Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

The Vallejo Planning Commission is now in session at 7.06. Commissioner Douglas, can you please lead us off for the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, All right. Thank you, Commissioner Douglas, for leading us off.

All right.

So we'll move to the next item is roll call.

Chair Taylor.

Present.

Vice Chair Douglas.

Present.

Commissioner Medeiros. I'm here. Commissioner White.

Present.

And let it show for the record that Commissioner Blind and Commissioner Beasley-Stanberry are both absent, but we do have a quorum.

All right, great. Thank you. So we're going to move to the next agenda item is the consent calendar and approval of the agenda. We can motion to.

So moved.

Second.

Okay, we're going to do a roll call votes tonight. Chair Taylor?

Aye.

Vice Chair Douglas?

Aye.

Commissioner Medeiros? Aye. Commissioner White?

Aye.

The motion passes 4-0.

Very great, thank you. So we're going to move to the next agenda item, which is a presentation for the Merritt Island Development Agreement Annual Review. I believe that we have... Members here to present.

Yeah, through the chair, staff does not have a formal presentation for you tonight, but just to give you a brief introduction, this is an annual review that we present every year to demonstrate and talk about compliance with the development agreement that is in place for Mare Island. As discussed in the staff report, there is a development agreement specific to South Mare Island, and then there's another one for North Mare Island, which is the DDA. Those are two separate agreements. So the one that we're focused on tonight is the first one on South Mare Island. So at this time, I'm going to go ahead and hand it off to the applicant. We have representatives from the Mare Island Company who are going to give you a presentation.

Great. Thank you.

