Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Call the regular planning commission meeting of Tuesday, 02/18/2025 to order, and we'll ask the clerk to call. Roll, please.

Good evening, planning commissioners. Chair Ruddin?

Present. Vice chair Lightfoot?

Here.

Commissioner Klein? Commissioner Burkus? Here. Commissioner Banta? Here. Commissioner Vermont? Here. Bill Wilkerson?

Here.

Abba Quora. Thank you. Everyone, please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, and I will ask Vice Chair Lightfoot to please lead us in our salute to the flag.

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

We will now move on with regular business starting with communications. At this time, I will ask director Morris if there is any communications or announcements for this evening's meeting.

We do not have any supplemental communications. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. We will now move on to the approval of this evening's agenda. Do I have a motion and then a second to approve the agenda?

So move.

Motion from Commissioner Klein.

Second.

Second from Commissioner Beaumont. May we have a roll call vote, please?

Commissioner Klein?

Yes.

Commissioner Baucus?

Yes. Sorry.

Novanta? Yes. Commissioner Vermont? Yes. Commissioner Bergerson?

Yes.

Vice Chair Lightfoot? Yes. Chair Ruddin? Yes. Great. Thank you.

The next item is business from the floor.

This portion of the agenda is available for the public to address the Planning Commission on any issue that is not on the agenda. There will be a limit of three minutes per speaker. I welcome anyone who wishes to address the Commission regarding a topic or issue that is not on the agenda this evening to please approach the podium. I don't want you to come up here. Three minutes will start.

Hello, commission. We're looking to address the issues with food vendors. We're all licensed local food vendors in the community here. We're looking to see what we can do to have a place to go as far as the local parks go and not have to pay the $250 fee every time we do an event there. We already pay county fees, licensing permits, health permits, safe food handlers, seller certificates, commissaries.

We're paying left and right, and we're just trying to bring something to community community here that's wanted, and we're looking for a place to be without having to keep paying all this money out. We're all just trying to survive like everybody else, and the the amount of money we're spending out to do this is putting a lot of our friends and ourselves either out of business or close to out of business. So we're trying to see what we can do to remedy that and have a place for us to actually go for doing these events without being charged at $2.50 every time we have an event. That's that's one of our our biggest concerns right now. Also, as far as trying to set up maybe doing a a once or twice a a week vendor night where we can have several vendors get together in one location, that's that's basically what we're trying to figure out right now and trying to see what we can do about getting more of the community involved as far as us actually being able to bring more of our goods to the community and stay involved at all local local events.

Events.

Great. Thank you.

Well,

for the food vendors, just because we're up against such a battle. Every time we think that it's okay to be somewhere, county says yes, city says no. Again, with the fees, it's anytime we wanna be somewhere. So the city of Vacaville says, yes. Come in. Pay your business license. Come be a part of but we're not gonna provide anywhere legally that you can set up. And I know that you guys all see the tents all over town. They're there, and we see them every night, every night, and that's really disheartening for the rest of us. And it's not about wanting them to even be kicked out, but I'm gonna give an example.

There's a local taco truck here in town, probably the best one in Vacaville gets the most reviews. If you're part of Vacaville Foodies, you've probably eaten at Schuless, but we're very good friends. And they went to a park. They set up legally, and the police came and told them they needed to move, that a resident nearby complained that a food truck was there. Twenty minutes later, an illegal food truck popped up, and they were there all night long.

The police never came and did anything to do that. So we're just looking for some help. We want some help of a safe street that we can go. Lots of cities have food truck parks where on certain nights, they block off roads, small roads, nothing that's gonna, you know, cause major traffic in Vacaville, but I'm sure we can find a street that's not being utilized. But it's just a safe place the community can go once or twice a night. We're not looking for every day. But just so you know, we've already done the groundwork. We've gone to businesses. We've been willing to pay rent places. Business owners say no.

All of us are licensed. So on top of all those fees, he said, we pay insurance up to 2 to 4,000,000 per event. Our insurance is willing to put them on our coverage, and they still say no. They just reject us. And the ones who do let us in want a thousand dollars a month. As food truck vendors, we also have to pay a commissary. Even though we have a food truck on wheels, we pay for a licensed kitchen. 100 to a thousand dollars to a kitchen that doesn't even get used just so that we can sign a paper to say we have one. So just we're bringing up an issue that you guys may not even know exists. We only know it exists because we live it. Thank you.

