit corridor. I'm not saying we need to make it like a whole cove and it has to have its own, but it isn't even as thrilling or retail draw that allows people to sit down, have a cup of coffee, and just chill after work. I'm not saying that during the day it's going to look—hopefully. But I just didn't feel the reduction was enabling the actual then concentration to draw more. Because that's why I'm saying your parking is not there. People are not able to come in, feel they can park, get a cup of coffee, sit down, enjoy. This is a culturally intense area, as was said. It's a high development for Korean and Indian retail. And it is a cultural draw. If you go to Cupertino, that's what you see. The Asian hubs are real. And that I'm not sensing you have built that pockets. And I know you have only certain spaces. You have low residential. So you only have retail, mixed use in certain you know, breaks. It's not even contiguous. Like, I would love to be in Paris. So I don't know how to invigorate a city while, like, diminishing that retail is not viable. It is.

Yeah, but you've got to remember, too, that that's, I mean, I love that place, but part of it is, like, you go into Phil's Coffee, and the majority of people there work where? Apple. Apple. And you literally can walk to your office.

I'm going from Santa Clara.

Yeah, but you don't have to cross the street. I mean, their offices are literally right up to it. Yeah. So they do have kind of a captured audience in one sense. And they did a very good job because some of the retail in there is like phenomenal. And what I love about it is it's phenomenal because per square feet costs a lot of money, right? But if I have some of these small little stores that are these specialty places that are like... like Korean hot dogs. I'm there and they can make good money. But there's more to, I think that's beyond kind of what we can kind of do because that's not really the planning commission. But I mean, that's the idea is like, how do you innovate this to make it happen?

Yeah. And I'm not just thinking it is a corporate. It is across the Cupertino High School. We have a school. So I will guarantee the majority of people there are Apple, but you know, I'm sure there's a I watched all the high schoolers go, so I don't know what time you went, but I don't think you saw the high schoolers go. But I'm saying I'm hoping I love this neighborhood. This is my neighborhood, so I have a vested interest to see I could walk to this neighborhood and make it my evening destination. I don't need to go to Cupertino, but I did not find that draw in this yet. So I don't know how to infuse that as either a principle, you know, pedestrian-friendly. I know you have tree line, wider sidewalks, parking that is supported for your retail, smaller coffee shop retail. Even San Jose has aced it along, say, the Market Street. So I just feel like we're missing out on Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, San Jose. But it's so important. It's so just mundane. Come on, give me a break. I've been there just two days ago as well, and I found great, great flamingos, just not enough traffic. I didn't feel like people are going there. This is a highly, I would say, visible, it's going to take off in so many ways. It's got all the right semblance of a very thriving neighborhood in the future, and how do we make it happen with our vision today?

And there's also a downtown group that would like to probably talk to you about some of this as well. But is there a question for staff that you want to?

No, that's what I want to make sure. We have reduced, by the way, the number is 289,000 square feet of commercial is reduced. Just FYI.

Any comments from staff about this?

I'll try and address most of those and I'm sure Leslie will have some additional thoughts on this. This is a three and a half, three and a quarter mile long corridor. The comment about retail isn't viable was that you can't have three miles of retail anymore. The example you gave in Cupertino, Main Street, that's a very short, it's basically two or three blocks really. It's very concentrated. The activity nodes along this corridor that we have presented are what those areas are supposed to evolve to. You get these pockets in these three or four locations along this corridor where you will get that vibrant retail with smaller stores, like you mentioned, the Korean hot dogs, et cetera. where you could get that. Now, some of these have recently developed, like the Target Shopping Center, that's unlikely to change, but some of the other activity centers could evolve to create the kind of vision you were describing. That is the intent of the design standards and the vision of the specific plan.

I think yours to there, the trees bring the people and some seating. That's exactly right. The bike-friendly and inclusive.

Right. I'll add one more thing. The activity centers, which are in the regional commercial mixed-use designation, they are required to dedicate 10% of their lot or the property to create public open space. So when a project comes in, there is the inbuilt requirement of building that kind of gathering space that we want to see the third place, right? Surrounded by coffee shops, restaurants, and other experiential retail that you would typically want to see.

Okay.

Just, Chair, if I may, for reference, I just looked up Main Street Cupertino. It's an 18.7-acre site. So the largest site we have on El Camino, I think, is 14 acres. And Main Street Cupertino, you know, includes office, as you said, and commercial. So, yeah, hopefully we get something similar in our activity centers, maybe not as big.

We have retail here. We can have anything we wanted to be.

My question to you on that is, was Main Street a single developer?

Yes.

Okay. That's why it's successful, because you've got to have a master plan. When they did that, did Cupertino do anything to say, hey, listen, we want you to be successful, and we'll give you some incentives if you do it right, but if you don't, you happen to know if the city in any way incentivize like, hey, if you do this, you gotta.

That I do not know.

I would suggest maybe that might be an interesting aspect to look at because if we can incentivize somebody in some way, and have them do it right in agreement with what we see as makes sense, that would be wonderful. All right, that's all I gotta say for that for the moment.

Yeah, I wanna say a couple, real quick. I'll try to be to the point, keep it as fast as I can here. My main concern that already was brought up was the parking. I think the parking, what's going to happen is it's going to go into the residential areas because I don't care what they say that, well, we're going to have maybe one and a half parking spaces per unit. It's not going to work out. That's my number one concern is that all the parking is going to be shown back to the residential area and people will be walking one and two. You know two streets to be able to get to the residents when they live in the El Camino that is happening already or in other parts of the city Now one of the things that was not targeted at all was entertainment if you can have all those residents in there What are you gonna do to you know? for families to entertain like they used to have bowling alleys or the theaters or venues, restaurants that have dance or jazz clubs or something like that. I don't see anything in that regards. And that's one of the number one things that when they did a study in the city of Santa Clara, one of the things that they mentioned is entertainment. We lacked entertainment for gathering and doing things. Now, I'm gonna bring up one development, we were talking about residentials with business on the bottom. One of them, the first one that was done was run in El Camino and right at the Flora Vista, right on the corner, El Camino and Flora Vista. If you can see, they have parking, ample parking in the front for all of the businesses. like a large parking lot. They even have Walgreens, if I recall, in there. Then for the residentials, it's in the back on the ground. So that is what really makes sense if you're gonna have commercial residential. One of the first pictures that Levy showed in there, which is a joke, is the unit that was built right by Monroe that the developer went bankrupt and the business was there forever. That doesn't have any attraction at all. They have a dental office and something else to do with housing. That is it. So that is not what I think we have in mind. Don't forget also that El Camino Real is a highway, a state highway, and that's the main thoroughfare. So if you're gonna start cutting it down, and putting bike lanes and so on, where's all that traffic that is gonna be used in that main artery? It's gonna go right through the residential district. I'm pretty sure you don't want that in your neighborhood. I don't want it in my neighborhood. Pretty sure our mayor doesn't want people cutting through her neighborhood either. So that's one of the things that really upsets me. Now, regarding shopping centers, they say they're going dead. You work at Stanford. What is the shopping center there that's so vibrant, it's unbelievable? Which one is it? Town and Country. That place is always packed. And it's an old, we used to have a Town and Country shopping center here. We got demolished. So that'll just give you, if you have good businesses in there, guess what? People will come. You don't have to start destroying all of the shopping centers and so on. So this is all that I got. We had good businesses in a lot of the places I just saw that were gonna develop. Really they were thriving and they've been sitting empty for now 10, 12 years and they have homelessness over there and starting fires and so on right behind your backyard. Yeah. So it's been going on and on and on. But we had good businesses in there. So that plan sounds really hunky dory, you know, with 44. Oh, yeah. But you got to think a little bit more. And it's just not that part of the city. I consider Santa Clara my whole city, my whole neighbor. They're all my neighbors, all the residents, not just a separate district or whatever. So that's the way that I look at Santa Clara, what is going to be good for every single person in our city. Thank you.

speaking of I don't need a whole lot of traffic in my neighborhood because I'm pretty close to El Camino so I very much understand that so I agree a lot with a lot of what was said and I do think a missing element is the entertainment factor now that might be more the night time than the daytime but to me there's also an art piece that should fit in okay if you really want a vibrant walkable gathering place and the like, it's gonna take that combination of doors and walkability. But I'm not sure that massively including parking, although I do like what you were talking about, the Flora Vista and El Camino, where I go to that center. They have a great place there. But anyway, it's like the businesses in the front, the parking in the back. But I think there's another element, and pardon my naivete here and my going a little south, but How do you get people into a walkability neighborhood I don't think is entirely tied to does every mom and pop have adequate parking? I do see, and I still remember a town that I visited once. Let me start by saying every time I drive by the Lawrence Square Shopping Center, Lawrence Expressway, and El Camino, I cringe. Okay, that has all the elements that you were talking about earlier, right? That it's near major intersections and the like, and it's dead. I mean, it's really dead. I actually walked through it the other day because I thought maybe there's something I'm missing. It is so dead. But if, and I know for folks in my neighborhood, If you had a place where you could go park and then you had a trolley running up and down El Camino connecting the mom and pops potentially, I'm gonna go a little south here, or north, or I'm not sure which direction I should say, potentially connecting a new downtown, the uptown, the elements, okay? Then I think this, you know, oh my God, where's all the parking to meet for every mom and pop? it doesn't become such an issue a hop on hop off trial trolley that goes up and down i think will take some of the stress over not enough parking for the mom and pops and i think it's it's another reason that you will attract the bodies You might live off of El Camino and Pierce Street, okay? But do you really want to go all the way down El Camino in your car to find parking for this hot new restaurant in that old dead shopping center? No, okay? But if you had a trolley, I'd walk the seven blocks to El Camino and take the trolley everywhere. I didn't have to get in my car. It'd be lovely. I think besides the fact that, like you said about entertainment, I'm going to add art to that element, although one could argue art and entertainment are simply intertwined. You can have both. Other than having a restaurant that's really an entertainment center with a place where you can get something to eat, there's ways of combining that. I also think to take some of the stress off of the lack of parking, having something like a hop-on, hop-off trolley that connects the dots, okay, would go a long way towards getting the high density, higher density folks along ECR into and off to other places along ECR. And I'm just kind of surprised, because I know, God, I was talking about that back when you and I were on, I think, the Historic Landmarks Commission. Why that hasn't, I don't hear about that, and I'm curious why. I'm not saying that necessarily means you have to change bus routes, because that's a whole other animal, VTA. But trolleys, you know, up and down, hop on, hop off. I don't understand why that hasn't come up, and maybe I'm just naive. So those are my comments.