Good evening, commissioners. Brian Nagy with Mare Island Company. Thanks for having us here tonight. For those of you who were here last year, it's going to be a presentation very similar to last year's and the years before. I want to go through just a quick slide show of what we do on Mare Island every day, which is operating the island in addition to all the development things we do. But most of the slides will represent the operation side, which is sometimes not the sexiest things in the world, but we take it very seriously and we have a really great team in working with the city and the planning department. We really love doing it, so we'll kick it off. This is a map of Mare Island that breaks it down into ownership. A lot of folks think that Mare Island is owned exclusively by our company. It is not. As you can see from the map, the Navy still has holdings out there, mostly land that still needs to be transferred. There's environmental cleanup still going on in the south part of the island, which is to the left. And then there's some wetlands transfers happening over on the west side that also have some environmental cleanup getting done. So that'll be transferred. And then there's a mixture of other owners out there, including the U.S. government with the Department of Agriculture and the Army that have land out there. So this is where the operations team of Mare Island Company kicks in. These are the before and after pictures I like to show every year. Things like doors getting kicked in, you know, just being ripped off. We find them all the time all over the island. We have to put those back and make sure the island looks good. This is another example of graffiti that we're very proud of the fact that graffiti doesn't stay at Mare Island. And we have limited tagging because of that. There's not a big canvas out there. There's a lot of walls, but our team gets right on it. And we generally will not let anything sit on there for more than 24 hours. The sidewalks in Mare Island continually having issues. And so we'll have slabs of concrete broken or old hexagon pavers out there that have been broken for many, many years. We'll go through and replace those as needed. This is a fun one. This looks like not a big deal. The D on island lost a screw up there and slid sideways. And it seems like an easy fix when, in fact, you have to send somebody up there 10 stories in the air. And they have to hang over the parapet wall to fix that. So that was not an easy day for whoever did it. landscaping is another thing that we we take a lot of pride in making the place look great whether it's you know the most strips in the streets or morton field or the backyards of some of the residential areas that we own you can see we replace the grass some hedges back there cleaning up these kind of things are something we do every day This is the front yard of one of the Q quarters. It's old military housing. And then you can see we freshened up the grass, put new plants out there just to make it look a little nicer. Another backyard shot. And once again, what we're attempting to do is to refresh this area. Take down fences. Not a big fan of fences that separate neighbors from one another. If they want it, they can put them back up. But generally, we're trying to open the area up This is a house that we ended up purchasing a couple of years ago. H4, H5, they were hospital quarters. And we purchased them from a private owner and we're remodeling them for student housing for Torrey University. And we went through and remodeled the buildings themselves and redid the landscaping. And it looks significantly different than it did a couple of years ago. Taking trees out is on occasion something that we need to do, and this is an example of a tree that died and we removed it. And speaking of tree removal and maintenance, a lot of people don't pay attention to that kind of thing, but we spend close to $100,000 a year on just tree maintenance. There's that many trees on the island, so it's significant. We also put in a greenhouse on Mare Island that we're just getting going on in the the idea here is to start growing our own plants so that we can have a whole storage area for plants to plant around the island. And eventually we're going to start putting trees in here that we can go ahead and plant around the island as well. These are our professional weed abatement goats. There's a herd of 700 that we keep on the island most of the year. They do leave for periods of time, but they do a great job taking care of the old golf course and portions of the unbuilt residential area and North Mare Island. So if you're there in the spring or in the fall, you'll see them all over the place. They do an amazing job. This is inside of H4, which is H's hospital for the hospital buildings. And we remodeled the floors, painted the walls, fixed the windows, new shades, pretty much anything cosmetic that you could do on these buildings we did. And we're starting to lease these up to, as I mentioned, to Toro students. And we're hoping to have both buildings filled before the next semester starts. Just more examples of what we put in there. Okay, these are a list of new businesses that we brought out in 2025. iTherapy, California Engineering, Alta Group, those were great gets for us. And then there's other ones on here you'll recognize. One that isn't apparent, CHR, is a racing company that redoes Porsches for racing around the country. Really phenomenal. If you ever get a chance to stick your head in that space, the cars in there are just really cool. And then Peevel, next to that, is a photovoltaic company that does testing of solar panels. And they're up on North Mare Island. Very small footprint at the moment, but we're hoping to grow them. There's an example of the cars that we actually stole these guys from Steers Point. They were out there, and we thought it was a really neat business, and so we moved them out to Mare Island. Maker's Fair, if you've never been out to it, you really should try it out. It comes out annually to Mare Island. We lease space to them as well, so they're not just a vendor out there. They're a tenant of ours, and a really special event brings in tens of thousands of people every year. This one's a slide that shows the job count for Mare Island, and you see it's been pretty erratic over the last, in about five or six years, we did make an adjustment on one of those dips where we originally inherited a protocol of trying to count every job on the island, but we found it really tricky because not all of the businesses on the island were our tenants, so people wouldn't respond to us. People like Alco and Earthquake Protection and other businesses like that. So we decided to go ahead and cut it back to just our tenants. It was easier to collect data. And then lately we've had a bit of a dip, as you've probably heard. Maryland Dry Dock went through some trouble over the last couple of years. Harbinger Homes has had some trouble. So we're working on that and I'll address how we're gonna address that in the next couple of slides. Last year we had over 200 events on the island and close to 90,000 people visited the island and that's a lot considering when we took over in late 2019 there was not any events on Mare Island and nobody was visiting it for the most part. So I think our teams have done a really good job activating the island, and you can see the ship in that picture. That's one of our tenants, the National Park Service, brought five of their ships from San Francisco, and that's just starting to open up to the public. They've been touring school kids out there for a number of months now, and now they just recently opened it up for the public to come on the weekends to check out those vessels. So just another example of what we're trying to do to activate Mare Island. Another one of the events that we do, this is a slide that shows four of them. These are the ones we actually sponsor and pay for. They're all free and you can come out and check any of them out. The decked out one is a music event where bands play on the porches of the officers' mansions. The Spirit Ship, which is coming up next, July 4th. We do a drone show and music and food and everything that you can come out to. The Halloween Block Party is, we shut down Walnut Avenue and have kids trick-or-treating at the mansions. And then Light Night is around the holidays where we light off the holiday tree down in the waterfront. I'm not gonna go through all of these, but generally speaking, this is a selection of some of the activities we do on Mare Island. The Quarters Coffee House, we didn't open it in 2025, but we certainly got a lot of awards. The best coffee house, et cetera, et cetera, and that kind of thing. So we're really happy about that. It's doing really well. Every month, it seems like sales are going up and up and up. And I think everybody in the island is very happy about that. We also installed, at our cost, some tennis courts and three pickleball courts. And those have taken off like gangbusters. I know some people were skeptical about how they would do. They're free to the public. There's a reservation system that people can use. We have over 600 reservations a month on those right now. So it's booming. Our office is right near there, and you can hear them playing every day. So it's great to hear. We also redid the watering system at Morton Field and we opened it up to the public to lease in another reservation system. You can lease the space for events or for sports. Elite just did their graduation out there and this is an example of a rugby team that uses the field and has games out there. I mentioned the National Historic Park Foundation brought their ships out. Love those things. They're really a great draw for us and I'm pretty sure Mare Island Brewing Company loves them too because they bring a lot of beer drinkers to Mare Island. This is an art installation that is representative of things we've done over the last three or four years. We rotate this art, we try to do it every six months or so, so that people can wander down the waterfront and check out some Bay Area art, some of which has been at Burning Man, some of which has been around the Bay Area, and really kind of fun stuff. Development this is Conley corridor that I've mentioned in the past We're still working with the city on this to try and clear the hurdle to get this going again we've had some challenges here, but we are still working on it and It's we're optimistic. We'll get this going soon. I This is another one of the projects we're working on, the beautification project. This is the North Mare Island G Street improvements. The one on the upper right is a big Mare Island sign. It doesn't look too big in the picture, but it is significant in size. I can't remember if it's 10 feet tall, but it's something close to that. How long? Ten feet. Ten feet. I had it right. So our proposal is to put trees and greenery in there so that as you enter the island, you enter a green corridor. And it's been promoted or proposed as a phased approach. This one, we had some challenges with the Navy still being on Mare Island, and they still have some cleanup things they need to do there. So they're right in the middle of where we proposed to build this. So we think we can do some things on either end of it around the Navy, but we're working with the city on that. And then the specific plan is something we've been working on for a couple of years now, and it's been submitted to the city. City staff is working hard on the environmental impact report and the DA and everything associated with this plan. So I'm sure you'll be seeing pieces of this coming through, hopefully shortly. And this is a draft land use plan that shows density of housing proposed. And what we're trying to do is go from fourteen hundred residential units that is under the current specific plan to the proposed specific plan would be closer to ten thousand units. It's a big jump but it also brings in a lot of jobs and a balance of jobs and houses. So I think that's it for me. If anybody has any questions or our team here, I've got Andrea Jones in charge of development and construction and I've got Bailey Keener who's the director of operations behind me. So if you have any questions for us, we're happy to answer questions.

