It's Monday, uh, May 11th and exactly 7 p.m., and we'll begin the City of Alameda Planning Board meeting.

Um, before we officially begin.

Board Member Hom, can you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please?

Do you fly?

I know that indivisible.

Thank you.

And we'll begin with roll call.

Uh I see seven out of seven.

We've got a full board.

All right.

Do we have to go through we need to go through them all?

I don't know.

That's what we can really do.

Okay.

I like to go with the flow, but Board Member Hong Kind of gotta check the voices too.

Board Member Sue.

Here.

Board Member Ruiz.

Here.

Vice President Arisa.

Here.

President.

Here.

Board Member Wang.

Here.

And Board Member Sava present.

Now we have a full board.

All right, great.

And do we have any agenda changes?

No, from staff.

Okay, or the board.

Looks like no.

Um, and any member of the public.

Oh, sorry, I'm gonna interrupt myself.

Before we go even further, um, just a quick uh disclaimer that um uh some rules uh in terms of how we conduct our meetings here in the city of Alameda.

This is official business, so please know disruptions.

Uh listen carefully while others are uh speaking, especially could be that person's first time doing public speaking.

Um, and we want to create a safe space.

Uh, please be mindful that folks are uh potentially watching and listening from home online, so um, they could be younger.

We want to set a good civic example.

Um, and according to the California Phenom Code, section four hundred three, it's a criminal offense for any person to without authority of law willfully disturb or break any assembly or meeting that is unlawful in his character other than assembly or meeting referred to penal code section three or two, first violations for receiver warning and continue violations will require additional action, which could include police intervention.

Okay, so um with that said, we can move on to non-agenda public comments.

Um, anyone may speak on an item that's not already um listed out in tonight's agenda for up to three minutes.

Do we have any speakers?

Uh yes, we do.

Um Danielle Mueller.

Good evening, board members.

Uh, I'm Danielle Miller, sustainability and resilience manager for the City of Alameda.

Uh, here tonight to talk about potential revenue measure for the city.

Um, so over the last year, we've been engaging with the community regarding the city's significant infrastructure challenges.

During four city council workshops last fall, we identified more than $800 million in urgent needs.

This includes our aging roads, bridges, storm drains, and public safety facilities, all of which are increasingly vulnerable to severe storms, sea level rise, and major earthquakes.

So I'm here tonight to um update you on this work and share how we're gathering community input to help us prioritize these critical projects.

To give a recent example, in 2023, we experienced a major power outage while the high street bridge was open.

So to prevent this from happening again, we are exploring backup generators to ensure residents can get on and off the island twenty-four-seven even during a blackout.

You likely also remember the significant uh flooding this past January during the King tides.

This is a preview of how sea level rise will impact Alameda in the coming years if we don't take action now.

We must ensure that city facilities remain operational even after a major earthquake.

Currently, we face significant risks.

And when studied our West End fire station received a C grade, the Alameda Point Station and Training Facility received a D, and the Alameda Animal Shelter received an F.

Our pavement condition score is currently 66 out of 100.

While that's slightly better than Oakland at 58, we're lagging far behind neighborhood neighbors like Emeryville at 78 and Pleasanton at 76.

Neglecting these needs increases costs for everyone.

It shows up in diminished property values, vehicle wear and tear, rising insurance rates, and most critically slower emergency response times.

Without a dedicated funding source, the city is forced to use the general fund for urgent repairs.

These repairs become more expensive every year they go unaddressed.

One option under consideration is a $300, $300 million local infrastructure measure that would create a protected dedicated fund, especially for these infrastructure needs.

If approved, property owners would pay approximately $49 for every $100,000 of assessed value, not market value for a home with an assessed value of $500,000 that equates to roughly $245 per year.

This funding would allow us to prevent flooding in the Posey Webster tubes and on city streets, install earthquake safe backup power so our bridges remain operational, repair potholes and improve traffic safety, maintain sewer and stormwater system to prevent BAFE pollution.

Ensure our first responders can react quickly to fires and medical emergencies.

We recently mailed Alameda voters an information guide and survey.

If you haven't yet, please visit Alameda CA.gov slash stronger together to review the materials and complete the online survey survey.

So please help us spread the word.

We want to hear from as many residents as possible.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's exactly three minutes.

Any other speakers?

Any attendees wish to speak, please raise your hand now.

No further speakers.

Okay, great.

And that was a very helpful update.

Moving on, we'll close non-juna public comment item and open up for the consent calendar, which are the draft meeting minutes for April 13th, 2026.

If we have no discussion on the minutes, do we have a motion?

Oh yeah, before I guess.

Yeah, do we have any public comments on the consent calendar?

It doesn't appear so closing public comment.

Do we have a motion?

I move to approve the draft meeting minutes on April 13th, 2026.

Okay, and we have a second.

Second.

All right.

All those in favor say aye.

I have three.

I would stay.

Yeah, two abstentions.

So that's uh five zero with two obsessions.

Okay.

Okay.

And the motion passes.

Great.

Um moving on to regular agenda item, which is a study session for the accessory dwelling unit uh condo conversion update.

And we have CF staff presentation.

All righty.

Thank you, esteemed board members.

Uh President, for your time this evening.

Um, as noted, the item before you is a study session regarding updates to the ADU ordinance.

Um study session is intended to be emphasized.

This is hopefully gonna have a little bit of a conversational tone.

I'd like to get some input from the planning board, but we will not be making a decision tonight.

The intent will be to bring back um a red line version of the proposed ordinance amendments with direction from the board, hopefully, at the second meeting in June.

So with that in mind, the item before you is updates the ADU ordinance.

The ADU ordinance originally adopted 2017-2018 give or take, allows for the creation of accessory dwelling units.

You'll hear me refer to those as ADUs.

I'm going to give a little bit of background on those.

I'm sure you're all probably pretty familiar with them, but just for the benefit of the public who may be listening in and anybody who maybe wants a little bit of a refresher.

So the way I'd like to frame this is basically by going over each policy issue one by one, getting input from the board, and then we'll kind of go back and recap some of those policy directions from the board at the end.

And with that in mind, just a little bit of the background I discussed.

So ADUs are typically compact dwelling units, sometimes converted from existing space in residential lots, sometimes created as new construction.

Generally speaking, permitted wherever other residential units are allowed.

And sort of a distinction here is accessory dwelling units, ADUs, and what you may hear me refer to as JADUs, junior accessory dwelling units.

The key difference here is that junior accessory dwelling units can only be created within existing space of a single-family home.

Typically there's also smaller, there are different restrictions associated with them.

Whereas ADUs can be detached, attached to the primary dwelling, converted from existing space, sort of all of the above.

There are limitations that apply to ADUs that don't apply to JADUs, and of course, the number and type allowed vary.

So it's important to keep that in mind.

And actually, I'm gonna jump to this last uh point too here while I'm making a distinction between types of ADUs.

Um it's important to remember that the development standards that we'll be asking the board for uh comment on tonight generally don't apply to what are referred to sometimes as statewide exemption ADUs.

Um also you'll see them referred to here as 66323 units.

I know that's a very uh sort of opaque way to refer to these units, but it is how the state refers to them, and so um it references government code section 66323 that contains the development standards for these specific types of ADUs.

Basically, um a 66323 or statewide exemption ADU refers to an ADU that is uh no more than 800 square feet in uh floor area, uh, has four foot side and rear yard setbacks, and generally meets um one of the height restrictions associated with these statewide exemption ADUs, usually 16 or 18 feet.

Um the reason it's important to remember is that um when we're considering these various development standards or um various uh policies that might be applied to ADUs, they typically won't be applied to these statewide exemption units.

Um, so just something to kind of frame the conversation.

Nothing we would be proposing here would, you know, create a hurdle for those types of units or make them any more difficult to build than they currently are today.

Um in addition, just some background here, you know.

Um I think you folks were pretty involved in the annual progress report that we had that um showed that our ADU production is actually going quite strong, both this past year and the year previous.

Um, and so it's sort of proportionally making up a greater amount of the overall housing production in the city right now.

Um, I also want to note that there's um quite a bit of data to suggest that ADUs are inherently more affordable than other types of residential units.

Um there are a couple of different reasons for this.

I won't speculate as to why that may be the case, but generally speaking, ADUs are considered a more affordable option than you know, sort of a typical single family home or even maybe a condo with shared walls.

Um then, of course, there's the uh state prohibition on separate sale or conveyance of ADUs, which had been in place until relatively recently.

Um one of the reasons we're here today is because of changes to state law that allow local jurisdictions, if they so choose, to allow the conversion of ADUs, either proposed or existing into condominiums, allowing their separate sale.

So that is gonna be one of the main questions we focus on today, but just to kind of give you an understanding of how ADUs have sort of historically been looked at and considered to be sort of uh an auxiliary use to the primary dwelling and therefore non-separable, right?

But we'll we'll consider some of the reasons why that may be worth taking a look at.

So just moving along here, we do have a housing element program that encourages us to annually sort of review our ADU ordinance in production.

That takes place as part of our annual review.

You may remember there's some brief mention of that in our report.

But because the ADU production has met our expectations over the past few years, that is meeting the sort of average 50 or so ADUs annually that we would expect to be permitted.

There hasn't been a robust review of how the changes to state law may need to be reflected in our local ordinance.

Now, any places in the local ordinance that currently conflict with state law, staff defers to state law on.

So it's not like there's a vulnerability there, but it's best practice to kind of true up the local ordinance to make sure that it's consistent with state law.

And because of certain changes that have been made, there's sort of a range of smaller cleanup kind of changes in addition to the policy questions we want to ask you.

So we can go over those in a little bit more detail if there's any specific ones that pique the board's curiosity, but just some examples of some of the state laws that have changed.

So obviously AB 1033 is kind of the maybe one of the more consequential ones, the reason for us coming and kind of discussing this condo conversion option.

You'll also see SB 1211, expanded the number of uh permitted units to be converted from existing multifamily, and there will be a bit of a conversation on that as well.

Um I'm actually just gonna pause just to kind of give you guys an idea of the uh how we've structured this a little bit, and I'll get into this in the next slide.

But I've tried to kind of top load our our agenda tonight so that we've got a lot of policy questions that I think maybe warrant a little bit more discussion right up front, and then as we kind of move through some of these policy discussions, some may warrant less discussion.

Um, so continuing on some of these legislative updates, uh AB 2533.

Um, this one was significant because it allows unpermitted ADUs to be converted into legalized units, um, while only adhering to those provisions of the law that are related to health and safety.

So a lot of times that involves complying with the building code, but it may not involve maybe some of the uh planning uh sort of codified zoning ordinance requirements for ADUs.

So that was a pretty significant change.

Um AB 1154 provided clarifications regarding JADUs.

Uh they uh provide additional guidance regarding some of the deed restriction questions that we'll be talking about later.

And then SB 543 has to do with the timelines that are related to our review, as well as sort of clarifications on, you know, for example, when we talk about ADU, how ADU floor area is measured.

Typically, when we talk about floor area, we're talking about sort of the footprint of a building, but ADU floor area is actually measured from the interior walls.

A little bit of a distinction there.

So all interesting updates to state law, they uh are pretty relentless with kind of coming down every few years with updates regarding ADUs.

So we're keeping an eye on those, and like I said, we typically just defer to the state law, but um where possible we'd like to kind of update the ordinance to reflect some of those changes.

So these are the key policy questions that we have here for you tonight.

Um we're gonna return to this slide at the end, so um don't worry too much.

But uh what I'd like to do is go over these one by one, provide some examples, get some feedback from the board, and then at the end, I'll recap some of the information that's been provided to us, some of the direction that I think we've received, and you can clarify for me if I've got any of that mixed up.

Um just gonna run through these real quick, but like I said, we'll have dedicated slides and examples for each.

So, whether ADUs should be allowed to convert condominiums, whether non-state exemption ADUs should be subject to a front yard setback, the number and type of ADUs allowed specifically in multifamily buildings, whether additions to existing non-conforming accessory structures, that is maybe a garage that's located right up to the rear yard property line, as part of an ADU project can extend along existing nonconformity, that's gonna require come you know, maybe an example or two.

We'll we'll get into that.

Clarifications to the uh removal of existing parking requirements.

Of course, no parking is required of ADUs, just to be clear, uh, potential uh, you know, either continuation of our existing impact fee exemptions or you know, questions about whether or not how that should be handled, and then uh like I mentioned before, the deed restriction requirements.

So moving right along here to sort of the arguably the mediest question before us, um, the question of whether or not the city ought to allow the conversion of ADUs proposed or existing to condominiums.

Um it's worth noting uh that this would not apply to JADUs, so this is not going to be applicable to a junior accessory dwelling unit that is uh ADU converted from existing living space in a single family home under 500 square feet.

