Attachment 03LOS GATOS PLANNING COMMISSION 12/14/2016
Item #6, 15215 Shannon Road
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A P P E A R A N C E S:
Los Gatos Planning
Commissioners:
Mary Badame, Chair
D. Michael Kane, Vice Chair
Charles Erekson
Melanie Hanssen
Matthew Hudes
Tom O’Donnell
Town Manager: Laurel Prevetti
Community Development
Director:
Joel Paulson
Town Attorney: Robert Schultz
Transcribed by: Vicki L. Blandin
(510) 337-1558
ATTACHMENT 3
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P R O C E E D I N G S:
CHAIR BADAME: We have a number of people waiting
patiently here, so I am going to move on to Item 6, which I
assume that you’re all here for. That is 15215 Shannon
Road, Planned Development Application PD-15-001, requesting
approval to rezone a property pre-zoned HR-5 to HR-2½:PD to
allow for subdivision of one lot into five lots,
construction of four new single-family homes, and removal
of large protected trees, APN 537-25-002.
Ms. Armer, we’re ready for the Staff Report.
JENNIFER ARMER: Good evening, Chair, Vice Chair,
and Commissioners.
The project in front of you this evening is a
proposal by Fred Sahadi to rezone his property to allow the
subdivision of the 13-acre lot into five lots.
The proposal before you involved a multi-step
process. The Conceptual Development Advisory Committee
occurred in December 2014, almost exactly two years ago.
The Planned Development zoning, which sets the stage for
the remaining steps, is what is being considered this
evening. The steps that would follow, if the PD were
approved, include annexation into the Town, subdivision and
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construction of the roadway improvements, four individual
architecture and site applications for each house, and then
followed by building permits.
As described in the Staff Report, the Planned
Development zone is required in the hillsides for
subdivisions of five lots or more. The HR-2½ zoning that is
proposed is consistent with half of the adjacent
properties; about half of the border of the project
property is zoned HR-2½, and the other half is zoned or
pre-zoned Resource Conservation.
The exceptions that are requested as part of this
Planned Development zone include exceptions to the cut and
fill requirements, construction outside the Least
Restrictive Development Area, the roadway grades up to 20%,
retaining walls up to 6’ in height, no sidewalks on the
private roadway, and consideration of home heights up to
25’ on the ridgelines.
An arborist report was prepared by the Town’s
Consulting Arborist, and a current proposal for roadway
improvements would include 16 protected trees being
removed. Additional trees would likely be removed with the
construction of the homes, but would be considered as part
of the individual architecture and site applications.
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An Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration
was prepared and potential impacts were found to be reduced
to less than significant with mitigation.
Staff recommends that the Planning Commission
review the findings in Exhibit 3 and consider recommending
approval of the Planned Development Ordinance in Exhibit
10. This concludes Staff’s presentation, but I’d be happy
to answer questions.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Ms. Armer, for the
report. Do we have questions? Vice Chair Kane.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Clarification on the PD
requirement. You said a PD is required if the subdivision
is five or more lots, so that means if we were just doing
four a PD would not be required and the project would be
subject to the Hillside Standards and Guidelines?
JENNIFER ARMER: The project is subject to the
Hillside Standards and Guidelines either way because of the
underlying hillside zoning. A PD zone is a possibility if
it’s fewer than five lots; it just happens to be a
requirement because they chose to propose five lots.
VICE CHAIR KANE: It’s the requirement if it’s
five or more, but not if it’s four or less?
JENNIFER ARMER: Correct, but it still would be
an option.
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VICE CHAIR KANE: Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Hudes followed by
Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I have a few questions, but
I’d like to start with we did a site visit in November, I
think, and it’s difficult to assess this site. What
changes, if any, to the proposal have been made since the
site visit that we were able to conduct in November?
JENNIFER ARMER: No changes have been made to the
proposal since the site visit.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay, great. I have actually
a lot of questions, but maybe I could ask just one more?
CHAIR BADAME: Of course.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I’m trying to understand the
application, and on page 5 under B there appears to be
something that I wasn’t sure about which talks about future
single-family homes and driveways, so that seems to be
going beyond what is in this application, because they say
clearly architecture and site are not part of this. Is it
normal to approve future developments in this way under
those two bullet points that are in there? Is that normal
to do that, or wouldn’t that be considered with the
architecture and site?
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JENNIFER ARMER: The PD zone allows for setting
of basically the zoning rules for any future development of
the sites, and so what is being requested there is
providing guidelines for what could be considered and
potential exceptions to the Hillside Standards. There are
no specific houses proposed as part of this, but there are
five lots, each of which has a potential building site
described as part of this application.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: The thing I’m obviously
concerned about is giving permission for 25’ height for
homes that are in the future that could be part of this,
and I’m just curious whether that’s normal to ask for that
kind of thing in advance of the applications?
JENNIFER ARMER: What is being asked for is an
allowance that they be able to consider, if appropriate,
heights up to 25’, because currently the Hillside
Guidelines and Standards sets a limit—I believe it is 18’
height limit—when development is on a ridgeline. Because
this development is currently proposed with the most likely
building sites on ridgelines the Applicant has requested
that one of the elements of the PD be consideration; not
necessarily allowance of 25’, but that it be allowed to be
considered as part of those future applications. This is
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one element among many that you can consider including, or
not, this evening.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I sat on the Planned
Development Study Committee, and I was just trying to
understand, aside from the fact that there’s a five-unit
subdivision proposed, but supposing it was four, when we
spent all this time talking about the Planned Developments,
clearly an important use of Planned Developments is in the
hillsides, but what I got out of the discussions is so that
we can protect our hillsides, and yet we’re being asked to
change many, many exceptions from our Hillside Standards
and Guidelines. I’m just wondering what Staff’s opinion is
of the benefit of the PD, supposing that it was four units,
relative to using our guidelines? I’m struggling with that
because of the large number of exceptions.
JOEL PAULSON: Whether this is a PD of five lots,
or a standard parcel map at four lots, that doesn’t require
a PD. Either way they can request exceptions, so this is
just going through the PD process. What Staff does is they
evaluate the requested exceptions, evaluate the Applicant’s
proposed justification for those, and makes a determination
as to whether or not in this instance that is appropriate.
As you’re well aware, and as has been stated by evening by
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Ms. Armer, the Commission can either agree with some, or
all, or none of those requested exceptions, and then we
would move forward from there. Then you would be making a
recommendation ultimately, so whenever that recommendation
is moves forward. Any additional direction that you want to
include in that motion can also be offered.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Okay, thank you. I had a
second question, if you don’t mind, and then that’s it for
now.
I wanted to ask about the road. It seemed to me
that if you looked at all the exceptions, a large number of
those occur because of them wanting to put in this road,
and so I’m trying to understand what it is that makes it so
necessary to cut into the hillsides and put a road in that
beautiful hillside when they already have a road that comes
in. I was wondering what Staff’s opinion was about the
road.
JENNIFER ARMER: Going on the assumption that the
existing road you’re referring to is the driveway access
easement from Shannon Road, that current driveway access
via easement is not actually up to standards, so if there
were new development on the site there would be certain
standards for the fire department access, for instance,
that would require changes to that roadway based on the
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Applicant’s analysis. I believe, up to 10’ of fill, and
therefore another exception, would be required in order to
level that out and meet those standards.
JOEL PAULSON: I just offer also, as it was going
through the process Staff, in conjunction with the
Applicant, looked at the options, and almost all, if not
all of these exceptions to some degree, if they took access
from Shannon Road would also be triggered.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: But they’re only triggered
because of the potential of doing new development?
JOEL PAULSON: Correct. If you intensify, then
you have to bring a roadway, whether that’s from the
private drive as proposed, or the existing driveway that
currently is out there on the site.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Okay.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner O'Donnell followed by
Vice Chair Kane.
COMMISSIONER O’DONNELL: It’s my understanding
that the proposal now is that a roadway be put in, which
would be the primary access of the development, but that
the existing easement be retained as essentially an
emergency exit. However, we received a letter, I don't know
whether it was today or yesterday. I assume this is the
Murphy easement, and yet the gentleman who wrote the letter
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was definitely not a Murphy, who said that the easement was
constricted to support, I think, the one lot, period. If
that access were not available as emergency access because
it was to serve one lot, what does that do to any approval
that we might give?
JENNIFER ARMER: I don’t believe that the Shannon
Road access would be required for any Town standards or
requirements.
JOEL PAULSON: And I’d just offer that even in
the Hillside Development Standards and Guidelines and/or
the General Plan there is a desire to obviously in the
hillside area, given the constraints that are out there and
the potential for fire, there’s always wherever an option,
we look to have that secondary access just from a safety
perspective. We don’t have the particulars on the easement
in front of us, and so the Applicant may have additional
information on that as to whether it is in fact currently
restricted.
COMMISSIONER O’DONNELL: Part of the reason I ask
the question is we typically don’t get involved in
arguments about easements, and I’m sure that will remain
the case, but to the extent that it’s an open question,
then I as a Planning Commissioner would take that into
consideration at least.
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Secondly, another writer indicates that if that
were to be kept open, one, it has drainage issues, and two,
it has traffic issues, both of which the writer suggests
would be perhaps better addressed by the new road. So I
throw that out now. I’ll be asking questions of the
parties, but also I think Staff should perhaps eventually
have to respond to us on that too, but that’s premature.
CHAIR BADAME: Vice Chair Kane followed by me.
VICE CHAIR KANE: I agree with Commissioner
Hanssen that the new proposed road captures most of my
attention. There was a map submitted, I think by the
Applicant, that showed all the cut and fill and slope in
excess of what’s usually required, and it looks like a real
problem requiring four or five waivers or exemptions. Mr.
Sahadi wrote us a letter; I believe he said he’s been
living up there for 46 years, so I heard what you said,
but, if the family has been using that road for 46 years
safely and otherwise, why can’t they continue to use it and
share it with other people? One of the responses is going
to be 2.68 people in each one of those houses, it’s going
to hurt, but if that road has been good for 46 years, why
can’t we continue it and get rid of a big problem on the
project?
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JENNIFER ARMER: Standards do change, and this is
an example where with new development current standards are
required, so the access being safe based on current code is
the requirement when you’re talking about new development.
JOEL PAULSON: And it’s really fire department
access that drives this for the most part, and so as I
stated before, to improve the existing access that’s being
used would require most, if not all of the same or similar,
exceptions that are proposed for the proposed roadway as it
currently is laid out. Given the existing topography, you’d
have to widen the road, tree removals would be required
probably, and then there would be a retaining wall on one
side, and there would be cut and fill probably, as
mentioned, in access of up to 10’ potentially to try to
level that out to, again, try to meet as closely as
possible additional fire department requirements.
VICE CHAIR KANE: I read in the Initial Study in
the Mitigated Negative Declaration that the land is
designated as super high fire possibility area, and yet for
46 years we couldn’t have a fire truck go up that lane if
they had to. I really want to avoid the other road, and I’m
looking for a way out.
JOEL PAULSON: You can avoid it if you have one
house.
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VICE CHAIR KANE: Could it be a smaller fire?
