All right welcome and good evening and welcome to the December 11th planning commission meeting will the secretary please call the roll
Thank you. Commissioner Moran here. Commissioner Cown here. Commissioner Strongman here. Commissioner Kwok here. Commissioner Klopp here. Vice Chair Knighting here.
Chair Anderson has phoned in he will not be here tonight. So we have six we have a quorum.
perfect. Do we have anything on the consent calendar today? We do not staff
recommends no changes. Okay, beautiful. Now before we begin there are two
opportunities for the public to provide comment. The first is during the item of
each agenda as it pertains on the agenda and the second one is would be right now
and it's for comment that is within the purview of the Planning Commission but
not something that is on the agenda.
So does anyone want to provide any public comment
for items that are not on the agenda tonight?
Seeing none,
then I would like to then start with the public hearing
and open the public hearing.
Oh, pardon me.
Has anyone had any expert communication?
Seeing none, lots of shaking heads.
Well, I just will say I drove all the sites, so.
Perfect.
Does staff have a presentation?
Thank you.
Good evening, commissioners.
Simmer Gill, Senior Planner with the City.
We are here tonight to consider
the Mount Diablo mixed use development
that will be located at 2094 Mount Diablo Boulevard.
The applicant representing this project,
Ben Johansson and his team are here tonight.
as am I, and with the city, we have Ryan Cook,
who is the senior civil engineer,
also available for any questions after the presentation.
And just to quickly orient you with the site,
it is zoned mixed use commercial,
and there is an existing commercial building on the parcel.
It's a roughly 24,000 square foot lot,
and it is located within the west downtown specific plan,
and also listed as a housing site
or where we envision housing, future housing.
So it's listed in this inventory sites table.
And here are just some photographs
really showing you what's currently on site.
It is that existing single-story building
with multiple tenants.
And the project request before you tonight
is to demolish that existing commercial building
to build a seven-story, 74-unit mixed-use development,
which also consists of approximately 3,000 square feet
of ground floor commercial space,
as well as a daycare center.
And the project does consist of a mix of studios,
35 one-bedroom units, and 35 two-bedroom units.
Sizes range from 591 square feet
to roughly 1,500 square feet.
and there is new ground floor
as well as rooftop landscaping.
There is 80 parking stalls that will be located
within the mechanical parking system
as well as eight surface parking spaces
for the commercial component.
A drip line encroachment permit is also requested
as part of this project.
And because the project is providing
eight very low income units,
it is utilizing state density bonus law
as also being processed under the Housing Accountability Act,
which I'll go into more detail further in my presentation.
So this project did go before the Design Review Commission
on September 17th, where they reviewed the project,
as well as made some comments which are listed on this slide
and made a recommendation to move the project forward
to the planning commission
for consideration of the entitlements.
And the plans have been revised to address
all of the lighting and lighting related comments
as the project does include building mounted
security lighting.
The site distance triangle as well as the drainage plan
was reviewed by the city's traffic engineer
and the public works department.
And the fire apparatus access is also shown on the plans.
The applicant is requesting to waive to,
did not address, did not incorporate a second material
because they're requesting a waiver to that,
associating it with costs that are associated to the project.
And so tonight, the Planning Commission will consider
the design review for the new building,
tree drip line encroachment permit,
as well as the density bonus concessions and waivers,
and also a conditional use permit,
which is for the daycare portion of the project.
Before we go into the project,
I really just wanted to touch on
the applicable state housing laws
that apply to this project.
So this project is being processed
under the Housing Accountability Act,
which does require cities to approve housing projects
that meet the city's objective standards.
And the only way the city could deny this project
is by making specific health or safety findings.
And these findings must be based on objective,
existing written public health safety standards.
It's also being processed under SB 330, which essentially got adopted in 2019 to strengthen
the Housing Accountability Act, which means that if a project meets the city's objective
standards, SB 330 essentially prevents the city from reducing those housing units or
adding any new development standards after an application that was submitted to the city
has been deemed complete.
And as mentioned earlier, they're utilizing density bonus, which because they're providing
affordable units as part of the project.
And a waiver is granted when a development standard would physically preclude the project
from being built at its permitted density.
The permitted density is the base density plus the additional units they get under density
bonus law.
And concession is granted to reduce the overall construction costs of that standard or requirement,
which is resulting in more costs for the project.
And the city may only deny the waiver and concession if the city with substantial evidence
can show that it causes a specific adverse health or safety impact.
Also regarding the concession it could only be denied if the city can determine that the concession is not resulting in any
cost savings for the project and
just now I'm going to move on to the
density of this project so the lot it is 0.55 acres and
the mixed-use
commercial general plan designation allows 88 dwelling units per acre which then results to 49
Units as the base density, but because they're providing a low-income affordable units
under density bonus they get a 50% increase which then results in 25 additional bonus units that could be added then
Resulting in a total of 74 maximum units that could be built on this project
so the applicant is
proposing to construct 74 units also requesting five waivers from the city's development standards and three concessions and
now I'll move into the
The three concessions that are requested tonight. The first one is building materials, which
The city's objective design standards require two materials be provided on any building frontage
The applicant is only providing one single material and again, they're citing
costs that it will reduce the costs if they apply only one material and this is in addition to the
glazing and railings and once we get into the
the elevation
slide I could go into more detail about what they are doing in terms of articulation or
adding more like from an aesthetic point of view what they're doing because they're only using one material and
and the second one is frontage improvements that are required along Mount Diablo Boulevard.
The west downtown specific plan does require a 14-foot wide sidewalk. The applicant is retaining
the existing frontage as is and that's including the existing sidewalk and driveway apron. Again
stating that if they were to put in the new sidewalk, replace the existing sidewalk as
as well as widen it.
Widening it, it then triggers stormwater treatment facilities
to be placed as well.
And that does result in significant cost savings
if they're requesting the concession for it.
A third one is public art.
They are waiving the public art requirement
as the anticipated construction cost for this project
is $30 million.
And if they were to pay that public art fee at that 1%,
it would be $300,000.
or they would have to install art on site.
So again, they're waiving that siting cost savings.
And here is a list of the density bonus waivers.
I probably won't go into too much detail on this
because just to be respectful of everybody's time,
the applicant is also making a presentation
and will walk through all of the waivers.
But I did wanna highlight that the two that are in yellow
are after further review, staff did determine
that these do not need to be requested as waivers
as this is existing conditions.
So the proposed is actually existing conditions on site.
The applicant's not proposing it's there right now.
So nothing is changing
or they're exasperating the area in any way.
So here is a closer look at the site plan.
Again, the existing building on site will be demolished.
Here's what it will look like with the proposed layouts.
and this is just for site context. This is a mixed-use building so I really just put this
slide in here to show that the adjacent uses are commercial and retail and this the ground floor
of this building is commercial and the upper floors are residential and there are residential
uses directly behind the site so it would be a good fit for this type of project. And here is
There's a closer look at the ground floor.
As you can see, the commercial component
is fronting Mount Diablo.
And there's a lobby that'll take you to the upper floors,
the residential units.
And as you go down the site, there's a bike room.
And in the middle of the site is the mechanical parking
system or spaces that you can park into.
And further down into the site is another lobby
that takes you to the upper floors.
I could probably use this.
Yeah, so and then there's the waste or waste room
as well as the utility room and the child care facility.
And as you can see here, there's an entrance
right off of the south side, right there.
I'm trying to get the clicker there.
There you go.
And then there's another, there's an exit or a egress door
that goes out to the west side.
And there's a five foot wide path that leads out here
in case of any emergency or evacuation
from that child care center.
And here is the second floor plan.
And here you can see the parking system
which does consist of four modules.
The system stores the vehicles vertically and horizontally
and each space does function independently
storing the vehicles without having to relocate any vehicle
to get a new car in.
And the residential storage units
that are required for multi-family uses
are being provided on the second floor as well.
And now moving into the building architecture,
the entire building consists of smooth cement plaster finish
with a mix of paint colors.
And a material board with the color swatches
is provided tonight.
It's right behind the secretary, if you
would like to see that passed around,
to see more of the color palette.
Also consists of black metal louvers and screens,
as well as black metal canopies.
Glass guardrails will be installed on the outdoor decks.
Again, this is the street facing elevation.
And again, just to be respectful of time,
the applicant has a presentation.
And they'll really go into more of the design concept.
This is the rear elevation that will be facing
the existing multifamily uses.
And again, the same color material
palette carried along, as well as the outdoor decks.
And this is the east elevation facing inwards
where you would access into that mechanical parking garage
and to go up to the upper floors.
This is the US elevation, which is from,
if you're at the adjacent parcel
where the service station is, it's looking to that side.
So essentially the back of this building.
And moving on to the landscaping plan,
this is the ground floor plan.
Because it's a tight site layout and there's existing utilities along the frontage, there
was really no space to put in any trees or street trees, but the applicant is providing
shrubs, grasses, and ground cover as well as compliance with the bioretention, the basins
that are located.
And there will be trees that are planted on the roof deck, so there's 14 new trees that
consists of olives and pine trees,
and I think those were selected because they're evergreen,
and they're also wind resistant.
So the roof deck also consists of lounge seating, a spa area,
shaded areas, open space for other types of gatherings,
and the mechanical equipment is also located on the rooftop.
And there are four trees on site, the pear trees
that are being removed.
These were administratively approved by the City's consulting arborists due to their
size, health, and the species.
There are six offsite trees that are all located along the west perimeter of the site that
are shown on this ... Let's try this again.
Yeah, that are all located along the west elevation.
These are all being preserved and that we protected in place during construction.
As mentioned earlier, this project also consists of a daycare.
It is 860 square feet and consists of also includes the outdoor play area, and the hours
of operation are Monday through Friday, 730 a.m. to 530 p.m., and this will function exclusively
as an amenity for the building residents, so it won't be open to the general public.
And the pickup drop-off activity is spread across the two-hour window in the morning
and afternoons.
Again, no additional vehicle traffic is anticipated beyond the normal residential activity as
it is, again, just not open to the public and just an amenity for residents.
The outdoor play area is enclosed and separated from the vehicle circulation routes as shown
back here.
Sorry, I'm having fun with this new clicker.
They just added this new feature and it's fun.
So this project also qualifies for a class 32 CEQA exemption, which is the infill development.
There's a criteria. There's, I think, five findings that need to be made, one such being
that it's consistent with the policies of the mixed-use commercial zoning and general
plan. The site is less than five acres. There's existing utilities on site, and I believe
The project site is currently developed
and there'll be less than significant effects
to traffic and air quality and so forth.
And all of this has been outlined
in the draft resolution attachment one in more detail.
And same goes for the findings
that are required for this project.
Again, all are addressed in the draft resolution,
but it does require, to approve this project tonight,
the project needs to meet the subdivision
and design review findings,
and then the conditional use permit,
a special specific childcare findings
for the childcare portion.
And the project also meets the intent
of the West Downtown specific plan,
which really does envision a activated ground floor
or a commercial space that fronts the Mount Diablo frontage
with residential uses on the upper floors.
And the project does meet the objective design standards.
the project is located within a half a mile apart.
So per our parking standards,
and I believe it was,
what's it AB?
2097.
AB 2097 also says that if a project is located
within a half mile apart, does not need to require,
it does not need to provide any parking.
The project is providing 88 parking stalls.
And with that, staff does recommend
that the Planning Commission adopt
the updated draft resolution approving the entitlements listed before you for the mixed
use project at 2094 Mt. Diablo Boulevard.
I did want to mention that there were minor corrections made to the draft resolution,
and a copy of that updated resolution has been presented to all of you.
The corrections are highlighted in yellow.
That is all I have.
Oh, and sorry, I also need to make the finding
or recommendation for the CEQA exemption.
And that was already outlined in the draft resolution,
but I forgot to state it for the record, so my apologies.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Does anybody have any?
Perfect.
Going back to the sidewalk waiver,
as I know that we most likely will grant,
if we approve it, we'll be granting that waiver.
But will the city be able to come through sometime
in the future and create a 14 foot sidewalk through there?
Yes, because there is sufficient right of way
and the 14 feet that's envisioned
in the west downtown specific plan will be achieved
as the existing street width will be reduced
to accommodate that 14 feet.
So regardless of this concession, that will still happen.
And we do have, as mentioned earlier,
the city engineer here, if we need to elaborate on that.
Thank you.
And another question, it's great that it has a daycare,
but it closes at 5.30, which I think is awfully early.
If my kid's in there, I would never make it there
in time to get my kids out.
So are they willing to change that
to more reasonable time of say six.
That's a great question.
I believe the property owner is also,
or is here tonight.
Okay.
And third question, it appears to be only two elevators.
Is one of them sufficient to handle furniture going up
before people move in and out?
Yes, and it meets all the building code requirements.
I believe it would have sufficient space for that.
And final question, the HOA on this,
how does an HOA work with residential
and commercial.
Anything special on that or is there?
In this case, it's not a commercial endeavor,
it's an amenity.
So the HOA would be responsible
to maintain the amenities on the property.
Okay, thank you.
And no question for the questions right now.
Thanks, Samara.
I'm curious about the in lieu waiver.
Is there precedent for this?
I mean, is there,
Does the city look at the numbers and say, you're right, we get it, you're tight on the
margins?
Or can you just expound on that a little bit?
So regarding the public art fee waiver?
Correct.
Yeah.
Claire, do you want to?
I can take a stab at that.
The applicant argued that the art fee is similar to a development standard in that it required
on-site public art to spend 1 percent of your construction cost estimate on an art project.
Or you can take the low road, or the high road,
I guess, depending on what roads you're driving,
and pay the fee.
So it was likened to a development standard,
and development standards are waivable.
And in this case, maybe the philosophy is,
there's not a lot of real estate, necessarily.
So where's the giant windmill gonna go, right?
Is that, am I thinking the right, okay.
Thanks, Chip.
My mic is not on, that would help.
So there's no separate commercial lot
that's being created or subdivided as part of this map?
It is, yeah.
There's a separate?
They're creating the, yeah, one is the commercial,
the daycare is the amenity.
Okay, because that's what I was paying to your question.
Because when there's a separate lot,
then the Davis-Stirling Act would go ahead
and have CC&Rs specific for the commercial lot
and then the residential, I'm assuming.
Because then the second, the residential lot
will then be condo mapped.
Yes.
With the 74 units.
The 74 residential units, yeah.
And then speaking of concessions,
so I thought that a concession for fees
is discretionary under state density bonus law.
So the Denzimona statue does not require
the provision of financial incentives,
and I think that's what you're referring to,
but the idea here is that the requirement
is the provision of public art.
The fee is the in lieu of that.
That's the ender is the provision of art.
So you're conceding out of actually providing
the art itself, not the in lieu fee.
Correct.
Okay, did that help?
Well, no, it was my understanding
that we were waiving the fee, right?
Well, a waiver would be for the requirement
to provide art because the fee is not to provide the art,
but pay the fee instead.
But the bottom line is we're not getting
the extra 300 grand.
Correct.
Okay.
I think the fee was shown just to show
there'll be a cost savings,
which a concession requires the city to illustrate
will there be a cost savings by approving the concession.
I'd build on that by saying that the cost of the art
is supposed to be equal to what the fee would be.
Yeah, 300,000 approximately.
Any more questions I have?
Oh, go ahead.
No, none.
Do you know if there was any truck turning analysis
completed as part of the categorical exemption
and also did the fire department look at this?
Yes, they did.
And again, the applicant, as part of their presentation,
is going to incorporate the whole,
the discussions they had with the fire department
as well as building to make sure
there's been accessibility provided on site, yeah.
Then I'll just save my questions for them.
Thank you so much.
I did want to ask, is the overflow room open?
it is not prepared.
OK.
We're just going to get nice and cozy in here.
And it's cold outside, so it's fine.
So how long does the applicant have to 10 minutes?
OK, I'd like to then open up.
Does the applicant want to come up and provide a?
Hello, my name is Ben Johansen with LCA Architects
representing the applicant.
Thank you, Simmer, for your summary of the project.
And we'll work to provide a little more information
on particularly where we've gone and the discussions
we've had since the Design Review Commission heard it.
So this is the feedback that we heard.
We heard about public safety and visibility.
They encouraged us to look into these further,
the street facing elevation, the site triangles.
There was a neighboring property owner
who wanted us to confirm that their drainage
would not be impacted by this development.
And then we have worked, spent significant time
with the building division
and Contra Costa Fire Protection District
in order to work through fire and emergency access.
So first, public safety and visibility.
It's our feeling that the project will improve safety
and visibility on the site just by opening it up
to 24-7 surveillance by introducing residents.
Previously, there's the parking lot,
the storage areas for the nade-brewing retail in the back.
And it's not as easy to survey as the proposed project.
We are providing adequate light around the perimeter.
And we imagine the site will be activated at more hours.
Street-facing elevation.
We feel that one primary material in addition
to the glazing and the railing that do not count
towards the, to the standard that we're asking to be waved
as well as articulation of the building face
will create a high quality, interesting facade.
There's some curved balconies on the corner.
There's large storefront glass at the ground floor.
I mean, we probably exceed the 20% in glass alone
on the frontage, but that doesn't count
towards the standard, so we're asking it for it to be waived.
We did the analysis as requested
for site distance triangles and the project conforms.
We also looked with our civil engineer to confirm
that the drainage plan works to not impact the neighboring
commercial building and specifically the one at the
frontage of Mount Diablo. So we are matching at the center line
of the driveway. With the existing conditions, there's
pervious paving on our side now. The existing cash basin is
going to remain. And then I'd also point out that in the
conditions of approval number 28, there is a condition that we
will not negatively impact them, and we will adhere to that standard.
We worked with the fire district.
We did, as part of this project, submit an alternative means and methods application
and worked with the fire marshal to come up with an acceptable plan.
As far as truck access, there is not just the dimensions of the site would not allow
for a firetruck to turn around on the site. So we have to provide
alternatives. So the fire marshal says we can do a dead end to 200 feet
and then they would back out from there. And then we're also providing wet stand
pipes in two stairs at the front and back of the site going all the way up to
the roof. Those are kind of the primary things. This is a fully sprinkler building.
It's type three non-combustible construction on the exterior.
And so we feel that we've been able to work towards a, we have been able to work
to a solution that's acceptable to the fire district
and to the building division regarding fire and emergency access.
The alternative means and methods that are proposed are sort of standard exceptions
When a site is not able to provide the the aerial apparatus access road as would be prescribed in the code.
So we worked with the building division to make sure that all the openings on this tight site, all the openings conform to.
the standards in the California Building Code.
We work to make sure that each of the exit pathways
from the front and from the mostly from the rear stair
and from the childcare facility in the back of the site
would be protected and maintained
as a safe exit pass way, exit pass passageway
in the event of an emergency.
As part of that discussion back and forth
with building division, we did need to eliminate four metal
grill louver systems at the back of the mechanical parking, which
would have, you know, we had anticipated perhaps being able
to provide natural ventilation for the parking garage. But
that would have created openings that couldn't be protected in
in the event of an emergency and so we've eliminated those to make the passageways safe
and we will provide mechanical ventilation for the parking garage. So it's kind of into the weeds but
we've had a lot of discussions and we appreciate the work of the fire district and the building
division. Driveway width is another is a waiver, the first waiver I'll discuss. We are maintaining
the same width of the existing entry drive into the site where there would be a where
the standard would be for the first 25 feet, it would be 25 feet wide. Just the cross section
across the site with providing a viable commercial space, the residential lobby, the exit passageways,
just make that a difficult standard to, it would physically preclude the project to
apply the standards. So we are asking for that waiver. There's also another at the mechanical
parking, just proximity to some columns coming down. The standard would be for there to be a
27-foot backup at these parking stalls. We're providing four inches less, at least conceptually.