Um this would be uh allowing the conversion of either a proposed, meaning you don't have to necessarily have an ADU on site to propose this conversion, or an existing ADU, one that has already been constructed, to turn into a condominium.

That is to say that it would have some sort of a governing body like an HOA that would have CCNRs, you know, restrictions on the use of, for example, shared space, and the uh sale of the actual ADU condo unit would be uh sort of limited to the building itself.

So, a little bit different from maybe uh a parcel map or another type of land division that would also convey the the land associated with the property.

Um ultimately the question comes down to whether or not the conversion of eight allowing the conversion of ADUs to condominiums would constitute a threat to the existing rental housing stock in the city, and whether or not the uh allowance of a conversion to a condominium would incentivize property owners who would not otherwise construct an ADU to construct one because of the potential value capture from the sale of that new unit.

So generally speaking, I think there's a consensus here.

You know, we're a we're a pro-housing city, um, we we like ADUs.

Generally speaking, we want to encourage ADUs.

Um we've had a really great success with having these units develop in neighborhoods that would otherwise struggle to densify their residential um unit count, and so um this is a way for that to be done in a way that is maybe less impactful to the community but allows uh a relatively low burden uh sort of type of application in construction for uh homeowners who have you know residential properties and are looking to expand.

Um like I mentioned before, not only are ADUs desirable because they're relatively easy to build, but they're also desirable because they're inherently more affordable than other types of units.

And so with that in mind, the argument for allowing ADU condo conversion hinges on the idea that the there are property owners who would not otherwise construct an ADU if not for the incentive of being able to sell that ADU once it's constructed, either because they don't want to deal with managing renters, they don't have the wherewithal or savvy to manage a sort of rental property, or because the uh configuration of the site isn't very suitable for you know rental ownership.

Uh so they they you know sort of are given an opportunity to construct an ADU with a different sort of outcome in mind where they aren't managing this new unit or owner occupying it.

The um the argument against is that if the city were to allow ADU condo conversion, that we would need to accept the possibility that it would be quite popular, right?

And it's not impossible that if all of the ADUs in the city converted to condominiums, not that that's a likely outcome, but that it is hypothetically possible, that this would create a reduction in the existing rental housing stock in the city to the detriment of the rental uh renting residents.

Um the sort of counter to that would be to argue that because ADUs are inherently affordable, by creating these condominium units, you've created a home ownership opportunity that wouldn't really exist otherwise.

And so there's sort of these competing interests as far as preserving the existing rental stock that we you know acknowledge is very important in the city, and incentivizing property owners to create new ownership stock in a type of unit that otherwise doesn't really have a way to come into being.

When we were looking at this, it's worth noting that roughly half of the units in the city are currently rental units.

And there's a little bit more of a robust breakdown.

I don't think we necessarily need to go over the exact numbers in the staff report.

But even if every existing ADU were to convert, it would represent less than 3% of the rental housing stock that currently exists, and we we simply don't expect this to be the case for for most ADU projects.

So I think that's a relatively manageable concern.

And because I just threw a lot of information at you, I'd kind of like to pause right there and just make sure there weren't any questions or thoughts about that.

Um yeah, thank you.

And um just to like clarify how you want to um move forward with the study session, is idea for like each section, like we'll pause, do some clarifying questions, and then like yeah, so the setbacks and then the blah blah blah.

Unless you as president have a different preference, I'm certainly happy to roll with this however you want, but um that gives me an opportunity to take more robust notes and kind of hear a little bit more of the conversation as we go.

Perfect.

Um, yeah, I'll uh open it up to the board for clarifying questions.

Yes, sure.

First of all, thank you for the staff report.

I thought it was uh a good thrill staff report.

I'll just start off with some questions about this issue.

Um, and I know this legislation has been in place, and different cities are debating it.

Uh one of my general questions, which is not necessarily relevant, I'm just curious what other cities have done as far as uh allowing for the condo conversions, um, but one of the questions I have is does state law provide any limitations on if a city decides to allow condo conversions where the city could also impose a minimum development standards such as lot size or um require I know owner open c is now kind of removed, but for the purpose of a condo conversion, is that an option that is still in place?

We may need to explore this with our city attorney's office a little bit.

I think as I understand there are you know basic limitations.

I think I mentioned, for example, JADUs cannot be converted into condominium.

So the state does provide some guardrails, um, but I would need to do more investigation as to whether or not presumably we could in order to make the findings associated with the subdivision of the property, presumably you could do some amount of uh, you know, either conditioning or requirements associated with that.

It would be good to clarify that since this is an optional action the city can take.

I'm just wondering whether the general restrictions uh on ADUs, whether those are waived or they're allowed to be a little bit more flexible if the city chooses to allow for condo and home ownership.

Yeah, I presumably if we were to allow condo conversion and somebody proposed a statewide exemption ADU and then proposed to turn that into a condo, um we would not be able to apply the additional development standards, whatever those may be, to such a because it would already be a statewide exemption unit.

So presumably in that case, we wouldn't be able to apply additional standards, um, but I would assume that outside of statewide exemption ADUs that they would be subject to whatever standards we we see fit.

Yeah, I'll I'll just weigh in a little bit.

Um this is really an evolving issue.

There have been very few cities that have adopted these um ADU conversions, and I think there is some tension between um uh I think it's AB 1033 that allowed the conversion um with the um the the state exemption um ADUs that that require at least an 800 square foot ADU be approved.

And so if you were going to um require a lot, uh a minimum lot size that would not accommodate an eight eight hundred square foot ADU, of course, that would um not be permissible, but um assuming it would um I think it's it's an interesting issue, and I don't know that it it has been uh determined yet.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um board member Dewey's?

Yeah, thank you for the presentation.

Um we're just taking questions right now and no comments, correct?

Yeah, just clarifying um questions for now.

Okay.

So along the similar line, there's also SB9, the subdivision of lots, and how how do those two compare?

Have you have you taken that into consideration in proposing this?

So uh SB9 as I understand it caps the resulting lots um to have four units, that is you know, you result in a duplex or two single family homes and the resulting um ADUs associated with them.

So uh presumably that four unit cap would if you're pursuing a subdivision under SB9, the four unit cap would apply, but it would be a different pathway if you were preserving a presumably a condo conversion for ADUs.

But after that, after SB9, then they can subsequently condo convert everything because there's no cap on what happens after subdivision, correct?

I would need to look into more of SB9s, because I think there's deed restrictions associated with the SB9 uh application, and so there may be something in the that's a that's again I clarify when you bring that back again.

Yeah, I think I think you're right in the sense that you know there's various permutations you can get with an SB9 application, whether it's a lot split or you know, a duplex with two ABUs or two duplexes, etc.

But presumably after an SB9 subdivision, the remaining single family home plus potentially an ADU or the remaining duplex could pursue uh um well if it's it would have to be an ADU to be benefiting from 1033, right?

So we often have to layer these different state laws in as we review a project.

Right, but Alameda's uh ADU law doesn't really cap the size.

I think it's what 1400 if I remember correctly.

It's not 800.

1200 square feet.

1200, right?

So it's a that's a decent sized ADU, so you can potentially have that.

Um what I'm saying is, you know, the state law it exceeds the state law limit limit, but it's not a six six um six, six three two three unit, but is a legal ADU, and then they can subdivide that they can count to not subdivide but condomize that separately.

And I know you haven't gone to it, but the restriction was one of the questions that we were supposed to answer to, right?

Yeah, yeah, that's so we just want to know what what the extent of SB9 is and how that interacts with this current this this um ADU ordinance that we're discussing right now.

Good question.

Okay, thank you.

Any other clear point?

Yes, uh board member uh Sahiba?

Yeah, thanks for the presentation again.

Um you voiced some concern about the conversion taking away from the rental stock within the um within the city.

And uh well, two parts to that question.

First is um, I guess from the city's perspective, what are the challenges of that of reducing that rental stock?

What what should we be mindful of if that happens?

But secondly, uh if it does get converted in a condominium, the owner of the condominium can rent it, correct?

So it would be back into the rental pool in a sense.

Um so what um, so again, I'm sort of trying to understand what the challenges I it feels like there's more optionality actually than restrictions, when I look at it in that perspective, but I am curious to hear what your thoughts are.

Yeah, and and I think there's definitely an argument that can be made that goes that something like this is actually more flexible, right?

Um ultimately the concern you could almost derive it from the existing condo, excuse me, conversion to multiple houses ordinance that we have, which has what's called the critical ratio standard.

Um the stated intent of that is to preserve rental housing stock.

It basically states uh condo conversions can't take place after the you cross 60 40 threshold um for you know rental units versus ownership units, and so um you can get the impression there and in some of our general plan programs and policies that preservation of existing rental units is a goal purely because typically renters are more vulnerable than folks who own their properties, and so um, you know, by not converting away those units, you preserve those folks who are in a more vulnerable position.

Um, I mean you're right to point out that a conduized ADU could end up back on the rental market, that's certainly possible.

Um I guess the argument would be that currently it only goes in one direction, right?

Currently, every ADU becomes a rental unit.

And so how much of this would be diverted into ownership units, question, right?

There's a there's realistic barriers, there's practical reasons why folks might prefer a rental unit over an ownership unit.

Um, but at the end of the day, I I think our analysis shows that there's it's unlikely to create a significant negative impact to the existing rental housing stock just by virtue of how robust our current rental housing stock is in comparison to the the ownership proportionally.

Um but it it is it it we would be remiss if we did not bring the issue to your attention, right?

There is, you know, you'll see these arguments made in other jurisdictions where they're having these conversations, and so we at least wanted to sort of bring to light the the concern.

Yeah, and I think just to add to that, I think the it's it's part of it is the direct displacement potential, right?

So it's there's the sort of rental versus ownership housing stock question, but also just there could be an existing resident there and the you know making it easier or making it allowing the ABU to be come a condo could incentivize the displacement of an existing tenant.

Obviously, Alameda has pretty robust tenant protections and and just cause eviction rules.

So those tenants would benefit from that.

Um but it's you know something we definitely wanted to flag.

Yeah, and just to kind of bridge off of that a little bit, you know, the the goal would be to avoid any kind of LS Act evictions or to um put guardrails around these conversions such that you wouldn't have you know undue displacement.

Um obviously uh tenants get first rate of refusal under state law.

There's there's a lot of protections built into condo conversions already that prevent sort of the most extreme forms of displacement for existing renters.

Um so I do just want to point out that that's not um really a acute concern of ours.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

None.

Um I had a clarifying question, and I feel like we've talked about this before in the past, but um the we do we have a sense of like those ADUs that are being built every year, the 50 or what have you.

Um, what the actual use is like um like they could be for short-term rentals or for family or for office or so, generally speaking, ADUs are not allowed to be short-term rentals.

Um they I would say we aren't requesting uh that applicants tell us their intended use.

Um, but I think you know, a quick scroll through your Zillows or you know, your whatever preferred rental um marketplace is that you'll see a fair number of them do become rental units.

I think there's also it's fair to say that a lot of them become sort of in law suites, um, you know, family members living in there, uh kids coming back from college, things like that.

Um so I think you know it's fair to assume that some of these may not even have been on the rental market in the first place, um, but yeah, I think there's a pretty broad range of uses for these.

I'd also point out that probably fewer are used for offices, although it would not surprise me if some number are, um, just because uh our home occupancy um kind of program that allows folks to run businesses out of their homes does make it easier for folks to do that out of their primary dwelling, um, rather than out of any accessory dwelling.

So I think primarily being used as either a primary rental residence or as sort of a an in-law suite.

Okay, that's helpful.

Thanks.

Um and I guess would you prefer that we give you our commentary and guidance at the very end of this, or do you I am open to either approach?

Um my intent was just I'm gonna be going over a lot of information on like a specific policy issue.

What I don't want is to get through this policy issue, go on to the next one, and now you've forgotten everything we just talked about, right?

If you have stuff that you want to, you know, the direction.

Oh yeah.

I was just gonna say, um, don't we need to wait for public comment before we get into discussion on these years?

Or because it's a study session, it's kind of anything goes, or I think we have some flexibility because of study session, but traditionally we did we we do want the board to hear the public comment before they give sort of advice to staff.

So you can kind of weigh that how you how you want to handle it.

Okay.

Um I feel like I would prefer for us to have the discussion now, and then we could do like a quick rediscussion at the end after public comment if that's okay.

You also have very few attendees.

So if you wanted to take public comment on issue by issue, you could you can even do that.

Um, if you were so inclined, but uh up to you.

I think, yeah, I think we could um wait till the end, but oh yeah.

