Attachment 8 - January 11, 2023 Verbatim MinutesLOS GATOS PLANNING COMMISSION 1/11/2023
Item #5, General Plan Amendment
re: Draft 2023-2031 Housing Element
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A P P E A R A N C E S:
Los Gatos Planning
Commissioners:
Melanie Hanssen, Chair
Jeffrey Barnett, Vice Chair
Susan Burnett
Kylie Clark
Kathryn Janoff
Steve Raspe
Emily Thomas
Town Manager: Laurel Prevetti
Community Development
Director:
Joel Paulson
Town Attorney: Gabrielle Whelan
Transcribed by: Vicki L. Blandin
(619) 541-3405
ATTACHMENT 8
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P R O C E E D I N G S:
CHAIR HANSSEN: We will go ahead to Item 5, and
Item 5 is to consider and make a recommendation to the Town
Council on the Draft 2023-2031 Housing Element. Location:
Town-wide. General Plan Amendment Application: GP-22-003.
Who is doing the Staff Report? Oh, Ms. Walters.
ERIN WALTERS: Thank you so much and good
evening, Commissioners. The Town of Los Gatos is required
to adopt an updated Housing Element for the period covering
2023 to 2031 by January 31st.
Starting in early 2021 the Town worked diligently
to comply to State law with the goal of adopting a Housing
Element prior to January 31st. The deadline is outlined in
Attachment 3 of your report.
Under the Housing Accountability Act, Bay Area
jurisdictions that have not adopted a Housing Element that
is in substantial compliance with the State law by January
31st could be required to approve a residential development,
even if it does not meet local General Plan or zoning
regulations. This is known as the Builder’s Remedy and has
been in the Housing Accountability Act since 1990. For a
project to utilize this it must be a residential
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development that proposes at least 20% low-income units or
100% moderate-income units. No applications under the
Builder’s Remedy were submitted during the two previous
Housing Element cycles when the Town missed the statutory
deadline for adoption.
Staff recognizes that this current element
housing cycle is unlike any past cycle and any jurisdiction
that adopts a housing element later than January 31st could
be subject to the Builder’s Remedy.
On January 20th of last year the Town Council
recommended that the current version of the Draft Housing
Element as submitted to HCD on October 14th be considered
for adoption prior to the statutory deadline of January
31st.
In addition, the Town Council recommended that
the Sites Inventory of the Housing Element utilize the
minimum density requiring additional sites to be added in
order to comply with the Town’s RHNA and required buffer.
The primary purpose of this item tonight is to
provide a recommendation to Town Council on whether or not
to adopt the Draft Housing Element, which is found in
Attachment 1, with the revised Sites Inventory Analysis,
Exhibit 4, and Revised Site Inventory Form, which is found
in Exhibit 5.
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The next steps to complete the goal of adopting
the Housing Element that is in substantial compliance with
State law by the statutory deadline is for Town Council to
consider Planning Commission’s recommendation on the Draft
Housing Element at a special Council meeting on January
30th.
The Town expects to receive a comment letter from
HCD tomorrow. Once the HCD comment letter has been
received, a draft memorandum and Response to HCD Comment
Letter illustrating how each comment has been responded to
and how it is in substantial compliance with State law will
be prepared for future view by the Housing Element Advisory
Board, and then based on that review and recommendation by
HEAB a revised draft will be submitted to HCD. Subsequent
review by HCD will take up to 60 days.
Based on HCD’s second review it is possible that
additional revisions may be required before HCD will
certify the Housing Element, which means Planning
Commission and Town Council hearings for adoption of the
revised Housing Element would need to be conducted again.
There was an addendum circulated on Tuesday with
the Planning Commission’s comments.
This concludes Staff’s report and we are
available for any questions. Thank you.
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CHAIR HANSSEN: Thank you for your Staff Report.
Since three of us, Commissioner Janoff, Commissioner
Thomas, and I are on the Housing Element Advisory Board as
well as the General Plan Committee, I think Ms. Walters and
the Staff Report went through this but as should have been
clear from the report, this is not intended as a detailed
review of the Draft Housing Element. This is more of a
go/no go thing to prevent us from being subject to the
Builder’s Remedy, and as noted by Ms. Walters, we fully
would anticipate making quite a few revisions based on the
HCD comments.
