for being here this evening and welcome to what we're calling commission Palooza this is I believe the first time we've done this but we're here to kick off the general plan update process and the commissions have a very important role to play in this number one because you really all represent citizens of Davis and getting citizen input and engagement is critical in the general plan and number two because each of you have an expertise be it in open space being in transportation it's very important to bring that perspective in as well so welcome to everybody so now I'm going to call the meeting to order officially okay with that um I need um I'm gonna start with Alana on my left here and ask if you have a quorum for your commission I do Patrick to you open space has a quorum excellent uh planning has a quorum uh recreation and parks commission has a quorum social services commission has quorum transportation commission has a quorum fantastic I'm so happy for that thank you all for being here um I am now going to have to turn to you all and ask if someone could make a motion to designate me as the chair I move to designate planning commission chair Michelle Weiss as chair of the Commission of Palooza I second the motion uh all those in favor aye okay excellent thank you all okay um with that I need to ask if I can get a motion to approve the agenda motion to approve the agenda a second thank you all those in favor aye okay excellent we've got this agenda here perfect okay so we're moving right along and as you can tell I like to keep things on time and moving swiftly so that will be a key theme of this evening uh not that it's not important content and material we'll be going to but it is best done with a judicious use of time um okay with that I want to move us to the main part of our presentation on the general plan update I'm gonna explain to everybody in the audience that tonight is a little bit different than a normal standard meeting where there's a lot of public comment at the beginning on matters not on the agenda and then there's public comment after and all of that tonight we've only got one item and that is this general plan update we will be taking public comment but it will be at the very end of the meeting so you're gonna have to you'll be hearing an update you'll be hearing some clarifying questions you'll be then hearing each commission going through their feedback you'll be hearing a response a little bit there's a lot of that will be going on before we go to public comment and again public comment will only be on this item so I just want to be clear on that and it's always important to us to get to public comment that's why we'll continue to move with some speed but yet taking our time to make sure we fully understand things.

Okay with that I would like to I think turn it over to you Sherry thank you Chair Weiss I am going to turn the meeting over to the city's consultant Mr Eric Yurkovich who works for RAMI and associates chairs commissioners and members of the public thank you all for coming this evening my name is Eric Yerkovich I'm a principal at RAMI and associates and I've outed myself as a Gen Xer by calling this Commission a Palooza maybe some of you remember Lala Palooza from the 90s I think it's cool again this is really uh an exciting opportunity I'm um joined by my colleague uh Gladys Cornell from AIM Consulting I'm gonna let her introduce herself when she does part of the presentation we'll share in the responsibilities this evening answer your questions and are really here to listen to you all uh this evening um we're gonna have lots of opportunities to engage with the commissions in uh individually uh throughout this process we're gonna share a little bit about how that's gonna happen and when it's gonna happen during the process but as we kick off this process we thought it was really an exciting opportunity to bring everyone together um as one to hear from each of the commissions individually on your thoughts on pressing issues in the community some project outcomes that we want to make sure to to forward through this process but we also want you all to hear from each other and communicate with each other through the portion of the presentation so tonight we're gonna have hear from each commission individually and then at the end we'll have an opportunity for you all to talk amongst yourselves and to share ideas about the things you think are the most pressing issues across commissions how you can collaborate across commissions to implement the good parts of the general

But we also want you all to hear from each other and communicate with each other through the portion of the presentation.

So tonight we're going to hear from each commission individually, and then at the end, we'll have an opportunity for you all to talk amongst yourselves and to share ideas about the things you think are the most pressing issues across commissions, how you can collaborate across commissions to implement the good parts of the general plan update.

My job this evening is really to share an overview of the general plan process.

I'll talk a little bit about the key deliverables, the phases of the work.

I'll hand it over to Gladys and she'll tell you a little bit about the community engagement program that we're going to go through as part of this process.

She'll hand it back to me, and then I will share these preliminary draft project outcomes.

We really divide design these to really start a conversation and give everyone a starting point for the conversation this evening.

We'll then turn it over to you all for clarifying questions again, and then each of your individual commissions will talk about pressing issues and then those project outcomes before we break and then move into kind of a more open and collaborative conversation.

Raming Associates is the lead consultant for the consulting team.

We are a mission-driven planning and urban design firm focused on creating healthy, sustainable, and equitable communities where we work.

I'm based in Berkeley, California, so not very far away from you all.

And we have a pretty extensive set of experience working on general plans across the state, doing innovative policy, and we're also going to be working with some of your commissioner fellow commissioners on the update to the general plan guidelines that's ongoing currently at the state level.

We're joined by a terrific team of collaborators in AIME, environmental science associates, fair and peers, BAE urban economics, Atlas Planning Solutions in Illingworth and Rodkin.

