Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

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Commission and staff, are you ready to begin? Okay. Welcome. I'd like to call the Planning Commission meeting to order and ask that we 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,

Okay, I'm now going to ask the staff to explain the meeting process. We'll then proceed with roll call.

Pursuant to Saratoga City Council's remote public participation policy, members of the public may participate in this meeting in person at the location listed on the agenda or via remote attendance using the Zoom information listed on the agenda. Public attendees participating by Zoom are automatically muted and are not viewable on camera. I will now call the roll. Commissioner Couser? Yes. Commissioner Sriharan?

Present.

Commissioner Hassan? Here. Commissioner Brownlee is absent. Commissioner Zeng is absent. Chair Germerod?

Present.

Commissioner Lee?

Present.

Thank you. Because we have a member of the commission coming in remotely, I have some questions. Commissioner Lee, can you hear me well?

Yes.

Were you able to hear our proceedings up until now?

Yes.

Do you have a copy of the agenda for this meeting?

Yes.

Have you ensured the agenda for this meeting was posted at your location within 72 hours of the meeting? Yes. Is your location accessible to the public such that any member of the public can participate from your location if they wish to do so?

Yes.

Is there a member of the public there with you who would like to participate in the public comment portion of the meeting or otherwise address any agenda item for the meeting?

None at this point.

And now I have some questions myself. Thank you. I have some questions for the commissioners. Is there any member of the commission who has not been able to clearly hear commissioner Lee hearing none, let the record show all members of the commission have indicated they are able to clearly hear commissioner Lee commissioner Lee. Have you been able to clearly hear chair and myself?

Yes.

Is there any member of the commission who has reason to believe, based on voice, recognition, or otherwise, that the person representing themselves to be Commissioner Lee are not truly so? Hearing none, let the record show that no commissioner has expressed doubt that Commissioner Lee is the party participating by teleconference with the city commission present in person. Please be advised that all votes taken during this meeting shall be taken by roll call. This concludes my questions.

Thank you. We'll now proceed with oral communications on non-agenda items. Any member of the public will be allowed to address the Planning Commission for up to three minutes on matters not on this agenda. The law generally prohibits Planning Commission from discussing or taking action on such items. However, the Planning Commission may instruct staff accordingly regarding oral communications. At this point, I would like to open public comment on the non-agendized items. Staff, can you please explain the public comment process and announce our first speaker?

Thank you, Chair Germrod. In-person attendees can request to speak by submitting a slip to staff, which are up at the podium. Those viewing through Zoom can use the tool in Zoom to raise their hand. If you're on the phone, you can press star 9 to request to speak. There are no hands raised at this time.

Thank you. Is there anyone in the audience tonight that wishes to speak on the non-agendized items? Seeing none, I will conclude the oral communications on non-agendized items. Next on the agenda is approval of minutes. Are there any additions or corrections to the minutes?

No.

Okay. Does any Commission member wish to move approval of the minutes?

I move as presented. I second.

Thank you. Would the staff please conduct a roll call vote?

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Don't we have to do a roll call because she's on Zoom? Commissioner Lee? Aye. Commissioner Hassan? Aye. Commissioner Sriram? Aye. Commissioner Couser? Yes. Chair Grimerod? Aye. Motion passes unanimously.

Now I'll talk about reporting on appeal rights. Any interested person objecting to any decision on this agenda may file an appeal of application with the city clerk within 15 calendar days of the date of the decision. Regarding public hearings, applicants and their representatives have a total of 10 minutes maximum for opening statements. All interested persons may appear and be heard during the meeting regarding the items on this agenda. If the items on this agenda are challenged in court, Members of the public may be limited to raising only issues raised at this public hearing or in written correspondence delivered to the Planning Commission at or prior to the close of the public hearing. Members of the public may comment on any item for up to three minutes. Applicants and their representatives have a total of five minutes maximum for closing statements. With that, we'll go on to the public hearings. The first one is continued from May 13, 2026, application CPX24-0011-14486, Oak Place. The applicant is requesting approval of development project and tentative map subject to the Housing Accountability Act to subdivide into three lots. an existing 6,750 square foot parcel. Each of the three lots will include a three-story single-family residence of 2,489, 2,346, 2,409 square feet, respectively, with the third lot additionally having a 635 square foot attached accessory dwelling unit. Two protected trees are proposed for removal. The site is zoned R1-10000, WITH A GENERAL PLAN DESIGNATION OF MEDIUM DENSITY M10. WITH THAT, I WILL OPEN THE I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE THE STAFF PRESENTATION ON THIS PROJECT. THANK YOU.

For this project at 14486 Oak Place, the applicant is requesting approval of a tentative map and associated design review subject to the Housing Accountability Act to subdivide an existing property into three lots and to develop three single-family dwellings and an accessory dwelling unit. The project site is approximately 6,750 square feet. It's located at 14486 Oak Place in the R-110,000 zoning district, and it has an average site slope of 9.8%. The site contains an existing one-story residence and related site improvements, including an accessory structure. A total of four protected trees are located on site. Surrounding uses on all sides include single-story homes on similar size or larger parcels, and the existing site improvements would be removed. So the project would subdivide the existing parcel into three lots, with each lot being accessible via a shared private driveway with connection to Oak Place. Each of the lots will be developed with a three-story single-family residence, with lot three additionally containing an attached accessory dwelling unit. Two protected trees are proposed for removal, and one covered garage parking space is proposed for each lot. Okay, I'll give a quick overview on the Builder's Remedy. The project was submitted pursuant to the Builder's Remedy provisions of the Housing Accountability Act. The Housing Accountability Act was adopted by the state to significantly increase the approval and construction of new housing by effectively curbing the capability of local governments to deny, reduce the density for, or render infeasible housing development projects. The builder's remedy is a provision of the Housing Accountability Act that is applicable to qualifying housing development projects for mixed-income households. In such cases as when a preliminary application is submitted before a city has adopted a substantially compliant housing element, This application was submitted first in March 19th, 2024, which was after the state's housing element deadline, but before the city had a certified housing element. Housing for mixed income households includes projects with an affordability component or small projects, which are fewer than 10 units above the qualifying density of 10 units per acre and on a lot smaller than one acre. criteria which this project also satisfies. So the Housing Accountability Act limits the city's ability to deny or conditionally approve a qualifying housing development project, and it prohibits the city from applying subjective standards to the project or relying on inconsistency with zoning and general plan standards as the basis for disapproving it. The Housing Accountability Act does allow the city to enforce some objective development standards, conditions, and policies by imposing conditions of approval so long as the conditions are based on objective standards in effect at the time the preliminary application was filed and do not render the project infeasible or require a reduction in the proposed density. Okay, and another quick overview on AB 130 and CEQA. As a discretionary project, this application is subject to environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. The project was found to qualify for an exemption to CEQA under AB 130, which is a recent state law which established a new statutory exemption to CEQA for qualifying housing development projects. The criteria for qualification include that the project is in an urban infill location, that is at least half of the applicable density for the city, in this case, at least 15 dwelling units per acre. And it is not within certain designated areas, such as being in a very high fire hazard zone, being in a flood zone, having protected species habitat, prime farmland, et cetera. And that the project go through tribal notification and consultation process. which was carried out earlier this year, and tribal recommendations are included as conditions of approval, as is the requirement for a Phase I environmental assessment, which AB 130 also requires as a condition of approval. Okay, now that we're through the state laws, I'll share more of the basic details of the proposal. So here is the proposed site plan. The first home would be set back 8 1⁄2 feet from the front property line, The homes would be about 5 feet 10 inches from the left side property line and about 15 feet 8 inches from the right. Here are the elevations. The overall height of the project will be about 41 or 42 feet. That's measured from the average natural grade to the tallest point of the roof.

I'm going to ask the audience to please be respectful of all the speakers. It will be important to have a good process tonight. If you could do so, it would be much appreciated. Thank you for your consideration.

Go ahead. And here are the elevations for the side and rear as well. Each home would be three stories with a rooftop deck on the second stories. The applicant also provided a streetscape view for reference. And a color and materials board for the project. The exterior materials will be white stucco, dark and white gray standing seam metal roofs, and dark gray and white vertical wood siding alternating These are our required design review findings. The findings serve as a basis for the planning commission's decision on the project. The commission is meant to determine if the project meets these findings, so details not related to the findings are effectively beyond the scope of the commission's review. A number of these findings, C, D, E, F, and G, would normally be unable to be made given the project's characteristics. However, under the Housing Accountability Act, where there would be an issue with making a finding, but changing the project to meet the finding would require reducing the project's feasibility. The city is prohibited from using such a finding to deny the project or impose conditions. More details on each of the findings are included in the staff report, and I'll be happy to answer any questions you have about any of them. And here as well are the required subdivision findings. The same applies here. Normally findings 1 and 2 would not be able to be made, but inconsistencies with development standards as part of these findings may not be used as the basis for denying the project under the Housing Accountability Act. So staff recommends the Planning Commission adopt resolution number 26011, to conditionally approve a tentative map to construct three three-story single-family homes and one attached accessory dwelling unit, which includes the removal of two protected trees, grant design review approval, and find the project to be statutorily exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, pursuant to Assembly Bill Number 130 and the corresponding section of the Public Resources Code. And that concludes staff presentation.

Thank you very much. Are there any questions from the commission of the staff? Seeing none. Oh, you're right. Commissioner Lee, do you have any questions?

No, thank you.

Great. Okay. Hearing no further questions from the Commission for Staff, the applicant now has 10 minutes for opening remarks.

If you could start the timer, please.

Hi, I'm Deepak Chandani. I'm the applicant for 14486 Oak Place, Saratoga. I'm also a Saratoga resident. I understand that this project is challenging. It's something new for Saratoga, and I'm very clear about that. We had a lot of thinking to do before we started this project. I do understand and I also believe that whenever there's some change, there's going to be two sides. And change, you know, it's going to happen. Yes, I do it, somebody else does it, but change will happen. And these new rules of builder's remedy, you know, yes, it's challenging, but it allows people more housing. I do believe city of Saratoga does need more entry-level housing, not affordable, but entry-level, because a lot of young people who want to come to Saratoga, I interact with them every day. And it's hard. I also understand from hearing that schools need more kids. And you cannot bring young kids in Saratoga if you don't have entry-level housing. A lot of people who buy homes here are already in the mid-level. They have kids who are in middle school, high school, sometimes maybe just high school for a few years. And so our schools need kids. Our property values in Saratoga are dependent on schools. One of the reasons why people come here is because our schools are good, society is good. It's a great place to be. So if we don't keep up the schools, if we don't get the kids in there, how are we going to get our schools keeping up? So the project, because we had this land, and I've got my architect here, Mark Hogan, my attorneys here, Linda, who can answer all the questions that I cannot answer. But Mark is very competent. and designed, I think, a very nice product. Yes, it's three-story tall, but in order to get the density, that's the only way we could do it. I feel that this will bring three, maybe four entry-level families into the downtown area, which is good. They're vibrant and with young kids. And we also put elevator in the property because a lot of people want to retire. And they have one-acre properties, half-acre properties. And after living in Saratoga for 30, 40 years, they don't want to leave. And I don't blame them. But they don't find affordable or entry-level place to sell their homes and move in Saratoga. So here is an opportunity of products like this are opportunities for people. We put the elevator there so that maybe people who retire can come and live there. And there's an alternate plan for them to move. maybe find housing in Saratoga. So that's my view of this project, and I'm totally committed to that. I believe in what I'm telling you, and I understand that some people are not going to be happy. Thank you.

Thank you for your opening remarks. Are there any questions from the Commission of the Applicant?

I have a quick question. Sorry, can you hear me? There's this talk of a density bonus and a mixed income community. But from what I saw here, the ADU is not de-restricted. So is there an affordable component to this property or are they all the same?

I think you can answer that.

Yes, so the ADU is not de-restricted. The project still meets the Builder's Remedy requirement for it being a mixed income housing development project. It's instead of having an affordability component, it's basically considered a small infill project. So it is less than 10 units overall, smaller than an acre, the project site, and of a density that's greater than 10 dwelling units per acre. So under the provisions of the state law, it still meets that criteria. And our attorney can expand on that if you have any additional questions about it.

Are there any other commissioner questions for the applicant? Thank you, then. Hearing no further questions from the commission, I would like to... Oh, I do, I do. Oh, I'm sorry. I apologize. Go ahead. Go ahead. Commissioner Ping? Commissioner Ping, if you can hear me, your screen is frozen at the moment. We'll see if we can. Yeah, maybe try turning your video off to see if that'll help. That's sometimes a helpful thing. I think what we're going to do is we'll proceed and allow her to ask her question later when we get contact. So pending the questions. Oh, you're back.

Hello. I'm sorry. I don't know what happened.

Go ahead.

Yes. So yeah, as the applicant agreed, this housing project has a significant impact to the privacy, to the, I'd say, quality of life of our neighbors. And I just want to ask, has there any effort from the design side, from the builder side, to mitigate those challenges?

That's a good question.

I'll let my architect address that.

Hello, I'm Mark Hogan. I'm the architect for the project. There was some effort taken to do that on the ground floor closest to the house on the east. there we've minimized the number of windows on the ground floor most of the windows are at the roof level of the house that's closest on the east on the west side there's a much bigger setback there's actually a bigger setback than is existing with the existing home it's a it's typically 15 feet and then it increases at a few points and is much greater at the back we have roof decks but the Roof slope is continued to provide kind of a privacy wall, blocking a portion of the roof deck from the adjacent lot that's closest to the east, and also that happens on the west, although it's quite a bit farther on that side. So within the constraints of the site, You know, we've done whatever possible. I mean, with four units, you know, obviously it's going to have a greater impact than a single-story, single-family home that's there now, but we've tried to mitigate this to the degree possible.

Yeah, as you know, I mean, it's already stories, and it's really, really tall. It might make almost five years, four and a half years in the planning commission. We haven't seen a building about 40 feet tall. It's huge. And my question is, what's behind the thinking about the rooftop? Because we see balconies and the rooftop that people can stand there and overlook the surrounding neighborhood. What's the thinking behind that?

Well, the thing is the people that will want to live there will want some outdoor space. And that is the outdoor space that's available. We have a driveway. But if people have kids, especially, they're probably going to want somewhere to go outside that's maybe not the driveway. Or there's a small backyard. There's an oak tree in the back of the lot. So there is some open space back there. But I think the idea was to create some open space for the residents. And as I mentioned, we have used screening to try to protect the privacy. The developer here may be open to some additional screening on the east side if that would help with a roof deck. But I think having a roof deck is really important for the future residents to have some amount of outdoor space to use.

And how tall is this screen? How tall is the roof?

Right now, there's a sloped wall that goes up to eight or nine feet, and then it comes down to the height of the parapet, which I believe is about 42 or 44 inches. If it would be a benefit to the neighbor on the east where we're closer to the property line, additional screening up to, say, six feet from the walking surface might be acceptable. I think on the other side, we're substantially farther from the property line, and we're really overlooking the driveway. I don't think it's as much of a concern.

Yeah, that would be great if that being taken into consideration. Then my other question is, we know builder's remedies is really hard for the city, for the commissioners to reject or disapprove. HOWEVER, WE DO WANT TO ENCOURAGE COMMUNICATIONS, DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE NEIGHBORS AND THE BUILDERS AND BETWEEN THE CITY AND THE BUILDERS AND ALL OF US COMMISSIONERS. SO HAS THERE ANY DIALOGUE OR COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE NEIGHBORS DURING THIS PROCESS?

I'LL LEAVE THAT TO THE APPLICANT.

Project is about housing and the density. So in order to provide housing for three, maybe four, there is no other option here. We did consider maybe two housing, but we just couldn't meet the density requirements. So there has not been any discussion except for one neighbor just last week. But there's been no discussion before that. And unfortunately, last week's discussion is, in my opinion, we're almost here. But it's not about two or three. I do understand that sometimes to get this kind of density and housing, you... We're probably the first of this kind in the city, and I get that. And this is why I said when there's change, there's going to be some people happy, some not. Maybe the newcomers who come there will want that kind of housing. They want the terrace. They want this kind of housing. And a lot of cities have done it. I mean, if you go to Los Altos or Los Garros, people have done it. And a lot of young people want to go there because those cities provide that housing. We don't. We don't have it. So I'm just saying that win some, lose some. I'm not saying that it's not good to talk to neighbors, but I'm saying that there is no way to satisfy everybody. So my mission here and my goal here is to create housing for the young people who want to come to Saratoga, the entry-level homes, and it will be high density. I'm sure there'll be other projects of a different kind, but new kind. So I'm open to talking to people. I think Mark and I have talked about this. We're trying to address it, but I think besides screening, there's just not much we can do.

