Good evening and welcome to the Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024 City Council Special Meeting.
The Walnut Creek City Council encourages respectful dialogue that supports freedom of speech and
values diversity of opinion.
The Council staff and members of the public are expected to be civil and courteous and
to refrain from questioning the character or motives of others participating in the
meeting.
The city requests that speakers do not use threatening, profane, or abusive language
which disrupts, disturbs, or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the council meeting.
If you have any questions, please refer to the end of the agenda which is online or in
person on paper to review the options participating in the meeting.
Unless stated otherwise on the agenda,
every item on the agenda is exempt from CEQA guidelines
for many sections and we're about to start our meeting.
So would everybody join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation under God, indivisible,
liberty and justice for all. May I please have a roll call. Councilmember Silva? Here. Councilmember
Wilk? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Darling? Here. Mayor Haskew? Here. And Councilmember Francois is absent due
to a work conflict. Thank you and we're on to the consent calendar and I believe there is only one
item does anybody wish to pull the item seeing no head shake does anyone in the
public hi you're our public tonight does anybody in the public wish to call it up
if not may I have a motion move to adopt consent calendar item to a which is the
resolution approving the salary and wage wage plan dated and effective as of July
24. Second. All right roll call please. Councilmember Silva aye. Councilmember
Wilk aye. Mayor Haskew aye. Motion carries unanimously. The next item on the agenda is
public communications. This portion of the meeting is reserved for comment on
items not on the agenda. Under the Brown Act the council cannot act on items
raised during public communications but may respond briefly to statements made
or questions posed request clarification or refer the item to staff consistent with section
nine point five of the city council handbook 30 minutes will be allocated at this time for
public communications for items not on the agenda any additional time for the communications will
be held at the end of the meeting the next item is council member staff um announcements reports
on activities or requests and we're going to start with the city attorney.
Nothing to report this evening, Madam Mayor. Thank you. City Manager, next please.
Good evening, Dan Buckshi, City Manager. I do have one update this evening. I thought I would
share an update regarding FEMA reimbursement, which is not something I would typically do,
but I wanted to highlight that we are receiving, we should have the check in the mail soon,
$215,000 for FEMA for work related to COVID.
So I wanted to share this one, it's good news,
we're receiving this to offset some of the costs
that we incurred, but also to highlight
the amount of diligence and work it takes
to process these, given that we're talking
about four years later.
And just to highlight everybody's memories,
some of the types of activities and costs
that are being reimbursed are the additional costs
of cleaning and sanitizing that we had to do
of city facilities during that timeframe.
We had masks, we had protective gear,
we had staff in the lobby to direct folks
to help ensure that folks weren't getting
too close to one another.
We had additional signage, we had isolation.
There were times in the beginning, very early on,
when our police department was actively working,
when most folks were sheltering, if someone came with COVID,
they had to be isolated in a hotel
so that they didn't infect their family or other workers,
that we could actually have an active police force
at the time.
So I bring that up, it's easy to forget all of that
now that the years have passed,
but we were still working on this four years later
to track down the reimbursement.
So great job by everybody following through on this
and receiving these funds, and that's it this evening, Mayor.
Thank you.
Kevin, would you please take the honors?
Well, I do have one update since last week
regarding County Connection.
Normally our general meetings, we don't have meetings
here at City Council for three or four weeks afterwards.
so they're often not out of date, but not as fresh.
This is fresh off the press.
There's a proposed transfer policy
that's meant to be simple for riders
to understand for County Connection
and would provide a discount of up to $2.50
for each transfer within two hours of the first boarding.
Transfers to any local service would be free,
and transfers to regional services
such as BART or Caltrain would be discounted.
Again, this is proposed, so this will actually be voted on
and potentially come into effect by late summer, early fall.
For passengers transferring from BART to County Connection,
the proposed policy would increase the discount
and riders would transfer for free
instead of paying $1 as they currently do.
A more significant change will be
when riders transfer to BART
since there is currently no discount.
Those riders will now receive a $2.50 discount
off their BART fare when transferring
from another operator such as County Connection.
So for those people that are taking County Connection
and we have a lot of people in various groups
of our demographics that do, this is really important.
I'm really proud that County Connection
along with our other brother and sister transit agencies
are able to make, hopefully have this policy come into place
after the proposal is voted on.
That's my update.
Thank you.
Yes, please Council Member Silva.
Thank you very much.
So actually, I too have had a number of meetings.
They all seem to compress on July 18th.
So one is the Association of Bay Area Government's
Executive Committee, Executive Board met last Thursday.
And we were talking about the every four year update
to Bay Area Plan 2050.
This one is 2050 plus.
And the challenge that I see, and we were talking about,
although I couldn't get a lot of momentum
from other county representatives and city representatives
is that they're still assuming that the East Bay
and Contra Costa County and Alameda County
will carry more of the share of housing
and less of the share of jobs.
As an example, it assumes that in 2050,
we will have 11% more households,
but only 6% more jobs.
And it also assumes that the job,
the work from home percentages will be higher
in the South Bay where the jobs are,
as opposed to in the East Bay,
where it means that we're commuting.
And so I pointed out that that's quite counterintuitive
to the greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.
But I was assured that, oh, don't worry,
this doesn't affect RINA.
Oh yeah, right.
Thanks for smiling, Dan.
Also last Thursday was a meeting
of the California Seismic Safety Commission,
and I serve on that commission.
And it was one of the things we discussed
would be of interest to the community development department
and to the issue of conversion of commercial properties
to residential.
And the structural engineers of California
are very concerned that the structural integrity
of older commercial stock is not going to meet
the requirements for life safety
and more than life safety that is necessary
in residential properties.
So we had a bit of discussion about that
and they're trying to work with housing
and community development department,
which has been assigned to come up
with regulatory requirements for how to convert
commercial offices and retail to residential.
That should be an interesting conversation.
So we should keep an eye out for those regs
because buildings built in 1970 are not carrying
the loads and the structural integrity
to be able to really adapt well enough.
I really wanna thank the Arts and Recreation Department
for a fabulous week last week for Fiesta Cultural.
I enjoyed, first of all I heard fabulous things
about Ballet Hispantico.
Friday night with Spanish Harlem Orchestra was fabulous.
The Fiesta, the festival on Saturday was great
and it was only overly hot, not overly, overly hot.
It was rather warm out there,
but thank you for all the work.
I know it takes a lot to put something like that together.
Last week also, the Walnut Creek Homeless Task Force
had its last meeting.
Mayor Pro Tem Darling and I were there as was city manager
and community development housing staff.
And I just want to give a shout out
and it was hosted at Trinity Center, so thank you.
I just want to give a shout out to the people
who volunteered and did the work for 10 years.
It was a celebratory event,
but also there was some interesting conversation.
I know Mayor Pro Tem was able to stay a bit longer
than I was able to stay.
There may have been some ideas generated for the future,
but I will mention that there was a discussion
of the affordable housing bond measure
that is being placed on the ballots
in the nine Bay Area counties in November,
and that would be a $20 billion bond measure
from the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority,
and perhaps we should bring that presentation forward on that
so that we can make a decision in early September
whether to endorse it or not.
And finally, I will mention that as was,
we talked about a few weeks ago,
former Mayor Charlie Abrams passed away on June 3rd
and his virtual memorial service will be this Saturday,
July 27th at 11 a.m.
And you can get the link and sign up to attend
on the city's website on the homepage under news events.
And that way you can all sign up
And you're not trying to listen to a long link being read over the internet.
But I hope many of you can attend because he was very, very important to this community
in the transportation arena, the business arena, and just all around what he did for
the community.
So he will be greatly missed, but his legacy is living on even today.
So thank you very much, Mayor.
Can I ask, is that service is actually being conducted somewhere and it's just being streamed
online, or is it all online?
all online because it's in, he was from the east coast and he still has brothers and sisters alive
in the eastern time zone and so they decided to do it virtually. Yes please. Okay,
yes, as council member Silva said, we did have the celebratory tenure hoorah for the
homeless task force and it was interesting talking there about how far we've come. There were things
like hop that didn't exist when that task force got going, the winter shelter, the core team,
a lot of those things that we now take for granted with homelessness. And we are going to be looking,
we the city, our non-profit partners are going to be looking at ways to refocus and continue to work
together because that cooperation and coordination that used to happen through that group was really,
really important. And I did get to recognize, Marco Newsom couldn't be there
because he had to go on vacation, I don't know what that's about, but we did get
to recognize Donna Colombo with a proclamation which always makes her feel
awkward because she doesn't like the limelight, but the woman has done so much
for our city and our homeless population and to help us all do a better job in
that regard. It was really nice to be able to recognize her. MCE we had an
an interesting and long meeting on Thursday night.
We went from the very mundane.
We decided that the lease is up on the building
that we have up in Marin County.
We decided we are going to,
staff has been negotiating with the landlord
and decided we are gonna purchase the building.
It has a number of great attributes.
MCE has done a lot to electrify the building
and it will end up saving us money in the long run.
And then we got into a really interesting
philosophical discussion about Diablo Canyon,
which is providing about 10% of the power for California
through the heat waves.
And there are, this is gonna come back to us
and we're going to wrap ourselves around the Axle
for a long time whether or not MCE is going to take,
whatever we do will have nothing to do with how much
that project operates.
But it's whether or not we allow ourselves
to recognize that the energy we're getting from that
are greenhouse gas free.
And it, believe me, that was a discussion
that's gonna go on for a while.
So I won't bore you with it, forget it.
You know, yeah.
I did, I was downtown with one of the board members
from Walnut Creek downtown and we just happened
by Model Bakery as the staff were out there
and I got to go inside and just watching them get ready
to make those English muffins.
I'm really excited for that one.
I'm looking forward to that.
Many of us, and I'll let you talk about it,
we're at Shadelands with the Historical Society
benefit last night.
And the last thing is we have a cabin up outside of Portola
in between Portola and Grey Eagle.
And there, this time yesterday, all of a sudden you realize
that that thunderstorm that went through yesterday,
probably about two in the afternoon,
had started multiple fires in the area.
And my husband was up there,
and he didn't seem all that concerned
because his zone of evacuation
was only just recommended, not mandatory.
So he thought he'd make dinner.
But one of the fun things,
he has an old Forest Service guy,
he has a lot of connections up there,
and there is an app called Watch Duty
that you should all have downloaded on your phone
because it goes through.
