City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, it's 5 o'clock, so we'd like to call to order the Santa Clara City Council special work meeting. With this, we have, oh, we do have Justin here. Excellent. So we have a full council, Justin Kaplan, Janine Burton, Krista Hinton, Dave Pond, and Mark Hendrickson. And can we just do a quick, can we get a report on your new family addition, Justin?

Got a new baby boy, boy number four. Yeah. Yeah.

Mom's doing well.

Thanks, Luke. Mom's doing well. Yep. And we're happy to have him.

OK. Awesome. We're excited to have you here with us. Thank you. OK. We'll move into our working agenda. Our general business item number one is the discussion regarding the Hillside Ordinance Update presented by Jim. But it'll actually be Rick Rosenberg with assistance from Lance. We'll turn it over to you. And we want to also welcome, we've got our planning commission here. Thank you so much for coming. And we'll turn it over to you.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate the opportunity to come. I appreciate you guys scheduling a special meeting that's going to help the committee have a little bit more time given the time constraints that we're under to get this thing finished up. We wanted a chance to present some of the things that are in it now, particularly the mapping that we've got. and some of the requirements for the new studies and stuff that are coming along. So kind of get an understanding of that. The ordinance that you received still has some tweaking to do. You probably noticed a couple of sections to be prepared. We're still working on a few. The committee has been meeting pretty much weekly, either formally here or informally amongst the group, working on this thing. And so we know that we've got a deadline. We're working hard to meet it. But I just want to jump right in and start with the maps. I appreciate Lance being here and being able to walk through. Sensitive land maps for the city of Santa Clara using all of the existing geologic hazard studies that have been prepared by the Utah Geologic Survey and other consultants, the maps that FEMA uses. And so this is the boundary of Santa Clara. You'll note that the Rosenbrook annexation doesn't show, but Lance is working on that. And it's set up in city maps on the city website, so any property owner can go on here. There is a base layer of parcels on this, and we'll zoom in in a second. But go ahead and turn flood hazard on. This is all the flood hazard maps that are coming from FEMA as part of the National Flood Insurance Program that the city participates in. These maps were originally created a long time ago. They were updated in 2009. and they're going through another update right now. We've got a meeting next week with FEMA and the state reps. For the most part, I don't think Santa Clara's maps will be changing. If they do change on a national level, this layer updates automatically. The blue areas Our special flood hazard zones, this is your 100-year floodplain and floodway. The light shade of purple is Zone X. It's an area that has very shallow flooding. If you look at the light purple right in the center of the map, it's the area downstream of the Lower Toconwash Detention Basin, or the Lobb Pond. that failed back in 2012 and resulted in flooding down that flume that went down toward the Santa Clara River. They also mapped it. It's a hard one for them to model because it's so shallow that they included a big chunk of country lane in that as well to where the flow comes down and turns and can actually go down country lane and eventually end up in Sand Hollow. And the city has plans for that in their emergency operation plan. But this is basically the spillway of the lower Tuaqan Wash. Some of the purple areas are areas that were floodplain that have been removed, so they still show as a flood risk, though the hazard has pretty well been mitigated. If you notice the downtown where the Rhone subdivision is, there's kind of a bulge right there. That bulge was – yeah, that one right there. Zoom in on that one for me, Lance. That was the after effect of the 2005 flood. The river actually eroded everything from the blue line out to the outer edge of that magenta line. And that area was mapped as flood hazard area. The developer had to go through a process with FEMA called a letter of map change to actually have that removed from the the floodplain, and that map change is formalized. It's on file with FEMA, so those properties don't have to pay flood insurance, but it still shows up as a risk to make them aware of that. The city could have that removed if they wanted to go through a letter of map revision process, and I'll talk a little bit more about that when we're going to bring back Cody here. Cody's not here. I imagine Cody's going to bring back the map modernization maps. probably in the next couple months and we'll talk about options to possibly clean that up a little bit and also some funding opportunities to help with that but if you had a piece property you're looking at develop and it falls underneath these zoom in tight enough that you get the the parcel lines okay I want these guys to be able to see that how easy it is to we tried to make this is relatively user-friendly as you can make GIS. How's that? If you go in Lance's office and look at his whiteboard, you'll see how easy GIS is to understand. And we've tried to make these maps so that you can go online, you can find your property, your home, and then you can turn on these layers one at a time and see what kind of issues you may have in that home. You can see those parcels. So if you lived in Ben Shakespeare's home right there off the map, you'll see that he's adjacent to the floodplain just down in the bottom right corner. That's Ben's home right there, and so a portion of his was in the historic floodplain. That lighter shade of magenta is the 500-year. The other one is special flood hazard. It's been changed out to now be just the blue. So you can kind of see a history of that. And if you wanted to know what the flood risk is on your property, you can go to this map. Now I'll turn off the floodplain one and let's go to the next one down. Erosion hazard zone is in there. Erosion hazard is based on studies that have been done for the city. We did these immediately after the 2005 flood. And it shows the area where the soil in those areas is very susceptible to erosion. It really means the river has been there before historically. And it's an area that is very subject to erosion.

And there are certain things that you have to do to mitigate the impact of that riverine erosion on your home.

We have erosion hazard studies for the Santa Clara River. That one's shown. We have them for Sand Hollow Wash. We have them for Toucan Wash. And Lance is in the process of adding those to this map. So you'll be able to see those on there as well. Turn that one off. Let's do landslide. These are areas that are susceptible to landslide. to the landslide movement. You can see the area. And I apologize, these never have worked there, but they do up here. So this is the area around the heights. This is the rim that goes around the heights. The existing landslide that we had to mitigate is right here. That area right there. was a dark day in my history as mayor. When we had those homes, we ended up purchasing four homes and six properties to mitigate them from the landslide risk that was on those homes at that point in time. It was extremely painful for those property owners that we had to work with. We were able to get a FEMA grant and the city put some funds to go toward that, but offset some of their expenses, but it did not make them whole from their original investment. And so that area around the rim is in a landslide. We've got proof of that. If you look at the south hills, a lot of those slopes that are out in the south hills are susceptible to landslide. So as part of any development in those areas, the developer is going to have to go through some landslide and some slope stability analysis. And that's defined in the text. and in the charts what they have to go through. It's not saying it can't be developed. It's just saying before you can develop, you have to go through and do these studies and then follow the recommendations of the studies. And that's kind of how all of these risks work. Let's go to the next one. liquefaction liquefaction doesn't have a lot of concern on a residential structure but if you were doing like multi-level buildings heavy buildings if we were doing a hospital if we were doing critical facilities like a hospital like a school liquefaction happens in the soil where you've got sandy type soils and high groundwater and if you have an earthquake With those conditions present, the soil can actually liquefy, and you will see massive settlement, mass settlement of your structure on top of it. It doesn't have a lot of impact on a small footprint like a residential home. Now, some of these homes we're starting to build, it may have a big impact on because they're getting so big. But it really comes into play on public buildings and critical buildings. Expansive soil, or rock fall, excuse me. Rockfall, we do have some out in the top of the Cove Wash, and we're doing some research now. I think there's some additional rockfall hazard in here. You guys have been out to the Yoakum property. It's in the canyon. The home, Jimmy Rosenbrook's house, is built next to a rock that fell off the top.

