Good evening and welcome to the November 9, 2023 planning commission meeting of what's
the City of Walnut Creek.
I will be standing in for our chair, but our first item of business is our roll call.
So Mr. Secretary, please take the roll.
Commissioner Reiser, here.
Commissioner Neiting is absent.
Commissioner Lezak, I'm here.
Commissioner Pickett, here.
Commissioner Anderson, here.
Vice Chair Strongman?
Here.
And Chair Wood is absent.
Thank you.
We do have one item on number two of the consent calendar,
which is the calendar.
Does anybody have any questions about that
or have a motion to accept the consent calendar?
Move to approve the consent calendar.
Second.
We have a motion and a second.
Could we have another roll call, please?
I'm sorry, the motion was by Commissioner Reiser
and the second was by Commissioner Anderson.
Great, thank you.
Commissioner Reiser. Yes. Commissioner Nateing is absent. Commissioner Lisak. Yes. Commissioner Pickett. Yes.
Commissioner Anderson. Yes. Vice Chair Strongman. Yes. And Chair Ward is absent. Thank you.
Moving on to item number three, public comments. This portion of the meeting is reserved for
comments that are not on any item that's not on the agenda. Under the Brown Act, the Commissioner
cannot act on items raised during this public communications, but the main respond briefly
to statements made for the questions posed and request clarification or refer to the items.
Do we have anyone in the audience who would like to speak on something that's not on the agenda?
Seeing none, do we still have Zoom or is that...
We do not.
Okay, thank you. Therefore, public comments are now closed and we'll go on to the next
item which is the public hearings for this tonight is the Trinity Center evening winter
shelter program conditions use permit application Y23077. Good evening commissioners Brittany Lenoir
associate planner with the community development department so we are here tonight to consider the
proposed CUP for Trinity Center temporary evening program that will
operate at the armory at 1800 Carmel Drive. So before getting into the
presentation I want to mention that we did receive one public comment and that
was from a neighbor of the armory who voiced their support for the
project. So on the right you'll see an aerial view of the site where the
overnight services will take place. The armory is surrounded by a parking lot and
equipment storage at the end of Carmel Drive. The immediate context consists of
Civic Park to the west, the Iron Horse Trail to the east, and apartments to the
south along Carmel Drive. The site is owned community facility which requires
a conditional use permit for housing for the homeless and emergency shelters.
This year the evening program is scheduled to run from December 11th to
April 12th as stated in the operating plan included as attachment four of the
the agenda packet.
The maximum capacity is 50 participants.
They must be pre-registered with Trinity Center.
The evening program will run from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.
There are no walk-ups allowed,
so this is a closed shelter.
People will not be able to show up
and expect to receive housing for the night.
Intake occurs at the Trinity Center,
and participants will be transported to and from the Armory.
no alcohol or drugs are allowed on the site,
and there are no in and out privileges during the night.
So there would be onsite security as well,
and that'll be provided by Trinity Center.
In addition, National Guard personnel
and Trinity Center staff will be present onsite.
So Trinity Center can expand on the outcomes
and impacts of their program last year,
but just to summarize a little bit,
it did run from December 14th through April 9th.
It did serve 34 individual members.
And due to the cleaning requirements
in the management agreement
and precautions taken by Trinity Center,
there were no instances of COVID-19.
Also as required by the management agreement,
two community meetings were held to allow the public
to provide comments or feedback.
No community members attended
and no comments or concerns were received
for the program last year.
So if approved, this will be the eighth consecutive year that the temporary shelter will operate
within the Armory.
This year, City Council approved funding for a total amount of $100,000 to cover a portion
of the program's budget.
Also, this year is the start of a new three-year management agreement between the City and
Trinity Center, and that, along with the license agreement with the state to use the Armory,
be executed prior to the start of the program this year. So Trinity Center has shown their
commitment to this program and have returned to planning commission for the past eight
years to ask for conditional use permits each year. Trinity Center's operations are so closely
controlled under the license agreement and the management agreement that the processing
of the annual CEP has become repetitive, costly, and time-consuming for Trinity Center as well
city staff. So as a result staff is requesting that the Planning Commission approve a standing
CUP. The standing CUP will not change the requirements for the license agreement, management
agreement or any and will not change requirements for any annual conditions required in the
use permit. But it will just now require review by the community development department to
confirm compliance as opposed to having a full commission and public hearing and there still will
be an opportunity for the public to attend a community meeting if they would like and that
would be held through the Walnut Creek Homeless Task Force and that's a requirement under the
management agreement. So when it comes to the CUP, the Housing Accountability Act, limits the
the jurisdiction's ability to deny emergency shelters unless it can make
at least one of the five findings listed on this slide. So four of those findings
are not applicable. The fifth finding is whether the shelter would have adverse
impacts on public health or safety and any potential effects on the park and
neighboring community will be mitigated as intake will occur at the Trinity
center day program site. Security at the armory will be provided by National Guard and by a hired
security service and the city's police department would also conduct site visits at the site.
