Good morning, everyone. Today is Monday, December 2nd. We have a meeting. We have a meeting. We have a meeting. We have a meeting. We have a meeting. We have a meeting. We have a meeting. We have a meeting. We have a meeting. We have a meeting. We have a meeting. We have a meeting. We have a meeting. We have a meeting. We have a meeting. able to join us today. Not a problem. We will have a wonderful discussion with the agenda as planned. An informational item with the proposed adoption of the sixth cycle housing element. Another information item, soil, import, ordinance, update, we will have public comment as well. And however, it won't be an official meeting, we will simply have a nice discussion with staff. That said, I would like to start with our first item, an informational item, again, proposed adoption of the sixth cycle housing element of the Alameda County General Plan. I'll give it to staff. Again, we will have public comment on this item as well. Sure, thank you. Good morning, Supervisor Albert Lopez, plan director. We do have a little bit of a lengthy PowerPoint to get through this morning, so I would try to get through it as quickly as possible. Revenue is a virtue. What's that? Revenue? Revenue. Oh yeah. Revenue. All right, I will try to do my best. So this is our last stop before we go to the full board to for action on our six cycle housing element. As you know, this is a requirement of the general plan. And after a very lengthy two year long plus process, we have gone through a rigorous road show, including many stops at our municipal advisory councils, as well as our planning commission and now are looking at board action on this item next week and as usual this is our our last step before we go to the full board is to this committee so with that next slide please. This is a link to all the information that we're going to cover today. So for those in the audience or watching online, this link will get you there. Next slide. As I mentioned, the general plan has a series of elements housing being the one that is the most active, I would say, given all the various state laws. And there is an eight year cycle for housing elements. And we are about two years late on adopting ours. It was due in early 2023. And here we are looking at early 2025. And so in terms of the process itself, it has taken as much longer than we anticipated, but again, are wrapping it up, and hopefully we'll receive a board approval. Next slide. This is, I'm not gonna read all this, but essentially, there has been a very long process from when we first submitted the draft to state HCD. State HCD is the State Department of Housing and Community Development. And they are the approving body for housing elements, for every jurisdiction throughout the state, every city and every county in the state. And so ours was no different. We had a series of back and forth interactions with state HCD culminating in most recently in November 7th is that we received a letter from them indicating that our housing element mates met state statute. And so that was certainly good news, but there was a lot of back and forth going all the way back to 2023. And so we are again also coming to the end of that process in terms of the interactions with State HD. Next slide. The contents of the draft element, there is, it's about a thousand, thousand page document your office may have received a copy of the element by now. There is a, it's basically broken into four sections. There's an overview of the summary of the projected housing need. Section three is the one that gets the most probably scrutiny, which is the actual housing sites and housing resources. And then we also have a section that's related to all of our programs and actions and goals related to all of our programs and actions and goals related to housing for the unaccompanied county. Next slide. And this is just a slide showing what the sort of the insides of our housing element look like between the needs assessment methodology, all of governmental non-governmental constraints, our programs and how we solicited public input. And then there's a new section which is section F, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, which does require us to do an assessment of sort of the housing distribution, historical patterns, and try to overcome some of those that have not faired well for some of our populations. And then housing resources is another section that provides information how folks can tap into existing like fair housing resources. And for example, if you are dealing with a landlord issue, it does provide some information around that as well. Next slide. In terms of our housing plan goals, I mean, essentially the housing element is a document that requires us to provide housing sites. In this case, it's 4,700 and 11 units for the unacorporated area over an eight-year cycle. We had to find sites for folks at all the various income levels from above moderate. Those folks that are very well to do all the way to the very low income and folks that are facing poverty. And so there's quite a bit of programs that span that whole, that income range. And many of the housing goals that we have are related to that. It includes things like also creating opportunities for people with special needs. And to ensure fair housing for all people without discrimination in accordance with state and federal law. So there is, I would say that the overall housing on the package is consistent with state law and that it does create programs to meet housing, meet housing needs for folks at all income levels. Next slide. I'm gonna talk a little bit about how we came to our number. Essentially, what we call our regional housing needs allocation or arena, it's 4711 units and we get that number that's given to us. It's a process that goes from a state through our regional council government, which is A-Bag MTC, and then there's the whole methodology that they have to distribute that number to all of the jurisdictions in the A-Bag MTC territory in the nine county area. And so that process has come next slide please. That process has culminated into our arena, and here is that slide. Essentially it shows that for the 2023, 2031 period that we have 4,711 units. And you can see the breakdown there in terms of all the various income levels. The highest being above moderate, just under 2,000 units. And then what you can see the distribution there between very low, low and moderate income. And then also just of interest should be the percent increase over the last cycle which is 2015 to 2023 where for example under for very low there was almost 200 percent increase in that number and then overall there was 166% increase from the previous cycle which was 1769 units and so that was quite a jump and this is consistent throughout the state given the housing shortage and the situation with housing going throughout the state. Next slide. So our methodology for identifying sites, the most easiest of course was to identify projects that were already in the development pipeline, which we have a number of. We also looked at baking sites and publicly owned sites using access to data and doing also site visits and just our familiarity with the communities in which at vacant sites and under utilized sites and I'm also needed to consider the FFH analysis as I mentioned earlier to look at sites that met some of the goals of that program. And then we of course we avoided any kind of environmental hazards and sensitive areas for example that're prone to earthquake movement or wildfires and other sort of environmental constraints. Next slide. One of the new components of state law was related to housing mobility. And this is something that I think is very interesting in our particular case because what it is is that the state looks at mobility in terms of how you can create generate intergenerational wealth and allow people to move up sort of move up in the the ladder of of housing and housing stability as well as as creating value in their housing situation. And the state looks at vacant single family, vacant single family's own land as one of the areas where you can create housing mobility. And that's usually going to be through increasing density. And so there's only really two areas in our community that that's considered to be sort of higher resourced and that's going to be in the Northern Cache Valley area as well as parts of Fairview. And so we have done that in our inventory and that was one of the things that state H2D particularly wanted to see was a very specific program to allow for housing mobility. And so in those areas, we did up zone parts of Fairview and parcels in Northern Castro Valley up to 17 units per acre, and that would be above moderate income housing. But again, it does create a little bit of a ladder for housing mobility. Next slide. And so I'm not gonna necessarily go through all this information, but just to know that we did approach our site's inventory from a, I guess you could say, a surgical approach is that we didn't do large wholesale rezoning of land, but we did pick particular parcels that were either vacant or underutilized. Of course again the pipeline parcels but the in the middle sort of the bottom middle of the slide there you can see that most of our units are in the Eden area just under half are 44% are in Eden 32% in cash revalued with the remainder of being in Fairview and East County. And so most of the units are going to be in our sort of urban core and then some of the remainder of the units sort of on a periphery in the more lower density parts of the county. And then we were able to through the state process, we were able to get almost 10% of our total rena just with a projection of the number of 80 use that we expect to be built in the 8 year cycle, which is 427. Next slide. a inventory that does meet our regional housing needs allocation. We do have a little bit of a buffer. I think it does range in terms of the income level, but right now we're at somewhere about, I think it's about a 15% buffer, more or less. We don't know how things will shake out in the end. We do have to make sure that we are able to accommodate our arena numbers throughout the whole eight year period. And so having a healthy buffer is a good thing. We look at other counties and there's a quite wide range of variety in terms of the buffer, but it looks like most people are shooting for somewhere around what we've got, which is about 10 or 15%. Next slide. As I mentioned, we do have to make sure that we can meet our Venus throughout the eight years cycle. And no net loss law is, and that's intended to make sure that our, you know, we have development opportunities throughout the cycle, as I mentioned, for all the income categories. And that's why it's really good to have a good buffer so that we have sufficient capacity to meet our remaining arena. You don't know what happens to sites. I mean, just in the time period that we develop our inventory, we have a number of sites that have fallen off the inventory. Some sites have been added on and it seems like we, you know, we're mostly playing catch up. And so again, because of no net loss, we want to make sure that we have a good buffer to last throughout the eight-year cycle. Next slide. I wanted to talk about some of our major sites in their inventory. Most significantly is going to be the Bayfair Bart station, which is in the Ashland area, in the Eden General Plan area with 448 units. A couple of other county on sites include