If it pleases the board, let's go ahead and give commentary now on this issue area, if if that's okay.

Okay, all right, open it up.

What do we think about B?

Yes, for membership.

Um I guess I'll go first.

Um so uh yeah, I think this is an interesting uh topic of this of this law.

Um, and I think one thing that's interesting is that the conversion process requires um the homeowner to comply with a uh pretty complex law.

I think it's called the Sterling Davis Act, and um it's this whole mapping process.

You basically have to condominize your property and set up like CCNRs and like to establish a common area and likes out.

So on the one hand, like yes, there's this argument that maybe this will reduce the amount of rental properties, but on the other hand, like this process may also um dissuade property owners from going through it because I would imagine it'd be somewhat expensive.

Um you probably have to hire a lawyer and come up with all this stuff, and then when you go to sell it, you're gonna have to, if you have a mortgage, get sign off from your um your bank.

Um, you know, you're gonna have to get a map and like the assessor recorded.

So there's this whole process that I think kind of makes it a little more uh complicated than as just like, oh, you can just go and do it.

So um, so I kind of from that angle, you know, I don't see this as at risk of kind of reducing rental properties as much.

Um just looking at some kind of the articles of like recent um uh cities that have adopted this.

Um I saw kind of one suggestion, I think this was in Berkeley.

They had one of the council members had proposed certain kind of like tenant protections to try and like stem you know people from being forced out of their rental ADU if they were if their ends were used because condominize um and so you know that's something the city like couldn't could consider maybe I don't I don't think I want to want it to be incredibly comprehensive, but you could do something like um like a right of first refusal or something.

I don't know if you can write that into the ordinance, but perhaps that's something where if the ADU gets condominized, property owner has to then make an like and if they decide to sell it, they've got to offer it to the renter first.

You know, I'm sure there may be some other like other policy considerations there, but that's like maybe one idea to consider if we're talking about rental rental protections.

But I but I you know in your staff report I I do think like if we've got 450 out of and it's only three percent, like I I'm not as concerned, but you know I think it is an important um important discussion to have.

Thank you.

Yeah, board member Deweys.

Um thank you.

I almost want to echo verbatim your comments.

Um in terms of the I'm I am of a camp to provide options and and varieties for our residents, um, not to restrict them because market is market.

The government cannot dictate a market.

You can try, but we're not here to do we don't know what is going to happen in the market, and all we can do is uh offer optionalities for the residents, depending on what their financial situations are or their long view.

Um yes, there's a condo management, it's not that easy to convert, right?

You have a CCNR, you need to have management from overseeing, make sure there's reserves that's allocated for it's just it's not as simple as it is.

So is it gonna compete or deplete our rental stock?

I don't think so, but it is an option.

So I and I'm all for options.

So if you're looking for a black and white yes and no question uh answer, I'm gonna say, yeah, let's go for it.

And if it doesn't work, then if you have a slater, we can reevaluate that.

But at least now, then the residents have options.

Thank you.

Any other uh board member Wang other comment?

Uh yeah, I'm interested in seeing this happen.

Um, from my perspective, it looks like you know, maybe modest upside, very little, pretty much no downside.

Uh again, more flexibility has been an ongoing theme.

Um we've talked about preservation of existing rental stocks.

I don't know if existing is an operative word in that phrase.

Um, and I bring that up because to me, ADUs are kind of a new creature.

Like they've they've, you know, secondary units certainly have existed for a long time, but as part of our uh short-term rental ordinance discussion, I think we established that there actually is a difference between ADUs proper and things that are not ADUs but kind of look like ADUs, right?

And so I kind of I when I look at ADUs and the creation of ADUs, I don't think existing rental stock, I think uh ADUs as a newish creature, it's being created now.

Uh we're looking for more creation on an ongoing basis.

And so I think what we're saying here is as ADUs get created, why don't we allow some of those to be ownership based?

And why don't we allow that um as as you said, I think uh it might even spur more creation of ADUs.

So I don't see this as eroding existing rental stock.

Um if we're saying that we have a policy of creating only rental units as we create housing in Alameda, I think that's a different question, but I don't think that is a policy, and uh I don't think that's the question that's being called here.

That's correct.

Thank you.

Any other uh comments?

Uh Vice President Aditza?

Um I I guess I kind of agree with what everybody has said, that it it seems just like adding um flexible kind of more flexibility to the ADU, but at the same time, it seems also complex enough that not everybody's going to do that just because it's allowed.

I'm curious to hear how the lots are actually split.

I hear then that there is another ordinance or the SB9 is what kind of governs the division of the lots, but then there's this other one that would govern the division of the property or the ownership.

Uh which the whole thing seems pretty complicated to actually do if you're an owner.

So why not allow it?

I mean, why not?

Thank you for the presentation.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

Uh, board member Han?

Yeah, I I I agree with the board members that this should be allowed as an option.

Uh, from a policy standpoint, the balancing of whether you'll be impacting residential units for ownership units.

Um, quite honestly, when I think the need for ownership, lower lower income ownership units is probably more acute because at least we are producing affordable rental units at the very low and low income level.

Uh if we adopt the amendments to the inclusion housing ordinance where the ownership units are primarily moderate income, then we have this huge gap that is defied in the housing element of very low and low income units.

And I think the ADUs could potentially fill that gap.

So from a policy standpoint, I think a lot of the option would be beneficial.

Having said that, I agree with the comments when I think about you know filing a condo map to try to create a say maybe it could be more than two lots because you could have multiple ADUs.

But that seems like a pretty onerous task by itself, you know, don't want that to be an obstacle but a homeowner needs to go in with our eyes wide open on if they truly want to pursue that option.

I'd also be interested to explore the idea I don't know what kind of standards whether certain standards that we might want to apply to conditions for allowing the ownership or the condo maps.

I don't know whether there's some minimum lot size or some other standards that we may might want to apply if state law does allow that for this option but those are my thoughts.

Great any other comments no I have an agreement with my fellow board members and definitely agree um that uh homeownership is a huge challenge here in California and a Bay Area.

So I think it'll be a good problem for us to tackle if we ran into that and I also um I appreciate everyone's comments but also as we said we have um strong tenant protections and also you know what more can we do for to address the displacement concerns that were um brought up by staff so yeah I think we're all in agreement.

Great.

Thank you and and we will come back to this I'll try to recap some of those comments after we have uh public comment um but just in the interest of keeping us moving here this is kind of our second issue.

And again these are sort of in descending order of uh how much they probably need to be uh you know uh hashed out um this is um this could be a little bit uh confusing because it's gonna include a distinction here um as many of these will for our um statewide exemption ADUs so of course our our statewide exemption ADUs would not be subject to this standard um because we don't have the authority to apply it um the current code the current ADU ordinance excuse me uh does not state any specific setback for front yards um that is to say that in most residential districts here in the city um there is well in all of our residential districts and most of the districts that allow residential there's a 20 foot front yard setback um on at least standard lots for substandard lots that are you know lots with less than a hundred foot depth um or in a couple of other situations for example involving um you know where it abuts the water uh the front yard setback can be reduced but generally speaking most you know our zoned properties in the city have this 20 foot front yard setback um we've been advised that generally speaking uh you know if we did get an ADU proposal that was not a statewide exemption unit and did you know locate in this front yard area um that it could be the case that we can make an argument for the uh existing front yard setback to apply to such a structure um but we've been advised that it would be a little more airtight a little bit more um kind of in keeping with best practice to have any front yard setback applied to ADUs codified in the ADU ordinance um and so this question is really um do we feel that uh we we ought to kind of take this front yard property um line question and apply it to uh non-exemption ADUs uh sort of the same way it applies to um other like a primary dwelling unit on the lot and the kind of policy question that's here is you know if we agree that a front yard setback should be applied to non-statewide exemption ADUs should it be the same setback applied to our existing primary structures, right?

Should it be a flat setback, right?

So a 20-foot, for example, setback from the front yard, regardless of whether or not your lot is substandard or has some other non-conforming condition?

Or is there some other arbitrary value that we think is appropriate?

A 10 foot setback, a five-foot setback, whatever it is that we feel would be, you know, more suitable for the the front yard setback applied to non-exemption ADUs.

So that one's a little bit of a quicker spiel.

Do we have any questions about what it would mean to apply a front yard setback to these sorts of things?

And again, we will return to this at the end, give our public opportunities to comment, but any clarifying questions?

Yes, board member Wayne.

So just so I understand, is this question related to condo conversion, or is it just because we're opening the ordinance that we're taking the opportunity to clarify something that maybe is unstated right now?

I should have been more clear about that.

Excuse me.

Yes, this is entirely independent of the question of condominium conversion, as are all of the other remaining issues.

Um so while we may want to consider how they interact with that if we are going to pursue a direction to create a condo conversion option.

Um they are not specific to that.

These are generally applied to all ADUs.

Okay.

So currently all primary structures on residential lots, that is lots that have an R designation, not other zoning districts that allow residential uses.

Those lots have a 20-foot front yard setback requirement.

Now there may be existing legal nonconformities, that is to say there may be places where the homes were built prior to that front yard setback standard, in which case you'll often see homes that are less than 20 feet away from the front yard property line.

However, this would be applied to you know new construction.

So I'm proposing a new ADU, I'd like to locate it in my front yard area, how far setback, and it's not a statewide exemption ADU, you know, for whatever reason, let's say it's a thousand square feet, right?

How far setback should that be?

Should it be the typical 20-foot front yard setback?

Should it be the typical 24 20-foot front yard setback with caveats that are extended to existing primary structures, or should it be some other, you know, arbitrary number that we think is more appropriate than 20 feet?

Um board member Luis, so um board member vice president or is uh the reason being that currently our ADU ordinance has side yard and rare yard setback, but is completely silent on the front yard setback.

So that's why he's seeking clarification on that.

So the question is whether we want to keep the 20-foot but clearly stated, or whether we want to change it to something different?

Generally speaking, yes, that is that is sort of the question, although I think there's a little bit of nuance there as well, you know.

Um you could choose not to apply it at all if you wanted to direct us to do that as well.

And that's technically an option.

Right.

You could go from zero to twenty, any number.

Or exceeding two, yeah, hypothetically, yeah.

Board member home?

Yeah, just a question.

For the 663 to three exemption units, what is the lawable front yard setback?

For those you just can they actually go right to the zero lot line?

That is correct.

Okay.

Oh wow.

Okay.

Which is seems low.

And those are the 500 square foot units.

Uh, maximum.

Not quite.

So those are 800 square foot maximum.

500 square foot maximum is a J ADU.

Oh, okay.

And a lot of little thresholds here.

So if you have any questions about those, happy to clarify.

Any more questions?

I don't have questions, I think.

Um sorry, the way you framed it, were you saying um either uh recommending the 20 foot front setback or complying with whatever that existing properties front setback is?

That that would be uh one of the options available to you as a policy direction to staff would be to say yes, apply the 20-foot setback as it is typically applied in residential districts, uh, except where the front-yard setback would otherwise be modified by other provisions of the code.

Okay.

I'll open it for uh feedback.

Uh board member Hall?

Yeah.

Um this one, I don't know, for me, is kind of simple.

I I kind of favor uh requiring the same setback as the primary structure, which allowances.

I know there's bounces for porches or things like that to encroach in the setback, but to me, require the same.

I mean, I'm open for more flexibility in the rear yards, but in the front yard setback.

I think I'm thinking about the character of the residential neighborhood and the street, and um it could be to me, visually, it could be disruptive to see an ADU uh that doesn't comply with the prevailing setback requirement.

Uh certainly if there's a street where you see a predominant number of homes that are non-conforming front yard setback, that could be justification for a fair end, say, you know.

But uh I'm tend to favor require the same setback as the primary structure, the same zoning regs.

Um board member Louise.

So I just want to clarify that.

Um, Barham.

So if the primary structure is non-conforming, then has a non-conforming setback, then the ADU will have the same non-conforming setback, right?

They don't have to justify that.

All they have to do is say, hey, the main structure is only five feet away from the front property line.

So therefore the ADU will be five feet away from the front property line.

Yeah, I'm not sure the process, but I would see that as a justification for an exception process, not automatic.

From my C, I would like to see that as automatic because you're matching existing building.

And just you don't want to create more hurdle.

Try to figure out why, and if the existing building is only five feet away from, I'm exaggerating, but it's only five feet away from the front property line.

There's there's already a precedent there.

Why do you want to make an ADU to go through hurdles when the you've got an elephant that's a why against the street?

Yeah, I guess it depends on what we mean by a hurdle.

If it can be administratively approved, uh is where I would see it.

But I guess I'm not in favor of just making automatic.

Okay.

Yeah.

Any other reasons?

Definitely keep it simple though.

