| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:01:29.79 | Nastassya Saad | I'd like to call the regular planning commission meeting for Wednesday, November 12th to order. The time is 6.30. Thank you everybody for being here this evening. Assistant city manager, can you orient us please? |
| 00:01:42.87 | Assistant City Manager | Absolutely, good evening Chair Saad, Vice Chair Junius, Planning Commissioners, staff and members of the public. This evening's meeting is being held at City of Sausalito's Council Chambers at 420 Litho Street and is open to members of the public. Members of the public may also access this meeting and provide public comment through Zoom. With that, I will move to call roll, Commissioner Moore. |
| 00:02:04.58 | Fred Moore | here. |
| 00:02:05.24 | Assistant City Manager | Commissioner Merlot. Present. Commissioner Luxenberg. Present Vice-Chair genius present chair sod |
| 00:02:12.20 | Nastassya Saad | here. |
| 00:02:12.91 | Assistant City Manager | We have quorum back to you, Chair. |
| 00:02:14.86 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. Item number two is the approval of the agenda. |
| 00:02:19.13 | Assistant City Manager | So, |
| 00:02:19.18 | David Marlatt | Thank you. |
| 00:02:19.23 | Assistant City Manager | Don't move. |
| 00:02:19.25 | Nastassya Saad | So. |
| 00:02:19.28 | David Marlatt | Thank you. |
| 00:02:19.35 | Nastassya Saad | All moved. |
| 00:02:19.67 | David Marlatt | Thank you. Second. |
| 00:02:22.81 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you, Assistant City Manager. |
| 00:02:25.43 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you. |
| 00:02:25.54 | David Marlatt | Bye. |
| 00:02:25.70 | Assistant City Manager | morning. |
| 00:02:25.97 | David Marlatt | Thank you. |
| 00:02:26.08 | Assistant City Manager | you you Thank you. Thank you. Uh, I'm sorry, can you repeat that for the record? Commissioner Merlot yes Commissioner Luxenburg yes Vice-Chair Junius yes chair Assange yes motion passes back to you chair |
| 00:02:36.50 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 00:02:36.51 | Nastassya Saad | Yeah. |
| 00:02:36.72 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 00:02:40.07 | Nastassya Saad | Yes. Thank you. Item number three this evening are for public comments on items that are not on the agenda. |
| 00:02:47.82 | Assistant City Manager | This is time for the commission to hear from citizens regarding matters that are not on the agenda, except in very limited situations. State law precludes the commission from taking action on or engaging in discussions concerning items of business that are not on the agenda. However, the commission may refer matters not on the agenda to staff or direct that the subject be agendized at a future meeting. Video or audio public comment participation is limited to three minutes per speaker, unless modified by the chair. If you'd like to make a comment, please submit a speaker card to me and or my colleagues to my right. I'm joined by Matthew Mandich, principal planner and office manager Maria Hernandez. If you'd like to make a comment in the Zoom application, please raise your hand, and you will be called upon when it is your time to speak. To raise your hand from a phone, press star 9. Each speaker will be notified when their time has elapsed. Thank you. And Chair, I'm gonna look to the Zoom application. I'm gonna look to the chamber first for any raised hands. Seeing none, looking to the Zoom application. |
| 00:03:52.59 | Assistant City Manager | Any raised hands? Seeing none, and I will give it back to you, Chair. |
| 00:03:58.14 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. ITEM NUMBER FOUR ARE THE APPROVAL OF THE PLANNING COMMISSION. WE HAVE PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES. WE HAVE MINUTES FROM THE 8TH OF OCTOBER. ARE THERE ANY DISCUSSION POINTS OR IS THERE A MOTION? Okay. Would anyone care? I'll move to adopt the minutes. Thank you. |
| 00:04:15.86 | David Marlatt | I'll move to adopt the minutes. |
| 00:04:18.89 | Nastassya Saad | Is there a second? Second. Thank you very much. Assistant City Manager, please. Commissioner Moore. |
| 00:04:19.33 | David Marlatt | second. |
| 00:04:24.60 | Assistant City Manager | you |
| 00:04:24.97 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 00:04:24.99 | Assistant City Manager | you |
| 00:04:25.22 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 00:04:25.34 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 00:04:25.44 | Fred Moore | of kind of back here. |
| 00:04:27.94 | Nastassya Saad | Is there a microphone ball... |
| 00:04:27.95 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you. |
| 00:04:27.97 | Fred Moore | I'm sorry. |
| 00:04:28.02 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you. |
| 00:04:28.38 | Assistant City Manager | is a good thing. |
| 00:04:31.16 | Fred Moore | Bye. |
| 00:04:31.30 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you. |
| 00:04:31.60 | David Marlatt | I could call them. |
| 00:04:32.43 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 00:04:33.61 | Assistant City Manager | Microphone cover, we'll have staff Look for one. |
| 00:04:38.17 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. Actually, on that note, I believe I had to open that up for public comment for the minutes. |
| 00:04:50.70 | Assistant City Manager | And we can do that, Chair. |
| 00:04:55.99 | Nastassya Saad | THE FAMILY. Thank you very much. |
| 00:04:59.65 | Assistant City Manager | We can do that chair opening this item up to public comment. I'll look to the chamber first for interested speakers via a raised hand or a speaker card. I have no speaker cards and seeing no raised hands. I looked at the zoom application seeing no raised hands. |
| 00:05:00.41 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 00:05:11.96 | Assistant City Manager | I'll give it back to your chair. |
| 00:05:13.35 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you, and we had a motion and a second. If we can continue with roll, please. |
| 00:05:18.70 | Assistant City Manager | Absolutely. Commissioner Moore. Commissioner Merlot. Yes. Commissioner Luxenberg. Yes. Vice Chair Junius. Yes. And Chair Saad. |
| 00:05:23.19 | Nastassya Saad | Yes. Yeah. And... Yes. |
| 00:05:28.13 | Assistant City Manager | Yeah. Motion passes. |
| 00:05:29.94 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. Item number five this evening are communications. Does staff have any communications? Although actually if we can take one quick note, are we having any issues with streaming? |
| 00:05:48.21 | Nastassya Saad | Can we take a |
| 00:05:49.73 | Assistant City Manager | Yeah, I'd like to request a five-minute recess to address this. Let's do a |
| 00:05:51.44 | Nastassya Saad | to address this. Let's do a six minute recess to come back at 640. I'm sorry for the delay, but we are having issues with our Zoom application and streaming. So we will resume at 640. |
| 00:06:01.64 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you, Chair. |
| 00:06:02.20 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 00:06:19.97 | Kevin McGowan | But the last thing you were going to say was that nobody's changed... |
| 00:06:24.32 | Unknown | Let's get on the third floor. |
| 00:06:26.05 | Adam Blair | It's a good thing. |
| 00:07:14.06 | Andrew Junius | Hilarious. |
| 00:07:23.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:07:23.79 | Andrew Junius | that. |
| 00:07:24.03 | Unknown | the Chicago Bureau. . It looks like. . |
| 00:07:39.86 | Unknown | . |
| 00:07:43.30 | Andrew Junius | You football fan? Yeah. You play a lot of NFL football? Yeah. Niner fan or a Patriot fan? Niner fan. |
| 00:07:43.79 | Unknown | football. |
| 00:07:46.24 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Yeah. Niner fan, Patriot fan, or was Patriot fan, Niner fan now. |
| 00:07:50.10 | Andrew Junius | Thank you. Thank you. Oh, you abandoned the Patriots? Well, after a while, I was just |
| 00:07:56.01 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Well, after a while, it was hard to watch both games and both Cal and Michigan on a weekend. But I'm still a Patriot fan. But one spot was shut off and Brady left. It got a little sad for a while. A little sad. Although the 49ers have Mack Jones. I know. That's pretty cool. |
| 00:08:01.76 | Andrew Junius | Good. |
| 00:08:09.20 | Andrew Junius | to. |
| 00:08:09.41 | David Marlatt | Thank you. |
| 00:08:09.42 | Morgan Pierce | . |
| 00:08:13.08 | Andrew Junius | I know, that's interesting. |
| 00:08:14.98 | Unknown | Patrick's perfect. |
| 00:08:15.95 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Well, Matt Jones, because... I'm sorry, the patron? No, but who's the patron? |
| 00:08:19.95 | Andrew Junius | I'm sorry. Who's the? a major quarterback. |
| 00:08:23.73 | Jeffery Luxenberg | I'll picture a quarterback is somebody I haven't heard of. I don't know. I mean, the name didn't mean anything to me. I saw it. But, yeah, it didn't mean anything. |
| 00:08:30.99 | Unknown | I saw it, but yeah, it didn't do anything. Who do you face? I'm a bear face. Bear face? |
| 00:08:36.30 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:08:36.37 | Jeffery Luxenberg | for you. |
| 00:08:37.03 | Unknown | The President. |
| 00:08:39.44 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:10:52.33 | Unknown | We knew that. |
| 00:10:56.38 | Andrew Junius | Even in Vegas now. Thank you. |
| 00:11:06.37 | Morgan Pierce | Thank you. you Thank you. Oh my God, that's a great foundation. What? |
| 00:11:10.75 | Andrew Junius | We have a picture. |
| 00:11:11.69 | Unknown | of official. Thank you. for you to close this year. . All just by the intervention of the president. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:11:20.97 | Sophia Collier | Thank you. |
| 00:11:21.07 | Jeffery Luxenberg | you Yes. |
| 00:11:23.18 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:11:23.20 | Sophia Collier | Thank you. |
| 00:11:23.23 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:11:23.25 | Sophia Collier | Thank you. |
| 00:11:23.30 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:11:23.32 | Sophia Collier | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:11:24.33 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. Right on schedule. |
| 00:11:27.91 | Nastassya Saad | the time check that it's 640. |
| 00:11:33.02 | Unknown | Nice. |
| 00:11:36.63 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 00:11:36.66 | Unknown | Are we back? |
| 00:11:36.73 | Nastassya Saad | Are we back? In business? Sure, no problem. |
| 00:11:43.48 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Did we get kicked out of Zoom? |
| 00:11:45.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:11:47.01 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Yeah. |
| 00:11:59.75 | City Attorney Rudin | commissioner as a desert. |
| 00:12:00.07 | Assistant City Manager | There's a different. |
| 00:12:05.27 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you for confirming, Attorney Rudin. |
| 00:12:24.56 | Nastassya Saad | We'll give it just another minute for anyone who's on the phone that can hear us. We had a technical issue and we are almost resolved. |
| 00:12:39.49 | Peter Hardeen | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:13:32.50 | Assistant City Manager | All right, we are a go, Chair. |
| 00:13:34.33 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. Thank you for all of your patience. Sorry for the technical issues. We are back on. We were at item number five, which are our communications. Assistant City Manager, anything from city staff? Yeah. |
| 00:13:45.94 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you for the opportunity chair. There's one communication item from staff this evening. As the commission public is aware, the city held a special election on November 4, 2025, where two ballot measures were voted on by the Sausalito community. The two measures were measures J and measures K. Measure J as related to the rezoning of 12 sites in the city's commercial districts. Measure K related to the rezoning of a portion of the city owned Martin Luther King Jr. property to allow for more than 50 units of housing to be built on no more than two acres of the property while maintaining our park recreational and educational uses on-site measures J and K were placed on the ballot for voter consideration by the City Council to meet state requirements to zone for 724 additional housing units at various income levels before our January 30th, 2026 deadline. And this is all in connection with our housing element certification and implementation. These measures were placed following months of community outreach and review, including feedback for more than 800 residents and approval allows the city to avoid costly lawsuits, penalties of up to 600,000 per month as well as the loss of local zoning control. The preliminary results were released by the Marin County Elections Department on the evening of November 4 and they have been updated since then. The most recent counts indicate that measure J was passed with 75% approximately approval rating and measure K was also approved by the voters at approximately 54%. While the vote counting process will continue over the next month, it seems clear that the voters have approved measures J and K and we'd like to thank everybody in the community who participated in this year's election. That does it for my update chair and I'll give it back to you. |
| 00:15:36.66 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. And just to reiterate what assistant city manager said, however you voted, we appreciate all of the turnout because there's nothing like community input in all of this process. So thank you to everyone and to the city for putting those measures forward. I personally do not have any communications. I will look to the commission, our working group, for the code update. Do you guys have any questions? Communications for this evening |
| 00:16:01.37 | Andrew Junius | Thank you, Chair, not a lot. Commissioner Marlott and I have had a number of conversations. There's a lot to think about, a lot to do. We're really, so kind of organizing our thoughts, but in the coming months, we will certainly have something solid to share. So thank you. |
| 00:16:16.59 | Nastassya Saad | THANK YOU VERY MUCH. LOOKING FORWARD TO THAT. SEEING NO OTHER UPDATES, WE'LL OPEN THIS UP FOR PUBLIC COMMENT. ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER. |
| 00:16:25.35 | Assistant City Manager | I have received no speaker cards. I'll look to the chamber for raised hands. Seeing none, I will look to the Zoom application for raised hands. Seeing none, Chair. |
| 00:16:37.83 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. Thank you very much. That will close the communications and we are on to item six, which is a special presentation that we have this evening. We are going to receive and file a report from the Department of Public Works related to projects that impact trees in Sausalito. And we have Kevin McGowan, our Public Works Director, here to present to us. Thank you very much for being here. |
| 00:16:57.17 | Kevin McGowan | Good evening, Chair Saad, members of the Planning Commission. I'm Kevin McGowan. Public Works Director for Sausalito, I have a short presentation for you this evening and in order to talk a little bit about tree impacts in Sausalito. This request is quite timely in that we have a lot of work happening at this time of the year and to emphasize some of the repairs we need to do on sidewalks in terms of the health and safety of the community. Next slide, please. In your packet this evening is a staff report regarding our efforts related to trees in Sausalito. The staff report is very detailed and I will try to cover just some of the issues in the staff report in this presentation. First up, First up, the Saucolidio Municipal Code provides a process for addressing trees on private property. More specifically, Chapter 11.12 addresses a process to address trees and views, as well as disputes of vegetation on private property, such that that vegetation may obstruct the views of other properties. This chapter in the code notes that mediation as well as arbitration are, the residents can use mediation or arbitration to solve some of these issues associated with views. Next slide. |
| 00:18:37.29 | Kevin McGowan | Trees and vegetation in the road right away are managed by the Public Works Department. the area between the roadway and a person's property line is considered the road right of way. In many cases, the city does not maintain this section of roadway. And on occasion, the maintenance of the trees and vegetation in the area is generally falls to the fronting property owner. The city does not trim trees or vegetation for views, but rather trims vegetation to allow vehicles and pedestrians to pass on the road section itself. Other jurisdictions have ordinances that denote this area between the road and the property line as the responsibility of the fronting property owner. and staff here at the city may pursue an ordinance to modify our code to mirror this approach in the future. So the slide in front of you has, I think, a decent representation of one of the roads just up on the hillside here is only about 15 feet wide. However, the right-of-way itself is 40 feet wide. So- What that means is you have a lot of vegetation between the road traveled way and each property line. That's just kind of a demonstration. And one of the pictures on the lower left-hand side shows that we've got a tree this kind of leaning into the road right of way. That tree could get hit by delivery trucks or fire trucks going up and down the roadway. Public Works takes an interest in that in that we would want to either take that out or trim it back to a point that it wouldn't be an obstacle. The, some of the issues that come into play though have to do with utility lines. So if some of these are below utility lines, we would reach out to the utility itself, PG&E or Comcast or whomever, to trim their lines, trim that tree below their lines. And in some cases, they will take the tree out altogether. Next slide. At this time, Public Works has been working with our risk management firm, who has directed us to repair deficient sidewalk areas caused by tree roots. The most recent has been the removal three trees on Caledonia in front of Smitty's. These three trees were located directly on top of several utilities, such that raising the utility boxes and repairing the sidewalk was not possible without removing the trees themselves. Prior to this work, we communicated with Sausalito Beautiful, a local organization that helps us with trees and vegetation issues in the city. who provided us with a detail that involved a root barrier system. Unfortunately, due to the close proximity of the utilities, the use of the root barrier at this specific location could not be pursued. Some other issues arose at this location as well, including the fronting building was not necessarily constructed correctly. And there's a picture right in the center there that shows their sub-basement was kind of exposed when we cleared out the sidewalk itself. So we had to have the property owners step in to repair their buildings before we put in the new sidewalk itself. Luckily, everybody cooperated well with this one, and we got the sidewalk replaced prior to, I think the event was the the toast of Sausalito on Caledonia. So that was good news. On this particular location, we haven't installed new trees yet, but we will. We're intending to put new trees in the location in the future. And we'll work with Sausalito Beautiful to identify the species, as well as some more details, which I'm going to get into in a quick second. Next slide. All right. Public Works is moving forward with several other important projects, such as addressing undulations caused by root intrusions in the bike path near Gate 6. We intend to utilize root barriers here which is a It's a type of material that goes between the tree and, let's say, the roadway or the sidewalk. We intend to use this type of system Thank you. because the tree itself is located behind the sidewalk or behind the pathway. Thank you. In other words, we prefer it if the fronting property owner would address this tree either by removing it or replacing it. But in this particular case, we don't feel we should be removing that specific tree. We have some other ones shown in this picture, and I'll kind of run through a couple of these in the next couple of slides, too. All right, in the last few weeks, DPW Maintenance has addressed a sidewalk uplift project on Bridgeway at Lot 3. roots from the stone pine trees which front this entire area have migrated to the roadway and have buckled the sidewalk. In addition, these roots have damaged the driving surface in lot three. We anticipate removing at least one of the trees, which is shown there on the picture to the left-hand side. next to lot three, even though we have an arborist report that denotes that we should be removing all of the trees in this area. This effort, we want to work collectively with Sausalito Beautiful on these. And removing all the trees all at one time does not seem reasonable right this second. We want to at least remove one try to put in some root barriers, and rebuild the sidewalk at this point with the intent of trying to limit the amount of root intrusion into some of the public spaces. I have found that that hasn't worked well with stone pines in the past, but we're going to work together to see if we can make it happen. Next slide, please. All right, our maintenance department is removing other trees on Bridgeway near the taco shop. and on litho, which have uplifted the sidewalks. Similar to the trees on Caledonia, dense underground utilities are in this area, such that removal appears to be the best course of action at this location. The city is also working on a capital improvement project on Bridgeway to replace some existing trees that have struggled in the downtown area particularly next to the water itself. Sausalito Beautiful has been a key player or collaborator in this case in helping us choose the new type of species of trees and to schedule this type of replacement. In this particular case, we're gonna replace the trees after the holiday season. We didn't wanna impact the businesses as well. Next slide. Other less obvious projects are also in the works. The median between the upper and lower glen is overgrown with vegetation and in some cases, trees exist in the median itself. We are concerned that this overgrowth, especially the tree roots, will impact the structures, the structural stability of the lower wall, which in some places rises up to 10 feet in height. Our maintenance division will be addressing this area while coordinating with utilities since there are overhead lines in this area. In particular, this is one of those very old walls that you see in Sausalito. It's made of stone, probably built way before I was born. And we're a little worried that as you get more and more trees or larger root systems here, it'll tend to push over that gravity type of wall. And we want to avoid that. So. Making sure we remove all the old ivy and trim things up is gonna be important. In addition, our maintenance division has noted that the root systems from eucalyptus trees are impacting the walking surface between Coloma and Gate 5. This is on Bridgeway. And the removal of these trees is being considered at this point in time. Next slide. Sausalito-Beautiful has been an integral partner in many of these efforts. We intend to continue that effort by working with them to identify new trees, new species, as well as have them participate in future capital projects, such as improvements to our parking lot one. We do not always see eye to eye. But that's OK. We like that. But staff will continue to request their expertise and move forward with projects. Next slide. Only a couple more here. In recent years, Sausalio Beautiful has proceeded to plant new trees on Caledonia. In this case, they intentionally place the trees deeper in the plant wells or in the tree wells, in order to have the root systems develop lower and below the sidewalk itself. The intent is to have those root systems not push up the sidewalk in the future. I've got my fingers crossed that that's gonna work and we're keeping an eye on that because that may be our new model in the future of how to install street trees Other communities have investigated alternatives to removing trees. A root bridge or to maintain trees has worked in parks and open spaces in other areas. This approach may not work in tree wells in Sausalito. Nevertheless, staff will continue to identify these type of improvements and consider them where they are appropriate. Next slide. So there are more details in the staff report, such as the implementation of a sidewalk reimbursement program or the pursuit of code changes to reduce the cost of tree removal between the roadway and the property lines. Again, a big shout out to Sausalito Beautiful for helping us. We want to work collaboratively with them. Also, keep in mind the list that you have in your staff report. It's a dynamic list. Changes day to day. Even today, we have a new three that was identified by one of the residents, NEAR the Casnew Park, which is near Kaz, New, and Gerard. And that tree's got to come out as well because it's pushing up the sidewalk. So we'll have these move forward throughout the year, and we hope to continue to address that. So that concludes my quick presentation, and I welcome your comments and questions. |
| 00:29:49.12 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much, Director McGowan. We appreciate you being here. I think it's been a topic in the community, so we are grateful for your time. I'm going to turn it over to the Commission for questions and comments. Commissioner Luxembourg. |
| 00:30:01.02 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you, Mr. McGowan. That was an excellent presentation. Also appreciate the detailed staff report. I have no questions at this time. |
| 00:30:09.65 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. Commissioner Marlott. Okay. |
| 00:30:13.69 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 00:30:13.72 | David Marlatt | Thank you. So now same, I do appreciate the report, but I have no questions at this time. |
| 00:30:14.04 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 00:30:14.09 | Jeffery Luxenberg | And. |
| 00:30:17.70 | Nastassya Saad | Commissioner. |
| 00:30:18.21 | Fred Moore | more. Appreciate the report also appreciate you reaching out to Sausalito Beautiful. I know they have a lot of expertise in that group. So I hope that the city continues to rely on them for their expertise. A couple of questions. Smitty's it looks like there were three fairly large trees removed. It looks like there's one tree well remaining. So was there intent to replace one tree, not all three trees? |
| 00:30:42.28 | Kevin McGowan | I think there are more than one tree well. I didn't have a picture, but walked in today. |
| 00:30:45.68 | Fred Moore | okay I miss remembering that when I walked by so that's good with respect to removing trees versus putting tree barriers and unfortunately I dealt with that a lot in a prior community always sad to have it to remove a tree but we tried a bunch of different options necessarily before cutting the tree out and removing it such as cutting the roots putting in a root barrier with the roots cut back and some trees can tolerate that, some can't. Is that part of the city's potential alternative to merely removing a tree and seeing how a root cut and adding a root barrier would survive? |
| 00:31:23.82 | Kevin McGowan | Yes, absolutely. In fact, I think I mentioned it on the sidewalk that was recently replaced in front of lot three. Um, There is one tree that is pushing over retaining wall system at lot three. That one should be removed. But the rest of them we put in a root barrier on the backside of the sidewalk itself and kept those trees in place. I'm still concerned about those trees because they are stone pines. It's the type of species I'm worried about, that their root system will continue to push out and reach for more water further out. My example is at the end of Nevada Street. About a year and a half ago, we ground out the roadway. and we put back asphalt, dug out the root system itself, There's a stone pine on the other side of that. And within a year and a half, those same roots kick back up. Well, maybe not the same roots, but new ones. came back up and kicked up the roadway. So we're still getting complaints from cyclists and others who travel that way. And we have to do the same thing again. |
| 00:32:32.86 | Fred Moore | The other item you mentioned that they're going to be some Proposals coming forth does staff have some sort of time period for that as far as how to deal with sidewalks vegetation on property lines replacement between owner in the city is give a timeline for that at all or a Timeline for that specific area those presentations you said mentioned you have some code possible changes at ordinance changes to deal with maintenance of Sidewalks on private property and streets between public right-of-ways and private property |
| 00:32:51.79 | Kevin McGowan | That was pretty exciting. |
| 00:33:03.33 | Kevin McGowan | Yeah, right now we're pretty busy with the capital improvement program, but on our list of things to improve upon, we would like to move forward with some code changes. I would suggest within the next six to nine months, we'll want to discuss it with our city attorney. I want to make sure that if we are moving forward, that we're doing this correctly and step forward that way. So within a year, something like that. |
| 00:33:27.94 | Fred Moore | Last question with respect to the standard for you mentioned Some issues with utility lines routes and route barriers Is there some standard that the city is using as far as how close a route barrier can be to utility lines? well |
| 00:33:45.82 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you. I don't, let's see, let's phrase it this way. Sausalito beautiful has provided us a great standard. It looks great. But here in Sausalito, I've always found that whoever put the utilities in way back when They didn't necessarily comply with a standard. That's what we found in front of Smitty's. Usually you'd want to see those utilities 30 inches down. No. Some of them were 24. He had a gas line that was a decent distance down, but the electrical systems were not. So it's problematic. I would love to say that, yeah, we got a standard and we're going to follow it. But. What we have out there doesn't necessarily comply with a standard. So each case will be examined. Each case will try to do our best to involve Sausalito Beautiful. We know that they want to keep the trees. We know that we all want to keep the trees. But in some cases, the safety of our pedestrians as well as vehicles, that comes first. And we have to take care of that. |
| 00:34:45.59 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Vice Chair. |
| 00:34:49.68 | Andrew Junius | I just had one quick question, Kevin. Great report, really appreciate the work here. With respect to the city arborist, how long is that contract and when does it go out to bid? |
| 00:35:02.10 | Kevin McGowan | So we do not have an arborist on staff. So we go out to solicit an arborist. And I don't really have a good answer to that question because I didn't investigate it with our maintenance staff. But I will check into it and get back to it. |
| 00:35:17.02 | Andrew Junius | I appreciate that. Thank you. |
| 00:35:21.20 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you, Vice Chair. I only had one question. We greatly appreciate Sausalito Beautiful. They're an integral part of our community. I know that the Planning Commission's agreement is for privately owned tree removal permits, but I guess it's not a question. Just a note that if you want to lean on any of us as a resource as well, I think we'd be definitely open to assisting in any way we can as well as a supplement to Sausalito Beautiful. |
| 00:35:50.97 | Kevin McGowan | I'd really appreciate that because I do get a lot of questions from residents. One example was up on Glen. We met with some residents about the median. And they all have questions about views. And I'm trying to Let them know here's the process in the code. And it's sometimes difficult to understand how to Address your neighbor and their tree and how do you get to a solution. So having your insight and try to help with that could be very helpful in the future. |
| 00:36:20.57 | Nastassya Saad | And thank you, and actually one quick question along those lines. City owned trees that have been planted, you noted at the beginning of your presentation, when they do block a private view, is it on the property owners, onus really to to request that to be trimmed back and then that property owner would be responsible for facilitating it if they get approval from the city or does the city take into consideration that the trees that they have planted are blocking private views |
| 00:36:59.97 | Kevin McGowan | So the city maintenance division doesn't trim for views. It would have to be the property owner who is interested and trimming that tree. they would have to come to the city and obtain an encroachment permit in order to trim the tree. We would also request that they have an arborist report or that we could reach out to an arborist to make sure that it's not trimmed too much and it won't kill the tree. So we would leave it up to the property owner requesting that. |
| 00:37:26.82 | Nastassya Saad | And is there any point of discussion with a property owner when a when a public tree is going to be planted near private property or is there no ability to have a open dialogue around that. |
| 00:37:45.11 | Kevin McGowan | Well, let's bring up the case of right out here in Caledonia, Sausalito beautiful. went ahead and implanted a whole bunch of, not a whole bunch, but a bunch of trees right out in front. Those are the ones that have the root systems a bit deeper. And we did request that they reach out to each fronting property owner, which they did. And even myself and some of our staff reached out to them as well, made sure that they know this is coming. And so there is that communication effort between whoever is going to plant a tree and the fronting property owner. |
| 00:38:17.36 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. We appreciate it, Director McGowan. We're gonna open it up for public comment at this time. Assistant City Manager, could you help me facilitate that? Yeah. |
| 00:38:27.16 | Assistant City Manager | Yes, thank you very much, Chair. I do have two speaker cards submitted and I will call them in the order received. First speaker on this item is Carolyn Revell. Carolyn, welcome. Thank you for being here. You'll have three minutes. |
| 00:38:41.02 | Carolyn Revell | I'm Carolyn Revell with Sausalito Beautiful. As partners with the city, we appreciate that Director McGowan gave us the chance to review the staff draft report. We'd like to stress some important topics in the report We agree in a couple of areas where we have differences of opinion. regarding tree species. There's no perfect street tree. Some that were popular in the past are subject to disease, like the calorie pairs. the director mentioned on downtown Bridgeway, as part of an ongoing project we've advocated, funds from the current CIP will pay to remove 11 of the calorie pairs and replace them in January, as the director mentioned. when we think of choice of species, as he mentioned, many types of eucalyptus are undesirable and stone pines have root problems. We are drafting, Sausalito Beautiful, a revision of the approved street tree list and hope that we can review that with Oscar of the city and other staff, and perhaps work with you to issue a new revised street tree list. as far as planting techniques, Director McGowan mentioned the project on Caledonia where we deep planting holes, soil amendments, root barriers, perforated pipe for irrigation, Most importantly is the watering. Regular yearly watering, and we think that should be included in a contract with the contractor. Regular maintenance of our street trees is also critical by a city staff or certified arborist, removing the stakes when the trunk. |
| 00:40:09.58 | Adam Blair | you. |
| 00:40:11.32 | Carolyn Revell | has matured, regular pruning, removing dangerous limbs, widening the hole where tree grates are cutting into the trunk base, fertilizing trees. Ideally, larger holes for planting, and even planting strips are preferable to a small 36 by 36 hole. Regarding the root conflicts, we appreciate the city's concern for potential liability caused by tree roots. We hope to work with DPW to explore alternatives And there are a range of alternatives. Some of them work and some don't. We've been trying to do research on that working with the city on recommendations for alternative approaches to removing the tree. where removal of mature trees is the only alternative We recommend a city policy to plant two new trees for every one that's removed. One near the site where it's removed, if possible, and an additional one. and perhaps your process for I'm sorry. The tree removal permit process generates funds. Perhaps those funds could be used to contribute to tree planting programs such as the one we have on Caledonia. Just one other minor thing, as you know, and Kevin, Mr. McGowan mentioned, The utilities often do tree work. and it doesn't seem as if the trees are actually trained and it would be lovely if there was some way the city could use leverage to have actually pruned but properly pruned trained people. The city policy should be to retain mature trees wherever possible and explore alternatives to removing mature trees. That would be our recommendation. And now our president, Morgan Pierce, will pick up from here. |
