Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

How to order the Planning Commission meeting of January 20th, 2022, 2026. Secretary Lewis, please take roll call. Good morning. Commissioner here. Commissioner Cushing here. Commissioner Ayala here. Vice chair. Sandlin here. Chair. Kesley here. Thank you. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Like. This is our annual meeting where we will elect a chair and a vice chair of the Planning Commission for 2026. I will now give the floor to Planning Director Dave Ward, who will serve as the secretary for the nomination for chair. Thank you. Chair. Kesley and commissioners. Good morning. Are there any nominations for chair for 2026? Yes. I'd like to nominate Charles Salen. Thank you, Commissioner Cushing. Are there any additional nominations for chair? Seeing none lose. Can you call the roll for the nomination of chair? Yes. Commissioner Boydston. Yes, Commissioner. Cushing. Yes. Commissioner.

Ayala. Yes. Vice chair. Sandlin. Yes. Chair. Kesley. Yes. Congratulations. Chair. Sandlin. At this time, we will turn the hearing over to you. If you'd like to change seats and positions, we will do that and change our nameplates. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. Appreciate you. Good. Okay. And at this time, then Chair Sandlin will take the next step for the selection of vice chair. Thank you. Director. Thank you, director Ward. It's an honor to be chair in 2026. The planning commission. Director Ward, do you do I have any nominations for vice chair? I'd like to nominate Commissioner Cushing for vice chair. Any additional nominations? May I second that second Secretary? Luce, please take roll call. Yes. Commissioner. Boydston. Yes. Commissioner. Kesley. Yes, Commissioner. Ayala. Yes, vice chair. Cushing. Yes, but I'm not vice chair yet.

Commissioner. Cushing. Yes. Chair. Sandlin. Yes. Okay. All right. All right. Congratulations. Commissioner Cushing as vice chair. The next item is set is to set the hearing schedule for the year 2026. The planning Commission is available to meet the first and third Thursday of each month at 8:30 a.m. and it anticipates doing so during the 2026 unless the planning director anticipates a different Thursday is necessary and updates the commission as he does during his hearing date. Projections. Do we have any discussion or motion to approve our 2026 Planning Commission meeting calendar? I would like to make that motion to approve. Had a motion from Commissioner Kesley. Second second from Commissioner Boysen. Luce, please take roll call. Yes, Commissioner. Boydston. Yes, Commissioner. Kesley. Yes. Commissioner. Ayala. Yes. Vice chair. Cushing. Yes. Chair. Sandlin. Yes. All right. We've got the calendar set. The next item is public comments. Secretary Luce, did we receive any comments on items not included on this agenda today? Chair Sandlin I did not receive any comments. That is not included on our agenda today. Thank you, thank you. The next item is approval of the minutes for December 4th, 2025. Do I have a motion to approve those minutes? Move to approve motion from Commissioner Boysen,

second. Second from Commissioner Cushing. Secretary Luce, please take roll call. Commissioner. Commissioner. Boydston. Yes. Commissioner. Kesley. Yes. Commissioner. Ayala. Yes. Vice-Chair. Cushing. Yes. Chair. Sandlin. Yes. All right. The next item is item seven, a case number PL 230051. The applicant is Ventura Ranch Partners, LLC. The applicant requests approval of a tentative parcel map, discretionary tree permit, and a planned development permit case number PL 250040, to subdivide a parcel into three developable lots and a conservation lot, and construct a 328 unit farm worker housing complex. The project location is at 4884 North Ventura Avenue, approximately 1.7 miles north of the city of Ventura, in the unincorporated area of Ventura County. Is there any commissioners that have any disclosures? Since this is a public hearing and request for a tentative map tree permit and. The planned development permit at this time, I'd like to ask each planning Commissioner to state on the record whether or not he or she has received any oral written, ex-parte, communication, or has any other information to disclose regarding this agenda item that is not already contained in the record before us on this matter, please disclose the substance of that information only if that information is not

contained in the record before us on this matter. Secretary Lewis, please take roll call. Commissioner Boydston no disclosures. Commissioner Kesley, I have no disclosures. Commissioner Ayala. No disclosures, vice chair, no disclosures. Chair Sandlin. No. No disclosures. Case planner Michael Klinger, please proceed with your presentation. Oh, there we go. Good morning, Chair Sandlin and members of the Planning Commission. My name is Michael Conger, representing the Ventura County Planning Division. The project before you this morning is a request for a tentative parcel map plan, development permit and discretionary tree permit for the Ventura Ranch Farmworker Housing Project. The file number is PL 23 0051. For those wishing to participate on zoom, you may register at the link provided on the screen. If you're participating by computer, you can click the Raise Hand button. Otherwise, if you're participating by phone, you can dial star and then nine to be queued to speak. This is for agenda item number seven A. This is a basic overview of our presentation this morning. We'll start by discussing the project sites location, then the project description. I'll touch on two key state laws. Then we'll have our environmental consultant, Rincon Consultants, speak about the environmental review process for this project. After that, we'll discuss findings and consistency and touch on public comments. And finally, staff will outline the recommended actions for your commission to take. Starting with the project location. The project site is located on North Ventura Avenue, approximately one and a half miles north of the city of Ventura. The site is at the

southeast corner of Norway Drive and North Ventura Avenue. The site is addressed at 4884 North Ventura Avenue. This is an 83 acre parcel. It does have a split General Plan designation, with the western portion of the site in the existing community, agricultural designation, and the eastern portion of the site in the open space designation. Only the western portion of the site is within the North Ventura Avenue Area plan, and in that area Plan, it's designated as agriculture, and the zoning is agricultural exclusive, with a 40 acre minimum parcel size on the western portion of the parcel, and open space with 160 acre minimum parcel size on the eastern portion of the parcel. This is an aerial view of the overall site. You can see that there's a neighborhood that surrounds the northern and western boundaries of the property. That's a neighborhood will commonly refer to as the Valley Vista Track. The. The focus of this discussion today, though, is going to be on this western portion of the property. This is 19.6 acre area and it was formerly in crop production. It was a lemon orchard. Now moving on to a description of the project. As I mentioned, this project involves three different entitlements. There's a tentative parcel map, a plan development permit, and a discretionary tree permit. The tentative parcel map is necessary to subdivide the existing single legal lot of record into four parcels. Three of those parcels will be developed with a farmworker housing complex. Those are parcels one through three. And then the fourth parcel, parcel four, which is about 63 acres in size, will be preserved as permanent open space. The plan development permit is necessary to construct and operate a

farmworker housing complex. This particular complex is a 328 unit complex, and it's a phased development. Each of the phases corresponds with each of those lots parcels one through three. This will result in 18 buildings that are three stories, just under 35ft in height, 572 parking spaces, two community centers, and a variety of recreational amenities including children's play areas, a basketball court, and a garden. Finally, there's the discretionary tree permit. That's necessary because seven trees will be removed to accommodate access to the property. Five of those trees are non-native heritage trees, and two of those trees are coast live oaks, and the applicant will be required to offset tree removal by paying either an in lieu fee or by planting. This is the tentative parcel map, and these are the four resulting parcels. Again, parcels one through three are on the western portion of the site where the farm worker housing complex will be developed, and parcel four will be preserved as open space. This is the site plan zoomed in on the three parcels where development is proposed. Access is provided by way of two roads accessing Ventura Avenue. On the western portion of the property. There's a third access point at the top right of the screen at Floral Drive. I want to point out that this access area will be gated off and restricted to emergency egress only until such a time, as the public agency accepts Floral Drive as a public street. This is the site or the landscape plan, and you can see the two children's play areas and the central green, which has the basketball court and

some other sports facilities. You can also see the level of tree planting that's proposed on the property. By applying the site plan to the aerial image, you can kind of see in context how how the development will fit in. One of the things I would like to point out is that the site plan was developed after extensive public outreach and the the applicants redesigned the project so that there was a 90 foot between the nearest residential building and the northern property line, which is the backyards of the residents along Barnes Road. Additionally, the two buildings closest to the Northern property line have been oriented so that the two story portion of the building faces north, and so the hope was with with these measures taken, that this would help with the sufficient buffer for the neighboring residents. Additionally, I'll go back one slide to the the landscape image so you can see what the planting looks like in that buffer zone along the northern boundary. Here's a few site photos, which I'll cycle through fairly quickly. Both of these photos were taken along the North Ventura Avenue frontage. The photo on the left is taken from Norway Drive, looking south, and the photo at the right is taken from the southern property boundary, looking northeast. And these are photos of the site itself. The photo on the left is taken from the Ventura Avenue frontage, looking east into the site. The photo at the right is taken from the Floral Drive stub out, looking southwest towards Ventura Avenue. And the

photo on the left here is taken from the farm road at the south side of the property, looking northwest back towards the Valley Vista Tract and Ventura Avenue, and the photo on the right is taken from Norway Drive between Bounds Road and Ventura Avenue in the Valley Vista neighborhood. This is an example of the floor plans. I won't go through all of the floor plans. Those are all included in exhibit four to the staff report packet. But I did want to show one illustrative example. This is Building Plan A. This is the largest of the four building plans that are proposed for the site. It would consist of 24 units, eight units on each floor. It's a combination of one, two and three bedroom units. These are the elevations for a different building plan. This is building plan B, and the reason I'm showing building plan B is that these are the two buildings closest to the North property line. The elevation at the top right of this image is the elevation that will face the residential backyards along Bounds Road. Now, I'd like to briefly touch on a few pertinent state laws that apply to this project. The first is called the Housing Accountability Act and this applies to housing development projects. It generally limits local jurisdictions to applying only those policies that are objective and in effect, at the time that the applicant application was deemed complete. For context, an objective policy is one that can be applied without any personal or subjective judgment. So, for example, building restriction that says height shall be no more than 35ft is an objective standard, whereas a building standard that says building height shall be no more than is

compatible with the surrounding neighborhood would be subjective. Additionally, with the few limited exceptions, the standard must have been in effect at the time the project was deemed complete. In general, the county cannot apply newly adopted policies or standards to housing development project except in very limited circumstances. So, for example, when a preponderance of evidence is in the record that the application of a new standard is necessary to mitigate or avoid a specific adverse impact, and there's no alternative method to satisfactorily mitigate or avoid the impact, then the new standard can be applied. The other major component to the Housing Accountability Act is that it requires that the county make specific findings if it is denying or reducing the density of a housing development project that complies with all applicable general plan zoning and subdivision standards. This is a high bar. It requires written findings supported by a preponderance of evidence in the record that there is a specific adverse impact. Again, those key words specific adverse impact on public health and safety, and that there is no feasible means of mitigating that impact other than to deny the project or reduce its density. The Housing Accountability Act, however, does not limit the county's ability to deny or condition a project to comply with other applicable state laws like the California Environmental Quality Act. The Housing Accountability Act comes into play when we're dealing with the very high Fire Hazard Severity Zone. These are two maps showing the property and the very high fire hazard severity zone boundaries in red. The map on the left shows the the standard prior to July 2025. The map on the right was adopted in July 2025 and is currently in effect. Crucial to this project is that the

project was deemed complete in April of 2024, which means that the map on the left is what we have to apply to this project. You'll hear this come up in reference to this particular standard. This is section 807, 41 .3.3 C of the Non-coastal zoning Ordinance, and it prohibits farmworker housing complexes in the very high Fire Hazard Severity Zone. For the purposes of this standard, again, we have to use the map on the left. And so the project is deemed to be in compliance with the standard. The other state law I wanted to discuss is the density Bonus law. This law applies to affordable housing projects and allows them up to five concessions or incentives for projects that have 100% affordable housing. Additionally, the State Density Bonus Law applies a reduced parking density or excuse me parking calculation. The applicants are using the Density Bonus Law to apply the reduced parking ratio, and also to request two incentives. The two incentives are to allow ground floor units to have the same area of private open space as the upper floor units, and to allow a reduced interior side setback for two structures. In general, the county is obligated to grant the requested concessions or incentives unless they would not result in cost savings, they would cause a severe health and safety impact, or they would otherwise violate state law. Next, we'll move on to environmental review. And I'd like to introduce Danielle Griffith if she's here. Yes. Excellent. Just hit that. The white button. The white button. Sorry. Yeah. That one advances the slide. Good morning. My name is Danielle Griffith and I'm with Rincon Consultants. And we work with the county to

review the environmental impacts for the project. We reviewed the project under guidelines of 15183 Sxl. Guidelines 15183 provide a streamlined environmental review for projects that are consistent with an adopted general plan and are located in an area where environmental impacts have already been analyzed and the project is found to be consistent with the Certified General Plan for the for the EIR. So Sequa guidelines 15183 encourages the implementation of an adopted general plan, so it reduces unnecessary delay when the environmental effects have already been studied analyzed and the impacts deemed mitigated or no impacts found. Projects qualifying under 15183 don't have to have a new EIR or a negative declaration when the impacts have been found to have been adequately addressed at the planning level. This is not a blanket exemption, so the agencies are required to still confirm that the project doesn't create a new or significant new impact. Previously identified impacts are adequately mitigated, and that if there is an unusual site specific condition that might exist, that additional environmental review must be provided. In order to confirm all of these things, we need to start with confirming that the project is consistent with the land use, density and development standards of the adopted General Plan. You need to confirm that the project does not result in any new or more severe impacts than those that were previously identified in the General Plan EIR, and we need to incorporate applicable general plan mitigation

measures and policies, as well as all uniformly applied policies of the local agency and regulatory requirements. So for this project, the County analyzed and determined that the the project is consistent with the General Plan. The impacts are reduced by the General Plan, EIR mitigation measures, and no new findings or more significant impacts than the General Plan. EIR found request that you refer to exhibit five of the Environmental Checklist and exhibit eight for the findings. Thank you. Thank you Danielle. Now on to findings and consistency analysis. The proposed project is consistent with the 2040 General Plan, the North Ventura Avenue Area plan, the Non Coastal Zoning Ordinance, the Subdivision Ordinance and the City of Ventura policies and standards. The specific policies and standards from these documents was reviewed in exhibit six, seven and 12 to the Staff Report packet. Based on this information, staff believes that the Planning Commission has enough substantial evidence in the record to make the required findings to grant a tentative parcel map, PD permit and discretionary tree permit. Now, I'll address some of the public comments we've received on this application. At the applicant's request, the planning division opened a two week public comment window between December 5th and December 19th for comments on the section 15183 analysis that Danielle just described. And during that comment period, the Planning division received 63 individual comments and 249 form letters. Those comments are contained in exhibit 15 of the staff report packet and staff's response to those comments is an exhibit 16. Since that time. Since the end of the comment period, we've

received 48 additional individual comments on the project of those comments. Most of them are already addressed by the master. Comments and responses in exhibit 16. Many of the comments we've received focus on fire safety. In this case, the fire department has recommended appropriate fire safety measures to be incorporated into the project, in which include a 200 foot extended fuel modification zone. The fire department provided a memo, which is exhibit 13 of the staff report packet, and it indicates that they are able to safely serve the project. There were several comments received about defensible space zones impacting residents along eastbound road. However, these areas are already subject to defensible space requirements and there would be no change to the requirements as a result of the proposed project. Regarding evacuation, the applicants had prepared an evacuation study which is in exhibit five, appendix I, to the Staff Report packet. This was prepared by Dudek Consulting. The evacuation study found that it would take approximately 58 minutes to evacuate the area in an emergency, assuming reasonable worst case scenarios. Additionally, I should note that the Valley Vista neighborhood currently has only one way in and one way out. That's Norway Drive. This project would create a new connection at Floral Drive, allowing emergency egress from the Valley Vista tract in case the Norway Drive access ever becomes compromised. Regarding traffic, the applicant prepared a traffic study which is attached in staff report. Exhibit five, appendix B. The traffic study found that the project would not result in the degradation of the level of service below acceptable levels. Several commenters have questioned the need for farmworker housing, suggesting that there's a limited demand. The county has been engaged in

an ongoing study of farmworker housing needs, and phase two and three of the study were released in August of 2024. The study looked at the needs and preferences of farm workers, and concludes that many farm workers are living in substandard and overcrowded conditions, which which suggests that there is a marked need for affordable farmworker housing. Many commenters also expressed concerns with compliance with the Soar initiative. That's the Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources voter initiative. Importantly, the developed portion of the project site that we're dealing with today is within a general plan designated existing community where Soar does not apply. Even if Soar did apply here, Soar recognizes the need to house farm workers, and farmworker housing is recognized as an appropriate land use for agricultural land. Several commenters have stated that the location is not ideal for farmworker housing. Many have suggested that perhaps this project would be better sited in Oxnard, Somis or Saticoy, as those those locations are closer to fields. Citing projects like this does, however, require a delicate balance. For example, housing complexes need urban level services like community water and sewer, so they generally need to be located somewhat near developed areas. Additionally, farmworker housing complexes are only allowed on agricultural exclusive open space and rural agricultural zones. The issue before your commission is not whether this site is the most ideal for this use, but rather whether the proposed development complies with the objective standards and policies. Parking has also been raised as an issue. As I discussed earlier, the project is able to use the density bonus law to use a reduced parking ratio. However, despite that, they're still providing 27% more parking than is required. Several commenters have raised water availability

as an issue. The project will receive water from the City of Ventura, which maintains and regularly updates an urban water management plan. The Urban Water Management Plan ensures that the city has adequate water to support both existing development and future growth. Finally, we've received some recent comments. Specifically, I want to address one from Steve Bostock regarding pesticide contamination at the site and concerns that there could be health effects generated by construction born dust, the Air Pollution Control Districts Fugitive Dust rule will apply to the project, which means that dust control measures will need to be put into place. These measures typically include watering exposed soils and installing a stabilized construction entrance. Regarding pesticides, the site was previously used as a lemon orchard, and pesticides and herbicides were commonly used. Soil sampling was conducted as part of a phase two environmental site assessment, and the sampling concluded that the pesticide levels in the soil were all substantially below residential screening levels. Therefore, the risk of exposure is not considered significant. I would also like to address a recent comment from Mr. Bostock about environmental justice, which includes the notion or which environmental justice includes the notion that disadvantaged communities should not be disproportionately burdened by toxic or exposure risk. The General Plans, Land Use and Community Character Element addresses environmental justice, and it's targeted towards designated disadvantaged communities. The project site is not in a designated disadvantaged community, and therefore the environmental justice policies don't apply. In any case, providing affordable housing for an underserved population generally aligns with environmental justice goals. And finally, I'd like to address a comment made by Linda Bellamy recently about compliance with the health and safety code standard regarding the very high fire Hazard severity zone. The statute Miss