We may be able to increase it as we go into construction documents, but we want to make
sure that we're providing adequate dimensions for the mechanical parking system and structure,
and so we're asking for a waiver as that as well for four inches. So here is the
section that's proposed in the west downtown specific plan for Mount Diablo Boulevard.
It's all within the hundred foot right of way that's existing.
So each of the 14 foot walks on either side of the road, the new bike paths, all of that
occur within the existing defined right of way.
We are asking for a front setback reduction.
The front setback is standard is for 15 feet at the ground level, up to 40 feet.
We're proposing a reduction to about 12 foot 3, and that is measured from the curb.
So when this walkway, if this was to be developed, and to Commissioner Strongman's point, we
have not precluded development of this section as intended in the future.
When that walk is increased to 14 feet, we would provide, as shown in this, we would
provide 15 feet 6 at the, up to 40 feet and meet the standard.
Above that, we would ask for the waiver of the step back, you know, we have 25 density
bonus units, we're accommodating them, we need more building envelope to do so.
So we aren't stepping back as far.
do step back at the top to a distance that would meet the standard. But there's a couple
of floors in there that we do know. Side and rear yard courts, there's a standard
about 20 by 20 courts at living rooms, 10 feet by 10 feet at bedrooms along the side
yards and the site is not it's too narrow with the units that are proposed to meet those
standards.
Again, we've worked with the building division to come up with ways that the goals of ventilation
and light would be met within the units that have the closest setback.
And you know, this is all, you know, we have to build as if there's a site next door but
but currently there is none, so.
Thank you.
Okay, I'll wrap it up.
If there's any questions, I'm here, the civil engineer is here, and the applicant is here
as well.
Thank you for your presentation.
Does anybody have any questions for the applicant?
All right, I'll start.
So thank you so much for the presentation.
It was very helpful to understand what the developers did to conform to work to get the
to address the issues and concerns
with fire safety and also code conformance.
On the issue of safety, I did want to get clarification
on the mechanical parking stacker.
I do park in one of those at work.
So I am aware that they are very powerful machines.
And at my work, they're gated to make sure
that people can't walk under the platforms
as the cars move up and down.
So is the-
Yes, these will be gated.
Okay, all right.
And then there's adequate protection measures
make sure that if someone does everything, there's all the
safety sensors and there'll be card access to open the gates.
You know, there'll be four, four gates that go up at each one at
each bay. And so at any time, you know, it would just be for
the car that's coming in. I have it in the other
presentation.
Okay, that's good. Yes, I've included our set, there's a
list of the safety features that are provided.
All right, thank you.
Going back to your emergency plans, what about the daycare?
Is there an evacuation plan if there's an emergency?
Yes, there are, as Summer pointed out, there are two exits out of the childcare.
So there is this one that would come out along the east side of the site to exit, as well
as there's another exit on the west side to come down as well.
Thank you.
So just when I drove the site to kind of see what we were looking at,
I know that the right next to this on the bottom
of that map is the ACE Hardware right next door.
And so just to clarify, you have the, on this map, you have the red and the purple
and then below that is Ace Hardware and they have access to parking on that side of their
fence. Can you just describe that? The site has a shared parking access route.
There's 10 feet on our side of the property line and 10 feet on the west property as well.
And so that is what the easements are, and so we are maintaining that 10-foot easement
all the way to the back of the site. And then so we are providing the same access that they're
afforded now going forward. Anyone else? I have a couple of questions.
So you had mentioned that you're keeping, and I understand that you're using a waiver.
is it a waiver concession for the driveway width? The the waiver is is yes it's a waiver. It's a
waiver. Yes. So my question is you're saying you're keeping it as is but the air there's kind
of two yeah so there's a concession that allows us to keep the frontage improvements including
the driveway apron and then behind the driveway apron there's a development standard for for the
the first 25 feet, you're supposed to be 25 feet wide.
And so it's kind of both.
You have it at 21.
We have it at 21.
So where I'm getting at this is that the existing buildings
don't qualify to trigger the aerial apparatus code
because of their heights, correct?
Correct.
Exactly.
So the problem that I have right now
is the fact that normally the fire department goes 150 feet.
that's the length of their hose.
And I get that you're getting an AMMR.
I'm very, very familiar with AMMRs.
So it sounds like you're providing additional.
Sometimes they don't allow you to use the room method.
So then you have to provide additional fire sprinklers.
And the reason I bring all of that up
is because you have a child care facility.
The existing conditions don't even trigger that.
And so I'm just, my kids go to Dan's class very close
to here, so I'm very familiar with this site.
That is my, and I notice that you're sharing it
with the law firm.
What are we sharing?
The purple is the access for the law firm
that's the brick veneer building next to it.
In the front, the small one storage.
And so how, when BKF did the truck turning,
they just had the truck,
They had an aerial truck going in and then just backing all the way out.
When we discussed this with the fire marshal and they approved the AMMR, they said we will
and the fire code has a provision that the fire marshal is allowed to say, okay, usually
we would go in 150 feet for a dead end.
They can extend that.
So he said, we are willing in this condition to go in 200 feet.
And then also we anticipate being able to come up for Mount Diablo Boulevard as well
to access the roof with an aerial apparatus.
And then beyond that, you know, you see projects that don't have any access roads onto it.
We did 17, 16 lofts.
And it's just a walkway around it.
just the one you come off of Main Street and you can ladder up. So in some ways this is an
improvement over something like that and then the code offers the opportunity to do the wet stand
pipes and the stairwells. Did you do ladder truck exhibits that show? The ladder truck,
so they would bring a truck in. That would not be an aerial apparatus. They're not going to do that.
Because an aerial apparatus driveway is 26 feet.
Yeah, that's what I asked.
You can't do it.
This is not an aerial apparatus that's coming into the site.
They anticipate being able to put an aerial apparatus
on Mount Diablo right in front, go up to the roof that way.
And then a different truck driving 250.
A different truck would come in the 200.
And they've already confirmed.
And so the only reason I'm banging this up,
I probably owe too much.
And there's a child care facility.
Sorry. I mean, it's the children that live in the building anyway, so they would be, you know,
they could be upstairs, they could be down there in some ways having, you know,
while they're on the ground floor, that's easier for them to evacuate than they're all. They're
just all in someone else's, there's 11 of them, I think is what I read. So at the end of the day,
the fire marshal has confirmed that aerial apparatus wouldn't go down here, which now makes
It's a lot more sense to me.
The aerial does not go down there.
It would be a different truck that they've already confirmed can drive there.
They can have their hoes.
So now, because in my mind, I'm thinking to myself, how in the world?
You need lateral apparatus.
No aerial apparatus.
You have to be 26 feet.
Yeah.
It's not going to fit.
You have to be at least 15 feet away from the building.
Yeah.
It doesn't work.
Okay.
But I did want to make that clear that when you stated, oh, it's the same driveway with
if we're just keeping existing conditions,
you're triggering a completely different building code
than what's existing.
So it's not an aerial app.
Okay.
The other question, I only have two more.
One of them's really easy.
The second question is the BMRs,
affordable housing is always good.
Where are they located?
Where are the eight?
Yeah.
They'll be distributed.
It'll be proportional, I forget exactly,
the two bedroom, one bedroom studio count.
What?
Okay.
35 each and then one studio.
So it hasn't exactly been confirmed,
but it'll be proportional to the unit types.
You know, it has not, you know, it wasn't,
it hasn't come up as far as assigning them at this stage.
It will need to be assigned.
And then the last question is the green roof.
Are you using that for C3 water quality purposes?
We are using it to reduce the amount of impervious area
on the site.
It's not a treatment.
OK, got it.
OK.
I feel like I'll ask a lot of questions.
And there's a lot of people in here.
Any other questions?
OK.
Thank you so much.
So now, I'd like to open up the public comment.
does anybody have anything that they would like to discuss
on this item only, out of all the people here?
No public comments on this item?
Oh, yes.
Thank you, Chair.
I actually live two blocks from this project.
It's kind of scary, but I'm not anti-development at all,
so I appreciate the questions.
It looks like the team has done a great job
in terms of accounting for the site challenges.
I mean, I literally live two blocks from the site,
so I know this very well as well.
So I appreciate the efforts that everyone's put into this
and look forward to it.
It'll probably be a nightmare for a while
with the construction, but that's just part of the process.
So thank you.
Thank you.
With nobody else, now the applicant has a chance
to speak again.
I don't, but you don't have to?
Thank you.
I would like to now close public comment
and bring it to the commission
for any considerations, emotions, thoughts, comments.
All right, I'll make the motion.
So I move to approve this draft resolution
for the tentative subdivision 9697 for condominium purposes.
Final design review, density bonus,
tree drift line encroachment permit
conditional use permit application number y24-040 at 2094 Mount Diablo Boulevard.
And just to confirm that's the revised version that's been presented.
As amended? As amended, yes. Thank you.
Okay, Commissioner Kwok. Yes. Commissioner Kownd. Yes.
Commissioner Moran. Yes.
Commissioner Strongman. Yes.
Commissioner Klop. Yes.
and vice chair knighting yes okay that is motion carries thank you and now we're going to be moving
on to the second item on the agenda for application y 23 0 0 8 3 located at 7 4 4 9 buena vista avenue
does the city have oh perfect yes uh staff has prepared a presentation for tonight
So, good evening commissioners. My name is Stephen Cook, assistant planner with the city's
community development department. Before you this evening is a request for a conditional use permit
to establish a new K-8 private school, the LGD Academy at 2449 Buena Vista Avenue.
The associated project number is Y23083. Before we begin, I'd like to note a few housekeeping items.
Since the publication of the agenda packet, the applicant has invoked California Assembly Bill
2097. So AB 2097 prohibits local jurisdictions from imposing minimum off-street parking requirements
on eligible projects located within one half mile of a major transit stop, which in this case
includes the Wanna Creek BART station located just south of the site. Accordingly, staff has
updated the draft resolution to reflect this change. Revisions include updates to the background
section, the conditions of approval, as well as the addition of the approved transportation demand
management plan or TDM as a new attachment confirming the project's
eligibility under the city's off-street parking ordinance. The project site is
located on Buena Vista Avenue just south of Alvarado Avenue. The parcel is
approximately 36,000 square feet and contains four detached single-story
buildings totaling roughly 7,100 square feet. The property is owned by the
Walnut Creek Islamic Center. It's currently being used as a religious
assembly facility. An existing surface parking lot, as shown on the slide, provides on-site
parking for visitors and staff. The surrounding area consists of a mix of single-family residences,
other religious assembly facilities, and several elementary and K-8 private schools.
And the zoning for the site is duplex D-3 residential. For background, the school
previously operated on the site from fall 2023 through spring 2025. During the final spring
semester, the city's building official, and a fire inspector from the Contra Costa County Fire
Protection District directed the school to cease operations until all required permits were obtained.
Staff also confirmed that the school is actively registered with the California Department of
Education as shown on the slide. LGD Academy is a 501c3 nonprofit organization seeking to establish
a K-8 private school within the existing Islamic Center. The submitted business plan identifies
a maximum enrollment of 90 students and for context the school previously enrolled 46
students. Staffing includes four administrative staff, two fully credentialed teachers and
ten part-time teachers in training. The academic curriculum includes English, language arts,
mathematics, science, leadership, religious studies and foreign language. Daily hours
of operations are Monday through Thursday with a staggered drop-off period between 8
and 8.40 a.m. and staggered pickup period from 3.30 to 3.45 p.m. Fridays exclusively
operate as half days with an 11.30 a.m. pickup. So this operational schedule indicates that
the school activities will not overlap with the scheduled religious assembly functions,
thereby minimizing any onsite parking demand and reducing potential traffic congestion.
transitioning into the proposed site plan. The layout identifies the seven classrooms
when administrative office which are marked in stars for reference.
All other areas will be retained by the Islamic Center and the project also includes modifications
to the existing surface parking lot including restriping to create a designated pickup drop-off
area, improve on-site circulation, and ensure compliance with ADA, Fire Access, and the city's
parking design standards. As shown on the plan, site access is provided from Buena Vista Avenue
with separate ingress egress points.
So during the noticing period,
staff received several public comments,
many of which raised concerns relating to parking traffic
and noise beginning with parking and traffic.
As noted earlier, the project invokes Assembly Bill or AB 2097,
which prevents the city
from imposing minimum off-street parking requirements.
Under the city's off-street parking ordinance,
projects relying on AB 2097 must submit a transportation demand
management plan for review and approval by the city's transportation administrator,
and so the applicant's TDM plan has been already approved and includes several measures including
operational and design strategies to prevent spillover parking procedures for regular monitoring
of neighborhood parking conditions and contingency measures. So if spillover parking is observed,
there's an activated share parking agreement with a nearby property at 2317 Buena Vista Avenue,
just south of the site about a quarter of a mile which has approximately 77 parking spaces available
and so the approved TDM plan is included as an addendum to the agenda packet as attachment seven.
So in addition the project includes parking lot improvements and these improvements are
intended to better manage the flow of vehicles entering and exiting the site onto Buena Vista
Avenue and for concerns regarding unauthorized parking on private property on or in red curbed
areas, residents could contact the Walnut Creek Police Department traffic enforcement division
to report any violations. That division is responsible for enforcement and can issue
citations to offending vehicles. Please refer to the GIS vicinity map which illustrates the
project site's location within one half mile of the Walnut Creek BART station for your reference.
And regarding noise, the city's general plan recognizes that noise is both subjective
and contacts dependent with sensitivity often increasing during the evening and night time
hours. So the general plans land use noise compatibility table guidelines as shown on the
screen classifies single-family residential uses and school uses within the same normally acceptable
and conditionally acceptable thresholds for the day night average noise levels.
In addition the school's business plan indicates that all academic instruction will occur within
fully enclosed buildings and to further limit potential impacts the draft resolution includes
a condition prohibiting outdoor school-related activities within the parking lot. This ensures
that the open areas on the site are used primarily for vehicle circulation rather than student
activities thereby minimizing potential noise exposure for nearby residents. To summarize the
applicant is requesting a conditional use permit to establish the new K-8 private school for
for LGD Academy, and the Planning Commission is tasked
with reviewing the required CUP findings
as shown on the screen.
Staff believes that the Commission
can make the necessary findings
and has prepared a draft resolution
that provides a response to each.
Okay, the project is exempt from CEQA
pursuant to section 5301 class one existing facilities
as it evolves the partial conversion
of an existing religious assembly used
into a new school use with no expansion
of the building footprint.
Staff recommends that the Planning Commission move to determine that the project be exempt from CEQA
under the section 5301 existing facilities and adopt the revised draft resolution approving the conditional use permit for the
LJD Academy at 2449 Buena Vista Avenue.
Okay, and that concludes staff's presentation for tonight. I'm available to answer any questions and representatives from LJD Academy are also present
here tonight to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.
Thank you for the presentation. Does anybody have any comments for staff or questions?
Okay, I'd like to then open up the public. Oh, does the applicant have a presentation?
Good evening
Commissioners. My name is up
Excuse me. I've been talking all day
My name is yesterday Siri. I'm a parent and a founder one of the founders of LGD Academy
I'm also an optometrist.
I've been serving community health centers
my entire career, about a decade,
and specifically in expanding services
to underserved areas.
I shifted my interest to education,
as of course you never think about that,
but with having two kids,
I saw that my daughter was going through
some challenges at school,
so I looked to find an alternative for her.
So, El Judy began really as a collaborative effort
with other community members
who wanted to find something different,
an alternative education opportunity for their kids.
And we chose Walnut Creek.
It's been the center hub for a lot of our families.
El Judy would be the first Islamic school
if given the permit in the Walnut Creek Tri-Valley area.
And growing up here, I've been raised in the Bay Area,
onto public schools, I graduated from Cal.
I know that the most important thing is to making sure
that the school is also a part of the community.
And one of the most important things that makes L. Judy
special for my daughter and for one of the reasons
why parents pick the school is that it's brought
in a leader in me.
A leader in me is an established program
that works to bring in and adapt the seven habits
of highly successful individuals.
And that framework teaches kids that leadership
starts with service.
The essence of leadership is service.
And when we first came into the community,
we know kids make noise.
We know that.
I mean, I have two, and I feel like I have 20.
So it's not easy.
And our students went door to door
to the adjacent neighborhood in an effort
to show that we're here.
We want to create a type of friendship, a bond.
They introduced themselves, passed out
a box of baked goods to every neighbor.
They were very excited.
We got some positive feedback from that.
So that was wonderful.
I also today spoke in detail with a friend of mine,
Pastor Edward Ching, which is from the gospel church
across the street from Dar el Salaam.
And I spoke to him.
And he let me know a lot of the concerns
that the community was having.
And he said, just to try to emphasize and make sure
that people understand that you understand
where they're coming from.
And we sincerely do.
But we can't speak for the mosque
because we are a separate entity.
And we can only represent El Judy.
And speaking to that, with the concerns
that the community has, I want to wholeheartedly extend
that we are here to mitigate any issues
that our school is responsible for.
Like Steven said, our operational hours
do not coincide with the mosque.
And in addition to that, for our operations, we went ahead.
I looked at the schedules for the different schools
in the area.
And we end an hour later to mitigate traffic.
We start 30 minutes later.
So these are all things that we kind of thought about.
We installed a bike rack.
We have given scholarships to neighboring residents.
And we are encouraging people to walk.
I have, as working in admissions as well,
I have heard a lot of parents say,
hey, I want to move from another state.
I want to come to El Judy.
This is a great opportunity.
And growing up, I never had this opportunity
to go to an Islamic school where it's a one-stop shop.
I can get my academics.
I can get my religious studies.
I can get everything I need, and then I
could also build my identity.
Some of our parents say that their kids were suffering
from emotional, social issues.
And in a smaller school setting, their kids are thriving.
And that's very important nowadays,
because you have a lot of kids who are neurodivergent learners,
who might have anxiety or other issues.
And these schools, this type of school,
would really help them feel supported.
our class sizes, our largest class is eight students.
So you have two teachers per eight kids.
And we really, what I find the most
is sometimes when I get stressed with working at the school,
my daughter will get worried like,
oh, we're still going to have the school, right?
And I'll tell her, yeah, yeah, because she's like, no,
I can never not be.
I can't be without my friends at L. Judy.
And to speak to what she said when I first started,
she said when she was in fourth grade
when I first started working for the school,
sometimes you feel like in public schools
you may be losing your children to ideas, or friends,
or certain trends.
But she told me, I'm not coming to that school.
And I said, that's fine.
It's your choice.
But what I want you to do is just try it out.
Just try it.
Because we had uniforms, we had small class
sizes, and new teachers that look like your mom.
So she wasn't excited.
But now if you ask her, and she's here tonight,
she will say, whatever you do, don't give up.
Power through.
So it's been a challenge, but it's been a ride of a lifetime.
And I speak for the whole team when
I say that there is so much in so rewarding
to be an education, more so than optometry.
Thank you so much for looking at our application.
We're here to answer any questions from the public.
And we're happy to continue to,
if this permit is approved,
to lend our hand to our open communication
so that we can help with any concerns in the community.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Does anyone have any questions for the applicant?
All right, thank you so much for the presentation.
It was very helpful to understand and meet people
who work at the academy.
I did wanna get a sense of how far the families are served
and what communities they're from.
So it was mentioned, I was thinking,
oh, it's just local to Walnut Creek,
but it sounds like there's families as far as Livermore
or maybe way up as far as Concord.
So it sounds like this is a school that serves families
much farther than just Walnut Creek.
it's very much a regional institution.
Yeah, I say as a beginner, that is true,
but we do have quite a few families
from Walnut Creek as well.
One of our families are new to this area
and we've kind of helped them get acclimated
to just how life works in the Bay Area.
But I'm personally, we're from San Ramon
and other families, like you said,
are from Livermore or Concord, Martinez, Vallejo,
But, the reason why that's so is Islamic schools in the Bay Area, I could name them
on one hand.