I also own a food truck. Wanted to bring up one of the things she did touch on is people don't realize when we say a thousand dollars, it's a thousand dollar a month for our commissaries and up. That's not including everything else that we have to buy in, you know, propane, in our supplies, and things like that. So by the time we pay and everybody has their handout for we've had Travis call us and ask us, can you guys come out? But they want sometimes 10 to 15 to 20% of our take.

All the schools are asking for 10 to 15 of our take, and then we have to pay for parks and go to go places. We just wanna do a community thing where we're not going broke. If I sell a hotdog for $12 or a meal for 15, I'm making 80¢ by the time I've paid my fees, my licensing, my commissary fees for the month, my insurances for the month, and we have all these these food vendors that are coming from different towns like Fairfield's really cracking down and Woodlands cracking down. And I don't know if any of you are out in the evening, but there a lot are coming here. And so that's kind of the point that we wanted to make was that what do we do as the people they're they don't have handwashing stations.

We do everything licensed. We do everything that we have to do in order to make it healthy for our community, and yet we we can't afford to go places. My husband and I did we did creek walk, and we didn't even do all the events. We paid $18 to be there. We probably made back what we paid. And so and we're just we're just trying to make a living. You know? We're a community. We wanna do things, and we do do things for the community. When you guys have asked us when officer Bowman passed and the firefighter also, we definitely all of us chipped in.

Everybody wanted to donate towards them. We we donated off our trucks, whatever we we made on top of paying fees to be where we were at. So we just kinda wanna know, is there any way you guys can help us out as vendors to be able to have somewhere to go that is safe? And that's another thing. I don't know if you guys heard about the vendor that got shot in the head down in Vallejo. So we wanna go somewhere we're safe so that people, you know, the police do drive by and say, hey. How are you guys doing? And just check on us and bring the bring the community together. That's basically what I'm trying to pull around out here. Thank you for hearing us. Thank you.

As it's not an agenda item, we can't really speak on it, but I would definitely recommend reach out to counsel as well.

Okay.

Can I just

ask if Mr? Klein?

Thank you very much, Chair Ruddin. Director Morris, is there anything that we can

Apparently, you got three minutes too.

In part From the presentation we've received, just I don't want to be, know, have a tenure to what we just heard.

Thank you, Commissioner Klein. We are working on bringing something to counsel for their discussion and consideration. I don't know that there's a date exactly for it yet, but it's something that staff is actively working on.

Thank you very much.

Great, thank you. Moving on to our next, now is time for the consent calendar. We have one item on consent, which are the meetings from the 01/21/2025 meeting. Does anyone from the Commission or the public wish to pull the consent item for discussion? Do I have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar?

So moved. I'll second.

Motion from Commissioner Klein, second commissioner Vargas. Can we please have a roll call vote?

McClain?

Yes.

Commissioner Vargas?

Yes.

Commissioner Banta? Yes. Commissioner Vermont? Yes. Commissioner Wilkerson?

Upstate.

Vice chair Lightfoot?

Yes.

Chair Roudin? Yes. Okay. Moving right along. We will move to our public hearing this evening. We will process proceed, excuse me, proceed to the business item on the agenda.

Okay.

Sorry. Reading this. Okay. We'll move on to business item this evening, which is to receive the 2024 general plan annual progress report. We will first hear the presentation by staff, followed by commissioner questions, then we'll open it up for public comment, then bring it back for commissioner comments. May we please have the staff's presentation?

Good evening, commissioners and those in attendance. Item is to discuss the 2024 general plan annual progress report. According to California state legislation, the city must submit an annual progress report to the state of California Department of Office of Planning and Research and the Department of Housing and Community Development by April 1 of every year. As a reminder, the city's general plan is the city's guiding policy document containing the programs and policies that implement the community's long term vision for development topics such as land use, transportation, housing, and public facilities. The housing element is a required component of the general plan with implementation programs and policies related specifically to housing.

This annual progress report identifies implementation status of the programs and policies of these documents, upcoming priority programs that the city will implement in 2025 and upcoming years and also provides data tracking housing development in the city. The HCD submittal is an Excel form with numerous tables containing data for how many units were allocated for planning entitlements, the number of building permits issued, housing element program implementation, and other housing related information. The submittal to the OPR includes this information as well as the implementation status of the other general plan programs. State of California mandates that all California cities, towns, and counties must plan for the housing needs of its residents. To do this, the State Department of Housing and Community Development calculate a regional housing needs allocation or RENA for short for communities to determine how many housing units communities must plan to accommodate.

