Feb 27, 2024 4:00 PM - Redding Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

>> Good evening. It is 4 o'clock, and I would like to call the, City of Reading Planning Commission meeting to order. Today is February 27th. Almost, the leap here, which is kinda fun. Can we do a call to order, please? >>[CROSSTALK] >> Thank you. Moving on to approval of minutes. We do not have any this evening. We're moving on to number 3, announcements. >> No announcements, chair. >> Any announcements here from the di? Then we are moving on to number 4, planning commission items. And, today, we have 2 items before us, 4b1 and 4b2. The city attorney can correct me here if I'm wrong, but I'll just do a quick preamble. Often, the Planning Commission serves in a couple of different roles. 1 is a quasi legislative role which we are doing today by looking at the general plan and some of those rezoning applications by the City of Reading. And then other times, we act more as a quasi judicial body where we will look at these rules that we are actually helping to create today and say whether a project, conforms to those rules. It's kind of an interesting departure from some of our normal normal fare. Also, before we get started, if you would like to speak on any item, there are blue cards in the back, feel free to fill it out. We'll have a public comment period for this item or for both items. Each, item will have 3 minutes per speaker. There is a couple of lights up there on the podium. The yellow light says you have 30 seconds and then the red light means your time is up. Just mind that. Some people look at the yellow light and think, my time's done. That is not the case. Again, blue card is at the back. Feel free to bring them on up here. And with that, I will turn it over to staff for presentations. >> Thank you, chair. Just to get us started this afternoon, staff is pleased to get to this point in the process to be presenting this body with the draft general plan and final EIR general plan 2045. Of course, the commission knows this but for the public that may have joined us this evening and hasn't been a part of the process up to this point. We really spent a lot of 2023, in fact, most of 2023, workshopping this with the this with the commission, having many public meetings on the various elements of the general plan and going on 2 years probably since we un started undertaking this process a couple years ago. And it's, it's really exciting to be this point and be this close. That being said, I just wanna do a quick, introduction of what we'll be presenting on this afternoon. So our senior planner, Vishnu Krishnan, is gonna give a general overview of the process and get us caught up to speed. Kent Manuel will be providing some context regarding what a general plan is and also going over some issues and topics. I'll be going over the planning area discussion myself, and we also have our, planning consultant, Mark Teague from Place Works, who worked on the environmental document, here to do some presenting as well as be available for questions. And so with that, we know we've talked about this ad nauseam. We'll keep our our staff report relatively brief, so there's plenty of time for discussion and public input. And I'm gonna pass it off to Kent first to give us just a general, what is a general plan, for the benefit of the public here that might not know, and then we'll go from there. >> I'm remiss. If we can segment this a little bit, we have a recusal for part of it. So if we can put the planning area at the end of the presentation, then we can we can manage that. >> Yep. We do have it parsed out as a separate topic, so we'll just make it to the end of the presentation. With that, I'll turn it over to, Kent Manuel. >> Thank you, Jeremy, members of the commission. This is probably about the shortest, introduction to a general plan that, anyone has ever heard, but there may be, some folks in the public who aren't at all familiar with it. But general plans are really required by state law, and they they control the physical development of your community. They establish where various land uses are, where your shopping centers are going to be, where your density housing, lower density housing, industrial parks, parks and recreation, open space, all of those kinds of things are addressed in a general plan. By law, it has 9 well, 7 mandatory elements, sometimes an 8th if you need an environmental justice element, covering transportation, noise, land use, housing, safety, all the kind of the basic things that you, would expect to see in a document that, governs the community. But, it goes beyond that, because it really is intended to reflect the collective community priorities and vision as collective of of the community, not individuals. Those should be reflected ideally in the various goals and policies that, ultimately get adopted by the city council. The general plan is gonna be pretty thick. It's about 300 pages or so, and most people, you know, really don't delve into those policies all that much. Most people who come into the City of Redding and want to know about the general plan are more interested in what's known as a general plan diagram. That's the map. What's the land use of my property? Can I develop it commercially? Or, is someone going to develop a high rise apartment complex next to my house? That's known as a general plan diagram. But as I said before, it has a number of mandatory elements, but it also can have optional elements. In Redding, we have a number of optional elements proposed, and including ones in our existing general plan, covering, Recreation Parks and