Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Thank you. Outro Music so so

I will now call the regular planning commission meeting of Tuesday, June 16th, 2026 to order. And I will ask the clerk to call the roll.

Chair Wilkerson, Vice Chair Banta, Commissioner Vargas, Commissioner Vermont, Commissioner Dingman, Commissioner Hampton, Commissioner LeRoy. Chair, we have a quorum. Thank you.

Everyone please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and I will ask Commissioner Vargas to please lead us in our salute to the Pledge.

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

Thank you, Commissioner Vargas. We will now move on with regular business, starting with communications. At this time, I'll ask the Assistant Director Garcia if there are any communications or announcements for this evening's meeting.

Thank you, Chair Banta, Acting Chair Banta. We did receive two communications for the first item on the agenda tonight, and those were forwarded to the commission and also posted online.

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

I'll second.

So we have Commissioner Beaumont to approve and Commissioner Vargas as a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. And motion passes. 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'll 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.

Seeing as there is no comment, we will close the floor.

Now it is time for the consent calendar. We have one item on consent, which is the minutes from the May 19th, 2026 meeting. Does anyone from the commission or the public wish to pull the consent item for discussion? All right, if none, do I have a motion and second to approve the consent calendar?

I'll second. Didn't get a motion.

No need a motion.

I'll motion.

So we have a motion from Commissioner Vargas and a second from Commissioner Wirth. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion passes. All right. Next, we'll move on to our first public hearing this evening, which is to receive a presentation on a general plan amendment zoning ordinance text amendment. We will first hear a presentation by staff, followed by commissioner questions, and then we will open it up for the public comment. Before we proceed, I would like to ask if any commissioners received ex parte communications for this matter.

No.

All right then may we please have stops presentation.

Good evening members of the planning commission all those in attendance. Tonight's item is a request to amend Title 14 of the City of Vacaville Municipal Code, amending Division 14.04, entitled General Plan Amendments to Change Administrative Procedures and Requirements for General Plan Map and Text Amendment Applications. For background on this item, the proposal is to remove current requirements for general plan amendments to either the map or the text. It includes an initiation hearing And the intent of the initiation hearing is to avoid processing proposals substantially inconsistent with the general plan. So we're proposing to remove this requirement from the code, as well as a current requirement for application filing windows, which are time periods where a general plan amendment application is allowed to be submitted, which are currently from March through April and September through October each year. In addition to that, we are proposing to amend the zoning text to clarify who can initiate a general plan amendment. And our proposal is to have it be a motion of the city council or planning commission, a property owner or authorized agent, or a director of any city department. So this is the whole process for a general plan amendment that exists currently. And this is what we're proposing to eliminate. It's this initiation hearing here. Takes approximately eight weeks or so of staff preparation. And we're proposing to remove it to reduce the time that it would take to get applicants to have their projects proposed in front of the city council for approval or denial. And this is a proposed process. To conclude, the intent of the zoning text amendment is to streamline the review process for general plan amendments to allow applications to be submitted earlier and year-round, to clarify who can initiate a general plan amendment, and to streamline the development review process and facilitate new projects. After this, a City Council public hearing will be held for a first reading on July 28, 2026, and a second reading will be held on August 11, 2026. and staff recommend by simple motion, recommend that the City Council adopt the resolution of the City of Vacaville affirming that the General Plan Amendment Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment is exempt from environmental review pursuant to Section 15061 of the California Environmental Quality Act Guidelines and introduce an ordinance of the City of Vacaville City Council amending Title 14 of the City of Vacaville Municipal Code by amending division 14.04 entitled general plan amendments to allow general plan amendment applications to be filed year-round and to modify the initiation process for general plan amendment requests. Are there any questions or comments?

Thank you for the presentation and we will now open it up for Commissioner questions or comments and we will start with Commissioner Boma.

Thanks, Jamiro. Appreciate that. I just have one quick question. Is this from the staff, 100 percent, or does any of the City Council ask for this to be done?

There were concerns from the public, and I believe the City Council directed our director, Aaron Morris, to look into this and prepare a possible text amendment for their consideration.

Okay, good. Thank you. That's all I have.

Thank you, Commissioner Beaumont. And next we have Commissioner LeRoy.

Yeah. I'm just curious. I think I read in there that you think it'll reduce the work on the staff. I'm curious how that was formulated since now you'll be getting applications all year round instead of during certain periods. Like, how's, like, the workload seems like it would increase, not decrease.

There's a considerable amount of staff time that goes into the initial merit hearing, so preparing the staff reports, reviewing the project proposal, and having all the internal review and preparation for agendas. So, that would cut out the time that it would take for that. We would still receive applications year-round, but we'd be able to organize that internally in an efficient manner to coordinate when those general plan amendments should be grouped together. Gotcha. Throughout the year. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Commissioner Leroy. And next we have Commissioner Dingman.

Thanks for the presentation. Appreciate it. I'm definitely a fan of streamlining things. Just interested, though, in some of the data. Some of the stuff you talked about was a little bit anecdotal. I mean, was there anything over the past couple of years or any information that you guys had that was concrete as far as, like, applications that were denied or substantial, like, back and forth with the staff that took more time? Do you have any data or information that could be shared or showed on that?