Bellamy cited relates to a streamlined ministerial permitting approval process, which this project is not subject to. This project is going through the discretionary approval process. Therefore, that statute is inapplicable to the project. Now we'll move on to recommended actions. The Planning Division recommends that your Commission certify that you've reviewed and considered the staff report and public comments. Find that the project is exempt from Sequa under Sequa guidelines, section 15183 and Public Resources Code section 21083.3. Find that the tentative parcel map complies with the subdivision ordinance as set forth in exhibit nine. Approve the tentative parcel map subject to the conditions in exhibit 11. Grant a partial credit for the Quimby Ordinance fees conditioned on the General Services Agency, confirming satisfaction of the standards. Make the required findings to grant the PD permit and discretionary Tree Permit, and to grant the requested density bonus law, concession and parking reductions subject to exhibit ten. Grant the requested concession and parking reductions under the Density Bonus Law grant the PD permit Discretionary and Discretionary Tree Permit, subject to the conditions of approval in exhibit 11. And finally, to specify that the planning. The clerk of the Planning Commission is the custodian of records. Once again, I'd like to remind those participating on zoom that you can indicate your desire to speak on this item by pressing the Raise hand button, or by dialing star nine. This is agenda item number seven A. This concludes staff's presentation today. Planning staff and our consultants are available to respond to any questions. Additionally, we have staff from other agencies standing by both in person and on zoom to participate. If there are any specific questions relative to their

areas of expertise. We also have the applicant's representative, Lisa Woodburn, who has a presentation for your commission. Thank you. Thank you, Michael, thank you for your presentation. Any questions of the staff by the Commission? Commissioner Boysen? Can you talk a little bit more about not having to do an EIR because the general plan had already done it previously for this for this piece of property, and how was it analyzed at the time? The general plan was was analyzing the environmental document or preparing it? I might defer to Danielle Griffith on that one. She's the consultant who prepared that document. Hello again. So the the general plan that was prepared for this project or for the county analyzed multiple issue areas that are required under sorry, I'm calling someone. Oops, sorry. Message. She's on the phone and I'm calling. Sorry Emily, let me take a step back. So the general plan prepared an EIR and analyzed all of the all of and above the appendix G questions that are provided in Sequa the California Environmental Quality Act, when with this project, we looked at all of those same impact areas. So an initial study was essentially prepared, and we reviewed each impact area against what the general plan findings were to ensure that the project was consistent with all of the findings from the

general plan itself. And then if all of the mitigation measures that were provided in the general plan still applied here, they were applied to the project moving forward, and it was found that all of those mitigation measures mitigated any of the significant environmental impacts that were found in the general plan. So the the project itself is consistent with the findings of the general Plan. Mitigation still apply and environmental analysis was prepared. We just confirmed that the site is consistent with the findings of the General Plan EIR. So it was an orchard before and now it's a housing project. How do all the measures still apply and not new ones happen to pop up. So I believe that the the new the General plan, land use and zoning designations for the site allows for farmworker housing and with regards to like the density and the number of units that are allowed, all of those provisions still apply to the project, and it falls within the envelope that the general plan allows for. For farmworker housing on ag land for uses allowable at the site. Thank you. I see that the fire department is here. I believe I have a question for the fire department. I believe we have Alan Dearden from the fire department here. Morning, sir. So I understand that, you know, prior to redesignating the high fire zone that this wasn't included. Do you have any idea was it not included? Because at

the time, it was an orchard. It it was not a very high fire severity zone, but all around it. Right. Was. Yeah. So it was it was not a very high fire severity zone, that parcel, because it was a lemon because it was an orchard. Yeah. And that. Okay. The state has three designations. They have very high fire severity zone, high fire severity zone, moderate severity zone and the LRA. And in the SRA, we also have our own ordinance that designates areas HFA high fire. No. What is it H high fire zone. Because we can have a local ordinance which we applied with this project to increase the building requirements. If it's not in a state designated zone at the time, that would require those the the ordinance back then it was a chapter seven A of the building code. The new 2025 code now has a whole chapter for hardening structures in the wildland urban interface. So it's my understanding. Maybe this is I have another question for you, but it's my understanding that when this project is deemed complete, it wasn't in the zone. But there can be new, new things that happen after the. Completeness letter that take it out of so that you can consider them significant impacts. Is that correct? I don't I'm sorry, I don't understand. Sorry I think that's for for planning. And then then I have one more for you. Yeah. Sorry. So there's there's an exception under the Housing Accountability Act to allow you to apply newly adopted policies and standards and that if they are significantly different than what was prior to, well, there needs to be a specific adverse

impact that you're looking to avoid by applying that new standard. Well, it's putting putting housing within a high fire zone. Well, as opposed to having an orchard. And I don't know if you want to add anything. So that is not an issue with us. Any plan development in this on this parcel, we would have conditioned it exactly how we conditioned this project. We took into account that there is going to be development on this parcel. Looked at it, it was in a high fire area. So that's why it got us conditioned from us to meet the requirements of the building code. Chapter seven. We expanded the brush clearance because of the the secondary access separation and any other project going in here. Industrial, commercial, single family would have gotten the exact same conditions. If they do it tomorrow, they get the conditions that we put on this project. Well, with one caveat. You can't put farmworker housing in a high fire zone in a very high fire zone severity zone, but that's not a fire department issue I understand that. Yeah. So quick question for you. Just from a from a firefighting standpoint, how is the fire water being treated? Is it tanks and pumps, or do you have the pressure up. How do you know? We had the Thomas fire and we had major neighborhoods where the pumps failed and there wasn't water supply. And essentially the fire just went. There was no fighting it. That's a good concern. Prior to the Thomas fire, every water purveyor in the county is required to have a backup system. If the power goes out, that they can still provide fire flow. Fire flow is what we're talking about. That's what comes out of the fire hydrants. Fire hydrants and fire flow are different from fire sprinklers. All of these buildings will be

hardened construction with full fire sprinkler systems in them. The fire water system is part of the approval process that we look at. We look at access and water. Can we get there? Can you get out? And do we have water to fight the fire when we get there? So you anticipate that you're going to be doing that at a later stage figuring that out? No, it's already in place. Okay, so the project wouldn't be deemed complete without fire flow. Are there tanks or is it just off the water? I don't know who the purveyor is. Surprised? I think it's a city. It's a city of Ventura is the water purveyor for the site. So okay, so we don't know how it's being how water is being supplied. Is it through the city water lines or is there a certified water with a water availability letter on they they meet all the state requirements to provide fire flow to this site. Right. Because I know we did a camp up in above Malibu and their water came from storage tanks as part of the fire system because they're probably not in a purveyors district. Okay, so if they're outside of a purveyors district, we do allow a private water system. But this is a public water system that has to meet state requirements to the site. Okay. And then lastly, and on the evacuation times. So the Thomas fire came through in the middle of the night and there was not any time to evacuate. I think people sort of got out of there 30 minutes before their home burst into flames. You're stating that from your perspective, you now have in place adequate evacuation notifications so that that won't happen again. Commissioner, evacuation is handled by law enforcement, so you'd have to talk to them

about that part of the project. Okay? Right. Thank you, Commissioner Boydston, we do have representatives from the Sheriff OES, if you'd like to ask that question, I guess I would like to ask that question. Thank you. Yes. Mr. Maynard comes down. I will also remind that in the staff report exhibits contains the analysis provided by Dudek that was utilized in this project. Thank you. Good morning, chair and members of the commission for the record, Patrick Maynard, Director of Emergency Services for the Sheriff's Office. To your question about evacuations. Every scenario is different, but I want to be clear, and that the Thomas Fire clearly demonstrated that traffic is an issue along the Ventura Avenue area. You know, we can do our best to get resources out to an area like this, but there's no guarantee that those resources are available. And as you can imagine, during the Thomas Fire, law enforcement resources were tied up, knocking on doors. So one of the mitigation suggestions that was provided in the traffic study was to have flaggers in place at intersections to ensure the efficient movement of traffic. And that just isn't practical. I want to be absolutely realistic. That is not practical. Not to say that evacuations won't be possible every again, every scenario is different. Not every fire is a Thomas fire. But we need to be realistic that we're seeing these fires move faster. We have less notice. And while we have great systems to notify people, that traffic study assumes that everyone knows which direction to go, that everyone drives in an orderly fashion, that everyone's packed up and ready to go. And I think the reality of the case is that that's not what happens. So I think we can't be blind to the

common sense view of there will be impacts to traffic, and there is no sure way to ensure everyone's going to get out in an orderly, timely fashion. So you don't agree with the traffic study? I don't want to say I don't agree with it. There's a lot of detail in terms of the, you know, mathematical study portion of it that, you know, has a point. But I think the reality is what we saw in 2017 during the Thomas Fire. And I can tell you, I was there, I was on Ventura Avenue to witness it myself. It's a challenge. And adding, you know, 500 or so additional cars will exacerbate that. Is it going to exacerbate it to a high degree? You know, it's hard to tell, but it will obviously exacerbate the situation. So I would never want to stand before the commission or for the before the Board of Supervisors and lie to anybody and say that there will be no impacts. This is additional vehicles in an area that is challenging, plain and simple. So are you working on a plan to make it better? You know, working on a plan specific to that area? No. I think, you know, what we do year round is encourage residents to plan and prepare. So when we say plan and prepare, don't wait for us to tell you to leave. If there's a fire, leave, especially if you're in an area that is difficult to to get out of. It's things like that that we look to as mitigation measures. Again, it's not practical for us to promise resources into an area to control traffic at intersections. Again, I wish I had a lot of deputies to be able to do those types of things. The reality is we don't we do not have those resources, so there's no magic answer. Unfortunately, again, it boils down to individual preparedness. Staying very alert to potentially rapidly changing conditions and being prepared to evacuate far before we ever ask you to. That's a big ask. It is it's it's a challenge. And again, there's there's no there's no there's no magic

answer. As much as I'd like to say we could wave a wand and clear traffic, you know as well as I do that there's traffic on the roadway every day under blue sky conditions, it will not be, you know, a good situation under gray sky conditions. If you look at if you look at, for instance, Camarillo and the fire there, the embers were running 15, 20 miles ahead of the the actual fire, you know, and there is no preparation for that. No, there isn't. And again, those are some of the worst case scenarios. I do want to say that's not every every case, thankfully, but those are, you know, many of the issues that we're dealing with today. And again, there is no magic answer. I think that is why it's important that we're mindful about where we construct new projects and take these things into careful consideration. Thank you. Appreciate questions from the Commission. Thanks. Commissioner Kesley, are you are you done with your questions? Commissioner Kesley, good morning. I'm going to just continue a little bit on the same discussion as my colleague has taken us, which is what something says on paper doesn't necessarily ever equate to what really will happen in a in a real emergency situation. And it's not possible that we can we can plan a one size fits all for every situation that happens. I will need either staff or the applicant to demonstrate to me how you're going to get all of those people out of that area safely and in the need of an emergency evacuation, when there could be limited visibility or no visibility, or people are in panic mode because they have 30 minutes to get out. So that would that would be a requirement for me. Thank you. And Commissioner Kessler. Commissioner Kessler, I wanted to mention that I believe the

applicants team does have a representative from Dudek Consultants who prepared that evacuation study. Commissioner Boysen. I just had a general question for you. The children in this area, when this development happens, where are they going to school? This area is in part of the Ventura Unified School District. Okay. And how are they going to walk to school? Well, right now there's no sidewalks on a large portion of the Ventura Avenue. Unfortunately, there is a bike lane. Yeah. And I was surprised that I didn't see any sort of communication or letter with Ventura Unified. Commenting on the increase in students and whether they had facilities to actually accommodate the children. Did you communicate with them? Typically, what's done with school districts is there's a fee that's paid to help pay towards facility fees. Well, typically you when you get a big development happening. What I have seen is, is there is some communication with the school on what the impacts to their school system, this this development might bring. Where the were there any communication there. We're not okay. And and I anticipate the high school students are somehow going to get to Ventura High right. Yes. Thank you. Are there any other questions of the Commissioners of Staff? All right. I did have one question.

Just wanting to follow up to Commissioner Boynton's concern about students, I guess just a general question. How do or where do the Valley Vista students attend school and how do they get to school at that point? I'm pretty sure that there's an elementary school on the avenue somewhere that I honestly, I, I don't know, I don't know, I know this question is outside of your realm of expertise. I mean, you're of course. Yeah. I don't I don't know the specific school that they attend. Okay. Any other questions of the commissioners or staff? One additional question regarding the 60 acre conservation lot, just wanting to understand what are plans for conservation on that parcel? Is there going to be any sort of like site remediation or some sort of restoration project to sort of create more of that fire barrier potentially? Well, part of the fire barrier does go into that, that property. So there is going to be an easement in favor of the parcels one through three, to help for maintenance of that 200 foot fuel modification zone. Aside from that, I don't believe any particular restoration projects are contemplated. The way the condition is worded right now. There's options to record a deed restriction or to transfer the property to a conservation organization, or put it under a conservation easement or open space easement. You can ask the the the applicants team if they have any specifics on that. I know that they were talking with one of the conservation organizations about acquisition at one point. Thank you. Any other questions by the Commissioners of Staff or county planning staff or other county staff? Seeing none, I will now open the public hearing. Would the applicant

like to make a presentation on this item? Yes. How do I make the the white button moves it forward. This one moves it backwards. Okay, great. Thank you. For begins my wife. Just the decor. Before the applicant likes to speak. I'd just like to talk about the decorum in the audience to maintain the public meeting environment. Conductive and welcoming to receiving public comments from all members of the public. The audience is discouraged from engaging in displays of support or opposition to staff reports or public comments, including clapping, booing, hissing or cheering that may create a disruptive or intimidating environment for members of the public wishing to participate. We just respectfully want to let everybody communicate their points of view without any disruptions, and we appreciate that. Thank you. Applicant. You may proceed. Thank you. Good morning, Planning Commissioners. My name is Lisa Woodburn and I am a senior planning manager with Sanibel. I'm here working with the applicant team to present the Ventura Ranch Farmworker Housing Project. I want to mention that we do have a full team here today to answer any questions that you might have. Alex Pratt is here representing Amcal. They will be the developer of the property, myself and Robert Harvey. Robert is the civil engineer on the project. Sarah Shelton is here. She is the architect. Stacy Miller has done our public public outreach. And Doug Nichols from Dudek is here to answer any questions that you have about the wildfire hazard reports that

were done. James DeWitt is available via zoom. He was he's from Stantec, and he did the analysis of the soils. And Neil McGuire is here. He's our land use attorney. I'm putting this up just to show you the project timeline. We did originally submit the project in May of 2023, and at that time, this was what the project looked like. We did still have the three story buildings, the same number of buildings, but they were closer to the neighborhood. And we only had one form of ingress and egress out of the site, the other at access. Access Way, was through Floral Drive and then down Bounds Road and to Norway Drive. And so it would have gone through the Valley Vista community. And once the application was submitted and it got out, there was immediate opposition from that neighborhood. And they were very, you know, they they formed groups, opposition groups, they had a website. And we knew we needed to get in front of this. We needed to talk to the community members and find out what their concerns were. So we did have a community outreach meeting. It was in November of 2023. It was up in the Oakview Community Center. And this is just a photo of, you know, the attendance at that meeting. We wanted you to know it wasn't just a few people that showed up. I mean, there was good representation of the neighbors. And we heard their comments. And based on those comments, we thought, you know what? They're right. We need to make some changes to the project. So what we did was we moved the the buildings back. We moved them further away from the backyards of the neighbors on bounds. So now most of the the buildings

are all the three story components of the buildings are all about 180ft away from the backyards of the people on bounds. The two exceptions of that, and Michael mentioned it. There's two buildings that have a two story component that's about 90ft away, and that's highlighted here in yellow on the right side. And this again, this is what it will it will look like those buildings will look like to the neighbors on bounds. So they will have just two stories about 90ft away from them. And then the three story component of the building will be behind. The other change that we made after the community meeting was we added a second point of access into the site itself. So there's two forms of access onto Ventura Avenue from the site. We did keep the floral drive to bounds to Norway as an option, but that will be gated. That will be an emergency access only. And I think it's important to note that it's not only for us, it's also an emergency access that will be available to the people in the Valley Vista community, because right now, right now, they only have one form of ingress and egress to in and out of their neighborhood. So we resubmitted the application and it was deemed complete. As Michael said, it was deemed complete in April of 2024. And while the county was doing their analysis and reports and preparing for the hearing for the project, the fire hazard maps were changed and Cal Fire changed the maps. And in July of 2025, we became part of a very high fire hazard zone. So because of that, we thought, you know, we need to have the fire hazard

