Good evening, welcome to the Fairview Mac meeting December 2nd.

Please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to apply on the United States of America.

And to the republic for which it stands.

Can we get a roll call, please?

Councilmember Farmer?

Here.

Council Member Higgins.

Here.

Council Member Filden.

Here.

Council Member Rhodes.

Here.

Chair England.

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

Moving to public announcements, open forum.

Do we have any comment cards?

Yes.

The first speaker will be Bruce King.

Hello.

Hi.

Bruce King with Friends of San Lorenzo Creek.

I just wanted to give you some updates on multi-use trails that are related to creeks.

And what's been going on?

So I don't know if you remember.

We've we um hard and public works got a 28 million dollar grant a couple of years ago, a transportation grant to build the San Lorenzo Creekway from the bay all the way to Don Castro in Fairview.

Okay, and uh they keep saying they're working on it.

They said they were working out an MOU with public works and how to manage it, um, but we haven't seen a lot of progress on that.

But there are two segments of that trail that are already built, a quarter mile segment at Lincoln Landing near Foothill Boulevard, that big 400 unit complex there, and the other segment that got built with the Eden Housing Project at Ruby Meadow.

There's a quarter mile trail there, so but there's two quarter mile segments of that already built.

Um the other trail that Hard has in their trail master plan is the foothill trail.

The foothill trail is its plan is to go from Groveway in Castor Valley over near Carlisby Park and past the Japanese gardens and then it across the Hayward Foothills all the way to South Hayward.

So segments of that are getting built, and the segment that Hard is currently working on is the segment from Foothill Boulevard to A Street.

Okay, and I gave you an announcement they're gonna have a public meeting on December, Saturday, December 13th, where the public can come and see what some of their plans are and provide input on that.

So that is um gonna be a real asset for Castor Valley and Fairview.

Um the segment that goes from Groveway up to the top of the hill.

When you get up to the top of the hill, you can see all over.

You see Castor Valley, Fairview out across the bay.

I mean, it's a it's a vista point up there, and then it's gonna drop down through Carlisby Park.

It's gonna have to have some bridges across Shabow Creek, Castor Valley Creek, and then it's gonna proceed over to A Street, and they want to have a pocket park there.

So from a creek standpoint, Friends of San Lorenzo Creek is always advocating to get people out to see things and experience things, but we also have some habitat issues.

We need to work on our habitat.

We keep building things, we keep cutting things down, but we don't put habitat back, and even hard sometimes wants to build things and uh they forget that hey, we should be working on habitat too.

So just some updates.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other comment cards?

There are no more speakers, none online.

Cool, thank you.

Okay, moving on to approval of the minutes.

Oh, sorry, closing public comment first.

Um, and then opening approval of the minutes.

First off, we have the October 7th minutes.

Any discussion?

Do we hear a motion?

I move to pass the October minutes.

I second.

Councilmember Firmer.

Yes.

Councilmember Higgins.

All right, council member Philbin.

Aye.

Councilmember Rhodes.

Aye, Chair Englin.

Abstain.

Thank you.

And then we have the minutes of November 6, 2025.

Any discussion.

Or motion.

Okay.

Okay.

I think I made a note on that.

November 6.

It's just a um yeah, it's it's just a formatting thing on the second page.

Council member Higgins, if you can speak into the mic.

Oh, sorry.

Yeah, on the second page under recent and ongoing enforcement that uh one, two, three.

The fourth point down D street traffic coming measures.

Uh yada yada yada, share feedback with the and then we have a charge return and another dot point works.

Just knock that dot point out, and the public works will come up and that extra dot point will go away.

That's all.

No substance, just formatting.

Do we have a motion?

So moved.

Second.

Councilmember Farmer.

Aye.

Council Member Higgins.

Aye.

Council Member Philbin.

Abstain.

Councilmember Rhodes.

Aye.

Chair Englin.

Aye.

Motion passes.

Thank you.

Moving on to our first item tonight.

It's a very long introductory, so I'll let you guys read that one.

Good evening, Council members.

For the record, my name is Angelica Gonzalez, a senior planning supervisor for the Alameda County Planning Department.

Joining me this evening is Olivia Ortiz, a planner three also with the planning department.

Just before we begin, I wanted to acknowledge that our presentation is the first of many as we begin the planning department's efforts on the affordable housing production policies initiative.

Olivia and I are the project managers and coordinating with departments, including county housing community development and economic and civic development departments.

This evening we will be introducing this initiative, which focuses on inclusionary zoning and ministerial review policies for the unincorporated areas in order to one comply with Metropolitan Transportation Commission's Transit Oriented Communities Policy, also known as the TOC policy, and two to conform with the county's general plan by advancing programs in our adopted housing element.

We'd like for you to hear our presentation to provide input to county staff and also to take public testimony.

In addition, we're requesting that the council consider the creation of an ad hoc subcommittee for affordable housing production policies as we begin this effort and appointment of up to two subcommittee members to serve on this subcommittee for additional opportunities to advise and provide additional feedback to staff as we develop these policies.

So with that, I'd like to turn it over to Olivia Ortiz, who will be leading the presentation.

Thank you, Angelica, and good evening, everybody.

Could we have the next slide, please?

Okay, so um taking a step back from what Angelica just said, the project we're here to talk about is part of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Association of Bay Area Governments or MTC A Bags Transit Oriented Communities Policy.

We're gonna call that the TOC policy.

Um it has four components.

They're the listed here on this table and also in your staff report.

Um we're only focusing on one, but the other three are residential and commercial office densities, transit station access and circulation, and parking management.

Um and those are relevant near our BART station, so you probably won't hear a lot about those at this meeting.

But the fourth part, the affordable housing production, preservation and protection policies, as Angelica said, is what um this project is a part of.

Um so I'm gonna get to that.

Sorry, lost my place in my notes.

Next slide, please.

Great.

So a year ago, thank you, Angelica, our staff applied for a grant to develop and have the board consider ordinances that comply with this part of the TOC policy, the affordable housing component.

And in March of this year, MTC gave our agency 400,000 to do so.

This past September, the Board of Supervisors accepted that 400,000 grant.

We are sharing it with our colleague department, housing and community development.

Their part of the grant, which is 120,000, is for tenant anti-harassment ordinance development.

So we won't be talking about that, but just so you know, in the remainder part of the grant, 280,000 is, as we've been saying, for the development of an inclusionary zoning and ministerial approval or ministerial review ordinance.

And we've hired a consultancy called Street Level Advisors to help us with that work.

And I'll talk a little bit more about them later.

Next slide, please.

And yeah, first we'll talk about inclusionary.

Then I'll go over ministerial, and then we'll go through the timeline in our ask for the ad hoc committee.

Next slide, please.

So an inclusionary zoning ordinance would apply to new residential developments or mixed-use residential developments, and it would require new developments of a certain size to include a set percentage of affordable housing units, or it would require developers to contribute in some way to affordable housing development.

And inclusionary zoning generally applies to both ownership and rental units.

Next slide, please.

There are some common components of inclusionary zoning policies, and we have some examples of those as well up here.

So we need to define what percentage of housing needs to be affordable and at what level of affordability it needs to be.

Our neighbors in San Leandro, their policy requires a total of 15% of rental units and a new residential development to be affordable.

For them, 9% of those units, so most of the 15%, needs to be affordable to households making 50% the area median income, and the remaining piece, the 6%, needs to be affordable to households making 60% area median income.

And for context, I think the median income in Alameda County this year for a family four was like $150,000, give or take, somewhere around there.

So inclusionary zoning.

Thank you.

New mic.

Inclusionary zoning policies also require a minimum length of deed-restricted affordability.

The housing has to stay affordable for so many years.

In Dublin, they require housing built for ownership through inclusionary zoning to be affordable for at least 55 years.

So there's a whole staffing regulation program around that to make sure that it's actually kept affordable.

And lastly, there's a state law, AB 1505, that requires there to be alternatives to literally building the affordable units on site, especially for rental.

So common examples are paying a set fee per unit called an in loo fee.

Dedicating land elsewhere for affordable housing or building the affordable housing but on a different site are also common alternatives.

So we we may be thinking about some of those later.

Next slide, please.

Inclusionary zoning and the conversation for it in our jurisdiction isn't really that new.

Way back 21 years ago in 2004, the Board of Supervisors adopted a housing element for the unincorporated areas that had a program to explore inclusionary zoning then.

And in 2008, our agency began working with a consultant to do that.

However, it's probably everybody in this room remembers.

2008 wasn't a great year for our economy or housing.

And between that and a court case, Palmer versus LA that briefly banned inclusionary for rental units.

Our agency kind of dropped the project, and so it didn't move forward.

In 2016, the community development agency did a study on affordable housing fees, so kind of just the in lieu part of inclusionary.