We can get that data for you. We don't have anything on hand right now, but we can certainly return with that.

Yeah, just interested in general because I do think that this is probably very smart. I like the streamlining, but I'm interested in where the hiccups were in that whole process. So it's not a huge deal, but I would love to see it. Thanks. Absolutely.

Thank you, Commissioner Dingman. Next we have Commissioner Hampton.

I just want to commend the internal team, okay, just being there and being in an administrative role and recognizing the impact that that has on staff during, you know, a small window of time to prep that versus staggering it over. It is much more efficient and it expedites the process. So I want to commend staff or whomever generated this new protocol. I absolutely support it, and I think it's much more efficient. So commend the forces that be that put this together.

Thank you, Commissioner Hampton. My question is kind of similar to Commissioner Dingman's. Are there any jurisdictions that don't have requirements such as this that have more of a streamlined process, and have they seen any benefits?

Yes, it's not completely unfounded. There are some other jurisdictions who do have a merit hearing, but for the most part, the standard practice is not to have it. And Vacaville would align with a lot of other jurisdictions in that regard.

Awesome. And then I know that there's been a lot of conversations with developers over the last year about our process and the timeliness or the lengthiness thereof of it. Was any of this a result of feedback from those meetings?

A direct response, yeah. Okay.

Thank you. All right. If we have no more commissioner questions, then we will open it up for public comment. And each public comment has three minutes. Thank you. You can go ahead and start talking. It'll come right on for you and then your minutes are right there.

Okay. Some real basic questions because I just saw this like maybe a day and a half ago. This is something that would be recommended to the City Council and not like voted and approved tonight. The other part of this is I think you said July 28th and there was a date in August that there would be an opportunity for a public hearing. All right. I would say I'm generally a continuous improvement type of person myself. However, the caveat there is that since there are developers involved, I would be very cautious about what kind of gates you open with that. But I don't know enough about this yet to really say one way or the other. So thank you.

Thank you. Do we have any other public comment? If not, we will go ahead and close public comment. And I'll bring it back to the commission to deliberate and provide feedback to staff. And if there's a motion we can take a motion. Motion approved.

Second.

All right, so we have a motion from Commissioner Hampton and a second from Commissioner Beaumont. Clerk, can we have roll call vote?

We should know about this yes, commissioner Vermont commissioner Damon is commissioner Hampton is commissioner Leroy its vice chair banter yes motion passed.

All right and next we'll move on to our business item this evening which is to receive a presentation on the Northeast growth area planning study we'll hear a presentation followed by commissioner questions and then we will open up for public comment.

Thank you, Acting Chair Banta. Tonight we will receive the presentation from Cliff Lau and Ellie Fiore with Placeworks.

Good evening, Vice Chair and Planning Commissioners. My name is Ellie Fiore. I'm a principal with Placeworks, and I'm here with my colleague Cliff Lau. And we're excited to present the work we've been doing with the Northeast Growth Area Planning Study with you tonight and get your feedback and questions and answers. Next slide. We've been working with members of the Community and Economic Development Department, and we also have three sub-consultants who are leading some of the technical analyses, which you have all of their very detailed memos in your staff report. So the Northeast growth area has been identified for growth and expansion of city for several years now. The 2015 general plan provided a clear policy direction for future planning and development. The entire area is within the city's sphere of influence and urban growth boundary. And the land itself is split between land that is currently in the city and in the county. Our charge was to engage the community and start thinking about what land use and development scenarios might make sense here. In 2025, when we kicked off this project, we did several stakeholder interviews with land and business owners, talking who own or manage the kinds of uses that we're looking for. And then we created three potential land use and development scenarios, which we'll present tonight, and looked at the impacts on transportation, infrastructure and utilities, and the high-level fiscal considerations. It's important to note that staff, city staff has been coordinating with the county and will continue to do so and that they have been supportive of these efforts. Obviously some of the land is currently in the county and once it's annexed into the city will still be adjacent to county land. So they are an active stakeholder. So we started this project about a year ago with the public engagement that I mentioned, then developed three distinct land use alternatives, which Cliff will walk us through. Tonight we're presenting to you, and then in July we'll go to the city council. And following that meeting, we expect to identify a preferred alternative. So it could be one of these three or a variation thereon. And then we'll prepare the final report in a little bit more detail on that preferred alternative. As I said, the general plan has pretty specific policy direction, primarily that this land should be used for employment uses. This is a real opportunity to bring in some higher-end jobs, high-paying jobs to Vacaville to help balance the jobs and housing, to make it easier for people to live and work in Vacaville, and potentially shorten some of those commute trips as a result. The following R work specific plan would need to be prepared before anything moves forward in earnest, and that would include a full environmental review, and there would be detailed plans for transportation and infrastructure. As you can see, the area right now is primarily agriculture. There are some pockets of lower density, single-family residential, some manufacturing, light industrial, but primarily kind of green fields out there. With that, I will turn it over to Cliff, who will walk us through the alternatives.