Thank you. Actually, I don't have further questions, but I just want to make a last comment. So this type of a project, as you said, is very new to our neighborhood, and the impact is huge. And the communications that we want to encourage is not about not increasing more housing, but it is more about avoid confusions, misperceptions, mistrust between the builders and neighbors. Hopefully that will actually help the project. That's all from me.

Thank you. Okay. Vice Chair, may I ask the planning commissioners to ensure that their cell phones are further away from the microphones? It provides a lot of feedback. Thank you.

Okay. Any other further questions from the commission? Okay. Then I'm going to open the public comment period, and I'll ask for public comment. And I'm going to read the names. Should I start with the remote? Okay. We'll start with the in-person ones. Thank you. And you'll please excuse me for mispronouncing names this evening. I'm going to try and do my best at reading these and pronouncing them. But the first one that I have out there is Shanisha Ramakarishwan.

Sandita.

Can I go later? No, I've got your, would you like to speak? Can I go later?

We just do it in the order.

We just do it in the order received. It looks like it's a little less order.

I was hoping to go last.

Would you like to speak tonight?

She wants to speak later. But I don't think we, it's up to you, the chair.

Okay. I'll put you last then. Okay. The next one I have is Kalar.

Good evening. Thanks for the opportunity to share my comments. So I just have like four summary comments. I submitted my detailed comments to the Planning Commission. As I was listening to today's presentation, something came up. You don't have to answer the question right now. Maybe after I finish my comments. So before Saratoga adopted its housing element, there was this three-month window during which this project and a few other projects probably came in. So my question is, if any new project now comes and gets submitted to the city of Saratoga, would it have the same leeway as any of the projects that got into those three-month window? Or will they be restricted by the city's usual code? So that's a question you can answer that later on. I'm just going to dive straight into it. So I read the staff report, and the staff report acknowledges the inconsistencies and conflicts with the city planning policies, but cites the builder's remedy as the primary reason why the city cannot deny the project. So my question is, does builder's remedy give a carte blanche to any project? And the follow-on comments are, builder's remedy, although there's a term, phrase bandied around, I don't think a lot of us clearly understand the scope of it. So it'll help, actually, when you do the formal reporting after all the comments are done, to clearly explain and identify the statutory basis upon which the city is concluding, making conclusion one way or the other. The next one is about objective standards we talked about. To distinguish between the objective standards from the city and the city's own standards and which one gets preempted because of the builder's remedy and which one still can be enforceable. So that was the second question. The third one is in terms of any objections or objective conditions Have all measures been taken in terms of mitigating the impact? And that's a question too. And the last one is I'd like the commission to independently evaluate each of the required findings in addition to the reports that have already been done before taking a final resolution on the project and for the record clearly explain the evidence and the law supporting the decision basically. So there's a lot of non-clarity around it. I know a lot of people are talking about housing elements, this and that. So clearly it will help a lot, not just for this project, but for the future for everybody to know what decision was made based on what finding and kind of clearly list it for the benefit of the city and everybody else. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, the next speaker is going to be Ram

Good evening, Commissioners.

My name is Ram Jagadishan. I live next door to the site at 14490 Oak Place. I have submitted detailed written comments, so tonight I would like to focus on one central point. I am not asking the Commission to oppose housing or reject builders' remedy projects. I am simply asking, before making the findings required by law, You ensure that the administrative record contains the evidence needed to support those findings. This project presents an unusual combination of circumstances. It proposes three three-story homes over 41 feet tall plus an ADU on a very small site with zero foot setbacks between newly created lots, construction adjacent to a mature valley oak, and a request for the recently enacted AB 130 CEQA exemptions. Because of this combination of unique features, I believe this project deserves careful, project-specific consideration based on the evidence in the administrative record. My written comments identify three questions regarding AB 130 exemption. The most significant, in my attachment A in the written, most significant is that the staff report acknowledges that the project is not consistent with the general plan designation, while simultaneously concluding that the project satisfies all conditions of AB 130, which include general plan consistency. The record contains no legal analysis explaining how the deemed consistent provision in Builder's Remedy Statute applies to the separate requirement contained in AB 130. My comments also raise questions about the biological evidence supporting the habitat determination, which appears to rely primarily on a single afternoon field visit and discusses only three species brought up in my previous comments without discussing any other protected species for which the site could be habitat. I also raised the earthquake fault criterion, where applicant appears to say that the project would comply in the future rather than explaining why the criterion is satisfied today. Before approving the tentative map, the Commission must also make specific findings under Government Code section 66474. Some of the technical evidence supporting those findings appear to be deferred to future building permit review. I respectfully ask that the Commission distinguish between what has already been evaluated and what remains for future review before making those findings. I also respectfully request that the Santa Clara County Fire Department provide a brief written explanation of the fire protection analysis supporting its recommendation, including determination regarding aerial fire apparatus access. Accordingly, I respectfully request that the Commission not approve the requested AB 130 CEQA exemption or the tentative map unless and until the administrative record demonstrates that the required statutory findings and eligibility criteria are supported by substantial evidence. Thank you for your time and your careful consideration.

Thank you. All right.

Let's see.

The next one is Terry Singjev.

Good evening, commissioners. I am here as over a 25-year resident of Orchard Road, and my children would walk to school up Orchard Road and down Park Place. So I'm very familiar with traffic and parking on those streets, as well as Park Place. Oak Place, I find... It has a lot of parking from the villas of Saratoga over by the napkin ring, narrowing the street. So there's one sidewalk, but it's not quite contiguous. I'm going to call where the Builders' Remedy housing is going up the east side of Oak Place. On the west side, there is an asphalt parking sidewalk. And then you must cross the street. you have to cross Park Place. And Park Place is a Y intersection, and they're quite wide, two lanes. I've seen cars going to the right, on the right side and turning left, and I've seen cars approaching the Y and turning to the left. It's not very clear. I would like to see some sidewalks, painted sidewalks there. because there really is done. It's a quite wide intersection. So where do you walk when a car is traveling up Park Place and Oak Place? You know, it presents itself lacking distinction. Where do you walk? And with the cars coming out from the Builders' Remedy 14486 Oak Place, with a shortened frontage of, what is it, eight feet, and a shortened driveway, particularly for the front house, It's at an oblique angle, and it will be difficult to see children walking in that narrow area, particularly further down Oak Place towards, I guess, north maybe. towards Orchard Road. The street, when there's the parking there, is substantially narrowed to essentially a one-lane roadway. Two cars cannot pass, and there definitely is parking permissible on both sides of the street. So I want to remind you that children, young children, they can see. They can see. But young children lack the cognitive ability when there's differing, there's a car coming up one way, there's a car coming another way, to make the decision to cross safely. It's not possible.

Could you please conclude your remarks then?

Okay.

We're out of time. Thank you.

Please take a close eye at this. I don't think it's appropriate for pedestrian safety.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Andreas Juan Rubinix.

I'm Andre Jan Rubenets, and our home is due east of the project property. I have some major concerns about how the subdivision map act was used in conjunction with SB 330, the builder's remedy. And I find that Basically, this project is invalidated because the SMA Act is not properly used as one condition. And the Act has government code 66410 through 66499. And SB 330 does not modify any of these codes. I want to make that point clear. Now the submission was as a tentative map under the subdivision. Now tentative maps are used for parcels that are five and higher. So that was incorrect. What should have been used is a parcel map, which is four and under. So that's an incorrect submission. The parcels under the Subdivision Map Act are supposed to be independent with their own off-site services. And this is not the case here. Now, what's presented in the proposal is really a three-unit continuous townhouse. because you have common walls. These are not separate structures and does not conform to the subdivision requirements. Now, the other issue is the current zoning is R1. A townhouse-type development requires zoning RM, which is Residential Multiple Family. The site currently has R1, and even if it's divided as a subdivision to more R1 sites, these are substandard sites because they become like 2,200 square feet, which are not really reasonable building sites.

Now, the...

Well, I guess I ran out of time. Yeah, thank you very much. I did have some other issues, but I've got them documented in my letter.

Thank you so much. Okay, the next speaker, I have three, Rajkumar.

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Turiya Rajkumar. I live at 20385 Saratoga. My property is the property in the back of the applicant's property. And we are co-owners of a mature heritage oak tree. That is one of the points that I want to talk about here and put on record. This tree, I think the applicant's arborist report submissions has indicated measures to protect the tree during construction, but those are standard construction practices. I haven't seen any further indication on either reports or further clarity on how the tree will be protected post construction because we have had examples of trees that have in post-construction scenarios have kind of like lost its roots and subsequently died. So I am asking this commission to look into that before approving the tentative map. That's point number one. And then point number two, as Commissioner Lee pointed out, these are 42 feet tall houses with open terraces. And my property, along with all the adjacent properties, are single-story. And while I do appreciate the applicant, Mr. Chandani's interest in bringing more entry-level housing in Saratoga, privacy has taken a major hit. So... I would request the applicant and the architect to reconsider the open terraces as well as the height and come back with alternate proposals. Thank you.

Thank you very much. The next speaker I have is Glenn Hendricks.

Hello, my name's Glenn. I live in Saratoga. The applicant brought up an interesting thing. He says he's trying to build entry-level housing for young homeowners. I assume he means entry-level pricing for young homeowners. Is there someone who can define what the price range is for entry-level housing in Saratoga, so we know what's being discussed there. And can you find out from the applicant if they would be willing to commit that these units will be sold within that definition of entry-level pricing for young homeowners? Thank you.

Thank you. Ms. Sanjita?

Good evening. Thank you for giving me the time to speak. I'm Sangeeta Ramakrishnan. I live next door to the property under discussion. So we heard a lot of different points today. I want to mention a couple of things. I don't know if the Planning Commission or the city folks have actually visited the site. Our street is single story homes. The Saratoga Federated Church, which is a historic church, is probably going to be shorter than the building that is being proposed in this location. So the church is almost across the street from this home, diagonally across. And at 41 feet, I think this will be taller than the two-story church we have there. It's a historic building. The street has a lot of historic buildings. I don't know if that has been taken into account as the... application is being reviewed by the city. There are other Julia Morgan architected buildings in that street, including a small-sized home. I appreciate what Commissioner Lee mentioned, and it would be great if the city could work with the builder and the neighbors to arrive at a plan that provides the entry-level housing that we all agree is needed in Saratoga. So I have no objection to that. But if it could also match the characteristics of the neighborhood, that would be much better. I would encourage the city to work with the builder like they did on Chester Avenue. And I think it was a great result for the community, for the city to add more housing. So I think if we could follow that roadmap and work with the builder, that would be great. I was also very happy to hear Mr. Chandani mention that he's open to building just two homes. His concern is whether he would be able to meet the density requirements with that plan. I would encourage the city and the Planning Commission to work with the builder to see what exemptions can be given in order to consider such a proposal from him. And we are happy in the neighborhood to work with him and the city to find something that's mutually acceptable. Also, is it possible to consider lowering the height of the homes? Instead of 41 feet, can we build two-story homes? Yes, they may be smaller, but actually they may be more entry level. At the 2,000 to 3,000 square foot these homes are going to be at, we're talking about 2 to 3 million plus homes. for these homes, right? So we're looking at about maybe 2.4. I think 2,300 square foot is probably the smallest home being proposed. So we're looking at probably 2.3, 2.5. I'm not a realtor, but I believe that's the price range in Saratoga. So I think the way to bring it more to entry level, we would be happy to work with the city and the builder to do it. Other than that, I want to make sure that a lot of issues have been raised by our neighbors. So I would request the commission and the city to really make sure the administrative record shows how these decisions have been made. Today, from what we have seen so far, I don't see that in the record, but we would really appreciate it if you could see that. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you for your comments. Appreciate it. Okay. I have one from Monak. Carr.

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Mona. I've been a Hillside resident for the last 13 years. I understand that this application is being reviewed under the Builders' Remedy provisions of the Housing Accountability Act and that the city's discretion is limited. However, I believe that it is still important to acknowledge the magnitude of what is being proposed here. Excuse me. This project would replace a single home on a 6,750 square foot lot with three three-story homes and an ADU resulting in four residential units and a density of approximately 26.7 units per acre where the general plan designation is medium density residential and approximately 4.35 units per acre. The proposal also includes building over 41 feet tall in an area where the standard height is about 26 feet. Significant reductions and setbacks, as we saw in lot sizes, far below what is normally required in the R1 10,000 district. Oak Place is claiming a CEQA exemption under AB 130, but that exemption requires 75% of the site's perimeter to join urban uses. Oak Place is surrounded by a church and single-family residential homes. A church in a low-density residential neighborhood does not constitute the kind of urban context that the statute requires. contemplates. The exemption doesn't apply. Secondly, the city is approving approximately 20 builders' remedy projects totaling 672 units across multiple evacuation corridors, which is Pierce Road, Mount Eden Road, Stolgate Road, and Highway 9 here, where Oak Place is actually sits right off of, which is a critical evacuation route for the western hillsides. The city has already commissioned an evacuation study documenting that these routes are severely constrained and impacted. You cannot approve Oak Place without analyzing whether Highway 9, along with all other evacuation routes citywide, have the capacity for cumulative new demand. That's what California law and CEQA demands. Third, county fires approval letter explicitly states that it is not a substitute for formal CEQA review. Fire only checked code compliance, not evacuation capacity. I hope the commission will clearly recognize the precedent which is being set and the impact that neighbors have raised regarding privacy, parking, neighborhood character, drainage, evacuation route constraints, and wildfire safety. Staff notes that these concerns were repeatedly raised by residents during the review process. this project is liable for a full CEQA review. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for your comments. Okay, that concludes the comments that I have, comment cards here in the audience. Frances, is there anybody online who wishes to speak?

Yes, there is, Chair Germrod. First, we have Steuben. Please again.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay. I was just going to make a simple comment, which is that none of us want to kind of change the look and feel of Saratoga. We're all so compassionate towards all these builders, remedy things that are going on. I personally know... the Chandanis, so I'm of course going to support whatever I can to help them with this project. My take on it is that even if you have to push this through based on your hands being tied, is the possibility of the third story actually being a basement, a full-size basement that you can request, so therefore the height will not become so obnoxious and kind of stand out, and the residents may be a little bit more cooperative. That's all.

Thank you very much. Frances, are there other speakers?

There are. The next speaker, it just says iPhone. Please look for the prompt to speak.

Hello, my name is Meredith Houston Patrizio. I just wanted to comment on the basement comment really fast. We have a spring that runs underneath our houses in our neighborhood, and both houses on either side of us have built basements and continuously have leaking when it rains. So I don't think that that would work. But anyways, my family has lived in this neighborhood since 1988. My parents intentionally chose to make this their home because of its historical charm, distinctive architecture, and strong sense of community. Our house was built in 1912. My mother grew up in Saratoga and has always loved this neighborhood. Over the past several decades, we have been proud to live in one of Saratoga's most historically significant neighborhoods. This neighborhood is simply not old, it is historically and architecturally significant. It includes a home designated by the renowned architect Julia Morgan, whose work is recognized statewide for its craftsmanship and cultural importance. It is also home to the historical meeting place of Saratoga's Foothill Club, an important part of the city's early civic and cultural history. Additionally, actress Olivia de Havilland once lived in this neighborhood, further reflecting its longstanding significance within Saratoga's heritage. These landmarks and stories define the identity of this area and make it a unique and irreplaceable part of Saratoga. The proposed project is fundamentally inconsistent with that historical context. Introducing three large modern homes with significant height, massing, and density on a parcel of this size would permanently disrupt the established architectural rhythm and visual character of this historic neighborhood. These qualities, once altered, cannot be restored. I am deeply concerned about the impact on surrounding families. Two adjacent homes are occupied by families with young children. including one family with very young children. These children regularly use their backyards as safe places to play. The height and proximity of the proposed structures, including elevated windows, balconies, and roof decks would create direct overlooking into these private family spaces. This would significantly reduce the privacy, safety, and sense of security that these families have long relied upon. While I understand that the state housing laws, including the builder's remedy, limit local discretion, they do not eliminate the Planning Commission's responsibility to ensure that all required findings are fully supported by substantial evidence. Historic context, public safety, environmental protection, and subdivision standards remain critical responsibilities of the Commission. Before approving this project, I respectfully urge the Commission to ensure there is clear evidence that it complies with all applicable fire safety requirements, that any claimed CEQA exemption is properly supported, that mature and heritage trees are adequately protected, and that the project is compatible with the historic character of the neighborhood. Housing is important, but so is the preservation of historically significant communities. New development should respect and respond to the architectural and cultural fabric that already exists. In my view, this proposal does not meet the standard. For these reasons, I respectfully urge the Planning Commission to deny to the proposed subdivision as currently designed. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Okay, moving to the next one, we have Kiran. Please accept the prompt to speak.

