Welcome to the April 10th, 2025 planning and design commission meeting. The meeting

is now called to order. I don't have a gavel so I'm just going to pound my fist on this.

Will the clerk please call roll to establish a quorum.

Thank you, chair. Commissioner Lee.

Here.

Commissioner Llamas.

Here.

Commissioner Naibo is absent. Commissioner Caedon is absent. Commissioner Hernandez is

absent. Commissioner Mosia-Sri.

Here.

I said here.

Commissioner Ortiz.

Here.

Commissioner Blunt.

Here.

Vice Chair Chase.

Here.

Commissioner Ruschke.

Here.

Commissioner Thompson.

Here.

Thank you.

I would like to remind members of the public and chambers that if you would like to speak

on an agenda item please turn in a speaker slip. When the item begins you will have three

minutes to speak once you are called on. After the first speaker we will no longer

accept speaker slips. We will now proceed with today's agenda starting with the land

ancestral lands by choosing to gather today in the active presence of acknowledgment and

appreciation for the Sacramento's indigenous peoples history, contributions and lives.

Thank you. Please remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge 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. So against our first business of

the day will be the director's report. Thank you, Chair. When I am in for the director's

report this evening on Tuesday this week, City Council adopted Title 17 code amendments

to assure that the planning and development code reflects the 2040 general plan guidance

to eliminate minimum parking requirements citywide. Since the general plan was adopted

last March, city staff has been operating under the general plan guidance but now the

code language will match that direction. That's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Move on to the consent calendar. Is there a motion and a second? Oh, we have

to ask for the Robert. Wait, I think I need to ask for are there any members of the public

who wish to speak on the consent calendar before I go to the motion? Thank you, Chair.

I have no speaker slips on this item. Sorry, I kind of improperly script so I've got to

work through that. All right, do I have a motion? Second? Commissioner Blunt? Motion

to pass. I have a motion. Second. I have a second. Thank you. Will the clerk please

call the roll for a vote? Thank you, Chair. Commissioners, please unmute. Commissioner

Lee? Aye.

Commissioner Llamas? Aye.

Commissioner Naibo? It's absent. Commissioner Canaan? It's absent. Commissioner Hernandez?

It's absent. Commissioner Moses-Reed? Aye.

Commissioner Ortiz? Aye.

Commissioner Blunt? Aye.

Vice-Chair Chase? Aye.

Commissioner Rischke? It's absent. Commissioner Thompson? It's absent. And Chair Young?

Aye. Thank you. The motion passes.

All right. We will now proceed with the discussion calendar item 2, the 2024 housing element annual

progress report. Good evening, Chair and commissioners. My name is Greta Seuss. I am a senior planner

with the Community Development Department and I'm here tonight to present to you our

2024 housing element annual progress report. Every April, the city is required to submit

a housing element annual progress report to the state. The report provides status updates

on the city's adopted implementation programs and a report out on the housing production

numbers for the prior calendar year. The 2021 through 2029 housing element planning period

housing target is 45,580 housing units, which is broken down by income level from extremely

low income to above moderate income housing. And this housing target assigned to the city

by the state is known as the city's regional housing needs allocation or RENA. When we

break down that housing target over the eight year period, we must produce about 5,700 units

annually across all income levels. In 2024, we produced a total of 2,387 housing units.

This is a 12.7% decrease in overall housing production from 2023 to 2024. In 2024, the city

produced 544 deed restricted units of extremely low income, low income, very low income and

moderate income units accounting for 22% of total production. This graph also shows how

market influence and greater economic forces impact housing production. For instance, we saw a

large housing boom in 2006, fueled by loose lending restrictions, followed by the 2008

housing market crash and great recession. In 2015, we saw markets pick up with a shift

towards more infill production in the central city. The COVID-19 pandemic then caused material

supply and labor disruption, followed by increased interest rates and inflation. We are now seeing

a slight decline in rents in the central city due to a boom of infill housing production over the

past several years. In looking forward, we anticipate that overall housing production may

be impacted by material cost impacts from tariffs and reduced federal funding for affordable housing

may impact affordable housing production. This graph shows our 2024 housing production numbers

by income level in comparison to the regional housing needs allocation averaged over the eight

year planning period. While we only produced about 42% of our total housing production target,

we did see production of housing across all income levels. This chart shows the number of

units produced by income level and includes the breakdown of deed restricted and non-deed restricted

units, deed restricted affordable projects that counted towards the 2024 calendar year,

include ascent workforce housing, bridge mix use on Arden Way, the San Juan apartments on Stockton,

home key roadway in on Howe, Kines South and more. While deed restricted unit production is critical

to ensuring long-term affordable housing in our community, we know we cannot meet our lower

income arena with deed restricted units alone given current funding availability to meet our

lower income housing need through only regulated affordable housing. We would need to secure at

least $7.5 billion over the planning period with the city of Sacramento's portion being about $2

billion. And in order for us to meet this tremendous need for lower cost housing, we must build more

regulated affordable units, but we must also build more lower cost housing that does not require

subsidy such as multi-unit housing or accessory dwelling units. And this graph shows our accessory

dwelling unit production since 2013. The 2024 calendar year showed a 16% increase in ADU building

permits over 2023. And this shows that we have surpassed our target that we established in 2021

of 680 use within the planning period by already producing over 1,000 ADUs since 2001.

Thus far, 15 ADUs have been constructed using our city-produced free shelf ready plans. 22

separate building permits have been issued with these plans and about 20 additional

applications have been submitted to use the shelf ready plans.

When looking at the number of units permitted by jurisdiction from 2019 through 2023,

Sacramento is the fourth highest producer of housing and as this graph shows is the highest

producer of housing per capita statewide. Moving on to implementation program updates,

this graph shows the number of implementation programs we committed to by implementation

timeframe. Of the 49 adopted implementation programs from our housing element, we committed to

completing over a third of our programs in the short term and a third of them are annual and

ongoing programs. Thus far, we've completed 15 programs, 12 are in progress, 7 have not been

started yet and 15 are annual and ongoing. In 2024, the city completed or made significant

progress on the implementation programs listed here. The city eliminated parking minimum requirements

through the general plan update and as Stacia noted, through approval on Tuesday at City Council

brought our zoning code into consistency with this direction. Additional modifications to

parking requirements will be brought forward for consideration later this year. The city

adopted modifications to our planning and development code related to permitting requirements for

special needs housing such as residential hotels, emergency shelters and permanent supportive

housing and also updated our density bonus ordinance for consistency with state law.

The city launched an affordable housing education campaign with an associated educational website

and eight citywide workshops and we've made significant progress on program H24 also referred

to now as Streamline Sacramento and the photo here shows one of the eight citywide workshops

that we conducted as part of our Sacramento for all housing education campaign.

The city also already completed many programs in prior years listed here

including the development of a housing development toolkit and ADU resource center

of which a screenshot is shown here. We've also made some recent accomplishments that were not

part of our adopted housing element. The first is a recent launch of a housing development toolkit

map. This draft map was developed as a resource for the development community to aid in project

siting and pre-development and includes layers such as our general plan land use and floor area

ratio designations, zoning, vacant lots, the city's housing element, sites inventory,

TCAC opportunity areas, flood layers and a newly developed stormwater drainage infrastructure

requirement layer that was developed with state planning grant funds.

We also recently launched a small developer incubator pilot program in partnership with

two nonprofits to provide training, networking and informational opportunities for small

developers. We've had three very successful events thus far and are looking to host

additional trainings and resources through the end of the year. This concludes my presentation.

I'm happy to answer any questions. We also have Greg Sandlin, planning director and Yaya and Isle

City Housing Manager available to answer any questions. Thank you.

Are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this item?

Thank you, chair. I have no speaker slips on this item.

Okay. Let's commissioners. Are there any of you who wish to speak on this map item?

I'll let you do that.

Thank you, chair. Great job, Greta. I remember when we were approving the housing element,

it's a huge amount of work and just congratulations by getting, you know, this far in the process.

I think it's a lot of great progress. I'm really excited.

I just had two quick questions. Obviously, it's unfortunate to see that our development is down.

Was it 12 or 16 percent? 12 percent? Yeah. So that's unfortunate, but we will wait and see

what happens with the market. There's a lot of things happening, so we'll wait and see.

I do think as a city, though, we've done a great job with our streamlining efforts,

and we obviously will be continuing that process as you heard, so really excited to see what more

we can do to encourage more development. So two questions. One is on the ADU slide that you had.

So I think generally we understand that you usually, in the planning department, get more

building permits than what we see actually developed, right, built and actually receive

a building permit. So that's clearly reflected here, but I'm just curious, and this could be

really general, a general question for staff for all development, but maybe particularly for ADUs,

have you looked into or asked questions or gathered any research or information on why

people specifically for ADUs are applying to build and actually only and don't get to the

building permit process? I, of course, I have a construction company, so I understand that sometimes

cost comes into play, and that can certainly be a factor, and I know we've talked about

creative ways that maybe we could find opportunities for some of those individuals,

some of those applicants to get financing, but I'm just curious if you have identified or asked

the question, because I think that if we're looking at ADUs as one of those housing types that could

fill some of those gaps, right, for Rina numbers, that it could be some good insight for us to

identify more opportunity. So curious if you guys have done any research or asked the question about

why they're getting, you know, you're getting an application, but they're not getting to building.

