Planning Commission - 4/13/26: County Zoning Overhaul With 131 Amendments Unveiled - Board Chambers Meetings

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Good evening everyone. I'd like to call the meeting of the Planning Commission for April

(00:09):
13th to order. Stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance, please. Roll call?
Roll call first.
Okay. Can we do, sorry. We'll do roll call first.
Members Rockenstein? Members Berger? Here.

(00:31):
And members Devlin? Here.
Okay. And let the record reflect that members Borja and Cronus Avignano are absent at this
time.
Awesome. All right.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for
which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

(01:11):
And then I will go ahead and read our announcement.
Thank you.
The county fosters public engagement during the meeting and encourages public participation,
civility, and the use of courteous language. The commission does not condone the use of
profanity, vulgar language, gestures, or other inappropriate behavior, including personal
attacks or threats directed toward any meeting participant. Seating may be limited and available

(01:33):
on a first-come, first-served basis. To make an in-person public comment, please complete
a speaker request form to the clerk. The individual will be invited to the podium to make a comment.
Members of the public may send a written comment, which is distributed to commission members
and filed in the record. Contact information is optional and should include the meeting

(01:54):
date and agenda off-agenda item number to be sent as follows. Email a comment to boardclerk
at saccounty.gov. Mail a comment to 700 H Street, Suite 2450, Sacramento, CA 95814.
And that concludes the announcement.
Thank you. And that brings up our first item. Can we call the first item to order, please?

(02:21):
Yes. Item number one is PLMP 2023-00085. This is the 2023 Zoning Update. This is an informational
workshop to be discussed and receive feedback regarding a zoning ordinance amendment. And
this is countywide.
And let the record reflect that our esteemed chair has made it.

(02:43):
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Good evening, commissioners. Wendy Hartman, principal planner for Planning and Environmental
Review. And with me tonight is Matthew Tomomi, who is the lead planner on this project. Given
that this is a workshop and the length of the presentation and ability for us to have

(03:04):
kind of a back-and-forth conversation with the commission, if you have questions during
the presentation, I'm going to go ahead and just have Matthew stay seated for this presentation,
if that's okay with you. All right. Thank you.
Okay. Good evening, commissioners. Again, Matthew Tomomi. As the clerk mentioned, this

(03:25):
is a workshop. It's a non-voting item. So let's go ahead and get started. So today's
workshop will be split into four parts. I'll go into the background of how we got to this
package here today. Commercial and institutional amendments within this package, residential
amendments within this package, and then feedback and next steps.

(03:51):
Okay. So just some background here. We have some members of the public. So the zoning
code is a foundational document that we have. Okay. Is that regulates land use in the county.
It provides guidance on what goes where, how do uses operate, and how do uses look, and

(04:19):
how do they construct structures on property. Here on the screen is an excerpt of section
1.3 of the zoning code, which goes over the purpose of the zoning code, including key
things like the zoning code enhancing public safety, promoting health and healthy communities
and convenience and accessibility, and promoting a sustainable and efficient use of land, which

(04:43):
overall supports the goals of the general plan. So our zoning code is a living document
that evolves and changes over time. Our zoning code was first adopted in 1936. That's a typo
there. Our first full ordinance was adopted in 1950, and we're currently on our 7th edition.

(05:07):
So as it is a living document, we regularly update it with different levels of updates.
So there's fix-it packages, which are sort of topical updates that occur from time to
time. Some recent ones that have come through are massage and coming through soon is crowing
fowl. There's also state legislative updates, which was recently seen by this council, and

(05:29):
then this is an example of a major amendment package. This is the largest one that has
come through since this edition was first adopted in 2015. So just for a sort of metaphor
of what this is, those other updates, those minor updates that I described are kind of

(05:49):
like if you're thinking of maintaining your car, changing your oil, replacing air filters
or rotating your tires. This is more of a 30, 60, 90,000-mile major update to your car,
and it's been 10 years, so it's time for us to do this major maintenance.

(06:10):
Just to quote the Board of Supervisors in a resolution they passed in 2023, which is
kind of like our North Star in thinking about how we drafted this ordinance. This ordinance
that the board passed, this resolution says that the board generally supports amendments
to county codes and regulations that allow for more ministerial by-right development,

(06:32):
more approvals at the staff level or lower hearing bodies, and other changes that make
it easier to do business with the county and build within the unincorporated area.
So this package, it is quite large. It has 131 different items, and mainly these items
have come through constant feedback that we receive as members of the planning department.

(06:58):
So we work with residents, business owners, developers, and other county divisions on
a regular basis, and we get to see where our planning, our planning codes, our zoning codes
have issues. And whenever we run into those issues, we record them, and then we bundle
them to different packages. Just an example of how much interaction we get on a regular

(07:18):
basis within the last six or so years, we've received and sent about 100,000 emails just
through our general inquiry inbox.
Just formally today, the request is for feedback and comments on this zoning ordinance amendment,
which affects all chapters of the zoning code and Title IV, which is the interim zones of

(07:42):
the zoning code.
So 131 is a lot, and what we've done for this update is that the first major attachment
in this package is a matrix, which lists out all of the items listed from A1 to A131. It
provides the name of the topic, the affected sections, and a brief summary of the type

(08:07):
of fix that's being addressed, along with a subjective degree of change from 1 to 5,
a quick sentence or two on the issue and what we're doing to fix it, and then the affected
communities or specific zones.
Subjective degree of change is ranked from 1 to 5, going from 1 being like a minor clarification,

(08:31):
so typographical errors and clarifications of definitions, all the way up to 5, which
are more substantial policy updates which affect a larger community.
So just for some background about how many are in each of these, there's 45 in rank 1,
21 in rank 2, 28 in rank 3, 23 in rank 4, and 14 in rank 5. So basically there's more

(08:55):
at that lower level of review, lower subjective degree of change, and then the more intensive
the updates, the less quantity there are in this package.
Okay, so I'll be going into detail on 20 of the 131 that we've selected that may be of
more general interest to the county as a whole. So I'm going to start with the commercial

(09:20):
and institutional amendments.
So this first one, actually before I start, I'd just like to note on the screen, you can
see that on the top there's going to be a number on the right-hand side, that's the
subjective degree of change 1 to 5, and then the bottom right, if you'd like to reference

(09:41):
it on the matrix, is the specific items that I'm going to be referencing on that list of
131.
So this first item, bucket use classifications. So our zoning code puts all uses on private
property into use classifications. There's about 200 of them in our zoning code, and

(10:02):
we used to have a lot more prior to 2015. So in 2015, we consolidate a lot of them and
put them into buckets, which are more broad use classifications that encompass similar
uses with similar intensity and operational characteristics. So for example, we create
a general office uses category, bundling doctors' offices, accounting offices, all that sort

(10:25):
of thing, create different levels of different uses as well.
So some primary problems with the existing bucket use classifications we have, there's
some that have unclear terms or unclear definitions, and sometimes there's barriers between the

(10:46):
two that aren't very clear. So we might have a use that might fit into either one of them,
so we want to make that delineation clearer. For example, our repair services classifications,
we have one that's general repair and then tool-based repair, and some of those use classifications

(11:07):
of businesses that fall into them might better fit in other classifications. So what we're
proposing is cleaning up our various bucket use classifications and moving around certain
businesses where they best see fit based on what we've experienced in our regular inquiries
working with business licenses, just working with these various types of businesses.

(11:34):
So here on the screen is a general hierarchy that would be clarified by this amendment
where just for general industry uses, there's basically going from least intensive and commercial
areas like general office all the way up to outdoor assembly manufacturing and processing.

(11:56):
So if we have a use that might not fit inside of our specific classifications, we have these
buckets that we can take a look at when we classify businesses that may not fit into
our zoning codes current classifications.
Moving on to the next item, piggying back on the idea that we had in 2015 where we created

(12:19):
these bucket use classifications, we used to have a lot of school-based classifications
but we condensed them into only a few classifications. Notably, we have one private school use classification
which kind of lost the nuance for smaller type of schools, small training academies.

(12:41):
Additionally, there was sort of an incentive structure in our previous zoning code where
industrial trade schools, so operation of large trucks, cranes, teaching people how
to do that, we incentivize industrial zones and this simplification kind of removed that
incentive structure. There's also some clarifications that are needed for our automobile driving

(13:07):
school and art gallery, art studio use classifications.
So going back to the small school issue, so our current code, if you are Kumon, Mathnasium,
you do language classes, you do CPR, that's really low intensity activity but how our

(13:27):
code reads, those are classified as private schools and those require a use permit in
a wide variety of zones. So what we're taking a look at is creating a training, tutoring
or testing center, 25 or less students use classification which really allows these type
of uses in a wide variety of commercial zones where it makes sense that they would operate.

(13:53):
So a Kumon or a testing center would fit well inside of a typical shopping center environment
or it could work in a business park. So just opening up those opportunities there.
There is a typo on the second slide here. We do want to allow for these type of uses
in the agricultural residential, not AGR, and RD zones in conjunction with an existing

(14:20):
institutional or commercial use during off hours. So what this means, what we're thinking
about, if you have a church in a residential zone and they may have a ministry for reaching
out to the community for language classes or similar, they could operate that during
off days. So if they have services on Sunday, they could operate those classes with up to

(14:44):
25 students on Tuesday or Wednesday. Additionally, for our classifications, this
one really needed us to clearly define them similar to the bucket use classifications.
For the incentive structure for industrial trade schools, we want to have it be at a

(15:05):
lower hearing body level in our industrial agricultural reserve, light industrial and
heavy industrial zones. So inside of those zones for industrial trading schools, if they
have 100 students or less, they're now provided a lower level of review of a minor use permit.
Our art gallery, art studio use classification is pretty vague right now. It just says wherever

(15:30):
you do art activities. So we want to make it clear what exactly that means and what
we're envisioning. So we're making that definition close to what a maker space could be where
you can create small electronics and have limited equipment with limited effect on surrounding
areas because it's a use permitted by writing a wide variety of zones. So we have a specific

(15:53):
use classification for that. Additionally, standards are added for automobile
driving schools. So these are just passenger vehicle driving schools.
Moving on to animal and pet services uses. So do you have any questions thus far? Okay.