analyzed and the wildfire hazard analyzed. And so we contracted with Dudek to prepare, prepare to reports. And one report was the fire protection plan, and the other report was the wildfire evacuation study. So the fire protection plan, what were the findings of that? All of the structures within this development will meet the latest building and safety fire codes. They will need to be hardened and built that way. Also, the Ventura County Fire Department has very restrictive landscaping requirements in the very high fire hazard zone for the new developments. So we will incorporate zone zero, one, two and three into our parcel. And that includes a 200 foot fuel modification zone along the open space parcel. I'll show you in a minute what that's going to look like. The fire access roads, the driveways, the fire hydrants will be installed and maintained to Ventura County Fire Department code requirements. There will be a reliable water source provided by Ventura City Water. And again, we will have two access roads from our development, plus the emergency access. What does fire resistant building. What does that mean? All buildings will comply with the new verify high fire hazard requirements in the building code. All of the buildings will be equipped with fire sprinklers. All of the residential building exterior walls, the unit separation walls, the floors and the roofs will have a one hour fire rating. All the floors and ceiling vents will be covered with a wildfire, flame and ember resistant materials, and all roof vents will include a corrosion, a fine, corrosion resistant and noncombustible

mesh material to present prevent the passage of embers into the buildings. And this is that exhibit. I wanted to show you about the fuel modification zones. So the site itself, you see pretty colorful there. Those are the requirements of our landscaping. Meeting the zero, one, two and three requirements. And the three is the in green. And that shows the 200 foot fuel modification zone that not only will protect the Ventura Ranch development, but it will also go up along the open space parcel and it will be a fuel modification 200ft wide along the Valley Vista neighborhood there. So then we also did a wildfire evacuation study, and the findings of the study were that the project is consistent with the existing emergency response plans and emergency evacuation plans, and it actually adds to it increases and enhances the evacuation for the Valley Vista community by giving them a second access road. I know we talked earlier about the Thomas Fire and, you know, the problems that happened with the Thomas fire. That was eight years ago. And I think since then there have been a number of other wildfires. I think we've all become much more aware of the, you know, the emergency and the the importance of getting out as soon as we can when there is a wildfire, there's everybody has, you know, the Fire Watch app on their phones. We have VC alert, there's door to door sheriff notifications and wireless emergency alerts. And we really do feel that there will be earlier evacuations in the future for wildfires than what

happened at the Thomas Fire, and it would allow for not as much congestion on the roads at one time. The available roadway capacity is sufficient to safely accommodate the number of evacuating vehicles. Again, we have the two primary accesses from our site and the emergency access. And one thing I wanted to point out is if it were to happen, if we needed to. These buildings are built in such a way that the residents could shelter in place. Okay, so what are the benefits of the Ventura Ranch project? Let's talk about that for a minute. There have been some comments made that why are we even building more farmworker housing? There's no need. We don't need any more farmworker housing. And I think that's I just want to mention that we are building this project to provide much needed, high quality, affordable housing for the farmworkers in Ventura County and their families. So again, why are we doing this? There is a need. And Ventura County, and I know you guys have seen this presentation by staff. They were part of a farmworker housing study. They went out and surveyed farmworkers, and they found out that a lot of them were living in overcrowded conditions, and they're living in homes that need repair. And why are they living that way? Well, it's because there isn't enough affordable housing. You know, we have a housing crisis in Ventura County and there's not enough affordable housing. And so they're living in those kind of situations. And as a result, the farmers are saying they're having difficulties in recruiting and retaining a sufficient, significant or sufficient workforce. So there really is a need for more farmworker housing in the county. Why live in why should they live in in the Ventura Ranch community? Well, besides the fact that these buildings

will be well constructed and, you know, built to current standards, great standards, there's also a lot of on site amenities that we're providing. We're providing a central recreation area. There's going to be two playgrounds for kids, for children. There's a recreation area outside of one of the community centers that will have bocce ball and picnic areas. There's a lot of walking areas around the site. It'll be a beautiful place to live. And here's a picture of what one of the playgrounds look like over at Somis. And here's another one. So you see the you see the playgrounds. I mean, they're going to be beautiful. They're going to be well constructed. We also have amenities. Somebody had mentioned in one of the comments about the laundry facilities that there just aren't enough laundry facilities. They're going to have to go to the two community centers. And that's not true. I don't know if you can see on this site, but in the blue, on this, on this slide, that's the location of the laundry facilities that are spread out throughout the community. So they have ample opportunities to do laundry without throughout the site. There's also going to be four 24 hour, seven day a week residential managers living on the site. So if there's any issues, they have any problems, they'll have somebody to go to. And lastly, there's the community centers. The there will be two community centers. They provide after school activity rooms, a computer area, community lounge, a kitchen, laundry facilities. This is a picture of the community center over at Somis. So you can see this is the community lounge and the kitchen. And this is another one of the community centers. So you know, they're beautifully done. They have you

know, this this second community center has game tables and, you know, things for people to gather and and just enjoy each other's company. So that concludes my presentation. I did want to mention again, we have a full applicant team here available to answer any questions that you have about the project. And I wanted to take a moment just to thank thank you for the opportunity to be here today and also thank Michael for his work on this project. It's it's been much appreciated. So thank you. Thank you. With the commission, I'd like to ask any questions of the applicant at this time. Yes, Commissioner Cushing okay. I have a couple questions. Currently behind Valley Vista neighborhood. Is there a fire barrier right now? I mean, you're going to provide 200ft fiber. Is there one currently? No. Right now the open space parcel is I mean, they have to meet I want to back up. We have to meet the the requirements of the fire department for brush clearing. But it's not that fuel modification zone requirements for the 200ft. Okay. And in a project is there if you don't have enough farm workers to can other low income people rent in this project? No. The requirements for the county is that this has to be since it's in an agricultural zoned property, it has to be farm workers. And when I say farm workers, it doesn't just mean people that work in the fields. It could also be people who work for, you know, preliminary processing, anything having to do with farming, they can live there and their families. Okay. And I've noticed driving down like the 126, there's a lot of times there's farm worker busses that are transporting

people to jobs. Will there that be that take place at this location, or I would want to defer that to Alex, who's Alex Pratt is here representing the developer. And he might be able to answer that question for you. Okay. Good morning commissioners. My name is Alex Pratt. I'm the vice president of development for Cal Housing. We haven't currently made provisions for busses to move people around, but in different developments that we've had, depending on the needs, we've provided band services for health services for various things. So that's just something we'll be evaluating the course of working on the development right now. If the Somis Ranch project, we have busses that are obviously are getting folks to schools at the various schools in the districts, but not separate transportation process for the farm workers. Okay, okay. And I know that's come up about Ventura County School District. I know Ventura County School District is way down in student population. And so I don't really think that's a concern that if you're going to add more students, the district might like having more students. And then on the fire, you said that the buildings are going to be one hour fire rating on the outside. So I said yes. And I don't know, I have the architect. Yeah. That's okay. Sarah Shelton is here to answer any questions you have about the architecture and the building hardening. If that's come up. Yeah. Correct. The buildings will comply with the 2025 building code. And also, as mentioned under the 2025 building code WUI has been separated into its own code. So wildland urban interface. And so all the buildings will have one hour rated walls and full fire sprinkler systems. Okay,

okay. I don't have anything else. Do we have any other questions for the applicant from the commission? Commissioner Boysen? I'm curious, since you showed the slides, is this the same design team that did the Somis project? Yes. And? Is there one of the managers of the Somis project that we could ask questions? Well, Alex is here. Alex Pratt is here representing Amcal so he can answer questions that you might I'm interested in, in, you know, beautiful photographs of the community centers and things like that. I'm interested how well they're used by the community. They're being used by the community. But it's an evolving process because we're still in the process of leasing up all of Somis Ranch. So what we do is we provide a series of services, both computer modules for folks. There's a social worker who's there on site 20 hours a week who can provide access to health services, etc. but the whole process is kind of evolving as community kind of comes together as a whole over the course of leasing it up. So from your experience. How many in the community have have computers or know how to use them? I don't have any statistics on that, so I don't want to quote that. Are the units set up for internet? Yes, they are individually, yes, they're set up for internet, but they don't have pre provided internet service for them. So they have the hardwired part. So you have to actually order it. But everything that we develop is set up for internet access. Is

the community center free for for computer access. It is. And there's high speed internet access in the community center as well as classrooms, etc. Thank you. Yes. So I just one more question. One more question from Commissioner Boysen on the traffic study. Did they study having busses available or a transportation management plan for getting people to their work site? No, that wasn't included in the traffic study. It was mainly analyzing the level of service on Ventura Avenue and finding that we were, you know, the level of service wouldn't be increased to something that wasn't significant. So there was no traffic management plan done for the project? No, thank you. I have a question for the applicant. Now that we know that they are part of the project. During the mountain fire, and maybe this question for Alex during the mountain fire, was there any issues with evacuations of that property? Feeling a little like a jack in the box? But no, there weren't any issues. I mean, we kept a very close eye on what was going on. I think we were concerned like everyone else. But no, there were actually no issues of evacuation. Evacuation never got quite that close. So, you know, we were watching kind of the air currents and everything else, but it was never a need to evacuate the project. And in that project, familiar with that project is down the street from my house, actually. How many access in and out of that project do you guys have? Two. Two accesses. And that's

similar to the access in and out of this project. Similar in that it's two I mean, it's a different kind of access, but but it's similar that there's two two access points. I mean on this project, I mean, I don't have the two of them to kind of show you, but, you know, there's an access point that's going out around the perimeter that's kind of adjacent. It's being shared with the community in Somas. Both accesses are only for the residents of the Somas development. And they're getting and well, actually, there's a couple other folks that are using them, but they're really to get them in and out of the development. There's other small users of that there may be using it, maybe less than 5% of the traffic going out. And and what's the the difference in housing numbers between that facility and this facility? The Soma facility is 360 units. This one is 328. So this is a difference on 32 units. Thank you. No further questions for you guys. For me, if any other commissioners. Commissioner Boysen, I hate to be a pain, but I'm just trying to for myself on the traffic study, I saw that the intersections studied didn't really go very far south. For instance, Stanley Avenue. And if in fact, there are no connections for people or children to walk, one would assume parents or somehow busses were going to have to bring children down into Ventura, into the schools. And the schools are essentially there's one just north, right? The tech high school, or I forget what it's called, it's not high school. And then

there's there's two south of there off of, I think in the west side. And then on Main Sherwin Way is one of them and things. So my question is how why wasn't Stanley Avenue which is impacted now during school hours, not analyzed as part of the impact that this project will bring, which is bringing children regardless of if Ventura Unified can accommodate them with because of their lower numbers. How does this project impact Stanley Avenue? Can I just interject just one point before she answers that, because she's the expert on the traffic study at Somis Ranch, where we have quite a few children, all the high schools, middle schools, etc. in the area have transportation that goes right onto the development and comes right into the middle of the development by the community center and picks the children up and takes them out. The only children who are walking is are those who are going next door. And we have a separate pathway that is on our site. And then it's connected to the high school next door, where they can walk on the sidewalk and then walk directly next door. So it would be my expectation that anyone who's leaving the site would have bus transportation to be able to leave the site, and wouldn't be walking off the site any distance to get to their schools. Just in terms of from an operational standpoint, that's a great response. But I wonder why it wasn't in the traffic study. I have to have her speak to that. And I, you know, I, I didn't prepare the traffic study, obviously, but I know our traffic engineer studied the intersections that were required by the county for the study, and it was deemed appropriate and complete. I also, you know, it's it's I read the study and I understand that it was minimal to the, to the applications, but it wasn't

always it didn't seem to me practical in, in that it should have been a wider sort of net study. Okay. If in fact, traffic is going into the city of Ventura, into impacted zones. Thank you. Thanks. Any other questions of the applicant? Seeing none I do have a question for Patrick. Patrick from the the safety brought up a point about evacuation and I wanted to get some context in history because Mount Fire was recent and it was right by that development that was already built. Patrick, do you have any specifics in regards to any evacuation issues that occurred in the Somis project or near the Somis project, or any safety issues that came up during that fire with evacuation and Somis that you can speak of from experience? Yeah. So specific to the Somis project. No. What I can say is traffic was extremely challenging in that entire area. So again, not necessarily specific to that Somis project. I was looking back at the evacuation perimeters as the discussion was taking place, and that area was directly adjacent to an order area, but none that I remember. That being said, lost Posas Road. You know, that whole area was very impacted by traffic. It took people a lot of time to get out of there. So I don't want to dismiss the fact that, you know, there could potentially be issues. Again, every scenario is different. Yeah, I remember the mountain fire and I remember you guys had shut down Los Posas Road. Is that correct? Ultimately it was put under a hard road closure. But, you know, of course getting people out of their traffic needed to get out. So it was left open for a period of time and then eventually closed. And then you guys also had

shut down the Somis road. Correct? Correct. No traffic in and out, which is the the access road, which would be like the 33 or Stanley Road into this project. Is that correct? Correct. And and you guys didn't have any safety issues with with that community at all. Again, specific to the Somis development. Not that I recall, but it's hard to say. You know, again, that's just based on my recollection. Again, traffic was definitely an issue along Los Posas Road as people left the Camarillo Heights area and all of those homes, if my memory serves me correctly, the evacuation extended down to Las Posas Road in that area, so it is a pretty, pretty large area and traffic was severely backed up again. The Somis development is on the eastern boundary of that. So it's, you know, not in the epicenter, but, you know, just thinking broadly, I think that depending on the scenario, that area two could very easily be impacted. It just maybe wasn't that particular day. Do you see any and just thinking from an emergency perspective, do you see any things that that from a safety perspective could be mitigated now that the Somis project has been built, do you see anything else from a safety operational management perspective that could have been added to the project? That's not at the project now. It's a great question. You know, I don't think anything comes to mind again, with many of these developments and many of these problems that we tend to deal with. After projects are built. We go back to the preparedness part. So, you know, ongoing preparedness efforts for the residents, I think is our best solution, our best answer to to any of those problems. As much as I'd like to see more roads and more access in and out, we know that's just not practical in all areas. So given the fact that the project is built, I would just say ongoing effort

to plan and prepare with residents is really our key to to successfully evacuations. And last question, would you say that the evacuation from the Somis project was adequate during the mountain fire? It's hard for me to say I wasn't there to witness that particular evacuation. Again, I just will reiterate traffic was terrible all through the last post. This area granted, you know, that's on the eastern side of that portion of the fire. I would imagine traffic was not good in that entire area. Yeah, definitely evacuations. There's traffic's never going to be good. And I just trying to understand from the perspective, did you get any briefings specific to that project in Somis that caused any red flags or harm or things that we need to look at from a county that to mitigate any of the potential issues of evacuation from the Somis project? No, nothing has been brought to our attention related to that project. Okay. Thank you. No more questions. I appreciate the analysis from that. It seems like a similar project, similar access, similar situation, similar infrastructure. So I'm just wanted to get your perspective on it. There was any problem? Well I appreciate your perspective on that. I feel slightly different in terms of where this project is situated. That's being proposed and discussed today as compared to that one, of course, similar in nature and use, but I think, you know, one location is a little more remote, a little less ingress egress. Again, in my opinion, that's that's my perspective. And again, I've had the opportunity firsthand to witness evacuations from the Ventura Avenue area. And I was there in the early morning, late evening, early morning hours of the Thomas fire to witness that firsthand while I

was out at the mountain fire. I wasn't directly near that Somis project, but I have seen the side effects of evacuations along the Ventura Avenue area, and it's it's not good. It's very difficult. It's difficult to get in and out of there. So I want to be very clear about, you know, what I have witnessed and the course of my job. And it's difficult in that area. Great. Any any more questions for Patrick while he's up here? Commissioner voice I have one. So you stated that the mountain fire you had really problems with, with congestion and traffic, those neighborhoods evacuating were predominantly single family homes. Is that correct? That is correct, sir. Following up on that, from your perspective, is it easier to evacuate neighborhoods of single family homes or high density housing projects? I think a bit of a rhetorical question, but, you know, higher density complexes would definitely create more challenges just due to the amount of traffic. So I think that, you know, is is somewhat of an obvious answer given given the layout. And then just to follow up on the chair's observations on Somis Somis project really wasn't in the direct path of the of the fire. It was on the periphery. Is that correct? That is accurate. It was on the, you know, eastern periphery of the project. So again, going back and trying to refresh my memory, there were evacuation orders adjacent to. But it didn't directly did not include portion of the project. Yeah. Which is a difference. Correct. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions of the. Commission of the applicant or

staff seeing none. I think this is a good point to take a break. There's we've got about I don't know how many speakers do we have. Chair Sandlin we're at 45 speakers. So that is quite a bit. So I do support your direction to take a break. Also letting folks know if you've parked in the very front area where it's the three hour parking, you want to make sure you move your vehicle so you can avoid that parking restriction. How much time would you like to take the break for? Five ten minutes. Ten minute break. Okay, great. Yes. Commissioner Boysen, can we clarify before break how much time each applicant is going to be given? Each right now, each each member is going to be given three minutes. Respectful communication and their perspective on the. Thank you for clarifying chair. Thank you.