Yeah, we haven't actually done that sort of more in-depth surveying. It's something we could

look into doing, but I think the general, what we see is kind of what you were

alluding to in more of like the financing or maybe just something happened, and they are, you know,

not interested in building it anymore, but yeah, I do hear a question. That's another question that

someone emailed me yesterday, so I think it's a good question, and we can look at maybe doing

a survey. I think that's something that has been coming up. Yeah, I mean exactly what I was thinking,

even like a quick like three to five question survey, and again, it's, I know it's giving

stuff a little extra step there, but it could be that, hey, you know, you have a pending applicant

on an ADU, that's, it's been a year, and you know, maybe that application is going to fall,

fall off, and just maybe gathering some information around what is, what is the issue, right? Why can't

we get from A to B? I think it would be really helpful and insightful. And then my other question is

on the small developer incubator program. I've heard a lot about it, really excited. I've heard

a few people that have participated. I'm just curious though, like I know generally what the

goal and intent is, but can you speak a little bit more about the program? I haven't actually

attended one of the sessions, so sort of what the city's goal and intent for that program is?

Yeah, absolutely. So the, the training partner that we are working with, it provides training for

small scale, generally residential development, but it can also be used for commercial or

adaptive reuse. But our goal is really to increase the capacity of small developers

that might want to build maybe missing middle housing or start building kind of more intergenerational

wealth and kind of target those groups that are not represented in our development community today.

So looking at really targeting like BIPOC, women, LGBTQ, like trying to get folks into development

that have historically been excluded and just give people the tools to create the

communities they want to see or create the housing that they need in their communities

and do it in the way that's reflective of what they see Sacramento looking like.

But also goes really well with the timing of the adopted missing middle interim ordinance.

We have a really big gap in that type of development occurring in the city and so that's part of it

is people are really excited to build that type of housing. And so part of, part of it is really

like learning what are the hurdles to doing that and the incremental development alliance,

our training partner is really all about that and you know trying to figure out, okay, how do we,

how do we do this now that it's allowed even though there are some common hurdles to developing

that type of housing. And I'll just add Greg Sandlin, planning director. For, from my perspective,

I think this is an exciting growth area because you have your traditional housing developers

larger, like way different type of finance, they have a lot of experience, but I've walked by the

counter twice now on my way to my desk and I hear, well, in this case you'd use the interim

missing middle housing ordinance to these people at the counter and you know it's missing middle,

I think ranges not just from like duplex to triplex, but also ADUs. And there's a lot of people

that are just kind of dipping their toe in the water looking at this scene like what they can do

and for the city to proactively reach out to these folks and give them the confidence and the

confidence to move ahead, I think is something we can do proactively. We're looking at doing

an open house and a little bit with the participants at the workshop, also inviting other people

where they can come in with a site plan. They just have an idea and they'd be planners, architects,

engineers from public works and utilities ideally, folks from the building division that can just

give them an idea of whether this could work or not just from the outset and then they can invest in

you know work with an architect or a designer and move on, but I really like the idea of cultivating

just more of that organic development because you see here in the slide

ADU production is still going up. It didn't dip like the rest of the city's housing production,

so it's just another way of getting more units built. Yeah, I mean you know I've talked at

Nazium about ADU, the importance of us cultivating the development, I think that's really exciting

what you're saying Greg and I agree 100%. It's a huge opportunity for us as a city. So thank you

guys for doing that because I think we've oftentimes you know we've talked about you know a development

toolkit that you guys have created right at one point and it's like you know we have all these

rules, all these guidelines and goals and each area and district of our city have their own

sort of unique guidelines right there's the central city and there's the Alhambra right and some of

them kind of fold over and cover you know two plans in one kind of area and so in terms of just

design aesthetics right and the requirements involved it can get really complex and you know

we've certainly I personally just run into just issues with trying to really navigate that and so

I just want to express my appreciation for what you guys are doing I think this is really good

stuff so with that I yield my time. Thank you chair. Thanks Greta for the presentation.

I also wanted to ask about ADUs. I from what I heard they're not all of the ADUs that were built

were using the city's shelf ready plans but it sounds like those are kind of increasing so maybe

folks are learning about them a little more and maybe even with these small developer incubator

program workshops more people will start to use those I'm kind of curious have you guys

heard anything about folks who have used those plans and how much maybe it's saved in terms of

timing to get the development through permitting and construction and just kind of you know what

some of those benefits might have might have been so far. Yeah we don't have that exactly

quantified it's a little bit difficult to do just based on like not having kind of comparable

projects to compare it to and but it is something we've kind of heard here and there about costs

and stuff and it does it it does seem like an affordable option right I think the the costs

that we're seeing these be built for is relatively affordable but we don't have like concrete data

on on costs and time but the staff who review the plans are the ones that made the plans so

I think that does probably save some time on their end. Perfect yeah I would imagine so I mean

and to hear that they're we're being used a little more and more is also exciting I think it's a great

opportunity for folks to kind of streamline that process for them and like you guys were saying

you know kind of encourage and empower folks to take the next step because it can be a daunting

thing especially for someone who's not a developer to maybe build out some land in their backyard

to build an ADU or extend in their their home so so just want to kind of commend you guys for

the implementation of that project it seems there's like a lot of good headway being made there.

I am I also was curious about the affordable housing outreach so it sounds like I know we talked

about it at one point and you guys moved very quickly and I saw that yes had it completed so

that's great to hear. I was curious about that outreach I think you said there were about six

or eight sessions I'm wondering if they were like sessions targeting a specific subject or was it like

a session that covered like as much as you could in one session in different areas within the city.

Yes they were all identical workshops so we did eight workshops one in each council district

of the city and we had a couple of exercises to get people thinking about what affordable housing

means and you know kind of their perspective on the topic and getting them to think about

what is how do we get more affordable housing in the city right like kind of getting their

juices flowing and then we got we had a presentation that really walked them through like what is

affordable housing how does it get built what's the cost who's involved and what are kind of the

city's priorities on housing and then giving them examples of how they can get involved

and examples of projects where community input really did shape you know the implementation

of policies and plans so and then yeah pointing them to the website that we've developed and

and things like that so that was kind of our road show which we're happy to do at any time

if there's a request but I think you know people were people were excited about it and I'm hopeful

that people go to the website continuously and we have some videos on there so yeah it was fun to do.

Perfect thank you for that context and I'm glad you guys were up to get that off the ground pretty

quickly and engage with folks throughout the city and just have folks be a part of those conversations.

I did have a question another question about the housing element particularly for farm worker

housing I think there was a bill that was passed and I was trying to look it up right now I couldn't

find it that it might have encouraged I don't know if it mandated cities to carve out some language

or at least address a special needs populations and specifically farm workers was that something

that was included in the city's housing element special attention to potential farm worker housing

and Sacramento. So we do conduct a constraints or we have a community profile that we identify

like housing needs for and I know that we did at the time of our housing element

address all of the you know what was adopted in state law at the time if something was passed

more recently I don't think maybe we addressed it through the housing element in that case but

I don't recall there being anything about farm worker housing in our housing element

so I would have to go back and double check but I'm not sure if you have the bill number

let me know and I'll look into it. Yeah and it's not something that

HCD has brought up with us as far as a strong need and I would say we have a lot of well

we're all struggling with this in the state but we have a lot of options for someone I guess who

is a farm worker to live in our in our city housing affordable housing what not where I think it's

more acute in rural jurisdictions where you have farms and you have communities but prior

prioritization for those farm workers specifically hasn't been made so I think it's pushed a little

bit harder in those rural jurisdictions. Okay well thank you for that context I'll look up the

bill number because I I don't get it I don't know if it was mandated and I agree there are many rural

areas jurisdictions that do focus a lot more on farm worker housing but I would say that there is a

lot of ag lands surrounding Sacramento and for farm worker housing that can be built even on the

periphery of the city limits that could meet the needs of farm workers but but thank you for

entertaining the question I appreciate your your responses I yield my time.

Commissioner Ortiz. Thank you so I am new as you're and I am trying to get to the essence of

what I think this table be for our 2021-2029 housing element plan and I am looking at the column

allocation by income level for very low low moderate and of course down below extremely low

income units and I'm assuming that these annual totals reflect where we are in meeting that green

column okay and as I understand it our target date is 2029 to achieve that green column target.

