13 Attachment 2LOS GATOS PLANNING COMMISSION 2/26/2020
Item #2, Preferred Land Use Alternative
Framework for the General Plan Update
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A P P E A R A N C E S:
Los Gatos Planning
Commissioners:
Melanie Hanssen, Chair
Kathryn Janoff, Vice Chair
Mary Badame
Jeffrey Barnett
Kendra Burch
Matthew Hudes
Reza Tavana
Town Manager: Laurel Prevetti
Community Development
Director:
Joel Paulson
Town Attorney: Robert Schultz
Transcribed by: Vicki L. Blandin
(619) 541-3405
ATTACHMENT 2
LOS GATOS PLANNING COMMISSION 2/26/2020
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P R O C E E D I N G S:
CHAIR HANSSEN: We have three public hearing
items on the agenda, all items related to the Town of Los
Gatos, and the first one is Item 2, which is to recommend a
preferred land use alternative framework for the General
Plan Update to Town Council.
This is a defined item in the process of updating
the General Plan through 2040. We are to consider the
recommendation of the GPAC from January 30th and determine
what recommendation we will make to the Town Council
regarding the preferred land use alternative framework and
the Town Council will consider this matter in March.
Ms. Armer, I understand you will be giving the
Staff Report this evening, and I would also like to say for
the audience that because this is a Town special project
over a two-year period we won't be using the five-minute
applicant time for speaking; the consultants will be
speaking a little longer.
JENNIFER ARMER: Good evening, Chair, Vice Chair,
Commissioners. The item in front of you is the preferred
land use alternative recommendation to you from the General
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Plan Update Advisory Committee, and provided to you for
your review, consideration, and recommendation to Town
Council.
Tonight we have the Town's consultant, Rick Rust
of Mintier Harnish with a presentation for you before you
start your discussion of this item. Mintier Harnish is the
consultant that has worked with the Town and supports us
through this process. Their presentation will include a
discussion and summary of the General Plan Update process,
the land use alternatives process, and the GPAC preferred
alternative.
This concludes Staff's portion of the
presentation, but I will now hand it off to Rick Rust for
the consultant's presentation.
RICK RUST: Thank you. Good evening, Madam Chair
and Planning Commissioners and to the public. Tonight we'd
like to give you a brief overview of the land use
alternatives process and where we're at, and a little bit
about the General Plan too for the audience that is
watching this evening.
As we go through this we want to talk a little
bit about what is the General Plan for our audience
members. This is required by state law. Every jurisdiction,
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city, or county in the state must have a General Plan to
represent its blueprint for the future, and it really
represents the community's vision for where they want to be
in the year 2040.
The Town Council at the beginning of this process
laid out five key issues they would like to have addressed:
land use, transportation and mobility, environmental
sustainability, evaluation and modification of objective
standards—that's relative to housing—and fiscal stability
and responsibility.
In addition to that we're also looking at the
entire General Plan and we'll be working with the GPAC over
the next few months to look at the individual elements that
make up that plan and talk about the policy components.
Tonight we're just talking about the actual land use
alternative.
As far as the state element, you now have to have
nine of them included in your document. You don't have to
have them specifically called out with these names, many
jurisdictions combine them, and we also talk about having
some optional elements that reflect the needs of the
locality.
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As we do this one of the big changes that we'll
be going through is addressing new state laws. One of the
biggest guides to this is the new State Guidelines for
General Plans which was published in 2017. You can download
a copy by going to the project website for this project,
which is losgatos2040.com and you can obtain a copy of the
General Plan Guidelines, which gives you a great look at
what the state expects out of the different elements of
General Plans.
Part of this is looking at what laws have changed
over time, and there's a wide range of items that we're
going to have addressed: environmental justice, enhancing
the Complete Street components that are already in the
Town's planning, looking at vehicle miles travelled as far
as how we might change for transportation impacts going
forward, wildfire and how to better protect. This project
is partly supported by a grant from CAL FIRE and CAL FIRE
has been an active participant in providing us some
guidance on how to enhance the Town's policies regarding
protection from wildfire.
So, these are all things that we're going to have
to look at going forward in the overall planning process.
Now, that planning process, these aren't equivalent little
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blocks so we're at least past the halfway point, but we're
starting to get into the important and exciting components
that make the plan move forward.
As I said, we're looking at the land use
alternatives. This is an opportunity, as we have throughout
the process, to update the Planning Commission and to
provide your guidance to the Town Council at key steps in
the process. The land use alternatives will guide a lot of
the combinations of what we have to do. Some of the things
that we do in policy though will affect the outcomes of the
land use alternatives, so this will be something you're not
one and done tonight. You're giving us your guidance for
where you'd like the land use alternatives to go.
This will get further refined as we do the policy
document and we'll come back for your approval again when
we have a public draft document for hearings and review at
that point. So, not a final decision, but we'd certainly
like to make sure we're in the right place. The next steps
are developing the policy, and as I mentioned, we'll be
doing that with the GPAC over the next couple of months.
Developing the document we have had a number of
public input events. There's a complete list starting at
the bottom of page 13 of your Staff Report. Spring into
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Green was a great event we had last April 14th, which
brought a lot of people that don't normally get involved in
workshops and normal Planning Commission events, or Town
Council's for that matter, to be involved in the General
Plan and understand what we're doing and give their input.
We're expecting to be part of your Spring into
Green again this year, which is on April 19th this year, and
engage people in the discussion about the future and
alternatives and where we're going for these next steps.
Now let's look at our land use alternatives,
which is what we're here to for tonight. As everything, we
started off earlier looking at a Vision and Guiding
Principles. The Vision Statement provides what you
envision. What would the Town be like 20 years from now if
you were to report back and how would you describe the
community? What is it you're trying to achieve?
The Planning Commission reviewed this Vision
Statement as well as the Guiding Principles on July 10th and
moved them forward to Town Council who accepted them as
being in the right direction with their modifications on
August 20th. Again, all this is subject to change until the
final gavel comes down at the final document later in the
year, but they did give our blessing from the Planning
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Commission and Town Council on direction. Won't read that
all for you tonight. It is available on the website if
anybody would like to look at the details.
There are nine Guiding Principles. The Guiding
Principles, as you look at this we start to get more
refined in what we look at. The vision is the broad
picture, the principles are some key directions that we'd
like to take, and then each of the elements has a set of
goals, policies, and implementations that get more and more
refined about how we achieve the vision that's stated on
that last slide.
But our principles cover things such as
transportation, sustainability, protecting natural
resources, fiscal sustainability and responsibility,
government transparency, community vitality, diverse
neighborhoods, inclusivity, and the promotion of public
safety. So, this provides a guide for where we're going
with our policies and these will be important as we look at
the policy documents in the next few months.
The land use alternatives we looked at, we
created four. The names aren't that important because
whether one is medium-high or low it's all relative to what
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they actually say about your future rather than what it
might be named.
But we looked at developing some alternatives
with the GPAC. We talked originally about looking at the
2,000 unit as being a key factor for our future. Why is
that number there? Well, the state gives us a regional
housing needs allocation which states how much housing we
need to develop over given time periods. The Town does not
have the numbers that will be coming up in another year for
where the Town needs to go in its next cycle, but we're
looking at having about three cycles and the last cycle was
about 600 housing units, so for a 20-year period the 2,000
number kind of was in the right place.
And the alternatives report also talks about some
other projections from the Department of Finance as well as
our own economist looking at different growth rates, and
that 2,000 number is approximately correct in that context
as well.
When we looked at the land use alternatives we
were really looking at modifications to residential density
and infill potential that might occur in the Town. As
you're well aware, there's not a whole lot of vacant land
lying around to be developed. The North Forty was one of
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your last big pieces and that's already been plotted out
for its use, so we're looking at more of a redevelopment
construct.
To do this we identified a number of opportunity
areas. These opportunity areas are areas that provide us
either through their location, their existing
infrastructure or access, roadway capacity, and
compatibility with adjacent uses, typically your
intersections or corridors. These are areas that might be
able to sustain a little higher development potential than
other parts of the community, and these are the seven areas
that were identified as part of that.
I want to note that in all of this we're looking
more at the residential, although we have looked at a lot
of mixed-use development as part of the community's future.
We have a zero loss assumed as far as commercial space
within our current commercial corridors. That is, if we're
going to build it we're going to replace the commercial
that's there with at least as much as is there today or
perhaps more as we add residential on top of those types of
units in a mixed-use construct.