(16:22):
Animal and pet services uses. So our zoning code currently only has three use classifications
for animal and pet related businesses. What we found is that they do not encompass a wider
variety of animal based businesses that are out there. Notably, we've run into issues
of classifying doggy daycare as a use. We've also run into issues where wild animals are

(16:47):
not addressed. We've received inquiries for people wanting to keep elephants and giraffes
and that sort of thing. And additionally, we've received some complaints about our current
standards of saying that if you have more than four dogs or four cats, you're subject
to a use permit, which is over $9,000. So what we're proposing on the front of classifications

(17:12):
is five different use classifications. Daytime animal services. So that's doggy daycare,
roaming pet salons, that sort of thing. Animal boarding, which I'll go into more detail on
the next slide. Wild animal sanctuary. So any wild animals that you're keeping, that's
defined in the county code. Veterinarian animal hospital stays the same from our current code.

(17:36):
And then finally zoo. So we have a use classification in case we ever get requests for that. Okay.
So I'll go on to the animal boarding definition. So what we're trying to target here in this
use classification is specifically people who are keeping animals on behalf of others.

(17:56):
So you're doing it as a commercial operation or you're a domestic animal sanctuary. So
you rehabilitate and keep them on your property. This does not affect specifically agricultural
uses. Agricultural dogs, agricultural animals are not counted in this. So this revamped
classification says if you have more than five dogs, five cats, or domestic animals,

(18:22):
and there's certain criteria based on your zone, you can be under this animal boarding
use classification, which is at a lower hearing body level in our agricultural zones as proposed.
So if someone wanted to have, they wanted to have a tortoise rehabilitation center,

(18:42):
they would be subject to a lower level minor use permit rather than paying $9,000 for a
conditional use permit to the zoning administrator.
Just to help explain what you're saying by minor versus major, if you want to call it
that way.
So we have different levels of conditional use permits. I believe there's four levels.

(19:06):
So there's a minor, which is our planning director level. So it's administrative. There's
still public noticing. So we're able to apply conditions to that use permit. The next level
up is to the zoning administrator and then planning commission and then finally board.
So those are our four levels. So really the big difference for like these smaller operations,

(19:27):
$9,000 versus $1,400 for the minor use permit can be a big help for these type of smaller
operations.
And where does the rooster fall into this? We just latestly done a whole different change
in the roosters.
Yeah. So the crowing fowl ordinance, that is completely separate to this. So crowing

(19:51):
fowl has all of its own regulations.
So it's going to be all separate from.
Yeah, this is separate regulation from that. So that's going to the board soon, I believe
in a month.
So this one is primarily on what's considered a domestic animal or pet. And we have a definition
of what a domestic pet is, where your roosters and chickens fall under our livestock.

(20:12):
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Any other questions here?
It was not clearly specified in our code. We just addressed dogs and cats.

(20:33):
So what triggered it? Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
You're automatically a kennel, which was only allowed in certain zone districts and required
a higher level use permit.
Okay.
Yeah. So that's here on this next slide.
I'm not saying I would have four cats, but just in terms of just for clarity, it's more

(20:57):
of the, it would trigger the $9,000 if you had like five, let's say five cats or.
Correct. Yeah. So on this slide, this next one here, I'm addressing personal keeping
of animals here, but on the left hand side is our current allowances. If you have four
dogs, four cats, that's okay. Five dogs, four cats. Now you're subject to being considered

(21:21):
a commercial kennel and you pay $9,000.
So what we're proposing here is a new allowance. If you look at this graph in the pink, you
can have up to 10 dogs, 10 cats or a combination thereof, up to 10. And basically in zones
where there is two acres or one acre lots, typically you'd be subject to that minor

(21:46):
use permit. And then over two acres, those zones, you're just permitted by rights or
agricultural zones, all that stuff. You could have your additional dogs and cats. So additional
allowance there.
What's driving the increase? I mean, 10 dogs on an acre aren't necessarily all that easy

(22:11):
to deal with. I mean, five dogs on an acre aren't necessarily all that easy to deal with.
So what's driving the change?
Sometimes we receive inquiries from people who want to take care of fostered animals
as an example that may want to be on their property. But it is something that we see

(22:34):
from time to time where people just happen to have one or two more dogs and then they
need to pay up $9,000. And that's been an issue from time to time.
So but what you're saying is I could have 10 dogs on an acre for however long I want
to have them on an acre.
You'd be subject to that minor use permit, our typical agricultural residential zone.

(22:58):
So we notify your neighbors to see how you work with your current dogs. And we could
apply appropriate conditions as necessary on where they're situated on the property.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, for the next item here, vehicle use standards. So similar vein to the previous

(23:23):
ones where we're trying to make the changes we made in 2015 better. Our previous zoning
code, we had about 44 use classifications just on vehicles. And then we simplified them
to 18. However, the implementation we did in 2015 wasn't complete. Whereas similar to

(23:44):
the other issues, there's missing definitions, conflicting use classifications, and there's
some uses which should probably be together that we separated for some reason.
So what we're proposing for this use change, which I'll have a graph on in the next few
slides, but reducing the use classifications, defining them clearly, combining use classifications

(24:10):
that naturally work together, boat and RV is the most common one. We currently have
a separate lowering certain reviews and industrial zones where it makes sense and increasing
the level of review for RV and boat storage and LC since we're combining those.

(24:31):
So this table here, these two tables summarize the changes that we're making. So the first
thing I'd like to point out, I'll just flip between these two slides. On the top left
hand corner here, actually on the columns here are what you're doing with your vehicles.

(24:54):
And then the rows are the types of vehicles. So just a matrix of what those things are
doing. On the top left hand corner here, you'll see for automobile repair, we currently
have two classifications, which are based on the intensity of auto repair that you do.
What we're proposing since these types of businesses may want to repair motorcycles or

(25:17):
other types of vehicles, for any sort of vehicle that's 10,000 gross vehicle weight rating
or less, we would just say you can repair any of those subject to the intensity of the
type of repair you're doing. So it allows these repair businesses to have a wider breadth
of a similar type of vehicle for their business. I don't mean to give you a hard time, but

(25:49):
how do you distinguish between minor repair and major repair? That is a good question.
So our zoning code currently is not very clear on that, but we're clarifying the definition
more, but really minor auto repair is more of your jiffy lube type of places. They're
not really going into the motor very often. Major is really your under the hood body repair

(26:14):
painting more intensive use classification, where it would fit better in a more intensive
commercial area rather than being in your shopping center where a jiffy lube could operate without
annoying the surrounding businesses with impacts. So you're combining the two classifications,

(26:35):
minor and major, basically, right? No, so it's saying so if the minor and major is being shared
now between automobiles and small vehicles, so your mopeds, motorcycles, that ATVs, that
sort of thing. So those businesses are able to do that type of operation between the two.

(27:01):
Thank you. Yes, yes, yeah.
Over here in the middle, sales, lease, and rent. Again, on the, on looking at vehicles under
10,000 pounds gross vehicle weight rating, combining your operations regarding those
businesses into one classification. However, we're keeping automobile sales as a separate

(27:27):
classification because of historical precedent for wanting to regulate auto sales and controlling
where they can operate in the county at a higher level of review. So this use classification
combines vehicles that are under 10,000 pounds. You can lease, rent, or sell them,
but it would not include auto sales. It's a little bit of a nuanced one.

(27:55):
Nuanced one there.
And then finally for on the right hand side is combining wholesale and storage of large,
of a, sorry, of automobiles, small vehicles, RVs, and boats. Since those types of businesses often

(28:16):
just store all those things in the same place or do wholesale operations of them. So they're
under one use classification. And then finally here across the bottom for boats and RVs,
they're combined together. So they used to be separated out. Boats and RVs are together and
you get to do whatever you want with boats and RVs across the board since those types of businesses

(28:40):
do all these things in one place usually anyway. And then for large vehicles and heavy equipment,
it's remaining the same for those delineations.
May I have a quick question, sir? Yes.
If you go back to that slide, I'm concerned that you're creating an unfair disadvantage

(29:02):
for electric vehicles. The GMC Hummer right now and the EV Silverado is,
without any additional modifications, tip about 9,500 pounds. You put a rack in there,
you're going to be at over 10K. Are you creating an unfair disadvantage for EV
owners who will not be utilizing as much space in order to fix? Because they don't have, let's say,

(29:28):
as much hood to fix. Their batter packs are heavier. As batter packs are getting bigger
and there's extended longer ranges, now you're having to force folks that will potentially be
fixing vehicles with gross weight of over 10,000 pounds into a large vehicle category.
Yeah, so the 10,000 pounds is based on the DMV's classifications. But on your point about the issue

(29:54):
of these vehicles that are right on the middle, in our zoning code definitions, what we've included
for basically it's non-commercial and commercial vehicles, we provide a way for the planning
director to make a determination on if a vehicle that's right under or right over to be on the
different side of that classification. So we do have allowances for those types of vehicles, but

(30:17):
we did want to create the base definition to be what the DMV does for most of their business. But
we do have an allowance in that sort of scenario. Understood. And then under the gross weight,
you're breaking it down by like class 1, medium duty, class 2, heavy duty at all, or we're just
again basing this primarily on gross weight? Just gross weight 10,000 above 10,000 less,

(30:43):
just making it simple there. Okay, thank you.
Typically for enforcement purposes, if it's clearly a passenger vehicle,
we treat it as such regardless of the weight. Our definition will clarify that a little bit more so
that, yeah, your box trucks and things of that nature are always going to be considered commercial,

(31:08):
but we recognize that big pickup trucks and things of that nature, sometimes depending on whether
they have a tonneau cover or something like that, DMV may classify them one way or another. So there
is some flexibility for that. And then to kind of add to why we're keeping automobiles separate
is we still have a large portions of certain areas of our county where we have the auto

(31:33):
commercial zone district that was very specifically identified in certain areas like around Fulton,
and so really preserving those auto commercial areas, and they do get treated,
the board has historically wanted to treat those areas differently than other types of
vehicle sales and repair. Understood, thank you. Okay, any other questions?