There aren't that many.
And as, you know, second or third generation here, we know a little bit more than our parents
might have known, and we are more involved in our child school and in their education
and more in tune into their needs.
So I survived public school, but maybe I
would have been better off in another school.
I mean, you know what I mean?
So I think it's just having those accessible opportunities
of education close by.
I mean, that would be wonderful.
And one other thing about our model
is that we do train our teachers.
Our principal is a teacher trainee over 40 years.
She has a background in education.
And we have some of our teachers here
just to speak to her methods, so we want this to expand.
We want the education and the principles
of cooperative learning and leader in need
to be accessible all over the Bay Area.
All right, thank you.
Hi.
I was looking at the layout of what areas are used by the school
and noticed that the kitchen was not included.
So I'm curious how the kids are fed during the day.
Sure.
So the lunches are on the parents.
So couldn't get away with that one.
But yeah, so they bring a bag lunch.
We don't use the kitchen.
The kitchen is the mosque.
And then so much of what we're hearing
is concern about parking, as you know.
and I know some of that may have to do
with other days of the week,
but you mentioned the gospel church
that's right across the street,
and so is there an agreement with them as well,
or do people have to go to the further location?
Yes, so there is not an agreement with the gospel church.
I just kind of created a relationship with pastor,
I just so I could understand the area better,
and get to know the community.
But the self-realization temple, which
is further down the street, is for spillover parking.
Now, if you look at the size of our school and the method
and how the students are picked up and dropped off,
it's a very smooth carpool lane.
We have about four to five teachers
with yellow and blue vests, walkie-talkies.
The students stay within the courtyard,
and they're cold as their family cars arrive.
About 45% of the school uses the shuttle.
And it's about 14 kids.
So we are pretty small.
And I think it's probably going to grow at a slower rate
than your average school because we are so intentional
in what we can do and provide for the kids.
But to go back to the carpooling,
I mean, from the traffic study.
And I'll let Mr. Jessup talk about that.
It's about, I would say, no more than 12 cars
have ever been parked on that lot
during our operational hours.
Now, again, I can't speak to the Friday prayer.
But the temple down the street does have about 70 open parking
spots.
In addition to that, we do know that schools
have safety routes, so you can park your car
and walk your child to the school.
So we can designate those areas for parents.
But the majority of our parents are both working.
So they really love the idea of drop.
And see you later.
So just to follow up, you were saying
that you envision the numbers growing slowly.
So what we're looking at is a maximum of 90
when your previous numbers were 46.
So, are you seeing it as like 90 next year?
No.
How did that number?
That number, because, so yeah, so there are seven classrooms
and the maximum capacity for our curriculum
and for the classroom as well is about 12 students.
So seven times 12, so yeah, it's about 19.
But as you know with private schools,
you're not gonna get an influx at the older ages.
They're gonna come in when they're younger
and then they stay with you.
So we imagine that our growth pattern will be the same.
Any further questions for the applicant?
Thank you very much.
I'm curious about the recess,
and I believe the phrase says
that it's gonna be done in an enclosed outdoor space.
Yes, so if you look at the structure of the building,
it's got a courtyard in the center.
So before the students used to play on the side lot,
that was the parking lot that goes uphill,
which was neighboring the neighbors on Buena Vista.
So that's not going to be happening anymore.
The parking lot will be restructured and only used
for parking in order to follow fire-access standards.
So we anticipate that with the changes in the parking lot,
It will improve flow as well,
both for the car lane and for anyone else
using the facility.
So the recess is gonna happen in that rectangle
in the middle.
Yes.
Between the little dots.
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
Any further questions for the applicant?
So we can have staff pull up something.
I do wanna mention this before I begin
because I'm assuming that everyone who wants to speak on,
Thank you so much.
That everyone who wants to speak,
we are a city that is a good neighbor.
And so I want to make sure that everybody in this room
is curious and is a good neighbor when we speak.
You will all have two minutes, please.
And that's all you will have, so when you hear the ding,
please don't have me tell you to sit down.
You'll hear the ding.
So can we start?
Yes?
I think I got a lot of head, I got a lot of nomam.
Okay, I have, I think, seven cards?
Oh, I can start reading the cards.
I thought you were gonna say 70.
I was like, oh, dear.
Eight?
Eight, okay, eight.
Okay, great, thank you.
Okay.
We're getting to 70.
Okay, we're getting to 70.
Yeah, I'm gonna start calling off names.
If we could have order and everybody could sit down, please.
If we could have Mike Kim, please.
In consideration of, I want to make sure
that everybody has appropriate time to speak.
And by the way, in case you're wondering,
other cities only give applicants and folks even less
time, such as like three minutes.
So what I would like to do with your permission
is to potentially be able to decrease
to a minute and 30 seconds?
Everyone's gonna get two minutes, so how about we do this?
Why don't we go, if everyone moves
and starts moving quickly,
then everyone can have that two minutes,
but if we see that things are getting out of control, yes?
Yes, go ahead.
Are you, you represent a neighborhood?
Can you raise your hands if this man represents you?
How many of you have cards in?
Okay, you can, if you wish, you can have 10 minutes.
Done, go ahead.
Good evening, members of.
Do you have a card in, sir?
Do you have a card in?
Okay.
Good evening, members of Planning Commission.
My name is Mike Kim,
and I'm from a neighboring town in Lafayette,
so I will only take one minute.
I just want to share a quick anecdote.
My wife and my children, we lived in Lafayette,
which is on the Orinda side is our house for about 30 years,
and we have a ranch that our family owns
on the Nuana Creek side called Deer Hill Ranch,
which is across the street from Aquiline High School.
And the anecdote is simply this.
on the ranch, we have two different operations.
We've got what's called Sienna Ranch, where
we teach kids about horses and nature classes and what have
you.
It's been thriving and doing quite well.
But also, we also have a Muslim homeschooling cooperative,
about 30 families and 80 children.
And I went through the same process about 20 years ago
and heard a lot of the concerns and traffic and noise
and other unsavory comments.
And I'm here to tell you, to put everybody at ease,
that Ilmshu, which is a Muslim homeschooling cooperative,
while my ranch property has been thriving and doing well
and well integrated into the community.
And one of the things that it did is quite magical,
is familiarity reduces a lot of the anxieties.
And once you get to know people for who they are
and what they are, then you become much more tolerant.
And that's exactly what happened.
And now the school is very much a part of the Lafayette
community, and I'm happy to report
that it'll hopefully continue on for years to come.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next.
Are you inquiring about a restroom?
We'll have someone take care of it.
Next speaker.
Tariq al-Dardiri.
Good evening, my name is Tariq al-Dardiri.
I am the operation manager of the mosque,
one of the Islamic Center.
Thank you for giving us the chance to express ourselves.
It's very brief that we need a school actually
that can take care of the rituals and the studies
of Islam, especially that this is possibly
one of the places that serves about 13 cities around us.
It's one of the schools that actually
is within the East Bay of San Francisco.
So I know that possibly the issue of having some noises,
it happens everywhere.
We are doing the same thing we had,
and we have the noises of the schools
around us in the same street.
I understand that sometimes it's a bit coming out of control.
But with our cooperation, I think
we can go further and build more understanding ground for that.
Thank you very much.
Next speaker.
I might get this wrong.
I think I'm Isan Tinat.
My name is Isan Tinawi.
I live in Walnut Creek with my wife and our two-year-old son.
We actually used to live in Alameda,
went to Canada for a year.
And then when we were choosing where
to live, when we came back to the Bay Area,
We especially chose Walnut Creek because it was close to El Jude school.
We live a 15 minute walk from the school and we were very intentional about choosing that
location because hopefully when our son and his future siblings are older we'd love to
like walk them over to the school or bike them because my wife and I don't really like
to rely on cars for transportation.
El Jude is very important for us as a community because it will ensure that our children grow
in the culture that we grew up in and have shared that shares the same values
that we do and I think it's really important for for them to experience
that growing here growing up here and I just wanted to add that I read the plans
that the school and mosque have put forth and I think the school has been
very like responsive to the concerns of the community I think there's really
great energy here today where I would love for there to be an avenue for continued discussion
and understanding because as Mr. Kim mentioned, like that's really what fosters a community.
So I want to keep it short. I hope we're able to find a path forward here that allows the
school to operate while maintaining the beautiful care and safety that drew us all to Walnut Creek.
Thank you. Thank you.
Kark, is it Kark or maybe Carl Hartley, Kevin Gebkin?
Thank you very much for allowing me to come here today.
Thank you, my neighbors in the Islamic community
and my resident neighbors as well.
I want to really kind of tackle these three big issues.
And some of these things are actually out of their control
that you're hearing about.
And I want to explain how they came about.
But it's going to take all of us to kind of try
to understand how to fix this.
The first issue has to do with parking.
There was an agreement with the church right across the street,
the gospel center, to allow some parking.
And the community actually felt some relief at that time.
However, that's dissolved at this point.
And unfortunately, the trek now is about almost a half a mile
for people to park and come to the gospel or the church
and or the school if you have off street parking that far away.
There's many people who can't do that.
There's the elderly that can't do that.
There's people who are sick that can't do that.
And many people who are just inconvenienced don't do that.
That's why on the emails, you see so many people parking in the red zones.
I talked to many of my fellow residents, they have their cars blocked in.
People parking on their private property, you see the photos, they're posted.
The second issue has to do with the noise and environmental issues.
Some of that can't be, it can't change because I want kids to be kids.
I'm a therapist.
I've been a therapist working in the county for 30 years
before I retired.
I worked with kids.
I worked in underserved communities.
I'm pro-kid.
I'm pro-religion.
And I'm pro-schools.
I went into the schools to advocate for children
many times.
So I do want to mention something
that the proposal said earlier, and that
had to do with my particular place where I live.
There was a talk of a retaining wall there that prevents sound.
And I want to pass around.
I wish I had a slick slides and that pointer thing.
That pointer to do, that's a good deal.
So this picture here, sir, this is the old retaining wall
that we had.
And I put a little arrow on there for reference.
So I'm going to show you what it looked like just a year ago.
That's what I think the Planning Commission probably,
when they made up this idea, it looked like.
I got that picture actually off their website.
And it's some children playing right there on the concrete.
And behind that fence is where our homes are.
And it was quite loud.
How many people think that was loud over there?
OK, there's quite a few people.
We tore that fence down.
It was in disrepair.
We were asked to do that.
We did it.
It cost a quarter of a million dollars
for us to build a new wall.
But we have a concrete wall.
The new concrete wall, you'll see, is no longer seven or eight feet tall.
It's four feet tall.
Four feet.
The concrete is no barrier for any sound at all.
The top of the wall is under the foundation of our homes.
If you take us side by side, you'll see this is the same area we're talking about.
Now we have fences exposed.
The second stories of these homes are exposed.
And the noise with even 30 children was loud.
Children need to be children, though, OK?
In the beginning, when this school first started
conditionally, there was no requirement for a noise study.
I only ask you that we do that now.
The situation has changed.
We're asking for 90 children.
The 10th they're talking about has openings
all around the top of it.
I want kids to be kids.
I was sad to hear actually that they can't open it.
I came here today prepared to ask you to reopen the school.
And I'm sad to hear that that's not possible.
Because I looked at some of their letters
and they're very, very compelling.
I would like it to be open.
I'd like us to do a study.
I'd like us to just pause for a moment and figure out
if this is the best place, the best location,
and we can really handle a School for 90 children.
That's issue on noise.
Lights, there's a lot of environmental things
that need to be looked at.
As far as staggering some of the times, another thing,
they have no control over.
Unfortunately, there's some security issues
that have happened to Buena Vista.
You probably were involved in knowing that they did some fencing and stuff like that
to keep out people that go there.
And I'd like to show you a picture of – I'd like to show you a picture I took just this
morning where my daughter went to school 20 years ago.
She went to Buena Vista, but it didn't look anything like that.
There was no fencing.
There was no permission to get in.
There was no guards at the door, so to speak, and the turnaround area in that is extremely,
extremely slow.
And if you drive on Buena Vista, which is a main artery to get to the freeway there,
it takes a significant amount of time.
I'm worried that this is going to add to it.
Buena Vista serves 550 children.
a lot of children on one road. There are cars lined up. You can see the photographs of them
on that were posted. People are worried about that. They're worried about the congestion.
I talked to the traffic cross guards right there. They're worried about their own safety,
let alone the safety of the children crossing the street.
Some of that is because of these issues that I'm talking about.
The last issue I want to talk about is the parking.
Oh, I mentioned parking.
Oh, and they used to have an agreement.
There is a site, another site, it's a long ways away.
Okay, so I want to offer some practical solutions since I've went over these three issues.
One solution would have been to open the school up.
It's the very first thing I have on my list, but I'm sorry that can't happen actually.
but I'd like you to pause your decision before you say yay or nay today to really take a close look.
This parking study that you will find was conducted on Tuesday, okay?
You and I know if you're going to study the Bay Bridge traffic, you don't do it on a Sunday at midnight.
You do it on a weekday during surge hours.
This was a commissioned thing that happened on a Tuesday.
Very low time.
It explains nothing about the surge volume
that they have with parking.
And that surge is Fridays, every Friday afternoon,
every Friday evening, every festive holiday.
These are realities.
Am I right?
They can attest to that.
So there's a couple things I'd request of you.
One is a comprehensive review of some of these things
I'm talking about, parking, TIA, transit, and safety issues
for the kids, and also an acoustics evaluation
if the homes in the area are going
to be impacted by 90 children.
I can tell you, I only live 24 feet from the property
Do you know how far 24 feet is?
It's about to where that flag is.
That's my back door.
Right here is my patio.
That's where I try to enjoy my morning with a cup of coffee, maybe a newspaper, some cereal.
It's not possible.
It's just impossible.
We have, my neighbors and I were worried about our own peace and quiet in our own community.
That's something I think that you pride too.
I'd like to work with them, I'd like to find a solution.
I'd like to figure out if this will work.
It's not fair for these children to be out of school.
It's not fair for them to feel dangled and not know what's going to happen.
Thank you for your time.
Do you have any questions you'd like to ask me?
Thank you.
Chip, do you want to call three names so folks can line up?
Is that okay?
The next three names will be Mark Sneri, Samra Samser, and Alisa Trove.
So Mark?
Good evening.
Mark Sherry.
I live on Buena Vista, about 900 feet northwest right on the street.
I grew up in Walnut Creek, Muslims were not here, welcome, come on down.
Have a school, good on you.
But you talked, and the director there talked about getting along with the community.
Would you please space us, sorry when you talk.
Sorry, speak more.
Thank you so much.
They want me to be quieter, you gotta work with us.
Friday, I believe it's Friday prayers, if that's appropriate phrase.
The parking on Buena Vista, Alvarado is chaos.
Either last Friday or Friday before, I was driving out of the appropriate time.
And one of the attendees, I don't know the proper phrase,
was parked on the two crosswalks at the corner.
It's chaos.
I think if you want to get along with the community, as you said, and I doubt you do-
Can you please address us?
Can you please address us when you speak?
I'm sorry?
Can you just address us when you speak?
Okay, I'm sorry.
Thank you so much.
I'm sorry to be nice to them.
No, I hear you.
Thank you so much.
You have to have some understanding of working with the neighbors.
I don't need a meeting, but if you've worked out a deal with the temple down the street,
your congregants, your attendees need to know that and go there.
Or it's just going to get worse, and bad things will happen.
I don't want them to happen, but we need to get along.
We have other churches, schools on that street and none of them have this problem.
So I'd ask you to work with your folks and make it so we can all get along.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next speaker.
Samra.
Good evening respected community members and city members.
My name is Samra Samir and I have been a credential science teacher for 15 years.
I have worked at El judy for two years, teaching science at El judy, and I can say by far that
I have grown immensely at this institution.
The admin, especially the principal here, ensures that their teachers are properly trained
in the cooperative learning strategies, which I think guarantees student success in any
classroom.
Being a science teacher and given the opportunity to go and develop the curriculum here, I had
noticed and I observed from day one the students came here. They had such a great talent in
science and pursuing science. So we tailored the curriculum for them and part of that was
not only building the curriculum but also having amazing science fairs and we had great
experiments with regards to that. And I think given the opportunity, the school, if they
are given the opportunity to come here and pursue what we have been doing for this long,
they will be able to go ahead and represent themselves
at the county science fair.
And I cannot wait for that to happen.
I think the kids here through the leader in the program
are really learning how to lead.
And given the opportunity, they're gonna rise and shine.
So thank you so much.
Thank you.
Next speaker.
Elsa Trav, Travay?
You got it.
You go.
Hello, my name is Isa Travay
and I'm a student at El Judy Academy.
I value my school for all the different subjects
and con teachers.
I was in a school that didn't really work out for me
before I discovered El Judy.
I was homeschooling for one year
in between the old school and El Judy.
I discovered El Judy because I had some friends
that were going there.
I found sanctuary.
Every single one of us has something
that connects everyone and forms what we call our school.
I hope one day we can get the permission
and travel back to sanctuary in West Walnut Creek.
At Old Judy we value everybody and teach everyone
everything we need to know to be successful.
It should be no labor to be kind to your neighbor.
If we can please just, good neighbor here,
so we're gonna, everyone gets a clap,
so we don't need to clap anymore.
The next three?
Next three would be My Muna.
And?
Murs Rafik and Hakam Ibrahim.
Ibrahim?
Sorry?
Yes, ma'am.
Yes, we're just calling it three up at a time so we can,
because there's little kids in the room,
so I'm trying to be cognizant of that.
Go ahead, thank you.
Can we start the clock?
Thanks, Claire.
Madam Chairperson and Commissioners, if I got you right.
Okay, my name is Meemuna Ahmed.
I have been serving on the Contra Costa County
Assessment Appeals Board for three years,
representing our district, District Four,
which includes Walnut Creek, Concord, and Pleasant Hill.
And I'm here to speak in favor of the ongoing
Algiers Academy on Buena Vista.
I would like to address the issue
that I saw on what is it called?
Not what's next door on the app about a week ago,
which alerted me, which didn't sound very good,
threatening decline in property values.
When you talk property values to someone
who's been an appraiser since 1987,
state certified, California certified general appraiser.
I've done Buena Vista, I've done Contra Costa,
Alameda County, I know all the shortcuts during rush hour.
If you want to pay me something,
I'll take you on a ride around.
how to avoid the traffic.
So, I'd like to address the issue of property values.
I have appraised also in Southern California, L.A. and Orange Counties,
and I have never seen any property decline in value
because it was located near an elementary school.
High school is a whole different ball game because parents of young children want
to have their kids, if possible, walk to school.
I walked to school as a child, my mother was a teacher.
I had to walk to school, no one was driving me in those days.
Nowadays parents, especially moms, are driving kids.
So if anything, parents want to live near an elementary
school, if their kids can walk to school, that is ideal.
And so the other thing, let's see,
I went completely off script.
So at any rate, the Nextdoor app basically, is that it?
Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. Next speaker. Is it Moos? Good evening,
commissioners. My name is Moyes Rafik. I'm an attorney. I've been living in
Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill for about the last 10 years. I'm an attendee and
volunteer at the Walnut Creek Islamic Center. I actually also happen to live
next to an elementary school and so I sympathize with all of our neighbors.
Every single morning when I get out to take my kids to school, there's a
stranger in a different car, sitting, parking right in front of my house, several cars,
and they're walking out and they're walking down two blocks to take their kids to school
because they want to avoid the traffic. And so our entire cul-de-sac is full. Every morning
and every afternoon, I come back and the entire cul-de-sac is full. And I get frustrated sometimes
because I'm like, that's front of my house. But I had to remind myself, I don't own that
street. It's a public street. And I realized these were not strangers. These were my neighbors.