Open this meeting back up. Back from break. Hopefully everybody's back from break and ready. Any questions for you? We do have one disabled person that's kind of like, you know so I am pulling her because she's number 34. But I'm pulling her as number one. Okay. So we only have like a limited three minutes. So we would be give her an additional minutes to. But we're moving. We're going to open the meeting back up. And due to the additional request for comments and and request from the commission, we are going to move it to two minutes for each speaker, two minutes for each speaker. And so please make your comments concise and try not to repeat what somebody else had said, so we can evaluate all the information thoroughly and get all the different perspectives. And so I, Secretary Luce, we have any. Public comments. Here. Chair Sandlin good. Good morning. I just wanted to acknowledge and let you know that we did receive a statement. Cards. Let me just go and kind of like give you the names of the people that submitted the statement cards. And then I will pass it on afterwards. And then after that I would call in the in person speakers. So we received statement card from

Ken Ivanov, Brainerd Moon, G. Evans, Doctor Evans, Seki, Paris, Robert. Lee, and then Hayley Purdy, Carmen Cameron Rader, and then we also receive a statement from Gemma Gudina with with the map of this fire hazard severity zone. And we also received a comment from Steve Bostock. And it is in compliance with the two pages materials. So I will go ahead and kind of like pass it on to the planning commissioners. Thank you, Secretary Lewis. And we'll be able to evaluate those. Okay. And now we will be moving on to the speakers in person. We will I will call in first Julie Perez. And please be reminded that it's going to be a two minutes per speakers. Okay. Hold on a second. And then after Julie Perez, the next one would be Linda Bella Bellamy Bellamy, followed by Laura Swenson, and then Mary Greek. Okay. Let's see. Should I start? Yes. Go ahead. I'm a

little hoarse this morning. My name is Julie Perez and I live in close proximity and reside in the Valley Vista tract A vesting. And I forgot my glasses. A vesting tentative parcel map is one of the most discretionary approvals the county can issue. It requires environmental evaluation, formal findings, and the ability to approve, deny or condition the project because it is discretionary. Ceqa applies automatically. A project with a vesting map cannot be processed as exempt, and it cannot rely on $15,000 streamlining, because the map itself requires site specific environmental review. Approving this project without Ceqa would violate state law and undermine the integrity of the county. County's land use process. We ask the Commission to require proper seeker, proper seeker review. Thank you. Thank you for letting me speak. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. The next person is Linda, followed by Laura. Good morning. My name is Linda Bellamy. I live in the Valley Vista tract.

I object to the Ventura Ranch project. The County of Ventura is non coastal ordinance states farmworker housing complexes are prohibited in any high fire severity zone. Your non-coastal ordinance was recently updated ten 1725. In addition, California Health and Safety Code 17 02. I'm sorry, 17 021.8. Division 13, part one, chapter two expressly prohibits streamlining for agricultural employee housing on sites located in a Cal designated Very High Fire Severity Zone. Because Ventura Ranch is designated to be in a high fire severity zone, the county lacks legal authority to process this project as ministerial. If this project proceeds as ministerial permit process, the record will show the county acknowledged the high fire county, the High Fire Severity Zone designation. The county proceeded under the Health and Safety Code 1702 1.8 anyway, and the county ignored and expressed statutory prohibition. It's reversible error, ultra various action sequence exposure, and a procedural due process problem. As stated in the 2024 Ventura County General Plan, has 1.5 states. The county should discourage the building of homes in high fire severity zones. Other than all of that, I noticed how the AMCO had pushed back the housing from the Bounds Road properties and basically all they did is put in over 238 vehicle parking spots, which means those vehicles are going to start up five in the morning, violating the noise ordinance of a quiet time from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. in

the morning. Three storey buildings, 35ft high will change the character of North Ventura Avenue, diminishing the scenic beauty from highway 30. Thank you, thank you Linda, your time is up. Thank you. Next is Laura Swenson, followed by Mary Creek and then Henry. Kate. Okay, I don't know how to work this, so it's on. My name is Laura Swenson, and I live in the Valley Vista tract. I have several concerns regarding this project building these 328 units in a very high fire hazard severity zone, regardless of when it was passed, endangers the residents of the Ventura Ranch Project, the Valley Vista Tract, Ortonville, and more. The recent catastrophic fires are examples of the dangers in building in such a zone. Fires or other catastrophes will bring evacuation traffic on the already congested Ventura Avenue and Highway 33 to a standstill. First responders may or may not be able to navigate the gridlock, endangering many lives and the current infrastructure, including water. A drought hasn't been that long ago. Power, sewage treatment, fire protection, EMTs and law enforcement, I feel, is inadequate for the addition of 328 housing units and 1000 or more residents. There are few agricultural employers in the area that will be able to employ these additional farm workers. The workers will need to commute to Oxnard, Carpinteria, Somis, Fillmore and further costing them transportation money and adding to pollution. There are no grocery stores, pharmacies, medical care, gas stations or other shopping amenities nearby, again costing transportation money to get them to get to them and adding to pollution. In addition, the current deportation of illegal immigrants immigrants has lessened the need for large farm worker housing projects.

Please take my concerns into consideration and do not risk the well-being of the West Side communities. Thank you, thank you Laura. Next is Mary Greek, followed by Henry Cake and then Brian from Autism Society of Ventura County. Hello, my name is Mary Greek, and this is the first time I've ever been to a planning meeting. Anyway, I am a nurse by trade, so my concern is with the safety of the people. I lived through the Thomas Fire when I lived in Ventura. I moved to Camarillo and I lived through the mountain fire. I now live up in Ojai. My concern is, have they evacuated the evacuation traffic that's going to be coming out of Ojai Valley on Highway 33. With this large development that's going to impact on the traffic on highway 33 and also Ventura Avenue. I know just living in Ventura County that the roads are congested. Now, my concern is these people are not going to be able to get out, and EMS is not going to be able to get up and help us. So that is my concern. And another one is who's going to have the key to this locked gate to allow that second access for these people to leave? Thank you. Thank you. Next is Henry, followed by Brian and then Jackson. Piper. Hello. I've lived on Frazier Lane for 50 years, and I strongly object to the proposed Ventura Ranch farm worker housing project because it is surrounded by a very high fire severity zone. On May 20th, 2025, the entire board of directors, Ventura County Fire Protection District passed an

adopted ordinance. 33, office of the State Fire Marshal. 2025 Recommended local Responsibility Area of Fire hazard Severity Zones. Ventura County's inventor county's general plan safety and hazards. It states the county should discourage building of homes in very high fire severity zones and now Ventura County. The planning decision is considering to push through a project that is dead center and surrounded by a very high fire severity zone, and this is not a single home, but an extremely high density multi-story project. Which is not only not discouraging the building in this zone, but actually encouraging it with a direct violation of the county's general plan. I also object to the county waiving and streamlining the EIR. I object to the removal of the protected trees. I have listened to the county's rhetoric long enough, and I have decided to draft a letter directly to CalFire requesting that they shed light some some light on this situation in which a developer purchased a parcel, mows down over 2500 producing fruit trees, submits some plans, and expects the county to believe that this is the perfect location for the project, even though it is in directly in the high fire severity zone. Thank you, thank you Henry. Next is Brian, followed by Jackson Pifer and then Kerry Glenn. All right. Good morning, chair and commissioners. My name is Brian

Schumacher. I am advocacy and community impact manager for Autism Society of Ventura County. I'm speaking today on behalf of our advocacy committee, which regularly reviews land use and policy decisions to ensure that individuals with disabilities and their families are involved in decisions that affect their lives. So we are here today to offer our strong support of public hearing. Item seven a the Ventura Ranch Farmhouse Farmworker housing project. At Asbc, we recognize the necessity of affordable housing and the dignity, stability and empowerment that housing provides. Ventura County's agricultural economy does not exist without farmworkers, and it is neither realistic nor ethical to preserve agricultural land while refusing to house the people who sustain it. You cannot have agricultural land without agricultural workers. We have heard many arguments framed as safety concerns used to oppose this project. Let me be clear. Our farm workers are not disposable people who must choose between safety and housing, and they are not pawns in neighborhood preservation battles. Housing instability itself is a health and safety crisis. Farmworkers, like more than 80% of Ventura County residents, already live in high risk fire zones. What distinguishes agricultural workers is not the presence of risk, but the conditions under which so many farmworkers are currently living. Too many farmworkers reside in overcrowded, unregulated and unsafe housing. Denying regulated planned housing does not remove people from risk. It removes protections, oversight and dignity. If there are legitimate environmental fire safety requirements, then the county has both the authority and the responsibility to enforce them through conditions. Mitigation and oversight. Safety is not a reason to deny housing. Safety is a reason to do housing, right? Farmworker families, like all others, include children, adults and elders with disabilities, as well as medical and sensory needs. Stable housing will improve their lives drastically through better health outcomes, educational access and community integration. We hope to see projects of this caliber prioritize housing for people with disabilities in the future. We urge the Commission to stay focused on the real issue before you. This is about necessity. This is about

dignity, and this is about whether Ventura County will meet the needs of the people who make this region possible. Thank you. Brian. Next is Jackson Piper, followed by Carrie Glenn and then Hussein Garcia. Hi. My name is Jackson Piper. I'm a resident of Newbury Park, but I'm here as one of the co-leads of Ventura County, Yimby I've been a co-lead of that organization as a volunteer for about six years now, working on housing advocacy throughout Ventura County. I'm also an urban planner as my day job. I'm not here in that capacity, but I do have some knowledge. I would like to think of planning profession in theory and practice. I'm here to voice my very strong support for this project and asking you to approve staff's recommendation for this project before you. I understand that there are concerns about public safety regarding the fire potential for this property. However, I also understand that the reality of this project is that it was submitted and and considered complete application prior to the designation of the fire zone. Changing. My recommendation is that the county work on disaster planning to prepare evacuation plans that will be sufficient for whatever number of people end up needing to evacuate from this area of the of Ventura County, farmworker housing is desperately needed. House farmworkers had a statistic. I think it's still true about there being over 41,000 farmworkers in the county of Ventura. You can all look around and see how vital farm work is to our county. It's not a good idea to have farmworkers in conditions where they are overcrowded, crowded together, potentially sharing illnesses with each other, then going to work because they have to work

because they can't afford a day off, because they are lower income and struggling to stay in whatever housing they have. So please approve this. It's for public health and it's for the benefit of the whole community. Thank you. Okay, next is Carrie Glenn, followed by Jose Garcia and then Connie Thomas. Good morning commissioners. My name is Carrie Glenn. I live on East Bounds Road directly behind the proposed Ventura Ranch housing project. My husband and I purchased our home in January of 2020, after losing our apartment in the Thomas Fire. Because of that experience, wildfire safety and land use decisions are not abstract for us. They're personal. I want to be very clear. I support farmworker housing. Farmworkers are vital to Ventura County and deserve safe, affordable housing, but this project is not appropriate in the location or at this scale. First, wildfire risk, as you've heard many folks say and will continue to hear, say that this project is in a high fire hazard severity zone. Seeker requires wildfire risk to be avoided or substantially reduced. This project does not do that. Second, the project depends on existing homes for wildfire mitigation. Our homes are being used as part of the project buffer fire buffer without permission or legal consent. Third, incompatibility with the Valley Vista neighborhood. This housing tract has existed since 1958 and consists of single story homes. The proposal introduces three story, 35 foot plus buildings, a perimeter road feet from our property lines, increased traffic, garbage trucks, light noise and light pollution. 14 households were experienced will experience these impacts directly, permanently altering our quality of life. Fourth, loss of farmland and wildlife habitat. This site is farmland of statewide importance and active wildlife corridor soon to be replaced or proposed, to be replaced by parking lots, trash enclosures, street lights, urban development and over 1000

residents. Finally, this community has spoken. Over 350 communications have been submitted from a tract housing tract of 250 homes. Residents pay substantial property taxes and deserve a meaningful seat at the table. At a minimum, the county should bring neighborhood and developer together to advance. Before advancing this proposal, I respectfully ask you to deny this project as proposed and I urge you to visit Eastbound Road. Looking at you, Commissioner Boydston, since this is your district, and see for yourself. Thank you. Carrie, your time is up. We're experiencing. Thank you so much for your time. Next is Susie Garcia, followed by Connie Thomas and then Karen Flack. Good morning, chair, Planning Commission. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this item. My name is Jose Garcia. I am a lifelong member of the of Laborers Union. We have a local right here in Ventura. I don't usually read. I'm going to I need to read on this. So. We are in full support of the Ventura Ranch Farm worker housing project. Farm workers are the backbone of Ventura County's agricultural economy, yet too many live in unsafe or overcrowded conditions or endure long commutes that separate them from their families. This project will provide safe, affordable and accessible housing for the very workers who sustain the local farms and ensure that our community continues to thrive. By approving this project, the county will not only address the urgent housing needs of farm workers and their families, but also strengthen our local economy. Many of our union members have proudly worked on other farmworker construction jobs. That allowed our members to contribute back to our local economy and our contractors, as well our partner contractors that bring jobs to Ventura

County. We urge the Planning Commission to prioritize this project and support essential workers, and help secure a dignified future for the men and women and children who feed our community. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Next one is Connie Thomas, followed by Karen Flack and then Francine Smith. Connie Thomas. Okay, we will. Next one is Karen Flack and then Francine Smith, and then James Jack Dempsey. Please go ahead. Good morning commissioners. My name is Karen Flock. I'm the real estate development director with Ventura Housing, formerly the housing authority of the City of San Buena, Ventura. We are a developer, owner and manager of affordable housing in the city, and we support this project. I'm also a member of the board of directors of House farmworkers. We need to think big to address the tremendous need for affordable housing in our county and state. And this project will make a difference for over 300 farmworker families. I support the planning staff recommendation. I've worked with farmworkers to address their housing needs for many years. Farmworkers are hard working, responsible, and family oriented. They are essential workers and we depend on them to put food on our tables. The people who will live here will be a great addition to the community. Affordable housing developments like this one have long term affordability restrictions. For 55 years, the owner, the manager, the investors and the lenders all have a long term interest in a property that is well managed and well maintained. This development will be an asset to the community. Wanted to speak a little bit about parking. We we

did a study at our Westview housing in West Ventura, which is currently 286 multifamily homes on a comparable site, about 20 acres. And we originally developed it without asking for any parking concessions. And frankly, it's way over parked us. Our study finds that the families own less than one car per home, just to put the fire issue in a bit of context, most of Westside Ventura is in high or very high fire zone, and we are actively proposing new housing on sites in West Ventura. It was mentioned that Ventura Unified School District has lost a lot of kids and could certainly use more kids. Thank you, thank you. Next is Francine Smith, followed by James Jack Dempsey and then David Swenson. Hello, I'm. I live in Valley Vista track. I'm very concerned about the fire. During the Thomas fire, we were notified by people pounding on your door. People turn their phones off at night. People were coming up from north of Stanley to get out. Our way to get on Shell Road was packed. So Gardenville neighborhood, Del Sol, Sycamore village, they're all coming up to us now. You add a thousand residents here and the traffic and the one accident opening. And before the flood of 69, there were two entrances and exits to Valley Vista. There's still an empty lot down there that could be used. When I came back 20 hours after evacuating, we still didn't have the fire department. We had water. Our neighbors saved our neighborhood, except for a few

homes with their hoses. And that was 20 hours later. So I'm concerned about the lack of parking, she says. Oh, they only have one car piece. Well, that's down closer to downtown Ventura, not where we live. Okay. Also, I have ag neighbors right on my block. Do they work in County of Ventura? No, they work in the County of Santa Barbara towards Carpinteria. So I don't know if that makes any difference. The Valley Vista track, even I'm on the one street up. I had a little view of the islands the last few weeks when it was clear. Go up to the third and fourth Street. You can see the islands. You put this in these these homes that have been there that have passed on generation after generation will not have that view. It'll be Valley, no Vista. Also, I'm concerned about the conflict of interest with Cal and with Del Sol that was built. And it's tied directly into government pension fundings. Okay. Next is James Dempsey, followed by David Swenson and then Tim Hilton. Jack Dempsey, eastbound S road. Neighboring the property, members of the board, a very high fire hazard severity zone is not a casual label. It's not jargon. It's not a buzzword to be downplayed at every turn. In planning, I read 177 pages where practically the whole thing was just downplayed. I would have thought it was written by Amcal, frankly, refusing a formal EIR with Sequa in being so adamant about streamlining should be actually your internal signal as the red flag that it wouldn't hold up if done in the

most thorough formal process. If this isn't feeling intellectually like a half baked cake, I don't know what to tell you. Allowing every privately owned property and home on eastbound Road to be treated as part of the project's equivalent 200ft fire fuel modification zone in a high fire severity zone is egregious. Just look at the map. Every single home on eastbound road is part of their planning. They don't own our homes, nor can they control the outcome of anything thereafter. We are now far from the self-contained promise by the developers in prior meetings. They are using our property for their approval. They don't own nor lawfully control. That's how they're getting to that 200ft. If it wasn't noted earlier, they're using all the way up to the bounds road itself. Even going through my backyard, through half of the, you know, backyards into the front yards, that 200ft of fire buffer includes our properties that should be self-contained, as promised from the beginning, which means that you're basically taking 10 pounds of Bologna, squeezing it into a 5 pound bag. It's too big, period. It's not as promised, and it's not as advertised. So you have a duty to be gatekeepers here, especially in a Thomas fire burn area. Thank you. Jack, your time. Thank you for your time. Next is David Swenson, followed by Tim Hilton and then Sarah Swidler. Good morning. Well, let's cut to the chase here. This project is not farmworker housing. In reality, it's low income housing. Why do I say that? Well, all the farmworker jobs are taken. And