The scope of what we looked at is the five land
use designations on the side. We looked at areas that are
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designated low-density residential, medium-density
residential, and high-density residential. We also looked
at neighborhood commercial and mixed-use commercial, both
of which can provide residential components within those
designations. We looked at both inside the opportunity
areas, and again they had a higher amount of density
potential in the opportunity area, but we also looked at
some potential for redevelopment that might occur
throughout the rest of the Town only for these five
designations.
You will notice there are a number of
designations that aren't in this discussion, for instance,
hillside residential is kind of off the table, if you will.
We weren't looking at this as an opportunity to provide
future housing opportunities because of the wildfire risk
on the community's edge. I will note on our slide the
central business district downtown; we'll asterisk that
because the GPAC at this last meeting did request that we
add an opportunity area for the downtown as part of their
recommendation.
As I mentioned, we look at several factors. We
look at redevelopment percentage, that is how much do we
assume will change over the next 20 years? What percentage
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of an area in this land area would change? And then we look
at density ranges, and we did look at how these might be
increased and that's how we achieved the 2,000 units, by
increasing some of the densities and looking at what the
redevelopment potential would be.
On a lot of the tables you'll also see something
called typical density. When we talked to the state about
housing production they don't allow us to look at maximum
density, we have to look at what would be typical within
that designation, and so you'll see on the tables a range
of typical densities in these columns here, and those are,
if you look at the simple math you look at the number of
acres times the percent redevelopment times the typical
densities, these get you towards the units that we're going
to be developing going forward. So, we've got lots of
tables in your Staff Report as well as available in the
alternatives reports that's online.
One of the things with density, to hit a certain
density you have to start going up in height, and so these
are the different height limits that would be associated
with some of the alternatives. For Alternative C in the
opportunity areas that's a four-story maximum in those
areas. Then in the alternatives report you had a series of
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these maps. Now, the alternatives report does not include
the net Accessory Dwelling Units. The GPAC did ask us to
include that as a look for what might be in these future
options. Again, we're trying to look at what would be the
new land uses.
As you look at these tables in here, this is the
number, the net new dwelling units that came from doing
that math that I talked about. This is the net new
Accessory Dwelling Units. This is basically 20 Accessory
Dwelling Units per year, which is pretty in line with what
the Town has been seeing, plus an additional five Accessory
Dwelling Units that would be considered Junior unit, and
that is a unit that's inside of an existing home. This
gives us our total new, and this is the number that we're
really looking at as we compare different alternatives.
Four hundred and seventy five is a number that's consistent
throughout all the alternatives, and that's the number that
the Town currently has as pending or approved. For
instance, some of the part one of the North Forty are in
that number there, in fact 75-percent of those units come
from the North Forty first phase. So, these maps give you
that kind of look.
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I do want to point out because we have this map
up here, when we talk about areas outside the opportunity
areas that would be the areas that are colored on this map.
Again, those are the designations we're looking at for
potential infills or redevelopments for the future but at a
much lower density and expectation for redevelopment
percentage. So again, we have 1,181 here. We have 1,916
here, so we're very close on B. We have 2,328 for
Alternative C. And 3,201.
We got some questions as to why did you perhaps
include even A, and we wanted to make sure that we provided
a look at what kind of staying the same and not doing a
whole lot would turn up, and it didn't turn up a whole lot
as you saw in meeting that 2,000 unit number, so again,
that's why we wanted to give the GPAC a good range to look
at in their considerations, and the GPAC did take time and
do a lot of consideration of this.
We had four meetings with the GPAC that addressed
different aspects of the alternatives development process,
whether it was looking at the opportunity areas and
identification of those, whether it was looking at the
different alternatives and the different assumptions that
would be used.
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The last meeting the GPAC held concerning this
was on January 30th, at that time to discuss community
feedback. We did have a community workshop in mid-January
where we had some individuals come and have a look at the
different alternatives and provide some feedback that the
GPAC used in their final consideration on this. The
majority of the GPAC members agreed that Alternatives A and
D did not meet the direction, that is, Alternative A was
too low, it didn't hit that 2,000, and Alternative D was,
in a term, being too intense for what the Town needed.
So, the GPAC narrowed down on Alternative C as a
basis for looking forward. Alternative C does exceed the
2,000 net dwelling units that were required or part of
their original goal for the development of the
alternatives. It allows a maximum height of 50' or four
stories.
I will caveat this will be something we'll look
at this. These could be some of the pieces that could
change as we look at policies. For instance, we didn't have
a chance with the GPAC to talk about downtown, which has a
45' height right now and that may be considered to be
staying the same as we go to those areas. So, those are the
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kinds of things where policy starts to come in and make
some tweaks as we move forward.
The big thing in the GPAC alternatives, as in all
the alternatives, is providing for a wider range of housing
types. A lot of the infill was seen as doing things like a
duplex where you might replace an older single-family home
with a duplex that reflects the same look and feel of the
neighborhood. You've got something in your document that
talks about the "missing middle" as far as housing. It
explains in good detail about how you can put infill where
you're using a duplex or a triplex to keep within the
character of the neighborhoods while at the same time
providing better affordability and better access to housing
for your entire population.
Now, in recommending the Alternative C as a
framework for the downtown, that was the one change they
made to Alternative C was to add the downtown area. The
downtown was defined as the area that's currently in your
General Plan as the central business district, also which
is the C-2 zoning designation, and the idea there was that
there was more opportunity for housing so the density in
the downtown area would be allowed to go up a little bit in
keeping with Alternative C. So, you might go up to about a
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26 as a typical as opposed to a 20 dwelling units per acre
being typical in the downtown today. And again, the idea
with the higher densities and intensities was that would
encourage economic investment into these areas and thus
provide the incentive to do these redevelopment type
projects.
So, here are your final numbers then for the
GPAC. The 1,964, the 500, those all came from the original
Alternative C. The 136 is the potential that would come out
of doing the same kind of calculations in the downtown if
we have that as an opportunity area.
In your Staff Report and other materials one
thing the GPAC did ask in their considerations is they
wanted to see all the different breakdowns in case there
was an idea to do a hybrid type alternative, and so we
broke things down by looking at the different alternatives,
what were the different land use designations, etc., within
those item? And these tables kind of give you a breakdown
of some of that. I just wanted to point out here is the 26
we used for the central business district moving forward
with that item.
So, that was a quick overview of what took the
GPAC to go through eight hours and much studying on their
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part to get through, but they've done a great job in
getting us to this stage of the effort and providing some
guidance for the Planning Commission's consideration. What
we're looking for is for you to make a recommendation to
the Town Council for their consideration and the Staff
Report lays out your considerations, which could be to
accept what the GPAC and forward that on, it could be to
modify that or to continue this all for some further
discussion as you feel appropriate.
And with that, any questions I'd be glad to help.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I will take questions from the
Commission in a second. Could you please explain to the
Commission what is going to happen after this meeting?
RICK RUST: As I was mentioning, this is just to
give us a nod we're going in the right direction. We will
take your recommendation up to the Town Council and convey
to them all this background: the alternatives report, the
GPAC actions, the public input, the Planning Commission's
recommendations, and take that to Town Council and get
their direction on what would be a preferred land use
alternative.
From that point we'll be working with the GPAC
over the next few months on looking at each of the elements
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that are being proposed and look at the changes that are
being proposed and the actual elements, that is the goals,
the policies, and the implementations that make this
happen.
That document, once it comes back from the GPAC
then will be brought to the Planning Commission and you'll
have a chance to look at that document, and also to Town
Council to try to get a sense of we have a public draft and
then we can go off and do the environmental analysis on
that document, and then you'll have another set of hearings
to do the final approvals.
CHAIR HANSSEN: The reason I asked the question
is because a number of the GPAC members had questions about
what we had agreed to when we recommended Alternative C,
and as I was understanding it, and I'm asking you the
question, that we recommended a framework but we hadn't
voted on recommending specific policy changes at this time
because that will come later in the process.
RICK RUST: Right. We're just doing this idea
about the densities, the opportunity areas and locations,
and again, that all may have an effect by looking at the
policies that may make some tweaks. As I mentioned, you may
say the downtown will have a 45' height to stay consistent
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with the CBD, other opportunity areas may be the 50'
height, and those are discussions of policy that the GPAC
has not weighed in on yet.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Okay, thank you. Now I'd like to
ask if any of the Commissioners have questions for the
consultants or Staff? Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I had a lot of questions but
one is related to overall questions about the process and
everything. I was a participant in the last round and so
some of this is familiar and some of this is different, and
so I wanted to make sure I understood.
First of all, the timeframe for this. Our last
General Plan was adopted with ten years left on the clock.