Cliff Sadof- Thank you, Ellie. All right, so as Ellie said, we've put together three land use and circulation alternatives. to develop and analyze different land use and development scenarios for the Northeast Growth Area. And all alternatives do maintain an industrial focus with a variety in land use makeup and distribution. And we did this in order to understand the benefits, needs, and potential costs for each alternative, as well as look at infrastructure needs, transportation needs, and fiscal impact considerations for the city that would come with each scenario. There are five primary land use types that comprise each alternative. Given the focus and emphasis of employment-generating uses, there are the two primary uses we want to highlight are business park and industrial park. The primary distinction between these two are business parks are intended to represent more technology and more high-end industrial uses. So this could be R&D and advanced manufacturing. industrial park is intended to represent more traditional industrial activities such as commercial services and warehousing and logistics. We've also explored the placement of highway commercial given the northeast growth areas proximity and along I-80 and also introducing some residential uses as part of the exercise of looking at a variety of land uses throughout the alternatives. And lastly, I do want to mention that we've also looked at potential size and location of open space parks and buffers to serve both potential employees in the area as well as for the alternatives that will have residential uses, parks to serve residents. So, just a quick overview of what was shown in the 2015 general plan where they did do a preliminary layout of land uses there. And as you can see, there's heavy employment generating focus here with the lighter gray colors that range from technology park to industrial park and business park, but also some red for commercial and yellow for residential. So, a mix of uses in the area. So we did use this as a base to look at, you know, to understand what was done before, but we do want to point out that because this area will undergo a specific planning process, the land use plan will be determined through that process. Okay. So, we'll begin with alternative A. And so, we do lead with trying to meet purely the general plan's goals of a employment-generating area. And so, we're looking at all industrial uses here. Allocation is roughly spit of like 50 percent to the business park, which is the higher-end industrial use, and about 25 percent to industrial park, which is the more conventional commercial or warehousing logistics use. The purple indicates highway commercial, which you can see are focused more along the Midway I-80 interchange, as well as the Weber Road interchange. And parks are, there's a park distributed in each of the areas. There's a community park in the southwest corner, as you can see. And then two neighborhood, two parks are assigned to the neighborhood park size. in the center of the northwest area and the southeast area. And the road network here follows more of a gridded, conventional street-like pattern, so roads meeting at 90-degree angles as fast as possible. And we have some greenway buffers as well that follow along some existing aqueduct greenways, as well as to provide some buffers to adjacent agriculture or residential areas. You can see in the south edge over there. Parcelization, we are looking at, we did follow some existing parcel lines, but based on our stakeholder interviews, we did hear that current trends indicate that at least for the advanced industrial uses, size of the parcels are between 20 to 40 acres. And so we looked at a range between 15 to as much as 50 acres, and so that's why you're seeing sort of these variety of parcel sizes here. But this alternative, because it's looking at mostly industrial uses, we're looking at the least amount of parcels here, and there's about 42 total parcels of varying sizes. And this is just a table summarizing the percentage, acres, build-out, potential build-out based on these uses. And so, these are based on FARs following the general plan. And so, yes. And so, this is just for the summary here. Alternative B, we begin to look at some residential in the south edge of the plant study area. And these are medium high density and high density residential, and these are consistent with densities of the general plant. but still pretty much 50 percent distribution of business park use and industrial park use. I didn't point this out in Alternative A, but this is also a case in Alternative A. We've given priority frontage of the business park use, the advanced industrial uses along I-80 for visibility, and then a step back from that are the industrial parks usage. We show a slightly different idea of parks here with a community park, a large community park in the southwest area and then a neighborhood park in the south, I'm sorry, southwest to serve the residents and then still a neighborhood park in the northern area. But as you can see, the streetwear network is a little bit different here, more curvilinear, less gridded. And so this is also show a different idea for circulation. And the land use summary for alternative B, so if I were to do off the top of my head, I guess we have about 11 million square feet of potential industrial and business park development. We could achieve potentially 1,400 residential units here if we're following the maximum densities of the project general plan. Alternative C, we introduced even more residential, almost about like 20 to 25 percent of the land is now residential, and about 30-something odd percent to business park, and about close to 20 percent for industrial park. We've included a lower density of residential in this range here, so we're going as low as medium density, but still sticking between the medium to high density range. As you can see, the residential is mostly concentrated in the southwest area adjacent to the adjacent community there. But we've also begun to show some medium density residential along the north boundary with a park to serve them. There are some more parks here. As you can see, there's a community park that is on the east end of the study area, but we have other neighborhood parks distributed to serve both employees and residents throughout. And with this alternative C, there's obviously less potential build out of industrial with up to around nine and a half million square feet. But residential, we could achieve up to 3,000 square feet, excuse me, 3,000 units of residential. These are just pie chart diagrams providing a visual comparison of the land use makeup for alternatives. As you can see, Alternative C has the most variety of uses and Alternative A is strictly industrial. The light gray represents the business park, so it's not empty space. Just want to point that out. Another comparison of build-out numbers between residential and non-residential square footage. Naturally, it will descend with Alternative B having more residential than Alternative A, and Alternative C having most, and then non-residential will decrease from A to C. And then just looking, comparing the different road net concepts for each alternative with the alternative A having a more grid-like network, alternative B