I will ask if any of you have questions for
Staff? I do, but I wanted to see if any of the rest of you
do. Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Thank you. I understand the
process; I understand what’s happening. Two questions, one
for Staff.
I understand that we received verbal comments. Do
you have any indication based on the verbal comments that
our Draft General Plan is not in insubstantial compliance?
ERIN WALTERS: The verbal comments we received
were that there is additional work to be done, but the term
“substantial compliance” was never brought up or discussed.
It’s really to add to what we have.
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COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Did you get the sense from
that verbal communication that we weren’t on the right
track?
ERIN WALTERS: (Shakes head no.)
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: All right. I know you
didn’t get that kind of feedback precisely, but I was
curious what the sense of the conversation was from Staff’s
point of view?
ERIN WALTERS: We had one meeting. We didn’t
receive any fatal flaw comments, but again, we have not
received the final letter, and again, we anticipate that
hopefully by tomorrow, so from what we’ve learned to date,
we have not heard.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: A second question, if I
might, for our Town Attorney. Would you please advise the
Planning Commission as to your opinion of why it makes
sense for us to proceed with a recommendation for adopting
the draft in advance of the certified Housing Element?
ATTORNEY WHELAN: It’s definitely a policy
decision, but the recommendation to do this is based on the
fact that the deadline to have an adopted Housing Element
is January 31st, and after that date applicants can use the
Builders Remedy to submit an application that would not be
subject to the Town’s planning requirements.
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Added to that recommendation is the fact that the
Town has the ability to amend the Housing Element after
it’s been adopted based on feedback that we get from HCD.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: So this is not a kind of
tricky workaround the deadline, this is a reasonable
approach to meeting the deadline with adopting a draft,
understanding that there will be revisions coming following
HCD’s comments?
ATTORNEY WHELAN: Yes, the recommendation is
based on the fact that the Draft Housing Element is very
close. It’s possible HCD will recommend some minor changes,
and the Town would make those minor changes once we have
those recommendations in hand.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: All right, thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Thomas.
COMMISSIONER THOMAS: Thank you, Chair. I have
two questions.
My first question for Staff is where will we be
able to find the letter when we get it tomorrow?
ERIN WALTERS: That’s an excellent question. It
will be posted online when we receive it. It will be
available to the public and will be on the Town’s dedicated
Housing Element website, as well as our web page.
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JOEL PAULSON: I’ll just add that we’ll also
actually send it directly to Town Council and Planning
Commissioners as well.
COMMISSIONER THOMAS: Thank you. Perfect. Very
exciting. We’ve been waiting for this letter, I know.
My other question was related to the procedure
for making changes. Obviously, if we forward this approval,
it goes to Town Council, you explained that. If we have to
make changes, will those changes go back to the Housing
Element Advisory Board, then to the Planning Commission,
then to Town Council? Is that the order that it happens?
ERIN WALTERS: I would ask either Ms. Armer or
Mr. Paulson to answer that.
JENNIFER ARMER: I can start by answering that if
the Planning Commission makes a recommendation on this
tonight, or early tomorrow morning, and it wants to include
some recommended changes, that is something that could be
done; but it also is possible that comments will be shared
tonight, for example, those that were included in writing
in the Addendum, and that those will be taken into
consideration when we return to the HEAB for their
consideration of additional changes in response to the HCD
letter.
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So, if you choose as the Planning Commission to
include modifications as part of your recommendation in
this meeting, that could be part of the recommendation, but
it also could just be general comments that we could
consider and bring to the HEAB for their consideration and
recommendation.
COMMISSIONER THOMAS: Okay, thank you. I don’t
feel like there are any major, necessary changes, and I
understand. I guess what I’m asking is if this gets
approved before January 31st, but then we do need to make
changes based on our HCD feedback, then it goes back to
HEAB, then back to us, then to the Town Council. The
changes need to be approved at those three levels?