JOEL PAULSON: If they leave the one house up
there, then they do not have to… Actually, I think they may
be able to go up to two without having to improve the
roadway; we’d have to work with the fire department. No, of
course the fire department is going to get up there to the
existing house using that roadway. The high fire hazard
area you speak of is the entire hillside, so it’s not just
a specific site; throughout and even down out of the
hillsides is the wild urban interface, and so that is
possible. But once you are looking for requesting to
intensify use, then you do have to bring the roadway up to
standards that meet fire department requirements.
VICE CHAIR KANE: One last question, if I may,
about the Initial Study?
CHAIR BADAME: Certainly.
VICE CHAIR KANE: The Mitigated Negative
Declaration has whole bunches of this could be awful except
for the mitigation, there is just so many of them, and the
mitigation starts to not be persuasive, and I’m asking if
there… You know what I mean. I mean it’s a high-potential
problem except for the mitigation, and some of the
mitigation seems pretty wishy-washy, given the site, the
restrictions, and the constraints. I’m just overall
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concerned with what they’re pointing out about problems and
potential harm to the environment and to the people, and
that’s where the high fire super zone came in, and I’m very
concerned about that.
Also, in Appendix C there’s a geotechnical
report, and I know we’re going to be concerned about that,
because it’s up on the top, it’s on a ridge, and there was
a lot of cut. We walked the property, and it could be
hazardous to your health if… This says the geotechnical
report is provided under separate cover. I didn’t read it.
I just want to know if Staff read it, and are there any
problems pointed out?
JENNIFER ARMER: Staff did read it. Our Public
Works Department reviewed it, as well as their consultant.
It was reviewed and looked at very closely to make sure
that it had the appropriate details and considered the
potential concerns.
VICE CHAIR KANE: It met with Staff’s
satisfaction?
JENNIFER ARMER: Correct.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: That’s what we have a Planning
Commission for is to also review these. My question, since
I was next, is on page 17 of the Hillside Development
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Standards and Guidelines there’s a chart with cut and fill
maximums. We talked about the cut and fill for the roadway,
but I’m concerned about the future single-family homes and
driveways, so what kind of numbers would we be looking at
for an exception that would further exceed the maximums
allowed on that chart? Do we have any idea how extreme the
exceptions might be?
JENNIFER ARMER: The Applicant did actually spend
some time looking a little more closely at those potential
driveways. They have of course not developed proposed
homes, and so the exact location of driveways and where the
garages would be, et cetera, is not developed, but in the
information that you received today in your Desk Item there
was additional review of those driveways, and they worked
to make sure they were keeping a certain distance from the
trees, five DBH, so that they would be protecting as many
trees as possible, and keeping the cut and fill so that it
was going to be less than 5’, and when they do make their
presentation, I invite the Commission to ask further
questions and details.
CHAIR BADAME: All right, further questions.
Commissioner Erekson followed by Commissioner Hudes.
CHARLES EREKSON: I want to return to the
roadway/driveway issue, and I guess this is to be sure I
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understood correctly. So the paved area, and I’m using that
very intentionally, that departs from Shannon Road and goes
up the hill now, my understanding or conclusion—I’m
frequently wrong, so I’m happy to be corrected—is that
that’s a driveway for which the Applicant has a easement,
so does not own the property, just has an easement to use
it, and as a matter of fact, I would just maybe suggest to
Ms. Armer that standards haven’t changed necessarily,
because it’s just a driveway and the property owner has an
easement that allows it to go to the one house that’s
there.
Is that correct? Okay. So then I wouldn’t assume
it would be the province of the Town to require an
applicant to acquire property, in other words, to acquire
the land that is now owned by another party and convert it
into a street in order to provide access from that
direction, or to require them to grant an easement and
negotiate with the other landowner to allow them to do
improvements on that person’s property, because it’s owned
by another party, when there is another reasonable
opportunity to gain access to the property by bringing a
road in from the other direction. It seems like to me,
unless I’m missing what’s happening here, what the
Applicant has proposed, we may or may not want to approve
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it, but we couldn’t require them to acquire other property
or to go get an easement to satisfy us, or could we, I
guess?
JENNIFER ARMER: There actually is a private
access easement used either way. There’s an access easement
over private property being used as a segment connecting
from Shady Lane and Santella Drive to the proposed project.
JOEL PAULSON: And that’s given that the proposed
project is landlocked, so it doesn’t have any street
frontage, and it doesn’t have any direct access to a public
street. So either way, whether via the existing easement or
the new easement, there will be a need for that, and the
Applicant can speak more to that as well.
JENNIFER ARMER: That easement that I referred to
actually exists; they do already have that easement
recorded.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I had a couple of questions
about the applicable zoning and ordinances.
In a letter from Mr. Dave Weissman, there seems
to be some disagreement about what the present zoning is.
Could you walk me through what the present zoning is and
what the proposed zoning is? It says something about it’s
zoned A-20-SD-1, not HR-5, and I believe that there’s also
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HR-2½. What’s the evolution here of these different zoning
designations?
JENNIFER ARMER: The property is currently in
unincorporated county land, so it currently has several
different designations. The county has a zoning designation
for it. The Town has also pre-zoned it, because it is
within our sphere of influence, and so if it were
incorporated into the Town the current pre-zoning is for
HR-5, but the adjacent properties, the ones that are within
the Town, are currently zoned either RC or HR-2½.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay, thank you. That’s
helpful, and we may get some testimony we need to clarify,
but there does seem to be some disagreement.
Another question related to ordinance and zoning,
if I may? What’s the status of revisions to the PD
Ordinance that’s being considered?
JOEL PAULSON: Those are on hold. They were put
on hold given the direction to modify the North 40 Specific
Plan, which obviously takes up a lot of Staff resources, so
the priority was the North 40 Specific Plan.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: And there were
recommendations in there. I know there’s not a requirement
to, but it would be good to understand in what way would
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this comply or not comply with the new Planned Development
Ordinance?
JOEL PAULSON: I don’t have that information in
front of us, and it’s been quite some time since I’ve
looked at it, so I would not want to give you any
misleading information.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Maybe we could follow up on
that later, if that’s possible.
One more, if I may?
CHAIR BADAME: One more, and after that maybe
we’ll move on to the Applicant.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: This has to do with the
exception for grade. One of the exceptions on page 5 of the
Staff Report is roadway grades up to 20%, but for no
distance more than 300’. What is the maximum grade that is
permitted without requesting an exception?
JENNIFER ARMER: Fifteen percent.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay, thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: All right, I will now open the
public testimony portion of the public hearing and allow
the Applicant and their team up to ten minutes to address
the Commission. I’m not sure I have a speaker card from the
Applicant. I’m sure now. All right, if you could please
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state your name for the record. It should be David Wilson,
if I read correctly.
DAVID WILSON: We need just a moment to set up,
but yeah, my name is David Wilson from HMH. I’m here with
Joey Covey, also from HMH, and we are here representing
Fred Sahadi, the Applicant, and let’s get ourselves just a
minute here.
(Pause.)
It’s been a long road to get here. We’ve been
working on this project for over two-and-a-half years, and
I will do my best to summarize that two-and-a-half years
here in the next ten minutes.
As we discussed, we are proposing an annexation
to the Town and to change the current pre-zoning of HR-5 to
HR-2½. The project consists of five lots, as you see here
with the proposed roadway as described by Staff, and thank
you very much for your description, Jennifer.
The zoning is proposed to be consistent with the
current General Plan designation of Hillside Residential
with a density of between zero and one units to the acre,
and also consistent with surrounding land uses on the
Town’s zoning plan with the surrounding HR-2½ zones. As you
can see here, it clearly shows more than half the site is
surrounding by HR-2½.
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The Sahadi family has lived on the property since
1970, making it their home where they raised their four
children, and the site holds very tremendous value to them
and memories for their family. The intent of this project
is to subdivide the property into one lot to be able to
provide for each of the four children.
This process certainly hasn’t been easy. Staff
has been very regimented in the requirements. We’ve
actually gone through a lot of turnover as well. We’ve been
through two different planners, three different engineers,
and two different environmental consultants through our
process. Have coordinated extensively with Staff, County
Fire, West Valley Sanitation District, and the San Jose
Water Company, and have satisfied all of their requests and
all of the comments that we’ve received from them
throughout the process. We did go before the CDAC in
December and got pretty good support, recognizing that we
were asking for up to five lots.
As you can see from the video here, the site is
an intermediate ridgeline that’s surrounded by hillsides
with numerous oak trees. There are over 360 oak trees on
the property that are scattered throughout the site, as
well as other species of trees intermixed. The flat areas
are mostly clear for development. The surrounding hillsides
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we intend to maintain as open and clear greater than 50% of
the site development area. The lots that you see here
overlaid with the oblique view of the property, and the
arena that’s there in the center, would be retained for use
by the owners.
Moving on to the grading plan, the roadway that
we’ve described is shown here. The project application is
for the construction at this time of just the roadway and
not the lots. We did study very many different alternatives
for the roadway, including that existing driveway, and
found that this roadway actually provided the least amount
of impact for our project. We also included within that
roadway completing the unfinished public improvements at
the terminus of Santella Drive. There is an existing public
right-of-way that’s already been granted to the Town of Los
Gatos that is not secured by improvements, and we will be
finishing those public improvements with the project.
The road is outside of the LRDA, but it is in an
area that we have carefully coordinated to have the least
impact. The amount of trees that we actually need to remove
within the road is five. The remaining 11, to total the 16
that we’ve talked about, are outside of the roadway and we
believe we’d be able to save a majority of those trees
through some careful coordination. They’re within three to
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five DBH, so working with Debbie Ellis, we’ve had
subsequent meetings with her to try to work toward that end
as well, and we’ll continue to do that with our
application.
The home sites are shown on the application with
kind of a worse case large footprint, and flatter driveways
with more impacts. We’ve provided these exhibits that show,
I think, a more realistic development plan with footprints
that are carefully designed to miss as many trees as
possible and driveways that are steeper and that allow much
less grading. There are cuts up to 5-6’ in very limited
areas on a few of these driveways, but for the most part
they’re within the design guideline standards, and the
houses themselves have very little tree removal. There are
no trees for the lot you’re looking at now, Lot 5, one to
two on the other lots, and a few trees that would require
removal on Lot 1. Trees are very important to us. We want
to save the trees too. Those are a very, very valuable
asset of the site, and we certainly are working hard, and
will continue to work hard, to save all those trees we can.
Visibility is also very critical and important to
us. We recognize that preserving the hillside views from
the valley floor is critical to everybody, and that brings
us to a visibility analysis. Part of the visibility
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analysis we were utilizing this dead Monterey pine tree
that’s 60’ tall on the site. It gave us a reference point
for both location and hit of something that we could see
from various vantage points around the valley floor. So we
did do an extensive visibility analysis, which I’d like to
show you now, that shows what can be seen from various
aspects of the valley floor.