They've done a really good job with evacuation zones.
It used to be you'd have to go to the second quarter
of the last stop sign past Mr. Markell's grocery store.
Now they're all numbered.
They're on the map.
And you can open up watch duty.
They upload the perimeters of the fire.
They upload all the statistics on it.
They have which zones are mandatory
and which zones are go ahead and barbecue.
and just be ready to go.
And so it's been really reassuring to watch
as we don't burn down.
And right now the fire is past us
and heading towards Sierra Valley.
So it's all good, but watch duty.
It's a great app.
Okay, I really don't have that much to say
about the historical thing last night.
It was a fine time to get together
with a lot of people who care a lot
about the history of Walnut Creek.
And we reminisced a little bit at the dinner table
and we celebrated two young people who had contributed
toward the organization, one who did an incredible amount
of work and is a musician and is going to Cornell
and the other one who's also done a lot of work
for the Historical Society and she now works
with the Historical Society, it was hot, it was hot.
And everybody found a tree to be under and stayed there.
I essentially was, I was asked to be the kickoff speaker
for a festival of cultural and realized that the only thing
I knew how to say in Spanish was buenos tardes,
which fortunately fit the time because it was afternoon.
And then really did begin to enjoy
how much respect was given to a culture,
and in my remarks I said something I deeply believe
in my heart which is the best way to get to know a culture
is to experience that culture because there are more things
that are together than apart.
There was a CCTA meeting, and Mark DeSauni came
and basically told us what a good job he was doing,
raising money for our county.
And we also talked about and voted to support
one thing, another thing near and dear to my heart.
Teaching elderly people and people of limited,
or let's say, people who have challenges,
how to get around in the public transit system.
So they have classes where they teach people
how to ride BART, what to do if you're gonna take a ferry,
And we're funding it in a pretty serious way
to make it accessible throughout the county.
So yeah, it might be something that might have
some benefit to the people in our community as well.
Didn't even think about that.
Although Walnut Creek, many people don't know,
has a transportation system that's open for the elderly
and it actually goes outside of Walnut Creek
in order to accomplish its goals,
which is pretty rare for a city funded
transportation system.
So Walnut Creek's dedicated to helping people
and now the county is gonna be right behind us.
That's all I have to say
and we're now into the public hearing.
Mayor, can I just clarify,
you opened general public comment and closed it?
I did.
Okay, thank you.
There was no.
I didn't catch it. Yes, there was nobody leaping forward. Yes, so we're introduction
we're the first item is the introduction of an ordinance making zoning amendments to update
provisions for off-street parking transportation demand management and waive the first reading
and welcome. Thank you Madam Mayor, council members. I'm here tonight to talk to you about
a proposed update to our zoning ordinance specifically regarding our parking regulations.
There are several different components. There will be a question and answer section
after each of them to ensure that the topics can remain better focused. The first is a series of
provisions to better comply with different state laws. Next we'll be discussing the right-sizing
parking study and amendments to our multi-family residential parking minimums. Next, bicycle
parking, followed by transportation demand management, and finally, some other technical
edits and cleanup. Could I ask who you are? Oh my goodness, I'm sorry. Yes, I am Henry
Roode. I'm an assistant planner for the Public Works Division. I apologize for not mentioning
that first but it's your first time presenting to us so welcome thank you okay so to get back into it
it's a little foot loose and fancy free because there's not a lot of people here
i do apologize for admitting that yes i'm a transportation planner in public works
that's why you smiled when i talked about transportation yes indeed oh thank you
Yes. So, the first state law that we are amending our zoning ordinance to comply with is AB 894.
This requires local agencies to allow shared parking agreements, provided that they have
underutilized parking, and provide us a professional parking analysis. Currently,
we require a minor use permit for these shared parking agreements. So, we are amending the code
so that when compliant with these provisions in state law, they will be approved by right
instead of requiring this minor use permit. We are also specifying that offsite parking must be
within specifically 2,000 feet of the project site rather than the vague reasonable distance
that was listed before. And this distance can be extended if there are shuttles or other
alternative accommodations. The next state law is AB 1308. This prohibits local agencies from
from requiring additional parking for certain kinds
of single family remodels, renovations and additions.
So accordingly, we have adjusted it
so that no additional parking is required
for these projects specified by state law.
Finally, and perhaps the most significant is AB 2097.
This is a state law intended to reduce development costs
where close to transit.
And this eliminates in their entirety parking minimums
within one half mile of major transit stops.
For the city of Walnut Creek,
what qualifies are Walnut Creek Bart and Pleasant Hill Bart,
which is outside of city limits, but is within a half mile.
This applies to both commercial
and residential development projects.
And there are some exceptions.
Agencies can make written findings
if there's a substantially negative impact,
but even then, certain projects
are exempt from these findings.
And finally, this is not applicable
to event centers and hotels.
So, for example, Leisure Center would not be affected by this.
And here's just a better look at some of the affected areas.
You can see that it covers a large part of the pedestrian retail zoning district and
Pleasant Hill covers some of the northern areas of the city.
And with that, I will open it up if there are any questions on the amendments made to
comply with state law.
I believe there are.
Would anybody like to jump in?
I have more, I always have more than everybody.
You always have more than me.
I don't want to, you know, go ahead.
I'll ask my one and then if there's anyone that you prompt,
I'll ask that too.
So do any of the areas here that we're talking about
go further than what the state is requiring?
So we are drawing the line specifically
as the state defines them.
And in fact, in our code update,
we specifically cite the state statute.
It's a little vague with AB 2097 specifically,
but there are HCD clarifications and other state laws
such as the density bonus that do make it clear
that this is drawing from the closest point
on the parcel of transit.
So our definition is matching that of the state.
We are not going further.
We're not going further, okay, thank you.
I'm gonna pick up where you left off on that question
if that's all right, Mayor.
So, a half mile from this major transportation transit stop.
So, I'm looking at the screen here.
Where is it measured from?
The fare gate or the boundary because over time,
the boundaries of these BART stations
are actually turning into housing
which makes them not really transit stations,
it makes them multi-use environments.
So, what are we measuring?
What is the point of the half mile?
So it is the boundary of the parcel.
So even if there are different, of the lot, excuse me,
for the transit center.
So even if other uses are on that same lot
as the BART station, for example,
it's still measured from the edge.
Well, what if there are multiple parcels,
which I do believe there are at the Walnut Creek station
that I know of.
The Pleasant Hill station is actually in the county,
so I'm not quite sure, but there are multiple parcels.
It's the parcels that are considered dedicated
to the major transit center use.
that would be where the fair gates are. Well I believe for clarity wanted. And the
reason I ask is not to be nitpicky but the premise of a half-mile is that that
is a reasonable distance that people will walk, scoot, roll, whatever, but walk.
And if there are many BART stations or transit stations in this state that have
have a half mile width of parking.
And so if they're having to walk a half mile
or three blocks across a parking lot,
it's no longer a half mile, it's three quarters of a mile.
So that's what I'm trying to understand.
And I've had this argument with members
of the state legislature.
I'm lost every time I've argued it, but.
Mayor, council, assistant city attorney, Claire Lai.
So with respect to that question, the measurement,
and this is reflected in the erotic sheet
that's before the council tonight,
The measurement is a straight line from the boundaries of the project property to the
parcel where the transit stop is located.
So if there is multiple parcels, if the station is on multiple parcels, then that circle where
the parcels are at would be the stop point of the measurement, of the end of the measurement.
And this approach, it's not specified in AB 2097 itself,
but HCD has, like Henry mentioned,
opined that this is the correct way to measure it,
because it's consistent with the goals of that statue.
And also that this method is utilized
by the state density bozo, where that statue is
clear that it's to the boundary lines of the property.
So the city would very much likely
have to use that for some of these projects,
since they're going to be affordable. So you answered my other question, which is it's measured
as the crow flies to use. Correct. So even if you couldn't, even if you had to walk a mile
based on the where the streets and the and the routing would be, it doesn't matter. It's as the
crow flies a half mile to the border, to the edge of the station. Correct. And that is also not
Not specifically mentioned AB-297, however, that is also another point by HCD that the
statute would have said walking distance as it does in the ADU statutes and in the SB9
statute where it specifies that it's walking distance, but where it does not say that HCD
has a point that it's a straight line as crow flies, and so we think that's an appropriate
measure for it.
Regarding 2097, we're actually in the muni code.
I think it's page 14, but I think it might be some other pages as well.
There were a lot of red underlines, strikethroughs, et cetera, and after a while you kind of lose
track of where finding something in the document.
And you said there's an errata sheet?
Yes.
There were some revisions made.
So the specific AB 2097 changes are on page 14 of the proposed ordinance.
That's Attachment 1.
It's in the section beginning with no off-street parking spaces shall be required for projects
located within one-half mile of public transit.
And that is Section 10-2.203 of the code, 2.3.203, excuse me.
Now the changes that we're making to bike parking is really because of 2097.
we have to decouple our standards.
I know you're not talking about bike parking yet,
but it's been triggered by 2097, is that correct?
So I will get into that later,
but the changes to bike parking
are not mandated by the state.
What happens is that with this new state law,
our current bike parking regulations
do not fit very well with it,
so staff have prepared alternative requirements
that better fit new state law, but it is not mandated.
And are you going to be covering
the Transportation Demand Management later as well.
Sorry, I forgot the outline from the beginning.
No, it's quite all right.
So I had a couple of questions about AB 1308,
the single-family parking requirements, basically some,
if someone was to convert their garage,
where they no longer had a garage,
are we precluded under this law and other state statutes
from requiring them to at least replace
ensure they had on off-street parking equivalent to a garage? So if it is an
ADU we are precluded if it's a conversion but outside of that we are
still permitted to require replacement parking we just cannot require
additional parking. And that was what I needed clarified. The word additional
words matter don't they? And regarding the shared parking which sections of all
of these pages. And I know the pages will actually be different once the red lining
goes away. Yes, so that is part 4, section 10-2.3.203A and B, address that.
So we've done shared parking programs in the past. I mean, one in particular I can remember
is between a church and a medical office building. And they have compatible uses and they don't
need all the parking for both, what happens and what recourse do we have if after a shared
parking program is put in place between two property owners and the original property
owner that was sharing its parking with a new development changes its use, decides to
redevelop and the shared parking disappears.