(32:00):
Okay, moving on to the next one, which is drive-through reservoir space. So part of this
update, we worked extensively with different county departments, and one of them was the
Department of Transportation, and they raised the issue that our current standards for
drive-through reservoirs, so the amount of space that basically is from where you pick up your food

(32:24):
at a drive-through window and where it's clearly delineated drive-through, is too short to
accommodate certain businesses. Our current standards say that for food or beverage-based
businesses, there's a 180-foot reservoir space minimum, and for all other businesses, it's 60

(32:50):
feet. So generally, the amount of space you have for your vehicle plus the area in front and the
back is about 20 feet. So that would be about nine vehicles for queuing and three for other businesses.
Our Department of Transportation, in recognizing this concern of vehicles backing up onto public

(33:12):
streets and adjacent property, they did a study in 2020 of different businesses to see what the
queue lengths were at our local sort of higher traffic type of drive-through businesses, and
in addition to that, they reviewed a study by studies at the national and regional level to see

(33:33):
if those results were in line with those standards. So after reviewing those standards,
the Department of Transportation came to us and had this recommendation, which is our current
proposal today, which is for this more detailed version of the required reservoir space for

(33:58):
businesses, which is based on the 85th percentile of drive-through queues.
So for restaurants with drive-throughs that primarily serve beverages, so coffee shops,
that's 14 vehicles. For restaurants with drive-throughs that do not primarily serve
beverages, 12 vehicles. Standalone car washes, 12 vehicles. Accessory car washes at nine

(34:27):
vehicles. Financial institutions like banks at six vehicles, and office use type of drive-throughs
which are typically pharmacies would be at three vehicles. So there's an increase and different
stepping for these types of businesses. Of course, these businesses are not all the same. Some have

(34:52):
more traffic than others. So the Department of Transportation would be provided the ability
through these applications we receive to allow for a reduction in the reservoir space based on
engineering justification that's provided to us. So if a business has different locations in our

(35:14):
area and they all have lower queuing lengths than what's in our standard and they provide that
information the Department of Transportation, they'd be able to take that into consideration
and allow that lower queue length without getting an additional special development permit
for deviations. The change also includes a codification of a queue management plan for

(35:38):
these types of businesses. So when they, if in the event they do go over the reservoir space for the
business, they would have the queue management plan to outline where they would direct traffic
and queuing if they do exceed that reservoir space. Additionally, if it is a use that's not
listed in that previous slide, the Department of Transportation would be able to request for

(36:03):
study and justification to figure out what would be the best queue length for that type of business.
Yes.
Just have a question. That previous slide talked about banking. Does that banking cover the
parking lot drive-through ATMs that aren't in a bank? They're basically in a parking lot?

(36:24):
Yeah, they would cover that, yeah.
So it'd be six cars in the queue of 120 feet?
Yeah, if let's say Bank of America, they have these all over the place and there's not always
six cars there. They could just provide DOT with the information, hey, this is the amount of

(36:45):
vehicles we get on a daily basis. It doesn't necessitate six and they can reduce that.
Okay, thank you.
And that's for drive-up ones, which is different than a lot of them that we see in like shopping
center parking lots are actually walk-up kiosks and walk-up kiosks are dealt with differently than

(37:06):
a drive-through kiosk or drive-through teller would be, if that makes sense.
I can see in my mind four different ones in my general neighborhood that are both.
Yeah.
And Bank of America, perfect example, right off of Elkhorn,
is got both, drive-through and walk-up. So that's why I was asking the question.

(37:28):
And then this would be for new drive-through businesses, existing ones, only if there's
like a significant change in their use. So if it was a financial institution and it's going to a
Dutch Bros, obviously they would need to bring it up to standards. But if it was just switching
between different bank entities, then the existing standards they have in place would be fine.

(37:50):
Okay.
Next item is service yards.
Sorry, Mr. Jamal, I had another question.
Yes.
Related to that. I was hoping you can kind of share with me or Ms. Hartman.
When we're proposing an extension of more queuing lanes for a vehicular type of business,

(38:17):
but we then overlaid that with other specific use planning, North Watt specific plan, for example,
that is designed for transit-oriented development because of high propensity or areas of pedestrian
accidents, we're telling businesses that have drive-throughs, you need to be able to accommodate
more cars. But just in case you go to a place that has a transit-oriented development plan

(38:41):
or a specific use case that is disincentivizing businesses to not have as many cars,
now you kind of have a juxtaposition of two policies that are going against one another.
I specifically remember in this dais, I don't think that these are the same folks,
but we turned down a Popeyes on North Watt because that had a drive-through, a Popeyes.

(39:06):
Okay. It's a business that a lot of the community members wanted to support.
We turned it down because in the name of transit-oriented development.
Now we go to Arden Arcade and use, this is a 2020 study, now we use in and out as an example,
and there's still people walking in and out of, pun intended, across the streets from the Arden
Arcade mall. Now we're saying that you're going to be having to have more vehicle queuing,

(39:31):
understand the name of levels of service and traffic and vehicle miles traveled against
outdated methodology by DOT, but there seems to be just a disconnect of are we trying to be
a car, less than a car-centric type of organization in highly impacted areas and
encourage the use of walking and biking versus now you want to invite new businesses, but then

(39:57):
you have to require them to have longer queues. That's probably a way. Again, I'm having a little
bit of a disconnect here. So how would you overlay that? Certainly. That's a very good question. So
currently in some of those areas, because of the transit corridors that they're in or because of a
special planning area, they prohibit drive-throughs. Your commission, the planning commission did see

(40:22):
an update to one of those plan areas to allow drive-throughs with approval of a use permit
because it was prohibited in that area. So that is one of the things that happens is in some of
those areas we just don't typically allow for the drive-throughs. That being said, we have recently

(40:43):
hired a position called our infill coordinator this past year and they have initiated an infill,
it's not a council, what is it called? There's a subcommittee for infill
and they are looking at each of the county's 14 identified corridors within our general plan

(41:09):
and coming up with some policies that would be specific to those corridors and some of the,
you know, within a buffer of those corridors. And so within those areas they may have different
standards, not just for drive-throughs, but for what types of uses in general do we want to see
along those areas that we are looking to have more of a mixed use, higher density, walkable

(41:34):
environment. So there may be a different list of allowable uses, there may be different types
of development standards for those areas that are currently in the works. And so hopefully
that will get rid of kind of the discord that you're mentioning right now.
Yeah, I would, I mean in lieu of a queuing management plan, if you have a good actor

(41:56):
of a business, good actor or actress of the business who is, again, not trying to create
more traffic by providing more access for folks who are not in single occupancy vehicles, I hope
that we would be at least flexible and recognize that that's the case and not inadvertently
encourage them to do the opposite, right? Especially if it's going to be in a transit corridor plan,

(42:19):
which again, I believe there's going to be a disconnect there. So I really do look forward to
seeing that kind of come to fruition. Sorry for interrupting. Thank you.
That's good comment, yeah. Okay, any other questions on this one?
Okay, so next one is on service yards in the industrial office park or MP zone.

(42:46):
So our current definition of service yard workshop is quite broad in the type of businesses that
encompasses. So it says that it's used for office storage yard or maintenance shop of a garage for
service use. This use is currently prohibited in our MP zone. However, if you kind of drive around

(43:08):
our MP zones, there's a lot of these types of buildings that you'll see on the screen,
where there's an office in the front, and then there's roll up doors in the back,
where it really works well if you're someone who is doing a contractor business for landscaping,

(43:28):
pool cleaning, that sort of thing. There's a lot of businesses already exist that sort of
operate as a service yard in the MP zone. And when they come in through business licenses,
we often see that they are erroneously classified as an office type of use. And realistically,
they're doing all this stuff in the back, and the building is designed for that sort of use.

(43:55):
So how did this situation came to be? It seems like there was some nuance that was
lost in our previous zoning code on the types of businesses that could be allowed in the MP zone.
So what we want to do is to change it to be permitted by right, as long as the type of
operation is completely indoors. So these types of businesses, if you drive around, they're usually

(44:22):
in Northgate Boulevard in Natomas, between Truxell and Northgate on the north side of 80,
and then Gold River, there's some along Coloma Road, you'll see these type of buildings here.
So as long as they operate completely indoors, and there's also limitations that we're proposing
for how they store their company vehicles outside, as long as they meet those standards,

(44:49):
they would be permitted by right. If they need more vehicles, then they'd need to come in for
a minor use permit to allow for more vehicles to be stored outside. But generally, we want to allow
these types of businesses, landscape contractors, to be permitted in this zone where many already

(45:09):
operate. The next item is the temporary uses section. So it's quite a big one for us here.
The existing section in our code, the big issue that comes about when staff is using this section
is that it was largely copied over from our pre-2015 zoning code, and there's some conventions

(45:32):
that don't match with our current code. So it's quite a bit hard to read if your mind is in our
current code, and there's a lot of outdated requirements that are from that previous
edition of our zoning code. Just an example of some things that are missing from our current

(45:52):
temporary uses section is that if you want to store a pod in your driveway, let's say you're
cleaning up your house or moving, we currently say you can have it for seven days, and then after that
it's $1,400 for a use permit. So wanting to be realistic in the type of temporary uses that occur

(46:12):
today. So what we're proposing is rewriting the section to match our current sort of conception
of how our zoning code is being written. There's many standards that are staying, there's some that
are going, and there's different ways of being how these are going to be regulated. So we're looking

(46:35):
at permitting them based on the active type of use on the ground at the property rather than just
zone, since there might be different types of operations that don't match in the zone so that
they're in. There might be a convenience store in the residential zone that may want to have
some event. Currently our code does not account for that sort of use.

(47:00):
One of the things I'd like to highlight here is a new allowance for temporary outdoor operations.
So if a business or institutional use like a church has a catastrophic disaster
or they're undergoing a large amount of renovation where they cannot use the space,

(47:21):
this would allow for a new allowance for this type of operation to occur outdoors temporarily,
so a church could operate outdoors if their worship area burned to the ground.
Our current standards do not have provisions for that sort of temporary use.