I wouldn't, you know, I mean it's part of the application.

Right.

I'm just saying that so if yes, they can you can that can be in the reason, right?

You can have to write out the reason why, because the reason will be existing structure is non-conforming.

Right.

And but if we're asking the applicant to justify that, does that mean that they have to go through the zoning code to find what ordinance that actually apply that allows a justification?

To me, that is a hurdle.

Yeah.

Well, I I would hope staff could assist the applicant that regard.

Plus, I guess if there's an existing non-conforming structure and someone wanted to expand that structure and maintain that nonconformant setback, doesn't city require that to be approved as not automatic.

I guess that if it is automatic for a primary structure to say add some square footage to a non-conforming setback structure, if that's an automatic process of the city, then to be consistent with that.

But as long as certain findings can be made, yeah, there are basically if you can uh extend along the existing nonconformity in such a way that it does not create impacts to I want to say it's view blockage shade and privacy.

Maybe I'm making up one of those three, but uh certain factors if you're uh not creating undue impacts as compared to a conforming addition, then yes, you're allowed to.

Those are the kind of findings I would see consistent.

I'm trying to be as consistent with what we apply to main structures as accessory structures.

Yeah, I think you're just to add to that, there's there's we have an existing process.

Not necessarily every existing nonconform building could, you know, automatically apply that that non-conforming setback, but if there's sort of there are conditions where uh you know it's typical on the on the block that everyone's at a 10 or 15-foot setback, then there would be we would apply standards.

Obviously, anything we do craft, we have to craft it in a way that it's objective.

Um, and so you know, start talking about some things like view blockage and shaving and things.

Yeah, you know.

You have to be able to to create a rule that's pretty pretty simple, but uh and we're I think the difference between these two potential universes is very small, right?

There's just the practicalities of meeting any setback in front of a house.

Um that would apply.

If there's very few lots that this would even be uh uh academic exercise in, much less you know, giving real projects, I think.

And actually to that end.

Yeah.

Here's a real world example in the city, um, where you can see sort of what this would look like, right?

I mean, these are for what it's worth uh seemingly fairly conforming lots.

So something to think about.

Yeah, so all the units on the side, they are not conforming, right?

I'm sorry, what one more time?

The the units on the on your right side of the screen, they encroach into the 20 feet setback.

Uh well, I didn't go out there with a tape measure, and sometimes it's a little bit hard to know exactly where behind the sidewalk that front yard property line begins.

Um, but I would say this is a pretty typical layout for sort of alameda, you know, front yards, um, where it's uh 20 feet or close to it with maybe a slight encroachment from the porch or stairs.

Okay.

What one thing I I think I wanted to just mention is you know, in the in such scenarios where like a property is set far back more back than what the setback is, so like if it's 20 and that property is set back 30.

I don't want the I don't think why I want the ordinance written in a way where it now says that the standard is 30 for that ADU, like it probably should be 20, right?

So 20 or yeah.

Yeah, so so it probably should be drafted in a way that sets a baseline, and then if the property owner says, Well, my my home is actually just 10 feet, then that is the standard that applies for that ADU.

But if it's 30, then the ADU builder or the property owner can use the 20 feet standard.

Yeah, so yeah.

But you said were you gonna say something?

Well, uh I was just thinking kind of in a very pragmatic way, that you know, most of the lots are kind of deep and narrow proportionately.

So I I don't think that these would apply.

There would be a way to build, it's more like the question is do we want to change the character of the street by allowing ADUs within the 20 foot setback?

And if we don't want to do that, which I assume we don't, then I guess we're saying we want to maintain the 20 foot setback as the baseline.

Is that kind of a comment?

Yes, uh, board member Wang.

Um, so so I I guess the first comment before we talk about numbers is this seems like an exceedingly rare condition, right?

And we don't really have front yard ADUs being proposed very much.

I would argue that most and maybe our developer communities can chime in.

Uh I would argue that a lot of folks are opting not to pursue these because they want them in their rear yards.

Um I don't think we should jump to the conclusion that people will self-regulate and just choose not to do these if they are an option.

Okay, that's helpful.

Um I guess my opinion on the front yard setback is a little bit different.

I'm generally a little bit less bothered by a little bit of variation in front yard setback, and so I was gonna propose a couple ideas just to throw into the pot here.

And one of them was if there's an existing setback regulation on a particular block that the front yard, the front setback for a new ADU has to be at least 85% of the existing uh setback regulation.

So that's one thing to throw in the pot.

The second would be um to kind of consider I think the dynamic between what board member Hom and board member Ruiz um were playing out, uh, is to say that the setback could be the lesser of I think the first number or the um or an existing non-conforming precedent on the same block.

So it's kind of just written in to have to kind of snap into one number if there's already a number that establishes a different datum in the neighborhood.

Thank you.

Any other comments or suggestions?

Okay, see none.

Um did I give you like somewhat of a starting point?

I feel like I got pretty good direction on that unless somebody else wants to chime in.

Okay, all right.

I think we're okay then.

All right, keep it moving here.

So next one, this one's gonna get a little bit in the weeds, so bear with me here.

Um this is a question about the number and type of ADUs allowed now.

The reason this is a relevant question for us here is because the city's current ordinance is more permissive than what is required by state law is sort of the bare minimum.

As far as the number of existing converted uh space that we allow to be created into ADUs on multifamily lots.

So uh if you have an existing multifamily uh building, that can mean a duplex, it could mean you know, a 16-unit apartment building, you can convert any amount of the existing space.

Um this could be non-habitable space as well, so for example, an attached garage, to any number of ADUs.

Um, this is distinct from state law in two kind of meaningful ways.

Uh, and I've prepared a table that hopefully explains this uh in a clear way.

Um the first way that state law uh sort of their minimum requirements are distinct is that it's tied to the existing number of units on site.

Um so you know, for a six-unit building, you get six ADUs, right?

So it's got sort of a cap built in in that way.

The other thing that distinguishes it is um sort of an overall cap at eight units.

So if you had, you know, as you see here, a 10 or 11 unit apartment building, that doesn't mean you necessarily get up to 10 or 11 units under the a state law, you would simply be capped at eight.

Um currently we have no such limits in either situation.

So the question before you would be, and sort of there's three, I would think of this as sort of three three buckets that we could potentially explore, right?

The first would be to say, no, we like our uncapped multifamily conversion rule.

We don't want that to change, and we just want them to have as many as they want in there.

Uh the second option would be to say we really like that state standard.

That's the most capping we can do.

It's the most limitations we can impose on these sorts of things as far as the number allowed.

We're gonna go for that.

And the third option, which is a little bit more nuanced, right?

Similar with what we were saying with front yard setbacks, right?

Is you can choose something in between the two, right?

You can say, maybe we want there to be some arbitrary cap, 10 or 15 units, you can't exceed that.

Uh, but we don't necessarily want to tie it to the number of units on site, right?

Or vice versa, you could say, well, we're interested in tying it to the number of units on site, but we're not gonna cap it at eight.

We're gonna say you can go up to the number of units on site regardless of how many are on site.

And just to kind of inform, you know, maybe add some concrete examples to this, um, we have two projects that the city um received applications for.

Um, I'm not gonna go too much into detail about you know the location or the specifics of the project, but just to kind of give you an idea of how these things uh end up playing out.

Uh on your on, sorry, I guess our left side here, um the apartment building that you see zoomed in on.

Uh, the proposal was to convert that existing ground floor that's primarily uh parking spaces, laundry, sort of storage areas to nine ADUs.

Uh, this was in addition to the two detached ADUs they proposed in the rear yard area.

Um, so those were relatively small units, but um you can imagine a situation where if we had the state law applied here, they wouldn't be able to convert the nine units because you would be capped at eight, or the number of units uh on site.

And so um the result would be likely not that the conversion wouldn't happen, but instead that fewer number of units would be proposed, and in all likelihood those units would be larger, right?

Because you're converting the same amount of space.

Um, or they would choose not to convert that entire space.

Um and then on your on the right side here, um, this is uh sometimes referred to as the cellshore apartment, sometimes referred to as the beach and tennis club.

Um these are apartments sort of by Westline and Shoreline there.

Um we did receive a preliminary application to convert existing office commercial and parking areas within this larger multifamily development for 55 ADUs.

You know, that was a preliminary application, so they were really just seeking guidance from staff about how our standards would uh interact with that kind of a proposal that wasn't sort of a formalized proposal that we received as like a building permit application.

Um but it does shed light on the way in which uncapped ADUs can um lead to some pretty interesting proposals as far as this the sort of magnitude of of uh unit conversions that are proposed.

So um I think I'm gonna pause there and just make sure we don't have any questions about sort of number type allowed.

It might be helpful even just to have this table back up so that we kind of see what that breakdown is.

Questions, concerns?

Um bring it to the board.

Um yes, board member one.

Um thank you.

Um so uh I generally want to understand the concept of ADUs and the in the context of multifamily dwellings.

What is there some kind of advantage for an owner to call a new unit an ADU versus just a residential unit?

For instance, would they not be allowed to build, would they not be allowed to convert those garages to units if they just called those units instead of ADUs under their current zoning?

What's what's the what's the ADU pathway here?

Yeah, it's a really good question.

Um short answer is yes, they're generally incentives.

There are also some I wouldn't call them disincentives, but there are uh development standards imposed on ADUs that aren't opposed on other types of units.

So it's sort of a give and take.

Um primarily I think you'd be looking at things like building code compliance is a big one.

So for example, generally your ADUs don't need to be sprinklered if the primary unit isn't sprinklered.

Um, whereas if you are creating a new unit, um, you know, it has to meet the current fire code.

Um there are also things like um generally speaking, the unit that is created as an ADU just generally doesn't have the same as robust requirements of it.

The idea is that it's got, for example, an efficiency kitchen, right?

Um it's got uh allowances for things in the building code that are a typical unit would not be able to get away with.

Um so generally speaking, they're easier to construct.

Um there's also the permitting timelines associated with them.

So ADUs are subject to state law that requires that we um essentially go through our permitting process more quickly and without any discretionary review.

Um and so short answer is yes, there's there's generally more benefits to trying to construct an ADU than a primary unit, although there are some development standards applied to ADUs that are not applied to primary units.

So for example, the cap on square foot area.

Okay, that's super helpful.

And then looking at this slide, could you clarify then that the column to the number of ADUs allowed by state law per certain uh lots with existing multifamily units?

Do those numbers apply now today here in Alameda or no?

No, Alameda is allowed to have a more permissive standard apply.

Um if for whatever reason we had conflicting standards on the books and we tried to apply a more stringent one that reduced it below the number that you see there, then we would have to defer to state law because it would be in conflict.

Um but as things stand, we have a more permissive standard, and therefore we apply the more permissive standard.

Um yeah, that's just sort of a glimpse of what maybe other jurisdictions might do or what the minimum required under the state law is.

Okay, that's helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, so um so I just wanted to understand this table.

I I had thought that um there was a different number of ADUs allowed depending on if you're proposing like detached versus attached.

Like so I thought it was if you were talking about um detached ADUs, it would be basically this table.

But if we're talking about conversion of non-habitable space within an existing multi-failing building, it's some other equation.

Um I may be just behind the on the law on that, but just wanted to kind of confirm like what it is this does this apply to both detached and attached, or is there different so uh with a multifamily lot you get your two detached ADUs and in addition to that you can convert any uh to any number of units within existing space in the multifamily building.

So it's in addition to that, you get your two detached on a multifamily lot and you can convert your existing space, you know, whether that's the ground floor garage or a storage space or whatever, into as many ADs as you want.

Okay, that's our current regulation.

So that okay, so but the what's so what's the state law on like what's the bare minimum under state law that we have to offer for both detached and attached ADU?

Same thing for detached, two detached, and uh, you know, per unit up to eight conversion in the existing.

So uncapped conversion of the existing in our current one, capped at eight, and then the other distinction is uh scaling with the number of units.

That's the state law, which doesn't apply currently in our so that yeah, that's the detached law where you get at least two, but you can also you can go up to is it can you go up to eight in that one or is it detached as unlimited under state law?

So regardless so i if you're converting existing space within the building, it's gonna be inherently attached, right?

Right, yeah.

So that space under state law can be converted into the number of units equal to the number of units on site up to eight.

Yeah.

Is that answer your question?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

And then sorry, and then for detached, is it just two is is the minimum that you have to offer under state law, or is it two is the minimum you'd have to, yes, to comply with state law you have to allow at least two detached ADUs on multifamily law.

Okay, thank you.

And I believe that cap it of eight is a relatively recent amendment state law.

For the for detached, right?

Or or for the attachment.

Conversion of existing.

Okay, gotcha.

Okay.

Good questions.