What recourse do we have to basically control anything, or do we just lose all opportunity?
So, the state law allows us to ensure that the initial parking agreement has provisions
for the future, and we will record that, and it will come up in the title report.
So, if they stop adhering to that, it would be a code violation like any other that we
can still continue to enforce, even with the state law.
And is that in the code or is that in the state law?
So as long as we're referring to state law, we're okay.
State law allows it, but the code reaffirms that.
Claire?
Yeah, and the code does include a reference,
yes, in our code, that the parking agreements
are to be in force in accordance with that state statute.
And so to satisfy all the requirements,
you have to have the continuous future provision of parking.
So essentially they can interrupt what they're doing.
So my last question related to shared parking.
Does this still allow us to approve
what are essentially leasing of excess parking capacity
for auto storage?
Because there's no really, it's not recurring parking.
Do we have to require a shuttle and all that when basically
they're running to get inventory of cars that are for sale?
So, first of all, auto storage, vehicle storage is a use that is prohibited in most districts
and that remains true, we do not have to change that.
The bill only applies to sites where 20% or more of the development's parking spaces are
not occupied during that period that parking is proposed to be shared.
And other sites can still get a minor use permit with us as they could before.
So let me tell you where I think we really need to do this.
It's actually in the North Downtown specific plan, and we had conversations about it where
there was surplus of parking because they actually didn't some of the developers in
the last 10 years didn't believe our parking reductions and that they thought they would
need more parking and they have dozens of empty spaces, but we don't seem to have a
way to incentivize and facilitate the allowance of the leasing of excess capacity to a neighbor
in use auto sales. How do we ensure that we are not actually precluding it inadvertently
with some rule? Will this trigger some rule that would preclude us from doing common sense
leasing of parking spaces? So these changes to the code make it easier
rather than harder to accomplish these shared parking agreements. Certain ones that before
required a minor use permit with us now will be approved. However, the city still can in its role
as a facilitator conduct and kind of cultivate these shared parking agreements with its own
communications were not prevented under this law. And these changes will also facilitate or
accommodate the discussions related to phase three at the transit village and the parking
requirements for that? I mean, all of that is in play again, then.
Yes. So these changes, they only make that development easier. They do not constrict
anything.
Okay. Thank you, Mayor.
Thank you. Thank you for all those questions. You have any?
I have none. So we can, I guess, move on to the next.
Okay.
Thank you.
So the next thing we're going to talk about is the new parking minimums.
So as some background, our housing element of the general plan identifies the limited
supply and high cost of land as a major constraint on new housing development.
We are committed per the housing element to review and modify development standards that
pose a constraint to development and more specifically to reduce minimum parking requirements
for multifamily and mixed use projects.
And per the housing element, we are committed to make these amendments by fall of this year.
You can see in the diagram there, just a little infographic showing how increased parking
increases the cost of housing.
So last year, we used a local early action planning grant to conduct a rightsizing parking
study to look at the real demand for multifamily residential parking, to better analyze the
observed demand and then adjust our parking minimums accordingly.
Farron peers were retained to help us conduct the study and the full results are available
in the staff report but I will summarize here.
We conducted field counts in May of last year on a typical week night late in the evening
when most residents are expected to be at home.
This was at 11 large multifamily residential complexes with onsite parking facilities,
wholly residential in use without commercial components.
You can see on the right, the map there,
that they were all throughout the city,
not just limited to downtown.
About half of them were within the AB 2097 area
and about half were not.
And we also contacted the property managers
for further information regarding the unit size,
like how many bedrooms and how many types of units each had,
and also the occupancy
at the time the field counts were taken.
Using this information, we could compare the parking spaces
that we observed to be occupied with the dwelling units
we knew to be occupied
and calculate a per dwelling unit parking demand.
Two facilities could not provide us
this occupancy information
and they were excluded from the average calculations.
With that said, the average observed parking space
to occupied dwelling unit ratio was 0.96,
while the supply averaged 1.27.
And this per unit demand helps to provide
an overall average regardless of unit size
bedroom count, but using that information we could also look at occupancy through a
bedroom-based lens, which was especially helpful because our existing parking requirements
are based on bedroom count and unit type.
So with that, we could see that all but one facility had fewer occupied spaces than current
regulations would require, and the only exception had exactly the amount of spaces required
by the North Downtown Specific Plan.
Overall, demand was substantially lower than our current regulations require.
And despite the location-based variability in the existing regulations, demand is fairly
consistent citywide.
This suggests that multifamily residential requirements can be lowered to a single citywide
standard without negative impact.
Accordingly, the study recommended new lower requirements for multifamily dwelling units.
These are one-half space per studio, three-quarter space per one-bedroom unit, one space per
two-bedroom unit, and 1.25 space per unit with more than two bedrooms, which are exactly
what we currently require in the North Downtown specific plan.
These would be consistent citywide except as otherwise mandated by state law, for example,
in the AB 2097 areas.
So with that said, if there are any questions about the parking study and the new multifamily
residential parking minimums.
I'll open it up.
I believe, Mayor Pro Tem.
I have a question this time around.
So when you were doing the counts at the apartments,
did you look at whether or not any of them had TDM plans
or if they had decoupled the parking spots,
the rent for the parking spot
from the rent from the apartments?
We did ask for that information from the property owners.
As far as we could tell,
and not all of them could answer this,
but all the ones who could answer definitively
We did not have TDM plans come and we do not have any reason to suspect that the other
ones did either.
Okay.
Thank you.
I have a question which is it seems to me like a studio apartment would have the same
ratio of needed cars as a one bedroom apartment and I'm concerned that if we make it, do we
have any ability to have more than we have in this example,
but less than we have in our current rules.
Did that make sense?
Yes, I think I understand.
And if that is a direction the council wants to go,
they can direct it to staff
and we could find a different end point.
We are committed per the housing element
to lower the minimums, but the specifics are not dictated.
These were the recommendations of the parking study,
based on the demand that we observed.
I will say that with regards to studio versus one bedroom,
if you imagine a couple or a pair of people,
they could live in a one bedroom and each have cars,
whereas a studio, you'd expect lower parking demand.
And we did find in the full results of the report,
we did look at unit size
and compare that to parking demand.
And we did see that buildings
that had a higher percentage of studios
had a average lower per unit parking demand
than buildings that had more bedrooms,
including one bedrooms.
Kevin, please.
Thank you.
Could we go back to that map that showed the,
the numbers? Study sites.
Yeah, there we go.
So that looks like,
is that Ignacio Valley Road that goes upward?
Yes. Okay.
And do you have Creekside on here somewhere?
So, Creekside is not on this map,
because we could not get occupancy information from them.
There's one other site where the same thing was true,
so those are the nine sites that were incorporated
into our averages and our calculations.
Okay, and could you, let's go back to that slide
right before the end again, right there.
Okay.
So, what we're talking about here is matching these
for the North Downtown specific plan,
but it would be citywide.
That is correct.
which would include those apartments
that are off the main streets.
I'm just thinking of places that are up near Ignacio
and Oak Grove Road.
There's been ones that have been proposed.
Everything from the Citrus Center to there's Montego.
There's apartments that are along there.
I think there's also, as you go up Ignacio,
there's a lot of different apartments throughout.
And of course, as we know, the state mandates are making it onerous, obviously here with
parking, and to build more housing.
So is there a concern that if we look at these areas that are outside the core areas of the
main street where there is public transit, that we are going to severely impact the ability
of residents to be able to park their cars?
It's one thing to be able to walk a few blocks and take the Route 4 county connection, the
shuttle to Bart or to take one of these Route 5 buses or something else that runs somewhat
frequently.
It's a whole other story if we're further outside the main area.
Up Creek site is an example.
Are we concerned about really hurting those residents that would need a car, that public
transit is not available for them?
So of course local conditions will always affect parking demand in specific ways.
It's important to keep in mind that these are minimums, so developers, if they estimate
a higher market demand than our lowest recommendations, they are welcomed and encouraged to build
more parking to meet that demand.
So I can only imagine that a developer would not be building less parking than they anticipate
their residents needing, especially if they're in that further out Oak Grove area, for example.
If you want to-
Okay.
Hi, Smidhar Boardman, City Engineer.
So I just wanted to add a little more to that, which is that generally speaking, good land
use planning means that you have higher density residential co-located with complementary
land uses.
So if you imagine orchards, right, that is a full service kind of situation or, you know,
there's other services provided within that area too.
There's medical, there's employment, and then there's other, you know, food markets, that
kind of thing. So generally speaking you know yes you could say that sure in
some of the single-family residential portions of the city you would expect
that higher auto ownership when it comes to the multi-family residential
opportunity sites that's actually really co-located with those services that would
drive vehicle miles traveled lower as well as car ownership and also you would
and see lower either more environmentally conscious folks
who are living in those types of circumstances,
or they may be of a certain demographic socioeconomic level
where they are living in these types of units.
And so they're going to have lower rates
of auto ownership as well.
And there's a lot of research
that's been published on this topic.
Okay, I appreciate that Spadara, thank you.
I am concerned about putting the onus on developers
to put in the necessary amount of parking.
I think that we can all probably think of a few examples
in our city where developers did not put in
the necessary amount of parking as it turned out.
And that does cause me some concern.
I guess that I'll just be hearing more questions
about this too.
Thank you.
Council Member Silva.
Thank you very much.
And before I ask my questions,
I'm not going to make comments at this point
because just in case there's someone here from the public
that wants to have input as well.
But one of my questions, and first of all,
I am very supportive of right sizing.
We've been talking about it for six or seven years,
and then we had COVID that got in the way.
But I see discrepancies between attachment three
and the table that says demand versus minimum requirements
that would occur under the North Downtown specific plan.
and the other very interesting tables
that have more detail.
But when you connect the two,
I find the table in attachment three to be the most telling.
And so I will just give you a heads up on that.
So I'm going to, I don't have any questions, I understand,
but I just had a heads up that I may drill down on that.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Anyone else?
Okay, are there any public comments to be had?
I believe there are none.
So we're gonna bring it back to council and.
This is not the last section.
Okay, then continue on.
Thank you.
Next, I'm gonna talk about bicycle parking,
just to give you some background.
Several recent state housing laws require agencies
to adopt objective standards.