(47:42):
An additional allowance I'd like to highlight on the example here on the screen, you see a picture
here of the Midway of Fun Carnival at the Florin Mall Shopping Center. Currently our zoning code
says you can only have temporary uses of up to temporary uses not specified, which is a term we
use. It includes most carnivals, concessions, events, that sort of thing. Those are only

(48:07):
limited 10 days a year and in order to incentivize greater use of these underutilized parcels in our
corridors, what we're proposing is that for these larger shopping centers with a lot of empty space,
so over 20 acres, they can have these temporary events for up to 30 days a year so we can
have more activation of these empty spaces until they're committed to a permanent use.

(48:35):
So really our Florin Mall Center would be one of the eligible areas, Country Club,
Plaza, and Arden Arcade so we can have more activity at these areas.
Some other miscellaneous things that are being addressed, a rewritten section on tents,

(48:58):
we have tents at a very high level of review right now if you want to keep them up on your property,
so making it be more realistic how tents are being used for businesses. So if a business
wants to have a tent outside for canopy for eating outdoors, they could have that during the summer
months. Enhanced standards for temporary occupancy in RVs, so this is if your house is undergoing

(49:23):
renovation or is being reconstructed or is being built, you can temporarily live in an RV
as long as the building official deems that your house is not habitable or it's still being
constructed. For the point I brought up earlier on pods, more allowances, so if you want to go to up

(49:46):
to 30 days or have two pods, you can do that with a temporary use permit, so there's a pathway there
for a cheaper permit to have longer term storage. Additionally, we're proposing a new major temporary
use permit which is for these larger type of projects where we have more than two hours of

(50:08):
staff work or we distribute to more than two agencies. Currently our temporary use for it's
about 270 bucks and that's the same cost for someone who wants to do like a 500 person festival
and we lose our money on that, so we want to be able to get more cost recovery, not complete cost

(50:28):
recovery, a little bit more on those type of permits that take more of our time. Additionally, just some
clarification on a new standards for staging areas which are currently non-addressed in our code, so
if you have a someone that's building a subdivision and they need to store their items or implement

(50:49):
a construction crew, they might have a lot off-site. We have standards for that now included in our code.
And the hot ticket item here for temporary uses is mobile food facilities and compact
mobile food operators, so your food trucks, your food carts. So currently in our code, before I

(51:11):
start, I'd like to note for planning regulations, we cannot regulate these type of businesses if
they're within public right-of-way, so if you have a food operator, food truck operator or food
concessions vendor that's inside of like a bus stop area, planning, we cannot have regulations

(51:34):
on that. Our environmental management department still has regulations on all these type of
businesses, but for us, we can't regulate that. We can only regulate these businesses if they're on
private property. So what we're proposing is some standards for their operation,
like how they need to maintain certain setbacks. One of the things is that we're proposing is that

(51:58):
they would need to maintain a 300-foot separation from other food concessions vendors that are on
private property, so they can't really cluster in one area, there'd be separation distance there.
Again, we can't measure that from those that are on public right-of-way.
And additionally, for these types of businesses, to sort of take into account our brick and mortar

(52:24):
restaurants, if someone wants to operate a food truck, let's say, and they are within 300 feet
of a brick and mortar restaurant, they'd have to obtain a letter of support from that brick
and mortar restaurant in order to go through our process. If they're unable to get that
letter of support, it would go for the CPACs for a recommendation on their permit.

(52:50):
I kind of asked some questions. Yes. I want to go back to the pods. So you're saying that you
want to allow pods to be left in residential areas longer than the existing, what, 72 hours?
So currently it's seven days, so if someone's unpacking that, it would go up to 30 days,

(53:15):
and the ability to have two with a temporary use permit, so that's about 280 bucks. If they want
to go beyond that, then it would be subject to our cargo container standards, which is the existing
1,400 permit, which we'd see it as a permanent use on the property, and that's subject to
moving it so it's in the back of the property and other standards.

(53:40):
I'm baffled by the change, considering, you know, the reality of the fact that those things are in
place in a lot of places for a lot longer, and enforcement doesn't seem to make a difference.
So now we're going to give them 30 days before enforcement can do anything about it?
Yeah. Most of these tend to be for those moving companies where you're getting ready to

(54:07):
move someplace, and they'll drop off a pod. Yeah. Usually in someone's driveway. In someone's
driveway, and they'll come and pick it up, or you're doing sometimes some major house renovations,
and you might get a different type of pod set up. That's more of what these are focused on.
If they actually are using a cargo container, we have a separate section on cargo containers

(54:30):
that limits the number they can have and where they can be located. We would treat these pods
the same way if they're going to be there longer than the 30 days. Okay. I understand you don't do
enforcement, but it's just an issue in anybody's neighborhood that you go around. I mean, you can

(54:52):
go down here to Rio Linda, go down here to Antelope, go down to Alberta. It's an issue
in terms of 72 or 7 days or 30 days. You know, some of them are there for years. So it's more
of an enforcement issue. I just hate seeing opening it up to a longer period of time,

(55:16):
but I understand what you're trying to do. The other issue is your food trucks
and your temporary food distribution. Lack of another term, pop-ups. I'm sure you've all
been dealing with the hugest issues. I mean, my last supervisor's meeting, it took up about a

(55:39):
third of the supervisor's meeting because the brick and mortar folks are done with food trucks
and pop-ups that park on private property and end up staying there for long periods of times.
This 300-foot issue with existing brick and mortar stores. I'm going right down here on

(56:05):
Elkhorn Boulevard by Main and Elkhorn and ask the McDonald's who has to deal with the guy who sits
in the old Rite Aid parking lot. How you say that they got to get a permit to do that.
How they dealt with it, they don't. Yeah, if they cannot obtain a letter of support from like

(56:29):
that McDonald's because corporate just doesn't want to do that, then it would go to the CPACs
for recommendations. So the CPAC would be able to discuss the situation of that business and
make a recommendation. And then if neither wants them there? It would be recommended denial to the
zoning administrator at that point. Yeah. To your point, Commissioner Varga, yes, the board has

(56:56):
been talking about these and actually directed our staff to come up with some provisions for
private property. Right now, the mobile ones that are the actual food trucks have kind of an
exemption in our ordinance and so that's been really hard for us and for code enforcement to
regulate. For the ones that are doing the compact mobile food operators or from a stand, we do have

(57:23):
a provision in our zoning code right now that requires they get a temporary use permit from
the planning commission and the board indicated that that's too high of a level and so that's why
we're looking at treating both the food trucks and the compact food vendors essentially the same
with just a regular temporary use permit at an administrative level with some standards.

(57:47):
But if your commission feels that these standards are not strong enough or the distances
or are not adequate to protect our brick and mortars, those are
are good comments for us to bring forward to our board as well. I can tell you for a fact,

(58:08):
especially if you go down in that area, it's more of a bigger issue in the high traffic corridor areas
than it is, I guess, within the city of Sacramento or in downtown county or anywhere else.
It's an issue that's run most of those businesses out. Most of them are gone because they can't

(58:28):
compete with that. I just believe we need to think about these a little bit differently than
we have done in the past. Nothing wrong with food trucks, not an issue with food trucks that are
properly done and properly permitted, but I'm more concerned about allowing even anywhere close

(58:53):
to some of these things to the brick and mortar stores. We just won't have them very much longer
in that general area. If you drive down that road tonight, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.
So just whatever you can do to try to bolster that piece of it
will make a big difference, at least in those areas down there. Thank you.

(59:15):
Okay, any other questions, comments here?
Okay, next one on a completely different note. We're updating our death care use classifications.

(59:37):
So death care includes funeral establishments, crematories, that sort of thing. So one of the
issues that we run into is that our current death care classifications do not account for death care
of pets. So if people want to do pet cemeteries, that type of thing, we're allowing it now to be

(01:00:00):
at the same classification that we consider for those same death care of humans. So if you do a
cemetery, it would be treated the same per our zoning code for both pets and humans. Additionally,
we're proposing lowering the level for funeral establishments without crematories, so just
funeral establishments. They're currently at quite a high level of review. If you want to do it,

(01:00:25):
it would need to be planning commission in our light commercial zones, lowering it to administrative
permit given they don't really have a lot of impacts on surrounding areas. I'm also lowering
level, one level in our business professional office zone. Additionally, our death care standards
for crematories do not account for modern, new modern sort of use for reducing bodies. So

(01:00:55):
there's something called alkaline hydrolysis, image there on the right, where there's a big
sort of metal container. You put a body in and it applies heat, water, and pressure to
reduce the body to powdered substances. Our current code is specifically for sort of your crematory

(01:01:18):
type of use with fire involved. So generalizing it for any sort of advancement in this field where
any reduction of the human body to this use is treated the same as a crematory use, given that
there's still hazardous materials sort of considerations, no matter the way that you

(01:01:39):
reduce a body.
Sir, would that require additional vetting by the sewer, the water district to make sure that those
types of effluent are safely gone to the wastewater systems? Definitely. So any sort of crematory use,

(01:02:01):
so that type of use they'd need, it would be a use permit to the board in most cases,
and it would be distributed to those departments for appropriate comments. Thank you.
Okay, next one is battery energy storage system facilities, which I'll refer to as BESS,
to be clear here. So BESS facilities that we're taking a look at are those that have a large

(01:02:27):
array of electrochemical devices, so batteries that charge or collect energy from the grid or
power plant and discharge them at a later time. So as we were aware, we've had some projects that
have come in with BESS facilities. Previously in 2023, the planning director made a determination

(01:02:49):
that the BESS facilities are substantially similar to our commercial Solar II facilities,
because we don't have a use classification for BESS right now. So we applied those standards
the best we can. In addition to that, we applied industrial standards to those uses that are more
stringent and also would be subject to a use permit to the board. So what we're proposing here

(01:03:14):
is codifying standards for BESS facilities, given that we're compelled to by our Climate Action
Plan, in addition to the SMUD 2030 Zero Carbon Plan. So the targeting of the facilities for this
use classification is for utility scale BESS. There are smaller accessory BESS for businesses,

(01:03:40):
so we recently had an auto zone that just wanted to have a battery backup that's technically
classified as a BESS facility. That's not something that we're regulating here. It's
the primary use of BESS. So we did work with our staff who's knowledgeable in BESS facilities
and updated and created standards for BESS facilities that are proposed to be codified.

