Order this meeting of the planning commission for May 6th, 2026.

And I now ask for a moment of silence.

Commissioner Smith, will you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

To the flag of the United States of America.

And to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible liberty and justice for all.

Kayla, roll call.

Before I start the roll call for the meeting, I do want to announce that we have Valeria Venturia at the back of the council chambers for your Spanish translation if needed.

Commissioner Smith.

President.

President Swigger.

Present.

Present.

Greggins?

Present.

Chairperson Gonzalez.

Absent excused.

We have a call.

We have excuse me.

We have a quorum.

Kayla, will you now read the information on how the public may participate in the meeting?

Members of the audience who wish to address the planning commission are requested to complete a speaker card available at the back of the podium at the council chambers.

Please submit the completed card to the clerk before the item is called, preferably before the meeting begins.

I would like to briefly go over the process of submitting comments to the planning commission.

Please submit your public comment to the planning commission electronically, no later than 1 p.m.

on the day of the meeting.

Comments received before the deadline will be sent to the planning commission and will be part of the record and mentioned as part of the public comment portion of the agenda.

Material may be emailed to planning web at city of Merced.gov and should be limited to 300 words or less.

Please specify which portion of the agenda you are commenting on.

For example, oral communications or item number.

Your comments will be presented to the planning commission at the appropriate time.

Any correspondence received after 1 p.m.

will be distributed to the planning commission and retained for the official record.

TV video or listen to the planning commission meeting live, go to the city's website, www.city of Merced.gov, Facebook Live or Comcast Public Access Channel 96.

Members of the public who wish to speak on any matter not listed, and the agenda may speak during this portion of the meeting and will be allotted three minutes.

State law prohibits the planning commission from acting at this meeting on any matter raised during public comment period.

Members of the public who wish to speak on this matter that is listed on the agenda will be called upon to speak during the discussion of that item.

Kayla, do we have any requests to speak?

Yes, we do.

I do call Arturo Martinez Jr.

to the podium.

Members of the uh planning commission, my name is Arturo Martinez Jr.

And I wear many different hats in our community.

But today I'm here on behalf of my hat as a resident of district six.

And today I want to take time to just acknowledge what's going on in District 6, right?

So I I'm an Averwalker and I walk through uh my district and other parts of Merced, and while I'm glad there's development, we see development.

Um I think it's like three or four different housing developers I see in the area building homes we need homes, right?

But when we think for the future, I know some right now the planning commission in the city of Mercedes are also looking for a 30-year plan.

Is how are we gonna address the growing UC needs, the water expressway, and more um other people coming to the city and other jobs.

And uh I do not think that a lot of residents of of Merced just want single family homes.

We could do better with our land.

We could do whether people want to do multi-family, um, rezoning or multi-use rezoning should be something that should be considered.

I know the Virginia Smith Trust Fund, um, unless they got changed.

I know when it got approved, it was single family homes and next to a UC, and it really brings to question what are we doing with our land.

Um I'm a big love of uh I love ag and that's farmers and farm workers.

And while we are annexing, I'm not I anti-annexation, right?

We gotta expand our city, we're gonna end up with the suburbia, just a bunch of single family homes, and then that means more traffic, um, more just people have to walk longer distance to a lot um people have to walk longer distances to either a bus stop or to buy their groceries or their food.

And don't get me wrong, I do see that in Yosemite there is some multi um housing over there they built for the students, but what about for the other residents of Merced?

And I guess my only ask if there's any of the pending commissioners you all take these things into consideration with the city of Merced for our next 30 years, is to think of what can be done to the zoning so that we can make best use of the land to do more dense housing, right?

Um, I I like downtown out there.

We can do what we do in downtown everywhere across the city.