all the farm workers right now, they have housing already. So if there are no jobs for these people, they will be on entitlement programs such as welfare, food stamps, social security. This is how they will pay their rent and live. These programs are funded by taxpayers. So AMP Cal knows this and they have no problem having tax payers programs pay their tenants rent. I suggest you refrain and from approving this project do not approve it. The environmental impact report is negative. The exemptions under Sequa do not apply and Cal Fire has designated it as a high fire zone. I yield. Thank you David. Next is Tim Hilton, followed by Sarah Swidler and then Andy Connelly. Tim. Okay, if Tim is not here, next is Sarah, followed by Andy and then Karen Fraser. Go ahead. Chair and commissioners. My name is Sarah. I'm a resident of Floral Drive. I want to be clear. Ventura County needs housing and we need safe, dignified housing for farm workers and their families. But housing and safety are not competing values. Farmworkers deserve both, and they should not be placed in the highest wildfire hazard category because of a paperwork technicality. As it relates to VFD ordinance 33 that took effect in July 2025 and mapped the site into the highest fire hazard category. After the application was deemed complete in April 2024. Respectfully, nothing has been built and that matters because this is exactly

when we can still do the right thing and prioritize safety. We've had record breaking wildfires in recent years, and the Thomas Fire came directly through the adjacent Valley Vista neighborhood, burning land and homes. This area has been placed in the highest fire hazard category for a reason. Ordinance 33 was enacted to protect Ventura County residents from being put in harm's way. The common sense rule is simple when you build new, you build to today's safety standards. If this project were filed today, it would not be allowed under ordinance 33. Staff also leans on sequa streamlining under section one, 51, 83 and the Housing Accountability Act, saying you can't deny unless there is a specific adverse impact. But approving a 328 unit multi-building complex on a site now designated in the highest fire hazard category and with documented hazardous material and agricultural chemical history, creates exactly the kind of direct foreseeable public health and safety risks those standards are meant to prevent. Even the county's own one 5183 checklist notes, historical pesticide application, abandoned aboveground storage tanks and soil staining, and recommends subsurface investigation and contamination management. There are real soil concerns here, and the grading and trenching for a project this large can disturb contaminated soils, creating toxic dust runoff pathways that endanger nearby residents and workers during years of construction, and raise long term concerns and exposure risks for future occupants. So my request is simple do not approve this project today. Deny it as proposed. And if you're not prepared to deny it today, then don't approve it until there is a complete, transparent environmental record and enforceable protections in place. Please don't make your constituents live with the consequences of a bureaucratic loophole, because placing hundreds of farmworker families in the highest fire hazard category on a chemically impacted site is not a technicality. It's a choice, and it's a choice you still have the power to make safely approving this would be the county saying we knew the risk and we approved it anyway. Next is Andy Connelly, followed by Karen Fraser and then Gabriel of House Farm Workers. Andy. She still has time on her clock right there. How can you tell her she's out of time? I quite understand it either. Yeah. No, actually, it's only two minutes. And so I already went ahead and kind of like stopped the timer. No, the I'm sorry. That one is

already kind of like, you know, like it's already zero and then it's already one. So that's when I stop. Thank you. You're welcome. It's Andy here. Okay. So if Andy is not here, the next one is Karen Fraser, followed by Gabriel afterwards. Oh, hello. I'm the executive director for home. It's a nonprofit established 20 years ago to address housing issues and to promote a diversity of housing opportunities in Ventura County. As an organization, we gather professionals together to look at issues and projects from different perspectives. Some may approach this project with apprehension or fear. Fear of change, hiding behind a litany of excuses, but ultimately holding on to the status quo for fear of change. Another approach, which we suggest is celebrating the opportunity you have to provide a meaningful change to some of the hardest working families in our county. These are families that are also county constituents and pay taxes. This is a good use of scarce land. We have some of the highest housing costs in the nation, coupled with one of the strictest land use policies saw. Together they make a statement that we value our agricultural resources and therefore must find ways to help the very people this industry depends on to be able to live, work and raise their families as an integral part of our community. Without this project, there is no secondary access. There is no 200 fuel modification zone, there is no improved services and there is

no help for this segment of our existing community. This is a good project. The applicant has addressed traffic, environmental safety concerns. And instead of succumbing to Nimby mindset, let's embrace what we can do to let these hard working families know they are important and vital part of our community. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Karen, that's Karen Fraser, next is Gabriel, followed by Luis Lampara. And then. Thank you, Commissioner Kesley and honorable members of the Planning Commission. My name is Gabriel Vignone and I'm the executive director of House farmworkers. Our board prepared a letter in advance of this meeting for your review. And I'm here to further emphasize with you today why Ventura Ranch is needed. It serves as a great opportunity to provide affordable housing for our local farmworkers. House farmworkers, in collaboration with the County of Ventura, is currently working on the Ventura County Farmworker Housing Study and Action Plan. I serve as one of the Co-project managers for that. During phase three, we surveyed 417 farmworkers. I'd like to share some of that data with you. Farmworkers reported spending 48% of their income on housing. 45% of farmworkers reported sharing a dwelling meant for single household with one or more households, meaning they share kitchens and bathrooms with people not from their family. 35.8 of farmworkers reported six or more needed repairs in those units. I'd like you to take a moment and imagine what it feels like to spend 48% of your income on housing, where you have to share a home with other people, and you need multiple repairs, and you could live in affordable, safe and stable

housing. But there's just not enough in Ventura County. Now, imagine hearing people are arguing about whether that housing should be built. Our data also tells us that Ventura County is home to between 25,000 and 30,000 farmworkers who have lived in the county for a median of 15 years. This housing is meant for people already living in the county of Ventura, who need an option out of substandard housing. Our county has only around 1400 affordable units designated for farmworkers. There is a large discrepancy between the number of affordable housing units for farmworkers and farmworkers in our county. We also surveyed 40%, I'm sorry, 40 representatives of Ventura County agricultural employers. That includes berries, avocados, rotational crops, nurseries, farm labor contractors and packing houses. And 76% of them agreed that there's not enough farmworker housing. Next is Luis Lampara. She was shorter her time. You told her she was none other time. I just watched that camera. She still had time on it. When you told her she had, she was. I apologize, but that is exactly what happened. That's enough to change this. Please proceed with the next speaker. Okay, so the next speaker is Luis Lampert, followed by Colette and then Barbara Ortiz. Luis Lampert. Is she here? Okay. Next is Celeste. Good morning. My name is Julieta and I'm with the Ventura County Housing Coalition coordinator. And today I'm speaking on behalf of Cos. For more than two decades, Cos has organized alongside farmworker and immigrant communities across Ventura County who are

disproportionately impacted by housing instability. This this conditions are not accidental. They result from long standing policies and market forces. They have failed to provide safe, affordable housing for the workforce workers who sustain our our agricultural economy. I have personally worked and organized farmworkers for more than ten years. During that time, I have seen how housing instability affects families, children struggling in school, parents living in overcrowded unsafe conditions and workers facing constant uncertainty. My current work focuses on connecting Ventura County families to affordable housing, and farmworker families constantly face the greatest barriers. Most recently, I worked with farmworker family, who is currently on house, highlighting the urgency of this issue. The Ventura Ranch Farmworker Housing Project offers a solution by providing permanent, well-designed housing, near jobs and essential services. It supports healthier families, improves children's education, and strengthens our our agricultural workforce. I have seen the positive impact farmworker housing Somis ranch, where stable housing has truly transformed lives. Farm workers are essential part of our community and driving force behind Ventura Counties agriculture economy. Approving this project is about dignity, fairness and honoring the farmworkers who have made Ventura County thrive. On behalf of CAS, I urge you to stand with our community and support this project. Thank you. All right. Next is Barbara Ortiz, followed by Daniel Mora and then Brian Schumacher. Yes. My name is Barbara macri Ortiz. I'm an attorney, and I submitted a letter. I hope you've had a chance to review it. I won't go into the details of that letter, but that raises the issues in terms of the facts, the law. What you're doing here is planning commissioners and what your

obligations are as planning commissioners. So please take a look at that before your consideration. Now, first I want to say one thing about farmworker housing complexes. It's a an ordinance we got after many years of advocacy to try to get housing. And it's very limited. You can only be a farmworker in Ventura County, Santa Barbara County. Farmworkers cannot live in there. There's very specific requirements and very specific reporting. But the problem is there's very few places that we can build. And I want to address one thing. People seem to say that now that this they labeled this a high fire zone. And there's a provision in the Farmworker Housing Ordinance about prohibiting that. I don't know when that came in. It did not come in when we when we actually formed that ordinance and it was passed by the supervisors. I don't know who slipped that in, but I want to say farmworker housing is the only place where that prohibition is. Which means that if you deny on that, you give us a perfect, fair housing discrimination claim because you're treating farmworkers different than the rest of the population. So I think you should think a little bit about that, even though it's not relevant to this case. Now, we talk a lot about housing. And yeah, the farmworkers are housed because they're already here. Let me tell you about one of my clients. They live in a garage, actually. It's a two car garage. They live in half of it. There's a sheet in the middle of it, and the owner of the building parks their car on the other half. That is how farmworkers are living in this county. Thank you Barbara, that is not housing. So please review. This is Daniel Mora,

followed by Brian Schumacher and then Vincent Allen. Daniel, are you here? Okay. Next is Brian Chumash. Schumacher I already went okay. Thank you. Vincent Allen, followed by John and then Tony Weaver. Hello. Three minutes wasn't enough time. Two minutes. Now let's see. I've been. I was born in Valley Vista. I've lived there 40 years out of the 60 plus. If you were to ask someone that has witnessed the growth of Ventura, promised so many things only to be problematic. I mean, is it really true to just dig up every piece of property there is available? I'm hearing things with this community that why do they live in such substandard conditions anyway? If we have such building codes and stuff like that, you know? We do not need this community. It's problematic all the way around the block. I'm sitting back there and I'm a couch potato, and I can see that there's a host, a host of things. We already have projects down in Ventura on the Avenue. There's other problems that are going to arise from this. One is California insurances. Now with the fire issues now, I have lived there and seen more than just the Thomas fire. I've lived through probably three major ones with all the minor

ones. No police officer knocked on the door. My brother and I, who is now deceased. We were one of the ones that protected two houses plus our own. I should have let it burn since the state of California now is demanding that a full replacement of your roof. Has anyone got any notices? Insurance notices? It's interesting. Even if you keep it maintained. You know, drones flying overhead. So now there's other issues that are rolling from this. People like myself who have a disability that came home to take care of critical care, brother. And now I'm there at my family home. Thank you. Vincent, do not do this. Thank you. Vincent, your time is up. Next is John, followed by Tommy Weaver and then Laura Schwab. Is that John Newman? It doesn't have any names. I mean, last name, just John. Okay. All right. Hi. Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak to you. I'm a fourth generation veteran. My family's been here for a really long time. I would just like to say that I think it's very impractical. I'm totally opposed to this project. I have no problem with farmworkers having a safe place to live. But when I look around there, I don't see any agriculture close to there. Everything's far away, and they want to say it's going to be practical and it's going to be affordable. But if you have to spend $5 a gallon on

gas to get there, I mean, I don't see that. I don't see it being any, any good at all. And the other thing is the Ojai Valley has a lot of people there. And when you look at the traffic just from commuters, that's horrible. Let alone if it's some type of emergency situation. Okay. So you have that, which is a very good reason not to accept it. And then the other thing is that for the people living in the general vicinity, they also, you know, are going to be highly impacted by that. And, you know, it's going to be a safety concern. So I think that it's also not that much in demand. You have the place in Somis and it hasn't even been filled up yet. And so what happens if it doesn't get filled up and it's not viable? Does it just go to the private sector? Is this just some kind of a loophole to get some property that they weren't going to get before? So that's my three things, is I don't think it's good for the farmworkers. I think they should be closer. They definitely need to have housing. It's definitely not good for the Ojai Valley and all the people there, especially anyone that's had to commute. And thirdly, it's not good for the people in the in the neighborhood either. So yeah, I'm definitely against it. So thank you for allowing me this time. Thank you. Next is Tommy Weaver, followed by Laura Swab and then Letty Ramos. Anselmo. Tony Weaver. None. Laura Swab, followed by Letty Leslie, and then Pete swab. Hi. My name is Laura Schwab, and I've been a Ventura County resident for 37 years. And I totally support farmworker housing and I support farmworkers. I have

produce on my table every day, and I love farmworkers. I pray for them all the time. But the segregation of farmworkers I'm against and I'm against this project. Totally. It's dangerous. It's not safe. This project isolates hundreds of low income farmworker families in a remote, hazardous location, far from services, transit, schools, medical care, and emergency resources. This is not integration. This is not inclusion. This is segregation by land use design. California's environmental justice laws require the county to avoid concentrating vulnerable populations in high risk areas. Yet this project places farmworker families, many of whom are linguistically isolated and transportation limited, as I've heard, into a very high extreme hazard fire zone evacuation. It's an evacuation trap, a flood prone corridor, and an area with documented pesticide contamination. The soil is toxic. Almost all the dogs in the neighborhood have died of cancer. This is the exact pattern that environmental justice law was created to prevent placing disadvantaged communities in unsafe, isolated, high hazard environments, while more affluent communities are protected for those risks. Segregation is not only about race or ethnicity, it is also about who gets placed in danger and who gets placed in safety. Here, the county is proposing to concentrate farmworker families and only farmworker families in a location where evacuation fails. Flooding blocks the roads and pesticides do remain in the soil. The fire danger is extreme. Thank you. Environmental justice analysis

and Somis ranch is not even next is let's see Ramos, followed by Pete Schwab. Hello, my name is Lexi Ramos. Anselmo. I live in the Valley Vista tract. According to the Sequoia guidelines, it would only take 58 minutes to evacuate current and future residents in case of an emergency. Well, there are approximately 255 homes in the Valley Vista tract. Assuming that each household has an average of two cars that totals 510 cars, the proposed Ventura Ranch is to have 328 units, two cars per household for them totals 656 cars. We are talking about a potential 1166 cars trying to exit Valley Vista and Ventura Ranch all at the same time. The 58 minute estimate does not take into account the high volume of cars, nor the confusion, the chaos and the gridlock that will occur if multiple vehicles are added to Norway Drive in Ventura. That will cause significant delays for the emergency vehicles to access both Valley Vista and Ventura Ranch. There is also an added risk for more homes being burnt and the potential for loss of life. Ventura Ranch Partners are requesting to bypass an EIR from being completed if truly, if they truly care about the well-being of all residents, then they should welcome an EIR that would reveal whether or not this is a safe project. The question is why do they want to bypass such a crucial assessment? I am absolutely against the Ventura Ranch Project project being developed at the proposed site. Thank you

for the opportunity to speak. Okay, next is Pete Schwab, followed by Carl Morehouse and then Steve Bostock. Said this one. Yes. Good morning commissioners. I was going to speak about the flooding and you've probably heard about it when it floods in the area. It's bad, but you already heard the representative from Ventura County Sheriff's Department who talked about live reports when the Thomas fire was going on, the evacuation problem. Now the fires are going to come. We know that they'll come again. And I'm wondering why, when the project was approved or settled or whatever you're calling it, and then now it's designated a high fire zone. Well, now that we know that, then why would it ever be considered? And let me straighten out something, too. I can speak, I think, for the majority of the Valley Vista residents that we are in favor of good housing for farmworkers. Like my wife said, we love the farm workers. And you guys keep talking about the unsafe conditions that they have right now. Well, why would you even consider putting him into a zone that is a known fire hazard? We look back at the Thomas fire. Remember what happened in Maui? We had the local mountain fire in just a little over a year ago. We had the Palisades and the Eaton fires. So why in the heck are we even considering this? There's got to be another location. You can put this. So there's an old saying. Those who forget the lessons of

history are doomed to repeat them. How are you guys going to feel if you approve this? And down the line, a fire comes in there and wipes out that community and people's lives are lost and it's a catastrophe. Think about that. We can see what's happened and we're against this. We're for the farmworkers. Thank you. This is a bad project and a bad idea. Thank you. Next is Carl Morehouse, followed by Steve Bostock and then Seki Perez. Commissioners Carl Morehouse, 40 year resident of Ventura. Some of you know that I used to work in this building. 20 years in the planning department, 17 years on the Ventura City Council. 19 years ago when I was mayor, I've been very involved with housed farm workers. I invited my lookalike, Kris Kristofferson, to come and give a benefit concert to raise money for farmworker houses. I knew he was friends with Cesar Chavez. He took me up on that twice. And we've continued to make money, raise money for farmworker housing. I was happy to hear the comments about saw. Saw does include the consideration of farm worker housing. I anger and disappoint a lot of my friends, because I contend that many people who signed the Saw ordinance and voted for saw simply didn't want any more development. I don't know how you can support agriculture, land, and then not provide decent, safe and sanitary housing for the very people who work there. There was comment on the losing of force of our agricultural community impacts our economics, but at the rate the current administration is going, we may have fallow land because we may have no workers. I've read this staff report. I've been very impressed with it. I think the homework's been done. I would urge you as commissioners to support staff's recommendation and approve it for all those who are here and saying that they are in favor of farmworker housing, I'd ask you to join House farmworkers. It's an organization. You can help us locate better housing, because

you will not have agricultural land to protect if you don't support the people who work there. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next is Steve Bostock, followed by Seki Paris and then Leonardo Santiago. Santalla. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for letting me speak and I have sent plenty of public comment through the other angles and sources. Thank you. I'm speaking today because this is not a true discussion topic. It's illegal. It's against our ordinances. If our county doesn't follow the ordinances that they make to protect the people that live in our community, then why do we even have ordinances to begin with? There has been studies in the past that have been done that says no farm worker should live in the areas that they could be, you know, burned to death. And yet they want to put these people in these areas where these people could burn to death. It's one of the worst ways to die in the world is burning to death. Putting 1300 people in the path of a wildfire known wildfire zone is absolutely ridiculous. You all say you want your safe farmworker housing. This is unsafe. Farmworker housing and the Rincon consultants who prepared the exemptions the same. I mean, just at our meeting, you guys had the full er how long it was going to take to do all this. Right. And you guys are trying now to cut it all out. You promised us all this stuff and you guys are pulling it away trying to fast track this thing. You got this guy working for you, doing everything he can to get this thing pushed through. And there's there's no there's no reason it's illegal. It shouldn't even be being done. You guys should be looking for a whole nother area to do this, a whole nother area. If these people perish in this fire, you guys got to wear the weight on your shoulders, and we're going to be jumping over the fence to try to help these people. Because I live right there

behind this place. I will be hearing the screams and I'll be jumping over. I'll probably perish too. So you guys are wrong. Move your move your stuff. Put it in a safe location. Protect the farmworkers. We love those guys. I grew up with farmworker kids. We used to take them back home after school. I know these people. They need to be in a safe environment. Don't put them there. Okay. Thank you. Steve. Next one is Zach Paris, followed by Leonardo Santalla and then Charlotte Wilson. My name is Zeke Perez and I live in the Valley Vista track. This parcel contains numerous sites specified specific environmental conditions that Ceqa requires to be elevated. These include pesticide impact soils, wildfire exposure, single route evacuation, steep slopes, protected trees, stormwater constraints, biological resources and sensitive receptors living immediately adjacent to the site. Ceqa does not allow exemptions when there is a reasonable possibility of significant impact. How? Here we don't just have 1 or 2 concerns. We have a cluster of environmental and public safety issues that must be analyzed before approval. Skipping Ceqa in a location with this many red flags would be legally indefensible. We asked the commission to require proper sequa review. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Leonardo Santalla, followed by Charlotte Wilson and then Mary Galati. If