more curvilinear, and alternative C having a blend of both that where some roads may not necessarily meet others at 90-degree intersections. I do want to point out that Alternative B does have, we show the general plan alignment for the orange drive extension into the plan area, which shows it as more of a curvilinear kind of alternative-led system. And so that's why with Alternative B leading with that, we tried to apply more of a curvilinear road network throughout the entire study area. So, with that, we conducted evaluations for both transportation and infrastructure needs of each of the alternatives with our full team. And our consultant, GHD, helped conduct the transportation evaluation and modeling to understand what would be the impacts to the intersections throughout the study area. And so, they evaluated 18 nearby intersections based on the proximity and expected impact from the envisioned land uses. Estimated the traffic conditions assuming no development or transportation improvements up to the horizon year of 2050. So what this means is that they set basically a no-build scenario that assumed no improvements including no transportation impact fee program improvements. So, we can go, I can explain that further later. That basically means that no work is done over, until 2050. And that's the baseline scenario. Against that scenario, then they evaluated the potential traffic conditions that were resolved from each alternative up to the year 2050. and then built that assessment from there. And assessments were based on the weekday AM and PM peak hour conditions. This map shows the 18 intersections that they evaluated. As you can see, there were some interchanges that are outside of the study area but adjacent enough where they could have been impacted by increased traffic conditions from growth of the study area or development of the study area. This chart shows against a no-build condition, if no improvements were done, how the intersections, each of these intersections would fare under the build-out of each alternative. And as you can see, pretty much most intersections would need significant or some level of improvement in order to bring it back to a satisfactory level of service and operations. And as I pointed out earlier, these do not include the factor in the 2025 TIF program improvements. So, GHD then, when looking at the potential required improvements in order to make these intersections work, that's when they started to incorporate the 2025 TIF improvements. And there were four intersections in the TIF improvements that were relevant to our study area that basically overlap with the intersections they looked at, and those four are highlighted in yellow here. The first intersection, intersection 1, which is at Leisure Town Road and Orange Drive, intersection 3, which is at Leisure Town Road and the I-80 eastbound road off-ramp driveway, intersection 12, which is at the I-505 northbound midway road, and 13, which is right across the road, which is the I-505 southbound ramps and midway road. And then so the next two bullets, the last two bullets just described there's improvements like the Midway Road widening between West City Limit and O'Dea Road, I-80 westbound off ramp and Leisure Town Road widening between Elmira Road and Orange Shred. So basically what GHD found was they looked at, they put together a set of improvements to make all these intersections work. And they incorporated the 2025 TIF improvements with some refinements based on the expected operations that would come with each alternative. So some of our improvements, their improvements, recommended improvements show like either less extensive or more extensive. for those four intersections. Specifically with Leisure Style Road and Orange Drive, the scale of improvements would be quite substantial. So this specific intersection was just highlighted just to note that these improvements were analyzed, but were not recommended at this stage as the required level of improvements would require significant expansion of the road at the intersection there. So this was a high-level assessment just to understand what the infrastructure needs would be. So they're not fixed design commitments. So it is recommended that for this specific intersection, it be evaluated during a future planning phase where additional systemic improvements may be considered. This is just a chart to show the, oh, sorry, we're moving on to infrastructure now. So this is a chart summarizing visually what the infrastructure needs would be for water, wastewater, as well as water quality treatment for stormwater. As you can see, Alternative C, likely with the higher residential uses, would show a higher protected water demand overall. And wastewater demand is pretty even between the three alternatives, with Alternative C also still showing slightly the most. And water quality treatment areas, given that there's like similar developable areas that would result in terms of hardscape and softscape, they would also be pretty equal. So the major differentiator would be water demand. This is just describing the differences between them. So alternative A for water has the lowest water demand out of the three. Alternative C has the highest. For wastewater, alternative A would have the lowest average dry weather flow. Alternative C will be highest slightly there. And stormwater drainers and water quality treatments do not vary much. For connection and alignment, for the connection and alignment for water and wastewater, for the water, all the infrastructure, we need to be extended throughout the road network. So there's not much variety there, but connections would also need to be, will be coordinated with the Eastern Fleischer Town specific plan process. And for wastewater alignment, given the natural topography of the area, which the land descends from west to east, meaning the lowest point is at Burns Road and Lewis Roads, that would be the ideal place for a wastewater alignment, but that would mean that going through Solano County land. And so that would require coordination with the county, likely an easement agreement. If we were to go directly south to try to go through willow road that would run through an existing community, the Lock Patton community. So the likely scenario would be going a little bit back towards the west end, towards Leisure Town Road, so that brings it back towards the high end of the study area. That requires sewer lift stations, which cost quite a bit. To help offset with those, it would be combined with some design of long force mains, and so That's sort of what we could be looking at in terms of water and wastewater alignments. Just a quick summary of fiscal impact findings. At Build Out, all three alternatives would be expected to create a net fiscal surplus for the city's general fund. Residential commercial use is more favorable than industrial as they provide greater property tax and sales tax revenues. And residential uses could result, do result in increased operations and maintenance costs due to services such as police and infrastructure maintenance. It is estimated that Alternative C would create the greatest net fiscal surplus. Alternative B would generate the least net fiscal surplus. Okay. Thank you, and we'll open up for any questions and comments.

