the May 15th, 2024 meeting of the Townalwoodside Planning Commission. We'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance. I'm going to move on to the roll call please. Chair Weaver. President. Vice Chair Gar. Mr. Gunrako. Mr. Talber. President vice chair guard. What's your gun? Raccoon. What's your tober? All right this this is our public comment period. This is a chance for town residents to address issues that may be of interest to the Planning Commission, but which you're not on the agenda. At this time you were invited to speak either live or online. We don't have anyone in the room. If you do choose to speak on issues not relevant to the Town of Woodside or the Planning Commission we have the option to cut you off. We do not have any members of the public online. In that case we will close the public comment period and move on to the consent calendar. And I believe the only item on the consent calendar is review and approval of the minutes from the January 10th Planning Commission meeting. That's correct. April 3, minutes. We'll be here next meeting. Make a motion to approve minutes of January 10, 2024. I would second that. Right, Chair Weaver. Yes. Nice to hear Gar. Yes. Mr. Gunrecco. Mr. Taber. Yes. Motion moves. Moving on from the consent calendar, we will move along to our one item on the agenda tonight, which is a set of revisions and amendments to the municipal code, which we are reviewing and recommending or not recommending approval to town council with respect to changes in our sign ordinances in the municipal code. It's good evening. As you've indicated, you have in front of you some proposed amendments to your sign regulations. These proposed amendments come as a result of two fairly lengthy study sessions, which were conducted by the council. These were conducted at the request of staff. We placed this agenda before the council to get policy direction because the town's sign ordinance does not comply as currently written with an opinion issued by the United States Supreme Court in Reed versus Gilbert. And the reason it is out of compliance is because we have regulations that are not uniform across the board for temporary and political signs. And so staff was recommending that the council take a look at the regulations as they currently exist and do as best they could to help us bring them into compliance with a read versus Gilbert. In the staff report, we've given you the ways in which temporary signs and political signs are regularly differently right now. I'm happy to go through those if you'd like, but what we're trying to do is get them to be similar. And so I think probably the easiest way for me to walk you through what the Council felt comfortable with having you take a look at is if you look at Exhibit A in your staff report because everything you see in here that's colored purple are the proposed changes to the sign ordinance. And I'll just walk you through each of those and then be happy to answer any questions and look forward to taking your input before we return to the council with this ordinance amendment. So the first change you see is in the purpose section and the council ask that we include some additional language in the purpose section to indicate that we are recognizing first amendment right to free speech and expression and that the sign regulations that are being proposed are being imposed uniformly across all types of temporary signs. If you look at page two of the proposed ordinance, section 153-503, we've moved all the definitions into one section so that we now have one section entitled temporary signs and in that we are defining what a commercial sign is, we're defining what an election sign is and what a temporary sign is. And although they're defined differently, you're going to see that in all but one instance the council has determined that they should be regulated uniformly. So the regulations themselves begin on page 3 of the ordinance and I'm just going to walk you through one through 12 and let you react to these and give us any suggestions you might have. So number one, right now you have differing sizes for different kinds of temporary signs, different size for election signs, different size for signs that deal with nonprofits. So what the council has determined is that all temporary signs of any sort shall not be more than 24 square feet in area per printed size. And that's an increase in the size of temporary signs. Council had a long discussion about this and came to the conclusion that 24 square feet was appropriate because particularly for election signs, they thought a smaller size would not be as effective for people to be able to be informed about upcoming elections and election issues. We want to do comments as we go or we'll totally. Have you take comments if you'd like to do it that way? This was actually the first thing that jumped out of me when I was looking across the board. It's interesting. I feel we are appointed to this planning commission in the interest of sort of maintaining a rural character. And it is true. I think when we go into election season, I'm not surprised the council recommended this. I've seen some of our esteemed council members names very large on these signs. I don't feel it's in a lot of the rural character. on these signs. All right, I don't feel it's in a line with the rural character. So I would actually, from my perspective, I would pose this. I think going from 6 to 24 is not quite necessary. Do you have a sense of what you would think would be inappropriate? So I think that question will come back. Yeah, I mean, the precedent has been 6. I think that's adequate. I know there have been sort of exceptions to that with the, I think it was it was on the pioneer. There were some large signs through the last election cycle and I don't know they definitely stood out as I think different a little bit out of character for the time. You know, I can think of true signs. You know, I can think of two sides. It went from a town council member who was running. And then the other was related to the pro or against Mejure. And they were huge. And I just feel like we were lucky enough to not have too many of them. But if we had a lot of them, I think woodside, I mean to Matt's point, the character of woodside would change. So if you ask me like what would be an appropriate size, I don't know, but I do know it's almost like that test. I do know that 24 is too much. Why don't we let Jean go through some of the additional points? I think that Matt raised a very good issue, but I think the discussion that's getting started here is maybe appropriate for later on. Sure. Okay. Point number two, temporary signs. And again, now we are defining political signs and all other kinds of signs that are not permanently affixed to the ground are temporary signs. So this is, so when you hear the word temporary signs, think of all those sorts of signs. So they can be a freestanding sign. They can be aff fix to a building, and they should not exceed the overall height of 8 feet if they are free standing, but they can be up to the top of a building if they are attached to a structure. Number three, temporary commercial signs are not to be displayed in residential districts. They are to be limited to the community commercial district and the planned community commercial districts. And that is a change. For no temporary signs are to be fixed or placed on public property. That's a current regulation. They're not to be we tried to be even more clear, so folks would understand they can't be attached to traffic signals, streetlights, utility poles, guide wires, mailboxes, or traffic signs. So that's really more clarification than a change to the ordinance. Five temporary signs are not to be placed within the public right of