These were people just taking their kids to school. And, yeah, it was inconvenient, but
It was about 10 minutes, a period of time.
And as soon as school's over, they're gone.
And as school drop off, they're gone.
And I had to remind myself that I don't love it.
I understand.
I'm also someone that parks in front of the streets.
I don't block your driveways.
And as good neighbors, if the mosque is not adhering,
the attendees on Friday, if they're not,
they should be towed, right?
And we should do better.
But the problem is we're conflating the issues with the mosque
as an issue with the school.
And so I think it's really important to separate those.
The school is ending at 11 30 a.m. on Friday,
and the mosque is a separate situation,
and I sympathize, because I have to park on Fridays,
and I know it's very hard,
but we do our best to park on public streets.
It's two hours in the middle of the day,
and everyone is gone,
and if people are parking illegally,
I'll be the first to have them towed.
Thank you, next speaker.
I got it.
Tom Ibrahim.
Thank you, commissioners,
and thank you to Steven as well for his work on this project.
I'm, my name's Hakem Ibrahim.
I'm a 36 year resident of Walnut Creek.
I grew up on the north side of town.
My parents still own their home there.
I grew up in the shadow of Northgate High School,
so I'm very familiar with the traffic issues
with living next to a school.
I wanted to say, those were my exact sentiments,
what the last speaker said about how some of the residents
are conflating the issues with parking on Fridays,
with what the school is intending to do.
I think, guess what, if you kill this project,
none of those scenarios are gonna change.
There's still gonna be issues
with people parking on Fridays.
There's still gonna be issues with people parking
during festive holidays, during the Muslim calendar.
So why kill the school?
I don't, I think, the other thing is,
now that I live on the south side of town,
I have four kids, two of them went to BV.
They're now at WCI in Los Omas.
two of them are still at BV now.
And I think since the construction
that they've just completed at BV,
a lot of parents are not using the entrance on BV anymore.
There are three entrances to the school, BV,
one on Alvarado, one on Buena Vista, and San Juan.
And so it's totally unfounded that there's traffic now.
It's actually gotten much less
because during construction,
parents got used to picking up on San Juan,
and so now everybody's continued that this year as well.
And so I think it's I agree with the last speaker, too, on on days where I have to where I work from home on Fridays and I go pray at the mosque.
I agree the parking is is really bad.
But I I've seen Walnut Creek police out there enforcing the no parking zones, enforcing the red zones.
And those people should be cited.
They should be towed if that's necessary. And that's how we're going to change that behavior.
Thank you. Thank you. Should we do the next three speakers?
Yes, Bishop Hasib Suqra and Shauna Munroe start with Bishop.
Yeah, good evening.
I'll keep this short because I'm just
going to echo what others have been saying.
My daughter goes to al-Judi.
I drop her off in the morning.
And then I go as a caretaker of my father who
lives on Warren Lane in Walnut Creek.
So it's really important for me, for my daughter,
to be very close to me.
And I just want to point out that I have never
had a problem with traffic, because the school starts
that half hour after the elementary school's
on the street, and ends an hour after that.
I've never had a problem with traffic.
I've never had to park in the parking lot of the mosque.
And yeah, again, I know that the mosque has its,
there's some challenges there.
But we're talking about the school here,
and it does not overlap.
Thank you.
Thank you.
My name is, yeah, Hasib Sahar.
and I'm a homeowner in Wallman Creek.
I'm here tonight to support the approval
for the use permit for LGD Academy.
My child attends this school
and our experience has been outstanding,
not only academically but in terms of personal growth.
The school's leader in me curriculum
is one of the few programs in our area
that teaches confidence, communication,
and responsibility in a structured and daily way.
I've seen a noticeable and positive change
in my child because of it.
I also wanna address the concerns raised
about traffic and noise.
As a parent who drove this route every day,
my experience has been overwhelmingly smooth
and well-organized.
Morning drop-offs have been efficient
and because of the way the school manages traffic flow,
most parents can pull in, drop off and exit
without needing to park at all.
On days when parents do choose to park,
they use the school's parking lot.
It's also important to note that the other schools
on the same road seem to have different start times,
which naturally spreads out traffic load
and reduces congestion.
In my daily experience,
this staggered timing makes some noticeable difference.
I've never encountered backups, unsafe situations,
or other issues during drop-off or makeup.
Algiers Academy is a responsible and considerate neighbor
and the families are committed to following the rules
and maintaining a positive relationship with the community.
For these reasons,
I respectfully ask the council to approve the use permit
so the school can continue providing a safe, nurturing,
and leadership-focused environment for our children.
And continue being a positive asset to Walnut Creek.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Shauna?
I'm just nervous here, but I just want, yeah,
I live in the complex that's next to the Islamic Center.
And sometimes we can hear the kids when they are playing,
but, and I agree with Kevin, you know,
And I think the city should come out and do some kind of noise study because 90 kids is going to affect the residents nearby.
My big thing is the parking.
I don't think it's mentioned here that currently they have 53 parking spots and this is going to change it down to 33.
And so that's 20 less and that's just going to make the parking in the area worse on Fridays.
And this is a multi-use facility and I know people have said that it's separate,
school and the mosque, but reducing the parking is just going to make it worse for everybody
in the neighborhood.
You know, I live in the Britten Hills Homeless Association, and on Friday, we have to stand
out there and kick people out of our parking lot.
We have people parking in the red zones every Friday, they park in no parking zones, they
park on private streets that are posted.
And just this last Friday, and I sent in with my email, there was only four people parking
in that shared agreement.
So I guess the thing is, you have this shared agreement,
what's going to make, what's going to change the behavior
now, because they haven't been doing it before.
And also, I have nothing against the school or anything
like that, but I just feel, you know,
this footprint is not big enough to hold 90 people.
And it seems like that this center has outgrown.
And that's just where I stand.
I do oppose this proposal.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Three more.
Lizette Duran, Abdul Adwalla, and Nav.
I can't read that as a DC, D-I-S-I.
Sounds a little slick.
So Lizette?
Good evening, Council.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to be here.
My name is Lizette.
My daughter attends the audacity Academy,
and I'm here to support El Judy and the approval
of the permit.
I would like to share just one memory with you
since we have a lot of people who are gonna speak.
So one day after I'm picking my daughter from school,
this is her first year at El Judy,
she shared with me her class lesson on empathy.
And I was very happy to hear how enthusiastic she was
on sharing her lesson with me
that she learned in a class.
Because for me, being a successful parent
means raising kids who are empathetic,
who are respectful, generous, and good citizens.
And being a good neighbor is actually a part
of our Islamic creed.
And so there are rights prescribed to our neighbors.
And so we have a duty to be good to our,
we have a duty to be good to our neighbors.
So therefore I have a duty as a parent,
as do our other Muslim parents here
to teach our kids how to be good citizens and good neighbors.
And so I want to reassure the community
that any concerns that our neighbors have,
we are going to be here to address it and to work on it
and to be good neighbors with you on Wanna Creek.
Thank you so much.
Abdul. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. So my name is Abdul Awadallah. I'm born and raised here
in the Bay Area. We have, as a family, plenty of businesses in the Bay Area. In San Francisco,
we got pizzerias in Berkeley, in Hayward. We're very much a part of the Bay Area, and even here
in Walnut Creek itself, we have a roofing business, a better roofing company, which we do business on
homes right here in Walnut Creek. I want to tell you guys where we, me and my
brothers are residents of Livermore, California.
We have to wake up our children very early in the morning before the sun
rises. We got 10 of them and they all get in
a van that we have purchased. My father who is their grandfather
gets everybody into that van very early in the morning
every single day and just drives all these screaming children to the school.
Now, with all of what he goes through and everything, my father still, still is happy
to do this every single morning even though he still works in our San Francisco pizzeria.
So this is a joy for him and I think that this is not only a joy for our family, it's
It's a joy for every single one of these children that are out there coming to school, getting
together with people that they know, people that they share values with.
It's really a surreal thing that they are going through and enjoying, and we don't want
to take that away from them.
I think we are really, really conflating two totally separate issues.
Parking is an issue.
We got to figure that out.
It should be totally separate, you know, with the mosque.
What are we going to do here?
If cars need to get towed, they should get towed.
But don't take these away from these children.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Is it Nav?
Yeah.
Thank you for having me here.
First of all, guys, look at this community.
I'm so proud of everyone out here, especially the kids.
This is a piece of the puzzle, the melting pot for Walnut Creek.
My name is Naveed Desai.
I'm a Walnut Creek resident.
I go to the mosque.
And I'm here speaking in support of the L. Judy Academy.
I understand that neighbors have concern about traffic
and noise, but guys, it's the Bay Area.
Traffic in the Bay Area is almost like peanut butter
and jelly, right?
But I do want us to kind of take a look at this in context.
Projects like this are extremely common.
even in Walnut Creek, churches, synagogues, cultural centers,
have all gone through similar processes.
And I did hear someone mention next door.
And I do want to address that really quick with care.
The words that I read on that post
were echoing patterns that we've seen before in history books.
If XYZ happens and the property values decline,
framing children as a neighborhood burden,
or even treating a weekly gathering
as inherently disruptive.
I mean, I don't like to see these tropes.
And I know it's probably unintentional,
but we have to be a little bit better than that.
And the reality is simple.
We have this school that produces daytime activity.
And this daytime activity is during the day.
It's during normal times.
It's during normal hours.
We can expect, we can have that as a normal expectation
in the Bay Area.
It's, you know, the noise, sure it can bother us later.
The parking issues, sure it can bother us,
but we can work through that.
So once again, just hearing support of Old Judy Academy
and thank you very much for your time.
Got three more, Musa Tariq, Shaim Sriram,
and trouble with this one, Q-A-I-S, I think, Musa?
Yeah, good evening, commissioners and community members.
My name is Musa with CAIR,
the Council on American Islamic Relations,
as well as a long-time Contra Costa County resident,
and we want to urge you to support the permit
for the El Judi Academy.
El Judi Academy is a small community-based school
that has worked in good faith with the city for many months,
including on fire safety upgrades,
transparency around operations,
enrollment, and traffic plans.
There has been some misinformation circulating online,
including claims that conflate the school with the mosque,
but the reality is simple.
This is a modest school serving local families.
It has a detailed plan for car drop-off and parking
management, including an on-site liaison
to prevent illegal parking and ensure orderly pickup.
Noise and traffic levels stay within normal expectations
for a site this busy on a street that already hosts
several other congregations as well as other schools.
Again, we respectfully ask you to improve the permit
and allow El Judy Academy to continue
serving Walnut Creek students.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Good evening.
My name is Shahm Siriram.
I live in Hercules.
My stepdaughter, Naima, tells Al-Judi.
I also want to mention that I'm a higher ed educator with 23
years of experience teaching political science.
I'm here in support of the proposal,
and I'll just keep you very brief.
I'll just say that nothing is more important than the stability
of our schools, not just for our children, but for the city.
Many of the complaints are those that have been heard today.
are those that we hear nationally
and are ongoing in the US in everywhere from Alabama
to Texas to other places.
Any time Muslims want the same things
as other religious groups, we hear the same arguments
about parking or peace of mind or property values, et cetera.
I'd like to mention that, as has already been said,
many Muslims already call Walnut Creek home
and the area seen as a nurturing site of growth.
I'm holding up the US Constitution
and I wanna just remind people
that God is not mentioned once in the US Constitution.
And many of us here are American by birth,
Muslim by preference, Muslim by the grace of God.
What could be more American than wanting a great school,
buying a house, paying taxes, and giving back
to our community?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next speaker.
Mr. Habib.
Check the easy route.
You've got to help me with that.
It's kites.
Spelling throws everyone off, no worries.
So, I'm gonna read what my wife prepared
as she's way more articulate than I am.
I'm writing this letter as a parent
to my 11-year-old daughter who attends
El Judy Academy in Walnut Creek.
I'm also writing as a 20-year veteran employee
of John Muir Hospital in Walnut Creek.
I'm someone who deeply values the integrity
of the neighborhood and well-being of children.
I understand that the council is hearing concerns
from nearby residents about increased traffic
noise. These concerns are reasonable and I appreciate that the city's taking them seriously.
At the same time, I hope to offer a broader perspective on the essential role of school,
role this school plays and why it continues to operate. Its continued operation is in the best
interest of the students and families. This school provides a learning environment that's
exceptionally difficult to replicate. For many students, including my daughter, it has been a
a place where they have finally felt understood, supported,
and able to reach their potential.
Students who may struggle in larger or more rigid system
find individualized attention, emotional safety,
and a strong sense of belonging here.
From academic progress to social emotional growth,
this school has been life-changing for my daughter
and many others at the school.
Closing it would remove a critical education option
for children who thrive only in small supportive settings.
She has like four more paragraphs.
I'm not going to read that just because we
don't have that much time, but I do
want to thank the opposing families that are here.
I understand your concern.
Friday prayers, I've been to that mosque on Friday prayers.
Unfortunately, it is a disaster, but we can't control everybody.
A mosque cannot, they make announcements.
They've made multiple announcements.
Hey, you cannot park in red zones.
you cannot block driveways.
Unfortunately, you can't control human action.
And also, this was a good thing, so please support it.
Thank you.
Do we have the next three?
Three more.
Is that it?
Three more?
No.
No, actually, we're working them down, though.
Robin Davis-Ramos, Linda Barajas, and Jessie Rock.
Let's come up here, guys.
Robin?
Yes.
I just see a bunch of littles and the,
and I have young children, so.
So then, what are the three since,
since we're grading one for three,
what's the next three?
Which?
So, maybe I'll take four minutes,
because that way I have a little bit of a cushion
since they gave me-
Two minutes, sir.
Two minutes, okay.
Starting, already starting.
Well, my name is Jesse Ramos,
I want to say thank you for your time this evening
for reviewing the application.
And I want to start off with I sympathize with the school,
wanting to start a school.
And all I want is harmony.
But what happens is this, is that the school and the MAS,
even though I separate the school as a separate identity,
they share a facility.
And when this facility is being used at certain times,
at certain months, certain days, et cetera,
it becomes overwhelmed and what the proposal is,
and this is what I object to,
is that you are taking away 20 parking spaces.
The neighborhood is already drastically short
on parking spaces and so the frustration you're hearing
about people parking in the red zone,
blocking driveways, all that traffic,
because they're circling the neighborhood,
trying to find that rare parking space is because of the lack of parking
spaces. So when I look at the proposal separate from the school, I see you have
a situation that's already bad and you're making it worse. You're making it
worse by taking away significant number of available spaces. So also when I look
at the proposal, and I'm looking at the school, I want to make some other notes. The school
is trying to get a capacity of 90 students. According to the architectural plan, I think
it only has a capacity of 80 some odd people, and if you have 10, 12 teachers, you're looking
at a capacity of only 70 plus students. Thank you.
more. Habah, Edith and Sarah weekly. Good evening. My
name is Habah Amastri. My family has been part of Svanla Creek since 1980. In
2019 we left the city we love and moved abroad to a Muslim country because there
there was limited schools where our children's needs were met.
We lived as expats for nearly six years.
When we heard El Judea Academy had opened,
we moved our family back to Walnut Creek
specifically for the school.
Our daughter has strived here.
She's made lifelong friends, her grades are soared,
and she finally feels fully seen and supported.
El Judea is the reason we are able to come home.
We understand neighbors have concerns
and we're committed to working with the mosque
and the city for solutions.
but for a family like ours,
Al-Judy is the reason we've come home.
Thank you.
That next speaker, please.
Edith.
Good evening, my name is Edith,
a member of the community
and also an educator with 10 years experience
working in public schools, private schools,
and nonprofit organizations.
In those years, I have not seen any school
that has provided an impressive educational environment
the way that Al-Judy provides.
I made an observation visit earlier this year
that coincided when they were in class session and lunchtime.
I was very impressed with how the children behaved
without being prompted.
They all cleaned up after themselves
and showed respect to their teachers and peers.
I have no doubt in my mind that the teachers
work a great amount to create this environment
that the students cannot access anyone else.
I would like to say that the community at large
is welcoming and aware of the concerns
raised by the neighbors.
In regard to the concerns in traffic congestion
due to the increase in enrollment of the school.
I'd like to point out that Buena Vista Elementary
has seen an increase in enrollment in the past few years.
In the 2022-2023 school year,
there were 466 students enrolled,
and the following year, 2023-2024 school year,
there were 494.
Overall, 28 student increase in one year.
In that year, what were the concerns raised
by the neighbors to the school board
about this enrollment increase?
that didn't relate to student and teacher engagement.
Were the same concerns of traffic and parking raised
to the city or the school board when this increase occurred.
We can't exclude one school and blame them
for the increase in traffic in the area.
I'd like to highlight again that the plan for LGD
is to have a slow increase in enrollment,
not a sudden increase.
In general, Walnut Creek has seen an increase in residents
and I believe it's because the city does a great job
in creating a diverse community
that provides unique opportunities in the community,
such as the great schools we have here.
As someone that recently converted to Islam,
I'm excited for the possibility to have an Islamic school
for my children in the future
because I don't have the extensive.
Thank you.
Next speaker, please.
We have actually four more.
Okay.
Omar Necco.
Oh, Sarah.
Oh, Sarah, I'm sorry.
Hi, Commissioner. My name is Sarafarzana Vakili. I'm a dental hygienist and a
resident of Dublin. This is my son's second year at Al-Jutee and I cannot
express enough the high quality education he's receiving, both
academically and learning about the beautiful religion of Islam. I would
like to share a few of the core principle and value thought within this
school of thought. Al-Jutee teaches children that Islam emphasizes the
well-being and welfare of their neighbors.
It encourages Muslims to foster harmonious relationships,
build a strong sense of community,
and spread peace and goodwill among all.
It's important to note that these values extended
to everyone, not just Muslim neighbors,
but all individuals, regardless of their faith or background.
I wanted to share these beliefs and values
to bring comfort and reassurance to the neighbors surrounding.
Aljudy School, we want to know that you are part of us,
and we hope you feel comfortable and support
having our school as part of the beautiful city of Walnut
Creek.
I also wanted to add because I see a lot of neighbors
concerning about the noise.
I live in a gated community where a majority of my neighbors
Indians, and if you guys know Indians they have really good celebrations of
their weddings and majority of the time I'm talking about past nine o'clock
there's a lot of music and sometimes it's frustrating but then we just learn
to enjoy it. It's okay it's not a big deal so again I understand that there's
concern about the noise but keep in mind this is during the day. If I could
tolerate it during the night I'm hoping that you guys can tolerate a little bit
And hopefully, we might find another location eventually.
So this might be just temporarily.
Thank you so much.
We have four more speakers.
It's Omar Neko-Bisan Abusharar, Niseline Montarvasi.
Montarvasi, okay, and Shamin, Johnny?
No?
Okay, Omar?
Yes, hi, good evening.
Good evening, Madam Chairperson, Commissioners.
Thank you for the opportunity.
and I would also like to thank the neighbors of the Judea
Academy and the Islamic Center there.
I also attend on Fridays.
I do go to the Islamic Center on Buena Vista.
Traffic is a concern, a big concern.
Parking is even worse, as we have heard.
No one's denying that.
I suggest or recommend that the leadership at the mosque
and the neighborhood, people of the neighborhood,
we come together and come to a reasonable solution
with the issues on Fridays for the Friday prayers that time.
But I don't think that that, well,
everyone say that that really does not affect,
The school does not affect that.
And I don't think that they have to take out
those parking spots.
I mean, for the egress and egress of the traffic for El
Judy.
They can just operate that with cones during the school days
and during the school operation hours.
I don't think that they have to permanently take out
all the parking spots.
And I really also ask the city to maybe increase
enforcement, people who park illegally on Fridays and road
zones and all that, those people need to be sighted.