The 2018 Countywide Bike and Pedestrian Plan
encourages jurisdictions to provide
adequate bicycle parking racks and lockers.
And our 2023 sustainability action plan
calls for additional supportive infrastructure
for bicycles such as parking facilities.
So currently our bicycle parking requirements
are wholly derived from automobile parking requirements.
So for example, if you were building something
and we asked you to build 20 parking spaces,
we would say you need to build two bicycle parking spaces
as 10% of that.
And this presents a problem with AB 2097,
where large swaths of the city now have a parking requirement
at least defaulting to zero,
which would also mean zero bicycle spaces
as the code is currently written.
So staff have written new decoupled bicycle parking
to prevent any contradiction.
In practice, this means that bicycle parking requirements
are determined by use and square footage
rather than automobiles.
This allows us to adjust bicycle and automobile parking
independently of each other,
and it also best lets us shape short-term
versus long-term parking requirements
based on the land use category.
The Transportation Commission reviewed
these new bicycle parking requirements last year
and were very supportive.
They did provide some feedback to lower the requirement
for medical care uses, so that has been lowered accordingly.
With that, if there are any questions
on the bicycle parking requirements.
Have at it.
Thank you very much.
And I did provide these in advance.
So just in case they're not a surprise.
The way I read the proposed changes in the ordinance,
it eliminates the specific requirements
for the West downtown and the North downtown specific plan.
And basically those standards will become the standards
for the whole city.
by interpreting that correctly.
So these are not specifically the west downtown
and north downtown specific plan standards.
It is a new set of city-wide standards
based on our research and best practices.
So these new standards are replacing everything.
They are replacing everything.
However, within the downtown overlay zone,
we have allowed kind of a bicycle parking in lieu program
where if you, if there's any public bicycle parking
or infrastructure within 200 feet of the entrance
that can count towards this requirement.
So in the denser downtown area,
we don't have to worry about bicycle parking
crowding out the right of way.
There was also something that I noted
where in notes 12 and 13 related to the bike parking,
page 11 of the ordinance,
it uses the, these are talking about the BART proximate.
And it says a minimum of one secure bicycle parking space.
These are standards that use the term secure.
Is that used in the other standards as well,
and I just missed it?
Or is this only for the Pleasant Hill
and Walnut, the Bart proximate?
So secure is part of our definition of quote unquote
long term bicycle parking.
This is bicycle parking that is not necessarily accessible
to the public.
It is secure, not, you know, it's within a room or a locker
where you can be relatively sure
that the general public isn't at risk
of theft or damage to bicycles.
It's intended for people who are gonna be
in the building all day,
like residents of an apartment building
or workers in an office.
So note 12, yes, we have ensured
in that transit proximate area
that every single unit has access
to at least one secure bicycle parking space.
As to note 13, that is an error.
The existing requirements in that table
already satisfy that condition
and it has been removed in the errata.
In the errata.
And then one of the questions I questioned
was the reference to public and private schools.
Public schools do not come before us
for land use decisions, correct?
Yes, that is correct.
So for public schools,
this would be our recommendation
the appropriate body, but it would only be enforceable for private schools.
Okay.
Well, I hope the state architect is willing to take it up.
And I think that answered my that answered my questions.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Any other questions from Council?
Just one quick one.
So on the bicycle parking, it sounds like we've come up with a new theory of how much
we need.
and significantly increasing or decreasing parking from what or by
parking from what you would have expected with our old system. So that
will depend on the site because before it was based on automobile parking
whereas now it's based more specifically on land use. So for land uses where it is
expected that there is a higher demand like retail for example it is an
increase from existing requirements. This is in conjunction with you know a
large part of our ideas for transportation demand management
throughout the city. We're lowering of automobile parking requirements in
several places. We want to ensure that there is still you know sufficient
supply to meet that demand across different modes and encourage that mode
shift. Okay and then I think I know the answer to this but we didn't happen to
to do any like usage of bike parking survey
when we were counting cars, did we,
we just counted cars.
Yeah, we did not do a study on that.
That would have been, you know, like, okay, thank you.
Go ahead, and thank you for asking your question.
It triggered the, if we're really talking about
that the intent of AB 2097 and all of this
is to really reduce the cost of building housing,
Then we are requiring more bike parking, which I understand the
Are we requiring it as individual lockers or can it be consolidated behind a locked door the same way?
Garage parking is behind a locked gate
Yes, so especially in a like a housing complex. It could be as simple as a locked room
So the cost really neighbors, but you don't have to trust the public. Exactly. It's not accessible to literally everyone
It's just an, you know, somewhat enclosed space where you can have some confidence that it is, you know, protected
But it does not need to be specifically a locker. Okay, so we're not consuming more
Land for bike parking than necessary. All right. Thank you. No other
Okay. Okay. All right. Well, well
This is the final section
Go on to the final section. Thank you
So we are also implementing new provisions for transportation demand management for projects within a half mile of major transit stops
This is the areas where AB 2097 sets the parking minimums to zero
we're requiring a transportation demand management plan with provisions to encourage transit ride-sharing and
Shift to modes besides single occupancy vehicles to build on our existing TDM policy
This helps bolster our eligibility for transportation grants and other funding
And it complements the removal of parking minimums to ensure that the demand does not exceed the available supply at each project site.
They will be evaluated against an external, objective TDM guidelines document similar to how our objective design standards work for design review now.
And we also have some other technical edits and cleanup, replacing planning manager with community development director,
Treating medical and general offices more consistently through adjusting the setbacks.
Technical edits to clarify community commercial parking ratios and covered parking provisions.
With that, if there are any questions, I'll open it up.
Yes, please.
Again, thank you.
Regarding the technical updates, we have typically treated medical office at a higher turnover
And therefore, a need for more parking because of patients coming and going.
That the 250 to the ratios have not changed, it's some other technical issues about setbacks
and use where parking can be located?
Yes.
So this is not changing the parking requirements, the parking minimums for medical offices.
This is just eliminating the setback prohibitions, which are not in existence for other offices
so that we can treat it consistently in that regard.
And then I have a question on the TDM program.
There's this paragraph that says that the developer can say,
I don't need this much parking, bike parking, parking.
And I can do this calculation.
But it describes a calculation for determining
whether you have excess or you have enough parking
in order to avoid spillover.
how on earth does one, what formula are we going to offer to make this feasible to prove
that they don't, they still don't need to be billed as much parking as we are requiring?
Yeah, definitely. So there's a few resources that traffic engineers or transportation planners
will use to develop a parking study or parking analysis. It could be ITE parking generation
manual it could be like the ULI which is a planning resource and then you can
also you could always pull from let's say other agencies who have different
requirements but may have similar characteristics or it's a similar
context but you'd have to justify in some kind of study and that would need
to be prepared accordingly so that's that's kind of where you pull it from
you don't you don't necessarily have to start straight with the what's the
actual city requirement established in the code.
So this is feasible and it will be clear to a property owner or developer that what they
would need to do, because this is probably a large project, not a small project where
we're arguing over one parking space.
Yeah, that's right.
And the TDM guidelines document would also very clearly establish what that scope of
work would look like in terms of what that parking analysis would need to include.
And how quickly do we get to have to get the TDM guidelines document prepared in order
to be compliant with the law?
So we don't, well, we don't need that to be compliant with the law, but this is part
of the municipal code changes.
This is an external document and so I'm not, I don't think that we're anticipating something
coming in immediately following the code implementation, you know, about being the next several weeks.
this document it's again it would establish sort of what that scope of
work that's expected from from the you know the developer the applicant and
then it would also provide kind of many of options for measures that could be
implemented in order to sort of take credit for what would have been parking
otherwise so maybe they are providing all that bike parking maybe they're
unbundling parking. There's a few other options. My last question is really
related to the timing. It says we have to do this by fall 2024. We're not
even in fall yet. We're still in summer. Fall technically starts September. The
Vernal Autumnal Equinox and goes until just before the holidays. So what are we
I mean, so we are not, if we were to do something tonight
that delayed us doing this in the next meeting in August,
we are not gonna be violating state law
or our commitment on the housing element.
So the housing element is no more precise than fall 2024.
Okay, thank you.
Yes, please.
Okay, one last question on the TDM.
So it sounds like the requirement for the TDM planning
is a not a change in state mandate but it just helps developers deal with the fact that they
now have no guidance on how much parking to do and they're you know we want push them to have
less parking and so this is a way to help them deal with the demand of their tenants and
customers is that it yes it will help developers anticipate demand and it will help the city
ensure that the developers can provide a supply that matches that anticipated
demand. So this is a way for us to at least look at parking even in areas
that are impacted by state law. And we've been requiring TDM planning for a
while. Do we have you know are we going to be developing guidance or do we
We already have a fair amount of that.
So this is augmenting the existing regulations.
The new provisions are that external TDM guidelines document and also this trigger in the municipal
code where if it is in that transit proximate area, they will have to provide one.
Okay.
So we didn't have something in the past.
We just said go do it and go do it well.
Okay.
All right.
Thanks.
We didn't tell them how.
But well, we always say do it well.
public comment. No, no public comment. So we're going to bring it back to Council and
do we have comments or additional questions? Cindy, you asked the most questions. Would
you please start with your comments? I know this was a lot of work and so thank
you. I think it reflects what we need to do to comply with state legislation and they're
going to keep doing it to us so we might as well get used to it, AB 2097 894 and 1308.
So I'm supportive of all of those issues and I appreciate that the ordinance changes.
What I'm struggling with is actually how we're rightsizing this.
It's important to rightsize.
It's important because pretty much we've been oversized except for our Bart Proxima properties.
But I'm concerned that we will inadvertently become undersized, and there's no going back
once you undersize something.
And I'm afraid I disagree with the fair and piers in that there's a lot of numbers here,
but Attachment 3, the table in Attachment 3, clearly shows that we are either at a push
or too few spaces against the North Downtown standards.
The table does not deliver to me the conclusion, and it's only nine properties.
And as Council Member Wilk pointed out, there are no properties east of Shell Ridge, which
everything west of Shell Ridge is probably reasonably BART proximate, or at least it's
proximate to trails, transit, BART, and downtown and services.
But once you go over Shell Ridge and you get beyond John Muir Hospital, there's a lot of
multifamily and there's a lot of old multifamily housing stock.