way except they can come within two feet of the edge of a paved surface and that was a clarification that the council thought was important to make because your sign ordinance reads right now that they can't be placed in the public right of way. But for almost any individual it's difficult if not impossible to figure out where does the public right of way end? Because it isn't at the edge of paved surface. Sometimes the public right of way goes up onto what you would assume would be private property. And so the council thought it would be much more useful if people understood exactly where signs can be placed. So they can be a no closer than two feet from the edge of the paved driving surface or of a sidewalk. But those signs are not to block the normal path of travel or to constitute a traffic hazard. Sixth temper. Roberts put signs up at the top of the supermarket. And when I read two, I felt like, okay, so no more than 8 feet, but Roberts is obviously continuing to do those things because they're signed or are fixed to the building instruction and they do not exceed the building or structure height. So they can continue to. Yes, the eight feet is a free standing sign. If you have one on a stake stuck in the ground, it can't be more than eight feet high. The building Robert. Up to the top of the building. Yes. And and subject to a maximum that would be set in item one. Is that correct? Yes, correct. Number six, temporary signs are not to be used to block hinder or or interfere with areas where public parking occurs. Seven, they're not to be lighted. Eight, they're not to be placed where they will obstruct traffic visibility. Nine, they're not to be affixed to any tree. Yes? The public is present. I'm sure absolutely. I'd like to have be questioned on it. Temporary signs under number 10 can be placed on private property, but you must have the expressed consent of a property owner to place it there. 11, and this is one area in which the council made a conscious decision to treat political signs differently than other temporary signs. Election signs can be displayed beginning 90 days before an election and they need to be taken down 10 days after an election date. Is that a change from current? Now it says they need to come down 10 days after. There's no time frame for when they go up beforehand. So they did place an outer limit on the total time they can be displayed. And 12, the town manager will have has the right to immediately remove any temporary sign that's posted in violation of this section or that's placed on public property or in the public right of way. So those are the new regulations on where signs can be located, how long they can be displayed, and what size they need to be. There's also another change at section 153-504, and I'll talk a bit about this, and I don't know Sage may want to add something about this one as well. This is just trying to get into your code what's really what's really done in practice right now. And this deals with signs in your community commercial district where there's a separate sign permit for those signs. They're part of an approved use permit and so they're not going they don't require any other kinds of permits. They're just part of the conditional use permits for, for those centers. So these are permanent signs. The ones in section 153504. Yes. So the permanent signs. Yes. But temporary signs can be in the commercial district. Yes, they can be. And then finally at 153.507, right now, holiday displays are lumped in with your temporary signs. And when we took a look at it, they're not really signs in the traditional sense. And so we're splitting those out holiday displays. Those can be lighted and those can be erected 31 days prior to a holiday and remove 14 days after the holiday. And would that happy to answer any questions? But I'll make one comment if I could and it goes back to the issue that Commissioner Gar raised. The council did have a long discussion about appropriate size of signs and one of the reasons I think they came to the decision finally that 24 feet was acceptable is because one or more council member said, well, if you if you have a smaller size, we're not limiting the number. And so people will just put up smaller signs that hook together to get the size they want anyway. So let's be practical and allow 24 square feet. So that was the, I just wanted you to have a context for where that decision came from. So happy to answer any questions. Mac to item three on page two. Does item three prevent me from having two foot by two foot political sign in my front yard. No. So what is constrained to only be in the commercial section then? So what the council said was we don't want to have commercial signs and residential districts. We're okay with political signs in residential districts, but we don't want commercial signs. They're unless they are required by law. So real estate signs are required. And they also said we're still comfortable with one construction sign on a project. So construction company can erect one sign while they're building a home or doing a remodel that indicates what construction company is working on site. And the council had comments from I think two members of the public complaining that on several sites in town they observed a number of construction signs. And that's really, we indicated to the council that's a code enforcement issue because right now your code says you can have one Construction sign so that's a continuation in any district for a remodel so in a residential area is a Sign for a nonprofit considered to be a commercial sign like if Woodside High School is advertising their musical or the Elementary School's advertising operetta? No, that is not a commercial sign. Yes, so, besides the size of the sign, which in just to give a very simple visual impact, the sign would be larger than this television in width and it would be twice as high as a television also. Also, I do not see anywhere as far as a time frame where temporary signs, how long they can be hosted if they're not political. That's correct. So there is no limit on someone putting a sign legally, a large sign like this, and it can stay there all year if it's not political. That's correct. Discrease with that, totally. Did anyone else have questions for Jean on specific items? If there are no more questions, we could move on to Commissioner discussion and happy to start with Matt who had the first Yeah, I think I think I have two two main main points one is on the size and the second is on I think the the types of things to which signs can be affixed are the two main categories in terms of the sizes Go on so thank you Jean for the for the context on the commission or the excuse me, council discussion. And it's interesting. I think my sense in terms of an outcome I would frankly like to see is, is number one. I mean, it feels a bit large to have those sorts of signs. I hear the motivation behind saying, like it's more effective if it's bigger. The types of signs that I'd like to see that apply to, and this is where we might get into some challenges around different categories, but I think about the types of things that the community really benefits from having something large is like an opera. Right, the types of things on Robert's set of events, and I think that serves a community purpose. The political science, I don't buy it, to be honest. And I also think, I think if the council thinks a bit more creatively, it's really easy to add another piece of language. It says like, you know, many small signs adding up to an aggregate are prohibited, right? That's an easy thing, and it's a bit, um, I'm not surprised the council came to that outcome given some of the signs we've seen that are roughly 24 square feet. But I don't think it's a good