Through the chair, if I could add some final remarks. I failed to mention during the introduction that staff has completed a full review of all the terms and conditions associated with this original Mare Island development agreement adopted in 2001. So we've completed our review and we have made a determination that the Mare Island Company is in substantial compliance with all of their terms and conditions.

What was I gonna say?

Oh, and then just as another reminder, there's no action required by the commission tonight. This is just a presentation to share the findings. However, feel free to take any questions if you'd like.

Great. Thank you for the update on it. And thank you for the presentation. I enjoyed looking through it. So I have been on Merritt Island several times this year, especially at Morton Field. So I definitely see some of the work. And I enjoyed my time being there. And actually, I think I stopped into one of the, I guess, one of the, I can't even think of their name. But they are the ones who designed the electric vehicles with the old.

Oh, Kindred Motor Company. Yeah.

Yes, walking by, just appreciating everything. I just got a chance to peek in by someone nice, and we just enjoyed the view.

Did you buy a couple cars?

I wish I was able to buy a couple cars, but I was definitely dreaming about it. But I do admire a lot of the work that you have done there so far, so that's the comment that I have right now, and I can see the presentation reflects that work from what I've actually seen. So I will leave this open to my fellow commissioners if they have any questions or any comments.

If you're going to make a comment, speak into the microphone so we can all hear you, because I can't hear any of you.

Absolutely.

No, there was a question about if this warrants any public questions or comment.

It's just a presentation, but you should, if there are any public comments, Manny.

Typically, we don't list this as an item for sign up, but if there are any members of the public who would like to speak, feel free to raise your hand. We do not have any members of the public signed up online.

All right, great. Well, thank you for the presentations. I don't have any other comments or any questions. And again, I'll give the fellow commissioners their opportunity.

Just a comment about a lot of the growth on the island. It's visible, and we welcome you and look forward to a lot of the developments coming up. I like that Mare Island sign. Yeah, it's me. I think that's going to be a really nice welcome. It reminds me of the Welcome to Napa sign.

Yeah.

So I could see that really being a picturesque-type, photo-type Instagram moment to increase Visit Vallejo. So thank you.

Thank you. Thanks, everybody.

All right, thank you.

Okay, so we can move to the next agenda item, which is a report of the city council liaison. We have Vice Mayor Matulik here to present.