And those people who block driveways or park
in other people's properties, they need to be towed away.
It's going to happen a few times,
and then they'll get the hint.
So thank you very much.
I do recommend, I do would like for you to reopen,
have the school reopened as soon as possible
while we work through these challenges.
Thank you very much, and thank you all for coming.
Thank you.
Shamine?
Oh, I'm sorry.
Hello all, my name is Shamine Ghani,
and I'm here to advocate for LGBT school.
My husband is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon,
and I gave up my career as a physician assistant
to focus on raising our four children.
About four months ago, I moved from Texas to California
because my twins were accepted into Berkeley and Zaytona
College in the Bay Area.
My oldest son graduated from Rice University,
the number one school in Texas known
as the Harvard of the South.
I mentioned this to emphasize how dedicated I
am to my children's education.
I chose to live in Walnut Creek because of its welcoming,
open-minded community, excellent school,
and especially because of LGBT schools' reputation.
This school truly meets the needs of children
and has highly active parents involvement.
What I find most remarkable is that the faculty really
pays close attention to the students.
Besides providing excellent academic instruction,
the school emphasizes developing children
with strong moral and ethical values.
The children are very well-behaved,
exhibiting great mental stability
thanks to the consistent presence of parents
and the school's leadership and philosophy.
When issue arise with student,
the school administration and parents work together
quickly and closely to resolve them.
Overall, I'm fully confident in LGBT school
and believe it will be the valuable addition
to our community.
As we all know that a community's reputation
reflects the strength of a school.
I am certain LGBT will be among the top school
fostering student who excel academically,
morally and ethnically in Walnut Creek.
In light of this, I respectfully request
that the Planning Committee grant
duty school the permit necessary to continue its excellent work. Thank you so much for giving me
this opportunity to speak. Thank you. Nisaleen? Hi, thank you everybody for being here. I'm here
as a Walnut Creek resident and also as a member of the local Muslim community. I just want everybody
to take two seconds because I don't have that much time to look around. What we have gathered here
is really something special. It's not something that you're going to get to find very often. So
Honestly, thank you. I have four kids at home. They're going crazy. I probably need to leave soon. So thank you
Um, but I'm gonna dress first their concerns as a Walnut Creek resident. I get it. I live on a street with
Walnut acres go jaguars
If there are any jaguars out there, so I understand it's really frustrating
We have parking issues. I live next to st. Matthew's. They're a wonderful church and they have a lot of events
So I understand about the noise.
I really do.
And I completely relate.
But I think we have to think as residents about what
we want our city to be about.
And El Judy just has the potential
to be a lot for Walnut Creek and for the local community
and Muslim community.
Like there is nothing, nothing compares
to being taught your own religious and cultural
traditions with honor and the respect and the thought
that they put into it, and the type of citizen that creates.
So I think we need to keep that in mind.
There are definitely, with anything, with any project,
there are going to be cons.
There are so many more pros.
And we're all problem solvers in here.
I had a trailer parked in front of my street
for like two weeks during Thanksgiving.
I'm going to give them one week.
And then after that, I called the police.
And guess what?
It was gone in a week.
So let's use our resources, call,
get those cars that need to be towed away, towed away,
and they're going to learn really quickly.
So anyway, thank you so much, have a good night.
And the last card I had is Bisson, Abu Shahra.
Hi, good evening.
I used to live on Cleveland in the middle
between Pleasant Hill Middle School
and Sequoia Elementary and Sequoia Middle School.
If you're familiar with that street, it can get really bad
because we're in the middle, our street was in the middle
of three different schools.
At the times of, and my kids went to Sequoia Elementary
in middle, when you guys, if you wake up in the morning,
it's traffic, very bad.
So it's understandable.
I lived there, my kids went to the school,
so we had a little bit of grace,
understanding that the parents are picking up their kids
and dropping them off.
It's only like a short time, half an hour,
maybe 45 minutes, we can survive it.
I feel like parking, living around schools
is tough for everybody, so it is understandable,
but at the same time, it's not that bad.
Like, it's not an all-day kind of thing.
The other thing, I lived in this community for a while,
about five years, six years,
and my kids used to go to the schools,
but they got into an age where I really needed them
to go to a school that shared their values,
and I have three little girls.
And that wasn't available before LGBT opened.
So we actually had to move.
We moved to Sacramento about an hour and a half away from here.
We drove with our four kids here at this time
to support El Judy, because our kids still have friends here.
We come here a lot.
We have a lot of friends that, because we
used to go to the Friday nights at the mosque.
And I feel like we can come over,
like we can solve the parking problem, but not close the school.
Because this has solved a problem for a lot of the people
that live in this community.
And I hope that not everybody has to move away
in order to find a solution.
And in Sacramento, there's a lot of temples that, for Indians,
that they're very, as mentioned before,
they're very loud, they're full of people and full of life.
And it's not all the time.
It's a short period of time.
Thank you so much.
Was that the last speaker?
Yes, that's all the cards I have.
OK, beautiful.
I want to thank everyone for speaking.
And so I'm going to close the public comment.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
You have- Thank you.
You would you like to come up and say a few words?
You had the opportunity, do not feel pressured.
I'll make it short,
because I know we're all waiting for this
to come to a conclusion.
I just wanna say the parking reduction
that's going from 53 to 33.
Keep in mind the reason that's happening
is for the safety of both the facility there,
but for the entire community.
It's happening because with this reduction,
we will be following the fire codes better.
And there will be an easier traffic flow.
So even patrons of the mosque or of the school,
if there's no parking spots there, they can't park there.
And I'm all for people getting towed.
I wouldn't want that in my neighborhood either.
So that's going to, I think in my opinion,
encourage people to use the shared agreement.
It's an eight minute walk and point three miles
from the mosque to the temple.
So, I mean, I parked tonight like three blocks down
to get to here.
So it's the Bay Area, it's in our urban area.
There's gonna be parking issues.
But again, I want to extend my full transparency contact
information for the school if we were to continue there,
that we are open to mitigating everything.
We understand and we are here for you.
Thank you.
Before you sit down, yes, I have a question for the applicant,
but, OK, beautiful.
Commissioner Clark.
Again, thanks to everybody for their great comments.
But my question for you is, obviously,
this hearing brought out concerns from the neighborhood
and you initially described a process early on
where you worked to get to know the neighborhood.
Were you aware that these concerns were developing?
Did you have a mechanism for learning about the concern?
So we, in that flyer that we sent out,
we went door to door with our students to every neighbor.
And I wish I knew about the complaints.
I never received the letters, emails.
Our contact information was there.
All we received was a few thank you letters.
So again, just from a professional standpoint,
if we get a complaint as a nonprofit,
we are here to meet with you, to work it out.
I was talking to someone else about something.
And they gave me an example about how
they had a basketball court at their facility.
And they were shooting hoops until 10 PM.
And the neighbor wasn't happy with that
because they wanted to enjoy their evenings out
in their backyard.
So what they did is they went over to them, and they said,
hey, let's come to an agreement where at this,
you know, what works for you?
You want us out of here by 9.30 or 9 o'clock, that works fine.
So I have confidence in my team and the school
and the parents that they will address anything and everything.
So it sounds like you hadn't heard until this event.
No, no, and I wish we did.
There's a picture of the rocket that went into the yard.
That was a science experiment, like Ms. Samir said.
The kids are to the STEM level, but we moved that to the park.
And we apologize for that.
I wonder if you'd be open to thinking about the idea of maybe having one of your leadership
team act as a liaison so that there's a name that—
Yes, kind of like an HOA.
Yes.
You know, that they have a—
Yes.
And our cell phone number, personal phone number was given on that flyer, and I wouldn't
be more than happy to do that again.
Great.
Thank you for that.
You're welcome.
Any other questions for the applicant?
My question is, I remember you mentioning in your presentation
that you had spoken to the pastor at the Contra Costa
Gospel Church.
Yes.
Could there be any parking arrangement there?
Because they're right across the street.
Right.
I think for Friday prayer, that might be something.
But for us, and we can bring up, I
can refer to the traffic engineer who
worked on the study.
We don't, in the event of a spillover,
I feel like the area down the street,
who I've spoken to them, I've worked with them,
is what works for us now.
I feel like the pastor Chang,
he's open to us sometimes going over there
and playing basketball,
but they didn't have a good experience a couple years back,
which is something you might have alluded to.
And for us, from our traffic study,
we don't have more than at any point 12 cars there.
Because some of the teachers are the parents.
Some of the admin have three kids at the school.
So I don't foresee, even with growth,
I feel like we could still be able to accommodate.
And if there was ever a problem, like I said,
we're here to mitigate anything, any time.
traffic report so there was a parking study and there's a technical
memorandum, there's the TDM plan that came very very last-minute but that's on
a traffic report you're just talking about the parking demand study sorry
okay because that did not that did not study level of service or trip counts
correct you pointed to someone who's your traffic yeah so we have a
presentation it my only question to you is it did not it's it wasn't a level of
service you weren't doing traffic counts during peak hours it was just a parking
study right yes that's correct question of a process is my understanding that
they're exempt from requiring parking exactly they are because of the law but
when she mentioned traffic report, I was like, oh, maybe I missed it.
Sorry. This whole process is very new to me.
So parking study traffic, it's sorry. Yeah, that's my offer a clarification on that.
So the the AB 2097, it does add the outset,
prevents the city from requiring parking if the project was a half mile apart.
In our case, the city's code requires the team plan or the analysis.
because there is a
Finding that the city can make but it has to be made based on a substantial evidence or
preponderance of the evidence that there is a
negative impact on that and so you know in this instance
I mean based on what's provided in the staff report the conclusion is that there is no such findings being made
if you know, but the city the Commission does have the ability to
request more studies or more to look further into those issues that are in
the in the municipal code so I just want to make that clear to you. Any more
questions for the applicant? Seeing none, thank you. I'm gonna close the public
comment and so in the same way I ask that in the same way that we all sat
here listening intently I ask that we be respectful in this room and not
interrupt and not stand up and to allow us to discuss because we're all good neighbors here.
I'd like to bring it back to the commission for just comments, thoughts, discussion.
I guess I'll open. So I did want to say thank you all who are here for coming out to express your
perspectives on the All-Judy Academy. It has been very interesting to hear about the school and how
it serves not just Walnut Creek, but also families from much farther out and to hear about the
benefits that this school in particular provides to the students, the children that go there.
And as someone who is, who moved to Walnut Creek a few years ago, I recall being a new resident of
the city. One of the things I like about Walnut Creek is how welcoming the neighbors are,
especially since I also live near this area. I'm very familiar with the traffic on Parkside,
as people go to Buena Vista and I figured a lot of the traffic that I encountered was because
people going to Buena Vista, parents dropping off their kids at Buena Vista,
but I also have a lot of, I also see a lot of kids on my way to work who are walking to WCI,
Walnut Creek Intermediate, or they are walking across Main Street from the apartments on the
on the other side of the bar tracks to Buena Vista.
So there is a lot of activity from parents
taking their kids to school,
parents who are dropping their kids off to school.
So I get it, and I figured that out
as I lived longer than neighborhood.
And for me, it became a part of my life.
So it's something that in some ways
it can definitely be a drawback
because I'm trying to get to work
or coming home from work.
I have to pacify all the cars
that are parked by the sides of the streets.
But at the same time, it does create the character
that I like so much about this neighborhood.
And I think it has made my life fulfilling
and it sounds like it's made the lives
of a lot of people here in this community
fulfilling as well.
Any other?
Yes.
I guess my one concern is that if you had come to the city
at the conception of the school
instead of founding the school
and then being shut down and coming to us,
it would be entirely different project
and we probably have solved these people's issues
right there, okay, that's it.
Any other, yes.
I just wanted to also say thank you so much
to everyone who came out tonight
to share your perspectives
and it really is a beautiful thing
to be able to see the strength of this community,
the values of this community,
of people really coming together and valuing family
and valuing education so much.
And as I think about this project,
and there is some parking being taken away,
but it seems like the purpose of that
is not so much the expansion of the school
because the school changes just happened
within the interior of the building,
but it's more for the safety issues of the building overall.
as far as I can tell.
And if the activity of the children
is being moved away from where it was in that photo
that got passed around that was right against the fence,
instead it will be in between the buildings.
It sounds to me like that's an effort
to improve on the noise situation as well.
So I appreciate the improvements of safety,
the improvements of noise, and the efforts to really meet all of the requirements of
the city and the city permits to work together to make this all work.
So thank you.
And again, I want to thank everybody for their comments and their respect for each other
in this process.
I do notice there's some blurring of concerns relative to how the mosque operates and how
school operates. And I just want to confirm we're talking about the school today. And so other
issues may need to be addressed in other ways, but we're talking about the school today. So
thank you all. I second that thanks everybody for the school community, neighbors for coming out.
It's great to see everyone kind of sit in the same room and work out our issues. I really appreciate
and encourage continuing education in Walnut Creek of all stripes. I have concerns that what
we're maybe about to do is moving with limited knowledge of what we're about to do, and that is
more to the point of the sound issues. What I'm looking at in the reports say that the staff
believes that it won't be an issue. The neighbors say otherwise with 45 students as it is now.
I understand that the recess will be in the courtyard and not where it was before. It's
my understanding that the buffer, the wall, is not sufficient right now. And I guess where
Where I come down right now is I think if we were to commission a sound study, a traffic
study, get it done quickly, have staff expedite with the school to try to understand the basic
facts of what we're talking about, because everybody can say, well, it's not that bad
because we're staggering it.
And I understand that.
The school has done a lot to later starts.
I understand that the school is not the mosque.
I understand that the prayer service starts after Friday drop-off, but what I'd like to
see is an actual study done on a Friday, and I'd like to see what the noise issues would
be with 90 children.
I understand that we're ramping up enrollment, but when we get to the point of 90 children
at recess for 45 minutes, what does that sound like?
And if it sounds higher than what the city says are in the acceptable range, then how
How can we mitigate that?
Right?
It's not saying that there shouldn't be 90 kids there, it's saying that how loud are
they going to be, what is the impact to the neighborhood, and how can we all work together
to make sure that everyone's happy.
My inclination would be to approve it with the continuance subject to a noise and a traffic
study.
We would just continue it to a date certain.
Sure.
Right.
But with that in mind.
correct. Could that I see that as possibly being done in two different
ways so one would be to continue this on to a future meeting pending a noise
study but another way I'm wondering curious from staff if another way to do
it would be to include in the resolution itself a condition about meeting the
noise ordinance. And so if in the future they violate that then that would be
written into the resolution and they would be violating their conditions.
So that is a way to include that condition. You know sometimes the
Commission the Commission might think about the enforceability of such a
condition because sometimes different by project issues may if you wanted to
understand the noise impacts of a project typically that's done before you
approve it rather than conditioning it to be completed at a later time if you
approve the project and include a condition then the issue becomes more
enforceability and to you know if the study whether it's done or not is it up
to the city standards and is it going to exceed the levels that are in the ordinance?
So those issues, at times before the project, it can be easier to address and understand
as opposed to post-project, so that's another consideration.
I'm just thinking about if we don't have 90 kids yet, how will we study the sound of 90 kids?
Are we going to recruit some kids from somewhere else to come hang out in the school?
It would be through modeling.
Yeah, there's acoustical consultants that will do that.
The traffic consultants will do that.
I mean, that's how every environmental analysis
is done for a general plan, right?
It'll check the full max build out of a city.
What I would like to say here,
because there's so many parents in this room,
I do want to tell you that almost everyone on this side
of the room is a parent.
So I just want to make sure that that is very understood.
And two of us have children at the age of what LGBT serves.
And so I do want to make sure that when you're listening
to what we're discussing, we are discussing it
with the heart of a parent, and we hear you.
And being that we are also Walnut Creek residents,
I started off by saying that a big part of why we're here
is that we want to be good neighbors.
So I just want to make sure that we state
that as we're discussing things, folks, right?
For me personally, I'm very, very well aware of TDM
from just ordinance perspectives
and also utilization under CEQA,
which we're not talking about CEQA today.
I personally need more time to look at it
since I know that this was just submitted today.
So some of the, if we're keeping,
if we're keeping with this motion of being a good partner,
being a good neighbor,
which is something that all Judy wants to do
because they want to blend and mold into the neighborhood,
and that all of us here are supportive of education
of all kinds because we have the babies.
What I personally would like to see commensurate
with what Commissioner Moran was saying is
it would be good to understand what that looks like
for a future build out of 90 students
or whatever that is in order to curate
the perfect amount of students specific
to this 7,000 square foot site.
If I'm, pardon me, that's all four buildings.
All four buildings are 7,100 and five square feet.
The other item that I would like to understand
is also just, because I am not personally a teacher,
I don't know how that works,
it'd be interesting to also understand operations
of how 90 students would flow and grow and build
based on what the business plan is about Judy,
which seems very impressive to me.
I think that's kind of where you were going along,
but not requesting studies that would be in violation
with the assembly bill because that's not what we're asking.
It's more just more information about what can be studied
to help support the proposed future operations
and plan of this school so that it fits in
and blends in beautifully with the neighborhood.
Am I saying that correctly?
For me, it's sound and traffic.
I understand- Sound and traffic.
That parking is exempt.
But people coming down Buena Vista,
how many buildings are gonna be built next to BART
and they're coming to and fro?
or the people coming to 680,
is the Baptist Church gonna grow?
Way to Vista gonna grow?
What I like to see is the hard data
from sound and traffic analysis
rather than we think or it's predicted, right?
Okay.
So for the sound, I think what you're saying
is relevant, the business plan for the school,
because it does matter are all 90 students
outside at the same time or what's the flow of that
is gonna be relevant to noise as well.
Yes, exactly.
What do the other commissioners thoughts, comments?
One thought I had was because we received
this transportation demand management plan,
would it be fine to take maybe,
I don't know how much we would get out of reading it,
15 minutes and then coming back to it?
And that's why what I think we're leading towards
is a continuance to a date certain.
So that way we're providing certainty for a next.
Oh, oh, oh, Chip is giving me that.
Because that kind of provides that, here we go.
There's a time we're all going to come back here together.
It hasn't popped out of our minds.
It's fresh.
What do you, what do you thought?
I would offer if there is, if there is a continuance
and the Planning Commission reaches consensus
on certain items and one of them is,
or two of them are studies from an SME it would be difficult to put a date
certain in there because we're not sure how long these things are going to take.
Oh how long the acoustical engineer.
I mean if we picked up you know say March 12th I we I don't that we...
Can't you write a staff report in one week? Sorry I just figured para I figured
parametrics would go ahead and considering that they did the TDM.
The consultants would have to get under contract, do the work, produce a report, be reviewed.
So then, so then at that point,
then maybe it would be as soon as the applicant
can complete this and we can all.
It'd be continued.
To be continued.
I wouldn't mind some language that says the phrase
expedited, you know, for what it's worth,
what, you know, whether it be on the staff level
or also the school level.
I know that you can't set a date because then
there's so many things out of our control.
Yeah.
But I'd like to give at least the,
everyone the feeling that we're not taking
the can necessarily on the code.
We just need to know what we're talking about specifically.
Yeah.
Question, it's, I'm assuming the school
is not in session active right now, it's closed.
Yes, we are not at the Walnut Creek site,
so how would these studies be done?
My next question, thank you for that.
When do you, if our decision's not tonight,
When would you hope to start classes again at the site?
After the break.
Basically, first of all.
In January, in the new year.
Yeah.
We approve tonight.
If we approve tonight, yes.
Yeah.
And the other thing is, because this
came as a collaborative effort between families
with kids who had situations and issues that were dire,
we have lost a lot.
And as a nonprofit, obviously, we
don't make any profit off of this school.
It's difficult to shut down and then come back.
So I was telling Pastor Chang that I don't,
I mean, we would probably restart with 15 students again.