There's not just townhomes.
There are apartments that are tucked in Heather Farm neighborhood, San Marco neighborhood,
right around John Muir Hospital, that are ripe for redevelopment.
And these standards would be triggered and could be too low.
And I'm concerned that if we don't, I mean, I'm supportive of adopting everything but
the one paragraph that goes to 0.5, 0.75 and one, and just letting that run for a little
bit longer while we enhance the study to basically look at those properties that are beyond
Shell Ridge and what they're currently parked at and et cetera, because I think the data
is going to show something different. I also think Creekside Drive is all it is is multifamily
housing and when you do not look at what that is like, you're not also getting a sense of
if you're under parked in one property and you're over parked in another, they can't
go on to that other parking. There's no shared parking. It's on the street. And there's no
room. We don't have any reflection of what's going on. And so I would like to see if there's
a way for us to bifurcate just that lowering of the requirement until we can be absolutely
sure that what Farron Pierce says is in fact true.
If I may respond, I will just note that that specific paragraph that you singled out is
the single part that we are committed to amending
by fall 2024 per our housing element,
we need to lower these-
I'm not saying another six years.
I'm saying another six weeks.
I just wanted to clarify that.
No, I understand.
I mean, I understand it's in there,
but that's why I also asked about how long is,
where is fall 2024 and what would it take?
Because I don't want to get this wrong.
And the statement that says,
developers will most likely build the parking they think they need I think is
true until it's not and we have encountered those who will take
shortcuts everywhere they can and they've been in front of us and there's
been a lot of conversation and then they don't do what they promised they would
do and they're in the field and engineering and public works is dealing
with them so it takes only it takes one or two to make a problem for everybody
but I I just think we need to ensure that we can be comfortable with the
numbers. I understand. And I will just also note that what Smidar was talking
about where even in these further out areas this is strictly for multi-family
housing where demand per unit is much lower for parking even in those further
areas because those larger multi-family developments are built in conjunction
with and in connection to these other services like at Orchards. I don't want
argue with you and I do respect the professional opinion but I also know how
much multifamily is actually sitting out near where Kevin lives and it's hidden
and it's and it's dense and I just think we could do a little bit more research
to make sure that our conclusion is going that we're going to be able to
uphold the conclusion and do right by the development community right by the
future and right by the existing residents who will be struggling with
the parking demand if it's spilling on to neighborhood streets inadvertently
because we didn't take we we inadvertently didn't count the cars on
half the side of town. Next. Thanks you guys done a great job here I did have
one more question so on the parking minimums we compare them to the north
downtown, have we looked at other cities around us who are doing a similar effort to right size?
Do we know if we are above or behind some of our adjacent cities?
So several cities in the state of California have eliminated parking minimums entirely.
There is a big push for that. Others are lowering them to a greater extent than what is proposed
here. These were intended to be fairly conservative in their impact, considering what is required
by the housing element. But we don't know, like specifically Pleasant Hill Conquered
Lafayette, the cities that are similarly situated like us where you have close in to Bart and
then a little bit further away. So we don't do we know what they've been doing? For a
more comprehensive report, I would have to look into that and get back to you. All right.
I appreciate, we've been asking for this,
the right size parking data for a long time,
and I appreciate that we have it in front of us.
And I do want to right size it,
recognizing that those parking spots cost $50,000 each.
And so I want to move this along,
but I also recognize what my fellow council members
are saying with some of those areas that are further out
that aren't as well connected
to the transportation network may be problematic.
So I'm on the fence.
Thank you.
I appreciate the comprehensiveness in this
and the fact I was on the transportation commission
for eight years and on the county connection now
for eight years on the board.
This is all really interesting.
A lot of this I agree with
and a lot of this I don't agree with.
Some of the things I have nothing to say about it
because it's state mandates,
and that's the way it is within a half mile of BART.
And it doesn't mean I have to agree with it,
but that's the way the cookie crumbles in those instances.
But when it comes to the right sizing
for the city as a whole,
we've had discussions here over the last couple of years
that what the state mandates are trying to do,
and when we've pushed back on that,
we have been against one size fits all
because Walnut Creek is not San Francisco,
is not LA, is not Fresno.
and we don't feel it's been right
to have this blanket state mandates
when we're all very different.
I visit my daughter who lives in San Francisco,
and in a popular neighborhood,
a lot of neighborhoods there are popular,
and I've got to drive for 20 minutes
in concentric circles around blocks
to try to find one parking spot
just to be able to visit her.
And when she leaves,
now they don't even have a car there now,
and certainly San Francisco has made it,
Number one, inconvenient to have a car,
expensive to have a car, and you don't need a car
because she can go out and there's a bus
every eight or 10 minutes.
That is not the way it is here though,
and it's not the way it is in a lot of the counties
in Contra Costa.
Different areas do have different needs in this instance,
and we've mentioned Creekside,
I appreciate Council Member Silva mentioning that.
Where I live out in the Oak Grove, Ignacio area,
there are all these pockets out there,
and when these developers are coming in,
and they're going to build a multifamily
and dense housing there,
they are going to use, in my opinion,
and maybe I will be wrong, but in my opinion,
they will use the minimum amount required to build
because they are expensive.
And as we've seen in several other developments,
some commercial, but regardless,
they have been under parked.
And we are facing the repercussions of that now,
and the residents are facing the repercussions.
Public Works is dealing with that.
We get constant emails about that.
And it is so hard to try and reverse that
or put band-aids on it.
And this has been real problematic.
Where, in these outlying areas,
public transit just isn't convenient.
And I know what the funding is
on this sitting on County Connection.
These buses are coming every 30 or 60 minutes
in non-commute times.
And so why don't the buses run more frequently?
Well, because there isn't the traffic for it,
but there's not the funding for it.
I mean, everybody needs this kind of funding.
And so I understand that we're leaving
all of this discretion to developers.
I'm just really concerned with that.
And the consternation of our residents of what happens
when they now live in Walnut Creek and they can't park
or on Creekside, take a drive up there.
And I don't know how many parking spots
are in each of those apartments, but it's pretty significant.
But I can tell you how many parking spots are on the street.
Not too many, when I have to go up there,
it is hard to find a parking spot on the street as it is.
And a lot of these apartments are ready
for upgrades and complete redevelopment on there.
So I understand the objective
of getting the cars off the road
and then reducing greenhouse gases,
but it feels like here we're forcing the hand of residents
more than I feel comfortable with.
And again, we're not San Francisco, Oakland or Berkeley,
we're still walling the creek without the infrastructure
public transit that more that more urban and metro cities have and so while I'll
I will be voting to approve most of this that area where we're talking about
right-sized parking I will not be voting to approve okay I'm sitting here with my
my version of the world and a studio apartment is one person and one person
comes with one car or one bike or one thing depending on how close it is to
their services. I keep thinking about it doesn't make any difference. I can
imagine going to work without a car and yet I can't think of how I buy a
TV without a car and getting it up the hill. It's it's or on a bicycle or a big
package or something that doesn't fit. So I'm having trouble I'm having
trouble imagining that this reduction isn't too large a reduction because people aren't
quite there yet where they can call Uber and they think it's well.
I had a group of ladies attack me at Farmer's Market.
They had a conversation with me at Farmer's Market
about how waiting for a bus is not as pleasant as it should be.
There are no overhangs.
There are no benches.
If they are, they're messy and not cleaned up.
And I got a 15-minute lecture about how bad it
is over at Walnut Creek Park.
So I think that we're encouraging the right thing.
I just agree with Council Member Silva
in that if we set the standards too low
and discover that they just aren't even effective,
that they aren't accomplishing what we want to accomplish,
that we can't get them back up again.
And especially we can't get them back up again
in the properties that have been built.
So my leaning is if there is any slack in this
so that we can reduce it to what it is generous enough
so that there's some wiggle room.
And if it isn't enough,
I magically say in five to 10 years
when we have a better idea about what the impact is,
maybe then we can come down to the very lowest thing.
But I don't think we need,
if there's any possibility under state law,
we can give ourselves a little breathing space.
I hardly think it's a good idea to do so.
So we don't know what to do.
We wanna comply with our commitment and the housing element.
Mayor, if I may summarize what I'm hearing
and taking away from this,
see if that captures the feedback from the council
and I'd also like to hear from staff
if it's feasible to do this within the timeframe.
So as mentioned, we have basically until early December
and look at the council calendar,
we would need to have this adopted in a November timeframe
at the latest given the council calendar.
So that's what we'd be looking at.
What I heard is council member Silva noted
that she would like more buildings studied,
more multifamily buildings in other parts of the city.
What I heard is a focus on the North Gate area,
potentially Creek side.
We can determine if there might be other areas
farther away from the BART stations
that would add to the data and add to the study.
I'm thinking in the neighborhood
of four or five additional buildings,
I wanna get a sense if that resonates.
Of a size that actually,
can I, I'll make one more point
because I'm really, this is really helpful.
The building, the reserve at Walnut Creek,
it is under parked based on this table.
And it is only nine-tenths down Ignacio Valley Road.
We go further, I think it's going to get worse,
but we have no data support, my conclusion.
Okay, that's helpful.
So in the neighborhood of four to five buildings
at these various locations I noted,
I heard from council member Darling,
if we can gather data on other cities
to see what they're looking at
in terms of right size parking,
some that may be a little further along than us,
and if they have data how it's actually worked
since it's been in place.
If they were under or over,
recognizing every city is a bit different,
but to see what takeaways there may be.
Heard from council member Wilk that we might need to consider
depending upon this data, additional data that comes in,
we might need to consider different standards
for different parts of the city.
Obviously we have that within the AB 2097 area
that would be mandated, but that is that other areas
that are within the city's discretion,
we may need to be open to not having one standard,
but based upon location,
but that would be driven by the data
with this additional information
to see if that would be necessitated or helpful.
And then I heard from Mayor Haskew
that better to be more incremental than to overshoot
and have to back off of that.
So my question of staff,
is it feasible to survey an additional four to five buildings,
gather this additional information and come back no later than one of the November meetings
to review this with counsel.
May I ask another question?
Is it feasible for us to adopt everything but the reductions so that if it were to come
back we don't have to go through more?
We're not actually recommending that because they are tied together in certain ways.
And that's the time-sensitive aspect.