Leonardo is not here, Charlotte Wilson, are you here? Hello. I am a survivor of the Paradise Fire campfire. I moved here to Ventura because I need to relocate. There were no housing up in Northern California after all the many fires. Not even to also including the Thomas fire, which I watched, which was devastating. I want to talk about infrastructure because we already know it's a high fire zone infrastructure. You have these units going on down the avenue. You have 400 units going in across from Deanza school, which the nearest onramp is Stanley. We have 100 units that we just were notified on the end of Cedar, where the Kellogg Park is off of the avenue. So all those units together is nearly 1700 more cars on the road. The evacuation on the onramp of Stanley is extremely short. It is. You're entering onto the fast lane coming from Ojai in the mornings and at school time, and 4:00, when a lot of the businesses on the avenue closed. It is for it's backed up for blocks. Now you're adding all these cars. These cars come from up the avenue where we're proposing these units going in. They're going to drive their car down the avenue. They're going to drop their kids off at Deanza. They're going to enter Stanley to go onto the city of Ventura. This is ridiculous. Also on the avenue they've put on the Ada, you know, they redid all the Ada because our representative is an Ada and not not not I'm not saying

there's anything wrong with that. It's great. But the way they did it is they made the street. They put these cement bump outs for the ramps. You cannot open up the street wider to get cars out. There is actually a cement barrier in the middle of the avenue, right in front of Red barn liquor. You cannot open up that middle lane to get people out of the area. It took over. It took about an hour for those residents to get out with all these extra cars. We're talking more. When I was in Paradise, three of my neighbors burned to death in their homes. Many of my friends were. My son was stuck in the fire for eight hours. No cell service. Every street light, traffic light was blinking red, which meant one car, one car, one car, one car. Charlotte, your time is up. No, I've got 15 on here. No, actually, you're already to two minutes and 15. Well, I want you to talk about this in. Any infrastructure needs to be looked at, including schools. Okay. Next is Mary Galati followed by Cameron Rader and then Troy Robinson. Thank you. Thank you for having me here and for giving me this opportunity. I'm going to tell more of a personal story. I have lived here 49 years, and my little home is 99 years old, and I have four children that are amazing. My oldest son is a builder. He was a builder in Malibu and LA, the builder up in Montecito. My middle son is a PE teacher and golf coach for Buena High School, and they went to CIF and my third child is a son who is a fence builder

and the father of my only grandson, and my daughter is she's an event director at a school, a private school up in Carpinteria, and she's a surf coach. So I have like a variety here. And they all said, you know, mom, we had the greatest childhood. And they did. They had a lot of freedom. And I have noticed the quality diminish in my my neighborhood. I've noticed more drugs and I live two miles north of Valley Vista, and it's a disturbing thing to see things maybe not going as well as I'd like them to. But the good news is, is we can make decisions that are impactful and save lives. So with that said, and I just am going to add this I was dropped from my homeowner's insurance two years ago with no warning dropped. Thank you you guys have a good day. Bye. Thank you. Mary. Next is Cameron Rowe Rader, followed by Troy Robinson and then Spencer Noreen. If Cam. Cameron. No. Troy. Okay. Go ahead. I am Troy Robinson. I live south of Valley Vista. Track on the

avenue. This isn't fair housing discrimination. Farmworkers are 96% Latino, 70% Latino males. Seems to me like this development is skewed. Like somebody said about segregation, it also seems like some sort of prison without barbed wire and fences for these people. If you really want to help them, why not develop what there already is like in the area? Single family homes with yards, driveways, garages that they can own and get some equity and some sense of upward mobility. We continue to build this stuff that traps these people and creates a peasant class, a permanent peasant class, and it's not fair to them. And it's not fair to us, because there's a different attitude about people who are invested in the community, who feel a sense of permanency. They're and care about it. And you keep building this stuff and enriches one person, one corporation. It's corporate greed disguised as helping communities. And it's got to stop. Can't accept it. Besides all the safety stuff, everything else somebody complained about the way farmworkers live. Well, they live that way because they extract all their economy to their families south of the border. They live in garages by choice. They live 12 to a room by choice. Okay, that's not. It's ridiculous. What about the crime increase? Are we going to get more deputies on the West side? Who's going to enforce the occupancy levels? Who's going to check to make sure

that these people continue to. Troy, your time is up. Next. Next is Spencer Noreen, followed by Crystal Calvino. Thank you. Clerk I appreciate that. I'm here today to mostly speak in the empowerment of the commissioners. Thank you so much for your effort and being representatives of the Ventura County. Tough decisions are being made and it's very difficult. I understand that me, being a former Parks commissioner of the City of Ventura, also PTA president of Cabrillo Middle School, know how this can affect our community in a positive and in this sense a negative way. Because of the high fire risk, I support farmworker housing as a family's been residents for over four generations. Original builders and Island Acres. We understand that how it works in continuity, but in this instance I have to support the representation of the Valley Vista residents and their quality of life, plus the risk of the possible new workers there. This is a high fire zone, and you have a chance to make a decision for the people and keep people safe. A lot of decisions have been made wrong in the past. I think that the County of Ventura Fire Department recognized that about different places. Houses have been built by the county that are in dangerous areas. We can't right those wrongs. We can make right decisions in the future. Also representing the people from their transparent point of view. I want to bring you to commissioners as possibly special interest groups, coming in here and giving you opinions that aren't ultimately valid in my sense, and the essence of public comment cards being turned in by other people that were not here. Luis Lampara is a great person in this community, and I have been at many public meetings. As she was a general plan member. She did not come to this meeting today. She did not turn in a public speaker card. So that tells you that somebody else in this room filled out public speaker cards for somebody else. And I ask you why? Why was that done? And it's because they know that

this project needs special interest and advocates to overwhelmingly choose those options. Stand with the people, stand with safety, and please deny this project. Thank you. Thank you. Last but not the least is Crystal Calvino. All right, go ahead. Good morning. I might get a little shaky. My name is Crystal Calvillo. I was born and raised in Ventura. I'm here because I live in the Valley Vista track on Primrose Drive. For the past 16 years. I'm raising my two sons here, and I love our neighborhood because it's quiet, safe, away from business. I mean from the busyness of downtown and South Ventura Avenue. I think we can agree that every day, our beautiful town is less recognizable. When we used to have open views to the ocean, now they're blocked by all these apartment buildings going up our streets packed with cars, especially if there's an event at the fairgrounds. And with Main Street being closed, it's one less road we have to use as an alternate route in case of an emergency. I guess against this development 100%. Although I respect everyone in this room, these developers don't live here. Have no idea what our day to day life looks like. And yes, the Thomas fire was eight years ago, but for us who lived through it, it feels like yesterday. Please take our concerns into consideration and don't let this happen. Thank you. Thank you. Crystal Chair Sandlin and commissioners, those were the in-person speakers that we have. If you would like, I can move now to the zoom speakers. Okay. Like take just a two minute break because Mr. Kesley and the other commissioners need to use

the restroom, so. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Bringing the commission meeting back in session here. Luce, do we have any speakers still on the zoom? Ready to speak? Yes. Chair Sandlin, we do have at least like four speakers on zoom, so I will now go ahead and call in the the first person online. I mean, on my list. Thank you. So first is Tim Hilton. And if Tim is not there, Helen McGrath, followed by Sean Stewart and then Leslie Purcell. Go ahead Helen. Good morning commissioners. My name is Helen McGrath. I'm a farmer in Fillmore and Somis and a resident of Ventura. I'm here to lend support for this much needed project for our city and county. I'm frankly very disappointed by the opposition to this project. It seems they are somewhat grasping at straws to try to find a reason to oppose it. All of the reasons are easily explained and disputed. First of all, 96% of the county is in a high fire zone. According to the California Department of Fire and Forestry. The fact that this is repeated by residents that are already living in that fire zone is classic Nimby behavior. If, God forbid, a fire did go through the avenue area, this new construction would likely be one of the only structures to withstand it. We're all familiar with the extensive building codes that have been updated since the Thomas Fire, which makes new builds more resilient. I'm curious if this scrutiny has been levied on other projects, including multi-million dollar homes that have been rebuilt in actual burn scars or other luxury or market rate condensed housing throughout the city and county. If there's a concern about evacuating an additional 300 residents from the avenue, then OAS and other county agencies need to prepare for that. Accordingly, I had to evacuate our foreman from Aiken

Road and Somis during the mountain fire. We evacuated down Lewis Road, and the Somis Ranch housing project was the least of our concerns that day. The argument that there isn't a need for farmworker housing is a complete fallacy and, quite frankly, xenophobic. There were over 2000 applications at Somis Ranch. They are vetting those applications and that project will be full. There's over 40,000 farmworkers here in our county that deserve to live in this quality of a project. This project is necessary for marginalized yet very essential community here in Ventura County. And it's the perfect use of former ag land that was not able to remain in business. I hope that the Commission finally approves this. Thank you. Helen, your time is up next one. The next one is Sean Stewart, followed by Leslie Purcell and then Bert Handy. Thank you. Go ahead. Sean. Yes. Good morning commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm a resident of Oakview, and I'm here today to voice my opposition to the project. This is really a half baked project that we're seeing trying to be rushed through. We've heard about the high fire issues, the infrastructure issues, and taking a step back. I think what benefit is this project providing to the community, and is this the type of quality development that the community as well as farm workers deserve? We heard about the pedestrian circulation issues from the site getting down to the avenue. When asked about access for students to the schools, there were hypothetical answers as to whether the busses would pick

up on site. It's unclear whether On-Site circulation can even support busses like that, as well as busses for the farmworkers. I would urge you to ask questions of staff as it relates to the Housing Accountability Act, because there are findings that can be made in order to deny this project. The Ha does not require ministerial approval of projects, and the fact that this is trying to be pushed through on a technicality of the prior island issue. With the high fire mapping, the developer knew at the time that this site was surrounded by a high fire zone, and it would continue to be going forward. It was merely the fact that the land use was identified as an orchard and not for residential use. So I'd urge you to rely on that to make the preponderance of evidence, finding that either this is a too dense of a project. Thank you. Sean, your time is up. Next is Leslie Purcell, followed by Bert Handy and then Christina Villa Villasenor. Leslie, are you in? Okay. Go ahead. Thank you. Well, there are a lot of issues raised here, and I think some of them are are valid in terms of actually further study the traffic issues, the ingress egress and the pollution issues to from the soil contamination. And I don't know that that's been properly addressed in terms of how that cleanup would happen and how it would affect the neighboring property and

the people living along the avenue. So I hope that there might be further consideration and further study done before the Planning Commission decides on this. The fire safety issues are are big as well. And I would also like to just raise an issue in terms of vegetation. And the project goes ahead at some point in the future. I'd like to recommend the use of native plants and trees in terms of the landscaping that would be put in in the future under circumstances that hopefully will be more finely tuned, and some of these concerns be addressed more fully than they have been and are raised by, especially the neighbors and people in the area that know it well. Somebody mentioned flooding as well, because I believe it's kind of a bottom of a hills area. So I just like to raise that issue as well. Thank you very much. Thank you. Leslie. Next is Bert Handy, followed by Christina Villasenor. Good morning, commissioners, can you hear me? Okay. Yes, yes. Thank you for taking the time and doing your job as commissioners. I had a couple questions in regards to the native trees that are there. Are those monarch butterfly overwintering sites, if they are, that needs to be protected. Another issue that I was looking at is how long has the Camarillo facility been accepting applications, and what is the current demand,

and have there been any issues with prospective residents that are coming in? I haven't heard that issue addressed. And in addition to that, the last study that they were referring to in their explanation was taken in 2024. That was before the Camarillo facility was opened up. How current is that information in regards to what's going on in regards to the location of the laundries in the facility? You've got two of them over there, very close to the residence of the housing tract, and I believe those should be moved away from that facility, that area, because when they have laundry at night, that's going to be a noise location where people hang out. And that should not be close to those areas. That should be a quiet area for the residents over there, unless you have hours of the laundry rooms, which is really hard with this situation. Another thing that I believe you should do is you should have some kind of a siren notification in the facility in case of a fire, flood or anything like that. Because the problem is a lot of these residents there may not have local phone numbers, they may not be tapped in or they may not have phones at all. So how are they going to be notified? I believe you should have an on site siren and a system to notify the residents in the facility if it is approved. Thank you, thank you. Bert, the last speaker that we have is Christina Villasenor. Go ahead. Christina. Yes. Good morning, chair and commissioners. My name is Christina Villasenor. I am a board member of House farmworkers. I'm also a Fillmore City Council member and former mayor. But today, I am not speaking on behalf of the city of Fillmore. I want to thank the planning staff for your clear and exhaustive, exhaustive analysis of the