But again, that project didn't quite move forward.

However, with the adoption of the county's most recent housing element at the end of last year, the board has again committed to considering inclusionary zoning as well as compliance with the transit-oriented communities policy, TOC policy that we were discussing earlier.

And earlier this summer, the board also adopted County HCD's 10-year housing plan, which is a separate housing plan from our housing element.

And that plan includes inclusionary zoning as one of the potential strategies to raise funds or build affordable housing here in unincorporated.

Next slide, please.

Okay.

We are not alone in thinking about inclusionary zoning.

So it's relatively common here in California.

Back in 96, 75 jurisdictions in California had an inclusionary policy.

By 2003, that was 107 jurisdictions.

And as of 2019, that's 162 California cities and counties with inclusionary zoning of some kind.

And for context, that's about 30% of jurisdictions in the state.

It is a bit more common here in the Bay Area.

I have a map up here that shows that.

So the darkest blue are jurisdictions that have a required inclusionary zoning policy.

The middle tone blue are jurisdictions that have an affordable housing fee, like an in LU fee kind of program.

So they don't require you to build it, just charge fees.

And the gray ones, like Solano County, have no inclusionary zoning nor intention to explore it.

Excuse me.

So like I said, Solano's County is one of the only, is the only Bay Area County without an inclusionary zoning program.

You can see in Alameda County, Piedmont is the only other jurisdiction with an intention to explore.

Everybody else has some kind of policy in place.

Interestingly, back in 2004, the same time we first thought about inclusionary was when San Leandro and Hayward both adopted their first inclusionary zoning policies.

And Pleasanton and Livermore have had theirs since 2000.

So next slide, please.

And this is the same information but shown as numbers instead of a map.

Three-quarters of jurisdictions, about 82 or 75% in the Bay Area have an inclusionary zoning policy.

And then we're in the 11% of jurisdictions that have committed to a policy.

So I guess all of this is to say that the affordable housing policy work that this project is about an opportunity for our county to join the majority of Bay Area cities and counties in supporting affordable housing production through an inclusionary zoning policy.

And if you're curious exactly which cities and counties constitute all those numbers, it is attachment C of the staff report.

I wrote them all out for you.

Next slide, please.

So that was it about inclusionary zoning.

That honestly will be the bulk of our work.

Inclusionary zoning is the bigger of the two policies.

And ministerial approval is kind of like an extra thing on top.

So just to provide that context.

Next slide, please.

Okay.

So Angelica called it ministerial review.

I keep calling it ministerial approval.

It's also called buyer right zoning in our ordinance.

All of these words refer to the same thing.

I apologize for that being confusing.

It's a way, it's an approval process that's just shorter because it relies on existing vetted standards that have already been reviewed, have come before this MAC and the other Macs in the Planning Commission, and then adopted by the Board of Supervisors.

And of course, that's our zoning code, that's general and specific plans, the Fairview Plan, our residential design guidelines and standards.

And the whole point of this process is to keep review of housing or whatever building businesses, et cetera, fair and objective, so that the judgment coming from staff is whether a project does or does not meet guidelines.

And to be clear, ministerial approval, buy right zoning, however we call it, it only applies to the planning department's process.

So building has their own stuff going on, fire has their own stuff going on.

We're not talking about those processes.

Next slide, please.

So when projects are ministerial, ministerially reviewed, that means that they're exempt from CEQA.

That said, a lot of things we do already are exempt from CEQA.

For example, if you propose a single family house and it meets all the guidelines in the majority of our jurisdiction, I guess, assuming sorry, you're here in Fairview or parts of other parts of that incorporated, a lot of that will meet.

I'm sorry, it's making that slight humming noise.

And the reason we're talking about ministerial approval today is that the change in this policy or the expansion we're talking about is using a ministerial approval process to incentivize new residential projects to include even more affordable housing requirements than the inclusionary zoning, the theoretical inclusionary zoning policy.

What?

And so again, the goal here is to incentivize the production of affordable housing for households of all incomes.

Next slide, please.

And as I've kind of already said, we are already doing this in some capacities.

There's a variety of state laws that if you do certain things certain ways, a jurisdiction needs to process your project ministerially.

If you came in tomorrow and asked to build an ADU under 800 square feet, there's very little we can tell you about how to do it.

It would be approved ministerially, just because of how the state law is.

Our housing elements, overlay combining district has includes ministerial approval as an incentive, and our development planning staff have actually been working with a consultancy M group over the past almost year, maybe, to fully organize and finalize our department's ministerial approval process just since it has become a more regular part of state laws.

Next slide, please.

So that's it on ministerial, kind of short and sweet.

We are very excited to have hired street level advisors to work with us on this policy development.

They will be at future meetings.

We just thought we'd introduce the basics to you all ourselves.

Their staff have been working on housing policy in the Bay and elsewhere for decades.

They worked with San Francisco on their inclusionary zoning policy.

They're helping the city of Alameda update part of theirs right now.

So they know the Bay context.

They've actually worked with County HCD before.

They know our context.

And this is their logo, and that's a report that their principal wrote for a prominent land use institute, the Lincoln Institute, I believe.

Next slide.

So like we said at the beginning of this presentation, we are at the very beginning of this project.

This is literally our first public meeting on it.

We'll be at the other MACs later next week in the Planning Commission December 15th.

You can see us hopefully at the board subcommittees later in January.

And hopefully some other community meetings as well after that.

After that, we'll have a website up soon.

It will have a lot of content that will feel very familiar to you after this presentation.

And I think most importantly, what's going on right now is that street level advisors is connecting with some local developers to understand the development context and trends and project level economics.

This is actually one of the things we were hoping if people have ideas about projects or people you think they should speak to.

We would love that feedback, because this will influence the policy document.

We've of course sent them about the past five years' worth of projects to reach out to, but if something comes up, please let us know in the comments.

So that's what's happening right now.

Next year, we'll continue doing engagement with developers, housing advocates, and housing providers.

We will, of course, be back here fairly regularly to give you updates.

We should have at least one community meeting that isn't a public hearing presentation, so stay tuned for that.

And we'd like to start an ad hoc subcommittee for MAC members, which I will talk about a bit more in another slide.

So we will hopefully have those meetings next year as well by the end late 2026, if not sooner.

We'll have completed the economic feasibility study for inclusionary zoning, the policy recommendations for inclusionary zoning, including those alternatives, and the ministerial approval feasibility and consistency report.

So all the papers that the actual ordinances will be referencing will hopefully be public and available for consumption by then.

And we'll begin circulating draft ordinances for comments, coming here for feedback and beginning that those rounds of revisions by early 2027, hopefully at the latest.

Next slide, please.

And again, we're fairly confident, our consultants are fairly confident it won't take all the way till July.

Next slide, please.

And here's my slide about the ad hoc subcommittee.

So if you haven't been reminded by county council about all the parts of the Brown Act as we have been recently for this, we're allowed to have ad hoc or temporary subcommittees that are not public meetings when they are have a defined purpose, a specified timeline, and serve purely in an advisory capacity to the actual project and actual uh MACs.

So we would like to request the formation of an ad hoc subcommittee to supplement other engagement processes in this project.

And the subcommittee would be a place for the appointed MAC member participants to ask us additional questions and provide further feedback.

So like an additional touch point on the project.

And if your council of your commission is interested, we can have up to two MAC members per Mac on the committee, the subcommittee.

We'll have between two and four meetings scheduling very to be determined.

And the subcommittee would conclude once the ordinances are essentially in their final drafts, once there's no more changes to be made, if not before then.

Next slide.

So that's our presentation.

As a reminder, our request and recommendation for this item is to for you all to take public testimony, provide comments on our project, and consider the creation of the ad hoc subcommittee on affordable housing, and appoint up to two members to serve on it.

Next slide.

So that's it.

Thank you for listening to me talk at you.

We are very happy to answer all your questions and take your comments.

Thank you very much.

We'll start off with the member questions and then we'll go to public comment and then we can come back and give you our comments after that.

Ms.

Farmer, you want to start us?

Sure.

On your staff um uh report, page nine.

It speaks or talks about um uh affordability requirements for TOC compliant inclusionary zoning.

You have a table one there.

If you want to look at it, you have a copy.

I have an extra copy there.

There, okay.

Uh it says the rental units um have a minimum deed of length of deed restricted affordability is 55 years, and then above that it says set a binding maximum rent or price restriction to ensure affordability for the length of the time described in table one.

Does that mean they're not gonna have any rent increases for 55 years?

Okay, I'm gonna be real with you.

I don't exactly know how it works.

That's kind of why we've hired consultants who know a lot more about inclusionary, and I'm so excited to learn.

I don't think that means that there will be no rent increases, however, it will be less than the what 10% allowed by state law.