I'm sorry I'm I appear to it appears to be really really challenging if not well very challenging to

meet the very low the low moderate and extremely low income unit targets and I know there's

challenge in general with development but it would be helpful to me to see a column that says

where we are percentage wise of having met that r hna allocation by income level to date

if you could say to me we are what is it that's 10 000 uh so three four maybe 400 400

of a goal of 10 463 for very low income housing is that correct we have produced

1 506 units of that 10 that's 10 essentially 10 percent of that 10 000 goal yes and I suspect that

the column the other categories are equally low in terms of meeting our target but I'm not good at

math I guess maybe it would be really helpful I don't know if this body ever looks at just those

categories periodically to update us where we are the most challenging income level housing goals

I think there was one slide or figure you provided that said we are doing much better than many other

regions but my senses were probably doing really well on the moderate to you know affordable to

you know higher income and I just feel like maybe anecdotally I'm perceiving that and maybe it's not

correct I guess my my question is how are we ever going to achieve these really challenging

very low low um and extremely low income targets by 20 29 is that plausible realistic and and I

understand we have a lot of strategies where we're looking at 80 reduced reducing parking

increasing density which I think are all one lots of multifamily which is important but

collectively I just think gosh you know how are we going to meet these goals for these really

very low income and people who work in our communities who can't afford to live in our

communities you're not alone in thinking that um so our regional housing needs allocation

is a number that is really it's the need that is identified it's a process that starts at the

state level right for the state yes identifying um you know the housing needs currently and projecting

into the future right and then the regions are assigned a number and then they assign numbers to

their jurisdictions um and so you know what the city has a responsibility to do each every eight

years in updating our housing element is ensuring that we have land that is available and appropriately

zoned to meet the housing needs that are identified in this table and to adopt policies

and programs that will um help us meet those goals incentivize housing um you know do everything we

can to reduce constraints um and pull all of the levers that we have as a government entity um which

you know I think we're doing pretty well at but we're always trying to do more and you know

keep looking at what what we can do to make it easier less costly for development to occur

in our city um but so that's what we're doing right and that's what we're reporting on it's

this picture in front of you is really not um uh uncommon to see jurisdictions not meeting their

regional housing needs allocation um I will also point out that the this graph shows it might be a

little bit hard to see on some of the screens but it shows the breakdown of housing units issued by

income category so you can see that dark reddish burnt color um the top section of each bar that's

the above moderate income housing so you can see we used to produce that was like the main

type of housing we were producing in well mid-2000s right when we were building out um North Atomis and

we still see you know single single unit dwellings being produced and that's usually what we are

what the red is um but it's it is good to see kind of a little bit more of a breakdown between them

so I appreciate that and let me just uh sort of reframe it uh we as a city are doing everything

to try to do everything short of becoming a developer our policies our procedures our

housing element adoption our streamlining processes everything short of actually having

developers enter the market to serve this this category you know this market of housing needs

I appreciate that and um yeah okay this is this is important and I wish I just know that it's just

a compelling issue in our region we're you know unfortunately we're those housing options are

not available to persons in those lowest income categories and the only other thing I would

just like to do a little housekeeping issue you know I have a mac at home and I was reading the

report online and um page two and I don't know if it's just because I was on a mac and I wasn't on

chrome but it cut off um all of the top of what is page two um when I was reading it on the mac uh

and uh cut off up to the first bullet so I don't know if there's something that it's not amenable

to everybody's uh but I couldn't read the report so I had to go into chrome and print it out and

it's interesting so just I don't know whether it's just I don't think it's just my mac but

yeah I just thought I'd mention that thank you thank you for your explanation of this

thank you please chair chase

I think

back to the the difference between the the number of our applications through planning for adus

versus the number of permits and the people that follow through on that um I'm wondering you know

trying to get an idea of what what the reason for that is and my colleague commission of us here

is for you may have an idea of you know how much of how much of that is cost do we think

because I wonder when you take uh I think we know generally speaking the smaller a

dwelling unit is the more expensive it is per square foot because your bathrooms and kitchens

are the most expensive part of it and if all of the other fluff space gets you know squeezed down

you still got the expensive things in there so the cost per square foot on adus is obviously

going to run higher is there do we know when in the process applicants might be become aware

of the costs and is there any way since there are a number of adus that have been built

in the city that the city can provide any kind of a range for people coming in to let them know

early on if you're considering an ad you here's a range of what the cost might be per square foot

so that people can be so well I guess I could I want to pursue that or I don't I can't you know

yeah we unfortunately cannot do that but we do provide financial tools and calculators on our

ad resource center that we try to help people um um understand the cost I think the cost can

really vary widely dependent on when you build it the materials you use your contractor I mean your

site um constraints whether you're going to build you know a new driveway or not if you have to

move sewers it's it's so it varies so widely that we do not or legally should not be providing that

information it's just something that we don't want to miss mislead people um but we do try to provide

you know those resources for people to do that before they kind of get to that stage but I'm

not sure when you know when they kind of drop off because I think the drop off rate on the ad

use is probably much greater than it is for other types of applications that come in you know

certainly there's some that aren't that sophisticated they may come in for a small mixed use and decide

they can't but typically a developer or builder coming in they kind of know what they're dealing

with they put the application and they follow through on it ad use are new to a lot of our people

and you know just the whole building experience is new to them as well uh as is the cost so I you

know I think as we move forward anything we can do to help the applicants you know

understand decide earlier on whether they can can actually pursue and follow through that

would be very helpful I think thank you chair I yield

great report thank you very much commissioner must see you three sorry I want to take up too much

time because commissioner blunt had some questions but um I was gonna just briefly touch on that

commissioner lemas because I have a construction company I you know we don't have our architects

here unfortunately you know you have some experience in that but commissioner rischke and

thompson are not here today to maybe provide some insight for us but I will say um as someone who has

built ad use I mean again there's really no one answer to that question about affordability but I

would say you know um you know if you have you know a budget set that it could be anywhere from 10 to

20 percent of your budget if that's including engineering costs right so if you have architecture

and engineering um included in that and and really the streamlining process right with with

having the pre-approved plans is also streamlining the time and time is money right time is money

especially in a project and so that could save you weeks or months and so um I would say just

using the pre-approved plans can can save you the time but also you know that that cost can

range anywhere between 20 and 10 to 20 percent of your budget and so you're looking at thousands or

maybe even tens of thousands depending on what the budget for the project could be so just a little

insight thank you commissioner blunt um great uh Greg uh thank you so much for all this this is um

a herculean effort um and you know this is a true crisis that we're in um I am very very heartened by

the um you know the stats that are going in the right direction with ad use um that stuff is

I think the right the right way to go um I just also I'd love the small developer incubator program

I think everything that you've said about it is brilliant and genius and um I think in in particular

because recently I was at an event um very recently and a you know there was a panel and

one of the panel members was a residential real estate developer and they asked him um what his

his plan his plans are going forward in the city of Sacramento and he's straightforward said

I'm not going to build because there's you know too many places for rent we're not going to build

and until until the there's there's a demand then then we'll break ground and this this developer

does affordable they do um you know market rate um and and that's it you know it doesn't matter

what our needs are what what what our communities need doesn't matter what matters to them are

profits and that's it and I think that you know trying to find ways to make the pool larger

with like a small developer incubator program that I think that that is that's key you know and

and finding inventive ways like the ad use and I and I also you know I I've been uh a thorn in the

side I think probably more than I should be about the streamlining stuff because I think that you

know we should get more as as a community if we're going to be giving this stuff away I look at these

numbers and I'm like we need them to do stuff and so if that's if that's what it's going to take

that's what it's going to take but uh I do think that with the streamlining I and I think that you

probably already have this in mind like when you're looking at that sort of stuff if you're

more focusing on like the small incubator stuff those types of developers um I think that that's

the right way to go um yeah that's just my thoughts I don't have any questions just bravo and keep

up to good work okay thank you Mr. Lee yeah I just want to make a few comments uh thank you Greta

and Greg for working on this uh I appreciate everything you guys are doing uh obviously a

lot of moving parts through this and I'm certainly not an expert uh but I can't share what I hear

from the community uh and obviously you know besides homelessness which is uh probably the

number one issue one of the top issues facing Sacramento and California um I don't think that

this other issue gets as much attention as it should and it's the issue of people with

unstable and temporary housing situations and so you know you you got a lot of families and just

individuals out there and that you know they may be living on couches or or there are sometimes even

four or five families all living under one roof and you got you know a family of two parents but

children all sharing one bedroom and it's uh not it affects relationships people with mental health

it's just really bad out there and on top of that of course Sacramento looks really really

attractive to folks from the Bay Area from LA so we're constantly getting folks from from those

areas and of course it puts the squeeze on uh locals who you know are trying to purchase or

even just rent an apartment here um so uh yeah I mean we definitely need more housing not just

single family housing all types of housing I'm really happy to hear that you know like win-win

is working on the missing middle housing so that's great um and you know as we've seen the city budget

just can't keep up with all the costly infrastructure maintenance associated with urban sprawl so

there's just a lot of other issues tied into that but yeah I just wanted to bring that up and

sort of daylight that issue I know that you know some of us are you know know about that already but

yeah a lot of people are counting on us whether they know it or not so yeah just want to say that and

thank you thank you um I just had a quick question and a comment I guess um so the the way we calculate

deed restricted units um how do you go about getting that data do you mean for the non-dead