Trails, Economic Development, and those sorts of, items. So, I guess the last thing I'll say, it gets a little bit beyond the general plan is, so you have broad policies, what happens next? Because as I said, this is a vision document, is intended to be vision document. It gets implemented by the various standards that are adopted by the City Council, and others. For instance, the zoning ordinances intended to implement various policies of the general plan, whether they're stream corridor setbacks or building heights, those sorts of things. The subdivision ordinance will regulate things like secondary access in fire prone areas, a whole lot of things, how big the lots can be, and those sorts of things. You also have the development code that the Public Works Department uses. How wide should our streets be? How about our sidewalks? How does the drainage supposed to work? Those are development standards that also implement the general plan. And you also have state and federal regulations, whether they're environmental regulations or other regulations that also implement the policies of general plan. And, you know, last but not least, we could probably go on, is specific plans. We've noticed in a lot of the comments that we've received on the general plan so far that a lot of folks are concerned about what may be happening along the river. As you may or may not know, there is a process underway to update the Redding Riverfront specific plan. That is an area that runs from essentially the the rodeo grounds all the way down, to Cypress Avenue Bridge. There is an existing plan that was adopted in 1990. It is still in effect. The policies, and we can get into it in detail later if we need to, but the policies of this general plan have to recognize that that specific plan is in effect because the 2 have to be consistent. So if the newly revised, whenever that happens, specific plan for the Redding Riverfront changes things that are shown in the general plan, it will also take a general plan amendment. So there, I just wanna let you know that the general plan is not the end game. It's the vision statement, and then the implementation stage comes next. With that, I will turn it over to Ishmael. >> Thank you, Kent. So we've categorized the update process into 3 different, discussion items. So we will be going over project initiation and purpose. And then we've got the update process. And then we're gonna be talking about the policy direction that we took. The state OPR requires cities and counties in California to update their general plan once every 20 years, and this is with the exception of the housing element. So Reading's current general plan was last adopted in the year 2000, and a lot of changes have been made with respect to land use, natural resources, conservation, safety, air quality norms, noise levels and transportation. So since the general plan is funded by the REAP and LEAP grants, it is important for us to ensure the process is completed within the given time frame. Now the state OPR introduced environmental justice in 2016. They built a data set through Kalinvaro screen tools and helped jurisdictions identify disadvantaged communities in their limits. The parameters are provided by the state here. And, the mandate requires jurisdictions updating 2 or more elements of the general plan, draft and adopt an environmental justice element. So the project team identified 4 disadvantaged communities in Redding and, in addition to the Redding Ranch area, and we drafted policies with with the help of a 30 member focus group that included leaders and representatives of minority groups and disadvantaged communities in Redding. So the update process, we started with, gap analysis. So we took all the state requirements and that had been updated in the last 20 years to ensure our recommendations met the state goals. So this was the very first step. And then, we followed it up with the director interviews to understand the department wide goals and vision. We then partnered with Polco Co to send out a scientific benchmark survey, the results of which greatly helped us to set a vision and work with the focus groups. The focus group participants were identified and grouped based on their expertise and interest. We met with roughly 138 focus group participants, including CSAC commissioners, to get the draft document together. It was an incredible journey, and none of this would have happened without the focus group participants who invested their time and energy to review the materials and provide feedback that helped shape this document. Our special thanks to, Janessa Hartman coordinating with Shasta and Enterprise High Schools, enabling the project team to meet with roughly 379 high school seniors to gather their feedback on the general plan. This was really an important step for us as it helped us identify issues that are more prevalent in schools and among the youth. The planning commission workshops were organized, from January through April 2023. The commission reviewed all the 9 elements on a biweekly basis, providing direction to the project team on the next steps. Info room sessions were designed in a way to reach out to the community and discuss the recommendations made in the draft document. Staff organized 5 such sessions in at various locations in the city from June through August 2023. The results of these in 4 room sessions were discussed at the planning commission meeting in September 2023 meeting. Based on the feedback received, we then decided to meet with the commissioners individually to address their concerns and made appropriate changes to the policy document. Now