Um, I think that the intention if we assume rent is supposed to be 30% of a person's income in the annual the average the median income increases slightly every year, it wouldn't be able to be more than that 30%.

Let's say that's yeah, all right.

So um also Fairview Urban Unincorporated Areas.

Where are those?

Are those D Street in the north properties of the Fairview district or what?

What specifically are Fairview urban unincorporated areas?

At this time, we are referring to all of Fairview, the entire plan area as the urban areas.

Because technically Fairview is a part of their urban unincorporated.

Okay, got it.

Um I take it that uh the Fairview Mac role is to develop an affordable housing policy within Fairview, or are we uh doing this?

Uh are we dictating to the rest of the county what our wishes are to clarify um the work that we're doing would be in order to explore compliance with TOC compliance, right?

So that would include um unincorporated area, and so this is consistent with the housing element in one of the uh programs that was adopted, which outlines that there would be uh some sort of countywide inclusionary zoning policy.

So that's something that we're looking to explore.

Um, because we're in the very early stages of the process, um, we are here to to take input and feedback.

Um, I think we're starting from from scratch, right?

And so we're looking at all of uh the areas within the unincorporated areas that we're responsible for, and so um as part of the process, our consultant will do uh studies, we'll conduct studies, for example, and look at this a little bit further, and as we get more information, we'll we'll prepare um additional details to the council, and then at that point, that will help us to um to have an informed decision.

Also, this would be up to the board in order to adopt the the final inclusionary zoning policy.

So um is mentioned it's really uh a two and a half year process that we're looking at, and so I staff understands, and and here's what um the council is saying.

I think because we're we're starting in the early stages, we're looking at the county as a whole, specifically for the unincorporated area.

So hopefully I've answered your question through that.

Thank you, Member Higgins.

Okay, can you hear me now?

Cool.

Um, you know, something that would be helpful, and um I'm not sure when we get a motion.

I'm not sure when we we put this together, but some sort of map between the um sections of the housing element and pieces of this study or recommendation, something you know, going forward that you know, when we move to other meetings, we can trace back and forth how it, because there's there's a lot of stuff, and you guys know it better than us, and you know, my P brain, it's much better if I have a place to, so I I don't have to flip back and forth.

Um and there's a a sore point that I have with these kind of things.

Um they always leave out the parking that's required for each residence.

Okay, you guys always tell us, oh well, you know, we'll we'll take care of that later.

Well, you know, I've got a um a property near me on the same private street that I'm on that um went through all this kind of vetting, and we were in the neighborhood in the community all upset about inadequate parking.

Um one of these houses that was going in, is um, they provided uh four parking places um with five bedrooms, and we kind of we know how many parking places you need in our community, and of course, we mentioned that this particular property will need 10 parking places.

Well, they got four, and they have 10 cars parked there, and we have a narrow private road, so somehow some powers that be need to hear us, or you're gonna create gonna ghettoize our community, that's just a fact of life.

You know, we're we don't have public transit, you know, nobody's definition of public transit, no definition of adequate public transit.

There's there's no place in Fairview that's within reasonable distance of um a transit line that runs with a frequency of 20 minutes.

The most frequent line runs at 40 minute intervals, and that's just not except you know, we you can't walk to the store in Fairview, okay.

And in my nearest store, is over a mile walking in hills, so you know.

If you're old coot like me with a cane, uh it's it's good exercise, but it's difficult.

Okay, so um that's I I think I'm getting a little ahead, right?

I'm getting down in the details, and I I can clarify if I may though, um, or I want to point out so inclusionary zoning won't change any densities and has not doesn't alter any parking requirements.

So I guess we could argue about the existing parking requirements, but this won't further alter them.

I wanted to be clear about that.

There is a note in the ministerial approval parts of attachment A that talks about the transit-oriented community policy requirements that we are not committed to complying with.

That's just to show the goal.

There is a bit about um not requiring minimum parking for ministerial approval projects where we need to clarify with MTC staff about it, but we're fairly certain we will only be uh suggesting that or having that for the areas actually by the BART station, so within that half mile.

Well, and the MTC staff that suggests we need fewer parking places.

Please please let refer them to the people that live in Fairview, and we well happy we'll be happy to walk them around.

And you know, we're we're ignoring this just causes problems in the community.

It's it is a major impact on quality of life.

So um, let me I I think I had some more some more notes.

Uh maybe.

Oh, the the ownership pieces, I think you you would dress some of that.

And again, I'm um kind of looking forward down the pike for what happens in real life, but it the existing places you talk about locking it in for like 50 years or something, yeah, which is probably adequate, but I just don't know how I my head hurts when I think about how that's gonna work.

I I I don't know.

I'd I'm I'd be real happy just find out what what other uh what other communities do.

Um did and you know the the uh you know going back to your uh uh the basic components of inclusionary zoning, this idea of paying a set fee per unit called in loo fees, dedicating other land to affordable housing.

Has any has anybody thought about like pooling all these fees and and grabbing a space and setting that for a different, you know, for a specific project?

So that is as I understand what happens in other jurisdictions, they you can um kind of tune your inclusionary zoning policy theoretically to gather more fees, it would be cheaper for a developer to pay out versus actually build, or you can tune it to actually build units.

We are so excited to see what our consultants have to say about that, but with whatever fees are collected.

Um other jurisdictions have affordable housing funds, and then projects get to apply for that money, so it would be gathered up together, yes.

Well, I'd be real interested to see what's working and what's not working in other places.

Um that's all the notes I have right now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Member Fulban.

I just figured out the answer to my question.

So I've been um listening to my colleagues ask the questions I had, so that's good for me.

Member Rhodes.

First of all, thank you very much, Olivia and Angelica for the presentation.

Uh appreciate also the PowerPoint that um clearly is like a bit more concise than the report I read earlier.

Um, but I I want to start by just um sharing some context, which I think most of the people in this room know, which is when this six-cycle element was presented uh at the Fairview Mac, it was quite controversial.

We had this room packed, it was over a hundred people who were here and who are voicing various concerns.

Uh there were plenty of concerns that were expressed by my colleagues up here, and we were I I'll speak for myself.

I felt like it was a bit we're doing this.

There's there wasn't really like any room for us to represent the concerns that our community was sharing, and um I recognize that the board has since adopted, we're moving forward.

I do want to recognize and appreciate that it sounds like there's an attempt to create this ad hoc subcommittee, an attempt to kind of include folks along the way and try to figure out how to make this happen, and I want to say that, you know, the there is, I feel very strongly about creating affordable housing.

That's there's no argument from me on that point.

I think that that it's a just cause, and it's great that the county is putting effort to make this happen.

I just want to state for the record that, you know, I think a huge concern that our community has uh safety around evacuation routes and fire safety.

And um, you know, this ministerial approval process is being proposed is a concern for the community because we already have an unsafe setup, and what is being proposed through the six cycle element, housing element, uh, is less purview for the community to continue to give input on those concerns.

So I just kind of wanted to frame like where I think a lot of us are coming from.

And you know, also want to share that from my perspective, and I I don't know how to be um correct about this or not not put my foot in my mouth, but like I'm concerned about kind of rushed approvals and developers having the ability to make shortcuts that are not good for our community, and not as like a not in my backyard kind of situation, but moreover, like we have legitimate concerns around evacuation routes being we there's a lot of bottlenecks in our communities, and there's a lot of tender.

So we already have had to fight to create those evacuation routes if we allow for denser communities with less purview over you know regulating traffic and providing adequate, you know, road widths, uh things of that sort.

It is increasingly putting our communities in danger.

So that's where we're coming from around our concerns.

Um so thank you for listening to my statement.

I have several questions as well.

Um, okay, so the first thing I'm curious about is this kind of uh overriding the sequent uh sequa, is that what's called Sequo requirements?

Um because my understanding is that uh CEQA does uh provide overview on like fire evacuation evaluations.

Uh it does um like a traffic analysis, um, and it also allows public input.

And I get that that's kind of we're trying to streamline the process, but those aspects seem quite important for the concerns that we have in the community.

Uh so I had give me a sec.

On page five, at the bottom, second to last paragraph, last sentence, it says the developments using ministerial approval are also exempt from CEQA, which eliminates the cost and time for environmental review.

So I it that statement to me is quite crass, and I'm interpreting it a certain way.

I want to hear maybe your perspective on that.

That's fair.

Um, that you would see it that way.

Um, where do I want to start?

Going back to project level SEQA.

So every time we do a general plan, the housing element, the fair view plan, all of them, they all they have a what's called a program level SQL analysis, which doesn't get into like the nitty gritty of like how the theoretical housing is set up on the law, but looks at, you know, if we build X many units, this will add Y many cars and we can mitigate blah blah.

They're always very long documents, you know.

So things that are approved ministerially rely on that program level CEQA essentially.

They do not need to do further project level CEQA.