All right. So I get to go last, I guess?

You want to do something? Quick one. Would Commissioner Biagini like a response first, I think? Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry.

They're in response.

Yes, staff can certainly try to comment on that. I think that's actually a very keen observation and I think a lot of cities definitely have engaged with trolleys. There are a number of cities throughout the Bay Area that have done that. Walnut Creek is one of them. and Emeryville is another one. And those kinds of systems started occurring once redevelopment started taking place. So there was a certain number of years where there was private investment that went into the redevelopment of the shopping centers and it took a certain amount of density and investment, and then the city partnered with, created a public-private partnership once the ridership was there and to allow for that to occur. So, for example, in Walnut Creek, it didn't actually occur until... 2016 and there was a Agreement and it the trolley system began, you know with a downtown trolley and it you know started with from where the BART station was and it looped through the downtown and then there was a phase two where there was an extension but there was a ridership demand and so I think You know as this evolves and as investment takes place and redevelopment takes place, I think that those are important goals that we should probably look at and maybe look at a future policy.

I totally hear you. I would say there is one town that I was at that did this Incredibly well, and that was Old Town Alexandria where their trolleys hooked up with their BART Okay And I don't think there's like no parking there Okay on the main drag and it didn't bother anybody and they always had folks there. So I think that's a great place to look at I

And just in response to your art comments, I would just point out the regional commercial mixed use zone, the most dense zone with the activity centers. We do have a requirement that, well, it's a soft requirement. Public art should be incorporated into any new development in RCM were ever feasible. But the commercial part of an RCMU development is still subject to architectural review, subjective architectural review. So in that context, we can enforce it if somebody comes in with a concrete box with no art. Publicly accessible open spaces that are required for those activity nodes that you heard about earlier They have a certain number of features that they must include and one of those is art So there's there's some inclusion of what you were speaking of. Also, the community benefits program where you can get additional density if you enter into a development agreement. That's one of the benefits you can provide, public art, as well as a shuttle service along El Camino Real.

Well, art can be as simple as beautiful murals that I've been watching going up on, what is it, Washington and Newhall Scott. I mean, it can be that simple. I know, convince a developer, but anyway.

Well, you know, the good thing about it is what we're trying to do is come up with a plan that makes it easier for developers to come in, right? It's a living plan. It will evolve, and I think these are all great ideas that, you know, staff could at least note so that, you know, later we can talk about how do we incorporate it, because my feeling is if you try to incorporate everything at the first round, you're going to have some things that just don't get used. So I like building on and getting these ideas, because it really does help the discussion. So Commissioner Bhambikar, you said you had a comment?

Yes, thank you. Actually, just a technical question. And I'm trying to square this in my head. So the City Council request three, maybe four years ago was mainly to reduce the total housing from 6,200 to 4,400. So if I look at this as a magnitude of the problem, That's the main requirement. And then the response has taken us, and I'm not questioning, I'm not trying to trivialize the response, the amount of work that needs to get done. I don't know about it. So obviously there's a lot of work and alignment with staff and that needs to be done. So three, four years later, we've come up with a response that we now want to go back to city council with. I have a question. At the rate at which life changes, do we even know that that requirement still is relevant? and valid and unchanged and you know so the the the the worry i have it's an infinite loop type of problem right by the time we come back with the response the the city councilors have changed nine commissions have changed and they say well why can't you do this now So I stop here in just asking, whatever the length of time it takes, do we know that that requirement is still valid? Is it possible that the city council says, you know what, $6,200 is okay? The question that our colleague here on the commissioner's desk here was raising. So I stop here. That's my question. How do we know that the requirements that we're responding to are still valid?

As of June last year, June 25, we presented the draft plan to city council at a study session, and they wanted us to continue work on that and prepare the EIR.

Thank you. That's a good answer. We received some recent direction. That being said, they're under no obligation to approve this. They could easily say no again.

I don't want to jinx it because we've been through this so many times now.

No council can tie the hands of a future city council. If there's a change in the membership, there's a change in the membership, period. I'm feeling optimistic. One thing I will just comment on that delayed this process was, well, we had to get a budget for the additional work again, and that took time to get into the budget. Another thing was, you know, we had to start the environmental from scratch. I think a very important lesson from doing this the first time was after the council said no, We should have all run to the podium and said, before you finish, could you still certify the EIR? Because we could have reused that EIR. This is a scaled down development. We could have just reused that EIR. It was a good EIR. We spent years working on it. And we would have saved so much time and money if they had just reused it. So, you know, lesson learned. If they say no again, we'll run. So hopefully iteration three won't take as long. But there won't be an iteration three because this is perfect.

Thank you. All right. Thank you.

Commissioner Wang?

Yeah. Thank you, Chair. Just one more comment. I fully understand council member changes. The thing I tried to emphasize is resources. It's priceless. Land, sun, sunlight. So that's why I uh i mentioned we maybe we can increase the south side of the air communal so i mean resources it's it's limited um we have a building probably in the last maybe 50 years maybe 100 years i hope we do the right thing yeah thank you yeah oh another thing is i feel very grateful i live here this is the best place on the planet so I think many people want to move here. I hope they can have a space today.

Thank you. I have a few questions. First of all, I want to make sure Zander and Leslie, especially all the staff, Do you guys feel comfortable with the plan and that it isn't overly prescriptive? So in other words, thinking about the charter review committee, right? One of the things that Glenn keeps on talking about is like, look, you don't need to make everything in charter You don't have to do it there because you can do it by ordinance. So do you guys feel like this is nice and flexible in the way that you think that, okay, we're not gonna have a problem with city council and that it will wind up that if there are things needed, it has the ability to grow and change as needs come so that they understand like, hey, you're not committed to a absolute one way is gonna fit everything.

Thank you, Chair. I can start if anyone else wants to add comments. I think we did a really good job on this plan building in flexibility. Previous versions were a little more stringent, say, on the commercial requirements. But as time has gone on, we've scaled back on those a little bit to address the current market. But having said that, the plan still allows commercial. So we're not saying no, but We're not making you do it if it's not the right time to do it. Our development standards are objective development standards, some of that to respond to state law. A lot of state laws require if you're going to use that specific state law that you still have to adhere to a city's objective standards. What we tried to do is really put in the objective standards, the things that the community really cares about and wants to make sure happens on the corridor with new development. So I do think we did a great job on and our consultant in getting us to where we are today with the standards that we have. This plan didn't originally start with objective standards. It was a sort of typical design guideline kind of writing and they really went through it and did a good job of turning those into something that could be objective.

To the extent those objective standards do provide a constraint on development, residential developers have an ability to wave out of those standards. Again, we will sit down at the table with them and scream and yell and won't just roll over, but they're going to be able to get out of some of these requirements. if it's a constraint.

Yep. Well, you know, that's the way it works. They want to get the most for their money, and, you know, our staff is the one that has to kind of balance it out. So I appreciate that work. All right, let me get down to the ones that I do want to kind of discuss. You discussed the poor business areas, the ones that are not so vibrant, right? And I wanted to understand more about what in the plan there besides identifying that there are these areas that aren't very well not doing very well and such like that what specifically is the plan to in any way deal with that or is it just something that was just noted like hey we have certain sections and that's just the way it is

Right, and applying new land use designations that encourage redevelopment. Also, the zoning districts allow for existing commercial to stay and to rehabilitate itself as well. So again, trying to provide that ultimate flexibility to get the best out of the corridor.

Because what I don't want to see is small businesses that are local, you know, go out of business and, like, bring in a bunch of, you know, franchises and things like that. I really want to protect the local owners. So if you start going out of the way to say, hey, listen, we're going to rezone this, and then the landlord says, yeah, everybody get out, I would be upset with seeing that. And I understand sometimes you just got to. I mean, downtown San Jose is probably a perfect example of that. If the redevelopment agency hadn't come in and done what they've done, and it was, as we all know, that was a big deal. you had to. But if we can find some ways in here, I want to make sure that we protect the local business owners and that they're okay with, you know, what we're doing to go forward, and that we promote it and we help them be more vibrant would be the best thing. Now, the last thing I got here, it's one of my favorite things, because Toll House, the construction on El Camino and Calabasas is blocking a lot of views of people. The setbacks next to the R1s are incredibly close. And there was a big to-do about we thought the developers said they were going to have opaque windows pointing to the developers or pointing to the R1 housing, which there was no proof of that, so they couldn't do that. So I am concerned that we're going to have a canyon if there are these six-story buildings all over the place. And I've already seen this in other locations in Santa Clara, as well as like Sunnyvale, and they look awful. So I know that the idea that there's gonna be 100% affordable developments being passed, which means that these developers can then go up to six stories, I'm very concerned of anything above four stories. I just don't want to see Santa Clara become this, like, we used to be able to see the mountains and things, and, you know, it was very different, and we make this concrete jungle that, okay, it's just very, very depressing. So can you maybe address some of those concerns?