| 00:41:50.05 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you very much, Carolyn, for your comments. Next speaker is Carolyn's right, Morgan Pierce. Welcome Mr. Pierce, you'll have three minutes. Thank you for being here. |
| 00:42:00.97 | Morgan Pierce | Good evening Chair Saad, Commissioners, Director McGowan, Assistant City Manager Phipps, City staff members of our community. I'll try not to reiterate the items that Carolyn mentioned, but if I get redundant, well, so be it. My name is Morgan Pierce. I'm an architect, a landscape architect, former chair of this commission, former chair of the Historic Preservation Commission, but I'm here this evening speaking to you as a community lover of trees, all things green, and the president of Sausalita Beautiful, a local nonprofit that works closely with the city and specifically Director McGowan's department to preserve, maintain, and improve our public parks and green spaces. We'd like to start by thanking Director McGowan and the Department of Public Works for engaging Sausalita Beautiful in this study and taking into account our perspective on preserving trees and enhancing the urban tree canopy in our community. In our ten years of existence, Saucy the Beautiful has enjoyed a robust and productive relationship with the city, adding many new trees, advocating for public space improvements, and exploring means and methodologies to reduce the maintenance burden on the public works staff. As we consider the future role of the city with the property owners and the preservation of our urban streetscapes, and green infrastructure. we would like to emphasize the following. Street trees are integral to our cities. No other infrastructure element can so dramatically transform the character of a neighborhood at so little cost. Without trees, streetscapes are dominated by paving, wires, buildings, and signs. With trees, they are verdant corridors of life, supporting pollinator communities reducing the effects of solar radiation and enhancing our streets with greenery. WE RECOGNIZE THE CHALLENGES THE CITY FACES WHEN DEALING WITH TREE INSTALLATION AND MAINTENANCE AND WITH SIDEWALK AND STREET REPAIR CAUSED BY AGING ROOT SYSTEMS. And we understand the city's desire to minimize its exposure to litigation. Suscidive beautiful fears that by fully moving the burden of tree installation and maintenance and sidewalk repairs to the adjacent property owners, may result in a wholesale reduction of urban streetscape improvements and discourage property owners from investing in public spaces, fronting their homes and businesses in the Bridgeway and Caledonia Street corridors. THIS HAS BEEN THE CASE WITH SAN FRANCISCO AND IS THE REASON THEY SHIFTED RESPONSIBILITY BACK TO THE CITY IN 2016. And they created a general fund set aside to be administrated by Street Trees SF, Department of Public Works subset to specifically address those issues. Our hope is that instead of passing the responsibility entirely onto the property owners, It's also a beautiful recommends developing robust urban tree preservation program that creates a tree sidewalk fund based on annual projections that includes the engagement of a qualified and empathetic arborist. It should include language that complements the state code and builds on that policy in a city-driven, community-supported fashion. And Saucyta Beautiful would be happy to assist the city in such an endeavor. Thank you. |
| 00:44:58.24 | Assistant City Manager | Mr. Pierce, thank you very much for your comments. That does it for received speaker cards. On my end, I will look to folks in the chamber for any raised hands. Seeing none, I'm going to look to the Zoom application next. |
| 00:45:13.92 | Assistant City Manager | And Ms. Revell, I'm happy to distribute those documents to the |
| 00:45:21.06 | Assistant City Manager | I appreciate that. Thank you very much, Ms. Revell. Looking to the Zoom application for raised hands. Going once, going twice, and seeing none. Back to you, Chair. |
| 00:45:30.46 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. We are just here to receive and file a report, but I will look to the commission for any comments on this topic this evening. Commissioner, Commissioner Moore, do you have any comments for this? No comments. |
| 00:45:43.43 | David Marlatt | Thank you. from. Thank you. |
| 00:45:44.02 | Nastassya Saad | Okay, Commissioner Marlott. |
| 00:45:46.25 | David Marlatt | All right. |
| 00:45:46.55 | Nastassya Saad | No. |
| 00:45:46.74 | David Marlatt | Amen. |
| 00:45:46.98 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. Commissioner Luxenberg. No comment. Thank you. I have no comments. I will leave it to Vice Chair. |
| 00:45:53.14 | Andrew Junius | I appreciate that, Chair. And again, I just wanna thank you, the staff, Brandon and Kevin, really, really excellent report. The detail is great. This request came in not too long ago, and you guys came through and got this on the calendar pretty quickly, so very much appreciate that. This is really a difficult issue for the city. You know, between the risk management situation and the desire to maintain healthy trees, I think Morgan did a great job in discussing how important mature trees are for a city. So this hearing is really important. I think it's great that people have gotten an opportunity to take a look at this problem and this situation and understand what's coming and some of the issues that we're facing. I was a little surprised to hear that the city is considering transferring responsibility, more responsibility to the private owners. And I, I don't think that's a good idea. Morgan hit it on the head. San Francisco actually tried this and it got so bad that they had to immediately go back to the way it was before. Um, you know it's you know it's it's a simple statement but the right-of-way is really the responsibility of the city right I mean to keep |
| 00:46:59.44 | Unknown | Right. |
| 00:47:01.34 | Andrew Junius | you know, to keep putting the responsibility of things in the right of way that are already required by state law. There's no question that Kevin, I think, did a great job explaining that there are certain things that the state law requires owners to deal with in front of their properties, sidewalk and whatnot. But street trees are kind of special and kind of, I think, different. And I think going in that direction is gonna just lead to people not wanting street trees because they're not gonna wanna deal with the cost and the hassle of maintaining them. You know, and it's also, I think, going to create a situation where you just have just another, you know, layer of enforcement where the city is responsible for citing people that aren't taking care of their trees. And it's just going to create much more paperwork than I think we need. So, I mean, the bottom line is, again, a healthy, you know, tree canopy is extremely important. you know, Every time we look at removing a mature tree, we should stop and think about are there ways we can try to save the tree. Again, risk management is important, but I don't think we want to become a city that's run by a risk manager. You know, there's a lot of things in the city that we should, you know, just balance more carefully and, you know, carefully consider. and I think possibly in the future we should be thinking about earmarked funds to have more resources so that these issues are not driven by cost. and carefully consider, and I think possibly in the future, we should be thinking about earmarked funds to have more resources so that these issues are not driven by cost savings. So again, thank you for the staff, and thank you for the opportunity. This was a wonderful report, and I appreciate the work. |
| 00:48:32.88 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Vice Chair. I second your comments. At this time, we don't have any action, so I believe we will just close this topic. Thank you again very much to Saucyta Viewtival. Thank you to Director McGowan. We appreciate you being here and all of the public input. We are now gonna move on to item number seven. That is our public hearing portion of our evening. 7A is a public hearingIC HEARING AND RECOMMENDATION ON AMENDMENTS TO THE MUNICIPAL CODE ADOPTING TITLE 10A. THESE ARE OUR OBJECTIVE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS. AND WE ARE HERE TO RECEIVE A STAFF REPORT. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR BEING HERE. at your leisure. |
| 00:49:15.06 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you, Chair. We will be pulling up a presentation in a moment. And thank you to Mr. Barb Brown for being present this evening. |
| 00:50:08.35 | Bob Brown | All right. Very good. Good evening Chair Saad, members of the Planning Commission. So tonight we are back discussing the... adoption hopefully of objective design and development standards, which I'll abbreviate as odds. This has been a four and a half year odyssey. We last were at the commission in February of this year and we are back again tonight. Next slide please. a fair amount of this presentation will be familiar to the Commission you've heard some of this before although Commissioner Moore is new so between Commissioner Moore and members of the public who may not have been following all the way along I'll go through some of these items again really quickly we're going to look at how we develop the draft odds what projects it applies to and which it does not how will it change the development review process for the city How does, what's the relationship between the odds and your current zoning ordinance? The recommendation you made back in February, which the council then did not choose to adopt at that time. So we are back again looking for a new recommendation. And we'll talk about a few of the edits that have been made to the draft odds that you last saw in February. We'll talk a little bit about the ViewSync software for the view preservation component. And I believe there is a presentation by Ms. Collier again on that topic. and then we'll have... SOFTWARE FOR THE VIEW PRESERVATION COMPONENT, AND I BELIEVE THERE IS A PRESENTATION, MS. COLLIER, AGAIN, ON THAT TOPIC. AND THEN WE'LL HAVE SOME Q&A. A little error there, we'll have the public hearing and then commission discussion. And hopefully you will make a recommendation then to the council. Next, please. |
| 00:51:50.35 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:51:53.23 | Bob Brown | So again, four and a half years ago, we started on this process. Initially, the Planning Commission had a subcommittee. Vice Chair Junius was on that subcommittee. They elected at that time to, Thank you. utilize a a form-based code that was developed by OptiCoast Design, specifically for Marin County and its cities. And the idea was it was a collaborative effort, and then each city was expected to take that document, that toolkit, which had a wide range of standards, and pick and choose which of those made most sense for each community, really depending upon how prescriptive you all want to be with your design regulations. So we worked on that first based upon your former zoning, and then because the housing element was being adopted, we then shifted and modified the odds to also take into account the higher densities from your new housing element. The council received that draft and at that time decided in early 2024 to appoint a group of local volunteer architects and historians as a peer review group. And they reviewed the document, made a lot of recommendations for changes, most of which are in the document you have before you now. And just to note, the Planning Commission has had six meetings on this, and the City Council's had six as well, up to this point. |
| 00:53:28.61 | Unknown | Next. |
| 00:53:28.95 | Bob Brown | Thank you. |
| 00:53:32.22 | Bob Brown | So the odds apply to projects really following state law. So state law has defined housing development projects as any projects that it's adding two or more new housing units, either in A multi-family project or in a mixed-use project if at least two-thirds of the square footage is residential we've applied these odds to your multi-family zoning districts and and also to your commercial districts that allow multifamily units, and now to all of the housing overlay zones that have been adopted as part of the housing element update. It also applies to projects where applicants seek to use state law for ministerial approval processes. |
| 00:54:18.51 | Unknown | Next, please. |
| 00:54:21.50 | Bob Brown | So the odds do not apply to single-family homes in single-family zones. Does not apply to SB9 projects, again, which are in single-family zones. And it does not apply to any alterations of existing multifamily or mixed-use projects if two or more new units aren't included in that modification. So if it's just a design change, not going through the odds at all. Next, please. |
| 00:54:50.05 | Bob Brown | So the review process would change because design review would no longer be required for projects that fully comply with the odds and also all your other municipal code objective standards. So at that point, If a project is in full compliance, the staff would verify that compliance through a housing compliance review permit and that project would then be able to move forward to its building permitting. Thank you. |
| 00:55:15.72 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:55:15.73 | Bob Brown | please. |
| 00:55:19.16 | Bob Brown | I've made this caution in each of our meetings. Even with the very, very best adopted odds, applicants still have the ability to utilize the state density bonus law. If they have five or more units in the project and if they meet the minimum requirements for affordable units included in the project, Applicants can waive virtually any zoning standard if they can demonstrate that standard would constrain the feasibility of their project. So again, you've seen and read about many, many projects here in the county and elsewhere, in fact, that have used waivers to develop projects that are very much in exceedance of the zoning standards otherwise. Something we live with. Next, please. |
| 00:56:08.38 | Bob Brown | So the odds, how they work with the zoning code, the odds are additive standards. And that was one of the big changes that the peer review group made, wanting to not have a document that was entirely, you know, self-standing, but that referenced back to the zoning where it could. And so the zoning ordinance will still regulate maximum density, maximum floor area, building coverage, setbacks, and also height limits. So those basic parameters are still going to be in the zoning code. Next. What the odds adds are really sort of design standards that go above and beyond that. Because really what the zoning creates is sort of a rectangular box, in most cases, that the building could be. And the odds tries to really refine that. So the odds has maximum building dimensions. What the odds is trying not to do is have really monolithic and huge apartments or condominium projects, but on larger projects to break those up into smaller buildings that are more compatible with the scale of Sausalito. and also has massing composition and building type requirements. So you get some articulation in the building. Again, not just a rectangular box. It also has standards that require a certain building frontage types. So how the building addresses the street. So a residential, for example, would have to have, for example, a porch, a mixed use project would have to have a storefront improvement on the ground floor. And there's very detailed regulations for how those are designed. Um, There's screening requirements for outdoor equipment, outdoor service areas, utilities, that sort of thing that are not in the zoning code. There's landscaping and lighting requirements. that go beyond Um, there are higher or I'm sorry, lower vehicle parking rates and higher bicycle parking rates that are part of the odds for multifamily units. And there are a lot of regulations about parking, not the number of spaces so much, but how they're configured. The maximum size of parking lots, the screening of parking lots, in most cases trying to get parking lots behind buildings or in an underground garage so they're not visible. Um... There are also privacy standards, so when you have a new I'm not sure. multifamily project with windows that look out. If they look out on an adjacent property that has windows, or decks, or rear yards, there are restrictions on how those windows can be oriented. And then very uniquely, there are view preservation standards that we've talked a lot about in the past. that allow a maximum blockage of existing views of defined water views or iconic views like, you know, the San Francisco skyline or Angel Island or the bridges. Um, and there are also added standards that deal specifically with the historic district. |
| 00:59:08.02 | Unknown | Next, please. |
| 00:59:10.87 | Bob Brown | So last February, if you recall, you recommended that the council consider adoption of the draft odds with some modifications. You could not agree on whether the view preservation chapter should be adopted, but you recommended that it be incorporated in the document that went to council without a recommendation from your body. There was also a discussion about the height definition for the historic district. Staff had the odds had from the peer review group, a different definition for how you measure height for the historic district than elsewhere in the city. Staff had recommended that the height definition be consistent and that's what the planning commission recommended. I think that that issue is going to come up again tonight. Um, And there was also a very minor change to the porch standards. Buildings are allowed to come up to the back of the sidewalk with a zero-foot setback. We had a six-foot setback for the porch, which made no sense. So the porch is now at a zero-foot setback. |
| 01:00:14.22 | Unknown | I'm not sure. |
| 01:00:14.40 | Bob Brown | please. So the edits to the odds, a couple of revisions to this slide. There are four and one more proposed. These are all changes to the view preservation standards. So the peer review group, as the software has been developed and utilized, recommended that the maximum blockage of iconic views from a single property's vantage point be increased from a maximum of 5% additional blockage to up to 10%. They also eliminated, which is not on the slide, the iconic view of Mount Tempile Pius because in most cases it's up and back and really is not necessarily an issue in terms of views. There are edits to definitions, and there's one more that's proposed. There is a definition 14. This is not in the draft you have, but definition 14 describes the digital surface model resolution requirements, and right now it says that the resolution has to be 15 square centimeters or less per cell. And the recommendation is that that should go up to 30 square centimeters as a minimum. |
| 01:00:57.15 | Unknown | And, Thank you. |
| 01:01:33.63 | Bob Brown | And then the last is there were changes proposed for the technical description of the view sync or the view analysis software that's in Appendix A. Thank you. Next, please. Again, there will be a presentation regarding the ViewSync software, but just very, very briefly, the amended housing element, based upon comments from HCD, has a requirement that the software that's proposed in conjunction with the View Preservation Standards be made available publicly for at least a month before adoption. So that was posted to the city webpage last week. and BE MADE AVAILABLE PUBLICLY FOR AT LEAST A MONTH BEFORE ADOPTION. SO THAT WAS POSTED TO THE CITY WEB PAGE LAST WEEK AND THE PLANNING COMMISSION RECEIVED THAT LINK SO YOU COULD TRY THE SOFTWARE. MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC CAN AS WELL. I WOULD JUST NOTE THAT WHEN YOU DO USE THE SOFTWARE, WHAT IT GENERATES IS WHAT APPLICANTS PUT IN IS A MASSING MODEL OF THE PROJECT. And then what comes out of the model is a compliance report. whether it's from each individual vantage point that has the potential for view blockage, whether it passes or fails based upon the percentage of additional view blockage of the project. And then it also produces these visualizations that are two-dimensional overhead views that show the view scape and the proportion that is being blocked by the proposed project. Again, these are somewhat different views than you saw in previous iterations. Again, there's been work that's been done on the software since then, refinements, make it more usable. So these are now what are available from the beta version. And next, please. So the recommendation is to conduct the public hearing, and ideally adopt a resolution making recommendations to the council either as the document is before you or changes you recommend to it. Or if you cannot make a recommendation, then forward your comments to the council. And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions. |
| 01:03:44.78 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. It's always very nice to see you. We've had many presentations, so we appreciate your time and all of the updates. We will look to the commission first. Commissioner Luxenberg, do you have questions? |
| 01:03:58.91 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Yes, thank you. Some of these are going to be very technical. Again, excellent work. This has been a long process. We've seen this six times. This is number seven. So I want some clarification on some of the issues we had before and have now. I guess the first one, going back to the zero setbacks. So I'm a little confused because in the draft that we have, there is both on page, I think it's 56 and 58, the six-foot setbacks are still there. And in the second tier, there are lists that those requirements can be removed. But if that requirement doesn't exist, then there's no reason to have that. And something you just said triggered something in my mind. If you're having additional requirements for parking and you're having additional requirements for all of these things, There's nothing that says in the odds we can't have a six-foot setback in the front yard just because the zoning has a zero-foot setback this is an alternative path so theoretically we could keep the which I think is our is still in there the six-foot front setback if we wanted to because we have all sorts of other things we're keeping that are slightly different than our existing zoning. So I guess my first question is one, could we have a different item and two, isn't it still in there? Look at page, uh, look at 10 05 042. I see dimensions for that front setback of 6 feet. in that one and then 10 050 52 also in the little diagram those are still there and then uh up in the beginning on page eight there is the second tier that we if a project isn't feasible that there can be a a requirement removed these are listed the six foot ports the six foot porch there's a front garden one and there's a porch projecting one |
| 01:06:19.36 | Nastassya Saad | Commissioner Luxembourg, you've got some good details. For the benefit of the public, can I just ask Maria if we can, can you go back to that first page? Was that page 56 you said? |
| 01:06:29.65 | Jeffery Luxenberg | If we can go to 56 in the document |
| 01:06:32.57 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. Let's give it a second so we can align ourselves. |
| 01:06:42.83 | Assistant City Manager | Here is page 56, commissioners. Thank you very much. |
| 01:06:45.31 | Jeffery Luxenberg | So if you look at, it's hard for me to read, but it's one of the, I don't know, there's, yeah, there we go. B, B is six foot minimum. That's in the draft that we have now. |
| 01:06:48.67 | Assistant City Manager | for me to read. |
| 01:07:06.54 | Jeffery Luxenberg | So one, I want to check that it's still in there. And two, we have other requirements on parking, as you said. I didn't think about it that way till this evening. So there's no reason we can't have a slightly different requirement for a front yard if somebody wants to go through 10A versus chapter 10A versus chapter 10. So those are my two questions on that. |
| 01:07:29.15 | Bob Brown | Yeah, I do think that the intent was to eliminate the six foot minimum setback based upon the prior commission recommendation. And again, it's because the building itself can have a zero setback. So again, there was no point in requiring a porch to be set back further than the house or the building itself that could then come forward to the sidewalk. So that's why the change and your question was, can the applicant provide a greater setback? Certainly. Can the city require it? No, these would be objective standards. |
| 01:08:04.89 | Jeffery Luxenberg | OKAY. SO IF WE HAVE A ZERO FOOT SETBACK THEN PAGE 56, PAGE 58, WE NEED TO BE AMENDED. AND IF WE CAN GO TO PAGE 8 IF WE COULD, MARIA OR MATTHEW OR ACM. |
| 01:08:11.27 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:08:11.38 | Bob Brown | you |
| 01:08:11.44 | Unknown | And, |
| 01:08:11.51 | Bob Brown | Thank you. |
| 01:08:11.53 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:08:11.54 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 01:08:24.96 | Jeffery Luxenberg | So these are allowed adjustments. So we're allowing a change to the six foot minimum for the porch and the front garden depth. But if we don't have a requirement for the building, If we have no requirement for the building, do we need a requirement for the porch in the front yard to be waived? And the answer would be no. So this would come out of this one if we go down that road. Okay, so those are those questions. |
| 01:08:51.81 | Bob Brown | that right. Both are very good catches. Thank you. |
| 01:08:55.84 | Jeffery Luxenberg | The next question goes to the height definition. And so I'm not sure what's in the latest draft on that, but in addition to in the historic thing, which is 10A0652, if we could go to that page,'s a requirement there's a definitional question in the historic district where um we should we obviously should measure historic buildings from the street and not on the slope because of the way historic district is designed and that's what we got from a number of of the public um so the definition now, there's one definition in, I think it's 10A652A, if we can bring that up. |
| 01:09:55.51 | Assistant City Manager | Do you have a page number? Thank you. |
| 01:09:56.69 | Jeffery Luxenberg | That one I don't have because that one came in today from the public. So there was something from the public we could just bring that up too. |
| 01:10:08.08 | Bob Brown | I think it's page 65. Although I'm seeing two page 65s. |
| 01:10:14.87 | Nastassya Saad | Can we check page 69? Commissioner Moore believes it's page 69. |
| 01:10:23.71 | Jeffery Luxenberg | It's in chapter whatever, it's in chapter six. So if you just go to chapter six, oh six, it'll come up pretty quickly. So if you scroll through, it goes from five to six, and then 50 in that, and then two. |
| 01:10:40.30 | Bob Brown | Right, what it says right now is that the Height of new constructions that is within 15 feet of the street facing visage shall not exceed the average height of the neighbor context buildings, that's fine. |
| 01:10:51.86 | Nastassya Saad | I'm very sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Brown. Is the microphone on? I just don't know if we're... Sorry. Oh, thank you very much. Let me move the computer. |
| 01:10:51.87 | Bob Brown | I'm, |
| 01:10:59.01 | Bob Brown | So the important sentences, it says, in no case shall the overall height of new additions or new construction exceed 32 feet consistent with the requirements of Chapter 10.40.06. So that's in the zoning code, how the zoning code measures height. What was in here previously, and so the way the zoning code measures height is the height is the average at the building perimeter between the high and low elevations, right? What the previous definition had was that the height would be 32 feet, period, from the midpoint of the property frontage. So if it was on a sloped lot, it would be based on the front property line. |
| 01:11:15.72 | Unknown | Right. |
| 01:11:15.97 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 01:11:44.81 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Right. So there was a suggestion by the peer review group that we modify this instead of referring to chapter 1040.06, that we insert as measured from the midpoint of each property that front of street. I happen to concur. I think that's a good idea. I think that was what was in your draft before. I now fully understand the need for that but then now I also want to go and again these this is a very complicated document this is going to serve the city for the next you know 40 years or whatever so I think it's important to get it right so it's worth spending the time if we could go to page 76 |
| 01:12:35.13 | Unknown | And it's go to eight. |
| 01:12:35.55 | Jeffery Luxenberg | And it's go to H2 and it's the definition of height. So this says, and I don't even know what this means, the vertical distance between adjacent finish grade and the highest part of the structure directly above. is what, how it defines height. So what's important is the definition here and whatever we put in under 10A, 0650 2A are consistent with one another and I'm not even, what does this actually mean? I'm, is it the adjacent properties? Is it the adjacent street or what does that even mean? |
| 01:13:19.77 | Bob Brown | Yeah, I'd have to really look at that. That was, again, part of the original toolkit, which has just remained. But you're right. This should be looked at in conjunction with the height definition in the historic district. |
| 01:13:32.00 | Jeffery Luxenberg | So I guess my only question is we're not going to solve it right now. We'll solve it when we get back to the dais. But if we want to go ahead with measuring it from the street, not the slope, we need to fix the first language, go back to what you originally had, and then we need to amend this particular piece as well. |
| 01:13:52.22 | Bob Brown | And going back to the staff recommendation back in February, I think the main issue regarding the height limit was one of consistency, concern that if there are different height definitions in future plan, check processes, staff may not recognize that there's a unique definition here that's different than what's applied elsewhere. And so it's easily could get missed. So I think that was the main concern of staff to try to have some uniform |
| 01:14:17.12 | Jeffery Luxenberg | And I understood the concern at that time, but now that I've heard today that we have different parking standards and everything, if you go through 10A, since there's a whole section about historic, the staff will be specifically looking at the section on historic. It'll define height very clearly, and so I can think we can solve it that way. That'll be a matter of coming up with appropriate language if the commission wants to proceed in that way and the city council wants to proceed in that way. But I just wanted to highlight those areas. My next set of questions all relate to the view sync attachment. Should I wait to ask after the next presentation? I would say, okay. With that, I'll give back to the chair. |
| 01:15:00.27 | Nastassya Saad | I appreciate the detailed questions. Just for the avoidance of doubt while we're on the height topic. So what we have in front of us in 10A is currently from the street, not the slope. Is that correct? Yes. Thank you. Okay, thank you. |
| 01:15:12.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:15:12.69 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Yes. |
| 01:15:13.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:15:16.57 | Jeffery Luxenberg | No, actually what we have right now is currently what the zoning requires, and the zoning requires slope. |
| 01:15:22.67 | Nastassya Saad | Bye. |
| 01:15:22.85 | Bob Brown | I'm sorry. I'm not sure. |
| 01:15:24.07 | Nastassya Saad | Slope Knott Street. Thank you very much. I just want to make sure we can save that for our discussion point. |
| 01:15:25.70 | Bob Brown | not. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very |
| 01:15:33.97 | David Marlatt | Commissioner Marlott. Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, and thank you, Bob. Just to beat a dead horse a little bit on this height thing, it's just more of a question for your understanding. I understood the comment from the peer group was to measure the 32 feet from the midpoint of each property, but I took that to mean, and it's like maybe I was wrong, to mean the midpoint of the depth of the property, not the width. So in other words, if a property is 150 feet deep in the first 75 feet, like we have in the historic district, it's kind of a hockey stick. So the midpoint is 75 feet. It's five feet taller than the sidewalk. Then that would be the point at which we measured the 32 feet. In terms of understanding. |
| 01:15:35.32 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 01:16:12.31 | Bob Brown | Do you have that understanding? |
| 01:16:13.61 | David Marlatt | current zoning code or? No, the suggestion from the, some of the peer group members. |
| 01:16:14.94 | Bob Brown | I don't know. |
| 01:16:18.73 | Bob Brown | Yes, yes, it was the midpoint in the property. |
| 01:16:21.26 | David Marlatt | of the depth. Not the way. |
| 01:16:23.45 | Bob Brown | Oh, I'm sorry, the way I read it was it would be measured at the property line, the midpoint, so let's say it was a 60 foot wide, |
| 01:16:24.75 | Adam Blair | . |
| 01:16:31.92 | Bob Brown | property frontage on the street. it'd be measured at the point of 30 feet right in the middle. AND SO IF YOUR PROPERTY HAS A SLOP AT ALL IN TERMS OF THE FRONTAGE, IT WOULD BE MEASURED AT THE CENTER POINT OF THAT STREET FRONTAGE. OKAY. |
| 01:16:48.83 | David Marlatt | Okay. This may be something we just take up later when it comes back to the dais, but I wanted to clear that up because there may be a misunderstanding. For all the definitions we have, we haven't defined midpoint because I understood it to be the midpoint of the depth of the lot. |
| 01:16:58.26 | Peter Hardeen | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:17:02.31 | Peter Hardeen | That didn't seem to be... |
| 01:17:03.07 | Jeffery Luxenberg | I think we need to define midpoint also in addition. So we should, by suggestion for later on, is we need to figure out where the commission wants to go with it and then get the wording right to follow that logic. |
| 01:17:03.12 | Peter Hardeen | I'm sorry. |
| 01:17:06.38 | Peter Hardeen | Yeah. |
| 01:17:17.65 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Yeah. |
| 01:17:18.41 | David Marlatt | My next question or comment, getting a little bit down in the weeds, but on the page nine, if we want to pull up page nine, this is a small thing. If the commission chooses to go forward with ViewSync, It's just in the adjustments schedule. It says that the iconic view on page nine, I think. The iconic view can be adjusted up to 8%, but if we're already adjusting the iconic view to 10%, then that 8% doesn't make sense. It maybe wants to be 15%. It's in table 10A.01060. |
| 01:18:01.91 | Bob Brown | Okay, I'm not there yet. Just give me one second, sorry. I can't see that on the screen well. |
| 01:18:13.37 | Assistant City Manager | Commissioner, this is the table you're referring to, correct? Or is it the below table? It's the next page. Yeah, this one. |
| 01:18:15.67 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Or is it the below table? It's the next page. |
| 01:18:18.54 | Mike Monsef | Thank you. |
| 01:18:18.55 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 01:18:18.99 | David Marlatt | Yeah, and it says 8% obstruction for view encroachment. which would be less than the standard. Oh, Coach, man. about it. I'm suggesting 15. I mean, we can take that up. later. And this is contingent upon going forward with Chapter 3, of course. |
| 01:18:37.49 | Bob Brown | we can remove Vista views, is that what you said? |
| 01:18:40.26 | David Marlatt | No, no, I'm saying if the baseline is 10% now in the revised version, then the adjustment may be 15, for example. It should be a number greater than eight. greater than 10. |
| 01:18:52.27 | Bob Brown | We've I just noticed we've also eliminated Vista views so that third. Oh, good catch. Yeah. |
| 01:18:56.27 | David Marlatt | Oh. Catch, yeah. OK. I guess my final question is a little bit higher level, and this may be something also for Attorney Rudin to chime in on, is helping us understand a little bit better the mechanism of how Title X is sort of an alternative to Title XA and whether if somebody, if a developer's proposed project cannot meet the 10A standards, then they presumably, and in order to protect us from state law, of course, they presumably can voluntarily choose to go the Title X route? Is that, I mean, is there, what are the kind of mechanics of that? And is there any concern from a state law level of a developer waiving their rights or, you know, waiving rights that can't be waived? |
| 01:19:42.79 | Bob Brown | I'll leave that to the city attorney. |