So it's obviously out there, so we're going to extend that down through that property as well, put some rockfall hazard there.

This has been an issue in St. George before. You guys have been here a while. You remember seeing the articles of the rock coming off the home over to Rockville, killed two people, landed on the home and killed two people. We've had them go through bedrooms over against the Black Hill and out on the Entrada Ridge. Rocks come off the ledge, roll down the slope, and penetrate the home. One little lady... There was one gentleman, his wife was out of town, he slipped on her side of the bed, the rock came through the house and landed on his side of the bed. She survived, but I always wondered if he had something to do with that. Expansive soils, I mean Santa Clara's famous for these. everywhere underneath the heights. You've got blue clay at depth. This is expansive soils that are either at the surface or below the surface, both. And again, it's just saying you can build there, but you have to do the studies and do the engineering and design your home appropriately. You can also see there's a lot of this out in the South Hills. So a lot of these undeveloped areas that we've got have these issues with them. The WUE, this is a layer that This is the wildland urban interface. We took the text out of the report, so I'm not going to address WUI in the sensitive lands ordinance. We're going to address it in a separate ordinance. But there is a map already put together that shows where the wildland interface areas are, where you'd have to do special requirements, correct, Chief? Correct. Clearing and buffer zones and stuff like that to build in there. So that information is up there. The ACEC is an area of critical environmental concern. This was established by the BLM on BLM public lands. I don't anticipate that these would ever be released for development in the city, but we do have a couple of them inside the city that we just need to be aware of. Like I say, there are plant species that are out there, milk bitch, a couple of different milk bitches. And so I don't think they'll ever be developed. They're shown on the map. So that's the series of maps. And you can turn on these layers one at a time. It's just as easy as what we just did. You can get online, do it at home. But if you turn them all on, this is Lance's favorite thing. You can see how much of the city is impacted by one or multiple geologic hazards. And there's a lot of them that have two or three geologic hazards that impact them. So it is important as we go through and develop that we pay attention to what's going on with them.

That's all of them, right?

So, again, this is – Lance can send you a link if you want to tinker around with it, if you're looking to buy property. You can see the LAVA is – the LAVA flow up here where – The Black Desert development is predominantly lava. There are a couple of blue clay that underlie the lava, and you can see that if you go out there and look in some of the cut areas. The blue clay is there. It's just underneath. So as long as you, again, do what's right in your development, then it shouldn't have an impact on it. That lava cap is pretty solid out there. But you start getting some of the other areas in town. This was historically, this was all lava for you recent move-ins. Our lava field went all the way down through here when I first came to town. So there is development that's shown on there. There's development shown in all of these geologic hazards, pretty much. Okay, questions on the maps?

So this is on our website right now. We can look at this or not yet.

It's on your website right now. Okay. And like I say, the parcel is in there. You can surf around in there and find your parcel number or identify your home from the street, and you could go through and do these off and on and see what kind of issues you may have with your home.

Does anybody in the audience have any questions? Can you grab a remote or a microphone? Anything stick out? Okay.

Very good. Okay. All right. Now let's go to the text. You all were, I think, Brock, have you got that loaded up? Sensitive lands ordinance? I think it was part of the packet that Jim sent out. And I'm not going to go through the whole thing. I'm just going to introduce you a couple of points that you, a couple of things didn't change. A couple of things changed significantly. Let me start, and it will come up in just a second, but we're using The sensitive lands map that's in the city general plan is really the first indicator of sensitive lands. It's a map that we put together last year working with the consultants that showed a lot of these same areas in more of a block format. And so we're referring to the general plan that's been adopted to identify the general the sensitive lands. So if you have a piece of property inside the sensitive lands, like the edge development, shows inside there, you're in. If you have slopes greater than 15% based on a detailed topo and you're proposing to disturb that slope by your project, you're in. These four cases, you only have to have one of them to be in. If you're affected by potential geologic hazards or geologic constraints identified by geologic evaluation. So if your lot has any of those shaded colors on it, you're in, and you'll have to address it. If your project contains intermittent or constant flow stream corridors or floodplains, riparian areas, wetlands, and springs as regulated by the state, or the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, you're in. If your ephemeral wash has a drainage basin more than .15 square miles in size, so if you're wanting to build across a wash, an ephemeral wash, a dry wash, but it has a large drainage basin above it, you have to go through the sensitive lands evaluation. If you guys have been watching any of the video that's been coming out of Springdale this week, there was some significant floods that came down, ephemeral washes, washes that hadn't seen water for decades. And the flood that came down some of those washes moved a rock about the size of a VW bus. And it floated it down and deposited it in the middle of the road at the bottom of the hill. It's important that we – like I say, it's not saying it's not developable, but in order to develop, you have to go through some engineering analysis and design accordingly and mitigate the risk. So if you're in any of those four – go to the – it's on the next page. Oh, sorry, Selena. Can you go to the next page? There you go. There's your four constraints. So if you're in that, you're going to be doing sensitive lands review. You're going to do sensitive lands review if you're proposing to do new building permits, new subdivisions, adding on to a primary structure, conditional use, preliminary and final plats. If that area you're disturbing impacts sensitive lands, you'll have to go through the analysis. So if you're on the edge of the heights and you want to build off the landslide, you're coming in for sensitive lands review. If you live along the river and I'm going to build my pool, In my backyard next to the river, you're coming in for sensitive lands review. So it's not – you can have an existing home and still have to go through sensitive lands review if you're proposing to do new improvements or new construction or add on and you're impacted by a geologic hazard. The city is going to retain – or at least we're recommending the city retain a city engineer, a geotechnical consultant, or a geologist for review. You need somebody on staff or at least a consultant that you can contact to be able to review the documents that are going to be able to come in for that sensible interview. Somebody has to be able to review and sign off that it's met it. The city right now has a consultant pool, an engineering consultant pool, that is probably due to be rebid.

I've talked to Casey about it.