idea for one side in the character to have political signs that big. Um, now as far as categories, I wouldn't like to restrict that because it's for us something like community events. I think there's value in like seeing that grease or a wonka is happening, and I think that's something that truly benefits the community. I think, and you know, I would say this if they were sitting here as well, I don't think the same applies for town council elections and other local elections, I think, to find if people are interested, they can go up to the sign, they can see it a bit more closely, no harm, no foul. I would advise that the council consider something like, let's say to six feet and let's also put something in there that says, if I'm not sure how to say this, right, but the language should say, if you're trying to game the system and connect signs to get a bigger sign, like that is expressly prohibited. And I'm sure there's a way to sort of legal it right that. So that's my two cents on the sizes. In terms of what can signs be affixed to the register couple, like the sort of public works, categories, like utility polls, etc. make sense, right? I think those block them make sense. Mailboxes, maybe I guess those are quasi, as I private, quasi public, not sure. Trees seems a little bit odd to me, I would think you could like, I assign to a tree. So that one I don't quite see the logic of. And Trees are rural, I don't know, seems like a rural thing to a tree. So that one I don't quite see the logic of. And entries are rural. I don't know. Seems like a rural thing to do is to attach a sign to a tree. So those are my my sense in trying to just think through what would be most in line with the general plan that we are here to uphold. Those are my thoughts. Richard, what do you think? Well, with Matt, I have not to be redundant as far as what he's saying. The permit process that was intact prior to this proposed change, gave some control over potentially. I guess the issue was that if you allow a permit process or someone to judge whether or not you can have a sign, then that goes against the court case that actually started this whole process. However, returning back to the no control over duration of time that a sign can be up, I feel that a permit process for that, I don't quite understand why if you limit what a permit process can do, why you couldn't have it be in this process to control some of the exceptions that we're voicing here. One is the amount of time that a sign can be placed. So in other words, someone would apply for a simple permit to put any kind of sign that they would like to say on the sign. But then it would have a length of permitted time of 30 days. It's just an example, right? Then if they wish to do it again, then at that point the permit process might have some say as far as whether or not they can do the same sign. And also the size of sign, I totally agree with Matt, five feet by five feet plus for sign that could be put there indefinitely. It's not political. Is excessive. There was something in the description here regarding that, yeah, we want to enable banner signs. Well, okay, so you don't enable banner signs. Well, okay, so you don't enable banner signs. You just restrict someone to resign on a smaller scale. Is that my feelings? Alex. Sorry, may I ask just one clarification? Commissioner Garza, he thought six square feet was the appropriate size. Do you have a sense of what the appropriate size would be? I think that worked fine for decades. Thank you. That would be good. I actually, I hadn't considered what my fellow planning commissioner had said about, when does the temporary side have a president? That would be a problem. We've been challenged. I must admit that I hadn't considered your point of view on when does a temporary sign become a permanent sign? And I think it's a really good call out. I'm also trying, as I think about that because I hadn't thought it through, I think what comes to mind is, how do we get the town out of the business of permitting everything? And I think this language works for temporary signs. And they don't need permits, but I think what you're referring to is when does a temporary sign become permanent? And whenever it becomes permanent, then they need a permit. Because then it's not a temporary. So to kind of just propose a language that prevents what my planning commissioner member is afraid of is, I think we should leave this language here, but put a threshold beyond which a temporary sign becomes permanent and it requires a permit. And I think it's better for the town to not be monitoring all the signs that go out, but if a sign is out for 120 days. I mean we got 90 days and then we have 10 days. If a sign is out for 120 days or 150 days, whatever you want to name it, it doesn't need to permit. And I think residents are able to report that sign to the town and the town can then follow up and require a permit. So, I like that. I think your point, I was against size, but I hadn't considered what you said, which is a 24-foot sign that is permanent. It starts becoming really obtrusive. So I think the permitting of those signs is necessary. I think that aside dealing with temporary signs, I'm not afraid in the last elections, I'm not afraid of people's strength. So people game the system, and I never saw somebody game the system by stringing signs along to create a bigger sign. What I did see is it became like an escalation of the battle between two points of view as to who could deploy the bigger signs. And if that is taken to kind of, if that is abused and everybody starts doing it, because that's the only way to get attention, I think it does change the rural character of Woodside. You can come back to me and say, so what's acceptable? And I think it's, I think if we propose something above six feet, we are spitballing, sort of speaking. And I think what I would prefer is to save six feet, but allow the town council to reconsider this. And when this gets taken to the town council to say, look, the planning commission feels strongly about six, you want it 24. That gives the planning department enough time to in a more logical and data driven way to perhaps propose something that is below 24 and less and more than six. But I'm not comfortable doing that. I think the experts should do that. We should stay away from that. I think with regards to trees, I think they should be fixed to trees. I've seen them fixed to trees. It works. Poles, trees. I just don't want to step into the neighborhood as to what they can be fixed to. So I would emit the tree part of it. That's it for me. So, Gene, one point of clarification, whatever we recommend and whatever we revise and send on to town council, they would have the ultimate say to further amend it and adopt the actual changes in the code, correct? Yes, they have not introduced this ordinance yet. So it will come back to them with your recommendations and they will have the opportunity to introduce what they've sent to you or to make changes that evening. Could I just make one comment back on the size of sign issue because there was a suggestion made from staff and the council did not take us up on this suggestion, but I'd like to ask for your opinion on it because it deals directly with the size. One of the, because there was some concern expressed by some council members about that size, 24 square feet, and maybe that's too big. So one of the suggestions we had as a staff was, would you like to consider keeping the size smaller, six square feet, or something like that? But during election season, allow for all types of temporary signs, because you can't distinguish, to be bigger. But have it only during a particular period of time, and the council was not interested in doing that. But