| 01:19:44.89 | City Attorney Rudin | I don't think that there are any concerns about a developer waiving rights that can't be waived because the city is not asking for that either under Title 10A or under Title 10. Basically, the framework that is being set up here is Title 10A is intended to be a streamlined permitting pathway. So if the developer volunteers to comply with the standards in 10A, they get review. and approval in a streamlined method without having to comply because the process under 10A is not discretionary, and you are entitled to approval as long as you meet the objective standards. So that's the benefit and the carrot to the development community. you meet these clear standards, Um, And you get a less discretionary permitting or a non-discretionary permitting pathway for your project. Um, The reason that the city is creating it as an alternative permitting pathway is to ensure that it's preserving the development capacity that exists prior to the odds being adopted. Basically, we're not downzoning any parts of the city. We're not eliminating development options that are available under Title X and the discretionary design review process. So a developer can choose. |
| 01:20:55.83 | Adam Blair | not. |
| 01:21:07.90 | City Attorney Rudin | So. I think that is the intention here, This is a carrot. |
| 01:21:14.10 | Bob Brown | And it explicitly says that on page five, under applicability number two, it says noncompliance with objective standards, projects that do not comply with all provisions of the odds and other objective standards in the municipal code, may seek review and approval pursuant to the city's development review process as set forth in Title X. |
| 01:21:32.43 | City Attorney Rudin | And I will say that the one exception here is that this is mandatory for SB 35 projects. However, that statute expressly says that the city can adopt objective design standards that differ from zoning for those kinds of projects. that would be the one exception, as I understand it, with how the odds would apply. |
| 01:21:55.01 | David Marlatt | OK, well, thank you for that clarification from somebody who's a non-technical in terms of law. So I guess my last question and kind of staying on that subject a little bit in your experience, Bob, in Marin County or the areas where you're working, do other communities have this same kind of approach of an odd standard and as an alternate to the basic standard? Typically, yes. This is pretty typical. OK, thank you very much. |
| 01:22:18.99 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. I believe Vice Chair has a follow-up question. |
| 01:22:21.81 | Andrew Junius | Thank you for the city attorney. Thank you, Chair. Sergio, did I hear you? Did you speak correctly when you said that 10A is a streamlined process that if you opt in, you avoid CEQA? This is a local streamlining. It's not AB 2011 or SB 35 or anything else. It avoids CEQA? |
| 01:22:42.48 | City Attorney Rudin | Yeah, that's the intention. And additionally, this is As mentioned, this would be the standards that would apply to your SB 35 projects as well. and your AB 2011 projects, I need to double check the applications language, but I believe that that's correct. This is these are the standards that apply to the state mandated streamlining projects, as well as providing a alternative streamlining pathway for projects, um, where the developer just seeks to comply with these in lieu of seeking discretionary design review approval. |
| 01:23:20.94 | Andrew Junius | Okay, thank you. |
| 01:23:23.57 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you for that line of questioning, that was really useful. Um, Commissioner Good morning. |
| 01:23:30.34 | Fred Moore | feel like the late cousin to the party here just in the last four years also kind of interesting the objective standards have a lot of subjectivity in them right with all these standards about six feet zero feet eight percent so why agree in concept where the end result is it seemed like a lot of subjectivity and a lot of hard work has gone into for the city and all the various subcommittees so I think the city should be very appreciative of all that hard work I do kind kind of agree with Gibson Barlow regarding the table that needs to be adjusted. I think if we come back to the dais, whether it needs to be increased to 15% for the iconic views. And also I agree with Jeffrey regarding the historic district. I think we have the ability to change the height definition there to be more reflective of the historic district to keep it preserved And we can discuss whether it's the front lot line or the middle of the lot to preserve that 32 foot limit Just to kind of help me get caught up to speed I know there were some meetings in February where the Commission refers to back to City Council, so when I'm looking at this modified red line version, it has a January date. So is this January before the February or is this actually February and it should be February, not January? |
| 01:23:43.13 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 01:24:44.86 | Bob Brown | Yeah, the date on the document, which I did change later, but it didn't make it in your packet, is 11, 12, 25. So this was the version that the commission saw back in February, but the strikeouts and underlines are the current version, the new version. |
| 01:25:04.03 | Fred Moore | Okay. |
| 01:25:04.28 | Bob Brown | Does that make sense? |
| 01:25:04.87 | Fred Moore | Okay. All right, that helps, I appreciate that. If I go to page 25, and you mentioned in your presentation that Mount Tam was removed from the longitude and latitude list, but it remained on the page 25. the precursor to those lists as a view. So is it intended to remove that altogether or is it just removing the longitudinal latitude? |
| 01:25:33.93 | Bob Brown | It should be struck out in the definition of iconic views. At least in my version it is. 25. Just double check. Yeah, it would be F. |
| 01:25:51.88 | Fred Moore | F was struck out. |
| 01:25:52.86 | Bob Brown | In definition, 3F, the Mount Tam, I kind of view as is struck. |
| 01:25:59.81 | Fred Moore | I need to find it again. I guess it shows up again. I can search for it. 25 at the bottom. |
| 01:26:04.02 | Bob Brown | Again, I can |
| 01:26:04.78 | Unknown | search for it. |
| 01:26:09.50 | Fred Moore | I see where it struck out. I just thought it showed up again as a view. I'll search for it and get back to later with that. |
| 01:26:12.66 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 01:26:12.67 | Bob Brown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:26:16.45 | Bob Brown | Oh, I see. You're right. Up in number three at the first sentence, it does say M. Maltemapaya, so yes, that's your question. |
| 01:26:23.93 | Fred Moore | Right. So that, okay. So the intent is to remove that altogether, right? |
| 01:26:27.05 | Bob Brown | Yes. All together, right? OK. 03020. |
| 01:26:33.85 | Bob Brown | remove Mount Tim, yes. |
| 01:26:36.97 | Fred Moore | Lastly, then I'll move it on to someone else more intelligent. So on page 31 of the presentation, a lot of additions, blue, red, strikeouts, et cetera, et cetera. So it was, seems like that's related a lot to the software. So did you make those? How were those revisions incorporated into this? |
| 01:27:00.84 | Bob Brown | That is way above my technology grade. No, this is recommended by the peer review group, and I think Sophia Collier could respond to these. But yes, they were based on technical changes as the software was refined. This reflects, again, the latest thinking and how to define how that software is developed and used. |
| 01:27:24.55 | Fred Moore | And just one last question, sorry. My last, last question to the last question. It mentioned in the presentation about the software and the inability to produce the three-dimensional and it hadn't been developed yet, so we went back to the two-dimensional. Can you explain that a little bit, what that actually means going forward with this? |
| 01:27:42.38 | Bob Brown | Well, again, I think that the technical explanation will have to come with the next presentation. The perspective of staff, the consultants is really what is the utility of the software generation as it would be available to the members of the public and to applicants. So, um, again, initially the thinking that we were going to see a 3d model of the building that's proposed with indication of which portion of the building was intruding on the view from any particular property. That then guides the applicant to know where they need to shave the building. the concern from the public's perspective is not seeing that three-dimensional image of the project in front of their window and only seeing a two-dimensional view scape with colorization of where blockage might occur, again, from a bird's eye view. I'm concerned that it's not going to be very intelligible to members of the public to really understand how their views are impacted. And then that leads to questions to staff that, again, may or may not be able to be answered. |
| 01:28:48.55 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 01:28:48.56 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. Appreciate it Commissioner Moore. Vice Chair, did you have any questions? I too don't have any questions and I believe we have another presentation that might open us up to a different topic. So if we can move forward with the view sync presentation and welcome Sophia Collier up here. |
| 01:29:09.56 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 01:29:09.57 | Sophia Collier | Okay, thank you very much. And I wanted to actually, unfortunately, I think the staff report had some small nuances that weren't actually accurate. And it kind of pertains to what we were just, the part of the topic that we just opened. So I wanted just to go over that briefly before I give my presentation. So I actually have these sheets. |
| 01:29:29.28 | Adam Blair | THE END OF |
| 01:29:42.21 | Sophia Collier | So one of the things that I first want to do is I want to thank my partner Bob here in his efforts. I mean, what an amazing guy has carried this forward for so long. Brandon working this thing as well. Obviously, everyone here on this dais, the council, and all the members of the public that have been part of this. One of the problems that we have is that these projects go on for so long, they're sometimes hard to follow what exactly is going on. So in this case, in the staff report on page eight, in the third paragraph, third full paragraph, it says early versions of the view analysis software were intended to be built by Esri, mapping had the capacity to develop 3D visualizations from the selected vantage points. Previous presentations showed 3D imagery in explaining the potential view analysis. However, this software was unable to produce the visual analysis within reasonable time frames, and so the simpler DSM model was utilized. Okay, actually, this is not actually accurate. The actual facts are that there's, ViewSync Interactive, which is the 3D software, and then there is ViewSync Compliance, which is a web app. and folks that have seen my presentations over time have seen both of these things demoed. Now the Esri product, which is the 3D product, is actually a It's not as actually as accurate because what it is is it's a 3D extrusion of a footprint with a flat roof and it doesn't have any trees or any of the details, the true details. So it's more of a simulation of the environment. It's very handy for design. You can see beautiful picture out the window. But in truth, it's actually not accurate to the environment. The only thing that is accurate to the environment is using what's called a DSM. And I'm going to go over that. But the point is, we did develop both, and Sausalito has both. So that is the point. I thought that our mission today was to have a compliance application. that was objective and allowed folks to say, is my project compliant or not? It wasn't to assist people in design. though we did actually develop something that could do that. So we actually have both. So I just want to start out that because I think this was a bit of a misunderstanding. And again, I know that it's technical and there's a lot of different details involved in this. So why don't we just go to the presentation? Happy to take questions afterward. OK, so here's what the app looks like. I know some members of the board have been uh, applied for, um, usage and have will be running models and some have run models. Next slide, please. Just briefly, the science of views. A viewshed is the geographic area that's visible. It's a with software you can see the shape of a viewshed being be calculated and visualized. I presented this before. Next slide please. The key thing is that views have shapes and shapes have sizes. That's the magic behind the whole thing. Next slide, please. In order to do this, we needed to create a digital twin of Sausalito, and a digital twin has four elements. Next slide, please. Those are the digital surface model, the DSM, that's the high resolution grid with precise elevation values for each grid cell, It's a building footprint. Those are outlines of the structures within the DSM. classification of the footprint. And then finally, the proxy window locations. And those are the latitude, longitude, and elevation of a viewpoint along the footprint that can fairly represent the water view of that location. Next slide, please. Okay, so here's the digital surface model. This is a high resolution grid, and as you can see, There's a lot of detail on it, and we're looking down, but we're looking down at all the beautiful shapes of these roofs and the different trees in those particular day when this was flown, the cars So on so that's the digital service model Next slide, please. These are the footprints. These define the section of the DSM that is a residential property. And that we actually, we started out trying to get this from Marin County. We tried to get it from OpenStreetMap. We tried to get it from Microsoft. We tried to get it from Google. But we actually ended up going and having to actually custom digitize Sausalito's footprints because it wasn't sufficiently accurate. So what we did was we created a custom data set of digitized footprints and these are the precise boundaries And we excluded porches and similar elements that are not part of the building body next slide, please So then once we had the footprints, we had to classify them and as to whether they were residential structure. So that involved finding out from the tax map whether that particular structure was, in fact, included at least one residential unit So now all elements that are in the DSM, of course, are part of the environment. However, only residential structures are entitled to view protection. So we're not protecting somebody's garage or a or a shop, just only residential structures. Next slide, please. Okay, the next thing is the proxy windows. And this is five feet below the roof line, It is adjusted, it's a, adjusted along the footprint to find a clear location using the DSM elevation to guide it. So in this example, property 1001, you can see that one of the little proxy windows is slightly off It seems like it's a little bit off. However, if you look down at the actual picture of the situation, there's actually a tree where that would have been. So that doesn't actually characterize the view. So because we have tremendous computational power, available, we have ViewSync deployed on Google Cloud, so we've got a tremendous computational power available we were able to march that little a little dot along by increments along the grid until we found a click nearest clear spot to what ideal spot would be so that is a way to improve the location of those idealized location next slide please So again, using our vast computational power that we're using here, we created a low-resolution composite viewshed for every property. Originally, when we started this mission, we were doing a reverse viewshed. We're saying, okay, if the proposed property can see the building, the building can see them. I can see you. You can see me. But actually we realized that a much better approach would be to just go ahead. Once we had all the windows, go ahead and run every single window in Sausalito, create a composite where it could see the water. And then we would, next slide please. And then once we had that, we would take the proposed property, upload it. It's not just massing models. It's any kind of model, any type of model of pretty much any complexity could be uploaded into ViewSync. Next slide, please. And so then we would take the composite and then we would see is the building in the composite. So that's pretty straightforward that that is a potentially impacted location. It may not actually be impacted with a detailed analysis might determine it's not impacted, but that is a good, that's a good a way of seeing, gosh, let's check that particular one. So we start with, so we have an iterative filtering. We start with all properties. Then we look for a height of less than 150% of the proposed building. Again, something that's two C's right over it. We want to exclude that. We created a dynamic radius concept based on the building height because something that's far away might not be, it might look tall when it's here, but because of perspective, it's far away. So the taller the building is, the larger the radius is then we do the intersection and then we have a list of potentially impacted properties next slide please Then we do a detailed analysis, and then that's where we bring in the high resolution. you shed and we determine if it can see the water. actually. And then we would, in this particular case, created a scenario where it definitely would block And in this case, it is. One of the things that's interesting in this particular diagram, or to me interesting, is that when you look at the purple lines, what you're really seeing there is the shadow of the buildings. that are in front of you. They are, sometimes you see your water view, not, you don't see the shore, but you see, the water view over the buildings. So we want to identify that view Not the view that, okay, gosh, we're blocked, we can't see the shore. but we can see the water over the buildings. So that is the line at which the point at which the person actually sees their view actually strikes the water. Next slide, please. Then we have of course the public views, those are also handled in the same manner. They don't have a proxy window, they're a specific point. And then we have the iconic views, viewpoints. Next slide, please. and those are the iconic viewpoints, and those are they, and that we recommended eliminating Mount Tam. We also recommended Some other things, next slide please. Okay, so these are the key differences. So one is the initial property filtering Formally, we used a bearing line. I don't know if folks remember the bearing line, but the idea there was that Sausalito sort of has a primary orientation, so maybe we could just use that to find what was the view facing. That proved to be a flawed approach, so we went with the full view corridor approach, which is highly accurate. So that was eliminated, and so that's one of the changes. The observer point filtering, again, we used the We used a method to as I described, to find the right window. Location. That was an, and then also the directional filtering, again, using the pre-calculated view corridors. That comes in also with the impact zone identification again. So these were just refinements that as we undertook this development process, we identified better ways of doing things. So these were some of those. So next slide, please. Okay, key difference from regulatory. So again, we went over moving up from 10 to 10 from five eliminating Mount Tam and then future proofing, putting the 30 of the water. in addition to the 15, even though we are using 15 now, It's not always possible, maybe there might be a time where it wasn't available. there might be some reason we would need to use a 30 centimeter or possibly we might have availability of LIDAR, have other elements of accuracy, but might be available only at the 30 centimeter. So rather than coming back, we thought, let's just put it in there. So that's the basic, that's what she wrote. So happy to take all questions. |
| 01:41:54.74 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much for the presentation. I know it's been a lot of hard work also on your part, so we appreciate the updates. I think our resident architect commissioner, Marla, would you like to start us off? |
| 01:42:05.18 | Sophia Collier | I'm sorry, may I say one other thing? So in response to the concern expressed by Bob about the, and also David Marlott mentioned, hey, maybe you could give a little more indication of where the view impairment is occurring. So what we've done is we've actually developed this additional visualization which I provided And that's not deployed as yet, but we have developed that. And probably in the next week or so, we'll roll that out. So that this is just basically a zoomed in view of that bigger view. So providing that zoomed in view, people can see, look at it, the orange rays point to the exact problem area. In this particular case, it was so extreme, it's pointing at the building. |
| 01:42:54.26 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. I just, for the benefit of the public, we did receive some paper handouts that perhaps at some point after this meeting we can attach to the agenda just for the public record. Thank you very much. Commissioner Marla, do you have any questions for ViewSync? |
| 01:43:10.34 | David Marlatt | Yes, thank you very much. Thank you, Sophia. Obviously, I'm familiar with ViewSync somewhat. Let me start with just where we left off with the next development that you showed us in this illustration. Is that part of the web-based DSM application? |
| 01:43:25.78 | Sophia Collier | Yeah, that would be, yeah, that would just basically, it would come in the report. So the report would, instead of having two, parts, it would have three folders. It would have the iconic view, it would have the water view, and it would have the window view. So it would have three folders, and it would come as part of the report automatically. |
| 01:43:46.37 | David Marlatt | OK. and do you have an idea of what roughly the timeline might be for that? |
| 01:43:51.34 | Sophia Collier | I think, I mean, it is developed, as you can see, that we've created it. So we're just going to do some further testing. I think we could probably roll it out at the, if not at the end of this week, probably the first of next week. I mean, it's really, all it really is, is a zoom in on that larger view. So it's not actually very complicated to have created it. |
| 01:44:12.47 | David Marlatt | Right. If the city does take up view sync in its part of its odds, what is it getting itself into in terms of updates and keeping the DSM updated? Is there a does the city have to be rescan regularly or how does that is the update? What's the maintenance on this? |
| 01:44:28.47 | Sophia Collier | Okay. I think there would be two approaches to updates. In my mind, one approach to updates would be I'm just the, DEER MAP is right now the provider that we've used, and they provide an update on a periodic basis. And so it would just be, just basically updating as they do, which in that they refly the area on a periodic basis, not regularly, but it's every year, every six months to a year, being in the San Francisco Bay Area, they refly this area quite a bit. having that update. It's an annual subscription, includes all the updates. |
| 01:45:09.24 | David Marlatt | Thanks. And I think my last question, at least for now, is obviously the whole view sync technology depends on receiving reasonably robust, accurate models from the private sector. Right. Yeah, exactly. Such as myself. |
| 01:45:12.41 | Sophia Collier | you |
| 01:45:22.65 | Sophia Collier | private sector. Thank you very much. |
| 01:45:26.03 | David Marlatt | And, you know, but what is the, I don't know, what is the thinking and what is the plan? Obviously, it's sort of not all architects, some architects, believe it or not, are not even using 3D modeling, actually quite a few. Is there a plan or a technique or a methodology for, I don't know, for a consulting type service or some service bureau or some thinking process wise, someone comes to you and they're just using a simple chief architect model and they don't know how to do a KMZ from a KFC. And what do they- From the DMZ. Right, from the DMZ. Yeah. That's right. What is the thinking there in terms of just implementation process? |
| 01:45:58.73 | Sophia Collier | And... Thank you. What do they? From the DMC. Yeah. |
| 01:46:05.84 | Sophia Collier | Okay, one of the things that we have done in response to your suggestion is we also are going to roll out an approach where the person can drop the DEA file in there and that it will package it and make it into the KMZ file. So it'll be a little easier for someone if they're exporting that, but some may not find that as easy as, you know. I'm embarrassed that I understood what you said. Yes, thank you very much. I'm embarrassed, yeah. |
| 01:46:29.58 | David Marlatt | I'm embarrassed that I understood what you said. Yes, thank you very much. I'm embarrassed. |
| 01:46:36.21 | Unknown | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 01:46:36.67 | Sophia Collier | Thank you. |
| 01:46:36.75 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:46:36.79 | David Marlatt | Thank you. |
| 01:46:36.80 | Sophia Collier | . Thank you. Think how I feel. But I do think that we do have a relationship in the city with an organization called Mr. Mapp, who has been a Um, person who is one of the developers and who's worked on view sync since the very beginning. So I don't know whether he would want to be in the business of supporting it, but he certainly would be very capable and he has provided services and now his payment channel is open so he's able to get payments from the city or but obviously it wouldn't be from the city, it would be from people who would retain him to do that. But I think it's a pretty minimal effort to do it. It sounds complicated at first but I think once people sort of could even maybe have somebody walk them through it, like I think large firms, it's going to be very easy for them. Yeah. |
| 01:47:34.50 | David Marlatt | Yeah. |
| 01:47:34.72 | Sophia Collier | Small firms, it may be more difficult. |
| 01:47:37.22 | David Marlatt | Okay. And then maybe my last question is, speaking of large and small firms, I know some of the initial model that I gave you was too large for the view sync, and then you tweak things and adjust it, and everything actually works very well right now. Are there going to be limitations on size of the model or... |
| 01:47:50.56 | Sophia Collier | Thank you. |
| 01:47:56.91 | David Marlatt | pretty much, I mean, someone comes in with a really significant development. |
| 01:47:58.39 | Sophia Collier | Yeah, I mean, there's no limitation on the size of the model. that initially we had sought to basically use pretty much like massing models. And I think the typical process that people would use in designing this, like if I were gonna design a project in Sausalito to do this, I might make a massing model and just say, okay, let me put my massing model in and kind of get an idea. So that might be an approach that somebody might take, but it really was very important for us to be able to support any type of model because a lot of times models have quite a few elements in them, even if they're not necessarily critical to identifying the exterior shape of the building. nobody wants to go through and clean up their model just to do this. So we wanted to be able to take any model, and just basically process it into ViewSync and we worked with David on some of his beautiful designs to make sure that No matter how many hundreds, thousands of vertices were in those models, they were all beautifully integrated into the ViewSync software. |
| 01:49:05.40 | David Marlatt | Thank you. I don't think I have any other questions for now. |
| 01:49:08.58 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. I'm glad you understood. It's a Vulcan mind meld going on there. Commissioner Luxenberg. |
| 01:49:11.61 | Sophia Collier | can mind meld going on there. |
| 01:49:17.71 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. And so far, I thank you so much for your presentation. I was supportive of this back in February, and I think it's important to be included with the odds. I do want to sort of understand, again, going to the earlier questions I had with Mr. Brown about the details here. If we could bring up attachment, what's called attachment five on the agenda, which is then labeled attachment four when it comes up. I just, I'm not sure what this is. It was a test that was done, and it's important, I think, to understand. I don't know if they were testing this against a project or they were just defining the views of these properties, but if you could explain to me, I don't know if they were testing this against a project or they were just defining the views of these properties, but if you could explain to me, I don't, I missed all those letters that David understands. And so I want to understand what original score, modified score, percentage change, threshold, and compliant mean in this document would be helpful. |
| 01:50:06.54 | Adam Blair | Yeah. |
| 01:50:20.47 | Sophia Collier | this document would be helpful. Yeah, so basically these are, this is the report. So basically it's showing that the size of the view is this 12,000, that number. and that the percentage change, so basically the way ViewSync works is okay, initial view and We have, okay, here's the model, it's uploaded. So then it's, okay, this model is going to potentially impact these 10 properties. Then we go in and we say, for each of those properties, let's characterize their view. in terms of its size. Then we say, Now bring in the model. lets you run it again. So this model may be in front of them or it may not be in front of them, So then we would say, what is the modified score after the modification of the new property. |
| 01:51:11.75 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Let me just interrupt you for a second. So was there a project model? Yes Where what was the address of the model because none of that's in here? |
| 01:51:16.10 | Sophia Collier | Yes. |
| 01:51:20.39 | Sophia Collier | Okay, it is the uploaded file name is the North Street 35 foot mass model. So that at the top of the it says uploaded file name right there. That's the name of the model that was uploaded. That was familiar with. |
| 01:51:39.07 | Jeffery Luxenberg | I'm familiar with the neighborhood, but what, where, was it an address where you just built a model? You just picked a property and built a model? |
| 01:51:46.54 | Sophia Collier | and built a property and built a model? In this case, an architect provided a model |
| 01:51:52.59 | Peter Hardeen | Okay. |
| 01:51:52.75 | Sophia Collier | And his model was actually the model of 217 North Street, but it was done at a 35 foot mass model. So I'm not sure this was a model created by David, to test different parameters, I guess. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but this model was provided by an architect. So that's not... |
| 01:52:16.84 | David Marlatt | So that's not our. It's the actual building. I just raised it five feet to provoke a problem. . |
| 01:52:23.03 | Unknown | Right. |
| 01:52:23.50 | Jeffery Luxenberg | All right, so to put it in Langman's language and simple, it's a model of a 35 foot building at the location of 217 North Street. And then you're testing what blockage that occurred. |
| 01:52:35.82 | Sophia Collier | Thank you. Right. |
| 01:52:38.33 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Okay. |
| 01:52:38.77 | Sophia Collier | Like how tall do we have to be to fully block 22 Atwood? |
| 01:52:42.48 | Jeffery Luxenberg | And so the original score, so explain to me how much, what is, you go down there and there's like 755, but there's 12, at 309, let's take 309, 311, 12,255. What's the maximum it can be? What's the? |
| 01:52:43.31 | Sophia Collier | For example. |
| 01:53:02.90 | Sophia Collier | Is the 12, the original score is the original, that's if there was no other property involved. That would be, let's say we were just saying, let's just characterize the view at that particular location. And that would be the size of the view, of the water view at that location. |
| 01:53:14.78 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:53:20.82 | Jeffery Luxenberg | What's the biggest water view you can possibly have? |
| 01:53:24.99 | Sophia Collier | I mean, vast. I mean, it just depends. I don't know. |
| 01:53:28.93 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Like if you have absolutely no boxers, you're on Wolfback Road, you have a 360 degree view, what's the maximum score you can hit? |
| 01:53:36.55 | Sophia Collier | Yeah, I don't know. This is a relative score. So this is 100% of what that So it's not relative to anybody else's view. It's just like, you know, you're not going to have a property. This is at that property. That is the view of that property. How big it is. |
| 01:53:58.32 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. Okay, so they have 12,255 for a water view and the modified score is the same. So what it says is the building doesn't block their view at all. |
| 01:54:06.22 | Sophia Collier | It's... Correct. |
| 01:54:09.31 | Jeffery Luxenberg | And so a compliant means true. Right. So now go to iconic view. Right. They only had a 2% view of Angel Island, but it didn't block their view anymore. So at this one, it didn't block any view. So now go to 22 Atwood, I guess, if we scroll down. That's the one that. So this one is saying they had a less water view water review than the first one but then they've got a 50 blockage and they only can have a 10 blockage i'm now understanding this and therefore it's false which means it doesn't comply for the bay bridge they they can still see the bay bridge no they can't see the Bay Bridge at all. So they don't pass there and they can't see the skyline is only 43%. Okay, I understand it now. That was my question. Right, thank you. |
| 01:54:14.67 | Sophia Collier | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:54:24.60 | Adam Blair | Great. Thank you. |
| 01:54:30.64 | Adam Blair | That's the one that. |
| 01:54:36.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:36.10 | Bob Brown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:36.12 | Unknown | THE FAMILY. Thank you. |
| 01:55:00.91 | Adam Blair | I'm trying to scourge life. |
| 01:55:03.56 | Sophia Collier | All right. Right. |
| 01:55:07.59 | Jeffery Luxenberg | My next question was why was Mount Tam taken out? I'm just curious |
| 01:55:11.57 | Sophia Collier | I mean, one of the reasons is it just seemed like a lot of work for nothing, like there were no occasions when there were views that were being blocked of Mount Tam like in the entire year of working on this. It just seemed like a wasteful, like it costs money to run this thing, you know, every minute on the cloud costs. So it just seemed like to run that, like to create vast DSM of Mount Tam, when it doesn't, no one can actually see it. In my opinion, people care about their water view. Certainly some might care about their Mount Tam view, but the likelihood of being blocked from seeing Mount Tam is so vanishingly small. It was something that a member of the peer group kind of threw in, and I think that it just didn't feel like something to sustain. It was a lot of work and cost for no candle. Thank you. |
| 01:56:07.92 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Okay, those are my questions. I'll go back to the chair. |
| 01:56:11.52 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. I actually appreciate that because I was struggling to read that. So thank you, Commissioner Luxenberg. Commissioner Moore, do you have any questions Fusing, thank you. Vice Chair? Thank you. I don't have any questions either. I appreciate it. I think this will be a great time to hear from members of the public. Thank you. So assistant city manager, I will have you facilitate. I believe we have some speaker cards on hand. |
| 01:56:27.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:56:38.90 | Assistant City Manager | Apologies, Chair, can you repeat that? |
| 01:56:40.15 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. No, that's okay. We are here for the public comment portion of the evening. If you can help facilitate. I do want to just note that we did receive some public comment. I see four that are attached to the agenda, so everybody knows that this commission has read those and those are filed. But public comment in the chambers when you're ready. |
| 01:57:00.03 | Assistant City Manager | Yes, happy to assist with that, Chair, thank you. I'll look for raised hands, as I have not received any speaker cards for this item. I'm seeing one enthusiastic raised hand. Mr. Mike Monsa, please. Welcome, you'll have three minutes. |
| 01:57:15.25 | Mike Monsef | Hi, my name is Mike Monsef. Some of you know me and the commission. I'm an advocate of you from the beginning for a long time. And I'm not gonna challenge AI And it's kind of difficult for me. It just goes over my head. But the issue is that view is not part of basic... code. that we have established as Uh, commission Luxembourg said that this is, this document is going to be for here for a long time. And there is also there is a decision made by Supreme Court of California that view is not a right is a privilege. And I want to establish that right now. that. If you don't do that, If you get the view of somebody preserve That means denying somebody else in front of him, that they cannot have the same code requirement If he wants to go for 32 feet, which the guy behind him had it, If he goes 32 feet and block his view. then You are denying somebody's basic right. So this is something you have to pay attention to it right now. I'm sure AI can find a lot of angles and everything. This is already established in your report was done here by your commission on fish and chips. We brought it up and they agree that view is not a right, it's a privilege. So I just want to establish that at this time. And the Supreme Court of California And there was a case in San Diego and they already established that the views are the right. It's not a privilege. It should be recorded in this document. Thank you. |