As part of that, what we did is we used the
three-dimensional topography that’s available within Google
Earth, overlaid the site plan on it, and with that we then
actually extracted building masses. Again, we don’t have
architecture, but building masses that would show the
proposed house locations. Google Earth also has three-
dimensional trees available, which have proven to be very
accurate in their dimensions, and that was the basis then,
modeled home sites, three-dimensional information available
to us with Google Earth.
Obviously we used the Town of Los Gatos hillside
map and the specific viewing platform locations, and we
looked not just at the viewing platforms, but we wanted to
look at the whole valley, so you can see a lot of it
spinning around and it’s what we looked at.
But focusing on the first viewing platform at
Selinda Way, we used both photos and simulations to see.
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This is looking over Leigh High School from Selinda and
looking toward the site. And now I’ve windowed in where you
can see actually where the site location is, looking
towards Lots 1 and 5, and you can see now that pine tree
poking up above the other trees in the foreground. At this
point you’re looking at a threshold of about 500’ of tree
line that are obscuring the actual site itself.
Taking those away and seeing what you’re seeing
behind it, Lot 5, the 18’ and 25’ heights, just for some
reference, well below everything you see, what a building
mass may look like, and again, as we bring back the
vegetation and the hillsides that are obscuring the view
you can see clearly it’s well, well below anything that you
could see.
Kind of spinning the model up just so you can see
the sightline and how it goes through all of those trees,
and the numerous screening elements that are in front of
the site itself; it’s not just a few trees on the outside.
As we spin around toward the next viewing platform we’re
looking for anything else that we might see, again, not
just the viewing platforms.
Here we’re looking at a piece of Lot 1 that
appears visible from Pinehurst, and at Pinehurst there’s a
place where you are looking at Lot 1, and there are some
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openings in the trees and it’s the point at which I think
we have the most visibility of anything that we’re
proposing to develop on the site.
You can see some of the netting that we’ve put up
there just for aiding ourselves with height references and
location. Approximately a house would be terraced into Lot
1 as proposed something like that, and it would be screened
behind those trees and a portion of the house would be
visible. It’s about, depending upon the home size, 18-20%
of the face of the home that may be visible from that
location of about a mile away.
Looking at the next viewing platform at Blossom
Hill, you’ve got to position yourself a little bit
carefully, because if you stand at the intersections there
are just signs and buildings in the way. So we moved down
the street where we can see between the trees, look at a
sightline where we can see the site again, and fortunately
you can see a little bit of that dead pine tree poking
above the trees and the canopy, and you can see the
position of the home sites that Lots 3, 4, and 5 are well
below anything that you’d be able to see from that
location.
Kind of looking again at the vantage point to see
how those sightlines do pierce through some of the terrain
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and the trees. You kind of get a flavor then of how it is
that those sites are actually obscured from being visible
from that location.
Spinning around, there’s a location that’s up the
valley area where the arena is, and some of the home sites
may have some slight visibility as you go to valley floor.
You need to actually move about 1.8 miles away, and we’re
now at the old Chevy dealership, and in that parking lot I
had to carefully position myself again to find a location
where you could see the site, but there is a little window
that opened up where you can again see that pine tree that
gave us our vantage point. We blow that up here largely,
take away again the elements of the screening and the
foreground, see what Lot 5 is, and as we place that
building mass we’re going to look at that building mass
father back in the lot, that’s certainly where we’re
proposing it, and well behind anything that screens
visibility of that home site.
CHAIR BADAME: Mr. Wilson, you’re going to have
to wrap it up. Your time is up.
DAVID WILSON: Okay. The rest of the visibility
analysis shows from Highway 17 and Main Street. Again, no
visibility can be seen from there, both were behind
ridgelines and screening.
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So really in conclusion from our visibility
analysis from the viewing platforms, as well as from
locations between the viewing platforms, the home sites are
simply either not visible at all or very minimally visible
with that one location at Lot 1 I think being one…
CHAIR BADAME: Mr. Wilson. Five seconds.
DAVID WILSON: Okay. I think we have addressed
all the concerns of Staff, and worked very hard to design
this project in a very compliant way that’s sensitive to
all of the requirements.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you very much. We’ll see if
we have any questions for you from the Commissioners.
Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I wonder if you would be
able to show us the view from Highway 17 and Main Street,
as I think those are important view platforms.
DAVID WILSON: So this is actually going across
the bridge at Highway 17 and just kind of shows the view
from a car traveling by. You couldn’t really see anything
in the sites, so now we lift up above that so that we could
actually get an idea of what was obscuring the view. There
are several trees, and views, both topographic hillsides
and vegetation that’s screening it from that area that you
only see as you lift up 50-100’ in the air. The white lines
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that you see are the site lines from the viewing platforms
up to the site.
From West Main Street the viewing platform is a
location that simply isn’t conducive for us to see the
site, so I actually moved down the street a bit so that we
at least get an opportunity to see some of the area. I
still couldn’t really see it, so again we’re just going to
show lifting ourselves up higher in elevation toward that
site. You can see the view line and the proposed
development behind. Here we just kind of zoom up on it so
you can kind of see as you get close to it what actually
you are seeing, just very little of the home site, maybe
some of the roof.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Just as a follow up, thank
you. I’m not as familiar with the viewing platforms and how
all that works. Is there a document—maybe I missed it—that
shows where these viewing platforms, or vantage points,
whatever you call them, are located?
DAVID WILSON: Yeah, viewing platforms are
identified in the Hillside Design Guidelines. There are
four of them, with a fifth being pretty much another one
that makes sense. The fifth viewing platform that I chose
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was the entire valley floor, because I thought that that
made sense to me.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: So you used the ones in the
guidelines, plus the valley floor?
DAVID WILSON: As you saw in the video, we really
did examine the entire perimeter of the valley.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Hudes, the viewing
platforms are located on page 13 of the Hillside Design
Guidelines, for your reference.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Any further questions from
Commissioners? Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I’ll start with just a few
questions in the letter in the Desk Item today, Exhibit 11.
With regard to construction traffic, on page 3 it
states that… I think there was a question about whether
construction traffic should go through the Shannon Road or
through the Shady Lane entrance. Do you have an opinion? Is
there an advantage to using one means of access versus the
other?
DAVID WILSON: There’s no real definitive
advantage. We are fine taking construction access through
either route. We actually had envisioned that it would most
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likely be through Shannon Road and not through the recently
constructed Highland of Los Gatos subdivision, but if there
was one impact that was seen by everybody of having more
than the other with construction access, we’re flexible; we
could take it either way.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I think we have public
comment either way as well…
DAVID WILSON: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: …so we’ll have to consider
that. Can I keep going?
CHAIR BADAME: You can keep going. I don’t see
any other hands up, so go ahead.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: With regard to the 18’
height limit in the Hillside Development Standards and
Guidelines, what options are available for this development
to comply with the 18’ standard?
DAVID WILSON: The reason that we would like to
look at the option to go to more than 18’ is to have a
second story element on the lot. As you can see, like for
example, in a development scenario like is shown here for
Lot 4. I’m arbitrarily showing 5,600 square feet as a
building area excluding the garage.
In theory, you could take that whole wing of that
home site that’s configured between these Trees 110 and 111
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on that upper left side and make that into a second story
element and still have the square footage of the home site,
have less of an impact to the lot area itself, have more
natural open areas, and still have a home you wouldn’t be
able to see, because really, the difference between 18’ and
25’, as demonstrated in that view analysis, doesn’t make a
difference between the home site being seen or not seen. I
think in this case, even though it may be counter
intuitive; it would actually provide a benefit to the site
to have at least a less amount of impact.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Had you considered using
cellars to be able to move at least a portion of the
structure so that you could have essentially two floors
within an 18’ height?
DAVID WILSON: It’s certainly something that
we’ve considered. The problem with the cellars in this
particular development is the site, particularly the
intermediate ridgeline where the building sites are
predominantly naturally occurring shale and the surficial
soil layer is 6-12” at the most, so as you get into an
excavation you’re really ripping into rock, so having more
offhaul and material. Doing more grading and ripping into
the fractured underlying shale layers just really isn’t the
best option, I think, from our standpoint.
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One of the things that we value here is that
these building sites are flat enough where we don’t need to
grade paths and we don’t need to be doing perimeter grading
around the buildings. We’ll certainly need to be grading
for a slab for a garage, but other than that, we envision
raised stem walls and leaving the sites natural.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Have you considered other
options to reduce the grading that exceeds the guidelines?
DAVID WILSON: We have considered a lot of
different options, and it’s interesting because one of the
items that starts to get into our balance between cut
heights or fill heights and saving trees is a balance
between maintaining acceptable grades, as coordinated with
County Fire, and what alignment that would be able to have
practically on the hill as to configure the roadway, and
what clearance we have to trees.
What we’ve done is taking all that into
consideration, and we have aligned the roadway with the
appropriate grades that we know County Fire will accept to
provide as most clearance as we could to the trees, that
sometimes meant that we would purposely move the road over
and have it entirely into a fill condition so that we
weren’t cutting next to the roots of adjoining trees or
adjacent trees that may be 6-8’ away. That would mean now
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we’re filling 6’-plus. We could have moved it over and been
filling 3’ and cutting 4’ and said we’re in compliance with
the guidelines, but with a little careful thought, some
careful planning and selection of that roadway alignment,
we can actually put the road in and save trees. Maybe it
sounds horrible to you that we’re filling 6’, but we’re
doing that because we have the opportunity to adjust that
alignment and preserve trees.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Is that obvious from the
diagrams that you’ve shown to us where you’ve looked at
that?
DAVID WILSON: We’ll, you’d see the final product
of our grading plan, and you can see where trees are like
at the high side of the road, and we don’t have a retaining
wall there, and we’re actually conforming to grade at that
high side of the road. The rest of the road is in fill with
the retaining wall at the outboard side, and that’s a
condition where we purposely decided yeah, we could comply
with cut and fill requirements in the guidelines, but we’d
remove a tree if we did that. Why would we want to do that?
I think we’re being smart.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: I know you said you
considered different options, but I don't know if we did
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see the chart that showed what the LRDA was and where it
would be.
DAVID WILSON: The LRDA is actually shown on one
of the exhibits up there.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Okay. I didn’t know if it
was in our packet or not. I looked through and I didn’t see
it. Maybe I missed it. What were the other options that you
actually considered?
DAVID WILSON: Well, the first roadway alignment
that we brought before the CDAC was, as you were discussing
earlier on, why not use the existing driveway? The existing
driveway is there. I think you mentioned it’s been used for
45 years, so why can’t it still be used? The county has a
very, very strict approach on that. In our meetings with
County Fire they made it exceedingly clear that access to
any lot in the hills, with wild line fire danger, whatever,
they would not accept exceptions to what their standards
are. Now, they prefer 15% max, the 20% max per the 300’
comes from the county, that’s their standards, and we
carefully coordinated with them for those locations where
we were doing that.
But the reality of us having to improve that
existing driveway just proved infeasible. We’ve got a
drainage channel on one edge of it. We’ve got large oak
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trees on both sides. We’ve got a grade that’s up to almost
30% on a portion of that existing driveway; it’s very
steep. So that’s what makes the need for the extra fill; in
order to compensate for that really steep area, you need to
fill and flatten it out and have it be longer, and then we
needed to fill it up. Well, now to fill it up we couldn’t
leave it in the same alignment. That’s on adjacent
properties owned by Tzanavaras; Murphy is adjacent to them.