I know this I knew this table was gonna get some good questions, so I have a question.

Sure.

Uh is there a m minimum area for an ADU?

Uh if I'm not mistaken, I think under state law it's like 200, maybe 180.

It's a it's very, very, very low, if at all.

Okay.

I mean, eventually you you have to ultimately have either, I mean, if it's an ADU, not a J ADU, you're gonna need a bathroom, an efficiency kitchen, a bedroom.

Um, you know, so there's sort of functional minimums there as well.

Um I wanna say it's a hundred and eighty square feet, but that could be uh old, old news in ADU law.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think it's a building code requirement as opposed to an ADU law.

Remember Dewey?

So I remember when we um updated the ADU ordinance, and the idea is to promote as many units as possible, especially in the multifamily products, and it looks like you know an example of that 50 unit application is doing exactly what we wanted it to do.

And my question is who complained?

Right, why are we why is why are we trying to capits?

That that I it's just I'm a little bit baffled.

I I so I think we have receiving public command, uh are we receiving public complaints that we're allowing too many units to be built in a housing constraint market?

So so just to be clear, you know, staff doesn't is not giving you direction that um these projects were undesirable or um were otherwise alarming in any way.

Um but we did want to emphasize the projects that came through that would not have been allowable under state law, right?

So that are only possible because we have these more permissible.

So just to sort of give examples of that.

The only reason I and they weren't um necessarily again, one of them wasn't even really an official project, it was a preliminary request that we'd received.

Um and so we're not really getting feedback from the public on these.

It's more um it to illustrate how this plays out in reality.

Um in jurisdictions I I have had the benefit of working with uh jurisdictions that are much less friendly towards housing.

Um vastly preferred jurisdictions that are very friendly towards housing, personally.

Um but I can say that the arguments you hear made in those jurisdictions have a lot to do with um sort of nebulous ideas of preserving neighborhood character or generally having the opinion that density negatively impacts either property values or um you know the uh abstract community values that they may have.

Um I don't think they're particularly robust arguments, but those are the sort of things you hear in jurisdictions that have uh less interest in solving the housing crisis.

But most of these units using that 50 unit example, they are within the four most of the units except with the exception of two, are within the four walls of existing structures, correct?

Uh as it was proposed, yes.

They had proposed conversion of existing office.

Sorry, so there's really no change to existing volume.

That is correct, although I will add that particular proposal did include prefabricated ADUs on the roof of the existing parking structure.

But that's true, though.

You can only have two.

That's it.

It's converted from existing space because that existing roof parking structure was actually used.

And so their argument was that those would actually be converting existing space.

Oh, that is okay.

Now we're getting the crux of the issue.

Developers will tend to um ask for the you know, sort of most, and then we can give them guidance on what you know we might disagree with.

Okay.

Uh more member huh?

Yeah, just a couple of questions.

I'm I'm kind of neutral on this this issue, but uh just a couple of questions.

Um I'm trying to think of the differences if some if a multifamily project was proposing to create some new units versus ADU units.

Um is there differences in parking requirements?

Uh neither would have any minimum parking requirements.

Yeah.

Okay.

Whether they're an ADU or not.

Regardless.

Okay.

And um with the eight would if it were non-ADU unit, would they pay impact fees?

Yes.

Okay.

So that's a could be a key financial difference.

Um, and based on those examples you brought up, not from a policy or political perception standpoint.

Are there any zoning um issues that are difficult for staff to deal with when someone proposes that many additional ADUs?

I'm just trying to think of what might be the physical constraints that because they're proposed from existing space, um, they really don't pose too many issues from like a zoning compliance standpoint.

I will say they, in my experience, I've seen these applicants struggle a little bit more with building code compliance.

For example, needing to fire rate separations between these units and things can be quite challenging.

Um, but not from a zoning ordinance compliance perspective.

Yeah, I'm just wondering whether that might be an issue.

Okay.

Thanks.

And I remember Luis.

Yeah, so back to the 55 or 50 units example.

You said they were they're proposing prefab on top of the parking structure or within the parking structure.

And again, I think their goal through this preliminary process was to ask for the most and see what we would be willing to entertain.

Because I'm reading our zoning code.

It says within portions of existing structures.

So on top is not within.

I think we probably gave them similar guidance when they asked about their proposal.

So then again, that is a one-off, then I'm not worried about that.

But I for all intended purposes, the zoning, the co is doing what it was intended to do, which is allowing maximal units into our into the market.

So, um, like board member Ruiz uh has transitioned us to the feedback part and and member hom um also uh saying you're agnostic about this, but any other guidance or feedback from board members?

Uh board member Sue.

Um yeah, just a couple of comments, and I really appreciate all the great discussion here.

Um I just wanted to turn back to the uh state law, which you know, I think we're probably not like because we're we go beyond, I just wanted to kind of be clear.

I think it for when we're talking about detached this Sway dwelling units, I think there is a distinction between whether you're talking about an existing multifamily dwelling and a proposed multifamily dwelling.

Um, if we just look uh, and this is it's the code uh government code 66323.

I think under A4, I think if you're talking about existing multifamily dwelling, you can do up to eight attached to uh eight detached accessory dwelling units, um, but you can't exe but you can't exceed what the existing um dwelling units are on the site.

So if you have like a six-unit building, you can't exceed six detached strolling units, and it's so just kind of yeah, but if it's a but this is this is fascinating, but if you're proposing a multifamily dwelling, you can't build more than two detached.

There must be there was probably policy decisions behind that, but it's just this odd distinction that I wanted to flag.

Um, and the other thing I wanted to just kind of bring up is um so when you know, under our current code, you know, if someone, you know, like take that um, I think club or whatever with the existing office and commercial and wanting to convert it.

I totally support it.

I think it makes a lot of sense, and this law allows um you know developers to kind of go and and and seems like it maybe make more sense to them in many cases, but I think when you're talking about when you're getting to these like developments where, you know, something on the extreme end where it's like some existing, like I don't know, bigger shopping center, maybe they're willing to add a hundred units or whatever.

I think under the current law, ADUs might be like exempt from like the impact fees, or like you can't impose them.

And so when you're talking about adding like a hundred units, I wonder if the kind of policy considerations change there a little bit about whether or not we want to continue exempting projects like that.

Um, you know, obviously developers are trying to reduce costs, so that could be one way.

Um I'm not saying that we, you know, that is like a like a defined deciding factor for me, but I think it's just something to consider um if we're talking about like 100 units, 150, like at what point do we draw the line and say, okay, like maybe at that point, you know, we say you can't use this because you're just there's too much of impact now onto the road onto existing city resources.

Like we're gonna we're gonna look at that a little more closely.

Thank you.

Um any other uh feedback, uh board member Deweys.

This is just for discussion purposes, but ADU doesn't have parking requirements, correct?

That's correct.

All right, so yeah, so but I'm just talking in general, like you're gonna add like you know, bunch of units with at least one person that maybe you're gonna use libraries, go to school, right?

Things like that, fire services, like right.

And I I'm just saying like again, in order to get to that, it has to be within existing structure.

You'd be converting something else.

Right.

So you're adding and subtracting.

Um, yeah, no, that makes sense.

No, but uh I understand.

So because you are adding people or families or that likely will have cars.

Even if you don't have a parking, you you will have a car.

So not necessarily.

Well, not necessarily, but you might.

Right.

So those things could impact.

But you make a good point.

Like there's already existing development, there's so we can do that.

It's within within existing the confines of existing walls.

But the uses being changed, so it's like the diff different different needs.

Like if it wasn't, I don't know.

Yeah, like you said a shopping center or something.

Extreme, but yeah, unlikely, but yeah.

Um, any other comments?

Uh board member Wang?

Um I think the board member uh Sue brings up a really interesting point.

Um I was thinking about something similar, which is that, you know, uh relative to this uh the dynamic between building a regular unit versus an ADU.

If an ADU is easier to build um for a variety of reasons, uh it does make sense for owners to take that path.

Um, but in the case of 50 ADUs, you've got to imagine that owners got a lot more resources and they can probably pull the trigger one way or the other.

Um that said, um, you know, we've been we've also been in this room talking about impact fees and their effect on getting housing produced.

We've also been in this room talking about we've only got 60 units permitted last this year, and they were all ADUs, so I also think we should just take into account.

I do think the impact fee question is a really relevant one that hasn't come up yet.

And so the question to us becomes is this a particularly interesting way for us to be generating housing at scale?

Oh, and look, it turns out we don't have to create a new policy that helps to incentivize it because we've already done the work, right?

Any other comments or guidance?

Okay, yeah.

Scene none.

And um, yeah, I think I'm in agreement with the general sentiment of um uh this being a good catalyst for more housing.

Cool.

Thank you.

I feel like I got good input on that one.

We are getting into the slightly easier questions, at least in my personal opinion, so um hopefully these won't be quite as complicated.

I'm gonna try to go a little bit quicker through this.

Um we actually talked a little bit about legal nonconforming additions before.

Um I think it was pointed out um that if you were proposing uh non-ADU related on a primary dwelling in addition to a building that has an existing non-conforming setback.

Let's say you've got a two-foot side yard setback instead of the required five, and you were to extend that nonconformity without increasing it as part of your addition project, as long as you're not making impacts to things like shade or view blockage.

Generally speaking, those kinds of things can be permitted um through what we refer to here as KL findings.

It's a reference to a part of the general provisions in our in our zoning ordinance.

Um currently that part of the code only applies to primary dwellings, which means when somebody converts an existing accessory dwelling to an ADU, and as part of that, they're proposing what our code allows is a 150 square foot addition for ingress and egress.

The addition has to be conforming.

That is to say, it doesn't get to take advantage of that existing legal nonconformity.

What ends up happening as a result is sometimes some kind of awkward-shaped buildings.

And I think this illustration kind of helps define that a little bit.

So you see here a very typical kind of block and alameda where you have um the homes are arranged to one side such that you can have your driveway on the other, and the garages, the detached garages, are in the very backmost corner of these lots with more or less a zero-foot setback from the rear yard property line.

Those are non-conforming, and um frankly, great candidates for ADU conversion.

Uh, when these convert, um, you might have somebody say, Hey, I'd love to do a little addition as part of this.

And the area you see in blue outside of that four-foot setback is where they're currently uh sort of required to build, right?

In a conforming area, not encroaching into that setback.

Um, if we you know wanted to make changes to the code, we could hypothetically uh allow that same continuation along an existing nonconformity for these uh additions to uh you know the existing nonconformity accessory structures that are being converted to ADUs, which would allow you to do something that you see in red there, which does encroach um, but uh, you know, doesn't increase the nonconformity of the existing accessory structure.

Um, and just to clarify what I mean by that, let's say this had a one or two-foot setback from that rear yard property line, it wouldn't be a zero foot setback that you're constructing, it would conform to that existing setback distance.

Um, I don't feel like this needs too much more clarification.

So I think I'm just gonna open that up for questions, comments, concerns.

Uh board members of Kiva.

Yeah, I just had a question on your statement there.

Um if they were allowed to do the addition in red, you said it wouldn't increase the existing nonconform condition, but it does increase the existing nonconform condition, right?

You have a longer length of nonconformity happening yeah I guess what I mean to say is uh it doesn't increase the magnitude of the nonconformity.

That is to say, if you had a nonconforming two-foot setback, it wouldn't be encroaching into the zero foot setback area, right?

Like you wouldn't increase the the extent to which the nonconformity takes place, you would increase the quantity of the nonconformity, right like yeah maybe it's just um the nuances of the of the wording that you're using but it just it you are increasing the nonconform condition um you're just conforming to the non-conformed condition in a sense um increasing the amount of nonconformity not the magnitude of it right uh well there there's a magnitude to it so I I don't I'm still not I guess I'm not completely understanding I mean to me uh you know in this example that you have with the zero lot line you you know you're you're on your neighbor's property line obviously and then you're you're going to continue to do some work along that edge if you don't do the four foot setback I don't um again I don't know about all these examples of you know these are a lot of things that we can kind of think about but um I don't personally I don't know the um uh the number of times this would need to be like kind of thought through but it seems to me that if you needed to do the addition and you needed to you know now conform to this four foot setback um not seeing the downside I guess of that what what what would be the problem yeah so I think most folks from a just sort of practical realistic perspective want to conform to the existing walls from a structural perspective it's easier to do right um I'd say you know when we do have projects that have to notch in a foot or two to comply with a setback that you know is otherwise maybe only non-conforming like that one foot um it does add cost to those projects um there's you know a increased difficulty in in creating a structure that can't rely on the existing exterior walls like that and now has to you know kind of meet its structural calcs through its own I'm not missing I'm not I'm not a structural engineer but I'm not positive of that analysis because I think whatever structure you're gonna add you're gonna it's gonna have to be structurally sound whether it's um whatever the existing structure is doing I think if you don't build in the red zone gives you opportunity for light and air into your existing structure like and your new structure because you're not on the property line on that side.