Sure, I'll start and then Leslie will have something to add and maybe Xander as well. Given the desire to see more housing in alignment with the general plan vision to create a mixed use corridor, there needs to be housing, right? And it has to be viable at certain densities. So the three and four and five story designations allow for that housing to be built. um there is the issue of privacy concerns with the with the neighbors and there's a fair amount of standards that i described earlier that limit impacts that they don't take away all impacts i'll be honest about that but they limit impacts there are building code requirements that we can't supersede for fire safety access and egress in terms of where windows are placed and how those windows are treated, how high they can be and so on. For the marketability of those units, having opaque windows also limits the light and air for those units. You can't have unopenable windows for residential necessarily, especially in this mid-rise three to five story condition. but we have the step backs, we have screening requirements with landscaping, fencing, we have the balcony setbacks, the whole encouraging of designing a project so the side is towards the residential and it's more inward facing if there's a courtyard, for example, or facing towards El Camino Real. So the standards, development and design standards push the units out towards the front of the building to the extent possible, towards El Camino Real, which is a very wide street, and the scale of it is appropriate there. But they would, given what we are already seeing being built, which we're actually not following these standards, to be clear, there will be some relatively, we think, pretty mitigated impacts of

Some needs to be quantified. I know what I think of some is, but I would love to see that quantified in some way, because if you're gonna have, let's say, 50% six-story buildings, that's not some. You have 10%, sure, that makes sense.

There is a height map in the specific plan, Chapter 4, I think was the page number, Leslie?

I think you're 4.1, page 60.

Page 60, which shows where the higher density nodes are. Those are the bigger, deeper lots. Again, the hope is that, not the hope, the regulations are that Buildings that are built closer to the residential are lower in scale, three-story, and then the massing is towards the front of the lot. That's one. Two, if someone uses the state density bonus law, which gets you to the higher height, up to six stories, that's, while it's possible, we are not seeing developers using the state density bonus law to get additional units. They are using the state density bonus law to actually just use the concessions and waivers that are available because of cost of construction. And this has been going on for a while. So we are not seeing those additional units being built. So I think the While the potential is there, the likelihood is very low.

Well, that's hope and it's not a strategy. So I really would like to see something in there that kind of addresses that because, you know, we need to make sure that we're not going to build a canyon. You know, that's my one concern. So I know what you're saying because you kind of, your hands are tied in some ways. The state's going to say you've got to do this because this is the law. And all I'm asking is if there's something that we can look at to kind of help moderate it better. Or maybe I missed interpreting it correctly that it already is moderated in some way. But it sounds like if I, as a builder, if I go ahead and build in a certain way, I can go to six stories all I want. Is that correct?

I was just gonna add one thing. So as Simran said, the activity centers are our highest heights at six stories, right? And there's three activity centers along the corridor. So they're fairly spread out. In between that, we have sort of our medium density. There's a bit that can go to four to five stories, but on a lot of those sensitive properties, That are adjacent immediately adjacent to single-family at the rear mostly on the north side We did change that to townhomes and a maximum height of three stories So to really I mean that's very different height modulations as you go along the corridor But again, like you said state density bonus lot is a thing and they do have an ability to add building height but our plan is is laying out to have that modulation along the corridor, so it's not a canyon. That was definitely a specific concern of the City Council as well, and we've heard that quite a bit.

I'm sorry.

I was just going to add, El Camino Real is a very wide corridor, so the canyon effect is really when you have 100 plus.

I don't want to become anywhere where somebody thinks of that. I understand because the ones I'm talking about definitely are not as wide as El Camino, for sure. But I just want to not have to wake up, walk out, and say, wow, this is just like a canyon. So if it gets over six feet or six stories or more, it tends to start getting that way, in my opinion. But I understand what you're saying. Now, one thing I will want to say also is, not Toll House, but the development next to it, because the setback was so close to so many people, somebody went and talked to the developer and saying, hey, these people are literally looking into my backyard. And the developer didn't have to do anything, because this was the one with the opaque window thing, right? But the developer was good enough saying, hey, listen, if you would like shrubbery there, to then put kind of a block up there, we'll pay for it. And that was really good of them. And I'm sorry, I don't remember the name of the contractor. If you want to mention, please do, because that was a very good neighbor of them. And that might be something that we can consider as well in helping the residents. As we go and look at objective standards, like, hey, if we're going to go this high, you need to go ahead and offer some kind of way to mitigate it for the residents that are literally right behind it.

That is actually a requirement in the plan for screening to be provided when you're adjacent to.

That would be like shrubbery or anything else? Yes. Perfect. Then let's see. Anything else? I think that's it for me.

Good. You brought something up about the canyon. All of a sudden, you just hit me. If you recall, our ex-mayor that we had, Patty Mahan, and when things were starting to you know the first plan was brought up uh god bless her she's she said you know this i got a feeling this is what el camino is going to look like and i i hope to be around that i could try to you know change it. But I'm glad that you brought that up because it brought a lot of things up. Also regard, for staff, you said townhomes with three stories. Do we have a height limit? Because I've seen like the ones that we, the houses that we're building and with the Church West St. Mark's Church on Prinridge, there are just two-story homes but they have really high ceilings. It looks almost like three, three or four stories and they're looking right into the people's backyard and they, and the other side. So that's one of the things we have, you know, just because there's a townhome doesn't mean that they're not going to have, you know, their garage downstairs and then high ceilings. There's going to be like a four story. That's right.

The height limit is 40 feet for the three-story residential, and that includes some of the roof forms. Three stories. Typically, the townhomes have a duck under garage at the bottom and then two floors of homes, so the 40 feet allows for that to be built along with the roof.

One story is not typically 10 feet?

It is 10 feet, 10 to 11, 10 to 12, floor to floor because there's a structure of the floor itself. Then if you have sloping roofs, those need to be accounted for. The 40 feet gives you flexibility and the standard says three stories or 40 feet, whichever is less. You couldn't squeeze in four stories within that 40 feet limit.

Just unfortunately, Commissioner Boozer reminded me of one other thing, so sorry about this, but one of my favorite pet peeves about renting places was sound and the too much of sound. So when we do this, is there, I don't know honestly if there's any current requirements, because I do know some apartment buildings that were built that the sound between the rooms are awful and you can hear everything with everybody. Is there been any discussion in regards to this about how do we make sure that these places are... Sound attenuated.

Yes. No, there's not been any discussion on that. I've never seen a standard around sound between units.

Yeah, I mean, I know how to build them to soundproof them to a point, but I was I would like to see something like that as well, because I just know of too many places like they all of a sudden they don't get enough money in or revenue and people don't want to live there. They get better reputation. It's it's not the kind of thing we want in our community. But all right, I'll leave that one alone. That's what I got. Any other final questions before I open it up?

Maybe I'm reading it wrong. Just a last question. On the existing zoning in the specific plan, page 25, it says R4 allowed height within 20 feet within all other zones. Am I reading that R4 can be within the 20 feet at 32 feet height, but all other zones is 80 feet? Page 25 in your staff report. Oh, in the staff report. Oh, page 55 of 308. And then in the other zones, so 80 feet, 40 feet, 60 feet, 32 feet, 60 feet. Am I reading that as that's the existing that's going to change? Page 55 in the packet, if that's helpful. And it's page 25 for this process, the CEQA documentation.

Oh, it's in the EIR you're looking at?

I think it's this page.

It says 2425, yeah. Sorry for the goose chase here. You could just tell me the height, otherwise to keep ourselves sane.

The 80 feet was the height for our R4 property if it was adjacent to any zone. This is the current zoning as of today. You're allowed 80 feet and we are going, depending on what you're adjacent to. If our R4 property was adjacent to R1-6L or R1-8L or R2, then it was limited to 32 feet, but if it was adjacent to any other zone, it was as high as 80 feet. We are reducing the height for the properties which previously had R4.

For the height that currently is possible within some of those districts, It's anywhere from 32 feet to 80 feet?

Correct.

Depending on the proximity to other zone land use designation, but what is the height now? What's the max height?

The max height in the regional commercial activity nodes is 75 feet.

Okay.

But that's only in those very limited areas.

Yeah, I finally caught up. And yeah, in our zoning code, Table 2-3, where they list all the heights, is exactly what she said. The height for R4 within 20 feet of R1 and R2 is 32 feet. And in all other zones, it's 80 feet. By contrast, R5 and R6, you can go up to 100. R3, you can only go up to 40.

To go up to 40?

Yeah.

So your canyon is now 40 feet. I'm hoping to get clarification.

I know I'm 6'4", but that doesn't matter.

All right, thank you for engaging me on that. I just wanted to make sure I got your numerics right. Thank you.

Okay, are we good? All right, so shall we open it up to public? Anybody public? Elizabeth?

Yes, we do have somebody online with their hand raised. I'm not quite sure I'm going to get the name correct. Savina Cagliucci?

Yes, that's me. Can you hear me?

Yes, thank you. You'll have two minutes to speak. Just a moment, please.

You'll have two minutes. Talk, so please go ahead.

Yes, go ahead. Thank you.