Ventura Ranch Project's legal and regulatory context. We believe that it makes a convincing case that the proposal poses no significant environmental impacts. It's consistent with the general plan, the Non-coastal zoning, Save our Open Space and Agricultural Resources Ordinance, and the concerns expressed by the neighbors regarding traffic and fire danger are being addressed in the city of Fillmore. Basically, the whole city of Fillmore is now in a high fire severity zone except for our central core. And just like in other communities, cities around the county were were dealing in the city with with projects that have been approved prior to these changes of maps. One is happening in Fillmore in the north, the north end by Sespe Creek. And I think what's important to note is that all measures are taking place to, you know, to address what the building in high fire severity means. And so that's been it's been said consistently through public comment and in the report that the development will reduce the risk of wildfire to the existing community as a result of the additional hydrants, extra fire access, special construction materials and ongoing brush clearance. So we thank you again, commissioners, for your hard work, for always being attentive to all the comments and all the issues that are being brought up. This is a great, great project for farmworker housing in the city of Fillmore. We just like in other communities, we're trying to build more farmworker housing as well. We have more forthcoming. For example, in Fillmore, we have 77 units that were low income housing with nearly 300 families on a waiting list. So this is really important. We appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you Christina. Chair Sandlin and commissioners, these are all the public speakers we have for this project. Thank you. Secretary Luz, with staff, I'd like to make a rebuttal to any

of the comments. Yes, I have some follow up comments based on some of the testimony we received. One person brought up a section from the Health and Safety Code. I want to confirm that this this project is not a ministerial approval. This is a discretionary approval. And so the section that was referenced from the Health and Safety Code is not applicable. There was a question brought up by Mary Greek, I believe, about how the gate would be unlocked. The floral drive emergency egress gate that will be on what's called a Knox system. And any firefighter can unlock that and open that up. Let's see, there was a question regarding or. Well, several speakers brought up the defensible space issue. There seems to be a misunderstanding about how the defensible space obligations work. They stop at the property line. So an owner, an owner is not responsible for defensible space beyond their property line. So there was an exhibit in one of the, I believe it was the fire protection plan that showed defensible space pouring over the property line and into the backyards of the residents along Bounds Road. And in reality, those those areas are already subject to defensible space regulations because of the houses along Bounds Road. And so there's no change in the owner's obligation. They're they're already obligated to maintain defensible space in those areas. This is not a circumstance where where the the project would be requiring anything new of the owners along Bounds Road. And then I also wanted to mention we have from the applicants team Dudek consultants, who prepared the wildfire evacuation study and the fire protection plan. So if

you have further questions or want to delve deeper into that, there is somebody here. You can you can bring up. We also got a number of speakers brought up pesticides. Again, I will mention that there was phase two soil testing that was done on the site, and the pesticides levels were below residential screening criteria. We also have a representative on zoom, James DeWitt from Stantec, who can also speak to the soil testing. They're the ones who conducted the soil testing. And there was a question about whether or not the units could be rented to people other than farm workers, and the housing is limited to farm workers. This is being approved as a farm worker housing complex. There are conditions of approval that require employment verification on a regular basis, so that will be a requirement. These won't be available for the general public. The. A few people brought up evacuation. And I also want to again remind you that Dudeck is available to speak further on evacuation. They're the ones who prepared the evacuation study. And so they can delve deeper into how how they calculated the amount of time, how they modeled the the evacuation procedure and arrived at the 58 minute calculation. And I think that might oh, let's see. Oh, there was a question about monarch butterflies as well, overwintering sites. And according to the initial study, biological assessment, this is not an area where where that's likely to occur and not in in that I guess the circumstances, the weather patterns and the trees themselves are not the type of trees where

overwintering is likely to occur. So it was ruled out as a possibility. Well, oh, and then there was a question raised about the wildlife corridor. The site is not in a designated wildlife corridor. So the wildlife corridor requirements in our zoning ordinance don't apply in that area. Thank you. Thank you. Staff, would the applicant like to make a rebuttal to any of the comments made or any last remarks? From from Dudek, and he prepared the wildfire reports so he can address some more issues about wildfire evacuation. Thank you. Just to clarify, I didn't personally prepare my assisted with it. We had a whole team that was helping with that. My name is Doug Nichols. I'm the representative with Dudek. I've been with the firm for about six years. My background is in fire prevention and fire protection planning. Most of most of my 30 plus years were with the Glendale Fire Department and Fire Prevention. However, I am a Ventura County resident of over 40 years. I too have experienced a number of wildfires. Including the Woolsey Fire, where our family was evacuated from one house to the next house, to the next house to the next house three four different times depending on what calls came. So I understand what that is all about personally. Also, I was a planning commission for the City of Thousand Oaks for six years, so thank you for what you do. I know it's not always a as grateful as it could be. I wanted to just start with a couple of things that I picked out, and then I'll be happy to address some specific questions regarding fire protection. I

wanted to note as as mentioned by our fire representative, Alan Dearden, that the conditions placed on this project and the structures and even in the property itself, are no different from farm worker housing than it would from any other structures. From a fire perspective, it doesn't really care who's residing in the structure, it's whether that structure is resilient or not. And so those codes apply regardless. And I also want to point out that in 2008 is when the first wildland urban interface codes were adopted into the California Fire Code and then subsequently adopted by local agencies, including County of Ventura. And that was specifically pointed out what exterior fire protections were needed for structures and called them out in the code. The reason I bring that up is any structure is built prior to 2008, do not have those code requirements. Now, subsequent to that, in every three years we adopt new codes. Those codes have been refined more and more. And as we've heard in various comments, the Fire Hazard Severity Zone was modified as well. State Fire Marshal did some additional modeling and expanded those zones throughout the entire state. So now these wildland urban interface codes apply to more structures and more land than they did before. And the current code that we're now working underneath that was adopted in 2025 by the state is now what used to be in the California Building code and fire code has now been all wrapped up together in what we call the wildland urban interface code. So we got lots, lots of code books that we have to contend with. So I just want to lay that as a foundation, so

to speak. When it comes to fire protection planning. The if I can get into the evacuation parts as well, the process that is used for evacuation planning is is modeling. It's mathematical modeling algorithms. You know, you put in the inputs, crunch it away and it goes select a planning area, a study area that you want to assess. And that's usually, you know, kind of agreed to with the the plan checker, whoever's kind of the traffic folks to kind of identify what is that area that should be studied evaluated. Then the the folks putting that input in as they look at all the units, all the structures, the homes, the apartments, commercial, whatever that happens to be in there, and they start inputting that data and then anticipating, well, if this is going to happen during the day, if there's going to be something at night, what's the population that might be there? How many cars would they have all estimated based on the number of people that are expected to be living, whether it's in a multifamily dwelling or a single family dwelling? Put all that into the computer and they start crunching it away. And to be honest with you, sometimes the number crunching can take hours, if not days. It's very, very comprehensive and calculating that. But that said, it's a mathematical model. You know, it is not it is not a lived experience, just as we've heard many times, this, this, this morning, people have lived experiences and can share that what actually happened. We've had numerous fires, talked about the Thomas fire here, Thousand Oaks, 2018. We had the Woolsey Fire. You know, we have all those impacts. We can say, yeah, we know what that happened. And in the Woolsey Fire, two of our three freeway options were closed by the fire. We only had one way to go. So, you know, the modeling doesn't always anticipate things like

that. So you put that into the model and the model crunches out the numbers. What the model also does in anticipate is human behavior. You know, people are going to do what people do, but it's the best we can do to actually come up with something to lay as a starting point onto what an evacuation would do. And we use that from place to place to compare. And you know what? What would the existing. And so when that was crunched in for the existing condition in 2025, it was determined that from that study area it would take 43 minutes to evacuate. Now, not necessarily that it's, you know, for real based on human behavior and lived experiences, but that's the standard that we set to compare. Well, what would change if these additional units were built. And so when you add those additional units for the project it changes to 58 minutes. So we know okay, it will increase in this case mathematically we say 15 minutes. We heard from our emergency services representative that some areas are more impacted. People are going to change at different kind of do their own thing. We can't model that. But we can say yes, we know for sure it will take longer. And this is approximately all conditions considered the same. How much longer that would take? The other thing I wanted to point out is having worked in an emergency operations center during an evacuation before, there are decisions that are made by the fire personnel, the law enforcement, law enforcement personnel, water personnel, power line personnel as to how to determine which areas need to get evacuated next and moving that around, then making sure you get the personnel in places to evacuate those folks. Fires are very dynamic. Things change. The weather changes, the winds change. That causes a change to say, stop, don't do that. We

need to evacuate these people now because this fire front is now impacting them. And it's more serious than this area over here. So what happens is that previous area kind of grinds to a halt because all the resources are put to the other area. And so again, personal experience now the traffic slows even more. It's very stressful. It's very fluid. Everyone's getting worried upset. You know, it's a fire. They're concerned about their own lives, rightfully so. And they think that they're going to be getting caught in a fire when actually the fire personnel have decided that area is not as severe as this one over here. That's why those people are moving and these people are not. So again, it's constantly changing. We've seen this time and again. So I just want to kind of point that out that it's very dynamic, very fluid and happens moment by moment depending on where these situations are popping up. Let's see what else I wanted to address. A couple of them were already mentioned before. I did want to point out that again. Our emergency services representative pointed out that preparedness is the best solution, and we think that's what we've tried to identify in the reports, where we've built the structures, or at least recommended how they should be built to as fire safe standards as best as possible with the current conditions. Make sure the defensible space, the fuel modification is all per standards or even exceeding that if possible, and also have an education component for the residents as to what to happen during an emergency. The infrastructure is a challenge, but that's beyond the boundaries of this particular project. Yet we still have to contend with it. So we say, okay, we need to prepare. That's why we also mentioned that because these structures have been built to the current

fire protection standards, that while they're not strictly classified as a fire shelter because they have are built, they are hardened and fire resistant and have quite a bit of space between the native vegetation and the project itself, that there's some flexibility in there. They also have some green spaces in there if people needed to kind of huddle together. So if the fire department and or law enforcement were to say, hey, we need to get the people most vulnerable out first, they may elect to say, let's get the neighborhood to the north, evacuated first, because those are some older homes. We know that this new project is built to current standards. All the fire protection features are built in place. We can probably, you know, protect those that will lose people more in place if we get a couple engines in there and support them. And let's get the most vulnerable populations out first. Again, it's very dynamic. I'm not going to say that's what happens. I'm going to say that that might be an option, depending on the particular challenges that they're faced with, any given incident. So those are the key things I wanted to point out. I'd be happy to answer any specific questions that you might have as best as I can. Thank you. Any questions from the commissioners? Commissioner Boydston, I just wanted to reiterate the the building standards are for a one hour fire resistant structure, you point out, and I think properly that doesn't mean fireproof. It also doesn't mean and we've heard it in this meeting, that it allows people to shelter in place because that's probably not a good idea. You also mentioned that being prepared was was part of part of an

effective plan. And you mentioned education in your written plan. Is there a component that describes what kind of education and what the process is for the residents that will be living here? Thank you for the question. Appreciate that. The report itself, the fire Protection Plan, is a recommendation to include a fire education component. We didn't actually prepare that education component as part of that plan, but as a recommendation that if this project were to move forward, that the applicant, then developer, prepare a wildfire education, actually more like an emergency education response education for those who are residents there, something that the management would keep on hand and make sure, you know, perhaps every year refresh and review that so that they would be familiar with what the operations are. And have you prepared such a plan? Yes. Our our firm has. Yes. And for, for planning staff. Is that a condition of approval? The fire protection plan itself is a condition of approval. If we wanted to add a reference to the education program into there, that could be a modification to, I believe it's condition B 32. Okay. And then I'm just interested in the model. I understand the models, I understand you you know, you put in data and it gives you data back. You know, a lot of people say, you know, it only gives you good data if you put, you know, good results. If you put good data in. Have you ever gone back with your, your model that you're using and look at past fires to see if, if they accurately depicted what what happened? Not that I'm aware of. I'm not aware of any of the

projects that we've done where we've actually prepared the modeling ourselves and assisted with that and then had a fire come through that I'm not aware. I will say, that evacuation planning and studying has probably really picked up within the last three years. It's become a very hot topic, no pun intended there. But prior to that it was just left to the government agency. Hey, do you have, you know, an evacuation plan for your city? For your county? Oh, yes, we have a plan. We've identified these roads as our main arterials, and that kind of was the extent of it. And then because the wildfires keep coming and they keep impacting, we realize, hey, there's more to it now at this level. They're becoming more expected to kind of get this precursor identification. So we really don't have a track record because it wasn't expected ten, 15, 20 years ago where we've had a history now to work with, I presume the coming years, we will and hopefully we'll get some good results. So to follow up on that, your model puts in the data, you get results back. How do you and I think you mentioned this. How do you factor in then public panic. It being at night it being all the electricity is off. Fire sprinklers don't work. How do you factor all of that in or is it factored in at all? I wish we could. You know, like I said, human behavior is a fickle thing. It's hard to do that mathematically. With algorithms, the best you can do is say, okay, this is the numbers I quoted. This is what the algorithm says. If you want to say add 10%, add 25%. Whatever happens to be to anticipate

some of those issues that we know will happen in some areas. But the the purpose of it, as I mentioned, is just to compare existing conditions with proposed conditions and say, okay, if it's 15 minutes more in this case with mathematically, then we know there's there's going to be some percentage wise with the human behavior factor or external factors that are not necessarily human behavior. So it's a comparison, but not necessarily a figure that you can put your finger on and say, yeah, that's what it's going to be. Because I know, I know if you go into, say, seismic structural seismic zones, considering the zones, they put safety factors on top of that. So in in the fire business, evacuation business, you don't do that yet. I'm not quite sure how you would what the safety factor for that in a seismic zone that's very high. Right. And you're building in that zone the there's a base for what you create for your structural calculations. And then you add a percentage of safety factor above and beyond that. Well, I believe that's what's happening when we've identified these very high, high and moderate fire hazard severity zones where now planning staff, landowners, insurance companies can use that information and kind of use that as a reflection of risk, where you may say, like in the seismic situation or in a flooding situation, you know, is this in a 50 year zone or 100 years zone, you know, what is the risk? And that's the same with these. So one of the things that the fire service has contemplated is should we do something more for very high fire hazard zones than we do for high fire hazard zones. Yeah. Or moderate. And they haven't reached a consensus on

that. I wouldn't be surprised if that were to happen. But right now it's just okay. It's a one size fits all. If it's in a fire hazard severity zone, either you comply with all these codes or you don't, but there is some conversation for that and I would not believe would not doubt that in the next code cycle or two, we may get kind of criteria, criteria that says, okay, if you're in a very high, you need to do a little bit more. So as a fire professional, right. Do you support putting residential in high fire zones if if the structures are built with the hardening and fire resistance? Yes, because as I can give you a little scientific example, the standard has always been 100ft of defensible space around structures. For many, many years. I studied that a number of years ago to find out why 100ft. 100ft seems like a pretty clear cut number. Why not 93ft or 120ft? Where did this 100ft come from and could never really find it? What I did find was there was a study done by Jack Cohen many years ago, back in the 90s. I believe it was where they actually constructed a faux house built out of plywood, just kind of a facade, and then ran a fire through it. And they found that the, you know, that the that flaming front went past that plywood structure without igniting it, but the residual of the embers that kind of stayed there and hanging on gradually got that structure burning and the interior heat. Yes, yes. And the radiant heat. So the concept was if we can build structures to withstand that flaming front that passes through in just a few minutes and it's fire resistant, you

know, often in our area, stucco, maybe hardiplank siding, as we have now, it's resilient because his premise was if the structure won't ignite, it won't burn. And so that's kind of how that was determined. So now a lot of this resources and the research that was done then has now been plugged into the codes kind of that dictates how we prepare these. And we feel yeah. If we if we can do that, do your defensible space. Make sure that the structures are hardened. It's no different than building a house in a seismic zone or in a flood zone. It's going to happen. You just don't know where or how bad. And same with in a fire. And the idea is, will it be resilient enough to withstand it? Thank you. I do have a question of staff. Sorry. Yes. No. Please proceed. Commissioner Boysen. So I understand now it is a county zoning ordinance requirement not to put farm worker housing in high fire zones. Is that correct? It's very high fire hazard. Very. Sorry. I need to make that clear. This is a very high fire zone. Correct. Right. So that's true, right? That is true. So in when you support a project like this in a very high fire zone, are you also going back and actively changing the ordinance code to allow farm worker housing in very high fire zones? And if not, why? Commissioner Boydston staff will be looking at our ordinances. We're up doing reform efforts on our ordinances as directed by the Board of Supervisors back in November. This item has come about looking at that in

regards to this project, the change of the very high fire hazard maps occurred during the processing of this project. It is notable that the general plan itself does not prohibit residential housing in fire zones. It does have discouragement, and that was debatable. Part of that provision in the general plan when it was adopted. But it also relied upon the process of the fire agency, the building standards, those kind of things to address that. So I do anticipate that at a future date, our ordinances will be relooked at that. I will also note that the county and all ten cities are working on the Farm Worker Housing Study and Action plan, and we are also anticipating some level of regulatory changes that helps to promote quality farm worker housing region wide. And that may also be opportunities to make adjustments to our ordinance. So just to follow up, do you know why this was farm worker housing specifically was inserted not to be allowed where other housing was can be allowed? When was the rationale? Well, what we believe in looking back at part of the records is the general plan. Originally was describing a prohibition of all residential housing. When that general plan in 2020 got adopted, the language was changed to discourage that. And that's where I think the disconnect is where it was a prohibition. And then it got changed in the general plan. That's the best. Looking back on why that occurred. So if if this project

had been deemed complete after the maps changed, would you still support this project? We would need to address the compliance with the state laws on the Housing Accountability Act in our review. And that's what we've described in our findings today, that that change in the map designation does not change our analysis and compliance with the Housing Accountability Act. So the facts are the facts we have today. What you're supposing is different facts. Michael, do you have something I can add in on that? The density bonus law also has a provision for waivers. So if there's a circumstance where a housing project that qualifies under the density bonus law would otherwise be prohibited. And again, it's not there's no specific adverse impact on public health and safety. Then an applicant can request a waiver of that standard under the density bonus law. That's that's probably how it would have happened, right? If, in fact, to get past the you can't put farm workers housing in a high fire zone. The way to get around that would have been through a density bonus through a density bonus. Waiver. Correct. Thank you. Any other questions of staff for the applicant? Yes, I did have a question. I don't know if this should be maybe directed to staff or the developer, but with concerns about flooding, I was just wondering if anybody could share potentially the Post-construction best management practices that would be implemented, what they would look like, and is the site meeting sufficient retention and infiltration standards for those 2022 Construction General