Good evening. My name is Kiran Pachigola, and I've been in the Oak Place neighborhood for 15 plus years. I'll keep my comments brief and focused on the issue of fire safety. This project proposal residential structures exceeding 41 feet in height. It is my understanding that both the California Fire Code and the Santa Clara County Fire Department standards contain provisions governing aerial fire apparatus access for buildings exceeding 30 feet in height. I further understand that fire department staff have reviewed this requirement and arrived at a determination regarding this project. I respectfully request the Commission direct the fire department to provide a written explanation of its analysis and recommendation and that approval of the tentative map be withheld until such documentation has for your time and consideration.

Thank you very much for your comments.

There are no other online speakers at this time.

Okay. This concludes public comment on the continued application CPX240011. Does the applicant have any closing remarks? You have five minutes.

Well, it's going to be hard to answer all the questions, but I was expecting some of them. I think the architect has worked with the city and submitted plans, made changes earlier on. So I think the aspects of the fire marshal and some of the objections have been addressed. And again, I do understand it's a different kind of a project. But again, my point is that any change is going to be difficult. Before this application, I had a single-family application there, and there were objections for that as well. So when someone's building and other neighbors are not building, there's always objections. This time, there's going to be a little bit more objections, and I get that. But anything I hear about safety, I think we are responsible citizens. I think we're going to take all that into account when building the heritage tree. When the tree protection is required, it's observed, it's followed, and it's respected. So we're going to do that. And regarding the basement comment, when you have two homes next to each other to provide shoring on a lot like that or a basement, that's not possible. And we didn't take that into account initially. So on the terracing also, I think Mark has done an excellent job by providing, if you look at the plans and you look at the architectural elevation, I think it's done a great job of providing protection, some privacy there. And, you know, I understand that it's a terrace, you know, why do we need terrace? But when you are looking on a positive side in the residents in their home, they need some outlet. They need to go to have a balcony or a terrace. Balconies would be worse. So we decided to build terrace with a lot of privacy there. for people, and again, like I said, we have an elevator there for the convenience of, because of three level. Now, considering the two level versus three level, the moment you go two level, it's not going to be entry level. I heard someone say two to three million. If I went two level, it would be probably at four million, by the way this place is going. So, I think that's the only way to provide the entry-level housing is the density. And we've gone through those calculations, and that's where we have resulted right now. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. This concludes public comment on the... Continued application from May 13, 2026, CPX 24-0011. Okay, are there any members of the Commission that would like to discuss this item?

There was one comment about the SMA Act. Specifically, two numbers, 66410 and 66499. I didn't fully catch what it implied, but it seemed to indicate some conflict between two separate set of laws. Can somebody comment on that? Maybe legal?

I believe that was a subdivision map act question.

I'm not familiar with that, but it...

Gabe, I don't know if you're on the call.

Can you all hear me?

Yes.

Sure. So the commenter noted the Subdivision Map Act, which is the state law that governs how we divide up land into individual lots to build houses on. Staff has reviewed this project previously. meets the standards of the map act and of saratoga's subdivision ordinance except to the extent that it is allowed not to by the builder's remedy right the builder's remedy says that for very there are narrow reasons that we can say our standards, that is not a reason we can say no to it. But as to the state subdivision map act, which the commenter referred to, this project, as far as I know and as far as I can tell, this project is consistent with the requirements of the state act.

Thank you. I have a couple more questions. Go ahead. So when I look at the the email that the city sends to us from Francis. I see a bunch of attachments. There's an AB 130 exemption request attachment. It seems fairly thorough. It goes line by line through all the different exemptions. But I've heard several commentators here, I mean, several comments here say that they don't have that level of detail. So I wanted to understand, do we publish all of this? Is all of this accessible to everybody here? Because that itself would answer a bunch of questions that I heard from, or comments I heard today.

It's a part of the public agenda. Yes, it's an attachment with it. Got it. The same exemption that you have.

So they all have the same list?

Yeah, it's publicly available with the whole packet.

For example, one of the comments there is whether this is in a protected area or something. And there's a map attached to it. So it's very clear to me that, you know, it meets the standard to not be in SQL. One last question I have is, there was a comment about a tree, a common tree between two properties, and some concerns about whether the tree would be impacted. What can we do to make sure that the tree is protected?

Yeah, so that's referring to the large tree oak tree, I believe, kind of in the back left corner of the property. That tree is being retained. The whole project has been looked at, reviewed, and approved by the city arborist. Standard tree protection measures will be required as conditions of approval. Those will need to be in place for the duration of all construction activities. Additionally, the applicant will have to pay a tree protection bond. So all of that is our standard an arborist condition of approval for tree protection whenever there's, not just for this project, not just for a Builders' Remedy project, but any development project where there are construction activities occurring in the vicinity of a protected tree. Cool. Thank you.

Yes. Further questions? Yeah.

I just wanted to kind of, there was a question raised by one of the early speakers, and I know, Kyle, you did Explain what a builder's remedy projects are but if you don't mind just going over it one more time So then everybody hears it again because there are limitations as to what we as Commission can do and what city staff is Able to do under the builders remedy because that was raised even though after you had said it and also The other question that came up was if any new projects come in now can anybody else come under SB? 330 so if you could please share that information, too

Yeah, so currently the city does have a housing element that's substantially compliant with the state, with the state HCD. So any new Builder's Remedy projects would not be able to be submitted currently. They're correct that all the Builder's Remedies that we had were submitted within that roughly three-month period after the deadline for having a housing element, but before we had ours compliant. For the Builder's Remedy description, I think our attorney might be

little bit better position to give a good overview of that okay can we go ahead no can we hear from you okay sure sure so I'm gonna give a very quick version of the builders remedy just because here we're And if the commission is interested in a workshop or a study session on the builder's remedy and other applicable housing laws, that's something we could talk about. But for now, the idea is that during the period between our deadline for having a compliance housing element and the time when we actually did have a compliant housing element, there was a gap of several months. And during that time, the city can say no to a project that is inconsistent with our zoning and our general plan. That's sort of what the zoning and general plan mean. If you're not consistent with that, we can say no to the project. For a builder's remedy project, that reason for saying no is taken away. So we're not allowed to say no And we're not allowed to impose conditions that would have the effect of saying no by making the project invisible. So what that means is that these applications or builders remedy applications, including this one, have one or more aspect of the project and we're not allowed to say no on that basis. That's the fundamental process of the builder's remedy.

Thank you, Gabe. So just to clarify, nobody else at this point can come in with another new SB 330 project, a builder's remedy project, because we have the housing element in place.

SB 330 in general has other applications beyond just builder's remedy projects, so let's just focus and say no one else during this housing element cycle can come in with a builder's remedy application.

Okay, thank you. I didn't realize there was more than just builder's remedy under SB 330.

This is the main context in which we talk about, so that makes sense.

Thank you. That's all for me right now.

Ping, did you have some questions?

Thank you for asking. Yes, I do. I heard about the parking, the problem with parking, because each unit only has one parking spot. And we have four units. And we know most of the families will have two cars. and we know it's near church and that road, how do we solve that parking problem? Maybe Kyle, you know, I mean, in the proposal?

Unfortunately, going back to Housing Accountability Act and the Builder's Remedy, we aren't able to impose conditions that would limit the project in terms of requiring more on-site parking. Did you have other specific questions or ideas in mind?

Yeah, I just wanted the builder to think about all these factors. I mean, we're talking about the impact to the neighborhood, and this is another major one as well. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, what's the solution? we can't discuss it. I mean, we passed that stage. But just very, very challenging, I think, for the neighborhood.

Ping, did you have any other points that you'd like to discuss?

No.

Thank you.

Is there any other commissioners that want to...

Okay, then I have some questions. Back to the legal basis for the AD130 applicability, there was mention made about it should have been a parcel map, not a tentative map, that there was no urban context. is not applicable or not corrected, and so it would not apply. I know this was kind of addressed, but could I hear it one more time affirmatively that the statute does apply? AB 130? The AB 130. I mean, you've reviewed this carefully, and the points made by our audience that it doesn't apply, do you find them valid or invalid? Gabe, I think it's for you.

Oh, sorry. I'd like to give my answer, but I'd first like to hear from Kyle about the sort of factual interpretation of the surrounding uses, and then I can apply the law to that.

Perfect. Go ahead, Kyle.

Yeah, so regarding the surrounding uses, the site is bounded on three sides by parcels that are zoned single-family that are all developed with single-family uses. Then on the north side, that's Oak Place, and there's basically a T intersection there with, I think, Park. And then on either side of the street from there, there's the church on one side, kind of catty-cornered to it, and then the other catty-corner, of course, more single-family residences. So that's the... factual setting of it, again, primarily single-family residential uses.

And the church. And so, Gabe, could you comment, does that context, is that the urban context, and do these laws apply?

Yes, so that sort of Sequel exception. I'll just read part of it out from the statute. Urban use means any current or previous residential or commercial development public institution or combination of these uses. So any residential counts as an urban use. The church is in effect a public institution. It's very clearly that meets the standard.

Thank you. Okay. Then we heard from the audience that they wanted us to carefully go through the findings. So I'm going to go through them to make sure that we're diligent in this process. So with respect to the findings for the subdivision map, We have to find that the proposed map is not consistent with the general plan. However, because of builder remedy, even if we were to find that, such an inconsistency may not be the basis for disapproving the tentative map. So by definition, the proposed resolution does not make the negative finding. I'm going to ask you this a number of times. Gabe, have I left out any objective standard that could be used that I'm not aware of that would make it appropriate to find a negative finding here?

Not as to this finding.

Okay.

I'll just remind you, all of these findings are these confusing negative findings. We would make it in order to deny it, but we can't make it.

Right. And I'm just, again, just in the spirit of being diligent. Yes. The second one is that the designer improvements of the proposed subdivision are not consistent with the general plan, but again, such inconsistency may not be used for the basis of disapproving the tentative map. That's correct, and you know of no objective standard that we could use to do so.

Correct.

Thank you. The third finding we have to make is that the site would not be physically suitable for the type of development and this has to do with the topography grade slope and This is a flat lot. So by definition staff has found this to be physically suitable. That's correct Okay And then it's not physically suitable for the fourth one We'd have to make the site is not physically suitable for the proposed density of the development and again that's the case here, that it is physically suitable for it. That's correct? Yes. Yeah, so we can't make that as a finding. So then the fifth one, the design of the subdivision is likely to cause substantial environmental damage or sustainability or avoidable injury to fish or wildlife. In this particular one, you referenced in your staff report that there were species that were checked on. One of the speakers asked whether that was a complete list and whether that had been a diligent study or not.

So that biological assessment was done as part of providing evidence for the AB130 criteria. One of the criteria for that is that the site is not habitat for protected species. So this finding is kind of separate from the AB130 criteria. Likely to cause substantial environmental damage, avoid injuring fish or wildlife habitat. You know, that biological assessment can be thought of as evidence for this as well. Even without that, we would make this finding just based off the fact that it is a already developed infill lot. And so generally, and without any designated protected habitat or anything of that nature. Okay. Thank you.

And I would just support... Kyle's observation that the evidence regarding the habitat finding in the exemption report also supports not making this finding.

Thank you, Gabe. The sixth thing we have to do is we have to find that the design of the subdivision would likely cause serious health or safety problems. And it was noted that it's been reviewed by the fire department, the planning department, public works, and engineering. I note that during our conversation, though, a number of speakers had questioned whether there was adequate fire protection and access available, given the three stories. And I guess I'd like to... here affirmatively that you think that the there's plenty of ways to get people out of those structures should there be a fire in it and should there be a problem also is there enough aerial access for the roofs could you please comment on that and tell us your yes so the project has been reviewed and plan checked by Santa Clara County Fire Department who we do have representatives of here so if you'd like to

talk more in depth about their review and their standards. You could pose that question to them as well.

Yeah, I guess I would like to make sure that they believe they have adequate ladder and aerial access and that they're comfortable that they can defend this property and protect the neighborhood.

Yeah, Chair, Commissioner, staff, thank you. Matt McKenna, Senior Deputy Fire Marshal for the Santa Clara County Fire Department. I oversee our land development work group. We have reviewed this project and made sure that it complied with the required code for aerial access, which is not applicable, and for ground ladder access to the emergency press windows.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that assurance. Okay, the seventh finding we have today. has to do with the conflict of easements acquired by the public, and the records from the planning department show that there were no easements in that area. That's correct, Kyle? Oh, yeah, none that would be affected. Yeah, okay, thank you. And likewise, it would not be subject to a contract per the Williamson Act.

Correct, there's no Williamson Act contract on it, no farmland.

Yeah, and then lastly, that the sanitary waste from the site is acceptable and the...

Correct, yeah, and the project has obtained a will serve letter from the sanitary district.

Okay. So with that, I think that we've covered in detail as requested what we need to do with respect to the site. With respect to the specific design review of this development, The first thing we had to do is we had to make sure that it adhered to the natural contours. We've already addressed that. That the protected trees shall be preserved. We've addressed that with respect to the one in the back. For the two that are being removed, one of the questions that I had was, in the statement it was that they're going to be replaced. My question is, given the constraints on the lot size, how are you going to replace trees on that property without impeding fire access?

Yeah, so the condition to replace protected trees that are removed, basically the preference is for trees to be replanted on the site. In some cases... such as potentially with this project, that might not be feasible. The requirement, and this is how City Arborist reviews and applies it, and this is how it exists in the tree protection ordinance. The requirement is that the trees be replanted technically anywhere in the city, satisfies the condition for replanting. So applicants who are removing trees can replant those trees on other properties in the city, other properties that they own, They can work out agreements with other property owners. And then in lieu of that, kind of as the last resort, the last preference, applicants can also pay into the city's tree fund in lieu of replanting. So the condition for effectively replanting if protected trees are being removed can be met in other ways. Okay. Thank you.

The third thing we have to do is talk about the height of the structure, location, and how that affects the privacy of the adjoining properties. We've heard a bunch from the neighbors how this is a concern. I note that the applicant said that they were willing to raise the patio. I guess I got the balcony. No, it's a patio screening from the current 42 to 42 to 72 inches. Did I hear that correctly? Yes.

Specifically, I think in the east side where it's closer to the property line, there's a much larger setback on the west side. So the screening would be on the roof deck. There's already a fence proposed.

Yeah, the deck, whatever. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So that would be a condition of approval then? What? Oh, okay. I've just been advised we can't make that a condition. So go ahead.

It's just because you talk about the roof. If there was no roof deck, would the building be shorter or less than 41?

The overall max height of the building would still be 41, 42 feet, depending on heights are different. The max height is the topmost point of the roof. And so the roof decks are lower than that topmost point. So yeah, the overall height number wouldn't change if the roof decks were taken out.

Thank you.

Okay, then the next one was the fourth thing we have to do is the architectural elements are in scale with the neighborhood, but we can't enforce that because of the inconsistency. is prohibited by the state law, and that's correct?

Correct.

Okay. And then the landscape, we've talked about the setback area is insufficient in the front, but again, we can't do it because of the state law?

Correct.

Okay. And the development of the site does not unreasonably impair the ability of adjoining properties to utilize solar energy, but again, We had one comment from the neighbor that they felt their solar power was going to be reduced by this. Is the applicant willing to do anything in that regard? Oh, I can't ask. Okay. Okay. Then that... The other thing is that the design of the structure has to be consistent with the residential design handbook. But because, again, the state law, we can't apply that. And the hillside laws or the hillside lots, this is not one. So that is not going to be applicable. With that, I feel I have gone through each of the points that the Planning Commission is able to go forward on. And I hope I've explained or with the help of the people that are here explained why the background behind each of the points on which we need to make a choice tonight. So are there any further questions that any member of the Planning Commission would like to discuss? Okay. Hearing that, would someone like to make a motion?

I'd like to move the application, CPX24-0011, as presented by staff.

I second.

Second. I have a motion and a second. Would you please take a roll call vote?

Commissioner Hassan? Aye. Commissioner Chittoram? Aye. Commissioner Couser? Yes. Commissioner Lee? Yes.

But very reluctantly, this is a very, very hard decision for our commissioners to make with such a huge impact to the neighborhood. But we can make all the findings that staff provided us.

Chair Germerod?

I, too, find it unfortunate that this is going forward, but it's a personal opinion. I can make all the findings, and therefore I approve the project.

The motion passes unanimously with the quorum we have in place.

Thank you. Okay. Given the time, we will take a five-minute break, and we will start again. Actually, seven-minute break. We'll start again at quarter of nine on that clock in the room. I'm going to give everybody in the meeting room a one minute notice that we're going to reconvene.

We'll reconvene in another minute.

Okay, I'm going to reconvene our meeting and the next agenda item is application MISC 23-0011 and it's the Pierce Road parcel. May I please have the staff report?

Thank you. I'll go ahead and share my screen. Give me a second.

OK.