When we were looking at the revised alignment we felt we
were going to have impacts to both properties with grading,
tree removal, filling a creek, and environmental concerns
with that, and new easement acquisitions.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: Okay, I understand that.
Relative to that, actually you (inaudible). I realize that
we’re not at the point where houses are being built, but we
received some comments, and I’m sure we’ll hear more in a
bit, but everyone on the Planning Commission has been up on
that Santella Court neighborhood for other proposals and
it’s a very long and winding drive, and so I’m just
wondering what would incent people to even go that way when
it’s much quicker to go down to Shannon? It seems like it’s
a huge amount of cutting into the hill, and I understand
the County Fire requirements, but I can’t imagine what
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would make people want to go use that road and go out the
other way.
DAVID WILSON: I can’t predict what people may
want to do, but that certainly will be the main focus of
the project entry. It’s going to be enhanced with its own
entry; it’s going to look like you’re entering the project.
The secondary access road, the existing driveway, if that
became a concern and we didn’t want traffic going towards
Shannon, then perhaps that could be considered to be gated.
We haven’t considered that, but those are all private
streets. It’s a private drive and an easement now, the
extension that we’re proposing is private, and so that’s
another opportunity. If there were concerns with cut-
through traffic or other people utilizing this route for
whatever reason, there could be some kind of a gate
proposed.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner O'Donnell.
COMMISSIONER O’DONNELL: You’ve read the easement
on the driveway?
DAVID WILSON: Yes, I’ve seen it, but I’m not
ultimately familiar with it.
COMMISSIONER O’DONNELL: Somebody made a comment
earlier this evening, I think it was Commissioner Erekson,
that perhaps the easement was for the benefit of a
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designated one house. Do you know whether that’s true or
not?
DAVID WILSON: I don’t know specifically if that
is true, but if it were to be found that there wasn’t a
legal right to increase that usage because of the
subdivision, again, we could look at gating it. That
secondary access isn’t of primary importance to us; I mean
it’s not something that we absolutely need. I think having
more routes in the event of an emergency and an emergency
evacuation, having connectivity, is a benefit for that
entire area.
COMMISSIONER O’DONNELL: But you’re saying you
could get along without it, is that correct?
DAVID WILSON: Yes, we could.
COMMISSIONER O’DONNELL: Okay, thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: All right, I don’t see any further
questions at this time, so thank you very much for your
presentation.
DAVID WILSON: Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: I will now invite comments from
members of the public. Members of the public will have
three minutes to speak, and our first speaker card is
Romina Ahuja.
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ROMINA AHUJA: Good evening, my name is Romina
Ahuja.
First of all, I’d love to just tell you how much
more respect I have for all of you here tonight, because to
go through this process, we’ve been here since 7:00
o’clock, and I bow down to you. I don’t know how you do
this on a regular basis.
I’d like to introduce myself as one of the
homeowners of the Highlands of Los Gatos. Also, I am now
the president of the HOA for the Highlands of Los Gatos as
well. I wear two different hats, so I come to you as both
entities.
The reason why we’re here tonight is that we do
understand that there is a proposal out there that is
proposing to use Shady Lane and Santella Road to go toward
Mr. Sahadi’s development. We would really like for you to
reconsider that, the reason being that we have been through
construction now for two years.
We are almost done with our construction. This
neighborhood has become, as you all probably have been to
it, a beautiful neighborhood, but we also have about 15
homes that are already taken and people are already living
in those homes, and in those homes we have people that have
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children, and Shady Lane, as Ms. Hanssen had said, is a
very windy road.
So what we are looking for you to do is to please
consider the fact that it will bring more dirt, and it’s a
safety hazard for the people that are living on that
street. We’ve already seen construction trucks going up
there and coming down, and the roads are a mess already.
We’re hoping that it’s going to come to an end very soon.
So if you could please consider that, as we’ve got a couple
of other homeowners with me tonight, and we all really hope
that you can consider that when you’re making a decision.
The other portion is that our street, Shady
Lane/Santella Road, as far as I understand it’s been
dedicated but it has not been accepted by the Town of Los
Gatos, and we would like to put it out there as a
consideration that we would be… As our neighborhood, we’ve
got 19 homes. Through the meeting that we had today, we
could really consider taking it over as a private road. So
if you can keep that in the back of your heads when you’re
making a decision; we would be very happy to come back and
talk about that again. Thank you very much.
CHAIR BADAME: Don’t go away. I have a question
from Commissioner O'Donnell.
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COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: I’m not going to ask you
a technical question, but it may sound technical; it’s not
my intention.
ROMINA AHUJA: Sure.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: But it isn’t crystal
clear to me at the moment what this easement is that runs
through Santella and down Shady Lane; it’s been talked
about several different ways. But typically when you buy a
house you get something called a white paper or another
colored paper, and in that paper it discloses to you things
that may have an impact on your purchase. I would imagine,
if this were a pre-existing easement, which arguably could
take somebody out of the development into the hinterlands,
so to speak…
ROMINA AHUJA: Right.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: …that would be disclosed
to you before you bought the house, so I’m wondering if
that was disclosed to you?
ROMINA AHUJA: Probably in the very, very, very
fine print, it might have been. We did know that we were
going to have Shady Lane; we were very prepared for it. I
was the first homeowner. I’ve seen ten other homes come
after that. They’re now building another home across the
street from us. So like I said, we’re almost at the end. We
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understand that last two years that that’s what we had to
do. They had told us it was probably going to be three.
Great, we’re willing to accept that. But when you’re going
into a brand new development now that’s going to start all
of it all over again for us, that’s something we weren’t
prepared for.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Have any of you explored
whether there is indeed a right for someone else to go
through your property?
ROMINA AHUJA: I don’t think so. I don’t think
so.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Okay, thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Anyone else? Yes, Commissioner
Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: With regard to your
preference to not have traffic go through Santella, does
that apply to the construction phase or to the residential
phase?
ROMINA AHUJA: No, more construction. Once the
residents, if they’re going through Shannon Road, we do not
have a problem for them going through there, but to come
through our neighborhood as a construction zone again is
more what we are fighting for at this point, or whichever
way you’d like to see that.
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COMMISSIONER HUDES: I had another question.
CHAIR BADAME: Sure.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: With regard to views and the
request to have 25’ exceptions to the Hillside Guidelines,
do you or any of the residents in your area have any
opinion on that?
ROMINA AHUJA: We would have to go back and look
at it, because this is the first time that we’re seeing the
way that they’ve shown the presentation of seeing. We would
have to go back, and we could probably come back to you
after, but at this particular moment we don’t know of that,
so I can’t answer that at the moment.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Any further questions? Seeing
none, thank you very much.
ROMINA AHUJA: Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Our next speaker is Tony Zingale.
TONY ZINGALE: Good evening, I’ll keep it brief.
I’m Tony Zingale. I’m also a homeowner in the Highlands of
Los Gatos; I’ve lived there almost two years. I live at
15574, which is directly on the corner of Shady Lane and
Santella, and to answer you question earlier, somewhere in
the fine print it was there that there was an easement
granted by Davidon Homes, the developer of the Highlands of
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Los Gatos, for access on Santella Drive past my home; and
actually my soon to be new neighbor, Allan and his wife,
are here. It’s a dirt road now with a gate, and so I guess
the proposal is to develop the road substantially, as all
of you have, asked a lot of questions about that, which
would be substantial development. Grading, trucks in and
out, dirt, safety hazards, et cetera, to develop the road,
whether they used it as the access road for construction or
later on as a main thoroughfare.
As you correctly stated, the distance from Short
Road all the way up to this property is a mile-and-a-half,
and it’s a windy road. I guess my personal view, as a
homeowner, is there’s a driveway, as you guys have been
contending all night, right off Shannon Road to this
proposed development. I don't know what all the issues are,
exceptions, et cetera, kind of not my purview to debate
that.
What is my purview is two to three or four more
years of high construction traffic going through the 19-
home development of Highlands of Los Gatos, which wasn’t
designed for that despite the fact that there was an
easement maybe granted at the time we bought our homes, and
the proposal of the homeowners association to maybe take on
Shady Lane itself as a private road such that we could in
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fact restrict some of this access and restrict some of the
thoroughfare nature as future developments go into the
hillsides is something we’re considering.
From our point of view, we hope you reject the
proposal, and at a minimum if it does go through, to insist
that the construction traffic go through Shannon Road where
the private driveway actually exists today, and not through
our newly constructed neighborhood after three or four
years. Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Any questions? Yes, Commissioner
Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Same question: Do you have
an opinion about the height that’s being proposed at 25’?
TONY ZINGALE: Very much so. I’d like to see it,
but I know there are pretty rigorous Hillside Standards in
terms of height restrictions that we all had on our homes,
in addition to the colors that the homes had to be painted,
et cetera, that were very rigorous when we were under
construction. I would like to see your Hillside Standards
enforced rigorously on the ridgelines and in the hillside,
just like we endured when we constructed our homes and
landscaping projects post acquisition of the homes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you.
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CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Mr. Zingale. Next
speaker is Josine Smits.
JOSINE SMITS: Good evening, my name is Josine
Smits. I husband and I have lived on Shannon Road since
1986. The first time we came to the Planning Commission was
to talk about creek bed erosion and flooding 20 years ago.
I will focus on the same issue of runoff again tonight,
because it has the greatest impact on the larger community.
Stormwater runoff from this new development will
affect us and our downstream neighbors, as well as the
taxpayers of Los Gatos and the county. This high-density
hillside development will increase the stormwater runoff in
spite of the measures put in place to make the impact
downstream less severe.
Infiltration trenches will fill for two reasons.
In the first place, they will fill during the more intense
rainstorms, because they lack the capacity of the natural
ridge with the canopy of Coast Live oak trees, and in the
second place, they will fill over time for lack of
maintenance. To prevent infiltration trenches from silting
up the sediment needs to be trapped in pre-treatment areas,
and the sediment and debris needs to be removed. If the
Town does not inspect the system twice a year in
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perpetuity, it is very unlikely that the homeowners will
keep it functioning.
Maintenance is the weak spot for drainage systems
on private land, especially along the ridges where the
owners do not feel the effect of neglect. That is
demonstrated even today by the existing runoff from the
Sahadi property. The runoff from the existing parking area
and the cul de sac and this very long, steep driveway are
supposed to drain into a culvert that runs under Shannon
Road onto our property, but this culvert is plugged up as
we speak. You can’t even see the entrance of the pipe, and
we’re expecting 3” tomorrow.
There may be a 350-page hydrological impact
report for the new Sahadi development, but nobody has come
around to look at the existing situation on the ground at
our place, so you can understand why we do not have much
faith that infiltration trenches will be maintained,
especially when the new lots are bought by new owners who
do not know the history. The Sahadi property was up for
sale three years ago as a possible three to five lot
subdivision.