As long as we meet the November meeting,
we're meeting the timing requirement,
and we are understanding the council
to generally be on board with the rest of the aspects
of this other than this new standard.
So in regards to feasibility, so here's what we can do.
There were several discussions about,
or several of those items that Dan had summarized.
So in regards to finding out what other cities have done,
we can absolutely bring that back to you.
No problem within this timeframe.
Looking at potentially even breaking things up
based on different areas,
we could always use best practice
or perhaps what we're able to find in terms of research
in order to develop different standards for those areas.
As it relates to data collection,
we actually need to contract out a data collection company
that specializes in these types of parking data collection.
We will know if we're able to contract with somebody
in the next couple of weeks.
We need to find funding for that,
but we will figure that out.
And really it comes down to you,
is right now actually a good time to collect parking data
because people are on vacation?
And so we wouldn't actually be able to collect this data
until pretty much kids are back in school, which is soon,
but it would be best practice
to wait to actually conduct the data collection
until about mid-September and then that puts us
into this timeline for completing that analysis
and then bringing that back to you.
So it's doable, potentially, if we can get
a data collection company willing to do this
for us in that time frame, but it's also very tight.
So I just wanted to let you know.
But I would also suggest that, like I said,
we can at minimum do everything else
and bring that information back to you
so that it can at least support
further decision making and just further information.
I appreciate the offer of other cities,
but if these cities are not similar in nature
to what we, basically our neighbors,
Berkeley does something very different,
they have different transit systems,
they have many more BART stations, it's more dense,
so I wanna be sure we're not just pulling
from other cities across the state.
I agree.
We'd want to try to find those that are most comparable.
I think, specifically, I was thinking Pleasant Hill
conquered Lafayette just because they have BART stations.
They have a lot of similarities in how their transportation
works.
Yeah, we'll definitely be looking at cities
that are similar size, similar type of makeup,
maybe have that kind of downtown aspect,
and then a little more growth around the outskirts.
And you could tell Pleasant Hill that we think they have a downtown and they'd be really excited cuz you know
Harsh
This amenable
Okay, so we will provide an update later after we're in touch with the companies
Regarding the feasibility if we run into a hiccup that it's can't
We will likely come back with a range of options for your council to consider
We may do that anyway, even after we receive the data to to allow a policy window for your council's consideration
We bring this back. Let me ask one last technical question. Do we want to continue this?
Meeting or this item? Yeah, that we don't have to reopen. You can continue it to a date certain. We don't have to re-notice it
But then we have to we do have to select the you know, presumably Dan that would be a meeting in October and November
Right that we'd be looking at
probably I'll defer to Dan on this but my recommendation is maybe we move it to an
October meeting because that gives us the opportunity to go to a November meeting if
we have to delay it again. I would agree we only have the one meeting
working meeting in November regularly scheduled because of the the federal election that's
scheduled for the beginning of November so I would recommend the second meeting in October
be the date certain and if we had to continue or something came up we have the option to do so.
Thank you and and one thing I do want to say I think we all agree that the current
requirements are well in excess of what we need. It's just how much we're reducing it down and
Do we reduce it down equally all over when I look at the chart and it says we required
822 spaces and only
460 or 400 yeah 460 of them were occupied. We need to do something. We just need to make sure that we're
Yeah, no, I just want to make sure if there's anybody listening that
Is in any doubt on that. We recognize that we have
overly generous standards
So if there's no further discussion that we'd entertain a motion to continue. I believe the meeting date is October 15th, correct?
Move to continue this item till the October 15th 2020 form regular meeting of the City Council second
Roll call vote, please council member Silva. Aye council member. Well, aye your president Darley mayor haskew aye motion carries
and thank you very much for your first presentation.
It took a really complicated situation
and made it almost so I could understand it.
Thank you.
All right, next on the agenda is the introduction
of an ordinance making zoning amendments
to update provisions for emergency shelters
for the unhoused low barrier navigation centers,
transitional housing, and supportive housing
to conform to state requirements and waive first reading.
And I should do this with my glasses on for.
Good evening council members. Mayor Haskew and
other members of the council. I'm Aaron Sage, principal planner for long-range
planning in the community development department.
And I have another state-mandated zoning ordinance item for you. Hopefully
this one will be a little more straightforward.
I certainly believe that it's there's less discretion involved but I will try
to highlight those minimal areas where you do have
have a little bit of leeway.
What I'm going to do is walk you through the four uses that
are listed on the title slide here, emergency shelters
for the unhoused, low barrier navigation centers,
and transitional and supportive housing.
I'm going to walk you through the state definitions
and key requirements from state law
and how we are updating the zoning orange to address those.
And then we'll do a brief run through
of some of the policy background and the planning commission's
recommendation on this item. Before I do all of that, I want to start by providing
you the housing element guidance and direction on this item. So Housing
Element Program H4C states that the city will quote review and update the zoning
ordinance and related policies pertaining to emergency shelters, low
barrier navigation centers, transitional and supportive housing, and group care
facilities to conform to state requirements.
There is a deadline of August of 2024 that we have to meet.
And I'll just briefly note that group care, although mentioned
here, it turns out there are other housing element programs
that more directly address that use
with a different timeline.
So we're not addressing group care facilities
with this package tonight.
These bullets show the specific items
that are required under this program.
and those include amending the definitions
of these uses to align with state law,
allowing emergency shelters and the other uses
that have already been mentioned by right,
where required by state law,
crafting objective standards for shelters
and removing the parking requirement
that we currently have for shelter residents.
So now we'll move into the first of the four uses,
emergency shelters.
So the definition of this under state law
includes four main components.
This is obviously housing for homeless persons.
So for those that might be a little confused,
this is not a disaster shelter, not that type of emergency.
This is simply an emergency of one's life state, I suppose.
And then the other components are
that the use includes minimal support services.
There's a six-month occupancy limit.
And there's no ability to deny shelter to an individual
because of inability to pay.
We do have one existing emergency shelter in the city.
The Trinity Center operates at the Armory.
That's a winter-only shelter operating
under a conditional use permit that
allows up to 50 residents.
This slide shows the key components
that we're required to address for this use.
So the first is that we, in at least one zone that allows
One is suitable for residential uses.
We have to allow emergency shelters by right.
We already comply with that requirement.
The next one, any standards for this use have to be objective and encourage and facilitate
emergency shelters.
And then state law goes on to list eight specific standards that that and those are the only
standards that we're allowed to adopt.
And I'll be going over those a little bit later.
And then as I mentioned earlier, as in stated in the housing element, we're not allowed
to require parking for residents.
It's only for staff.
This map shows, in the various colors there,
where emergency shelters are currently permitted and not
permitted.
So the green area in the middle is the ASCM zone, Automobile
Service and Custom Manufacturing.
And in that zone, it is allowed by right,
but it has to be above the ground floor.
That prohibition on the ground floor
is not consistent with state law because it's not
one of those eight standards that is listed in state law.
So that is proposed to be removed in this package.
Also, it's very difficult to see.
So when I go to this slide here, we
zoom in a little bit on these teal parcels.
And these are in the central retail zone.
And they are more than 500 feet from any residential zone.
And under that scenario, those are also allowed by right
with no further caveats.
And then there's a host of other zones
listed at the bottom left, where we allow this use
with a conditional use permit,
which of course involves a public hearing
and a notification to properties in the vicinity.
Okay, moving on to the next category.
Can I ask you to go back?
Would you mind if we interrupt?
Not at all.
Is that not changing at all?
I'm sorry, central retail?
No, are we going to get more more teal? No. Okay, so these, so the winter night shelter will not
is going to require a conditional, continue to require a conditional use permit at its location
at the armory. It already has a conditional use permit at that location if it moves. But we
do it a lot. My understanding is that that was recently approved to be continuous and not to
require, you know, coming back each year. Yeah. So if the winter shelter were to relocate
to another parcel, we would obviously have to look at what zone that that's located
in to see what the process would be. Okay, moving on to low barrier navigation
centers. This is a state created category of shelters. It's also a type of shelter.
But some of the components of the use are that it's, it's quote, housing first, the
idea that before addressing mental health issues and addressing other things that, you know,
contribute to someone being homeless, the best practice is to provide them with housing so they
have kind of a stable foundation to address those other issues. The next component is that it's
service-enriched, unlike the previous category which said minimal support services. Case managers
are provided to help folks navigate those issues they're
having, and also certain barriers, common barriers,
to people being willing to enter into a shelter
are addressed, such as allowing domestic partners,
allowing pets, possessions, and providing screens
or other partitions so there's privacy in between the beds.
Those four things are not mandated.
They're sort of listed as examples in the state law,
but the idea is that those types of barriers
are being addressed.
So for this use, state law allows it by right
in mixed use zones and non-residential zones
that permit multifamily uses.
I'll show you the map of those shortly.
Services that connect the resident to permanent housing
have to be provided and there has to be
a coordinated entry system.
There's obviously more detailed language in state law
that would all have to be reviewed
if somebody were proposing this use.
So here's the map of zones where low barrier navigation centers are currently allowed under state law and our
Amendments would just simply incorporate what's already required by state law into our local code
But generally as you can see these are located in the core area and in and around the downtown
And then on some isolated locations further to the east
Okay, this slide covers the objective standards that we are allowed to adopt to force shelters
Which would apply both to emergency shelters and to low barrier navigation centers, which are a type of shelter
The first one is maximum number of persons that can be served each night at the facility
We're proposing 50 which is based on as I mentioned the permit that's already in place for our current winter shelter
Staff parking is the next category we're proposing to keep the current standard of one space per employee
But to add language that if for some reason a particular zone would require less parking than that for another use
in that same zone that the shelter would be allowed to use that and that that comes into play sometimes when your
Your requirement is based on square footage
rather than employees if it's for example a warehouse type of use that could end up resulting in a very low employee parking standard
That situation would be pretty infrequent though
Next area is waiting and client intake area
We're proposing 10 square feet. This is as may be obvious the place where clients residents would
Wait before they're sent to their their bed
So, it's a place to be taken in by the staff, some case management may occur there as well.
We're proposing that area to be 10 square feet per bed or 100 square feet, whichever
is greater, and it must be located indoors.
On-site management is next.