Okay, it's. It's Sabrina and I just wanted to. Yeah, I have a couple of comments 1 would be, I really do appreciate the fact that. The reductions and the adjustments that you made, I think I think they're really important. Although after listening to this conversation, that makes me wonder. If any of it is. I mean, it sounds like a lot of things aren't enforceable, which is quite concerning. I happen to live right off of Morse on the picture that you showed with those two motels. I'm right there. I'm within 0.1 miles of El Camino. And just as a note for the city, I don't recall receiving any notice to come to any of those previous meetings. I mean, and the only reason I found out about this is because I got on the website and was snooping around. which is you know i'll say a little bit frustrating because we are the primary stakeholders i would say your personal property owners along this corridor are your primary stakeholders and it seems to me that we don't have much say in what happens, particularly, you know, I'm right behind where like a lot of these really huge buildings have come up right up again, but up against people's property. It's pretty concerning, but related to this plan, I want to make sure that there's enough parking. I mean, cars aren't going away in any near decade, right? So we need to make sure there's enough parking. That's a huge, huge concern because 4,400 units is easily 4,400 cars. in this area, right? 4,400 is probably the minimum, pretty closer to maybe 10,000. I mean, I don't know what the thoughts are on that, but that's hugely concerning. Although we want a change, we want update, but you have to also consider personal property owners. And I don't think we're looking for another San Francisco to be sitting in that kind of traffic or to have the canyon that you were talking about, right? And the other primary thing I want to say is I don't want to see any reduction in vehicle lanes out there. There's six right now. I think it needs to stay that way. I don't know what the plan is, but you're increasing cars, right? There shouldn't be any reduction in ability to drive. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

We don't have anyone else online, and no one in the council chambers is asking to speak.

OK. Any final comments? Motion to close public hearing.

Motion to close public hearing. Second.

Gives the chair a crew, makes the motion, and it's seconded by Commissioner Buza.

Thank you. Go ahead and cast your vote, please. Thank you. Motion passed.

All right. I'll make one comment to staff I forgot to make before. Tollhouse, the construction area right there, if any of you would like to go there in the morning, you will see that the parking goes out towards Wilcox High about two blocks in every direction. And as a matter of fact, a lot of times these people tend to park in a way that makes it very difficult when you're coming out of Side Street to see what's going on. And my worry is that's what's going to happen with residents, and what will happen is people will say, I want a parking permit system set up, and it's not going to be a good thing. So parking, even though the state of California wants to do something about it, I think we need to consider what we can say to the state. Anyway, with that said, now that we have our own discussion, anything that commissioners want to say? Dunn?

I just echo the comments made by the member of public. I truly understand it is going to be intense. It'll be high density. Parking will be an issue. If we are not planning intentionally for parking locations or garages that are supported in our land use plan, we are shooting ourselves in the face.

Hear, hear.

And I also recognize that the traffic is going to be higher because we are reducing the number of lanes from 6, no? No, we're not. Okay. But will the speed continue to stay between 35?

yes yes okay okay yeah what they did and uh leslie educated me on this several months ago was they moved the lanes already so you notice the lane from the sidewalk to the the first one is much wider than the rest so they did this how many years ago gosh it was like four years ago maybe longer so people kind of used when it was repaved yeah so yeah i mean the trolley i like the idea commissioner be a genie, but if you did that, you're going to get rid of two lanes easy, and I think people would not be happy. I love the idea, but unfortunately...

Wait, you don't have to reduce lanes for a trolley.

I do.

You'll take away one.

You're going to have to take away at least one at minimum.

That's not what I saw at Old Town, but anyway, okay. I get where you're going.

Just go to Tasman, you'll see what I'm talking about.

All right.

All right. Anyway, but I do like the idea.

Beyond that, I am ready to make a motion. It is a very good plan that actually plans for the future. Need for housing meets the desired intent to bring more of our city's goals forward to make it a livable, walkable, pedestrian-friendly neighborhood.

Let's see. Please make a motion.

May I request four, please?

I see the four. I move that, oh, sorry, anybody else want to go? I just have it up.

No, no. Go ahead. You're going.

You can start us off. I don't know. I just have it. Okay. Adopt a resolution recommending that the city council certify the EIR and related CEQA documents.

Second.

Motion by Commissioner Chericourou, seconded by Commissioner Biagini. That's for Elizabeth.

Thank you. And the motion is to approve staff recommendation one. Go ahead and cast your vote, please. Thank you. The motion passed.

Okay, I'm going adopt a resolution recommending that the City Council approved the El Camino real specific plan a Specific plan consistent with CA government code section six five four five zero dash six five four five seven second Commissioner Biagini

Motion was made by Commissioner Cherikourou, seconded by Commissioner Biagini to approve staff recommendation two. Go ahead and cast your vote, please. Thank you. The motion passed.

Adopt, third motion, adopt a resolution recommending that the City Council approve general plan text amendment creating the five new corridors or land use designations. Regional corridor mixed use, 55 to 100-acre density unit per acre, 0.2 commercial FAR. Second corridor mixed use, 45 to 65 DU per AC acre. Three corridor residential, 26 to 45 DU per acre, corridor residential low which is 12 to 25 density units per acre and last ground floor commercial overlay land use designation and amending the general plan land use diagrams for phases 2 and 3 to reflect the land use designations in the El Camino Real specific plan and remove the El Camino Real focus area

Well done. Anyone want to second?

Sure, second.

Same cast of characters.

The motion was made by Commissioner Cherikourou, seconded by Commissioner Biagini to approve Staff Recommendation 3. Go ahead and cast your vote, please. And the motion passed. Thank you.

recommend that the City Council approve the ordinance amending the zoning code to create the El Camino Real zoning districts.

Second.

The motion was made by Commissioner Kourou, seconded by Commissioner Biagini to approve staff recommendation four. Just fix that. Go ahead and cast your vote, please. And the motion passed. Thank you.

Good. Do we need a break? Yeah. OK. So we'll take a 10-minute break.

OK.

Thank you very much, Steph. Great job.

Great job.

for us to do this ordinance. This did come from the city manager's office as a result of that sign on the Hilton to be able to have a mechanism should someone want to put up a super graphic sign. but no one specifically has asked us besides the city manager to bring forward an ordinance.

It is content neutral. It does not have to be tied to FIFA. It does not have to be commercial or non-commercial. You can put up political signs. You can put up signs about your feelings about FIFA, which can be completely negative. They may have an opinion about it as well.

The hole gets bigger.

Well, the one thing we couldn't do was create a hole and put in content regulations at the same time. I mean, that's the easiest way to get a strike done. I mean, the only way to get this done quickly was a completely neutral law that says, hey, just this time period, just this area, we're going to allow these.

Okay. So let me look at it from the other side. When I think of advertising and advertising signs, I think of them as being up there for a long period of time. And when I mean long, I mean at least one year. Now the signs might change, but the poster board stays up there and you change it however you're making your money and you make sales. But the purpose of it is to do advertising and somebody pays for it. In this case, what you're trying to do is say something during FIFA, not necessarily commercial, but it could be. but is there any way to categorize it in a different way, saying, hey, this is a temporary signage, not like billboard, and delineate it in a way that, okay, we are gonna say, look, billboards are one thing. This is a totally different category. Is there some legal way to make that association or disassociation?

When it comes to content, we have the ability to distinguish commercial and non-commercial speech. We can enact sign regulations that allow non-commercial signs but exclude commercial speech. We cannot go in the other direction. If we allow commercial signs, we cannot disallow non-commercial signs unless it is a non-public forum. A non-public forum is typically private, I'm sorry, it's typically property owned by the city such as the light standards above roads. Those are considered a non-public form. Only in that limited, there's some very specific spots. We're not talking about city property here. We're talking about privately owned buildings. There's no way to regulate content when it comes to privately owned buildings other than we could say non-commercial only but that's the exact opposite of what we've been asked to do here this is to allow commercial speech so in this context i don't have much that i can give you in the way of limitations i have a question hold on there should be a jenny and then commissioner selene

So, Xander, I don't know what that material is that they use on the outside.

Vinyl.

Vinyl, okay. Two questions. Is there any prohibition if somebody just puts up a vinyl, doesn't have any writing on it? Because my next question, I'm going to tell you what it's going to be, then what's to prevent somebody from using one of those projection Right? You know, like, projection at night with the same message?

We haven't expressed prohibition on projections in our signed code.

Okay.

Yeah. Could you put up a covering over a building that has no pattern, no design, no words? That wouldn't constitute a sign. That's just final sign.

Well, that's why I'm trying to think like somebody who wants to get around it, OK?

You're a devious one, Commissioner. Well, you know. I've learned this over the years.

My previous life, I dealt with a lot of devious types. And this would be the kind of thing they do. There's nothing on it. You can't stop it. And then at night, somebody who knows who does that projection.

This one is limited to flat. I feel better. Thank you. No illumination. I'm sorry, it's allowed.

Thank you. The question I had is what category do banners fall under for things like Parade of Champions or Merry Christmas? Where does that cut the line for signage and billboards?

You have pointed out the exception for nonpublic forums. City-sponsored events and nonprofits, I believe, we authorized in our code. I can't remember if it's both city-sponsored and nonprofits or just city-sponsored. But that's a limited exception for nonpublic fora, which this is not. These are private property. These are the services of privately owned buildings.

Isn't FIFA a city-sponsored activity?

We have contracts with FIFA. I don't know that we've...

It's in our stadium.

But it doesn't matter. It's on private property, period. This is what we're regulating, private property. You're asking about could we put a... I mean, you're asking sort of separately, could we put a ban?

I'm just finding the paths that would lead to the same result, but through the existing... Oh, just have FIFA signs? Yeah.

Sponsored by.

That would be a commercial contract because FIFA would have been having to pay for that. Or if somebody even sponsored it, still it's like money in kind.

That is accurate.

I'm not looking for loopholes, I'm exploring them.

Right, no. No, they wouldn't be able to put something over our streets because it would be commercial speech and we don't allow commercial speech. And...

So I think maybe so could we say just non well, no, that's that's very complicated now because what we do allow seems to just be right on the thin edge of what this is asking for. Mm hmm.

I don't understand what your specific question is, Commissioner.

If I had one, I'd tell you. It's a general concern that we are double-standarding ourselves by having provisions for banners and advertisements for activities that are happening within our city, but we are preventing the sign because It has a commercial nature but is still about activities within our city in a timeline that's exactly matching the activity within our city. So it's a bridge issue. Are we cutting the corner too sharp here?