Right now there's five engineering consultants on there. And what it does is it gives the city staff the opportunity to go to a consultant they think is the most qualified to do this review for the city. Someone who is not working for the developer, so there's no conflict of interest, but has the expertise required to review the developer's information and so we're going to expand that to include some geotechnical engineers probably a geologist so that the city can go to have an expert that's on their side to review this information the cost associated that will be paid by the applicant by the developer so that and that's a process that we'll have to do pretty quick after this is to get that consultant on board This ordinance has gone through and reviewed this. It's triggering three or four other things that have to happen outside the ordinance. We have to rewrite some of the sections in the city design and construction standards to conform to the ordinance. So we're working on those text revisions at the same time. I'm hoping that those can go through the same night or possibly the next meeting after Sensitive Lands comes through, just to be prepared for it. And again, it's going to be recognized in any development or land disturbance application. If you're proposing to disturb the land inside the sensitive lands, you're going to have to go through the process. Sensitive Lands Review Board, this was the formerly known as the Hillside Review Board in the other ordinance. It's basically similar makeup. There's five members. Three of them are experts, and two of them are city people at large. Melanie. I'm hoping that she will stay on and be part of that board when the committee's work is done. It's been good to have the citizen, and you're going to see in a minute, just the citizen who may not understand all the geological hazard BS. is a really good communicator and can put it in a form that the citizens can understand. And so I think it's really important we have those two. They're all appointed by the mayor. Five-year terms. They shall not serve more than two, five consecutive terms. So nobody's going to be on there more than 10 years. We have members on the Hillside Review Board that were put in in 2012 when we created the ordinance, and they're still serving. And they probably need a break. So we're going through that process. There's a pre-application process where you're a developer, you want to come in and find out what is impacting mine, you can come to TRC, meet with the staff. They can go through this process, and you can get a pretty good idea, fill out a checklist of what you've got to do before they spend the – these reports and stuff cost a lot of money. So before they go to the effort, they can figure out is it going to be feasible. We're working on that pre-application process now. There's requirements for remediation of – I can't say that word. If you're going to mitigate, there's a potential for you to do it. There's a dispute resolution section to where if their consultant and the city's consultant disagree, there's a way they can go to a third party, an independent third party consultant to have that reviewed. There's process that have to come through. They have to do a topo base map. If they want to get the review, we have to be able to know what the slopes are. So they're going to have to do a slope analysis. They're going to have to do a grading plan just for the city to be able to do anything other than tell them you've got geologic hazards. We're going to really work hard on limits of disturbance. And limits of disturbance is a limit on disturbance. That means you don't disturb anything outside of your limit of disturbance. No grading for a wall. No grading for landscaping. Nothing outside your limit of disturbance that is approved. And we'll probably go to the point of having that staked and possibly fenced. And a lot of the counties up north, they fence that limit of disturbance just so it's identified on the site. You've seen some of that orange construction fencing up in Summit County and some of the other hillside areas. That's basically telling everybody this is what you can disturb and this is what you can't disturb. So there's no confusion during construction. I've worked on a lot of these projects where you establish a limit of disturbance and you go out for your first field review and they've cut a cat track up over the top of the – they've disturbed everything in order to do a geotech test or something like that. We're going to probably try and avoid that if we can. They have to give us grading cross sections. So that when it comes, all the sensitive lens overview is basically recommending body for planning commission. So they're going to go through this and then we're going to give a recommendation to the planning commission. And their grading plans and their development plans, All of that is going to go to Planning Commission for approval. Planning Commission needs to be able to understand what it is they're approving. So we're going to ask for some pretty specific things in the form of their plans and very specific things in the form of their reports. And then you're going to have the city review consultant be able to check everything and give a recommendation as it accompanies to the Planning Commission for those development approvals. We're identifying limitations on what they can't do. There's been a lot of discussion on the committee about building pads and setbacks and heights of cuts and all of that fun stuff, and we're finalizing that. It's amazing how you can put Three engineers on the committee, the city staff, and then a couple more engineers on the room, and they can't agree on anything. And then he had a planner in just to stir it up and had to say that because he's not here. Planners look through the world with different eyes as well. And I appreciate Jim and those eyes. Like I say, you need all those eyes to write a good ordinance. So we're still working on the development constraints and those limitations on development. and basically forty percent slopes and above will be not not disturbed all zero disturbance on a forty percent slow thirty to forty they can disturb ten percent twenty five to thirty they can't disturb fifty percent and up to twenty five they can disturb a hundred percent now there are some exemptions because i understand that to get roadways to get uh... utility corridors, and you have these small areas of 40% slope that run around out there. And if you've walked it, you can kind of see the hillsides aren't all the constant percent. They're a little flatter, a little steeper, really steeper, a little flatter, a little flatter, really steeper. There's ways that some of those 40% areas can be excluded. We call them anomalies. Like you can go out on the south hills and you may find a rock outcrop, and that rock outcrop may go vertical. But it's only the size of the podium. It's not very big. That would be an anomaly that you'd be able to disturb. If you had a ridge, a little ridge of 40% intermixed within a general overall slope of less than 25%, so you had a little ledge that kind of circuits the way through, but it wasn't very big, you could probably exclude that from the 40% limitation. So we're working on those types of things. The reporting, the geotechnical, geologic, and geologic hazard reports are much more detailed as far as the requirements that go into that. We've had, I think, two of the best, two of the most experienced geotechnical engineers in Washington County have put this together. And they understand not only the reports, but they understand the area of Santa Clara and those geologic hazards that impact it. And so I think we've got some good information there, and it's fairly detailed. We have made reference in there with the floodplains and erosion hazard zones. It refers everything back to existing city ordinance and Section 1536, Chapter 1536. That's basically your floodplain ordinance. It also covers erosion hazard. It talks about the map changes, working with FEMA. All that's already in the ordinance form. We're creating another new ordinance that is 1534 that does the same thing for the geologic hazards. That ordinance is coming. It's an ordinance that was developed by the Utah Geologic Survey and given to the communities as a recommended ordinance that talks about if you have liquefaction, you need to do this. If you have landslide, you need to do this. Those types of things. So that ordinance will be coming to you as well for adoption. The drainage stuff refers back to the Washington County Flood Control Authority sections that are already referred to in the city design standards. And so we're trying to use as much of the existing ordinance as we can so it doesn't have to come into the sensitive lands. Right now, sensitive lands ordinance has been shortened by about a third. But I think it'll probably be the same time we get the rest of those ordinance changes written in there. But the rest of them are relatively technical. If you need an erosion hazard zone, you have to do an erosion hazard study, and this is what has to be included in it. If you're in a landslide, you have to do a slope stability, and this is what's included in it. It's not looking at density or slope disturbance or that way. If you're in these hazards, you have to do this. They can. go, a lot of those shaded areas are high altitude, evaluation. Nobody went out there and did a bunch of borings or did a bunch of test pits and evaluated everything that's there. They looked at every document they could get their hands on. They walked the site. They looked at general geologic formation. They know that the shinnerump is on top of the chinle. The chinle is a blue clay. So if you've got shinnerump, there's probably going to be blue clay underneath there. And that's how they put those together. But you may be able to go out on your piece of property that is shown to have some landslide issues, and by doing a detailed geotechnical evaluation on that specific site, it may show that you don't have it. And so if they can show that they don't, then they don't have to deal with it. They just have to do the study and present the study and have the study reviewed by the city that says that they don't. the ephemeral washes. If they're in some of those areas that have that significant drainage basin, they just have to mitigate those improvements within their development. Maybe install large diameter storm drains. Maybe have sediment basins. Whatever they want to look at. We're not going to tell them what to do. They just have to go through the design process and the approval process so that it protects the future homeowners and property owners that are going to be coming in there and the existing homeowners that are adjacent to it. I think it's important that we look at, as this new development happens, we have existing properties that have been developed at the base of it. So anything we do up on top of the ridge will impact the property at the bottom with drainage and potential stability.