If I'm looking at Angelica to make sure I'm saying it all correctly, cool.

Um that might be necessary if you were saying out in East County and trying to build 94 houses outside of Pleasanton, like some folks are trying to do right now.

Um because it wasn't included in any of our general plans.

And yeah.

So I guess it's not quite the same level of intense detail, but it's not that it hasn't been considered and reviewed through CEQA.

I wanted to make that clear.

Um the sentence that you pointed out, I think one of the difficult things for us with the um we've been directed in so many ways, our department through this state law to try and make housing as like viable to build as possible because of the housing crisis.

And one of the few levers we can pull is making it faster for developers to build, and within, you know, we are not trying to cut corners because that is bad for all of us, obviously.

Um I guess I don't know quite how to allay that fear that you mentioned.

Um, but that is certainly not what our staff wants at all.

Um, but because when you are developing however many units you are borrowing money to do so, and so you're paying interest the entire time on that, and that is how money costs money absurdly for developers.

Um, and so be the what have we been told by people whose job that is is mitigating that factor a little bit is can be the difference between us getting you know new apartments built somewhere or not or whatever it is.

Um, so that is what we meant with that sentence, but I take your point that us saying it's cheap for developers maybe doesn't read well for you guys.

Fair enough.

Let me just give you an example.

So there's a proposal for a housing development on um D Street, which is a very open space along Upper D, right?

So right when Fairview Avene split, you go up, there's a bunch of land there.

That land has been, there's been several developers that have bought and sold that land because there have been many restrictions on how to kind of pull off a large scale development there.

And there's probably others in this room that could more accurately describe the blow by blow, but I'm gonna do my best.

Um I think where it last landed was they the fire, there was fire regulation, uh fire department basically said that they couldn't build there because there wasn't sufficient water pressure to support that many houses and be able to put out a fire that in case you know that happened.

So they were stopped because of that.

Now, this is also let me just kind of paint the picture that D Street is quite wide right when it gets into upper D, but it narrows at the top.

There's a hill and it narrows at the top, which is right where that land is, right?

If you come to on the other side of the land around Fairview, you wouldn't have any access to it.

So the only access would be that D Street.

So it narrows right at the top, and you can't see over the hill.

So you get into one lane where there's oncoming traffic right on the other side.

Now there's an assisted living facility there, and the employer doesn't let the employees park in their parking lot.

So they all park right along the side there.

So we have barely a lane at the top of that.

If that development happens there, which at this point it sounds like it's going through, there is a big possibility, especially if parking isn't taken into consideration, that people will continue to park up along, maybe even on both sides.

We've just recently were able to get some red paint on some of those um curbs in order to stop some of it so that we are not running into each other, but this is just like an example of how that, you know, very like well-meaning, we just want to move this through, we want to get some affordable housing, but and we're gonna create this process that doesn't bog us down to like send somebody out there and take a look at it and have a subjective opinion about it.

But it those in those situations is very important.

So I just want to give that example.

Not to say, and I don't know, like that's another point is like there's a teach, there's teaching moments here because I don't really understand at what point the approval process would be under the purview of say the fire department versus the ministerial approval versus like I'm sure there's different avenues there that I just don't know, but it raises a concern for me.

Um so on that point, um I am interested in knowing does um the ministerial approval process include any kind of like fire evacuation, road widths or access issues to be evaluated.

Would that be part of the objective uh consideration?

So, what we would be looking at is how the project matches up with the regulations we have about how the housing is shaped and where it is on the lot and how high it is and how dense it is.

Fire the fire department or you guys are under Hayward fire, right?

No, I always have that backwards.

Anyways, we would refer it to them.

The ministerial, I guess ministerial approval just refers to the planning department's approval, not like the county's overall approval process.

So, uh folks at fire, even though it would it would obviously be bad form on our part, theoretically, we could say this looks great, and then fire would say, No, no, there's still no fire pressure here.

We can't do that.

Um, because you're right, that's extremely important.

So that wall still happens, even if we can, you know, go through a process and look at our checklist and say it has the roof at the right height and yada yada yada.

Thank you.

Uh the other question I had, I think you mentioned this earlier, but I need some clarification.

So a part of the uh objective kind of constraints that the ministerial process would be taking into consideration, is that also the fair view plan?

Like everything we have in that would also be respected and looked at objectively.

Yes, so if I'm not mistaken, there's parts of the Fairview plan that say like unique to R1, these things are required or yes.

That's great.

Um so that's a change.

Yes, we're respecting the fair view plan.

Apparently, um respecting the fair view plan, you saying yes, that's a change from what we've heard in the past.

That the state requirements take precedence over the very plan.

That is and will remain true, yes, but so I'm trying to think of an example, and I don't have one that comes to mind, but in the in terms of us literally reviewing again, like the setbacks on the lot and the minimum lot size and you know, lot coverage, um, anything that's covered in the Fairview specific plan or the relevant parts of our residential standards and design guidelines here.

I always get the words backwards that um is what we'd be referring to.

Um, I think there are certainly like I don't know if there's something in the Fairview specific plan about limiting ADUs, for example, because I know state laws changed a lot since ADUs came out, but of course, like state law takes precedence there.

Um, but I don't at this time the California legislature is not telling us I think about law coverage or uh minimum and maximum heights in single family, for example.

Okay, a couple more.

I'm almost done.

Um who's gonna be responsible for ensuring that um the objectives are gonna be met?

Like, is that you personally or who in the county?

That would be our development planners, Roger Orduña's team.

Um, they are the ones who process uh actual.

Uh okay, sorry, you didn't.

No, yeah, that was it.

Okay.

How will the county enforce this long-term deed restriction?

Our consultants will be telling us the best way to do that, but I suspect it'll involve other departments in our agency who tend to look at housing long-term more.

Um, planning tends to not do that, but others do.

Since this is a change in in not having kind of any public input, what is the process or how will we as a community be notified when development projects are approved?

Excuse me.

That's a great question.

And we'll we'll certainly look at that and come back with a clearer response for you.

As you can imagine, because this is our first presentation, we're learning a lot from you all based on the questions that you are asking.

So we're we're taking um several notes here on comments and questions and concerns that you've provided.

And so we're we're going to make sure that as we're working through the process in the development of these policies, we'll respond to your concerns and look into them.

So we do appreciate the comments that you are providing at this time.

And unfortunately, because it is it is the introduction of the project.

There's a lot of unanswered questions.

And with the policy development, um, I'll segue to to the ad hoc subcommittee.

And so this is an important avenue for for staff in which we we believe that it's a great opportunity for one or two of you to participate in in order to um to share additional opportunities to express concerns or input as we develop these policies.

So we were our goal is to to work with you and in the community and also our intention based on what we've been directed by the board to do is um aiming to towards compliance right for those TOC policies and also to achieve the programs that we have in our housing element.

So I'd like to um just open it up and hear any uh discussions that you may have in regards to that, but just wanted to share those tidbits.

Thanks.

I have one last question, just which is um, okay, so you all did a really great job at kind of explaining to us like the axes falling, we've got to make this happen.

I I get the intent of why you guys are making this happen.

You want to access these state funds.

It's important to hit this deadline.

Got it.

But is there any other problem that the county is trying to solve by implementing this particular process?

Um, I guess beyond the affordable housing need um and homelessness.

Um other fun fact is that in this, so you were referring specifically to our fund housing element era.

The transit-oriented communities policy, which MTC's commissioners, which includes St.

Miley, are altering, so we'll see what actually happens.

But at least up until now, they have said that there is a set of money, OBAG funding, one Bay Area grants that more compliant jurisdictions will have access to.

I don't have a better way of saying it because they haven't told us what they're actually doing yet.

Um Alameda County has used that public work specifically, it pulls most of that funding.

I think they've done a lot of road paving with it, so um, it is useful for them.

Um it's possible, though I don't know for sure, again, because they haven't told us what they're actually doing yet, um, that we will have less access to future NTC funding if we aren't relatively compliant with this overall policy of which the two things we have presented to you all on are like but a quarter of the whole thing.

So that was a little convoluted, but there's there's again some money that could be tied to this, or maybe not as much as we thought a year ago.

They haven't made up their minds.

Thank you all so much.

All right.

I know this is your first round on here, so hopefully you're getting some good feedback.

My first question is very quick and easy.

On your timeline, it shows winter spring 2026.

Um is that winter of 2026 and spring of 2027?

Just for my clarification.

We're talking next, like March, February, like the three to four five months from now.

So the near future.

It was written in reverse.

So that's why I was not sure.

Um Solana has no interest in this.

What do you think several of their big reasons not going this direction would be?

If I if I had to guess, it's because they're quite rural.

They may have done studies, I'm not sure that preliminary studies saying that it's not, they're not gonna like make enough money or affordable units aren't going to happen.