This one appears to have like 19 years or something like
that, is that correct?
RICK RUST: Well, the timeframe will start from
when the Town Council adopts it, and right now we're
looking towards the early part of 2021 for that adoption,
and then you'll have… Yeah, I guess we call it a 2040 plan,
so yeah, you'll have a little less than 20 years, but
that's the idea.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Are there any implications
of dealing with a longer time horizon in a General Plan?
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RICK RUST: The state actually encourages that
you do a long-term horizon, and typical in California is 20
to 25 years.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay. I had a couple other
overall questions.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Go ahead.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: One of the other things I'm
not that familiar with is the detail that we're getting on
housing at this point. Some of that last time was in the
Housing Element that followed the General Plan here and
we're now down to tables and numbers and things like that.
I'm also just a little bit off kilter on how do you look at
and evaluate alternatives if you haven't developed goals?
And so it seems like we're trying to select between
alternatives, yet the goals are not there yet. For
instance, in the 2020 plan there was a goal, LU-4, to
provide for "well planned, careful growth that reflects the
Town's existing character and infrastructure," and while we
have some high-level goals we don't have anything that
specific in land use at this time, so the selection to me
is a little more challenging without goals.
RICK RUST: From that standpoint in some of the
land use pieces it could be a chicken and egg conversation
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of which comes first, but for a lot of what goes into a
document anymore as far as environmental implications, as
far as traffic implications, you can't run $70,000 traffic
models on multiple choice options and come back with the
right answers. We have to kind of get in a ballpark of
where we're going to look at before we turn loose all that
analysis that needs to go to support that.
Now, we did look at the different alternatives in
a broad sense from traffic impacts, and that was included
in the alternatives report. We had a small piece on fiscal,
which will be enhanced as we go forward in the next steps.
We did look at environmental protections, but because of
the designations used that was not a major issue. So, we
have incorporated some of those concepts in, and based upon
your old General Plan as far as looking at what it was
guiding as well as the new Vision and the new Guiding
Principles, so we didn't start from a plain sheet of paper,
but there are important things that we need to get in the
right ballpark.
Now, as I said, the GPAC, the Planning
Commission, and the Town Council will still have time to
modify and make corrections even before we start the
environmental document once we've gone to the next step of
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preparing the policy refinements. In doing this, this
activity of doing the land use alternative and getting some
buy-in on direction has been typical in every plan I've
been involved in. Not to mean you couldn't do it the other
way, but that's not a typical.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Burch.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: So, this may not necessarily
be a question. I kind of wanted to address the question
from Commissioner Hudes from the GPAC side.
While we may not have technically written a land
use policy that was guiding this, it came from a careful
discussion of state housing requirements, where they stand
today and where we feel they are going to be moving into
the future and taking into account that number, then taking
a look at the Town as an overall and where we felt these
areas of designation where we could increase some density
without actually impacting the general character of our
town, or whereby increasing the density it created actually
a better impact on that area, such as perhaps loss in the
downtown. So while it wasn't like a written like what we
already had, I felt that the GPAC did a very good job of
saying these are characteristics that we like, this is
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where we know the state needs us to be, so let's carefully
go through the Town and see where we may be able to add
another floor over a retail or something along those lines
to create those opportunity zones, so while it maybe wasn't
a written policy or goal yet, it actually was taken from
some very defined parameters. Does that help?
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Yes, thanks.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Thank you, Commissioner Burch. I
would add onto that for the benefit of the audience the
composition of the GPAC includes all of the members of the
General Plan Committee, which is comprised of two members
of Town Council as well as three Planning Commissioners,
Vice Chair Janoff, myself, and Commissioner Burch at the
present, and then we have a number of at-large members to
the General Plan Committee as well as there are
additionally three residents that were appointed by Town
Council to sit on the General Plan Advisory Committee
specifically.
So, there was a lot of discussion, as
Commissioner Burch mentioned, kind of going into this and
based on input from Staff and the knowledge of all of the
people on GPAC we felt like 2,000 was a good target number
because the numbers that we're hearing from some of the
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jurisdictions that are on a different cycle than us are
going to have much, much bigger numbers than they've ever
had in the past, and they haven't gotten to Santa Clara
County yet where the housing crisis is about as bad as it
can be.
So, that being the case we're also relying very
closely on the process that's been set by our consultants
who work with many, many jurisdictions to do this. There
were a few questions from GPAC members about do you put the
cart before the horse, but you have to follow a process,
and so this is the process that we're following the
direction of our consultants to kind of move forward, and I
think as was mentioned it's an iterative process in that
any recommendation we make now, once we have more data and
what the implications are of that, we might go back and
make revisions.
So, having said that, are there other questions
for the consultants or Staff from the Commissioners before
I take public comment? Okay, so that being the case now we
will invite comments from members of the public. If you
have not already turned in a speaker card to Staff, please
do so at this time, and when you're called to speak
remember to state your name and address for the record and
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adjust the microphone so that you speak directly into it,
and you'll have three minutes. Do we have any members of
the public that would like to make comments on this agenda
item? You could fill out your card later, so you could go
to the microphone, state your name and address for the
record, and then please fill out a speaker card when you're
completed.
KIMBERYLY BRYAN: Okay. I'm Kim Bryan and I live
at 268 Marchmont Drive in Los Gatos.
I appreciate all the time and effort that many
people have put into this process and I admit freely that I
just saw the first of the information when this agenda came
out, and the reason I came to speak is because I was quite
alarmed at the delta that I see between the current town
and the buildings that were put forth as potentials with
Plan C in particular, which is the one that was going to be
recommended.
There was a lot of information in the Planning
Commission agenda tonight about the missing middle and the
housing choices that can make that possible like duplexes
and fourplexes and tiny houses, and all of those things
felt to me like a much better fit for Los Gatos to find
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some areas in our town where we could maybe allow more
buildings on a lot or think of ways to incorporate that.
Even in the documentation provided one of the
things that they said is that conventional zoning doesn't
work and that a lot of the numbers we're using don't help
you to be able to add those buildings in, so I just wanted
to put that forth.
The other thing that I had in my head was that
when we got to the North Forty we had approved heights that
we thought were the maximum we wanted, but then based on
all the laws from California they were able to get bonuses
and make them taller and bigger and get more units, and it
seems to me like we are doing our best to go for a worst
case scenario of how many houses we need would be 2,000 and
to overcompensate for that, and then when it actually gets
to the developers they might come in and they might add
another floor and another number of units.
In particular the empty car lot, the drawing that
you had that was the options, the five- and six-story
buildings that are allowed in Option C seemed to me to be
much larger than anything anywhere near there, and
certainly if you anticipated a Los Gatos Boulevard where
there were many of those in a row, so I just wanted to
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encourage you to maybe take a slightly more conservative
approach and take… Or not conservative but take the Option
B which was not quite to the 2,000 but was close and assume
that at least let's see what happens with people being able
to have secondary units on their property and maybe it will
be more than the 500 that you were anticipating and that
gets us to 1,800 and it keeps some of that height that to
me was the biggest problem.
I mean, when I looked at those drawings provided
of what high-density housing looks like, this is allowed in
Option C, so for me that was something that I was surprised
by and I did not expect to see, and I think that you will
get some of the same late-to-the-game anger that was there
for the North Forty when people start realizing that things
like that could be put on Los Gatos Boulevard. Thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Thank you for your comments. Does
anyone have questions for the speaker? Commissioner Badame.
COMMISSIONER BADAME: All right, so you
referenced this missing middle housing study.
KIMBERYLY BRYAN: Yes.
COMMISSIONER BADAME: When I read through it, it
talks about a number of housing styles that could fit into
what's called the missing middle study and one of those is
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high-density housing, but you're opposed to that. Did you
say the duplexes or the ADUs, or you're not fond of the
high-density housing with the height, is that how I
understand?
KIMBERYLY BRYAN: It's mostly the fact that right
now nothing in town is higher than 35' and the minimum for
these multi-densities is five-stories, which is clearly at
least 50'.
COMMISSIONER BADAME: If you did see that we had
to increase the stories, what would be the maximum that you
could see anywhere in town?
KIMBERYLY BRYAN: Well, someone just mentioned
like putting a third floor on top of two floors of retail.
I mean, that seems to me like a much better fit than five
stories, so I would say three.
COMMISSIONER BADAME: And your thought process on
four stories?