that is another way to maybe talk about keeping signs smaller, for most of the year, but at election season allowing all types of temporary signs to be larger. So I just throw that out to ask if there would be any support for something like that if it is to go back to council. I would personally not support that. I mean, I think my thought goes back to, I don't know, it feels to, I can't find a word that seems appropriate, but it just feels tacky to sort of turn the towel into like 24 foot signs all over the place during election season. I would almost go the other direction. So it just doesn't seem necessary to me. You know, my two cents are kind of a remain. I think things that really serve the community interest, like just informational, yeah, absolutely. Campaign science, I just don't think they need to be that large and it doesn't feel in the in the spirit of the general plan to me. Thank you. at large and it doesn't feel in the spirit of the general plan to make. Thank you. Trying to sum up and collect my own opinions on this, it seems like the intent, and I listened to the council study session on this, was to treat all signs, all temporary signs uniformly, rather than calling out separate categories. temporary signs uniformly rather than calling out separate categories. I've been a resident of the town for 22 years. We have had one contentious town political issue in the time that I've been here where there was a blizzard of signs and there was some escalation beyond the norm and the amount of signage that was out there. In the other 22 21 years we've been here there has been an ongoing need for the nonprofits, the school, the high school, the churches, some of the civic organizations to have temporary science. And I would like to what protect everyone's first amendment rights as much as possible. And the political speech is the same as nonprofit speech to my mind. So I would like, I think it's a more benefit to the town if we allow signs larger than six square feet for both nonprofits and political speech. I think some of the other points that were raised were quite good. were quite good. Apparently the quote and I looked online a little bit, the standard size for a banner sign is 8 feet by 2 and a half feet, which is 20 square feet. So if we were to choose or counsel were to choose to move that 24 down to 20, that really wouldn't impact anything because I think most of the signs would be 20 square feet. I think for non-profit purposes for advertising operetta and some of the other charity events that occur in town that having a larger sign is beneficial and I would like to treat everything uniformly across the board if possible. I think Richard raised a very good point about temporary signs which become essential like permanent. There would seem to be some logic in my mind and trying to treat everything across the board the same. If you're advertising an event like operetta or the high school play or a fundraiser for the Fire District Foundation, if you have a window where you can put it up 90 days before the event and it has to come down 10 days after the event, so it doesn't become permanent, I think something like that would make sense. That's sort of the doubt as far as my thinking has taken me. Absolutely. I take I take what our chair says in the sense that what brought this issue to us is this issue of content and what is content and content being treated equally. And he brings up a really important point and I just want to make sure it's true, it's real. So if the school wants to advertise something, and we're stuck at six square feet, that means that the school can't advertise something at more than six square feet. Is that correct? Correct. So if Roberts Market always puts this community banners on their building, the community banners can't be more than six feet per feet. All temporary signs, yes. Right now, it's the largest size in that as proposed, but all temporary signs would be subject to whatever size is agreed upon eventually. So I actually am willing to reconsider my opinion because I don't want to, I mean, it's kind of the availability bias. I'm just thinking about political, too political. One town council member that did it in a heated political battle, but I did not consider the public good that they serve. And I think if we're going to mend this to get out of this, to bring up our, to bring this up to, to date, I think we need to treat them equally. So I'm willing to reconsider my six square feet. And, and I think our chair proposes 20 square feet. I'm happy to go with 20 square feet, and then everybody can go at it. 8 by 2 and a half feet. You bring up a good point. It does serve a public good in a lot of instances. Yeah, I think I'm similar thoughts. Maybe I just want to re-confirm the decision, the broader decision that sort of put us here, which is there is no differentiation, is there no differentiation allowed period? Like is that 100% no differentiation? And we get into the business of differentiation if we start saying for political science, I mean, we start getting into mud. Plus political is kind of a big category. I mean, it says issues as a definition of issues. Anything can be an issue. Sorry. No, I, you're totally right. Maybe change the subject back to the, the, the temporary nature. I think I like where the discussion was going earlier. to the temporary nature. I think I like where the discussion was going earlier and looking at the draft. It talks about the definition of a temporary sign being not permanently affixed and intended to be displayed for a temporary period. I think that's the problematic language in my mind, which is what is intended, intended right that's not measurable. So I like the idea of having a way of making that measurable which to I think my coke missioners points earlier. That's that's already been done in the language on political science, although frankly that then brings me back to questioning is that even possible If we're not allowed to differentiate why are we allowed to do a different time period for political? So that seems problematic in and of itself. So actually, that now brings me to a question. Why can we do that in terms of the fact? Staff did not recommend that, but the council felt that that was important. And I think Chair Weaver has raised a point that the council didn't consider, which is to place a limitation on all temporary signs the 90 days before whatever event is being advertised and remove 10 days after that event. And that is not something the council considered for all signs, but if that is something that they think. And maybe just a follow up question on that, which is, as written, can we even, could we even do what's written here? Because that seems like it's already a differentiation amongst the sign types, which is contradictory to what we'd said a moment ago, which is we can't differentiate at all. Staff did not recommend that time limits be placed on just on political signs. The council felt that was important. They understand that that would not bring them completely in a line with the case. But if you were to consider the position that Chair Weaver has taken, that would get you in line with the read case. All temporary signs then would be limited by the 90 and 10 days. So is it the legal opinion that as written this would not be in compliance? We have advised the council that we do not view this as being completely in compliance with read yes. Yeah, I mean it seems just to sort of get to maybe concrete suggestions, events in a lot of ways feel similar, right? Where it could be for the operator, you could have a similar type of thing that says 90 days in advance and 10 days after that feels logical. Events and elections are both events. I'm trying to think of some examples. Maybe we