JENNIFER ARMER: Thank you for that
clarification. Yes, the next steps would be to go to HEAB,
and then to submit that revised document to HCD to see
whether it has addressed their comments and whether they
can now certify the Housing Element. If it is certifiable,
then it could be forwarded to Planning Commission for
consideration and recommendation to Town Council.
COMMISSIONER THOMAS: Okay, just wanted to
confirm that that was still happening. Okay, thank you.
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CHAIR HANSSEN: If you don’t mind, Commissioner
Janoff, I did want to ask a question before I go back to
you.
As a preface statement, on December 1st the
Housing Element Advisory Board—and this is for the benefit
of everyone on the Commission and anyone watching—was able
to review comment letters that came from HCD to other
jurisdictions, for example, Saratoga, but there were
probably eight or nine different jurisdictions, to get an
idea of what we could expect from HCD.
I bring this up to ask the question of Staff,
when we looked at this stuff on December 1st it seemed like
one thing that was very consistent is there were definitely
modifications that have to happen, but I didn’t see in any
of the comment letters where HCD said it could never go and
certify it, it wanted modifications versus scraping
something and having to bring something anew.
Based on the conversation that you guys had in
December on the phone, did you hear anything that would
lead you to believe that we hadn’t followed the process
properly, or was it more like we’re going to have to put in
a lot more detailed information similar to what we saw in
those comment letters? So that’s my question.
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JOCELYN SHOOPMAN: Thank you for the question. I
would say our verbal conversation with the HCD reviewer
really mirrored many of those comment letters that HEAB
reviewed in December, and it really was the information is
there, however we may need more narrative to describe it,
more local knowledge, and more data to back that
information up.
CHAIR HANSSEN: That’s where I’m seeing where we
are right now, that there are going to be a lot of changes
that will happen after the 31st whether this is approved or
not, and this is sort of a stopgap thing to buy us some
time until we can get this certified.
Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: I appreciate the comments
that Vice Chair Barnett has offered, and I am thinking that
rather than forward those changes to Council with our
recommendation tonight that they stay with the general
comments so that could go back through the process that
Commissioner Thomas clarified, so that we can consider
those comments with the HEAB and then on to the Planning
Commission, to take it through that process of
modification, if that’s acceptable.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I think that’s a good suggestion,
but let’s see where other comments go.
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Commissioner Thomas.
COMMISSIONER THOMAS: I agree with that. I think
that’s a really good idea if Vice Chair Barnett is
comfortable with that and feels we discussed or addressed
them enough, because HEAB is going to have to go back and
go over and make modifications and recommend adding more
detail, as Ms. Shoopman said, so I think that’s a good
idea. I think that’s a way to make things more efficient
and streamline the process.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Vice Chair Barnett.
VICE CHAIR BARNETT: Thank you. I first want
thank the members of the GPAC and HEAB for the tremendously
wonderful job that they’ve done. I’ve read through the
entire document, and unfortunately haven’t been able to
monitor the hearings of HEAB as they’ve progressed, but it
is a magnificent document and I’m sure we’re going to get
final approval down the road.
In terms of my recommendation, I’m certainly
comfortable with it being considered at any point that it’s
easily addressed, and I’m certainly mindful of the January
31st deadline. I did have one other suggested change that I
haven’t yet submitted, so that would also be in the way of
a recommendation for consideration down the line.
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CHAIR HANSSEN: So it’s not a fatal flaw that
would stand in the way of being able to consider it in
compliance?
VICE CHAIR BARNETT: Absolutely not.
CHAIR HANSSEN: And we’re talking about in
compliance with the process that the State has outlined for
doing the Housing Element.
Ms. Armer.
JENNIFER ARMER: Thank you, Chair. Before the
Planning Commission gets too much into discussion I did
want to suggest that we open up for public comment if
questions of Staff are complete.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Do other Commissioners have
questions of Staff in terms of process or procedure? And by
the way, we will not be going through the entire document;
it will be more like general questions. Okay, nobody else
has any questions; so let’s do that.