Thank you, Chair Taylor, Vice Chair Douglas, planning commissioners, staff, and the general public. No specific council report today, but just want to, once again, just a reminder that with our new city manager on board for what is, I think this is the third week now, he has emphasized the importance the priority of economic development. And so this is tying into my comments of tying the planning commission to economic development, looking at our specific plans and identifying if there's any ways to improve that from an economic development standpoint. So hoping that at some point there's going to be able to have some collaboration with the economic development commissioned. And then for those that haven't driven by lately, but The Costco Fairview project, if you haven't seen it right now, there has been some significant advancement with the construction, and it'll be even more advanced in the next couple of weeks. Right now, I think the schedule is the Costco construction team is coming on site, and they're going to start doing all of their logistical stuff, along with the Lewis Group construction team is already on site. They've been there laying... getting the paving and all that other stuff, all the groundwork done and all the infrastructure done. But other than that, that is the extent of my report. Any questions?

I don't have any questions at this moment.

And I look forward to hearing the updates, any updates to the working plan ad hoc group towards the end of the meeting. Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, so we can move to the next agenda item, which is the community forum. And the community forum is for anyone who wish to address the commission on any matter which another opportunity to speak is not provided on the agenda and which is in the jurisdiction of the commission to resolve. It's a request to submit a speaker card to the secretary. And so we can open up the community forum for three minutes each for each speaker.

Through the chair, currently do not have any members of the public signed up for the community forum in person or online. We will go ahead and start a two minute timer on screen for interested parties to sign up for the community forum. But in the meantime, feel free to carry on with the agenda. All right, great, thank you.

Okay, so while we have the committee forum open, we will move to the next agenda item, which is the public hearing. And it's to hold a public hearing to consider the resolution recommending the city council to adopt an ordinance adding chapter 16.616 to the Vallejo Municipal Code, establishing an expedited permitting process for electric vehicle charging stations.