Permit amendments? I believe we have a civil engineer from the applicant's team available. Is that correct? Yes. Yes. Robert Harvey of our team is on. Okay. He can answer that. Yeah. Can you guys hear me? Yes, yes. Great. Thank you. So to answer that, there has been infiltration testing done. And it's shown that the soils are adequate for infiltration. So we anticipate providing detention and infiltration through a combined basin. I do know that there is flooding in portions of the neighboring neighborhood. But for this site itself, the floodway spills through the underpass before it reaches the site. So there is no actual flooding or FEMA flood zones in this area. Thank you. Are there any other questions for from Commission for Staff or Commissioner Boysen? Now that we have the civil engineer on board, I just had a sort of in the weeds question along the North property line. What are the grade differences between the backyards and the project itself? Because we've seen some projects along the avenue where in fact there's huge grade differences. Is is there a grade difference anticipated here? Please can you let Robert again thank you. So the site overall needs to be flattened in order to maintain fire

department and Ada requirements, which is resulting in a little bit of differentiation. I believe the max it is is about three feet, and it varies from being kind of three feet of cut in the the western portion to three feet of fill in the eastern portion. But at no point are we causing a drastic difference in elevation. Thank you. Any other questions from the Commission for staff or the applicant or the staff? Seeing none, I'd like to ask staff if they'd like to make any closing remarks. None for me? No. Okay. I will now close the public hearing. Do we have any discussion from the commission, any deliberation? Chair Kesley I mean, Commissioner Kesley. Used to that. I gotta change that. One of the beautiful things about having the five people up here is we all come from different perspectives and we bring different experiences and, and and reasons and examples. For me, I'm not I haven't been able to get past the public safety portion of this. I come from an area where I struggle with this myself, and I do understand that when there is an emergency situation, human nature is volatile. People are going to do whatever it is they feel they need to do to protect their family, their safety, and you can educate them all day long. You can try to prepare for it. But the

bottom line is everyone will probably go into a panic state. And is there a fair and reasonable expectation that people can get out and get away and be safe? I have to take to heart the candor that we heard from our Sheriff's department. I truly appreciate that. It's not often that I get to hear such an honest response, which is there is a problem in this particular area on Ventura Avenue, and that is not going to go away. And we're going to add to it by bringing in this development. So we haven't demonstrated where that is going to where that's going to have relief. So because of that, I am not prepared to to approve this project as proposed. I just won't I just couldn't live with myself if I did. Commissioner Boysen. Well, sort of do this in two parts. One, if we approve it. There are a couple of things that I have an issue with with the current plan. One is the lack of community space in the first phase. I think there needs to be more the green central green, you need to accommodate more open community space. In the first phase two, I think, and I don't know if we have any say, but truly, if this is a family project, then if you look at the floor plans, there's truly a lack of family space within the units. From a square footage standpoint, there are no bigger really than one of the bedrooms, and I think that's a problem. Also, I'm a big fan of saving oak trees, so

I think there was one identified as being significant to save. And with a with a project this size, it just seems like it's reasonable to to save, you know, one tree. And then I think there's really a lack of study on safe path pathways to schools. I don't think we can put families that far away from, from schools and have that not addressed. Having said that, I too have real problems moving a project along where I don't think things have been adequately studied. I think the traffic study is deficient. I think it needs to have a wider range and it needs to look at morning commutes for families, taking children to schools and how it impacts Stanley Avenue or Stanley intersection. The evacuation plan, I think, needs further study. I don't think the evacuation plan comes up with mitigations that make it safe for a large scale development. With those densities to be there in a very high fire zone. I also think that a lot of and it's not really been discussed, but, you know, it's great to say, well, we have fire sprinklers and the buildings are, are one hour and and resilient. But fire sprinklers only work if you have a reliable water source. I'm not sure. City of Ventura has demonstrated being a reliable water source to to their own

residences, let alone residences that are being added, you know, on its periphery. So I would like to see more study and verification done to verify water source before I will be comfortable supporting this going forward. Having said that, I'm not. I'm very much in favor of affordable farmworker housing. Make make no. I am not against it, nor am I against putting it in areas that can support it in next to existing development. I don't believe in NIMBYism and wouldn't support that either. I just think we have to be very careful these days with with the safety factors we put in with our environment, with the with wildfires becoming more significant, faster moving and and occurring more, more often, I think we have to change the way we look at development overall in, in California and specifically in Ventura County to keep our residents safe. I think that's a I think that's an overriding responsibility that everyone needs to share. The developer, city, city and county governments, the people themselves. So we need to give them as many tools as possible to make sure that they're safe. So, like I said, I'm not in favor of denying this project. I just think it needs more more time to incubate and and come up with some of the answers that have been brought up here and not just reading out of the

book, but really understanding how reality is. And, and I think more more discussion, more study. At least I need that in order to move this project forward where it's at. Thank you. I appreciate the views of both my commissioners here and concur in regards to there their thoughts and and their positions. For me personally, I'm very familiar with the Somis project because I live right next door to it. I was very familiar with the evacuation process because I was right next to it. I went through it. I I'm very familiar with the the location there off the 33 two as well. And. From what I see, the Somis project seems like it would have a harder time evacuating than this project here. Being that there's a two lane road and that's all you've got to get out Somis Road, whether in this project you've got Stanley Road, you've got the 33, you've got two lanes on both sides there in the 33, and you've got a lot of people there in Somis that need to be evacuated there along that road. I, in my questioning of the sheriff, didn't get enough of a straight answer. Exactly what the differences was between those two projects, and knowing the two, I. I am concerned about any development and any

location in Ventura County due to the fact that the wildfire is basically the whole county of Ventura now. I am a firm believer of property rights. This country was founded on property rights. People should be able to do whatever they want to do with their property, as long as it's safe, as long as it's environmentally friendly, it doesn't hurt the environment and it doesn't cause problems for the surroundings. Those are my thoughts. I am going to support this project. And. I'll have to listen to a couple more, maybe thoughts or concerns from my other commissioners here on my left to make my decision. Pretty similar sentiments to my fellow commissioners here as well. I'd also like to concur with some of the concerns surrounding safety for the adjacent communities. I also would not deny approval of this project. However, I believe there may be gaps that could be filled with additional analyzes. In addition to that, it seems as though the developer and the planners really only did like one main outreach session with the adjacent communities. I think there may be more that could be done. And in addition to that, I would also love to hear or for you all to have feedback from the farmworker community as well, and hear their concerns about where this project is located. Considering these are the folks that will be housed within this complex, I would love to hear from them as well, and understand whether their concerns also resonate with those of the adjacent community. Commissioner kitchen. I two are very familiar with

the Somis community. I have a business in Camarillo, and to compare the evacuation of there with here, there's thousands more people in Camarillo were evacuating than would be evacuating here. With that said, is it is it part of our recommendation that we bring this back to this body after we have some of the the concerns answered? I guess that's a question of. Yeah, I think it would be helpful to get a better understanding of I mean, there is an evacuation plan you did hear from an expert. And so what I think it's it's really important for your commission to articulate what you think is missing, what more you would like to see in that regard and be specific as possible. And not just that, but in terms of everything. We. Got. Because if I had to vote today, I would vote yes for this project. Me too. Yes, Commissioner Boydston. So, you know, specifically, I would like more feedback on the evacuation plan from Fire Department City of Ventura water that there's reliable water source. And from the sheriff's department. I would like to know the sheriff's department's overall county program for evacuating people if they have one and how they deal with areas in a very high fire zone with, I think, restricted pathways to. I would

like to know that I'd like the traffic study to study further south to Stanley Avenue. I want to see how the traffic impacts in the morning, taking children to school and in the afternoon taking children to school. And in terms of the traffic study, what if we're going to require more studies? That needs to be it needs to be expanded well, and it needs to be tied to a general plan policy or a development standard, you know. Well, you tell me, how do you get how do you get children safely to school? You know, with impacts with traffic impacts? Okay. So it's a concern for safety of of children and families. Yes. As opposed to level of service or. Yeah. Well I think level of service will come into play. But yes, I'd like to see City of Ventura because this project impacts them to have have more impact or I'd like to hear from them in stronger terms on all the issues, because I think we only heard from Ventura Water saying, yeah, we have a pipe full of water that can go up there. Chair. And I know when we were doing the camp, Rama project, there was a lot more in the fire fire plan and how to evacuate and where the water tanks were and what the capacities were, and a lot more detail. And I think that the difference here is that it's municipal water purveyor. And so the assumption is that they do have adequate supply. And it's a matter of and, you know, that's something that we could come back to you with. But

that's my understanding of why this is different than a project served by a small mutual water company. And how did that work for them in the Orlando neighborhood? Yeah, I don't want to get into hypotheticals. It's not a hypothetical. It burn the whole place down. And they had a water reliable water source supposedly share. Anyway, you asked for specifics, and that's sort of more of the dialog and the narrative that I'd like to hear. Chair. Commissioner Cushing had a comment, and then I'll come back to staff. Yeah. In regards to the the children going back to school, I think maybe contact Ventura County School District and see if they'd be running a bus service up there, because I think that would eliminate it. But we know they are like negatively impacted with with students right now. So, you know, so I think I don't think the volume of students is going to be an issue with them. It'll probably be a plus for them. No, I think you're right. But I think there's an issue of how you get them there. And I think the traffic study should also look at creating a traffic management plan for how you get people to either bus stops, or is there a shuttle service or how how all that works. Typically on projects that I run that are commercial businesses, we're always asked to do a traffic management plan for employees and how that affects the overall traffic study. And that's not even looked at here. Chair Sandlin, commissioners, we do have representatives from the Public Works Transportation Division. Mr. Soils, I believe you can address the level of analysis. I am hearing your comments about seeking more analysis

across different technical points. We have prepared the information. County agencies have been involved and reviewed the project. The City of Ventura was consulted along with the project even before it was filed. They did not provide substantive comments to us of concern. I think County Counsel Barnes is describing to you that the municipal water service is the distinction from Camp Raymond, when you were looking at different water sources for that particular project, the Ha compliance also limits the number of hearings that a jurisdiction can have regarding a project. The law is somewhat vague about community meetings, so that's untested to know whether you had five four community meetings. Oh, have you now used up all the five meetings that can occur to approve a project? So that's some bit of a concern with Commissioner AIA about wanting to have more engagement. The number of hearings before, which could be meetings to before a project is approved, is set at five. That also means an appeal is folded into that same five. So I'm raising that just to let you know the context of how the Ha can have an implication to future meetings before having to make a project. Well, the applicant, to their credit, engaged with the community early on as well. One could argue that's true. So I'm letting you know that more engagements there may be a limitation, maybe in your direction. To us that could be a suggestion. But saying staff needs to verify and ensure what that would mean for coming back to your commission to get a an

action. To identify what topics we would be analyzing further or providing more information. What I did hear was fire department and city water in regards to verifying adequate water for fire suppression. Right? So flow the Sheriff's department wanting to understand how the county county wide addresses evacuations and in relationship to the site in West Ventura, okay, the traffic analysis again. Mr. Soils, if you have anything that could add right now, and maybe that isn't something that needs to have further analysis, can you come forward to address that? This is based upon the level of review that was completed. In reviewing the applicant's traffic study. Yeah. So the the study was approved before my time. But from briefly reading the traffic study and report, I mean, all the intersections that were chosen to be analyzed was approved by the previous traffic engineer. And I don't know why Stanley wasn't included. Or maybe it's the just the the the buffer of what it's included in the scope. But of all the intersections that were looked at, they were all at a level of service A or B, and with the project they didn't. Those level of service didn't really change. I know there's a bus stop at Ventura Avenue and Norway Drive, I believe, so there's public transit available as far as school districts. The Valley Vista track gets serviced by a unified school district, so

they would be able to service that same development. So we can certainly look at expanded scope. Were you asked to do a traffic demand management plan for the project? What I have on file is a traffic impact analysis. So that's different I think. So, yeah. Yeah. You did generation trip generation, right. Not a traffic demand management plan. How to manage traffic. Yeah. No just a traffic average daily traffic in and out. We looked at Am peak trips and PM trips. So so if you're asking specifically you know what additional things I think that needs to be done for the project. Well, Commissioner, chair Sandlin, Commissioner Boydston, the traffic demand management plan would only be triggered if the analysis is showing that you need to be managing the traffic. So that's why that wasn't part of the requirement of the project. Yeah, but they didn't analyze in a wider range all of the intersections that needed to be looked at, which would maybe have triggered it. So we'll look at whether or not a wider analysis for the project is triggering additional traffic study and analysis. That would be the request on traffic. I think. Oh, director Ward. Just thinking about this, the valid concerns of of of my commissioners here, can we condition this project that the county look at that and find if it's adequate enough or not,

whether it's the the water from fire or whether it's the traffic demand management, the Stanley Road, the school system, these concerns, could this be approved with those conditions that those are approved by the fire department, by the sheriff's department, by the. The school department, by the Public Works Traffic department, all these concerns that are brought up here today. I'm sorry to. Put my mic on. Yeah. Yes. The short answer is no. Your commission couldn't basically. And maybe I'm misunderstanding your concept, but but your commission is the decision maker for this project as a whole. So I wouldn't recommend basically farming out or outsourcing decisions on specific issues to other agencies and departments. So we would come back with those requests after their analysis. They'd bring it to us then to analyze those issues that we came up with here today, including the tree. Yeah, I think that's valid concern. And so. Any other. Discussion or deliberation from commission, any other commissioner Boysen, I'd like to make a motion to continue this item for further studies to be done. I'll second that motion. And just as clarification, when you refer

to the further studies, that was what what director Ward just mentioned. Yes. Okay. And nothing else. Well, you never know what comes out when you start looking at things more closely. So, you know, I, I don't want to negate if issues come up based on additional studies that should be thought about. Okay. But that's at the planning division's discretion based on your direction. Correct. Okay. And then we can discuss whether they're adequate again when they come back. Okay. And I'm sorry, just I think it's important just to, to give the larger legal framework. And it was touched upon in staff's presentation in the staff report. But Francesca Verdine, my colleague, is going to provide the overarching standard under the Housing Accountability Act. If when the information does come back, the standard is for denying this project, just to put everything into context. Thank you. Thank you commissioners. So just so to clarify for everyone and so everyone's on the same page because this is a project that is deemed to be compliant with all of the county's applicable objective general plan, subdivision and zoning standards. Under the Housing Accountability Act, the county is limited in its ability to deny or to condition the project in a way to reduce its density. Essentially, the Housing Accountability Act would require your commission to make very specific written findings based on a preponderance of the evidence. So this is a higher standard than traditional substantial evidence. It means, you know, based on all of the evidence that's presented to you, included in the record, that it

is more likely than not that your commission can find one, that the project will result in a specific adverse impact on public health or safety, as specifically defined in the Housing Accountability Act. And two, that that impact cannot be satisfactorily mitigated or avoided. Other, you know, other than, you know, denying or conditioning the project to reduce its density. And under the Housing Accountability Act, this is cited in in the staff report, specific adverse impact means a significant, quantifiable, direct and unavoidable impact based on objective, identified written public health or safety standards, policies or conditions as they existed on the date the application was deemed complete. So it's very specific and it needs to be that public health or safety impact needs to be tied to some kind of an objective metric. So want to make sure that that's clear to everyone, especially in light of requesting additional studies. And when this comes back to your commission. So thank you. And feel free to ask any questions, is the request that we're asking for staff to study further. Would those trigger that? Could those trigger a specific standard that you speak of? So what I'm understanding and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that your commission is is interested in in obtaining additional information that potentially would go to that

public health or safety impact question, but that would need to be, you know, evaluated against some kind of an objective metric. And and that's why my motion was not to deny, but to to get some more specifics. Thank you. We have a motion and we have a second. Is there any other apologize before you take your vote? Just what we talked about, the studies and other analysis there. Commissioner Boydston talked about oak Tree. We also had a discussion about the lack of community space in the project phasing first phase. Thank you. And then floor plan, lack of adequate space within some of the floor plans. Are those family space. Yeah. So those items are also included in the motion for evaluation and response by applicant and staff. Is that okay? Thank you, Commissioner Cushing. Yeah. When you're talking about family space and stuff, is that objective standards. Because we can't we can't do subjective. Should we base it based upon what is actually could deny the project or what could not deny the project? I think that's really what it comes down to, because we don't want to have them go. I guess I would be interested in just the discussion coming from the applicant on how they sized the family space for the different one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom, and how they got to it just for a matter of specifics. And that may be something we could have done today, but since it's hopefully coming

back, maybe they can ponder it. I'm sure there's a statement. The applicant, if we're force them to come back with a with more study, I think there's a statement that they can make upon that next time we come back. Yeah. I'm just careful. I mean, you know, state law has really come down on what you can do from objective and subjective. I'd hate to take him from half a garage into an affordable housing housing unit that doesn't meet their. That puts them in the same situation. I mean, it has to be. It has to be. It has to be. Not. It has to be the same as what a market rate. You can't you can't undercut these people just because they're farm workers. I mean, the same standard sort of apply to commercial development. I understand the state law. Okay. I you know, I do I don't much like it, but I do. The staff have clear direction, you think to be able for us to make a motion. Yes. That is that is in front of us to make today. Correct. Thank you. Chair Sandlin. We do. And the Housing Accountability Act will be part definitely. As we look at each of the components we're talking about and how we present that back to you. So thank you. Appreciate that. Any other comments before we so we have a first and a second motion. Do we have any other comments from the commissioners? I'd like to discuss this. Would you like to take a roll call please. Yes. Commissioner. Boydston. Yes, Commissioner. Kent. Yes,

Commissioner. Ayala. Yes. Vice chair. Cushing. No. Chair. Sandlin. No. Motion still passed. Three. Three two. Okay. Okay. All right. The next item is item eight, a report from the planning director Ward on board actions and other matters. Thank you, chair Sandlin. I do have a couple of announcements. This relates to some prior project and activities. One relates to the appeal PL 25 0072. This was the temporary food truck at 3250 Somis Road. They have withdrawn their appeal and staff was able to address at a ministerial zoning clearance of that project, with some further details on the plans and work that through. So that is now off your agenda. The second one relates to the Pacific Rock mining Project that is Lu ten 003, located at 1000 South Howard Road. That project was anticipated to come back to your in February. The applicant has asked to pull that off calendar. They still are responding to public comments and other aspects of that project, so we do not have a date certain for that project at this at the moment. I expect it will probably be in the later part of spring, but it will get fully re noticed when

it's ready to go. And those are the two reportable items for you. We have no meetings for you in February, but we do have items queuing up for the March 1st meeting in March. March 5th I believe. Thank you director Ward. Thank you. Are there any items the commissioners wish to discuss or introduce? Well, happy New Year to you guys. And I'd like to go