I don't know what kind of development happens in unincorporated Solano County now.

Um, yeah, we could look into that if you're curious to see if they've written anything.

It's farmland.

Well, I did notice out of a hundred and I think it was 109 jurisdictions using it now in the Bay Area out of 162 in the whole state.

I was definitely curious about that, especially when you think about Los Angeles, San Diego, some of the other big communities, why not there?

Another excellent question that uh I do not currently know the answer to.

Uh the equivalent to MTC A bag in SoCal may have written something about it.

We could probably pull that data.

I think a little research on what worked and what didn't in these communities may be helpful.

Um, some of the major changes if it went to ministerial approval versus what we have now, what would some of the most impactful ones be?

Okay, again, this is the first time we're giving this answer.

So maybe Eden Mac will get a different one next week.

I don't know yet.

But if you know, a theoretical 20-unit building somewhere that was saying 20% of the units would be affordable, so they get to go through this ministerial approval process.

We would make sure that you know the roof was in the right place and the lot was covered and covered correctly, etc.

etc.

And then we'd email them back and they'd be on their way to building and there wouldn't they wouldn't come here and present to you all.

Um, and per previous question, we would find another way to make sure people were aware things were being built, but it wouldn't happen at a Mac meeting through this ministerial process.

I want to know the housing element ministerial process does have up to two informational meetings associated with it.

So that one would, but not this one.

And the follow-up to Vanessa's question about the D Street subparcels, you know, it'd be a great example.

May take a little bit of research, but would the fire codes decrease that may allow something today that wouldn't have four years ago, or are they still under the same standards?

Again, probably needs some research, but I'd be curious to hear that.

Um, and then there was a lot of mention in the staff packet about the half mile from uh BART for TOC.

And I was trying to figure out the correlation with Fairview since we're not within a half mile of BART.

Is that the driver to making it work for the county, or what's the impact, or is that written for Castor Valley's Mac house computer?

So this if our one of our first slides was on this the TOC policy, three quarters of it talks only to that half mile circle.

And since we're talking about the whole TOC policy, we wanted to provide the context, but the housing part um can apply to a whole jurisdiction.

Frankly, if we only put inclusionary zoning or fees, you know, on just one part of the jurisdiction, it might incentivize or deincentivize construction in one area or the other in a way that nobody quite wants.

So yeah, the half mile area, you are correct, you're not near BART, as we all know.

So that makes sense.

Maybe good edit for the future Max 2.

Left me running a little bit.

And then last question, I'm not a CEQA expert.

I haven't done a lot of work with that, but you mentioned a high level versus a low-level sequel inspection or process.

I've never heard of that.

Can you elaborate on that?

I think I was saying we, it might not even be the formal words, but when there's a CEQA write-up, uh mitigated negative declaration or an environmental review for a general plan document, we call it like a program level, um, versus if for I'll use the example because I know they have their EIR right now out.

Um Arroyo Lago out um outside of Pleasanton, though maybe not for long, um, has a whole EIR written very specifically about them and uh looking only at that development, so like a project level CEQA.

Again, I am also not a CEQA expert, so that is what I understand.

Thank you.

Any other questions before we go to public comment?

I suggest that we only have one member from the Fairview Mac to represent us.

Just because the reason that they state that they want two is because uh to avoid having another group, um, have the majority of votes, and um since we don't have anything to do with the half mile radius around any of the art stations, it seems like that's what the majority of this discussion is about.

I'm sorry, I want to I'm sorry.

So that the this subcommittee will only be for these housing projects, uh, these housing policies, excuse me, which um equally impact all three MAC areas, so not the other piece of TOC.

Apologies for that confusion.

Thank you for the clarification.

Public comment.

First speaker is Bruce King.

Uh I guess my first comment is for planning.

Um, I consider myself a pretty knowledgeable citizen.

I've worked with the county, the city of Hayward a lot.

I understand housing and developers and how developers work.

But I listened to your presentation, my head was spinning.

I was like, what is inclusionary zoning?

I thought I thought the Alameda County had policies that require developers to include a certain amount of low-income housing or or provide, you know, money so that you know, other low-income housing developers could build the housing.

Now I hear that we don't.

Um, but my whole head was spinning listening to your presentation, just trying to understand it.

So, you know, I think this is going to be a really big issue, and developers are probably gonna really get on this.

And yeah, I think you need to start out with some simple message.

Uh, here's what we got, here's where we kind of need to go.

And anyways, because you got to read all your reports, listen to your presentation, and then you're still kind of going, what the heck?

Um, so uh also I guess a comment I've seen like in the city, hey, where they allow developers right now to either build the the lower income housing as part of their development or provide money to the city to give it to other developers so they can build the low income housing as separate developments.

Um places I've seen big problems with that is like Lincoln Landing on Foothill Boulevard, five 475 units.

The developer said we don't want the the lower income housing as part of our development, which means that you end up with housing developments that are just lower income people, and if we want lower-income people to be included in our culture and our society, we need to integrate them.

So, you know, I understand maybe a really small developer doesn't want to do that.

But big developers need to take on more responsibility.

And then lastly, just a general comment about the what are we calling it?

The ministerial approval process.

They go in, they cut down the trees beforehand.

There's a tree ordinance.

They go, Oh, we didn't know that we couldn't cut the trees down.

And the city Hayward says, okay, well, we'll plant the trees somewhere else because you're allowed to build so many units, and and uh and we can't stop you from building those units.

And oh, by the way, we don't have to do any environmental review, even though we're gonna shadow all the vegetation on the creek uh with the five story building.

So, anyways, it can get a little out of control sometimes.

I I'm I'm an advocate of housing, but it can get out of control sometimes.

Thank you.

Next is Chuck Meadows.

Thank you.

I wanted to address several of the topics.

First, I want to just look at those numbers that were tossed out.

The number that was quoted was about 150,000 AMI for Alameda County.

If you take 60% of that, you're looking at a gross income of about 90,000.

Uh, if you divide that by 12, you're looking at about 7,500 per month.

And if you use the smart asset calculator to determine what your after-tax income is for a married couple, your after tax income is about 5,800 per month.

Now, if you take the rental income of 30% of the 7,500, you're looking at a monthly rental cost of about 2250 per month.

Now, if you take that divided by the 5,900 that you're bringing home to pay for the rent, you're looking at about a 40% cost of rent.

So it's a pretty hefty number to meet that.

And if you then work backwards into what kind of house can I buy for that kind of money, if you discount the annual rent by 5% discount factor, um, you're looking at about a $500,000 home.

So that means, you know, given the current cost of housing, you don't have a lot of space to build these kind of homes and actually get the rental rate that you're looking at.

That's something that pencils out for a developer.

So I think we need to look carefully at the economics of the situation to make it attractive enough that a developer is actually going to want to pursue this.

Secondly, I want to follow up on Bruce's comment about the whole relocation and giving credits, because that is a key part, which is integrating the lower income into a development and not allowing a ghettoization where you park them all out at the edge of the county line or wherever you're gonna put them, because that's just gonna concentrate it.

And the other issue you've got is to go back to the enforcement question.

What do you do if the developer simply doesn't follow through on those uh secondary units?

We build the nice high rise, never get the low income housing.

Is the county gonna start suing all the developers at what cost?

Next, I want to talk about the parking, which Chris raised.

I've lived in San Francisco for a number of years, and I can tell you having a half a space or one space is simply untenable in a modern household.

Most households have two, usually three cars, and I can tell you spending an hour hunting for a parking spot is not a fun way to end the day.

Um, also wanted to revisit the evacuation and safety issues.

That keeps getting overlooked and it keeps getting raised.

And I know we're a little different here because we have a more rural environment where we have narrow bottlenecks on the roads, but it's getting overlooked in terms of the impact that we'll have until finally that catastrophe happens and everyone starts pointing fingers.

Why didn't someone look at this before?

Lastly, the notification requirement right now is about 500 foot radius, which in a large lot area is like one or two houses around the area to be developed.

That is absolutely absurd for something of this scale.

It should be like at least uh several blocks for every single resident that would be impacted.

So I think there's, I mean, I appreciate the the start, and I know this is the first one, so there's always some refinement, but I think some of these other factors need to be addressed more carefully.

Thank you.

There are no more speakers.

All right, they've got a lot of input.

We'll close public comment.

Do we have any final comments from our Mac?

Member Higgins.

Yeah, I I have a couple.

Um one of the things, some of the solutions that have been presented over time for enforcement or you know, putting in deed restrictions.

Um there's no enforcement on deed restrictions.

The your only recourse is civil courts, and that's very expensive.

Um we see what we see happening in the communities is um there's either no enforcement or the uh the people that get involved in it are close to bankrupting themselves.

So uh those aren't those aren't a solution and and easements aren't a solution either.