So we're just going to look at both. And they have to have those documents that can go on file with the city. They're reviewed by another consultant, so the city should be in pretty good shape.

There's provisions to get on site to do inspections during construction. If a mitigation plan shows that they have to do retaining walls and retained earth, the city has the right to get on site and inspect those improvements as they're going in. And then the engineers have to certify they've been completed in accordance with the design documents. That's going to be important, that we get certifications at the end. That's going to put the burden on the consultants and on the applicant to build it in accordance with the plans. So if he says he's not going to disturb that area, he's not going to disturb it. And he's going to certify that he didn't. If he did, he's going to have to come back through some type of mitigation process and correct it. May have to do some re-vegetation or do some additional stabilization, depending on what what action he took. So that's kind of it in a nutshell. I say we're still working. I handed out three charts, and it kind of walks through the requirements of the ordinance. And we're coming up with forms that will go along, too. So if you look at this one. It kind of tells you if you've got slopes greater than 15%, you've got to do a geotech investigation. You have to do an evaluation. You have to do a storm drainage report. Those are the reports you've got to do. Come down the bottom, if you're flooding, if you're in a floodplain, you've got to do the geotech, the geologic, the stormwater, and a geologic hazard report. So it's kind of, again, giving them a little bit of information on what they're going to have to do. There's a flow chart, a black and white flow chart, This one here. If you look at it, it starts. You just do the determination. Is it inside within the sensitive lands overlay zone? So you go to this map. Is it inside, yes or no? If it's a yes, okay, are there any potential geologic hazards? So you go to the maps that are on the city website and you run through those and you answer that question. If it's yes, You're going this way. If it's no, you're going down. If it's no, say you've got one out there that's not, then we ask the question, is it steeper than 15%? They do a TOEFL survey. They do a slope analysis. You can make that determination easy. Is there any cut or fill on there greater than 12 feet? And you may want to have some input on this. There's been a lot of discussion on what we should have this be. It's as low as 5 feet. I think it's 8 feet in Ivins.

Where's Jim?

And I've seen it as high as 16, but if you've got an area on this site that you're cutting more than 12 feet, you're going to sensitive lands. It's not saying you can't do it. It's saying you have to go get it evaluated. I guess same with the 15%. We're not saying you can't disturb it, but if you are in there planning to disturb it, you have to get it evaluated. And if the answer is yes, then it sends you over to do your geologic reports. Again, if you've got those things present after doing your detailed, yes, you've got to go through the process. Eventually it works its way back to the normal city review process. So eventually it all comes back to TRC. This is just an intermediate. It's going to start at TRC and it will end at TRC with a whole bunch of stuff in the middle if you're impacted. Melo looked at it and tried to follow our freeway. We were drawing this. Logan Blake is here and I appreciate his help. He was drawing it with transportation software so everything looks like road signs. She drew this one. Yeah, I should say that. She asked AI, hey, help us out. It kind of goes through the same process, and we haven't met and corrected. There's a few of these boxes that are in the wrong place, but the format I wanted to see. This format, to me, when I first seen it, I thought, wow, that's a little easier to follow. Everything's all one direction. You just get into a group. You go down through. You combine it. You come back. It'll probably take the data in this one and put it in a format like this one when you see it again. So I've talked to a couple of members of the committee, and that's kind of where they're leaning. We're putting in wall requirements in there. We're working on forms. This is just a geologic site evaluation. If you go through and check all these boxes, you're going to go to TRC. If you can check the box at the bottom, it says no evidence of geologic hazard listed above were found at the time of the site evaluation. And you've got a geotechnical engineer that will put his signature and stamp on it. It could save you a lot of time and money. So the option is there. We don't want to take everybody through unless we need to. If we're going to take them through, we're going to take them through a detailed process and then make sure they follow that through in their design plans. Talking about identifying building pads on the slopes. I swear Jim gets involved. He wants minimum size building pads. We'll get through it. We'll get through it. We're planning on coming back. We're planning on meeting the deadline. I don't see anything that's going to prevent us from meeting the deadline. We have had two development groups participate with us. They sit in the back, and we bounce questions off, and we give them the opportunity to ask us questions during review. The Edge developers and Coco was here.

Is he still here? He just left.

You heard me talking, he bolted. He and his people have been here kind of listening, so it's not a surprise. Also, Joe Platt, who's doing the development out on Clary Hills Drive. Those are the two projects that when we put the, I don't want to say the M word, what's the, pending ordinance. When we put the pending ordinance, they were really close to submitting. And so this has possibly a bigger impact on them. So they've been involved so they can see where we're going. They've had the opportunity to maybe work with their consultants so that they're prepared once it's approved to be able to submit without big delays. And I've appreciated all of their input as well as the members of the committee that's putting it together. Dave Black and Wayne Rogers, they're not here tonight. They're geotechnical consultants. Logan Blake is here as chair of the planning commission, also as a civil engineer. Melody, I like the nickname, so I'm using it. She has been great in providing that perspective. to it. The city staff, Casey and Dan and Cody and Jim in particular, Jim's put a lot of time and effort into this and I appreciate all their work going into it. Any questions? This is the most dangerous thing I'm going to ask. Any questions? And Logan, I'll refer him to Logan if they're too hard.

Yeah, council or anybody in the audience?

I had a couple. Sorry. Just back up to the makeup of the committee. Is this committee? Board? The board. The alternates don't have to be city residents, and I just wondered if you could help me understand what the thinking is there.