So it gives you some opportunities.

Again you'd have to take advantage of them and I don't know if there's an existing window you know where where that red area is in the in the existing structure but um again I don't I I don't see the challenges I guess of managing to the setback that's required.

The only other argument I could think to make is you'd create some dead space right the same way you're saying you're creating a space that's sort of an opportunity I think a lot of folks end up with sort of a patch of dirt behind there that nobody ever goes to.

But I I see your point which is there may not be a a strong uh sort of injury created right nothing that we're solving by a lot of right yeah that's uh that's what I was just trying to figure out like how how's it becoming a challenge that that's that's it.

I would say this is something we encounter fairly frequently just because there is a large number of accessory structures that are non-conforming and they are good candidates for ADU conversion.

So it is something we see with some frequency.

Okay.

Alright thank you any other uh clarifying questions um okay um I can hold it yeah maybe quick questions and it sounds like we're like we're rolling pretty quickly now but um yeah any questions before we jump into comments now okay and we're moving um so I think that that first image that you showed was really just the conceptual illustration of what this K and L thing exists, right?

And we kind of talked about that in the prior.

Um I don't you know I generally I I don't have a problem with applying the same concept to ADUs.

But I think I do have a problem when we're talking about a zero foot setback.

Because we're we're pretty used to seeing you know long narrow lots um pretty small yards everyone you know I think neighbors are conditioned to seeing you know a garage on the on the back side of basically their back neighbor's garage in their yard.

I think it's another thing to say hey that garage is now gonna expand uh laterally by some number of feet maybe now it's going to take up half your yard.

Um so I think in the context of a zero foot setback I'd be more inclined to to hold to standards or even to some kind of compromise standard rather than to say that zero foot setback can continue and expand however you want to call that um so that would be my that would be my feedback.

Yeah I just so uh looking at K is it says I think only it just says side um required side yard setbacks does that mean this this doesn't all apply to rear and front yard or city next one K and L for rear yep but it does not apply to front yard.

But so L, I thought L was only for second floor no so you can go up on the second floor yeah okay but oh sorry you're asking whether this could apply to a reduction of a rear yard setback.

Yeah so like in your example right this is like this is a uh this rear yard is is zero for the garage um but K only says side yard it doesn't say rear or front so I'm wondering is that like a strict reading like you only applying this to if you're building within a side yard that doesn't comply with your side yard setback or are you doing it but on yes that is exactly how it works.

We wouldn't just to be clear we wouldn't be able to take K and L and like inject them into ADU ordinance as Brian mentioned earlier the whole kind of discretionary view blockage shade question is a little bit iffy I think we would really want like a uh clear standard that says something like you know a quantifiable you know X feet or whatever it is you know yeah okay um and so we would we wouldn't be able to just like copy paste the exact K and L language on the ordinance.

It was just sort of a kind of context setting yeah sorry I should clarify that no no no and that was my comment too and sounds like you're on that already is that like the wherever this new ordinance lives will have a specific language about it wouldn't have to be within that performance it would have to be quantifiable non-discretionary like okay yeah great anyone else uh board member home sure I'll weigh in um you know yeah I you know see I see both you've provided a good description of both sides of the issue um to me you know if it's an existing ADU I know state law is permissive that uh that requires cities to um legalize you know non-conforming existing ADUs um when you're talking about adding addition however I think that's uh different and I totally agree with you that red space is always this odd even if it's four feet or it's two feet is this dead space as odd um but when I look at the potential those are probably likely what about 200 square foot single car garages so if you're allowed like a 800 square foot ADU you know that can stretch across the entire backyard right so that's uh significant um encroachment into the four yard four four foot setback what I really think about uh is the neighbor and behind you know the you know they're gonna I think justifiably have an at first reaction to seeing suddenly this small accessory structure be expanded double or even more um and uh impact the rear yards so I'm a little concerned not not about the dead space, but how it affects the adjacent neighbor's backyard use.

So I'm kind of not necessarily inclined to allow for an automatic, I'll say automatic, but the or discretionary type of um uh reduction of that setback unless there's some particularly good reasons for it.

I will add you pointed out something that I failed to distinguish here in my comments, which is um this was intended for conversion of of.

Of course, if you had an existing nonconformity and your intent was to demolish and construct a new one, we could hypothetically apply different sets of standards to each of those.

So just to kind of clarify, there's a little bit of a nuance there.

Yeah, that's right.

Because to lose your non-conforming, right?

If you totally remove the old ADU.

Right.

But some people have just kept a frame in place.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Any other comments or feedback?

I agree with four members who um's commons.

Okay.

Uh so that sounds like not conforming to the non-conforming.

Great.

Um, next thing.

They only get easier from here, folks.

Uh so removal of existing parking, this is a great example of a standard that we um do have on the books right now, and we do enforce, um, but we're hoping to um kind of just bring it back to you, make sure everybody's happy with it, and uh uh make sure that we don't want to kind of tweak tweak it as we we kind of look at this.

So um, as I think it's probably pretty clear, a lot of these ADU conversions happen from conversions of existing garages.

Um a lot of existing garages in Alameda um are uh either uh detached and front directly onto the right-of-way or are attached and have a nonconformity in their front yard setback, such that there is very little distance between the opening of that garage door and the front yard property line.

And in cases where folks convert these existing parking areas to ADUs and there's less than 18 feet between that front garage door and that front yard property line, we do ask that those applicants remove their curb cut and restore the curb gutter and sidewalk to its condition.

The thinking being that um with cars the size they are now, uh a less than 18 foot area there would not constitute a standard parking stall in our code and therefore um is not really suitable for having a existing uh curb cut remain, um, in part because any cars that park there have a fairly good likelihood of encroaching into the sidewalk area, forcing pedestrians to potentially take on safe acts, you know, to avoid those cars and just creates a bit of an issue with the parking.

So um just want to make sure that uh we want to continue that policy of um you know regarding removal of curb cuts and restoration of curb gutter sidewalk for these projects that do kind of alter the parking in this way.

Um and you know, if if there are changes we want to make to that, um I think we probably want to continue to excuse me, uh put them in the ADU code because currently they don't live in the ADU ordinance.

Um so this is sort of similar to the front yard setback where we want to make sure that things that apply to ADUs all live in the same uh section of the code.

So questions, comments, concerns, thoughts about curb cut driveway removal.

Um, remember Wayne?

Um so you're saying I think I I understand the concept, but under current regulation, what's happening?

Uh so if a proposal included conversion of an existing garage to an ADU in such a way that no parking spaces remained in that garage, and if that garage conversion was either had less than 18 feet between that parking stall and the front yard property line, right?

That we would require as part of that building permit that you include in your plans removal of the existing curb cut and restoration of that curb gutter sidewalk and the public right-of-way.

So it does require that they get, for example, an encroachment permit.

Um it is sort of adding something for this applicant to do.

Um but the argument is that there are sort of impacts to uh the public right-of-way that can't be avoided if we don't require that of them.

Uh so you're saying we're already requiring this when this happens, and we may just want to continue to require it by being more explicit about that in the ADU ordinance.

Just making sure that it's clear that it applies to ADUs, um, making sure that it's clear how the standard applies, and just making sure that there isn't any kind of option for ambiguity if an applicant wanted to kind of challenge us on that request.

Okay, but it's been the practice.

It does not change our current practice.

As it's written out, certainly another reason to bring it before you is if you had suggestions on how to change it, we would implement those here.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

We're essentially allowing them to keep what becomes a non-conforming off-street parking space if they have sufficient room outside of the property line right now.

Because theoretically, like if they didn't have the garage before, we wouldn't allow, we wouldn't allow the curb cut to create that 18-foot driveway, because we would require them to have a parking space outside of the front yard setback.

So this is a situation where we sort of essentially we don't we don't penalize them as long as they have room for the car that's not encroaching on the right-of-way.

So it's just codifying that.

But you know, there is a some could make the argument that, well, if you don't have the garage anymore, you should restore it even if you have 18 feet because you no longer have that that space outside of the front setback.

But this would just be to codify the existing practice.

Got it.

That's helpful.

That was a little confusing, but helpful.

It does get confusing.

Curb cut stuff gets a little weird.

Maybe I shouldn't have framed this as the easy stuff.

Um any other questions?

Yeah.

I just want to comment.

I think the other advantage of uh requiring the driveway be closed off because it could create potentially another on-street parking space, you know, and in neighborhoods where parking is at a premium, you know.

I was just over in San Francisco the other day and finding parking with all the driveways is frustrating.

But uh but anyway, that could, you know, in a minor way uh alleviate a little bit of the parking in a neighborhood.

Kirkwood is absolutely sort of a privatization of the public right-of-way in a sense, right?

You do get more street parking as a result of this policy.

Any feedback or uh board member or vice president Adissa?

I it seems like a reasonable request.

So if if all we need to do is to include it in the ADU portion of the code, then it seems reasonable to me.

Great.

All right, we're all in agreement.

Okay, now we're rolling.

Uh impact fees exemptions.

I'm gonna preface this by saying um I was hesitant to bring the question before us at all, um, in part because we have an existing housing element program that commits us to waiving impact fees um on ADUs.

Um, but at the end of the day, uh we're we're reworking the ordinance, and so it uh, you know, it should at least come before you.

Um the city currently, excuse me, it sort of goes above and beyond with our uh waiving of impact fees.

Um we waive all impact fees that we have discretion over for ADUs.

Um I say we have discretion over, for example, school impact fees still apply because the school district levies those.

Um the state law does allow us, if we were so inclined to apply proportional impact fees to those portions of an ADU over 750 square feet.

Um, if the board was interested in pursuing something to that effect, um, what I would like to do is kind of pull out some numbers on examples of what an ADU revenue might actually look like, like what kind of impact fees we would actually get from something like that.

Um, to give you kind of a clear idea of how substantial that would even be, um I suspect it would not be very.

Um, but short of having that kind of raw data in front of us, I guess what we really need to be thinking about here are the hurdles placed on folks who are um proposing to construct ADUs.

Um I just want to point out that generally speaking, um, a lot of folks who are pursuing ADU um are doing it because uh other forms of uh either densifying their lot or proposing new construction or cost prohibitive.

Um and so you know, to to put cost-related hurdles on ADU construction would probably be significant, um, or at least we would I think it's reasonable to assume we would see impacts um on those applied as a result.

Um but certainly uh, you know, with the current state of affairs the way they are, um there's always reasons to consider um alternative revenue streams.

So just putting that to the board.

Questions or we could jump into comments right now, yeah.

I would be interested to understand what the potential revenue impact would be.

But for instance, you know, how many ADUs do we have that are over 750 square feet that could generate revenue under the state law allowance versus having them waived as they currently are uh board member Sue?

Um I'll just say I I do want to support uh board member Wang's comment kind of when we had this discussion just earlier now, um, just about kind of his discussion uh thoughts on you know how you know challenges with impact fees and and is there a way we can encourage more development through other avenues.

I think it's a great point, and I think this is kind of maybe one of those things where you know the housing element currently waives them.

Maybe we we just let that be the case and see how it works.

And if it allows like the job to come in and add 50 units, like that's that's great, you know.

So um just kind of wanted to to supplement my my comments earlier.

Yeah, I echo fellow board members' comments.

Um, I think at the moment, it we are ADU ordinance still fairly new, and we are going through unprecedented residential sector cycle where nothing really got built in the past few years, jumping so fast into adding impact feet at the moment, maybe choking the supply too soon.

And I'm more willing to wait a few more years to see, let the cycle normalize a little bit before we start changing the formula and that the market have time to react because of seriously nothing really there's hardly any new multifamily construction in the past three or three years, and all of us in the industry are anticipating a significant rent increase because of the constraining supply.

And ADU is ways to mitigate that impact, and that's just let it ride out a few years before we jump into imposing impact fee.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

Um this does remind me of the um earlier comment by board member Sue uh where like if it's a multifamily ADU project and it's like 50 ADUs, like are we applying that same argument and same those are all those fees are weighted?

Currently no distinction.

Yeah, okay.

Um I guess like that that would only be my one caution, just like circling back to that.

Like, do we want to think about that for like really large projects?

And given our recent um inclusionary zoning discussion, we have talked about um exempting projects 10 units or less, and so maybe that's something like that would be a threshold.

I'm not sure, I'm not saying that exactly because I do um very much agree with my fellow board members that this is a new policy relatively here in Alameda, we want to kind of see how things go, and it's something maybe for us to consider with these larger multifamily ADU projects.