The 72.45 acre vacant project site is located on Pierce Road near the intersection of Saratoga Heights Drive and the HR zoning district. The average slope of the site is 47%. The site is bounded to the north by single family homes, to the east by Pierce Road and single family homes, TO SOUTH BY HIGHWAY 9 AND TO THE WEST BY THE MOUNTAIN WINERY. THERE ARE 682 TREES LOCATED IN THE DEVELOPMENT AREA, INCLUDING COAST LIVE OAKS, VALLEY OAKS, CALIFORNIA BAY LAUREL, AND CALIFORNIA BUCKEYE. THE PROJECT WAS SUBMITTED PURSUANT TO THE BILL'S REMEDY PROVISIONS OF THE HOUSING ACCOUNTABILITY ACT, OR HAA. A stated purpose of the HIA is to significantly increase the approval and construction of new housing for all economic segments of California's communities by meaningfully and effectively curbing the capability of local governments to deny, reduce the density for, for rendering feasible proposed housing development projects. The bill's remedy is a provision of the AJA as applicable to qualifying housing developments when a preliminary application was submitted before Saratoga adopted a substantially compliant housing element. The applicant submitted a preliminary application for housing development on July 20, 2023, after the state's deadline for housing element adoption and before Saratoga adopted a compliant housing element. Additionally, the project is subject to the city code as it stood at the time of the preliminary application. The HAA limits Saratoga's ability to deny or conditionally approve a qualified housing development project. In addition, the bill's remedy provision of the Housing Accountability Act prohibits Saratoga from applying subjective standards to the project or relying on inconsistencies with zoning and general plan standards as a basis for disproving it. The HAA retains Saratoga's authority to enforce some objective development standards, conditions, and policies by imposing conditions of approval if the conditions are based on objective standards. In effect, the time application was filed and do not render the project infeasible require a reduction in proposed density. Saratoga does not have authority to impose conditions based on subjective standards. This is the project site plan. The project will include subdividing the site, develop 25 single-family homes, and related improvements, including new internal streets, landscaping, utilities, and bioretention and drainage features. Project development will be primarily concentrated in the northern 18.38-acre portion of the site, while the southern 54.086-acre portion is now proposed for development, except for the construction of an emergency access road which connects the terminus of the on-site street named Mason-States Way with Pierce Road. Lots 1 through 8 are located near the entrance to the project and adjacent to Pierce Road. Dwelling units proposed for these lots will be two stories and be 2,375 square feet in floor area. Dwelling units in lots 1 through 4 and 8 BE AFFORDABLE UNITS AVAILABLE TO LOWER INCOME HOUSEHOLDS. DWELLING UNITS ON LOTS 9 THROUGH 25 WILL BE BOTH TWO AND THREE STORIES WITH RANGE AND SIZE FROM 5,284 SQUARE FEET TO 7,091 SQUARE FEET. THE PROJECT WOULD INCLUDE THE REMOVAL OF 367 TREES. SITE IS ZONED HR. SINGLE FAMILY DWELLINGS ARE PERMITTED USE IN THE DISTRICT. SUBJECT TO THE DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS OF THE HILLSIDE RESIDENTIAL ATTORNEY DISTRICT. THE PROJECT IS NOT CONSISTENT WITH MANY OF THE HR DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS, INCLUDING MINIMUM LOT SIZE, SETBACKS, LOWABLE FLOOR AREA, AND MAXIMUM BUILDING HEIGHT. TABLE TWO OF THE STAFF REPORT PROVIDES GREATER DETAIL OF HOW EACH LOT AND THE DEVELOPMENT FOR EACH LOT DOES AND DOES NOT CONFORM TO THE DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS. THE 25 SINGAPHEMI HOMES WILL BE A COMBINATION OF BOTH TWO AND THREE STORY STRUCTURES FEATURING A CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN. MY PRESENTATION WILL NOT INCLUDE DETAILS OF EACH OF THE HOMES, BUT INSTEAD WILL INCLUDE THE ELEVATION OF THREE TO PROVIDE A GENERAL IMPRESSION OF THE ARCHITECTURAL STYLE. THESE ARE THE ELEVATIONS FOR THE HOME PROPOSED FOR LOT ONE. HOMES ON LOT ONE THROUGH EIGHT, WHICH ARE ADJACENT TO PIERCE ROAD, WILL HAVE THE SAME ARCHITECTURAL STYLE. IT WILL BE TWO STORIES IN HEIGHT, APPROXIMATELY 24 FEET TALL. HOMES ON LOTS ONE THROUGH FOUR AND EIGHT, AS I MENTIONED EARLIER, WILL BE AFFORDABLE TO BELOW MARKET RATE HOUSEHOLDS. EXTERIOR MATERIALS WILL FEATURE FOUR NEUTRAL EXTERIOR COLORS, INCLUDING OFF WHITE AND GRAY COLOR STUCCO, GRAY BOARD AND BAT SIDING, BROWN DOORS AND ACCENT COLORS, TAN COLOR, STONE VENEER, AND BROWN ASPHALT SINGLE ROOFING. These are the elevations for lot 13. The three-story structure will feature a contemporary architectural style, a height of 29 feet 10 inches, and a floor area of 6,396 square feet. Exterior materials will include stone veneer, poly-ash siding, cement plaster, and metal trim. These are the elevations for lot number 24. The three-story building will include a four-car garage, height of 42 feet 9 inches, and a floor area of 6,469 square feet. Exterior materials will include stone veneer, stucco, and metal trim. This is the streetscape as viewed from Pierce Road at the intersection of Mason and States Way. As illustrated, four homes on lots 1 through 3, 7, and 8 will be visible from Pierce Road The remaining homes screen from off-site views by topography and existing and proposed trees. These are the landscape plans for the project. Landscaping will include new trees, including western redbud and coast live oak, and drought-resistant shrubs. Additional landscaping will also be located adjacent to all access driveways and interior roads. The perimeters of potential areas will be landscaped with shrubs and ground covers to soften their appearance. Each of the homes will be similarly landscaped, which offer a consistent appearance which is complementary to the streetscape of the development. Environmental Impact Report, or EIR, was prepared for the project. EIR is an informational document It discloses for the public and decision-makers the potential significant environmental effects of a project. An EIR also identifies ways to minimize those potential effects, including identifying a reasonable range of alternatives that would reduce or avoid them. An EIR can also conclude that a project would have one or more impacts that cannot be reduced to below a level of significance. EIRs contain information on a variety of topics, including potential effects on noise, aesthetics, rare or endangered plants, animals, and habitats such as wetlands, effects on residents from noise, air pollution, and wildlife risk that could be exacerbated by a proposed project. EIRs provide information, inform decision makers, and educate the public. THE DRAFT EIR WAS PUBLISHED FOR A 45-DAY REVIEW PERIOD ON DECEMBER 29 OF LAST YEAR. DURING THE REVIEW PERIOD, THE CITY RECEIVED WRITTEN COMMENTS FROM PUBLIC AGENCIES AND MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC. THE CITY AND THE SEQUEL CONSULTANT PREPARED WRITTEN RESPONSES TO COMMENTS RECEIVED, WHICH INCLUDED MINOR EDITS TO THE DRAFT EIR. RESPONSES TO THE COMMENTS, THE MINOR EDITS, AND THE MITIGATION, MONITORING, AND REPORTING PROGRAM MAKE UP THE FINAL EIR. FINAL EIR WAS POSTED ONLINE ON JUNE 20TH OF THIS YEAR. THE DRAFT EIR CONCLUDED THE PROJECT COULD RESULT IN POTENTIALLY SIGNIFICANT EFFECTS ON THE ENVIRONMENT AND THAT THROUGH THE INFORMATION OF MITIGATION MEASURES THAT ARE INCORPORATED INTO THE PROJECT, ITS POTENTIAL IMPACTS WILL BE REDUCED TO A LESS THAN SIGNIFICANT LEVEL. THESE MITIGATION MEASURES ARE LISTED ON THIS AND THE FOLLOWING SLIDE. included in the Mitigation, Monitoring, and Reporting Program, which is attached to the staff report. This document includes information on how and when the mitigation measures will be implemented. As previously mentioned, an EIR is an informational document that discloses for the public and decision makers the potential significant environmental effects of a project. An EIR also identifies ways to minimize the potential effects including identifying a range of mitigation measures that reduce or avoid them. An EIR can also conclude that a project would have one or more impacts that cannot be reduced to below a level of significance. These are referred to as significant and unavoidable impacts. The proposed project was determined to have significant impacts related to emergency response and evacuation, emergency access, wildland fires, conflict with applicable land use plans, and transportation or VMT. The benefits of the project, which constitute the specific economic, legal, social, technological, and other considerations, and justify the project areas are as follows. The project would provide residential uses including 20% ON-SITE AFFORDABLE UNITS ON A SITE THAT DOES NOT CURRENTLY CONTAIN ANY HOUSING, WHICH WILL PROVIDE HOUSING AND HELP TO MEET THE CITY'S REGIONAL HOUSING ASSESSMENT ARENA. THE PROJECT APPLICANT WILL DEDICATE A PUBLIC TRAIL THAT PROVIDES A COMMUNITY BENEFIT. THE TRAIL WILL HELP THE CITY MEET GOAL OSC-5 IN THE GENERAL PLAN, WHICH PROVIDES A CITY SYSTEM OF HIKING, BICYCLING AND HORSEBACK RIDING TRAILS THAT SHALL BE PROVIDED WITHIN THE COMMUNITY, WHICH INCLUDES REGION TRAIL LINKAGES WITH CITY, COUNTY, STATE, AND REGIONAL PARKS AND OTHER PUBLICLY OWNED OPEN SPACE LANDS. PROPOSED PROJECT WOULD PROVIDE WELL-DESIGNED OWNERSHIP RESIDENTIAL SINGLE FAMILY HOMES THAT ADD DIVERSITY TO SARA DUKER'S OWNERSHIP HOUSING SUPPLY MEETS A VARIETY OF RESIDENTIAL NEEDS. The proposed project is a cohesive development consisting of high quality contemporary urban design that respects and relates well to its surroundings and preserves sensitive features. Urban design that respects and relates well to its surroundings and preserves sensitive features of the project site. The proposed project would preserve the city's natural beauty and small town residential character and the project WHICH ALIGN WITH CALIFORNIA'S GOALS FOR HOUSING PRODUCTION. TO PROVE THE PROJECT, THE CITY MUST ADOPT THE STATEMENT OF OVERRIDING CONSIDERATIONS WITH SPECIFIC FINDINGS REGARDING ECONOMIC, LEGAL, SOCIAL, TECHNOLOGICAL, OR OTHER CONSIDERATIONS THAT MAKE THE MITIGATIONS ALTERNATIVES INFEASIBLE. IF FOUND TO BE INFEASIBLE, THE CITY MUST ADOPT FINDING THAT THE ECONOMIC, LEGAL, social, technological, or other benefits to the project outweigh the significant effects on the environment. These findings, as shown on the screen, have been provided in your packet. Seven project objectives are listed here and on the next slide. This list of project objectives is also included in the staff report. The purpose of a project objective is to clearly define the purpose and need for the project so that the Planning Commission can evaluate alternatives, assess impacts, and make an informed decision on the project. CECA requires that an EIR evaluate a reasonable range of alternatives to a proposed project to assess their potential environmental impacts. The EIR included the analysis of three project alternatives. These included alternative one, no product alternative with the site remaining undeveloped, ALTERNATIVE 2, THE CONSISTENCY WITH LAND USE AND ZONING ALTERNATIVE, WHICH REDUCED THE NUMBER OF LOTS FROM 25 TO 9. ALTERNATIVE 3, REPAIRING PRESERVATION ALTERNATIVE. THIS ALTERNATIVE WOULD PRESERVE THE REPAIRING AREA, WHICH REDUCED THE NUMBER OF LOTS FROM 25 TO 21. HOWEVER, IT WAS FOUND THAT THE ALTERNATIVES DO NOT MEET THE PROJECT OBJECTIVES AND WERE DETERMINED TO NOT BE FEASIBLE. Therefore, the proposed project is the one under consideration by the Planning Commission this evening. These are the design review findings the Commission must make to approve the project. These findings serve as the basis for the Planning Commission's decision on the project. The Commission is to determine if the project meets these findings. Details not related to these findings are effectively beyond the scope of the Commission's review. WHERE THERE WOULD BE AN ISSUE WITH MAKING A PARTICULAR FINDING, WITHOUT ALTERING A DESIGN ELEMENT OF THE PROJECT TO MEET THIS FINDING, WHICH COULD HAVE THE RESULT OF AFFECTING THE PROJECT'S FEASIBILITY, THE HAA LIMITS THE CITY FROM USING THIS FINDING TO DENY THE PROJECT'S PROPOSED CONDITIONS. THE PROJECT IS NOT CONSISTENT WITH FINDINGS NUMBER 1, 4, 6, AND 7. HOWEVER, UNDER THE BUILDER'S REMEDY PROVISIONS OF THE HAA, SUCH INCONSISTENCY MAY NOT BE THE BASIS FOR DENYING THE DESIGN VIEW FOR THIS PROJECT. THEREFORE, THE PROJECT RESOLUTION RECOMMENDS APPROVAL. MORE DETAILS ON EACH OF THE FINDINGS ARE INCLUDED IN THE STAFF REPORT. THE CITY CODE PROVIDES THAT THE PLANNING COMMISSION SHALL NOT APPROVE ANY TENTATIVE MAP IF THE COMMISSION MAKES ANY OF THESE NINE TENTATIVE MAP FINDINGS. THE PROJECT IS NOT CONSISTENT WITH FINDINGS NUMBER ONE, TWO, AND FOUR. However, on the bill's remedy provision of the HAA, such inconsistency may not be the basis for disapproving the tentative map. The proposed resolution, therefore, does not make this negative finding. The staff report includes evidence concerning each of these findings, and that evidence supports approval of the tentative map. Staff recommends that the Planning Commission adopt Resolution No. 26-015, making the appropriate CEQA findings, adopting a statement of overriding situation, certifying the final EIR, and adopting a mitigation, monitoring, and reporting program for the project. In addition, stop resolution number 26-016 to conditionally approve an application for design and view intended map to subdivide a 72.45-acre parcel in 25 lots and construct 25 single-family dwellings from Masana Estates MISC 23-0011, and SUB 26-0002, located on Pierce Road, APN 503-46005. We have a number of staff in the audience tonight that helped with this project, and I can introduce them. They can also help answer any questions that Christian may have. From First Carbon, the project consultant, we have Jason Brandman, and Jana Waligorski. Mexican, which is the project traffic engineer, Gary Black, attending remotely. From the fire department, we have Brad Fox and Matthew McKenna. From Fier and Piers, city traffic engineers, we have Franziska Church and Dan Rubens. And Gabe Ross, who you saw earlier from the city attorney's office, to conclude from the report. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Are there any commission members that have questions for the staff?

I have one. Go ahead. If I understood right, all the BMR housing are in one cluster. Is that, I thought they were to be spread out, or is that not a state requirement?

There's no requirement to have them spread out.

Okay. But they have to be, because for some reason I have this vague thing that there is something about, you know, you can't have segregated. housing kind of BMR. Clarify that for me?

Yes. So we adopted an inclusionary ordinance after this project was submitted, and the inclusionary ordinance speaks to that.

OK. That's what I'm remembering. I was like, I remember something, but I didn't. Thank you for that clarification, Sydney.

Any other questions for staff?

Not for staff, but maybe for the fire department.

So there have been a number of projects on Pierce Road in the last year or two, and they all seem to be adding to traffic on Pierce Road. The projects individually themselves don't seem to have an impact, but cumulatively they have an impact. So I want to know if there's any long-term mitigation planned by the fire department, given the... Significant new housing coming up on Pierce Road.

Senior Deputy Fire Marshal Matt McKenna, thanks to the staff. The cumulative effect of these projects isn't something that we analyze. Unfortunately not.

Does anybody analyze that?

Good evening. I'm Daniel Rubens with Ferron Piers Transportation Consultants. We've worked with the city to do two specific transportation studies related to evacuation. About a year ago, we did an evacuation estimates on the evacuation routes themselves. So looking at your entire hillside evacuating, what is the demand at that time? About 6,000 vehicles evacuating basically from the hillside to STATE ROUTE 85, OUR KEY FINDINGS THERE, THE FOCUS BEING ON YOUR EACH EVACUATION ROUTE, LIKE PIERCE ROAD, BIG BASIN, SARATOGA, ALL WOULD BE AT CAPACITY FOR SOME PERIOD OF TIME WHILE YOU EVACUATE. MORE RECENTLY, AS A PART OF A SECOND STUDY, WE LOOKED AT EVACUATION TIME ESTIMATES. SO WE SHIFTED FROM LOOKING AT JUST the capacity from a vehicle standpoint to evacuation time estimates. In that study, we did look at different evacuation scenarios. A larger population evacuating hillside and part of the flat area. Again, evacuating from the west to the east. And we indicated it could take several hours to evacuate today. And as you add additional development for the hillside, that increment, so including this development, was about 15 minutes. of additional evacuation time, and then you include everything else in the city, and that could take more than an hour of additional time for evacuation.