The thinking is that the alternate may have to be a consultant.

Different than an engineer? Because it says engineers can be outside, not residents, which makes sense to me, but why would our other alternates not be residents?

If the alternate is just for the – Jim put this section together. Let's leave it on Jim. If the alternate is just for the – there's only two citizen reps on there now. If the alternate is for the citizen reps, I would say they should be residents of the city.

That's what I was thinking.

If you need to – I wish we had a lot more engineers that lived out here. to give us more opportunity and more engineers that are willing to serve. Let me preface it that way. That would be nice to be able to have residents that live here and understand the conditions beyond the committee. But there's specialty consultants. There's not that many of them. in the county that understand the soils and the geologic hazards in Washington County. That's a limited group. So we need the ability to go wherever we need to go to get that individual to serve on the committee in that way.

I agree with the professional, but if we could make it clear that the alternate, if it's a resident, should be from Santa Clara. I will do that.

I'm sure that was just an oversight.

Yeah, it may just be the way it's written. Yeah. I'll make a note and talk to Jim about that.

And then in the grading cuts and fill section 4D, am I reading this wrong? I think it says max vertical height 12 feet, but under exceptional circumstances, the Planning Commission may approve cuts in excess of 10. Is that just an oversight?

That's a typo.

Okay.

We're still working on that. A limitation section, we're having a lot of debate on that.

I knew we talked about it a lot. I just didn't know if we'd decided.

I thought we arrived at a decision on the height.

You did on the Rock Falls, on the cut face. Cut face is 16, 10 and a 6. And I think it's going to go that way. I think it's going to be very similar to that. It may, with sensitive lands review, Well, I'm going to say it's probably going to end up going that way. There has been some discussion about increasing it. If they're going through this process, this additional engineering process, can they go higher? And what are your thoughts? I got a no. I got a maybe. I got a no and a maybe.

So what we're talking about for not the rock cut slopes like we were talking about before. This is just any slope that's being cut.

Any cut or fill, if they go through this more detailed, better engineered process, can they go higher?

Higher than?

Higher than what? Than 16.

Than the 16 that we talked about for the other one? And that's really, that's your call. Engineers can design it to go really high. And sometimes.

With what aesthetic loss? See, I mean, part of what you've got to look at here is you've done such a good job with the overall looking at the area and the landscape preserving our study. You start looking at that, you go much more in 16, like we talked about with the rock base cut, you're talking about an aesthetic cost to the area. And I'm not going to want to look at anything higher than 16 feet that my neighbors love. That's my opinion.

I've seen it done. If you go over to St. George and you look at the commercial development at the base of the Black Hill, you'll see it almost all the way around.

Where?

in St. George on the Black Hills.

On the Black Hills.

In the Black Hills that bound the downtown part of the city. You go to the toe of the Black Hill slope on either side, and you will have cuts in excess of 16 feet. The soil allows for it. I mean, it'll stand stable, and it allows for a bigger commercial pad at the base.

But you're building a commercial path, so your construction and your excavation and your foundation ratings are going to be far greater than the residential.

Absolutely. The level of detail and engineering that goes into it is big.

So I think that's where we need to be cautious.

Or make a distinction between commercial and residential.

Anyway, I'm looking to you for a little feedback on that. Because I can't say there's a consensus among the committees.

Well, I can't say that there's that much commercial that needs to be... That's true. We'd have to identify the commercial zones. If you're going to... You go around town and look at anything over 16 feet, you can go anywhere in this part of the state you love.

It's noticeable.

I've never been one to make decisions based on aesthetics. That's my career background.

I do know of some that the house or the building they put in front of it makes it so you can't see it. When you put that 35-foot roof line in front of it, all you see is side yards. And I'm not supporting one way or the other.

I'm just... That's a realistic point of view.

Yeah.

The one that kills me is the one that's by the D and how they cut into the mountain around the D and it just kind of looks ridiculous now.

There is an exception I failed to mention. I'm glad you mentioned it. There's an exception in here for any public transportation utility. You can't build the western corridor and... maintain here those cuts or not disturb a 40% slope. So there is just a blanket exception for any public infrastructure that the city may need, including trails.

Oh, that's good to know.

So you'll still have to, at least I'd still recommend that you go through the engineering design process so that you don't negatively impact an adjacent property or build yourself a problem. But you can do the disturbance outside of sensitive lands.

To go back to the commercial distinction, I mean, if anything ever develops in the South Hills commercial-wise, would we want to have some differences? It's still on our map on the back. That's why it came to my mind.

Or if there's any additional land brought in that we can develop at some point, I guess is where my mind goes.

Because even the edge of Grand Desert had the commercial aspects, right?

Probably that initial plan probably had a fill that exceeded the one that the PD zone was approved under.

Do we have anywhere in Santa Clara right now that has more than 16 feet of cut? Anybody aware?

There's some big cuts out in the lava. I don't know if they get over 16. They would be over 10. I don't know if they get to 16.

I think there's a couple out there that you see that they're over 16 that are... with lots right where they're at there some of those uh which would look to be walkout basements I'd say they're over 16 and they've the engineering design has gone into them so they're stable but they are over that and there's some fills we're talking about on lava Cove would be South Village of South Village yeah north of Piner most of its South Village I don't think anything in silvery

Yeah. And there are some fills along took on wash on the Red Mountain frontage that exceeds 16. And they're probably not engineered Yeah, I can see that.

Is that the arboretum that you're talking about?

Yeah, up the wash above the arboretum. My fingers are crossed when I say this, is I hope they did their design on their house foundation and then wasted their borrow over the back. In wasting their borrow, they created the 16-foot high.

But that, even better.

I don't even want to bet on that. I'm going to stay in optimistic lane. We've already been out there to do repairs on a couple of them. But the ordinance would kick in. And if they showed it on their plan, in that case, a lot of those lots along Red Mountain would have to go through the sensitive land and show that limit of disturbance because it's inside that rim of And if they exceeded it, they would have to mitigate it. So you wouldn't be left with that blue clay slope that's 20 feet tall.

They would have to do something different.

They would have to mitigate that somehow. So in answer to your question, Justin, there are a few out there. And as we get into the South Hills, there's a lot of terrain in the South Hills. So you'll see more. as they start developing in the South Hills. And on that far southwest corner, there's a lot of terrain right there, and it's commercial industrial. What is it?

It's on the map, I know.

Yeah.

Baby poop green.

But we put something out there, I remember when we did that, to have some type of tax base against the western corridor.