This table shows the Solano County RENA for this housing element cycle, which is from 2023 to 2031. These figures indicate the number of housing units that the county must plan for, and these units are categorized by input levels defined as percentages of the area median income and are determined by the State Department of Housing Community Development. In this cycle, the city of Vacaville's arena total is 2,595 units. This table here is from the HCD form and shows the number of units that have been issued a building permit for the last two and a half years within the city that have units dedicated to each RINA income category. It is worth noting that there has been growth in housing production from 2023 to 2024.

And this table indicates the total number of units that were issued permits for each housing type. In 2023, there was a good mix between multifamily and single family, but no permits were issued for multifamily in 2024. Please note that this table reflects the actual number of units built. The previous table indicates that 647 total units were constructed. This is because the table comes from data and attachment two which comes from a pre programmed HCD spreadsheet form and it groups units that have two to four units together.

So it calculated it as four instead of it being two for the single family units with ADUs which there were 80, added an extra 80 to the number. There were four general plan amendments that have been completed or initiated in 2024. They include the Millennium Center, the Interchange Business Park, the East Of Leisure Town Road growth area specific plan, and Roberts Ranch parcel end. There are also numerous general plan amendments that are pending. They include the fields at Alamo Creek, McMurtry Creek Estates, Park Parish, the East Of Leadertown Road growth area specific plan, and the Peabody Allison specific plan.

City also completed work on the following items for the general plan, the downtown utilities improvements, city gateways design master plan, priority development areas, the Jepsen Parkway project, safe routes to school, and energy services, as well as the Rancho Lagunitas Detention Basin, East Of Legion Town Road growth area specific plan, and land use and development code update. These are the some these are some of the recommended 2025 general plan implementation priorities for this year. These align with the time frames for each implementation action and program in the general plan. They include the downtown specific plan, various infrastructure and utility improvements, a storefront improvement program, a public art program, as well as a municipal service review and urban reserve land use analysis. There are also three specific plans in the works that are in the early stages of community engagement.

Analysis of these plan areas and further community engagement are scheduled to continue this year for Peabody Allison Northeast growth area and the East Of Leader Town Road growth area. Staff will also continue to implement the housing element as we have several programs that have target dates for this year in early twenty twenty six. These programs cover a range of different housing strategies such as ADU construction, fee deferrals, studying service fees for development, developing a low barrier housing program, and informing landlords and the public on fair housing rights. And lastly is the inclusionary housing item which was also just recently presented to the Planning Commission. So the housing element contains 40 total programs that are organized by specific categories or aspects of housing development.

These programs each contain a list of strategies or tasks for the city to work towards in order to accommodate anticipated housing demand and meet other housing needs for Vacaville residents. These strategies or tasks have target dates of completion that the city work on each year. The State Department of Housing and Community Development certifies each jurisdiction's housing element and they send letters to each community. So in their letter that they sent to us in 2023 for our certification, they identified these programs to be completed in a timely fashion. So we just wanted to include these in the presentation for information.

But we work towards implementing these as well as all of the other programs in a timely fashion. And this is a continuation of that list here. In 2024, staff have completed tasks for the following housing housing element implementation programs. This is just for 2024, but significant progress has been made in 2023 as well. In July 2024, the land use and development code was updated to remove regulatory barriers to housing, allowing ADUs in all areas zone to allow residential.

It also was amended to permit supportive housing and allow employee housing, single room housing, and low barrier navigation centers. Missing middle housing was also required in new subdivisions to increase the variety of housing types and number of units, and our density bonus incentives were also updated in accordance with state law, and subjectivity was removed for findings for several planning entitlements. Staff have also developed an ADU webpage with a preapproved ADU program that provides a list of plan sets that have been preapproved by the city to allow residents to be able to quickly navigate the permit process for streamline review and approval. We have also provided a general how to guide on how one may navigate this process. There are also other programs that staff have been working on that that are either ongoing or scheduled to be completed in upcoming years, but these are just highlights of those that were finalized.

And detailed information on the status of each program is in appendix nine. The following housing element tasks and programs are scheduled to be completed this year in 2025. They include marketing ADU development opportunities, creating an ADUJADU construction loan program, hosting an open house for homeowners for ADUs, adopting flexible standards or incentives for infill development, establishing that low barrier housing program, and establishing a centralized housing services coordinator position and developing a fee deferral program. The following housing element tasks and programs are scheduled to be completed this year in 2025. They include conducting a service fee study for processing permits, studying the feasibility of inclusionary housing, and amending parking requirements for studios.

