I see a few additional people have entered the room, and this will be the residential appeals committee meeting starting at thr uh a little after I stop speaking now that it's three o'clock.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to uh if you're not the appellant or the applicant are on their team and you would like to speak on at open forum or on the agendized item, you can grab a speaker card here and fill it out and turn it into Steph.

And if you parked at the garage under two fifty Franco Gawa Plaza, I believe it's called the Dalsille Garage, we do have promoted parking.

If you scan the park mobile sheet up here next to Steph, you'll get promoted parking as long as you haven't started your parking session yet.

Thank you, Catherine.

And with that, I would like to call the residential appeals committee of the Oakland Planning Commission for April fifteenth, twenty twenty-six uh to order.

Appreciate everybody coming.

There might be I know some confusion.

Usually we have our regular planning commission meeting on these days, but we have a very special appeal today, so we we swapped in that one in lieu.

And uh with that, um, can we do the roll call?

Uh Lee.

Here.

Commissioner Ahrens is absent.

Chair Randolph?

Here.

You have a quorum.

Excellent.

Um, I don't think there's any committee matters.

Anything we need to raise.

No.

Nope.

So um we are gonna go, I think the we don't need an agenda discussion, so we're gonna go into open forum.

Are there any speaker cards for open forum?

There are no there are no speakers for open forum.

All right, open forum is closed.

Uh and with that, we're gonna go to um new business, the uh appeal in front of us.

And the way it's gonna work is we're gonna have a ten minute staff re uh presentation.

We have ten minutes for the appellants and then ten minutes for the applicants, followed by if there's any public comment.

Is that correct?

Yes, and before we go into the details, do you want me to outline what the item is?

Yes, please.

So the item is nineteen oh one SLMR drive.

The proposal is an appeal of a determination that a change to the approved plans for case file PLN 23090 is considered minor per condition of approval number six.

The revisions include refinements to site grading, such as retaining wall with a maximum height of three feet on the side of the house and a planter and an elevated path on a retaining wall at the rear of the home with a maximum height of two feet.

And the case planner for the city of Oakland is Kubalai Anonley, who will be making a presentation uh before the appellant and the applicant at your pleasure.

Sounds good.

If you want to have staff coming up to start the presentation, thank you.

And just for the record state default name and then my name is Kubulai Inanla.

I'm planner one with the city of Oakland.

Um you guys hear me?

All right, perfect.

Okay, so um, as was previously mentioned, this is an appeal of DET 2600 3 at 1901 Asylomar Drive.

So I'll talk a little bit about the permit history of this site.

Um this uh there was a uh application for a renovation uh which included a creation of the ADU and expansion of the home uh with an upper story addition, which was approved in December 2023 under PLN 23090.

Construction for this project began in August 2024.

Um later on it was discovered that um there was uh an incorrect um lot area submitted on the original planning drawings.

Um so the applicant submitted revisions to bring the project into compliance with FAR requirements in January 2026.

Uh on February 13th, 2026, uh planning staff issued a determination that the revisions constituted a minor change, and then um seven days later, an appeal for that determination was filed.

Um the project itself um is situated on a downsloped lot in the RH4 and S9 zones.

Um and then our determination letter determined that uh the revisions submitted um to an approved and under construction project were a minor change according to the original approvals conditions where minor and major changes are defined.

Um these revisions themselves are grading modifications and the addition of retaining walls uh ranging in, I should say two to three feet high in the side yards.

Okay, um it might be a little bit hard to see on the slides, but uh what we have here are the originally approved site plan and then the proposed revision site plan.

So if you look on the right, um you can see the planter um retaining wall, which is um one of the revisions.

Um and then on the what is the left side of the building, um there's a low walkway uh that has been added as well, which um goes to about a maximum of two feet high.

Uh and then these are the elevations of the revisions.

So you can see on the um bottom left, there is a retaining wall uh at the base of the uh structure, and then the planter can can be seen on the bottom right elevation as well.

Um so I know that the appellant will be uh giving a presentation uh later, but just a very overall summary of what the um uh appellant is alleging is that the um that zoning aired when determining that the revision is a minor change and that the project is not compliant with multiple Oakland zoning standards and procedures, and that the appellant is requesting that RAC overturn this determination, uh halt construction and require a full review of the proposed changes.

Um so I've sort of um broken down this uh appeal into some of its major issues.

Um minor change determination.

Uh city staff found that the proposed revisions are minor because they're limited to small grading adjustments, low retaining walls are from two to three heat, two to three feet maximum.