restricted units or um for for deed restricted units sorry okay yes um so we um I usually use

reports from like loan hearings or things like that um it's like once once all the financing is

lined up they usually bring you know a staff report or something like that and um we we use those

tables to okay report on sorry I thought you were asking yeah no the the reason why I'm asking that

question is because I think that there are some affordable housing developers that do not come to

the city for financing so you have tax credit projects developers who who do not want to do

anything with who's soft funding with the city or hcd for that matter and and they're just doing these

um I think they're like 60 80 deals 60 deals and and yet they're still building in Sacramento I believe

so I'm wondering you know unless they go to shra and they're getting some sort of like issuer like

if if if there's some sort of issuance where the Sacramento is coming in as issuer then then we would

be able to capture that data I guess um but sometimes not all developers use Sacramento as the

issuer so I'm wondering if there's maybe like a small pocket of units that we might not be capturing

in our arena totals so yeah it's a good question I think um there so another way that we keep track

is um in our building permits there is usually a like when the application is being submitted

there's a checklist that or a check box that says de-restricted or not because okay they could like

they could qualify for our reduced rate for reduced impact fee rates for affordable dwelling units

program and there are sometimes other things I think in building um on the building side where

maybe they're not required to like meter every unit or things like that that maybe need to be flagged

so that the project is being reviewed in the right way and being assessed the right fees

so we hope that we're not missing any and you know we do um you know I speak with Yian I speak with

Kata I speak with Hesley-Turana yeah yeah um Habitat for Humanity and say hey did you have any projects

um that maybe we didn't know were affordable but we I feel that we have a good sense yeah that sounds

scary you might miss so I was just just checking the map that's all yeah thank you um yeah I think that

you know absent a permanent supportive a permanent housing trust fund right um that's

we're not gonna we're not gonna hit those lower AMIs and we're just I think I think the city's

waiting to get to a place where the community has the appetite to want to um collectively

invest in that whether it's through some form of parcel tax or whatnot but we're just not there yet

and so that said I um just applaud the city staff for just being super comprehensive with trying to

think of every nook and cranny way to to kind of push push this along whether it's trying to influence

the public in terms of how they think about affordable housing trying to figure out a way to

streamline our processes presenting information to developers and trying to recruit new developers so

like I I just applaud the staff for just trying to be super comprehensive in trying to just try to

meet our goals and so thank you very much for for the work and and the presentation and just giving

us a big picture that maybe makes me feel proud um that we are we're doing everything we can

right now um with with the resources that we have at our disposal so thank you um

I did want to just acknowledge your efforts and then I'm sorry the other housing staff

could you maybe just share a little bit about kind of your role in in kind of the housing world

that is Sacramento and if you're developing affordable housing in the city you're probably

gonna run into yian at some point yes so um my name is yian aisle i'm the city's housing manager

i work out of the city manager's office of innovation and economic development um the position

that i'm in was created i think two three years ago um as a person in the city who's also looking to

help expedite and accelerate affordable housing development so um sorry daniel foster was in my

position prior to me and i've been in this position for about a year and a half now and so um not only

do we sometimes put city financing into affordable housing projects which then um are regulated um

we also work to help facilitate and troubleshoot problems that developers might run into along the

way um we are also um working actively with our department of community response to bring on

creative ways to bring on the extremely low housing to help address the homelessness crisis

and we worked in coordination with planning and building on the zero dollar impact fee program

we also work in partnership with shra on supporting projects that might need some

additional gap financing from the city we have historically in the past have used measure u

funds um we also have homeless housing and assistance program funds that we receive from the

state we apply for um other uh state grants that might be available such as home key or even in

campmet resolution fund grants to try to help bring on affordable and extremely affordable housing

projects so um there's a lot of coordination and partnership between myself and a lot of the other

departments in the city as well as our external partners thank you yonion i just wanted to make

sure we we all knew right so thank you uh commission alumnus thank you thank you chair and this this

question might might relate to you i'm not sure um i was trying to reference uh the bill i couldn't

find the bill about the farm worker housing but i found the statute section so it's government code

65583 um dash that you know parentheses seven there's requirements in the housing element for the

city to um conduct an assessment right of housing um in the city that says an assessment of the

housing needs and an inventory of resources and constraints that are relevant to the meeting of

those needs analysis and documentation of housing characteristics including the level of payment

compared to ability to pay housing characteristics including overcrowding and housing stock and

then subsection seven says an analysis of special needs housing lists a number of different

special needs types of housing including farm worker housing um so i'm wondering is that like a

separate um effort that's happening out of creating the housing element but someone

are a team within the city working on establishing that assessment and that report and um is that

as published every any okay i just looked it up we do have a section on farm workers in our like

needs in our housing needs section of our housing element um it's on page 31 of appendix one of our

housing element um and um it it states that among among the kind of data that it um is pulling

it states that farm worker housing needs for migrant and seasonal farm workers may be greatest

in proximity to um areas of the county such as the delta in agricultural areas rather than

within the incorporated area of the city um and thus farm farm worker housing needs are anticipated

to be relatively small so that is what our housing element identified so we didn't have strategies

to specifically address farm worker housing um but we can always revisit that in the next housing

element okay thank you i appreciate you finding that um so then on that that same thought then

these requirements to create an analysis that was the analysis then right okay and it i didn't read

the whole thing but yes there's a small section in a separate report but that work was all done and

incorporated into the housing element that was reviewed and approved yes exactly our needs our

needs analysis is is our community profile appendix so if you look at it that's where it's found

perfect thank you appreciate that you'll my time thank you um i want to move on to the next

agenda item but i there was one more question i forgot to ask um regarding uh deed restricted

units where the regulatory agreement is about to expire does the city have an inventory of at risk

units that are about to go to market

so we we do not um most of the regulatory agreements are being monitored by shra

and so um i believe they might have a list or they should have a list of um deed restricted

projects that are expiring yeah yeah but we don't we don't have a preservation ordinance in the city

i've been in conferences where i've heard about other cities that have preservation ordinances

or at least notification processes for when projects are going to be expiring right and

availability for other developers who might want to continue that affordability we are starting

to see some projects i've been talking to a project who is wanting to deed restrict an existing

housing project so some of those we might um you know unless we know about it because those projects

don't go through a building permit process um a developer could just acquire a new project and

take advantage of the welfare tax exemption put new deed restrictions on it and there's no building

requirement they don't touch the city at all but most of them are most of them we are hearing about

because they for the welfare tax exemption you know they would be typically recording a new

deed restriction um on it um and that'll usually be done through shra or kata so we would still

through our partners likely hear about those projects okay it probably doesn't fit into the

housing element um but it probably is a metric worth keeping track of for for our purposes

yes and we do um i almost years now um we are um getting credit for like one maybe two projects

that are preservation or rehab projects in these numbers so i know that preservation is actively

happening um but yeah yeah i and we do have a preservation ordinance um affordable housing

preservation chapter five i believe it applies to federal projects there's some there's a it's a

limited limited in scope it's not broad-based thank you okay thank you very much um i don't think

there's anything else to make a motion or anything it's a discussion item okay we'll move on to

thank you very much again kata um we're gonna move on to item three discussion concerning

the number of seats and voting requirements for the planning and design commission

all right thank you chair um i'll get the conversation started with a brief presentation

just to kind of bring us all together on where we're at so each year the staff assists the commission

in the creation of an annual report which looks back at the accomplishments of the commission

over the past calendar year and also as part of that process gives the various boards and

commissions in the city the opportunity to make recommendations to the personnel and public

employee committee or pmp committee um and to city council so on november 14th the planning

and design commission discussed its 2024 annual report and included a recommendation to pmp that

the committee should in consultation with the commission explore reducing the number of planning

and design commission seats from 13 13 to 11 was what was discussed um but also look at changing

the number of affirmative votes that would be required to pass a motion on february 4th 2025

staff brought the annual report to the pmp e committee for consideration which is part of

that annual report process and i summarized their feedback in the staff report to you tonight but i

wanted to just kind of go over that again the members were open to the discussion of the

number of seats and asked the item return to the committee at a future date for further discussion

there didn't seem to be an appetite this is my impression um didn't seem to be an appetite for

changing the method of calculating vote um the current rule entitled to is that any motion of

the planning and design commission requires seven affirmative votes to pass which is the majority

of the seats on the commission pretty standard um and the way that that council and other

boards of commissions conduct their business so um that was kind of my impression of their

conversation they did ask why the commission was making this recommendation and what purpose it would

serve um and they asked what's the standard commission size um and um so i did include some

additional information in the staff report some background um as to what typically the standard

size of a commission is in the state of california and it largely depends on the size of your

jurisdiction and your governance structure and um they're they're all very different um which

probably is just reflective of the communities that they serve so um i think it would probably

really help the pmp committee if um we could articulate um how or if a reduction in the

number of seats achieves some sort of identified outcome i think they probably would appreciate

our input on that the um pmp committee moved the annual report on to council where it was

received and filed on february 25th and there was no further conversation um at that hearing to report