Parents need stability.
And we need your help.
We don't want to close it down long term.
And it's been so good in the short time
because parents who are also working as teachers
have poured their hearts and soul into this.
And to tell these kids here that it's over for good,
I just think that's really heartbreaking.
And I really want to appeal to the neighbors,
if you can give us a chance to come back with these changes
in the property.
I guarantee you there's not gonna be any complaints.
In the two years that we were there,
we didn't get any citations from the city.
We didn't get any noise complaints coming from the city.
We didn't get any letters or emails from the parents,
from the neighbors telling us we have a problem.
A lot of what's going on is from Friday prayer.
In our business plan, like you said,
every event from parent-teacher conferences,
we're happy to do them on Zoom.
We don't come there in the evenings.
We don't want to overuse the space.
And we completely understand that as working professionals
in the Bay Area.
We are not here to overburden anybody.
But to say, you know, it's over for these kids, I mean,
I would be in tears.
So I'm asking you guys to reconsider, please.
Yeah, so in terms of a traffic study,
I just don't really see the need for that.
I don't see a scenario where we would say
there's a certain number of cars on Buena Vista Avenue
and therefore this school can't open.
This is a very small number relative to
like one of the public comments that was about
the public school Buena Vista Elementary
and how much it increased by
is much more than the entire size of this school.
So if traffic is increased on that street,
it may not even be,
I don't think we can attribute it all
to this specific school in the first place.
So I actually don't agree with the idea of a traffic study.
I'm sorry, it's no.
So I appreciate the thoughts
that of all of my fellow commissioners
and the things that we are considering
as we look at what to do next.
I think myself as I've been listening to these comments,
I've realized I needed to ground myself
and what we're being asked to consider today,
which is the conditional use permit
and the findings that are in it.
So the findings that we're being asked to make are
that if we take action on this conditional use permit,
the use including any conditions imposed
is consistent with the general plan,
any applicable specific plan and this chapter.
The second finding would be that the proposed use
including any conditions imposed will not be detrimental
to the public health, safety or welfare.
And the third finding would be any findings required
by the land use regulations for the zoning district
within which the property is subject to the use is located.
So as an accountant, I do love numbers.
I love making decisions based on numbers
and I definitely can feel uncomfortable
when I don't have the hard data to work with,
but I'm also cognizant of what the task is at hand.
I think that because we are considering
the city of Walnut Creek. And I
think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
I think that's a very good point.
at 2449 Buena Vista Avenue along the creek as amended
Commissioner quark. Yes, mr. Cowd. Yes, mr. Moran. No, mr. Strongman. No, mr. Klopp. Yes
Vice chair nighting
There wasn't any discussion I I'm sorry, can we go back to I?
like your idea better about
having a condition
to
the approval
So I think we could I'm sorry. Can you can you go back to go back to discussion? I
I
Don't want to vote on it unless we have some condition in there about some thought process
Because I I agree that I want to be able to allow the kids to go to school as a parent
It's incredibly difficult to not know where your kid is going to end up on January 2nd.
So for the motion currently, if you do not want to vote on the motion, you can vote no.
And because right now we have six votes and it's two noes and three yeses.
So if you do not vote yes, the motion will not pass, and we'll go back to discussion.
the motion's already been made and seconded and we're voting and so we should complete this motion.
If you do not want to vote yes on the motion you can vote no. We need the motion too fast.
Is the thought process, can I just ask a clarifying question on what's included in in our existing
resolution. I think to convention our quarks point we are stating that this
needs to meet all existing ordinances right so the noise ordinance is one that
is already is it already covered yeah it would be done so I don't know that we
need to add it is what I'm saying if it's already covered as a condition and
And this is a conditional use permit, so therefore if they don't,
if they no longer meet the condition, then we would come back.
Right?
There is no condition in there to require a noise study.
I mean.
Not the noise study, to meet the noise ordinance for the neighborhood
that they're in, which was brought up during one of the presentations earlier.
It's anticipated.
In his presentation.
It is included in there?
It is not.
The noise study is not.
but the compliance with the noise ordinance is contemplated.
It's implied.
Yes, that's what I'm saying, thank you.
It's not a specific, there's no condition
that says you must comply with noise ordinance,
but the ordinance applies regardless because it is law.
So it's not called out, but it's implied.
So you have, it's inferred.
It's law, so apply, and they have apply with it.
Okay.
So if I don't know, it's a no, and if I vote, right,
What I heard you say is if you vote no, it's equal.
So we go back to square one, right?
Correct.
Correct.
Yeah.
But as long as you have an ordinance that is incorporated essentially by reference because
they have to oblige by it, right?
So how do you enforce that?
It's difficult.
the code enforcement and there's also the noise levels that, the noise data
that you saw, the rules came from the general plan is policy. It's not code. We
do have a code, a noise ordinance that's for construction, that type of thing.
But that's the intent anyway, live music, that kind of thing.
Got it.
Okay.
So because it's 848 and there's small children in here, the way I see it is that I don't
anticipate there being an issue because you have noticed, you have now mentioned that
you're a good neighbor.
I think that's a fair statement.
So yes.
10 days.
Before we take a quick break, as provided
in part four of article five of the Walnut Creek Zoning
Ordinance, any interested party may appeal the decision
to the Planning Commission within 10 calendar days
after the mailing of the decision
by filing a written appeal and the applicable appeal
fees with the city clerk's office.
And now, Secretary, we would like to take a quick break.
Five minutes?
Yes, thank you.
Thank you everyone we're going to start resuming the meeting.
Did we start the applicant has went ran to the restroom but I know they're locked out.
Okay, perfect.
Thank you so much to staff have a presentation.
Yes, thank you.
Good evening commissioners my name is Gerardo Victoria assistant planner with the community
development department. The project before you today is the song bed and
breakfast in conditional use permit y 25066 located at 1002 Hacienda Drive.
Before I get started as as well as my co-workers I do have some housekeeping
items as well that have been outlined in yellow in the updated draft resolution
and I also have a slide later on in the presentation to go over some other
housekeeping items. So some site context here, the property is located at 1002 Hacienda Drive
off of Homestead Avenue that's also surrounded by other residential uses. It is a 1500 square foot
single family residence. The general plan designation is single family medium and the
zoning is a residential 10. A bed and breakfast use is permitted with approval of a conditional
use permit. This item was brought before staff when neighbors contacted code
enforcement regarding an Airbnb operating without a permit. So code
enforcement in August of 2025 opened a code case, notified the applicant, the
applicant notified staff approximately 30 days later to file for the conditional
permit. The business plan is outlined in your agenda packet. The check-in times
are 3 p.m. The checkout times are 11 a.m. It's a three bed two and a half bath
with a full kitchen single-family home. One booking is allowed at a time which
means if one individual books one of the rooms the other two rooms cannot be
booked. Minimum two nights stay. Maximum seven days. Excuse me, my mouth is getting dry.
Check in with a custom code. The custom code expires at the end of your stay.
Breakfast foods are provided. Pets are allowed. Quiet hours are from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.
There is a noise monitor that will be installed inside the residence. No special events are
allowed on the property. The facility is entirely enclosed and soundproofed and
air-conditioned. There is one security camera that's been installed on the
exterior of the home by the garage and if guests do not abide by these
specific rules, guests will be evicted immediately. So as you can see here, this
is the site plan and the floor plan. So this is Hacienda right here and this is
driveway that leads up to the single family residence. The applicant is
providing five parking stalls for the bed and breakfast inn. Only three stalls
are required. As you can see here on the floor plan, it leads stairs up into the
front door. It's located here, which is located right here. You see this
elevation drawing and as you walk in, you walk into the living area. The full
kitchen is located here with the three bedrooms to the west and this is when
you drive up into the driveway this is what you see the garage right here and
then the living space up here. So these are the standard conditional use permit
findings for this project as outlined in the draft resolution. There are
additional bed and breakfast permit findings that need to be made so the
The facility needs to be located within 500 feet of an arterial or collector street.
This project does meet that standard.
There shall be no more than five guest rooms.
The applicant is providing three.
The maximum length of stay for any guest shall be no more than one week.
The maximum stay for this bed and breakfast is seven days.
The only meal shall be provided is breakfast.
Other meals may be served at special events.
Once again, no special events are allowed at this bed and breakfast and breakfast foods
are provided.
Signage shall only identify rather than advertise.
No signage is proposed as part of this project.
No bed and breakfast inn shall be located on a lot closer than 500 feet from any other
lot containing a bed and breakfast inn.
The closest bed and breakfast inn to this potential bed and breakfast inn is located
2,000 feet south on Oak Knoll Loop. So they're meeting that standard. On-site
required parking that is not located within the garage or on the paved
driveway. The applicant is providing five stalls where three are required.
There's no exterior changes proposed for this project. The Planning Commission may
allow special events at this facility. Again, no special events are allowed and
finding J is not applicable to this project. So staff anticipates using the
existing facilities CEQA recommendation section 15.301 that allows for the
operation repair maintenance permitting of existing structures and that the
current primary residents will operate as a bed and breakfast rental. So these
are the additional corrections to the existing draft resolution which on page
to the CEQL finding the deletion of the last sentence mentioning the ADU. There is not
an ADU on this property so I apologize for leaving that in. The project is a primary
residence. It's the existing single family home that I went over on the site plan. Page
6, condition 7, delete condition 7 as it is not applicable. So staff recommends to move
to adopt a CEQL determination and approve the conditional use permit based on the findings
outlined in the draft resolution to allow a short term rental at 1002 Hacienda Drive.
I'm available for questions. The applicant and the homeowner, Jennifer Song, is also available
and here, and she has a presentation for you. Thank you. Are there any questions for staff?
Early tonight in the first hearing, we created 74 units to satisfy our arena requirement
for the city. We now seem to be taking one unit down. Do we need to go add another house or
condo somewhere else to maintain our housing stock because the state is really coming down on us for
not complying with the Rina numbers. The house is still a single family residence. It has a
conditional use permit that they can use it as a bed and breakfast but it remains a single family
residents so that does count for Arena so we're not losing housing stock
correct then it's a drop in the bucket okay one more question is the Oak Knoll
property have a CPU I see CUP excuse me yes they do so there's only three
approved conditional use permits for bed and breakfast ends in Walnut Creek I
reached out to the police department sorry I don't mean I reached out to the
Police Department. And I spoke to Lieutenant Drew Olson, who
advised at those three bed and breakfast ends, there hasn't
never been a call for service.
Just to follow up on that, for those three, does the owner
reside at the property? Yes. They are hosted. Yes. Okay.
Thank you. So just so I'm sure I'm clear, there's, there's
three CUPs in all of Long Creek for bed and breakfast designation, but as we understand
a bed and breakfast designation is really like an Airbnb, it's a short term rental,
right?
It just has different nomenclature.
That seems really low.
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
I think that's another conversation, but I was quite shocked and just wanted to clarify
that.
Okay.
Just so I can follow up on that.
We do get applications for bed and breakfast, that's what the zoning ordinance says, but
we call them short-term rentals, we call them Airbnb's, they're the same thing.
We do get these applications, but a lot of them can't meet the finding of being within
500 feet of a collector or arterial street.
That is a finding that must be made.
And they are within 500 feet of a collector street, which is Walnut Avenue or Boulevard.
Yeah, thank you.
But our ordinance does not say that it
has to be hosted in the definition.
Because traditionally, like the original, I think,
definition of bed and breakfast when I knew them way back when
was like the host lived there, right?
Correct.
That's what I tend to think of when
I think of bed and breakfast versus Airbnb
short-term rental.
In my mind, those are different things.
I will note, and the applicant will get into this, too, she lives 15 minutes away.
She will be available 24-7 for any issues, concerns for the bed and breakfast.
Any more questions?
Within the city right now, are there any penalties for operating a short-term rental Airbnb without
a permit?
So right now we use one of our consultants, HDL, to try to get these permitted, try to
get them under control.
We know they're out there.
We don't have the staffing to go out to every single one.
That's why we've hired a consultant to help us with that.
Code enforcement, when they first go out, whether it's making contact for an unpermitted
Airbnb or a red tag for a building permit, they don't like to cite right away.
like to give an applicant enough time to come in to file for permits.
And that's what's, we're being consistent with this one as well.
Okay. And so then in the situation where the owner has already been noticed for these infractions
and been told to cease and they continue, are there then penalties at that point?
There could be, yes.
For this instance, the applicant was notified in August and she filed
for her permit application in September.
And when was the last time someone stayed there?
When the applicant filed, there has been no stays,
and she can follow up with that also.
Okay. That doesn't mean there hasn't been visitors.
There's, you know, the applicant is also having work done
in the rear of the property that doesn't need permits.
She's replacing a patio that's at grade.
It doesn't trigger a permit.
so the visitors are the workers? When I went out to I went out to the site twice and the second
time that I went out there there was a truck leaving full of workers so yes. Do you know if
the applicant has told you that they've taken the listing down from Airbnb since the violation or
the citation? She can answer that when she comes. Okay any other questions? Thank you. The project
Thank you.
Go ahead.
Hi, commissioners.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for taking my case today.
Thank you, Gerardo, for preparing that presentation earlier.
Thank you, neighbors, for staying so long.
And hearing me out, I think what we don't see is two things that I'm up here to speak
about is why we're doing a short-term rental and how we plan to alleviate a lot of your
concerns today.
And so I like to just kick it off since it's already a little late.
I wanted to begin with why we purchased this home.
I currently live in Oakland.
I have a toddler at home.
If I may share a quick story.
We're driving home from Costco.
I decided to park in front of my home, leave the car on, and just finish wheels on the
bus, singing along.
And then I hear some person had a tool in their hand and pushed the passenger window.
Looked inside the car for a purse, a backpack, didn't find anything.
I see him step back and look at the back passenger window where my daughter was sitting.
And that's when I just immediately turned the car to drive and drove away.
Sorry, pregnancy hormones, I think.
So that was my turning point of, I
think we need to find a new neighborhood to live in.
Because as a parent, safety is my biggest concern.
I want to keep my child and now children safe.
And we're still in Oakland.
We're still in that same house.
My husband couldn't be here today because he's traveling,
but I'm checking at night that my door is locked
and that we're safe.
So when we did our home search, we
landed on this beautiful neighborhood
in Wellman Creek.
It checked off all the boxes.
It's highly rated school districts.
We're only 1.6 miles away from the elementary school.
We love that it's walkable to downtown,
as well as a walking trail in our backyard.
So you get the suburbia feel, but also the closeness
to a coffee shop and restaurants that we can walk to
and don't have to fully rely on our car.
And the kind of nice thing about this house
was that it was a little bit older in a condition
where we can plan out how we wanted the house to look,
and we can personalize the floor plan.
So we did a gut remodel to the house.
So what did we do to improve the house?
Gerardo mentioned it a little bit before,
but the house was sloping.
So when you walked in, it was not straight.
You would walk sideways.
We put in a lot of money into the foundation work.
We turned a one bedroom, one and a half bath into a three bedroom, two and a half bath
for our growing family.
We replaced the knob and tube wiring, which is a fire hazard.
We took out the old plumbing, we landscaped the front yard, and then we're also doing
the backyard right now, as was mentioned.
So what we're trying to do is just really make it into our home and into a place that
we can live in.
But life happens.
wanted to move in and unfortunately my father-in-law's dementia worsened so
they moved here they did the reverse commute from Texas all the way to
California they lived in a small tiny little town into Oakland so it's a
little bit of a shock but they both of their children live here and their only
only granddaughter lives here too.
So as they're aging, we felt that it was necessary for them
to come out here.
And the additional plus was we found a rental for them
one block away from where we live in Oakland.
So it is just providing us the multi-generational support
that we have, and they find a lot of joy
in having their granddaughter visit them
throughout the week.
And if I may share just another story about why I think
a neighborhood, and a community is so important,
is that he takes our dog, 100 pound, fluffy whites,
great Pyrenees on a walk.
And for whatever reason that day,
maybe she led him down an unfamiliar street or whatnot.
And she saw a bird and barked and pulled on the leash,
and it pulled him down.
And he fell on the street, broke his nose,
had stitches all around his eye, and a neighbor
called the ambulance to pick him up,
to take him to the nearest hospital.
And that neighbor took our dog back to our place
so that the dog would be taken care of while he
went into the hospital.
And we were close enough by that we could visit him
and spend the hours needed to make sure that he was OK.
So that's just a long story short of,
we would have moved yesterday if we could.
And yes, we could leave him in Oakland.
And we could be in Walnut Creek.
But then we'll just have to go back and forth in between.
And we just felt like the proximity
of being walking distance is just
slightly different than being driving distance away.
And so I'm not trying to be here as a business person
to tell you that I'm going to invest all this money
into this property and try to get a return.
What we're really trying to do is, in the meantime,
until we're ready to move in, figure out a middle ground.
And the reason why we decided to do a short-term rental
versus a long-term rental is mainly
because we can actually screen a lot of the guests
that come through.
They're only here for a short amount of time.
I'm there weekly, if not more, making sure the place is clean,
making sure it's up-kept.
We found a plumbing issue.
We always find issues.
It's just the home ownership kind of thing.
And it's also like if we did a long-term tenant
And when we're ready to move in, we would have to evict them and probably pay thousands
of dollars just to kick them out.
And so it's just, I'm hoping that this is a short-term alleviation until we can solve
the problem of long-term care, figuring out what the government insurance policies are,
what facilities are close by, determining what their waiting list is, and then come
together.
And so I think something is like a reality is we are not making money on this property
as an investment.
If I was buying this as a investment property,
this would not be a very good investment
because we are losing money every month.
But it is something where we're OK paying the two mortgages
and paying that upkeep because we
want to live here for the benefits
that I mentioned earlier.
And y'all live in Walnut Creek and represent Walnut Creek,
so you already know.
But I just feel like giving us a little bit of breathing space
in order for us to move in when we can
is what at the end of the day I'm asking for.
And I know I stumbled across all the permit things.
I didn't realize that a bed and breakfast
was considered an Airbnb because my eyes weren't.
Now I'm providing bed and breakfast to check out the box.
I'm providing some cereal.
But that is either bed and breakfast or hotel.
And I didn't feel like STR felt in that category.
So that was my mistake.
I now know better.
And when I applied, I also applied the wrong time.
So it also took a little bit longer.
But we did take it off when we got the sea and assist.
I got the business permit, which was pretty immediate,
actually, and thought that I could continue
with the business permit.
And I put the permit number on the listing
to show that it was a legitimate listing that I knew of.
And then when I found out that I also needed the CUP
in addition, then I took it off.
It's not online right now.
And so that's why we also decided
to take the opportunity to do the backyard while we didn't
have guests there.
But I want to just correct your own statement,
there were guests in between the time of when
we got the notice to when we took it offline.
So I do want to be transparent and forefront about that.
But there are, I know, a lot of neighbors
here with concerns.
And so there are just some areas that I
thought I would put out there to hopefully ease some of that.
Noise, I know, is a really big thing with short term rentals.
We, as Gerardo mentioned, have really strict policies.
We let our guests know they have to agree to them,
and they can be up to eviction if they don't follow our rules.
And then we also have a noise monitor inside the property
so that we can monitor that accordingly.
As I mentioned, we built this home for us.
This is also our home, so we don't want it to get damaged.
We want them to be good guests.
So we screen the people who are applying to stay there.
They have to have a good rating or they tell us
why they're visiting for us to accept it.
It's not automatically accepted like some other Airbnbs are.
And so we also have security cameras and smart locks
to ensure the safety of who is coming in and out
of our property and in the neighborhood.
And then in case of emergencies, the guests have our number
so they can contact us immediately.
Some of our neighbors also have our number
so that, in case there is anything, we can address that.
And we do live 15 minutes away.
So there's been times where I guess needed a pack and play.