KIMBERYLY BRYAN: I mean, if we have to go to
four stories, we can, it's just I felt like when I was
taking part as much as I could in the North Forty process
that there are these bonuses that the developers were
getting based on following these rules that so even though
we had said the max was going to be 35' I think there are
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places they go higher than that, so I just imagine that if
we are accepting that all along…
Like one of the opportunity areas is quite long,
so I think it's along Los Gatos Boulevard, so if they can
come in and tear down a one-story retail and put in five-
story high-density housing I can just imagine there would
be a lot of people that would think that would be
worthwhile and that would definitely change the Town, and
the traffic at that intersection is the one that we're most
worried about with the North Forty, so to me it was not a
good tradeoff.
COMMISSIONER BADAME: Thank you for your
comments.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Burch.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Yeah, thank you for your
comments. You're right, I feel like sometimes we get pretty
far in the process before people start reading up and
asking questions.
KIMBERYLY BRYAN: And I apologize for that.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: No, I'm thanking you. I want
to point out a couple of things and then I'm going to ask a
couple of questions.
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I do want to confirm for you that in Option C
that was the recommended it is limited to four-stories, and
during our discussions that we had in the General Plan
meeting was a confirmation I guess to those of us that sit
up here and the see the applications, that these
applications would still be coming to us to make sure that
while that may be like you're allowed four stories that
doesn't mean cart blanche along a whole long corridor. We
all have the same questions and comments that you had in
hoping we could anticipate state needs but also be very
sensitive to the Town.
So then my question for you is because it's a
little, I think, newer on the plate is I heard what you
said about the boulevard but I'm curious about what you
feel about the downtown option of taking some of our one-
or two-story retail and adding lofts on that? I don't know
if you saw that much.
KIMBERYLY BRYAN: I mean, to me that's great
because I do support walking and biking and then there are
people that can live and eat and drink and get a more
vibrant downtown, so for me that is a much better fit for
what I would see for Los Gatos.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Perfect. Thank you.
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CHAIR HANSSEN: Again, thank you for your
comments. There are cards in the back. Thank you very much.
If you could hand your speaker…
LEE FAGOT: Lee Fagot, 845 Lilac Way in Los
Gatos.
I just want to say that I agree absolutely with
the previous speaker. She articulated very well, I think,
the sentiment of a lot of folks in town and I endorse what
she said.
The question of the height limit, downtown on the
plaza the height limit, I believe, is 45' only in that area
on the plaza. The rest of it is 40', and then in the
neighborhood it drops down. So, going to 45' downtown,
retail at the bottom, using the post office as an example
because that tenant may be leaving, the post office may be
moving out, if that is redeveloped, again with retail on
the bottom level and then housing above, it makes sense
going to that 45' height.
Los Gatos Boulevard, I think we saw the argument
on both sides on the Shannon Road interchange with Los
Gatos Boulevard and the developer there in trying to find
the right height and the right setbacks from the sidewalks
and so forth. I think using that discussion to help with
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some guidance will be very instructive for the developers
coming in and helpful to keep the same look and feel, the
famous look and feel of Los Gatos so that it is not
obstructing the hillsides and the views and it is a more
inviting pathway going up and down Los Gatos Boulevard.
Again, I really endorse the previous speaker
because she articulated very well those points.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Thank you for your comments. Do
any Commissioners have questions? Thank you very much.
Would anyone else like to speak on this topic? If you could
give your speaker card to Staff.
JAN MURRAY: Hi, I'm Jan Murray. I live on Lasuen
Court and public speaking is not my thing, so I'll give
this a try.
I live near the development at 15975 Union
Avenue, Blossom Hill and Union. The Planning Commission
recommended against this development and the Town of Los
Gatos Council overrode the Planning Commission's
recommendation. Those homes do not meet the mass, bulk, and
height character of the Town. In addition, they are
elevated, so I agree with the previous speaker's commentary
that good intentions get modified when the developers come
in and talk and offer street redevelopment, stoplight
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redevelopment, and things like this to incent the Town
Council to deviate.
I would highly recommend that when we talk about
height and stories we talk about not having 11' first
floors with the environmental impact of material use, long-
term power for heating and cooling these buildings so that
four people live in a 4,000 square foot home with 12'
ceilings on the first floor and 10' ceilings in the little
kids' bedrooms. They've changed the bulk of these spaces,
they're perpetuating the lifetime of the residents of that
home to waste electricity and heat. It's just
environmentally unfriendly.
Then, in addition the impermeable surface
deviations that they've gotten to impact the environment,
the ability to have carbon neutrals may be awfully strong
but they're the opposite and they don't have green space
around these homes, and for three homes they've put in 14
or 15 parking places. So, if you look at adding 2,300
dwelling units to this town it sounds like it's four cars
per dwelling unit and you are truly changing the traffic
just here.
Then when you expand that to the context of the
85 corridor you're negatively compounding life for the
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local residents if you do not include parks, libraries,
restaurants, and all the retail into your lifestyle
planning that you have. You can't just increase density of
homes on Union Avenue and not increase lifestyle businesses
and environment, because then you've got everyone commuting
to the downtown and creating this incredible congestion in
the beautiful downtown. You've got to create neighborhood
pockets.
I'll just finish with I hope they're using
baselines for planned communities that have been done in
other parts of the country when creating this kind of a
lifestyle, and that's the character of Los Gatos.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Thank you for your comments. Do
any Commissioners have questions? Commissioner Burch.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Sorry, I hope I'm not
commentating too much based on the GPAC meetings, but I
feel like it's important to share when people are bringing
up points that we discussed, is that okay?
CHAIR HANSSEN: I think that is very well said and
I think that there's really nowhere to characterize the
many, many, many hours of discussion on exactly these
points that the GPAC has had.
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COMMISSIONER BURCH: Okay, a couple comments. I
hope that you will please pay attention then to the GPAC
meetings, because part of the requirements and the points
that we will be moving into have a lot to do with the
environment and sustainability. It's actually something the
GPAC has identified as something we care a lot about. We
have another GPAC member here in the audience that has felt
very passionately about creating the services that serve
the neighborhood to get people out of their cars and
walking to their local coffee and everything, so those are
points that whatever use we choose are aspects that we have
discussed pretty thoroughly and want to make sure that,
like you said, this isn't just a plan for housing, this is
a more robust plan on community. I liked your comments a
lot and they're very accurate on how the domino effect can
happen with decisions, so I hope you'll pay attention and
come back because I think as we get into those particular
aspects I think you'll have a lot to add to that. Thank
you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Any other questions for the
speaker? Seeing none, is there anyone else… Oh,
Commissioner Barnett had a question. Commissioner Barnett
had a question for you; I apologize.
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COMMISSIONER BARNETT: Good evening. In your last
comment in your presentation you mentioned common interest
developments or similar multi-family housing that is
included in the missing middle presentation. Did you have a
concept about the size of those types of residential
improvements.
JAN MURRAY: My mom retired to Texas with my
brother instead of Los Gatos after we looked at senior
living facilities in Los Gatos, just to be clear. So
there's an area in Texas called The Woodlands, which was a
planned community and they've made it so that people with
small children and 80-year-old little old ladies could walk
to the grocery and the park and the library along beautiful
corridors, but in addition they have these home areas with
beautiful kind of Monte Sereno homes, but sort of like
Baltimore where it's a bunch of townhouses. When I lived in
Maryland there were so many more—it's kind of like what you
think of a brownstone in New York—a series of townhouses so
that like the property at 15975 Union could have had five
townhouses and still had smaller bulk than what they've
done, and some green space around it. So it's that use of
other neighborhoods that have appealing planning I think as
a benchmark outside of Los Gatos to kind of compare what it
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could be. Anyway, I think the use of townhouses is much
cleverer sometimes than even duplexes and triplexes.
COMMISSIONER BARNETT: Okay, thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Any other questions? Okay, so the
next speaker. If there is anyone else that plans to speak
on this item, if you could bring your cards up to Staff now
that would be helpful.
EMERALD HATHAWAY: Good evening, my name is
Emerald Hathaway and I own 208 Carlester Drive in Los
Gatos. I've been here for over 50 years and I have watched
many, many changes in this beautiful town. One of the
reasons why so many people want to come here is because of
the ambiance, the beauty, the safety, and the beautiful
schools that we have that are top rated in the nation, and
the friendliness. In all the years that I've lived here, it
doesn't matter who you are or what you do, or your walk in
life, your business, whatever you're doing, people love you
here.
It's a beautiful town and I really feel badly
when I read that we're going to try to change the town into
four-story buildings all along Los Gatos Boulevard. It
doesn't make any sense. It should be easy to add 2,000
homes or dwellings without putting in four-story buildings.