Right.

Alright, finish line in sight.

Uh this is mostly a reflection of changes to state law, but there is a bit of a policy question raised here.

So our existing ordinance does require um certain deed restrictions for JADUs, specifically their uh sort of owner occupancy, uh comply with the general standards associated with JADUs, they're uh kind of basic.

Um, but changes to state law have made it so that um we can only very narrowly apply deed restrictions even to JADUs.

So as I understand it, and it sounds like um city attorney's Offices advised us that uh maybe I need to clarify this a little bit, but effectively uh for JADUs, the only deed restriction that one could possibly apply is um regarding owner occupancy.

So there's a question about whether that applies to all JADUs or just those JADUs with an internal connection.

Just to clarify, I did state here that it was only those with an internal connection, but maybe more broadly applicable.

And the question really before us is we have to remove all of the other deed restriction requirements to comply with state law anyway.

Do we want to keep this sort of vestige of the deed restriction requirement regarding owner occupancy for JADUs?

Or is it our opinion that whatever we were trying to accomplish with those deed restrictions originally has been so consistently undermined by the state law requirements that there's really no point in requiring the owner occupancy alone for the JADUs.

So uh questions, comments, concerns on that issue.

Uh board member Wayne.

Could you um walk us through if you know the kind of policy origins of that of the, I guess the last deed restriction that's applicable here.

Yeah, so I think it may even be worth kind of going back a little further, which is um for a lot of jurisdictions, and I'd have to look up a little bit more closely what uh Alameda did originally, but for in many jurisdictions, deed restrictions were required of all ADUs at one point, right?

And slowly state law evolved to kind of curtail local jurisdictions' ability to apply those to more and more types of ADUs, right?

Um so this is sort of a continuation of that over time.

Um I think our current requirement um being applied to JADUs has kind of two sources, right?

Origin points.

Um the first is JADUs in particular, um, have the internal connectivity, right?

They have the possibility to share a bathroom, for example, the primary unit.

Um, and for that reason, owner occupancy seems reasonable.

Um, and the other is that um again, I think this kind of gets to the earlier point about jurisdictions that may not want to encourage ADUs so much.

I think deed restrictions were generally used as a tool to create, you know, an additional hurdle or additional requirements on folks who wanted to create these units.

So I think those are kind of the two reasons why deed restrictions are kind of often employed, but uh again, they've been pretty uh gutted by state law.

So if if we are going to do it, we are pretty narrowly um applying the requirement now.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions or if not feedback?

Um Vice President Adita.

Um I think I agree with you in that if the state doesn't really, you know, allow this many restrictions anymore, and this is the only one restriction left for us to enforce, it doesn't really seem that to be serving the purpose that we're pursuing.

So why leave it?

I it does there doesn't seem to be a reason.

I can't see it.

I don't know if others can see the reason to keep it.

Can I offer the counterpoint?

Yes, please.

So the argument would be the sort of the same reason for its origin, right?

Is would be I can create a JADU that is internal connectivity to the primary dwelling, and therefore we want to require owner occupancy so that there aren't conflicts between those two units, right?

Um you can imagine a situation where I rent out both units because owner occupancy isn't required, and now you've got to manage the potential tension points between two tenants who you know don't have independent living spaces.

Um that would be kind of the counter-argument, I think.

So is the risk the deed restriction requiring that the owner lives in the property but not in the ADU?

Yes, it does not require the owner to live in the JADU.

Just okay.

And if I may, this is one of those issues that we we need to look at a little bit more closely.

The state law says that if you want to regulate owner occupancy, you can do that.

Um it doesn't have to be via a deed restriction.

You can just say um, you know, you can impose an owner occupancy r uh requirement for JADUs with shared sanitation facilities, right?

Um, but then there's another aspect of state law that talks about the ability to impose deed restrictions which are really going out of favor and and i i the law allows um uh deed restrictions for jadus to clarify um the prohibition against sale of the j you which I don't know that that's really um uh uh necessary here but um and then also to clarify uh the restriction on the size and attributes of the JADU um so that those two deed restrictions are left intact by the state by state law so that means that we don't need to enforce them because the state is enforcing them.

Or or do we also need to um it it do the state law says that the city shall um impose these deed restrictions shall record a deed restriction for those two issues.

I see so sorry um um to repeat back like we may we should do this but not necessarily through a deed restriction I have a owner occupancy requirement.

So I'm sorry I yeah I um so there are two issues one is this this very narrow requirement in the state law that that requires cities to impose deed restrictions for um those two issues that I talked about the prohibition against sale and the restriction on size and attribute of the JADU.

Since that is a state requirement you don't have authority to elect not to do that.

The other um issue that we talked about is for um these sanitation facility the shared sanitation facilities if you're gonna have that type of situation um you um the state law allows cities to impose an owner occupancy requirement and I suppose that owner occupancy requirement could be um subject to a deed restriction there is a little bit of of policy um uh discretion there I'm gonna try to repeat it I guess one more time yes so um to comply with a connectivity sewer um provision that would have to be um owner occupancy which could be done through deed restriction or something else um it it almost right yeah this is I think you're really this is one of these nuanced issues that cities are a you don't have to impose owner occupancy for shared facilities but you have the ability the policy uh call to require it and again this is probably why it's very low in this uh totem pole of of issues because it's really not a major policy issue and if you do require an owner occupancy then you could probably impose a deed restriction requirement as well and if I may just add that I think the reason why the owner occupancy would want the reason one one might want the deed restriction for the owner occupancy would be because it's difficult to enforce otherwise, right?

Like it would have to be the rent program or some other um entity enforcing that.

Um whereas with the deed restriction, planning has the opportunity to enforce it through the development review process.

Yeah, it's also if I mean if it's an ordinance requirement, you could code enforcing it.

Yeah.

Board member Hu.

Yeah, I'm I'm a little confused, but uh I understand why I'm confused too.

But anyway, um so the concern is that if you don't require own occupancy, then that means uh primary dwelling unit and the JADU could be rented out to someone, and that someone who rents out the primary dwelling unit could have the ability to sub-lease the JADU.

Is that is that uh I guess I'm not seeing why that's necessarily a concern, but is that kind of why the owner occupancy ish issues being raised because lack of control by the owner to manage the land the tenant who may be sub-leasing the JADU?

Is that what I'm hearing?

I'm I guess I'm so not sure.

Like the property owner could lease both units independently, it wouldn't necessarily be one leasey leasing to another.

Um but yeah, in either situation, right?

The concern is that the shared sanitation facilities is a source of conflict and therefore better managed by an owner occupant than by a tenant.

But on that specific example, that is already required by state law to be when it comes to the sanitation, sheer sanitation facilities, right?

No.

That's not.

No, you can it it allow the state law allows cities to impose that requirement.

I don't know that we have had this issue occur.

So it's very academic.

Uh-huh.

But it could occur.

Yes.

So I think I agree with the it's almost like you're saying we allow you to have two units in your property.

And they are connected by these, they're sharing some facility.

But so we allow you to do that, but then you have to be there to manage it.

You have to live in it to manage it if you do that.

So are we okay with that or is it okay for us to like let it be what it is, and then I guess my question would be how does it if if there were issues that were raised because of this situation where there are two tenants and one owner, and they are sharing, let's say a bathroom or something.

Who would these tenants go to to resolve their issue?

Well, presumably the property owner, I suppose.

That's it, right.

Right.

So uh I mean, they could use any recourse available to them through, you know, either a rent board or whatever, you know, if there was a venue for them to raise a complaint.

Right, so they would have to go to the rent board and raise their concerns or sure, but I think this would really be a civil issue between, you know, the the tenant and the property owner.

Um, you know, unless there was an actual infraction of our our rent control ordinance or something, you really wouldn't bring the issue.

Right.

So it really is the owner is on the hook, let's say, for whatever happens with their own property, no matter what, whether they have a deed restriction or not.

That is correct.

I have feedback.

I mean, for it, yeah, um where do I start?

Um people share bathrooms, it's okay.

We don't I I think that I read this potential policy as throwing up an unnecessary roadblock to creating JADUs.

Um I don't see a need for an owner to need to leave live in a building that has a JADU.

If there's a bathroom that's shared, people share bathrooms all the time.

They can they can work it out.

Um they don't need to bring the planning department or the planning board into their bathroom conflicts.

Um or the owner or the owner, like people can work it out.

Um, and if the owner wants to create a JADU and not live in the primary unit or in the JADU, I'm sure people can sign the lease understanding that the bathroom is shared.

It's not a big deal.

Thank you.

Board member Han?

I totally agree.

I think this is this is more of a management issue in my mind, not a legal city issue.

And remember Louise?

Yeah.

Did it treat everybody like adults?

Great.

Especially the owner.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well board with that.

I'm just going to quickly go through these.

This is just a note that you know some of the other changes to the ADU ordinance that we will be proposing in the red line version we bring to you.

We did not cover tonight, but they are literally just compliance with state laws, you know, making sure that the references to the government code sections are correct.

And some kind of reworking the where things live, you know, what subsections things are in.

But all fairly minor none requiring any kind of policy input and of course we will have an opportunity to review those if you take issue with any of the formatting when we bring the red line version to you.

I was going to open up for questions but I think maybe I'll pass it back to the board.

We can do our um you know any public comments and everything follow that up with the discussion and then what I'd like to do is kind of read back to you some of what I gathered from your notes and you can give me input on that.

Good.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

And I guess we'll bring it back to public comment.

We have two speakers in person.

And I'd please ask any attendees online who wish to speak to raise their hand.

Our first speaker is Benjamin Winter.

You have three minutes.

Hi everybody thank you for your work and um I want to um here um as someone for a real world experience I'm here to give feedback as someone who sought for a home for my family for 15 years and it was always right out of reach.

And I'm also here now as a part owner of a property that's trying to subdivide in ADU.

So some real world just feedback for you guys from someone who's um in been in the city a long time.

First of all I want to say this discussion I'm very glad it's happening.

I've had my eye on this for a long time and I think without very conscious steps forward towards affordable housing it's never going to happen.

We've been talking about affordable housing I I've seen it from many channels and a lot of rhetoric about affordable housing but it's never going to just happen.

So thank you.

I'm really glad this has come up and that I really feel that we need to see it through as a city and there's a lot on your plate and so I'm really glad we're here.

So as a part owner I also want to say I'm I've been trying to go through a lot split traditional lot split working with planning for a year and a half.

And there was no there's no map for it.

There's no template there's no way forward we have worked with planning and we've it's just been there's no without there being a template or way forward we've run into cost prohibitive situation.

And so I think for ADUs to be in my experience for the last year and a half being absolutely nowhere and by no one's direct fault just by policy that's there.

So I'm very much in favor um of the city pursuing this.

So if they bought the house their mortgage at current you know current interest rates would be lower than the market rent considerably just so you know and I've retent I've had four tenants in this ADU and they're transient because they're trying to buy and they've all asked me if they could buy the unit I'm like I wish you could.

So affordability is a thing.

I also want to comment on just that I really believe that it would weave a socio economic web, these neighborhoods, making these houses affordable, you know, in these deep lots.

Instead of people just buying condos on shoreline on Clement on the base, we would really weave our neighborhoods in a much better way.

And so I think that's really important um discussion about where our city's going in that way.

Yeah, I really and I think uh I had a few notes and they're all over the place, and there's my three minutes.

So uh let's do it.

All right, thank you so much.

I really appreciate your comments.

Um you have another speaker.

Yeah, our next speaker is Hank Hernandez.

We have materials like this.

Thank you.

Wow, if you have access to how um dear planning board members, my name is Hank Hernandez.

Uh, I'm a longtime resident of Alameda, been here since 2001.

I'm also the president of Alameda Tiny Homes, a local ADU builder.

Uh we've completed dozens of projects here in town.

Uh I just want to thank you and the city staff for engaging in this issue of condominization of ADUs.

I think it's super important.

Um specifically, I want to encourage you to take action on it, uh, to move forward with it.

I think uh from my experience talking with literally hundreds of families in Alameda, this is an important opportunity for them to create new housing, mainly from my experience of with family.

Um we've built dozens of units.

I would say the vast majority are family use, maybe less than a third have been built as rentals to begin with.

Uh most of the units were built for uh maybe that leg up kind of house for a kid or a family member.

Um a lot of it is aging in place.

Some of it's different than you think, as in the grandparents moved to the ADU and the kids move into the main house because they need the space for family.

Um but time and again, a lot of what I'm hearing is there's no affordable way to own a home.

So let's build an ADU, but you're not gaining the benefit of the actual ownership and allowing that condominiization would give people that extra benefit.