So additionally the management agreement also requires cleaning and compliance with public
health requirements including those pertaining to COVID-19. So for those reasons staff does not
believe that any of the five required findings to deny the project can be made as the emergency
shelter will not have an adverse impact on public health or safety. So this project is
categorically exempt from CEQA since it's an existing facility that will be utilized as an
emergency shelter. So because of all of this, staff does recommend the Planning Commission
determine the project exempt from CEQA and adopt the proposed resolution to approve the standing
CUP subject to all conditions and timely filings of all necessary documents. So thank you for your
time tonight. I'm available for any questions you have. Thank you for a great presentation. Do we
have any questions of the Commission? Seeing none, thank you. Trinity Center is also here as well.
And I believe now we will open to public comments and Trinity Center will be able to have a 15 minutes to talk to us
hopefully brief
Thank you
Thank you vice chair strong wind. Thank you commissioners
It's always a privilege and a pleasure to be here to talk about
One of the things that we do that means so much to us our trinity center winter evening program our emergency shelter program
I just want to also say my being here alone doesn't mean that I don't have complete and
full support from our team and from our board, but they're off busy doing the rest of the work.
We've got one person off at a fundraiser and getting ready for another fundraiser on Saturday
that's going to directly impact the program. So we're all busy doing the work, getting ready to
be able to shelter our most vulnerable folks during the winter months. I'm also really glad
that we have city staff here and we have enjoyed this year especially, but in years past, great
support from our city staff our elected officials all the people who put in the
hard work and of course yourself so thank you it takes a village and we
have certainly benefited from benefited from this village and we hope that our
program and our members will similarly benefit again this year and in years to
come so Brittany's done a beautiful job as usual just laying out the basics of
the program you're all familiar with it you've got tons and tons of material to
read so I won't repeat anything but I did just want to highlight a few things
that we're most proud of about this year.
We have certain enhancements to the program
that we're looking forward to this year as well.
We have a brand-new van.
We did fundraising.
We got a lot of community support.
And now we have a brand-new van that's fully wheelchair-accessible
in ways that our old box van wasn't available.
So now we truly can serve people who are wheelchair-bound,
who may have needs,
and get them safely back and forth to Trinity Center.
Plus, knock on wood because it's old,
we still have the second van.
So it's actually gonna make it easier to transport
larger numbers of people in one trip
instead of having to go back and forth.
That's one enhancement we're really looking forward to.
Also, the slides talked about being from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Those are our hours at the Armory.
Historically, we've opened up at Trinity Center at 5.30
to have people come in, check in, have dinner.
We're adding an extra hour to that.
We're gonna actually be opening an hour earlier.
I like to think that is the power hour
because that will give time for people
come settle in and have some time to do case management, to access our computers, to do
the work that they need to do to find housing, find jobs, connect with family in a way that
they may not always be able to do during the daytime hours at Trinity Center because there's
a lot of other demand for those computer resources.
So that's going to be our power hour for case management and also to bring in workshop activities
and a little bit more about that in a minute.
So we're gonna use that time to help strengthen
the case management aspects of the program.
Plus, just honestly, sometimes last year
with all that rain, you'll remember all that rain,
it was so hard, it literally made me cry,
to have to have people sitting outside
because we didn't have our staff prepared to come in
and have them sitting outside in the rain.
It was just awful.
So we don't have to do that this year.
We're gonna have staff coming in early
so that we'll have a transition, a changeover
from our day program to our evening program,
but we won't have to leave our vulnerable folks
out in the cold and the dark and the rain.
Yay.
And finally, our workforce development program, which is one of the services in our day program,
we are really bringing that to bear with our evening program folks as well.
People will not only have managed goal and action plans towards housing but towards employment
if they are so inclined and don't have a disability that precludes them from having work.
So we're going to have case management options and access to the computers for employment
job search, and to support opening up an hour earlier,
supports our members who are working.