For the downtown specific plan, staff have completed several programs and they include the latest creek landscaping and bank repairs, the touch the sky art installation, and storefront improvement program. Also, a downtown lighting study is underway and is anticipated to be completed in June 2025, and Parks and Recreation is working on a public art program policy to establish procedures and guidelines for public art installation. For the energy and conservation action plan, the city coach transitioned to electric buses. So to conclude, the city has taken significant steps to implement the general plan and housing element. And for next steps, the staff will present to city council on 03/11/2025.

And April 1, we will be submitting to HDD and OPR. Are there any questions or comments regarding the information presented?

Do you have any commissioner questions? Commissioner Klein.

Very good presentation. Thank you very much for that. And welcome to the commission. Think this is your first presentation.

Second.

Second. That's what I meant, your second one. It's going very well for you so far. So I think OPR's name changed. This is like a technical thing. But I I think it's just like when you present to the council, I think we wanna update that to reflect the name change. As to slide 15, we're we're talking about the plans on the website. Is I just have a question. I think that there was a a a state law about this. And so does this this include, like, plans that have been approved and implemented to the extent the developer is okay with it being on the website?

Or can you talk about this? There's this is a a change in statute, and I just I think it'd be nice to hear a little bit more about it for the development community that's interested in learning about it.

Absolutely. Yes. So these plans were prepared by one of our engineering consultants, and they were vetted by city staff to make sure that they meet applicable building codes, that they meet the city's vision for development character that we wanna see, and that was done over a period of several months. There are communities that have other plan sets that are developed by architects or private ADU companies. And it is allowed for cities to use those as well, but they would have to come through and be formally reviewed by staff first and approved by staff before someone could use another plan other than these four.

Is it your sense that it's helping so far?

Absolutely. We have received numerous numerous inquiries and a lot of people it can be confused on how to navigate the process or they don't know where to get financing options from and so we've worked to make all this information very clear. It's on our website. Also when it comes to our counter, we have that information available and it's helping them able to navigate a lot easier.

It would be interested I would be interested to know, like, how many ADUs have been have come to Vacaville because we hear so much about ADUs, you know what I'm saying, being a a part of the missing middle solution. But I know like in a lot of jurisdictions, we talk a lot about it, but how many are actually being built? And there you have them right there, of course. And I just wanted to draw attention to this excellent slide, slide five. So this number though, to what degree have we built more recently versus previously? And you may know the answer to that question.

I think it's interesting. I think a few years ago when were more popular, we had, I think, a decent amount of applications in it sort of fell off a little bit, and it's picked up again. I think because ADU laws are becoming stronger and sort of giving cities less room to maneuver when it comes to ADUs. I think this the program that that was talking about, I mean, we're doing everything we can to make it as easy as possible if you want, so you don't have to go through the steps of finding an architect to design the plans for you, finding engineer. We're sort of in some ways, making it a one stop shop when it comes ADUs.

We're really hopeful that I mean, we've we've seen a pickup in ADUs, but we're hoping this is sort of the beginning of getting a lot of these and taking advantage of the website. Other cities do have it. They've had success with it. So we're hoping that we were able to sort of emulate that that success in backfill.

And it looks like it's it's increased like gangbusters here between '23 and '24. And I'm just curious what more can we do to help with the the issue. And, obviously, I'm not putting you on the spot now, but because it's maybe a loaded question. But, you know, if if Seth has any ideas about what policy, we would wanna recommend to the council to help to nudge things forward or give you the tools that you need, I I would be curious to learn more about that. That's it's a great presentation. That was the only thing I just didn't I take away was what more could we do.

Thank you, commissioner Klein. And there are numerous housing element programs set for this year as well that will also be working towards ADUs, and we'll continue to look in the future to see any other strategies that we can incorporate.

Okay. I have commissioner Wilkerson and commissioner Beaumont. Commissioner Wilkerson?

Great presentation. Thank you so much. To commissioner Klein's point, on the ADUs, are all those homeowner driven, or are some of those going to be developer developed ADUs? Because it just says permit issued. So I'm just curious on where the permits by the development community or where the permits by homeowners.

There is a mixture. I'm not sure of a certain percentage of these, but I do know we get a lot of inquiries from home homeowners themselves. So it's not just developer driven there.

Just I I think it'd be important to note that because I think many have that same question of regarding the ADU. Yes. We see an influx, but that influx could have been projects that were approved for development, not necessarily I mean, 14 to 92, that's a lot.