| 01:59:21.34 | Assistant City Manager | Mr. Monsef, thank you for your comments. I'll look to the chamber once again for interested speakers via raised hands. Seeing none, Chair, I'll look to the Zoom application. Seeing none, I'll give it back to you. |
| 01:59:36.26 | Nastassya Saad | THANK YOU VERY MUCH. THANK YOU FOR THE PUBLIC COMMENT THIS EVENING. SO WE'RE GOING TO BRING IT UP. I THINK WE'RE GOING TO HAVE PROBABLY SOME DETAILED DISCUSSION POINTS. SO WE MIGHT LEAVE MS. MARIA ON HAND JUST IN CASE WE NEED TO PULL UP ANY OF OUR DOCUMENTATION. COMMISSIONER LUXEMBURG, I AM GOING TO LOOK TO YOU JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE OUR MOST DETAILED COMMISSIONER. AND MAYBE WE CAN GET SOME OF THE MORE COMPLICATED CONCEPTS SORTED OUT AND WEIGH IN ON YOUR OPINION ON WHERE YOU ARE. |
| 02:00:06.03 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Okay. First of all, I think that I was moving on the zero setback for the zoning to allow the six-foot porch setback and the 12-foot front garden setback, or maybe that's the opposite. But now I heard tonight that since our zoning is at zero, we can't increase it by the section 10.8. So therefore, I guess my opinion is we keep it at zero because that's what the ordinance is, and we correct any of the errors in the document to meet that. I mean, maybe you want to do these one at a time, or you want me to give you a list? |
| 02:00:54.02 | Nastassya Saad | No, I think one at a time is actually best. |
| 02:00:55.45 | Jeffery Luxenberg | So let's see if we can get concurrence on that one. |
| 02:01:03.52 | Andrew Junius | whatever Commissioner Marlott says, I agree with you. Thank you. |
| 02:01:07.05 | David Marlatt | I'll have to look in a DAE model for that, but no, I would concur with Commissioner Luxembourg. |
| 02:01:14.20 | Nastassya Saad | Okay, so we want to keep the setback at zero feet. At zero. Thank you. And I think there's some |
| 02:01:17.05 | David Marlatt | Thank you. |
| 02:01:17.10 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 02:01:17.21 | David Marlatt | you're right. |
| 02:01:17.27 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 02:01:17.41 | David Marlatt | Zero. |
| 02:01:17.78 | Jeffery Luxenberg | photography. 0. Thank you. And I think there's some corrections, but I'll leave it to staff to go through the document one more time before it goes to silly city council and fix that as long as Tony Rudin will let us do that tonight, which I'm not sure he will, but because it'll be hard to go through a 84 page document and find any errors. So. |
| 02:01:37.54 | Nastassya Saad | I think we'll skip that. Actually, just may I, not to interrupt you, but just to level set here, this is a recommendation to city council tonight. So that's what this commission is here for. So we will make our recommendation. And of course, city council has their prerogative and so does all of the presenters today to be able to present again to them. But we're here simply to make our recommendation. Thank you. |
| 02:01:57.15 | Bob Brown | I just want to note that I am writing down any of the revisions to the draft document that you have. So when it comes time for a motion, we can just add those into your recommendation. |
| 02:02:05.32 | Nastassya Saad | I greatly appreciate that. Commissioner Luxenberg, please continue. |
| 02:02:07.07 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 02:02:07.10 | Bob Brown | you |
| 02:02:07.24 | Jeffery Luxenberg | you |
| 02:02:07.26 | Bob Brown | you |
| 02:02:08.44 | Jeffery Luxenberg | The second one is on the height of buildings in the historic district. There was some language that came forward from the peer group about changing, deleting the consistent with the requirements of chapter 1040.060 and inserting as measured from the midpoint of each property that front a street. I believe that the historic district is different. I believe that we should be met, I mean, you were looking up at the buildings and it's historic. Historic is excluded from a lot of the state stuff, so it has special regulations anyways. I think that's important. So I would agree with that language, except that I think we have to define what the midpoint of each property, the front of street is. I think it's the midpoint at the street. I don't think it's backing to the property at all. I think it should be at the street. And I see a director, ACM Phipps, nodding. So I'll let him comment on that. |
| 02:03:13.69 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you, Commissioner Luxenberg. Yeah, I agree with your interpretation. I always interpreted it as the midpoint of the property measured as halfway of total frontage. Thank you. |
| 02:03:25.93 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 02:03:25.94 | Assistant City Manager | Bye. |
| 02:03:25.96 | Carolyn Revell | Yeah. |
| 02:03:26.03 | Assistant City Manager | Bye. |
| 02:03:26.06 | Carolyn Revell | Bye. |
| 02:03:26.13 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you. |
| 02:03:26.23 | Carolyn Revell | you |
| 02:03:26.30 | Assistant City Manager | the frontage line to the public right of way. So I think. |
| 02:03:32.46 | David Marlatt | And then I would suggest if that's the one, if it's going to be the recommendation that we ask Bob to flush that out a bit. So we don't say just midpoint, but midpoint of the width of the problem is language, as you say that we fleshed it out a bit so that it's, Please. |
| 02:03:46.35 | Jeffery Luxenberg | And- And I think we need to do it in 10A, 060, 50A, 2A, and do it in the definition. And so we'll do it in both places. And so that's my suggestion. Let's see if we have concurrence with the commission on that. |
| 02:04:02.36 | David Marlatt | Well, I've heard. I would generally concur, but I do have a question then for Attorney Rudin possibly. Is there any concern in implementing, and it's the historic district, so CEQA and so forth apply. Is there any concern that this could be challenged as taking away existing development rights that existed in January 2019? Because effectively we're lowering the maximum building height in the historic district. Is that a concern? |
| 02:04:28.99 | City Attorney Rudin | I would say it would be a concern if the city was requiring this for all projects and that developers did not have the option to proceed with discretionary design review under Title X. because the city's preserving that alternative, the other pathway, the pathway that we have always had under Title X, to seek approval of development via discretionary design review. And because those projects would you know, developed uh taking into account you know the secretary of interior standards compliance at sequa under title 10. And because those projects could fully develop exactly the same kinds of buildings and configurations Now, under Title 10, as they could back in before 2018, you don't have a concern about a Housing Crisis Act violation. |
| 02:05:21.52 | David Marlatt | So. Yeah, thank you for that clarification. I just wanted to be reassured. Thank you. |
| 02:05:26.26 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Yeah, thank you, Attorney Rooney. That's helpful. So I don't know, what are people's thoughts on this? Thank you. |
| 02:05:32.14 | Fred Moore | Well, I concur with the language. I think the language that you were suggesting is the midpoint from each property line that fronts the street. So if we take a property line, maybe we need a definition of the midpoint of a property line. But it seems like you have a property line, one end, and one end, the midpoint's in the middle. And we say the middle of the property line. That's just kind of how I view it. So it's not the property, it's actually the property line. So there is a midpoint of a property line. And then mathematically. |
| 02:06:00.50 | David Marlatt | And then mathematics. But... Yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt, but then that occurs to me. There are some through lots in the historic district. So it's the which point, which property line, which midpoint? And does the higher or the lower one prevail? If it's on both Princess and Bridgeway, for example. |
| 02:06:13.16 | Jeffery Luxenberg | So... Yeah, so I would guess on Bridgeway, Bridgeway is pretty flat. So Bridgeway, it's not going to affect anything. It's the ones around the corner of Bridgeway and Princess because Princess goes up. So yes, so that is a good question. How do we define the front property? If it has frontage on both Bridgeway and Princess, then is it the midpoint on, Well, is it the height on Bridgeway is one thing and then the height on Princess is something else? That's a good question. |
| 02:06:50.82 | David Marlatt | to add then to a certain depth. Yeah, it gets a little bit tricky with the... |
| 02:06:55.38 | Jeffery Luxenberg | I think we should ask the architect on the commission of what he thinks. |
| 02:07:01.22 | David Marlatt | Well, one approach is to say the average. I mean, it's not going to be so many lots, so you have two figures and just average it and you're done. That would be one sort of brutal approach. |
| 02:07:10.67 | Jeffery Luxenberg | So if you if you have this for Bob, if we have two frontages, it would be the average of the midpoint. I mean, I think I actually think it should be the height on Bridgeway should be the fight on Bridgeway. And the height on Princess to be the high on Princess, because if it's going up |
| 02:07:29.99 | David Marlatt | But to what depth? 50 feet deep? Where the mass of the building is? |
| 02:07:33.50 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Um, Now I'm saying that if you measured the height from, if you measured the height on Princess, then on Princess it would be that height, and when you measured on Bridgeway, it has to be 32 feet on Bridgeway, and then 32 feet on Princess, and 32 feet on Princess somehow has to connect. Yeah, it's the somehow that I'm not. So do we wanna go back 15 feet or 10 feet? Because there's something in the odds. We already have that language. Yeah, we have that language in the odds about stepping back. Yeah. So why don't we just use whatever the dimension is. That on Bridgeway it has to be no more than 32 feet, measured at Bridgeway. On Princess it has to be no more more than 32 feet measured at Princess, and then it goes back, and then obviously Princess will be slightly higher than Bridgeway because you're going up the hill. But at least 10 feet back from Bridgeway would have to be the 32 feet. |
| 02:07:56.55 | David Marlatt | Yeah, it's the somehow that I'm not. |
| 02:08:04.30 | David Marlatt | I hope you already have that language. Yeah. |
| 02:08:08.53 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 02:08:35.16 | Nastassya Saad | Is that objective? I mean, is that an objective? Thank you. |
| 02:08:38.42 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Where's the math point? Yeah. I think that's subjective. I think that's subjective. If we just define the setback number, yeah, it'll be. I mean, it's all math. I mean, I don't think that's subjective in any sense. |
| 02:08:38.47 | Nastassya Saad | Where's the math point? Yeah. It's just two different numbers. |
| 02:08:47.92 | Fred Moore | Yeah. is another option just to take the |
| 02:08:50.54 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Oh. |
| 02:08:53.98 | Fred Moore | property line of the street address. You have an address on bridge that property spans and the front is on bridgeway, the side is on princess. It probably has a bridgeway address, not a princess address. So if you pick the property. |
| 02:09:06.50 | David Marlatt | So if you pick the property was in this because then the princess had building might be 15 to 12 feet tall. By the time 32 foot building gets back to princess. Thank you. |
| 02:09:17.48 | Fred Moore | No, I'm picking the spot from, well, if you go from Bridgeway, and that was your frontage, that was your street address, and you had the 32 feet from there, the building's going to go back in the lot. So you're not measuring again from Princess, you're just measuring from Bridgeway. |
| 02:09:29.28 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 02:09:29.40 | Andrew Junius | So, yeah. |
| 02:09:35.26 | Andrew Junius | If I might, this is a... |
| 02:09:38.66 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 02:09:39.00 | Andrew Junius | Measuring the height on a slope is really difficult. I think when you're looking at the frontage, if the street is sloped, it's pretty easy to go to the middle of that and we could figure that out. you know, It gets complicated when your site goes downhill or uphill, and I'm not sure we're gonna figure that out tonight. To be honest with you, it's complicated. And your questions, Commissioner Marlott, the depth, and things like that, that's relevant, stepping it up, If you don't do any of this stuff and you're in a lot that fronts onto a cliff, you're not gonna have a building because you can have a height of 32 feet, but the minute you go back 15 feet, you're into a wall that you're gonna, that you might not be able to build up, up the slope. So I don't know if we're gonna figure this out tonight. |
| 02:10:24.41 | Jeffery Luxenberg | i mean i i think the i think the the policy is clear we want in the historic district we have 32 feet in the district the district has a very defined area there's not that many properties if somebody wants a higher building because of the slope they can go through chapter 10 and come in through uh through design review and that's those are the projects that are appropriate for design review because they're complicated so I don't think we should be moving away from a very simple definable height just because there's a complicated project that we're quite honestly would require design review under most circumstances so I would we just define it as said earlier the midpoint at the property line and if somebody has two frontages it's going to be complicated and maybe they'll be encouraged by staff to go through design review or maybe they'll come up with some simple answer to on the side street it's one number and on the other students none number where it meets in the middle it still complies or something so I I don't think we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater here so Can you comment on that? Can we just move on and decide on the midpoint |
| 02:11:37.78 | Andrew Junius | Can we just move on and decide on the midpoint of the frontage and move on? That's what we've decided on? |
| 02:11:41.53 | Jeffery Luxenberg | That's what we decided. So if we all concur with that, it seems like we do. My third item was related to Chapter 3. In my opinion, as I stated back in February, I think ViewSync is a very important part, given Sausalito's history, and they've done a great job of developing the software. It might not be perfect, but it does give an objective way to define views so therefore I think it's important to put this in there know a lot of the properties that are going to come in under this probably in North Sausalito they're fairly flat and and and the hill is behind and up in a way so I think that the software will work very well for those uh we're not really going to get one little house in the middle of you know where whatever trying to do this these are going to be for the bigger projects that want to streamline so we can meet our our 724. so i i think this software is it does that I think they've done a great job And so I think we should include it with it with the package. That's my recommendation to this point |
| 02:11:43.62 | Andrew Junius | Thank you. |
| 02:11:43.64 | Nastassya Saad | or, you know, Yeah. Thank you. |
| 02:12:57.25 | Nastassya Saad | VICE CHAIR? |
| 02:12:58.46 | Andrew Junius | Sure, I'll jump in here. go at the other end of the spectrum. I don't have any detailed questions. I just have a few comments I want to make. And I want to respond to something that Commissioner Marlott, sorry, Commissioner Luxembourg just said. I actually disagree. I think This is the view sync if we do, if the city does end up dropping it, The ViewSync is really going to only apply when it's one of these house to house view issues because you know, the bigger projects down in the flats are just gonna waive it, because the density bonus is gonna allow them to waive it, so there won't be any, that the view sink will affect any views out of buildings for larger buildings, five units and above, rising off of Bridgeway. create a different process for a lot of stuff we see the commission all the time which is you know view claims about you know somebody's like we were gonna have a conversation a little bit later this evening about a project that There may be some of those issues. So I, you know, I think that is neither here nor there. I did want to just make the comment that I'm still a little confused about my earlier question and I wanted to go to the staff report with respect to the idea of ministerial approvals. I under, you know, on page two of the staff report it says, Streamline ministerial review and objective standards. Okay, we're required by state law to create an objective standard, set of objective standards, which this is, that's what the odds is. moving, setting the view issue aside for a second, Um, You know, we're establishing a permit process for streamline approvals where required by state law. Well, the state law is the streamlining. the local, that we're looking at now. are just the objective standards. All right. So, I don't think we're creating a streamlined process for projects to avoid CEQA, outside of the state process. SB 35 and AB 2011 and there may be other streamlining programs out there that may be applicable, but those are state programs. I don't think we're creating a new class of ministerial approvals that don't require CEQI. There is a narrow, you know, The idea that projects need to comply with objective standards is going to dramatically shrink down the discretion that this commission and the rest of the city has with respect to design review. That's true, but that doesn't mean the project still might not be subject to the California Environmental Quality Act. So I think there might be some confusion earlier there. I hope that clears it up a little bit. You know, we do need the odds. We're almost there. You know, I think I just want to make sure that that's on the record. And then my final one, I did want to comment about the member of the public that talked about the view, you know, the big philosophical view question. I think that's his statement generally is correct from the case law. But I also think that what we're doing here, if the city does adopt view sync and if it does pass muster and if it is determined down the road to be an objective standard, We changed that. We're actually, we're including a piece of, a brand new piece into our objective standards, that does take away people's views. you know, that will, or I'm not sorry to take away people's views, that will essentially suppress development rights on other sites in favor of people that have existing views. So that's a choice the city maybe it may make. I don't know if they'll make it or not. I don't know if eventually it'll withstand any challenges regarding whether it's truly objective or not. But there's no question that what we're doing here is moving from the world of discretion where we as commissioners had to constantly debate on well is there a view blockage or not. This is going to simplify that. But what it's also going to do is is take away rights that people have right now to build up. right and to add on to their homes. So that's a choice the city's making. if this does get adopted. And I think it's an interesting one. I'm not sure I agree with it. But I also you know the city's gonna do what it's gonna do so thank you |
| 02:17:12.87 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you, Vice Chair. So we do have some noted comments from Commissioner Luxembourg. um |
| 02:17:18.96 | Jeffery Luxenberg | I MAKE AN ADDITIONAL COMMENT RELATED. I JUST SAID RATHER THAN WE LOSE THE TRAIN OF THOUGHT. I DO AGREE WITH YOU THAT WE'RE GOING TO LOSE DISCUSSION ON THIS COMMISSION UNDER THIS. THERE'S NO QUESTION. WE'VE KNOWN THAT ALL ALONG. I BELIEVE THAT WHEN THE STAFF GETS A LARGE PROJECT IN UNDER, YOU KNOW, AFTER MEASURE J, MEASURE K, AND ALL THAT, THAT WE RUN THE VIEWSYNC sync, and then they will use that. And if the project doesn't comply, it is true a developer can ask for a waiver, but they will run this, and they will suggest that, well, maybe you can make these modern modifications, and they will have that information. And yes, a waiver could be asked for and might be granted, but it gives the staff, this view sync gives the staff some more information when they're reviewing the project to determine maybe there's a better way. Because what we've done in design review over the last number of years is usually make projects better. Sometimes maybe it just drags them out, but usually it makes them better. And this is a tool that will give staff something to help make those projects the best they can be. And yes, there may be waivers. I don't disagree with that, but not having it |
| 02:17:21.46 | Nastassya Saad | Sure. |
| 02:18:37.35 | Jeffery Luxenberg | is worse i think having it and it's a tool and if somebody waves it they waive it and but they at least have to run it and they can't just say uh we want a waiver of something we haven't yet seen they have to run it and then they say why they want the waiver and then someone asks is it feasible to build this thing by not blocking this view and doing this and they say oh yeah that's feasible and the project evolves a little bit, all at the staff level. So I think this is a tool that we should not throw away and we should include with our toolkit in this odds. And so, again, that's my reaction to saying that it's not going to apply to the larger project because I think it's going to be a helpful tool then. |
| 02:19:19.45 | Nastassya Saad | I appreciate that. Vice Chair, do you wanna follow up? And then I'd like to hear from Mr. Moore. |
| 02:19:21.31 | Andrew Junius | and then I'd like to hear from you. This will be my last word on this. I very much appreciate the back and forth Commissioner Luxembourg. I think you know, the way waivers are used and the way waivers work at a state law. It's not that they're might be granted, they will be granted, and the rules about what's permitted by the density bonus and how the waivers work, it's almost impossible for the city to say no because just the way this has all worked out from a state level. So I agree, I assume a developer might still go through this but they'll just go through it because the density bonus literally allows projects to double in size. you know, it's hard to imagine a situation where a developer is not gonna say, you know, any adjustment to my project that would, you know, you Preserve a view or create a different view situation is not going to I'm not required to do under state law, and so I'm just going to move ahead. So we just have to be ready for that conversation because I think that's what we're doing. We're going to see some of that as the years roll on. |
| 02:20:30.11 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you both. I appreciated the discussion. I know there's a lot going on with this document. Commissioner Moore, I think you might be the only commissioner that wasn't here at that last hearing. I'd love your input. |
| 02:20:45.11 | Fred Moore | sure you love my input well we'll see as far as the adjustments I think also we talked earlier about changing the table at section 10 a point zero one point zero six zero B when the iconic view percentage for if the second tier level of exceptions right now it's at eight percent it really probably needs to be more like 15 percent versus 10% just for consistency with some of the other changes that were made. I'm not sure I'm super crazy about the public and private view preservation standards as the title of Chapter 3. I agree with the speaker earlier. I agree with Commissioner Junius that know legally unfortunately I come from the background and been involved with many issues of view fights my best friend from elementary school spent about a hundred thousand dollars in legal fees over one inch above the maximum height for his chimney in a HOA that had view protection standards so I definitely have part of me that is always juggling the rights of the person who sat on their property for 50 years, never built it. The person behind them has been enjoying a view for 50 years, now the person wants to build on their family lot, and 32 feet's gonna block the view behind them, and I think including this you provision is going to create situations like that when they're going to say, hey, it's more than 10%, so you should not be able to build. And if that's a choice that the city makes, that's one that they have to deal with on those old and new homes throughout the community, which it's a juggling act. Because, again, state law is you don't have a right to view, and light and air is not as much as you think you do, even though you like to espouse it. You just don't have a lot of support with the court decisions but I agree it's four years in the running I'm the newcomer on the Bach and I know everybody has been beating this up right left there's been a tremendous amount of work just in the software itself and all the regulations so I probably also am supportive with the changes that it probably should be included in the package for the City Council to make the Policy decision whether or not that's how they want to go forward |
| 02:23:06.77 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much, Commissioner Moore. Commissioner Marlott, some final thoughts here. Yeah, thank you very much. |
| 02:23:10.57 | David Marlatt | Yeah, thank you very much. And it was no secret that I'm very supportive of ViewSync as well. Working with Sophia, I ran five of my projects through it successfully. Not too much view blockage, not bad. But it works, you know, as a beta tester. And I also appreciate, unlike the previous S3 model, it was actually taking into account actual roof shapes, gables and protrusions and so forth and so on. So I have more confidence, even though the presentation is 2D, I understand that. I have more confidence technically in the result and having this sort of zooming in technology will make it a little bit less of a trial and error situation if I wanted to refine and so forth. so I think that's all very positive. Commissioner Moore brought up something which actually I didn't really think about too hard before but it does bother me too for other reasons that we have view preservation standards. In my mind and I know I've said this before and I'm beating up a dead horse here but this is not about view preservation per se. It's about sculpting, and this idea that we're preserving of someone's private view privilege in my rationalization of all this is a bit moot. What we're doing is the same thing that FARs do, that setbacks do, that height limits do. Communities throughout the nation have always had a plethora of tools to say, okay, here's your actual lot. It's 6,000 square feet, but you can't build 6,000 square feet by 100 feet. We're going to sculpt it back. We're going to take certain steps. We have, not to pat anybody on the back or saying, but we have sort of invented a new sculpting technique, and one that is particularly suited to our unique amphitheater type of environment. But for me, if I was attorney Rudin and had to defend this in court, this is all about sculpting, which has a knock-on effect of protecting certain views, because that's the nature of our community. And that's why I've always liked the word view synchronization. I may not have a lot of positive feedback on that, but I always liked this idea that it was a view synchronization rather than a preservation, which does sound like we're favoring certain people over other people. |
| 02:23:54.68 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:23:54.97 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 02:24:09.14 | Adam Blair | I'm not sure. |
| 02:24:12.79 | Adam Blair | you |
| 02:25:28.30 | David Marlatt | But I do support the chapter, as I've said. |
| 02:25:31.66 | Nastassya Saad | You support the inclusion of Chapter 3. And actually, can I clarify, Commissioner Moore, |
| 02:25:33.03 | David Marlatt | of chapter 3. |
| 02:25:40.24 | Nastassya Saad | I felt you were on the fence on the inclusion of chapter three. Could you kind of clarify for me? |
| 02:25:46.21 | Fred Moore | No, I would support including the chapters. |
| 02:25:48.76 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 02:25:48.77 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 02:25:48.79 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 02:25:48.98 | Fred Moore | Okay. |
| 02:25:49.16 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 02:25:49.18 | Fred Moore | Thank you. I would like to not like the title change possibly to remove preservation, but Thank you. |
| 02:25:54.65 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Just to have a, I would support the 15% number as well and changing the title as well. I have no issue about changing the title. |
| 02:25:54.66 | Fred Moore | that's what we're doing. |
| 02:26:02.69 | Nastassya Saad | So I'm going to hear at this point, I hear three inclusions of chapter three, um, vice chair. I'm saving my comments till the very end. |
| 02:26:13.82 | Andrew Junius | Yeah, are we thinking of doing like two votes again to vote on it? Because the odds is kind of done with the exception I'm supportive of these small changes. But the views thing still seems to me to be a separate issue and I'd be in favor of a separate vote. |
| 02:26:30.76 | Nastassya Saad | WE CAN DO IT A FEW DIFFERENT WAYS. WE HAVE A STAFF RECOMMENDATION IN FRONT OF US. I'M GOING TO NOT BELABOR THIS BY ANY MEANS. AND THIS IS WITH GREAT RESPECT TO MY COLLEAGUE, OF COURSE, COMMISSIONER MARLOT, AND TO THE PUBLIC, AND TO SOPHIA, AND TO EVERYTHING THAT WE HAVE IN FRONT OF US. AT THE LAST HEARING, I DID NOT SUPPORT THE CURRENT VERSION OF THE ODDS, WHICH INCLUDED THE VIEW SYNC. as someone who values the odds, which included the view sync. As someone who values the view and is a huge proponent of it and wants it preserved probably more than anyone, I would love this tool to work every day in practice. I just do not feel that it is still at the level that I would be comfortable putting the city in the position to have to defend it essentially um and and with that it's it's been excellent continued work but i'm still not there um purely from all the efforts that we've had on this commission in the last few years all of our involvement on the housing element advisory committee it's just my opinion is coming from accumulation I'm the odd one IN THE LAST FEW YEARS, ALL OF OUR INVOLVEMENT ON THE HOUSING ELEMENT ADVISORY COMMITTEE. IT'S JUST MY OPINION IS COMING FROM ACCUMULATION. I'M THE ODD ONE OUT. NO PUNS INTENDED, THE ODDS. I'll be here all night. Thank you very much. Anyway, the point is, I still stand with the previous work of Commissioner, excuse me, Vice Chair now, Junius, and former Commissioner Feller, and that's how I voted the last time. So I'm not going to try to sway us and put a motion on the floor for that. That didn't pass last time, and we're far past that. But that is my opinion. And so with that, I'M GOING TO LEAN ON ALL OF YOU TO MOVE THIS FORWARD. SO WE DO HAVE A STAFF RECOMMENDATION. WE CAN DEFINITELY SEPARATE THINGS OUT AS WE ATTEMPTED LAST TIME. BUT WE DO HAVE A, WE CAN ADOPT THE RESOLUTION FOR TITLE 10A AS PROPOSED. OR have an alternative to adopt a resolution recommending the exclusion of chapter three. I don't know if that's pertinent given we seem to have a consensus among three of us, but however you'd like to move, I would love a move. |
| 02:27:47.32 | Unknown | And... |
| 02:28:45.49 | Jeffery Luxenberg | I'll make a motion to approve the staff recommendation with a series of including chapter 3 with the series of changes that I hope Mr. Brown can identify on the corrections and this will include chapter 3. it will include the definition for the historic district of height being measured from the midpoint with the additional languages just coming forward and keeps the zero setback for the front yard. We'll need a second. |
| 02:28:46.01 | Nastassya Saad | Yes. |
| 02:29:18.97 | David Marlatt | Yeah. |
| 02:29:19.29 | Nastassya Saad | you |
| 02:29:23.54 | Nastassya Saad | I would second. Just, oh, Attorney Ritten. |
| 02:29:23.74 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Oh, |
| 02:29:23.96 | City Attorney Rudin | and, |
| 02:29:24.01 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 02:29:24.05 | City Attorney Rudin | Thank you. |
| 02:29:24.07 | David Marlatt | Thank you. |
| 02:29:24.08 | Jeffery Luxenberg | that. |
| 02:29:24.17 | City Attorney Rudin | Thank you. Yeah, and to the extent we can have Mr. Brown state for the record the changes that he's noted, I think that would be helpful for us as we are reviewing the odds later and making those revisions. Thank you. And also, so that it is clear what motion the Planning Commission is voting on. |
| 02:29:43.62 | Jeffery Luxenberg | So Mr. Brown, please. |
| 02:29:45.90 | Bob Brown | Okay, the changes that I've heard you discuss this evening, the first is in Chapter 1, the adjustment tiers. In Table A, removing the porch engaged, since that's no longer an issue. And in the Table B, removing the vista views and increasing the iconic view adjustment to a maximum of 15% obstruction. In the porch engaged, frontage requirement to have this zero-foot setback Thank you. construction. In the porch engaged frontage requirement to have this zero foot setback from porch to sidewalk. In the view preservation chapter three, change the title to public and private view synchronization and remove the reference to Mount Tam in 10A.03.0203. And then in the definition 14 to change from 15 to 30 square centimeter DSM resolution. And then regarding the height, to go back to the original peer review group definition of height measurement, which you saw back in February, reinsert that. And then also to make the definition consistent with that in the definitions in Chapter 7. |
| 02:31:07.19 | Nastassya Saad | I'm never gonna let you leave our meeting. That was excellent. |
| 02:31:10.14 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 02:31:10.16 | Bob Brown | Um, |
| 02:31:10.60 | Jeffery Luxenberg | I did. |
| 02:31:10.95 | Bob Brown | Yeah. |
| 02:31:10.97 | Jeffery Luxenberg | I guess the last one, chapter seven is |
| 02:31:14.51 | Bob Brown | the |
| 02:31:14.56 | Nastassya Saad | THE FAMILY IS |
| 02:31:14.65 | Bob Brown | definition. |
| 02:31:15.03 | Nastassya Saad | THAT'S THE DEFINITION. |
| 02:31:16.20 | Bob Brown | Making sure the height definition in Chapter 7 is consistent with the height definition in the historic Chapter 6. |
| 02:31:24.47 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Yes, but one of the things that we all added was we want it to be defined as a midpoint as measured in the frontage, which is not what the peer group had. It had something more measured from the midpoint of each property that fronts on a street. We wanted to actually say the language. Somebody came up with better language. What was it? |
| 02:31:30.83 | Bob Brown | you |
| 02:31:31.00 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 02:31:48.60 | David Marlatt | May point at the frontage. |
| 02:31:49.90 | Jeffery Luxenberg | A MIDPOINT OF THE FRONTAGE. SO WITH THAT CHANGE. THAT'S WONDERFUL. |
| 02:31:49.95 | David Marlatt | A midpoint. Yeah. |
| 02:31:54.88 | Nastassya Saad | That's wonderful. Sorry, the midpoint of the frontage that's in the definitions in Chapter 7. |
| 02:31:59.97 | Bob Brown | Thank you. |
| 02:31:59.99 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 02:32:00.02 | Bob Brown | Um... |
| 02:32:00.83 | Nastassya Saad | Exactly. |
| 02:32:01.31 | Bob Brown | What is chapter seven? Chapter seven of the definitions. They are the definitions. |
| 02:32:03.64 | Nastassya Saad | They are the |
| 02:32:04.93 | David Marlatt | That's in chapter six. |
| 02:32:06.54 | Bob Brown | You noted that there was a disconnect between the definition section in Chapter 7 versus the definition language in Chapter 6. So we'll make sure that those two synchronize. |
| 02:32:07.30 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 02:32:08.48 | David Marlatt | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:32:17.78 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. I'm still not clear on that. So you're going to say that it's different from chapter seven, not the same? |
| 02:32:18.05 | Bob Brown | So I'm just pulling up. |
| 02:32:26.43 | Bob Brown | No, I want to make sure that this definition of chapter 7 doesn't conflict with what we were doing in chapter 6. |
| 02:32:33.13 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Oh, in Chapter 7. I thought you meant Chapter 7 of the zoning code. No, sorry. Chapter 7 of the document. Of the document. Sorry about that. |
| 02:32:36.02 | Nastassya Saad | No, sorry. Chapter seven of the document. Of the document. Sorry about that. Thank you. Okay, that was excellent. Is city staff and attorney Rudin satisfied and has clear direction? |