It will come at our expense, so please prevent
further degradation of our living environment. Do we have
any questions?
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CHAIR BADAME: Do we? Yes, Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Same question: The proposal
for 25’ height, do you have an opinion about that?
JOSINE SMITS: Yes, absolutely, because all of
the viewpoints shown in the video were from the valley from
the other side of the ridge, but we are located on Shannon
Road and we see the entire hillside. From our house we see
the entire ridge with all of the oaks beautifully
silhouetted against the sky. All of the three houses will
be absolutely visible and barely screened by the trees from
our house. They need to be set further back down the slope
toward the valley, in fact, where more of the trees are,
because right on the ridge, that is exactly where we will
see them.
CHAIR BADAME: Vice Chair Kane, did you have your
hand up?
VICE CHAIR KANE: Did you say that you read the
hydro modification report?
JOSINE SMITS: No, Mr. Sahadi mentioned that
there was a many page, hundreds page long hydrological
report.
VICE CHAIR KANE: I was about to be extremely
impressed. Thank you.
JOSINE SMITS: But I will if I have to.
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CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Ms. Smits. Any further
questions? Seeing none, thank you very much. Next speaker
is George Tzanavaras.
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: My name is George Tzanavaras
and I own the adjacent property from Mr. Sahadi, about 15
acres of land.
You spoke of the (inaudible) road is owned by me,
but Mr. Sahadi has access to use the road, and I was
informed about a few days ago about the activities that are
going to take place in that area. I am very concerned for
the original right-of-way that was given to 15 Shannon
Road. I’m afraid that road is going to be abused, and I
have justification for that.
Now, I heard some folks say why don’t you use
Santella, but use Shannon Road to enter and exit? Well, I
say the same thing: Why don’t you use Santella? This makes
our property vulnerable for vandalism, it eventually might
wind up in a freeway, lots of negative things can happen,
so I’m very concerned. I make it like I said the story
short, and I don’t like the road to be touched. I like it
the way it is now.
I know some people, they did some improvements
without my consent, without checking with me, and I don’t
appreciate that. Have any questions?
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CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner O'Donnell has a
question for you.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Let me make sure I
understand. You own a piece of property across which part
of this easement goes, is that correct?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: Yes.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: And I think there is
another family named Murphy that has part of that easement
too? Are you aware of that?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: No.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Okay. So your part,
there’s a roadway that goes up into the Sahadi property,
correct?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: Right.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: That, in part, goes over
your property?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: Correct.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: And when you bought your
property, was that easement in existence?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: Correct.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: And have you ever read
that easement?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: Pardon?
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COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Have you ever read the
easement?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: Yes, I did.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Okay. Do you know
whether that easement limits the use of that roadway at
all?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: Yes.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: How so?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: Well, the date of (inaudible)
is shown that only one person has an easement, and namely
Mr. Sahadi. I didn’t say they have the entire Los Gatos
(inaudible), because my property extends on the other side
of the road also, a small portion of the property.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: But the roadway itself,
I take it, ends at the Sahadi property?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: Correct.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: And some portion of that
roadway goes over your property?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: The entire road goes over my
property.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: The entire roadway?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: Yeah.
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COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: A hundred percent of
that roadway going up to the Sahadi property is across your
property?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: Well, it’s documented as
being the road on my property.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Okay, I’m just…
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: When you see it in black and
white.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: And your position is
that that was to benefit one home on the Sahadi property?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: Correct.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: And if I understand you
correctly, you’re saying if there are more homes, that
would be unfair to you?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: That’s correct.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Okay. And I also
understand that you’re saying that the increased traffic
you’d rather see go the other way, Santella.
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: Yeah.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Okay, thank you. I think
I understand your position. Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Hudes has a question
for you.
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COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you, sir. With regard
to the proposal to build homes that are 25’ where the
guideline is 18’, do you have an opinion about that? Will
it affect you?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: I would not change the
proposal to be 25’, you said, instead of what is existing
for the road now.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: With regard to the houses,
the Hillside Design Guidelines specify 18’ maximum. They’re
requesting an exception to 25’. Will that affect you? Do
you have an opinion about that?
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: The only concern I have is
that would make it easy to become a freeway.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay.
GEORGE TZANAVARAS: For one property, and a
private property, is not a problem.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you. David Weissman.
DAVID WEISSMAN: Dave Weissman, Francis Oaks.
If you agree to rezone this property to HR-2½ you
are in effect agreeing to four new homes with much
incomplete information. The Town’s pre-zoning, HR-5, has
been in place since 1981, and by looking at the Applicant’s
map one can easily see that all the undeveloped lands to
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the east and south of the parcel are zoned either RC or
pre-zoned HR-5.
I’d also like to point out that the three lots
immediately to the west are zoned HR-2½, but all of these
lots are smaller than one acre, reflecting their
nonconforming existence before 1981.
This property has a current net assessed value of
$278,000. Denying this application will not be a taking.
Contrast that situation to the Town getting nothing except
the financially losing proposition of more hillside parcels
to service. Plus the Applicant desires to use publicly
maintained Shady Lane for ingress and egress and all
construction activities. The Town’s Hillside Specific Plan
and General Plan require, both, a Town benefit. This
application provides none.
As discussed in my letter in your packet, the
present visibility analysis is outdated and inadequate,
especially for Lot 1. According to the corridor overlay map
of the Blossom Hill Open Space Study this parcel contains
two critical ridgelines, and the proposed new roadway lies
in the designated riparian restoration zone.
The Applicant’s letter lists five needed
exceptions. I’ll also add the fact that they don’t have an
adequate visibility study, there’s no benefit to the Town,
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there’s probably a large financial cost to the Town with
upkeep of Shady Lane, et cetera.
For all these reasons, I ask that you deny their
requested rezoning and leave this parcel as decided by the
Town in 1981, as HR-5. Your downzoning would set a terrible
precedent, with each subsequent neighboring application
requesting downzoning until an HR-2½ domino effect
development scheme reaches the Pacific Ocean. In other
words, everybody keeps coming in and saying, “Well, my
neighbor just got rezoned to HR-2½. Why can’t I?”
It seems to me that we have to draw a line
somewhere, and I think this parcel is an appropriate place.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Dr. Weissman.
Questions? Commissioner O'Donnell has a question.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: You’ve indicated that
you believe that the visibility study is not up to date, I
think, or somehow flawed. Could you be clearer on that?
Because we just saw—you sat there too—what to a layman was
an impressive display. Could you tell me what you thought
was wrong with it?
DAVID WEISSMAN: You folks last year had three
meetings totaling eight hours. The Town Council had two
meetings. While the final product never came through for
the visibility methodology, there were clearly a number of
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things that were agreed upon, that is, trees that were in
poor or fair/poor condition would not be counted as being
visible. The Town Consulting Arborist, Debbie Ellis—who, by
the way, is retiring next week—said that even trees in fair
condition, no effort should be made to protect them,
because you’re probably not going to improve them.
If you approve this four-lot subdivision they’re
going to get four new houses, and they’re probably going to
get them near where they want them, even though those may
not be the best locations. Maybe we need to have lot line
adjustments.
But if you look at the house, the proposed pad on
Lot 1 with all the fancy Google Earth stuff that they did,
none of it showed which trees are in poor condition, or in
fair/poor condition, and even fair condition.
You folks last year approved a couple of lots in
the Highlands, which I then appealed to the Town Council.
That got the whole visibility analysis stuff going, and we
went on for a year. If you approve this, do I then come
back and appeal that to the Town Council, and then we go
through the whole visibility methodology stuff again? I
think what the Applicant needs to do, at a very minimum, is
take those items that were agreed to by consensus by the
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Planning Commission and the Town Council and start there
for an effective visibility analysis.
On Lot 5 there are two major trees which the
driveway will come right near, and Debbie Ellis in her
report has said that she has concerns about how well these
trees will do. They’re big, old oak trees, and those are
the trees that do the worst with disturbance.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: So I make sure I
understand, your main objection—in fact, the only objection
I’ve heard, I’m not saying it isn’t a good one—is that the
trees are used in the analysis, and yet there’s no
evaluation of the trees. So it’s one thing to say a tree
that is in great health is just going to be there, whereas
a tree that is in less health either won’t be there or
probably won’t be there. Does that pretty well summarize
what you’re saying?
DAVID WEISSMAN: Yes, and when I first spoke back
in March/April of 2015 a lot of this was hypothetical.
Since then, we’ve had the lab experiment, if you will.
We’ve had the Highlands, and we’ve seen how many trees up
there that Debbie Ellis, the Consulting Arborist, said were
poor, were fair/poor, or even fair, and then these trees
have now declined. And it’s not just because of the
drought. It’s because they’ve had injuries, they’ve had
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grading too close to them, they’ve had materials stored
underneath the trees, the fencing hasn’t been done
properly, they’ve had tractors compress the roots, all of
these things, and it seems like we’re just setting
ourselves up to re-litigate this whole issue again with the
visibility analysis.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: All right, thank you
very much.
CHAIR BADAME: Any further questions? Vice Chair
Kane.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Dr. Weissman, I want to make
sure I understand your letter. You’re recommending two
additional houses on the property, Lot 5 and Lot 2?
DAVID WEISSMAN: Lot 2 already has a house.
VICE CHAIR KANE: That’s what I didn’t
understand.
DAVID WEISSMAN: One additional house. I think
one can make a reasonable argument for a house on Lot 5,
even though it’s on the ridge top, because there is no
grading requirement. If you’re careful, you could keep away
from the two big trees, and it’s already as pre-zoned HR-5,
you get two houses.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Lot 5 and Lot 2?
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DAVID WEISSMAN: No, it’s pre-zoned now HR-5. As
HR-5, you can get two houses on 13 acres.
VICE CHAIR KANE: So that would be a total of
three houses?
DAVID WEISSMAN: No, it’s counting the house
that’s already there.
VICE CHAIR KANE: That’s what I meant. That’s Lot
2.
DAVID WEISSMAN: Lot 2 and Lot 5.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Okay, and even though that’s on
a ridgeline, a ridge crest, how would that affect
visibility?
DAVID WEISSMAN: Well, if you’re careful with the
trees, those two big trees, there should be no visibility
issues towards the valley. As far as the neighbors go,
that’s a different issue, and that’s why the Hillside
Guidelines say if you’re on a ridgeline, 18’, and the
developer has the chutzpah to come in at this point and
start talking about 25’. The whole area is a ridgeline.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I wanted to understand your
point about the diversity of trees and what’s happened
there, and what is likely to happen. Could you explain that
point to me a little bit?
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DAVID WEISSMAN: I made the comment that there
were four species of oak trees on the property, according
to the consulting arborist, and that is more than the
Highlands. The Highlands, on a much larger property, only
has three species of oak trees. In the past that was
probably a pretty good, diverse piece of property, but it
hasn’t been taken care of. When you walk in an oak
woodland, and I contrasted this to my walk there, kindly at
the invitation of Mr. Sahadi, I didn’t hear any birds,
there is absolutely no understory anywhere where the houses
are going to go, which means that there’s no protection for
erosion, there’s no habitat for animals, and there are no
baby oaks coming up for future generations. You look at
those trees, and they’re all lollipops. They’ve been pruned
up for 15-20’, and in a normal oak woodland the oak trees
come down to the ground. These are old oak trees, and like
Debbie Ellis said, I think only 28% of them are in good
condition.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: So how does that situation
impact our analysis and evaluation of this proposal?