Thank you for the presentation, and now we will take Commissioner comments. We'll start with Commissioner Beaumont.

Thanks, Cliff and Ellie. Appreciate it. To me it's just basically do we want more housing or do we want more jobs? And alternative A provides the jobs that the general plan specifies. And so the level of service isn't a difference to me between any of the three. You've got problems with all three. I asked staff how many houses we have in the pipeline between east of Leisure Town, Green Tree, and North Village, and it's over 6,700 units of housing that we have in the pipeline that hasn't been developed yet. So for me, I'd prefer A, just because of the jobs, and I don't think we need the housing at this point. We need the jobs to fill the housing. And so my only question would be, it's bothering me that In the US, we talk about data centers and how bad they are for electricity and water use. I don't see anything in here that says a data center couldn't be built in this area. i think the city of vacaville needs to put its foot down and say we don't want any data centers so that we don't even have that possibility that's just me i'm assuming the city has that ability to say that so that would be my only comment about the whole thing and i and i'm for alternative a just because of what i said so thank you very much thank you commissioner beaumont uh next we have commissioner vargas

Yes, good questions. Thank you for the presentation. You mentioned the city and county coordination. Are these in the form of meetings? And if they are meetings, are there agendas and minutes associated with these meetings?

Claudia, can you take that one? Sure. Thank you. We've met with the county virtually in meetings and in person. I know that our city manager has been having conversations with them as well. Director Morris is here. Perhaps she can add to that.

Spectacular.

Thank you for the question. There actually have been a lot of meetings going back several years actually between county staff and city staff. There's no meeting agendas or notes because they've been mostly informal discussions about shared interests. And recently the topic has been discussed at a meeting of the county administrator, the city manager, and the county equivalent of me and me. And so far the county has been interested in this project and we've actually alerted them to this meeting, invited them to read the study and invited them to provide comment or feedback and meet with us before council to make sure that they're fully included in the process.

Thank you. Of course. A few more questions. And maybe I should know this, but the old Genentech building, is that currently vacant or is there anyone in that building?

Sorry, could you repeat the question?

The Genentech building, is that currently vacant? Is it still vacant or is it?

No, it was sold to Lonza. Lonza, okay. So Lonza is biomanufacturing pharmaceuticals there currently. happy to report they have plans for expansion and there's quite a lot of permits in the pipeline.

Okay, thank you. And then one final question. You mentioned net fiscal surplus for the City General Fund, which is a hot topic amongst citizens of Vacaville. Any information financially on the surplus and what that would generate for either of the alternatives?

Right now, we just have this sort of high-level analysis of what different land uses would impact the general fund in different ways. As we said, residential, commercial, you get the tax revenue, but also more operations and maintenance associated with those uses. Okay. So, we would move into a more detailed study.

So, no real projections right now? Correct. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. That's all I have.

Thank you, Commissioner Vargas. Next up, Commissioner Damon.

Cliff, Ellie, thanks a lot for the presentation. Really good information there. Similar to Doug, option A and B I liked a lot, especially because I do think we need a lot more jobs in this area. Housing's coming, but I still am very concerned about housing for a lot of different reasons, primarily because the $3 billion worth of economic value that's driven from Travis Air Force Base close by, there's a lot of airmen that don't have housing that's close by. So my question primarily is, what's the anticipated timeline for annexation of the county land? Is there a big picture in there? Maybe I missed it. Can you guys give me a ballpark on that?

So this planning study is preliminary and it would inform a future specific plan. So it would be at least like maybe five years from now because we would need to initiate the specific plan, the environmental impact report, and then begin the process with LAFCO for annexation. So it could take quite a bit of time. Five years is likely ambitious.

Okay. So I won't ask you, like, any more specific approvals because I understand the specific plan and the the hoop jumping that'll probably have to happen there, but is there any other way to accelerate that timeline? Because, I mean, I think these are things that we all know that we need here. It's really important for Vacaville and for, I think, this region to be able to have more jobs, have better and more affordable housing, those kind of things. But to be able to get to it before, you know,

we're all too far past our time whether it's on the planning commission or anything else how do we accelerate that timeline or is there a way to do that sure i think we can probably discuss internally but the preparation of this planning study really sets us um in a really good position that sets us up to perhaps have a more accelerated timeline than we otherwise would if we didn't have this study okay thank you thank you commissioner damon next commissioner leroy um

Robert Adler Yeah, I'm going to hit that part again that Commissioner Dingman and Beaumont both talked about, that the demand for jobs in the area, is that something that, because I look at Orange Drive today, there's a couple of businesses that have closed. I look at some commercial space around that's not, currently has businesses in it. I know we're talking down the line, but is this a zone it and we think this will come? Or has there been any studies that say there's a demand to put industrial? I'm thinking of the, when you look at the weights between building houses or apartments and industrial, i think it's a chicken or egg like who like is there a demand like 6 000 houses going in does that include apartments um affordable housing for maybe airmen at travis or somewhere you know just affordable housing for vacaville residents in general um which will then lead to more people wanting to come so the balance is better or do we just have a huge demand right now in the vacaville area for businesses to come in so it makes more sense is there any studies like that that have been done that could drive that decision

Well, throughout this process, as Ellie mentioned, we had a lot of stakeholder meetings, and so we were able to get a lot of great information about establishing a situation where we're not just building and waiting. It's more of a coordination with different owners and developers. And I think the fact that economic development is now housed under community development, our directors, is working on a strategic plan for that is really going to set us up for success to make sure that we are attracting new businesses.