Can I add to that?

Yeah.

Just one quick question. When you said several hours, is it two hours or 15 hours? Like what does that?

Yeah, so it was four and a half, three and a half hours for existing conditions, and it would go up to about five hours. under the full evacuation, and that included Mountain Winery, and that's a large reason why the evacuation time would take so long.

I just want to add to what Daniel was saying. My name is Francisca Church. I'm with Fair and Peers and worked with Daniel on the evacuation studies. So one thing I wanted to point out relative to the evacuation times, we talk about three, four, five hours. That's for the entire population to evacuate, so from person one to the last person. On average, each individual experience an evacuation time around 20, 30, up to 40 minutes, depending on the scenario and where you're located within the hillside. The important part I really wanted to point out is that these studies are being used to help inform what the city can do to reduce the evacuation times. What are some operational things that could be done? to make evacuations more efficient? What are some capacity elements that the city can implement to have more capacity? But also informational, like what education can the city do to help inform the residents of how they can make the evacuations quicker and more smooth?

Can I do a follow-up? So with these studies that you're presenting to the city, the city is going to look at to see if they have to increase the roadside?

Yeah. As I mentioned, there's three different basic mitigation strategies that you look at for evacuation time. Generally speaking, you're not looking to build new roads at a larger scale. And when you do, if you have opportunities, you might want to look at if a parcel has a secondary access point, if it only has one. But large scale, the city is not looking to build new roads, but rather look at innovative approaches where you could potentially use shoulders or bike lanes, more so down in the main city part, but use those during emergency scenarios to add additional capacity.

Because this also has a secondary evacuation, but doesn't everything end up on Pierce anyway?

Yes, they all end up on Pierce and then down into the city and distribute. So those two studies, but I think the important part to recognize there, is that the city is being proactive doing these studies to help understand what are measures the city could implement in the future to help negate the evacuation times.

And one last question. When you do these studies, are you taking into consideration the projects that may be coming up, or you're just looking at what is there right now on the books? Because there are other projects, right?

Yeah. All right. Daniel would know all the specifics of the different scenarios that we evaluated, but we looked at several scenarios, including existing conditions today, as well as build out essentially of the general plan, so the housing element. and even cumulative development outside of the city's jurisdictions that could potentially add vehicles to the scenario. So we looked at a wide range of different scenarios for that.

Thank you. Yep.

Ping, did you have any questions or any other commissioner have questions for the staff?

Yes, I do. Okay. Chris, can you put up the slide? with a list of significant and unavoidable impacts. Next, the one that has all the fire, I think this one, yes. So it says the following proposed project impact would remain significant here. And I saw your different alternatives. Even if we go down to nine houses, they won't help to reduce the risk. And can you help to explain that?

Yeah, if I want to have the secret consultant to answer that question.

I think that is alternative two.

Hi, Jana Waligorski with First Carbon Solutions. So with our alternatives, we considered a reduced density version, which had nine homes. And that still would not significantly, it would not reduce that significant environmental impact because of the capacity of Pierce Road as it stands. It is already above the volume capacity ratio of one. per the traffic studies. So even the addition of a single road would put us over the threshold of adding an additional vehicle to that road that's already above volume to capacity. That's the threshold we use. So the only alternative that could eliminate that significant unavoidable impact is zero homes.

Thank you. And then a follow-up question to Chris. Let's say regardless if this project is a builder's remedy, any proposal for building a new home in that area for if it's not builder's remedy, will that not be approved because of this high fire risk?

No, we would approve individual homes that came in for design review. Would be subject to an EIR.

But not like a group of homes?

Yeah, a group of homes that are subject to environmental review then are reviewed this way. But individual homes are exempt.

I'm gonna I'm gonna jump in and say that We can't make judgments about future applications that we don't have in front of us and we'll apply Because they wouldn't be builders remedy products we would apply our zoning in general plan and all of the city standards and we would do sequel review at

And since you're here, maybe I have this question for you. You're inviting this question. So I think our general plan is to keep the community safe and to avoid the fire danger. Can Builder's Dramedy or the HAA or AB30, 130, even override like fire safety for the community?

As I was explaining earlier, what the builder's remedy does is shrink the reasons that we can say no. And it takes away the possibility of saying no on the grounds that it's inconsistent with their zoning or inconsistent might have policies that would be a reason for saying no to this project that might be related to safety, to fire safety. I honestly don't know whether it does because I've been focused on this project. There is a remaining reason for saying no, aside from the general plan that still exists, even for Builders Remember Project, I am not aware of any that applies to this project, and definitely not in the specific way that you asked about, Commissioner Lee. But that is, so to answer your question, I think the answer to your question is we theoretically could do that, but with our code and this project, there is nothing that would let us use that.

Got you. Thank you.

Any other questions from the commissioners? Okay. Thank you for the staff report. Hearing no further questions, the applicant now has ten minutes for opening remarks.

Good evening. My name is Bill Hirschman, and I am the managing partner of Chateau Masson, who is the applicant and the owner of the Mount Winery. We submitted this application in June of 2023, which is just short of three years ago. And we have diligently pursued this ever since. I'd like to start by thanking the staff who has worked on this APPLICATION FOR THREE YEARS WITH US NOW, AND WE GREATLY APPRECIATE THEIR INPUT THROUGHOUT THIS PROCESS AND THE PROFESSIONAL APPROACH THAT THEY'VE TAKEN. WE HAVE RELIED ON THEIR RECOMMENDATIONS THROUGHOUT. WE HAVE WORKED VERY CAREFULLY WITH THEM, AND WHEN I SAY THE STAFF, I MEAN ALL THE STAFF, WHICH INCLUDES COUNTY FIRE AS WELL. THIS HAS BEEN A LONG PROCESS, AND HERE WE ARE THIS EVENING. THIS IS A BUILDER'S REMEDY PROJECT. As you're aware, the builder remedy laws have certain things that one can do and one can't do. But it is a builder's remedy project. I personally developed in this area, Saratoga and the surrounding, for over 40 years. And I can assure you, as I stand here today, I've never submitted a project that has had the degree of design elements that we've built into this. We have designed this thing to death. My consultants are all here this evening. We've brought everybody here to answer any and all questions you might have. And I won't spell them out by name. I'll let them introduce themselves if the opportunity comes up. But what we have here tonight are our architect, two of our fire consultants. We have our civil engineer. We have my land use attorney. Barron Pierce has already stepped up. They are not our consultant, but they had an integral part of some of the evacuation questions that you're asking. It's my understanding that the traffic engineer is here as well. Our fire consultant, who is with Wildland Resource Management, is here this evening as well, who prepared the wildfire protection plan that you see in the EIR and see in front of you. I'm pointing that out only because she's here to answer any of the questions that you are starting to bring up. It's a complex question, and it's a complex answer. And we started from the very beginning with the understanding that this was going to be a question that we were going to be asked. And how do we best design our project to address all the questions that you're starting to ask? And we've done that. We have done that, and we feel quite comfortable IN RESPONDING TO ANY AND ALL OF YOUR QUESTIONS. THERE'S BEEN A FEW RESPONSES ALREADY, BUT WE CAN TAKE THAT TO A WHOLE OTHER LEVEL IF YOU DESIRE, AND THEY'RE HERE TO ANSWER. WE HAVE A LIMITED AMOUNT OF TIME. THERE IS NO WAY WE CAN EXPLAIN THIS WHOLE PROJECT TO YOU. IF YOU WERE ABLE TO GET THROUGH THAT EIR, CONGRATULATIONS. THAT IS A VERY, VERY COMPLICATED DOCUMENT, VERY THOROUGH. I'LL QUESTION WHETHER YOU GOT THROUGH ALL OF IT. because even I have trouble getting through it, but you can see by what's been done. What does that mean? It's very thorough. It's very, very thorough. And we have touched upon all the elements that's required in a CCNR, or excuse me, an EIR, but at the same time addressed what we felt were the very important design elements that can respond to the kind of questions that you're asking. I want to point out a couple of things that kind of get passed over. This is a 75-acre parcel that we're requesting of the project. We're developing, we're leaving open about 54 or untouched, 54 acres of that. There's a lot of discussion about trees and about open space and that kind of stuff. But bear in mind that a large portion, the majority of this part, we are not developing. It's being left undeveloped. Important part when we start talking about things like trees, start talking about other, we could have come in with a much different design than what we came in with. We feel quite strongly that this design that we're bringing to you, this project, fits within the community. And we're quite proud of it, to be honest with you. We think we've come not with just a builder's remedy project. It is, but it fits in the community. It's designed to fit into the community, and we went to great efforts to do that. The affordable housing, let me just point out that the model that we used for the units that will be the affordable housing, we have built previously in Los Gatos. These are very nice houses. I won't share with you what those for sale market units sold for, but they were substantial. My point being, they're very nice units. They aren't substandard low income units by any means. My office sits in part of the development that we did that has included in that affordable housing. And it's a really great experience. It's a nice situation. And again, these are houses that we have built in the past and are quite proud of the designs of that. I took notes so I wouldn't forget things. I'm not going to explain the entire project. I think Chris has done an excellent job of giving you the highlights of that project. And again, for us to try to add much more to that, I will run out of time here in four minutes. And we won't be able to do that, but we would welcome any questions that you might have to address any and all questions that you have. Again, our entire design team is here this evening. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Does any commission member have questions of the applicant now? Otherwise, we'll wait until after their closing statement. Okay. Oh, go ahead, Ping.

Yes, a question for Bill. Yeah, as we just discussed, the fire risk is significant and unavoidable. And just from your proposal, if you can summarize the mitigations that you have worked WITH THE CITY?

I'M GOING TO ANSWER IN A VERY BRIEF MANNER, BUT THEN I'M GOING TO DEFER TO OUR FIRE CONSULTANT WHO IS MUCH MORE, CAROL RICE, WHO IS MUCH MORE ON TOP OF THE WHOLE PROGRAM THAT WE PUT TOGETHER THAN I AM. BUT I THINK I WANT TO POINT OUT THAT THIS STARTED with conversations three years ago with Santa Clara County Fire. We sat down with them and said, if we're going to do this project, how do we best look at this? And we had extensive meetings with them to decide what was the best approach from a fire analysis, and that's before these evacuation reports were even, Farron Pierce had even done their evacuation reports. And so we started very early in the game to analyze what, was the best approach to here. I will point out, and again, I'm getting a little out of my lane, so I'll be careful here. But the evacuation is, and Chris pointed out, the significant impacts are based on one car being an additional car impacting the evacuation. There's no denying that. You build a house, there's going to be a car, OK? or a potential car, no matter what it is. And that's what creates the significant impact. What we've approached is how do you best mitigate that? And Carol is going to speak to that. But there's many, many, many things you can do to minimize that impact. Farron Pierce touched upon that a little bit. And their efforts are I BELIEVE, I DON'T WANT TO PUT WORDS IN THEIR MOUTH, BUT I BELIEVE THAT'S THEIR APPROACH TO HOW YOU MITIGATE SOME OF THESE IMPACTS AS WELL. THERE'S THINGS THAT CAN BE DONE, AND THEY TOUCHED ON THAT TOO. I WANT TO ALSO POINT OUT THAT THE IMPACT THAT WE HAVE IS 54 SECONDS, WHETHER THE REPORTS It's in the EIR. It's in the reports. The impact that this project has on the evacuation is 54 seconds. Now, I would suggest that's not a very long time. Is it an impact? Yes. But are there things that can be done to offset that impact? Carol will speak to that here in a moment. If we have the time and can respond to that, I'd like to have her take it from there. Did I answer your question?

Yeah, I think it is really important for us to understand the incremental impact to the evacuation and the fire emergency response.

Sure. And I'm Carol Rice with YLN Resource Management. Thank you for allowing me to share with you. some of the ways that we've made this new community a fire safe and fire resilient community. In fact, I need to start off with, by the time when the project is over, we will be able to say that every one of the structures and every one of the homeowners could apply for the INSURANCE INSTITUTE FOR BUILDING AND HOME SAFETY, WILDFIRE PREPARED HOME PROGRAM. SO EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE HOMEOWNERS COULD APPLY FOR THIS, WHICH IS HIGHLY REGARDED. SO THAT'S A LEVEL OF DESIGN THAT WE WANTED TO END UP WITH. By looking all of their criteria, we would. So how did we do that? We first of all made the area ignition resistant. And being ignition resistant is really a matter of fuels. and in the form of both vegetation as well as structures. So the building themselves are ignition resistant due to the excellent California fire code, building codes and fire codes. So that they are... They will be resistant to any ignition should a fire come through. Now, they would also be less resistant to have ignitions because of the vegetative fuel that is managed around them. Every one of the structure will have 100 feet of defensible space, and all of the areas outside of 100 feet will be in what we call a fuel modification zone. whereby it's everything that you do for a defensible space but not mowing the grass. But none of those places that have fuel modification have to have trees cut down. It's really a matter of removing the shrubs underneath and mowing the grass and making sure that the limbs of the trees are up there. So we've got an ignition-resistant landscape. on the entire area. But we also, for the development, of course, there's excellent roads, very wide roads, suitable for access, and that there's an additional emergency access from Mountain Winery down to the site. It's not an evacuation, but access. And, of course, water supply has improved with an 8-inch water main into the site. Oh, I want to go back to the fuel management. So we are going to set up these regulations or standards for them. How could they be maintained over time? You know, so a homeowner association is going to be there, and they are going to have in their CCNRs that these kinds of actions will take place, and the there will be a third-party certifier to inspect it and then send a letter that says, yes, in fact, they are compliant every year. So it's not as though you're going to start off with great conditions and then it'll be eroded over time. So that's the physical part of it, but there's another community side in that we are suggesting and would be promoting the creation of a National Fire Protection Association, Firewise Community. And that is a situation where they have to take action every year, at least one annual meeting, and develop an action plan that they would take care of. So that's a banding to coming together. And part of that is an informed community about evacuation. They would be asked to develop an evacuation plan and practice an evacuation plan. So in the end, you'd have a community that is well informed and very able to evacuate smoothly. And speaking of evacuation, there is a commitment to... enhance notification and detection and signage so that everybody can have that opportunity to get out smoothly. And the one thing to comment about the evacuation is that if the area around your evacuation route is safe, in other words, the fires aren't very, the flames aren't very long, and these flames would be managed to a two-foot flame length or less in this area, then you're really just stuck in traffic. So yes, you're going slowly, but there is not a danger as you evacuate. So I want to make that a fairly clear distinction. All right. I'm sure that I have overlooked a few things, and I suspect that as questions come up, I'll be able to answer those specific things as well. Thank you for this opportunity.

Thank you. Anything further? I just have one. So it sounds like you're going to build the buildings to the standard that they have to be evacuated. You're not going to build them to the standard where people can shelter in place. Is that correct?

Well, that's an individual decision for the homeowner. And they probably could. But again, that's a decision for the homeowner. they would be very ignition resistant and would be the area around it. And the fact that the whole neighborhood is safe really makes you feel safer if you chose to do that, but I wouldn't suggest you do that.

Well, there are communities where the fire department recommendation is and the community recommendation is you shelter in place. You do not get out on the road. Are you going to build the buildings to that standard so that that recommendation will be made?

I can't say that there's going to be a recommendation of that, but the buildings are to that standard.

Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Hearing no further questions for the commission, I'd like to open public comment on this application, MISC 23-0011. Okay. And I have three speaker cards from people here in the room. I'll call them. Glenn Hendricks, you're up first.

My name's Glenn. I live here in Saratoga. I did read the entire EIR, and it was not too complex for me to understand. The EAR identifies 13 findings that even with mitigation will still pose impacts that remain significant and unavoidable. Many of these relate to health and safety of residents of the proposed project and surrounding communities. This leaves the Planning Commission with the decision on the statement of overriding considerations. The document defines the required legal framework for you to make a decision. A1. You cannot make this finding because there are 13 proposed project findings that still have, even with mitigation, impact would remain significant and unavoidable. A2, you cannot make this finding because the changes are within the City of Saratoga's jurisdiction. A3, the only aspect of this section you could possibly make is that there is a specific legal consideration, and that consideration is that the City will not be sued by rejecting this project. B, the only aspect of this section you could possibly make is that the public agency finds a specific legal, overriding legal benefit, and that benefit, again, is that the city will not be sued for rejecting the project. It then goes on further in the section to talk about the rationale for adopting the statements for overriding consideration. A, it's not relevant. The city now has an approved housing plan that shows a path being able to meet our required RHNA numbers. This proposed project is not required to meet our RHNA numbers. B, dedicating a public trail might be very nice, but it does not address any of the findings related to the 13 findings that will still have a significant and unavoidable impact. This is not even an attempt to balance out the negative impacts. C, D, and E, these items are nice word salad statements, but they're not relevant to outweighing the negatives of this proposed project. There's one other element of this section. It states the city adopts, even though the Planning Commission legally has the authority to adopt the Statement of Overriding Consideration, You should let the City Council make this determination. There are so many social, political, legal, budgetary, safety considerations and precedent setting that you should put this decision into their hands. After all, they've been elected by the residents and will have to deal with the fallout from this decision. Here's one other comment to highlight about how poorly this EIR was written and reviewed. The document states that the Saratoga Fire Protection District's 1928 antique Model A engine is listed as an additional reserve engine that could be used for wildland fire response. If they couldn't even get this basic fact correct, how can we trust anything else that's in the EIR? Please do not adopt this EIR. If the applicant wants, they can appeal your decision to the City Council. And remember, the only benefit of accepting this proposed project is the City doesn't get sued. There are no other findings that are relevant. If you find it necessary to approve this, please put conditions of approval in for construction traffic. Don't let any construction delivery vehicles queue up on Pierce Road or the surrounding community, and make sure there's a shuttle program for workers so that we're not having an influx of hundreds of pickup trucks of people that are working on the project. Thank you very much.