I will tell you First Amendment law is very complicated. I spent a semester on it in law school. Some people spend their whole careers just litigating signs. And it's very difficult. But there's that nuance for non-public fora above the streets where you can put up ads for city-sponsored events. That's not what this is, though. OK.

If it's not anywhere close to it, then I don't see a concern. If it is close, then we're saying no.

Oh, there are still concerns, but just not that concerned. What was the sign that was put up?

What did it say?

Are you hungry? Uber Eats.

Yeah, it's just a commercial ad. That has nothing to do with FIFA. I feel like I'm back in New Jersey again. Sorry. OK. Yeah, I think we tried to hack it and see if we could cut it in any way that we could help out people who want to do this, but it seems to me like that's not working. That's just my two cents. Anybody else have any more questions for Seth?

Another way of looking at it, it seems like there was a violator, and now we don't like violators, so we are going to make an exception. Why would I do that?

This is the way we should be doing all our violations, shouldn't we? So, anyways.

The permit cost $10, but the violation cost $100,000.

Yeah, I'd like to respond. Because of staff capacity, we had considered doing Super Graphics prior to Super Bowl. However, due to staff capacity and due to other things happening, we just weren't able to consider the Super Graphics as part of the original ordinance. So the violator that you're speaking about, that was separate, and we went through the proper code enforcement procedures and the finding and the notice of violations in order to get them to And we did put them on notice. And so now that we're moving forward with FIFA, it goes back to what we had considered prior to Super Bowl, prior to this violator that we don't have a relationship with. And we wanted a way essentially to create or allow for very limited signage on private buildings for a major event. So this is considered a special major event that's coming up, and it would be limited to just that duration. And that's it.

You're giving me the look.

I got it. Yeah, I'm refraining from comments because I know a lot in my head will negate everything you just said.

You what? Don't start by saying something then you hold back. No, because this just seems to...

Okay, you drew me out. This just seems to have started because somebody wanted to do a super graphic sign, okay? I don't believe that it was somebody's head and they did it as a violation uncannily. while staff was still thinking about it.

No. May I correct that, Commissioner Chirikuru? Staff considered doing super graphics prior to the Super Bowl.

Yes. However... You didn't have bandwidth, so you didn't do it.

Well, we didn't have bandwidth, but it was also kind of like... So it wasn't in relationship to this specific super graphic that was shown. So that's not what's triggering it. It was something that staff had already considered prior... How did that consideration come about? Because we were also looking at a number of that boundary for Super Bowl and for the major events and how to basically regulate not just signs but a number of things, right? Parking, vendors, so a number of things that typically take place during a major special event.

Well, the cat's out of the bag now.

All right.

I understand.

I'm going to open it up to public comment. Elizabeth, do we have anybody in the audience that would like to speak, the one person we have, or would somebody online?

We do not have anyone in the chambers requesting to speak and no hands raised online.

All right. Do we need to close public opinion? Yes.

I MOVE TO CLOSE PUBLIC HEARING. SECOND.

SECONDED BY COMMISSIONER BUZZA. I HEAR BETTER THIS YEAR PROBABLY. MARIO HAS THAT TONE THAT JUST RESONATES.

OKAY. MOTION IS TO CLOSE PUBLIC HEARING. GO AHEAD AND CAST YOUR VOTE, PLEASE.

ALL RIGHT. ANYBODY WANT TO MAKE A MOTION?

I have a question first.

Please.

Sander. Don't worry, it's not devious. If you, if, so there's two recommendations, that means two motions. If the second recommendation came first and did not pass, would there be a need to do the first one?

You are right on point. If you're going to disapprove or recommend disapproval of a project, there's no need to take action on the CEQA because CEQA is not required for projects that are disapproved. So if you want to make a motion to recommend that the City Council not adopt the ordinance, that's all you need to do. You don't need to do any CEQA motion, hypothetically speaking.

I'm ready to make a motion. Recommend that the City Council does not approve an ordinance in substantially the form presented authorizing the installation of super graphic signs on building services in the vicinity of Levi's Stadium during a limited time period surrounding FIFA World Cup 2026 special events.

I second that.

Okay.

So this is do not approve.

Correct.

Okay so you're saying do not so we vote yes that means you're not approving it.

Motion what I'm sorry were you saying something? The motion is made by Commissioner Biagini seconded by Commissioner Buza and this is to recommend that the City Council not approve the ordinance. Go ahead and cast your vote please. Okay. The motion passed. Thank you. Wait a minute.

It said adopt.

I'm sorry?

What I read said adopt that motion.

I'm sorry, what?

I'm sorry. I thought when I read it at the very end it said adopt the motion.

That comes up automatically. I don't even choose that. Okay. Just want to make sure you're not sliding something in through. It's saying that this is the motion that was made, okay? Just trying to make sure. Yeah. I hear what you're saying.

All right. Thank you.

The motion was for as we just heard, recommend that the City Council not approve, and it did pass.

Okay, so what did the vote come out to be?

I'm sorry, say that again?

The vote came out to be what?

It passed. Was it not on the screen? It's no longer on my screen. I apologize.

6-1, Commissioner Vuong dissenting.

Yeah, I don't even know how to get that vote back.

We don't have to do a second motion? Correct. Okay, I would like the minutes to reflect this conversation and the concerns about... Yes. Actually, I want to ask, if it's okay with the commissioners, I think we should have the minutes reflect that one of our main concerns was, and Xander, please tell me out here, what would be the best way to word this about the legal, that we're going down a slope that we may, the legal version of the rabbit hole.

Right. The commission responded to the... The commission expressed a concern over...

Precedent setting with allowing sign ordinance to be challenged.

So in response to caution raised by the Assistant City Attorney that creating exceptions to a signed ordinance can weaken the ordinance if challenged, the Commission CHOSE TO NOT ADOPT THE ORDINANCE, NOT RECOMMEND ADOPTION OF THE ORDINANCE GIVEN THE PRECEDENT SETTING EFFECT, SOMETHING TO THAT EFFECT. AND OPENS FUTURE EVERY EVENT.

THIS IS KEY TO OVERALL COMMERCIAL SIGNS, NOT JUST A SPECIAL EVENT SPECIAL SIGN. I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT'S IN WRITING JUST BECAUSE I'M THAT KIND OF GUY. THANK YOU.

ALL RIGHT.

NO CENTIMETER, NO KILOMETER. All right, last item five, planning commission input on the charter revision process. And is there any, I'm okay sitting here even though I'm on the charter? Correct.

Okay. Yeah, I have a short PowerPoint. I think I may need you to give it, did you lose your internet though? Is anyone in the Zoom? Oh, wait, I am. But I'm a guest. It doesn't matter. I can't. I don't know how to vote.

problem whenever you you get to the right point go ahead okay i'll have to tell you my new advance

While she's queuing that up, the city attorney regrets not being able to be here for the follow-up. The reason he's not here to discuss the charter review process with you is because he is at a meeting discussing the charter review process with one of the charter review subcommittees, one of three such subcommittee meetings he's had this week in addition to the city council meeting. Anyway, we're just here for a brief follow-up on last week's meeting where the City Attorney went over the charter review process for you. The 32nd overview is he talked about four different goals of the charter review process, the first being the charter is a structural document defining the roles of officials and staff and distribution of authority and high-level governance principles. The goal is also to improve efficiency and reduce administrative burdens because current processes require ROUTINE ITEMS TO GO TO CITY COUNCIL, FOR INSTANCE, CREATING WORKLOAD INEFFICIENCIES AND DELAYS IN PROJECT DELIVERY, UNNECESSARY USE OF HIGH-LEVEL DECISION MAKING. WE ALSO WANT TO CLARIFY RULES AND RESPONSIBILITIES. THE REVISED CHARTER SHOULD BETTER DEFINE WHAT THE CITY COUNCIL DOES, LIKE POLICY DIRECTION AND OVERSIGHT, WHAT STAFF DOES, LIKE IMPLEMENTATION AND OPERATIONS. and what commissions do, like reviews of specific subject matter. And finally, we want to maintain flexibility for the future. Charter should avoid overly prescriptive language, ensuring that the charter can accommodate new technologies, evolving procurement methods, and changing governance needs. Next slide. So the city attorney last time asked you to provide some input on four topics, the structure of the commission, the powers and duties of the Planning Commission as set forth in the Charter. Third, other topics in Article 10, which is called Appointive Boards and Commissions. It has specific duties and powers for the Planning Commission, but also boards and commissions more generally. And then four, just other general concerns you have for the Charter as a whole outside of Article 10. You all provided some verbal responses at the last meeting. Several of you also provided written responses to staff. So what I'm going to do is simply go topic by topic, relay what we've already heard, and give you an opportunity to provide any additional input. Starting with the first topic, next slide, the structure of the commission. Does the current composition of the Planning Commission, seven qualified electors, still make sense? All that the charter says on this is that the size of the commission shall be seven members and that you have to be qualified electors. There are no other specific requirements like a background in planning or development of real estate. Also, you're all at-large members. You're not assigned a district. Go ahead and advance. This is the topic we had the least number of comments on. The only comment we had is that maybe there should be a method of ensuring that there's an array of different backgrounds or professions on the commission. For example, you wouldn't want a commission made of seven real estate agents or seven developers or seven engineers or seven laypersons with no knowledge of any of these topics, because that would give a skewed perspective. Do you have any further thoughts on that one?

