The Half Moon Bay Planning Commission held a special hybrid meeting on September 25, 2024 (the agenda listed the meeting as Tuesday, September 24, 2024 at 6:00 PM, but the instruction specifies this date). The meeting focused on a briefing and subcommittee selection for Objective Design Standards (ODS), heard public comment regarding the Hyatt Place Hotel project, and approved the minutes from June 25, 2024.
Welcome to the special meeting for the City of Half Moon Bay Planning Commission on Tuesday, September 24th, 2024. At this point, Bridget is going to go over the Zoom protocol for this meeting. I'm just going to make it short and sweet. We um do have PCT live on their website and on Channel 27. We are doing uh Spanish interpretation, like always. And if you have a green card for public comment that is not scheduled on the or comment that's not on the agenda, you can speak at the general comment section. If not, we have um time for public comment during the specific item. Um for those of you that are on Zoom, please raise your hand virtually and we will um call upon you. Um I think that's it in a nutshell, we didn't have any correspondence. This is a briefing, so um that's all I have, so I'll turn it back to you. Thank you, Bridget. So let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Can you please conduct the roll call? Yes. Um Commissioner Reddick. I am here. Thank you. Welcome back. Um Commissioner Hernandez is not here at the moment. Uh Commissioner Gorn. Here. Commissioner, um, I'm sorry, Vice Chair Johannes is absent this evening, and we have Chair Gossett. Present. We have three commissioners present at this time. Okay, so we'll move on to the approval of the minutes from June 25th, 2024. Oh, well after. We could do it after the minute. All the commissioners were present that evening, so we should have a we have a quorum to approve, if if so, and inclined. I move to approve. I'll second that. Um those in favor? Yes. Okay. Motion uh minutes approved. Okay, and now we will move on to public comment. And Dave Shore wouldn't. Good evening, and thank you. Um it's not possible to address the deficiencies of the EIR on the Hyatt Hotel project in three minutes of verbal comment, so more will be submitted in writing within the next week. Bottom line, this project has significant and unavoidable impacts on visual resources as clearly delineated in the EIR. Under CEQA normal procedures, this means that the project as proposed at 34 feet in height cannot be approved. For reasons unclear, staff is recommending pushing this through anyway through the mechanism of adopting a statement of overriding considerations. This strikes me as rather strange. After all, the planning department is typically enforcing regulations and code rather than encouraging working around them or ignoring the rules altogether. As a very simple analogy, if I tried to put up a 12-foot fence in my backyard, my neighbor would call the planning department, somebody would promptly be knocking on my door, telling me that plainly the rules don't allow for a 12-foot fence, and I can't do that. Regarding the Hyatt project, there's an analogy here. It's quite unfortunate that the EIR process is structured such that you're effectively given only the choice between the project that the applicant wants or no project at all. Staff is basically daring you to turn this down with their heavy thumb on the scale. It would be much better if there could be an open and honest discussion among all parties about project alternatives, which include smaller buildings of lower height, which would not impact visual resources. As was suggested by the AAC several years ago. When you consider this project two weeks from now, I hope that you focus on the big picture here.