the county sheriff's station, that footable of art 150 is chairland place, which is just in between Ashland and Chagaland, and that's a county on site. It's an old we do element site and a couple other sites that are also significant high numbers, which is the first Presbyterian church, that's in Cache Valley. They're very interested in the project there. And then we do have one Builders Remedy project, which is out in East County with 445 units of senior housing. And that's a site that we have identified as a pipeline project. Next slide. I'm going to discuss all the various amendments to our general and specific plans. We basically had a crack open every single one of our general and specific plans. So there's like five or six of our plans that we had to amend. In the board action, you'll be looking at a very long and detailed resolution and ordinance that goes into all the rezoning and general plan and specific plan changes that we've had to make. Just about every community in our jurisdiction has a specific plan and so I would say that you know we've looked at all of them and and all areas were treated fairly in the sense that we did provide. We did create opportunities in every single one of our specific plan areas and that is consistent also with our AFFH requirements. Next slide. And our county zoning ordinance also needed to we need to create some new zoning districts as well as a men are existing zoning ordinance. And again, you'll see a draft draft ordinance at the full board with the requirement that you know, we need to adopt both general plan changes and zoning ordinance changes, rezoning, that is one of the areas, even though we've gotten the letter from state HDD that says that we meet state statute, we won't get a sort of full compliance letter from the state until we do all of our rezoning and general plan changes, which are all anticipated to be done by the end of the year. Next slide. We've also created a zoning overlay for housing element sites. This is an overlay that provides incentives to build housing. It provides permit fast tracking and ministerial review as long as projects meet objective standards. Many years ago, and as recently as two years ago, we have created objective design standards so that if a project meets those standards, then they're eligible for a streamlined permitting process. And that of course eliminates a lot of sort of, bureaucratic red tape to be able to fast track housing and try to meet our renegoles. Next slide. Just a little bit about SQL. We did create, we did develop an initial study and decided that a mitigating necklip decoration would be the appropriate sequid document to use in this case for approving our housing element. There's a whole public review process that goes along with that. And that was done to the dates to there on the slide. And we will be presenting the board with a final mitigated negative declaration for your action as part of the overall housing element approval process. Next slide. There is there's a number of topic areas that Seiko has requires us to look at. This slide shows the ones that we found to be less significant. Next slide. And then this slide are the ones where we thought we need mitigation. And for example, air quality, cultural resources, no A. So those are the areas that we did adopt some level of mitigation. I would say generally though that there was any, there were no impacts that we could not mitigate through this sequence process. Next slide. In terms of the road show, as you know, we have a very robust road show. We went to all the MAC meetings. All the MAC bodies just in the last 30 days or so. Unfortunately, we did not get much support from the MACs for the most part. I think out of the, all the bodies we only got one approval, one, one, yes vote from one, one member. But for the most part, as a group, that the Cash Valley, Eden and Fairview Max, they voted to reject the housing element. Most of the comments that received were related to impacts of new residential development on existing communities. There was concern about infrastructure, utilities, public services, schools and parks and public safety. And there's summaries of the comments that are attached on your staff member today. Next slide. And just about 10 days ago or so, we went to the planning commission. We got there was a 4-3 vote there to not approve the draft housing element. There was three main concerns about the accuracy, the lack of transparency, and because we did not receive any max support, some of the comments received there were related again to the accuracy and that they thought that the current draft should be discarded and we should start the process From the beginning and there also is a summary of their comments and the planning commission as part of your attachment as well And just a bit about community engagement We had roughly 30 meetings before county decision-making bodies to present the project and request input from public, from the public as well as decision-makers. This goes back a couple of years maybe even a bit longer than that. We had at least two all-mac meetings and then went to each Mac individually several times planning commission several times. And we have presented to this committee at least a couple of times on the housing element. And of course, we'll be going to the full board next week. Other outreach that we have under that we've done as part of the housing element, we do have a website and email a listserv part of the housing element. We do have a website and email a listserv dedicated to the housing element about 1,000 folks that are on that getting regular notices about meetings and when documents are released. We have posts on next store. We have provided or we've offered a virtual office hours with staff as well as to property owners. And we've done outreach to school districts and utility providers and to other community meetings. And we've offered that in multiple languages to the degree that they were necessary. Next slide. I'd want to talk a bit about the consequences of not having a certified housing element. Of course, we've talked about this before at this committee and I think there's you know lots of information circulating in the community about what happens if you don't do. I think there's some some short term very immediate sort of impacts. One of them is the the one Bay Area Grant O-Bag. Right now there is roughly $9 million that is slated for the, it's just the Public Works project, the Upper Sound of Renzo Creekway Trail. And that is potentially at risk if we do not have our housing elements certified by the end of the year. There are other grant opportunities that OBEG offers, and that's usually in about a two-year cycle, so it does put us quite a bit of a disadvantage going forward if we do not have a certified housing element. And there's a number of other regional and state programs that potentially are at risk by not having that housing element certified. There's an active transportation program and our transit oriented communities program and homelessness funding that all can be impacted by not having a housing element. I think generally speaking that between the state requirements and some of the regional and like transportation, the transportation regional like transportation, their transportation or regional transportation commission, as well as A-Bag and MTC, it really looks like they're requiring the housing element certification from many of their funding streams. And that seems to be a trend that has definitely branched it up in the last couple of years, and I imagine that will continue to be the case There's also a potential litigation from the state housing advocates or developers For example, you know, we could have our permit authority you revoke by the state We could have the state take over the the in permits in the building or plan departments. There's also the potential for builder's remedy projects, which is part of the Housing Accountability Act. And that means that if a project comes through, we wouldn't, because we don't have a compliant housing element, we wouldn't be able to, as long as they meet affordability requirements, we would have very little ability to deny a project no matter the zoning or general plan. We have one project in East County again that was taken advantage of the builder's remedy process. And in terms of next steps, again, on next Thursday at the board, the full board planning meeting, we are asking the board to consider approval of the housing element, the general plan, and as well as the first reading of the ordinance amendments. We'll have the second reading on December 7th. We'll quickly submit that document to state HCD in hopes that we get our certification letter by the end of the year. And here's a link to our website and a dedicated email if you want to submit questions to us related to housing element. There is quite a bit of documents including all the maps, all the programs, and it's about a thousand page document as I mentioned in total and including the what the environmental document it's a little longer than that and so lots of information but again staff is available and have been available to the community to answer any questions or provide information as needed. So with that, I'll wrap up and between myself and Liz and Olivia, we'd be happy to take any questions that you have. Before I have any questions, we'll go to public comment. So we can rotate alternate. Sure. I'll mention it. I'll mention it. Between. In person and online speakers first, in person speaker, Dale Silva. the committee. The committee. I will ask the committee to speak. In person and online speakers first in person speaker Dale Silva. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I am Dale Silva. I'm not speaking as a member of any commission or group. I wish to express the hope that the Board of Supervisors will refer the housing element back to the planning department to come up with a plan that doesn't threaten the wholesale disruption of our valued and established neighborhoods. Instructions could be made with a subcommittee of each MAC to find better sites. The problem sites certainly have been identified. We want to thank directors McEllacod Lopez and Rivera for the indeed robust road show on this element. They have been to the max a number of times. I've concerned about the reaction to that road show. The Eden Mac voted against this housing element six to one. The Castivali Mac voted against it seven to zero. The Fairview Mac voted against it five to 0. The Fairview Mac voted against it 5 to 0. The Planning Commission voted against it 4 to 3. In fact, two of your appointees, Supervisor Halbert and two of Supervisor Myles opponents were the ones who voted against it in the 4 to 3 majority. Reasons for this public rejection abound. For example, there's a one acre lot on the on Castile Valley Boulevard at Stanton. It's proposed proposed for a car wash. What is up with that? Why isn't not proposed for housing? There's a nine acre three parcels, nine acres combined in Fairview To be up zone for 153 units potentially The only way out is on Clover Road a narrow My done Ah, okay, I'm sorry It's a long list of draconian consequences the state may oppose we heard about them I think the state is demonstrated will in us to work with this. We need a little more time. I urge that the Board of Supervisors refer it back to planning. Thank you. Thank you. Collar, you're on the line. You have two minutes, Brenda. Yes, hi. I