Yeah. So I do feel like the 16 foot's reasonable. If a commercial thing came in, and there's just weird terrain, and it's going to be more than a 16 foot difference, That's what I was wondering. The way it's written now, what would happen? Is it just a blank no or is there an out for the new committee to say it's a no but? It's a no but.

Really trying to avoid that no but situation.

That's part of my question in general because it The committee reviews it and then it goes to the Planning Commission for approval. It doesn't come to the City Council for anything. Is that right? This land you said just go to Planning Commission It's really if we didn't like that and once it expands out into the South Hills or something then we just considered amending the ordinance I

I mean, you don't have a crystal ball, so you're just going to have to kind of take the best guess on that. I mean, you always have the ability to adjust.

Yeah, I don't. Right now, we don't have a way to get around it.

In an allowable condition, you'd have to have some type of a conditional use process or condition for exception approved.

I'll approach it with the committee next time we meet. We can talk about that. Maybe we can come up with some kind of language.

It looks like Brock was going to say something. No?

yet workers I just had one word so did you say that floodplain will be changing and updating and everything like that and those automatically update on the website for layers layers will be changing ours I've looked at the new maps for Santa Clara and when ours don't change at all okay Saint George is a different story Saint Saint this same prop started in I pulled it out today. The first invitation to this map modernization I got was in 2019. So it's taken FEMA seven years to get a set of maps out to the city. And the last three have been silent. When Trump suspended funding, the whole process shut down. So when FEMA's been unfunded over the last seven years, there hasn't been anything happening. During that period, St. George didn't – these floodplain maps didn't impact anything on St. George. It was regulatory, so you've had significant development happen in some of those areas, and now are shown as 100-year floodplain. Now, if your property is shown inside a 100-year floodplain on FEMA map, it's an insurance tool. It automatically kicks in flood insurance federal or a flood insurance requirement for any kind of a mortgage on that property.

If you had a mortgage that didn't have it and you did a refi, it would kick it in.

And then at the same time, the flood insurance costs have gone through the roof. So now you have a lot of residents who didn't think they were in a floodplain, who built their home, who may or may not be elevated above the flood elevation they need to be that have been built. And if this thing goes regulatory, they're going to get hit with those insurance requirements if they can get it. So not only are they at risk, but they may or may not be insurable. either due to cost or just because their house is two feet too low. So it's an issue. St. George is appealing the maps, trying to get them taken off. FEMA has pretty much told them no. But we're having a meeting next week, and it will be a fun one to sit in and watch. But Santa Clara's Santa Clara's are in pretty good shape from the maps they provided us. I feel really fortunate that we've been, the letter of map revisions that come through, and you guys have been on council for a while. You remember some of these subdivision required letter of map revisions before they can get recorded. The city went through all that process, and those have all been recognized by FEMA. So we don't have a lot of impact. We're going through and checking our files to make sure that They are aware of all of them. We don't have one hanging out there because sometimes you'll do these for a single lot. You do a single lot letter of map revision involving fill. And you go through, you get your letter, but if FEMA doesn't acknowledge it, it's as though it doesn't exist and that property owner may have to go through and do it again. Flood Control Authority is budgeting some money to assist with letter of map revisions as a result of this effort. And so I'm going to try and get Santa Clara some money to do the letter of map revision and correct some of the longstanding mapping issues on the Santa Clara River. That bulge at Rome. There's a couple of those along there that'd be really nice. It's not like they're hurting us now, but it'd be really nice to get it cleaned up just for the public and their review. And you don't have to go through like Ben's lot, for example. One little corner was clipped by the floodplain. That would trigger a flood insurance investigation when he tried to refi. And he'd have to come find his letter of map revision, find the FEMA approval, submit it all to his mortgage or title company as part of his process. That's just a step that's unnecessary. So we're going to see if we can eliminate some of that.

Everybody else probably knows this, but can you tell me the acronyms? W-U-I and A-C-E-S-C.

I'll say that again.

Wild land interface. Wild life.

Wild land.

That's the fire risk. Wild land urban interface.

That's coming from the state fire marshal. And there's going to be, I think there are requirements that they're writing as far as buffering, and you have to do some clearing around vegetation, clearing around your home and stuff like that. It's telling you guys as a city and a resident where the higher risk fire areas are. It's a result of all the wildland fires they've been having in California, well, and in Utah, for example, and the number of homes they've been losing, the one in Spokane recently.

And then what's the ASEC?

Area of Critical Environmental Concern. That's a BLM acronym that outlines an area where an endangered plant lives, and they don't want any disturbance to happen in there. That's the milk bitch.

The corridor problem.

Yeah, and that's why the western corridor won't go through that ACEC. It'll skirt it. OK.

I've got another question. So in here, if it's located in the sensitive lands map, I'm on that, I think, the same website, on our city website, clicking on that. On the sensitive lands, if I view everything under the sensitive lands and turn everything else off, the entire city is covered? Am I looking at it right?

If you're looking at adding up all the geologic hazards, turn all the layers. This is the sensitive lands map that's in the general plan. So it's all this green area, which is the South Hills, the flood plain, the rim around the heights, we've excluded the Black Rock.

So we're all in danger.

What?

That we're all in danger.

I talked about this the first time we talked. The hardline piece across the edge didn't happen.

The expansive soil and rock susceptibility is under the sensitive lands. And that has the entire city, literally.

Turn those off. So not not.

But under the first part, located within areas. So these are the four things that's either, any one of these, located within areas identified on the sensitive lands map.

So it says it's one of the four. But this is the first one, which has a sense of .

OK, so it's showing on the general plan. OK, so the general plan one, not the GIS map.

Now, we can go down to the third condition, goes to the GIS.

And right now, if you're building on a lot that has expansive soils, we require this stuff.

Yeah, and you require the geotech report and all the design if you're doing in that. Now, say they're coming in and the only thing they have is that blue clay. They're not going to come to the sensitive lands review board. They just do the reports and work through the staff.

So, yeah, that process isn't changing. Okay.

Because it's everywhere.

Yeah. OK, any other questions? Any planning commission or committee members? Yeah, go ahead. Come on up, Logan.

Is it OK, Rick? So on the retaining wall heights, We talked about 16 feet, but the current ordinance in Santa Clara is 6 feet. So we're talking about raising it from 6 to 16 in sensitive lands. Not above 16, I don't think, is what we're looking at. Going from 6 feet, which is the current ordinance, to 16 feet in a two-tiered wall. In a two-tiered wall? Yeah.

is that it's almost impossible to build on those slopes with six foot wall heights.