| 02:32:38.92 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 02:32:47.54 | Nastassya Saad | OK. |
| 02:32:48.44 | City Attorney Rudin | So, That was very helpful. Thank you. |
| 02:32:50.46 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. Yes, that was incredibly helpful. We have a motion. And sorry. |
| 02:32:54.09 | City Attorney Rudin | Thank you. |
| 02:32:54.17 | Unknown | . |
| 02:32:54.26 | City Attorney Rudin | Thank you. |
| 02:32:54.31 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:32:54.36 | City Attorney Rudin | Thank you. |
| 02:32:56.64 | Nastassya Saad | You seconded the motion. Okay. So is there an alternative motion on the floor? |
| 02:33:02.61 | Andrew Junius | Well, I'm halfway between here, because I'm actually supportive of the way the odds got reduced down, and I very much appreciate Commissioner Marlott and the others that worked on that. At this point, I still agree with the Chair that I can't really support the view sync. If there were two votes, I would vote yes on the changes that we just discussed on the odds package, and then I would vote no on adding that view sync. |
| 02:33:26.80 | Nastassya Saad | Would you care to put a motion on the floor with that? |
| 02:33:29.39 | Andrew Junius | I would... alternative motion to approve the odds absent chapter, the view sink chapter, pursuant to the, with the amendments that were just described by Mr. Brown. have a second. |
| 02:33:43.53 | Nastassya Saad | Commission. Thank you. |
| 02:33:44.80 | David Marlatt | doesn't Commissioner Luxembourg has to agree or not agree no we can |
| 02:33:48.73 | Jeffery Luxenberg | no we can take a separate motion you can have an amendment and then it can be voted on and then we can go back to the original motion or we can do something |
| 02:33:49.36 | Nastassya Saad | to take a separate motion. |
| 02:33:50.50 | David Marlatt | Yeah. |
| 02:33:55.97 | Andrew Junius | This isn't an amendment, this is a new motion. This is a separate motion. |
| 02:33:58.05 | Jeffery Luxenberg | This is a separate motion. This is a replacement motion instead of the motion. |
| 02:34:01.93 | Andrew Junius | Thank you. |
| 02:34:01.96 | Nastassya Saad | And if he gets a second, we'll vote on the second one first. |
| 02:34:06.65 | Fred Moore | You want to. Thank you. Second the motion so we can have some discussion again Maybe a little more robust discussion about the inclusion not inclusion of odds since you guys have been involved with four years of This so I'll second that |
| 02:34:20.66 | Nastassya Saad | Okay, no one talk. So we have a motion on the floor now that includes the current draft of the odds that removes chapter three. And we have a second on that. We will take that one first. I mean, to the discussion of the ViewSync, in my personal opinion, I just feel that it is still in a place that is opening the city to potential risk, even though I do see the value and I do see the growth, given all of the state housing laws and where we are in our housing element and all the feedback from HCD, I would love for it to work. Thank you. the state housing laws and where we are in our housing element and all the feedback from HCD. I would love for it to work for the city, but I do not feel comfortable to put it forward and put the onus on the city. There's also gonna be an onus on the city for maintenance and budget. So it's farther reaching than the project itself, even with the best intentions. That's my opinion personally, Vice Chair. |
| 02:35:25.16 | Andrew Junius | I agree with all those comments. In addition, just remember, we don't really need this part. I mean, it's aspirational. And the amount of work that's gone in is really incredible. And I do think it's come a long way. And I do appreciate the significant amount of technical work. It just goes in a direction I've never been very comfortable with for some of the reasons that Commissioner Moore mentioned. And I just don't think it's necessary. So, yeah, I would like to see, and again, I appreciate the chair's comments about the work the original odds task force we came up with. But I really do appreciate the work that this, the next bite at the apple, it was probably too big, it was probably too long, we were kind of drowning in that gigantic odds toolkit that the Marin County had put together. So now I think it's fine, I think it's good enough. You know, I may still have some questions about that, but we need to get this done. But the view sync part is very different, very separate, not necessary. And so I would, I can't vote for that part. |
| 02:36:31.56 | Nastassya Saad | I appreciate that. Again, this is just a recommendation, right? City Council, it's their prerogative to take our recommendation or not. I imagine every presenter and member of the public here will attend that meeting and make another case. With that, if you don't mind in the interest of time, we do have two motions on the floor. I would- I want to make a comment though about the D-Saint. |
| 02:36:49.72 | David Marlatt | I'm going to make a comment about the VC. |
| 02:36:51.50 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 02:36:51.54 | David Marlatt | Absolutely, please. Yeah, thank you very much. Because I think in your hesitation around ViewSync, if I understand correctly, there's sort of two themes, so to speak. Number one, basically, to staff, to ACM, based on what they've seen, and it's live now, and it's pretty simple, the graphics. Is it ready for prime time? kind of what it comes down to. Is it ready? Not that it's robust with every feature it might have, but does it do its job? Is it reliable? Is it ready? And I would defer somewhat to staff. If they feel like this is comfortable, they're comfortable that this is a design tool, they can read the results and they can say, here's your results. I would defer to that. The second set of concerns, if I understand correctly, are possible legal vulnerability, or maybe that's not the best term. And for that, I would defer then to our city attorney, who has also been part of this process, and whether he feels this opens us up to some unreasonable risk. I mean, there's no guarantee of anything. And so I would really kind of those two questions as we consider this motion. whether staff feels comfortable like, yeah, this is a tool, it's ready, and if the attorney Rudin feels like, yes, this is risky, this is risky for the city. |
| 02:38:05.10 | Fred Moore | But before he answers that question, I guess I'd like to kind of parrot that. Again, going to be the new person on the block, this provision is an attempt to allow a developer to come in Avoid someone up here saying no that's too much of a view block or it's too little of a view block because I ran the view shed analysis and I'm at Only nine percent. So you can't say I'm blocking the view Those purposes of stream that's my understanding is to streamline the process if we don't include the view Shed analysis at this point maybe because it's not robust enough maybe because we're afraid of some other legal challenges we still have the ability to process this and the developers still in presenting this project would be saying this is a project that doesn't impact views because of XYZ I mean you go back I'm gonna go back all older than all of you guys but developers all the time came with their own view shed analysis. Came with a presentation, they created a view shed analysis and said, here, I don't block the views of all these homes, I met with them, here's the elevation. So they still have the ability to do that. We're just now removing this software process, doesn't mean they can't do it. |
| 02:39:16.88 | David Marlatt | Well we're introducing an objective measure. I swear it's a surrogate. It's a surrogate for everything you just said. And so if we have any kind of view synchronization, use that word, and title, we have to do it through title to add into something that's objective, that's numerical. Not always fair, not always accurate, because it may say there's a window where there's no window, but it's kind of a surrogate for what's a very subjective thing today. |
| 02:39:21.03 | Fred Moore | THE FAMILY. |
| 02:39:21.10 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:39:41.47 | Nastassya Saad | I think with respect to the staff report, staff has essentially weighed in to a certain degree on their stance that the staff has been doing to use your words, it might not be prime time ready. That's how I interpreted part of this staff report. I don't know if Attorney Rooting cares to comment. I think if we're at this late, moment in this deliberation, but again, I just wanna be very clear that we are, we're not voting yay or nay, this is just our recommendation. So I believe staff can correct me if I'm wrong, that city council is still going to have the same presentation and the same information in front of them to consider themselves along with our recommendation. Is that correct? Thank you very much. So I think they're also going to get the full take. Attorney Rudin, did you care to comment |
| 02:40:36.53 | City Attorney Rudin | Yeah, I will say that As has already been acknowledged, you know, the odds, whether they include view sync or not, are an alternative permitting pathway. And so for that reason, I do think that a lot of the risk and the concerns about uh downsizing development or being an undue constraint should be somewhat mitigated because the city is not entirely eliminating development via this tool, and it is really intended to be used to facilitate streamlining of compliant projects. |
| 02:41:09.59 | Nastassya Saad | THE FAMILY. Um, Are you sure? |
| 02:41:13.54 | Andrew Junius | I mean, it's a really fascinating conversation and I do think It's a great tool. It's interesting. You really hit it on the head, Commissioner Moore, about you know, People are going to complain about this, right? It's like, it's not right. The numbers that, my model says something different, right? So we're just complicating the whole process more with something well-intentioned, But I just, I'm not sure we need it. I think the odds without it is just fine. You're right, we still become the arbiters of some view issues, but trust me, people are gonna bring this to us anyway. It's just that by recommending that it be actually included as part of our law, that's the big question. And that's where I think the chair and I are nervous that it's just, you know, still a bridge too far. And I'm not even saying that it Thank you. may or may not be ready for prime time. I mean, I'm kind of relying on Commissioner Marlott for that. it's maybe very close, but it's also, it just creates just a very interesting new dynamic. I was really struck by I don't know if we have any of these situations in Sausalito, you know, Commissioner Moore is right. Somebody that has a vacant lot may not be able to build at all on a vacant lot based on this because there will be 100% view blockage, and that's just that. So is that what's intended? Not to open up a new can of worms, A lot of still interesting things that this could you know, manifest, and that's why I really can't support it. |
| 02:42:40.65 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. I'm gonna let Commissioner Luxenberg make a final comment here and then I'd really like to take our motions for a roll call. |
| 02:42:48.24 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Okay, so first of all, we don't have two motions on the floor. We have a motion and an alternative motion. And under Rosenberg's rules, we basically consider the alternative motion, and then if that passes, the first motion doesn't matter. So I have very strong views that this odds package without this view sync is a problem. And we had this long conversation in the 1, 2 in the morning back in February. I think that the city, if we send it to the city council with no recommendation, if we were to adopt the motion that's on the floor right now, we're sending it to the city council without Chapter 3. So that sends a message. If the city council, we're supposed to be the planning commission, and if we make a recommendation, then they listen to us. So if we're saying it shouldn't be there, they can put it back in, and maybe they don't listen to us, maybe they do, but we're sending a strong message. We got this from staff. Staff recommended including it. I believe it should be included. I think sending it without it at all is totally a mistake and not something I can support. But if that passes, you know, I'm on the record of saying this is important for the city. When you look at the votes that we have with J and K and what people are looking for us to develop these odds. I mean, if we didn't think we needed them after adopting these these motions with the public then then they wouldn't be there and i think the view sync is an important part and i think you're you're you're cutting off the arm uh and a tool that the staff can use by taking it out i don't see any reason to take it out and. I also, as Vice Chair Junius clearly identified, a developer can waive this. There's no reason if it can be waived to take it out because they can always waive it, but at least I don't want to take it out of the tool book. I think this motion is a problem. It is worse than the motion we had before, which sent it with no recommendation, but included it. Now we're saying taking it out. So we're sending a message to the city council that this commission wants to take it out if this motion were passed. So I strongly encourage us not to do that. |
| 02:45:07.33 | Andrew Junius | So can I just clarify, I was thinking that we are going to have two different motions, one for the basic odds package and one for the view sync. So. I just want to be able to vote yes on the first part and no on the second part. If we can figure that out, great. If not, I'll just vote no on everything. But yeah, it should be simple. because it sounds like where there's gonna be at least three votes here, to So that's great. I mean, and I'm okay with that, but I need to vote no on the view sync part. |
| 02:45:36.32 | Nastassya Saad | Yeah, well we're not gonna be able to bifurcate them, so that's why I thought we had two. |
| 02:45:39.68 | Assistant City Manager | to, |
| 02:45:40.79 | Unknown | to. |
| 02:45:42.48 | Nastassya Saad | I don't believe, I think we have |
| 02:45:46.46 | Assistant City Manager | Yeah, if I may, I think the commission has two motions on the floor. As I understood it, the motion that we would consider first, the alternative motion was the entirety of the view sync exclusive of, excuse me, the entirety of the odds exclusive of chapter three view sync. While the initial motion was the entirety of the odds inclusive of chapter three. |
| 02:45:51.13 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 02:46:05.46 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. That is exactly how I understood it. So with that, then could we please take roll call for the alternative motion, second motion, which is, |
| 02:46:08.23 | Assistant City Manager | Fair enough. |
| 02:46:19.30 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. Vice Chair Junius's motion, just for the clarity, that was seconded by Commissioner Moore to have the odds as is, excluding chapter three. |
| 02:46:35.70 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Can I ask Attorney Wooden, if we do that, then we're done, right? We're going to take a motion to amend what we just did. I don't get what we're doing from Rosenberg's rules. |
| 02:46:47.75 | City Attorney Rudin | Yeah, the motion on the floor is to adopt the resolution with the recommended changes to the odds as stated by Bob Brown. with another recommendation added to remove Chapter 3, Viewsync. Um, Yes, if that motion passes, that motion is directly in conflict with the first motion and there would be no need to vote on the first motion. |
| 02:47:11.90 | Nastassya Saad | Correct. That's. How we'll proceed? |
| 02:47:14.82 | City Attorney Rudin | If this motion fails, then you would proceed to vote on the first motion. |
| 02:47:17.48 | Nastassya Saad | Exactly. We have two motions on the floor. Let's continue. Assistant City Manager, can you take roll? |
| 02:47:23.07 | Assistant City Manager | Yes, thank you chair. Commissioner Moore. |
| 02:47:29.57 | Assistant City Manager | Commissioner Merlot? No. Commissioner Luxenberg? No. Vice Chair Junius? |
| 02:47:40.60 | Andrew Junius | No, I'm sorry. Yes, yes on my motion. Yes, I apologize. |
| 02:47:44.47 | Assistant City Manager | Chirous on. No. |
| 02:47:45.60 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 02:47:48.75 | Nastassya Saad | No. The motion fails. Yes, I have my own. |
| 02:47:51.28 | Assistant City Manager | Oh, sure. Thank you. |
| 02:47:55.15 | Nastassya Saad | opinions. So we have another motion on the floor. That's the original motion, which is Commissioner Luxembourg's motion to include, Thank you. It is going to be for the odds as it is with the view sync in its entirety with the additions from Bob Brown as stated on the record, which was seconded by commissioner Marlott. Can we please take role for that one? |
| 02:48:22.27 | Assistant City Manager | Commissioner Moore. No. Commissioner Merlot. Yes. Commissioner Luxenberg. Yes. Vice Chair Junius. |
| 02:48:32.17 | Andrew Junius | No. |
| 02:48:33.15 | Assistant City Manager | Chair Sat. |
| 02:48:34.87 | Nastassya Saad | No. |
| 02:48:36.02 | Assistant City Manager | motion does not pass. |
| 02:48:39.23 | Nastassya Saad | So I wanna be explicitly clear so you don't look to me to help you. I am not going to vote for this as is, as I voted in February. So that I am, it's putting it down to the four of you. I do appreciate all the work, but I do, I still hold my original opinion. So with that, we can potentially try another motion. And again, to be clear, this is just a recommendation. However, we want to get that across the line. |
| 02:49:05.94 | Jeffery Luxenberg | ever. I'm going to vote to continue this to the December meeting. |
| 02:49:15.83 | Assistant City Manager | Is that a motion, Commissioner? |
| 02:49:17.75 | Jeffery Luxenberg | As a motion to continue, we're obviously not going to reach consensus as where we were in February. I'm about to continue this December meeting rather than going through it for another hour. |
| 02:49:35.30 | Nastassya Saad | There's no second on that. Do we have an alternative? |
| 02:49:37.82 | Jeffery Luxenberg | This is where we were in February and we went around in circles for a couple hours. |
| 02:49:39.18 | Nastassya Saad | This is where we're going. |
| 02:49:43.82 | Nastassya Saad | we did get it over the line so we we did end with um with commissioners |
| 02:49:50.88 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Let me ask a question. Commissioner Miller, you were supportive of this and now you're not supportive of this, so I guess I'm confused. |
| 02:50:01.49 | Fred Moore | Life is kind of a box of chocolates. |
| 02:50:04.09 | Nastassya Saad | I know. Thank you. |
| 02:50:04.83 | Fred Moore | I'm sorry. |
| 02:50:05.03 | Nastassya Saad | Oh! |
| 02:50:05.36 | Unknown | I'm not. I'm sorry. |
| 02:50:09.08 | Nastassya Saad | It's a comedy show tonight. Commissioner Moore, I think I am going to pressure you slightly. And I am going to do this with the best of intention. And it's only because. Let me stop you before. |
| 02:50:19.92 | Fred Moore | remember I'm the one who's been here for a couple days looking at 84 pages you guys have been here four years so there's a lot more back and forth with the videos the presentations etc so I feel like I'm the new kid on the block which I appreciate that and I have some experience but I also don't want to dismiss the experience that all of you have living through this on six different hearings, City Council and everything else and presentation. So, and staff reports and peer reviews. So there's a lot of other information that you guys are privy to that I'm not. I do. |
| 02:50:53.58 | Jeffery Luxenberg | That's why I gave the option of continuing it so you'd have another month to look at it quite honest |
| 02:50:54.02 | Nastassya Saad | 12. |
| 02:50:54.34 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 02:50:54.36 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 02:50:54.40 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 02:51:00.79 | Nastassya Saad | I respect that greatly. I do think from Thank you. having your fresh set of eyes, asking excellent questions and having the opinion of the view sync being worthy. This is why I was asking quite specifically. I did dock three of you having interest in including chapter three. It's your prerogative to change your mind. But I would look potentially for some input there for some input there. If your opinion changes so we can but I would look potentially for some input there. If your opinion changes, so we can get a little understanding so we can potentially come up with some other motion that's not a continuance. |
| 02:51:43.45 | Fred Moore | Okay, so my fresh old eyes, like I stated earlier, I have a, issue with the law in taking away property rights of owners who haven't done anything their property because they didn't have the money for years and then having a potential risk of then being usurped of their rights because of these provisions in here. Now, realizing that this doesn't apply to everybody in the city, it has very specific properties and size of projects, which I think is good. I think that's a great part of this. But as I mentioned very early, even though these are the objective standards, there's a lot of subjectivity in this section, even including chapter three. is 10% blockage sufficient or should it be 4% or is 25%? So there was a lot of discussions and a lot of conversations with peer review and other experts to come up with these provisions. But a fresh eye says, well, that was as subjective as anything else. So I do have a problem, you know, not debating those percentages of a view blockage and those items that also are in the city code already. Some of those view protections already exist in the city code irrespective of this. So if this is not included, there are still those competing property rights of an existing owner and a new owner in the city code as it exists and stands today. So also last, sorry about that. I'm not the most technical guy in the world. This is confusing to go through. I'm reading this about how you're going to apply this. This is not for the faint of heart. And maybe developers have the ability that you worked on it, commissioner, and found it productive. So I still would have the issue of whether or not it needs more |
| 02:53:28.06 | Adam Blair | maybe, |
| 02:53:38.18 | Fred Moore | Thank you. development with the program to make it more reliable. |
| 02:53:45.49 | Jeffery Luxenberg | that we have. |
| 02:53:45.74 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 02:53:45.76 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Can I make just one comment on that, Chair Saad? I want to remind everyone what Attorney Rudin said. This is an alternative. This is not, nobody is required to use 10A. It is 84 pages. It is really complicated. We're not saying anybody needs to do this. We're giving people a path that if they want to do this, cannot come to this Commission they can go directly to staff and this is the package that they have to do we're not the process that's currently exists is not going away got not being changed one iota so we're giving people an alternative if the alternative is too complicated or they don't want to do the view sync or whatever they don't have to do it this is an option and i think the option in my view and i've said it before the option should include this view sync but it's an i but i just want to make sure that everyone's clear this is an option it't, we talked earlier about this is what it's going to be and then they can always have an alternative to use chapter 10. It's the other way around. We start with chapter 10. If you want to use 10A, you can, you don't have to. We're not forcing anybody to do this. |
| 02:54:55.54 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 02:54:55.56 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:54:55.59 | Adam Blair | Yeah. |
| 02:55:04.67 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 02:55:04.68 | Nastassya Saad | I totally agree 100% with that. So if I'm a developer. Can you hold on for just one second? I'm sorry, Commissioner Moore. Can I just let Vice Chair |
| 02:55:04.75 | Fred Moore | Oh, really? This Wednesday. |
| 02:55:12.14 | Nastassya Saad | um, |
| 02:55:12.50 | Andrew Junius | Yeah, okay, we really should do something here and try to get this moved on. I don't think we want to continue it, I very much support what Commissioner Moore just said, If the recommendation here is to not to recommend none of this to the, if we can't bifurcate this, which I was hoping we could, then maybe there's three votes here to just recommend that none of this proceed at this point and let the City Council deal with it. So I'm going to make a motion that we not take the staff recommendation, and we recommend that the City Council not approve these odds with the view sink. |
| 02:55:50.80 | David Marlatt | Before I do that, can I make one comment from Commissioner Moore about subjectivity? Because I think that's important, the idea that these standards are somehow subjective or more subjective than anything else. all building codes, all law is subjective. Speed limit's 55, why not 57? Height limit's 32, why not 30? What these are is they attach, fairly or unfairly, quantities, so they make the law quantifiable, not subjective, and I think that's exactly what it is. 15% may be wrong, and we can learn that. |
| 02:56:20.81 | Andrew Junius | You're using the word arbitrary, really. They're arbitrary numbers we're setting here. They're objective, but they're just arbitrary. |
| 02:56:27.74 | David Marlatt | That's probably a better difference. So it was a seven inch riser on a stair is arbitrary. |
| 02:56:31.94 | Andrew Junius | Yeah, but it's objective. Seven inches, is it a number? That's clearly, but it's arbitrary. |
| 02:56:32.42 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 02:56:32.57 | David Marlatt | Thank you. |
| 02:56:32.67 | Fred Moore | but it's objective. Thank you. |
| 02:56:35.64 | David Marlatt | I'm sorry. |
| 02:56:35.67 | Fred Moore | That's not, that's clearly an effect, but it's arbitrary. So I probably use, I agree 100%. All the laws are, Arbitrary. Arbitrary. And I should use arbitrary versus... There we go. So they're arbitrary. So some of these percentages in here are arbitrary, but I just need to respond back to Commissioner Hur. If the developer wanted to block views, then they would opt for this. So we're giving them a tool to potentially block a certain amount of views by using this tool because we've given them percentages that they can abide by. If they don't opt here, then they have more negotiation. So I think that's maybe the downside I have here is that it could be used as a weapon by a developer to come and say, hey, I'm only blocking this allowable percentage or not. So that's where I struggle with it, including it at this point. |
| 02:56:43.81 | Adam Blair | I showed you. So that's- |
| 02:57:26.60 | Nastassya Saad | Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Not very sorry that I pressured you. I appreciated your input. We have a motion on the floor. to not recommend the staff report as is in its current state. Is there a second on that motion? I'm going to second that motion. |
| 02:57:52.67 | Jeffery Luxenberg | What does that motion mean if we're not |
| 02:57:54.89 | Nastassya Saad | That means we are. |
| 02:57:55.95 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Yeah. |
| 02:57:55.97 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 02:57:55.98 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 02:57:56.00 | Nastassya Saad | Is that what |
| 02:57:56.54 | Jeffery Luxenberg | We are making no recommendation. Regardless, at all. |
| 02:57:56.57 | Nastassya Saad | We are making no recommendations. |
| 02:58:01.05 | Andrew Junius | No, I think the recommendation is not to proceed. There's an odds in place now. This is just. another version of it, right? We are, we do have odds. Odds has been around since we adopted the basic odds months ago, right? years ago, frankly. |
| 02:58:15.41 | Jeffery Luxenberg | You're recommending not putting forward anything other than what's already in the zoning ordinance? |
| 02:58:20.30 | Andrew Junius | Essentially correct. |
| 02:58:20.32 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Essentially correct you recommend rejecting this yes, no, and let it |
| 02:58:22.88 | Andrew Junius | Yes, and letting the city council sort through this just like we have. |
| 02:58:27.18 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 02:58:27.20 | Nastassya Saad | It's still going to go to city council for an ultimate discussion and approval. This is just our recommendation. |
| 02:58:28.21 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 02:58:34.05 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 02:58:34.09 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Yes, Attorney Rudin, if we tell the city council not to do this, they can still consider this under state law? Yes, they can. |
| 02:58:47.47 | Andrew Junius | Just a recommendation. Just a recommendation. |
| 02:58:47.74 | Nastassya Saad | right? |
| 02:58:47.82 | Assistant City Manager | All right. |
| 02:58:48.95 | Jeffery Luxenberg | They keep it. and I believe |
| 02:58:49.97 | Fred Moore | So, Commissioner Moore. Well, for clarification purposes, the staff report does provide the alternative that we adopt a resolution just merely accepting odds and excluding Chapter 3. Isn't that really what the question is? That's what I originally wanted, and I was told whether |
| 02:59:05.74 | Andrew Junius | That's what I originally wanted, and I was told by the city attorney I couldn't do that. Am I incorrect here? |
| 02:59:10.15 | Fred Moore | Yeah. |
| 02:59:10.18 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 02:59:10.28 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 02:59:10.32 | Nastassya Saad | I'm not sure. |
| 02:59:10.39 | Fred Moore | Sure. |
| 02:59:10.42 | Nastassya Saad | No, we did make a motion and we voted on it. And it was voted down. |
| 02:59:11.26 | Andrew Junius | We voted on it. |
| 02:59:14.11 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 02:59:14.13 | Andrew Junius | Yeah. |
| 02:59:14.37 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 02:59:15.62 | Andrew Junius | Okay, so that's the, I'd like to, maybe we redo that motion. So I'm gonna withdraw my earlier motion. |
| 02:59:15.65 | Nastassya Saad | Okay. It was voted in. |
| 02:59:20.04 | Jeffery Luxenberg | My earlier erosion. you |
| 02:59:21.03 | Andrew Junius | We already did that. Let's do it again. Let's try it again. Maybe we'll have three votes this time. Let's see if we. So again, this is the motion is to adopt |
| 02:59:22.92 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Let's try it again. Maybe we'll have three votes this time. |
| 02:59:28.24 | Andrew Junius | the odds as amended exclusive of chapter three No view sync, but the everything else in. that make that motion. |
| 02:59:37.94 | Fred Moore | So do you want to |
| 02:59:41.42 | Andrew Junius | of YouTube. |
| 02:59:41.59 | Fred Moore | Do you want to try to parrot what the staff recommendation was, was retaining reserved for Chapter 3 pending resolution of the functionality of the viewshed analysis software? Or do you just not want to eliminate that altogether? |
| 02:59:54.99 | Andrew Junius | I just like to eliminate that altogether. Okay. Yeah. |
| 02:59:58.44 | Nastassya Saad | Sarah. |
| 02:59:58.97 | Fred Moore | second. secular |
| 03:00:02.14 | Nastassya Saad | Okay. |
| 03:00:02.41 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. So I'm going to reiterate my comment on the first time we voted on this. This is telling the city council that not only the last time we sent it to them for their perusal and their decision on what they would like to do. Now we're sending it to them saying we want it taken out. I think that's an awful thing for this planning commission to do. And so I think that that, I almost rather, but I don't want to suggest it, go back to the motion we had back in February, which at least it had no opinion on it. But to send this to them and say, take it out after all this work work and what i think is important for the people of uh of sausalito to take to take this out sends the wrong message to the city council i realize they can do whatever they want in the end anyways but we're supposed to be the planning commission and our recommendation matters so uh basically if we send this we're really telling them that even though before we were neutral on it now we're no longer neutral i think that's a problem |
| 03:00:39.49 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 03:00:39.50 | Peter Hardeen | I'm going to. |
| 03:00:40.19 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 03:01:10.62 | Nastassya Saad | I love it. May I ask city staff, to weigh in the February hearing of this year. I don't believe that is the action that we took. I think we had recommended the odds Commissioner Feller and I, dissented altogether, but there was a 3-2 vote to push the push a version of the odds. Is that incorrect? |
| 03:01:39.76 | Jeffery Luxenberg | That's it. What we did was we sent the odds, including Chapter 3, with no recommendation on Chapter 3. That's what we sent in February. |
| 03:01:47.93 | Nastassya Saad | Yeah, so we reserved it. |
| 03:01:49.35 | Jeffery Luxenberg | uh we we said we'll let the city council review it it's included but we haven't made an opinion about it this motion says we're we we want it not included it so this is philosophically very different |
| 03:02:01.18 | Nastassya Saad | Sure. |
| 03:02:05.29 | Nastassya Saad | We have, we have the motion. However, we do have a second. |
| 03:02:10.71 | Andrew Junius | Thank you. |
| 03:02:10.75 | Nastassya Saad | This is... |
| 03:02:10.76 | Andrew Junius | I'll call the question. Thank you. Shall we call the question? |
| 03:02:13.29 | David Marlatt | I'm going to make an alternative motion? No, it's too late. |
| 03:02:15.69 | Jeffery Luxenberg | I don't know. He called the question. Can you allow him to make an alternative motion? I don't know. I don't know. |
| 03:02:19.42 | David Marlatt | I don't know. |
| 03:02:25.90 | Andrew Junius | Well, maybe you should tell us what the alternative motion that you're thinking about would be. Thank you. |
| 03:02:29.95 | David Marlatt | It would be to adopt the chapter, Title 10A, as presented by staff with the amendments recorded by Bob Brown, with the exception that the Planning Commission specifically makes no recommendation as to Chapter 3. |
| 03:02:49.62 | Andrew Junius | which is what we did last time, identical version last time. |
| 03:02:53.34 | Nastassya Saad | Correct. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the city council is most likely going to be very well versed in this conversation this evening. So while on record, we have to pass whatever we're going to pass. But I think it's on public record that your opinion is very clear, Commissioner Luxembourg. And so is yours, Commissioner Marlott. I don'T THINK THERE'S ANY CONFUSION ON MINE. SO AS A PUBLIC HEARING, I THINK OUR CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS WILL ULTIMATELY SEE THE INTENT OF EACH COMMISSIONER HERE, BUT WE DO NEED TO GET SOMETHING OVER THE LINE. |
| 03:03:30.53 | Jeffery Luxenberg | I WOULD LIKE TO CONSIDER COMMISSIONER MARLAD'S MOTION BECAUSE WHAT YOU'RE DOING IS PUTTING ME IN A POSITION TO VOTE AGAINST THE MOTION WHEREAS THAT MOTION WE DID BEFORE AND SINCE I VOTED FOR IT BEFORE, CAN SUPPORT IT AGAIN. SO I WOULD LIKE TO CONSIDER COMMISSIONER MARLAD'S MOTION So I mean, I think we should be allowed to at least consider Commissioner Merlatt's motion since we considered multiple alternative motions. |
| 03:04:01.76 | Andrew Junius | I'm agnostic to that. Commissioner Moore, do you have an opinion here whether you want to go neutral or no on the vSync? |
| 03:04:08.74 | Fred Moore | I could support going neutral. |
| 03:04:11.17 | Andrew Junius | Yeah, I withdraw my motion then. |
| 03:04:13.51 | Nastassya Saad | and |
| 03:04:13.58 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 03:04:13.63 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 03:04:13.65 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 03:04:13.66 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 03:04:13.68 | Fred Moore | Thank you. |
| 03:04:13.83 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 03:04:14.57 | Andrew Junius | I believe Marlat's motion still requires a second. |
| 03:04:16.87 | Nastassya Saad | It does, thank you very much. I'll second that motion. Thank you, so we now have a motion on the floor with a second. |
| 03:04:16.90 | Andrew Junius | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 03:04:18.05 | City Attorney Rudin | Yeah. |
| 03:04:18.27 | Andrew Junius | Thank you. |
| 03:04:18.34 | City Attorney Rudin | Bye. |
| 03:04:18.49 | Andrew Junius | Thank you. |
| 03:04:18.52 | City Attorney Rudin | Thank you. |
| 03:04:18.56 | Andrew Junius | Yeah. |
| 03:04:18.64 | City Attorney Rudin | motion. |
| 03:04:23.82 | Nastassya Saad | Assistant City Manager. |
| 03:04:25.51 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Moore. Yes. Commissioner Merlot. Yes. Commissioner Luxenberg. Yes. Vice Chair Janias. Yes. Chair Hassan. No. Motion passes. |
| 03:04:32.61 | Nastassya Saad | Yeah. |
| 03:04:35.85 | Nastassya Saad | No. |
| 03:04:37.52 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you. |