wanted to speak specifically about our area of fair view. I've been to every Mac me. I'm going to be a little bit more and it's Brenda? Yes, hi. I wanted to speak specifically about our area of fair view. I've been to every MAC meeting. I've attended each and everyone and the planning commission meeting. The notes, I just want to tell you about the fair view MAC. It was contentious. It was horrible. There was some behavior that I don't endorse, but all of this comes from being blindsided. They all mentioned that this has come before the Mac several times. There was a meeting in first time in March of 24 that was a municipal advisory council workshop for all Macs that public wasn't notified. There was no notification. I found the agenda today, but there's no minutes. There's no recording. I don't know who was there. I don't think the public was there. I don't know which MAC members were there, but the MAC members are supposed to represent its constituency and those of us who live in in a fair view have a right to question these things and be notified before we just heard about them in December. The notification of this meeting today went out at five o'clock the day before Thanksgiving. That's why you're not crowded with people right now. I would just like to talk about this last minute notification or lack of public notice and one of the presentations to you today. There's something in there about we've had 30 public hearings about this. We heard about the 17 homes per acre rezoning off Clover Road in December. And like what we have private dead end streets that are privately maintained. We can't facilitate this. So please restate this. Kathy Langley? Well, I guess it's time to move out of the state of California. Build housing, we're housing makes sense. The state should not have the authority of eminent domain and to rezone our laws. It is blackmail, it is coercion by the state and the developer's dream. The governing laws created by communities should prevail. What's in it for the state and county one might ask? Trains of dollars and revenue from property taxes, harvesting money for developers and builders. Do we really need more housing in California? Will it make California housing more affordable, doubtful? The Exodus from California has been occurring for the last five years. 1.24% of households have left California for more affordable states. California lost 143,554 households to other states. I urge that the Planning and Transportation Committee kick this back to planning. We reject the housing element focus on the three municipal advisory committees that have weighed in a no vote on the housing element. They represent 225,000 residents of unincorporated, unincorporated Alameda County. Don't think we can't fight this. There are eight cities that are joined together to fight the housing element. They have joined together as our neighborhood voices dot com And they are fundraising to put a ballot measure on to stop this They include the mayor of Huntington Beach and the mayor of Flutton. There are many members of that raising money to put this on the ballot. That's the only way to get this done because our county is not helping us. Thank you. Bob, you're on the line. You have two minutes. Thank you. Bob Clark, resident of Fairview, a little star Ridge Road, want to speak specifically to the parcels that in planning wisdom determine that it's proper to rezone these single lots that are now zoned for I think maybe four houses per lot to 17 houses per acre plus ADUs which could total upwards to 150 homes. There have been you know several road shows about about the housing element. But before September, Mac, Fairview was not specifically even separated out in the housing element information. It was included in the Eden area. It was not until September that we actually saw the Fairview numbers and maps of where they think that it's proper for development. So I'm talking specifically about these parcels that impact our 88 homes on our two dead-end streets. We are all on septic tanks up here. There is no viable access, egress, ingress, off-clover road. We have a CSA that is totally unfunded properly for us to do road repairs. It would be a devastating build for our community, for something like this to go through. They need access. If they're going to build it, they need access off Fairview Avenue, which traffic wise is very difficult. We will fight this with litigation if necessary. Find your numbers somewhere else where there's density, access, and affordability makes sense. May Gutiars? I too am a concerned resident that lives in the Fairview District. I just found out about this last night and so I've got my nose unposted. I really feel that it's not right to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. As far as if something happens, there's no emergency roads. I mean, if you're considering building something, purpose to do that so that there's a way out for the residents up there. And to me to build a lot more housing up there is not right for the simple fact that it's not only danger, endangering the residents there now, but it will also endanger the people that will be living in the buildings that you're considering building for the simple fact that there is the emergency areas are horrible. In fact, there's quite a few of us that have joined the cert team or even took emergency classes, even the fire department are scratching their head as far as how they're going to to work it if anything happens up in that area so just please disregard that and as far as the homeless funding I mean come on we need more housing seriously We're a sanctuary state we're allowing all these people to come in and That should be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to ask you to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to ask the committee to planning commission or the residents. I mean, I see that they're noted generally, and I've looked at the attachments also. But it was rejected with the request to make some serious changes, because this is, you know, it's gonna be relaxing construction and community standards, and basically bulldozing our specific plans. For instance, in San Lorenzo, one of the sites is virtually eliminating the parking for the Lucky Black Angus shopping center, which is short on parking as it is now. I don't know how they're going to put an apartment complex of that size literally in that parking lot. It just doesn't fit. And the way that the properties are targeted for rezoning, it's going to bury what little of commercial area we have now. And so much for anybody walking to work in these places that are going to be built, because there won't be any places that are within walking distance when they get buried. Especially increasing the densities from 19.6 per acre to 86.8. And as far as fair view, I can't help but mention this, but fair view already is in danger of a wildfire going on up there. And it's going to be deadly with the amount of people that are up there and no way to get out. If we put more housing and more people up there, I guess so many people are going to die already. I guess it won't matter if a few more go. A major concern is to remove the public process and make it a private process behind closed doors. The court's questions come to mind. I understand what between a rock and a hard place goes our backs are up against the wall now. Mike? Yes, my concern is the Fairview District. Being up there after 38 years are our biggest concern we moved up there is to be in a farm devourment. When we have land that we can work with around us and not be congested with other homes that are one acre in our area. Those zoning was one acre of partial only at the time. Now it seems like it's going to get squashed and we're going to be eliminated from that area. Pretty soon you get these houses that are in our area and they complain about our farm life and pretty soon our farm life goes away because these people are interacting into our neighborhood and where do we go from here? That's what we moved up there for. We moved up there for the reason that we wanted to be in that environment. So I also looked at one of your slides that said that you're going to lose out on these special things that the state have for you for the trail. One of the trails that you have going on there and also some other things that are going on by the state. If you don't have the housing, you're going to lose this. There's other ways to raise money to these things. We have so much things going on in this area that we waste money on. Now why can't we just provide things for what we need in the area instead of more housing. There's other ways to get trails, there's other ways to get public transportation. We don't have to build more houses to encroach on our land to get money from the state to provide for these things. Catherine, you're on the line. You have two minutes? Yes, hello. I am a homeowner and I'm calling about the parcel that is going to be at Kellyan Maud, an already densely occupied housing area. I agree with Kathy and Brenda. I just like the fact that we keep getting last minute notices and there are also that these meetings are during the time that most of us are at work. I'm also concerned because currently we have 11 houses that are proposed that are going through six are already in the process of being built in the fairview district. over the Thanksgiving holiday. I notice mod street was completely full of cars. Also, when there's a school event, mod is full of cars for the fairview elementary. If you go to Bay Area equity atlas, again, that's Bay Area equity access. It shows that Alameda County in over 12% of units that are rentals experience overcrowding meaning that more than one person is living in one bedroom, more than two people are in a two bedroom. Where are all these cars going to go? Not to mention the pollution that they're going to bring. Why are we not considering building on the National Guard Land that's over there on Hesperian where I've seen an Indian restaurant and another building put up? Why are we not considering building around the Alameda County shipyards which are dilapidated and in need of upgrading? Those are two huge areas of land that could be built on that would not impact all the other residents in this area. And that's it. Thank you. Chuck Meadows. Good morning. My name is Chuck Meadows and I live in Fairview. I think a lot of us recognize the need for additional housing in the area and a lot of us are not opposed to that conceptually. We also are cognizant of the fact that the county is under tremendous pressure from the state, given both legal mandates and financial penalties if the county does not comply within a very short timeline. However, I'd like to echo Dale Silva's comments. And the fact that I recommend that the board send this back to planning because what you've heard from all of your advisory councils that represent the constituents of this county is that they rejected it unanimously. And even the Planning Commission, which has several developer representations or representatives on it, also rejected this four to three. It's not that we do not need a plan, but we need a plan that incorporates the public opinion and also addresses the infrastructure issues which have been raised repeatedly in each of the MAC meetings. The second thing is the ministerial approval process. Sort of bypasses the ability for the public to comment and provide local information as to how that might impact a specific