out on in the staff report i included some background information about the recent history of this

commission just to help everyone understand how we reached our 13 member um composition as well as

a reiteration of the powers and duties of the commission which i can go into in further detail

if you'd like um but i but i won't hear right now but you can let me know so our current commission

has 13 seats one member is appointed by each council member in the mayor and confirmed by the

council and then there are four members nominated by the pmp e committee and confirmed by council

and of those four seats one is an at-large seat and the other three are required to be filled by a

licensed professional that's either an architect landscape architect engineer or contractor

those license seat requirements were added in 2012 when the planning commission and design

commission as separate entities were merged into one and the design commission at that time had

licensed seat requirements the planning commission did not but since they're emerging into a planning

and design commission and assuming some of those responsibilities those licensed seats some of them

came over so to wrap up the purpose of this evening having this item on the agenda is to give the

commission an opportunity to discuss its thoughts surrounding amending title two to change the number

of seats and to further articulate any sort of goals related to that change since that seems

to be of particular interest to the pmp committee so i think that would be helpful to them next

steps i will prepare um to return back to the pmp committee as and as their as time permits on their

calendar to provide a detailed summary of these comments for their consideration and then the

committee can provide direction to staff and a recommendation to council related to the title

two amendments so not asking for you to take any sort of action tonight just have a conversation

about it and then i will recount those comments to the committee thank you

clerk are there any members here who wish to speak on this item thank you chair have no

speaker slips on this item right and just to keep in mind there are public comments

quite a few on the the website so um are there commissioners who wish to speak on this item

commissioner read cs read yes thank you um okay so i wanted to give a little context because this

conversation has been at commission before when we first did our shimlining efforts again i was

sort of thrust into it in 2019 when i was first started my tenure on the commission um and we were

sort of working on uh streamlining the planning process right and we made a host of recommendations

i want to say it was in 2020 that were passed um that was a very robust process um we ended up going

on a study mission to portland oregon with the mayor with planning staff um with a couple of the

commissioners and myself included and we learned about the city structure we met with their planning

department and their planning commission we it was a study mission we wanted to see sort of what

what other people other cities that are comparable in size to us were doing um and then we sort of

overarchingly wanted to identify ways to organizationally improve the processes here in sacramento

um so when we were having this discussion during that time um to condense the number of commissioners

the thought was that there were higher priority tasks and that this could be considered at a later

time which you know we did have a fairly robust um list of recommendations that we passed in um it

was a huge undertaking especially for staff so again i appreciate all that all that work um

so the reason why i'm bringing it back is is not because um well it's just because i i think that

you know currently the mayor mayor kevin mccarty and council member plucky bomb um are at city

council are having a conversation around um streamlining right further streamlining um our

efforts in sacramento to continue to bring more development into the city um and uh that's furthering

our development process and that obviously includes our planning process that includes

our building department as well um and i would consider this um sort of a follow-up to that

streamline process that we had in 2019 and 2020 but also it could be an additional method through

which we achieve those streamlining goals um i think it aligns with the goals that the mayor

has put out right now with the i want to say it's i think there's a term for the streamline

sacramento is a program called is it on core i'm i'm probably saying that wrong but anyways um i

think it'll achieve it's an additional method through which we can achieve those goals um so i

did want to mention uh a little bit on the history and thank you staff for providing the history i

think i'm a context person so for me context always brings me to a better conclusion and a

decision moving forward um so it did was mentioned in the staff report but i wanted to emphasize

that in 2009 the planning commission was increased from nine members so the planning commission

used to be nine members right so we had each council member each district had their appointee

and then the mayor had their appointee so it was a nine-member body and in 2009 the commission

increased to an 11-member body and they did that um to include two at-large members nominated by p and

pe um to ensure broad representation of the city's many diverse neighborhoods right and

and and i agree with that change i think um you know that is it's really i think those p and pe

positions are really important again you bring a level of expertise that a lot of us don't have

that i think are really important and critical to this conversation um so i also wanted to mention

that in 2012 and i've mentioned this before but i'll reiterate it um that in 2012 the planning

and design commission combined into one so we used to have a design commission we used to have a

planning commission right our 11-member body and then the design commission we combined the two in

2012 and they were merged into one commission which i believe is why we have such a large

body they wanted to keep two to additional members from that had expertise in that design

that design aspect of it right which which i understand um so they added those so we're at a

13-member body um so in in 2012 which this wasn't in the report but i i do think this is really

important information so when we did the recommendations to streamline back in uh 2012 uh we during our

streamlining efforts one of the changes that we made was to create a design committee of licensed

architects that would review projects earlier in the permit process because what we were seeing at

the commission was that projects were coming to planning commission and substantive changes were

being recommended right design changes that you know if you look at the timeline of a development

process are really late in the development game right and so the concern as a as a as a as a body

was you know that could how can we avoid that right without having to create another design

commission right because they again streamlining they combine the two so how do we avoid that those

substantive changes that have you know somewhat harmful and even costly like impacts to projects

right because we want to see projects built that's our overarching goal um so and and also for them to

move along in a timely manner right that is i think what streamlining is all about so so that

committee that design committee was created and correct me if i'm wrong greg but is still in use

today they so if you could even give us an update on that design committee and how i know that Bruce

Monaghan is not here but i know that there was um some movement in just having that review process done

early on yes it uh that i think it was called the design advisory group um

he recruited um some architects design professionals um they did uh advise on some projects um

but Bruce was kind of trying to find the right projects for the group and then i think it just

kind of fizzled so um i don't believe that group has met and Bruce would need to reconvene it

i don't i don't believe he's against doing it it's just something i think he's just been preoccupied with

just the process in general and um i could check back in with him about reforming it i would that

that was sort of an important part of what we were trying to accomplish and achieve again

you know there's no reason why an applicant should come to the the commission after you know the time

and money and effort uh and there's substantial changes being made or recommended substantial

changes i would love to get an update on where we are with that advisory committee um i think that

again was a really important part of our of our streamlined process um but that should be our overarching

goal uh so i think the last comment that i wanted to make uh is that i did have uh Stacia look into

the past several years of the commission and she even went back to prior to my tenure but um

just to see how long we've been operating as a as a 13 member body because you know again this is

just as an observation since i've been on the commission in 2019 you know i don't really recall

us ever operating as a 13 member body uh in in my tenure and i think i'm the longest standing

commissioner here so um since january of 2023 we've only had one month as a 13 member body

uh since my tenure in 2019 we have only had six months as a 13 member body so you know i think

that the commission can still actively and effectively reach its goals and and accomplish

what we've been tasked to accomplish um by reducing it down to 11 members and we can still keep our two

at-large p and pe uh that i think are critical um you know qualifications to this this process i am

not an architect i'm not an engineer i'm not a contractor i'm not a landscape architect i work

with them every day and i respect what they do but you know they have insight and expertise that i

can't touch and so i really appreciate having those seats on there and then you know lastly just to

also say with the staff report it's like thank you so much um Stacia for doing that research i did a

little bit of that research myself a couple of years ago when we were first time in this conversation

but it was very clear that we were like the only city that had such a large body so so with that

you know to to make sure that we're touching that my comments are touching on what the p and p e committee

members wanted answered i think my overarching why is really just because we need to you know this is

another this is a sort of follow-up to the streamlining discussion that we were having in 2019 and 2020

can go back and and look at at the meetings um but you know i think this will just further uh

further our goals in to streamline but also um you know we have been operating as really an

11 and 12 member body since many for many many years uh so i think that this is um a very timely

conversation that we're having um and then i just wanted to so that is regarding the number of seats

on the commission the second part of this conversation was around supporting changing the

method of counting the number of affirmative votes necessary to pass the motion i think the reason

why we had that conversation was because we've been having issues with quorum at commission

and that didn't really start until the last couple of years so i think i've been on the commission

for six years it really hasn't happened until more recently um as you can see here we barely have a

quorum tonight and so i think the reason why we really wanted to change that to uh you know

the majority of the members present was because we were having those quorum issues and we were

having issue items continued and continued and again it was operationally it just wasn't working

out it sounds like that is not an interest to the pnp committee i don't think that that is my

hill or anyone's hill to die on at this point um i would just ask the staff that you know if we are

having issues with quorum how can we address that issue if we're not going to be um you know

changing title two so right now and and and again i'm good this is a question for staff last year

i received an email from the city clerk's office uh saying that you will have missed your i think it

was fourth meeting and if you miss another one you will be effectively removed from the commission

right and so i that's when i pinged and asked about the process i said if this is a fiscal year

that we're doing this through what what is the ordinance what is the verbiage is it a fiscal year

is it a is it a calendar year what's the rule and so if that's the rule for every commissioner

on every commit a commission like could you imagine this the like operational headache

of trying to keep track of each individual commissioner um or committee member and if

they've missed a total of four or five in a year and and so what the city had told me the city

clerk's office had said was that it was on um it was on like a rolling calendar um and every month

that calculation restarted and so i requested that and i don't know if anything came of that but i