I I we have a lot of private streets in um Fairview, and they're private streets that really don't have adequate maintenance agreements, and they're they're just nightmares.

Um I'll just leave that out.

Um then the the back to the the CEQA uh the uh what you call that the the program level SEQA and the individual level sequa, we we haven't seen, we haven't seen those mesh.

And even when within when when there's been um inadequacies in things like the traffic study, we we never see them being addressed.

Um we see traffic studies that uh uh stop you know a block or two short of where there's a problem.

You know, somebody wants to put like I'm gonna put 50 houses in here, and uh they do a traffic study, but they scope it out so it stops just short of the intersection where we had three pedestrian deaths.

Well, what good is that, right?

And and that never gets fixed.

Um we were under the impression that with a Fairview specific plan, we would get a fair view wide traffic study, which is a really good idea both for the community and for the developer, right?

Because the developer each each developer doesn't have to fund this uh huge traffic study, and with uh, you know, like a public scoping section, you know, we don't have to worry that um the developer who's funding the traffic study stops short of this problem intersection, so that they don't have a problem.

And uh again, streamlining, you without these these public hearings, you never hear from the community.

You don't know that we in the community know that there's this particular corner is a problem and there's something got to be done, and it's been ignored for a while, you know.

So streamlining, you know, me as a is uh an old fart that that's lived here for a long time, that just puckers me up, you know, that really worries me.

Um so and and again, I you know, there's a P there's a property on D Street that's um they're thinking about uh developing again.

Uh not up by by you, Vanessa.

Uh it's down near me, and and there's been a number of uh attempts to develop it, and uh all the sequel related kind kind of stuff uh just gets swept under the rug.

They were we were poised to to um approve one development, and we asked the question well, what what about the soil study?

And they said, Oh, well, we we did a soil study 10 years ago for this first one, and that's uh that's adequate.

We said, Well, now wait a minute, five years ago, you caught someone dumping a bunch of soil on that place, so that soil study is not any good.

They came back and they did another soil study and they said, Oh yeah, we're gonna have a problem.

You know, you're you have uh you're planning your gas mains and your other utilities, it's crossing a historic landslide.

That's that's susceptible to you know, like big problems, and you know, we don't want to have that happen in our community, so um, I'm not sure what we do or what you know what piece of the process we what processes we put in place so those kinds of things don't slip through the cracks, but you know, these these public hearings are important, and rushing them is tough because I don't want to throw rocks at the staff, but all these problems, okay, they were squeezed out by people in the community doing their homework and working through this stuff.

You know, the people on the you know, what on a staff job you've got this little silo and and you just stay in that silo.

The people in the community, we tend to look, you know, go broader than the silo, so you know, so there's a partnership in there that when we cut short the public hearings and and allow and allow developers more access to the decision makers and the people in the community were gonna have problems.

And we can I can run down, you know.

I've I've lived in Fairview 40 50 years, I don't know, long time.

I'm an old fart, right?

But uh we see this stuff all the time, and you need to listen to us.

That's all.

Thank you, Member Rhodes.

Thank you, Chris, for those comments.

Um, and just uh to circle back on a question that you had asked during your presentation, which is are there community groups that to ask and get input from?

Um, and I know we can talk about that more in the ad hoc, but they um there are several community organizers that have done some work in the community.

I'm happy to pass those names on to you.

And they are some of these soldiers that are out there identifying issues and trying to troubleshoot them.

Thank you.

Other questions?

I'm sorry, comments.

I've got my final two.

You guys came looking for information tonight.

I think we gave you quite a bit.

Um I'm hoping you can do a little research on the other ones out there to see what's been working or what some of the challenges were.

I think that'd be helpful for the other boards.

And also to include some of our questions for their the upcoming agendas as well.

I know our last item on this one was talking about a subcommittee ad hoc.

Member Farmer, did you still have some questions about two members versus one or comments?

Um at this time, it seems like this.

After listening to the presentation and the questions that we have, I think we do need two people.

Yeah, because it's just not gelling for me, and I don't think it is for anybody else here.

So do we have two people that are interested right here?

Member Farmer as well.

Do we have a second person interested?

Member Higgins.

I think we need a motion to approve the ad hoc committee.

And I think the rest is all good, correct with the input.

Okay.

I'd like to move that Beth Farmer and Chris Higgins be appointed to the ad hoc committee to represent the Fairview Mac and the Fairview community.

I second that.

Oh, please.

Councilmember Farmer.

Aye.

Councilmember Higgins.

Hi.

Councilmember Philbin.

Hi.

Councilmember Rhodes.

Hi.

Chair Englin.

Aye.

Okay.

We have our new committee passes.

Thank you very much.

Alright, moving on to item number two.

General plan amendment to the open space settlement to comply with SB 1425, which is an action item.

The floor is yours.

Oh, there we go.

Hi.

Good evening.

I'm Allie Avers of the planning department.

Good to see all of you this evening.

My slides are up there.

So I am here with uh what will be I think a brief presentation about proposed amendments to the open space element of the general plan.

So next slide, please.

So a bit about um the requirements that these amendments would uh help the county to meet.

So, Senate Bill or SB 1425, which was adopted in 2022, requires cities and counties to review and update the open space element of their general plans by January 1st of this coming year, so very soon, to address these topics.

So, number one is equitable access to open space for all residents, and that's correlated with the environmental justice element of the general plan.

Two is climate resilience and other co-benefits of open space correlated with the open space or sorry, the safety element, and three is rewilding opportunities, which is correlated with the land use element.

Next slide, please.

So you may ask what are rewilding opportunities?

Um45 does define that, although it is fairly broad.

So rewilding opportunities may include but are not limited to opportunities to preserve, enhance, and expand an integrated network of open space to support beneficial uses like habitat, recreation, natural resources, historic and tribal resources, water management, and aesthetics.

And two, sorry for the extra two there, establishing a natural communities conservation plan to provide for coordinated mitigation of the impact of new development.

Next slide, please.

So in early October of this year, the state released draft guidance, draft guidance to help jurisdictions, um, like technical assistance to help just jurisdictions uh know how to comply with this law.

So that was fairly recent.

That was just a couple of months ago that they released this guidance.

Um, and and this is essentially what it outlines as a path to compliance.

So, first we need to understand the legislation.

Um, we need to take a look at existing plans that we have, and then evaluate those plans for compliance and look for gaps.

If we do not find any gaps, step 5A, which is I'll talk about in the next slide, becomes the final step for integrating those existing plans or policies into the open space element by reference.

Next slide.

So this is that step 5A, which I said the guidance says can serve as the final step to integrate compliance into the general plan by reference.

So it outlines this path, which includes referencing the plans that we've located, ensuring that they are internally consistent, which the general plan is required to be, summarizing how they help us meet compliance, and then adopting by resolution.

And I should note before I go into the proposed amendment itself, that we were able to find compliant policies looking solely at our general plan.

So this guidance actually would allow us to look outside of the general plan to other plans that are adopted by the county.

We didn't need to do that, because it is entirely the general plan already provides for that consistency.

So just a note on that.

So next slide, please.

So we did uh conduct that comprehensive review that was outlined in the guidance of the county general plan to identify gaps and opportunities to support SB 1425 compliance.

And we determined that the requirements of SB 1425 are already satisfied through existing general plan policies and implementation measures.

And so we developed proposed appendix B as a proposed addition to the open space element.

And what that does essentially is document our existing compliance.

It's like if you're an Excel nerd, it's like a pivot table of the general plan, just takes all the policies and puts them all in one place, and it would incorporate those relevant policies by reference into the open space element.

And I should note that you know, of course, the general plan documents are updated from time to time, and as that happens, each of those or this appendix will be updated in tandem so that we don't have policies that are inconsistent.

We're not referencing policies that no longer exist or that have been edited.

Next slide, please.

So in total, the uh various uh chapters or elements of the general plan contain 38 policies that address equitable access to open space, 24 policies that address climate resilience and other co-benefits, and 48 policies that address rewilding opportunities.

And I would, I'm I'm interested, I assume we'll have some discussion about the Eden Area General Plan versus the Fairview specific plan.

Um, I know that that technically the Fairview area is also encompassed within the Eden area general plan.

So that's what we were looking at here.

The Fairview specific plan also has policies that comply with SB 1425.

And I highlighted a few zeros here, and that's just to note that not every chapter has all three of these areas covered, but taken as a whole, all of the geographic areas of the county are covered by by SB 1425 compliant policies.

Next slide, please.

So you may or may not be familiar with a project called ROSA.

It's the resource conservation open space and agriculture element of the general plan.

It's a proposed future element of the general plan.

Um work on this future plan began about 10 years ago.

It has been on hold for quite a while because of staffing issues and state priorities that took precedence.

So when ROSA, when the work on ROSA resumes, we'll have a really um focused opportunity to adopt additional policies if that's something that's of interest for 1425 compliance.