site. This will override all of the specific plans and the general plans that took years for these communities to develop. Part of this housing element unilaterally modifies each of these plans, essentially bypassing the input that it took to develop these plans, which took years. So again, I'd like to summarize and say, again, I think Del Silva's recommendation is a good one. We understand the pressure the board is under to get this approved and through, but it should go back to planning and it should incorporate public comment in the public process more effectively. Thank you. Bruce, you're on the line. You have two minutes. Hello, Bruce Dugie here. I'm concerned about losing the funding that was mentioned and especially the $9.2 million for the San Lorenzo Creek. That kind of money is not easy to replace. It was hard fought. There was like at least three different cycles that hard issued, you know, an applicant grant applications for. And then there's other funding as well, but that's a real game changer, that project, and to lose that project would absolutely be tragic. We need more housing. You know, there was a comment that people are leaving California, but more people are coming to California than they're leaving. So we've had other than I think during a couple years in COVID, we've had a net increase, just not as we don't just, not growing as fast as we used to, but we're still growing as a positive growth. And we need housing for, you know, to grow the economy as well. So, you know, I know there's a lot of detail. People have specific issues with specific plots, but I don't know what to say. We need more, you know, more housing and that housing everybody's worried about traffic. We also need to change our transportation method to something that's denser. So, you know, buses, bicycles, walking, we need alternatives to the car because that's the least space efficient transportation method known to man right now. So that's another thing that needs to change in addition to, you know, densifying. You know, places like San Francisco also had large lots. And over time, they got smaller and smaller and over time, population got denser, housing got denser. So lots of things need to change. And so please, you know, approve the by the end of the year. Karen, Carrie. the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the The governor signed AB 2243 and September 2024 and there's a way to give some protections in neighborhood plans. It states that a development project shall not be put under ministerial review process unless a neighborhood plan had already zoned and property had already zoned, said property as multi-family. None of the parcels and fairview proposed for rezoning or a zone multi-family in the Fairview Pacific plan passed by the Board of Supervisors in 2021. Putting them under ministerial approval, violates AB 2243, section 8 item I. In 2022, the county senate 10 day notice regarding the proposal to rezone commercially zone for property at 26 30 70s david in fair view day housing within 10 days we gave the planning department a petition signed by 660 residents saying no in 2023 planning gave a 10 day notice over a holiday weekend for the same rezoning although many many people are out of town, we turn in a petition with 528 signatures saying no. Now in 2024 planning says we are going to rezone into housing and since they are doing it with ministerial approval and administrative modification, Fairview has no say on how many units are put there, how high they will be or anything else including parking spaces. Since Fairview has no say on how many units are put there, how high they will be or anything else including parking spaces. Since Fairview is in a fire risk area, people are losing fire insurance. There is great concern about evacuation. This proposed housing is on the road leading to safety and almost directly across from a grammar school. This street already comes to a standstill when parents drop off or pick up their kids. More housing there greatly increases risk of emergency. This proposed silences, neighborhoods, and ignores safety issues. And in against AB 2243 rule. Sharma, you're on the line. You know, I just want to say I agree with all the fair view residents that have spoken. I think everyone has the pretty much the same point. As a fair view residents, you know, I asked the board of supervisors to keep with the integrity of our plan in this community. Unlike Keshavali and Ashlyn, fair view has the you know, I asked the Board of Supervisors to keep with the integrity of our plan in this community. Unlike Castivali and Ashland, Fairview has the highest fire zone in the area with little to no egress. One of the sites is going to be built on, which is the ridiculous plan that the county put for an evacuation route, which is gated down a one lane road through Eucalyptus trees. I don't know who approved that, but you know, we supposed to drive walk through burning Eucalyptus trees in the case of fire. Um, you know, as the commissioners pointed out and you've heard, you know, they've had eight years to complete this plan. They were asked two years ago when it's gonna happen and they wait to the last minute and now it's urgent because we're gonna lose funding. I think that's extortion. And what's not addressed is there is, when five canyons, I'm at the end of Kelly, when five canyons was built, we have sewage backup from five canyons down Kelly, you know, and there's so many things that aren't being addressed. I don't think the low, you know, the low housing on Kelly and Maude should even be considered with two elementary schools, congested traffic, no egress, for severely mentally disabled individuals are homeless. So if the county is going to push this through and force us to build up here, they should at least reconsider and have something be a minimum and limit developers for 12 houses to two story. But anyhow, we need more egress. Maybe developers can build a road through Don Castro to the highways. Okay, that's it. Sorry, thank you. Bob, you're on the line. You have two minutes. Hi, this is Bob Zappatowski in Fairview. And I'd like to see the other comments that you've been seeing. I'm not sure if you're going to see the other comments that you've been seeing. I'm not sure if you're going to see the other comments that you've been seeing. I'm not sure if you're going to see the other comments that you've been seeing. I'm not sure if you're going to see the other comments that that we're seeing simply says that they've been considered. But I believe that we need to get this pushback to planning to have them document how they're going to address safety. You know, the roads as people have pointed out up there are one to one and a half cars wide. You're talking about introducing, you know, 450 additional residents, you're talking about putting, you know, two cars per unit with all the, the trips in and out, you're talking about adding like 1800 vehicle crossings onto clover and star ridge. are simply not set up to accommodate that. The roads would have to be widened. There would have to be an exercise of eminent domain taking people's property to widen the roads in support of private development. And I just don't understand how planning has taken that into account in terms of developing their plan here. As other people are pointing out, there aren't utilities in the area. There is no sewage system in that area. The water supply is set up to supply star-rich and clover which are much, much smaller than adding the four to five hundred people that 153 units would put in there. So again, echoing the other people, you know, I believe we need to push this back to planning to document how they're going to address the impacts on road and pedestrian safety, fire and evacuation, utilities and the other necessary infrastructure development to have this kind of population density in a rural area. Cindy, you're on the line. You have two minutes. Thank you. I'm Cindy McClature. I'm also a fairview resident. I object to the rezoning of the fairview properties. And I also object to the provisions of the housing element zoning plan that go beyond what is mandated by state law, limiting parking requirements, sequo exemption, administrative modifications for developments that do not already meet the objective standards. I have spoken to many Fairview residents in the last month and have many signatures from all over Fairview of residents that also object. I've even spoken to a few of the property owners whose property will be re-zoned, they object. Fairview residents are distressed over these proposals and that showed in the turnout at the November Mac meeting. Predominantly, our one-zone fairview has a small amount of undeveloped land. Why does that mean it should be developed in a manner that is completely inconsistent with the surrounding one and two-story homes? This is what has been proposed in the housing element. The zoning changes will allow three story structures to overshadow neighboring houses while requiring only a five foot setback. Could the administrative modifications in the H.E. zoning district leave us also with four or five story structures. In Felon Fairview is to be developed, it should be according to the Fairview Area specific plan and under the current R1 zoning. Fairview already has serious traffic, parking, and evacuation issues and rezoning to multi-family and higher densities will only further burden the area. There is little to no public transportation with only one bus line that runs every 40 minutes and no bus service of East Avenue. There is nothing but housing and schools in the Fairview area. No jobs, no services, no shopping with the exception of one store on East Avenue. The intention of the state housing laws is to put higher density developments in areas that are transportation and service hubs and households could do without a vehicle. This is not Fair view. Thank you. Carmen, you're on the line. You have two minutes. Hello, my name is Carmen, and I am a fair view resident for 15 years now, and I live in intersection with Second Street. We never receive any notification of any meetings, actually. And I leave less than a quarter of the mile from where you propose to have the new building areas. The traffic is already very dense, especially during the peak hours. There are accidents that happens down the road. We actually have all the traffic coming from Castro Valley so the bypass the 580. We have problems getting the home house insurance because of the high fire danger. We have, my house was broken into twice. I have no more valuable. We have, my house was broken into twice. I have no more valuable. So if you guys give me a sign to put it in front of my house that please do not break in, I have nothing else to offer you will be great. The traffic congestion is bad. Also my house is next to the second street and the second street is higher than actually my first level of the house. So I'm afraid that heavy traffic will increase the danger of the road being, you know, slides or whatever might happen. Also, it's not a good thing to build under the high voltage lines because that's where they propose to build. And this project that you have is just for the developer, development, developers, not for the citizens that live here. So that's my thing. I'm against it. Diane, you're on the line. You have two minutes? Yes. Diane, why they're from San Lorenzo and I pretty much agree with most with everything that people have said except