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Our town is not designed for it and never was, and people
want to come and live here.
I have watched the prices on our homes go up, and
up, and up. The reason why is because of the desirability
of wanting to live in this kind of a town, which is rare.
If you look at the national average, Los Gatos is one of
the safest places to live in the nation, and it's because
we have worked hard to have a good police force, to have
correct kinds of housing that works well for everyone. We
want to have a multi-use, multi-ethnic diversity in our
community of course, that's what our nation is built on,
but we don't want to destroy our town while we're trying to
be so diverse. We don't need to have that many stories.
Now, in the downtown area, when everyone was
talking I was thinking about how we have beautiful
buildings downtown that are at least three stories, but on
the boulevard, no. We don't want to turn into Campbell or
downtown San Jose, so I just ask you to please consider the
height and the amount of traffic that it would cause and
the change in the beauty of the Town; it just wouldn't look
the same. So, do you have any questions?
CHAIR HANSSEN: Thank you very much for your
comments. Do any Commissioners have questions for the
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speaker? Again, thank you very much for your comments; it's
very helpful. Is there anyone else that would like to speak
on this item? Okay, yes.
MARK GRIMES: Hi, I'm Mark Grimes; I live at
15561 Corinne Drive, which is over near to Lark.
My question is I read some of this before I came
here and there was an assumption made on how many
additional cars would be added based on they thought more
folks would start using public transportation, and I'd like
to know the factors they used to come up with this
assumption that most people would start using public
transportation.
CHAIR HANSSEN: When we have comments from the
public we're not able to answer your questions in a
discussion format, so you can pose your questions and then
perhaps Staff could follow up with you later and when we're
having our discussion we might be able to answer your
question indirectly.
MARK GRIMES: Okay, right. Thanks.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Did you have anything else you
wanted to say? Okay.
MARK GRIMES: (Inaudible).
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CHAIR HANSSEN: Thank you, it's a good question.
Thank you. Is there anyone else that would like to speak on
this topic? Seeing none, I'm going to close the public
portion of the hearing and we will ask if Commissioners
have questions of Staff, wish to comment on the item, or
introduce a motion for consideration by the Commission?
Before we do that I did want to suggest to my
fellow commissioners that… And this is a process that was
similar that GPAC took, and this was probably the biggest
point of discussion when we made the recommendation and
people were concerned. Am I agreeing to have 12 dwelling
units per acre in low-density residential? Am I agreeing to
force four-story buildings anywhere there's an opportunity
area? And so we gave the direction to the GPAC and I'm
giving you all the same direction, and I think as our
consultants mentioned, the policy part of this is going to
happen later. It's a general framework and so any vote to
support Alternative C doesn't imply that we're going to
allow four-story buildings anywhere in town.
But the other side of this is also that to get to
a certain number they have to put in more density somewhere
or more height somewhere, so if we take one thing away it
will have to come from somewhere else.
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So, that being the case, we'll go into the
questions. I'm hoping that what we can do as a commission
is make a vote on the preferred land use alternative
framework, be it C or something else if that's the will of
the Commission, and then we can also vote to provide
additional recommendations to the Council on things that we
need to be wary of. For instance, we have to be really
careful about four stories and where we're going to put it
and how we would allow it and so on and so forth. So, that
being the case I want to put it to the Commission to ask
any questions, make any comments, or if you feel that
you're ready to make a motion, which you're probably not.
Commissioner Badame.
COMMISSIONER BADAME: I was hoping we'd get more
public testimony with the amount of people in the audience.
That being said, I see a member in the audience that was
part of the GPAC, so my question is two of those members,
one being here in the audience and one not unless I don't
recognize that person, they opposed Alternative C, so if I
could get some feedback possibly as to why they opposed
Alternative C and which alternative did they prefer?
CHAIR HANSSEN: You want to take that one, Staff?
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JOEL PAULSON: Well, I will start off with I can
barely read my own mind, so I think obviously there are
concerns and this type of process is always difficult,
because as Commissioner Hudes mentioned before it's kind of
what comes first, and maybe you were comfortable with some
portions of the alternative but not all of them and since
that's how the motion was framed you're not comfortable
supporting it. I don't know if Jennifer or the consultant
remember anything specific from Mr. Rosenberg or Ms.
Quintana as far as what their concerns were. There were an
awful lot of questions and I'll let Ms. Armer provide any
additional information.
JENNIFER ARMER: In thinking back to the meeting
where the preferred alternative recommendation was made by
the GPAC, the concerns that kind of came to the forefront
there were some concerns about additional density within
the low-density residential areas. There were also concerns
about exactly how this would then be implemented as has
been discussed this evening and kind of what this framework
meant in term of how much flexibility there might be in the
future.
COMMISSIONER BADAME: The reason why I ask is we
have limited information, so unless we were actually on
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this committee, the rest of us, we don't have any minutes
to read from, so unless we were part of the committee or
present during the hearing. I just wanted to know what some
of the thought process was, especially from the public.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I can comment. We had two
dissenting votes on the recommendation, and one of them was
Ms. Quintana who is here in the audience, and the other one
was Mr. Rosenberg. I personally spoke to Mr. Rosenberg
after the meeting and he stated his concern during the
meeting. It was actually the opposite of what some of the
public comments were. It was more about, as Ms. Armer said,
having any of the growth happen in low-density residential,
and I think it's simply because it's hard to visualize, so
he had this idea that in any typical single-family
neighborhood there might be 12 houses, or 16 or 20 houses,
in an acre and the reality of this thing is that if you say
12 dwelling units per acre and you have an 8,000 square
foot lot you may only be able to have one house on that
lot. So that's one thing.
And so he was actually preferring to have the
density go into, say, a mixed-use, and this is a discussion
that many of the GPAC members had is that mixed-use was a
great way to go because we would have neighborhood-serving
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commercial and then we would have some housing above, but
there's still the concern about transition into the
neighborhoods that are nearby, so I'm going to go back to
what was said earlier that while we're agreeing to a
generalized framework we are not agreeing to any specific
changes in the General Plan use designations at this time,
and in addition there is another process that will take
place even after the General Plan is done.
One element that is not done with the current
General Plan Update is the Housing Element, and in the
Housing Element is where we get more into the zoning
implications of what we're doing, so when we're doing the
General Plan Update it's going to be followed by the
Housing Element, which when we start the Housing Element we
will actually have our regional housing needs allocation
from the state to help plan for specifically for that. So,
I hear that people are alarmed about this, but again, it's
sort of like the process is we aren't going to have all the
pieces of information that we need to go forward so we have
to kind of put a stake in the ground and there are no
decisions being made on exactly how Alternative C would be
implemented at this point. Commissioner Badame.
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COMMISSIONER BADAME: Okay, thank you for that.
Going forward, would it be possible for us to get minutes
of the GPAC meetings?
JOEL PAULSON: We can give you GPAC minutes.
They're just action minutes, they are not verbatim minutes,
so I'm not sure they would be much more helpful. I know we
have at least one commissioner, if not more, that raised
those concerns that hasn't been modified, but they're not
typical minutes like verbatim minutes that would give you
the whole story.
COMMISSIONER BADAME: Thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: To follow up on a comment
from the public, or question from the public, the heights
that are indicated in Alternative C, will bonuses increase
the height over the maximums that are listed in the
alternatives now?
JOEL PAULSON: If someone proposes a bonus, then
yes, they could request that, as they can currently. I
think the speaker is completely accurate and I know the
Commission is well aware of we have at least two projects
that have used those types of exceptions in the past. The
state continues to take away local control and provide more
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opportunities for developers. I don't see that slowing down
any time soon, so that will continue to be an option. I
think the challenge is once we get to our Housing Element
preparation we're not going to be able to put a comment in
there that says we're only going to plan for this many
units because we're going to plan that everyone is going to
do an exception or this many people are going to do an
exception. What we'll really ultimately do is when we get
down into the nuts and bolts of… There's really the areas,
the density, and the height.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: What are the numbers?
Currently what's the maximum and what's the maximum of the
bonus? And under Alternative C what would the maximum be
with a bonus?
JOEL PAULSON: I don't know that there is
technically a maximum, but ultimately that's going to be a
developer's decision and generally they don't go very much
higher. I think the North Forty it was in the 15-20' range.
Obviously, you hear a lot of conversations about
developments near transit being able to go up to four to
five stories automatically and if you do X, Y, and Z you
can go another story. We're not going to be able to
accommodate or plan for that.