requested from the to the city clerk's office that we make it a calendar year so that is more

uh you know it was more appropriate but also easier for us as commissioners and even for the city

clerk's office for that matter to track right um and so but now i just i have missed two meetings

this year for unfortunate one one very unfortunate reason that was not i was not expecting but after

missing two meetings this year i received an email saying that if i miss another one that

i could be removed from the commission so there's some inconsistency with the city's clerk's office

that i'd like to get answers from and i think that that could be a way that we address the quorum

issues but there needs to be consistency because right now i'm not sure if it's if i miss two or

three or four or five and sort of what that process is and then you know make sure that us as commissioners

we know what that process is it's in title two or wherever that that lies we get an email that has

very specific verbiage so we know at the start of the calendar year you can miss up to four meetings

and not be removed from the commission or whatever that may be so again not recommending that we

change it but again we need to have some way to address those those quorum issues that we're having

so with that i will yield my time thank you thank you commissioner blunt did cordonny want to address

i'm sorry yeah

i'm having it trouble i can't go to that section of the code but it was updated and it addresses this

and i just i don't recall exactly what it says but this issue was addressed within the last six months

ish or so if my computer rolls over i will tell you what it said so we'll wait and see okay it would

be really helpful to know that information so so yeah after this meeting if we could all get that

information i think that would be incredibly helpful um just clarification on that in that way again

we can all plan accordingly because life happens yep

yeah thank you chair and also thank you for pointing out the uh e-comments i

think that they're and i hope that uh stashio when you prepare your report to ppne

and pe um you include those in there because i think that they make some really good points

um i i i oppose this um you know back in november i oppose it now um i don't

i don't see the problem for for everything that you pointed out i just i still don't i don't see it

um and i i am concerned about reducing the number of seats i'm concerned about the impact that that has

on um the conversation that we have i don't see any issues i'm here um i you know i i think i've missed one

uh one of these commission meetings since uh i began um and for every single uh one of the

meetings i mean i don't see an issue with the size right there may be other issues but i don't see it

with the size so um and i do i am concerned about the implications of this um i understand i guess

i don't understand the streamlining issue because it doesn't seem like the 13 members are causing a

log jam the size of it isn't causing a log jam um yeah so i just wanted to be on record stating that

i do not support this at all thanks thank you commissioner chase vice chair chase thank you

chair um yeah i was going to comment on uh commissioner plunce comment about the effect

of the reduction of our body on streamlining because i'm not sure i see it either um this is a very

good group very workable i think whether or two less of us versus two you know i think a decision

could still be made i don't think it would affect streamlining but that's that's my take um i wanted

jump back to the design committee that uh that greg mentioned i was asked by bruce um oh god quite

a few years ago to to be on one of the design committees because uh we had a project come in

from iam pay's office for a high rise and bruce i've known him for 25 30 years didn't have high

rise experience i did as did a few other people so we were on a committee to to review uh that project

that's the last one that i've heard i think that's become a design that was many years ago greg you

i don't remember it sure was pre-covid but uh anyway um if that were more actual what is the

criteria do you know for projects to be routed to um design committee or is it bruce's call

i do not know the criteria that he did use um certainly it the it was it was after covid or

during covid um i mean we we formed this the DAG or design advisory group uh after the 2020

code amendments um and there were some projects that did go to commission relaying the the groups

comments but um i i don't recall what criteria bruce used for when to take those comments

you know back to the number i i don't have any strong feelings on the number of commissioners here

because i have not seen an ill effect on the number that we have here on projects coming through uh

not to say i'm against reduction in that if you know all of my colleagues favor that so far it

has in my uh going on you know five years here uh on the commission i haven't seen it be an you know

uh an issue coming up i was curious uh when you went up to to portland did they have a combined

planning and design commission up there they did not um the way that the city of portland

does things is very i would i would say vastly different from how we do things um they don't

have a very robust public process um and their planning commission i believe is not even calling

but a planning commission i think it's a sustainability commission and focus their focus is

primarily on policy related to like sustainable development and so i think that was again one

of the recommendations and why we see less entitlement now at planning commission than we

used to um so greg if you wanted to i know you were on that trip as well yeah um they have a

design commission um and that's if a project can't meet the objective standards and guidelines

they go to the design commission and apparently it's a pretty tough commission um but yeah their

planning commission you exactly was more policy sustainability focused or long range

long range planning sustainability focused

i remember a number of years ago we got a sense of how portland operates when

a number of them came down here helped us run this city uh it was it was quite interesting um

anyway those those might come as in questions thank you chair thank you commission alumnus

thank you chair and thank you um for the staff presentation and uh my colleagues comments

this is an interesting subject um i'm kind of on the fence one way or the other i i in terms of

streamlining um i can kind of see the issue i mean we had a project last year that went through

like four meetings because we couldn't get a minimum seven votes um and if the intent is to

make sure that we have enough commissioners and meet the minimum not just a quorum to meet but the

minimum numbers a minimum number of commissioners to vote that can be an issue right so if we're

basing the seven required um votes to pass the commission based on the 13 seats but we haven't

filled 13 seats for how long you know um we're we're actually creating even a higher threshold

for us to have to to pass a project forward um so with that kind of in mind i you know i think it's

an interesting thing to bring up and interesting to see that across the state at least from the

responses we got we're we're the highest or the largest planning design commission group i know

there's different ways that these groups are set up in different cities but regardless we're you know

we have the most members on our on our commission here so um so i would just say it's an interesting

proposal i'm open to it to listening to more ways that um this might be able to help us streamline

and get projects approved uh meeting quorum to meet and meeting the minimum number of votes

to approve a project so thank you thank you commissioner mesias read i forgot that i wanted to

obviously this is discussion we are just having a discussion here no no no public hearing or vote

tonight but i did i know that these comments are going to be pushed to the pnpe um and again just

reiterating you know the fact that we have not been operating as a 13 member body

for many many years um and i think that information stacia is relevant to to pass on

as well um but i i think it could be helpful to just mention specifically what i'm saying and i

don't i'm not trying to target like people or our commission i've always had the utmost respect in

regard for everyone who sits at this dais because we do this on a volunteer basis and i understand

the time and the commitment it takes um so that is sort of that is not what what that's not what

is happening here um but i do think i should be more clear with my um recommendation and again

this is not a hearing item but my recommendation to pnpe is to keep it as an 11 member body which

is ultimately what we've been operating at um and to keep those so it would be nine appointed

positions there is the council appointments and then there's the mayoral appointment that would

stay for the nine um as many of the cities in california do they just have that nine member

body for their appointments there for their for their council districts but then also keep two

additional pnpe uh seats that have the qualifications again that are not required for the appointments

because i think those qualifications are relevant to the conversation and the discussions that we

have at the dais here at the planning commission so i just wanted to be clear on that which would

then make the quorum six right the minimum quorum to six seven to six

implication thank you commission artist thank you um i just have some kind of foundational

questions and then i have some thoughts but i i do need a little bit of information um

um

design review projects that are in design review areas of the city i assume are handled at a staff

level so design issues midtown downtown historic areas oak park is still a design review area

let's see why yeah so are those handled at a staff level and it a project that comes from one of

those areas to us we'll have already addressed those historic design issues or will there be other

design issues that might come up before this body so in 2013 we went to citywide design review

everywhere in the city if you're touched exterior of the building it's it requires site plan and

design review particularly if you have a building you know what i really have a hard time hearing you

could you speak a little more clearly sorry um so yeah in 2013 we we went to citywide design review

and that's design advisory group uh no no um that's just a an entitlement okay any building permit

you're gonna building permit you're impacting the exterior of of structure it's um site plan and

design review and so you have different levels staff level director for deviations and then some

entitlements the less and less so come to the commission or even council so um most projects

that require design review do not come to the commission okay so the frequency in which we

address design issues may be less than universal relative to the other kinds of elements we review

compliance with title seven etc so that's really helpful um and and the design advisory group the