could brainstorm a couple examples. Like would that work for other types of signs as well? Do you know what I mean? Over here was mentioned like, I think it was mentioned here about when residential construction, they put signs out. So that's not considered, that would not fall under the 90 plus 10 days. It has to be out for the length of the project. Right now there's no limitation on those signs. But we can differentiate those signs. Those are different. Those are commercial speech that's that's entitled to less protection. I think there's a reasonable. We could also do something like just a fixed window. Right. What's an example of a temporary sign not tied to an event? I'm trying to think of one. Well the elephant in the room would be the sign in front of the pioneer for the music. For the music every Friday or whatever day of the week it is. It wouldn't need a permit for that. Unless it's like when you can park your car in the street for 72 hours and the movement, then you can move back, right? I don't know. It's interesting. It could be for like a certain, I don't know, a certain period. It's a tough one. I'm not sure how you do it. To adjust like a proper, uh, rather property owner that wants to put a sign. I haven't been living in, well, I've been living in Woodside, but I haven't been, I, we live in the hills, Woodside hills. So I come here essentially for these meetings and sometimes gas stations, sometimes to the commercial area for restaurant or whatever. So, but I don't go into deep woodside. And so I don't know how of a big issue this is, I haven't seen obnoxious signs or for whatever reason people want to put signs at all in most of what side you know during the times that I that I traveled there. So I don't know how big of an issue this is you know this this could be addressed again in the future and it not. You know, this could be addressed again in the future. Can it not? I mean, that'll be, I guess, a big rigmarole at that point. If we're dealing with the time issue, just dealing with the time issue. That might be kind of cumbersome to go back to the council, et cetera, et cetera. I thought that would be helpful for us to maybe come with some coherent recommendation. Yeah. Yeah. That they could take and consider. So I mean, I don't think it's a problem in the heart of Woodside right now, or at least that's my personal opinion. Not either. Yeah. But this sort of opens up, this sort of opens up the possibility for someone, oh, it's 24 feet, square feet now, that opens the possibilities for me to say whatever I like, post the sign forever, right? And if you know, 90% of the people don't agree with what I say on this, that's okay because that's free speech. So maybe, maybe this is just too simple. If a property owner wants to put a sign up, they can only do that once a year for the amount of time the political signs are put up. In other words, 90 days for that one year. Because getting a permit is like moving car in 72 hours and then moving it again, kind of thing. So that I don't think if somebody is, and probably there won't be too many people like that, but if somebody's really a diehard and wants to do this, they'll do it that way. Game of system. I would hesitate to try and solve a problem that doesn't exist into my knowledge, has historically not existed. If it did become a problem, of course, town council could address that going forward. Well, surely not, but we're changing something that has been changed for 20 years, I'm not sure if it's a short time. I'm not sure if it's a short time. I'm not sure if it's a short time. I'm not sure if it's a short time. I'm not sure if it's a short time. I'm not sure if it's a short time. I'm not sure if it's a short time. I'm not sure if it's a short time. I'm not sure if it's a short time. I'm not sure find the balance between the, there's a clear intent also from counsel to set a time limit on the political signs, which, you know, so they did a hundred days, right? 90 in advance plus 10. I'm trying to think of a way to generalize that, right? One way to generalize that would be to say, you know, X number of days out of a calendar year, right? And a temporary sign, like, I think, if we do want to find a definition of a temporary sign, which seems like something we should do. And like 365 days out of a year seems long. We could say something like it's 100 days out of a calendar year. And then that solves for like the live music on Sundays because you know live music is on a bunch of Sundays but not all Sundays and they typically posted for three days so you know that would fit into the category and perhaps solve for the election consideration on a time window in a way that would be applicable in a logical way across alt sign types. I feel like we're going way on the edge of the curve right now. It's like just signing. I mean, I just, I think that we're dealing with edge cases that are pushing us to the edge of the curve where the where N is very little. And I just feel on the the overall, the concept here is to make this uniform, to make content uniform, to make the way you treat these signs uniform. And I think Commissioner, we were brought up a good point about political science, I apologize, political science versus other type of signs and size. I think just applying the 90 plus 10 to 100 day limit on signs and not talking about calendar year or I mean, I think we start slicing things. The the the reason I might push back on that as smidge is I'm trying to also think about the We mentioned the elephant the room sign like the live music How does that work great because if we set a hundred days and they put it out again, you know, then does it violate a hundred days? Do you know what I mean? Like it's an edge case on the other hand. We don't want to put something in place that you know prohibits that which I see as a community good. So we could say a hundred days in a year which could be contiguous for an election, it could be, you know, independent bursts of time. That's to a certain point, we can create a set of ordinances in the municipal code that would force people to comply with the letter of the law. It's a little bit more problematic to try and wordsmith something that makes someone comply with the spirit. And if we're talking about extreme edge cases, technically, it might be correct that someone is violating the spirit or the intent, whether I'm going to lose sleep over it on a given night, I'm probably not. I mean, it doesn't seem like a rampant problem in town. Well, I mean, I would actually strongly disagree. And the reason I would say that is frankly, and I just don't want folks to get singled out by this, right? So I do always think it's important to consider the corner cases. And if we said 100, 100 meets the spirit of the election as written, and I could see you know if someone has an extra grind with the pioneer in their live music and we you know back to the letter someone could file a complaint with town council or with the and have the sign taken down right and then they're they're contained to you know three months out of the year of having live music that they can advertise do you know what I mean so that's why I do think it's important. And because if we said like 100, Intiguous, I don't know if we just said like 100 out of the year, it feels like something that that would just avoid folks getting singled out in a way that they're trying to comply with the spirit and yet somebody who wants to enforce the letter it can end up in a bad spot. I don't have a problem with that. So starting from the draft that's in here and moving towards what we've been just talking about, what points would we specifically change? So we talked about the size. I think I could go at 24 or 20. I don't feel strongly on that. I