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What we're willing to do is ultimately once we
get through this discussion the GPAC goes through the Land
Use Element and the draft plan comes through with some
proposed densities and heights. That's going to be the time
we can have those conversations.
I know the general concern was specifically with
the low-density residential, so your R-1:Ds, your R-1:8s,
those properties. The numbers in and of themselves are
scary. It's not that this Alternative C is going to say you
can have 50' in R-1:8; it's not. Ultimately, you can have a
density. I think the low-density residential proposed now
in C is up to 16 units per acre. So, if you have an 8,000
square foot lot with a 16 unit max per acre you can only
have two units.
Now again, there are a lot of other caveats to
that because we're not talking about ADUs and those have
their own implications, but ultimately, regardless of the
density we can still control the urban form, as Chair
Hanssen was speaking about, through the zoning regulations.
I mean, there is technically a scenario where we change the
density for these designations but we don't change any of
our zoning regulations. Now, some may think that's too
restrictive, but ultimately that will maintain the urban
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form of at least those single-family neighborhoods, but you
potentially will have more units in those areas.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: So, if I may, that raises a
question for the Town Attorney. Is it possible to
essentially describe and select an alternative that is
inconsistent with the zoning of the Town, or does the
zoning have to change to meet what's in the General Plan
and what's in the Housing Element?
JOEL PAULSON: Ultimately, when the General Plan
gets adopted, then there will be necessary modifications to
the Zoning Code that will have to take place. Those will be
implementation measures that will be done following the
General Plan.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: That's what I recall.
JOEL PAULSON: Yup.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: When we did the North Forty
Specific Plan a number of changes were made because we
couldn't be in a situation where the zoning didn't permit
what was permitted in the plan.
JOEL PAULSON: Correct.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: So I was a little confused
by your comment that the urban form might not allow what's
actually described in the General Plan.
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JOEL PAULSON: Maybe you misunderstood me. It
would still allow it, but you don't have to change
setbacks, height, coverage, those types of things. You can
still accommodate an increased density in those same
parameters. You basically have what would otherwise look
like a single-family house but it has two, or three, or
four units which is that missing middle housing document
that you have. So there are ways to try to maintain some of
that, but again, some folks may say well if we're going to
allow increased density maybe we should allow, as we do
currently, I think the ADUs a 10-percent increase in FAR
because we're getting increased units. But ultimately,
whatever gets adopted in the General Plan, if there is
anything inconsistent in the zoning regulations they will
have to be modified.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay, thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Vice Chair Janoff.
VICE CHAIR JANOFF: Thank you. I wanted to step
back a little bit because the comments from the public and
the question from Commissioners not on the GPAC all speak
to a concern about how what we're talking about
recommending to Council fundamentally changes the Town.
What we are essentially doing is enabling the consultant by
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giving them a framework of density and height specifically
targeting areas of town where it may be reasonable to have
higher density, higher height, in order for us to carefully
analyze how the Town can get from the number of units it
has today to responding to the increase in units over time
we anticipate the state will bring down to the Town.
So, we're not saying we're going to build… Well,
the Town can't build. The Town enables builders and
developers to build, so the Town isn't building, the Town
is saying if we have these requirements from the state and
we have to accommodate a number of units, how can the Town
absorb that increase without fundamentally changing the
look and character that we all cherish?
So, we understood that if we didn't give the
consultants a little bit larger number than we might feel
comfortable with, knowing that you may plan for 2,000 units
but you may only wind up seeing 800 built, usually, at
least from discussions with Staff, we're seeing an
underperformance against our target, so the fact that we
are shooting for a goal of 2,000, we could expect something
less typically in terms of an actual build.
This gives the Town the ultimate ability to
carefully analyze where those increases might occur. It
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doesn't say they will occur and they don't say specifically
how high or how not high, it just gives the consultants the
framework to talk to us about can we get close to those
targets we think are going to be mandated, and if so, how?
That's all this framework does. It doesn't say it's going
to happen, it just gives us the details, the data, to be
able to make an informed decision for the Town.
If we adopt a framework that's less aggressive on
the number of units we're going to fall short of whatever
the state is mandating, and then we may see other problems
in terms of developers coming in and asking for exemptions
because the state is allowing it and we haven't provided
that, so we're trying to do just what I said, trying to
accommodate what we think the growth requirements are going
to be but also do it in a reflective, thoughtful, careful
way that is respectful of the Town and what we want to see
happen in it.
We recommended Alternative C generally
understanding that that was sort of the outer limits of the
framework. What we don't know is whether the consultants
will come back and say that framework gives you the
opportunity to create 6,000 units, in which case we might
say let's lower the height and change some of the areas of
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opportunity. We just don't know what's possible yet and
we're looking forward to the consultant's input so that we
can make informed decisions going forward, so that's kind
of the overarching reason why we recommended Alternative C.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you, that's very
helpful, and I really appreciate the work and the
involvement of my fellow commissioners and of everyone who
is on the GPAC, because it's not possible to dive in and
understand that in the snapshot that we're in now, so I
have a lot of respect for the recommendations and the
direction that's coming from fellow commissioners.
I had a question for the consultant though, who
is probably more up to speed on the housing numbers that
are going to be coming down from the state, and really the
question is does Alternative B meet the state mandated
housing requirements over the next 20 years? I want to hear
the consultant.
RICK RUST: Well, we're looking at doing the
2,000 as the basis for that, and that was based off past
performance. That doesn't even account for what the state
might do to you. What has happened in the state has been
all over the board and some areas have actually doubled or
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tripled the RHNA numbers, some areas have only had a small
percentage increase. We were looking at just keeping yours
fairly similar to what has happened in the past with future
adjustments might as needed by Housing and Community
Development on the state side, so it was felt that this
2,000 number would get you through to this 20-year period.
If your RHNA does expand significantly you have time to
make readjustments as we go forward in the planning cycle,
because while your General Plan is supposed to have a 20-
year vision it's also supposed to be adjusted, and many of
our plans actually relook at themselves every five years to
see if there are any notable changes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: My question was about
Alternative B.
RICK RUST: It falls just right around that 2,000
number as far as the totals that would be allowed; it's
1,916 as far as this number, so it's in the ballpark. I
think what had been explained is the GPAC wanted to make
sure we had a little wiggle room, for instance, some of the
public mentioned what if we go down a floor? Or what if we
don't let the downtown go as big? So, as we make those
changes, if we have no wiggle room to start with we've
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already underperformed and we don't have the ability to
make those changes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I just want to make one more
comment and then Commissioner Badame. I think there's
something really important that wasn't said at this point
either that the GPAC discussed at great length. When we
started talking about the land use needs of our town
certainly the state requirements are part of it. We have to
address that, but probably more important than that is if
we have to grow we want to grow in a way that benefits our
residents and our future residents, and every member of the
GPAC felt that it was really important that we address the
housing needs of moving-down seniors as well as our young
Millennials that are unable to buy into town right now
because of the cost of single-family housing.
While we don't have the policies in place to make
this happen I think for all of us, our thinking was if
we're going to add 2,000 units we're not going to be adding
2,000 3,500 square foot housing, we're going to be adding
smaller townhouses, maybe taking a single-family home and
it becomes a duplex or a threeplex, but if we're going to
have mixed-use what we really would like to see is that
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those units are going to be 500-1,000 square feet on top of
retail and it's something that a 25-year-old could afford
to live in, or there will places that would be appropriate
for move-down seniors that want to move out of those 3,500
square foot homes.
So, again, it kind of gets down to the policies
that make this happen. Where we are right now is really
just talking about an overall number and then we have to go
through that process and figure out how we can do it to
preserve what makes our town great as well as take care of
the people that are in our town right now.
I don't know if people in the audience are aware,
but we heard this when we did the Housing Element the last
time and we've continued to hear it through the process,
but something like 35- or 40-percent of our residents are
going to be over the age of 65 in this decade, so again, I
think it's really important to think in terms of growth
that we're not looking at adding the same kind of growth
that we had in the past, we're looking at much, much
smaller units and then we need to figure out how can we
make that happen.
Commissioner Badame, you had a question or
comment?
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COMMISSIONER BADAME: My question was quick and
actually it's a continuation of questions for the
consultant pertaining to Commissioner Hudes' question, so
that was back to Alternative B versus C. So, B still meets
the criteria for the number of housing units, but the
primary difference, the major difference, between B and C
would be the difference between allowable height and number
of stories, is that correct?
RICK RUST: Alternative B only produces 1,916
units. The 475, if you look at 2,391 number, those are
existing approved and pending projects, so they do not go
towards the state's requirements for housing, because it's
expected they'll be built or permitted prior to your next
housing cycle.