DAG is an element of that review or is that a separate review that sounds like it's not really

operating is what i heard you it's yes it needs to be reestablished i believe that is the plan but

it has not been operating for a while um and that was to supplement staff's input design input

got it more complicated larger projects so again if that were indeed operative and re revived it might

further reduce what design issues may come to us because they will all have been mostly handled on a

staff level very few design issues actually ever come to us okay yeah because i mean the merging of

the two bodies is where i'm having a little bit of a struggle with so that's and i would just clarify

that the DAG's participation in certain projects would not determine how many design issues come to

the commission um it's really um other aspects other entitlements um that require commission

approval like PUD guideline amendments or um commission considerations of rezone or conditional

use permits the commission level um appeals of projects heard at director level will come to

the commission and they all have design elements elements but not not a full comprehensive review

most of that has been done at a staff well i mean that's the project i mean the commission would

consider that entitlements i plan a design review it'll go with other entitlements so

they'd make the commission would make findings about design on those i appreciate that and that's

really helpful i think um just as a comment i think it would be really helpful because i didn't get it

as part of my training um knowing what that absentee policy is it was the question i had i mean so

that's really helpful for all of us to get that as a standard you know orientation perhaps and then

annually shared with us whether it's a calendar year or rolling year and i guess my question is

are are there about 20 meetings per year roughly 18 to 20 so if a five absentee means you're disqualified

from continuing to serve essentially that's roughly 20 of the meetings close to 20 of the meetings

five out of eight 19 right i thought you said four if you missed five meetings

if you're asking math i am not that person but uh so the rule was updated because there was a number

of those issues last year and so we needed clarity clarity so thank you sapphire for your laptop that

i can read it to everyone so the rule is um it's city code 2.40.080 the title is failure to attend

meetings three absences from regular meetings in a calendar year is deemed good cause for removal

of a board or commission member from office under the provisions of the city charter when that happened

it goes on when you have three absences the clerk notifies you and then the clerk also

notifies the appointing or recommending member whether it's the city council or the mayor the

clerk sends a note to that person and says hey your appointee has missed so many are you aware

from there it's between that person and the appointee there's no automatic removal but it's

good it's a basis to remove you so let me continue on that side that's really important

because i think you didn't know that until it's just this it just changed so three out of 19 is

less than 20 percent of right i have a calculator right here i'm sorry it's 19 is 15 percent okay

so 15 not unreasonable but it seems like um if that's the standard in every appointed

board and commission i would hope it's uniform especially if they meet twice a month and i do

assume i assume that that discretion with the appointing individual or body whether or not

to release someone really would take into factor legitimate medical instances because i mean it's

one thing i've got to travel for my job or got to travel for my family's vacation you know i don't

know if that that latter one would you know scheduled around the meetings but um i do think

hopefully that that discretion that's implied really will take into consideration medical

circumstances which i assume that's it's not written but that normally is the other boards

i've served on when this went through that that was my sense of the discussion i was hearing is

that the prior rule did not have much flexibility for these very real reasons and so this was

intended to have a real conversation to yeah it might be have had been helpful or may be helpful

to actually express that and articulate it maybe look at other models of policies because i know

i sit on another board and you know we're pretty strict attendance as well so that's helpful to me

so one i think notice an opportunity for us to understand in our orientation what the policy

is to understanding there's some discretion but i do think so i'm gonna age myself a bit my my time

on the city council years ago was that that model is the mayor would appoint would get recommendations

from council members to appoint people to the planning commission and ultimately it was a

mayor's decision but it was in collaboration and it wasn't you know the full nine and i think the

argument that we need a diversity of opinions and neighborhoods is really important and i think you

can achieve that with nine or even less my recollection is though there'd be like four appointments

and then they would rotate and gosh i started when joe was the mayor joe sirna was a mayor so we

really did strive for diversity on there but you know i mean to say that we need four for ppne and

nine from the council and mayor to achieve diversity is is a is a bit much and and my observation is

when i was looking at the meetings you know 13 is an unwieldy body that's just all there is to it

and it's it's not the model i mean other communities achieve diversity legitimate compelling objective

of diversity with less than 13 i think the challenge is when you can't get a quorum you know

i mean it's incumbent upon the appointees to understand their their obligation and if even if

we were at 11 we might still have a problem getting a quorum i think the underlying issue is

people coming to meetings so i i think the number 13 is unwieldy i think i looked at the criteria

for ppne and it's like having an interest in or experience and or blah blah blah so there's one

category of that and then three of having experience or training in so i think that one that says

interest in um and then the other having you know experience training etc it's a really broad all

those four categories but they are desired objectives i mean you definitely want specialized

whether it's an interest or actual experience so yeah demonstrated interest training and experience

for one position and then three demonstrated interest so it doesn't even require training or

experience oh yeah oh and licensed right okay so it does seem like um there's room to achieve

all of this experience and training with less than four is my thought and quite frankly i think

there's room for less than nine from the mayor and the council i i'm again new and i know we're only

having a conversation and there's no recommendations coming out of here but i mean the bottom line is

13 a 13 member body is too large um and you can achieve the objectives of diversity and inclusion

and having communities represented by a smaller number i think the critical issue quite frankly

is people coming to meetings i mean it's just not getting a quorum not getting seven people

and i i know you i saw you heard your statistics but to not be able to get seven people to come to

meetings you know two thirds of the year one third of the year uh is is that's a bigger issue that's

a different qualitatively different issue i don't think that's what yeah we don't have that issue

oh is 11 so but there have been meetings where you couldn't get a quorum is my recollection

there are some what's the frequency i'm sorry not having a quorum to be able to have a meeting

i think we've been able to have a meeting i think the issue was that when it came down to the vote

oh it was so close to be it was too close yeah oh my goodness okay because we had some split

differences yeah okay okay so we always get a quorum for enough people to show up to have

a meeting every month we have been okay we have been i would also add to that the we were having

voting issues too because of a project that was particularly divisive device okay so i i

change my understanding of us not being able to get a quorum but to barely get a quorum

that still suggests that you're always i mean poor sapphire all the emails trying to get people to

say are you coming to the meeting um yeah we shouldn't just barely be able to get a quorum

again those are my thoughts um i do think we can achieve the legitimate and important goal

of diversity of opinion and neighborhood by a smaller both of the categories um you know at nine

from the mayor and council i'm maybe undoing myself here but that's a lot of bodies it's like

every council member gets to make a recommendation and the mayor and then you get pp and e to do for

i think you can operate with a smaller number of total by reducing a little bit each of them but

that's just my thought thank you for allowing me to do a stream of consciousness discussion

thank you commissioner blunt um yeah so thank you stasha for pointing out that the issue um you

know the commissioner llamas brought up um thank you for you know remembering that but it was it

was a very divisive issue and i remember not only was it that we had there was a huge community out

attendance and public speaking from not just you know neighborhood associations but also

business groups and it was it was a complicated issue also because there was the grandfathering

issue and then there was like how close is it to the light rail and how and how close is it to a

school and um is it was it was super complicated and it and it took a long time and i am glad it

did because ultimately the decision or the the the solution that we came up with that took a super

long time to come up with um and the commissioner or the chair right uh was sort of the foundation of

that um i think that it's it's actually a a model going forward for um this this type of that type

of issue so um i was glad that it went um it had all that sort of turmoil um i don't i

i'm still having trouble understanding like the the issue of how 13 is unwieldy um i respect

your the opinions on it but um i just don't see it i don't see when you know you have less

representation it's a good thing um and yeah um that's just my thoughts on it thanks thank you

vice chair chase thank you chair um yeah i also received one of those letters last year the

the rolling times oh my god how do i keep track of this and i i did realize that it had changed

to uh calendar year thank goodness um the to your comment uh and to commission overtices i

i'm i can't think of a an issue that's come before this commission in my five years here where

our being an 11 person body versus a 13 person body would have made a difference in the outcome

i'm not against reduction but i i don't see that i mean this is a very thoughtful uh you know

group of people here that really do talk and think things through so to me the number is not a real

issue um the the only thing i have an issue is and correct me if i heard this wrong if we

change the uh uh the the number of positions to 11 that drops the quorum required to have a meeting

down to six but did the voting still remain at seven is that what i heard the pp and p and p and p

wanted the 11 it should be six right no no there well there it could be there are two separate

things so right typically for commissions you have a quorum which is a majority of the body

and then when you vote it's a majority of the quorum of who or majority of who showed up that day

so the quorum for planning commission is a majority of seats established like it is for all

commissions but in addition the planning commission has a separate section of the ordinance it says

to approve any motion you must have a minimum of seven votes so you could lower to 11 for your quorum

but that's a separate section of the city code that talks about your minimum number of votes

i think i don't want to go along with that reduction if in turn we also

ask for a reduction in the votes as well just in all fairness but

other than that i don't really have a an issue with with the number reduction but i don't see

what it would gain us either thank you sure i wanted to ask um

would it be consistent with other boards or commissions if the majority of the seats was

the majority of 11 seats would be six

would it not versus seven do you think it would be inconsistent with

the way others commissions operate if the request was also to reduce the number of votes to six

so motion going off the fly i haven't done an exhaustive review of all the boards and commissions

we have um but all of the commissions in the city code there's a general provision that says

here are the rules for all of the commissions so all of the commissions a quorum is the majority

of the seats established for the commission so everyone's operating under that rule

planning commission and preservation commission have that minimum vote requirement

but um i don't know but presumably because the the vast majority of the other commissions are

merely advisory bodies planning commission and preservation commission are making actual decisions

on land use entitlements so there seem to be a um we could look at the legislative history but

i'm guessing it's something around that thank you commissioner lemmas thank you um

so this quorum versus minimum required votes to pass um i think is what gave us a little bit

trouble last time um and so i think commissioner vice chair chase was kind of alluding to this

even if we reduced the number of chairs of commissioners to 11 we would still need seven

to pass a vote yes unless that was part of the ordinance change if you reduce the minimum but

okay yeah it's just another section of the code okay and so seven of course would be higher than

the minimum for a quorum which would be six so um if we were to reduce the number of commission

seats to a to 11 so um so that's something interesting to kind of think about and you know

something if this is even something we're trying to make a recommendation for i know we're not

making any formal recommendations but some consideration for um the city to consider

how those two things played together and even um right now as it stands um i believe it was

mentioned that the quorum is based on the number of seats established but right now because we have

we have 13 seats but only 12 acting commissioners we would still need a majority of the total