So just wanted to note that in case that's something you are following.

Um, next slide, please.

So this amendment would not be subject to CEQA because it wouldn't result in a direct or reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment and pursuant to the common sense exemption.

So we are pursuing a notice of exemption, which we've posted on our website, and I think is also in your packet.

Next slide, please.

So you were actually toward the end of our roadshow for this item.

Um we're going to Castor Valley Mac next week.

We were going to go to them in November, but they had some technical difficulties in the room.

So that was rescheduled.

Um the agricultural advisory committee uh voted to approve the amendments, as did the Eden MAC and the Sunol CAC.

We're with you this evening and Castor Valley next week.

Is that next week?

Yeah, next week, and then um the Planning Commission two weeks from now, and then we're aiming to bring this to the Board of Supervisors within the first few months of next year.

So only a few months late.

And next slide, please.

Um, all of the documents for this project are on the planning department's website.

Um, encourage you to take a look at those.

They're also linked in your packet.

Um, next slide, please.

And finally, to the staff recommendations.

So the recommendation is that your council take public comment, um, give us comments and vote to forward the proposed open space element amendments and notice of exemption from CEQA to the planning commission with a recommendation that the amendments be adopted by the Board of Supervisors.

And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Start off with the questions from our council.

Uh let's go opposite.

Member Higgins.

Well, Member Rhodes.

Thank you, Ali, for the presentation.

Uh, let's see.

Um, my first question is just in regards to I understand that the situation is kind of like we already do this, so we don't have anything to do.

Um, but I'm interested to know if the pol like that whether or not these policies reflect our current climate realities.

Um, given that these were probably done.

I mean, it doesn't really even matter anymore, right?

Because things are happening so quickly.

So it would just be interesting to know whether or not this is really supportive of what we need as a community versus just what has already been, you know, established some time ago.

Taking some notes on that, thank you for that question.

Um, so you may notice in the document that it so it does reference the climate action plan, but it references the climate action plan from 10 years ago.

So that was adopted in 2013 or 2014.

And we have been in the process over the last couple of years of updating that climate action plan.

Um, it did make it through this body, it made it all the way to the planning commission.

Um, and we went through a couple of rounds with the planning commission, and they asked us to go back to the drawing board on our greenhouse gas emissions inventory.

So we are now in the process of updating our greenhouse gas emissions inventory.

Um, and we're anticipating that um the new climate action plan that reflects current current issues will be released.

I'm we're assuming um, I'm hoping it'll be adopted mid-2026 with any luck, and that I think at that point we can actually probably go through and amend this again to, as I said, reflect the new policies because that'll supersede the old climate action plan.

Um that document, I I can't speak to what policies will be adopted by the board of supervisors.

I don't know yet, but those will be much more current and much more reflective of what's happening now.

And a big difference between our 2014 climate action plan and the current one is that it includes a natural and working lands inventory, which very specifically looks at the climate co-benefits of open space.

Um, so very deeply related to this.

We just can't reference it yet because it's not adopted.

In reference to again a concern that I hold near and dear, which is evacuation routes and fire safety.

In the reports that were reviewed, is there anything that really supports that in our community?

Or are there ways that you've looked at it that we can access more resources for that?

So this draft appendix does reference the safety element, which we are also very close to having adopted that went through the planning commission on Monday, and is actually on the same path to adoption as this document.

So we felt comfortable cross-referencing those policies, and we'll finalize them when the board adopts it.

So policies that are in the safety element that have just been updated, including the new maps that Calfire just adopted, all of that are going to be reflected in that.

And specifically to policies about fire, I I actually don't remember if we cataloged any in this document, but I can take a quick look while we're chatting.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

When you talk about public access to open space, we're talking about publicly publicly owned properties, is that right?

So none of none of this has anything to do with privately held properties because that's what the other thing we looked at is busy trying to fill up with houses.

So in terms of having kind of general open space, is there anything in this policy or in your efforts to buy up properties to ensure open space?

I know that where I currently live, when we moved there 40 years ago, it was generally open around us more than it is now.

The deer lived on our property and came across and went to the various creeks that don't really exist anymore according to government policy, all those creeks don't exist.

This year for the first time, the deer have almost disappeared.

I mean, really, just in the last six months.

They had moved almost entirely onto my property and my neighbors' property and the other.

I mean, they live on our property because there's no place else for them to be.

So is there any look to buy up property to ensure open space?

Because it's being taken away just as fast as they can build.

And so, yeah, I know I'm I'm editorializing, I apologize, but you know, is that really the question is is that in what you're looking at is how to create more open space that's safe that's been saved.

So there are policies throughout the general plan.

Um, I'm trying to see if there are any in the Eden areas uh plans specifically, but there are policies about, for example, preserving open space areas for the protection of public health and safety, provision of recreational opportunities, production of natural resources, sensitive biological habitat, etc.

That's from the East County area plan.

Yeah, I mean, you know, in the Eden area general plan, the county should pursue opportunities to increase access from all parts of the Eden area to trail systems, etc.

So that's not specifically to preserving lands.

So there are in some places in the document.

I can't say immediately, I wish I could recall every single one off the top of my head.

Um, if there are any in the Eden area general plan, um there are some of the programs that exist within the county, um, or adjacent to the county for that support the preservation of open space generally don't specifically apply to Fairview, but you may be aware of the Altamont Landfill Open Space Committee and the Altamont Landfill Open Space Fund, which is a fund that exists um uh to essentially create a pool of money to purchase open space land and keep it in open space in perpetuity.

Um I mean, as you know, we we don't have a parks department in the county, so our partners uh at hard are essentially the the parks district, you know, the parks department for the county, but they operate independently, and so the county you know doesn't have control over what they do, but they're great partners, and um we we do um support their efforts wherever we can to increase access to open space.

Yeah, because the focus, the focus of Fairview over its entire history, as far as I can see, is to preserve open space, and it's not just so we can have a horse in the backyard, but it's you know it's for the entire environment.

So somehow anyway, I'll be quiet, but it's we're losing what can I say back to you.

Thanks, Member Farmer.

I really don't have any comments.

Okay, I've got several for you.

Um, what has been some of the main key points from the other groups that have seen this presentation?

Um let's see, let me turn my mind back to it.

So we had very few comments from the CENOL CAC, which is the body that I presented to most recently.

Um they they said these policies all already exist in the general plan, and I said yes, they do.

And they said, well, why, you know, what are we why are we doing this?

Um, and my answer to that was that it is a bit of a belt and suspenders approach.

Um so these do already exist in the general plan.

Um, and because we we don't have final guidance from the state, we are um ensuring that they and we know that we already have compliant policies by tracking them through this appendix.

Um so that was a null.

Um, the Eden area Mac, you know, also understood that this is essentially just a catalog of existing policies.

Um and they were really interested in, okay.

So now what?

So we've got these policies, they exist.

Are we implementing them?

Are we do we have?

I mean, so how do we put this into action?

Um, and the Ag Advisory Committee I also actually had very few comments.

Um I anticipate they will have a lot of comments from the Castor Valley Mac, so I'm really um interested to hear what they have to say.

Um I think that they're well, I don't want to um, I don't know yet, but I anticipate a lot of comments there.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

And when I see amendments or amending, that usually means changes other than amending or adopting the CEQA exemption request in there, what else is changing?

The only change that would be made to the existing open space element, which if you've seen uh was adopted in like 1970, it has a groovy swirly cover.

Um, it was amended once in 1994.

Um, and all this does is add an appendix, which is before you.

And then seeing the Dublin measure II and the CEQA roll out this week.

Do we see any impact here?

Because here we are saying it's exempt.

There's no major impact or major changes.

Um do you see anything changing after that?

I don't so um all of the policies have already been considered under CEQA as part of the process for adopting the general plan elements that they already exist in.

So um they've all already been considered um under environmental review, so it would be duplicative.

Thank you.

Let's open up for public comment.

Bruce King.

Bruce King, um, I guess I'm a little critical here.

Um, you know, when you read definitions of rewilding, you know, it's creating new and wild areas, also including strategies to improve existing open spaces and connect them to form larger networks.

Includes uh habitat restoration, recreation access, water management, preserving cultural heritage sites.

Wow.

Um, I think our county, especially the planning department is really good at writing policies, policies with goals and objectives.

What when it gets down to it, it's who owns the land, what is it zoned for, and they're allowed to do whatever it's zoned for.

And you know, if it's got overlay zones for uh biological resources and in this and that, um, it doesn't count.

Okay.

I mean, it's just whatever it's zoned for, that that's what they're allowed to do.

Um, and that's private property rights.

I respect that.

But even for the lands that our county owns, like public works and flood control.

If you say, are you doing any of these rewilding things?

The answer is that's not in our mission.