COMMISSIONER BADAME: But what about the ADU
units that add to that? Five hundred?
RICK RUST: Yeah, that was in the 1,916.
COMMISSIONER BADAME: Okay. Thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Question about the ADU
units. Does that assume the change that we'll be looking at
tonight on adding Junior ADU units to the inventory? And
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you've got that as a constant across all the alternatives,
correct?
RICK RUST: Yes, it does, the short answer. We
looked at 20 units per year as a regular detached ADU and
we looked at five units per year as a Junior ADU over the
20-year period. That's what gives you the 500.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay, thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Are there other questions or
comments? Commissioner Burch.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Would it be appropriate then
to direct towards the consultant the question concerning
the vehicle trips? It is one of the items that gets looked
at with the different alternatives. Or would that be
something that would maybe be more appropriate once an
alternative is selected? I'm asking the Chair that.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I think you can ask your
question.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Okay. So, you've heard the
audience; I don't need to repeat their question. In our
GPAC packet, page 29, you go through the vehicle trip
estimates per alternative, and I know there were some
assumptions made with public transit, so I was wondering
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if… We can't really have dialogue with the audience but
maybe you could assist in answering that question.
RICK RUST: In the phrasing of it at times it was
said most would go transit. That's certainly not the case.
The traffic estimates were done using the ITE estimations
for household sizes; that's the standard used across the
United States for generation as far as what would happen in
different kinds of land uses. Now, in the conversation
there's certainly discussion about the fact that if you
have a more walkable area, like your downtown; your
downtown has mixed-use components. It's not as much
residential as you might see in other places in the future
but it's a mixed-use area. You have a lot of people on
foot. You obviously have tourist traffic that parks there,
but the idea is that the people could live in that area,
walk around the shops and neighborhood shopping, and they
would have lesser need for automobiles.
Long-term how much parking is required is going
to be something that will change in the community. There's
not a requirement for four. I think that was mentioned at
one point and that wouldn't be the case in the future. Most
communities are actually looking to go down towards one
parking per unit, especially on smaller units because the
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occupancies are typically single individuals in a lot of
cases, or they don't have a car so it balances out to that
one, and so a lot of places are finding that to be a sweet
spot moving forward. So parking numbers actually would go
down in the future.
We expect some transit to be enhanced over this
20-year period. It's not going to happen next year after we
approve this, but it will happen over the long term and as
we have some enhancements to density you'll be able to
better support transit, but we did consider the automobile
still as being a dominant player in the environment.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Thank you.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I have some questions about
the chart on page 70, I think. It's the first large table.
So I had some questions. I'm trying to understand how the
numbers were developed. It talks about population first and
then it says, "total new population," and "total
population," and then "total projected 2040 population."
What does total population mean? That's a tenth of the size
of the Town.
RICK RUST: Total net new goes along with those
net units we've talked about before. The total population
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is taking that net new and adding to it the population that
would come with the 475 pending and approved projects to
give you a total.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay. The other question I
had is on the descriptions on the traffic congestion
increase levels. We're just beginning to use VMT and those
kinds of numbers. There's a description here that says,
minimal, minimal, moderate, and moderate. How confident are
you that that's what residents are going to experience with
this alternative, that it will be what they would
characterize as a moderate traffic increase or congestion
increase?
RICK RUST: The traffic engineers ran this based
on a preliminary model. Now, there's a difference in the
traffic engineering for what will be done now versus what
will be done for the Environmental Impact Report. These
were meant to be comparative analyses. As we go forward
with this we will do full traffic analyses to finding out
the actual impacts.
The VMT numbers, the big one to look at there is
the VMT per capita, because you'll see at the higher
alternatives the VMT per capita decreases and that's one of
the key indicators that your better performing
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transportation system, you're traveling less per person
overall, and some of that again is that enhanced
walkability long term. But it is not a full scale traffic
model at this point, again going back to that is a
significant undertaking and not something you do for each
alternative.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: But my concern is about
standing behind the terminology "moderate" or "minimal"
that's in the report. I understand the differences and I
believe I understand the numbers, but I don't believe that
we have the experience to know whether that's the way we'll
perceive it and I am concerned about approving the General
Plan that causes unacceptable traffic and then somebody
pointing to this report that says it was only going to be
moderate.
RICK RUST: Well, when you actually make an
approval of a plan you'll have a detailed traffic analysis
that you can point to and know exactly numerically what
that means. This was done by Fehr & Peers, which is the
leader in transportation analysis in the State of
California and they've done traffic analyses all over the
state, and so they're characterizing this based on their
experience in looking to the future.
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Now, traffic, I've worked in more than 200
communities. I could probably say 199 of them said traffic
was the biggest thing. Just finished a plan in South Dakota
and their idea of bad traffic was because they had to sit
behind a pickup at the light, so people's perception of
that. You obviously have a lot of traffic in town. You have
issues with your school system putting out on the streets
and what happens to the street during that half-hour pick
time. You've got issues with cut-through traffic on
weekends and other problems of overloading the highways, so
it's not that you don't have problems and not that it won't
make it more people will add more cars.
We likely do not have the ability to enhance your
transportation system significantly in town. We're not
adding lanes, in other words. So, we will get more people
into biking circumstances, more people into walking, more
on transit, but you're still going to have increases in the
overall traffic on your roadway systems and peoples'
perceptions of any increase in traffic will likely be not
happy, but they're all part of the tradeoff that you need
to make if you're going to meet the housing requirement.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I'm just reacting to
approving a report that says things are going to be minimal
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or moderate when we have no experience with VMT in reality
in town, and even less experience with these alternatives
and how that translates through to peoples' actual
experience, so I'm more reacting to that.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Vice Chair Janoff.
VICE CHAIR JANOFF: Thank you. In response to
Commissioner Hudes' concerns about traffic, there isn't a
person in this room, there isn't a person in town, there
isn't a person on GPAC who didn't start the conversation
with, "But what about traffic?" I guess that's not starting
the conversation, but we didn't view thinking of traffic as
our highest priority, although maybe it is the higher
priority for a lot of us today. The GPAC felt that in
itself couldn't be the reason to not call an increased
number of residential units. Don't like the traffic
situation we have. There need to be some changes. We hope
that there are changes in the works. We know that an
increase in the number of units will likely exacerbate the
problem, but we didn't feel it was our purview to say
sorry, we can't go to higher units because it's going to
make traffic worse.
So, I hope that reflects what the GPAC members
were thinking and discussing, but I just want to emphasize
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that traffic is a concern and we all realize that and these
particular areas of opportunity are going to have a
negative impact potentially, but that's an outcome of the
increase in units, and again, what we are asking the
Planning Commission for today is a recommendation that the
alternative that the GPAC is recommending, recommended to
Town Council so that there can be approval for the full
analysis upon which we'll have much more information to
determine what the traffic impact might be and how many
units, where density, where height.
I think it's important to get all of these
concerns out and I would hope that tonight with whatever
the Planning Commission puts forward to Town Council,
whether it forwards the recommendation of GPAC, that if you
have concerns about the recommendation of Alternative C we
also provide a list of those bullets so that the Council
can see—well, they'll hear those concerns of course if they
listen to these transcripts—but they can see perhaps
Alternative C is the one of have a more complete analysis
of, but we're concerned about these things and that can
still be part of the recommendation going forward.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I would also add that we're not
approving anything, we're only making a recommendation to
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Council, and if the Council goes forward with this
recommendation as Vice Chair Janoff stated, that will
initiate a process of more thorough analysis of the
preferred land use alternative, and there will be a full
Environmental Impact Report done for our General Plan
Update and that has to include transportation and all kinds
of issues.
We had some of this same discussion when we had
the GPAC meeting a few weeks ago about what are we
approving? We're not approving the General Plan yet, we're
approving a framework to move forward for doing more
analysis on the Land Use Element so that we can come up
with the right policies that would go with it. Commissioner
Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I had a few questions. I
crunched some numbers and sometimes I get more comfortable
when I see numbers, so I wanted to just maybe make a
statement and then ask a question about it.
First I looked at the different alternatives in
terms of population increase, and then I compared it to the
historical population that was in the previous information
that was provided in the previous General Plan, and it
looked to me like from sort of modern times, 2008 to 2020,
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overall there's been an annual population growth of 1.4-
percent in town, given the numbers in your chart and in
here, and that what is being suggested to accommodate for
in Alternative C is 0.9-percent increase. And I did see
that these percentages varied as I went back to 1963 and I
looked at each year, so I'm not uncomfortable with planning
for a population increase of 0.9-percent in Alternative C
given that we've experienced a 1.4-percent increase in sort
of recent history, so I don't find that C is out line.