think as part of the council discussion for... Am I thinking? I could go for either as well. I think part of the rationale for going to 24, even though it's sort of an oddball size, is that if it's up on a building like on the wall of Roberts, it's more distant from where you're looking at it. So in order to make it more readable, they wanted to push it a little bit. I think the standard banner size for the vast majority of them that you can get from fast signs or whatever is 20 square feet. So I mean, I could live with 24. Yeah, eight feet in itself even though it's only two and a half feet tall. It's quite large. When you increase it by three feet, so a 24 square, maybe a square, 24 would be fine. And that would encompass also the, because of everybody's side to have really wide sides, signs that would become even larger, right? And that would only be 20. So they would extend it this way and it would look. It would look a little obnoxious for me. So that's fine, 24. My initial, my initial objection to the size after the discussion is mute at this point for me. But the timeframe, I like the 100 days I think, unless we didn't consider something as far as an important sign for events and things like that that needs to be more than 100 days, probably not. I mean, a total of in a year. And then you wouldn't have to deal with permits and people gaming or gaming, but if they're really passionate about some issue for them, they can still do it for 100 days a year without having to sort of get a permit that really doesn't serve any purpose. So are you suggesting that it would be 90 days before I mean assigned? I'm just talking about someone's issue or something that can't be part of the political issue. Maybe they just want to have a statement. They want to have a statement. Whatever it is. All right. Whatever it is. All right. Well, Council had suggested as part of their study session that for election signs that they not go up until 90 days before the election and then they had to come down 10 days after the election. And initially we were talking about expanding that to other signs. So did you want to remove those date restrictions for the election signs? So there would be like caviar, the 100 days would have nothing to do with the election cycle. It would just be 100 days. I mean, I think what he's proposing is you could amend the language so that council proposes 90 before 10 after for a total of 100 days and then for non-political events, it's 100 days. I mean, the way I would think about it. I think the challenges we need to find a way to generalize this, right? It seems like as written, it's problematic vis-à-vis the decision about not being able to differentiate. So my mental model was if we did 100, then the logical behavior of somebody putting up a sign for an election will be put it up 90 or 100 days before probably, right? Because you don't need it afterwards. So they'll probably put them up 100, which gets the spirit. But it's also something that's generalizable to all types of signs. I mean, I think one of the concerns the council had was after an election having a lingering period where a candidate's political signs sat there along Highway 84 for 30 or 45 days. Yeah I'm having trouble coming up with a good way to say temporary, means that and then not differentiate right because we can't differentiate the way they've written it is problematic. Thank you. Well I think the suggestion that Commissioner Weaver made would bring it directly in line with Reed which is to say that a temporary sign regarding an event can be posted 90 days up to 90 days before that event must be removed within 10 days, known longer than 10 days after the event. And if that applied across the board to temporary signs, I think that would go a long way in bringing it into alignment with that. But I will say whenever you place time limits on things, you're going to run into this question, what about a recurring event? Like every Friday night there's music. Does the sign get come up and down and up and down and up and down in order to stay in compliance if it's a recurring event? This is where I'm really confused, because what I thought we heard earlier was we can't differentiate across any types of signs. So my working hypothesis for this was, we can't do things like say, a sign tied to an event versus a sign not tied to an event, which is why I've been pushing this direction of generalizing, like if we could do what, I like Commissioner Weaver's suggestion or chair, we were a suggestion, but I thought that that would be in violation of the non-differentiation clause. We step back and say from staff's perspective, we said you should not place time limits on any kind of signage. And the reason is we start into this discussion, which becomes a very slippery slope, because there are some signs that aren't tied to an event. They're an ideological sign. And so when does it go up? When must it come down? Some events never end that you're, who have a sign up for. An event could be defined by anybody, right? And it could say, well, my personal cause I have an event on Tuesday, the fourth is the decision. It's a very slippery slope. So I agree with that, which I almost feel like you have to do nothing or you have to just generalize it and say it's a certain period of time. That's where I had it. I can't come up with anything better. I can't cover anything better. So it's staff's opinion that generalizing it, that all temporary signs would only go up 90 days before an event and would have to come down 10 days after an event was acceptable from a read standpoint. I think yes. The only place I see an issue about that is if it's not related to a particular event and that always becomes the issue whenever you put a time limit on something. And then it would just have it could be up 365 days a year or because then it feels like it's no longer temporary. We're back to where we started. I don't think we're going to get this 100%. But let me say can I just address, I don't mean you're able to, can I just address something with the way the signs are defined here, temporary versus permanent has nothing to do with time. It has to do with what they're attached to. So. Yeah, which is okay. It seems it seems odd Temporary is like temporal is like a time The word has you know, it's root is in time We were mentioned and we just and I know that language of 90 plus 10 doesn't capture the 5% of the improvement, but it captures the majority of them. And our attorney seems to think that it complies with the law. So I feel like it's not the enemy of perfect on this one. I would agree with Alex and that it's going to be really difficult to either wordsmith or to practical level try and take care of all the corner cases. I know that you're itching to do that. I mean, it's just to be clear. My intention isn't to like make things complex. It's to avoid someone getting unfairly singled out. But that's my intent. So I'm not trying to make things complicated. I don't want someone to get like, we define something and then they get unfairly. Does that make sense? I'm not trying to be unreasonable with that. Yeah, well, I think if we make revisions, we've been talking about, then we're treating all temporary signs the same, where it gets a little bit tricky is, okay, when does temporary become untemperaire? Correct. Yeah. And I would, well I'm kind of stuck with Alex and that I don't think we can solve that. It feels like there are two things we can do, right? One is we can go with the 9010, knowing that not all signs are event based. The other would be to go a actually defining a temporary sign as a temporal thing, which I think that's where I've gotten frankly hung up, which is temporary, temporary, temporal time-based. And I think that's where we've