| 03:04:37.56 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. Thank you very much to everyone for their participation. Thank you. |
| 03:04:48.75 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:04:48.98 | Nastassya Saad | May I kindly request a five minute recess for the benefit of the public and the commission. We will resume at 9.38 PM. Thank you. |
| 03:09:21.33 | Nastassya Saad | 8 appreciate everyone on zoom hanging on we just took a five-minute recess we are now moving on to item 7b this is for 16 Marie Street this is a design review permit with heightened review findings and a non-conformity permit Thank you. |
| 03:09:41.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:09:41.92 | Nastassya Saad | We will have associate player. Sorry, excuse me. We will have the associate planner, Adam Blair. I'm, I appreciate it. We're not able to take, we're not able to take anything at this time. That's not on public record. So. |
| 03:09:44.60 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:09:44.77 | Anne McIntyre | I'm sorry. |
| 03:09:46.18 | Unknown | have the association. |
| 03:09:46.89 | Adam Blair | Thank you. All right. |
| 03:09:55.70 | Adam Blair | THE FAMILY. THE PROBLEM. |
| 03:09:56.97 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:09:57.95 | Fred Moore | to the next. |
| 03:09:58.03 | Nastassya Saad | Could I? |
| 03:09:58.91 | Fred Moore | Yeah. |
| 03:09:58.98 | Nastassya Saad | interject before you start the hearing thank you very much i knew i'd forget um commissioner moore |
| 03:09:59.03 | Fred Moore | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:10:04.48 | Adam Blair | Is this yours? |
| 03:10:05.03 | Fred Moore | The property is within my conflict of interest realm and I also have a fairly close relationship with the neighbor of the project. So I think in order to ensure there's total objectivity involved with this that I should excuse myself from this matter. |
| 03:10:27.17 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much, Commissioner Moore. So we'll give you a moment to go ahead and feel free to step out of the room, either into the hallway or into the room behind us. And once Commissioner Moore is recused, we will go ahead and start. Actually, on that note, can I ask if there are any ex parte communications on this item? Commissioner Luxembourg. |
| 03:10:50.39 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Yes, I did visit both 16 Marie Street and 14 Marie Street prior to the previously scheduled public hearing. At 16 Marie Street, Anne McIntyre and her designer were present. At 14 Marie Street, the owner, Jane Farley, was present. I viewed the story polls at that time, and I obtained factual information, but there was no ex parte communication. |
| 03:11:17.38 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much, Commissioner Luxenberg. Commissioner Marlott. |
| 03:11:21.83 | David Marlatt | I visited the site a few days ago, did not meet with any of the parties or interact with anyone. |
| 03:11:28.60 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. Vice Chair, do you have any ex parte communication? |
| 03:11:33.44 | Andrew Junius | No. |
| 03:11:33.76 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. Thank you, and I too met with the applicant and owner prior to the previous hearing that was scheduled and did see the residents, but we did not have any ex parte communications. With that, Associate Planner. |
| 03:11:50.60 | Jeffery Luxenberg | And before we get to the presentation, so we were handed something. For one thing, we were handed something else, but that didn't get passed out either. We pass them all out or we don't pass any of them out. How do we want to do? |
| 03:12:01.74 | Nastassya Saad | I will actually ask that we refrain from using these documents just because we can't have late handouts with us. So I'm sorry that those were passed out. I did not pass those out. Appreciated from the applicant, but we can't have final late handouts. Excuse me, associate planner, Adam Blair. |
| 03:12:24.49 | Adam Blair | Thank you Chair Saad. Good evening commissioners, members of the public. I'm Adam Blair, associate planner with the community development department. The item before you this evening is an application requesting approval of a design review permit with heightened review findings and a non-conformity permit to facilitate an exterior and interior remodel, which includes a new third-story addition, a new front entry addition, and a new roof deck structure at 16 Marie Street. Next slide. Here's a site map showing the property, 16 Marie Street. This property is located along a private roadway, which extends off of the Marie Street Public Roadway, which is just out of frame if you look at the bottom right corner. This private roadway is also named Marie Street. Marin County Assessor data identifies that this private roadway, which serves as an access easement and a public utility easement, is owned by the Marin Municipal Water District, 16 Marie Street consists of a duplex structure, which was constructed in 1968, and consists of two units, is a duplex structure. Unit A, which is, ignore the labeling on the screen, unit A is to the right, or to the southeasterly, part of the parcel. And then unit B is to the left or the northwesterly section. The parcel is identified by assessor parcel number 064-142-27, and it's a 6,757 square foot lot. The site has a general plan land use designation of medium high density residential and is located within the R-2-2.5 two family residential zoning district. Next slide. |
| 03:13:59.97 | Adam Blair | So applicant and owner Anne McIntyre is requesting approval of a design review permit with heightened review findings to again facilitate an exterior and interior remodel. which includes new additions totaling 806 square feet, These additions include a new 524 square foot, third story addition with an upper level balcony over unit A. A new front entryway addition in front of unit A. a new roof deck. structure with an exterior spiral staircase and trellis structure on unit B. and then some small corner bump out additions on units A and B. I'm site improvements from the proposed project include new landscaped areas along the driveway area. You could see in kind of the bottom drawing, it's a little hard to see the existing driveway used to be a large concrete slab. They've broken that up and integrated some landscaping area in there while still maintaining for compliant off street parking spaces. The site improvements also include a new landscaped area in the front entry for Unit A, just in front of the addition, as well as increased landscaped area in the rear yard area of Unit A through the removal of a rear patio. The exterior remodel work includes new WUI compliant siding as well as WUI compliant windows. And then the interior remodel work will entail a full interior renovation of Unit A, as well as substantial upgrades to building systems, including HVAC and electrical systems. Heightened review findings are required for this project since the proposed project exceeds 80% of the maximum allowed floor area ratio permitted within the R2 2.5 zoning district. And then a nonconformity permit is requested to facilitate the replacement of a nonconforming rear deck structure for unit A. It's a living room deck structure that's elevated and encroaches into the required 15-foot rear yard setback. This deck is likely to have existed with the house since its original construction back in 68. This is noted in the original building permit for the duplex structure. The deck is proposed to be demolished and reconstructed in the same footprint as the existing nonconforming rear deck structure. And this request was brought forward due to noted structural issues with that current deck structure, given it's almost 60 years old. Next slide. Digging a bit into the background on this property and the project, as noted earlier, the original duplex structure was constructed in 1968 through building permit number 5022. It was constructed as a 2,420 square foot duplex residence located on, as noted earlier, a 6,757 square foot lot Moving forward to 2023, the property was purchased by the current property owner, Ann McIntyre. and extensive remodeling of unit B was carried out in 2024. It was approved through a zoning permit with planning and then through building permits with the building division. Work to Unit B included new siding, a new rear quarter bump out addition, about eight square feet if I remember correct, Structural improvements, which included new siding and windows, as well work on the inside and a kitchen and bathroom remodel. Moving forward to December, 16, 2024, the city received a design review permit and nonconformity permit application for this proposed exterior remodel project you're hearing tonight. On July 10th, This year the city deemed this design review permit nonconformity permit application complete and scheduled it for planning commission hearing date Moving forward, since this project got continued a couple times, thought I'd dive a bit into this. Project was originally scheduled to be heard at the July 23rd, 2025 Planning Commission hearing date However, when the story polls were installed prior to the scheduled hearing, staff noted some concerns and relayed those to the applicant regarding the ability to make some design review permit findings. In response to that, the applicant filed a written request with the Community Development Department to put this application on hold to address some of these concerns. Some of the design modifications they performed at this time included the reduction of the size of the third-story addition from 636 square feet to 585 square feet. to address some of staff's concerns as noted earlier and noted in the staff report for this item. After working with staff, this item was then rescheduled for the September 25th, 2025 Planning Commission hearing date However, before the item could go before the Planning Commission, a zoning compliance issue was identified by staff in connection with a council interpretation of how to measure building length determining increased side yard setbacks per the municipal code section mentioned there. A summary of this interpretation and its application is provided in the staff report for this item. following this rescheduling, further design modifications were undertaken by the applicant team, which included an additional reduction in the size of the third story edition from 585 square feet to 524 square feet So overall, between the two modifications, it shrunk by over 100 square feet in size. They also reduced the size of the front entry addition. to decrease the overall length of the building. and they remove the rear yard patio at unit A, which was also contributing to the length measurement of the building to further reduce that increased side yard setback. And then they relocated the proposed roof deck and associated structures, which include the trellis structure and the spiral staircase. They shifted them inward a bit to comply with the increased setback requirement. Next slide. So as noted in the staff report and summarized in the zoning data table here, the project is compliant with Sausalito's site development standards codified in the zoning ordinance with the exceptions being noted as the rear yard setback and the two side yard setbacks. As noted in the staff report, the existing nonconforming decks encroach, which is where the 12-foot rear yard setback comes from, And then the property, even as it was constructed, had maintained four foot ten and a half side yard setback on the right side and four foot nine and three quarters inch on the left Those aspects of the property will not be modified as part of this proposed project. and then diving a bit into the increased setbacks noted in column two for the right side and left side. Those were from the application of the increased side yard setback ordinance, which comes into play when a building measures over 40 feet in length when measured parallel to a property line. As summarized in the staff report, I'm an increased side yard setback of five foot 11 and three fifths of an inch or five foot 11.6 inches is required for the right or southerly side of the property. and an increased side yard setback of eight foot three and two fifths of an inch or eight feet and 3.4 inches is required for the left or northerly side. The project as proposed and as conditioned in the associated draft resolution with this item complies with these increased side yard setback requirements. Next slide. So diving into the design review permit, of this project. A design review permit is required because the project proposes a height increase of the main residence. This is due to the 524 square foot upper level addition on unit A. as well as the new roof deck structure with associated trellis structure over unit B. The project also poses potential view impacts to surrounding properties as noted again by the 524 square foot upper level addition over unit A and the roof deck and trellis over unit B. Heightened review findings is required for this project since the proposed project exceeds 80% of the maximum allowed floor area ratio permitted in the R2 2.5 zoning district. The floor area ratio increased from 47% existing to 64% proposed, which is 1% shy of the maximum allowed of 65%. Next slide. |
| 03:22:03.98 | Adam Blair | So diving into the findings, staff recommends that the Planning Commission approve the requested design review permit with heightened review findings since the proposed architecture, since staff finds that the proposed architecture and site design complements the diverse variety of architectural styles, dwelling types, and dwelling orientations and forms in the surrounding neighborhood. The proposed site design introduces new landscaping areas which will complement the trees and natural features on the site. And the project will not result in a building profile which significantly projects above those of other properties within the surrounding neighborhood due to the downhill orientation of Maurice Street. The street goes down. the further you go along it. Moving to neighborhood impact, staff finds the project does not pose any potential hazard to public safety in terms of vehicle traffic. pedestrian circulation, slope and tree stability, runoff public utilities, The project poses minimal impact to natural features on the site and no impact to protected trees on site including the small live oak tree at the right corner of the property. It will be untouched. The project will not pose any impact to traffic safety since the new driveway design maintains the four compliant off-street parking spaces while introducing new landscaping to the site. And then finally, moving to light, air, privacy, and view, staff finds the proposed project has been designed to provide a reasonable level of privacy to the site and adjacent properties in the neighborhood. The roof deck guardrails, which consist of both solid and glass guardrails, have been oriented to minimize view impacts while providing privacy to surrounding properties. And then staff finds the upper level addition is setback and oriented to minimize obstruction of primary views for surrounding properties and to minimize impact on light and air for adjacent properties. Next slide. Moving to the nonconformity permit portion of this application, as noted earlier, the nonconformity permit is requested to replace a nonconforming rear living room deck structure at unit A. You can see an image here from building permit 5022, which is from when the duplex structure was built. You can see the decks circulated at the top there. Staff found that that deck structure is most likely original to that duplex residence, so it's been there for almost 60 years. As mentioned earlier, that deck structure encroaches into the required 15-foot rear yard setback, The applicant team indicated that that deck has structural issues and needs which need to be addressed. So, The deck is proposed to be demolished and reconstructed in the same footprint as the existing deck structure, so no exacerbation. of that nonconformity will occur. The deck structure, as again noted earlier, most likely original in 1968, staff noted that surrounding properties have similar rear deck structures and that these deck structures have not resulted and a notable negative impact to adjacent properties in the surrounding neighborhood. Next slide. So moving to the findings, staff recommends the Planning Commission approve the requested nonconformity permit. since staff finds, or noted that that DEC structure was likely original to the existing duplex. No change of the footprint is proposed. stop fines. proposed deck replacement will maintain compatibility with the character of the surrounding neighborhood as again properties in the surrounding area have similar rear yard deck structures and that deck has been there likely as long as the residence has. And then finally, that deck structure has not resulted in a notable negative impact or nuisance to the surrounding neighborhood. No code enforcement cases on file with the city. There are no code enforcement cases on file with the city which pertain to this rear yard deck structure. And the location of this deck structure in the rear yard results in a lack of adverse impacts to parking demand, traffic, and noise. Next slide. Okay, so with all that being said, staff recommends the Planning Commission approve application 2024-00248 for 16 Marie Street. and adopt the attached draft resolution approving the design review permit with heightened review findings and nonconformity permit. Staff finds the proposed project is in conformance criteria listed below. And with that, that concludes my presentation. Happy to answer any questions you may have. |
| 03:26:14.03 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much, Adam. We appreciate it and the thorough report. Open it up for questions to staff, Commissioner Merlot. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:26:22.92 | David Marlatt | No questions, but a very comprehensive report, Adam. So thank you for that. |
| 03:26:27.58 | Nastassya Saad | Commissioner Luxenberg. |
| 03:26:29.54 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. Excellent report, very thorough. Unfortunately, I have a couple technical questions given you went through that really quickly. So let me just ask a couple technical questions. So I went and looked at this recently and also back when the first hearings were. So there were story polls put up and then there were more story polls put up. And on the front, I think what you just said was the front of it has been pushed back. Is that correct from where it was prior to the other hearings that we actually didn't hold? |
| 03:27:03.86 | Adam Blair | From what I recall, the envelope of that addition was pushed back a little bit in the front and then also from the side adjacent to the easterly property line. So I believe the modifications were made there. There may have even been a modification in the rear part, but I'd have to look back at the older designs proposed. |
| 03:27:17.14 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Yeah. The third floor was pushed back. |
| 03:27:21.48 | Adam Blair | Correct, the third floor. |
| 03:27:23.32 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Now, on the nonconformity part, I'm just getting into the weeds here a little bit. Given the greater than 40 feet, the zoning table says that the setback on the right side, as described in the zoning chart, was 5 feet, 11 and 3 fifths inches. But the new addition on the top isn't entitled to nonconformity because it wasn't there before. So it needs to meet more than that. But if I'm reading the drawing, am I reading this right? It's the new addition is six foot nine inches from the property line, is that correct? I mean, I don't know if that's a question for the designer or you, but. |
| 03:27:43.42 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:28:08.51 | Adam Blair | I believe that is correct. I believe it is set back six foot nine inches. I could look at the plans real quick. |
| 03:28:14.21 | Jeffery Luxenberg | So you're not saying the third floor is because of the non-conformity permit. You're saying the existing space is non-conforming, but the new space needs to be conforming, correct? |
| 03:28:26.30 | Adam Blair | Right. it. |
| 03:28:26.97 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 03:28:27.04 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 03:28:27.14 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Okay And then my third comment, which I continue to make this comment and not directed at you, but directed at the whole staff, the drawings are, you're saying, have been received on 11-3. The drawings are dated 10-30 and a whole bunch of revision dates, and there have been lots of sets that I've looked at and e-track it. So whenever we get the conditions on any project, this applies, This is not even specific to here. We. lots of sets that I've looked at and he track it so whenever we get the conditions on any project this applies this is not even specific to here well we need to say the drawings dated X with revisions through 1030 in this case which were attached to the Planning Commission agenda and received by the Planning Department on 11-3 because there's so many drawings here we have no idea what you got on 11-3 we don't know if those are the drawings that are posted All right. the planning department on 11-3. Because there's so many drawings here, we have no idea what you got on 11-3. We don't know if those are the drawings that are posted. A while ago, the drawing, there was one sentence and it's happened recently where they're all stamped in red that said stamped received in the drawings that are posted. So I guess the question is why were you able to do that on other projects but not on this project. |
| 03:29:36.60 | Adam Blair | The question is about the received stamp. |
| 03:29:38.57 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Yeah, if you just put a stamp on that, then we can say the drawings received because that's what the drawings are stamped. But if we say the drawings that are received, and we've seen, we got information coming in tonight. We don't know what drawings you received on 11-3. We don't know if those are the drawings that are posted. But if you just stamp them with that stamp, is there some reason, I don't know if that's for you or for Director Fibb, I mean ACM Fibb I know this is technically possible but it would help things because there are, usually we used to just say the date on the drawings but now we're finding some drawings in the set have one date and some drawings have a different date. So if you want to use the receive date, do you have a technical way to stamp that before you post it? |
| 03:30:32.22 | Assistant City Manager | We certainly do. I think stamps customarily have been applied to physical paper copies, and we certainly have those stamps in house as well for physical copies of project plans. We are able to also add those in digital form if we like. |
| 03:30:32.28 | Jeffery Luxenberg | We'll be right back. |
| 03:30:48.00 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Okay, so I encourage you in the future to do that, and then when we have conditions of approval, we just refer to the submittal date because it's on the drawings. Okay, so that's an issue for later, but thank you. I'm all set, Chair Sun. |
| 03:31:02.24 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. Vice Chair, no questions. I don't believe I have any questions for staff either. Thank you very much, Adam. So we will go ahead and open it up for the applicant presentation. |
| 03:31:16.83 | Unknown | I'm going to go ahead and go ahead. Thank you. |
| 03:31:20.23 | Nastassya Saad | You will have 15 minutes for your presentation. If you can kindly speak into the microphone just for the benefit of everyone listening at home and the record, and please state your names and address for the record. If we interrupt you, we will try not to, but if we do, it will not count against your time and you are welcome to reserve some time for the end. We shall use after public comment. |
| 03:31:47.38 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 03:31:47.40 | Anne McIntyre | Whenever you're ready. |
| 03:31:51.93 | Anne McIntyre | Good evening, commissioners, staff. partner in crime. We appreciate your time this evening and I think in the spirit of collaboration with Sausalito, we're I hope the ideal model of having done our due diligence before we begun this effort, before I signed on the line and purchased this home, for two weeks. prior to deciding that Sausalito would become my future home. And so I commend the staff for their patience throughout this process, as well as the neighbors and the iteration of the story polls. My name is Anne McIntyre, Sarah DeVito, my lead designer and licensed general contractor, also Sausalito resident. Next slide. want to welcome you to Marie Street, the before and after. The left side is the B side that's been remodeled And we can go to the next page please. The remodel on the left side was completed in a very short period of time thanks to Cooperation the building department and planning department and I'm living in that side There are a few open items five in particular that we're asking for the planning commission to approve tonight in order to complete that portion of that remodel On the a side we're asking for again with the heightened design review, which we'll go through I The modifications both to upgrade the property as well as to put a primary addition on the top floor, which would make it my family home for three bedrooms, including my son, who's joining us here. um, due diligence. It's an important thing before you write a big check and again, The things that I learned as I went through in great detail about this Murray Street property that have really not been touched is that in fact there was, according to code, opportunity to grow, to expand, to improve what looked like a concrete parking deck and turn it into my home. There was also opportunity whether it was an ad you or an addition on the top obviously pending heightened design and those feedback. There was also a piece though that I couldn't measure, and that was without a survey, this very small deck, the only place that had any water view of our stunning Sausalito waterfront. And what we learned after closing is that was in fact in the setback. And then with guidance from staff, we explored whether or not we could simply expand it because it was already just to the width of the building. So you could get more than two people that would come out through a sliding door and that was your outdoor space. And it was deemed that that was low odds. So we did not embark upon that. And it became obvious after I went through. both a very dark, bedrooms that are lovely on the lower level, but as I say, you might as well be in Omaha because you can't see Sausalito. that in fact to make this my primary residence, my dream would be to take advantage of the existing code to invest in this property, to create a very small third story addition that had beautiful sus-lito views and still stayed within each and every one of the building codes and requirements and planning. So that was my conclusion and next chart. Next chart, the picture's worth a thousand words. It's a beautiful lower level with a lot of trees. You would not know that that's your master if you go one duplex over. Both their bedrooms and the upper levels have beautiful, beautiful water views. Next slide. Welcome to my humble little deck, cantilever deck. By the way, don't go out there. In 1968, we think that it basically is about a four-foot cantilever. You don't want to be standing on that deck. But that's an existing deck. And so if you go to the next slide, please. Next slide. Again, all of the upgrades have been made. We're very proud of the work that's been done. A lot of concrete was removed guidance from staff and renovation was completed pending these five items. I'll turn it over to Sarah DeVito. |
| 03:35:43.51 | Sarah DeVito | Thank you, commissioners, for having us here tonight. Appreciate the time. My name is Sarah DeVito. I'm the lead designer and I've been working with Ann for two years now on this project. And I know when we first started, I said, you know, this will take a while. I didn't imagine it would take quite so long. But we have learned a lot along the way. And one thing that is striking, I think, of working with Anne is that she really has made a lot of attempts to work with the neighbors. Now, I know that there's neighbors here tonight that are oppose the project and has written letters, etc. But I do want to put it on record that she has made every attempt to try to to make compromises to move back the addition from the A side over to the B side, you know, squeeze this push, push and pull, bring this the upper level forward back. It was story polls, renditions, etc. And so in the. photographs you'll see, you'll notice that there's story poles that are now obsolete. Not each time, but the adjacent neighbor would provide us photographs of what it looked like from her view and so you know that would help us drive our decisions on how we're going to modify the design going forward. But one thing I want to note before we change this slide is that Anne did in record time, in my opinion, a full renovation, bringing this 1969 property or 68 property up into today's standards and fully wooly, wooly compliant and a great, um, contribution to the neighborhood. Next slide, please. This is again, we're asking for with the 16B side, main thing for your decisions tonight here is the roof deck. It was, uh, we were encouraged by, um, planning staff to have the, um, B side and the A side come together in this presentation, partially because otherwise it'd be two heightened reviews. And so we did that. So I know it's a little complicated having the two together, but there's a few small outstanding items that could easily be an over the count, not over the counter, but in a regular permit process, second bump out on the, on the right hand side, right rear. and a new window in the kitchen and improved landscaping. Next slide, please. 16A, so here we are on 16A, next slide. These are the items that we're asking for. The main one that brings us here today is the upper edition. Entry edition at the front was originally 14 and a half feet at the front. It has been pulled back now to six and a half feet from the front elevation, the existing front elevation. lower level addition that's directly below the entry addition to bump outside the back rear and outdoor garden. Next slide please. Renovation proposed additions, you know, this kind of speaks for itself here. We don't really need to go into the details of it. I think Adam already did a fabulous job. The thing I would like to point out in this upper list here is that we are in compliant with all of the Sausalito design planning and zoning guidelines. We are at 64% of the FAR calculation. I understand that 65% is the allowed amount, Again, just want to reiterate, it's allowed. And so we understand that there's a heightened review and we appreciate that actually because you know, at 80% or more of FAR, you know, you can go, some buildings aren't very pretty. And there can be difficulties in having an appropriate design for the neighborhood. So we appreciate the extra feedback. I think it's brought a better design for us. Next slide, please. So pictures are worth a thousand words. This is sort of speaking to the letters that we've received and the complaints of the adjacent property neighbors. So these slides, you know, I'll have a headline regarding what, you know sort of a rebuttal to those comments so massing Massings in context with Sausalito. You can see in all these photographs of various areas of Sausalito, including the area of which this property is located, three-story buildings, four-story in the front right there corner. Next slide, please. Again, as part of the requirement, we're required to show the building as it is from the center of the Murray street. And again, you can see it still steps down. Next slide, please. These are just massing in context. Again, you can see Marie Street is 16A up on the top there with the story poles and the other structures nearby. Next slide. This is a view from Schoenbacher, and you can see it's a little hard to see with your screen there, but there it is, 16A, Marie, with the story poles, and in my opinion, it is very much in context. Next slide. Here's a little bit better view of that. Again, take a gander. Um, Next slide. This is a view from Bridgeway again not at the Ridgeline. I can still see another structure up behind it on the right hand side and the hill goes up. Again, just to get you reoriented, the existing structure up above, the proposed design of the front elevation. Next slide. Uh, just trying to show the idea that the upper level is not overwhelming. So the, um, blue box there is the upper level, the floor roof plan, basically the upper level. You can also see the site plan. You know, we're not covering a lot of the site. And next slide. Neighborhood outreach back to you. Yes. |
| 03:42:05.53 | Anne McIntyre | Thank you. An important part of this process and frankly wherever I live. is it becomes my home and the community and we spill over, especially in a very close community, physically as well, like Sausalito. This projected planning phase, again, has been more than a two year process. And in hindsight, maybe we should have just grabbed a design, put the final story poles up and gone for the gusto. But it just became, it's been, been iterative, but it's also been we're ready for a decision. And I think we're all here today better off than where we started, with input from all including guidance from our planners to be sure that we came up with a result that we believe is absolutely ready for approval and adoption tonight. There are five versions of story polls. Obviously, the expense associated with that drafting all of these plans. moving it from one side, moving it to the other, trying to do your due diligence, is prohibitive for most prospective homeowners. I did this because I want to live here and I want the end result to be. Worked for me a win-win in Sunny. If you look at the last third bullet, I think it's interesting to note that the project Uphill 2426 Marie went on the market to sell And we chose to leave the story polls up in full disclosure for the prospective buyers and with In the end, eight bidders, zero objected. And I thought that was a positive statement for new investors wanting to come to Marie Street. The last one again, individual neighbors, and go to the next slide if you would please. And we just have a few more minutes, but I am grateful for the level of letters of support from these individuals that are neighbors, my next-door neighbor, Doris Seashore if you can go to the next slide very quickly. just because history is fun to remember, and Doris is more than 50 years resident at the top of Marie Street, and at 88 years old, She was kind of felt like she was the, Ambassador of Marie Street. She was best friends with a gentleman that lived in the home that I bought. |
| 03:44:09.73 | Jan Matthews | Thank you. |
| 03:44:13.86 | Anne McIntyre | And so from the beginning, first month I met Doris. And throughout this process, she watched my remodel, she watched the story polls, and she felt strongly enough that she wanted to give me a handwritten note support so that I could present it to the Planning Commission It means the world to me. As I got to know Doris, I also learned that her home remodel had stopped in its tracks because of asbestos. So I tried at my time to offer, we're almost done, help her get it back on the market. In the end, she ended up putting it on the market. And it is my. Second home on Marie Street. So I'm very committed to Marie Street. |
| 03:44:48.79 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 03:44:49.35 | Anne McIntyre | And next slide please. and we'll just turn it back over. Lots of iterations, we're almost out of time, but what we described was is that in the first design two, and three, we moved it from one side to the other, The last design, which Sarah's gonna take you through very briefly today, and that's in your package, came into communication, from my next door neighbor at 14B on July 19th that was called kind of the Farley Idea 2. and that again was to push back that front addition to try and give her the best possible view from her kitchen side window towards Mount Tam while protecting the water views. And that's basically what Sarah has helped us to design. |
| 03:45:30.15 | Sarah DeVito | And I think we're going to... |
| 03:45:30.39 | Nastassya Saad | I'd just like to note that you're almost at a minute. Yes, thanks. |
| 03:45:31.18 | Anne McIntyre | Thank you. |
| 03:45:32.57 | Sarah DeVito | Yes, thank you. We're going to save the rest of the presentation because it may end up being sort of a rebuttal to comments. Clarifications. Thank you for your time. |
| 03:45:43.21 | Nastassya Saad | THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I'M GOING TO NOTE ONE MINUTE AND 14 SECONDS FOR REBUTAL. I'M GOING TO ASK YOU BOTH TO PLEASE STAY HERE AS WE MIGHT HAVE QUESTIONS AND I'LL NEED YOU TO SPEAK INTO THE MICROPHONE FROM THE COMMISSION. |
| 03:46:01.56 | Nastassya Saad | Commissioner Luxembourg, would you like to kick us off? |
| 03:46:03.33 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Oh. |
| 03:46:03.68 | David Marlatt | Thank you. |
| 03:46:03.72 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. I have no questions at this time. |
| 03:46:07.24 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. Commissioner Marla. |