Yeah.

So that's gonna that that says to me, some of that is development. Right? And so and their process could be, once it's permitted, it's go. But a homeowner may have to have take longer steps. That's why I think maybe a footnote just for the presentation would be helpful. That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you, mister chair. That's a great point. We'll look to include that.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Vice chair Lightfoot?

Just piggybacking a little bit on the permits issued, and maybe it'll shine some light on it. So the Montesa project, were permits issued for that already because that was quite a few ADUs?

Yeah.

We can certainly get you the numbers, but, yeah, we have Montesa, and we had another project that also had 80.

So Montesa, the one off of, you know California. Place in California Drive. So the there was probably a good chunk of those 92 are dedicated to that project, adding into it. Thank you.

Commissioner Beaumont. Thank

you for the presentation. I just have a couple of quick questions. The RANA graph or numbers that permits issued for building from '23, '24, and '25. I don't know about 25, but total RANA remaining for very low, low, and moderate are fourteen eighty four units. Is there any idea how you're gonna get any of that built?

So there are numerous projects that did receive planning entitlements in 2024. Allison apartments, they have about 135 low income. Oak Grove apartments, about 60 low income. Victory Gardens, 206 moderate income. North Orchard Oaks, two very low income. So it is coming slowly, but we are working on other housing strategies to be able to incentivize developers to come in and be able to build those units.

Okay. So there are some in the process. Another question on the downtown specific plan, the water and sewer infrastructure. Just wondering if that's going to disrupt any of the downtown traffic in the spring of this year.

Thank you, Commissioner Beaumont. Yes. But there's a lot of communication that's going to go out to folks downtown and citywide as that project is being rolled out. Robust notification plan, but this project is happening this year, so it'll be kind of done and then won't have to happen again for a very long time.

Good. Under an item, LU A-eighteen to the parking sensors that we put in that we ought to talk about it forever, is there any results on that as to how that's working or what the parking is like these days?

Can take this one too, Commissioner Beaumont, because I'm working directly on the downtown specific They plan know a lot of the answers, by the way. I'm just going take generally, but it's true, is that it supports that we have a lot of available parking downtown, like a lot, pretty much at any given time. The next step with that program is really to quantify that data, share that data with the council, and get some direction on where we want to go. But if you open up the app just kind of randomly like I do at different times of the day, you'll notice that there's a lot of available parking pretty much all the time. We have some data that is used by some members of the public, but it really probably has been most useful with giving the city data on what our parking demands are downtown and kind of where the parking is.

We have lot by lot, space by space, so we literally know which spaces are used the most, which ones are used the least and where those spaces are located.

Doing to help fill Ray's cycle in since we're talking about wanting good businesses in downtown, and I haven't seen anything that anybody wanted to come in and rent that or buy it or whatever they have available to do with it because we don't want another, excuse me, tattoo parlor, I don't think downtown. But all I'm saying is that we need something that is long term, that's a night attraction that we want to start building the downtown infrastructure. Or anything that you know that's happening that the We've city

met with the property owner several times about their future plans for that building, which is not the same thing as assisting them directly. At this point, they've reached out to us. We've met with them a couple of times about the plans they have for the building. And we are definitely available to be a resource.

Okay, great. Thank you. Those are my questions. Appreciate it.

Great. Thank you. Commissioner Banta.

Yes. Put you back in off. Commissioner Beaumont talking about the RENA chart. The ADUs, are any of those affecting the RENA numbers?

Yes. Those are included.

So none of them are for very low, low, or moderate?

No.

Also, commissioner Beaumont talked about the difference between the planning entitlement applications and those that have been building permits issued. Can we expect those that have entitlements to be built in 02/2025? And if not, what are common reasons they would not be built?

I'm not sure the average time of completion from start to finish from when projects receive an entitlement to finally getting their final building permit. Our planning manager may be able to speak more to that, but I think it takes several years on average for most projects.

Are you talking about the two projects that Dimir mentioned that that are going through the process right now?

It looks like there's a couple that have pretty heavy low and moderate, and so I was just wondering when we can anticipate those to be built.

Can't provide a timeline, but unfortunately so we have two other projects that we mentioned that have their entitlements and then time extensions but there are financing issues. So I think overall the sort of impediments development continues to be I think a large part a financing issue. That's why the sort of the inclusionary housing conversation is so important about giving us options.