Could you tell me if I'm right on my general understanding
of the population increases?
RICK RUST: Yeah, that's about right. Our numbers
originally started also with looking at what the California
Department of Finance projects using historic trends going
into the future as well as what our economics professional
looked at, and they were also in the sub-1-percent range.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Now, to the question that I
had, I also looked at the number of new units per person
added under the four different alternatives, and I included
the ones that had been approved, all of them basically. I
think the population lives in all those places.
Then I also turned it around and looked at the
average number of people per unit added and I was
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interested that between Alternative A we started at 1.7 per
unit and when we got to Alternative D we were at 2.09 per
person. Why would that be? Maybe you could explain why
there are more people per unit as we move up in the
options?
RICK RUST: I'm not sure of the math offhand, but
our factor we used was 2.4 persons per dwelling unit, which
is what the Town currently uses for projections.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay, well, you may have
been using a different number. You may have been excluding
in the process and the ADUs maybe? What I found interesting
was that it changed from alternative to alternative. In
your analysis you kept it constant?
RICK RUST: Yes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay. So, those are the
questions that I had on the numbers. Like I said, one of
them gave me some sort of comfort that we're in the general
ballpark with Alternative C.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Burch.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: I'm curious if it might be
appropriate for me to go ahead and venture a motion?
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COMMISSIONER BADAME: I was about to suggest that
to the Commission, that we should attempt a motion to see
where we stand.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: If I could just ask one
question of Staff real quick on process.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Sure.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: This has been billed as the
land use alternatives but we haven't talked about anything
other than housing. Will we be talking about other land
uses at the Planning Commission?
JOEL PAULSON: Ultimately, when the GPAC
discusses land uses we probably will have some
conversation. I'm sure you noticed throughout the
commercial was kept constant; there wasn't an increase
shown. This really was to explore housing from a land use
perspective, and we will have to have some factors that go
into the Environmental Impact Report as far as what we
think future growth in office, commercial, various
commercial sectors will be over the next 20 years so that
that can also be plugged into the Environmental Impact
Report.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay, because as I pointed
out before, I think we're ignoring some of the
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opportunities to be more oriented toward the innovation
economy in town and I think that this discussion about the
middle points out something that's missing. I think in the
commercial and in hotels as well as office space that
there's something missing there that's pretty fundamental
and pretty important for the Town. I've written up
something on this topic I can provide to Staff and to the
GPAC, but I just feel like if we are going to do a motion
and we're not going to address that I want to have some
comfort that there will be some opportunity to address
something that I think is important and missing.
JOEL PAULSON: Absolutely. I think ultimately
that's been brought up in GPAC multiple times, so once we
get to goals and policies from the Environmental Impact
Report it's really a square footage, and so then that
equates to employee population and greenhouse gas and
traffic, so it would be some kind of cap from an individual
commercial standpoint, but those types of items we
definitely welcome; definitely send those to us. We will
get those to the GPAC and the consultant and make sure that
those are addressed prior to the Land Use Element coming
back before Planning Commission.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you.
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CHAIR HANSSEN: And I'd like to add a comment to
that. Way back in the process when we talked about the
focus of the GPAC discussions it was decided that we needed
to focus most on the housing, but that doesn't mean as we
process through the Land Use Element that we can't add
goals and policies for commercial as well. I don't think
anyone on the GPAC wants to add 2,300 housing units and
then not have more commercial to support the neighbors, and
of course we want the people to have the jobs close to
them, so I'm sure that all that will be factored in later.
It's just it wasn't the focus of the land use alternatives
report, so I just want to make it clear that by making this
motion and recommendation to Council we're not saying we're
excluding commercial. So, Commissioner Burch, if you are
ready to make a motion.
COMMISSIONER BURCH: Yes, I am comfortable making
a motion that based on the recommendation of the GPAC we
will recommend approval… Or, I'm sorry, moving forward with
the study for land use Alternative C and the framework as
included in Exhibit 11.
I think I kind of butchered their recommendation,
but I'm comfortable making that although I've heard all the
discussion about the numbers, because truly this is really
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just authorizing our consultant to start something. We have
to give him a line in the sand somewhere on how to start
with this. There will be many more discussions about what
this looks like. We've got Los Gatos Boulevard everywhere.
Will it be in pocket areas? And then as our Chair
mentioned, we will be having discussions about now what
does this impact as far as our retail or local services?
It's all one big package. We just need to move forward with
this to get to that point, so I'm very comfortable doing
that.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Do we have a second? Vice Chair
Janoff.
VICE CHAIR JANOFF: I'll second the motion.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Would any Commissioners like to
add comments for questions before we take a vote?
Commissioner Barnett.
COMMISSIONER BARNETT: We've discussed the fact
that there's going to be further time for analysis and
review and modification. I wonder if it would be
overreaching to say it would be appropriate to footnote in
the motion that we anticipate there will be that kind of
further input?
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COMMISSIONER BURCH: Yeah, I would be very
comfortable with that.
VICE CHAIR JANOFF: As would I.
CHAIR HANSSEN: I think I would also add that I
think even subsequent to taking a vote on moving forward
with the framework it's perfectly appropriate since we're
making a recommendation to Council to take suggestions from
Commissioners as to things that should be considered when
the Council considers this as well. But your motion is
amended to include Commissioner Barnett's comments? Okay.
And does the seconder agree?
VICE CHAIR JANOFF: Yes.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Okay, now is there anyone else
that wants to make comments before we take a vote.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I've been wrestling with
this for some time, and better understanding the process
and better understanding the involvement of the public and
the members of the GPAC allows me to get more comfortable
with something I was not initially comfortable with, and
relative to having more input I believe that this really
should be done after we have developed goals. To me this is
the cart before the horse. It's very difficult to select
alternatives when you don't know what you're trying to
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achieve, and so I would just sort of reserve the right to
come back, and when this does come back and when there are
goals, to really look to see does this alternative meet the
goals with the risk that maybe we do another round at that
point.
I will be supporting the motion and let me just
give you some of the reasons for my discomfort that maybe
we could think about as we start to develop this.
One is that this is a longer timeframe than we've
done before. Longer timeframe to me means we're dealing
with more uncertainty. There's also more uncertainty in the
environment that we're in today. We've just seen SB50 all
over the place and we have a lot of uncertainty in other
aspects of retail as well. So, given the longer timeframe
and the more uncertainty I would tend to more conservative
numbers rather than put down numbers that might allow more
development than would be normal.
I also didn't hear yet that Alternative C really
is necessary to meet state requirements and could we manage
with a fewer number, and I'd be looking for that as the
process goes on.
As well, I felt that the middle is still missing,
and the missing middle is missing from Alternative C. It
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pushes us more toward the more dense and taller buildings
when perhaps it could be achieved more if we worked harder
at a smaller alternative focusing on that particular item.
Frankly, to me, I read the very interesting article on the
missing middle but then I didn't see the missing middle
that much in the actual proposals that were developed.
But like I said, I will be supporting the motion
because I think we need to move this forward and it is an
iterative process and this will give us the opportunity to
do that.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Commissioner Badame.
COMMISSIONER BADAME: I'll also be supporting the
motion, but I just wanted to add the comment that I work in
the downtown area, so adding that as an eighth opportunity
area I think was great and I fully support that. I
experience it downtown. I think the more mixed-use that we
can have adds to the vibrancy and the walkability, so I'll
be supporting the motion as well.
COMMISSIONER BADAME: Commissioner Tavana.
COMMISSIONER TAVANA: I would add that I'll be
supporting the motion as well, however, I did notice that
the GPAC preferred alternative is the only one that
includes the downtown district for the opportunity area, so
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I would wonder if we could add that to the other
alternatives to see what the total number would be if we
can include that in future studies as well.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Okay. Any other comments?
Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: One minor thing is I would
recommend taking out words that characterize traffic as
minimal or moderate before forwarding this recommendation.
I just don't think it's a great idea to do that.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Question for Staff. Will you be
taking the comments of the Commissioners and adding that to
the recommendation, or do we need to do that post the vote?
JENNIFER ARMER: The Town Council will have
verbatim minutes from this meeting as well as we will
provide a summary of what Staff has heard in the Staff
Report to Town Council.
CHAIR HANSSEN: Okay. That being the case, I will
call the question. All in favor? Opposed? No abstentions.
It passes unanimously. All right, thank you.