Right, because the current ordinance makes you go six foot, and then a six foot step, and then another six feet. And so we're looking at matching the rock cut slopes. And this, where there's going to be more scrutiny, in areas where there's more scrutiny, to allow them to go to the 10 and the six foot for a total of 16 foot wall. I don't think we're looking at one above that. Unless you want to rule out. And then I was thinking there's been some products that came through Planning Commission that were like conditioned on city council granting like a deviation from the standard. I don't think it was like Lonnie's project was like wanting to really use sidewalk off of one side or something. I was wondering if that would be something that they would be able to do if they wanted to go higher than 16 feet.

I think a design exception to the standards, the design standards, comes to council. That's correct. But not code. But not an exception to the ordinance. Right, Matt?

Yeah, I mean, the ordinance, and there's examples of this throughout the ordinances where there are exceptions and it specifically designates what body can grant that exception. The reason that design exceptions have to go to the city council is because that's what the code says.

So maybe you could put in there commercial developments that want to exceed this could get an exception from council or something. But yeah, we were just saying, 6 feet to 16 feet, and that goes through the Stanislaus Lounge review board process.

So I'm still new at all this stuff. So you're saying that anywhere else, then it's just a six feet, and if you're going to go up higher than that, six feet in, and then you can go up another six feet for a total of 12? Is that what you're saying?

No, a total of 16. So you could do a, the lower tier could be 10 feet. It's safer to have the higher height lower down, where it's going to be covered up, and it's just an engineering thing. And then you could go another step and go 16 feet tall in one wall. and then you have to separate them more or whatever to go up any further than that.

But if you don't go through the sensitive lands review, you're limited to six?

Yes, with the current ordinance.

And what's your opinion on what should be in this sensitive lands one?

My opinion is this is the 16 foot just because in my personal opinion the alternate would be giant kind of disturbed slopes that I think in my as I look as a developer and Person to see I dare look at like the decorative kind of rock face walls that you would see as opposed to just a big kind of urban slope Looks less in my opinion looks less on Disturbed disturbed. Yeah tighter allows for more concise development. It might allow you to keep out of certain areas is better if you can do those bigger slopes or whatnot.

We're trying to encourage avoiding. If you can, avoid the disturbance. So letting them go with those taller two-step walls can avoid the disturbance. If they couldn't do the wall, they'd have to do like a three-to-one slope and chase it up the hill. And disturb a lot. And disturb a lot.

So, okay.

And you said that there was disagreement on the height. Is there anybody here who's on the committee or who's been talking about it that disagrees with the 16-foot? I'd just love to hear a different perspective, too.

I mean, I don't think on the committee necessarily.

They've got Wayne and Dave have some projects that are higher out there.

Higher than 16?

Yeah, St. George, they recently, in like industrial areas, some places they let you go to 24 feet in a two-tiered wall, so 12 and 12 or whatnot. But those are...

But they're in industrial areas or specific commercial zones. They're not in residential. And we've got to look at this holistically that we have such a small percentage of commercial. We've got to address it as residential first and then that.

And St. George just increased their residential walls, I don't know if you're aware or not, to 20 feet. Just recently. Just recently.

Yeah, they gave them more than what the ordinance committee had asked them for.

Gotcha. Okay, thank you, Logan. Anything else?

No, I don't think so.

Excellent. Okay, anybody else? And we can tell this has been a large lift. Yeah, go ahead and come on up. You'll just want to come up to the microphone so we can get you on the minutes. And you'll just state your name, that's all.

With the passage of this ordinance, how will that change who's going to serve on your planning and zoning committee? Will they have the experience to review this? Grew a wash a year while over a hurricane. Just got flooded. I had a friend who built a home, met the city ordinances, built a home. He said the engineer certified, no problem. Two weeks ago, I helped him for a long time with water in his basement. Who's responsible? He met the ordinance. He was issued a building permit. The engineer certified he wasn't in a stud plane, but what happened? So if this ordinance is passed and something goes wrong, who's responsible?

I think that's a valid question.

The ordinance requires that somebody besides the applicant's engineer review the proposed plans in the development. It's required. It also has qualifications for who that person is. And if there's any question about between those two, there's the opportunity for a third party to come in and make the decision on it. So, you know, Mel, the biggest answer to your question is the quality of the engineering review of the plans that are submitted by the applicants for development has to be there. The quality of your consultants that you've hired to represent the city and review those development plans and those construction plans, that review has to be a quality review by people who understand it. like someone who understands landslides, who understands floodplains and those risks. If you have a reviewer, and this happened, it's not just Santa Clara hurricane or anywhere else, this happens all over the state, is that you'll get a plan reviewer who may not understand what a base flood elevation is or what the allowable risk on a landslide is or the height of the risk on a wall. And they assume that the engineer who stamped the plans does. And they approve it. But it has to be reviewed. And it has to be reviewed by somebody who understands what they're reviewing. That consultant pool that I talked about has to be qualified individuals. It's not just the first five firms you look up in the phone book. That's selected by qualifications. So who on your staff understands letter of map revisions with FEMA? Who on your staff understands how you stabilize a landslide or prevent one from happening? They have to have experience in those things. That's why I'm saying you have to, they're going to have to expand the number and lift the qualifications to prevent what happened in Hurricane at Gillswash.

Perfect. Yeah, Mello, do you want to come up?

So just to go back to his question, so say we do all of those things and we check all of those boxes. When we had that landslide in Santa Clara, wasn't the city ultimately the ones that had to purchase the house? Is that who it ultimately falls back on? I'm just asking.

Yeah, I mean, the landslide is a great story. When I retire, I'll write a book on the landslide. The landslide started back in the 80s, well before the city built Truman Drive in 1991 that connected Chapel Street to Truman Drive on the Heights. And a lot of you guys were here and maybe had the opportunity to drive that road before it literally came apart and we were forced to close it. But that was done originally by the city. So the applicant on the first day was the city. So the city, in my mind, and I'm not a judge, and Matt, tell me to shut up whenever you want. You're good. I'm enjoying this. In my mind, when we had residents, Hans Hafen came to the city, was the first resident that came to the city, said, there's something going wrong with my house.

And you could physically go up there and you could stand on his walkout basement patio and the hill was falling vertically away from his patio.