Mean

generally in Vacaville the way we've had low income housing has been city properties that were available for that. So that was some sort of incentive for people to to pursue development of affordable housing, but we're running out of land that we own, and costs are costs. They're not going down, so we have a few options. But really financing seems to be the big issue. So with those two new projects, they apply for financing and then that's the process they have to go through. I don't know if our housing director has anything to add to that part, but financing seems to be a big issue.

Okay. You mentioned the inclusionary housing ordinances, the conversation that could continue that going for financing options. What are aside from that, or is that the main strategy we can take to encourage promote more development of units in these income categories? And what are other jurisdictions currently doing to promote this?

There are also the density bonus provisions that we included. They are in compliance with state law, but we could always look to see if we could exceed state minimum requirements.

Just to add to that, and this is something that the housing element requires us to do, but we are required and or have vested interest in meeting with the development community as well. And so for example, last year, we met five times over the year with both market rate and affordable housing developers. And that conversation is important because, you know, I think they will probably have more ways of addressing that than than we do, and that's why I think we we had one meeting already this year. There's gonna be three other ones this year as well. So I think there are opportunities, but we're gonna keep trying to see what works for us. But I think reaching out to the development community with who that have that experience, I think, is is gonna be valuable.

Okay. I did notice that on I'm not sure what page it was, but h e five. It said in March 2024 that the city has not yet initiated efforts to mobilize funding. Is the meetings that you mentioned, the five meetings that you mentioned, is that a more current update on that line item?

Hi, I'm Tamara Colden, the Housing and Community Services Director. Our department works hand in hand with community development and implementing some of the strategies from the housing element. For that particular section of HE5, I believe what that's referring to is the city's ability to take a proactive measure and working with developers, nonprofit developers, and identifying contracts that might be or not contracts, agreements but that might be set to expire in the upcoming three to five years. Nervous. So in that respect, we have not been able to be proactive in reaching out and working with non developers and identifying areas where we can partner or encourage affordable housing development.

However, when projects or opportunities arise, so with the Victory Gardens project, the Homekey project at Quality Inn that staff is working with, we take those opportunities to negotiate affordable agreements, but as far as being able to be pro proactive, we have not had the opportunity to do that.

Okay. Awesome. Thank you. What is the status of the community land trust model, and how could that program affect financing?

There was an initial assessment conducted early in March 2024, but it determined that further research is needed. I wasn't here then, but I was getting out of the And we'll be able to provide you an update shortly on that.

Okay. So I guess it's safe to say that funding for affordable housing seems to continue to be the barrier? Okay.

Yes.

There was a mention that the city did not meet the minimum funding calculation requirement of 500,000 in November 2023 for becoming a home entitlement community. What is the effects of that and what could becoming a home entitlement community could have meant for our city?

As As far as becoming an entitlement community for HOME, that's a HUD calculation based off population poverty rates compared to other jurisdictions. HUD does a calculation each year to determine if a community temp can become an entitlement community for home funds. As of right now, based on Vacaville's numbers compared to other jurisdictions, it does not meet that minimum $500,000 threshold to become an entitlement community. What that would mean is that instead of applying for available home funds from HCB, the city would receive funding allocation each year similar to the CDBG program.

So it doesn't preclude us from applying for home funding?

Correct. It just means that we're not automatically allocated

our Awesome.

I probably have some more questions for you. When will the position of the housing service coordinator likely be filled and will that be helpful in implementing a lot of these elements?

Doctor. Yeah, so as of right now, we had completed a recruitment for the position. So the position has been established. It has been approved in this current fiscal year. However, we just have not had a successful recruitment for that position.

The department is looking at how to move forward in working with HR on conducting another recruitment for that position. With having that position vacant, it is impacting some of our ability to look at implementing programs more from the housing element. Right now, there are staff that are working out of rate to try to work on the more priority programs, but as far as being able to really implement a schedule staying on top of some of the programs outlined in the housing element, it is challenging for staff to stay on top of that.

I had another question about how many Section eight vouchers, because I know you handle those as well. How many are there currently being utilized in our city project based and housing choice vouchers, and how many are currently on our wait list?

Yeah. So currently, there are approximately about 171 out of 186 project based vouchers that are available to be used. And then as far as housing choice vouchers, which means instead of the assistance being tied to the unit, it is tied to the participant and they can use the assistance in whatever whatever unit they choose that they're eligible for. There's approximately ten twenty five out of about twelve oh six that are available to be used.

And then do you know how many are on waitlists?