Thank you, Chair Taylor. We're going to defer the presentation to Senior Planner Robert Busick, who's going to go over this item for you.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Good evening, Chair Taylor, members of the Commission. It's a pleasure to be here with you tonight. I am Robert Busick, senior planner here at the City of Vallejo, here to discuss amendment to Vallejo Municipal Code, adding Chapter 16.616 on electric vehicle charging stations. The purpose of tonight's meeting is to hold a public hearing. review the proposed zoning code text amendment. And then the planning commission will hold a vote whether to adopt a resolution recommending city council adopt the text amendment ordinance. This item is subject to the Levine Act. Have any commissioners received contributions from any of the interested parties? Seeing none, we can continue on. So, of course, to talk about electric vehicle charging stations, we must first talk about electric vehicles, which are commonly abbreviated as EVs. These are vehicles which use batteries and electric motors for propulsion instead of, or in the case of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, in combination with a combustion engine fueled by petroleum. These vehicles produce few or no local tailpipe emissions, and batteries are recharged through connections to electrical utilities, which are known as electric vehicle charging stations. Electric vehicle charging stations are broken down into three types, and these definitions are from the California Department of Energy. The three levels are based on the voltage of the service connection. We have level one, which starts at 120 volts. That matches the standard household electrical outlets. Level 2 ups the voltage to about 240 volts, and that, of course, increases the amount of range that a vehicle can have per hour of charging. And then level three is also known as a DC fast charge. These serve all battery electric vehicles, not the plug-in hybrids, at or above 480 volts and can provide a lot of range in a shorter amount of time. The state of California has determined that electric vehicles are expected to play an important role in achieving the climate and air quality goals statewide. These goals include increasing the number of electric vehicles registered from 1.5 million in 2025 to 5 million in 2030, with the eventual goal that 100% of vehicles sold in California will be comprised of EVs. As such, seeing that the electric vehicle, the adoption of electric vehicles is important to the state, the state legislature passed AB 1236, which requires local jurisdictions to establish an expedited, streamlined permitting process for EV charging stations and have included that in the government code. This proposed new chapter in the zoning code pertains to electric vehicle charging stations and it's inserted into the procedures and permits chapter of the zoning ordinance. The governor's office of business and economic development who oversees this particular state law and the adoption of electric vehicle, permitting of electric vehicle charging stations has been consulted while we've developed this proposed ordinance and they have confirmed that it is consistent with the intent of the pertinent sections of the government code. So the process that's proposed is very simple. STEP ONE IS THAT APPLICANTS MUST VERIFY THAT THE PROPOSED ELECTRIC VEHICLE CHARGING STATION INSTALLATION WOULD NOT CREATE A SPECIFIC ADVERSE IMPACT WHICH IS A TERM DEFINED IN STATE LAW AND WITHIN THE ORDINANCE ON PUBLIC HEALTH OR SAFETY. STEP TWO WOULD THEN BE THAT APPLICANTS WOULD SUBMIT A PERMIT APPLICATION with the required documentation and applicable fees using a city checklist that we would publish online. And we also explicitly allow electronic submittal of applications and electronic signatures to facilitate electronic submittal of applications. THE THIRD STEP IN THE MINISTERIAL PROCESS IS THAT IF THE APPLICATION SATISFIES THE CHECKLIST REQUIREMENTS AND COMPLIES WITH THE APPLICABLE BUILDING ELECTRICAL FIRE AND SAFETY STANDARDS, THEN THE CITY'S CHIEF BUILDING OFFICIAL WOULD PROCESS THE APPLICATION THROUGH THE EXPEDITED MINISTERIAL REVIEW AND ISSUE THE NECESSARY PERMITS. At this stage, if the city or if the chief building official determines based on substantial evidence that a proposed electric vehicle charging station would create a specific adverse impact on public health or safety, then the planning and development services director may require the applicant to obtain a minor use permit, which is indicated in our zoning code as MNP, and going through the minor use permit process rather than ministerial approval. If a minor use permit is required based on the specific adverse impacts or impacts identified by the chief building official, then an application for a minor use permit shall be submitted to the city in accordance with the chapter governing minor and major use permits. The application will be reviewed by staff for completeness based on the timelines in the permit streamlining act before being sent to the planning and development services director for a decision similar to all other minor use permits. The director may condition minor use permit approval to mitigate specific adverse impacts through another term, a feasible method to satisfactorily mitigate or avoid each specific impact identified by the chief building official. The minor use permit application may only be denied by the director if the chief building official makes written findings based on substantial evidence in the record that there is no feasible method to satisfactorily mitigate or avoid each identified specific impact. And these findings shall include the basis for the rejection of the potential feasible alternative for preventing the adverse impact. As with all other minor use permit director decisions, this may be appealed to the Planning Commission. The required processing times for the ministerial permits are outlined in government code and are based on the number of stations that are included in a EV charging station application. So these are quicker than your standard permit streamlining act. COMPLETENESS DETERMINATION AND APPROVAL DEADLINES. SO FOR APPLICATIONS PROPOSING 1 TO 25 STATIONS AT A SINGLE SITE, THE COMPLETENESS DETERMINATION MUST OCCUR WITHIN 5 BUSINESS DAYS AFTER SUBMISSION OF THE APPLICATION TO THE CITY. Once the application is deemed complete, then an approval decision must be made within 20 business days. Those timelines are doubled for projects proposing more than 25 stations to 10 business days for completeness and 40 business days for an approval decision. Staff has analyzed the zoning code text amendment against the required findings for such an amendment in the Vallejo Municipal Code. There are two findings that are listed. The ordinance amendment is consistent in principle with the general plan and any applicable specific plan. And the ordinance amendment is consistent with the purpose of John Potter, The zoning code to promote the growth of the city in an orderly manner and to promote and protect the public health, safety and general welfare staff provide an analysis in the staff report and the proposed record. John Potter, resolution. that are included as attachments in this item. It met seven general plan goals and is consistent with the state laws promoting climate and air quality goals to promote and protect public health, safety, and general welfare. Regarding the environmental determination, staff advises that this amendment be exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act pursuant to the section of the CEQA guidelines focused on ministerial projects. The city is required to adopt this ordinance by state law. Accordingly, no further environmental review is required. Public notification was provided in accordance with the public notification section of the Vallejo Municipal Code. This requires a notice to be published on a one-eighth page ad in the Vallejo Times Herald. This occurred on May 24th. And the notification is also emailed to members of the Planning Commission. As of this time that I'm here before you, no public comments have been received by staff regarding this item. Given all of that, city staff recommends that the planning commission adopt a resolution recommending that the city council find the project exempt from environmental review pursuant to CEQA guidelines section 15268A ministerial projects and approve an ordinance adding chapter 16.616 electric vehicle charging stations to the Vallejo municipal code. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

Great. Thank you so much for the presentation. I believe at this moment we still have the community forum open.