DAVID WEISSMAN: It impacts it because a lot of
these trees are not going to be there in a little while.
You put a tree that’s already in a poor or a fair/poor
condition, or even a fair condition, and you traumatize it
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like we’ve learned on the Highlands, and those trees don’t
do well, especially old trees like most of these oaks are.
They’re tall trees.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you for making that
connection.
CHAIR BADAME: Thank you, Dr. Weissman. Next
speaker is Lee Quintana.
LEE QUINTANA: Lee Quintana, 5 Palm Avenue.
I hope you’ve read my letter that I sent in. One
of the things that I think is most important from the way I
look at this is that the justification for changing the
zone from HR-5 to HR-2½ has been made not based on the
difference between the impacts from that change, but it’s
been based by the applicant on how they originally looked
at it and how they have minimized the amount of impacts.
Assuming that 5-lot subdivision, HR-5 is a zoning that
allows between 5 and 40 acres per dwelling unit, depending
on the conditions in the site. HR-2½ allows between 2½ to
10 acres for each dwelling unit on the site, so leaving the
zoning at HR-2½ does provide a possibility, not a
definitive use of the site for two houses, but again, those
houses need to be able to meet the Standards and Guidelines
of Hillside Development Standards and Guidelines. I don’t
believe they do.
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I think that it’s already been said that the
entire parcel is on the hillside and the applicant’s visual
analysis really just dealt from the visibility from the
valley floor; yet, houses on ridgelines are very
prominently visible within the hillsides area.
The applicant made a statement in his letter
regarding that he had listened to all the proceedings of
the Planned Development Committee that was looking at
changes to the PD zoning. I was on that committee, and it’s
my understanding that one consensus of that committee was
that a PD would not be used, or should not be used, to
increase the intensity or density of the site, and that
appears to be exactly what this proposal is doing by
proposing to downsize the property.
So this becomes the same Catch-22 that we often
see. Once you’ve approved the PD, if you approve the PD,
even though you are not making the findings or approving
the subdivision application, the subdivision is already
within the PD that would get approved, and so you really
have no ability later on down the line to deal with
questions, whether it’s a good subdivision or not. That’s
all of my time.
CHAIR BADAME: Questions for Ms. Quintana? Vice
Chair Kane.
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VICE CHAIR KANE: Ms. Quintana, you said you were
involved at the PD revision process, and it was said the PD
is not to be used to increase density. Is that in writing?
LEE QUINTANA: No, it hasn’t come to the
Commission yet, or back to the Town Council, but I think
one of the things that seemed to have the most consensus
was that a PD should not be used to increase density, or
necessarily to allow for exceptions to the requirements of
the zone.
VICE CHAIR KANE: Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Ms. Quintana, that would be the
proposed PD Ordinance, but what about the current one that
speaks to protecting ridgelines and preserving open space?
LEE QUINTANA: Well, I guess that’s my comment on
whether you should be assessing this proposal based on the…
I don’t know how to say this. I think the discussions
should center around the proposal to downsize the zoning to
HR-2½ versus leaving it at HR-5, which is more appropriate
and more consistent with the existing Hillside Development
Standards and Guidelines and with the intent of the Planned
Development zoning as it is? Specifically because—I don’t
have it in front of me, I think I wrote it in my letter—
there is a separate chapter in the Hillside Standards that
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deals with subdivisions and PDs and clearly states what the
intent there is.
CHAIR BADAME: I believe it’s chapter 8.
LEE QUINTANA: Yeah.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you for your letter;
it’s very helpful to have a chance to read it in advance of
the hearing.
LEE QUINTANA: Subtle criticism.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: The question is about the
LRDA and the concern about the access. Is this one of your
most serious concerns?
LEE QUINTANA: Excuse me?
COMMISSIONER HUDES: At the bottom of your letter
you talk about the LRDA shows almost 100% of the proposed
new access is outside of the 25%, and 100% outside the 30%.
Is that one of your largest concerns with this project?
LEE QUINTANA: My concern is that if you don’t
change the zoning, that likely will not be necessary.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Right, but if the zoning is
changed, this is a big concern for you as well, the access
road being outside of the LRDA, is that correct?
LEE QUINTANA: The access roads are allowed to be
outside the LRDA if that’s the only feasible way to provide
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access, however, this one is almost 100% outside of it, and
a lot of it, more than half of it, is above the 15% grade.
If this were zoned at its current zoning, I don’t believe
you would have that kind of impact. You also wouldn’t have
as many houses that could be visible from within the
hillside valleys.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Thank you very much.
CHAIR BADAME: Any further questions for Ms.
Quintana. Seeing none, thank you very much.
The applicant is now invited back to the podium
to address the Commission for up to five minutes.
DAVID WILSON: Thank you. Let’s start maybe in
order with some of the comments that I had heard.
There was discussion about Santella Drive, Shady
Lane, those existing roads. Those roads were dedicated as
public roadways, with the final map done with the Highlands
of Los Gatos, so all of those streets are public roadways
just like every other public roadway exists out there. They
have not yet been accepted by the Town is what I
understand, but they were offered for dedication with the
final map.
With regard to an easement right, there isn’t any
other specific easement right other than the fact of the
public roadway dedication, and that’s what also exists in
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that Santella Drive stub; that was also an offered right-
of-way to the Town of Los Gatos, but it was not improved.
With regard to construction access, as we
mentioned, we would be open to construction access from
Shannon Road. Tzanavaras did state that he does own the
property where that access easement exists, and this is in
fact true, the access easement that goes to the Sahadi
property extends from Shannon Road through Tzanavaras’
property to the point at which it enters the Sahadi
property.
There was concern mentioned about drainage. There
is a portion of the existing private area, the parking
area, at the top of that private drive that does drain
towards Shannon Road today, however, as part of our
application we’re proposing that gets regraded, and the
drainage would not be directed down towards Shannon Road.
The only drainage that would continue to be directed down
towards Shannon Road would be that which falls on the
driveway that exists today. Any of the developed areas
would be directed toward the other direction from the
ridgeline where we have stormwater mitigation proposed.
Maintenance is critical, as she pointed out.
Those are issues that we all need to deal with today on all
developments: stormwater mitigation, hydro-modification
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compliance. Those issues do require continual maintenance.
They’re not unique to this property; that exists for any
development that is going forward.
There was discussion about the visibility
analysis not being adequate. I think we’ve done a
visibility analysis that far exceeds anything that you’ve
probably ever seen.
Looking at tree conditions, there is no adopted
policy today that would tell us to do that. Complying with
something that doesn’t exist right now doesn’t seem like
it’s a fair condition to be putting us under, however,
there are a lot of trees on the site that were quoted as
being in fair condition or poor condition. I think that
site, as well as all of our forests around here, have been
stressed by years of drought. There are shallow surficial
soils at the site. We’ve had other arborists look at the
site as well and they had the opinion that the trees are in
a condition that is to be expected for their environment
and where they’re growing. It doesn’t mean they’re dying.
They’ve been there for hundreds of years and we think that
they will continue to be there.
Comparing us to Highland is just not fair. If
Highlands did compaction and damaged trees and hit the
trees with construction equipment, I just don’t think it’s
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a fair comparison to say that because one developer may
have damaged trees that that would happen with us.
There was discussion about development lots. All
of the lot sites can be developed with almost no grading
and very, very little tree removal. There was a mention of
Lot 5. The exhibits that we provided to you that you have
in your desk packets this evening shows the recent studies
that were done showing we’re not even close. Can we build a
driveway and access to Lot 5 without even being close to a
tree? Yeah, that’s possible to do. We can actually get to
Lots 3 and 4 with very, very little tree impacts; maybe one
or two trees.
We’ve got four very natural building sites that
we’re proposing to take advantage of in order to get to
those building sites. The access needs to be improved. That
access would need to be improved for even development of
one more building site on the property, so whether it was
maintained as an HR-5 with two lots, of the HR-2½ as we’ve
proposed with the five lots, access needs to be improved;
it doesn’t change that condition. We have very natural
building sites that would allow for the four additional
lots as proposed with very, very little impact.
I think that addresses most of what I had heard.
If you have further questions.
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CHAIR BADAME: Vice Chair Kane followed by
Commissioner O'Donnell.
VICE CHAIR KANE: I want to see if I can clarify
the shoddy easement road coming off of Shannon. You
submitted a land use plan 2.0 diagram. It implied that the
speaker is on side of the easement, as if the easement was
on the border of his property, and that the other side your
diagram says, “Lands of Murphy.”
DAVID WILSON: Mmm-hmm.
VICE CHAIR KANE: If that’s the case, then it
doesn’t run through his property, it borders his property.
DAVID WILSON: No, the property line I think is
coincident with the eastern edge of that easement, so
Murphy is on the east, the easement is on Tzanavaras’
property, entirely west of Murphy.
VICE CHAIR KANE: But it borders his property?
DAVID WILSON: It is adjacent to his property,
correct.
VICE CHAIR KANE: It doesn’t run through it?
DAVID WILSON: Correct, it does not run through
it.
VICE CHAIR KANE: The other side of the road is
Murphy?
DAVID WILSON: Correct.
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VICE CHAIR KANE: All right, thank you.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: The discussion of
visibility, I want to bring you back to that. We’ve heard a
couple comments. One comment relates to the fact that if
you’re going to use trees as a site barrier you ought to
know what the condition of the trees are, because the many
years I’ve been doing this, one of the things we’re
concerned with is a site barrier, and obviously if I’m
using a tree that isn’t going to be there in five years I
probably ought not to be using it.
Now, we don’t have any evidence, nor did you show
any, as to the condition of the trees that you’re asserting
would make the houses, whether 18’ or 25’, not visible from
most viewing platforms or the valley. Why shouldn’t we
inquire as to the condition of whatever trees you want to
use as a barrier?
DAVID WILSON: I’m not saying that you shouldn’t,
I’m merely saying that there is no governing ordinance or
requirement to do so at this time, so (inaudible).
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: But there’s no
prohibition either, right? So we can probably use reason?
DAVID WILSON: Right. So the point that needs to
be recognized is there is only one location where we’re
relying on only the few perimeter trees on the lots that
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provide screening. The rest of the screening is provided
both by hillside topography where you’re within the
grounds, or by hundreds of feet, up to 500’ in many places,
of skimming through tree canopies throughout the hillside
areas. So we’re not talking about one tree that might be in
poor condition, except for in that one small window where
we were talking about maybe some visibility on Lot 1.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: We’re talking about
trees, no matter how many, that we don’t know their
condition, right?
DAVID WILSON: We would be evaluating literally
thousands of trees.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: I saw a picture today or
yesterday of California forests that were impacted by
beetles and such, and it’s amazing how big that is, so I
guess all I’m saying is it’s not unreasonable to inquire,
whether it’s 500 trees or five, what the condition of the
trees are, and at the moment we don’t have that.