Okay.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Richard Larson.

I'm just very frustrated. The neighborhood is not just those 25 new houses. The neighborhood is that whole area, and we all share Pierce Road. It is great that they have techniques to minimize risk to those houses. That doesn't help the rest of the neighborhood. It doesn't help us and our cars. driving down Pierce Road in additional traffic. The recent fires in California have been just shocking how many cars have burned on the road trying to evacuate. The statement that Pierce is already over capacity and so there is no impact is absurd on its face. It's already over impact, so why bother analyzing it? I mean, that makes no sense. Yeah, just very frustrating. Like I said, if the only reason you're making this decision is not to be sued, that's the wrong direction. This needs to be fought for the safety of the community. I'd also point out that the last time there was a fire in Mount Eden and we had the smoke rising above our house, I drove up Mount Eden to rescue our dog. The statement was that we should shelter in place because if we did try to evacuate the neighborhood, the fire department would not be able to get their equipment in to fight the fire. That's really what's going on back there. That's the decision. Either the fire department comes back and fights the fire or people evacuate. You can't do both on Pierce Road. Thank you for the time.

Thank you for your comments. The next speaker card I have is for Mona Karr.

I'm a Hillside resident. last 13 years, and I'm asking you to deny the Emerson Estates final EIR. The final EIR admits that this project's impact on wildfire evacuation is significant and unavoidable. We just heard that it could take up to four to five hours to evacuate Pierce Road. The Paradise fires were moving at the speed of one football field every few seconds. So yes, those 53 seconds matter. That phrase itself should stop this project call. There's nothing to do with a beautiful design project getting better insurance rates. You're talking as if you're the only people evacuating. This is about current thousands of residents being evacuated safely. No, we cannot stand on peers' shoulders. Where are the shoulders on peers? There's no shoulder on peers. And no, I don't want to shelter in place and burn to death. Thank you very much. We all know that there is no fix. We all know that Pierce Road is already over capacity. The city's own June 2025 evacuation route capacity assessment found Pierce Road's volume to capacity ratio above 1.0 before this project added even a single car. Missoula State's own evacuation study confirms it makes that worse. I know Builders' Remedy ties your hands on zoning grounds, but evacuation safety is a separate legal question under CEQA. And there you still have very real discretion. That evacuation study deserves scrutiny, not deference. KLD Associates, which has done wildfire evacuation modeling for over 40 years, reviewed it and found outdated capacity standards, no accounting for shadow evacuation, and a routing assumption that sends over 1,000 fleeing vehicles to a church lot with 212 parking spaces. The city's answer was that it has discretion over its methodology. Discretion doesn't make flawed numbers accurate. Also, I'm sure that you are aware that the applicant also has the Mountain Vine Rebuilders Remedy Project with 247 units and a 81-room hotel being proposed with the county Mason Estates and Encore Estates on two unrelated landowners who happen to be neighbors. It's one owner filing separate applications on the same hillside on the same evacuation route The cumulative analysis should be treating these as connected actions by a common developer, not as isolated independent projects, each entitled to its own minor impact finding. And this isn't a 25-home decision made in isolation. Pierce Road, Mount Eden, and Tollgate are the only way out for several hundred more builders' remedy units proposed on the same hillside. In 2017, as my neighbor said during the Mount Eden fires, Officials had to actively block civilian traffic on these roads just to make them clear for fire engines. That's not a hypothetical situation. That has already happened there. The applicant says that the project has been designed to death. I just ask the commission to make sure it isn't the residents who end up living that phrase. I'm asking you to use the discretion you do have over a documented and unresolved safety impact and deny this project to alternative one, which is no project, so that we can ensure that the last car and resident can evacuate safely. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Appreciate your comments. Frances, do we have any speakers online that would like to address the commission?

Yes, we do. The first speaker is Ravik. Please accept the prompt to speak.

Great. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Good evening. Commissioners, my name is Rafiq Bawa. I live up the hill from this project. I've submitted a detailed written objection, and it's in your record tonight, and I want to focus on what matters who live on the hillside can get out alive when a fire comes. Now let me be really clear. The city attorney confirmed today at the beginning of this session that you have full legal authority to deny this project where an objective written health and safety standard is violated. I'm here to remind you that the city's own evacuation study is you to rely on it. Here's what the city's own documents tell us. First, there is one way out, Pierce Road. The proposed secondary access road loops right back onto Pierce. The city's own evacuation route capacity study has found that Pierce Road is already over capacity before a single new home is built. The EIR doesn't deny this. It admits it in its own words that the evacuation impact is significant and unavoidable. Think about what that phrase means. The city's experts are telling you we cannot fix this. Second, I've proposed real solutions in my proposal. Everything from widening Piers Road to fixing Highway 9 to the intersection to building a true second way out. The response dismissed all of this as infeasible in a single sentence. No cost study, no analysis, nothing. So commissioners, if the measures needed to make this... the project is infeasible, not that we build it anyway and hope the wind never blows. 18 months ago, we all watched Los Angeles burn. Palisades, Altadena, 31 of our fellow Californians died. Many of them were elderly people who never made it out of their homes. The roads jammed within minutes. People abandoned their cars. They ran on foot through the smoke. Those neighborhoods had more ways out than this hillside does. Here's what haunts me about these fires. None of it was a surprise. There were hearings like this one. Warnings like mine. Written comments Officials who looked at the risk and decided it was acceptable. If this project moves forward, you will be asked to formally declare on paper, in writing, that the benefits of 25 luxury homes outweighs an admitted unavoidable risk to human life. And if the wind ever comes for the hillside and Pierce Road fails, that record will be pulled, your names will be on it, this meeting, this night, this morning, it will all be read back by not lawyers, but grieving families. So tonight, you as a commission, you can say no. You can be the one that refused to gamble with their lives until the worst case was actually answered. I ask you to deny this project. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Okay, our next speaker is Subha. Please accept the prompt.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay. I was going to make the exact same points that Mona and Rafiq did. I thank them because I concur with them. I agree with them 100%. A few other points that I want to bring to your attention, that greed has its limit. The greed of this developer is... making sure that their development is safe by giving us all this background about how they're meeting all these standards. They are not at all concerned about the people that have been living there for a long, long time. I think it's very sad. And there are going to be many other impacts besides the safety, which is that there are hardly any parking spots. So I'm not sure with so many residents what's going to happen to the parking situation. And please be aware. And also the other concern was that even though that they're leaving 55 acres that are being undeveloped, given their level of greed, I am not sure if there's anything in the laws that says that they can't come back later and additional homes are there. So that's a question mark. I'm not aware what the answer is. So I leave with that. It's very sad what's going on, and I think blood will be on someone's hand at some point. Please be aware of that. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

The next hand raise is a phone number ending in 479- you can press star six to unmute.

Hello, can you, I'm hoping you can hear me, yep. My name is Daniel Fisher. We have a property adjacent and actually, I don't know if there's so much comment so much as a question. When I looked at the CEQA, I couldn't discern the actual sanitation solution. I think that there was a proposal for some type of... Oh, God, it's slipping my mind. I can't remember the exact sanitation solution. But basically, that was all I was looking for, some information as to that, if it was located in the CEQA. I looked through it. I couldn't find it, so I was hoping for some guidance as to that. That's pretty much it.

Thank you very much for your comments.

That appears to be all the speakers online.

Thank you, Francis. Okay, this concludes public comment on the Agenda item application MISC 23-0011. Does the applicant have any closing remarks? You have up to five minutes to do so.

Thank you very much. I'm going to make two remarks and then defer to our land use attorney and Carol again because to answer a couple of the questions that came up, if that would be okay. I'm going to touch upon only two here. THERE'S BEEN SOME COMMENTS RELATIVE TO PIERCE ROAD BEING THE ONLY EXIT. THAT IS NOT IN FACT THE CASE. THE SARATOGA HEIGHTS IS AN EXIT AS WELL. AND PART OF WHAT WE'RE DOING IN OUR CONDITIONS OF APPROVAL AS OUTLINED WITH SANTA CLARA COUNTY FIRE IS WE'RE MAKING SOME IMPROVEMENTS ON SARATOGA HEIGHTS TO BETTER IMPROVE THAT ACCESS AS WELL. THE NEXT THING, AND I'LL LET CAROL ADDRESS THIS, BUT I'LL JUST TOUCH UPON IT, THAT As part of the mitigation measures that we're providing in our development, it will slow the fire spread down by two hours. That's a significant number. I mean, managing what we have helps the entire community by slowing the fire spread down. I'll let her speak in more detail about that, but there are a number of things that we're doing that absolutely benefit the community. Last but not least is we are agreeing to make some fairly major improvements on Pierce Road in an area on our frontage that is currently a potential landslide issue on Pierce Road. That's all part of the mitigation measures and the conditions of approval that you have in front of you this evening. It's very difficult to touch upon all of these. There's lots of them. But again, we have all the time that we need to present these to you if needed. Let me defer to Carol just for a while. I'll defer to Brian and then to Carol.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Brian Winter, land use attorney on behalf of the applicant. Apologies, I'm going to speak rapidly given the time. I also want to thank staff for their good work and connection with this project. But to touch on what I believe the city attorney said earlier, I don't believe he said that the project could lawfully be disapproved. I believe he said the opposite. He can confirm that for himself. But there is nothing in the law that allows this project to be lawfully disapproved. And the laws, the statutes, must be looked at together. The legislature has written all of these laws. The legislature is presumed to know what it's written and what is the outcome with respect to these laws. It's important to understand also, which is very often not understood, that CEQA is not an independent source of legal authority. CEQA is actually, if you look at section 15040 of the CEQA guidelines, I'll just pick a couple of examples, CEQA is intended to be used in conjunction with the discretionary powers granted by public agencies by other laws. CEQA does not grant an agency new powers independent of the powers granted to the agency by other laws. The exercise of discretionary powers for environmental protection shall be consistent with express or implied limitations provided by other laws. Other laws include the Housing Accountability Act. The HAA establishes the only basis upon which a project can lawfully be disapproved. That is from a federal district court decision called North Pacifica. but these statutes need to be looked at together. The findings cannot be made. There is no evidence in the record, much less a preponderance of the evidence, that this project would have, as required by the HAA, a significant, direct, quantifiable, and unavoidable impact based on a written document that was in effect as of the date this application was filed and vested rights were conferred. The city attorney has already conferred that despite the three years that this project has been under process, there is no such written document, and absent such a written document, the findings cannot be made. I would respectfully request that you approve this project. Thank you.

Good afternoon. There are some questions about the evacuation, the timing, and the risk that may be posed by that. I wanted to also let you know that we did some fire behavior modeling that looked at fire growth. We used the same methodology that firefighters use all over the nation for fire containment so that this is a standard procedure. We looked at a variety of different ignition locations outside of the project as well as inside the project. and saw, as Bill said, that there was a slowing of the spread of fire as much as two hours. So the impact of this project and the area management outside of the project would actually reduce the fire spread and thus allow more people to evacuate during that time spread. It more than compensates for that 54 seconds of the additional evacuation. But more important than that, when you, again, when you have a safe environment, that extra time may not be as important. May not be as important.

Can I ask you to wrap up, please?

Okay. Risk is not the same thing as added evacuation time. So that's my point.

Thank you. Okay, this concludes public comment on the application MISC 23-0011. So are there any members of the Commission that would like to discuss this item? Go ahead.

I have a question for our attorney. A number of speakers said that there were findings that in the EIR due to which we could deny the project. Can you help us clarify that?

Sure. I think, if I'm recalling the same thing that you're recalling, Commissioner, there was a reference to the inclusion in the documents of our recent evacuation plan, which is part of what the part of what the EIR's analysis relies on and does make determinations about evacuation time. It does not create a standard. It's a study and it's a plan that hasn't been adopted, so it doesn't create a rule that we can impose. And it was only created, I believe, in 2025 after the application for not directly applicable to this project. So it does not create the sort of health and safety standard that I was referring to earlier. Despite the facts that are found in that plan and study and the facts that are in the EIR, we do not have the grounds.

Follow-up question to that. A number of speakers also said the only reason we would approve this is so the city would avoid being sued. How does that come into play?

As we've said, the law requires the city to to reject it. We don't have those allowed reasons. So the city is required to approve it. I'm not aware of any impending lawsuit That's what it is. I think to go beyond that a little bit, the statement of overriding considerations that folks have referred to that is included in the SQL findings, that's the requirement when there are significant and unavoidable impacts. To approve the project, we look at the aspects of the project that bring benefit that outweigh the impact. And there are several overriding considerations beyond the legal aspect that I was discussing that are listed in that statement of overriding considerations, that it is in the city's discretion to determine how they weigh against the impacts of the project.

Thank you.

Go ahead. A quick question. There was also a comment that we should let the City Council decide and not the Planning Commission. Can you comment on that?

The Planning Commission has full authority to make this decision. Thank you. Under our code.

But a clarifying question quickly. If the applicant can always appeal the Planning Commission's decision to the City Council, is that not correct?

If the Planning Commission were to deny the project, the applicant has the right under our code to appeal, yes.

Thank you. Any other questions? Ping, do you have any questions?

Yes. I'm still wondering, I mean, the fire danger, the risk is real. And I think the the life, the impact is real. Although we, like our attorney said, we currently don't have an objective, written objective standard, but the problem is real. I still want to understand more, why can't we solve it? I mean, what are the ways that we could mitigate it? Can that still happen?

So yeah, maybe go ahead. I'm happy to answer, or you can direct that to Steph. So I think that what the EIR shows is that the problem is real and is bigger than this project. our evacuation plan and that process which is ongoing is a way of looking at the larger problem and has as a variety of ideas for mitigating the problem on the larger basis. As to this individual project, which makes its contribution to the larger problem, there are a few mitigations that will reduce its impact but will not take it away entirely. And the mitigation The ways that could take that away entirely are sort of out of the scope of the project. There are citywide mitigations that we can't impose on this one project.

Ping, anything further?

Yeah, so basically this problem is not stoppable. at this moment when we are considering this project.

That's what the EIR tells us, yes.

Yeah. So if we don't accept the EIR, then the projects get denied. But we have to accept the EIR under SB 330? Are those two connected?

Sure. Sorry, I'm thinking through the logic. SP through 30, the builder's remedy does not give us the option of denying the project on SQL grounds. So when I say we are, and at the same time, to approve the project. So I think the way to make those work together is to sort of look at project approval and certifying the EIR as one and say that we're required to approve the whole thing. I would also note that I don't think that I have heard Any significant concerns about the adequacy of the EIR? To my notes and my memory, what I've heard are concerns about what the EIR tells us. It tells us about evacuation problems, but it does so accurately. I haven't heard that the EIR itself is inadequate.

Yes, I think all our concern is really based on, because we know there's a citywide challenge about evacuation, and it's not just this project, and somehow this project may help mitigate some of those measures if the flyer spreads or whatever. But it's wait and see. We don't know if that would be true. How is it, and I think the challenge that the certain residents who are living in the hillsides right now, I can understand what they're talking about is to get stuck there and how do you evacuate. It's a bigger problem than I think we can solve at the planning desk, I believe, with this project, I think. We have to separate those two things. I'm not sure how we can put it together. I don't know how my commissioners feel about it. But it is definitely a challenge in the hillsides about evacuation from the city's own study.

I just need to correct myself. I realize there are written comments taking issue It is our opinion that the IR is in fact adequate and the staff's recommendation to certify it as such stands.

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions. The first one is, so there's the evacuation in the event of a fire and there's the mitigation to reduce the probability that a fire would spread, right? And these two together... I mean, they're complementary to each other. I think I'm not getting my point across clearly, but there should be some way to measure these two side by side. And I don't think I fully got, like, does reducing the spread of a fire by two hours actually buy more time? and nets out positively for the region or for that area or not. I didn't get a clear understanding of that. And that would really help make the decision. So that's one part. And the second one is the fire concern is mentioned as a CEQA concern and not as a health and safety concern. That's what I understood from you. Why is that? I mean, shouldn't that be more health and safety than CEQA?