for the one person who wanted his past. It's clear that that the only person who really thinks this is a good acceptable plan is a state. I, nobody else, it seems to think of it. None of the max have approved. The Planning Commission hasn't approved. I don't wanna repeat a lot of what other people have said, but we're going a couple of things that haven't been mentioned or just touched upon is, the state has already told us that single family zone parcels can already be split into two, if no, have to be split into two. They've already told us that we cannot stop ADU's from going on every single solitary lot or a JADU. So they're already telling us, so we have to have six times as many people in a single family lot as we have now anyway. Secondly, sequel was just barely touched upon, but we keep not requiring secret plans for anything anymore. Well, a lot by lot, maybe that's not a big deal. So we lose a few more caterpillars, butterflies, birds, and trees, but times it, times 4,000 lots, and how much more natural environment are we losing? And then the last thing is there's also an environmental justice plan and a climate and safety plan that we are supposed to be fulfilling. Those require less over-clarodity and less pollution from cars, more open space, more trees. This housing thing is totally opposite of any of that. And the one last thing, you have to look at the lot sizes because a lot sizes are determined how many stories high these properties are gonna be to come. You did being proposed. Thank you. Adrian, you're on the line. You have two minutes. Hi, I'm Adrian Clay and I live in the Fairview District. I agree with what everyone has already said about Fairview. It's a high fire risk evacuation is impossible. Even if you were to go up Fairview and go out five canyons, people are going to go to 580. Well, 580 is already backed up every day all day long. So all of our evacuation routes are impossible. And what if there is an emergency while these children are in school? You have Fairview Elementary School, East Avenue Elementary School, and Hayward High School, all together. If something happens, there's an emergency. What are we going to do with all the children? How are we going to get them out? I think our safety should be considered before developers and their pockets. So thank you. Shelby, you're on the line, you have two minutes. Hi, my name is Shelby. And I live in the Fairview area. I've lived in other parts of Hayward over 30 years. The Arnie is not lost that I'm literally sitting outside City Hall. I'd just go to go to a local homeless coordination board meeting about housing. I just think, I only found out about this meeting on next door that someone else had posted very last minute. And I just think as someone that's lived in Fairview for, I just seen with Kelly Hill, I lived in Kelly Hill, I sold a home there because when the five canyons was built, it was just disastrous to the neighborhood. And now we're thinking about selling our house to you because it's just dangerous. There's no way to get out if there's a fire. There's we move to Fairview because there's horses. We wanted our family to grow up like no one would a horse looks like and a chicken in hearing those kind of things. And I also just wanted to echo Mr. Silva's recommendation about going back to the planning commission. And there's two schools as it is I have a driven and over 18 years I take public transportation. There is no public housing up there is just going to impact that you're saying this transportation there is none public transportation so that's it. Someone else can use my time if that's allowed if not. Thank you. Mark you're on the line you have two minutes. Supervisor Halvard I think what you're hearing is the heartfelt concern of the community. The public is a part of the community. The public is a part of the community. The public is a part of the community. The public is a part of the community. The public is a part of the community. The public is a part of the community. The public is a part of the community. The public is a part of the community. The public is a part of the community. The public is a part of the community. The public is a not what the community wants. The planning commission had to write letters to the Board of Supervisors and state HCD to require staff to engage in a robust public process as required by state HCD. The public was not involved in the site's inventory process. This housing element is being dictated to the community. Staff should have met with the Macs and crafted the site's inventory as a collaborative process. Why was an Albert Lopez and Sandy Rivera worried about the consequences of not having a compliant housing element when they decided to be a year late in starting the housing element in order to work on the climate action plan and the environmental justice element. In conclusion, I think you will see the public file suit against this housing element, if it's approved in this form. The record will show that the housing element has been ran through the process. Staff doesn't live in our communities and we will not stand for them to dictate our futures. A future that degradates our quality of life forever. Thank you. Chris, you're on the line. You have two minutes. Yeah, my name's Chris Higgins. I'm a resident of Fairview. I'm also a member of the Fairview Mac. I'm speaking for myself. My concern is mirrors most of the concerns, but specifically, the ministerial approval process is eliminating public hearings. And these public hearings have historically uncovered problems with proposed developments that haven't been picked up by the staff. We had a proposal at a quarter of D street and Madero's or it was originally 15 houses went down to 12 and they relied on a 20 or 15-year-old soils report and illegal grading and dumping had occurred there. There have been proposals that that misrepresent the hard scape. There's all this stuff that shows up in public hearings and that's why I'm opposed to the ministerial process. The two proposals on Kelly and Maude and Windfeld and East Avenue, the commercial property. Both of them, they're proposing to put dense housing within adequate parking. And as been brought up before, we've got inadequate public transit in fair view. That's enough out of me. Thank you. I have no more speakers for item one. Very good. Thank you. I'd like to thank all the speakers in person and online. I note again, we're not having a meeting today for action. We don't have a quorum. This is a good public comment, good information. I get to hear it. Staff gets to hear it. This is not a required meeting per the process of approving the housing element. But I'll ask our director to describe the process from here out. I believe that's a board meeting. Either December 10th or the 17th. Is that correct? December 12th next. December 12th at our planning meeting. Yes. Okay. Does it then go to the board on the 17th? Or that is the full board. That is the full board. But there'll be a second reading of the ordinance on the following Tuesday Which I believe is this 16 17 that would be the 17 so planning meeting for the full board on the 12th Second reading on the 17th and that sounds like that's our last meeting of the year Needs to get done by then We're barely making it time wise. That is correct. Our plan is to assuming that it goes as planned. After the 17th is that we submitted back to the state. And by the way, they're closely following our process as well. I mean, we've been in very close contact with the state. They know our deadlines, they know our timeline. And I think that's why they've turned around certain letters pretty quickly. And I think they plan to do the same. If the board does adopt on the 12th and has a second meeting on the 17th, the state I think is poised to issue us a, that your housing element is certified or meets substantially compliance with the state housing law by the end of the year. All right, so I know sometimes first and second readings require 10 days, 15 days, 30 days. This is legal to get it done with five days. Yes, council is blessed our process for the most part. Yes, the president of the Federal Reserve, the county council, the primary reaction that you'll be taking on the 12th that you're more planning meetings, the adoption of a resolution, which is you know only requires one reading. The reason we need two readings for the ordinance is because we're making amendments to the ordinance code. That is an ordinance that does require two readings. Typically you require five days between readings, but there is an exception for publicly noticed hearings. So we believe this process is, is we believe this process is fully compliant with state law. Okay, so we heard a lot of comment today and I have questions around how many units we were assigned 4,711,166% above the prior cycle. So then the question becomes, and I know we don't make that number up. It's given to us. For the area that we're looking at this planning, and we have to allocate a number of units to a certain parcel list, sites list, but in reality, how many units do we typically build in the last eight-year cycle? And we have six years left on this cycle, because we're two years late, we have six years left on this cycle because we're two years late, of the six years left, how are we going to accomplish the building of these units or put it in reference? I think we build a couple hundred units a year. Is that right? I think in the last cycle was even a little bit less than that. I mean, I think Liz has the exact numbers in her head, probably. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but our last Reno, I think, was 1769, and we built about 40% of that number over the last eight year cycle. So 1769 and we did 40%. So 700 is that right? And divided by eight years is around 88 or 90 per year. Okay, we got six years left if we're on track for 90 times six, we're probably going to build 540 out of 4,711. If we stayed on track flatline, even with the number of years. So I think I know the answer to this, but what gives? We're allocated $4,700. We're going to get petitions and requests to build and actually build $540 if everything stays the same. Does that comply with state law? We just have to plan for the number of units. Yeah, I was just going to say that the county has no requirement to build the units ourselves of course. This is all going to be either private developers Profit developers to help us meet this goal as well as Homeowners that are building homes or eight use on their own of course and so the the last eight-year cycle That 40% I, represents a pretty traditional clip for us in terms of how many units we add per year if you look at our long-term growth in the unacorporated area. This cycle is actually looking a little bit better in terms we already have quite a number of units in the pipeline. I think it's about 1 a thousand units or so, isn't it? 600, 700 units already in the pipeline that are slated for housing. Of course, that includes the Builders Remedies Project in East County, as well as other large projects that are already being planned for. And so I think that, you know, we have, it's very much a, you know, a planet that's, you know, we're hoping to meet as close to target as possible, the 47 cycle after 2031, I mean, who knows what the state will do at that point, but I think that it seems that they're continuing to ratchet up the pressure for local jurisdictions to meet these housing goals. The more and more that