They can come in, they can relax after their day of work,
they can take a shower and be ready for the evening.
So adding our workforce development component
and that attention is gonna be an additional enhancement
to the program this year.
So we're hoping that that will continue
to increase our successes.
In the past you saw from the slides and from the packet,
our successes last year.
When you look at it, it may not look super fantastic,
but please do remember that of those 34 people
that we housed throughout the winter,
about half of them didn't finish the whole program.
And a majority of them didn't finish the whole program
because they came in and used the program
during that really, really rainy period.
There was that period of two to three weeks
when it was constant rain,
and we worked in partnership with the county
to bring in additional people
who hadn't really been connected with Trinity Center before,
but who needed safe shelter during the night.
So once the rains went away, so did they.
So we really didn't have the traction with them
to do some of the outcome-based stuff that we normally do.
But people did find housing,
and they're still finding housing.
There were a couple of folks
who got housed right out of the program,
but sometimes the seeds that are planted
and the work that started still takes months
to blossom into people getting their actual housing.
So I'm happy to report that in addition to the people
who got housed right out of the program,
several people have been housed since that time,
since we closed the program in April.
One is recently, just this week,
she stopped me on the street, she's like,
♪ I got my keys today ♪
And it was great, we were doing the happy dance
and she had been with us in our evening program
and she had been working with us
and doing our workforce development program
and just going through the long, arduous,
sometimes disappointing process of applying for housing
and getting turned down and applying again.
It finally, it all came together for her and for others.
So that does happen.
And finally, I just wanna say with gratitude
that we have members coming to us.
We've had members coming to us since earlier in the fall
saying, are you gonna do the program?
Really need the program.
It's getting really hard to think about being outside
in the winter, are you gonna do the program?
And we've had people coming up and saying,
we wanna cook dinner, how can we help?
We wanna be part of the program.
going to do it again this year, right?
Like, yes, yes, yes, don't worry.
So the need is still great, unfortunately.
And until the day that it isn't, we'll
keep trying to operate this program with your support.
Of course, if you do approve the standing CUP,
I won't have this wonderful chance, necessarily,
obligatorily to come stand and brag about our great program.
But I'll be more than happy to share successes with you
going forward.
So thank you so much for your support in the past.
We hope that we can have your support and approval again
tonight.
And I'm more than happy to answer any questions.
Thank you for a great presentation.
Any questions?
Seeing none, is there anyone else in the audience
who would like to make a public comment
on this particular item?
Seeing none, I will bring it back to the commission
for further consideration and possibly a motion.
Start.
When I first saw this on the agenda,
my first thought was, are we doing this again?
Because we seem to do it every year.
And things don't really change a lot, a great deal.
And I saw that it was actually asking to make it more
of a, not permanently, continuing situation
where it doesn't have to come back to us every year.
And I approve of that.
And I think that's a good idea.
Mr. Reiser?
Just a couple of quick comments.
Number one, there's no questions or anything.
Just a couple of comments.
One, I think the standing CUP is a great idea.
because we do see the same application
and it's just a wonderful program.
And secondly, I'd like to commend the folks
at Trinity Center and the homeless outreach folks
and the whole staff and the team
and the work you guys do is just amazing.
So I'd like to pass along my praise
and thanks for what you do.
Okay.
I guess with that, why don't I introduce a motion
to motion for two things.
One is to waive CEQA, is that,
waive the requirement for CEQA, or?
Make the CEQA determination.
I'm sorry.
To determine that the project is exempt from CEQA.
Okay, that.
A motion to waive that the project requires CEQA
and secondly to pass the standing CUP.
It would just be to adopt the resolution?
Adopt the resolution stating yes.
So moved.
I'll second.
We have a motion on the second, please call the roll, please.
Commissioner Reiser. Yes. Commissioner Nate Ting is absent.
Commissioner Leisak. Yes. Commissioner Pickett. Yes.
Commissioner Anderson. Yes. Vice Chair Strongman. Yes.
And Chair Ward is absent and the motion passes.
Thank you and best wishes to this winner. Thank you for what you do.
moving on to item five which is commissioner commission considerations do we have any
seeing none um item six uh commission member staff reports and announcements any staff reports
none from staff thank you any commissioners well then they have a good weekend for me
for everyone uh seeing none of an item seven adjournment this meeting is adjourned
Can we do it?
Meeting for dinner.
Excellent leadership.
Excellent leadership.
Thank you.