(01:04:03):
There are some that are still taken over from the commercial II standards that our planning
director determined before. I'd like to note that we are permitting them in less zones than the
planning director's determination, so removing certain zones that might be closer to residential
areas. So it's still subject to a use permit to the board, and it would be in our agricultural,

(01:04:25):
interim agricultural, light industrial, and heavy industrial zones. I'd also like to note that these
type of uses, they locate near existing substations or other electoral infrastructure, so they're
typically in specific areas with that existing setup already there. So recently the Arboleda BESS

(01:04:46):
facility came in on Ishinger, which is near a substation in the city of Elk Grove, and then
the Coyote Creek solar facility was near a major transmission line heading into the city of Elk
Grove. Can you maybe just kind of go into a little bit about how primary use is defined, and then
what other uses are, you know, maybe more commonly associated with those uses? You might have heard

(01:05:17):
the term behind the meter. So behind the meter means that basically the BESS facility or battery
backup storage is being just used for that specific business. So in that case, it would be accessory to
the primary business. What this regulation is focusing on are the ones where the primary business

(01:05:40):
is actually just storing power, selling it back to the grid or other entities at a future time.
Does that kind of help, or do you need kind of a little bit more on accessory use?
No, I think that that gets my, that answers it. So when it's not a primary use, it's really just

(01:06:05):
something that is attached. It's a secondary use to the business itself. Correct, yeah.
Thank you. And in those cases, there still might be review by the fire department,
environmental management department as part of their building permits, or if they trigger
a discretionary entitlement, it'll be reviewed as part of that. But it would be treated much

(01:06:30):
differently than these where their primary focus is just the BESS storage, because given the amount
of battery capacity that's involved with some of these, there have been some issues in other
jurisdictions with fires, explosions, things of that nature. So we're treating them quite a bit

(01:06:51):
differently than when it's just a small secondary battery for a business. And do you, sorry to
follow up, and do you have an idea as to like the scale or the range of kind of possible scales for
these primary BESS uses? I mean, are we, my gut tells me that we're going to be looking at more
of these in the coming years as the grid kind of modernizes. Are we looking, are we preparing for,

(01:07:19):
you know, the different kind of possible scales of these? Or are they all going to be kind of,
you know, big facilities? Or are we looking at kind of more of a distributed model?
They could range in scale. A lot of it's going to depend on the type of substation that they're
near. They also need to usually have a purchase power agreement of some nature, either with

(01:07:47):
SMUD, PG, or some other provider. And so sometimes that kind of regulates the size based
on what that purchase agreement contract is going to look at. We could see more of these
potentially at a smaller size related to things like data centers, which we are not specifically

(01:08:13):
addressing in great detail in this package because we have a recent working group that
we're working with, with our sustainability division under general services, along with
our long-range staff and economic development on coming up with some specific criteria for
data centers because we are seeing a big increase in those and they have a huge, a very significant

(01:08:39):
energy need. And so as those things kind of change, this could be an area where we adopt it now
and then we just have to keep following it and doing our kind of typical fix-it packages as
either technology changes and gets safer or as either state or federal regulations kind of provide

(01:09:00):
more of a standardization. Thank you. And again, obviously your home solar battery
backup isn't part of all this, right? No, that's kind of what we refer to as like behind the meter
sort of thing. Yeah, you were just talking about behind the meter for businesses. I didn't know
they were equated the same for homes. Yeah, it's also for homes and multifamily, yeah.

(01:09:24):
Those tend to be a very small, small unit, yeah.
Any other questions here? Yeah, I have a couple of follow-up questions if you don't mind. I was
wondering if you guys considered Assembly Bill 205, the 2022 bill, and kind of discussing this
this requirement under that provision, you know, large-scale utility provider, or large-scale

(01:09:49):
utility and anything over 50 megawatts can just opt into like the CEC purview as opposed to the
local jurisdiction. So the Energy Commission would be the lead sequel agency for that type of
project. It's to kind of alleviate the burdens because, you know, it was part of the GO-Biz
initiative by the governor to kind of incentivize more of these types of battery storage solutions.

(01:10:13):
So I was wondering, you know, if they were to opt into that kind of scenario,
it would kind of kind of put some of our restrictions in certain areas kind of,
I don't know, in a little bit of a friction with state law. So that's one thing. That same thing
with like SB 38, which would require certain certain facilities to have like fire suppression.

(01:10:33):
And then the last thing I want to say, as you mentioned, Ms. Hartman, kind of in the future
fix-it approach, you know, we're slowly shifting away from lithium-ion batteries as we go into
solid-state batteries. This is going to be the technology and the data has shown that the fire
risk goes down from like 20 to 15 percent of what is currently in lithium-ion. And so especially

(01:10:57):
when we have the 2030 plan, which has very stringent, again, very, very high reaching rules
that a number of our developers and a number of our organizations around the county are required
to abide by, if you're not allowing for solid-state batteries that by the genuine, you know,
kind of the, just the design of technology being water-based away from highly urbanized

(01:11:24):
areas because of the restriction that we had artificially put in these guidelines,
kind of hard for SMART to get their 2030 plan in places, right? And so I would really hate for
communities, especially disadvantaged community of colors that tend to carry a lot of these like
environmental issues, traditionally speaking, by our land use types of decisions to, again,

(01:11:49):
inadvertently be disadvantaged because they can no longer have battery energy storage solutions,
especially if they're using solid-state batteries because our county system disallowed that because
we're basing it off of risks of lithium-ion, which again is technology that my mom and my
grandmothers used. And so again, I'd like to encourage the staff to maybe look at potentially

(01:12:11):
providing the planning director some flexibility and some leniency with the technology improves,
in addition to, again, that layer that certain projects can just use the energy commission's
kind of purview to just say let's not artificially create like this electrical barrier, especially
communities that need it most, because these are the types of communities that do not have the
ability to buy Tesla Powerwall banks, right, that are going to be more reliant for the grid,

(01:12:38):
and they're typically not the ones that are going to be having, you know, solar panels,
especially when we're at an M3.0. So thank you, I appreciate you guys hearing the feedback.
Okay, so the next update here is on accessory parking and storage of commercial vehicles. So

(01:13:02):
this is on accessory use, so it is in conjunction with an existing business. So this is more,
if you think about a Pizza Hut, if they have a delivery car, that's the type of vehicle regulating,
or Walmart has delivery vans, that's the type of thing we're regulating here. So our current
standards are based on zones, when there could be different businesses in different zones that don't

(01:13:27):
match their conceptual zones. So again, the prototypical idea of like a convenience store
could be in a residential zone, so making it based on use, so they have the same allowances.
Our current standards also do not account for commercial and company vehicles in our agricultural

(01:13:52):
use properties. That's been a common issue, where if you have like a big pear farm,
technically our code says you can't have your commercial vehicle to haul your pears out,
and that would be not permitted, or it would require a use permit in order to do that.

(01:14:12):
Additionally, our standards for commercial and industrial storage of vehicles are kind of sparse.
So in creating this amendment, we work closely with our code enforcement division to create
more enforceable and reasonable standards, which take into account the type of business that's
being affected and the purpose of the zone that it's located in.

(01:14:40):
So for agricultural uses, what we're proposing is that at the current time, the way it's currently
written in your packet is that if it has at least five acres dedicated to agricultural uses, then
you could have your any vehicle weight agricultural equipment or agricultural

(01:15:03):
vehicles that are road legal, so hauling the pears again. We did receive feedback from our Delta
CMAQ and our Southeast Area CPAC, whether you did want to see it at a higher acreage minimum,
so we're currently looking at 20 acres as being the minimum size or having a Williamson Act

(01:15:25):
contract in order to have these storage of vehicles, given that we don't want to incentivize
hobby farms that don't really need these large commercial vehicles to have it there, so sort of
preserving the intent of going for these larger commercial agricultural operations.

(01:15:47):
For commercial and institutional uses, so typical shopping centers or offices,
what we're proposing is two company vehicles that are stored on site.
This takes into account the average, so if you have a big office complex, chances are not all
of them will have two company vehicles there, so kind of going with what these businesses could

(01:16:11):
have. For every 10,000 square feet, over 10,000 square feet of space they have, they could have
one additional vehicle, so if you have 20,000, then you could have three vehicles. Any additional
up to 10 is subject to a minor use permit, and it's still subject to our parking guidelines that

(01:16:32):
we have, and in industrial areas, there's no limitation on numbers, and that's what we'd
like for them to store their vehicles. On the flip side of the number of vehicles you can have
is sort of where it can be stored on the property and what the screening is, so for our commercial

(01:16:53):
institutional uses, specifying in which zones where it can be stored within the buildable area
of the property, if it's like these more intensive commercial vehicles,
so just making it be based on zones so we can fit the look of the zone that it's in.
I'd also like to note that we are loosing the standards for any sort of storage of vehicles

(01:17:21):
that are under 10,000 pounds, so currently there's some language where if you store,
if you have a business and you like your pizza hut and you put your delivery vehicle within the
front setback of 50 feet where there's already parking, technically that's non-compliant,
so just saying, hey, it makes sense to store those vehicles and no one would see that as an issue

(01:17:46):
within the setback areas if it's a typical passenger or light fleet vehicle.
Mr. Germano, is there a typical number or ratio of number of allowed trucks or like heavy duty
vehicles per like hundreds or per acreage of agricultural use? So for example, if I,

(01:18:11):
South County area, right, let's just say South of Cameron Road, I own a pear farm,
also operate a trucking business. What's the, help me out with that dilemma, how would it work?
Yeah, so this specifically covers accessory storage again, so it has to be related to that
agricultural use, so it has to be related to that pear farm. If they are renting it out to other

(01:18:37):
people that are storing their vehicles there, that would be a completely separate use classification
that's not permitted in our agricultural zones. Understood, thank you.
Any other questions on this item?
Okay, next one is on hazardous waste and materials. It's continuing on the theme of working

(01:19:04):
with our different departments. We work closely with our environmental management department to
create these different standards which I'm discussing here. So currently our zoning code,
if you are a business that stores hazardous materials, there's two use classifications you
can go in, warehousing or hazardous waste treatment storage, and that's very different

(01:19:28):
uses on those two spectrums. So warehousing is permitted in a large variety of zones,
hazardous waste treatment is use permit to the board and only in the limited zones. So what we
want to do is to create a use classification which clearly allows for this type of use
subject to certain standards. Additionally, when working with environmental management,

(01:19:51):
because of a business that could be storing these materials, they could be considered as a warehouse,
they're just permitted by right, so sometimes there might be a registration issue with
environmental management where they don't have the appropriate registration or regulation
on file for these type of businesses. So trying to fix that issue.