I would also add, if I may, industrial is a big kind of umbrella. Sure. So, we're not talking just about kind of what you associate with traditional industrial uses, but this could include things like biotech, ag tech, research and development, sort of advanced manufacturing. Those are kind of the types of businesses that are most in demand and would be, you know, bringing in the highest paying jobs. Those all fall under the umbrella of industrial.

Thank you. And when we talk about the houses that are in the pipeline already, is there a breakdown of I'm going to call them affordable housing, probably high density housing versus low density housing percentage wise already in the plan?

We do have some affordable housing projects that are already entitled, but not yet being developed. I know that for the East of Leisure Town project, Senior Planner Enault and Director Morris are working to make sure that there's middle housing opportunities as part of that project. And so we are working to have a variety of different housing options in the community.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner LeRoy. Next, we have Commissioner Hampton.

Yeah, I know a lot of times, and I know you guys probably do a lot of interdepartmental communication, but I'm just curious, has Parks and Rec had a voice in any of this, or have they communicated with you?

They have. They've been part of the internal coordination throughout and we have received some comments regarding the proposed park areas. Throughout the different alternatives as you've seen there's different open space and buffers and the buffers were a direct response to the community feedback that we received that It's a lot of open space back there, and they envisioned that these large warehouses were just going to be very boxy and large, so we wanted to provide opportunities to set them back and provide screening and landscaping to kind of reduce that large-scale building. In addition, a lot of these open spaces are envisioned to be privately owned, publicly accessible open spaces, which proposed, and so they would be maintained by these businesses but open to the public.

So along that, thank you very much. Appreciate that. So with the need for potential housing and additional open space or at least parks, how big are some of the scaled parks in your drafts?

They follow the park standards that have been set in the general plan. So for community parks, at least the community parks we're showing, they are between 9 to 12 acres. And for neighborhood parks, they are six to nine acres. And we did a little walk-sharing analysis to make sure that they are within, I think, the half-mile walking radius to all residences, but also size to the population needs as well.

Okay, and one final question. Are any of the parks large enough for sports facilities or, you know, athletic fields, things along those lines, or are they just pretty much wide open spaces?

think there's go ahead yeah i think um both sizes both types of park could accommodate playing fields not like a complex i don't know what you're envisioning but yeah certainly within a nine plus acre park there would be some development whether it's a community center fields trails um minimal structures not just open spaces per se yeah thank you

Thank you for the comments. I have a question also about the parks. I know that there are many throughout the entire plan. Is there a reason do they need to be out throughout the entire plan? Or kind of to Commissioner Hampton's point, there's the community parks and the neighborhood parks. I mean, 10, 10, and 12, that's what encompasses, like, there's like three that are at the 10 size and one of the 12 that encompasses maybe the 60 acres. I do frequent a lot of other communities' sports facilities because of my four children that play sports. And The average size of most of those parks is around 30 to 50 acres. And so if we're trying to build a community, our city is asking for a sports complex. So this is an opportunity to potentially put a sports complex in the business industrial area, which is actually a perfect place for it. So I'm just wondering if there's a need to have it separated or could we request it to be together?

Good question. Thank you for the question. For the purpose of our study, we saw parks as a supporting need to support both, at least for alternative A employees. And so from that perspective, it was distributing to sort of evenly serve different employment areas throughout the study area. When it came to introducing more residences, we were sizing it to at least the minimum to at least serve the residential households within certain proximity. We also were trying to follow what was at least originally shown in the general plan open space element where there was at least two neighborhood parks and a community park shown within the Northeast growth area. That being said, I think we could imagine a flexibility of how park space could be allocated, either combined or distributed to serve like an eventual development scenario in this area.

Thank you. I did also have a question about one of the first slides shows that the existing conditions of the land use. I don't know if you were able to bring that up, but it shows that there's like existing residential and then we quickly go to overlays where it looks like that's going to be turned into business and industrial. Has there been No, 1 more and yeah. Yeah, right before those 3 patches so that that yellow area, single family residential kind of in the middle on every single point you plan uses commercial or industrial have those people owners been spoken to or discussed about the potential uses of their land. I'm all for the jobs in the industrial, but if there's currently already residential there. I think it might be wise, or at least explore, like, putting residential around the existing residential, or maybe the parks around the existing residential or buffers around the existing residential, or have some thought into that. Or have we even spoken to the people that currently live there? What happens to them if we say, nope, now you're zoned industrial.