Um I think uh, you know, regardless of my anecdotal uh uh experience with you know what are being rented versus what have been built for whatever reason, I think it'd be important for the city to do a survey of the existing units to find out what are they actually being used for.

These things change over time.

Like I know some of our clients didn't build it as a rental, but maybe have rented it since, or started as a rental but now have a family member living in it.

Um so I would I would encourage you to do a survey.

Um it's also important that you know this is an important personal issue to a lot of families that people in town have the opportunity to reflect on what you're gonna propose because a lot of people are gonna be impacted by it.

So as you develop it, uh please publish it, let other stakeholders um, you know, folks that are building ADUs uh, et cetera, um know about it.

Um particularly important to me is utility connections.

So not only is this going to impact ADUs that have already been built and that need to convert, but for those that will be purpose-built to be converted, and those are gonna be different kinds of units that are gonna face different kinds of challenges, and I think it might be appropriate to have uh a special way to deal with the conversions versus um, you know, existing ADU stock will have different challenges that those understand it.

Anyway, um I just like to offer my help.

I have literally talked to hundreds of people about ADUs.

I've built dozens in town.

Yeah, thank you.

Pick up the phone and call me, and I can give you a lot of perspectives.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

You any other public comments?

Uh if anybody online would like to give a comment, please raise your hand now.

Uh there don't appear to be any online, but I will point out um I'm not sure if the board members had an opportunity to check their email today, but we did receive a public comment from the Housing Action Coalition that I'll just share publicly now.

Very briefly.

It's just a quick summary of their comments.

Thank you.

If no other public comments, then we'll close that portion of the meeting.

Don't see any.

Great.

And we'll bring it back to the board in case folks would like to update any guidance or have any reflections.

We had some experts here that seem to like validate a lot what we already discussed and but also brought up some interesting points.

So yes, board member Ha.

First of all, thank you for um coming to the hearing sitting through our deliberations.

Your comments were very beneficial.

Your comments did raise kind of two points in my mind.

One, it sounds like the consensus tonight was to allow for the option of ownership ADUs.

And we discussed the process could be pretty onerous.

And part of me is thinking, well, creating the policy to allow for it is probably not going far enough.

One thing that staff might need to take a look at is there a way if if the policy direction is to facilitate ownership ADUs, is there a way to come up with a more streamlined process for processing these condo conversions?

So they're not as time consuming or labor-intensive, uh costly as they could be.

So fall kind of following through with a policy and implementation.

Um the other point that I saw, and this was in the second page of Mr.

Hernandez's letter, and um I think a staff report talked about this, but I don't think we talked about tonight, was the issue of allowing for the patios and rooftop decks.

And there's a lot of states at the 66323 ADUs are exempt from those kind of design review.

But I know that in the past, things like patios and roof decks are sensitive issues with neighbors.

So I guess one of the questions for staff to explore is for the you know, non-66323 ADUs, what you know, what is there a more streamlined process of what the thinking is regarding our current standards, whatever they are, versus what might be modified if anything is being thought of.

Yeah, yeah, if you briefly I don't have to you don't have to fully respond.

Just I mean, you you pretty much summarized exactly it.

Um yes, we acknowledge 66323 units should not be subject to any discretionary review, including design review.

Um generally speaking, the uh policy that we currently have is that um, you know, yes, you if you're proposing a rooftop deck as part of an ADU project that you would trigger design review.

Um so the current uh policy question is really just to make that more explicit in the code or to uh uh exempt those projects from design review is really the question that um we were intending to bring before you with more of a red line version just because I think the language is really important um for that particular policy question.

Um but uh if you have additional direction regarding that, happy to incorporate that into our first draft.

Yeah, yeah.

I would like to see analysis of that and maybe what the options are.

Right now I don't have any particular position on, but I could see how it is a sensitive issue at neighbors, noise and all that, and privacy and facts.

Understood, thank you.

Thank you.

Um, any other board members?

No, seeing none.

Okay.

And yeah, I'll um echo board member Hong's uh comment where I I um thank you so much for coming tonight and um seeing through the deliberations and your feedback was really helpful and reinforcing.

Um I also thought um, you know, just in the spirit of um reinforcing, um, how do we make this easier for um ADU condo developers, for example, um uh when possible, uh reducing burdens like the utility connection mentioned here, um I guess it could be uh major cost and roadblocks.

So it's in spirit of like how do we make things easier um and then uh with this survey idea, um it circles back to my earlier comment where I am just curious about what the uses are for um these ADU projects and if anything, it could be interesting for spurring um some uh ADU uh con conduization.

So um I like the concepts.

Um I think that's it.

Those are my additions.

Did you um want to go ahead and repeat back everything?

Yeah, I'm gonna try to make this really quick for you guys.

Um but basically I just want to kind of read back to you what I think the direction that staff has received tonight is.

Um and I would love any kind of nuance or additional comments you want to throw on top of that.

Um so just generally speaking on the question of whether ADUs um should be permitted to convert to condominiums.

I got generally a positive reaction, right?

Um it seems like there were a lot of questions around whether separate development standards or rental protections can be kind of imposed on this in addition to um kind of what would be typically required for a condo conversion.

There was also a question about uh a different pathway or different process um for these types of condo conversions.

Um, but generally speaking, I think what we'd like to bring before you is uh maybe a couple of different options for how we could do it, um, all of which would allow it to some extent.

Is that pretty pretty good capturing what we got for ADU condo conversion?

Yeah, okay, keeping going.

Um got fairly positive feedback on the front yard setback.

It sounds like we really don't want to exceed 20 feet.

It sounds like there's probably some questions about existing nonconformities.

And I really liked the question about whether or not we need to do um sort of a percentage or a lesser of the options sort of wording to make sure that we're not imposing a uh greater requirement on something that um has an existing nonconformity or something like that.

Um I think there's probably gonna be a couple of kind of policy options that we'll bring to you for that as well, right?

Like A or B.

Um, but I think generally we do want to see some amount of front yard setback for ADUs.

Is that fair to say?

Okay.

Not non-statewide exemption ADUs.

That's true of all this.

So um number and tight and loud, it sounds like we more or less don't want to change, or if we did want any change, it would have to be something for like an extremely high cap or for like very extreme corner cases.

But generally speaking, we like our policy regarding uncapped conversion of existing multifamily residential area.

Is that fair?

Go ahead.

Yes, but I also want to um remind you that four men of member Sue pointed out the discrepancy on the detached unit between the state law and our because the the state law actually all appears to allow for more detached units.

Yes, the the up to eight units includes both detached and attached, yes.

That that's not what you read though.

Yeah, so I I think I and yeah, we should, you know, I think we'll all confirm, but I think that as I remember it, it's if you're talking about uh building within an existing multifamily building, converting non-hibitable space, it's like 25% of what the existing units are something.

And then if you're talking about detached, if it is a uh existing multifamily, then you can go one for one up to eight, and then after that it's just capped at eight.

Uh but if it's a proposed multi-family, then it's just too detached.

So we should confirm that.

But I I think our rules are so much more lax and I support keeping them.

But we're more lax on the uh internal conversion.

Yeah, we are.

Not a detached one.

So we should confirm, make sure I'll detached the language for the detached as a conform, you know, conforming with the state law, and which from at first glance looks like it's more liberal.

So just we want to go with which have, you know, just confirm that.

Yes.

The goal is to go with the more liberal policy of the two and to make sure that it complies with state law.

Correct.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Any other comments on that?

Just want to make sure I capture everything.

Great.

Um, generally, it sounded like um with regards to the question of existing nonconforming accessory structures.

Um, I I got the impression that we weren't too keen on allowing extensions of those existing nonconformities.

Um, or if we were, at the very least, we want to avoid any kind of zero foot setback or um maybe even something that's in that kind of range.

Um thoughts on that?

Pretty comfortable with that outcome.

Yeah, I was gonna add, I I don't I think it's either the requirement, which would if it's four feet or whatever it is, but not less than that, because I think that creates the challenge that you were describing before, which is like when the space gets so small, what's going on back there?

So um, I that that would be my recommendation.

Okay, yeah.

Okay, I think I got that one pretty good.

Uh moving along clarifications, the requirements for removal of existing parking.

We're we're all um pretty comfortable with just kind of keeping that language and moving it over to the ADU ordinance.

Great.

Um impact fees exemptions sounds like A, we're gonna want more data for sure.

We'll get more data for you, get kind of an idea of what that revenue stream could hypothetically look like.

But generally speaking, I got the impression that we're not super interested in pursuing that as a policy option right now.

Um just kind of looking to investigate a little bit more.

Uh and then deed restriction requirements, sounds like we can get rid of them just in their entirety.

Um, I'm I'm pretty comfortable just removing that, uh except for what is required of us under state law, of course.

All right.

Last chance, questions, comments, concerns, thoughts, things you'd like to see added.

I'll just add one more thing that I think I heard um from multiple folks in a couple different sections is this idea of exploring, you know, on the sort of extreme edge case where you have this 50 units of ADUs, getting a little more information analysis about the possibility of including impact fees or other uh, you know, for the for those kind of projects, as well as doing the math on projects that are above 750 square feet.

I think we heard a few people speak to that.

Great.

Hopefully, we won't get too uh too in the weeds on that next time.

But uh if we do have any you know questions that arise in the meantime, you folks know how to reach me.

Um I'm gonna go ahead and work on this and uh like I said, hopefully be back in late June um with a red line draft.

Um, really look forward to your comments on that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Great presentation.

Really excited for us moving forward in this next step with our ADU journey.

Um so many thanks to staff and to members of the public uh for all your work on this.

Uh closing regular agenda item 5A, moving on to staff communications.

We have item six A and six B.

Yeah, I think maybe um before I get into six A and six B, we'll let our um interim director um say a few words.

Sure.

Hi, good evening.

Uh President Cisneros and members of the planning board.

My name is Abby Thorne Lyman.

I am the director of base reuse and economic development.

I've been with the city since 2023 for those who haven't seen me before in some way.

Um, and I wanted to give you an update on the transition for the planning, building and transportation director position since Alan Ty did leave.

Um so I will be the interim uh planning, building and transportation director while also fulfilling my base reuse and economic development role.

Obviously, that's a lot to take on.

So uh retired planning, building and transportation director um, Andrew Thomas has agreed to return for 10 hours a week.

So I'm very grateful and excited to have Andrew along for the ride with me.

He's gonna sit in the back seat.

He's been very clear.

You guys won't see him very much, but he is he is, and I think our planners could tell you, has been very, very active behind the scenes already.

So anyway, just wanted to give you an update.

Uh, a little bit about me.

I have a master's in city and regional planning from UC Berkeley 2003.

Um, very much obviously a background in economic development, which brought me to this seat.

I came from BART where I was the director of um real estate and property development, overseeing BART's transit-oriented development program as well as their right of way.

Um, and so we was really excited to come to the city and part of why I have assumed this crazy additional role is I really want to see economic development and planning work much more closely together.

I'm really excited about that opportunity.

These guys will tell you, I've all already implanted the economic development staff with the planning staff, so that's really my interest.

So thank you for having me.

And uh you can always always find me.

I'm going to be reaching out.

If I haven't reached out to you yet, I will be reaching out to hopefully grab coffee with each of you.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, um, very appreciative of you doing two jobs especially.

So, yeah.

Great.

Yeah, just to finish up, um, item six A, we had I think one action that was in your packet, um, approving a use permit.

Um, and for six B, you got a number of upcoming items.

You're you I think a month ago gave a recommendation on inclusionary housing ordinance, which will go to council next week for first reading.

Um, and then at your next meeting, which I'll flag is Tuesday uh May twenty sixth because of the holiday.

Um, so double check your calendars.

Um we are hoping to bring some uh a few development agreement uh annual reviews um that are still outstanding and a minor amendment to the Alameda Marina master plan.

Um, and then um a lot of ordinance work um coming up this summer, um, as well as uh potentially some other interesting items.

You some of you have been involved in the community commercial zoning um work that that staff and economic development um speaking of that integration have been working on with some community stakeholders, so that's coming along nicely.

Um and should come before the board um in the next couple of months for for consideration as well.

So, thank you so much, and really appreciate the reminder on May 26th and not have that on my calendar.

So, um, any um comments from the board or um we could open up to public comment.

Um, so we can open up for public comment.

I don't see any commenters for non-agendized here.

We've already got all our speakers, so nothing.

Thank you.

So closing agenda item six.

Moving on to board communications.

Seeing nothing.

Um any public comments?

No.

All right.

Closing agenda item seven, any non-agenda public comments.

Anyone from the public may speak on an item that wasn't on tonight's agenda for three minutes.

Any speakers?

All right.

It is 9 31 and we are adjourned.

Thank you.