South San Francisco Planning Commission Regular Meeting - March 20, 2025
STREAMING COPY IN PREPARATION — RECORDING AVAILABLE FROM THE ORIGINAL SOURCE
South San Francisco Planning Commission Regular Meeting - March 20, 2025
The South San Francisco Planning Commission held a regular meeting on March 20, 2025, at 7:00 PM. The meeting covered reports on the 2024 General Plan and Housing Element Annual Progress Reports, a presentation on the San Mateo County ADU Resource Center, and approval of minutes from the previous meeting. Commissioners Evans and Shihadeh were absent; Vice Chair Pamukcu was absent; Chairperson Funes-Ozturk was absent. Commissioner Faria was nominated as temporary chair for the remainder of the meeting.
Consent Calendar
- The Commission unanimously approved the minutes from the March 6, 2025 Planning Commission meeting (moved by Commissioner Baker, seconded by Commissioner Faria).
Public Comments & Testimony
- Max Holland (public commenter) asked about how the city determines the percentage of above-moderate housing categories relative to the Area Median Income (AMI). Staff clarified that the income category percentages are mandated by the state and HCD, and the AMI is adjusted per county annually.
Discussion Items
- Report on 2024 General Plan and Housing Element Annual Progress Reports (Billy Gross, Principal Planner, on vacation; presented by Adina and Stephanie Skangos, Senior Planner):
- The General Plan (Shape SSF 2040) remains consistent with state law. No historic properties were designated, and no General Plan amendments occurred in 2024.
- Implementation status of 764 policies and actions: completed/ongoing increased from 51% to 55%; underway increased from 16% to 19%; no action decreased from 33% to 26%.
- Housing Element Annual Progress Report: The city's RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Allocation) for the 6th cycle (2023-2031) is 3,956 units. In 2024, 62 new residential units received building permits (6 single-family, 6 small multifamily, 50 ADUs). 255 units received certificates of occupancy. Cumulative building permits issued since 2023: 177 units, meeting 4.5% of the RHNA target. Breakdown by income category: above-moderate 1.9%, moderate 6.4%, low 13.5%, very low 3.1%.
- Staff emphasized that the city is not penalized for low production as long as zoning and policies allow for development; market conditions are a factor. Commissioner Baker noted that many entitled projects (e.g., PUC project with 800 units) have not yet pulled permits, referencing the time lag between entitlement and construction.
- Commissioner Tzang questioned whether low permit issuance could lead to a larger RHNA in the next cycle. Staff confirmed that market conditions affect production but the city has zoned for sufficient capacity.
- Presentation on San Mateo County Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Resource Center (Anna Alexeva, Director):
- The center launched in September 2024 and serves 17 jurisdictions, including South San Francisco. It provides technical assistance to jurisdictions and homeowners, offers a website (smctu.org) with resources, an ADU guidebook, a cost calculator, and upcoming free feasibility consults and a homeowner helpline.
- New state laws highlighted: pre-approved ADU plans, legalization of unpermitted ADUs, expanded multifamily ADU standards, and optional condominiumization of ADUs.
- The center is developing an affordable ADU program in coordination with member jurisdictions, offering financial incentives for renting ADUs at affordable rates.
Key Outcomes
- Unanimous approval of the March 6, 2025 meeting minutes.
- No formal decisions were made on the reports or presentation; they were informational only.
- The meeting adjourned without further action.
Meeting Transcript
Good evening. I like to call order. Thursday, March twentieth, the regular meeting of the South San Francisco Planet Commission. This meeting is being held in person at the Library's Park and Recreation Building Council Chambers. Please note that all commission time limits and rules of the quorum will apply to public comments. Here. Commissioners Evans and Shahade are absent. Vice Chair Pamaku is absent, and Chairperson Punis Ostrick is absent. Any change to the agenda? Yes. Staff would like to move the consent calendar to after administrative business. Okay. Any member of the public wish to address the commission at this time? We have no speaker cards. Okay. Next disclosure of ex parte communication. If any commissioners have had any communications with applicants, did any cider project visits, had interactions with third parties or had any conflict regarding any items on the agenda. You may disclose them at this time. If you like to recuse yourself for any item, you can also do that at this time. Hearing none, we'll move on to the next item. And see, so we move the consent tell. We'll move on to administrative business. Item number two is a report regarding the 2024 general plan and housing element annual progress report. And I am going to start the presentation and then Stephanie is going to finish it. And as you all know, uh Billy Gross, our principal planner, is really our general plan expert, and he is on vacation. So he is having a great time, and I'm here presenting for him. So I'm also having a great time. He's presented plenty of items for me, that's for sure. So I'm just gonna this is on just get this on here. There we go. Okay, so tonight we're gonna present our annual progress reports for 2024. We have our general plan annual progress report, which is to ensure that our general plan is maintaining consistency with state law requirements. I'm also gonna give a brief implementation on our policies and action update. Um and then also um just a reminder about the general plan data dashboard, and then after that, Stephanie will give an update on the housing element APR. So um as the Commission Okay, is this better? Oh yeah. Okay, great. So as um the Commissioners recall, our Shape SSF 2040 general plan was adopted in October in 2022, and our general plan continues to be consistent with all of the state statutory requirements. There was a new state law that is in effect now. It's called Assembly Bill 2580, which um states that if any properties within the city were designated as historic places, we need to report that as part of the general plan annual report. And there were no properties within South San Francisco that were designated as historic places last year. So we do not have a report on that. We also did not have any general plan amendments in 2024, so we have no uh report on that either. So this chart here shows the most recent year that our um general plan elements were updated. As you can see, most of them were updated most recently in 2022 when the general plan was adopted, with the exception of a few elements which were um updated in 2023, and that was part of the Lindenville specific plan. So this table just shows an example of a general plan implementation table. Um in the Planning Commission staff report attachments, one and two are the detailed general plan implementation tables that show the current status of each of the 764 policies and actions within the general plan. So if you're looking at these tables, the ones that are highlighted in yellow indicate that they have been updated since last year. So perhaps a change in um the status has occurred, maybe a new program has started that shows that we're working towards implementation of those actions or policies, or it's possible that um they've changed uh time frame as well. Overall, items that are considered complete or ongoing have increased from 51 percent to 55 percent.
openpublica.com