The ordinance proposes that that be provided one hour from opening, one hour before opening
until one hour after the last client leaves.
to other shelters. This is the minimum distance that's required in between shelters so that
no particular area has an over concentration of shelters. And the standard there is the
maximum distance that we're allowed to require under state law which is 300 feet.
Length of stay is covered by the definition and comes directly from state law. As I mentioned,
the maximum of six months.
And then lighting, here we're simply
referencing the objective lighting standards
that the council adopted a couple of months ago
as part of the design review amendments.
Those include things like minimum and maximum lighting
intensity, maximum fixture height, and things like that.
Finally, we have security, and that
would be required at all times that the facility is open.
And I'll just note that the standards for maximum persons, for staff parking, proximity
to other shelters, and lighting, all of those can be modified through a conditional use
permit process or in the case of parking through a minor use permit process, which is what
the code already states.
I'll also just note that the ordinance also has a few guidelines for some additional items
that we're not allowed to require under state law,
but we felt would be important to at least state
for applicants that the city's desire would
be to see storage facilities for personal possessions, storage
lockers, showers, laundry facilities
if there are daytime services provided.
And finally, a community meeting be
held with residents and property owners
within 300 feet of the facility prior to opening.
So next we'll move on to transitional housing.
So this is defined in state law as a rental housing development
where the units are recirculated to an eligible program
recipient within six months.
So the whole idea here is to provide a more permanent type
of housing than a shelter.
It's a place where beyond what a shelter can provide,
somebody gets on their feet, starts to build stability.
But it is specifically geared toward people
coming out of homelessness and moving on
to that next stage of their lives.
And state law requires for this type of use
that, basically, it not be treated differently
than the housing type within which it is situated.
So transitional housing can be located
in a single family dwelling.
It can be a multi-family apartment
situation and other housing types, a group care home,
for example.
And we have regulations for all of those different categories.
And state law says you get to apply those regulations
that you already have.
You don't get to treat transitional housing
as a separate thing that's subject
to its own set of rules.
So the proposed amendments for this use
are to, first of all, list the use in all of the zones
where we allow residential uses.
And then adding a note that it is not
treated as a separate use, but it's
subject to whatever the underlying use
category within which it is located.
We're going to remove restrictions in the R zone and the SFH PD1 zone that do treat
it as a separate type of use.
And then we're going to remove the specific parking standard of I believe it's 0.25 parking
spaces per resident because again we're not allowed to apply a separate standard to this
use.
Okay.
This is the last of the four uses.
And this is supportive housing.
Under state definition, there's no limit on the stay for residents.
There is a target population that the development is oriented toward, typically based on its
funding source.
And there's an on-site or off-site service component to, again, help build more stability
for these residents.
State law requires that this, the same actually as transitional housing, that this use not
is subject only to the same restrictions that apply to other dwellings of the same type
in the same zone.
And this is the category within which the YVR 699 Ignacio Valley Road Development would
fall, the recent Hope Village project that was approved, and this is the most typical
category for most subsidized affordable housing that you find.
Now there's a subcategory here I want to cover briefly of supportive housing under
AB 2162.
If a supportive housing project meets these criteria, and this is obviously just a brief
overview and all of the detailed criteria in state law, then it's allowed by right
in multifamily and mixed use zones.
So those criteria include 100% lower income units, at least a quarter of the units are
for the target population.
There's a services plan.
an on-site area for supportive services and all units have their own bathroom and kitchen.
So the proposed amendments for supportive housing include listing the use in all of
our zones that allow residential uses, adding a note regarding AB 2162 that it is approved
by right in those particular zones, and then adding the use to our parking table with a
note to use the same standard as the underlying residential use.
here's the map of the mixed use and multifamily zones where under AB 2162
this use would be allowed by right. Okay I can certainly come back to the map if
we need to, but I'll move on to policy background briefly just wanted to
highlight a few of the key policies that support the amendments that are before
you this evening under the City Council's 2023-2024 priorities under
diversity, equity, inclusion, establishing an inclusive community that welcomes
diversity. I think that obviously applies to income diversity and homelessness as
well. Under public safety and social wellness, ensuring that Walnut Creek is a
safe community through more innovative and effective responses to homelessness
and mental health challenges. And then moving back to our housing element, we
We have a goal to provide a range of housing opportunities, particularly for people with
special needs, which includes persons experiencing homelessness and extremely low-income residents.
And the policy that supports that, the city shall prioritize the development of housing
that meets the needs of special needs groups.
Goal H4 is to minimize the impact of potential governmental constraints on the maintenance,
and development of housing with a policy targeted toward the uses that we're
discussing tonight. And obviously allowing these uses by right in more
locations, removing some of the restrictions that we have right now is
going to further this goal in this policy. The Planning Commission's
recommendation is very straightforward. They recommended adopting the proposed
ordinances and did not have any changes for your consideration.
And staff's recommendation is to waive the reading and introduce the proposed ordinance.
And with that, happy to take any questions you might have.
I'm waiting for somebody.
Yes, please.
Thank you.
And thank you for sorting through all this.
And I did have to Google low barrier.
I was like, what?
So now I understand that one.
The 50 participant standard on the emergency shelter,
is that just strictly based off of what's been happening
at the armory?
It is.
So if somebody comes in and decides they wanna do 60,
they can do a CUP, but the 50 is the standard.
That's right.
Okay, and then on the suggestions for storage lockers,
showers, laundry, and a community meeting,
those are not requirements, they're just suggestions
to somebody that comes in with that kind of project.
Right, there's status guidelines
and the word should is used instead of shall.
Okay, there's no shalls.
And then on the transitional housing,
when you were talking about the parking standard there,
you were talking about part of it we're gonna take away,
but the underlying parking standards
that would apply to that use will still apply,
is that correct?
The standard that applies to whichever category
the transitional housing falls into.
So, as I mentioned, it's gonna be operated
within a single family dwelling
or within an apartment building.
It's never going to be its own thing.
So, it's more just, it's more of an operational,
a way that you would operate another residential use.
Okay, so the underlying standard will still apply to those,
but they don't have anything different
just because they're transitional.
That's right.
Okay, all right, thank you.
I really appreciate it.
The other Cindy thank you very much and I appreciate the definitions and they I
was trying to figure out what what's the emergency shelter what so what do we
have a low barrier navigation area etc so you answered it in essence if I'm I
heard you correctly all of our affordable housing projects most likely
are categorized also with supportive housing because they provide some level
if they provide some level of services? Correct. In your experience or the experience of staff,
are there opportunities where an affordable housing project could also offer a transitional
housing component or some set of it? Is that allowed? I don't see why the two things couldn't
be combined into the same project. We would just have to make sure that, you know, we're
applying the appropriate rules to each component.
But I've never heard of that, that mixture.
But I'm not in a position to say that it couldn't be done.
OK.
The other question I have, so the winter nights, the hope,
is Trinity Center at all in any of these categories?
They provide services, but they don't provide housing.
These are all forms of shelter or housing
where people are sleeping.
That's right. That's right. They're all housing and Trinity Center is a service center only,
at that you know, with St. Paul Commons, you know, being on that same location.
Right, exactly. It's a mixed-use property.
Yeah, yeah.
All right, thank you.
Kevin, do you have any questions?
I have a couple of questions. I mean, my brain keeps hearing people are going,
how do I say this so it doesn't sound like I don't have a lot of faith in our community?
This seems to be for some people a difficult situation because homeless people will be
housed in their neighborhood, not unlike what we went through when we first did the winter night
programs is is is there anything that that gives us hope that we can communicate to our community
that this will take a while to change and it will not ruin our city and i'm not i mean i you're
looking at me with exactly the same seriousness i'm asking the question is i'm nervous because
when you go through this and you read it for the first time i'm imagining a house across the street
from our neighborhood. Somebody dies, nobody comes and takes it, and all of a sudden it's now one of
those, one of those places. Do we, do we, as a city, have some opportunity to make sure that
if that happens it's okay? It's, all of the requirements are met. If, could you just describe
the scenario that you're asking about a little bit more, just to make sure? Yeah, I live in a pretty
well to do neighborhood and if one of those houses just the owner dies and nobody comes in and takes
it over and what would have to happen so that that house could be taken over by one of these
characteristics are there are there ways to assure the community that they just won't be taken over by
people who burn down houses. I'm being a little silly but you know I can,
it occurred to me people are going to be really nervous about this and do we have any.
Well they're not going to, so this is one, this is state law that we're implementing so
we're obligated to do it but secondly it's not going to mean that they don't have to
comply with code enforcement issues or other issues. It's more the state
equating at least in the single-family neighborhood context that a facility that might house
homeless folks or unhouse folks get treated in the same way that another similar single-family
house with a mixed use of adults would be treated like a group home or something like
that.
And so I would say that there, and I would defer to Aaron more if he has more information
or Erica, but there isn't a long history of these types of laws actually being abused
in the way that people are concerned about it, that there isn't really that trend line.
And this is a, you know, these laws exist throughout all cities in California.
And so, it's not as if there's a kind of a concentration effect of whether they're only
going to be in one city or another city in the county, that the laws apply to every city
in the county.
So, there's going to be the opportunity for these types of facilities in every city, frankly.
Okay.
Mayor, maybe there's a way for Erin also to answer your question and the public's question.
Perhaps there's a way for you to go back and walk us through these four categories.
and what's, like when I'm looking at the emergency shelters,
there's like four parcels in the community
that wouldn't require a use permit of some sort, I think.
Okay, well, I mean, can I get through my list
of level questions but I like your approach.
And Mayor, if I could just offer two more thoughts
to what the city attorney said.
One is funding.
I think most of these uses require substantial subsidies
and funding, which as we know are hard to come by.
And the second is, I think these service providers
generally will, of their own volition,
locate in areas closer to transit,
closer to other businesses, where their residents have
better access to jobs, better access to services
that they need.
So the scenario of this occurring
and more outlying, more affluent neighborhoods,
I think is a pretty unlikely one, generally speaking.
Well, I'm not completely convinced that
because we're putting housing,
one of these programs right by a church
and it's pretty far out of town.
But yeah, no, I understand and I'm not opposed to this.
Please let, please understand.
On the waiting, I'm still kind of also struggling
with the gradations.
The waiting area, I probably wrote down the thing,
where the bed is assigned every night.
Yeah, that's I think the one.
Does the person who comes in there,
do they get an assigned bed that is theirs,
or are they treated like a new person every night,
or don't we know yet?