Yeah, so we actually keep separate waiting lists for each project based project as well as a separate waiting list for the housing choice voucher program or for housing choice vouchers. So there's approximately five seventy five on the housing choice voucher list and then between all the different projects there's approximately about 2,000 people on the waiting list for the various projects.

Awesome. And then I had one more question about the home down payment assistance funding from HCD. It said we were waiting to hear back from that. Do we know when we would potentially hear back from them?

So unfortunately, I don't have a time frame for exactly when we will hear back from HCD on that award. I can say that the awards have not been announced publicly. However, HOME is currently reviewing our project setup material, and once we get approval on that, we would be able to move forward implementing a program.

And then could you explain a little bit about what the impact of that program could be?

Yeah. So right now, our application is for $500,000 in down payment assistance for low and moderate income households, so households earning up to 80% of area median income in the area. In addition to that, the city has approximately $375,000 $400,000 in program income from repayment of past loans that we intend to add to that $500,000 to be able to implement a new down payment assistance program.

Thank you. Commissioner Vargas.

I just have one question on slide five. I'm curious. The multifamily units, the permits pool 202323620240. I'm just wondering why that is.

I think just the timing of the planning received versus when they're actually able to start constructing. So we did see that there were a large number of units. I wanna say couple 100, if not a thousand, that received entitlements in 2024, but they'll just just come later on down the pipeline.

Those of you will see an increase this year or or a permit this year?

As our planning manager said, it kinda depends. There are a lot of different variables, financing, construction costs, things that kind of delay the process. We hope we would like to see that in 2020 Understood.

Thank you. A great presentation, by the way.

Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Okay. Only have one little question. Because Rina is based off of AMI, what Suwannee County's AMI? It changes every two years, correct?

The last update we had was in 2022, and it varies by household number. So for a four person household, the AMI is 108,700

per of course, 108,700.

I'm sorry. I'm a little bit above. That's above moderate. So I don't have the AMI on hand, but I do have what the percentages are for the income levels. The moderate income for a family of four is $86,800

Okay. For counsel, when you present to counsel, mostly for just educating the public, letting them know what the AMI is, because I know talking with people, they always say, well, what does low income mean? And it's like, well, actually there's a formula to that. So they have a bit of base of reference of what AMI is for perhaps, you know, family of four, single a single person or whatever.

The most recent AMI for a family of four is $113,200 That's the area of the family of four.

Okay, great. Because I know it's different for each county. For County. For Solano County? Yes. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Okay, so moving on from Commissioner questions, I will open this up to the public. If anybody from the public would like to speak, come up to the podium. Okay, will close public comment, bring it back to the Commission for questions or not questions, excuse me, comments and discuss feedback.

Okay, so like I said, my little bit of feedback would be to have those numbers for AMI.

Thank you. I will include that.

Okay. Well, if we have no further comments, I will move along. Thank you very much for your presentation. Moving on to Director's Report.

Bear with us a moment as we get the presentation up. No pressure, Peyman. Okay, thank you. So since the Commission last met, we're actually in the month of January, the Council did a second reading of the ADU ordinance amendment. This brings us into compliance with state law as far as how we regulate ADUs.

On January 28, the City Council entered into a contract with EPS to prepare a fiscal analysis for the East Of Leisure Town Roads plan. That fiscal analysis also includes a component that looks at how the city or what the city's best practices should be as far as establishing community facilities districts. So it's actually an interesting multi component project. I'm sure it will be very riveting when it comes back to the Commission at some point. We're kicking off this Thursday on the work effort.

And then we do have projects for you. We assure you. We were trying to get Orange Drive here this evening, but we're still working out the conditions of approval with the applicant, so that is expected to hopefully be here next month. We'll be bringing the Commission an update on the Peabody Allison specific plan. Since Phase I is now complete, we would love to get you up to speed.

And then you can expectyes? VacaVille has two priority development areas and one of them is the Allison priority development area, but when we started our planning effort Peabody is a far more significant street in that particular district than Allison is, so we married the two to give it a name because everyone knows where Peabody Road is.

I was just trying to get to how

it It's the Allison PDA, so it covers a bunch of commercial areas as well as some residential areas. It has

nothing to do with the new park, the Centennial Park?

No.

Okay.

No, different part of Allison entirely. Okay. Thank you for that question. And we'll be bringing the Commission the annual, very exciting, Capital Improvement Program General Plan Consistency Report in May, so mark your calendar. You will not want to miss that one.