(01:20:11):
So what we're proposing are two new use classifications to encompass the storage and
distribution of hazardous materials. So hazardous material storage and distribution and extremely
hazardous material storage. So hazardous material storage and distribution triggers EMDs permitting

(01:20:33):
requirements, but it doesn't trigger the California Accidental Release Prevention Program,
which is more intensive, sort of hazardous materials in larger quantities with more
things of issue. So if you are a business that let's say you are storing and distributing propane

(01:20:54):
tanks, you would be able to be classified under the hazardous material storage and distribution
use classification. Extremely hazardous material storage, again, the triggering of California State
Accidental Release Prevention Program requirements. Just to sort of visualize what that type of use
is, here is a picture of the suburban propane facility in Elk Grove, which is two gigantic

(01:21:25):
suburban propane facility in Elk Grove, which is two gigantic tanks of propane that are about,
I think, 12 million gallons. That's an example of an extremely hazardous material storage facility.
We don't have one in our current jurisdiction, but we want to account for that sort of use.

(01:21:45):
So there's those two levels that we're proposing. Hazardous material storage and distribution,
again, if you're like a propane distribution facility, just for giving out propane tanks to
regular public, you're subject to a use permit to the zoning administrator if you're within 300 feet
of different sensitive receptors like residential zones or public parks. If you do meet the

(01:22:09):
separation distance, you'd be permitted by right in our light industrial and heavy industrial zones,
and then subject to a minor use permit in our industrial office park zone. In our general
commercial zone, it would always require a use permit for review. Extremely hazardous material
storage would be subject to quite large setbacks and distance separation. It'd only be permitted

(01:22:36):
in our heavy industrial zone, so really targeting this more potentially dangerous use classification.
Okay, questions on this one?
Okay, moving on to agricultural uses and schools. So for this one, we worked with our agricultural

(01:23:00):
commissioner. So in 2018, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation issued
regulations restricting the application and timing of pesticide application within a quarter mile of
a school site or child daycare. These standards were further strengthened in 2024 with AB 1864.

(01:23:21):
Our agricultural commissioner, we worked with them and they emphasized the need for
protecting agricultural resources from schools that may want to site inside of agricultural zones.
So what we're proposing is that for these sort of educational uses, private educational uses,

(01:23:44):
it would get bumped up to a board level review. So it goes to a much higher level of review in
the agricultural zones and they're subject to certain findings. The two notable findings,
first one is that it doesn't, it's not within a quarter mile of sort of high value agricultural
land. And then the second one is that it doesn't affect existing agricultural operations where they

(01:24:10):
wouldn't be able to control their pests by putting in pesticides. So they aren't put under those,
that unneeded additional standards. I'd also like to note that we are not including public schools
in here because public schools do have the ability to override our zoning code with a

(01:24:30):
vote of their school board. So this specifically targets what we have the ability to regulate.
Yes. Can you just compare those buffer zones to current residential?

(01:24:53):
We don't have buffer zones between schools and residential right now.
They're cultural spraying, sorry.
Like a distance from residential, I'm not aware. I don't have that off top my head right now.
Okay. Maybe we can come come back with that at some point.

(01:25:15):
Yeah. It's just an interesting, I mean, if we can't spray within a quarter mile of a school,
because there's a concentration of children for, you know, probably, I'm assuming, very legitimate
reasons. Just curious as to like, what's the buffer zone requirement for, you know, where
these children live? And we all live. Yeah. I do know that the agricultural commissioner

(01:25:37):
regulates pesticide uses. Folks have to get permits. And so some of it might depend on
permits. And so some of it might depend on the type of pesticide being used and how it's being
applied. We also tend to look at some of that buffering issue as we approve new

(01:26:02):
developments at times within those existing agricultural areas. But we can get you more
information for our, when we bring it back to you.
Okay. The next item is body art. So currently our zoning codes, tattoo shop use classifications,

(01:26:28):
that's the name of it in our code, originates from 1980. And it has definitions that are quite
outdated and are not matching the state body art act, which has more comprehensive definitions for
piercing, branding, different types of modern body art uses. Additionally, we've received over time

(01:26:52):
numerous comments about the high costs and level of review applied to tattoo shops, body art
facilities. Currently where they want to most situate in, in the light commercial and general
commercial zones are subject to a use permit to the zoning administrator. So that's about $9,000
for that use permit. So what we're proposing here is addressing those two main issues. So first,

(01:27:22):
updating our definitions to match those state regulations and lowering it from the use permit
to a minor use permit, the administrative level in our light commercial, general commercial zones
where most of these want to situate. So it's still subject to neighbor notification conditioning,
and it allows us to direct these businesses to the environmental management department so we can

(01:27:46):
ensure that they're getting those appropriate permits from them as well while lowering the
review still. So and also in our industrial zones where they don't really want to situate,
but lowering at one level from the planning commission level permit. An ancillary change
here is allowing it in conjunction with beauty salons. So like a permanent makeup,

(01:28:14):
the eyebrow tattooing, that's a common thing, just saying that that's a permitted
use, allowing it there and clarifying that standard and allowing it in conjunction with
art galleries and art studios as an exhibition since that's something we've actually received
inquiries on. Questions on this one?

(01:28:39):
Okay, so this table just outlines our history of the regulation of our body art classification.
So you can see it's changed different levels and had different standards over time.
In 2015, we did lower it to the administrative level, but we did have distance separation.
In 2017, that was deemed to be unconstitutional through the court case Anderson v. City of Hermosa

(01:29:04):
Beach. So we removed that distance separation requirement, and then it was bumped up by the
board to the use permit to the zoning administrator, which is a $9,000 permit.
And what we found is that it's caused quite a high barrier for these type of businesses,
given the high cost and the time frame. So lowering it down just to be a minor use permit.

(01:29:32):
Okay, next one is a new Title IV. So this is our interim zone classification. So
Title IV was introduced in 1972, and 1977, we worked on it during that time period.
It holds our zones that were in effect prior to 1972. So we create our modern zones in 72,

(01:29:54):
but we didn't get rid of all of our old zones. So we just said,
we're going to put it in this appendix, and we'll get rid of it at some point in the future.
50 years later, it's still here. So what we're proposing is starting a winding down of this
classification, this entire title, because it has a lot of duplicative or unnecessary

(01:30:16):
standards for these zones, which are still applied to a good portion of the county.
Some of the changes we're proposing, notably in our agricultural areas,
a lot of them use the A zones, A-, there's the modern agricultural AG zones. So just saying,

(01:30:37):
hey, you have A-20, you're AG-20, simplifies things because there's not really much
to differentiate them right now. There's also our interim residential zones,
they're applied in some communities. And some of our other older zones are just saying,
go to our modern zones. There's just one table you can go to, old zone, new zone,

(01:31:02):
simplifies things significantly. Additionally, we're proposing some additional allowances
where we can begin the phase out of our plan development and county-initiated
plan development combining zones. The notable interim zones, one of them is our residential

(01:31:23):
estate zone or RE zone, which is applied to the Sierra Oaks Vista community and other
plan developments and Bayerford Heights in Arden Arcade. It was a special zone we created for
sort of the large setbacks estate style living that you see out there. So simplifying those
standards. So it's just putting inside of our new format with some clarifications.

(01:31:48):
Additionally, permitting home occupations in those zones. That was a restriction we put in
in the 70s where we couldn't imagine online work or that sort of thing. So
permitting home occupations inside of the RE zone. I'd also like to note that

(01:32:12):
the current standards call for a use permit to the planning commission
for these home occupations, which is quite high. And over time, the enforcement of the
specific standards has changed based on the decades. So just permitting these home occupations.

(01:32:32):
A travel commercial zone is one that we tried to eliminate in 2015, but we received basically
the purpose of why we seemingly kept this zone is that it's the only zone in our zoning code where
hotels are permitted by right. In further review of the travel commercial zone, we found that there

(01:32:53):
are few affected properties. There's only eight hotels or motels left and 10 vacant properties.
So what we're proposing is for these businesses that have active business licenses,
while we wind down this zone, eventually turn into general commercial in most cases,

(01:33:14):
which requires a use permit to the planning commission for any hotel. If you already have
an operating hotel with a business license, we will issue a free minor use permit. So they apply
and we can issue them for free so they can stay at a lower administrative level of review, even if
we get rid of the travel commercial zone. So if you're a hotel in this zone, you get this permit,

(01:33:39):
20 years, you want to expand, you can just amend that permit with a low cost compared
to going to the planning commission. Additionally, the 10 vacant properties,
if they do want to open a hotel or motel in the time period before we finally get rid of TC,

(01:34:00):
they would be able to apply for that minor use permit, $1,400 as well.
And then Wendy mentioned earlier the auto commercial zone, which is applied to a lot of
Fulton and parts of the county, simplifying those standards. And I'd just like to note that
we're keeping the core of auto commercial that makes auto commercial what it is. So

(01:34:24):
permitting auto sales, auto repair, car washes, all those auto uses continue to be permitted by right.
Okay, moving on to our residential amendments. We're getting to the end here.
First one's on our mobile home park combining zone. So in 1980, we introduced a combining zone

(01:34:49):
to allow for mobile home parks and residential zones. Prior to that, we only allowed mobile home
parks in one specific zone. So this was an idea that we came up with to allow for potentially
more mobile home parks. In 2015, our zoning code was amended to allow for mobile home parks in our
commercial zones. But we kind of created a weird situation where you're required to rezone into

(01:35:13):
the mobile home park combining zone. But you can only do that if you're in a residential zone. So
we have a catch-22 there on if someone wants to open up a mobile home park in commercial.
Realistically, we haven't gotten a lot of mobile home parks since this was introduced. We only have
three. But we want to make mobile home parks treated like any other residential or commercial

(01:35:41):
use that we have, where it's in our mainline zoning code rather than being its own special
combining zone in our code. Additionally, just some updates to the mobile home park standards
that would be codified as a part of this update.