maybe been, which is this idea of it feels weird to have them stay three to six days here. So the other potential recommendation we could give to council, and I also don't know if we need to be unanimous on this, would be to say let's set a time limit of X days in a year, which that's probably where I come out more in favor of something like that. And so that's a problem for staff in the context of, well, when commissioner Garwas was just talking about defining what a temporary sign would be, that one I think you should stay far away from because then you get right back into the content based regulation. You don't want to have to look at the message and the sign to determine, is this a temporary sign or is this a permanent sign? No, no, no, sorry. Oh, well, you could say say any any any temporary sign that doesn't require a permit just has a time limit. Not not based on message, right? Just writ large. Yes. Under days across the board. You could. That would seemingly work. That would seemingly work. You could just say like there's a, you know, a hundred across the board. A temporary sign is the, you could put this as a definition of a temporary sign, right? A temporary sign is a sign that is, you know, not permanently affixed and is not displayed for more than, you know, 100 days of a calendar year. That language could you say that could you, for political science, could you require that they be taken down 10 days out of the day? I don't think so, because then we're differentiating. So if I'm, if there's an election tomorrow, and I put my sign today, I can leave my sign on for 10 for 100 days after, 99 days after the election. Yes, but you get a pretty bad ROI on your sign. Right, because you only got one day of exposure. So it would be, yeah, put it a month before the election. I can leave it two plus months after the election. Yeah. And, and I think from the town's perspective, getting all that stuff cleaned out after the election is, is important. I agree. It's not optimal at the same time. I think folks would generally Optimize for putting the signs up early and this is again, we're just trying to think of a way that's like splits the difference Between two. Yeah I'll tell you I'm at the 9010 and that captures events, but it doesn't capture that edge base. The counter to that is your point. I want to capture everything. I just think most of the signs that go up are political signs and and I would love to see them out 10 days after the election. Based on what Commissioner Toddler just said, I would agree with that and would support that revision and moving everything else forward. Well, but we still need to talk about, so there's trees, right? How do we feel about trees? Or are you good with that, Matt? I mean, we respectfully disagree. I just want to make sure. I think so. So can we just, can we figure out what that means for, what does that mean for the Roberts sign for a life piece? Like does it mean that each event? Pioneer. Yeah, excuse me. Yes, yes, pioneer. So does that mean each live music? And so they could put it up, take it down, put it up, take it down. I think that works. There's not too many of these in town. Yeah. So if you feel passionate about like a cause and you want to put up a sign 365 days a year, that would be allowed in what we're saying. Correct. I think then I go to Lyle's comment earlier. It hasn't happened. Yeah. And we're like dealing with ghosts now. Yeah. I think that's right. But it would be possible for 365 days a year, right? In what we're saying. If you take it down and put it back up. Yeah. If it's not in the back, do it. So there's no end. So there would be no time limit. How would you, how would you go back to that issue if it became obnoxious for a couple of people. Yes, you can. Edition the town council to look at that particular case or. Define the language a little bit better. And you can. I guess today you can already do this just not for a large sign, right? So I could. Right. I could put up a six foot sign today and leave it there and definitely. And express your opinion about something correct you could. I'm inclined towards not legislating or restricting more. It feels weird to me, right? Like a temporary sign that you can just keep up, definitely seems like a weird thing. At the same time, I'm of the mind of not like introducing the restrictions that weren't there before. It was introduced to us because of this philosophic kind of threat of consistency. Yeah. Entry in the meagwali. So 9010 for any temporary sign tied to an event. I could support that. I think we could always revisit, right? If it does become problematic, it seems like something that could be raised as a general thing to consider. Are we good with this, Matt? I'm good. Can we move to trees? Yeah, sorry. How do you all feel about trees? I feel as far as I think Matt's looking for a career in signage here. trees should fall under the same regulations as far as an 8 foot height. Potentially just any other sign. It can be higher than 8 feet. And if you can affix it to a tree, I would say it's fine. A sign in itself in woodside looks out of place. You know, a white sign or whatever looks totally synthetic, right? You put it and no matter if you put it in the ground, it's a feet tall, or if you put it on the tree, this trees all over the place, so not that you can put them on. Every tree I'm saying that trees are always going to be there. And putting it in the ground, sticking up eight feet will be just as obnoxious as putting it on the tree. And as long as you conform to the eight feet and then the five by five, whatever it is for attempting a lot of time, that's why. May I ask a question as you're opposed initially to you as you're talking about trees right now. Signs are not allowed in the public right away and many of your trees are in the public right away. So do you want to make a distinction between trees that are on private property? Or do you want to make a new exception and allow signs to be placed in the public right of one on trees? No, we do not want. Treaties on private property. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think there are 90% of all signs on trees. I like the question about how do we feel about trees? I like trees. I also think trees are suitable signposts. Maybe we should just, I'm pro signs on trees. I'm pro the 8 feet height limit on trees. I would also be pro something to the effect of like a non-harming method of attachment onto the trees. Like let's not start nailing signs into heritage trees. Like maybe there's something to the impact of like temporary non-harming means like a rope or something like that. Yeah, no, we're really kidding. We're maybe not going to be involved in doing code enforcement on that. I don't know. Maybe covered elsewhere too on our tree ordinances. So maybe that's already covered. I don't know. That would be good to understand. Paul for the private property. Yeah. And I'm public right away. But I think when we start getting into methods of attachment. We may already have things in the true one. You're actually keeping me from these things away from these things. And it sounds like we've switched roles today. So I don't know what you ate this morning, but Are we good with that are we good trees so trees I think we're good with trees Resurrection on private property. Yeah, I think that covers everything that we we had So I make sure I did hear correctly that you ended up saying okay to 24 square feet. Yes, yes Okay, yes, very much debate and 9010 9010 24 square feet. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Very much to pay. And 90 10. 