So I'm going to answer your second question. The reason we are considering it solely as a CEQA concern is because we don't have a health and safety standard, a written rule that we can apply regarding evacuation time. CEQA is the sort of

Who would that be? I don't know. They're trying to figure out who's going to talk.

One of those three over there.

Hi, Grace Karski, senior planner with Kittleson & Associates. We help do the technical evacuation analysis as part of the CEQA document. So just to confirm that I have your question correctly, you're asking how the wildfire mitigation is helping with evacuations. Do you mind just repeating your first question?

Yeah. The way I see it is there's time to evacuate in the event of a fire. And that has its own risk. We've seen in the palisades that it wasn't enough. There wasn't enough time for several people to evacuate. And that's compensated by mitigation measures that reduce the chances that a fire occurs in the first place and it slows down the spread. And I just want to know how these two interact with each other. So I'm trying to figure out, again, I'm trying to figure out if these mitigation efforts put us ahead or behind. when you look at it from a perspective of should the unthinkable actually happen?

So I'll start by saying that the evacuation analysis that we did as part of the CEQA document, the assumption is that there's no fire suppression. There's no traffic control happening. Nothing's happening to stop the spread of the fire, slow it down by fire. city or police aren't there to help navigate people during an evacuation. So that's just kind of the basis of where those travel times are coming from. I don't want to misspeak for Carol, but in terms of the mitigation, having that fuel and vegetation management to slow the fire down provides more time for people to evacuate so they are not, you know, the fire's not adjacent to the roadways. They are not driving through a fire. It is still... a distance away where people can safely evacuate into the city of Saratoga. Does that help answer the question? Or any follow-ups?

It gives me context, but doesn't give me a metric to evaluate the two side-by-side. But thank you for...

Thank you. And I don't know if it's appropriate to maybe have Carol...

Sure. To add on what Grace was saying, yes, it is exactly like she said, that the time that it, if a fire were to come to the location where you're evacuating slower, that means you have more time to evacuate and get further away from what could be an exciting circumstance when the fire arrives at your door. Yes. So if the fire...

Understand the dynamic. I'm just trying to find out how to evaluate the two side by side. There's a person raising hand.

We can't, because it's an audience, we can't really have them come up and speak. But I think what you're trying to find out is... them building that project, if it's going to help the rest? Is that what your question is? How is them building the project going to help the rest of the community in evacuation? Is that going to slow down? And if I heard right from the speakers, it's like they don't feel that's the case. It's like they only care about their own project and not the rest of the community. And so I think that's where the dilemma is, right?

So I would add that the fire spread would be coming from outside the project and through the project and into the neighboring projects so that the fire spread would pass through the project, but it will also be delayed when it gets on the other side.

And you're saying that it's going to be delayed by two hours from the time it comes through?

As much as two hours, depending on where the ignitions are.

Yeah, but it's going to be delayed two hours from the time it reaches your development to the time it exits your development.

Actually, it's two hours from the ignition to the outside of the development, again, depending on where the ignitions are.

Yeah, so it's two hours to cross the development.

A little bit more than that from a far away, but significant.

OK, thank you.

Is that the question?

Bing, did you still have your hand up? Did you want to?

I haven't, but I do have another thoughts. This project is just one of the builders from the project. And there are more on Pierce Road. So I think as a city, If we know that it's already a problem, and now this is the first . As a commissioner, I feel like we probably have obligation to advise our council about our concerns and how should we handle this project as a city.

Don't we have to handle each project on its own?

Go ahead. This is a discussion, so we should discuss. Go ahead.

I don't know if we can, like what is a task here is just this project. I don't think we can do evaluation and bring about, we know there are future projects coming all around the city, and we know that the city is working on hillside evacuation, but I think we have to stay focused on what our task at hand is, which is this project. and the EIR related to this project. I'm not sure we can get, like, if somebody wants to answer the question, I don't know, but, you know, we have Gabe online if he thinks it's something that we can even think about as we are working through this project application.

Just to add to Commissioner Lee's concern, yeah, I have a thought. I think it's... Is there a mechanism for the Planning Commission to inform the City Council that we have a lot of concerns about upcoming projects here? And while decoupling the decision on this project, there has to be some sort of strong signal given to the City Council that this is a very critical matter to pay attention to. I think that was Commissioner Lee's point.

If no one else has any further questions, I have a number of further questions. Just a quick question.

The question is that have you heard it from Santa Clara County Fire Department and was there a comment on that?

Fire Department, can you answer that question?

The question was that have you guys looked at that thing and what's your opinion on that?

We've reviewed the project and found it consistent with the fire code.

You did find it consistent? Okay. All right. Thank you.

I have a number of questions that I'd like to ask. first i wanted to so it's my understanding analysis of staff then it's my understanding that the untouched 54 acres that's not part of the actual development that there's no obligation to leave that untouched so we could have two more projects of the scope um coming forward with that 54 acres there's nothing to prevent that from happening is that correct

Well, yes. It's this project, the Village Remedy Project, which they can't file anymore because the window for that is over. So any development of that remaining area, we need to comply with city standards.

Thank you.

And then...

Another question, just in the EIR, there were a whole bunch of mitigations listed. You know, they all had bull face type. Are those part of the plans before us, or are those just, I'm a little confused about, I understand the EIR is a separate report. This development, does it incorporate all those mitigation plans that were listed in the EIR?

Yes, that's correct.

So each of those is listed as a condition of approval, or it's been incorporated?

It's not listed as a condition of approval. The mitigations are adopted as part of the project.

Thank you. Okay. And then specifically, just to address the one comment on the sewer solution, that there is a sewer. My understanding, I guess, was that it's going into the county. Okay. It's Cupertino Sanitary. Okay. So it's going through a city sanitary thing. Correct. Okay. And it's got an approved hookup, so to speak.

It's got an approved letter from them that they will accept it.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. Then back to a discussion. As a commissioner, I'm sitting here saying, okay, we've got a tentative map approval that we have to do. Item number six, I think it was, is the health and safety. And we're being told that it has to be an objective health and safety standard if we were to, you know, not accept, you know, use it as a means of rejection if that's what we so choose, but that that's precluded by statute. So with respect to the tentative map approval, that health and safety is a point, one way of saying it. I would like to check on the, if Chris, you could put up your slides on the overriding considerations. You had finding number one and number two that we had to make. And while you're doing that, I guess I'd like to ask the question, who specifically determined that the benefits overrode the risks. The wording is the city, but I want to know who the city is.

I'll take that one. As a legal matter, it is or it would be, if you adopt that, the Planning Commission making that determination. FINDINGS SETTING OUT THOSE COMPARISONS AND OUTWEIGHING OF BENEFITS AND RISKS ARE PROPOSED FINDINGS AND STAFF'S RECOMMENDED FINDINGS FOR YOU, THE PLANNING COMMISSION, TO MAKE.

NEW SPEAKER I GUESS I'D LIKE TO KNOW WHO WROTE THOSE DOWN AND WHY DO THE BENEFITS OUTWEIGH THE RISK? WHAT'S THE QUANTIFIED BENEFIT AND WHAT'S THE QUANTIFIED RISK WHERE THE BENEFIT OUTWEIGHS THE RISK?

I don't think that they're quantified or quantifiable. I think that they are policy concerns and risks that have specific numbers put to them in terms of evacuation time, so they're quantifiable in that way, but there's no way to quantify the weight that they should be given as against the benefit. That is a policy decision for the commission to make. This is our recommendation. Again, as has been pointed out, in light of the fact that the law requires approving the project.

Okay. However, we have to say that we make... Finding one and we have to as individuals of Planning Commission we have to make finding one in finding two if I is a for example if I have a Planning Commissioner do not believe I can make finding one or finding number two I Have to deny this project. Is that correct?

I I think that is correct. I would draw your attention to the last of the proposed and recommended overriding considerations concerning alignment with California's housing policy, which really stands for following the housing law, which requires approving the project.

Yes, but there's also civil law that says that I cannot approve something that's unsafe. I mean, I could also be liable for causing harm to property or persons. And now aren't we talking about which law has more impact?

I'm not aware of the law that you're referring to concerning liability.

I'm not liable for causing somebody's loss to personal property or to their person?

as a member of a planning commission. It's hard for me to rule out without having done the legal research, but I've never heard of that.

OK. Thank you. So back to our discussion. I think we've kind of got two choices here tonight. One thing we're being asked to do is to just continue on. And we'll develop solutions later. I'll speak for myself. I think this is a terrible idea. And I'm being asked, do I just let this one go because I shouldn't fight it? And we'll have to worry about developing solutions later. But we'll also have to live with consequences. later should they arise. The other thing we could do is we could just stop now, let the city council work on it if they wish, and we can wait until the solution is found. And as part of that solution, a project like this could be developed. And I'll just be very candid. My personal feeling is that is that we need to, for me as a commissioner, I believe I have to stop.

What do you mean by stop now and let the city cancel?

Like move it to another date? No, I can't make those findings.

You can't make?

Let me ask on the staff. This is really, really difficult, very, very difficult in front of commissioners. If I say I abstain, What does it mean? I mean, if all of us just feel the same way, we abstain, what does it do?

Without a majority vote in favor of the project, the approval fails.

Even if we didn't say no?

Correct, because we need the yes votes. We need four yes votes.

So what if we say that because we are not comfortable, it seems like you have told us that this is the city recommendation, but we as commissioners have to take the responsibility because we are the policyholders to do it because the law says we have to do it. But there's no clear mitigation about the fire risks and the evacuation. Because as it's been stated, 25 homes is great. It's wonderful. We're going to add more housing to Saratoga and all that and improve. And it's going to save us two hours of evacuation if it happens. But it's kind of eerie to think that, oh, OK, we're going to say yes because the law requires it, but it's just because it's a policy decision but not the right decision because we don't know what the evacuation plan looks like. So is there any way possible so that we can table it to another meeting so you can get a little bit more understanding of what that Mitigation is going to look like like you say the EIR requires them to do stuff, right?

But we don't know what that is going to be right and Don't think that there is more evacuation information that we're going to get by continuing the meeting and I don't think that I Mean, I know that the commission's and the city's legal responsibility under the Housing Accountability Act is not going to change.

So the Housing Accountability Act says that it doesn't matter even if it's human life at risk and we don't know how it's going to work, but because the law says it's going to be like this, we need to just approve it. Am I understanding that correctly? Okay.

Yes. The law does not, I think, contemplate the particular risks of any one project, but sets out the narrow circumstances in which the city may say no to a project, which don't exist here.

Yeah, because... Okay, so one of the things that we... I want to say something. Go ahead, yeah.

I think it does exist because... Yeah, speak into the microphone.

Yeah, I think it does exist.

I think it does exist and we don't have to... I mean, even though the law says that, but under this given situation that we are right now in, we are assessing the situation and we're saying that doesn't make sense. I mean, it's too much at risk. And it cannot be approved just because the law says that you have to do it. It's a general law.

I guess my question for you, Gabe, is would it be better for us if we believe, I'll speak for myself, is I believe that this is presenting, I can't make those findings. Is it better for me to abstain or vote no for the city's position?

I don't think it makes a difference for the city's position. I think that's a decision you need to make.

Thank you. Does anybody else have more to discuss?

My take here is there's two scenarios that we all operate under. There's one that's before the Palisades happened, the one after. And just objectively, I don't think the law has caught up with what happened over there. And that's just a fact. And so from my perspective, I would have been a lot more confident if I had an easy way to objectively conclude that the mitigation done actually helped. Because I think they're all related. And more data there would really help make a decision. But at this point, it feels unconnected to me.

Can I ask you, Gabe, that if, I don't know if we can ask the applicant that, instead of, if we moved it, I know there's some rules about how many hearings we can have and all that stuff. Five? This is number one? This is number one? How is it number two? Okay. Okay, this is number two. So we still have three more. Would you think it would be beneficial if the applicant can come back with some more confidence for us to understand? And so we can basically move it out to another meeting and not abstain or say no or deny the project as such? Because I think what our challenge right now is the confidence level of how are we helping all the people who are living in the hillside being able to evacuate safely by adding 25 more homes. And the study already says that even one extra car is not going to help. So that is the conflict that we're living with. We want to make sure that we all understand that the housing element wants us to have more housing in Saratoga. It's wonderful somebody wants to develop in the hillsides. No doubt about the project's going to look beautiful. And you've done everything you can. But how do we live without consciousness about, yes, we approved a project, and we did not danger the lives of I don't know how many thousands of people live in the hillsides already. 25 more families who are going to join those thousands of people. That's the challenge we are sitting in. That's how I feel. I'm not sure if moving it out and getting a third hearing would help resolve that or not.

I guess I want to clear up one thing, which is the point about one car or each additional car is actually a legal point about the standard of The EIR does not, in fact, say that an additional car adds a great deal of risk. The amount of additional risk from the project that the EIR found is actually pretty small, less than a minute of evacuation time. That said, I just want to sort of clear up the sort of two different meanings of significance and risk there. That said, to your question, Commissioner, I think it's hard to understand or for me to answer whether an additional meeting would help without knowing what is the information that we would be looking for from the applicant.

That's where we need to understand. Because honestly, right now, it's going to ride on at least my consciousness if something does really happen there. It may not. We may never have a fire. Everything may be fine. But we all know, who live in Saratoga for so long, that going on piers, even coming down from Mountain Winery after a concert, it can take you a lot of time, depending on how many concert goers are coming down. So it's not just a minute. honestly, I think your project's great. It'd be beautiful, but it's just the evacuation thing. If we can get a better understanding of what does it look like, how is it going to really impact, or maybe the city has plans of improving Pierce Road. I don't know. Because there's just one, or even Saratoga Heights. How are we making it safer for the whole community at large? And not a project at a time. Because we do have other projects that are going to come up.

Yeah.

OK. I think at this point we have an option to have either somebody make a motion, or we can table it.

What I heard- We don't have to make a motion to table it. Cindy, do you want to say something?

Staff is recommending we invite the applicant back up to make a case or to explain if you have anything that you could do.

But if we open it up to public comment, we'll have to also have, if we apply, if that's making, opening the public comment, then we'll have to also apply, let other residents speak up also, correct? I just want to make sure that we understand, we open it correctly.

Is that still staff's recommendation?

So I think we should, if we want to hear from the applicant, maybe we do use another meeting. They have five.

I would agree. For us, I'm sure it would be nice to have a public hearing or a workshop or something like before this, before we make decisions, a meeting just for discussion, research, understanding. the pro and cons and the impact, and if we could even try to quantify, that will help the commissioners to make our decisions.

Okay, what would you want to do? Do we want to move it or do we want to open it back to public hearing?

Open it again. No, no, no.

What I'm saying, do we open it back tonight and let the applicant and other people in the audience speak? Or do we want to table it into another day and then let everybody else come back at that time? That's the question right now. I'm unclear if we'll get more data. Yeah, I don't know. What is Gabe's recommendation?

Again, I think if the intent or the interest is in continuing the hearing in order to gather more data, I think we need to be real specific about what is the additional data that would help make this decision.

Okay, I'll just, in the form of a discussion, what would help me make this decision is I want the six benefits quantified, at least as much as, I mean, I imagine some is subjective, but I want as much as possible those to be objective and quantified things. The mitigations that we have, I want those quantified in terms of the fact, and with respect to the The time they're talking about, 54 seconds, it's my understanding that's an average of 54 seconds. But that doesn't do anybody that's last in line keep from burning up. So I want to know how many people, I want to know what that distribution of people getting out of here is, not the average. So that would be some things that I would want to know in order for me to make a yes or no decision. Do other people have questions? insider guidance that they'd like to offer and whether or not we think we can gather that.

I don't know if we can gather that without asking the applicant. And if we're going to ask the applicant, we open it up. So we can do it as Zaheer said. We can do both. We can open it up, talk to the applicant, let everybody else speak who wants to speak again. And then we can still make that decision at the end.

Would you like to do that?

OK. You want to ask Bing?

We're reaching consensus here that we're going to continue the meeting now and open it up to the applicant and public comment again. Are you okay with that? It's pretty light there. Okay, great. We're going to do that. Okay, then I'm going to invite the applicant to come forward, and I guess we will give three minutes to...

I don't know, five minutes, ten minutes?

We'll start with five minutes and see how that works out from everybody, both yourselves and applicants. Thank you.

Three minutes for the staff.

Either way. Go ahead.