We will do Verbal Communications, so any member
of the public is invited to speak on the Housing Element,
and we ask you to limit your comments up to three minutes,
and it looks like we have at least one person.
JENNIFER ARMER: Yes, thank you, it looks like
Rigo Gallardo, and you should be able to unmute now. You
have up to three minutes.
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RIGO GALLARDO: Good evening, Chair and Members
of the Planning Commission. My name Is Rigo Gallardo, I’m a
representative from Carpenter’s Local #405 for Santa Clara
County and I’m speaking on behalf of approximately 39,000
union carpenters, men and women across Northern California,
including 18,000 Santa Clara County residents and members.
Today I’m here to speak on area labor standards,
ones that include a livable wage, healthcare,
apprenticeships, and local hire.
A livable wage with medical and retirement
benefits that allow workers and their families to live in
the communities they work in. This also means those wages
will be reinvested back into local economic community as
they spend their earnings, and their tax dollars will help
fund local schools and government.
A commitment to accredited apprenticeship
programs to guarantee we will continue to have a trained,
skilled, and experienced work force that is able to
complete high-quality projects in a safe and timely manner.
Healthcare is vital in these COVID years and
having healthcare for families is a big necessity. I
believe if you work hard full time you should have access
to healthcare from your employer.
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Being able to work where you live as a local hire
allows you to spend more time with your family and be more
involved in your community. My question to you is what are
we doing to implement these area labor standards in our
upcoming projects? Thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Thank you for your comments. The
way our Verbal Communications work is we don’t normally
answer questions if you have them during the Verbal
Communications, but I don't know if Staff wants to add
anything to that?
JENNIFER ARMER: No, but we can answer questions
during the discussion.
CHAIR HANSSEN: But if any Commissioners have
questions for Mr. Gallardo, we can do that.
Commissioner Thomas.
COMMISSIONER THOMAS: Thank you, Chair. Thank
you, Mr. Gallardo, for staying up late and coming to speak
on stuff that is important to us. I wanted to ask if you
had any specific requests or anything to do with the
decision that we’re going to be making tonight about the
Housing Element, or if your comments are more just general
about some of our policies that we’re dealing with in Town
right now?
RIGO GALLARDO: Just the policies.
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COMMISSIONER THOMAS: Okay, thank you so much.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Thank you, and just know that
your comments are noted and will be circulated to the place
that can help. Thank you.
We have another speaker, Ms. Quintana.
LEE QUINTANA: Wow, thank God this is the last
item on the agenda.
I find this process rather difficult, because it
feels like we’re making comments based on a moving target,
which makes it very difficult to make comments, so I will
focus my comments on the Implementation section, and I do
want to make a few comments.
The Implementation section has over 60
implementation programs, and it seems to me that there are
at least eight items that are subject to the use of BMP
funds. There are also at least five items that have to do
with rehabilitation and repair. There are other groups of
items that have to do with outreach to the public and
outreach to the development community.
It seems to me that as a user-friendly document
it would make a lot of sense to revise the organization of
the Implementation section to focus on areas of common
concern rather than having rehabilitation issues spread out
throughout the document stated in slightly different ways
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to meet slightly different policies but essentially they’re
all the same, and I think that’s really important.
One other comment I would specifically make is
Habitat for Humanity is mentioned in the Implementation
programs, and I would ask that you recommend to Council
that before they specifically mention HFH they verify with
HFH that they are willing to participate in rehabilitation
and repair programs in Los Gatos, given the fact of the
result of their participation in the Dittos Lane project.
It’s my understanding that HFH has decided that it won’t
touch anything in Los Gatos in the future. Those are my
comments for now.
CHAIR HANSSEN: That’s good information to follow
up on, and as with the General Plan we had a lot of
implementation programs in the General Plan, and so getting
them in a good organization so that people can work from
them is a very good suggestion.
LEE QUINTANA: Do I have any time? I have one
more thing to say.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Oh, do you have more time? Okay.