The other thing I was going to ask you was we’ve
been focused on looking down, i.e. to put it another way,
looking up from the valley floor. Ms. Smits, for example,
was saying wait a minute, I’m behind, I’m back there. Then
somebody has argued, and maybe it was Dr. Weissman, that
that gets to the ridgeline and 18’ versus 25’, because 25’
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seems to be asking for an exception. What do you say to
somebody who says yes, from the valley floor 25’ may work
fine, but from the back, even 18’ is a problem, but 25’ is
worse?
DAVID WILSON: For the most part the site isn’t
visible from surrounding areas; it’s contained kind of
within a bowl, self-contained. There are areas along
Shannon Road where you would view toward the ridge, and
there will be small elements of houses that will be
visible.
I did see the Smits’ photo that was submitted,
and I did do a simulation based upon that photo; I don't
know if we’d be able to show it right now. But what that
demonstrated is that the home site proposed where she’s
taking the photo is actually behind the ridge. We’re not
proposing a home that’s far enough where she’d even be able
to see it. There’s maybe a small portion of the roof, maybe
the upper foot. There would be less than the white fence
that’s visible right now that she can see, but there would
be less than that visible of the home site.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Perhaps I missed
something. Did you give us some data or some photographs or
anything looking at the proposal from not the valley floor,
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but from the valleys and undulations behind the
development?
DAVID WILSON: I did not provide that for you
tonight, but we have looked at that, and I did do an
analysis, like I said, just to look at that photo from the
Smits’.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Okay.
DAVID WILSON: I’d show that to you right now,
but for some reason I guess our projector is not working.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Well, okay, maybe while
they’re looking, give you a minute to see if they can find
it. There may be other questions.
DAVID WILSON: I could show it to you on the
screen, if you want to pass that around and look at it; I
think I could do that.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: I missed that. What does
that mean?
DAVID WILSON: We have it on the laptop here.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Oh, I see. Well, what
does your able assistant there think? It always kind of
fails when you need it.
DAVID WILSON: Yeah, exactly.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Hudes, did you have a
question in the interim?
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COMMISSIONER HUDES: I have a number of questions
on trees, and also on the lot layout.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Let me make a
suggestion. While you’re asking those questions, if they
can, they can try to take their time and see what they can
do, but I’m not asking you to be diverted.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Are you able to answer some
questions then?
DAVID WILSON: Sure, yeah.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: There was some discrepancy
about trees. I believe in your letter it talked about 300
trees. There were 169 in another. Could you explain to me
the difference between the 300 and 169?
DAVID WILSON: Sure. There are over 360 oak trees
on the property. Most of them exist downslope and on the
steep sloped areas around the perimeter of where we develop
and far away from where we developed. Debbie Ellis, when
she did her arborist report, specifically looked at the 169
trees and tagged those trees, and those were in the close
vicinity to where our roadway and home sites would be, so
she did not take the time to review the hundreds of other
trees that are located well beyond anything we’re proposing
to touch.
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COMMISSIONER HUDES: Have any trees been removed
since at least the 2014 CDAC?
DAVID WILSON: I think there was one tree that
had fallen in a storm that was removed, and since 2014 I
think the other dead pines at the tennis court near the top
may have been removed, and we left that one 60’ tall dead
pine in place, so that’s the only thing I’m aware of.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: And do you have a reaction
to the issue that was raised about diversity of trees and
the lack of undergrowth, only seen apparently as I believe
testimony we heard was they were lollipop trees or
something?
DAVID WILSON: I’m not an arborist, but from what
I have heard, the tree conditions that exist on the site
are consistent with what would be expected in the
conditions that they’re growing. The lack of understory
growth is a result of clearing, as mandated by County Fire.
There are several structures around the site, and clearance
around the structures is something that they mandate, so
understory clearing has been done for fire protection
purposes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: So, really, this kind of
brings me to I think the thing that is most important to me
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with regard to the trees, which is how many are anticipated
to be removed in total?
DAVID WILSON: Six trees for sure for the
roadway. Five for sure, you know, (inaudible) the roadway;
one I think is close enough where it’s going to have to go.
Most likely since the others are adjacent to it, I think
what did we call it, 16 or 17 trees there; I think we’ll
probably be able to save five of those. Call it 14 trees.
For the houses, it’s hard to say, because we
don’t have home site designs, but based upon my more
careful layout, approximately another seven to eight trees
with another 10 to 15 that would need to be carefully
evaluated for their clearances. And again, all dependent
upon creative architectural design, maintaining the
clearances, things that we should be doing, which we
certainly plan to, but I just can’t stand here and say we
have that, because we don’t have architectural plans yet.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I understand there’s some
uncertainty, but I also know that in some of your
correspondence, I think about maybe Lot 1 and Lot 5, you
did suggest some numbers of trees, and so that’s why I
think it’s important for us to understand, even if it’s an
estimate or a range, the total number of trees that will be
removed through the course of this project.
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DAVID WILSON: Right. So did I answer that?
COMMISSIONER HUDES: So you’re saying seven to
eight, plus 10 to 15 that are questionable…
DAVID WILSON: Like on a watch, yeah.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: …plus six, plus five?
DAVID WILSON: Yes, on a watch, correct. That’s
what I would anticipate.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Sort of the maximum is the
11 plus seven to eight plus 10 to 15? Okay.
I do have some questions about lot placement, but
maybe we ought to come back. Are you ready to come back to
that other issue?
DAVID WILSON: The projector is not working, but
if we can somehow view the screen. Is there a way we can do
that? Pass it around, I don't know.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: What is it that the
screen would show us?
DAVID WILSON: It is the view from the Smits
residence where she submitted the photo, and we’ve
supplemented that with a simulation of the home actually
constructed on the site and what would be visible.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Well, if that’s the only
way we can look at it, I guess we could just pass it
around. But maybe we’re getting some more help here.
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DAVID WILSON: We’ll see if this works. All
right, so that’s the photo that was submitted from I
believe the residence of the Smits’. Hard to see, but
between the tree gaps there you can see a small portion of
the white fence where the cursor is located, right there.
And then this is now from the same vantage point,
duplicating the view using, again, the three dimensional
aspects of Google Earth. The trees are a little rough, but
it actually captures quite accurately the shapes of the
trees that can easily be compared to the photo.
In the simulation you can see between the trees
those two small triangular pieces; those are representative
of a building rectangular block, so the eaves are not
represented. In reality the eaves of the houses would be
lower than what is represented there, so I would consider
that an absolute worst case.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: That’s a 25’ house?
DAVID WILSON: One of them is drawn at 25’, on
the right side, and the left side is drawn at 18’.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: And the vegetation or
whatever that is on the left and the right, is that
vegetation?
DAVID WILSON: Those are trees that exist.
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COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Go back. That’s
vegetation too?
DAVID WILSON: Yes.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Rocks?
DAVID WILSON: Those are trees. They just are a
little rough looking with the way Google Earth models.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: So if the house was up
to 25’ high, those trees are like four times higher, or
even more.
DAVID WILSON: I don't know, they’re not that
tall. Some of them are closer than the house, so that’s
deceiving. Others are located behind the house and you’re
only seeing the tops. It’s an interesting perspective,
because you’re looking up basically from Shannon Road at
it, but the point is that the house itself is located far
enough beyond the topographic shape of the hill such that
the house is obscured not by the trees, but by the hill
itself.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: And the photo-simulation
or the photo was taken from where?
DAVID WILSON: It appears to me that it may have
been taken from the upper story window of the house, just
based upon the alignment of the trees when I tried to
duplicate it in the model.
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COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: So somebody came up on
the Smits’ property and did this?
DAVID WILSON: No, she submitted the photo to you
this morning.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Okay, thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Hudes.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I just want to follow up on
the visibility; I do have questions on the lot placement on
the visibility. I was very impressed with the video. In our
information there are several sheets. Was there additional
information in that video that isn’t represented on those
sheets?
DAVID WILSON: Absolutely.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Was that provided to us in
advance of the hearing?
DAVID WILSON: The video was not.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Is there other additional
information that you’d like to be part of the record that
isn’t documented that was either part of your slide or
other presentation?
DAVID WILSON: I think the video is kind of the
most important aspect, because it conveys the extensive
visual analysis that was done, not just limited to four
viewing platforms.
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COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay, thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: Any further questions? Seeing
none, thank you very much.
DAVID WILSON: Thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: The public testimony portion of
the public hearing is now closed. Do Commissioners have
questions, comments, or a motion? Commissioner Erekson.
CHARLES EREKSON: It’s a question for staff. I’m
trying to get my head around the proposed rezoning. So it
was pre-zoned at HR-5, they’re proposing to rezone it to
HR-2½, and in the Staff Report it says that it’s consistent
with the General Plan and so forth. What I’m reading and
understanding that to be is that because they want to
subdivide into five lots, they’re using the right
methodology to do that. That’s different than them judging
whether they… Does the Town require them to have to have a
rationale to propose the rezoning, other than the fact that
they would like to subdivide it into five lots?
JENNIFER ARMER: When a rezoning is proposed, it
is evaluated to make sure it is consistent with the General
Plan and that it is consistent and appropriate with the
adjacent zoning and appropriate for that location, so that
is the analysis that staff performed and made
recommendations to you based on that.
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CHARLES EREKSON: So we do not require them to
have a rationale that there’s some basis for wanting to
rezone it that has a good for the Town, because the Town
already has it pre-zoned, so we say if you want to develop
it in this manner you need to follow this methodology, and
that’s the only thing that we required and they don’t have
to have a rationale that meets some sort of good?
JOEL PAULSON: I know one of the speakers
mentioned something about a benefit to the community, so
I’m not sure if that’s what you’re speaking towards, which
was part of previous Planned Development conversations when
we had community benefit policy. But they have requested,
to get back to one of your original questions, yes, for
them to propose five lots the proper mechanism is to
request the rezoning from the pre-zone of HR-5 to HR-2½.
In your evaluation you should be looking at it
from a perspective of does this proposal comply from your
perspective to the Hillside Guidelines, the General Plan,
and the other policy documents in its current proposal? You
could determine that you don’t think that it meets that,
and that the justification or the application has not
provided enough information to make you feel comfortable
that that’s the appropriate land use decision.
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Ultimately, the first decision is is it
appropriate to rezone this from HR-5 to HR-2½? Then you
have a yes or a no, or maybe. And then from that point,
then we can walk you through those paths. I think that’s
kind of the fundamental land use question, because we are
really before you with the zone change.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Erekson.
CHARLES EREKSON: May I ask a follow up? I follow
you completely. The Town also has an existing Planned
Development Ordinance, and I would say to my fellow
commissioners who’ve raised questions about the potential
future of a change that to base any decision that we make
on what future ordinance the Town might have is speculative
and not particularly helpful.
But that aside, the PD Ordinance provides some
goals, or purposes, or reasons for using a PD. That’s
completely applicable in this situation.