Well, I guess I'll start by asking, what are you asking me to respond to? So if you can give me some specific questions, I can do my best to respond. The questions were that you don't feel that the mitigation, if I'm understanding your comments, that you don't feel that the mitigation measures sufficiently address the concerns that you've pointed out. I don't know that we can do anything else. As I think the city attorney has pointed out, the mitigations are there already. You talked about a community benefit, and you don't know what would happen, for example, on Pierce Road. I will tell you what will happen on Pierce Road. Pierce Road is failing. And if we don't, and you can ask your city engineer as we sit here right now, Pierce Road is failing. Part of our mitigation measures are to improve Pierce Road. It's slipping off the hill. Part of what we're going to do as part of our project is improve Pierce Road. That's a multimillion-dollar improvement. which is part of what we're doing. It is in your conditions of approval. It is in your mitigation measures. It is in all the documents that are in front of you this evening. There's absolutely no additional benefit we can give you by you continuing this. The mitigation measures are there already. You're talking about 54 second delay. It's all analyzed in the hundreds of pages of reports that you have in front of you already. If you don't understand that, we have the consultants here to address that. And if that's what you're asking us to do, be happy to do that. But to suggest that the mitigation measures and the The mitigations to help solve some of the questions that you're answering are not available, although they most certainly are. Great. So if what you're asking me is how we would like to proceed, I would like you to make a decision this evening. Whether it be a denial, whether it be an approval, I obviously would appreciate an approval, but we want to move on.

So as you said, you have your consultants here who can explain the mitigation. Maybe that would be a good start to just tell us the ones that... Be more than happy to do that.

It would be helpful. I mean, we've taken many notes. We're trying to catch what you're specific. The speaker said this isn't a complicated project. Yes, it is. It's a complicated project. And so we're more than willing to address that if we can understand... more specifically what you're looking for. You raised the issue about the 54 seconds. If you'd like to know how we came to those terms, if you want to talk about specific improvements that we're doing, the benefits of us with regards to the fire spread or the fire ignitions, we've done hundreds of analysis of this. And we're touching the surface for what the underlying documents support. So, again, we have all night. If you'd like us to answer the question, we'd be more than happy to do that. So if you could be more specific, then we can bring the appropriate person up.

Great. I'll do exactly that. But let me just check with the other commissioners here. Thank you.

You should just let the speaker speak and then.

Oh, okay. Great. Okay, can I get, I'm going to need you to fill out speaker cards again.

I think we'll ask the questions after we talk.

Oh, you're going to let them speak? Yeah, I think from a procedural standpoint, we'll let members of the public speak to wish to speak, and then we'll ask our questions.

You reopened this, and he got five minutes. I should give five minutes, too. Agreed.

Thank you.

So first off, I didn't say it was a complicated project. I said it was not a complicated document. I think you guys are asking exactly the right question. The question is, who's the city that's making this decision? And right now, it's you guys and her. And the question that the city attorney keeps coming back to is that you guys are grappling with this. Here, I can't personally make these findings, but the law says I have to make these findings. And he used the word. He said, it's policy. You guys are not city policymakers. The city council is. You guys implement city policy. If in your mind, if there's a policy question issue, then you should make a motion to approve the project. Everybody vote no. And it will go to the city council. That actually doesn't cause a lawsuit. That just makes these people right here have to file an appeal. And it will be up to the policymakers of the city to make and grapple with the policy question that you guys are struggling with. That's what should happen. In terms of some of these things you want to find out, they're not going to be able to run any more studies and give you answers by these people. This question of 54 seconds, OK, fine, it's 54 seconds, whatever it is. The issue of what they're not talking about is you have a document that says Pierce Road traffic stops. That's what anything above a one means. So if traffic is stopped, how are they only adding 54 seconds? This project keeps trying to talk about their impact on an evacuation in isolation, just about their little area. Oh, here, we'll fix this little embankment problem on Pierce Road. But that doesn't talk about everything that happens on Pierce Road and how all this goes. If you look at the evacuation study documents, it says Pierce Road is screwed up. It says Big Basin Way is screwed up. It says that Saratoga Sunnyvale is all screwed up. It says Saratoga Avenue is all screwed up and Saratoga Los Gatos. Pierce is bad. But traffic is bad everywhere else in the city. It's this policy decision you guys are struggling with. You can't personally say, here, I can make these findings. But the lawyer says, Sacramento law says you have to. So I said in my earlier comments, the suggestion is Don't make policy decisions. Send it to the city council. Let them grapple with it. Don't have another meeting yourselves. Leave the city council up with three meetings if they have to have multiple meetings on this topic. Unfortunately, the way Sacramento law is written and HAA and all that other kind of stuff like that, you are being asked to make an impossible decision. This is Star Trek and the Kubiashi Maru. It's a lose-lose situation for you guys. So again, I'm suggesting go ahead, make a motion to either approve or disapprove, and then vote yes or no the other way, and force us to have to go to the city council. There's no legal lawsuit implication yet, because these guys have the opportunity to appeal to the city council. And then they're going to go ahead and make the policy decisions. That's what actually the lawyer should be recommending to you. As soon as he said the word policy and that there's a policy choice decision, he should have been saying, leave it up to the policymakers. I think some of you know what my background is. I've actually done this stuff. I've done it as a planning commissioner, and I've done it as a city council member, and I've done it as a VTA board of director. I've done policy stuff on land use and approving EIRs. You guys should stick with your bailiwick which is implementing city policy. And if you've got to deal with an open policy question, punt it to the policymakers. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm happy to answer any questions. We're just taking comments right now. Thank you very much.

I'm still happy to answer any questions later.

Great. Thank you very much. You want to speak? Go ahead.

So the applicants themselves say that Pierce Road's failure is addressed in the mitigation measures. With respect, that is not what the final EIR says. The final EIR states plainly that mitigation measure, while one reduces but does not eliminate the increase in evacuation time on Pierce Road. This is exactly why the impact is classified as significant and unavoidable, not less than significant with mitigation. Those are two different legal categories under CEQA, and the difference matters. If the mitigation actually solved this problem, then his own consultants would have written it up as less than significant. They did not. You cannot approve this project on the theory that Pierce Road is fixed while the document in front of you says in writing that it isn't. The emergency access road that he's pointing to helps fire trucks get to the site. It does nothing to add capacity to Pierce Road for everyone trying to get out. Residents of this project and every other household relying on that same corridor, those are two different problems, and only one of them has actually been addressed. I'd also like to note that this commission has now spent significant time tonight and still cannot reach consensus. That itself tells you something. When a body with this much collective land use and technical experience cannot agree that a documented significant and unavoidable life safety impact has been adequately resolved, that is not a sign to push it through. It's a sign the record isn't ready for a final decision at this level. Under the city's municipal code, a significant and unavoidable impact requires a statement of overriding considerations, and that is the council-level policy judgment weighing housing benefits against a documented risk to human life during a wildfire evacuation. That is exactly the kind of high-stakes precedent-setting trade-off the council, not the planning commission, is supposed to make. Given the division on this commission tonight and given that this project will set the template for how the city handles several hundred more units proposed on the same hillsides under the builder's remedy, I'd ask you not to force a split decision here tonight. My ask is simple. Deny this project as presented and let the council take it up with the full record. including the applicant's own admission tonight about the mitigation and the city's newer citywide evacuation data squarely in front of them. This is too consequential a decision for too many future households on that hillside to resolve on a divided vote at this table. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Is there any other speakers in the room here that wish to speak? Francis, are there any speakers online that wish to speak?

Yes, we do have one hand raised. Suman, please accept the prompt to speak.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes, I once again concur with Mona. I think that this is too crucial of a decision, and I don't think that it is appropriate to make a rash decision. Too much is at stake, and the fact that it's kind of bothering all of us means that there is some things that we need more answers to. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Francis, are there any others?

Yes, one more. Randy Taylor.

Thank you.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

I'd like to know the... Randy Taylor?

Yes. Can you see if you've unmuted yourself on your end?

We can hear him fine, Francis. We can hear you. Go ahead.

I'd like to know what the embankment improvements are on Pierce Road that they have in their EIR. And I live in Saratoga Heights, just next to the proposed development.

Okay. Thank you, Randy. Appreciate your comments.

Can I get the city... Yeah, the city to answer that for me. Or is that in the EIR? It's kind of huge.

I recommend that the project engineer can address the question. Thank you.

We have another hand up. Rafiq, please accept the prompt to speak.

hear me? Yes. Okay. Yeah, I just want to reiterate what some of the other speakers have said tonight, which is this, approving this project really does require a statement of overriding considerations and a formal declaration that the project's benefits outweigh unadmitted, unavoidable risk to human life. It's not a technical land use judgment. It is a political and moral one. And, you know, a decision to override life's answer to the voters, not delegated downward. So I agree with the decision that thought by others that this should be pushed to the city council.

Thank you. Appreciate your comments. Frances, are there any other people online that wish to speak?

There are no other hands raised.

Thank you very much. I'll then bring it back to the Commission. Yeah, I'm going to close public comment at this time on... You have questions. Right, but I'm going to close public comment on Application MIS-C23-0011, and I'll bring it back to the Commission for discussion. Questions? Go ahead.

I think I agree with the speaker, the last speaker. I think it's the protocol and more of a procedural decision that we have to make. So let's go for that.

I just have a question. Because we had asked Chris a question and he said he wanted the applicant to speak on it. So can we please know what the improvements are, the mitigation is?

Evening Amanda Lucy Burdell with Hannah Rennetti. I'm a civil engineer. We've been working with the City Public Works Department There is a portion of Pierce Road. I believe it's about 500 feet. That's currently sliding if you drive down Pierce Road From the mountain winery before you get to the s-curve in it. You could see the cracks in the road. It's a active landslide and what we would be doing is fixing that landslide so that if there is is Armageddon and the road actually slides, people will still be able to get out, right? So that is one of the benefits of the project. And it's not in the EIR. It's a condition of approval. That was a misspeak.

Great. Thank you for the clarification. Again, so we had one comment. Any other discussion amongst commission?

Yes, I have one. For me, I think the biggest concern is the significant and unavoidable impacts to the fire emergency and the evacuation. And regardless if this project is related to that or a separate city issue, that concern that I have will prevent me from approving this project. However, we also understand the state law kind of forcing, not forcing, require us to override that concern. But for me, I just could not make a certain decision based on that.

Chris, can you put up the slide which has those two findings we have to make? I think that way we have it in front of us, and then we can make the motion.

And I want to ask Gabe a point of clarification. Gabe, when we go back to the state law requires the city to approve it, was the speaker correct? The Planning Commission could... could make a motion tonight as the recommended action, the Planning Commission could not approve that resolution. But given that the city council then would be able, it could be appealed to that, that would be the city authority. So the Planning Commission actually wouldn't violate state law by voting no.

It is the city as in a single agency that is bound by state law.

Yes. OK.

Perfect. So I think that means that the answer to your question is yes, that the city council's, assuming it was appealed, that the city council's action would be the action of the city is the action of the city. As I said earlier, the Planning Commission is fully authorized by the city code and by its appointment by the city council to make all of the decisions in front of it today, make all of the findings, weigh all of the different factors against each other. That is entirely within the Planning Commission's appropriate authority.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

I understand that, Gabe. But I think it is very difficult because there is no clear policy here. We are acting as policymakers. And yes, we have the authority. But I don't see, it's not as it has been in other projects that have come to us. And maybe because this is a little bit more complex project that has come under the SB 330 or builder's remedy, that it's very grappling as to understand because of the safety concerns. And I know we've been talking about health and safety standards, which we don't have. And even if we had them, this project was with the city earlier. I cannot make the findings. And so I think I would want to just make the motion of, I move that we approve or deny

Just state it that way.

Can I just interject? So for the record, and so that the applicant knows what they're potentially appealing, can you please state the finding that you cannot make and the reason why you cannot make the finding?

That's finding two. Yeah. We don't agree with finding one. Yeah.

I don't think finding one is a problem.

This is finding one. Specific economic, legal, social, technical, or other considerations, including considerations for the provision of employment opportunities for highly trained workers, make infeasible the mitigation measures or alternatives identified in the environmental impact report.

It's the second one, right? It's the specific overriding. It's the second one that I'm having a challenge not being able to make.

Yeah, specific overriding, economic, legal, social, technical, or other benefits of the project outweigh the significant effects of the environment. For me, I would state that the, and again, this is for the commission, I would state that of the six elements that we had to approach, to look at benefits, having the, as I look at those benefits of having 20, basically, you know, 20 some odd homes on the project, a public trail, having it be consistent with the city's, you know, social environment and aesthetic environment, natural beauty, small town character. and the proposed project would align with California Goes for Housing Production. I don't find those benefits outweighing the potential loss to property and loss to human life that this project might bring.

I have a question for Gabe. So we have the recommended actions here. Number one is to adopt the resolution so we can certify the final EIR, and number two is to adopt a resolution so we can conditionally approve the development project and tentative map. In my eye, number two is not a problem. We can adopt that resolution, but it will fail because one will not be adopted, right? So I just want to, the way I would do it, I would let the city council know what the reason is to say no on adoption of one.

And then... One being the... The CEQA. The EIR?

Yes. To certify the final environmental impact. Because this overriding consideration is part of the environmental impact.

The overriding consideration is actually part of the project approval.

But it's part of the... It's coming from the CEQA, right?

Yes, but it is required for approving the project. Under CEQA, you can't approve the project without making the overriding considerations. You can certify the EIR as adequate without making the overriding considerations.

But the EIR is not adequate, right? Because it's missing. It's the evacuated. I don't think the EIR is evacuated. Maybe I'm just not understanding it.

No, we had speakers say that it had inaccurate data in it. I don't know whether that's true or not, but we had speakers say that they're trying to say that. Well, the city staff is not saying that.

That is not staff's opinion.

That's staff's opinion.

The staff believes the EIR's data is complete, and it discloses all of the impacts. We're talking about the impacts that the EIR discloses. And it is out of order. Yeah.

So Gabe, I think you probably have a good understanding of what we're trying to do here. What is the best way to word what we move or not move on? And what is the best way to provide the logic for it so that we can move this to the city council?

So I'm going to work backwards. I think that what you actually want to do or are talking about wanting to do is to deny the two recommended resolutions. And so normally, sorry, I need to talk it out.

Normally we would actually,

move the approval of the resolutions and then people vote for or against. But my sense is that there is no one who wants to move the approval of recommendations. So I think you would move to vote to deny. And that motion could state the grounds for denial. So you might say that you move. to deny the resolution, resolutions, because the Planning Commission is unable to find that the project...

It's this finding.

legal, social, technological, or other benefits of the project outweigh its significant effects on the environment.

Okay, so my motion is, and we can do both of them together, right? Because it's one application, right? Okay. So my motion is to deny the project because I am not able to find the specific overriding economic, legal, social, technological, or other benefits of the project outweigh the significant effects on the environment. Do I have a second?

Second.

I'll now take the roll. Commissioner Hassan? Aye. Commissioner Sheheran? Aye. Commissioner Couser?

Yes.

Ms. Shirley? Aye. And Chair Germerod? Aye. The motion to deny passes unanimously.

Okay. Oh. Okay. So I want to thank everybody for their help tonight. Next on the agenda is director items.

I'll stay brief. Thanks for the Work Planning Commission, members of the public being here, all the different consultants. It's been a long day and a long night. Thank you for all that. Chris, Kyle, Cindy did amazing jobs tonight. Cindy, I appreciate your leadership and mentoring of these projects with Chris and Kyle. Chris, this was the first project that came in in July of 23, and I remember... that day well, and so it's been a long haul. So thanks for all you've done, and thanks to Kyle, and thank you, Sadiq.

Okay. Thank you, Brian. Are there any commissioner items that you wish to discuss tonight?

I do.

Go ahead.

So it is hard to coming in and both are, we have to make very, very hard decisions. And I also want to remind ourselves that we do have a work plan for communication and transparency. I'd like to see if we can put that in our next meeting agenda for us just as commissioners to maybe bridge the residents, the public, with builders, with the city, and with commissioners? And how can we prepare ourselves better and make the information with the education to our residents as part of this process? Because there will be more. There will be more hard builders' remedy project coming in. Will you all agree?

Thank you.

For a commissioner item, I'll just say that I, as you know from the past months, is working on the fire standards and health and safety, and continuing to work on that. And just since they're here, appreciate the help of the Santa Clara County Fire in doing so it's clear that if we have good solid objective standards that it'll make some of these decisions a bit easier for us it won't solve all the problems but it will will help them appreciate your support and help in doing so um and if there's no other commissioner items we will adjourn the meeting at 11 0 5 or 5 yes actually i do have a question

No, you're the chair. You set the agenda. We will put it on the agenda.

Thank you.

Thanks for staying with us, Payne. Much appreciated. I know it's late. Good night, everyone.

Good night. Thanks for Gabe as well. Sorry this was late, but thanks for everything you did tonight. Yes, Gabe, thank you so much. Yeah, really valuable to have you part of this.

Thank you, Gabe. Yeah, thank you.