LEE QUINTANA: I would like to say that also in
the Implementation section I think it needs to be more
specific about what we’re trying to accomplish; not just
rehab this and rehab that from this organization and that
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organization, but the actual number of rehabs that we’re
aiming for.
The same thing with the BMP funds. It seems like
we don’t have that large a pot of BMP funds that it’s
enough to stretch over eight different programs. I also
think we need to have more specific statements of what the
objectives of these programs are and what we intend to
accomplish by them specifically.
CHAIR HANSSEN: It looks like Commissioner Thomas
has a question for you.
COMMISSIONER THOMAS: Hi, Ms. Quintana. Thank you
for staying up late and offering some input. Would you be
willing to submit a list of the categories you feel like
the implementation program should be clumped into so that
HEAB can explore that when this goes through the progress
of the modifications?
LEE QUINTANA: I will be very honest with you. I
have a terrible problem with putting things in writing, and
it is almost to the point of being disabling. I went
through the implementation programs and just looked at
where the funding was coming from and what the topics were
and could easily identify numerous things. I will try, but
I don’t think it’s my responsibility to do that.
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COMMISSIONER THOMAS: So your opinion in that it
should be organized in a different way. You don’t have an
ideal structure in mind, just that it needs to be organized
in a way that…
LEE QUINTANA: Well, I’ve given you three
examples of specific categories that they could be broken
down in. There are probably other categories that would
need to be added to that.
COMMISSIONER THOMAS: I think like giving Staff
and our consultants a little bit of an idea of the
direction that you were thinking about would be helpful,
but no, I agree, that’s not your responsibility. Thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Any other questions for Ms.
Quintana? Thank you again for your comments. Is there
anyone else that would like to speak about the Housing
Element? I’m not seeing any other hands raised, so we can
go back to the Commission.
Our objective is to make a recommendation to
Council. We have only three people out of seven that have
been on the Housing Element, and this is fairly
complicated, so I wanted to see if anyone had any questions
about the process or the document that would help you to
make a recommendation? What we’re looking for is are there
any fatal flaws relative to thinking that this thing has
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substantial compliance with what is needed for the State.
All right, I don’t see anyone with any questions.
This is like any other hearing though, so if
there are questions for Staff, that’s good, or if you have
comments you’d like to make on the Housing Element and what
we’re trying to do with certification, this would be a good
time to do that, and I don’t think we’re quite ready for a
motion, but maybe.
Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Thank you. Having been
involved with the process gives us a little bit of an
advantage, because we’ve read every word and gone through
that drafting process.
I would like to say that what I believe we are
being asked to do tonight is forward a recommendation for
Town Council to approve the draft. I think I could find
that our draft is in substantial compliance. There was a
great deal of work by Staff, by consultants, we’ve got
public comments, and we’ve followed the guidelines that the
HCD had provided. I think that I can competently say that
this draft is in substantial compliance having worked on
it, not having received any comments back, but I think that
there’s a fairly low risk in our making this recommendation
to Council. We can anticipate that there might be changes
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coming, as Staff has indicated, but I would not expect
those changes to substantially alter the draft that we have
before us such that our recommendation would be hollow, so
I very much would support making the recommendation to Town
Council that they approve this draft and the associated
documents.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Thank you, Commissioner Janoff.
Commissioner Thomas and then Commissioner Burnett.
COMMISSIONER THOMAS: I agree with Commissioner
Janoff’s comments, and as someone that has been sitting on
the Housing Element Advisory Board, I actually wasn’t at
the meeting where we approved this, but I did look at all
the feedback and was keeping up and I do think that this
needs to get forwarded. I’m really happy with the process
that we would be able to modify anything that we need to,
concerns that come up related to HCD and official
certification or not, or acceptance by HCD.
What I really am most concerned about though is
us missing the deadline. As my time on the Planning
Commission, the Housing Element Advisory Board, and the
General Plan Update Committee, I feel like it’s really
important that we meet this deadline.