Put in one piece of good advice that Glenn put in, and that was, are we solving a problem? If there's no problem to solve, be careful about being prescriptive. Now, qualified electors, I do know that that's already being discussed, because it's used everywhere else. And they're trying to say, OK, well, what does that really mean? So I would say when you think about this don't worry about the qualified electors that's being talked about very well And if you have an opinion great love to get your input, but I would say If things have been working and you think it's okay the way it is Okay OK, that's clear. Thank you. I would ask staff, I mean, you've seen more planning commissions, I would assume, than any of us. Do you have any opinion on this? Have you seen it where it has been problematic where you had too many of one profession?

Honestly, no. I don't like lawyers very much. Yeah, I resign. No, honestly, I mean, the selection process, the council itself, you know, will probably keep that in mind. We always have a bunch of applicants when there's a planning commission vacancy and, you know, I think there's already a mechanism for making sure you don't end up with a homogenous commission. And so far, it's been very effective that way.

So since I probably was the one that dropped that idea, maybe Sean or Leslie can chime in. I know that there is a pre-sorting process of all the applicants that submit their names. I believe staff still goes through and tries to select candidates before sending it? No? All candidates are submitted to the council for review? Interesting.

It's a council decision.

Oh, I understand.

I went through it. Staff does not. Staff basically processes the application, but staff is not involved in the selection.

Are there criteria of the application that can preclude somebody? Like if they fill out something wrong or if they actually...

If they don't submit on time.

I mean, I think I have to go through all the resumes and write a report where I discuss just are there any legal impediments to any of them serving. We did have one commissioner removed a few years ago when it turns out that the address they used on their application was not actually where they were living. But short of lying on your application, we don't do any filtering.

So a 7 o'clock bedtime wouldn't disqualify you? I'm saying there's practical issues. There's practical issues that may need to come into consideration

I would hope the City Council would ask that question. Yeah, that would be a good question.

Okay, no, you actually cleared up some concerns I had about a pre-filtering process that I thought was still actually, or still a part of the process, but no.

One of the common things that came up was like, if somebody had a misdemeanor, would that disqualify them and such? And that hadn't been decided, but that was something that was discussed. Felony would but only I believe would correct If it's the crime animal, I don't know if it's all felonies or just moral It was like a specific one and then they also talked about moral turpitude. Yeah moral turpitude. Which is what does this mean? That's another one. Probably you could have a lawyer that does nothing but talk about moral turpitude. I

I don't know what it is, but don't do it. There you go. Let's go to the next slide. The second topic was powers and duties. The charter lists three categories of powers and duties. Recommendations on the adoption, amendment, or repeal of the general plan. You're supposed to exercise power set by ordinance regarding land subdivisions, planning, and zoning. And third, you're supposed to exercise other, quote, unquote, planning, zoning, and environmental functions. Probably the biggest one of those, of course, is your recommendation and adoption of CEQA documents. Go ahead and advance. For this topic, Commissioner said there should be an express focus on public input. You wanted an express description in the charter of the importance of hearing and understanding the voices of the people. Also, there was a request to have some more weight given to the Planning Commission's action when there's an appeal. For example, if the Planning Commission made a decision via unanimous vote, then maybe the Council should only overturn the Planning Commission via unanimous vote. or if the Council overturned the Planning Commission, the Council would remand the decision back to the Commission for further consideration rather than simply vacating. I will say those are some ideas I have not heard in other cities, but I'm happy to take more input on this topic or Any other?

One particular one, Priya, I need your help on this one. Remember we had, there was something that came through, and we had the choice to pass it or not, but it was like if it ever, when some of the additional details were then decided later, it would not come back to Planning Commission.

Does anybody remember that one?

Because I know, like, for example, the Kiley project, do you remember which one that was? There was also the Kylie project, which it's like I'm sitting there thinking like this is built on pretty loose soil, but they didn't have to.

I think it was the fence, the electric fence or something.

What happened, it wasn't an electrical fence, what happened, the next thing was to go to the architectural committee. But after they, if they approved it, it did not come back to planning commission.

Well, and that is our usual course. We always do development review hearing at the end of the process. Most cities, I'm sorry, strike all that. Yeah, we do it at the end of the process. A lot of cities do architectural before planning commission and council.

So that'd be, I mean, that'd be a structural thing you could talk about.

But yeah, it's not uncommon for there to be changes at development review hearing after planning commission and council.

To your point, we still have variances. Yes. So the other planning zoning and environmental function is very broad.

Yes. Are we spell out variances rather than just have it in an ordinance?

Yeah, I mean, we do have We do have our ARC, the Architectural Review Committee's role that trumps a lot of our ability to look at heights and aesthetics. There was that limitation. If it got out of one, if it's not an Architectural Review Committee appeal, we would not see a lot of the actual architectural we would only see subdivisions. We would not see what is above subdivision. So what came to us, if I'm trying to think through, was that the ARC had approved the actual housing projects and only the seven lot subdivision came to us post the superstructure and we said at how does that differentiation when we are actually what if we did not approve the subdivision then what happens to the actual approval of the the physical development on site ends up as apartments they could build apartments but not condos in that in that case Yeah so that was I think one area for me that I can try to consider like should we clarify how the structure happens of how subdivisions come to Planning Commission and if it is actually bundled with a super structure project then the project bundles rather than separating.

And the other side of this would be if it can be done by ordinance rather than in the charter that's always preferred.

Yes. Yes, the horizontal of ordinance always.

I'm not even sure how to say this. An issue comes before us and we approve it, but we have concerns about certain changes that can happen as it progresses.

Certain parts that haven't even been designed yet. We didn't see how the foundation was going to be done at all.

Can we build into it that says if there are any kind of I know, here comes the big word, significant. Who wants to define significant? But if there are any significant changes that it comes back to us and start putting that in our motions?

Or is that going to cause more headache? The Cali project, it wasn't even a change. It had yet to be defined.

Yeah. I'm trying to think of a way to achieve what I think we're getting at. But then I'm thinking, yeah, sure, say significant.

Versus charter versus ordinance. Again, let's define what we write in the charter.

Ordinance. Yeah. That would still be something that, Xander, unfortunately we're putting the burden on you at 9 o'clock at night.

That's why he gets the big bucks and we like him.

What big bucks?

Give that man a raise. I'll represent you.

I do want to also emphasize, like, does the current list of commission powers properly describe your role and function? At this time, if I can recollect what I was trained on, the charter describes what the planning commission's role is, but also state law does. Doesn't it? It defines that the Planning Commission is an actual recommending body to City Council for all land use. So I don't know if we can redeem ourselves through a charter by saying, oh, sorry, Planning Commission does not need to do. We are required by state law to, I mean, in fact, I don't know if it's national, but state law prescribes land use come through a certain level of Planning Commission as a recommending body to the City Council, especially when it talks about

largest superlatives of general plan zoning ordinance um well yeah and i think the point is well taken it's it's kind of a sparse list i don't think it fully represents what you do and i think part of the reason is you know the charter is written in 1951 and a lot of these duties of a planning commission arose after that sequa didn't come around until the you know 1970s so you know i think it's maybe it would behoove us to look at what's currently spelled out for planning commission and state law and see if the charter accurately reflects that and maybe include some of those powers that are mentioned in state law. And maybe, you know, actually mention CEQA rather than environmental functions since CEQA didn't exist in 1951.

Chair, if I may. What Xander was summarizing was one of the inputs I made, so I own up to that. I just want to expand a little bit going about the discussion we've had. So specifically to this point that's raised, powers and duties of the Planning Commission. Whether there needs to be some alignment with state law and all that, again, those are all, I would say, routine standard things to do. What I was saying was, or I was putting up for consideration, at a higher level could be termed as expanding the powers of the Planning Commission a little bit. And what does that mean? So in many cases, whatever issues under state law or our charter alignment, whatever issues come to us through that legal pathway, our defined zones of jurisdiction, if we pass Let's take a specific example. If we pass a data center issue that has come to us and unanimously pass or fail, unanimously, and then of course that gets, we just are recommending body. So we recommend that the city council don't do this or do this, right? Then there needs to be some way if that decision is to be overridden by the council, That means changed completely by the council. We approve, they disapprove. We disapprove, they approve. There needs to be some way to say that if you approved or disapproved of, you changed the decision unanimously at the city council, then you stand. Let's understand. We recommended, you unanimously said, nope, we're going to do something different. Fair enough. If not, so the law passed not unanimously. I do not specify the majority. It was not unanimous. That tells me there was some support for the views of the Planning Commission. And all I'm asking is in that case, the matter come back to the Planning Commission. Say we did not approve or we did not quite agree with your decision. Look at it one more time. And then if the Planning Commission now again passes the same judgment unanimously, then that stands. That's expanding the powers of the Planning Commission. It's a serious thing to think about. That's what I was trying to say, then I'll stop there.

I wouldn't want to take away the power of a city council. They're above us. I'm not real big on if we say unanimous, they have to say unanimous, but I might see more fit to say if we say unanimous, then they have to have a super majority, five of seven.

All good inputs. So that's the discussion that Zander is looking for, right?

Yes. One other question along those lines. There was an appeal last night at City Council of an architectural decision you all had made. The first thing the Director said in her presentation to the Council was, just so you understand, the standard of review is de novo. That means you don't have to put any weight on the lower proceedings. You're simply doing it anew. Another standard of review is the deferential standard of review where they have to find there's something clearly erroneous about the lower decision. For instance, you misunderstood evidence. You got some bad information. They would defer to your lower decision unless they could find there was a mistake of fact made, something like that. So that's just something I want to float. It's actually not appropriate for the charter because we say it's de novo in the zoning code. We need to modify the zoning code. But, you know, that's just, I don't know. Another option, if you're unanimous, then it changes the standard of review from de novo to deferential.