| 03:46:09.86 | David Marlatt | Yeah, thank you. And I just have one question. We didn't see the drawings, but I don't know if we can pull the drawings up. On sheet A3.4, which is the facade facing the uphill neighbor, there's a privacy, about half of the deck, the roof deck is a privacy wall and the other half, I guess, is a glass railing. And can you speak to that? Is there a reason that that privacy wall wouldn't extend all the way to the edge of the deck or that it was there at all? |
| 03:46:40.76 | Sarah DeVito | Oh, sure. So the privacy deck was put in the drawings by the request of the right adjacent neighbor at 14B. She's very concerned about privacy at her deck, and that was the dimension that she... showed us, asked us to do. So there's no reason why it couldn't go all the way. There's this balance in working with the neighbors, trying to distill down which views are important, kitchen window, which is small, ended up being very important. And what I would have imagined would be also important would be the view from the rear deck. But anyway, so it is there at the request of the neighbor. |
| 03:47:34.01 | David Marlatt | Okay, thank you. That's my only question. Thank you. |
| 03:47:36.09 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. Thank you very much. Vice Chair. Thank you. Could you comment? Did you have a chance to see, excuse me, the applicant shadow study? This is in our packet. I believe it was a little bit on the later side. There is a PDF that I would hope that maybe we can just bring up. Is this from you as the applicant? Did you conduct this shadow study? Can you just comment? Can you walk us through it just for the benefit of the commission and public? |
| 03:48:06.47 | Adam Blair | Yes. |
| 03:48:12.59 | Sarah DeVito | Sure. Thank you. Yes. Let's see, the whole shadow study is at the end of the deck. I'm going to give you a page here. It's in the back up. What is it? Let's see, it's like 58. In my glasses, sorry. |
| 03:48:22.80 | Anne McIntyre | Thank you. backup. Thank you. |
| 03:48:28.74 | Sarah DeVito | Thanks, sir. Yeah, it's all at 58, please. Oh, is that possible to do on the deck that we provided to the staff? The presentation deck? |
| 03:48:40.42 | Anne McIntyre | Presentation deck. Who's driving? |
| 03:48:42.61 | Sarah DeVito | Yes. |
| 03:48:42.75 | Anne McIntyre | Yes. Thank you. Sorry. |
| 03:48:44.15 | Nastassya Saad | OK, let's give it just a second to pull that up. |
| 03:48:44.59 | Sarah DeVito | Thank you. I'll second to pull that up. |
| 03:48:46.26 | Anne McIntyre | It actually starts on 57. |
| 03:48:48.67 | Sarah DeVito | So while you're pulling that up, I will make a comment about why we chose to do that. So the downhill neighbor and the neighbor to the right. And I'm going to speak of the property as if viewed from the street, just because it is off of it faces southwest, the front entry. And so the orientation is not exactly to the right. You know, it's not exactly east, it's so right. |
| 03:49:10.93 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 03:49:15.37 | Sarah DeVito | right side is 14 B there was very concerns from 14 B stating that we were going to with this addition negatively impact her we're going to shadow her property significantly and then the downhill neighbor was also concerned about that at 169 Filbert We were not required to do a shadow study. I described what I perceived to be uh, the, um, effect of the shadow of this third level on the, uh, properties in the application. And, um, and, but that just wasn't, um, um, no one believed that I guess. And so, uh, there was a demand in several letters that we should be required, uh, prior to, uh, approval of this project. to conduct a shadow study. So we preemptively decided to do that. So the first page here is giving an example, or not an example, but the four properties that are within the shadows of this, of 16. Site plan down at the bottom. So next slide, please. This one is the shadows. So we start out with December and 9 a.m. You can see that no shadows on, you know, that we're impacting. And also at 12. The existing shadows are on the bottom plane. And then the proposed with the addition are on the upper. So no effect there. So next slide, please. |
| 03:50:57.29 | Anne McIntyre | on the summary chart might be helpful if we wanted to start. |
| 03:50:59.64 | Sarah DeVito | Sure. |
| 03:51:00.11 | Anne McIntyre | Thank you. |
| 03:51:00.23 | Sarah DeVito | Thank you. |
| 03:51:02.24 | Carolyn Revell | We're here. |
| 03:51:02.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:51:04.60 | Sarah DeVito | Okay, so the one on the left is 3 p.m., so there is a little bit of shadowing. You can see it on the 169 Filbert, which is the top right property. On the lower, the existing, this is the left-hand side. left bottom. image. There's a light spot at the center of that roof. So that is the little bit of light that particular property is receiving. at 3 p.m. right now. And then up above, you can see that that little bit of light change. The one on the right is 6 p.m. So Mount Tam takes care of everybody's shadows at this time. Next slide, please. Again, this is March and you can see that 16 is actually in the shadows of 14 in this one. No change to either property. Next slide please. 3 p.m. also no change if you compare the lower on the left side is the 3 p.m. Lower one is matches the same as the upper. So on the right side, we do have a little bit of change. So I have this in my slide deck circled. I didn't do this one, I don't think. Is there an orange circle on this? I'M SORRY. |
| 03:52:24.69 | Nastassya Saad | you you |
| 03:52:25.97 | Unknown | to be able to get the |
| 03:52:33.99 | Nastassya Saad | I'm sorry. Yes, you do need to speak into the microphone for the record. Thank you. |
| 03:52:39.60 | Sarah DeVito | I'm sorry. So top right image, you'll see there's two orange circles and those orange circles indicate the changes that are differential between the bottom image and the top image. Not significant. I didn't calculate the exact percentage, but, you know, there is an effect, but not significant. So next slide, please. This is June again. I'm terribly sorry to do this. Yes, thank you. This is June, sorry. June 9 a.m. and 12, no change. Next slide, please. |
| 03:53:05.58 | Nastassya Saad | I'm terribly sorry to do this. Yes, thank you. |
| 03:53:16.34 | Sarah DeVito | And again, 3 p.m., no change. And then at 12, or sorry, at 6 p.m., you'll see a change again. You'll see that I have an orange circle on the 14B deck. If you look at the slide below, Her deck is already shaded. On the one above, you'll see that there's a little more shading on the corner there. |
| 03:53:38.38 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. I appreciate the shadow study. Although not required, it is appreciated, especially with a heightened design review, since these things, we do have findings to make. Could you comment on the just general privacy issues that have been raised by the neighbors from your professional opinion on the design? |
| 03:54:00.08 | Sarah DeVito | Yeah, I struggle a little bit with that word privacy. What does it mean in an area where there's a steep hillside, where people are sort of on top of each other? |
| 03:54:16.00 | Nastassya Saad | Actually, I don't mean to interrupt you, but you bring a good point. I'd like to narrow my question even because I don't even want you to necessarily comment on the deck privacy from deck to deck. Sure. But do you have any concerns about a privacy that would have a direct line of sight into somebody's home versus from one deck to another? |
| 03:54:26.69 | Unknown | Sure. |
| 03:54:26.96 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 03:54:37.14 | Sarah DeVito | In this deck, in the other photographs that we have saved, there are examples of that. Shall I show you those now? I would appreciate it. That would be great. So let me find which page. Actually, if you go all the way to the end of this deck, there is... |
| 03:54:46.66 | Nastassya Saad | That would be great. |
| 03:54:56.33 | Sarah DeVito | One example, so at 18B, there was concern also I don't know if that letter came through, but it was a comment made to us during the design |
| 03:55:08.59 | Anne McIntyre | Ms. Let's just get the actual chart because you can see. |
| 03:55:11.77 | Sarah DeVito | Oh, at the very end, so number 65. |
| 03:55:19.19 | Sarah DeVito | You'll start there, you were close, so I was leaving it there. Yeah. Okay, so this is, this is taken from the roof deck of 16B, and it looks out to the 18 Marie. |
| 03:55:30.30 | Adam Blair | Yeah. |
| 03:55:37.57 | Sarah DeVito | That's a car deck there for two townhouse condos that are similar to 16. And there was a concern from the neighbor at 16 sorry, excuse me, at 18, B which is on the left side and of that you know people going up onto the roof are going to Look at her while she's leaving her house Getting to her car. So this is a picture standing on that corner. So if you were to come up onto the for the Roof deck you would have to go stand over to that corner Which you probably wouldn't do because the views are to the rear to the water But if you were to stand in the corner |
| 03:56:08.69 | Adam Blair | the |
| 03:56:21.73 | Sarah DeVito | you would see a little sliver of that. So the red flags, this is from a previous story poll rendition, but the flags are in the same place. So that's one. And then if we go back to 27, please slide 27. |
| 03:56:39.18 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you, Maria. |
| 03:56:44.23 | Sarah DeVito | Okay. So this is a photograph from the roof. The blue story pole flags are the ones current. and we have shown you know, with the yellow screening, the mesh that you're standing on that deck and you're not seeing any part of 14B. Next slide, please. There's a concern about the windows on the, right elevation facing over to 14B. You can see that there's one window up on the upper level, if it's a bath window that's high, it's got a high sill. And what's interesting on the right side, you'll see it's sort of a roof plan. You'll see we're about the location of that window. And you can see that it faces basically into the bump out of the dining room of 14B, which doesn't have any windows. There is a window, kitchen window. to the left of that bump out, but there's no direct sight line into that. Next slide, please. Is that right? Exactly. Yeah. This is a view, you know, from 14B, a photograph provided by the neighbor at one point, and we've had to change the story polls because we don't have the current photographs from the neighbor. She, I think, was pretty finished with sending us those. So the story of Poles are kind of drawn in, but Um, this is her view, uh, from her deck looking towards Mount Tam. Um, and you can see that, you know, most of the balcony on the third level, the proposed balcony is, uh, blocked. |
| 03:58:26.71 | Nastassya Saad | Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you taking us through that. I just, we didn't have too much of the plans in the staff presentation, even though we've reviewed them. So I think that answers all of my questions. |
| 03:58:27.15 | Sarah DeVito | Thank you. OK. |
| 03:58:35.14 | Sarah DeVito | Yes. Oh, just one last thing. We don't have to show it right now, but we do have also views from the 14th, sorry, It's late 16B roof deck looking down on the lower neighbor and what those views would look like if you were standing at the rear of that roof deck. I appreciate it. |
| 03:58:45.25 | Adam Blair | LATE. |
| 03:58:56.91 | Nastassya Saad | think you've satisfied my questions sorry to belabor that but I appreciate that at this time you may go ahead and return to your seats you still have a minute and 14 after public comment so we're gonna go ahead and open it up for public comment this evening I do want to know for the record I believe the last I counted were 13 so we have received 13 public comments that have been posted to the agenda that this commission has reviewed I will look to assistant city manager Fips to facilitate our public comment please |
| 03:59:32.35 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you very much, Chair. I have received two speaker cards in connection with this item. First speaker is Jan Matthews. Jan welcome. Thank you for being here. You will have three minutes. Please state your address for the record. |
| 03:59:48.35 | Jan Matthews | Okay, thank you. It's Jan Matthews, address 129 Miller Avenue in Mill Valley. My husband and I, my husband Matt and I, We own the Mill Valley Lumberyard, which we renovated about nine years ago. With that and other projects, we certainly understand the process of going through design review and it's important. It's a very important process. So thank you. very much for all the efforts you've put in to make Sausalito, a better place. That's great. I wanna mention that we've worked with Anne McIntyre with both our private residents as well as with some projects at the lumber yard. And she's a very professional She has a great design sense. and really takes the time to listen to all sides to come up with the best design possible that is practical. And I know that with her residence at 16 Marie, she has done just that. Really the best design that is still feasible to build and live in as her forever home. I THINK WE HAVE A LOT OF You know, if she was just going to do a fix and flip, I think she probably could just put up an ADU and, that conformed with the ADU restrictions and that extra square footage and be done with it. but I know that for her, she wants to go through the time and the cost and all of that that needs to be done. in order to make this a home that she really wants to live in and stay in. So. I think that, you know, she's really listened to a lot of the feedback from both planning and from the neighbors and has done her best to address the concerns as as much as is feasible it's really a wonderful design and i hope that you approve her application tonight thank you |
| 04:01:45.63 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you very much for your comments. Next speaker is Peter Hardeen. Peter, come on down. Thank you. You'll have three minutes. And please state your address for the record. |
| 04:01:58.15 | Peter Hardeen | Yes, I live in San Francisco. My home address is 2890 Pine Street. But I own, for over 25 years, a duplex that's on 28 and 30 Marie Street in Sausalito. Ann's units are directly below mine, and I have no objection to what she is doing. I just wanted to support her. She seems thoughtful and thorough, and I think that it's a benefit to the neighborhood are because, you know, the properties there are all getting 30, 40 years old. in need of improvements. So I just want to say that I have no objections as a matter of fact that I support what improvement she's bringing to the neighborhood. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. |
| 04:03:03.88 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you. Thank you very much, sir. Appreciate you being here. That does it for received speaker cards. I'll look to the Zoom application chair, looking for raised hands. And I will call them in the order of C. |
| 04:03:16.37 | Nastassya Saad | Sorry, Director Phipps, we've got one raised hand. |
| 04:03:19.57 | Assistant City Manager | No, an additional raised hand in the chamber. Sir, please step forward. You'll have three minutes. Thank you for being here. Please state your address for the record. |
| 04:03:27.05 | Clark Phobes | I'm not sure. Good evening commissioners. My name is Clark Phobes. I'm speaking on behalf of Jane Farley because she's not feeling well tonight. She asked me to read this statement. Is that okay. |
| 04:03:38.20 | Nastassya Saad | Absolutely, could you just kindly speak into the microphone for me? Thank you so much. |
| 04:03:40.55 | Clark Phobes | Thank you so much. Thank you. My name is Clark Phobes. I'm a friend of Jane's, and she's not feeling well tonight, so she asked me to speak on her behalf. I'm just going to read what she wrote. Good evening planning commission chair commissioners and community development department of Sausalito. My name is Clark Phobes and I'm speaking on behalf of Jane Farley the homeowner at 14 Marie Street unit B whose property is directly adjacent and immediately impacted by the proposed third story. at roof deck at 16 Marie Street. For nearly two years, Jane Farley has lived under the weight of this proposal, enduring redesigns, shifting claims, and now a project that still shows no real regard for her privacy, her sunlight, and her home's livability. Each modification has been strategic, aimed not at solving neighborhood impacts, but at securing city approval by technical compliance. This process has taken a toll not only on Jane's peace of mind, but on her confidence that the city will protect her basic right to privacy, light and quiet enjoyment of the home she worked her entire life to afford. Her property is not an abstract said pack. It is a setback diagram. It is her retirement home, her creative space, and part of her daily life. The applicant's choices have been unreasonable and self-serving, dismissing simple, viable compromises that could have preserved everyone's quality of life. Instead, the burden of harm has been placed entirely on Jane, who has spent hundreds of hours researching, documenting, and presenting respectful alternatives that have been ignored. At this point, the issue is not about design flexibility. Is it about, it is about fairness, respect, and community balance. The project before you continues to violate the intent of Sausalito's design review findings by eroding the very values that make Marie Street a cohesive, livable neighborhood. On behalf of Jane Farley and the many residents who cherish the spirit of the hillside community, I urge the commission to deny this application and allow peace, sunlight, and privacy to return to Marie Street. It is time to end two years of conflict and protect the integrity of the well-established Marie Street neighborhood. Thank you. |
| 04:06:07.38 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you, sir, for your comments. Looking to the chamber once more, ensuring I did not miss an additional raised hand Seeing none, looking to the Zoom application for raised hands, I see one. That hand is the hand of Sunil Thattarakal, and apologies if I butchered that. Welcome, you'll have three minutes to speak. |
| 04:06:30.93 | Sunil Thattarakal | Good evening. I hope everyone can hear me. My name is Sunil Tutarico, and I live at 14A Marie Street, which is part... of the two unit HOA that is shared with my neighbor Jane, who is at 14B Marie Street. While I respect Anne's desire to improve and invest in her home at 16 Marie Street, at the same time, Jane, our immediate neighbor who shares this two unit HOA with us, will experience some sort of significant impacts from the added level, particularly the natural light and long established views. And this, I think, is most important for her, the established views, especially since Jane is an artist and she does paint and she requires that sort of environment to paint. And we've been over to her house and seen that she does that with the views that that are facing the water and also the views of the mountain. So even small changes to light and views can affect some sort of quality too. her life as well as the property value. And because this house is connected through our HOA, any change to her property will also affect ours. So we do share concerns about the current plans that Anne's provided today. So what I guess I'm respectfully asking the Planning Commission is to review all these impacts. before making a decision, and if possible, Help, guide. Thank you. Um, guide us for some sort of alternative amicable solution. Thank you. |
| 04:08:28.96 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you very much for your comments. Looking for additional raised hands in the Zoom app. And I am seeing none, Chair, back to you. |
| 04:08:35.27 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. I'm going to go ahead and turn it back over to the applicant. We can put a minute. Thank you. Minute 14 on the clock. You can use the time as you wish for rebuttal or continue your presentations here. |
| 04:08:49.02 | Sarah DeVito | Excellent. May we have the slide back up, please? And I would like you to go to number 23. |
| 04:08:53.04 | Anne McIntyre | Number 20. And then Maria, could you be ready to go to 31 quickly because we have a minute Thank you. |
| 04:08:59.96 | Sarah DeVito | Yeah. |
| 04:09:00.21 | Anne McIntyre | and change. So then we will jump to the |
| 04:09:00.46 | Sarah DeVito | change. 23, please. |
| 04:09:03.67 | Anne McIntyre | 23 first and then 31 if you don't mind. |
| 04:09:05.78 | Sarah DeVito | Okay, so one more. Oh, sorry, 24. Back there, right there. No, one more. Right there. Yes, there we go. Okay. All right, we're ready. All right, so in working with Jane, this is a July letter from Jane stating three options for us. One was do nothing. Number two is the one we chose to focus on. And one of the... The goals, you know, she says, I want light air views, which totally understand. Um, and she asked specifically to pull back the addition at the front. So, uh, next slide please. Next slide. 31. 31. Yeah, there we go. So just actually go back one if you would. There you go. So in this slide, you can see this is her rear deck. You can see the impact on the left side of the addition. Next slide, please. This is her view, pretty much uninterrupted towards the view to the Richardson Bay. Next view. Next slide, I mean. |
| 04:09:45.91 | Adam Blair | I'm sorry. I love you. So, |
| 04:10:07.15 | Sarah DeVito | This is her view from inside her living room, and you can see the story poles on the left, and then again, this is right at her living room window. You can still see that she has views. If she's looking to the left, you can't see it. Next one, please. |
| 04:10:19.76 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 04:10:19.78 | Anne McIntyre | Next slide. |
| 04:10:20.23 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 04:10:21.45 | Anne McIntyre | Multiple, multiple. |
| 04:10:22.34 | Sarah DeVito | And this is a view out of the kitchen window. And one more, please. Thank you. |
| 04:10:25.72 | Anne McIntyre | Real quick on the question when we go back. We lower. Can I finish just a sentence? Jessica. |
| 04:10:26.92 | Sarah DeVito | Thank you. Go back. No. Nope. |
| 04:10:32.23 | Nastassya Saad | No. We appreciate it. Thank you very much. |
| 04:10:32.26 | Sarah DeVito | No, we appreciate it. Stay up here. |
| 04:10:36.15 | Nastassya Saad | you No, thank you very much. So that does close that portion of the public hearing. At this point, we are going to bring it back up for discussion and ultimately a motion. Same story. Commissioner Marlott, would you mind kicking us off with some thoughts? |
| 04:10:54.69 | David Marlatt | Yeah, thank you. And after looking at the drawings and listening a little bit, and of course the neighbor whose primary objector, I guess, can't be here herself, I sort of look at three issues. One is light, privacy, and view. The view, frankly, is from a kitchen window, however nice the view is. It's a kitchen window of Mount Tam. I'm not sure that raises, in my mind at least, to that level of primary view that needs to impact someone else's ability to build. Light, and this gets into the shadow study and so forth, the property, the applicant's property, it's basically to the northwest. So as you saw in the shadow study, it's just, you know, geography, it just about can't cast a shadow, and it doesn't. And there's 13 or 14 feet, |
| 04:11:30.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:11:30.72 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 04:11:54.09 | David Marlatt | space between the two buildings, so I think that the you know deprivation of light and air In my mind just don't don't resonate Privacy did kind of resonate when I saw the applicants objections letter and that's why I raised the question about the Privacy wall, but I also see that extending the privacy wall up on that third floor deck to the full depth blocks some of the neighbor's view of Mount Tam potentially, although they're only seeing it through a glass rail. So now I'm sort of ambivalent about that. Prior to understanding that, I thought, why don't they just extend that privacy wall? But I'm ready to support the project. |
| 04:12:35.23 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. For your thoughts, Commissioner Luxembourg. |
| 04:12:39.89 | Jeffery Luxenberg | I'm going to see what the vice chair has to say about this one. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:12:44.78 | Carolyn Revell | Vice chair. |
| 04:12:45.36 | Jeffery Luxenberg | you |
| 04:12:45.39 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 04:12:46.47 | Andrew Junius | Great project. I move to approve as recommended by staff. |
| 04:12:54.10 | Nastassya Saad | Would you like me to go next? Sure. Out of courtesy? I appreciate the shadow study. I think it's good due diligence when you have a heightened review. I know it's not required, but it is appreciated because you've got very close quarters over there. And it helps put at least my mind at ease that there's really no major impact and I actually really hope that it gives your neighbor some peace of mind because any heightened review is is daunting it's it is impactful in certain ways I've experienced it myself and it can be overwhelming but those types of tools really can can ease mine so I was grateful to see that I don't have concerns with with the light because of that study I think privacy is a non- issue nobody is warranted to be able to not be seen from an outdoor space especially a deck even though it could be close quarters maybe a little awkward at first, but that's a given right to be in a public, excuse me, in an outdoor space. And I actually don't have any issues with the non-conformity if we're going to build like for like. I did visit the property. I did stand on the questionable deck. I do think it does, that place deserves that outdoor space and it's nothing more that's being asked. I DO THINK IT DOES, THAT PLACE DESERVES THAT OUTDOOR SPACE, AND IT'S NOTHING MORE THAT'S BEING ASKED FOR. AND I THINK IT DOES, THAT PLACE DESERVES THAT OUTDOOR SPACE, As our friends said before us, apparently Mount Tam is less important. So I just think it's a notable thing. I mean, as you can see, you guys have sat here all night and so you're hearing the kinds of conversations that we're having up here. They're not easy. They're not. Yeah, I mean, in general, we live here for the view, and it might be a privilege, but I feel very privileged to say that I have a view. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but to that degree, those pictures also show it's, you lose a little of a view, but you have a lot of another view. I mean, nobody has, again, also an unobstructed right to a 360 view, even though those homes over there are beautiful and really get to take advantage of all angles. So, so, so with that, I'd be more than happy to second a motion that approves this project as is, but we still need to hear from Commissioner Luxembourg. So, but I'm very supportive of this project. |
| 04:15:28.47 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Bye. Yeah, as I stated earlier, I want to make an amendment to the conditions of approval, number three, which reads that the project shall be designed and constructed as shown in the set of plans, McIntyre Residence 16A, Renovation and Edition 16A, 16B. Marie Street Sausalito received November 3rd, Attachment 3 with the following exception. I want to change the words received November 3, 2005 and should read the drawings dated 4-7-2005 with revisions through 10-30-2005, comma, which were attached to the Planning Commission's 11-10-2025 agenda and received by the Planning Commission's 11-10-2025 agenda and received by the Planning Commission on November 3rd so that we make it clear that the drawings that are in the packet are the ones that are with the conditions of approval. And again, I encourage staff in the future, just stamp the things and we could have just used that date. So with, I make that change. With that, I can support the project. |
| 04:16:38.00 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. Did you officially make a motion, Vice Chair? I did. You did, and I seconded it. Are you amenable to that change? |
| 04:16:45.79 | Andrew Junius | Absolutely. |
| 04:16:46.62 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. So we have a motion, we have a second. If no further discussion, I'm gonna look to assistant city manager, not director Phipps. |
| 04:16:57.27 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Merlot? Yes. Commissioner Luxenberg? Yes. Place Chair Junius? Yes. Chair Saad? Yes. |
| 04:17:03.70 | Nastassya Saad | Yes. motion passes. Thank you very much. Thank you to everybody who waited here for that a long portion of the evening. We are not yet done though. We still have item 7C. We do need to get Commissioner Moore. Yeah, could you mind? I did text him. We will take a |
| 04:17:20.00 | Adam Blair | Seven C. |
| 04:17:21.03 | Jeffery Luxenberg | We do need to |
| 04:17:27.62 | Nastassya Saad | Quick moment to retrieve our fellow commissioner. |
| 04:17:50.96 | Unknown | Sorry, I took the teachers. Thank you. |
| 04:17:54.35 | Nastassya Saad | and to all of our enthused Members of the public, I will ask you to just kindly celebrate outside. Thank you. Yes. |
| 04:18:10.98 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:18:13.32 | Nastassya Saad | We are now moving on to item 7C. This is the ordinance. Amending chapter 10.44080. of the, I'm gonna bang the gavel. Silence is golden of the accessory dwelling unit regulations. We have our principal planner, Matthew Mandich here to present as soon as Maria is ready. |
| 04:18:47.09 | Andrew Junius | We've been proud tonight, Matthew. |
| 04:18:48.59 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah. |
| 04:18:49.11 | Andrew Junius | . |
| 04:18:50.80 | Matthew Mandich | Packed house. |
| 04:18:56.86 | Matthew Mandich | wait for everyone to clear out. |
| 04:19:08.40 | Matthew Mandich | All right, good evening commissioners and staff and no members of the public. Somebody might be on Zoom. Somebody might be on Zoom. No, ACM is shaking his head. So Sergio's there, I'm sure. Anyway, so yeah, first of all, I just wanna actually thank former principal planner, Kristen Teichy, as well as the whole BBK team for doing a lot of work on this ordinance already. I've been tasked to kind of carry the water to the finish line here so just want to acknowledge the work that's gone in before my taking over the project. So with that we'll jump right in. |
| 04:19:14.09 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Somebody might be on Zoom. Thank you. |
| 04:19:18.33 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:19:45.33 | Matthew Mandich | Next slide, please. So some of you may recognize that ADU, an architect potentially in this room. But so yes, the request tonight is to conduct a public hearing on the proposed ordinance amendments to Title 10, Section 1044-080, which is accessory dwelling unit regulations. And we'd like you to provide a recommendation to the city council for consideration at their regular meeting next week on November 18th, 2025. Next slide, please. So just a little bit of background. The city's ADU ordinance and JDU regulations were last amended by adoption of ordinance 01-2025, which occurred in February of this year. It's kind of yearly updates that we're getting from HCD now to make our ordinances compliant. So that was done earlier this year. We're getting a little bit ahead of that this year, getting it done before the end of the year to make sure we're compliant come January 1st, 2026. These updates are to bring the city into conformity with state housing law and HCD direction. The newly proposed amendments, which you'll see tonight are to design to establish conformity with updated state laws and ADUs and JDU specifically under the bills, assembly bill 1154 Senate bill nine and Senate bill 543, which will go into effect on January 1st, 2026. cities are required to bring their regulations into conformity with these new laws and ordinances or they will be superseded by state law. HCD has also provided direction on the format and requires that this ADU section be standalone that it doesn't communicate with any other chapters of the code. Next slide please. So just first of all I'm just going to give you kind of a rundown of what these new regulations are what was signed into law and then second part will be talking about how we've integrated these into the proposed amendments which will be before you so AB these new regulations are, what was signed into law, and then second part will be talking about how we've integrated these into the proposed amendments, which will be before you. So AB 1154 alters the JADU owner occupancy requirement so that it only applies to JADUs with shared sanitation facilities. So if you have a JADU in your home that has a separate sanitation facility, you could then potentially rent the home and the JADU as well without having to be an owner occupant in that space. Also requires that a JADU be rented for a term longer than 30 days. A lot of cities had this in their code already. It was a little bit ambiguous of whether or not this was enforceable as state law so now it is so no SDRs for JADUs. SB 9, this imposes a penalty for not submitting a copy of your adopted ADU ordinance to HCD within 60 days of adoption or failing to respond to any comments that the ordinance does not comply with state law. So the penalty would be that your ordinances are under null and void and that it defaults to state law. Next slide, please. This is kind of the big boy that we're discussing this evening. A lot of the changes are reflected through this Senate bill here, 543. So this revises the statutory JADU definition to read as follows. Junior accessory dwelling unit means a unit that is no more than 500 square feet of interior livable space and contained entirely within a single-family residence. So kind of getting around the idea of this livable space of, you know, if you have small little areas that are storage areas or little compartments on next to the, you know, the unit, those wouldn't count. So we're trying to look at space for living, eating, sleeping, cooking, things like that as livable space. Also requires ADU, JDU application completeness be determined within 15 business days. So this is certainly a change on our current ordinance or in current law, which requires 30 days A list of items need to be submitted if the application is determined incomplete and these need to be an exhaustive list. So anything not in identified in that initial incompleteness letter cannot be brought up in a subsequent and complete in this letter. Requires a jurisdiction now this is another very new thing to provide a written appeal option to either the city council or the planning commission to challenge any incompleteness or determination or denial so prior this section for example and we'll talk about the amendments in section but those were all non-appealable and the director's decision was final so this is definitely a new law that we've needed to incorporate into the ordinance adds the term liv term livable space next to the square footage limits, kind of already covered that. Provides that units under yes, government code section 66323 can be combined. This was already known, but not really stated as explicitly as it has been and will be in the ordinance. And then amends requirements related to JDU fire sprinklers to match ADUs, which is that they're not required unless they're required for the primary residence. And also imposes other requirements for failing to submit your adopted ordinance to HCD for review. Next slide, please. So that wraps it up for what those new laws are. Here are how we integrated those new laws in our proposed tax amendment. So just kind of running through the ordinance from top to bottom here. First section is definitions. The change that was proposed here is that addition of 500 square feet of interior livable space for approvals. This is an interesting one. So in our current iteration of our JADU code, or an ADU and JADU code, excuse me, we allow for building permits to be used to approve ADUs and JADUs currently. However, we are pivoting back due to the advice of BBK to have an ADU permit and a building permit be required to permit ADUs and JADUs, which personally I think is a little little bit easier to manage, a little bit easier to track from a tracking system, and, you know, has some additional fees that help fund our time reviewing these permits. Again, the completeness determination must be rendered in 15 business days after submittal, so that's, you know, three weeks, which is a cut down from 30 days before, and again, city must provide the exhaustive list of incomplete items and the application is determined complete if that 15 business day deadline is missed this written appeal option is also been written into the code now which is required for incompleteness or denial this appeal we've taken the decision to send this appeal straight to City Council rather than the Planning Commission. The reason for that is to avoid extra levels of appeal or review. If it's reviewed by the Planning Commission first and the appellant doesn't like the response, they'll just appeal it up to City Council, so we're just going straight to the end right here. Action must be taken on this written appeal within 60 days. So the way this is designed to work is that is that you know written