we don't meet Arina, I think that the trend has been for the state to take away some of our local discretion. And I think that that potentially could continue as well. But we're not obligated or the county, you know, we don't build the housing ourselves. There are other implications for not meeting our arena. I think Liz, it sounds like you want to maybe add to that. But there is certainly other things that that the state will do. And we do have to make sure that we have the ability to meet our arena throughout the eight-year cycle. But it sounded like to me that you were kind of questioning how much of this will we actually build. And I think that number that you know 30, 40 percent of our last cycle is probably in the ballpark. I think we're going to do a little bit better this cycle. We have a different economic situation now. I think interest rates are much higher just in the last year or so. What I'm hearing from other jurisdictions is that they also have experienced a bit of a slowdown on the housing front. But again, I think the state is that they are anticipating that we're going to add a number of these units, but that the likelihood of us hitting on a percent seems a little bit iffy given our historic trends. All right. Was there more to add Liz? I was just going to say that the reason for the state's requirement to include things about, you know, permit streamlining and in ministerial approval and streamlining sequel process and things like that that have been added over the last few years through state law is to ramp up production. So there are several programs in the housing element that are intended to increase production of housing units. So I think we're all a little skeptical that we're going to make the 4,711 units. But the hope is that we will produce more units than we did over the last cycle. So when we do produce these units, one of the comments I heard was a very concern for infrastructure, road width, number of roads, school infrastructure, sewer and water infrastructure. It's my understanding that if units are to be proposed on sites that they would be required to, say, upgrade the roads or add infrastructure or amenities, they can't just or maybe they can if they have a buy-write to add an ADU. It described what we have planned and the concern about crowded roads and lack of infrastructure. What will be the requirement for the builder to improve that? So in other words, it won't just stay the same amount of infrastructure if additional housing is built. Well, like all traditional development from the private sector the developer usually will pay for infrastructure upgrades to the extent that they're needed. Even though we are proposing ministerial review in many cases or by-right approval in many cases, there's still a whole slew of county standards and codes that a project will have to comply with. We don't just, you know, throw out the rule book or anything like that. There's still fire code. There's still going to be the building code. All the other sort of environmental health regulations will have to be addressed. For example, if they're proposed on septic, which actually very little of our, or none of other projects that we are proposing are gonna be on septic. I don't believe we did eliminate that as a constraint. So there is still gonna be the requirement for us to look at the project also from a public works perspective in terms of how you access the site, how you exit the site, eliminating any kind of hazardous conditions to the extent that that's possible. The way that the environmental document addresses congestion, I think they look at vehicle miles, they look at vehicle miles traveled versus congestion and levels of service, which is actually a sort of an old way of looking at it. And so I think that congestion is a fact of life in the Bay Area. I think that, you know, we wouldn't be, we wouldn't be, since here we said there wasn't going to be any additional congestion. I think that that's, again, a part of life, a living in the Bay Area. But all the other codes and standards that I think that relate to health and safety will certainly be followed. New development will have to pay park fees, will have to pay school fees. We have we have heard from some of our school districts and hard, for example, they have provided some input. And I think that the this is primarily a housing exercise. It's primarily an up zoning and rezoning exercise. That's been the primary focus of the project. So those are a lot of my questions, but my main concern now is focusing on the comments around. All the Macs voted against it, I guess, was heard. Feeling that lots of comments were made, but they've only been noted, but really no changes have been made. Feeling that we're not listening to constructive feedback of how the residents would rather see the plan made. I know we've had a lot of meetings, but have we made any changes as a result of those meetings, if you could share on that. But really what it comes down to is, so what could we do from here because I just need to know I'll be happy to send this back to the Planning Department and start all over but what would that do to us? What does that mean? It certainly means standing up for the people that are concerned and have expressed that concern today but what does it do to our overall county? To do that, what are our alternatives, if any, a question and a remaining question that I have is, the ministerial review that we're proposing is that required by state law, or can we amend our current plan to not have it be ministerial? And or of the remaining concerns that we've heard, what latitude do we have to put them into the plan before the 12th and the 17th? So that we don't have to send it back. Help me out with that. Sure. I'll certainly try to. Well, it definitely has been a challenge in working with the local community around the rezoning. As I mentioned, the housing element is primarily a rezoning process. Our densities in the unaccorporated area generally speaking are fairly low. When we're not a very super high urban area, our highest densities have been at the bar stations and other county-owned sites, where it seems like it's a better idea to accommodate much of the highest zoning. And I think that when you, the proposition of not doing any rezoning, is there any up zoning, I think, I would say that's probably a non-starter for our particular process because it's 4711 units. I mean, that's a lot of units. And they have to go somewhere. And so I think that given all the other requirements of the housing element, as I mentioned for example, the mobility aspect, that really does suggest that we want to rezone higher resource areas or lower density areas so that people can have an economic mobility ladder up to housing, up to housing ladder so that they have a more chance of creating intergenerational wealth and sort of undoing some of the past discriminatory practices around housing. That's the AFFH, the affirmative leave, affirmatively furthering fair housing component of the housing element. And that is state law. And I think that they look at, for example, vacant single family home, vacant single family-zoned land as an opportunity for AFFH. And that's what we've done. That was a very specific thing that the state wanted to see is like show us something very concrete that you're going to do to help people with that mobility. And so, um, uh, upzoning in areas that, for example, in some of our lower resource areas, like this, say, Ashland or Cherryland, doesn't hit that target, up zoning places in Castro Valley, and Fairview does hit that target. And so that's why we did that. So a lot of what we're doing is complying with state regulations. And I note that if we don't approve this by the end of the year, I think it was mentioned in the report, the state essentially makes decisions for us. Isn't this, didn't this happen one year in Pleasanton where they didn't have this and the state, a judge in a courtroom actually was issuing building permits? Is that what could really happen? Well, it's not gonna happen on January 1, 2025. I mean, the state, the HCD has a whole enforcement arm of their department to be able to look at what we're doing and what the delay is. And I think that they, I can't speak for the state, but it's like our code enforcement, it has a escalating sort of degrees of punishment or consequences, but it's not going to happen on January 1. I think that there are some short-term consequences that we talked about in terms of losing some of that O-Bag money by the end of the year. And that is a real potential. It's not a 100% given outcome, but I think that is a high potential that that money could be in jeopardy. In terms of what happens in pleasant and I can't speak to that, I'm not sure about that. Well, maybe Ms. Weddle could. Besides losing money, we also lose control. I believe it was mentioned Ms. Weddle. You could check mine. Right, Supervisor. I do want to remind the everyone who's listening that the state HCD is all already issued a letter telling us that we are non-compliant. We have missed the deadlines. So now the deadlines are all about funding. And if you state HCD has been working with us. They've seen that staff is working through the process and trying to comply with state law. The risk is if they see that we are not willing to move forward on a timely fashion that state HCD has an enforcement unit. And at the end of the state HCD process is a referral to the California Attorney General's enforcement unit. And all of the lawsuits that they have filed against either non-compliant or jurisdictions who are willfully flaunting the state law saying we will not comply have resulted in court judgments in favor of the state. And I believe there have been some penalties issued against local jurisdictions. Typically they have resulted in decisions from the court or consent decrease from the jurisdiction saying, yes, we will comply. Our legal position vis-a-vis the state is not good. But you know, certainly I think we're doing the best we can to comply with state law and not go to so many extremes that it is an unworkable plan. Yeah, it seems like we're setting up for a perfect storm fight though. We have so much pressure from the state. We have pressure from the community. We don't have a lot of great choices. We can play chicken, a game of chicken, with state HD or their ability to refer to the Attorney General. If we want, but that seems like a tough choice to make. We could lose funding. That's a tough choice to make. But why, I think I heard that we needed to review our environmental justice plan. And I think another document that we chose to need to take precedent over this. Why are we at the 11th hour two meetings before the years over needing to get this done or face penalty of lost funding or continued out of compliance? Is there a way that we could? I don't want to play money more in quarterback, I guess. I want to get ahead of this for next time to ensure that we're not, what can we do to ensure that we're not at the last minute, number one, and number two, what could we do to ensure that we build in the feedback from our community? Are there things that we can say we're hearing from them. We want to do we can do that can we do some of the things that were being asked to do? So in terms of next time I think that the the housing element requirement from the state and all the sort of implications and consequences of not having a certified housing element are going to