And that goes back to what is the actual role of planning commission. If all of the city, powers are primarily based on its ability to drive land use on its budgets and infrastructure, if those are the two city powers beyond the state and other national requirements, then your planning commission is the base of what is land use. And that goes back to If we are the ones who are making the recommendation on the general plan and the adoption and the subdivisions and we are so ingrained in our roles and powers and responsibilities to give appropriate, you know, even as a stakeholder, you know, we are members of community, but we are actually qualified to be on a planning commission and we are making that recommendation. It's based on the role and power and duty. So I feel like there is something missing here that the city is not still picking up on the importance of Planning Commission under state law. I can see tonight's decision go and say, like, forget Planning Commission. They said unanimously, no, so be it. Okay?

Yeah. Okay.

Exactly. Yes, they do have the powers. We are appointees by the City Council. We are a recommending body. But I would highly look at some way to narrate that the power and the duty, while it is recommending, is based on some serious principles of land use.

Yeah, yeah.

It's not just based on something. That's why you're elected or qualifier or whatever your other world of defining who sits on a planning commission becomes. I didn't make up that term.

I'm just saying.

But to emphasize on a charter, you have state laws, so I'm not going to belabor it, but if you're asking more, does the current describe your role and function, I would highly elaborate that the role and function of the Planning Commission is to drive city councils and the city's future on land use regulations. That's the base of it all. However you say it, that's what we are here. I like how you just said it.

Yeah, through the chair I was just going to say that there is the Planning Commission is a quasi-judicial body which generally makes recommendations to the City Council and then you know there are a number of robust areas that you can reference. ILG has a lot of information about what planning commissions do and what their roles and responsibilities are, and generally they actually cover some of the things that you just enumerated. And then there's also, of course, the Planning Commissioners Academy, which occurs every year where all of this is covered and discussed. And I think what you are saying is within the general frame of what is robustly covered in contemporary documents.

be captured. I'll draw an extrapolation, and it doesn't have to be. The Historical Landmarks Commission is, and could be, because we are a certified local government. And when you have a certified local government status, you are required to demonstrate you have a credible Landmarks Commission. There has to be at least two people who have a credentialed architectural or architectural historian or historian background. Those are like the qualifiers that a CLG requires jurisdictions to do if you have a certified local government status, which then allows you to get additional funding. So I just wanted us to see if there was a way to emphasize that the industry and the, you know, standard for cities to have planning commission is based on the efficacy of planning commissions. I would say responsibility role qualifications to actually make recommendations on land use.

So San Jose, San Diego, and San Francisco have quasi-judicial planning commissions. And they do have final approval authority, unless appealed, conditional use permits, variances, site development permits, design review approvals.

Yeah.

Just FYI.

Through the chair, that's also defined in our zoning code.

Yeah. Yeah. We're not purely a recommendation.

No, but what we can, which I don't know is actually what's a term? Is that still a requirement under the Charter or is it covered anywhere else in the Planning Commission? What is the term of a Planning Commission? What is the number of years they can ask for a re-term? Those are, I think, I don't know if it's three terms, two terms, what is the requirement?

It is listed.

So we iterate that. So your term, your qualifications, your number of meetings that you attend, should there be like, you know, and those are like things that we have.

Yes, we had a fun discussion about how many times that the city council could meet or should meet. And I'm sitting here saying they're meeting like every other night. I don't think we need to, but we actually said 24 meetings. And we did it in a way where it didn't have to be like two meetings per month. They could have That's right, because July, there's no meetings.

Yeah.

And I didn't think they would have any problem doing at least 24. If they only had to do 24, or no more than 24, I think they'd be happy in one way.

Yeah.

Anyway, are we beating that horse?

Yeah, this is the easy topic. This is the easy one. Why don't we get into the harder one? Well, or rather just the ones where you had to pull the one in from the other room. Wait, wait, wait.

Before you jump past that topic, though, One of the things I saw that was kind of missing was our duties and responsibilities in future proofing the city, giving us an opportunity to suggest areas that we need to be concerned about, because we bring a lot of talent and technology knowledge that may not be present in the staff of the city because it's not their job to know this stuff. And we should, as a commission, at least try to bring that into visibility so that the city doesn't wander along blindly into a problem. And the only thing I think from the last time that probably made Commissioner Booza annoyed at me was I ground deeply on autonomous vehicles. And I actually went further now. So I know too much about autonomous vehicles and their impact on cities. And we're just so vulnerable to what's coming that it's kind of scary. But there's nothing in our city organization or structure Focused on these future issues being brought into consideration. So that's a concern that we could address Nuclear yeah, there's many topics that Every single one of them is a devoted topic something that would totally occupy someone's full time. I Then you're asking for Definition of possible responsibilities that include Review and suggestion of future issues that are going to come up for the city we're doing it in the form of the Review sessions that we do, you know the learning sessions. That's great but There's no form for us to propose areas to be concerned about formally as a part of the commission, because we are a reactive body instead of a proactive body when it comes to that.

Well, I'll take one topic that I do want to get into at some point is cell towers. Don't want to do it one at a time. But if we even had a study session and I say, yeah, great, here's a great plan. What is the mechanism today, if any, to then say, hey, city council, we would like you to take this up?

Really the only mechanism you have right now is that annual priority thing where you submit your ideas to the council and maybe get a meal. So I'm guessing you'd like a more formal structured process for providing advice on technological advances and present issues affecting the city, something like that. Alrighty. Next slide. The other next topic was just Article 10, which contains topics relevant to boards and commissions, including the Planning Commission, but also more generally, things like appointment, how we handle vacancies, length of terms. For this one, commissioners asked for specifics on attendance. Go ahead, one more. So you asked for the attendance requirements for commissioners to be clarified, since there are currently no details. Also outreach policies. A commissioner sought more accountability to establish whether notice had been properly provided in response to circumstances when members of the public complain that they were never notified. And also modernization of noticing. Technology should be harnessed to provide broader noticing, such as push notifications on cellular devices. instead of relying upon newspaper publications, and the Charter should continue to adapt to future technological changes.

Any further thoughts on Article 10? You probably heard me say this more. There was a public speaker that said, I am right by this thing that you're talking about. I never heard nothing. So this happens. It just happens far too often.

I think we've gone around it a lot. Yeah. And we've tried to do the best we could with staff. The staff has been very accommodating. But you're always going to get somebody. Yeah. For sure. And given the size of the town and how many people, you know, all of a sudden saying, wait, wait a minute. I heard about this. You know. Yeah. We continue to improve. We can. It doesn't have to be in the charter though.

Yeah. No.

That means a non-charter item to deal with.

So the topic was other topics in Article X. And that meant some of the, let's say, the problem areas that we've been facing. And so that's under that banner is what I .

I think the attendance one is one that should be codified in some way. But that could also be done by ordinance as well. that still should be out there in terms of outreach policies. I mean, what were you thinking in terms of charter?

Okay. Yeah, that's actually a good question. In terms of our charter, how do I bring that topic in within the charter? Yeah, correct. So I don't know that there is a direct umbrella that I can put that under, right? But I'm saying this point, it's just a sore point. We've seen this over and over again. And the modernization part is my option to say, let's do things differently. Whatever the standards were adopted at some point in time, you have to post this within 500 feet, and there's a post on an electric pole somewhere. And the requirements today have been fulfilled. And I'm saying that's the reason there's this big disconnect, right? That what the requirements are, they've done. But it no longer meets the needs of the population today. They are expecting an email or this or that or whatever. So that was my bridge to see if we can do a better job there. But I don't know that it's a direct connection to our charters.

You could just say always enable full transparency of all projects, land use decisions, and cast a wider net in one way. But to the point that we now need to, Look at social media, you know I mean you, we have a city of Santa Clara Facebook posts and communications that that are much more out. You know reaching out, but just to have that blanket statement to say the city will endeavor to make all decisions related to you know land use and other. financial decisions in the most inclusive, transparent way, including public noticing, you know, and enabling people to come and ask. Something that is very broad.

It's like almost biblical. So that was what I was trying to say there, basically. And that's what Zander was trying to summarize here.

All right. How many people know that there's an app for the city of Santa Clara?

I know that I do. Oh, God.

My Santa Clara. How many people that are actually citizens of Santa Clara that don't come here know about it?

Yeah.

So I think that, you know, we're all trying to do the best we can to do it. And I think that's, you know, we can even put up notices or something like that at different very public places. Like, I'm thinking, like, Safeway and Homestead. For example, you can put up a sign, hey, you know, here's this app by Santa Clara. Guess what? It's free. Libraries. Libraries.

No, the big banner would work.

Yeah, well, we can put a banner on the building because we can do our own building, right? Yeah, I understand it. I like it that we want to do more, but I'm not seeing exactly what you would like to see in the charter.

I think I acknowledge that point. Okay. I'm not disputing the facts.

Advance. It's your moment.

Sorry.