Through the chair, no members from the public have signed up for community forum.

All right. We can close the community forum now and we can open it for any public comments.

Through the chair, we currently do not have any members of the public that have signed up to speak on this item.

Okay.

Through the chair, I just want to clarify, Robert may not recollect, but at the, your documents in the packet, both the resolution and the ordinance have a different CEQA exemption, that it's not a project because they're administrative activities. We're going to, because of the minor use permit, potential so when the each application when it comes in it'll either be ministerial or it will be subject to CEQA so this ordinance adoption of the ordinance is not a project under 15378 b5 because it's an administrative activity thank you great thank you

Great, all right, thank you. So I guess we can give in the public forum about three minutes if we have any one who decides to want to make a comment or log in at any point. As of right now, does any of my fellow commissioners have any questions or any comments?

Yeah, I have a few questions. You talked about the number of days for permitting or to get approval and that also I don't think took into account if it had to go through a minor use permit process. Can you explain please?

chair taylor commissioner medeiros so the ordinance before you part of that expedited process for electric vehicle charging stations is to shorten the time period that staff have to review an application AND TO MAKE AN APPROVAL DECISION OR A DECISION WHETHER TO APPROVE OR NOT COMPARED TO OUR, YOU KNOW, STANDARD APPLICATIONS WHICH FALL UNDER THE PERMIT STREAMLINING ACT.

OKAY.

AND SO THE PERMIT STREAMLINING ACT REQUIRES THAT STAFF MAKE A whether an application is complete. So whether an applicant has provided all of the documentation necessary to then analyze a project to determine whether it's consistent with our codes within 30 days. So the five days for one to 25 stations and 10 days to determine completeness for over 25 stations is much reduced compared to that 30 day.

So that's more, excuse me, through the chair. So that's more of an internal, uh, process timeline.

Through, through the chair, if maybe I could help clarify the timelines that are identified are related to the ministerial process. And I believe that is set forth by state law. Yeah. If it falls into the minor use permit, then we default to the permit streamline of timelines.

All right. Um, through the chair again, uh, there was mention of a city checklist. for the process. I'm just wondering what kinds of questions are asked on that checklist. We know sitting up here that there are stations throughout the city that are not working because their cables have been cut. So what happens when that crime happens? I mean, what happens next? Who owns these stations? Is it the city? Is it a different entity?

Through the chair. It could be anyone. It could be a residential home, single-family home, up to...

I'm talking about the ones that are out in public for public use.

The ones on the city parking lots? Those were... who owns them like the target parking lot it was a pilot project i'm trying to think i approved those contracts so they came in they were no cost to us um i think they were through a grant process Well, PG&E sponsored it. You had to use a PG&E approved contractor. The contractor supplied the equipment and they would get a cut of the kilowatt hour charge. And when the thieves came in and cut the wires, they decided not to pursue anymore they didn't want to pursue any more installations in Vallejo Wow so they're just gonna sit there so they're just gonna sit there and Mark Helmbrecht was in charge of the parking lot program you know managing all the parking lots and he's gone I don't know who's doing it now in Public Works but we do now have a new city manager I'm sorry new Public Works director and a new city engineer so the city has no recourse to We could revisit those contracts.

I think the public would appreciate that.

We could probably get them to remove the equipment. Yeah. But I don't know about getting workable equipment.

Yeah. And I understand that part. That would be a request. What was the other one? Also, there was a statement that you made about impacts or potential impacts. What feasible impacts do you foresee?

Chair Taylor, Commissioner Medeiros, so those impacts are actually determined by the chief building official based on the building code, a lot of the health safety regulations pertaining to the location of electrical equipment in proximity to certain various uses. It would really be something to determine, you know, site by site, proposal by proposal. but of course the chief building official is the person in charge of the building code, administering the building code, and so would make the decision, would advise the director on whether a proposal needs to be analyzed further through the minor use permit process to provide those conditions to address any item that comes up.

Okay. Can you tell me if the California building codes have a code in reference to electronic vehicle stations? Is there a chapter in the building codes for that from the state?

Chair Taylor, Commissioner Medeiros, in the research, as a planner, we don't read building code. We're focused on the zoning code. But in the research for this, it came to my attention that there are items called out in the California building code regarding electric vehicle charging stations.

Okay, is there a section or is it just kind of sprinkled somewhere?