are here to stay. I don't see that changing necessarily. And you know the next cycle for example so I think that of course starting earlier would be better. I don't think it you know it speak for the team that's been working on is I don't think it's we didn't think it was going to take us this long, of course. We issued the RP to hire a consultant in like early 2022 thinking that we would have the process done in the amount of time that we had, of course, we were way off. And so I think that we are institutionalizing the housing element and everything that we do. And this kind of goes back to, for example, the Baker Tilly report and the fact that we have local government constraints and some of our own departments are constraints in many ways. And so we're trying to eliminate a lot of those constraints. And it all sort of comes together. I think that the, some of the other elements that you mentioned like the environmental justice element and the Climate action plan. I mean, it's all important right. They're all they're all state requirements and Some of them we started before and they finished earlier some we started later and they finished earlier For example, just I think it was in the summer this year where the the We got our environmental justice element completed the climate action plan is that the planning commission now as well as the safety element. So those all required elements of the general plan. I think that's a degree that you know we we don't necessarily have a hierarchy, but right now the housing element certainly is the is a focus and what we need to get done now. But going forward, I think that we are institutionalizing the housing element overlay into our zoning ordinance. And so I think it's much more, it's going to be easier to change. I think for the next cycle, then it was for this cycle. But we really were starting from scratch in many degrees, you know, to a large degree, just in terms of the overall than it was for this cycle. What we really were starting from scratch in many degrees, you know, to a large degree just in terms of the overall rezoning package that we're presenting to the board. And so I think that, you know, there is, I think the future is bright in that sense. But right now, again, where we are at the 11th hour, unfortunately, and I think that we have done a very surgical approach to our housing element. We haven't rezoned large swaths of the county, but we've picked certain sites. And there's a couple of sites that people have mentioned in the in the testimony that you've heard where we know that the property owner is interested in the housing project. That would be a ripe opportunity in my view because we have a willing property owner. We've also had sites that we've removed from the inventory because property owners are not interested in housing. And so just to kind of echo what you said, we have had many masters to sort of serve in this particular exercise from the community, from elected officials, boards and commissions, and then the state of California, as you know. And you know, right now then the state of California, as you know, and right now, as the approving body, the state of California is sort of what we feel is sort of driving the timeline and the programs that we've put together. And I don't think that we have missed any sites. If we have, we certainly would like to know about them. We are very familiar with our communities. We've done site visits using Google Maps, of course, identified sites. We've contacted property owners when we can. Not every property owner has reached out to us. We have, I would say, had very little opposition to reasonings. Generally speaking, we've had a few that we've taken off the list, but given the number, it's, I think it's under like two to three percent or something like that. So, you know, rezoning a site to higher density does add value to a property of course, as you can imagine. So there might be some desire to have a site rezoned. And I think that, you think that we're also very aware of that fact as well as we move forward. So overall, I think that's been a very robust process. We have tried to change the document. For example, we did eliminate some sites in the Cascha Valley Hills, which are in a very high fire hazard area, whereas in Fairview, they're just in a, not just, but it's not the very high it's just high and it and state allows us to use those sites we have removed some sites that were identified as I mentioned earlier before because of the property are not interested in in housing or rezoning and that's come out of the some of the Mac process as well so we have listened where we can, but I think for example, as I mentioned earlier, just to say we don't want any development or we don't want any upzoning really puts us out of disadvantage because that's really primarily what the housing element is about. Well, thank you. I would encourage us to continue to review those comments from the community if there are more that we can incorporate before the 12th. I don't know. I'll just ask, are there any things that you've heard the community time and time again and they'll have another two chances to come back the 12th and the 17th? Are there any other elements that we can build in to our housing element before we finally submit it that would appease the residents or will be faced with the tough decision? Send it back and play chicken with the state or tell our community that we just can't accommodate them. If it's to send it back, we really need to understand while it's a risk, what's the real risk of lost funding? Has State HCD ever cut county funding? And the history of their ability to do that to any county in the state? Well, the funding that that primarily is that risk, is not coming from state HCD, but from other state and regional bodies that provide funding to the county for transportation. There's homeless. There's plenty money. Are there ever been cut? Has the county ever been cut? Yeah, that I'm not sure if it looks like our director has some input here. Sandy, we're very community development agency director. It is the first time that the state is putting this type of pressure in terms of these requirements. And actually in some of the applications or new grant requirements, they've just added the state that housing elements be certified. So this is new. We have not seen whether or not they've we hold it. Any kind of funding, but it would be for our hat money, which is the homeless funding, as well as, um, it's just announced that home key funding would also be, um, held back to. So there's one holding back something that's already due us, awarded to us or coming our way. Another is you can't even apply for new funding. If you don't meet this requirement. That I can understand is pretty clear. You can't apply. That's different than cutting something that we already have. All right, which they can do as well, but all right. Well, never a dull moment. Again, I want to thank everybody for coming out. This was a discussion, not an action item because we're having a discussion. And we'll now move on to the next item. Thank you. The next item is a soil import ordinance update. We'll have a chance for I. Soil import ordinance update. We'll have a chance for public comment on items not on today's agenda. After this item. Good morning, civil riser, however, this is Ed Lovyer with Alameda County Code Enforcement. I was asked today to give an update on the soil importing ordinance. Just a brief reminder that this ordinance. See here. Next slide, please. This ordinance was effective on November 16, 2019. And the purpose of this chapter is to regulate the soil importing of soil or other fill material in unencorporated areas of the county to ensure that such importing is related to our probably land uses. Next slide. This is just a quick snapshot of the complaints cases we received per year 19, 2020, 15, 2021, 9, 2022, 12, and 20, 23, and 10, 2024. So 65 cases in the last five years. These are complaints of soil being imported into our county or this isn't illegal dumping. It's not illegal dumping. It's soil being imported into private properties. And people complain about that. Yes. Okay, like a neighbor. Correct. Okay. Was there many more before 2020, I think our soil importation ordinance When did that happen? Are you asking about what 19 yeah 20 in 19 so in 2018 17 16 did we have a lot more complaints than these numbers? I think the whole reason for the ordinance being created was we were seeing an up swing on properties that were bringing in importing soil and there was not much regulations in place to control it. For example, the neighborhood preservation ordinance only states that any mountainous soil should be incorporated into the landscape and then and also must be used for ag purposes, but that wasn't very clear of our specific enough. So we've added more details into the ordinance to make it clearer. Next slide please. So in terms of where these complaints are coming in from, so there's a 20 liver more, 19 castor valley, 3 in Pleasanton, 3 in Sonol, and 3 in Mountain House, 65 cases total, and out of those 65, 47 in Agzone Properties, and 18 in residential zones. Next slide, please. In terms of the complaints, there's seven that are still in process. Follow-ups are scheduled. Either notices are being created or more evidence are needed to move them forward. Four have not been in compliance. And their finds are feet, finds and fees are being issued. And one side this being monitored, perhaps the permit application are anticipated to be submitted by the property owner. And out of the close cases, we found 24 that did not have any violations, and five of those where we were not able to verify. 12 were in compliance, property owners decided to remove the soil. And nine are in compliance because they obtained necessary permits. And three were referred to public works agency, mostly the grading department for any grading violations. So this is just a snapshot of where they are occurring. Probably more needed to be added in 2024 here, but you could see that a lot of the concentration is more for the East County agricultural properties and in Castro Valley area, a lot of it is in the Fairview area where there's larger sized properties and it's a lot easier or needed to bring in soil for different purposes. Next slide. So in terms of the fines and fees for code enforcement, this is similar to any zoning violations that we get in the zoning ordinances. Reinspection fee, if the violations are not corrected, we charge $193 for our inspectors. And we add a administrative fee at 2068 for processing and mailing out and creating the follow up to the first. We charge an additional $250 in addition to the rein specion and administrative fee. And if it's still not corrected, usually we wait about a month. That second fine could add another $500. Third would be a thousand. Fourth will be 1500. And if it goes beyond the six month period, we add an additional $5,000. And for the soil importing ordinance, there is a $1,000 ordinance violations for each offense. The ideas that escalating fines will start making bigger impact on the property owner financially, wherecially, we're hopefully they get motivated to stop what we're doing and eventually comply with the regulations. So in terms of the buying permits, nine have been approved. Three were denied. One was closed because application was incomplete. And one was withdrawn by the property owner and out of those 14, nine were obtained from