I attended a couple of online Zoom meetings and
information sessions about the Builder’s Remedy, and I know
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that it hasn’t been used that much in the past, but I went
to some Zoom sessions on some things and there are
contractors, people, and a slew of lawyers that are really,
really, really ready to jump on using the Builder’s Remedy
to get projects pushed through like on February 1st, and
everything is very organized and lined up with a lot of
different organizations and it’s heavy supported by a lot
of people at the State level, I think, because of the
housing crisis.
So I think that from my experience on the
Planning Commission, on the Housing Element Advisory Board,
and the General Plan Committee, I know that for the people
that live in Los Gatos a really, really high priority is
maintaining local control over what gets built where, and
if we don’t certify this, we’re going to lose that control,
and so I think that that’s something that’s really
important. I was pretty surprised at how organized some of
these groups are with being ready and having the resources
to really use the Builder’s Remedy to get some projects
through.
CHAIR HANSSEN: And without local control.
COMMISSIONER THOMAS: Yes, and I guess that’s the
most important part; this Builder’s Remedy is we would have
no say. Planning Commission, Town Council, Town Staff would
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have zero say essentially on what would be built, and so we
would just lose all local control essentially and that, I
know, is really the last thing that a lot of people in Town
want.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Thank you for that, Commissioner
Thomas.
Commissioner Burnett.
COMMISSIONER BURNETT: Yes, good evening. It’s
been an interesting evening. Yes, I do agree with
Commissioner Janoff and Commissioner Thomas. I believe this
is a good document and I would definitely be for it and
sending it back to the Town Council. I also like the idea
that two new sites were added, which would help maintain
the RHNA plus a buffer, so I think it would be the correct
decision to send it back to the Town Council as it is.
Thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Thank you for the comments.
Commissioner Clark.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: I have a question, and then
I can make some comments. I was wondering how much money is
in the Town Affordable Housing Fund and the BMPP funds? I
had thoughts similar to Ms. Quintana’s about those being
applied to a lot of programs and I was wondering what those
funds look like.
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JOEL PAULSON: Thank you, Commissioner Clark. I
don’t have a number off the top of my head, and there has
been some shifting with some of the funds relating to the
Dittos Lane project, that was about $1.2 million, so I
would assume it’s probably somewhere in the range of about
$2.5 million currently.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: Okay, thank you. I don't
know, maybe something for the Town Council to consider is
whether that is sufficient for all the things that we have
them allocated for.
I don’t have any concrete changes that I’m going
to recommend tonight, I just have a few things that I’d
appreciate being included in comments to the Council when
it’s reviewed, or reviewed by the Housing Element Advisory
Board, in the future.
I think that there’s a lot about preservation and
repair of apartments and things like that, but a big
problem I think we all see on the Planning Commission is
the constant loss of starter homes in our town. If there’s
a home that is relatively affordable and maybe is one or
two bedrooms and is one-story and kind of old, it gets
bought by someone who has the money to afford it and then
it gets turned into a really big home that from then on
nobody will be able to afford, and so we’re losing places
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that people can buy when they want to purchase their first
home, and so I’d like to see something about preservation
of starter homes included.
One idea that I have floated around is something
like if a family buys a property, they aren’t allowed to
demolish the home within their first five years of owning
it or something, so that people with a huge amount of
wealth don’t buy a tiny home in order to demolish it. Just
in general, something along those lines.
And maybe like Policy HE-4.4, which is Naturally
Occurring Affordable Units, because that’s an example of
that.
Also, there is not an implementation program for
Policy HE-2.2, Housing Vouchers, and I think Section 8
vouchers are really important and I really liked seeing
that policy in there, but without an implementation program
nothing really concrete around it will happen, so I think
we should have an implementation program related to that
policy on Section 8 vouchers.
For Program D, the North Forty Specific Plan,
there’s an increase in the maximum density and I think that
we should include an increase in the maximum height as
well, because with the first section of the North Forty
that people are pretty upset with, the height restriction
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is definitely part of what made them more expensive I know
from speaking with the builders of the complex. Also part
of the reason why it’s not aesthetically pleasing to a lot
of people is because they built as high as they could and
then couldn’t really add any shape at the top or anything.