And it got upwards to 15 feet, where I think the only thing holding the ground up was the four-inch concrete patio slab. up there. The city worked a settlement agreement with the insurance company and obtained that property. And then we had other residents in the area start to see the same type of thing. So the city got progressive And we hired a qualified landslide specialist, an engineer, a geotechnical engineer with a specialty in landslide mitigation to come down and walk the slide, map the slide. They did their geotechnical borings and testing and came up with a failure zone. that extended back into three additional homes and two undeveloped residential lots up on top. And the city determined how much risk were we willing to take. And then we went after a FEMA pre-disaster mitigation grant based on the fact that the slide was already established that the risk of the slide continuing was really high, we obtained funding from FEMA to pay 75% of the cost to relocate the three existing residents and buy all of the properties impacted. The city paid 25% of those costs. A lot of that was in-kind type services. and the homes were removed and the slope was laid back. And that landslide continues to move. There's a new scarp on the existing stabilized area. It's not impacting any homes right now, but it's something that I encourage the city to periodically check. because you may have some additional homes that could come at risk because it is an active landslide. So there may be other homes up there. This ordinance is really trying to avoid that from happening again. We want to go above and beyond avoiding that from happening again.

And so to Mel's question, kind of overall, this new proposed sensitive lands overlay ordinance should help to better protect the land from excessive development in sensitive land areas and to make requirements to try to avoid landslides and floodplain issues and things like that.

If the ordinance would have been in place before the city Built that road in 89, the road wouldn't be there. It never would have been built if it had gone through this approval process.

And the layers of approval, I mean, you said they have to bring their own engineers. We're going to have to have our pool of engineers, consultants, and then it goes to the committee who is at least three members qualified, two member citizens, and then ultimately the planning commission makes the decision after it goes through all those kind of layers of protection.

Exactly. That project didn't have, I'm not aware of any geotechnical work that was done. So there was no landslide stabilization study done. If they would have gone and put together the geologic hazard study that the ordinance requires now, the landslide would have showed up in 1989. It would have been mapped, and they would have had done mitigation, and it either would have been mitigated properly or it wouldn't have been built. My gut tells me you wouldn't have done it. The feasibility of it would have went away.

I wouldn't have built it. Yeah. So on the question of, like, does this change the makeup of our planning commission, can you address that? I feel like, personally, I feel like it's going through so many layers that it doesn't really require you to have a technical person.

Hey, would I love all those planning commissioners to have engineers titles? I'd love that. That'd be great.

When I was mayor, that's the ones I wanted to appoint, was people who understood land development, engineering, the geotech if we could find one, constructability, those types of people that are making decisions so they have some technical base. But plan commission needs to represent the public. They need to, you can't just be experts. We can engineer anything. We can put people on the moon. We're going to Mars. You can give me enough money. We can solve anything. But is it the right thing to do? And that's where you need the public input on is it the right thing to do. The sensitive lands overlay, the committee will take it to a technical level and make a recommendation to the planning commission that I think the planning commission can trust. Now they can make this decision from their role as a land use authority. Is it comply with the zoning? Is it meeting all of that other stuff that Planning Commission looks at? And is it the right thing to do the city and the general plan? I mean, that's why they're there, is to make those types of decisions, not what's the risk factor for landslide stability or the base flood elevation. The technical experts will put that information together for planning commission and make hopefully strong recommendations to the commission. If something shouldn't be built, I want them to say it shouldn't be built. I recommend denial based on this list of findings.

It's in a geologic hazard area that hasn't been mitigated properly and is going to probably result in future failure.

those type of opinions that they're willing to put their name on.

Mayor? Sir? I want to make a comment just on the question about responsibility when things go wrong because I don't want anybody to walk away from here today thinking, you know, either the city is responsible in all cases or that the city is not responsible in all cases. The truth is every situation is a little different. And Rick talked about some of the situations we've dealt with in Santa Clara with the landslides in particular. Even those situations were not the same. When the city dealt with Hans Hafen's property, it was not the same circumstances as when we dealt with those and acquired those other properties. Who's to say whether the city would have done what the city did if it couldn't have got those funds from FEMA to finance that? And so every situation is different. Certainly engineers have standards that they should and strive to meet. The city, you know, strives to meet its obligations and do what we're doing now to make sure that the processes we're following are, you know, make sense, that they're reasonable and rational and so on. And questions of liability then get even more complicated when you start talking about, well, the city has some protections against liability that other folks involved in the process don't. And we've seen the effects of that in Santa Clara, too, where the city's been sued over infrastructure that's failed, but there's no liability because the city has some sovereign immunity. And so those are very complicated questions. Mel, in the example that you gave of the flooding and hurricane, it's the same thing. It would have to be evaluated, and that's why we have courts and lawsuits and all of those things. But what was said about this process I think is so, so good and so needed to update the way that we do things, bring it up with the most modern standards, We use the resources that we have in in people and and knowledge and so on and so You know you still can't you still can't plan for you know the thousand-year? Rainstorm right Rick you can't well you could that you go broke You could. That's right. And so there's a judgment call that's made that says, we're going to plan for the 100-year storm, but everybody understands we can't afford to protect ourselves against the 1,000-year storm. I mean, that's the reality, is you draw that line somewhere. And those that are smart on these issues say, that's the best we can do in balancing all the risks. So anyway. Yeah, thank you, Matt. Appreciate that.

I was just going to ask, so like affordability is always an issue with housing, and this is going to affect that to a degree. So can you just maybe address, like it'll slow down the process a little bit for some properties to get approved. That's a cost of development. They're going to have to get this extra geologic hazard report.

Yeah, the engineering studies will increase the cost.

But do you feel like it's enormous or unreasonable or is this just part of the development process?

Well, in my mind it's part of the development process because if you can't afford to do the engineering study to prove that it's not at risk, you shouldn't be building there. Yeah. Unless, if you're asked to approve a project in the middle of the river and not willing to ask for the floodplain study, you shouldn't be building there. These are areas that the Utah Geologic Survey and other experts have identified as having geologic hazard risks. So they are at risk of one of the five or six hazards that we've identified. And that hazard should be mitigated. It should be evaluated. And if it's real, then it should be mitigated. How much is it going to increase the cost? It'll increase the cost of development, depending on size and scope of the project and what you're trying to do. It doesn't seem to slow down the interest in developing. The product that they're building up there is an expensive, high-end product. As far as, are you going to go out and do your affordable housing project on the South Hills? Yeah, probably not.

Yeah.

There's very little flat ground out there. There's very little ground that's not one of the colors that you're going to have to mitigate. You don't have any infrastructure out there today at all as far as roads, water, sewer, power. You've got a little bit, but not very much. So the cost of doing any development over there is going to be expensive.

Okay, yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah, any other discussion or questions? Like I was saying before, this is obviously a very big lift, and I do feel like this brings this whole process into a modern context where we really can hopefully help homeowners and developers to do it the right way and at least mitigate as much risk as possible. So I really appreciate the committee and all your work, Rick, on this. Any other discussion at all? OK, thank you again. With that, we will adjourn and then recommend everyone go over to our America 250 lecture in about a half hour. Thank you, everyone.