All right. Topic four is just the catch-all topic, which are your general concerns about the charter more broadly. You raised issues about the process of amending the charter, the structure of the charter, and some specific subjects to include in the charter or in another document like the general plan. On the charter amendment process, you said that the project should include clear guiding principles to enable transparency, accountability, and inclusion of feedback from stakeholders and our community members. Community involvement, the projects clarify how community engagement and trust is being built through the process. Providing feedback, a commissioner was concerned that the method for planning commissioners to participate in the charter review process may be inadequate to ensure they're getting the full input. Sort of like a game of telephone, things may get a little bit lost in the relay. There should also be measures for evaluating success. The project should have both qualitative and quantitative metrics to measure the success of the effort. And closely related to measuring success, there should be subsequent review. The Charter should include a process for periodic review of its terms on the order of every 10 years or so to ensure that it continues to align with the values of future generations. There's actually three slides on this one question. The second one is some structural issues, starting with flexibility. A commissioner stressed the need for the Charter to be able to respond to technological innovations. As an example, regulations on where people can park their vehicles will not immediately translate to self-driving vehicles that have no driver and may not technically be parking. Integration with other documents. While the Charter's a broad umbrella of city government and governance structures, it should be vertically and horizontally integrated with other policies, ordinances, and plans. Ease of access. The Charter should be interconnected to other documents with live links and references. And also the ability to respond to urgent issues. The Charter should provide opportunities to deal with the situation swiftly when issues arise like the potential for ICE to appear at the Super Bowl and other unique events. And then the last part of this were some specific subjects you wanted to address, Measure R and telecom. As you know, the charter prohibits the lease or disposition of parkland for 180 days or more without a two-thirds vote of the electorate, which made it impossible to put in wireless facilities. A commissioner asked whether it was still appropriate for the police chief to be elected rather than the more common municipal model of an appointed police chief. There was also a comment about the mayor, whether the model of the mayor as an at-large representative but holding additional power beyond the other district representatives is appropriate. And then I got to say, my favorite comment of the whole thing was robots. A commissioner asked whether the city could enact policies regulating unattended robots roaming in city parks, using city roads, and traveling in pedestrian paths. To delivery, robots are already roaming the streets and increasing in frequency. The city could adopt regulations to ensure they safely save our public spaces. That is the infamous robot that blasted through a bus shelter in Chicago, and he wasn't sorry. Not all of these topics maybe should end up in the charter, but they're well taken.

I told you I was thinking of the future. I told you I was thinking of the future.

Yes. Well, it's actually the present. Yeah, it is. And I saw those in Austin when I was at South by Southwest a few weeks ago.

Kiwis. All kiwis. Kiwis? They deliver food.

Didn't give me anything.

If you'd like a little device to kind of have fun with them and play with them, you let me know. We have this little thing called a Flipper Zero. And you could do all sorts of, you know, don't go this way, go this way. Thank you. I'm sure you would love a straight up your alley with the legal stuff.

I appreciate your willingness to share.

Are we good? I'm sorry, you brought up robots. No. A commissioner brought up robots.

But we should. generally align on some of our technology, so I get that. The City of Santa Clara is home to one of the largest AI firms, companies, and we will continue to see that growth. That said, there's going to have to be some transparency on how Biofuel sells and BioBloom, you know, whatever, or future technology needs impact our data centers and understand what kind of implication. Not that it's a charter per se, but I do want to understand how are we actually measuring the ability to review things that we don't have in our zoning ordinance or in our general plan.

Oh, you mean like when they turn on all the generators at one time and we don't have any, okay.

Yeah, and the ability to have nuclear power for data centers.

We definitely want that, right? Prohibited by state law. Not even close. Okay. I think that it makes sense, a lot of it by ordinance, but I will say that, you know, one of the topics that came up quite a bit was what happened during COVID because there were definitely things that were kind of, you know, okay, it isn't quite in the charter, but we have to deal with this. So that's one of the things that they are trying to deal with when you have bizarre situations like that. exactly how do you run government because finances for example where like the revenue was not coming in how do we do this well we have to take money out of this fund normally we wouldn't do that but okay in this situation it is an exceptional emergency so that is one of the things they are bringing you bring up a great point financial frugality are we planning for a financial resiliencies

for the rainy days that we set aside as a principle, 20% of a budget will always be for those unknown circumstances.

Yes, higher than that. I believe it's 25%. 20%, 25%. 5% of that's not trivial stuff. This is not Starbucks money. This is a lot bigger than that. Got it. Okay, anyway, yes, because one of the things that I was bringing up as well, and we were talking about it last night, is can we better define reserves and how things work? Yes. The director of finance, Lee, was there talking to us about it and how things work. So this is definitely one of the things in the discussion. How do we properly do reserves? And the example that was brought up had to do with the pool and what happened with the swim center. And what can we do to prevent the same occurrence from happening again?

And how do we build a new city hall?

Agreed. Agreed. So what I would say is you have wonderful opinions, and I can't go into too much into what I've gone through, but I think I'm fine where I am. But we would love to have anybody come down to the regular meeting and give their opinion. We would definitely like your participation. Yes, so Commissioner Salima is volunteering to come. Thank you very much. Go ahead.

No, I think the only thing that I saw missing was I had a concern that we modernize our posted charter so that it was threadable and actually navigable. Do what? Thread our charter so that it's navigable online with hot links. So when some sections refer to other sections, I should be able to click on the reference and jump straight to that section.

We're looking for a lexicon.

I'm looking for a database of knowledge.

It's a lexicon, but let's put it this way. So one of the major things that is being proposed by Glenn is the fact that it has that problem. Like, you go look at it and read one section, and all of a sudden it's like there's this little piece somewhere else in a whole different section.

That's exactly what I encountered.

And that is what one of the things that he has already proposed, that we will clean it up so that actually every related item that makes sense is in the one spot. now having hyperlinks sure i mean we can do anything we want with the way we post it but i think the key thing is let's clean it up so things aren't all over the place and he's done a very good job of proposing that logically though you don't want hyperlinks such that when somebody says i want a hard copy it says click here on the page

So we have to be sure that our content is fully readable without it also something that is easily managed and navigated online.

Well, that's the key thing. You won't need hyperlinks to read it. It'll be much better than what it is today.

Yeah, that's great.

And then putting in hyperlinks to me is just a formality of how you, the different ways you get people to consume it.

I think it only came out of my experience of actually trying to read it. And I really struggled for a very long time to try and traverse the document. And I don't think I got more than about 30% or 40% of it.

That's why we have Claude.

58 data centers. There is an AI. There's somebody out there reading it for me. I can read it for you. Awesome. That's great.

All right, anything else? The only remaining issue is whether you want to appoint someone for the April 16th subcommittee meeting to.

Everybody appoint Priya, raise their hands.

Acclamation, send her. Without objection, the motion carries. Are you free April 16th? No.

Wait, can I make a motion to appoint for you?

Hold on, I'll do this right, look.

Yeah.

No, so seriously, I can't do it because I'm already on the charter committee. The idea is to have a representative from the planning commission come to one of our meetings and present the concerns that we've brought up here. Week from tomorrow. Week from tomorrow. I do too, but I'm going to be nice because I sit next to her and she's way too close to hit me.

I'm just going to say please, Priya.

I think you would be the best choice.

That would be a dual job for him and it's probably kind of not cool.

Don't say that. You know what's going to happen. Don't say that.

I will try and turn all the notes you've given me tonight into something in writing tomorrow. You will then take said writing and you can either ad lib it or you can read word for word what is on the page. It is up to you. Stop. Okay. What time? It's normally at 6 o'clock. It's normally at 6, yeah. What time is it?

Is it in person, virtual, okay?

Oh.

We do have virtual. We do have hybrid, yeah.

I have, okay. We do have what?

We do have virtual. Okay. But first of all, if you can't do it.

No, let me check my calendar. Okay. Wait, guys. Okay. Give me time.

GPT if you can do it.

See, it's all open right there. It's all open. It's all open. You want to see my calendar? I just did.

Please.

What time do you need her going?

Six o'clock. Six o'clock, yeah.

Six o'clock online.

Yes.

Okay.

You can do online. Done deal. All right. Keep going. It just... Let the chair over there know that she'll be remote.

This was sweet revenge, just so you all recognize.

Should I make a motion on that recommendation?

This was sweet revenge from this commission to me. You talk, go talk too much.

Chair, should I make a motion on that recommendation except I'll add in the name of who we're appointing? Yes. Okay. Are we ready for the motion? Thank you, Priya. I'd like to make a motion, provide consolidated, recommend that we provide consolidated comments to staff on planning commission relevant charter revisions for the charter review committee and city council to consider as part of the charter project charter review process. The commission has also chosen to appoint Commissioner Cherukuru to present these comments to the subcommittee on boards and commissions.

Second. Thank you.

Did I do that right?

You did it perfect.

So I have a question for, a legal question, Brown Act issue. Are we able to communicate with her now that we've done this process or are we supposed to have single communication with her, not three people? There's no voting on this, right?

No, the discussion is done. Priya is going to present based on what you have told her tonight. If you would like to offer me any comments to clarify what you said tonight, because I'm going to have to go through my notes and summarize it for Priya tomorrow, you can feel free to email me with, you know, and I'll just understand.

Before midnight, right?

well in all seriousness i'm going to write it tomorrow because after tomorrow i'm on vacation for two weeks so yeah what uh yes congratulations thank you south america um brazil argentina and peru you better make sure you get me the notes i'll be coming to south america i will i will give you the notes thank you sir um but you already have Half of them because I wrote the report that you have tonight. It's just the new stuff you gave me tonight that I'll add to that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So did we vote or it was by acclamation?

She's fixing it. By acclamation or consensus, either one. Without objection, the motion carries.

I think she's trying to edit what she has in her.

All right.

Thank you all. You're more than welcome.

I think she's looking to put up for a vote or we're good. Okay, we're good.

No, we're done. No, we're not quite done, thank you. Love having you here. All right, so reports of Commission Board Liaison in Committee. Announcements, other items? Nothing for reports?

No.

No announcements? No other items? How about travel budget?

Actually, in terms of an announcement, each of you, all of you got the email about the joint PC Council dinner tentatively scheduled for October 20th. several have you responded with your Availability if you have not please do so we're going to coordinate with the city clerk's office They have a lot of different commissions to coordinate with so I'd like to get an answer to them as soon as possible Okay, so thank you

Chair, I have a question regarding a past action. I just wanted to see. So there was a case that I remember distinctly because it passed four to three. This was a private construction and the neighbor was objecting to, you know, the views, blocking the views and all that. It did pass here and then the city council...

The council held it last night.

So it...

They upheld our decision.

Okay. So that means it also passed the council six to one. Okay.