90 10. Trees on private property no higher than 8 feet on those trees. Yeah. Yeah. I have a question. Or is this 24 feet? I'm not going to be debating that. As far as other cities and towns. Has this been raised? In other words, this 24 square foot size. And is this going to be adopted everywhere? So we're going to see 24 square foot political signs come September everywhere? I can't answer that question outside of Woodside. I know I know I know that some other cities are looking at updating their sign ordinances, but I'm sorry sitting here. I can't tell you what the size limitations they're looking at are. I'll just the one thing I'll just add to that if you ever drive through daily city during election season, the banners that are up there are well larger than 24 square feet. I don't know if that's allowed or not, but I commute from San Francisco to Woodside and driving through Dali City. It just amazes me how large those signs get. Question, do we need to make a motion or for recommendation or the notes that we just went through sufficient? I think you should make a motion, but we've indicated that your recommendation will be that the size of 24 square feet is appropriate, that you would recommend that a change be made to the draft ordinance to indicate that temporary signs can be erected 90 days before event and they must be removed no more than 10 days after the event. And finally, that signs may be erected on trees on private property, but they can be no higher than eight feet from grade. That captures everything on my list. So I think do we need to recite all that language or can we I think you can make a motion to adopt a recommendation to the town council on the ordinance before you with the changes which have just been recited into the record on those three issues. I'm happy to make a motion. So I'll make a motion to endorse the changes as stated by, stated by Jean. Right second. Chair Weaver. Yes. Mr. Gar. Yes. Mr. Gorucco. Mr. Talber. Yes. Motion moves. Thank you. I really do appreciate your time and your thoughtful consideration. I mean, everybody's smiling, but sign ordinances are, city attorneys never want to touch them. Because they're so fraught with so many issues. And so I really do appreciate your help in getting this back to the council. I can understand your patients with us as we debate it and went in circles. I'm a before you adjourn. Absolutely, you can make a comment. So I spoke to someone. It doesn't. The person that I spoke to doesn't matter really. But I was given the. A seat was planted in my mind. With regards to the four sites that we've heard two meetings ago, with regards to density and housing ordinance and everything. And I think this is probably going to be one of the defining cases that we have during our tenures planning commissioners. And we got a taste for how contentious it is. Just when we were hearing opinions and we were trying to make the town feel heard, we weren't really taking any formal action. And when we take formal action, it's gonna be even more contentious, I believe. It's easy to read all the documents that we get, but the suggestion that was given to me was put your boots on and go walk each of these sites. Because what looks on paper as a pipeline, what looks on paper as characteristics of a site. When you walk the site, you have a better appreciation for the site. And I think there's an incomplete picture that we have here, because our planning department has been to that site, regularly they've been experts come to that site, but we're only seeing things on paper, and we're only hearing from people as they present. But I think we owe it to ourselves for each one of us to put our boots on and go to the four sites. And for ourselves, experience what they are like like and I think they will make for better decisions when the time comes. So it's a suggestion. Sage, did you have any sort of staff report or upcoming indication of what's on the agenda is going forward. Thank you back on that a bit. Yes, all sites will be made available for you guys to site visits. We are also per previous discussions. We'll try to get the planning commission at a minimum the draft documents, whether the staff reports completely or not, but we can get you the draft standards as early as possible, as well as with access instructions that come along with those for each of the sites. And then just to update where we are yesterday, we received another letter from HCD on the housing elements that is now down to two items. One of which is related to subjective design centers for single-family residences and asking us to see their first further analysis is how that not constrained development or possibly getting rid of subjective design centers for those projects. And the final comment that maybe has a little bit more meat is they're looking for other programs that would increase density throughout the town. Currently, the town has a program in the draft element to consider additional ADUs on properties above what's allowed now. And we talked with HCD, and we thought that was going to be a way in which to allow for more kind of medium density, say a single family home with three or four or five ADUs on it, maybe depending on the size of the property property to provide some of that medium density. So we're going back to HCD to and talk through some of those last two items with them with that said we're review and process as you're aware the EIR for the housing element has been released. The 45 day review period for that ends on June 17th. There is a period of time in which the consultant will need to respond to any comments that are received and then release what's called the final EIR. The regular planning commission meeting after the 17th is June 19th, so it's unlikely we would have it on that meeting with that said it's possible that we may bring a study session regarding ADU regulations. To the planning commission on June 19th and we will send an email out, but maybe just mentally maybe you already know if you're available or not. Maybe a special meeting on the following Wednesday, which is June 26th. And that would be for review of the four sites and objective design standards. Then. Yeah, and Sarah remind me, I don't think we have anything for June 3rd, we'll confirm that tomorrow and get that out to the commission just to kind of settle the schedule. Okay, I'll go over June 3rd and I think we'll probably cancel that meeting and then potential items for June 19th and then if there's a possibility of having commissioners available on June 26th. So, don't question June 3rd and June 19th are 16 days apart is one of those numbers off by two digits? I'm sorry it's June 5th. Okay, I'll just thank you. I was thinking of ASRB. So yes June 5th and June 19th are the sage question? The first comment from HCD, was that they're trying to remove all subjective, is that like basically abolish air service? It relates to that. I am looking for legislation that requires that type of discretionary review to be abolished. That's the recommendation is not. It talks about that or providing more analysis in which, believe it, town provided. Anyone who's been through the ASRB, or sat on the ASRB if all, is it at all? I can't recall the last time a project was denied. So it hasn't really created constraint on people developing other projects that have been modified and design changes have been made. But suggest that it is a constraint on approving housing is a bit of a stretch. And we've tried to provide an analysis. We can provide more details if necessary. We'll be following up with that plan. It's continuing to push back. Not to have further discussion about that for sure. So anyway, this was a very good discussion. I think we all listened to each other and changed our opinions accordingly. No, I thought it was very useful. So with that, we'll send the emails out and keep you updated on schedule. Okay. Given that, we'll adjourn the meeting.