[The Alameda County Board of Supervisors Transportation/Planning Committee met on June 3, 2026, with Supervisor Miley and Supervisor Halbert present. The meeting covered six agenda items, including discussions on floor area ratio definitions, allowable uses in agricultural zones, a pilot for unincorporated communities coordination, a trail recommendation for the Alameda Tesla property, and a resolution supporting an innovative freight transportation system. Public comment was heard on multiple items, with significant debate on the Tesla trail issue.]
Item 1: Floor Area Ratio Definition
Item 2: Allowable Uses Under Measure D
Item 3: Unincorporated Communities Coordination Pilot
Item 4: Tesla Park Trail Recommendation
Item 6: Cybertran Freight Partnership Resolution
The County Board of Supervisors Transportation Slash Planning Committee meetings order. Will the clerk please call the roll to establish our forum? Supervisor can I like here? Supervisor Halbert present. Member quorum. Thank you all. I appreciate members of the public participating, either in person or online. Apologies for the room technical issues require that we be in this room today. It's a little bit tight inside, but everyone will have a chance to participate, including public comment. And if those people who are online wish to participate, there's a procedure for doing that, and I will ask the clerk to please describe that for anyone online. If you'd like to participate remotely, you can follow the teleconferencing guidelines posted at WWEW. And use the raise your hand function. We have many online. Yes, we have uh 26 people on the okay, very good. We have one, two, three, four, five, six items plus public comment today. The first item is an informational item discussion of discussion of floor area ratio as it pertains. Partially covered roof over a gravel walkway. Is there a presentation from planning department? Yeah, I'll take that one. Uh Albert Lopez Plan Director. Uh this item, it's it um there's a couple of terms that are used in the East County area plan, which I believe this is referencing um related to floor area and the definition of building. Um floor area ratio is uh it's a ratio between the size of buildings and the and the lot and the in the east county area plan, the floor area ratio generally it's 0.01, except for agriculture. Yeah, additional uh floor area bump. Um, but as it pertains to uh this particular item, I wanted to talk a little bit more about the definition of a building, which is in our code, and that's how we uh determine whether or not something should be counted as floor area. Um generally speaking, the if it requires a building permit and has been um engineered to uh as a supporting structure for the uh um I'll read the actual definition of the building, it's uh any structure erected for the support shelter or enclosures of persons, animals, property, um, and so if it requires a building permit and sort of meets those characteristics, we generally consider it to be a good uh if it is a building, then it does count towards the floor area ratio. Um and again with that point oh one generally speaking of the buildings in the um in the East County area plan, specifically, I think you have to talk to Ag Zone in this particular case, and so if there is um, we did have one case, I believe it was a couple of years ago. You might remember a cemetery that we approved. Um, and there were there were mausoleums um as part of that, and at one point we weren't going to count those as buildings, but we later on did count them, which we did. We had to reduce the size of the cemetery, or I think I think we actually ended up eliminating the mausoleums because of that because we did determine them to be buildings and they butted up against the floor air ratio maximums, and so um without a ton of context on this item. I would say that if it is a building, requires a building permit is uh engineered structurally to support um an enclosure of some of some kind for humans to use, then we would consider that to be a building and subject to the floor air ratio. So um do we need to um make a change to the definition of that or do we need to make a um voter initiated and voter-approved um uh amendment to measure D to and I think the um comments that I've heard is um that if it is open air that if it's a flooring that is semi-permeable, that it is unattached, that um similar to solar panels, which also cover the ground below them but are not considered part of FAR, i.e. the intersect power, that there is a way to have the meetings not counted as floor area ratio, and that a definition could perhaps alleviate that, like the definition of a pool, which used to be considered FAR and now is not considered. So I guess could staff work on the what we're trying to accomplish and figure out the how we can accomplish that. Yes. Well, so certainly we can come up with a definition of a building that meets the walkway. Yes, the criteria that you talked about on the arcade or something like that that is open air, permeable floor, unattached to another building, I guess, as opposed to attached to the ground. Um, you know, there is always the word structural to me. I I assume that that meant that if it's holding up the building, so helping the building to stand erect, then that counts. But if it's completely unattached, it has no structural bearing. Yeah, so and and could you remind us where exactly the page and the paragraph you're referencing when you did that? So the building uh definition is in the zoning code and zone mission section. Um that's uh 17.04 of the of the uh county code. Um, there is always a caveat about measure D, of course, because measure D does in the large parcel ag it doesn't talk about structures, it only talks about buildings, and then going back to that definition of buildings. You know, there could be a conflict there. Any zoning code, any ordinance, policy that the county adopts has to be consistent with measure D. Um, so to the extent that any definition change doesn't do that, then I think we'll be okay. But there's always some interpretation, as you know, when it comes to measure. Um, been on both sides of that that argument over the years, so that's the caveat. Yeah, supervisor Miley, do you have any questions about this? Yeah, and we um it's not requiring a motion, but um, can we provide direction to staff to work on as Albert mentioned, we can find a way to further define this?