We did have a community meeting and invited residents in the area to attend. Some of them did attend. This planning study doesn't commit the city to a specific course of action. It's just, you know, we're just trying to understand what it's going to take to do this. If we do proceed with a specific plan process, that will be a multi-year process with a lot of community engagement, and that's when we would start engaging the community even more. to kind of share this proposal and this idea of potentially rezoning those areas. And when you rezone the area, it doesn't necessarily mean that they have to leave. It could be existing nonconforming uses until whatever time they decide to sell, if they decide.

Thank you. And then we talked a little bit about at full build-out, the financial impact could be to fulfill the surplus of the general fund. What is a potential timeline of a full build-out? How many years are we talking?

We assume 2050 for the purposes of this study, so 24 years.

Thank you. And then my last question is, there was a lot of talk about working with the county. Are we able to share what any of the county's feedback on their potential uses of the budding up unincorporated county land is? What are they interested in using that land for?

Director Morris is going to give us some more information on that.

The county, we haven't had at the staff-to-staff level a lot of discussions about the county's land uses. There's a sensitivity to that, but the county is also embarking on their general plan update. So they're going to be going through a probably fairly substantial public process. They estimate it will take about 18 months. We think it might take a little longer, but they're supposed to kick that off soon. So they're going to be going through their own land use planning adjacent to the city of Vacaville, and that'll be how they update. It's been a long time since they updated their plan. Does that help? Yes. Okay, good.

All right. If we have no other commissioner questions at this time, we will open it up to receive public comment. And each person has three minutes for public comment.

And the podium is now open.

And you can just go ahead and start speaking. They'll turn it on for you and your time will be on the...

Commissioners and Vice Chair, Leila Skarsgård, Leisure Town. As this plan moves forward, let's keep in mind, I haven't heard any word from the staff that there's two potential battery energy storage projects, one on Kilkenny and Burns Road. The other one is on Kilkenny closer to Willow. And this is probably going to affect this project going forward, so just keep that in mind as you continue to discuss this project moving forward, that those projects, should they be, they move forward, one of them is being considered by the California Public Utility Commission presently, and if it does get approved by this commission, That's certainly going to impact any future development that you guys are thinking about voting on. So keep that in mind as you discuss this going forward. So thank you for listening to me. Thank you.

Hi, Chris Whitaker here in Vacaville. I think the thing I find really disappointing is that they go through all this effort. We showed up at the meeting a year ago, and the community engagement has basically been swept under the rug. They were broken out into two groups, and each of the groups, everybody said, do we want to leave it as ag? And all we had was the steering of people, well, what else would you want to do? We want to keep it as ag. Well, what else would you want to do? Oh, we want to keep it as ag. And they kept going and going and going. And now we have this. And look at this, like how much green there is, right? Most of that is ag. Do you see any of the alternatives? You mentioned ag tech, but I don't really see it. If we come to housing, have we ever thought of anything innovative like agri hoods or agri villages? I think preserving that area for its agricultural heritage is really important. I, as you can tell, am pretty not in favor of this. And I've also, through this battery energy storage stuff, come to know and really like some of these people that would be greatly impacted by this, including this person here who would lose their home. There's another person, he unfortunately couldn't make it tonight. He's got a historic property right there on Kilkenny. And you've probably met him because he's spoken at these meetings for the battery energy storage stuff. The other thing, too, I think maybe for a point of clarification is the printout had the 1,400 acres, but the printout says 789 on land within the city, but your slide had it as 789 within unincorporated. Just a little typo. The other part of that, the other gentleman brought up the battery energy storage stuff. The other thing to note is that, especially the Corby one on Burns and Kilkenny, not only do they have another 40 acres if the California Energy Commission were to go forth and approve that, they've also got more right of refusal for other areas in that area as well, so. or to consider. But I think overall, I think we really need to pull this back to what the community really wants. This is not what the community wants. And I know you guys hear feedback from economic developers and other developers and wanting to grow. I don't think this is it. I think this is premature. And I think we should find ways that we can promote the opportunity cost of agriculture that we have there right now. So thank you for your time.

Thank you.

All right and if that's all the public comments and we will close public comment and we'll bring it back to the commission to discuss and any other further feedback to provide to staff. In place x. We have commissioner obama.

Yeah with the last comment what's the next step for we look at this.

What's. Yes, we are going to, we are planning to take the presentation to City Council in July 28th, and then from there, let me see if I can pull up our process slide. And then following that, depending on the feedback we hear, we'll proceed with preparing a final report that summarizes most of what you heard today, but develop a preferred scenario for the Northeast Growth Area.

Thank you. I did have one more question that I forgot to ask earlier. Do we know what our current job to housing balance is? It was mentioned in the staff report that it's to maintain the current job to housing balance. And many commissioners have talked about it. Do we know what our current balance is? Could we follow up with that? And then also what other jurisdictions that are similar in size and type to us, what theirs is as well, maybe? Thank you. Is there any other commissioner feedback? All right, then we will go ahead and close business on this item. So we're all done. Thank you.

Thank you.

At this point, we will now receive our department monthly report from Assistant Director Garcia.