I don't have that information.
Yeah, okay.
There is a member of the public here
who might be able to answer that question.
Okay, I do not.
Okay, and not a land use question.
Yeah, and and no, it's a comment.
So I'll wait for that one.
How do we how do we measure the supportive types because that looks like it's people
will move in there permanently and I think that's more what is happening at St. Paul's
comments.
Sorry, how do we measure what the supportive I mean, how do we
how do we know we've got one of those
and is that likely to have a very stable group
of people living there over a long period of time
and are there additional services and?
So we're talking about supportive housing,
is it the AB 2162 with the by right?
Yes.
Well, as I said, there's more detailed guidance,
requirements in state law than what's on the slide here,
there does have to be a services plan provided by the project.
Again, more detailed language on that in the state law.
I think that the whole purpose of the language that's
in the state law is to create stable environments where
people are being provided with the services
that they need to build stability in their lives.
But beyond that, I don't know if there's ultimately
any guarantee that a particular resident won't.
Oh, no, people are allowed to move.
I mean, yeah, it's basically a longer term thing.
And then the next part of that question
is compare that to what Habitat for Humanity is.
Is that considered supportive housing, for example?
My understanding is that they mainly build housing,
owner-occupied housing, but I'm certainly not an expert on that.
All right, that's fair.
All right, I'm done.
And now would you bring back your suggestion?
My question is maybe you can review, again,
really the magnitude of how many possible opportunity sites
there are in each of those four categories,
so that it doesn't really sound to me
like there's a lot of change.
It's just codifying that we can't restrict.
So maybe looking at the four maps, okay.
So starting with emergency shelters,
the red is where it's not prohibited,
excuse me, not permitted.
The green is where it is permitted
only above the ground floor,
but the ordinance would remove that prohibition.
So basically, and then the gold is
where it's permitted with a conditional use permit.
So by right is going to be the green and the teal,
which is hard to see, but it's toward the bottom of the map.
And then this zooms in here.
It's basically on Newell.
I believe that's across the street from Kaiser.
I don't believe any of those sites are vacant,
but I haven't looked closely at that.
That's the other component with all of this, of course,
is that the site has to be available.
The has to be up for sale.
It typically has to be either vacant,
or it has to have a building that's
suitable to establish the desired use.
The shelter provider, the housing provider
has to deem that a suitable location.
The owner has to deem it suitable to sell the property
to that entity.
So there's a lot of ifs involved with all of this.
But does that give you enough of an overview on this one?
OK.
Then low barrier navigation centers,
all of the green areas under current state law
and the proposed ordinance, the use would be allowed by right.
Again, this is another type of shelter.
It just has to meet some additional requirements.
Transitional housing, I don't believe
I provided a map on this one because, as I said, it's not meant to be treated as a separate
use. It's being listed in any zone that has a residential use. So, in theory, any single
family dwelling could be operated as a transitional housing use, any existing residential parcel
or use.
And it has no requirements for special security or anything like that. It's just people can
live there, question mark.
I'd want to double check that before answering definitively or perhaps if no
okay I'm told that there there is no such requirement in state law but it's
six months or less no that's that's part of the emergency shelter definition no
excuse me that is yes that is true I got confused there but yes there is that
six month limit. And then moving on to supportive housing and the map here is
only for AB 2162 because similar to transitional housing supportive housing
can go anywhere and let me just double-check but I think okay supportive
housing is not the broader category of supportive housing is not specific to
multifamily. So again, this could go into a single-family neighborhood or home, but
where we focused on the for the map is the AB 2162 provisions. Those are
specifically for multifamily supportive housing uses, and those would be allowed
in the green areas shown here, and that would be by right. So supportive housing
requires services as well.
Yes.
So one could imagine that while it is allowed in single-family
neighborhoods, it would be very difficult for a service provider
to provide services to a geographically remote or
decentralized opportunity.
You know, one over here, one over here, one over here.
It makes it more difficult to deliver the services.
So maybe it's not as likely to happen in single-family homes
that same way. There's probably an economy of scale. We haven't talked about group care
homes and that's a different conversation. Yeah, yeah. And there essentially are the
rules that we have to live by. That's right. We have no other choice but to say okay we
can figure out how to make this work in Walnut Creek. Certainly on the locations, the zones
that we've gone over, those are very cut and dried where you may have a little more discretion
is on the objective standards for shelters, the table that I put up. Certain ones of those,
you have a little more wiggle room. We can talk about those if you like. But on the locations,
there's no discretion.
Thank you. We are now up to, unless there is any questions, is there any public comment?
I'm so glad to have somebody answer my question
about public comment.
Good evening.
It's always a pleasure to be with you.
I'm Leslie Gleason.
I serve as executive director of Trinity Center,
which is the operator of the city's
current existing shelter program,
which, as Erin said, is only operated in the winter nights.
So in general, what I'd like to say
is that we've had opportunity with Erin and others
to consult on especially the emergency shelter standards.
They would definitely be doable by another program provider
should another location be identified.
And honestly, that's been challenging even for us.
So this doesn't really make a lot of other spaces available,
but it does give a starting point
of what a potential other shelter provider
might need to be planning towards,
which I think is a great idea.
And we could easily, we already do comply with that.
So to the extent that it provides guidance,
that's a good thing if a property can be located.
In general, it's easy to get sort of lost in the minutia
about the standards and the definitions and the timeframes,
but it does come down to money as well.
A lot of the services and programs
that we're talking about are expensive.
So they will be naturally limited
by the provider organization's ability
to even fund such a program.
But to the extent that they do open up more areas
of the city and more areas of our community at large
to create housing opportunities for the people
who are already here,
people who have been in Walnut Creek all their life
but need an affordable or service-enriched
housing opportunity, that's a good thing.
And I think you can feel pretty confident
that providers are not gonna put themselves on the line
operate anything less than the best quality program, which means not only
serving the people that we serve, but the community at large, because we're all
part of the community. I think this is a great step in the right direction, and I
hope it's something that not only can you support, because in many ways we all
have to, but can see it as that great opportunity to continue to do more. Thank
you. I'm also happy to answer questions if that's allowable, and if I can offer
offer some expertise.
Yes.
Do you have any questions here?
I don't think so.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for coming and speaking.
All right, we're up to the part
where we can discuss, comment, and recommend.
Council Member Wilk.
No, well, it's a state mandate,
so that's something that, again,
is something that we'll need to support as a city,
but this makes sense as well.
And I think there will be ways to approach this
with the community at large when the time comes,
when there is going to be something
that occurs in neighborhoods.
We know that there is,
that there is uneasiness
among members of the community at times,
and we're going to hear about that.
so I think that we'll need a plan in place
with messaging to be able to have conversations,
maybe have some kind of a neighborhood talk about this
so that people become comfortable with it
as they are now about the Armory.
Thank you.
Cindy, please.
First of all, thank you to staff for the work on this.
These were always difficult and challenging opportunities
because you have to take what we already do
and somehow meld them with what the state laws are requiring.
And if anything we have learned from the past
is that sometimes state laws are inconsistent
between them, each other.
And so you're trying to navigate that challenge.
So thank you.
I see this as an opportunity because it standardizes
the approach, and it says we're going
to be in line with other communities across the state.
But I also think it's been an opportunity
to allow us to think about, are there ways to integrate a low barrier navigation center
in an affordable housing project?
I mean, can we get creative?
And you can't get creative until you actually think of these ideas because, you know, gee,
we've had some time to talk about it.
So I see it as an opportunity, and I don't think it's going to change a lot that happens
in the community.
I think it's going to be still the same with objective standards of the number of beds
in the hours of operation, et cetera, and so thank you again to staff, and I'm supportive.
And thank you, staff, for pulling this all together, and I'm looking at this from the lens
of, you know, when I went to the Homeless Task Force and I was recognizing Donna Colombo for
all the work that she's done and the amount of concern people had when we first started talking
about the Armory, and we had to require all these public meetings and everything like that, and
The quality of the providers that we have in our community
are such that when we used to have to approve that
every year, we'd come back to planning
and we'd say, okay, how's it going?
And each year, the number of people that showed up
at that public input meeting would drop,
and finally they're like, and now nobody cares.
It all worked.
And what I would say to people that are worried about this
is surveys consistently show 75% of the people
that are homeless in our community have always lived here.
They just have gone through some unfortunate set
of domestic violence, medical,
something that has made it impossible
for them to stay in a house.
And those people are gonna do so much better
if we get them into housing.
Their children will do better in school.
it's a public health benefit to everybody
to get them into housing.
And so we can take these standards,
we can continue to do this,
but I know that this will not change the bottom line,
that we're a compassionate city,
we're a city where the people are working
with our homeless populations will do an excellent job
and will provide services in a way
that not only benefits our citizens
who are experiencing homeless,
but also works for Walnut Creek.
So I am prepared to accept, to support this.
I too am grateful for your patience with my questions
as well as all the work that you have done
for not only this item,
but the other people who have left in the item before.
I was a homeless task force representative
for three or four years, two or four,
a long time and I constantly had to remind people
the word homeless doesn't describe anything.
There are, as Mayor Pro Tem pointed out,
there are 150 billion ideas on why people are homeless.
It's amazing how many people think they're well to do
until some crisis happens and the next thing they know,
they don't have a place to live anymore.
even houses that they've owned for years.
So I like what they're doing.
I like the fact that it does put all cities
in a similar pot so that one of us
doesn't have to take all the responsibility.
Other cities will probably now have to step forward
and take their share of the responsibility
to helping people transition to a more normal life.
So I'm totally in support of all of this
and thank you for those of us that are,
those of you that are in the business.
Thank you for the people that contribute
to help make your work possible
and I'm ready for a motion.
How about a move to introduce
and waive first reading of the ordinance
making CEQA exemption findings under section 1506.1b3
of the CEQA guidelines and amending Title 10,
planning and zoning of the Walnut Creek Municipal Code
to update provisions for emergency shelters, LBNCs,
and transitional and supportive housing
to conform to state requirements.
Second.
And a roll call vote, please.
Mayor Pro Tem Darlene?
Aye.
Council Member Silva?
Aye.
Council Member Will?
Aye.
Mayor Haskew?
Aye.
All right, it's another new record of this meeting.
Having done all the business that we have is adjourned.
See you next time.