JOEL PAULSON: That’s correct.
CHARLES EREKSON: So if in fact we were to judge
that doing a Planned Development in this case did not
advance those goals, that in fact could be a basis for
rejecting the rezoning of it as proposed, because they’re
proposing a Planned Development, is that correct?
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JOEL PAULSON: That’s correct. You definitely
need to take that into consideration.
CHARLES EREKSON: Okay, thank you.
CHAIR BADAME: As well, per Exhibit 5, we have a
zoning map, and I’m trying to determine the compatibility
of this zone change based upon a lot of the property
surrounding the project site is actually zoned Resource
Conservation. So when I read the RC zone, it’s to, “Protect
open space, restrict the intensity of development, and
limit residential density.” I’m just trying to connect the
dots, how I see that downzoning this is compatible with the
surrounding RC zone; I’m having a difficult time with that.
It seems that an HR-5 would be more appropriate, especially
as a transition between the properties on the left going to
the right. That’s my input.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: Which document are you
referring to, please?
CHAIR BADAME: That would be Exhibit 5. There is
a zoning map that’s probably about seven pages in, it’s
kind of beige in color; pull it out.
JOEL PAULSON: Exhibit B of Exhibit 5.
CHAIR BADAME: Yes.
JOEL PAULSON: Keep going. There you go.
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CHAIR BADAME: That’s it. Pull it out and you’ll
see the project site. But yes, to the left there’s property
zoned HR-2½, but there’s a significant amount of land
that’s zoned RC, and that’s where I’m having trouble, along
with the PD Ordinance and along with chapter 8 of the
Hillside Design Guidelines, which speaks to subdividing
property for a Planned Development.
Yes, Commissioner O'Donnell.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: I agree with that, but
in addition to that I’m also concerned with access, because
the only evidence I’ve heard tonight is not very clear, but
it does appear that there’s an easement across one piece of
the gentleman’s property that takes us to the Sahadi
property. I’ve heard nobody testify that that is some kind
of blanket easement that’s uninhibited by the then use of
the benefited property. I’m left with the confusion then,
because if that road were to close and could not be used
except for the benefit of one lot, and it could not be used
for, for example, fire department access. At the moment
it’s an ancillary use to the benefit for which that
easement was dedicated, i.e. for the one lot, so if you
need the fire department up there, an ambulance, whatever,
I think a lawyer would call that ancillary use.
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However, if you say now we’re going to have five
lots instead of one, all of a sudden it’s what does the
easement say? We don’t know. I don't know. The suggestion
certainly from the property owner is not that broad. That’s
a very significant question to me, because I know the
neighbors on the other side are saying goodness, we don’t
want the construction, but if they not only get the
construction but they get everything, and the owner of that
easement says Fred Sahadi can use that but nobody else can,
and he can use it as long as he owns, because it benefits
the property, it is not a personal right, that’s very
confusing to me and I don't know how we make a decision if
we don’t know what we’re talking about.
If we’re saying close that, some people will be
happy. Not these folks, but some people will be happy. But
then we open up that question of getting into the
neighborhood, and I don't know if we’ve evaluated that. You
look at the Negative Declaration or whatever it was, I
don't know what assumptions were made in deciding there was
no adverse impact or they were mitigated if you don’t even
know what the access is. Somebody made an assumption that
that easement could be used notwithstanding it couldn’t be
used for the fire department, but there is a basic
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assumption here that it could be used, and I don’t know
that…
We have not seen the easement, nor have I heard
that perhaps the Town Counsel has reviewed it, which would
not be normal; I wouldn’t have expected him to have, but he
could surprise me, as he often does, but if we don’t know
the scope of that, then I think I have a problem deciding
that there’s no significant adverse impact and that we have
otherwise fully mitigated it. It’s just that we don’t know;
maybe it’s fine.
But that doesn’t get to the more serious problem
of… The initial and the only question if you can’t get past
is do we go from HR-5 to HR-2½? If we don’t do that, the
rest of this pretty much falls away, although at some point
somebody is going to have to clarify the easement, because
if we said no matter what you do up there, if it’s more
than the one lot you’ve got to have the other road, well,
then you’re going to be getting into all kinds of problems.
CHAIR BADAME: I agree with that, and we have to
keep in mind that we’re just forwarding a recommendation at
this point in time. Commissioner Erekson.
CHARLES EREKSON: I’m going to venture a motion.
I will move to recommend to the Town Council that we
recommend denial of Planned Development Application PD-15-
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001 that proposes to change the zoning from HR-5 to HR-2½
by the use of a Planned Development Overlay Zone, because
it does not meet the intent, because we’ve been given no
public testimony or evidence by the applicant that it meets
the intent of the Planned Development Overlay Ordinance,
which is captured in Section 29.80.08 of the Town Code.
CHAIR BADAME: Second. Any discussion?
Commissioner Hudes followed by Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HUDES: I would add that beyond the
zoning conversion issue I also have issues with regard to
the exceptions that are being requested of the Hillside
Design Guidelines, very serious concerns about those
exceptions that are being requested, and in order for me
even to understand those and the scope of those exceptions
and their impact, we have those guidelines for a reason,
and I really would need to understand much better certain
elements of this, including the visibility analysis. I
think that there was information presented tonight that we
only had a few seconds to absorb, as well as concerns about
use from other areas, so I am supportive of the motion
that’s on the table and I’m able to second it, if that’s…
CHAIR BADAME: I seconded it, so we’re in the
discussion phase.
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COMMISSIONER HUDES: Okay, thank you; I’m a
little slow here. But I also want those concerns raised as
well about the lack of compliance with the Hillside Design
Guidelines.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Hanssen.
COMMISSIONER HANSSEN: And because this is a
recommendation to Council, I also wanted to weigh in.
I thought Commissioner Erekson’s motion is just
fine, but I think it’s really important to discuss the
Hillside Standards and Guidelines, some of the stuff that
Commissioner Hudes said. It’s written all over the Hillside
Standards and Guidelines that to give a subdivision and
Planned Development Overlay Zone that it needs to minimize
grading and all these other things, and this isn’t doing
that. I appreciate the applicant’s dilemma and that they
are between a rock and hard place to be able to build their
five things, but it clearly says throughout our guidelines
that it may not be appropriate given site constraints to
build what you want to build, even if the zoning indicates
that you could, which they would have to change the zoning
to get this.
There are just so many issues with this
application and the Hillside Guidelines, and beyond the
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zoning change I couldn’t be comfortable with it being in
compliance and give that many exceptions.
CHAIR BADAME: Any further discussion? Vice Chair
Kane.
VICE CHAIR KANE: I want to agree with what’s
been said so far about preserving the Hillside Standards
and Guidelines and the damage we do if we give away the
five, six, seven, eight exceptions that have been
requested.
But I’d also, and the maker of the motion may not
need to buy into this, because my saying it may have it go
to the Council just by being said, but I’d really like to
underscore what’s been said about Section 8 of the Hillside
Standards and Guidelines on subdivision and Planned
Development projects where it says, “The intent of a PD is
to significantly reduce the amount of grading, roads, and
other alterations to the existing environment, to minimize
the visual impact, and to retain the maximum amount of
continuous open space.” The applicant is on the horns of a
dilemma, because that’s just not happening here. I don’t
think the purpose of the PD is being achieved.
Also, I’m not an environmental scientist, Ms.
Armer, but I mentioned earlier the Initial Study/Mitigated
Negative Declaration. I guess when we deny the application
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we’re also denying that, or do we have to specifically get
into that?
JOEL PAULSON: I’ll chime in. You’re making your
recommendation, and we would be looking at if there is a
recommendation on the Mitigated Negative Declaration that
you want to forward to Council as well, then that would be
appropriate. I would just remind the Commission from a few
weeks ago that staff has reviewed, our consultant has
prepared, and our attorney as well as staff finds the
document adequate. The purpose of the environmental
document is to disclose impacts. Those impacts are
disclosed and where appropriate to provide mitigation
measures, but however, if the Commission believes that it’s
not adequate, then that can be part of a recommendation as
well.
VICE CHAIR KANE: I’m just simply repeating what
I said earlier, that there seem to be a large number of
potentially significant impacts unless mitigation is
incorporated, and I found some of the mitigation to be
soft, and I’d like Council to look at that. This just feels
like a square peg into a round hole.
CHAIR BADAME: Okay, we have five minutes where I
would have to ask for a motion to continue past 11:30
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unless we can wrap this up very quickly, so Commissioner
O'Donnell.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: I just have one question
and one comment. Notwithstanding, and I don’t fault at all
the recommendation of what you folks have done, however,
I’ve heard nothing tonight which would indicate you had
enough knowledge to make a decision relating to access, and
that’s obviously a question. You close that road, there
should be some consideration given to what the impact of
that would be. You couldn’t have done that since you have
not… But there’s been no testimony tonight, and I believe,
unless I’m wrong, you haven't reviewed the access.
Everybody said well, they’re going to have two accesses;
they’re going to have the main access and they’re going to
have an emergency access. Based on what I heard tonight,
it’s perhaps unlikely that you’ll ever have the emergency
access. So I’m just saying I don't know how you make a
recommendation on a Mitigated Negative Declaration if you
can’t answer that question. You did not take that into
consideration, and one would argue that that is something
of some significance.
JOEL PAULSON: Sorry, I know the time is running
tight, but the Mitigated Negative Declaration reviewed the
impacts of the proposed roadway. It did not review impacts
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of if you want the Shannon Road access to be the primary,
so that was evaluated in MND.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: Not if it were closed,
because it could not be used.
JOEL PAULSON: It was proposed to be an emergency
secondary access.
COMMISSIONER O'DONNELL: And that assumes facts
not in evidence. It assumes that that would be allowed
under the easement you have not read, isn’t that correct?
JOEL PAULSON: It’s not going to be in the
environmental.
ROBERT SCHULTZ: You’re not required to have an
emergency access, so if it goes away completely, it’s an
added bonus for this bonus for this project, but it’s not
required to have a secondary emergency access for a
subdivision, so it was analyzed as if, yes, it is a
potential part of the project, but if it goes away the
Mitigated Negative Declaration analyzed it from the Shady
Lane entrance, and that’s where the construction would be
and there’s where everything would be.
CHAIR BADAME: Commissioner Erekson.
CHARLES EREKSON: All of the discussion between
the attorneys and other knowledgeable members of the
Commission aside for the moment, the reason why I didn’t
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include in my motion any mention of the Mitigated Negative
Declaration is because that was an analysis done based on
changing the zoning, so if we are in fact recommending not
to change the zoning it seems to me that it is not
necessary to address the Mitigated Negative Declaration.
That’s in fact why I didn’t include it in the motion or
suggest a companion motion, so it seems to me it’s
irrelevant.
JOEL PAULSON: That’s perfectly fine. Thank you
for that clarification.
CHAIR BADAME: All right, I will now call the
question. All in favor? Passes unanimously.
Mr. Paulson, are there appeal rights of the
actions of the Commission on this item since we’re simply
just forwarding a recommendation to Council?
JOEL PAULSON: There are not, thank you.