We don't wanna do that.

We're not funded to do that.

Okay, I hear it all the time.

Say, they you know, public works and flood control.

We don't want to do those kind of things.

So it leaves it up to hard and East Bay Regional Park District to do a lot of these things.

So uh to me, uh I think implement implementation is the issue.

Okay, we got lots of lots of policies, uh uh goals, objectives.

When you read them, I've tried to apply them to projects, and it's sorry, but there's no requirement to do those things.

They're nice nice things to state in the policy to say that you're being compliant with state laws, so a little bit of critical.

I I think the the county tries really hard, but I think we fail a lot of times in implementing these kind of things.

There are no more speakers.

Thank you.

This is an action item.

Uh, close public comment.

And back to our board for the action item.

Just as a reminder, the last page of the handout had what they're seeking.

Um boarding the proposed open space settlement amendments and notice of exemption from CEQA to the planning commission with the recommendation that amends be adopted by the Board of Supervisors.

So staff is requesting.

Is it so moved?

Second.

Get a roll call, please.

Council Member Farmer.

Aye.

Councilmember Higgins.

Aye.

Councilmember Philbin?

Aye.

Councilmember Rhodes.

Aye.

Councilmember uh Chair Englin.

Aye.

Motion passes 5-0.

Thank you.

Close out that item.

Moving on to the chair's report.

I really only had one thing to remind folks of, and I was not here at the October meeting, but tomorrow night in San Lina and San Lorenzo at the library at 6 p.m.

Can somebody remind me the topic appropriate name of what we'll be discussed again tomorrow with all the Macs?

Big Mac.

Budget.

Overview.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Took my minutes.

Okay, dealing with the budget input and transparency among the areas that was covered in October.

So should be a good meeting, interesting meeting tomorrow night.

Subcommittee reports.

We don't have anything to report on at this time.

We're hoping to hear more from the sheriff, maybe in January.

Um other council announcements, comments, and reports.

Member Fulban.

I'd like to thank everyone who attended the Veterans Day celebration on November, I think it was the 8th, doesn't matter what day it was.

It was Saturday.

We had a great event.

Um Nate Miley was there and spoke.

We had the honor flight people there who spoke.

I gave the keynote address, and of course, I'm Toastmaster, so I was wonderful.

But no, seriously, it was a very nice event, and I encourage you to um mark that weekend just ahead of Veterans Day next year, and we'll let you know exactly when it's gonna be.

I think it's a request for something for the agenda.

You can tell me what I'm really asking for.

Um I received notification of sidewalks going in on 2nd Street.

I live on 2nd Street.

It was a horrible notification from the point of view that I could not tell from the map that was sent to me what the heck they were talking about, and they were using words that didn't make any sense to me.

So I'm concerned about whether or not there's going to be a public um meeting about it.

The only one they've had was back in February.

Thank you, Chris.

The only thing that was said at that meeting basically was we're gonna do sidewalks.

That was it.

Took them five minutes.

People who spoke at that meeting, their number one concern was traffic and speed on 2nd Street, which we have been talking about ag nauseum.

I am I just want to know what's going on.

Uh, are this are the sidewalks on both sides of the street?

How you know where is I know that there is um public right-of-way.

Public right-of-way that we who have lived there forever have basically ignored because nothing was ever done.

I know that there have been fences that have been approved by the county along our street, and I'm not sure they look to me like they're set back far enough.

Anything that needs to be done to open up the public right-of-way that it looks like the homeowners are required to pay for for having that done.

At some level, I can see that, but I can't really tell where that line is on my property.

The map that was sent to me was really only about my property.

Um, it talked about a wood, a wood, something or other being removed and where their arrow was.

There is no wood anything where they're arrow pointed.

So that's what I'm saying.

I really do know what they're talking about, but I'm just saying the map was incorrect, and it doesn't show the house, so I don't have a sense of it.

I need to be quiet.

Can we have somebody check on that?

Um, we've got a lot of people that live on 2nd Street besides me.

Um, and if they got similarly um quality maps, they probably also don't quite know what's going on.

Um, and I'm also interested to know why it's why East Avenue and then 2nd Street, nothing for Winfeld, and they're the corner of Winfeld and East Avenue.

Students cannot make that corner without walking out in the middle of the street the way it is now.

So I'm wondering why that's not a higher priority to get that taken care of.

Um anyway, I'm I didn't mean to make this personal, but I'm just thinking that other residents along that street, if they got what I got, are also wondering what's going on.

I have lodged a complaint by phone.

I haven't heard anything.

Um, but anyway, so is that am I asking that something be put on our agenda or am I just asking staff to look into it?

Do you know do you know what it is I want to get to where we're going?

I'm not sure if Tona's on with us, but if not, we can bring it up in our agenda planning next week.

Okay, thank you.

But I something needs to happen with that regard.

Okay, thank you.

Other comments.

Yeah.

Chris.

Um, yeah, to to uh tack on to what Sally said.

Um maybe with your your agenda planning meeting, you could somehow work a trip from someone for public works to come talk to us.

You know, uh to the D Street stuff that's been going on, it's been going on for a while, and it would be nice to get like an overview of um what's been done, what they're gonna do, and and when it's gonna be done.

Um I don't know if there's any other big ones in the area, but you know, it would be nice to just get an overview of what public works has got going on in fair view, uh, what they got on the schedule.

So um that would be pretty cool.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

I'll just piggyback really quick on what Chris was saying, which is I feel an overgrown sense of my own power that last month I was complaining about the D Street, um, and the public works put up a couple of signs on D Street saying they were gonna do construction the day before our meeting, and then they they never showed up, and the signs are still there.

And I don't know if they got scared off, but um, it is true on D Street, they're still they've done a lot of work, which is wonderful and great, but it's like unfinished.

The lines haven't been drawn.

It's it would be a second thought, it would be good to get a report.

Any other comments?

Any comments from absolute fill in or staff?

No comments, but I just wanted to um acknowledge there's two raised two um speakers who have raised their hand, but I'm not sure if we can take their public comment.

It's only five to eight if you want to let the speaker can, but you have to open public comment again.

Okay, we'll reopen public comment and hear what they have to say.

Brenda, uh, you have three minutes.

Hi, I just wanted to circle back to the fireworks ordinance and the uh the frustration of that.

We've been doing this for years.

Um I think the subcommittee was of the Mac was formed to sort of get things going and give us updates.

I understand that there are probably no updates, but I'd like to ask uh Todd in your meetings and working with the sheriff's department, which I understand is uh you know handling it.

Are you getting any excuses as what the holdup is?

I mean, we are the only jurisdiction that doesn't have such an ordinance.

It's an easy peasy thing.

So are they being blocked by the county legal department or is it their own legal department uh in drafting um the ordinance?

Thank you.

As you know, we can't respond to those, but we'll move on to the next caller, please.

Fran, go ahead.

Thank you.

Uh Frank Krug on Amex Court.

I raised my hand at the item subcommittee reports.

So I think it would be appropriate and allowable for you to comment after both Brenda and I make comments.

I was really hoping to hear an update tonight regarding the uh Fairview, the fireworks ordinance.

As you know, as far back as December 22, the MAC first took action requesting a more comprehensive ordinance with stricter enforcement and accountability.

Since then, there were occasional updates from members of the sheriff's department and impressive PowerPoint presentations with glimmers of hope of an ordinance in progress.

However, there seemed to be nothing concrete or even an outline of an ordinance forthcoming.

Eventually, our Fairview MAC took the reins and in July 2025, council members expressed frustration and the lack of progress and appointed a subcommittee and asked that the item their report be agendized for every meeting.

As far as I could tell, they were the subcommittee appointed in June this past year, and there was a report in July.

And other than one report in the summer saying there was no progress, or it was in progress and review, we've not heard anything else.

So I was really disappointed tonight, Todd, to hear that there was again no report.

This subcommittee is our hope for keeping the fire alive, keeping feet to the fire, and keeping the focus on an ordinance for Fairview.

Thank you.

And I would appreciate comments.

I've mentioned several times I'm not going to speak for the Sheriff's Department, but I do speak to them monthly.

And we know that there seems to be progress moving forward.

We know there has been a newer type of draft that has been circulated in the last couple of months.

We know a couple of the sticking points are looking at, such as, you know, who would handle appeals, so if they if depending on who the agency was, etc.

So I do know it's moving forward.

They are not going to present until they actually have some updates other than just rough concepts that have gone through, but we are in touch with them regularly, and it does seem like it's making progress.

Again, we've said it several times, but they think that early to mid next year, definitely by the 4th of July is currently the goal.

And again, they said as soon as they have something more substantiative, they will be back shortly.

So that's really what I know.

And with that, I will close public comment and wish everybody a very happy holidays.

And with that, we are adjourned.

Good night.