Thank you, Planning Manager Bivand. Let's see some City Council updates on June 9th Demir Powell presented on the entertainment zone ordinance to the City Council and receive a favorable outcome It's going to go back for a second reading at the end of this month Future Planning Commission items include sapphire luxury apartments. We're hoping to get that to you rather quickly pending items include the Vacaville Islamic Center and the Peabody Allison specific plan study session And for our monthly building division report, compared to as of May 31st, we've seen an increase in building permits that have been issued up by 46, which is great to see. And we've issued a total of 53 single family permits this month. And overall, we're seeing numbers stabilize in the building division. So very positive outcome. In terms of trends and activities, May is looking just below this time last year with 318 building permits in total. And similar here with the average activity trends compared to this time last year, we're a bit below but still looking pretty good with the up and down. And here with our overall trends, we've seen a slight uptick in the building permits as you see at the top line there. And we also received 7 ADU permits this month.

So just a quick update on current planning projects for May. District 1 received time extension for Nutri Business Park. This is parcel land that's behind the Nutri Retail Center and across where the apartment was planned. So the apartments are right, directly behind the Retail Center. There's extension of Nutri Road and then beyond that a business park, two buildings, roughly I think 170,000 square feet. So time extension is coming for that. And district two, the commission approved the orange drive apartments and retail development. District three, a mural was submitted and we also took in the barrel room PCN and that's their ability to sell alcohol. No activities for District 4. District 5, we received the pilot travel center application and also time extension application for Oak Grove, which was one of the city's affordable home projects, and then no activity in District 6. Just an update on the notable project for the city, Peabody Allison. Nothing's really changed. We're still waiting to do some of the water and drainage studies that we've been planning to do. MSR, we're continuing our conversations with LAFCO. Entertainment Zone, as was mentioned, went to council on June 9th. It's going back for second reading on the 23rd. Entertainment Zone and the Parklet Program were one project in terms of the outreach that was done with the public. Now that Entertainment Zone's been going through it and approved, we're gonna focus our efforts on the Parklet Program. So there should be some additional discussions about that and we'll let you all know about that. Per housing designation, we're still continuing to work with HCD. They've requested some additional information. I think late last week, I haven't had a chance to look at it, but we're working with our housing agency to answer their questions. East of Leisure Town, that is also just continuing forward with studies. Northeast growth area, you saw the presentation tonight. We're going to city council on 28th. And then General Plan Amendment streamlining that you received tonight, that's also going to Council in July and in August.

Other topics and staffing updates. We have two, well we have three interns starting in July, two for planning and one for economic development, so we're really excited about that. We're also currently recruiting a senior building inspector that should be closing on June 22nd. And planning manager Revan is reviewing applications for two assistant planners. So we hope to have some new planners here soon.

And that's it for our monthly updates. Thank you. Now is the 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 off going down the line with Commissioner Hampton.

Again, just appreciate the hard work staff does and recognizing that i'm going to go back to that initial item 7a not only was that good best practice internally but i think it really benefits the community so and again that's who we serve so having the opportunity for community to be able to streamline break outside those windows that were defined i think that has a benefit to our community so again good job on that thank you very much

All right, and Commissioner LeRoy?

Just like that, the sentiments of thanking the staff for the work they've done to put the information together for this meeting, and I really do appreciate it. I know everybody here does, too. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, Commissioner Vargas?

Yeah, thank you, staff, for the information. Good to see Director Morris. I haven't seen him in a while. Put in a plug for Farmer's Market on Saturdays in Andrews Park. It's lovely. It's fantastic. So I encourage you all to participate. Thanks.

Thank you. Commissioner Dingman?

Thanks. It's great to see everybody tonight. Thank you to the staff for the great briefings. Director Morris, it's great to see you. I also want to thank those from the community that showed up. There's a lot of important things going on. We know and appreciate your time. This is our community too, and it's a blessing to have you here. So thank you very much for that. And just, you know, great job, Ashley. Thank you. That's all I have.

All right. Next we have Commissioner Boma.

Vice chair, nice job. Thank you. Claudia, you've been doing a great job. It's nice to see Director Morris in the house for a change.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you. And I would like to thank you guys for giving me the opportunity to chair the meeting. Thanks, Chair Wilkerson, for being absent. And we miss you. And we'll see you next week when you join us, or next month when you join us again. I just wanted to give a little bit of a shameless plug and thanks to the City of Vacaville and Vacaville-Powell for putting on Junior Giants. I have the privilege of being a Junior Giants ambassador for our city in the Junior Giants Community Fund. And we had our city manager and multiple city department leads, Vacaville-Powell. We had our Mayor Carley, Council Member Chapman, Council Member Wiley, and Council Member Richie all came out to support the league, and it's a really cool event, free baseball and softball for our youth and our community. And so it's a really cool collaboration with our police department that I'm probably a part of. So if you know any youth wanting to play free baseball, give me a call. I'd just like to thank the public as well for showing up. I think it's oftentimes we hear about it after the fact, and it's really important to be involved at the beginning. And so this is that time, so I appreciate that. um at that with that we've reached the end of our meeting as a reminder our next meeting will be on tuesday july 21st 2026 with chair wilkerson back and thank you and this meeting is now thank you