(01:36:02):
Another update we have is for paving restrictions in low-density residential developments,
which is quite a common thing that we deal with here at the planning department.
In 2015, the zoning code was amended to add paving restrictions to the front yards of
residential properties, sort of to we believe to combat the urban heat island effect and

(01:36:29):
runoff inside of residential communities. Currently, we have a standard that says that
you can only pave up to 40% of your front yard. And the problem with that standard is that it
has specific definitions on what the front yard is, and it's quite time-consuming to calculate
that standard when we get permits in. We work with our code enforcement staff to propose some

(01:36:53):
revised regulations for this. They do receive quite a large volume of code enforcement cases for this,
because most people, if you do want to pave your yard, chances are they don't get a permit for it.
Most times there's not a permit needed unless you touch your sidewalk.
So that 40% limit, if you buy a new house and vineyard and you want to pave the side,

(01:37:18):
oops, you're now over 40% and you need to pay for a special development permit or rip it out.
So, of course, we receive a lot of inquiries from people who want to do this.
There's multi-generational households, there's homes with ADUs, and there's more cars that need
to be parked there rather than having it on the street. So keeping in mind these changing times,

(01:37:47):
we're proposing revised standards for paving that allow for basically more parking on your
property. So for lots that are over 65 feet in street frontage, it would be 50%, sort of 40.
For 40 to 65 feet in driveway length, that's kind of our RD3, 4, and 5 zones. The most popular one,

(01:38:12):
you'd be allowed to have a three-car driveway apron in most cases. Our RD7 zone, you'd have
a two-car driveway apron. And then RD10, which is more of your townhouse zones, just
similar to current standards, or just leading up to the garage or carport that you already have.
Additionally, what we're proposing is lowering the standard for deviating from these standards.

(01:38:36):
Again, it's a special development permit, so that's about $8,000. If you go over paving,
lowering it to a minor special development permit is about $1,400. So we still have
teeth on the regulations, but we're keeping into account what people want to do on their properties.
Questions on these?

(01:39:02):
Okay, so next one is kind of grouped together. We have home occupation tweaks. So currently,
our home occupation section, as I mentioned, is created in the 70s and 80s. We did not imagine
modern home occupation uses, people being able to operate Etsy store, eBay stores from their house
without causing disruption on their neighbors. So what we're proposing is some minor tweaks to

(01:39:27):
really account for this internet-based reality that we have today. So some of the limitations
I'd like to note, we had a limitation on 32 hours for home occupation. Not sure how we would

(01:39:47):
regulate that, but getting rid of that regulation and just saying you operate 7 to 9 p.m.
with limited exception. So if you're operating at 2 a.m. on your consulting business in AutoCAD,
that's fine. So we have standards that account for that. Our standards for repair at the time

(01:40:08):
were kind of geared more towards repairing lawnmowers and that sort of thing. If you are
operating repair of phones or computers, our current standards say you can only have 12
items being repaired. You probably have more than that to survive. So removing that standard,

(01:40:31):
just saying you operate and repair those things indoors. Additionally, some standards being
updated to account for home occupation fleet-based vehicles businesses. So we receive
common increase for non-emergency medical transport. So these businesses that have small
passenger vans that bring people to appointments saying that they can operate from their house

(01:40:54):
with one vehicle. If they need more than one vehicle, it's a minor use permit.
There's also minor changes being proposed to other home occupations.
One of the ones I'd like to highlight is prohibition on private recreation facility rentals
when your property is developed with a home. So in 2023, the planning director found that

(01:41:16):
this cannot be operated consistent with our home occupation section. The most common use
that we see for this is people who want to rent out swimming pools independent of their house.
So just putting it on an app, the most common one is Swimply. You rent out your pool,
don't rent out your house, not like Airbnb, just your pool or your tennis court.

(01:41:38):
It's really there to facilitate parties. So it's not really cohesive with the purpose of our home
occupation section. So explicitly prohibiting this type of operation from occurring in our
residential zones. Question? That would encompass, let's say, a coaching type scenario?

(01:42:04):
So would that like whether you're teaching swimming, teaching tennis?
No. So if you're doing coaching, you're providing the service of teaching someone to do it.
That is allowed under our home occupation section with limitations.
How about to a third party? No. It's just if you're operating it as

(01:42:30):
I'm good at tennis, I want to teach someone how to do tennis. I'm having them, I'm having a client
come over limited time to teach them how to play tennis. That's what the intent of the regulation
is. Thanks. I have one question on the previous slide. Do you have a lot of permits for gunsmithing

(01:42:51):
in private homes? We do receive it from time to time. We have people who work with the ATF and we
get inquiries on the ATF on people who want to modify firearms from their home. The most common
thing we get related to firearms, though, is more transferring of guns. So people doing the

(01:43:16):
paperwork for federal firearms license transfers. But from time to time we do receive inquiries on
people who want to modify firearms. And these are in personal dwellings?
Yep. Okay. Thank you. You can't do ammunition. I just lost the term. Reloading. Ammunition

(01:43:39):
as a home occupation. But yes, you could do some repair or modification or transfer.
So you can't do home loading as an occupation, but you can do home loading as
for personal use. Okay. Thank you.
Okay. The next one, quick one, is permitting the private car share home occupation. So common

(01:44:11):
one is Turo. We found in 2023, the planning director, that it can be operated in compliance
with our standards. So this type of use would be permitted as long as the vehicles are parked on a
paved surface or inside or in a carport. It cannot be parked on the public street. And
pickup and drop off of the vehicles has to occur offsite from the home.

(01:44:38):
Okay. Can you? So there's one slide I forgot in the presentation, but quickly on residential
accessory structure heights. So our current zoning code provisions, we have three different
ways to measure height, to peak, to midline, and a combination of the two with plate line.

(01:44:58):
What we're proposing generally in this amendment is to simplify it where we go for the accessory
structures to peaks. If you get your shed from Costco or Home Depot, it's pretty easy to find
that. And then for the primary structure, your house commercial structures to midline.
Additionally, something that is in our code that we receive a lot of

(01:45:20):
inquiries for are people who want to store RVs on their property. So this is regarding accessory
structures to homes. Our current standards for residential accessory structures have a limitation
of 16 feet. If you're storing your RV, sometimes 16 feet doesn't work. So you change out the AC
unit or something, you might need a taller structure. So oftentimes we deny those permits.

(01:45:46):
And then a few days later, they come back and now they're labeled as a barn.
Why people do that is because our current standards for incidental agricultural accessory
structures, so the structure is sort of holding your farm implements, chicken feed, that sort of
thing, is allowed to be 24 feet with increased setbacks. So to encourage truthful implementation

(01:46:09):
of our code, residential accessory structures would be allowed that 24-foot height allowance
if they are able to maintain 10-foot setbacks from the rear side and from the house.
So you need to have quite a large lot. But if you're able to, you can get your RV storage structure.

(01:46:30):
Additionally, there's a proposed amendment to
basically apply the same height standards that would go for an ADU for any residential accessory
structure attached to it. So if you have a detached ADU, we only apply the height allowances to the
habitable part, which is usually, it can be 20 feet in certain circumstances. But the garage

(01:46:56):
attached to it is considered a residential accessory structure and it's limited to 16 feet.
So we have to do some weird looking at the floor plan to see if it's over 16 feet
anywhere over the garage, which doesn't make sense. So just saying we apply the ADU height
for that entire structure. Okay, go back to presentation.

(01:47:20):
Okay, so that's the end of the marathon 20 items.
I just like to note the workshops that we have done thus far. So we went to every single CPAC
and CMAQ in the community and delivered a presentation on this item. We focused on 10
items of interest that we saw that could be of interest to each specific community.

(01:47:44):
We also did a county-wide workshop here on the 16th. Of all the CPACs we went to,
we've generally received positive dispositions from the CPACs with minimal comments. And the
comments that we have received, we are going to be taking a look and incorporating them
as appropriate into the amendments before it eventually comes back to you guys for a formal

(01:48:11):
recommendation, which is currently slated for June and then final action at the end of July
at the Board of Supervisors. So that's the end of my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any
questions on any of the items are provided or any of the 131 items in this package.

(01:48:36):
Any questions from my fellow commissioners?
Not necessarily a question, but thank you very much for a very thoughtful and
complete presentation. Again, not really a question, but just something that of all the

(01:48:56):
things that we kind of covered today, the home occupation of the business is the one that's like,
are we setting up kind of a slippery slope here? And you combine that with like maybe some of the
paving, like limitations and, you know, are we starting, are we opening up the door to

(01:49:21):
turning residential homes into, you know, what are really businesses? And that's the only,
and I don't know what the solution is. I will definitely spend some more time kind of thinking
about it, but, you know, it may be just one of those kinds of cases where, you know, when you
see it, but, you know, but by then maybe it's permitted within the code and it's a problem

(01:49:45):
for, you know, the rest of the neighbors and we don't necessarily have the tools to address
anything about it. So I'm going to spend some time kind of thinking about those different situations
and, you know, I just don't want to end up in a place where we're trying to define something
that's, you know, potentially really difficult to define, but, you know, ultimately kind of

(01:50:07):
creating a problem, you know, we end up in a Justice Stewart, you know, obscenity kind of definition.
But I don't want to, you know, create problems down the line for neighbors. I understand like
the economy is changing and transitioning, but of all the things that we covered, I guess that's
the one that kind of gives me a little bit of unsettled. This is the word I'd use, but thank

(01:50:33):
you for a great presentation. Definitely take a look. We have existing standards that we aren't
proposing to change already on home occupations that talk about that you really shouldn't be able
to tell that a business is being operated from the outside. We restrict operation to being either
in the primary dwelling, the garage, or an accessory structure. There is an exception for

(01:50:56):
larger properties where we allow for a family contractor's yard, but that's a kind of an anomaly
one. We have standards regarding traffic generation and when you do have businesses that we do allow
where the public is allowed to come, we do have currently restrictions on most of those that
restrict it to a by appointment only and no more than eight appointments in a day. And so that would

(01:51:23):
also lend to the person, whether they're doing piano lessons, dance lessons, they have a pool
and they're giving swimming lessons, they're allowed to have one student at a time up to eight
a day. And so we already have some of those standards in place to already
ensure that the primary purpose is still the residential purpose, but if you see something in

(01:51:45):
there, yeah feel free. We are still taking comments. I'm going to look to our attorney,
Bill Burke. I'm assuming that the individual commissioners can send us, if they are reading
through this before it comes to hearing, can they still send us comments or do they have to do it?