And we have a bunch

of pending items, and we put this up here just to remind the Commission that we have a lot of projects in the pipeline and we expect to have projects to bring to this Commission later in this year. That's a promise. The Building Division, it has been so busy. We set new records for building permits issued last year, and our inspections have been just really above standard as far as the volume. This weather, even with some weather, it still has not really let up.

Was a very strong month with two ninety seven building permits issued. New single family homes started. No multifamily. We had 29 EDU permits that are just part of this year, not last year, and collected a lot of fees. If you go to the next slide, this shows 2024 and includes January 2025 on the right, and it shows while we had like a serious spike in permit activity during the fairer months of last year, we're still holding really strong even in the wintertime.

Let's continue. And inspections, that October spike still kind of worries me. I'm not sure how we pulled it all off, but my building inspectors are amazing. And January has been very, very busy. We currently have 12 subdivisions under construction, and shortly we'll have a total of 15 under construction. So it's very, very busy out there. Let's go to the next slide. And then this shows our solar permits in relation to building permits. And we still are having solar permit activity, and it's still trending similarly as far as when it ebbs and flows. Let's go to the next slide, and this is where Pei Wan will take on the rest of it.

Good evening, Commission. Not a lot of in January not a lot of new applications or sort of staffable projects, But we did approve a few brown, that's an important one, the brown patio cover adjustment was one that we approved. House plans are sort of ongoing. We get new house plans submitted, house plans approved, and a lot of those result in inspections that the director mentioned too. Tractor Supply Company came in as an application.

They're taking over the Bed Bath and Beyond site. And we'll have also an outdoor display storage area. So that requires the changes to the use and also the site modification required design review, which we're processing and Lerner Gloom Valley Linear Park came in for planning review and the Baxter Residence. In terms of advanced planning, a lot of this information was in our presentation last month, but just sort of reiterate, we're going to continue to go through housing element implementation. The Peabody Allison specific plan we met with high school students.

We did the business walk on in January as well. And there were follow-up interviews that occurred last week or the week before last, we'll get an update from our consultants and we'll share that with the Commission as well. Lot A of activity with East Legion Road growth area as well, the fiscal counter that director mentioned. That actually was January 28, and the engineering services in February. We're still hopeful for the draft specific plan either late March or early April.

Inclusionary housing, you all heard the study session. We're gonna go to council with that same study session. We'll have that on February 25. Markham Callum Neighbor Plan, we're still trying to figure out how many and sort of what type of public outreach we're going to have, and so we're still working on that. And then Downtown Lighting Study, a lot of work's been done to meet with some folks, some stakeholders downtown, and coming up we're going to have more.

We had actually also engaged with high school students for both Buckingham and High, which was pretty interesting. So I think we've a lot of work to do with our downtown to entice people to visiting it. I think lighting will will be a part big part of that as well. So those are the updates that I have for advanced planning. If you gotta answer any questions.

This presentation we don't have any major staffing updates except for that we are recruiting for technician. We will be recruiting for a building services coordinator who works upfront with our permit technicians. And if everything goes well with the person we have in background, we'll have three full time building inspectors who work for the city in the next month or two. We've just got the one that's still in the chute. So things are definitely we're filling our positions, and once we fill a couple more in building, we'll be fully staffed, and then no one's allowed to leave, obviously. That concludes my presentation. Thank you.

Great, thank you. Okay, so I'm going bring this back to the Commission. Now it's time for Commissioner comments. This portion of the agenda is for Commissioners to inform each other of items of potential interest to other Commissioners such as interagency meetings or offer announcements as appropriate. I will start with Commissioner Beaumont and go down the line.

I appreciate it, operator. Thank you very much.

Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Banta.

I just want to say thank you for the presentation tonight. It's really nice to hear the update on all elements

throughout the plan because there's a lot. And so

it's nice to hear the updates on that, and it's encouraging to hear that we're working on all of all of them. And I just wanna highlight again that it sounds like there's financing, so I hope that our city continues to look into ways to make some of these affordable projects across the finish line.

Okay. Thank you. Vice Chair Lightfoot?

I have no comments this evening. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Commissioner Vargas.

Great presentation tonight. I am curious as to the housing services coordinator position. That's gonna be great for the city. So hoping to get

update on that soon. So thank you.

Commissioner Wilkerson?

I have nothing. And

commissioner Klein?

For me, nice job everyone.

All right. Nothing for me. Thank you everybody. And with that, we've reached the end of our meeting. As a reminder, our next meeting will be on Tuesday, 03/18/2025. Good night, backfill.