I actually don't know, but I know that there are regulations related to that. I'm not sure the organization of that though. I'd have to maybe get back to you on it.

Okay. Just some things I'd like to enter into the record. These days, there are things such as cut-resistant cables for these stations. They are evolving as crime has... predicted, I'll just put it that way. There's also tampered detection alarms for new systems and there's even forensic marking which what happens is if it's being compromised in any way, What happens is the discharge of synthetic forensic liquids that kind of sprays onto the vandals, whoever is trying to tamper with these. There's also locked enclosures and there's also secure firmware that's now available for them. And those are some of the things that I think that, you know, in your managerial, oversight that you should maybe familiarize yourself with.

Great. Thank you for those great questions. I do want to check back to the public forum to see if we have any new speakers that have any comments regarding this agenda item. Through the chair, no members of the public have signed up to speak on this item. Okay, great. We can close the public forum at this moment. Thank you. Okay, I do want to follow up on the commissioners if they have any questions or any comments.

I do. Thank you. Through the chair, thank you for your report. My question is, do we have any set hours of operation similar to like a gas station? Are these charging stations going to be available 24 hours or do they have an automatic time setter or something like that?

So Chair Taylor, Commissioner Beasley-Sansbury, So the ordinance in front of you tonight is aimed at streamlining electric vehicle charging stations wherever they might be installed with existing or proposed development. The standards that are in place for certain convenience stores would come into play with If it was combined with a proposed use for, you know, a larger, I think like a site plan type.

My question is during the process of them, of us streamlining the application, is it noted in the application where there are hours of operation or is that to drill down for this process?

If I could jump in, typically there are not limitations or standards related to hours for these types of chargers. However, if there was a situation where we needed to do a minor use permit, perhaps there could be a concern related to hours of operation and that's a type of condition that could potentially be folded in.

My concern is that with the lack of police presence that we have currently, that would just be a safety precaution because we don't have gas stations that are open past 10 or maybe 11. Restaurants close at 8. We're not an all-nighter type of town, so I was just curious about the safety measure. BEING THAT THE EVS ARE MANDATED BY THE STATE BY 2035, ARE WE IMPLEMENTING SOME SORT OF OR WILL WE, WILL THIS BE SOME SORT OF QUESTION ON THE APPLICATION OF you know, some sort of income barrier, some sort of, you know, different rate for those who are low income. Because right now, folks who are low income, they don't drive electric cars. They drive the electric bus. AND THEY PUT $2 IN THE CAR WHEN THEY CAN. SO MY QUESTION IS, HOW DO WE CIRCUMVENT THAT? IS THAT SOMETHING THAT WE CAN ADD INTO THAT QUESTION? OR IS THAT AGAIN SOMETHING THAT WOULD BE LIKE A MINOR USE PERMIT WITH AN APPLICANT?

SO THROUGH THE CHAIR, DEFINITELY A VALID POINT. I BELIEVE THE PURPOSE OF THIS ORDINANCE AND THE STATEWIDE LEGISLATION THAT LED TO THIS ORDINANCE IS REALLY TRYING TO ADDRESS KIND OF THE HIGHER LEVEL KIND OF CHICKEN AND EGG SITUATION WITH THE ADOPTION OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES WHERE FOLKS MIGHT BE HESITANT TO decide to purchase an electric vehicle for fear of not having anywhere to charge it. And so this is trying to address the provisioning of those chargers to make more folks comfortable with making the switch from gasoline powered to electric vehicles.

So this is a soft introduction into ramping up sort of, I guess, is that what you're saying? Ramping up the more use and more availability so that folks are buying more EVs, is that? Correct. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

So through the chair, I'm curious. So, you know, we have the ones that are in operational down there in Virginia and have been for what year, year and a half now. And I think that's what we're all kind of thinking about is how do we avoid that scenario? But, you know, and maybe we could put some some some rules in place so that they they're, you know. you've got to take care of them. You can't just put them in and, well, if it goes wrong, you don't replace them. What's going on down there in Virginia is awful. But are you saying that this isn't the time to implement those sort of thoughts?