They all bring specific and unique experiences to the process.

Many of them have collaborated and worked on different planning processes in the city.

Many of them bring very specific technical expertise or other tactical expertise and engagement that we'll be working through during this process.

So you'll get a chance to meet all of them.

Each of the commissions will meet with different representatives on our different teams depending on your commission through the process.

And then you're also going to get to meet the project manager for the project from Ramian Associates.

Her name is Melissa Stark.

She's actually sick tonight and unable to join us, otherwise, she would be here with us this evening.

So before we get started, I just want to talk a little bit about what a general plan is.

I think it's it's important to acknowledge what a big opportunity it is for a community to go through a general plan process.

You do it every 10, 15, 20 years.

It's really an opportunity to come together to create a fair, safe, and affordable future for Davis residents.

The general plan really affords a unique opportunity to bring together and share ideas amongst residents, students, people who work in the community, visitors, all with our overall goal of making maintaining Davis as a place where people can thrive in the future.

As many of you all know, a general plan is a long-range policy document that really maps out how the city of Davis serves its community.

Every city and county in the state of California is required to have a general plan and to regularly maintain that general plan.

Everything from our housing, our parks, our roads to our shopping center are a part of these sort of deliberative planning processes.

The plan itself really helps to set forward that long-term vision for the future, building on the community assets that exist now and tackling existing and emerging challenges.

But I think it's important to note that the general plan isn't just about tackling future challenges, it's about coming together to talk about the things that we're facing now and whether you're interested in the housing crisis, the climate crisis, whether you're open interested in open space and urban ecology.

These are all issues currently today, and as we think about the long-range future of the city, we want to address both now and into the future.

For those of you who are familiar with the general plan, it was the city's general plan was last comprehensively updated in 2001.

It's since been amended, like every general plan with a big amendment in 2007, and then it gets regularly amended.

So the housing element is required to be updated every eight years.

Many of you were probably involved in that process a couple of years ago.

The plan itself is sort of organized into these sort of four overarching themes, and then has 21 separate chapters or what we call elements in general plan state law.

Our charge is really to pull forward the ideas that are still relevant and applicable to the context now, and then seek opportunities to kind of organize and streamline the document as we go.

So along with kind of streamlining and making the plan easier for folks to use, updating the general plan is an important opportunity to kind of come together as a community to talk about what we love about Davis, dream up solutions for the challenges that we see in the community, and enhancing what we love about the place to really set that vision and values for the future.

The plan will address all of the batch of new state legislation that's come down in the last five, ten years, tackle new and emerging planning issues, and incorporate all the work that's been done by yourselves in the community over the last several years.

We'll address everything from climate change to park equity to environmental justice, evacuation, urban ecology, in addition to those core components of land use and mobility.

As most of you all know, the state has a requirements for chapters or elements that are that are must-haves in a general plan, and those are all listed up on the screen for you this evening.

But the state does provide flexibility for communities to pull in other issues of concern into a general plan so long as you address those main core tenets of the general plan.

There's been a lot of recent planning and programmatic work within the city, and it's really our job as a consultant team and a general plan team to really honor the work that commissions have done, communities have done, council has done, to lift up the work that's been done in the downtown plan, the parks needs assessment, the climate action and adaptation plan, and all the other great initiatives that have been ongoing within the community.

We're working with you all as commissioners and community members to really understand some of the lessons learned from those processes and really figure out how to incorporate those initiatives into revised goals, policies, and implementation actions for the general plan itself.

And this is just a simple snapshot of a few of those, but there are many others we'll be considering as we go through this process.

For those of you who have worked on a general plan update before, um, they can be long in terms of their timeline.

They have many technical steps, there's a lot of community engagement that goes on.

So what we try and do from the outset is to kind of shape and organize those technical tasks with those community engagement tasks into a series of kind of phases of work where we have defined deliverables that kind of come at the end of each of those different phases of work.

So for this process, we've kind of broken it into these sort of five different phases.

So listening and discovery, land use and mobility plan development, and then policy development, general plan development, public review of that, and then the final review and adoption.

During this initial listening and discovery phase that we're currently in right now, we really try to lay the foundation for the entire entirety of the process.

So we're in the process of creating a community engagement plan, which will map out how we engage different community members, different community organizations within the city.

We're gonna be establishing a series of project outcomes or parameters that we're gonna actually talk about this evening to help really guide our process moving forward.

Then we're gonna work with you all, the community and staff to really understand what you love about Davis and what you'd like to see in the future.

That information will help us refine the vision and value statements for the general plan itself.

And those kind of become again that core tenet of the plan itself.

Also in this sort of initial phase of work, we do a lot of reviewing of existing documents and existing policies that you all have in the books.