the complaints, four were just proactively seek by the property owner and there is one obtained for a plan development. So this is the plan development that we have right now. We only have one. There was another one that applied but then we drew for various reasons. So this one on Cookman Road's and all already started. Their CUP was issued in December 2020 and expires in five years so we're kind of like almost past the middle point but they have not started since this summer. So they intend to complete the project within in phases and they will require paying the administrative fee and approval of each source prior to import. That's submitted to the various departments for approval before they can even start importing and it requires periodic site visits and audits monitoring compliance by my team and other agencies as necessary. So so far they've completed job one they call it from one source and there's 2500 cubic yards and job two there is in progress so far they brought in 500 cubic yards and the recent monitoring inspection performed was on October 17 Just to make sure they follow follow all the protocols in place for Receiving and documenting the soil that that's being brought in So in terms of permit fee schedule once somebody is interested in a development project, they give a deposit of $2,500 and that's used by the planning staff to allocate their time into the review process and then they see if they need more or refund if it they use less of that. Administrative fee per soil important ordinance 17.66130. That's include $1.29 per cubic yard for import, for the soil imported into the property. And this is used for a code enforcement assisting in permit application review and monitoring their progress. Set up the project and face requirements, review approvals and site conditions prior to project start, perform the site monitoring and compliance inspections, review required documents and approvals for job completion for each phase. We have to maintain tracking data and we ensure at the end of the project that everything's completed properly. Overall, our department feels that the ordinance has worked well related to soil importing on large rural lots in the east county. The requirements that soil be used for agricultural uses has successfully limited improper use of the ordinance. In the urban areas, agricultural requirements is less applicable and some changes are needed to limit large soil importation. So back in May, when I did present to this board, we were considering some recommendations. Unfortunately, we're still kind of working through that, trying to see if it makes sense to either make a policy change or even ordinance language change, to consider revising their residential requirement, make it more practical to anticipate small deliveries of soil for normal residential use such as landscaping and gardening, because what we're finding out, this residential property sometimes, that they don't know the ordinance and they're bringing in some soil, flatten out a piece of land for parking, et cetera. Not it's kind of hard pressed for them to say, or we're going to use it for agricultural purposes. So some consideration that we're making there. And we're also considering revising this in order to include the requirements on property owners who aren't unable to provide adequate proof of the imported source and volume. It's very hard for us to do the enforcement if we can't track where the source is coming from. And then, in some cases, the adding special regulations and requirements to the ordinance regarding the properties that have slow graded and 30% or near water courses. These are the most sensitive that we would benefit from increased regulations. It's easy for us to see importing that just occurred and we can see the mound above Flatland, but it's harder for us to get to a point where violation is so clear that after it's already been rolled down the hill and it's been spread out, there's already grass growing on it. It's really hard for us to get down to a point where we can say, yeah, there's this type volume and location is very specific. So, I think that's the end of my presentation and I'll take any questions you have. Before we go to questions, I'll ask members of the public that want to make public comment. anyone online or in person? Check medals. Good morning again, check medals. And I'd like to preface my comments by stating that I want to acknowledge director Rivera Albert Lopez and Ed the Viag for regularly meeting with a group of us citizens to try and address some of the enforcement issues that I'm going to discuss today. I think they've really tried to reach out to us and I believe they're making some changes in the enforcement process. Having said that on the soil importation ordinance, there are some significant problems with this. I have now reached a milestone. This week, I'll be issuing another $50,000 check to my attorneys. I have now crossed the $600,000 legal fee costs in this matter. $600,000. Now, why is that? In 2019, I had a neighbor that began dumping not just on their property, but on my property as well. The PWA did issue a citation in 2018, unbeknownst to me, but they never followed up on it. Therefore, the party just took that as permission to continue with their violations. They came out in 2020 in response to a complaint that I raised because they were now starting to dump on my property as well. However, again, no follow-up was done. Therefore, the party took that as permission to continue. Now, what has happened as a result of this? We have two other neighbors. One who saw this going on, and now they have done a similar scale project on their property, which, fortunately, Code enforcement has come out and in the process of setting them. And then the second property who halted their operations once they were alerted to the fact that there might be possible enforcement actions. So what kind of change do we need to see here? One, there are no fines being imposed. There's a thousand dollars per load and a thousand dollars per day. To date, $200 have been imposed. My recommendation is that the fines need to be imposed and a geotechnical engineer engaged early enough to validate the complaints. Thank you. I have no additional speakers for item two. Okay. Let's start with that. How many fines is it true that only a few hundred dollars of fines have been levied when we have issued fines to property owners that did not comply at their reinspection. And we've also started finding two projects that received a notice and a failed inspection. And they're still bringing in truckloads. And our guys, you know, set out there and we started imposing $1,000 per truckload that we were able to verify. We need to see it for us to cite it. Meanwhile, I've had complaints in other parts of the county that it takes a long time to get a permit. I'll reference the equipment project 18 months to get a permit. Been working on this for years. I'm honestly at the point where I want to agenda as a moratorium on the soils importation ordinance. I'd like to have that at our next meeting and to stop it. Take it away for six months until we can, the discussion since May in process not completed, considering revising the residential requirements. And I think I'm going to stop leading by project and start leading by deadline. Like you have until this date to get this done. So that's why I'd like to agenda as a moratorium on the soils importation for a certain period of time by which you then have the ability to make these changes deadline deadline State gives us deadlines. So I feel like that's what I have to do When we do Discuss that I'd like to discuss the fees that we charge. And I get that it's a $1.29 per cubic yard. I think that's fine for somebody that's bringing in a few cubic yards up to a certain amount. But after you bring in a certain amount, I'd like a cap. Either a cap or a trailing off. It should not be a linear amount if you're bringing in five or ten or a hundred or a thousand yards. It shouldn't be the same cost per yard if you're bringing in 137,000 yards. I don't see the nexus there in what it costs us to process when those, and I grant that we maybe not didn't foresee that large spread, so I get that, but I would like to fix that. It's just an unintended consequence. So I would like that to be on the next meeting or the meeting after that in the next two months to discuss a moratorium and a revision of our per yard fee. I'll add to that what we heard today, an uptick or an increase in our enforcement. For some that are bad, bad actors, I want to see $50,000 fines. If we can, I don't know what the law is. I'd like to understand the upper limit of the law on what we can charge bad actors To the if we're gonna need to commission a geotechnical study then it's gonna cost a lot of money Means we're gonna have to pass that on to the bad actor if there is one so That's all I have to say on that. With regard to permits, I'll also ask that if we, I'll build in a by-right importation after two months if you don't get your permit processed, or three months, or four months. I'm open to the dialogue, but these are the kinds of things that I'm looking at if somebody puts in a permit request and it doesn't get processed by a certain amount of time they just have the right to do it. If we're allowed to do that by state law I don't know but those are the discussions and I'm not saying that that's where we'll end up. Those are the discussions that I want to have with our community, with our staff, and with this committee. But I've heard, I've just heard an awful lot. It's not the first time we've talked about this. So, but I appreciate the data that we were given is really good data. When we do talk about this, I would like for those 14 applicants or whatever number we had, we should notify them, hey, we're going to be talking about this ordinance. It's germane to your life. We should be letting them know that this is going to be a discussion. So I see a lot of head nodding over there. Are we good? Yes, I'm taking good notes. Sandy, anything else? Albert, legal team? We're good. Not a meeting, just a discussion. When you say more atorumium do you mean sort of? Suspend our ordinance spending the existing ordinance so there will be an Aperative of well, I guess we'll go back to what we had before which was no regulation right while we rework a new ordinance Yeah, okay, I'm open to that and if the public wants it, I'm willing to support it Yeah, I mean again, I think our ordinance did some work. It did some really good work. It's we're not having the number of complaints we had before. I guess, but yet we have we're holding people up. So I think there's a balance that needs to be struck. And if we can't speed things up, we'll just get rid of it for a while. See if we experience an uptick in complaints. I don't know if we will. We may not. Maybe people have learned their lesson. The bigger problem that's linked to this is illegal dumping. And I'm afraid that some people are maybe illegally dumping because they find it too cumbersome to work with our importation policies. They don't have any place to put it, so they can't give it to their neighbors, so they dump it illegally. So we'll see if that feedback comes in our public comments. So thank you. Thank you. With that said, we have the last item public comment. On items not on today's agenda. I have no speakers for public comment. Okay, with that case, this non-meeting discussion is adjourned. Thank you.