Through the chair, if I could maybe jump in on that one. I would say that this ordinance is probably mostly going to apply to private companies who wanna come in and install this type of infrastructure. So usually when you have a third party coming in, they are installing it and they're charging a certain fee. So they have a vested interest in making sure that those charging stations are working. I think the ones that you're referring to on Virginia, those probably were also tied into this grant situation, which is a unique but definitely we can check in with the public works director to see if he's got an update and if there's any plans to fix those or do something with them, and I can bring that back to this group. I will say I did see someone out there working on them not too long ago, so maybe there's something. I don't know, but I'll let you know.

Thank you very much.

All right, great. Thank you again for the presentation. From my interpretation of this, and I think for my fellow commissioners, those are some really great questions, something to think about. It's in terms of the public safety, ensuring that we have an infrastructure that is working well and that is available, and keeping all those aspects in mind. I do understand the scope of this agenda item, and that is to expedite this process and having and updating our municipal code to be in alignment with with the assembly bill. Is that a fair interpretation of what we're doing at this moment right now?

Chair Taylor, members of the commission, that is correct.

Okay, thank you. And so I think this is a step in the right direction to meet air quality goals as well as creating opportunities for various income groups to be able to have access to electric vehicle and have adequate amount of charging stations available. I'm sure some studies have showed that electric vehicle charging stations is usually aligned with home ownership or in specific housing developments where a lot of access is not available. So I think this creates accessibility to the public as well. So I think this was overall a great presentation and it's moved us in the right direction. And I think some of the questions that our fellow commissioners have asked, as I stated again, it's something to think about going forward as we move forward and try to account for some of these questions that could be potential risk. but overall thank you so much for the presentation i think this uh this steps in my direction so uh we can leave this open if we like to motion to move forward or

I motion to accept, hold on, let me read this. Okay. To consider a resolution recommending the City Council adopt an ordinance adding chapter 16.616 to the Vallejo Municipal Code establishing an expedited permitting process for electrical vehicle charging stations.

I'll second. I'll second.

OK, we'll do a roll call vote. Chair Taylor? Aye. Vice Chair Douglas.

Aye.

Commissioner Beasley-Stansberry. Aye. Commissioner Medeiros. Aye. Commissioner White.

Aye.

Let the record show the motion passed five to zero.

Great, perfect. Thank you again for your presentation. And we will move to the next agenda item, which is the written communications.

We have no written communications this evening.

All right, great, thank you. And we will move to the next line item, report of the presiding officers and members of the planning commission. Secretary report.

um yeah i have just a couple of quick items um i did not provide a presentation tonight with the full update because um i think we're going to be doing that just once a month and we did do one on the first of the of june so i have a more abbreviated update tonight um since we were talking about the building division i wanted to share that we do have a recruitment currently open for the chief building official That recruitment is going to be open through July 6th. So if anyone knows any good candidates that you want to recommend, please send them our way. I also want to mention that all of the memos that were prepared in response to the special referral from the city council regarding your review of the commercial corridors, those have been compiled and they have been shared with the Economic Development Commission staff. We're tentatively scheduled to have that item go in front of the Economic Development Commission for review and consideration in July. I apologize, I don't have the exact date, but they only have one meeting in July, so that is when we're taking that item forward. If any of you would like to attend that meeting and speak to the item, please feel free to do so. um and then the only other item is just at the last city council meeting on june 9th which is just last week the council did pass the second read of the ordinance for the fairview at northgate project which approved the master plan to put that in place and then also to increase the residential density so i just wanted to share that update and that is all i have this evening

Great. Thank you for the update. I appreciate it. And we can go to the next line item. 10B is the city attorney's report.

I have nothing to report. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. And we move to the next item, 10C, which is report of the chairperson and members of the commission. As of right now, I don't have anything to report. Does my fellow commissioner have any updates or anything to report?

Okay.

Well, I'll take everyone's silence as a no. And I will move to the next line item, which is a report of the ad hoc subcommittee. I will defer that to Commissioner Medeiros.

yes um i don't have a whole lot more to add to it but here's our file it's it's getting thick um we are going to try to meet sometime this week if not early next week to work on next steps for putting an outline together what i would like from my fellow commissioners up here is to send me what you believe to be the three most important items that we need to focus on this year as a group. So if you could do that, I would appreciate it. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for the update. Anyone have any questions or regarding the next steps for the work plan for ad hoc subcommittee?

OK. All right.

So we can move to the next agenda item, which is other. If we have anything else that have not been brought up or mentioned during the planning commission, I think this is a good opportunity. Other? All right. Since we don't have anything else, then we can actually conclude and adjourn the meeting at 8.05.