(01:52:07):
As long as they're not doing it as a group email, if they just like, they themselves individually.
Yeah, as long as you don't send back to everyone, everybody, just keep it one-to-one.
Yeah, so if there are sections that you're really interested in, please read through those and before
you know, maybe before probably mid-May, have those to us. We can take a look at them

(01:52:36):
and at least be able to accommodate those comments or come back at the hearing with
the why or why not we didn't include them. Thank you.
I guess my one of my bigger issues with with all the changes, I appreciate the fact that you seem
to be knocking a lot of the different areas out of the more expensive permitting process to the

(01:52:57):
least expensive permitting process and the fact you're trying to consolidate stuff to make it
easier to understand is a lot of this and the home business is a perfect example.
A lot of this is creating scenarios where it's not enforceable. It's unenforceable

(01:53:25):
to tell somebody they can't run their audio CAD in their house at two o'clock in the morning.
So part of the problem with some of this is we are recreating some of this stuff to the point
where we can't enforce any of it and that's a concern because when you look around some of the
bigger issues that you get hit up when you go to these different meetings is enforcement of existing

(01:53:50):
rules and if we continue to set up scenarios where who's going to go knock on the door at
two o'clock in the morning and say turn off your audio CAD. I mean so I just would appreciate
when you look at it try to look at it as from an enforcement standpoint as well as
making it easier for folks to get through the system. Sorry on the point about auto CAD what

(01:54:16):
we're allowing is people to actually operate outside those hours so if you're an architect
and you're operating at 2 a.m that's fine we don't care about it so that's a change we're making so
removing that unenforceable provision so. No that's fine I understand your point that's my
point though we how long did you have that unenforceable thing there before we made a

(01:54:41):
decision to remove it the question becomes are we creating even more of those categories that
are unenforceable and yeah. Hopefully not we had several folks within our code enforcement
division review the draft document before we even went to the various CPACs with the draft that's

(01:55:02):
before you today so we sent we had some items where different departments or divisions told
us ahead of time there were some topics that they wanted to be addressed in the package and then
once we had a draft of it completed we sent it out to just about every department or division within

(01:55:23):
the county that touches some aspect of land use as well as some of our outside outside folks so
code did read through all this and hopefully feel that the standards that they're required to
enforce are are done in such a way that they can enforce them. I'll just give one last example

(01:55:44):
your last slide you talked about that 16 foot RV height would create a problem you can't tow
an RV and general road over 14.9 against department transportation rules bridges are set at 14.9
that's when you see these videos of people taking off the top of their

(01:56:08):
trailers so I'm just saying you know you're going to allow it larger than that I mean higher than
that because it's an RV really it shouldn't be even on the property at that size but yeah
um our residential accessory structure if you were to look at this though this is to the peak
of the structure not the usually those the the doors on them would be much much lower so so it's

(01:56:34):
it's kind of a combination of the two the taller structure allows for you to have a taller door
that your that your RV could go in so even even on these 16 peak which we had 14 feet currently in
our code to the plate line some of those wouldn't even be able to even if you didn't have a door you

(01:56:57):
just had it more like a carport type structure they wouldn't be able to get in through the plate
line because of our plate line restriction yeah I'm sorry I misunderstood your calculation here
I thought you were talking about the RV could be 16 no oh no no no no it's a structure that houses
the RV yeah no problem yeah okay one thing uh please if that's okay uh so thank you very much

(01:57:27):
very thorough um in terms of just kind of going back to um Commissioner Verga's comment about
home uses and you know so it's not really would be the changes wouldn't it really impact let's
say somebody's doing tech support at 3 a.m in the morning you know for it and what would be

(01:57:51):
would there be a significant impact so if they're doing tech support they're doing it remotely
and they're not it's not physical assets but just remote assets would that be
uh where would that where would that fall as an example very service line oriented that would be
perfectly fine so our code so the code provision that we're proposing is that if you do administrative

(01:58:13):
tasks for your business and that occurs after 7 after 9 p.m and before 7 a.m then that's fine
we're like these type of regulations would be on complaint basis if yeah it does violate the
noise ordinance and people report it then we'd be able to take a look at it yeah I think that that's
where I would have the the enforceable uh aspect of it would be more related to if it's complaint

(01:58:39):
based because in terms of just the actual action of performing work where it's very administrative
let's say or support in the case of an I.T. technician then it really you wouldn't one
wouldn't know outside the doors you know that that dwelling you know that they're performing that work

(01:59:00):
exactly and that's what we want to allow yeah so currently we have this weird 32 hour thing which
we know is absolutely unenforceable and so the hours of operation are kind of going along with
kind of our noise standards a bit for those home occupations where they that we do allow that could
have some noise or some customers like for example going back to your recreational example we would

(01:59:27):
not want somebody doing uh pool lessons you know at two in the morning so it's it's it's kind of
like those things if you're if you're in your if you're inside your house and it's not something
that's generating noise nobody's going to know nobody's going to care but for those uses where
you could be generating noise or have people coming and going that's where we're just doing

(01:59:49):
an hour because it's easier for our code enforcement to regulate on just strict hours right and and so
what I would what I would say on that is that really the intent of these original regulations
was really designed more for physical assets so somebody's repairing a lawnmower you know going
back to the 1970s you know somebody's got a shop you're doing like woodworking for your welding

(02:00:13):
whatever it is and so you know now it's trying to uh you're still taking that into account because
there still are you know uses for those but you're also considering the more of the service
oriented industry which is more from an IT based you know maybe more services based etc.

(02:00:34):
Correct. Okay thank you. Do you use the word administrative tasks and if that is unclear?
Maybe that's yeah maybe that's something to delineate a little more you know from that would
be okay you could couldn't you cite some examples of that you know where you could say okay
administrative tasks could be somebody supporting it from an IT perspective somebody is let's say

(02:00:57):
they're um they're responsible for let's say an accounting function that you know they're
working for a company that you're doing accounting work let's say those those types of things.
Yeah yeah okay thank you. Sorry no no apologies Commissioner um just a couple of minor minor

(02:01:18):
questions uh not even a question I think I can email email offline but I just want to make sure
on 843 that's the caretaker dwellings and live work units you know I recognize that Cordova
and the vineyard community where I reside is uh area of special interest again I just want to
ensure that we're not inadvertently creating a disadvantage to folks that would like to

(02:01:40):
at least uh have an opportunity to convert some of those dwellings to an allowable
and restricted use already um here's a funny one um coin operated kiosks and arcades
what if you have something that is both an arcade and a coin operated kiosk are you going to treat
them one and the same you go to coin off in Roseville it's an arcade but they also allow

(02:02:03):
you to use coins just more of a question you don't have to answer that right now but I just
want to make sure that as newer a lot of these like newer places right coin off be an example
um they're both coin operated kiosks and an arcade so and then the last thing I just wanted to ask
A115 CPAC review exemption for updates predicated by state or federal legislation

(02:02:33):
staff is proposing to completely remove presentation to the CPAC
I think that is I think that's going to be a big challenge I really do I'm hoping that you guys
can at least look into a middle point where staff is not required to make a presentation

(02:02:56):
especially in areas where CPACs have a challenge and hitting quorum but I think that a lack of
information is just as troublesome as the burden of staffing to provide the information and so I'm
hopeful that we can find a middle ground I would encourage the planning director and the planning
director staff to at least inform the CPAC members and by virtue of the CPAC members the

(02:03:23):
community members who attend the forums even if it's not a presentation that's going to be attended
by staff to at least provide them with information the packet that a change no matter how ministerial
is going to be made right and so I don't know if my fellow commissioner saw that but I encourage
y'all to read A115 it's CPAC review exemption my notes here say that how are we facilitating

(02:03:50):
public feedback if we're removing that ministerially and a modification of a hearing so again
I encourage the staff to hopefully take a look at a middle ground where I don't want to be
burdensome when creating a big long presentation but we will be remiss if we don't educate our
community members that there is a change that's happening no matter if it's being required by the

(02:04:14):
state or the federal legislation for that matter all right awesome um I think we provided you with
a number of feedback today and questions and I encourage the commissioners um to continue
engaging with the staff again making sure that we don't inadvertently break the brown act

(02:04:35):
requirements um madam madam clerk do we have any comments for this item we have not received any
public comments for this item okay thank you again miss hartman and mr germano it's quite an endeavor
here and I appreciate I really applaud you all for going to all of the cpacs and the cmax and
and creating this workshop okay now let's move on to the next item and thank you vice chair

(02:04:56):
for uh starting the meeting really appreciate that planning director's report item number two
um
sorry I had we had announcements for all the cpacs but apparently not for uh the planning commission
okay understood and um okay well would that conclude to planning director's report

(02:05:24):
sound good for now okay thank you item number three madam clerk and for miscellaneous scheduling items
I have nothing to report okay it looks like we are still scheduled two weeks from now
all right that is correct yes and then item number four public comments there are no public comments
okay with that said uh we're concluding the meeting at 7 38 p.m thank you and have a good evening

(02:05:47):
everyone thank you

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Planning Commission - 4/13/26: County Zoning Overhaul With 131 Amendments Unveiled

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Planning Commission - 4/13/26: County Zoning Overhaul With 131 Amendments Unveiled