And I drove over and provided them that,
or they couldn't get themselves in,
so gave them an extra set of keys.
So we are close by and can provide that support as needed.
And I just wanted to remind folks,
we're in Walnut Creek, and the people who come to Walnut Creek
typically aren't partying.
I think they'll probably go to San Francisco
instead of Walnut Creek.
So I wanted to just show some use cases
of actually people who've stayed with us.
As a lot of the times, family is out of state
and now their parents or their grandparents or family
are in Walnut Creek, Lafayette, Orinda, Danville
and they're presenting.
And then just other guests and...
Thank you.
Any questions for the applicant?
Hi, thank you so much for the presentation.
It was very informative and I enjoyed listening to the why we're doing this.
I wanted to get a sense of the time frame.
When did this listing first go up or when did you start opening the house to guests?
Yeah, our construction took a little bit longer than expected.
So it took like a year and a half.
And then we put it up in the summer probably around July-ish.
Yeah, maybe late July summertime.
So July 2025?
Yes, this year.
Okay, all right, thank you.
I never have been able to get into Oakland
within 15 minutes.
So I have a problem with your statement
that you could get here in 15 minutes.
Without traffic, you could at night.
Not if you're doing 65, only, you know.
So, that's my.
I live close to 580,
and so it's just hopping on 580 on the 24 across the tunnel.
Okay.
Yeah, I mean, there are times when it's 4 p.m., 6 p.m. on a weekday.
It will take me a long time. It'll take me an hour.
I've been late to an inspection because of traffic and an accident.
So, yes, it can take a little bit of time.
Thank you.
Commissioner Moran, I think you-
Thank you very much. Have you ever considered long-term rental?
We did. It's the fact where I'm just afraid
I can't ask them to leave when I'm ready to move in.
That's why I didn't have a long-term rental.
And typically in California, because it is tenant friendly,
I do have to do cash for keys.
So then I would also have to pay them $20,000 or something
to like exit my property so that I can then move in.
Oh, no, I'm sorry.
In examples where that wasn't the case,
even when the family moves in, that we used to have to pay.
Do you have other properties on Airbnb?
My property in Oakland right now has a unit.
Any more questions, have you ever received any complaints?
Not directly. I only found out through the attachments from the case.
In Oakland, did you have to get a CUP? No. Just a business license?
Any more questions for the applicant?
Okay. Thank you.
You can sit down. I'm sure you're tired. Any public
Comment please the your cards just one. Oh my god. Should we call it out by three? How many are there?
I see Monica d'agal kleseth Robert Anderson and Kimberly Johnson
Can we just can we just start with Monica? I know
You're going to do great.
You're going to kick us off.
You're going to kick us off.
Hi, commissioners.
Thank you for being here.
I'm Monica Diego-Claysath.
I'm a resident on Homestead 1021.
I've lived here for about 47 years.
I represent the neighborhood on a lot of I'm a next-door lead.
I do all kinds of stuff behind the scenes.
But I think that because we don't
have a ruling on bed and breakfast,
which is actually Airbnb is how this was proposed to all of us.
I almost feel like this was a bait and switch fast one,
and I do think,
I understand that this will be the precedent for the rest of the city,
because there isn't any grave ordinances like what we're proposing here.
I feel like this was slid in very quickly under the – yeah, we just weren't warned,
and the timing of this meeting, I would have had 80 more people residents that would have
showed up, but most of them are out of town.
I've spoken with probably 45 people on the phone today.
We feel very strongly about this.
We've already been through this once with another residence within the neighborhood
where we had wedding venues.
And I know that it says we're not going to do anything extra or, you know, wedding receptions,
et cetera.
I just think this needs a whole lot more study.
I know it's supposed to be simple, but we're diving into this.
There's been multiple incidents that the residents didn't know to get a police report about.
And I'm sure she doesn't know about that either.
I didn't know anything about it until I got called by lots of people and to mitigate what's
going on.
And it's just really fast and I wish that we would make a whole lot more considerations
because many rules have been broken already without knowledge or consideration.
Okay.
That's it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Robert Anderson.
Hello.
Robert Anderson I live sort of Kitty Corner to the subject property and I've had a lot
of issues with short term rentals because the people that are coming into the neighborhood
are strangers and they're not committed to the neighborhood at all.
We have a lot of people that know each other in the neighborhood.
We have lots of babies in strollers, lots of dog walking and so you get to know a lot
of the neighbors and it just really changes the entire feeling of safety of being in your
own neighborhood.
So we have people that do long term rentals that are 31 days or greater and we have no
problem with those because the owners live there, the owners are immediately available.
They don't have the 15 minutes to Oakland idea because I've never been able to do that either, but there's been a lot of
shall we say
Poorly
Described situations that are not accurate like like the driving to Oakland if you have a
on-site bed-and-breakfast person
It eliminates a whole lot of issues, and I don't know if you can
You know, you don't really have a problem getting the people to move out if you're moving in as a family apparently, so that's
And one of the issues that's not true
Thank you for listening. Thank you
Kimberly Johnson
So, you know, I just want to start by saying I feel for the homeowner
I can feel how emotional she is and you know, I hope her family gets to move to our neighborhood. We will welcome you
You know, it's a wonderful place to live. I have lived in Walnut Creek for 23 years. I've raised three kids here.
I have a junior, I cannot wait to be an empty nester.
And I just want to talk about a lot, we've heard about a lot of theoretical things that might happen,
but we've been living for six months with this short-term rental. I know that the property owner has says that she
ceased operations. I have sent links to the city that were active in November.
It was still active on Monday of this week. I could have rented her place for next week
So some of the things that are being said are just not being said in good faith
For sure the rentals have continued there have been
Let's just go ahead and list. I can look at my thing here
We've had trespassing
Neighbors cut through other people's backyards to go to the open space or renters trespass through other people's backyards to go to the open space
We've had noise. We've had so many events and parties
They've rented two groups of workers with commercial heavy equipment and vehicles who stay multiple nights and do like regional jobs
One of them damaged our tree
Another one of the their tenants damaged our mailbox trying to angle in we've had
So we've had damaged property
We've had people approach us in our driveway someone approached my teen in our driveway when they were alone
To ask them questions about this. I don't know what the neighborhood or something
We've had an uptick in crime already. We had a car stolen two doors down from the Airbnb last week first time so
You know it's not it's nothing against these neighbors. I again. I welcome them to come live in our neighborhood
It is super I have two neighbors house keys two different neighbors have my house keys
that's the kind of place it is but we have already had six months of issues and
Talk is one thing actions are another. Thank you
Hi everyone, I just want to say thank you for what you do
I'm very impressed by how closely you listen to everybody and how much you study before they present to you
I'm really taken by that
I have a unique perspective in that I grew up at 1025 Hosseun to drive and had as you can already tell an incredible childhood
It was incredibly idyllic. Everybody knows everybody. I think they've painted a really good picture of what this neighborhood is like
I went to college got married and we decided we wanted to raise kids
So we moved from, ironically, Oakland to Walnut Creek,
and we got to enjoy the incredible schools here.
And we've lived in a fine place, a mile away
from where I live now.
Well, I am actually moving home to the mothership.
I am buying the home on 1025 Hossein to drive again.
That is how great this neighborhood is.
And we want to go back to the safety, the dog walking,
the kid walking, and all of that stuff that you hear.
I have to say, one of my observations today,
And when I hear the kind of lingo that's going on about an Airbnb versus a bed and breakfast,
I teach speech and debate at Los Alamos High School.
I'm a teacher there and have been for 25 years, and if my speech and debate kids were here
right now, they would say, I smell a rat.
That sounds super shady.
I think they're using a loophole, and something is wrong here.
When they would debate each other, they would listen very carefully to what their peers
are saying and say, that's not accurate.
So something here just smells really, really off.
I also just want to say, at Las Lomas, I am on the very much older side of things, and
a lot of my colleagues have to live in cities farther away from Walnut Creek because they
can't find a place.
There are renters.
There are renters out there.
My colleagues, my young colleagues, would love to rent a house for a one-year lease,
a two-year lease.
And then after that one-year lease is up, they could sign a six-year lease, and they
would work it out if they had to finish it at just a six six months they would
work it out and go find someplace to rent my husband I rented around the bay
area for a very long time and when rent when the lease was up the lease was up
thank you thank you I'm Michael Robertson I live at 1031 West Holly
which is about 100 yards west of the house and that we're talking about I
live there for 17 years my wife's been there for 30 I had this fully prepared
speech even timed it out to give to you tonight but I'm not going to use it
because I was impressed for two hours listening to the Islam community talk about how they
are part of this community, how they live here, they work here, they grew up here. They
moved here to be part of this community and they wanted to work things out with the neighbors
of Wayne and Vista. None of that is true about Miss Song. She doesn't live here, she doesn't
work here, this is a business acquisition for her.
I looked onto LinkedIn and pulled what I believe to be her account because the name matches
exactly the person that lives in Oakland.
She went to San Jose State Business Administration Accounting.
She's a certified public accountant.
More importantly, since 2018, she's been a real estate investor.
She has short-term and long-term single-family home investments in California, Indiana, and
Texas.
She's also a limited partnership in 150-unit building and 182-unit multifamily home.
Basically, anything she says about being confused about permits, about posting, about doing
things the right way, it's not accurate.
It's not accurate.
So we certainly will not accept an un-hosted building
home in our area.
We don't know who's coming in.
She said herself it takes longer than 15 minutes.
So if somebody's throwing a party on a Friday night,
she's not reachable.
It won't happen.
So please turn down this permit.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good evening, thank you so much for your time.
I know it's getting late
And I will try not to repeat anything
that my friends and neighbors have said,
because they've said it very well.
My name is Carissa Harris-Addamsen.
I live at 1100 Homestead Avenue.
I walk my dogs by the 1002 Hacienda twice a day.
For the last six months, I've seen a variety of people
in the driveways enjoying parties sometimes,
the big construction trucks.
I've asked multiple times if they are the owner,
because I was just confused as to who lived there.
And it wasn't until more recently
that I realized what was going on
that this was actually an Airbnb.
We are a really close-knit community, as you've heard.
The idea of having neighbors' keys, our kids,
having multiple houses that they could go to if anything
happened, we all know each other.
We all really like each other.
We have block parties in the summertime every Wednesday, there's a get together.
It's not in the spirit of our neighborhood to have an Airbnb.
We do have long term rentals in the neighborhood.
There's even one bedroom long term rentals that she could move her parents into.
There are other solutions that would not have a negative impact on so many people in the
neighborhood.
I do not know what their general intention was, but I finally did meet her husband this
past week when I was walking my dog and I again said hey do you live here do you
own this place and he said no we don't live here but I am the owner and he told
me that the numbers just didn't work out because I said why don't you just do a
long-term rental there are other long-term rentals here and he said you
know the pen it just doesn't pencil out this is what we need to do we've had
these you know personal situation that is keeping them in Oakland and the
numbers didn't work out to do a long-term rental and I just don't think
that is a reasonable response to inconvenience the rest of the neighborhood and really change
the culture of our neighborhood. Thank you for your time. Hi, my name is Deborah Burston. I
live at 1012 Hacienda Drive and I used to come to this chamber as a reporter for the Contra Costa
Times and also representing Walnut Creek on the County Library Commission. But here I'm today as
as a long time resident. And I want to ask you guys, do you not remember what happened in
Orinda with the Airbnb? Okay. Hello? You know, parties, absentee owner, out of control, shootings,
deaths from a party. We don't need that on our street. We're already having transgressions,
robberies, things we never had before since this came on. And I don't know if you all are well
versus in tenant law, but I have a tenant,
a lawyer in the family who also owns properties
in San Francisco, and the tenant law states that
if you, if it's to move in a family member,
or you and your family, you are indeed allowed
to move out a tenant without penalty, okay?
It's in that.
And my thing.
So anyway, so this, these owners apparently have knowingly operated illegally,
no host on site, already started operating Airbnb, which is not a bed and breakfast
where the cheerful lady in the apron is serving you muffins and coffee in the morning.
This is a very different animal, and you should not confuse the two, please.
But they've been, so they've had no permits, no transient occupancy tax.
So I feel like granting them a permit would reward that noncompliance, okay?
And that's under precedent.
We should be setting and also not taking a house out of the need for housing.
They could have someone on a month to month lease.
Why not?
You know, that would solve their problem.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Last one.
Sorry, Jane West.
Good evening.
My name is Jane West.
I live at 1078 West Holly Drive.
I've lived there since 1984.
And it's great.
It's just great.
Thanks for being here this late.
I know what it's like working late.
I was an RN for 40 years.
So I remember those late shifts.
It's rough.
It's hard.
I echo many of the sediments that my neighbors have stated,
particularly Kimberly and Monica and Deborah,
about the issues with parties.
When someone has a party and it's out of control,
we all have busy lives because this has happened to me.
And so the party's out of control.
And you're always hoping, oh, in about 30 minutes,
it'll be quieter.
But that doesn't happen.
So it goes on and on.
Then an hour passes.
And finally you think, oh, I need to do something.
But by that time, you lost an hour of your life,
and you're irritated.
And who do you call?
You must have to call the police or something.
And then they have to call this lady.
And then it goes on, a whole evening.
I've had 4th of July's events ruined because of parties
that get out of control.
And then she indicates she screens the guest.
Get real.
I mean, screening.
What kind of screening can you do if someone wants
to rent for seven days?
And I echo also about the bed and breakfast.
I think that's a misnomer.
I personally experienced this.
My husband and I had a wonderful cabin up in Groveland
in a gated community called Prime Mountain Lake.
And people would call it heaven on earth.
It was wonderful, but then about 2014 Airbnb came in and suddenly you would walk around
and it changed completely and we sold the cabin after 17 years.
Thank you so much.
I'm going to close public comment, but I appreciate everyone who spoke, so now I'm going to bring
it back to the commission for any comments, questions, thoughts.
Oh, that's right. I keep forgetting to do that today. Sorry guys, it's late
Would you like to?
Speak again, if you want to reopen public. Sorry, I'm gonna reopen public comment. Would you like to speak again?
You have five minutes. I appreciate everybody's comments and I am open to a 30-day stay if that's what it means and I'm also
Open to a sunset clause too. So I think we're just trying to make something work in the meantime
I respect whatever decision you all make and we will take the appropriate next steps to make sure that that happens. Thank you
Thank you
Now we're gonna close public comment and now I'm gonna turn back to you
Any thoughts comments discussion points?
Commission Moran, I just have a quick question of I guess order procedure is can we make a condition to permit with conditions?
that make sense right like granted but there's some extra you know rules around
are you are you asking if the Planning Commission can correct can create new
conditions of rule yes yes okay that's all for now all right I have a couple of
thoughts on this conditional use permit so yeah I do I do after reading the the
staff report and the resolution and the additional materials, do share the
sentiment that this permit can be seen as rewarding the applicant. And so that's
one perspective to look at it and it does it does make me pause if if it makes
sense to to say like oh after six months of operating the Airbnb, would this be
And so the other thought I had to that was, well, is it more important to bring someone
into compliance with the applicable laws and regulations that govern what they're doing?
And so I'm in my mind weighing the benefits and the downsides of saying, you know, should
we approve this permit and risk seeing it as a reward, or is it better to put the framework
in place so that we can say have something to point to in the future that if there continue
to be violations of the permit, then we can say, look, we approved or we took action on
a conditional use permit. With these conditions, the applicant has decided to continue not
to abide by those conditions and we do have the ability to revoke or modify that conditional
use permit. So I think the benefit of establishing the legal framework or the legal regulatory
environment for the applicant would allow us to do a lot more to manage the environment
and to address the neighbor's concerns. Can I ask a question of staff in response to
that if we were to deny the permit then I'm just trying to picture what that
would mean would it mean that then this property could not be listed on
Airbnb at all it could not be a short-term rental but it could still be
as that was mentioned a longer term rental lease like a regular month-to-month
month or year-long lease? Correct, it could be a long-term rental. It would I
mean in theory she could continue to be to you know be on Airbnb illegally. We
don't have a whole lot of code enforcement ability to track them.
There's more than one in town, so we don't have the ability to
track all these down and you know bring them here. I gotta say that once once she
was contacted, she was very quick in bringing into compliance which is not
typical. Is that true though if it was still listed in the beginning of
November that it was in compliance? If it if let's just say that if every day
that the, that property was rented or used as a short-term rental or a bed and breakfast
as our code calls it, that's our code's issue.
That's not, that's because it's behind the times.
Would be an illegal activity, locally illegal activity.
So, you just said, and I want to clarify that I understood it, that we don't have an Airbnb
set of rules and an Airbnb, you know, yeah, Airbnb and a bed and breakfast set of rules.
They are one set of rules. Correct. If you want to do a short-term rental is what is, if we rewrote
our code to be up to date, it would be a short-term rental, not a bed and breakfast. That was a sign
of the times.
Okay.
Every – the CUPs that we do have in place for bed and breakfast all operate as a – as
a VRBO or an Airbnb or an un-hosted property.
And I do just want to say that I tend to be a person who believes the best of people,
so I – I'm making some assumptions that our petitioner may have worked in different
cities, environments, et cetera.
So I'm not ascribing negative motivation to her,
but I do think there's a lot of misperceptions
and a lot of miscommunication, clearly,
that's happened between the parties.
So I appreciate everybody speaking up about that.
Thank you.
And just so if I can just offer a thought on that comment.
The commission, the project before you,
the land use project, and so what you want to consider,
the findings that are in the resolution
whether the land use issues of the project you know you can you're able to
make those findings or not I think that's what I would offer to the
Commission about what you should consider. I want to go back to didn't
anyone have any discussion about the stay the duration and there was and the
only reason why I brought I brought that up is because that was something that
the applicant had mentioned and I'm trying to in one of the findings if I'm
not mistaken says seven I believe it's our ordinance that says if you're
operating as this bed-and-breakfast in you have a maximum of seven days so she
would not if she wants to operate if we approve a conditional use permit to
operate as a bed-and-breakfast then no one can stay longer than seven days is
my understanding and I just clarify something real quick so according to our
This is a request here tonight
or seven days, that's the max,
that's what she's asking for,
that's it.
So would she need a permit for a 30-day or 31-day Wednesday?
I'm sorry, I stand corrected.
Okay.
And the request here tonight is for the bed and breakfast?
Seven days, that's the max, that's what she's asking for.
That's it.
or 31 day whatever what was that category called? A short-term rental is
31 days or less. Would you need a different kind of permit for that or if she can just do that?
No, she can't just do that. That's a land use classification or a definition of the requirement
is seven days for this. Got it. Okay, sorry. So the land use classification that is proposed
before us today is bed and breakfast not short-term rental. We don't have a
short-term rental is more of a definition. The land use classification
is bed and breakfast and we've processed all short-term well bed and
breakfast as short-term rentals with a period of up to 31 days if they
want it and our city has only three and they're all hosted correct they're not
hosted oh my understanding was they were all hosted okay that's right
captain okay yep so my concern here is that if we approve this it is a new it's
new for the city that that would be our first unhosted if the comparison is to
what's been approved yes but under the bed and breakfast in findings that is
not a finding you don't have to host or unhost it correct it's not listed as a
finding that's required under the bed and breakfast findings it's not a
finding that you have to host or it can be either hosted or uncorrect it's not a
requirement that they have somebody living there. Question is it's where in
spite of tonight when will the city kind of coordinate these rules and regulations
and land use problems and update get us back into the 21st century please. The
time is caught up with our zoning code and there's several sections portions of
the code that need to be addressed and that's one of them. To answer the
question we will with the general plan update process which is underway we will
do a complete overhaul of the code as well. I had a question about I so it says
if the planning Commission determines that the proposed bed and breakfast is
an appropriate location for special events to occur additional conditions
related to hours operation number of guests additional parking so does the it
says that the host intends to not allow special events does that have to does
that have to be a finding that's included that no special does that have
be an additional condition that no special events are allowed. So you're
asking if the planning commission may allow special events correct? No it's
it's what I'm trying to figure out is do we have to determine whether special
events are allowed as part of this. You may allow special events so that's a
determination you can make but for this one in particular she is not having any
the city's planning conditions.