13 seats to meet the quorum correct and that's the same for all commissions and my recollection

when they did this latest overhaul was that was a point of discussion for p and pe was do they want

to go to the majority of seats filled seats or majority of seats established and the decision

was made majority of seats established that certainly doesn't mean you can't recommend

something else for this commission but that's just my recollection and that's interesting too because

if there were years where we're operating with 11 members but 13 seats then that threshold is even

it's even higher um for us to meet um so um just you know just things that are kind of coming up to

to mine as we're talking through this if um this were to move forward and the city um you know requests

more information about a recommendation and and it we somehow end up going with the reduced

amount of seats i imagine um no commissioners will give up their seats i imagine we would just not

fill new seats and then until we get down to the the new being complicit with the new ordinance

okay just wanted to clarify that thank you you my time thank you commissioner missus re

i just wanted to reiterate um again it's not in the staff report but i think this is

really important information to have in the staff report because i know we're stuck on

we're a 13 member body and and if it stays at seven and we reduce the members right we're still

having to achieve a quorum so two things i would say on that is that i'm going to reiterate what i

said earlier which is since january of 2023 we have only had one month that we have operated as a

13 member body so we have still and then since my tenure in 2019 we have only had six months

do i don't know what that would be as a percentage but if somebody wants to do that i started in

the beginning of 2019 we have only had six months as a 13 operating as a 13 member body

so we have essentially not operated as a 13 member body i know everyone is stuck because that is our

seated amount we have not effectively been operating as a 13 member body so i agree with

commission or tease that we can still achieve because we have been achieving those same goals

and and the the the numbers are there to prove that the data is there to show and prove that

and i think all of us sitting on the dais have been a part of that effective change in and in growth

so i just really need to to and again i would really like that to be included in these talking

points and in the staff report because i think that information is is incredibly helpful stacia

went back i think to 2016 um and listed out how many months we've been in all the months and

how many members we've been acting and it the majority of them have been as an 11 member body

so again if we're just using facts and data we have essentially been operating as an 11 member

body and still achieving the goals and outcomes that we've set to achieve

and with that i'm gonna yield my time all right um oh commissionally right so new commissioner here

yeah so i'm on the fence about this and i just don't have a clear position on it

i do appreciate having a range of you know expertise on the commission uh you know that's

i also see a lot of value in streamlining processes uh like gretta was just here talking about you

know how do we increase our housing production like um you know does having a large commission

sort of hinder that process i don't know i'm just throwing that question out there

and then you know just one other observation too is that uh just at least you know people that i i see

you know there's less and less interest in local government especially just in planning i mean

that's a pretty niche field you know some cities are even having difficulty reading quorum

sometimes on a regular basis so yeah just just my comments on that and then about the

seven vote minimum yeah i mean that's definitely problematic and i'm not sure if that was

um fully understood by the ppne when it was last presented to them after they understood it but

obviously that's that's a major issue i mean you know it could just be a simple majority vote

to um approve items um so uh those are just my comments and uh you have my time thank you

thank you commission my c3 i apologize because i i promised it would be my last comment but

thank you commission early because i i did want to address question number four from the pnp e

committee which is that they did not suggest support or they didn't suggest support for

changing the method of counting the number of affirmative votes since our commission and

the preservation commission have that different separate sort of verbiage in our ordinance i

would recommend not only reducing to 11 members because we've been operating effectively as one

but also that we get that that um verbiage changed so that is it is the total member uh excuse me the

total number of members of 11 which would be six and not seven is that correct you would want to

change i would want to change or um number because that's a separate piece because they i know that

they showed that they did not suggest support for it but it sounds like our commission and the

preservation commission are the only commissions that have that requirement is that correct yes i

believe you're the only ones um without doing it but so what you're saying is you want the the quorum

rules will still apply meaning it's a majority of seats established you're just moving your number down

to 11 so it'll now be six and you're saying you would like the separate section that says you need

a minimum of seven votes to pass a motion you want that change to a minimum of six votes that is

correct because then the there's consistency with right with that rule across commissions

because i think it would be really difficult right because every meeting if you know if we have six

or eight or ten or you know every meeting then then that number could change and i and i want to keep

it as you know easy operationally as possible so yeah right so if you so you would have um

not to be that dead horse so if your quorum was six and you guys took up a project you would have

to be unanimous it's six yes same page okay thank you um

i think for the um there's a narrative of representation that i wanted to address from

public public comments on the internet and then commissioner blunt i think that you know when i

think about the representation i think we've we're we're covering each of the districts we have the

mayor's appointee and then really when i think about representation from the four ppne i'm thinking

of like professional guidance and insight right when it comes to matters of design and then i mean

it does also give some license for other professions not just the architect it could be a land developer

or someone else right um with experience right the way it's written

correct but it's not restricted to just being an architect right three of the seats have to be

a licensed professional one can be at large okay a licensed professional um any a lot specifically

a licensed architect landscape architect contractor engineer so it's very specific yeah exactly so so

i guess that's i think that's the question that i would just pose for ppne to discuss i mean i i

think that you know what how much representation of of guidance and opinions from these professionals

is is needed for for this body and i think that that's kind of the how i would love for the ppne

body to just kind of consider right i mean um i think that personally i feel uh just being able

to get the input from from the architects has been very helpful um especially with with projects that

we're not necessarily considering the the merits of the actual project where we're discussing a

planning item and whatnot but but part of my decision making is also predicated on hey is

this a well-designed project that fits with the neighborhood and so i i do believe that um you

know having having those professionals on this body is important the question then becomes you

know to what extent do we want you know how much influence do do we really want right um so i i feel

that the the existing um you know architects who are on this body are pretty succinct and

to the point i mean but i'm also aware that we've also had um architects in the past who who tend to

weigh weigh weigh heavily on design elements right and so i'm also thinking about the future right

as far as um who who else would take that seat may may be very um striding in terms of of how they

want to to um inject their their thoughts and so so in in any case i think that's that's kind of how

i'm thinking about it i i don't i'm not gonna necessarily uh make a formal recommendation

but i i do want them to maybe just kind of consider i think that is the the narrative

to be considered so thank you vice chair chase thank you chair um interesting enough and

in another lifetime i was a resident of west sacramental and i think we all know mayor

chris bookabaldon who is the mayor over there who appointed me to the planning commission

while i was there he was so glad to finally have an architect on that commission because

there was some some wild ones on there who would just had no knowledge whatsoever but would just

go off and kind of try to herd the rest of the commission to you know and uh so i think it didn't

need more than one architect on there to to at least you know uh pose a uh position on a particular

item uh and i would have to say most of the time wasn't just because of me i think any architect

had the effect the majority of the other commissioners would understand and would agree

and would override uh i won't mention his name um but um to that end i don't think so i think

reducing the number of players as long as there is at least one of those licensed professionals

you know however they may be uh on the commission as a resource if nothing else certain as a voting

member but as a resource to bounce questions off of that you know others may may want some you know

professional uh you know uh council or advice on i think that could that would would serve the

commission well so um and that said i would also support as we talked about earlier if we reduce

the the number of seats to also reduce the voting requirement i think they have to it has to go

hand in hand so thank you thank you courtney sorry i'm doing my legal research on my phone so it

might be incomplete but i just i wanted to clear up i don't want to give you the impression

i believe you're among the few that have a minimum voting threshold but as i'm hunting around i can see

the anlanded birth the henchel committee they have a minimum vote of six votes also so there may

be others but i just wanted to share that thank you thank you by share chase did you have anything

you wanted to add no i i will just move through that cycle commission early

yeah i just want to also uh highlight this i just i was just thinking about it while we were talking

and um i just want to recognize staff uh you know for um all these items that come to us

you know they're by the time to get to the planning commission or city council or whichever body

you know most of the work has already been done uh you know it's it's largely been vetted by

lots and lots of staff with various backgrounds and expertise so i think that should be part of

the consideration about you know what number of commissioners we need on this body and so i just

wanted to put that on the record and i know that around the i think there was mention about like

the 2010 period or so i know that cdd experienced a lot of layoffs city in general experienced a

lot of layoffs and so i know that there was a big loss of of staff and and you know folks with

expertise in different areas but i think you guys are largely stacked back up um probably you know

either at the same levels before the great recession or greater so i just want to put that out there

thank you all right i think that wraps up the discussion thank you everyone for your robust and

valuable thoughts um we're going to move on to commissioner comments ideas and questions are

there any comments no um we'll move on to public comments matters not on the agenda clerk do we

have any members wish to speak thank you jerry have no speaker slips on this item great that concludes

today's agenda thank you everyone for your participation the meeting is now adjourned

did you like that timing thank you i know i didn't have the gal i had to pound my fist

you