appeal will be submitted to the city clerk and then the council would have 60 days to provide a written response they will only be focused on objective design standards not anything subjective such as views or light air privacy or anything like that it'll be strictly confined to the objective standards in the code. And the process for that is something that, you know, we're still working on, whether that would be a consent item or, or or just be a letter that's sent to the applicant so but the process is here this new written appeal process and this you know 60 days to take action on that appeal the city council level next slide please. Okay, so this is something I'm really actually fond of about this new ordinance, which is the two classes of ADUs. This was always something that was, you know, kind of tacitly understood by the planners, but wasn't really spelled out in our ordinance and also wasn't super clear in state law. But what we've done now is divided the ADU types between a class one, which is statutorily regulated. So this is the 66323 units, and Class II, which is locally regulated, and we'll get into what those are below here. So Class I ADUs may be combined together. So in a single-family home, you can have a conversion at ADU, and that's either an interior conversion or the conversion of an existing detached structure. You can have a new detached ADU up to 800 square feet and a JADU. So this allows for three ADUs to be added to a single family property altogether. These are class one ADUs and they're all statutorily regulated, so there's no local regulation that can be done to these ADUs outside of what's in state law. For a multifamily, and this is still for class one ADUs, you can have an interior conversion of non-livable space, so that's typically a storage unit or something like that. An area of, for example, maybe a fourplex or a sixplex that's not used as livable space currently. Maybe it's down at the garage or whatever it is. That can be converted into a unit. So every one of these multifamily structures gets at least one of these interior conversions. However, if you have a bigger build, let's say you have 20-unit building, you can get 25%. So you would get up to five in in like a 20 unit build, for example. Those would be interior conversions. So if you had a number of storage spaces or something like that, I mean, there's a variety of, you know, boiler rooms, what have you, that could be converted into units. Also for multifamily, you get a minimum of two. So even if you have a, let's say like a fourplex, you can get two detached ADUs. However, if you have a 10 unit build, you could get up to eight ADUs. So you can get as many ADUs as you have units detached ADUs, that is, for multifamily structures. And these cannot be subject to any local objective standards or design standards that would be applied to the class two ADUs. So the class 2 ADUs are attached ADUs and detached or conversion ADUs exceeding 800 square feet. These can be regulated by local objective standards such as a front yard setback or a size limit not allowing an ADU to exceed 1,000 square feet for example or having a 10 foot front yard setback. So those are the local kind of standards that we can apply to class 2 ADUs, but we cannot apply those to class 1. Next slide please. So some updated general requirements here. Again, updated to reflect this distinction between class one and class two ADUs we just covered. Our subsection on height measurement has been amended slightly to read that height is now measured from the existing legal grade or the level of the lowest floor, whichever is lower to the peak of the structure. So this is not an average natural grade thing. This is from created grade or lowest floor level. Owner occupancy is no longer required for ADUs regardless of construction date. And JADUs are provided in exception to the owner occupancy requirement if you don't have that sanitation facility, if it's not shared. If it has its own separate sanitation facility, owner occupancy is not required. Deed restrictions are now only for JADUs, no longer for JADUs and ADUs. That means basically that the JADU cannot be sold separately and restricts the size of the JADU that was approved at the time the permit was approved. No certificate of occupancy may be issued for an ADU prior to the issuance of the CFO for the primary dwelling, and there are some limited exceptions for that for state declared emergencies. So these are all proposed tax amendments that have been built into our ordinance amendment that we're looking at today and in the red line that is attached to the staff report. Next slide, please. All right, so some of the specific ADU requirements. All the size limits in the subsection have been amended to include that term, livable space, next to the square footage limits. And we've also amended that any attached or detached ADU within the historic district, or H overlay, must be located behind the rearmost exterior wall of the primary dwelling and directly behind the primary dwelling. So visible from the street essentially fees here basically waves school fees for 80 years and JD is less than 500 square feet and then some sections have been removed such as the nonconforming discretionary approval section as well as the section saying that all decisions of the community development director are final and not subject to further appeal because we now have the written appeal process built in next slide please All right, so that concludes the presentation. So staff recommends the Planning Commission adopt the attached resolution recommending City Council adoption of the proposed amendments. The ordinance, from my perspective, and I think the rest of staff, |
| 04:31:45.11 | Unknown | Hmm. |
| 04:31:46.28 | Matthew Mandich | Excuse me. is much improved for clarity. Hmm. and consistency with state law. The draft ordinance has also been reviewed by HCD. They actually reached out to get a copy of the draft ordinance as they saw it going forward. They did a quick review and they had no comments or corrections to provide. So they just requested that it be uploaded once adopted. Yep, that concludes the staff report and the presentation. And if you have any questions, I'm here to answer them. |
| 04:32:15.60 | Nastassya Saad | Excellent work. Thank you very much, Matthew. We appreciate it. Any questions from Yes. OK. Commissioner Marlott, you start. |
| 04:32:27.99 | David Marlatt | Yeah, thank you, Matthew. No, I understand that this is fundamentally just a necessary edit to the existing chapter 10.88 for ADUs, so I don't wanna get into the weeds of why is it this, why is it that, but partly this is to help inform the effort that Commissioner Junius and I are undertaking now for just general code reform. Class 1 ADUs, or I think in San Francisco, they're called state program ADUs. They have different names. These are basically all ADUs up to 800 square feet. |
| 04:33:05.88 | Matthew Mandich | Well, not attached. |
| 04:33:09.22 | David Marlatt | Not attached. |
| 04:33:10.04 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah. |
| 04:33:10.08 | David Marlatt | Okay, so detached up to 800 square feet and conversions. |
| 04:33:13.79 | Matthew Mandich | Yes, up to. And then those that would exceed that would then fall into class two. |
| 04:33:16.03 | David Marlatt | with you. FALL. And then class two is basically anything from 801 square feet to 1,000 square feet. And so to what degree, and I don't need a precise answer for this, but I'm wondering when I was reading through all of this text, and maybe a half or two-thirds seem to be addressing class one ADU conditions. To what degree is this actually just restating state law, and we could come out with a guidebook or point somebody to that that and not embed it in our code and have to amend it every time the state law changes. |
| 04:33:42.51 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 04:33:42.54 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah. |
| 04:33:42.76 | Adam Blair | Thank you. |
| 04:33:47.24 | David Marlatt | Are we? |
| 04:33:47.99 | Matthew Mandich | So yeah, I mean those standards mimic state law almost exactly. However, by not amending the code and including them, our ordinance becomes null and void and therefore we cannot even enforce any of our local regulations on those class II agencies. |
| 04:34:01.76 | David Marlatt | But we have to incorporate them verbatim, so to speak, or can we incorporate them by and not by reference? |
| 04:34:06.29 | Matthew Mandich | Pretty much, yeah. I mean, you can ask Attorney Rudin about the perspective on that. But, yeah, there's very little wiggle room there as far as I understand for those 66323 units, as they're also called, or statutorily regulated. |
| 04:34:18.56 | David Marlatt | Yeah, no, I'm not questioning that, but whether or not our own code can simply reference, you know, ADUs in accordance with AB-54. |
| 04:34:26.05 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah, like it has to be a standalone chapter so it can't reference anything else. So you don't want it referencing like a hot link to, you know, government code section six, six, three, two, three. You just incorporate that into the code. |
| 04:34:37.61 | David Marlatt | I see. |
| 04:34:37.90 | Matthew Mandich | you |
| 04:34:37.94 | City Attorney Rudin | For the most part, it actually does parrot present state law. And it is going to be updated to parrot future state law. And as Matthew correctly identified, the reason we have to make these updates is that to the extent we want to enforce local design standards on the Class 2 ADUs, we have to make sure that our language... |
| 04:34:45.81 | David Marlatt | All right. |
| 04:34:45.88 | Adam Blair | I'm not. |
| 04:34:56.51 | City Attorney Rudin | Regarding the class 1 IDU, it stays up to date. |
| 04:34:58.82 | David Marlatt | Right, so you just can't simply say ADU shall comply with state law XYZ. You have to actually reiterate the law in the local code. Yes. Well, this is for the state ones. Now for the local ones, the class two of the, I don't know how many ADUs we've permitted in the last year or so. How many ADUs are we talking about? there's a relative handful because it seems awfully complex, the class two. And I know we're not gonna get into why is the FAR capped at such and such a thing. But I deal with ADUs in a lot of communities. And this is really complex, this is very dense. |
| 04:35:37.43 | Matthew Mandich | Well. I mean, look, the far cap and all those caps are there for really for larger ADUs. I mean, we still can't, even through 66314, we still really can't preclude the development of 800 square foot or less ADU. |
| 04:35:51.64 | David Marlatt | But I guess, are we writing all of these laws for five units or something? I mean, I don't know what the numbers are that are not class one. |
| 04:36:00.56 | Matthew Mandich | I mean, we're writing the laws to stay consistent with state law and not have our ordinance be out of from clients. So |
| 04:36:03.60 | David Marlatt | and not have our organization. OK, well, I don't want to beat it up too much, but I mean, I understand |
| 04:36:08.83 | Matthew Mandich | I mean, I understand your perspective. You want to know how many class 2 ADUs are we really seeing a year, and, you know, is it worth the lift to be doing these changes as opposed to just default? |
| 04:36:14.59 | David Marlatt | Yeah, and it's really dense in it. as opposed to just defaulting. And it's really dense and it's really complicated and we're supposed to be encouraging and streamlining and this is not. |
| 04:36:25.74 | Matthew Mandich | Well, in my opinion, I actually think the ordinance is much, much clearer and is much, much easier to read and understand than it was in its current iteration. |
| 04:36:25.76 | David Marlatt | In my opinion, |
| 04:36:34.20 | Matthew Mandich | To me, it makes more sense actually as a planner. So I mean, |
| 04:36:34.35 | David Marlatt | To me, |
| 04:36:37.72 | Matthew Mandich | I was actually... |
| 04:36:38.74 | David Marlatt | I'm actually keen on it, yeah. |
| 04:36:39.65 | Matthew Mandich | I mean, that's maybe a difference between an architect and a planner's point of view on it, but just leave it at that. |
| 04:36:40.91 | David Marlatt | I don't know. Exactly. |
| 04:36:47.17 | David Marlatt | All right, well I just had those general questions, because I know that we're not going to get into, you know. Thank you Commissioner. |
| 04:36:51.17 | Matthew Mandich | Thank you, Commissioner. |
| 04:36:51.95 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 04:36:52.10 | Matthew Mandich | Thank you. |
| 04:36:52.17 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 04:36:52.25 | Nastassya Saad | Sure. |
| 04:36:52.56 | Jeffery Luxenberg | . . |
| 04:36:52.74 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 04:36:52.76 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:36:53.11 | Nastassya Saad | Commissioner, look. |
| 04:36:53.71 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 04:36:53.81 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 04:36:53.87 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Just two quick questions. In either a class 1 ADU or a class 2 ADU, can you put an addition on a single family home? Not a detached building, but you put an addition on and make an ADU out of it. |
| 04:37:08.98 | Matthew Mandich | That's going to be class two. |
| 04:37:10.75 | Jeffery Luxenberg | That's going to be clear. You can do it in class, too? |
| 04:37:13.06 | Matthew Mandich | Yes, that would be what we call the attached ADU. And that's basically an addition attached onto the side of a new construction built out from the home, not a conversion. |
| 04:37:20.13 | Jeffery Luxenberg | So you can do that, and can you do that under the current code? |
| 04:37:24.43 | Matthew Mandich | Yes. |
| 04:37:26.02 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Okay, I thought there was an issue with that, but okay. Second is you have a, to our earlier comments on the odds, you have a new height definition in the ADU. So there was some concern, but we overrode that and said we wanted a new definition of height for historic buildings. You also have a definition of height for ADUs that's different than the definition of height in the ordinance. Is that correct? |
| 04:37:54.03 | Matthew Mandich | Correct. So the definition for height in the ADUs is what we just covered here. Okay. So it's not- Which has remained separate from the current one we have is slightly, worded slightly differently than what was you just saw. But it is also measured from created grade and not from average natural grade. |
| 04:37:58.56 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Okay, so it's not- |
| 04:38:10.23 | Jeffery Luxenberg | And so it doesn't take into account slope and any of those things. It's very specifically. So I was making a point that the odds is not, it's defining a new thing, but you have other places in the code where height is defined differently. So you have to just carefully read the code. Absolutely. |
| 04:38:18.72 | Fred Moore | Florida San Francisco. |
| 04:38:29.84 | Matthew Mandich | Absolutely. I mean, yeah, sure. There's, I mean, for building coverage, for example, it's, you know, average natural grade on the two foot. And then in certain areas for like parking above grade, it's two feet above natural grade, not average. So there's different areas in the code where height is measured in different ways. |
| 04:38:44.99 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Okay, so just when odds gets to the city council, I just wanted to make that point. Those are all the questions I have. |
| 04:38:49.21 | Matthew Mandich | Bye. |
| 04:38:49.23 | David Marlatt | Thank you. |
| 04:38:49.35 | Matthew Mandich | Bye. |
| 04:38:49.40 | David Marlatt | Yeah. |
| 04:38:49.48 | Matthew Mandich | Thank you. |
| 04:38:50.70 | David Marlatt | Just a quick follow up. Is the height definition dictated by state law? I mean, I don't know the history of it. |
| 04:38:57.30 | Matthew Mandich | That height definition, so no, that's- |
| 04:38:59.03 | David Marlatt | That's that's just something that seemed believe somebody did. |
| 04:39:01.74 | Matthew Mandich | something. our definition that's just been kind of trued up a little bit to me. |
| 04:39:06.38 | David Marlatt | So we're not restricted. If we wanted to align the height definition of radius with the height definition for buildings in general with average planes, that would be more- |
| 04:39:15.72 | Matthew Mandich | I WOULD BE ABLE TO DO THAT. |
| 04:39:20.43 | David Marlatt | I just didn't know if that was something that the state was driving us towards. |
| 04:39:24.16 | City Attorney Rudin | No, there is not a way that you, well actually let me just double check this. I don't believe that there is a way that the state law prescribes that we measure height. |
| 04:39:26.54 | David Marlatt | I don't know. |
| 04:39:33.48 | Matthew Mandich | Thank you. |
| 04:39:33.49 | City Attorney Rudin | I'm not sure. |
| 04:39:33.54 | Matthew Mandich | I'm not sure. |
| 04:39:33.63 | City Attorney Rudin | Um, |
| 04:39:34.03 | Matthew Mandich | I believe that is something that's locally determined, but the height limits are there in state law of 16 feet, 18 feet for near transit, and then the 25 for the attached. |
| 04:39:41.00 | David Marlatt | Yeah, yeah. attached. So yeah. How to measure |
| 04:39:46.13 | Matthew Mandich | How to measure that is, yeah, I think up to us, and we're choosing to kind of do the ceiling to floor method. |
| 04:39:55.87 | Nastassya Saad | Commissioner Moore. |
| 04:39:56.54 | City Attorney Rudin | Yeah. I agree. There is, as far as I can tell, no Um, No specific. No methodology prescribed in 66321. I will say, though, that it does have to at least... |
| 04:40:04.46 | Matthew Mandich | specific |
| 04:40:11.46 | City Attorney Rudin | you know, have some rational basis in terms of how you choose to measure it. can't just, uh, Um, you know, I think arbitrarily create some new height measurement that would be intended to defeat the provisions of state law. Let's put it that way. |
| 04:40:30.18 | David Marlatt | I was just questioning whether we can just align it with our existing method. |
| 04:40:35.04 | Matthew Mandich | So I think, you know, part of the issue with that, with the average natural grade in such a sloped city like Sausalito is that you will get some pretty tall ADUs if that were the case. So I think the idea is to keep these things, you know, within an ADU, accessory dwelling unit kind of parameters of 16 feet. And the only ADUs that really support two stories are the attached ADUs as well, which are up to 25 feet, and those can be attached to a home. But again, those are attached to a pre-existing building that already has a height limit that's likely above that in certain cases. |
| 04:40:35.05 | David Marlatt | So, Yeah. |
| 04:40:44.05 | Adam Blair | Nice. Thank you. |
| 04:41:08.42 | David Marlatt | Okay, that's fine, thank you. |
| 04:41:11.69 | Fred Moore | Thank you. Commissioner Moore. Just have about two pages of questions. Not really. |
| 04:41:17.09 | Matthew Mandich | Really? Mike doesn't like you tonight. |
| 04:41:17.60 | Fred Moore | Thank you. Mike doesn't like you tonight. Thank you. |
| 04:41:18.76 | Matthew Mandich | I'm not. |
| 04:41:18.78 | Fred Moore | I know. I have a pair of sort of Commissioner Marlott's positions. The ADU laws, they keep changing every year, multiple laws, multiple laws, and it sure seemed like it would be nice to be able to have some way of, as long as the new laws don't conflict with our existing laws, it seems like we should be able to just refer back to state law without having to spend clearly the hours and hours and hours you had to do to update this. It seems like an entire waste of time. So if the attorney looks at that and sees their way around it, that would be great to be able to implement. A couple of questions, short questions though. I noticed you changed the public transit, remove the ferry terminal. |
| 04:41:18.91 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah. |
| 04:41:59.87 | Fred Moore | and the fairies. that was related to something unrelated to the ADU law changes, right? |
| 04:42:06.90 | Matthew Mandich | So no, actually that is ripped directly from the new state law for the definition of transit. So it doesn't have the ferries or thing, but it does encompass ferries by, I don't have the words right in front of me right now, but it says all other forms of public transit and et cetera. So that change in particular on the transit is directly from the new state law. That's the new definition. |
| 04:42:30.41 | Fred Moore | Right. And I know you eliminated the references to, I think, the planning, community director, economic director, and just put director. It's just called director. The director is not defined anywhere. So do we know, I mean, different cities that I work with, the director could be the public works director, it could be the planning director. Do we need to define who the director is that we're talking about? |
| 04:42:37.75 | Matthew Mandich | It's just called Director. |
| 04:42:51.10 | Matthew Mandich | That wasn't, I mean, this was something, didn't come up as an issue with HCD. This was something that BBK, struck out and just left with director. So I don't know. I agree that there might be some ambiguity. |
| 04:43:05.11 | City Attorney Rudin | It is specifically defined in our definitions section |
| 04:43:13.16 | Matthew Mandich | Oh, in the early portion? |
| 04:43:13.22 | City Attorney Rudin | Oh, and... |
| 04:43:15.16 | Matthew Mandich | in, |
| 04:43:15.45 | City Attorney Rudin | No, it's in 1088.01. |
| 04:43:15.47 | Matthew Mandich | No, it's in 10, 18, 18. 40. Yeah, but up in the top and C in the definitions, okay. Thanks for that, I'll make sure to remember that one for council. |
| 04:43:26.22 | Fred Moore | No further questions. Thank you very much. Thank you, Commissioner. Vice Chair. |
| 04:43:27.77 | Matthew Mandich | Thank you. |
| 04:43:27.80 | Andrew Junius | Thank you. |
| 04:43:27.84 | Matthew Mandich | Thank you. |
| 04:43:27.97 | Andrew Junius | Commissioner. |
| 04:43:28.46 | Matthew Mandich | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 04:43:28.70 | Andrew Junius | . Thank you. Thank you. Hey, thank you, Matthew. You said that before you were processing ADUs with just a building permit, and now there's gonna be an ADU permit and a building permit. Is that was the building permit process before and the current one now like a full building permit? Like you have to submit construction drawings Thank you. |
| 04:43:46.40 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah, so actually it's a return to how we used to do things. So before last year's update that occurred early this year, we always had an ADU permit and a building permit. This year, based on the updates that were passed in February, we allowed those six, six, three, two, three units to be approved solely via a building permit without an ADU permit. Now we're kind of reverting back to both ADU permit and building permit. |
| 04:44:10.99 | Andrew Junius | And the ADU, I mean, I assume that that an applicant can come to you guys and set up a meeting walk through the parameters to make sure they're not just gonna go down a road spend a bunch of money on construction drawings and then be like, well, you can't do that. |
| 04:44:28.06 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah, ideally. Is that what the ADU permit's for? That's what the ADU permit really functions as. I mean, of course we could have a pre-op meeting, we could talk to the counter, do all those things without even spending any money on a permit. But the idea of that ADU permit is yes, that is the zoning check from staff, from the planning level staff. And we're either gonna, that's the permit where you have the written appeal option and things like that. So if we determine it's incomplete or that permit's denied, now you have this new written appeal option. |
| 04:44:28.81 | Andrew Junius | Is that what the ADU permit's for? That's what the ADU permit really functions for. |
| 04:44:51.91 | Andrew Junius | And it's sequenced, right? ADU permit first, you get that issued, and then you can go to the building permit. Yes. Okay, got it. Yes. And then on the appeal, I think that's kind of interesting. It's a new wrinkle. A very new wrinkle. An appeal of a ministerially approved. Yeah, yeah. Fascinating. |
| 04:44:56.01 | Matthew Mandich | Correct. Yes. Okay, got it. Yes. Mm-hmm. |
| 04:45:08.28 | Matthew Mandich | It's surprising to me as well. |
| 04:45:09.49 | Andrew Junius | Thank you. |
| 04:45:09.51 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah. |
| 04:45:09.61 | Andrew Junius | Yeah. Yeah. |
| 04:45:09.68 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah. |
| 04:45:09.71 | Andrew Junius | Yeah. I would assume Can anybody appeal it so your neighbor can challenge the fact that you have an ADU? Or is this just an appeal from the applicant? It's for the applicant. It's designed for the applicant. In other words, if they get denied and they think, well, you shouldn't have denied that. Okay. It's not, yeah. |
| 04:45:17.96 | Matthew Mandich | It's for the applicant. It's designed for the applicant. |
| 04:45:23.23 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah. Okay. It's not, Yep, yep. No, and then, so that process playing out would be written appeal, filed to the city clerk, goes to city council, 60 days to render. |
| 04:45:31.28 | Andrew Junius | And is it pretty clear that a neighbor can't appeal, cannot appeal, a neighbor that doesn't want an ADU next to you? That might be a gray area you want to think about. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah. That was it. Thank you, Matthew. |
| 04:45:36.80 | Matthew Mandich | neighborhood. |
| 04:45:45.03 | Matthew Mandich | I don't know if Sergio has anything to add on that. |
| 04:45:46.96 | David Marlatt | Can't anything be appealed in California? I always thought anything could be appealed. Petroleum's everything. Okay. |
| 04:45:53.17 | Jeffery Luxenberg | . |
| 04:45:53.37 | David Marlatt | Thank you. |
| 04:45:53.47 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Yeah. |
| 04:45:53.77 | David Marlatt | Thank you. |
| 04:45:53.89 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 04:45:55.61 | City Attorney Rudin | is who we know. |
| 04:45:56.37 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Tony Whedon going to comment on that. What's the answer to that? |
| 04:46:00.56 | City Attorney Rudin | I'm looking at the at the stature really quickly. |
| 04:46:04.28 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah, it's brief, what they say about it. I've read through it myself and I see a lot of clear guidance, but I think it's very much designed for applicant. Thank you. |
| 04:46:14.73 | City Attorney Rudin | Yeah, this is in SB 543. Yeah, okay. 543. |
| 04:46:14.75 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah, this is in |
| 04:46:21.24 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah, we certainly don't want to be inviting a big hostner. |
| 04:46:25.03 | Andrew Junius | Um... |
| 04:46:25.62 | Matthew Mandich | Thank you. |
| 04:46:25.87 | Andrew Junius | The entire community. Yeah, but I don't know. It may not be possible to limit it. Once there's an appeal right, it may be that anybody, you know, it should really stink, but, yeah. |
| 04:46:27.61 | Matthew Mandich | All right. |
| 04:46:35.76 | City Attorney Rudin | No, it says the permitting agency shall provide a process for the applicant to appeal that decision. Okay. |
| 04:46:40.62 | Matthew Mandich | Excellent. |
| 04:46:41.24 | City Attorney Rudin | Thank you. |
| 04:46:41.97 | Matthew Mandich | Thank you for the clarification. |
| 04:46:43.67 | David Marlatt | Quick follow-up Matthew and Commissioner Junius raised the point. Is the timeline, the 15 business days and so forth, is that only for the ADU permit or for the combined ADU permit? |
| 04:46:53.98 | Matthew Mandich | ADU permits. Thank you. |
| 04:46:55.87 | David Marlatt | So the ADU permit, because then a construction permit, a building permit could take 90 days. |
| 04:47:00.11 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah. |
| 04:47:01.14 | David Marlatt | You take the time to take. |
| 04:47:01.68 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah, yeah. No, that's for the ADU permit. So that's for the initial submittal of the ADU application. That's the time that we have to process that and come back with either approval, incomplete, or denied. |
| 04:47:04.28 | David Marlatt | Yes. |
| 04:47:12.21 | David Marlatt | of an entitlement, basically it's the entitlement is in 50 days. Correct. |
| 04:47:13.57 | Matthew Mandich | Yes. Correct. Okay. So as you can see, having the ADU permit kind of built back into the whole process makes everything a lot cleaner and easier. Otherwise, you'd have to have the full building. |
| 04:47:23.23 | David Marlatt | So otherwise you'd have to have the full building permit in 15 days. Yeah. Okay. |
| 04:47:24.78 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 04:47:24.88 | Matthew Mandich | Thank you. |
| 04:47:28.42 | Nastassya Saad | Any other questions? We have a good line of questioning. MAKING A LITTLE BIT. |
| 04:47:31.39 | David Marlatt | Thank you. |
| 04:47:31.43 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. No. Thank you very much, Matthew. Thank you, commissioners. I'm going to open this up for public comment. |
| 04:47:37.17 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you, commissioners. |
| 04:47:41.47 | Assistant City Manager | Looking to the chamber, seeing none. And looking to the Zoom application, seeing none, Chair. |
| 04:47:44.62 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 04:47:44.64 | Andrew Junius | Thank you. |
| 04:47:44.66 | Nastassya Saad | And, Thank you so much. All right. Well, I'm going to look for a motion if no further discussion. |
| 04:47:53.35 | Andrew Junius | I'm going to make a motion that we approve the staff recommendation and recommend this forward with no changes to the board of, not the board of supervisors, this would be the city council. Thank you. Second. |
| 04:48:01.89 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 04:48:01.96 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 04:48:02.07 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. Bye. |
| 04:48:03.88 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Thank you. |
| 04:48:04.08 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. |
| 04:48:04.15 | Jeffery Luxenberg | So, |
| 04:48:04.32 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much any discussion Okay, assistant city manager |
| 04:48:09.24 | Assistant City Manager | Commissioner Moore. Yes. Commissioner Merlot. Yes. Commissioner Luxenberg. Yes. Vice Chair Junius. Yes. Chair Sott. Yes. Motion passes. |
| 04:48:16.91 | Nastassya Saad | Yes. Excellent, thank you very much. Move to adjourn. Thank you. |
| 04:48:20.43 | Jeffery Luxenberg | I WANT TO ADJOURN. THANK YOU. THERE'S ANOTHER ITEM ON THE AGENDA AND I HAVE QUESTIONS FOR IT. OH, HE'S CORRECT. I KNOW IT'S LATE. |
| 04:48:24.90 | Nastassya Saad | you |
| 04:48:24.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:48:25.09 | Nastassya Saad | . |
| 04:48:25.17 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:48:26.27 | Adam Blair | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:48:28.18 | Nastassya Saad | Item, yes, Item 7D. This is a recommendation on an ordinance amending Title 10, Chapter 10.44.240 of the Sausalito Municipal Code Formula Retail. Principal Planner Matthew Mandich, welcome back. |
| 04:48:49.31 | Matthew Mandich | Bye. Thank you, Chair. So, yeah, briefly on this, we did... you know post and notice this item. This was something that we were planning on taking at this hearing, you know, a month or so ago. Priorities shifted. There were some other items that were popped up that needed to be scheduled. Some of those went away. And then the ADU ordinance came through. So a couple different things happened that took priority over Formula Retail. Unfortunate, I mean, this is a pet project of mine for a long time. Really look forward to bringing this to you guys at the first meeting in January. However, we haven't ratified the calendar yet, so I don't know if I can continue to a date certain on that. I don't believe I can, but the goal is to very much bring that at the first planning commission hearing in January. |
| 04:49:41.04 | Nastassya Saad | So you would not be, is it that you would not be prepared or is it that we have a full agenda for our December hearing? |
| 04:49:50.60 | Matthew Mandich | December, yeah, I don't think it's, well, we have a holiday coming up. You know, I have a busy work schedule already and got city council items, so yeah. |
| 04:49:59.32 | Assistant City Manager | Yeah. |
| 04:49:59.47 | Morgan Pierce | Thank you. |
| 04:49:59.51 | Nastassya Saad | I'm sorry. |
| 04:50:00.79 | Assistant City Manager | Yeah, this is staff's determination based on an assessment of capacity. |
| 04:50:08.11 | Nastassya Saad | I see, okay, thank you for the clarification. Commissioner Luxembourg, what questions do you have? |
| 04:50:13.12 | Jeffery Luxenberg | I know the hour is late, but it is frustrating for us to keep getting stuff on Thursday before a Wednesday meeting. In this particular case, the city council made some recommendations which have never been sent to us. It might be helpful if you would send us a memo summarizing those and where this at. But I want to make one simple point. There was some confusion when the city council did this this commission has always been strongly supportive of not having formula retail on caledonia street and there was some discussion in what's going to come back to us i understand that we're going to define formula retail as any businesses that have over 50 locations if that is in in in the intent and that's my understanding of what's being worked on uh i want to make it clear to staff and the commission at least my thought on this is we don't need formula there was some concern that we need formula retail to fill vacancies on caledonia Street if we're going to define formula retail above 50 locations then we can get all sorts of businesses that have 49 or less locations on Caledonia Street without adding the Caledonia Street zoning district to formula retail and there was confusion on what was said at the city council meeting on this issue so I just want to make it clear to staff that we can fill vacancies and still have no formula retail on Caledonia Street because there's a whole bunch of new businesses that now would be eligible so that's just a I don't know if that's I'm being clear to people but I know there was confusion when it was said |
| 04:52:00.82 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah, there was some confusion at that hearing, and so it sounds like you're well-versed in the record. But what the ultimate recommendation from that was that the council directed us to work with two council members, Councilmember Hoffman and Sobieski to locate a zoning district one zoning district which where we believe formula retail can locate we have decided that however that is not the CR so it will not be on Caledonia |
| 04:52:27.80 | Jeffery Luxenberg | Okay, I just wanted to make sure that's been part of the general plan that Caledonia Street is local, and if you're going to define it, are you still defining it above 50? Yeah, that's going to be the definition, correct. So there are lots of new businesses that would be eligible without having businesses that have 50 or more locations. That's the only point I'm making. Understood. |
| 04:52:37.15 | Matthew Mandich | Yeah, that's going to be the definition. |
| 04:52:47.55 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very clear. Thank you Commissioner Luxenberg any other points from the Commission or questions? Okay, I'm going to open this one up for public comment |
| 04:52:58.48 | Assistant City Manager | Signature. |
| 04:52:59.60 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you very much. I'm gonna close the public comment. No other questions, then we will accept the recommendation of staff to continue this to a date uncertain. Do we need to take a vote on that? |
| 04:53:09.64 | Andrew Junius | Do we need to take a vote on that? Okay, then. Move to, yeah, continue as recommended by staff. |
| 04:53:12.91 | Nastassya Saad | Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to second that. Thank you. |
| 04:53:19.02 | Assistant City Manager | All in favor? Aye. |
| 04:53:20.50 | Andrew Junius | Bye. |
| 04:53:20.57 | Nastassya Saad | Aye. Thank you. |
| 04:53:22.09 | Assistant City Manager | Zero opposed. Motion passes. |
| 04:53:23.88 | Nastassya Saad | Thank you. Item eight is adjournment. All in favor? Thank you. |
| 04:53:28.45 | Assistant City Manager | All right. |
| 04:53:28.81 | Nastassya Saad | All right, thank you. |
| 04:53:31.20 | Assistant City Manager | Thank you. |
| 04:53:31.29 | Nastassya Saad | Commissioners? |
| 04:53:31.44 | Assistant City Manager | Appreciate it. you Have a great evening. |
Morgan Pierce — In Favor: President of Sausalito Beautiful, Pierce thanked Director McGowan and DPW for engaging them in the study. He stressed street trees as integral, low-cost infrastructure that transforms neighborhoods, and expressed concern that shifting full responsibility to property owners could reduce streetscape improvements, citing San Francisco's reversal of a similar policy in 2016. He recommended a robust urban tree preservation program with a dedicated tree sidewalk fund and engagement of a qualified arborist, and offered Sausalito Beautiful's assistance. ▶ 📄