So those are the comments. I saw you all taking
notes, so thank you; I appreciate it.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Those are very good comments. I
don't know how much of the Housing Element you got to read,
and the devil is certainly in the details, but one of the
major goals in the Housing Element is preserving the
existing housing stock, so to me that would be a very
important detail that we need to have covered as part of
that goal. And the policies tend to be fairly high-level
too, and sometimes they’re specific, but the implementation
programs is where we would have a lot more details, so
thank you for those very specific suggestions.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: Yes, thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I just wanted to add on to
Commissioner Janoff’s comments that I feel very
comfortable, and even though I’ve been through this
document a million times I felt even more comfortable after
I read the Staff Report, because the way I was looking at
it was it’s not all the way in the details about like what
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density do you have on what site, it’s the process that we
went through.
One of the things that we had to do in this
Housing Element is add in affirmative fair housing—it’s a
new law in California—and so we have a consultant, and the
consultants worked on that to make sure that we’ve
incorporated all the appropriate language for that. We have
to have the site inventory; that part is done, and we have
to have goals and policies that would lead us to being
successful in meeting our RHNA.
The way I really think this will end up happening
is once we get the comment letter from HCD, and that’s why
I asked about the comment letters comparing this to the
comment letters of the other jurisdictions, because it is
very clear in all those comments that what they really want
is don’t just say I’m going to make affordable housing
happen. I’m just using it as an example. It would be like
I’m going to take these steps to make this project happen
here or this kind of project happen, and so that’s all the
stuff that we would think would come from HCD.
But I feel really comfortable that we went
through this whole process, that we have a good site
inventory that could potentially produce the RHNA, and that
we have the right kinds of goals and policies and it just
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needs to go to the next level in terms of detail, and I’m
going to guess that when we see HCD’s comments it will be
pretty much like that, and there are certainly some
modifications that have to happen to make sure we’re in
compliance with the State law, because they keep changing,
but those are all modifications.
Other thoughts from the rest of the Commission?
If you don’t have any other concerns we could try a motion
and see if we’re there, and if not, we can keep talking.
Commissioner Raspe.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: Thanks, Chair. I don’t have
any particular concerns. I’ve read the document and I think
you’re right, the devil is in the details and there’s a lot
in there. I’m relying heavily on Staff and the highly
qualified members of this Commission who have spent
countless hours on it, and I think you’ve done a fantastic
job, so I’m comfortable that this document represents our
best current efforts and is suitable to go forward.
I’m also uncomfortable in the knowledge of the
downside if we don’t move forward, what the risks are, and
so I think it behooves us to recommend to Town Council that
we forward the recommendation of approval of this newly
revised Housing Element update.
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CHAIR HANSSEN: Well said, thanks. Commissioner
Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: That sounded like a motion.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: It is now.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: If it was, then I’ll second
that motion.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Do you want that to be a motion,
Commissioner Raspe?
COMMISSIONER RASPE: Sure. Do you want me to make
it a little more formally?
CHAIR HANSSEN: Sure, why don’t you go ahead?
COMMISSIONER RASPE: I move that we provide to
Town Council a recommendation to adopt the Draft 2023-2031
Housing Element as set forth in Exhibit 1 of our Staff
Report, with revised Sites Inventory Analysis as provided
in Exhibit 4, and a revised Sites Inventory Form as
provided in Exhibit 5.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Excellent. Second? Commissioner
Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Second.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Any other comments before we
vote? I don’t see any.
Commissioner Thomas.
COMMISSIONER THOMAS: Yes.
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CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Raspe.
COMMISSIONER RASPE: Yes.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Janoff.
COMMISSIONER JANOFF: Yes.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Clark.
COMMISSIONER CLARK: Yes.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Burnett.
COMMISSIONER BURNETT: Yes.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Vice Chair Barnett.
VICE CHAIR BARNETT: Yes.
CHAIR HANSSEN: And I vote yes as well, so that
passes unanimously, and since this is a recommendation I’m
just going to clarify with Staff that there are no appeal
rights.
JENNIFER ARMER: That is correct.
(END)