I don't know if you have any
special events therefore you
don't have to. Consider it. Okay,
condition or do we need to make a condition that she has no special right. It is in the conditions that special no special events are permitted on site under number 6.
So number three specifies hours.
So I see special events as capitalized and I am assuming there's a specific set of occurrences
that would constitute special events.
So for example, in the applicant's presentation, there was the mention of wedding or couples,
wedding couples or their guests that would stay at that rental.
And I thought, oh, maybe that's one of the reasons why there's parties being thrown after
the wedding.
And so our special events things like that, where is it quantified by a number of people on the property at any time, is it noise or if we say no special events, what does that look like?
In other words, how is that enforced? How would a neighbor say, aha, this is a special event. I should call someone.
So, I guess based on the, there is a special event permit set of regulations and so what
I'm told is that it's based on the occupancy of the place and so in this case it would
be exceeding the, with the occupants of the house.
So if there's a large group of crowds that's, you know, they're beyond the occupancy of
the home then that we can constitute as an occurrence.
A party.
All right, thank you.
A party.
I have a question I I heard there was discussion about commercial fleet type
vehicles being parked and there was some sort of occurrence about damage to a
tree or a mailbox did that get reported to them because you had mentioned no
nothing was ever reported to the police. So when I spoke to Lieutenant Olson, I
asked him specifically about the three other short-term rentals that have been
approved, no calls for service, and he had no issues or no comments for this
address as well. Are there any other, I had a thought, does the city of Walnut
Creek have it's interesting because when I see commercial fleet type vehicles it
usually has a certain type of parking permit because they're larger vehicles
that was just a thought I had but a bit of conjecture because I I wasn't there
any other comments thoughts motions so I think we need to kind of back up and
and realize what we're being asked to do here,
and that is to see whether it complies
with the municipal code, right?
SAF believes that it does.
I'll get to it in a second,
but there's a larger issue at stake.
We're not here to litigate that,
what the code says and what it shouldn't,
and that's unfortunate.
I asked my original question if there was a way
to condition the conditional use permit,
Because it might be worth thinking in terms of because it meets all of the criteria for
the code, and we are not lawyers and we're not sitting here writing the code again, we
should approve it with certain conditions that we might feel are appropriate based on
the specific circumstances.
And I don't have those exactly right, and maybe we can discuss that, but maybe there's
like a two strikes rule and it comes back for review.
Maybe there's a cap on the number of stays per month,
something like that.
Where I come down though is that the facts are the facts
and what the applicant has and what the staff says is
that it meets all the criteria and we can't really argue that.
It's 500 feet and all that other stuff.
And my sympathies are with the neighbors
because I understand, but our jobs right here are
to make a decision based on what's in front of us,
not what we believe is right.
Nope, sorry.
There's a larger question here, right,
and that is when the general plan gets redone,
how do we view short-term rentals in Walnut Creek
with a low housing supply?
Is it better served for investors rather
than owner occupants?
what does it do to the character of the neighborhood?
And I get all that.
What I'm trying to say though is that we here today probably aren't willing
to go against what the code says because it is what it is.
And our jobs are not to just rewrite the rules because we see fit.
That said, we can put parameters around what I think we might want to do in terms
of issuing a permit and I'm open to discussion about that.
So I will, so right now what I'm looking at to help us with this discussion is that there's
essentially 11 conditions that we're looking at because then 12, 13, 14 and it's supposed
to say 15, it says 11, is really more about indemnification, city fees, you know, abide
by Contra Costa County Fire Protection District. So is it to your point about
the timing? So if I'm not mistaken this CUP is only one year? Did I read that
correct? Condition number 10? So it's just a one-year permit? No the that is
they have to like establish the use. Oh okay okay. So so as of right now there
there is no timeline for the CUP. It is just, is that correct?
Yes, that is correct.
But they also, so it is interesting, but it does say if a guest creates a nuisance or
does not abide by the rules outlined in the business plan, and the business plan did talk
about no parties, no unregistered guests or visitors, no smoking anywhere, quiet time,
parking provided, no eating and drinking allowed in bedrooms.
If those rules are not abided by,
then at that point, condition number four comes into play.
The guests shall be evicted immediately,
and then number nine, but it's interesting.
So that just talks about eviction,
and then condition number nine says it will comply.
So are there any ramifications of not abiding
by the business plan?
There isn't, right, beyond just eviction?
So the, so if you read condition number four
under condition 10, or I shouldn't say that,
but the city does have,
I think that's a very different thing,
but the city has in the municipal code,
the process for modifying and revoking CUPs,
And that is when the city, on its own volition,
can call up a CUP where the applicant is not
complying with the conditions.
And you've seen this in bars, for example.
It's an AUP, but it's the same idea
that the city can do that.
And so that's the ramification for not
complying with the condition.
And then the number four specifically
calls out the obligations of the applicant
to not have the guests behave that way.
Can I just back up for a second here first though?
Because I feel like this is written
for the bed and breakfast category
of maximum stay of seven days,
which is what the applicant applied for.
But what I heard in the conversation here
between the applicant and the neighbors
was that she is okay with something
it was a minimum of 30 days.
So it sounds to me like there's more discussion
to be had here between the neighbors
about what exactly the right land use is
and that it might not be this.
So just to clarify that use is better breakfast.
So if you're a short term rental
and that you're not, you know, it's not a long term,
it's not being resided in by someone,
you come in, you want to do a short-term rental,
you are a bed and breakfast.
You have to comply with the rules of bed and breakfast.
So there's not a separate short-term rental use
where you could go beyond seven days, for example,
but seven day is the requirement.
So if you want to come in and operate legally,
that's the limitation.
So the only way to do a short-term rental
in the city of Walnut Creek currently
is to do a maximum of seven days.
You couldn't do like a 30 day.
That's right.
Short-term rental, because that doesn't exist.
Correct.
In our, okay.
So what, so the other options would be something that's not a short-term rental.
Like if someone just has a month-to-month lease, what is that?
Is that allowed in the City of Walnut Creek?
Well that's a residential purpose, right?
That's somebody living there, so it's a residential use basically, single family.
Okay, so if the applicant chose to do that, they would not need this.
and they would not need a different type of permit
to do that, that's already something
that they would be allowed to do.
That's like you're renting your house else to someone,
by your leases, by month, month to month.
Right, so if what actually works here for the applicant
is a regular month to month rental lease,
then we would not actually need to approve anything tonight.
Is that correct?
That's correct, yeah.
question or procedure at some point we have to say yes or no to this thing is
that correct tonight or good to this the decision is yes we have to make a
decision you can't you continue it like continue that you are more amazing that
commission could do that. All right. Were you gonna do a motion? You talked about sunset
the suggestion was a sunset I mean we that is a condition we could add on this
that it's only for a year or two years or something like that. It could be for yes it could be a
limited amount of time you know you could have something like you want to come back
after two years for review or sometimes we do this for commercial CUPs so that
could be that's what I thought number 10 was originally saying like it was for a
year and then I got confused super quick condition number seven says the
property shall remain the primary residence for the host for as long as
the bed and breakfast remains operational but she's not that's being
deleted or per the slide that's right that's right that's right any other
the motion. I move that the that we approve the condition use permit application number Y 25 dash 0 6 6. So that in breakfast in air B and B at 1, 0, 0, 2, has yet to drive. That's as modified by as modified. Yes, that's correct.
Okay. Is there more discussion? I moved to continue this to a future. So hold on, there's a motion,
the second. No, there's no second. There was no second. But I know the rules now, you can
have discussion before the second motion. So there's no second on the first motion,
so that motion dies. Is there a second motion that is being? I don't have a second motion,
but I have something to say, but I'll stop.
Okay, if there's no second motion,
the Commission can continue to deliver it.
I would like to maybe discuss some parameters
that we can put in for the conditional use permit.
I suggest two strikes rule
that once there are two violations
of the permit as written,
then it comes back for review by this body.
And I'd also like to make it sunset after a year.
And we can review how things are going after that.
And those are my two thoughts.
Question on that.
The strikes, who determines the strike?
And where do they report them to?
Well, I believe if a complaint gets
made to the municipal code enforcement or police
department, there has to be something in writing.
And there has to be some sort of investigation,
would imagine. I don't know exactly how it works in practice but I think there's
probably an easy way to do that where if a complaint gets made someone sees did
it incur did it not incur and it's goes from there. So what happens if there's no
strikes and then the the year is up does it do they have to come back to this
body or does it or it does become ministerial with staff? I thought would
be that it would just be ministerial and it would just renew. So how would this
help if the if the situation has changed over the course of this meeting to where
if the applicant actually wants to do a month-to-month lease why would we even
move forward with this? Well you'd have to ask her I mean I think she'd have to
stand up and invoke it like right now in chambers in order for this to for your idea to go
through? Am I wrong? So that that's why my idea was to was a
continuance to let this move on to a future meeting to give time for these
discussions to take place. So also to clarify, the CUP doesn't prevent them
from doing that. They can seize the use. You don't, you know, you have a CUP for
alcohol, you don't have to serve it or an AUP. So it doesn't prevent them from
moving in and not operating it as an Airbnb ever and so they could run that
to someone, rent a room, that doesn't prevent that use from going on.
So she could still-
It doesn't change the residential use, it doesn't take that away.
So I guess I'm just wondering if there's a particular rush on this, rather than continue
it to a future meeting.
I'd like to add, I think that our condition of approval, 11, which says if any of the
conditions of the conditional use permit are not complied with, the Planning Commission
And after written notice to the applicant and a notice to public hearing may, in addition
to revoking the permit, amend, alter, delete, or add conditions to this permit at a subsequent
public hearing, notice for such action, I think gives us the tools that we need to revisit
the permit if it turns out that whatever action we take tonight doesn't work.
So one of my concerns with doing a two strikes proposal is that it boxes a certain bit where
the condition of approval 11 gives us more flexibility where if we say, okay, after one
instance of noncompliance, we want to notice the hearing to revisit it and notify the applicant.
That gives us more flexibility than saying, okay, after two strikes, then we're going
to consider.
So I think that the resolution is written is good.
It gives us, it covers all the basis.
And it also gives us the opportunity
to revisit this permit if we need to.
All CUPs have that language, if I'm not mistaken.
So that goes without saying,
what I personally would like to avoid is
there's an incredible amount of, I mean, we're free,
but there's an incredible amount of money,
taxpayer money spent for everyone to be here in it's 1015 so I want to avoid
coming back here so I like the eight that's what I'm trying to figure out I
like the idea of fine if today is the night of everyone needs to be a good
neighbor today is the good neighbor night right so if we do impose this two
strikes you know which I truly hope that doesn't happen we all do then would
folks be in favor of revoking and then they would have to come back here if
they want to reapply because we've had that before where people what's what's
with the face okay but so I'm just talking this out if there's two
complaints filed a bad behavior that doesn't comply with what's written here
and it's pretty simple no parties no unregistered no smoking quiet time park
in your designated parking areas then if that doesn't happen and there's something
filed then at that point are you saying it's immediately revoked and then or if
nothing happens and the city the city has to give them an opportunity to
respond because you're granting the permit to them. So that's why that
condition says with notice in public hearing. So then it can't be just
automatically, but we have to come back here after the two? Right, the city's
evoking the permit or altering the provisions of the permit. That's why I'm
hesitant to give the permit because I feel like it's actually harder to enforce
once you've given them permission. I don't think it's actually easier to
enforce once we've given the conditional use permit. Because it requires people
writing it in, right? And then to get back on our schedule. It's minimal as well.
I know that's why. Commissioner Moran, did you? I don't have my glasses on. The reason I say the two
strikes is because that that's a number, right? This is vague. And like item 11
says, you know, if there's there's problems and we have the right to do
whatever we want to do, right? And I understand it's 10-15. We as a body
shouldn't probably be issuing CUPs at all to short-term rentals.
It should just be like, do the parameters fit?
Yes, great.
Here's your permit.
I think that's going to be something that we'll have to deal with down the road.
But until then, we have to kind of play in the sandbox that we made.
And to that end, I take Commissioner Kwok's point that it's already built in the language.
What I'm trying to do is give a little piece to the neighbors that says,
she's got two chances. And if there is, there's two parties, then we're going to come back here
and we're going to look at it again. It might be a very quick meeting. Yeah, you know, it's,
it's that there's no one good way to do this. I think, and I think to your point, a lot of the
CUP violations that we've seen, it was after months, months of constant, it wasn't a set
It had been violation, violation, violation, call, report, so to your point, it is vague
the way it's written, where it's, who makes, right?
It's a bit discretionary about when the meeting is called.
So now that being said, what do folks think?
I think I'm going to support Commissioner Moran's suggestions for conditions.
the two strikes and one year.
So what does that look like then?
Where do we, where would we put that in
and how would this work?
Yeah, we would add that.
So I just want to be clear shows two complaints,
you know, written complaints or complaints
filed with the code enforcement or the police department
within one year from the issuance of permit,
then the hearing is triggered or is it one year regardless?
Is the two complaints that trigger, is that the intent?
Two complaints in one year are two separate things.
The two complaints will trigger a review
by the Planning Commission.
And I think it would maybe behoove everybody
to come back here a year later and let's see
how is this working?
And the reason why that might be beneficial
is because we're gonna have to rewrite the rule book
on how short-term rentals get done in the city.
And this is unfortunately a really good litmus test for that.
So I think that the two strikes, if you will, which have to be legitimate, I would add.
And then the year from now, your duration, we revisit it.
How are things going?
Are we going to renew the CUP?
So even if there's, even if everything goes well, this would expire in one year, unless we renew it.
So get a couple of questions.
Got quite clarifying questions of staff.
these verified complaints or violations? So that's that's the point I want to
make. I think there needs to be some sort of process from the city that says we've
received a complaint now we need to investigate. I know I can see the sigh
chip. It's just very difficult to do on code enforcement goes home at five
o'clock. So it's just very difficult to do. So it's a lot of times it becomes
hearsay. So right. Well that's what we need to be prepared for that. Right. So
That's what I'm trying to guard against it, right.
You could consider calls for service with PD
or verified violations of the CUP,
which actually is already somewhat covered
under condition 11.
So if we heard the language said two verified violations
of the CUP, would that make more?
Does that make sense?
Or consider modifying condition 11?
That, if that's, yeah, we would add to that and say.
So at first level, we would we would have a condition that says within one year from issuance, the commission, like it shall be brought back to the commission for review.
And then the second one, you know, we can modify condition 11 to say that if, you know, if there are two occasions of the conditions not being complied with,
but that actually, now that I'm looking at it,
actually narrows it a bit because it,
because now, you know, 11, it's even,
if one time they're not compliant with the condition,
then you can bring it back.
I understand that,
but I think there's a difference between reality
and what's on the paper, right?
How many times do people have to complain before,
to your point, Commissioner,
that people get complaints and complaints and complaints
and nothing gets done?
If we say two, and I understand the assistant city attorney,
what you're saying is that it does narrow it,
but the reality of it is that they can complain
all day long and code enforcement is very strapped
for time and nothing will probably get done
and these neighbors are gonna be more upset
and everyone's gonna be, it's not gonna get any better.
We could, so if I could just finish my thought.
we could add into this condition that including two substantiated complaints to the
code enforcement or police department so that that would be it that would be a trigger that
you can identify in the condition in addition to what's broadly stated what about within number
11 i think maybe the where the leeway is is that it currently says if any of the conditions are
are not complied with, the Planning Commission
may do those things, may take action.
But if we change the word may to will, then, or shall,
then it's a little bit stronger and it would only be one.
There wouldn't be a number of two.
The other comment I have, the other comment I have
about that is if we talk about two complaints,
is that two complaints that occur on the same,
like if we're having a party and we're violating
two conditions at the same time, does that count as two separate complaints in one instance
or?
That's a that's an excellent point. And I actually I appreciate Commissioner Counts
turn a phrase that that does that sits better. The the shell rather than me. Right?
We can. So on that question, we can revise it to say something like, shall have the authority
to evoke it because it does. You do have to give a public hearing. So you can't say you
shall revoke it or alter it.
But if it's changed to say that they shall have the authority
to do that, then that brings it before the commission.
And if Commissioner Kalki wanted to clarify,
we can add some qualifiers to what
is substantial complaints on two occasions,
on two different dates.
Or if it's just two substantial complaints,
it doesn't matter when it happens.
If there's 50 violations, then, you know,
two gets them over the threshold.
Okay, so it sounds like it's up to our discretion.
If it comes before us to review,
if we consider it to, or how we interpret that, okay.
Yeah, it does give you that discretion.
I think we were saying we don't need
the number two in there? Correct.
If we're using the shell language.
Okay, that's clear for us.
Not to throw a wrench in this,
But can we throw in some language that says,
do complaints committed by guests?
What happens if there's a timeframe
when it's not being rented out?
Code enforcement gets complaints about weeds,
but that's against the property owner.
What if the property owner chooses to spend a weekend
at that location and the property owner
decides to throw a party?
That's fine because it's the property owner.
So that's what I mean.
So committed by guests, I think.
That would be my suggestion.
So that's where again, the number two is hard to quantify,
but under number 11, if it just says,
if any of the conditions of the conditional use permit
are not complied with,
and we changed the word may to shall,
that we will have a hearing.
It will come back to us.
So then it's just about this use permit,
so it wouldn't, we wouldn't need to define
whether it was guests or.
Correct, at that time,
it would be a single family resident.
Exactly, right, thank you.
Okay, so the two conditions, we will.
So we don't need the number two,
because that-
Right, we don't need the number two.
We will add a condition, we have 16,
to reflect that the Planning Commission
will hold a review hearing within one year from issuance.
And we would modify condition 11
to change the phrase may in addition to,
say shall have the authority to revoke the permit-amend alter-delete? And then as written, does that
reflect what you're looking for? It does to me, yeah, that satisfies my conditional.
Okay, if that does, I just like to ask the applicant to come up here if you agree with
the conditions and if you can say that on the record. Yes, I agree to the changes that are
being made to the conditional use permit that's being discussed currently.
Okay, thank you.
I'd like to make a motion that we approve the, sorry I don't have it in front of me,
we approve the conditional use permit application to allow the establishment of bed and breakfast
in at 1002 Hacienda Drive subject to the following conditions as amended in the language that
We have changed in item 11 and also adding item 16 having to do with the year sunset.
Yes.
I was right into the record.
Right.
Second.
Commissioner Moran.
Yes.
Commissioner Kwok.
Yes.
Commissioner Cowne.
Yes.
Commissioner Kwok.
Yes.
Vice Chair Knight.
Yes.
Motion carries.
No.
Commissioner Strongman.
Sorry.
Motion carries. What I would like to say is it's provided in part four of article
five of Walnut Creek zoning ordinance any interested party may appeal a
decision on the Planning Commission within ten calendar days after the
milling of the decision by filing a written appeal and the applicable appeal
fees with the city clerk's office. Thank you. Okay I lost the agenda. Thank you
everyone for being here now Commission considerations I have some I have a
staff report a couple staff reports yes okay this is the last meeting of 2025
thank you commissioners for the year the next scheduled meeting is January 8th
2026 and that meeting has been canceled so the next time we will be together is
on January 22nd and we have a few items on that agenda. Also, parking passes. I
have the 2026 parking passes here and I'll I'll pass those out as soon as we
adjourn. The condition is you return the old ones next time. That is all. Okay,
perfect. Well, I think with that, we adjourned. Thank you so much.