the general plan has set of guiding principles that inform the policy recommendations made in the document. This can be found in the introduction chapter of the draft general plan. To summarize, we basically talk about emphasizing on the rich and diverse, history of the city. We talk about making recommendations that will enhance the quality of life for residents and the overall community's identity. We talk about preserving the city's unique physical setting and conserving the natural environment, ensuring an equitable approach to land use planning and policy decisions, promoting continued engagement with the city and city residents, pursue a diverse and stable economy to create jobs and opportunities, and provide a safe and healthy environment for all residents. >> At this point, thank you Vishnu. So, it was largely I know a review probably for our commission just to tell the story about how we got here. Hopefully, it was helpful for the audience here tonight as well. You'll see a packet that we gave out to the commission that's available to the public too. It sort of summarizes comments we've received up to this point after staff packets went out. In your staff packet, we provided all the comments that were received up to looks like, Jennifer can help me here, but 3 o'clock on November 14th all the way to Jan February 22nd. Is that right? Are in the staff report. And then starting at 5 PM on February, February 22nd through 3 PM of today, these are the comments that are summarized in this table as well as appended to. And so, what, Kent's now going to do is walk through, some of the issues that came up in in these comments that were received as well as, reiterate some of staff's response and allow questions and comments. And then we will table the discussion on the planning area boundary till the end of the presentation. So with that, I'll hand it back over to Kent. >> Can't get quite close enough to this thing here. That's alright. I'll just kinda lean in. You know, we as you can see from your packet, we received relatively few comments, on the, FEIR, the final environmental impact report and the general plan. This portion of the presentation, we're just gonna be talking about the comments that received on the general plan. We'll get into the final environmental impact report, after we, finish up with the general plan issues. However, as you know, there's a lot of interrelated interconnectedness between the 2 because all of the policies of the general plan sure. Okay. They're dead. Are also a lot of policies in the general plan are also found within the final environmental impact report. So among the, correspondence that we received on the general plan, the first one that is directing your staff report has to deal with the issue of a regional intercity transportation. We had a comment that we really need to be dealing with with, you know, light rail and some other issues, respecting that, you know, the the world is changing. We're not gonna be all in our vehicles at all the time. I think what the staff report notes that, actually, policies of the draft transportation element do address, those topics, in particular. And as you can see, up here on your screen, that that has been addressed, and this is really uncomfortable. So another, transportation related, issue that was brought up having to do with, the viability of high speed rail. I think, as we'll get into this as the, commenter, I believe, is in the audience today, he'll wanna speak to you. We misunderstood, I think, to an extent what, his comment really was. We believe it has more related to do with realizing that high speed rail from Sacramento, perhaps to Redding, maybe beyond someday, may be a possibility that we should think about preserving right of way to the extent we can and doing additional planning for that activity. At the end of the presentation today, we do have a draft policy, should the commission wanna feel the need to add some more definition about high speed rail opportunities, we can talk about at that point in time. The other topic had to deal with the letter you received from a noise consultant regarding the noise element. He correctly indicated, there was some issues with our nomenclature of CNEL, community noise equivalent levels, as well as LDN and LAQ. We won't get into all of those. But we've attached the corrected tables to your staff report and those will be made available, of course, as we move forward and this makes its way to the city council. The other, Jeremy, you wanna go back to the last planning area 1? We did receive a letter. >> If I may, I think we're putting off the planning area discussion. >> This had to deal with the, almost a kind of a similar thing. We did receive a letter from the property owner of the Gore Ranch, as you recall, at your last meeting in November. You it was determined that Gore Ranch is in a conservation easement. So at that point in time, we removed it from the, primary growth area. It has come to our attention that a small portion beyond the original boundaries of the Gore Ranch is also in a conservation easement. You kinda see an outline, of it there. The correspondence and and the property owner did not suggest that they were requesting any change at this point, simply letting the city know that the, conservation easement is included in the secondary growth area. It would be the recommendation of staff since we are currently not amending anything on our general plan diagram, that we wait until we amend that the secondary growth area from that conservation easement. So that would be staff's recommendation. No need to do it at this point in time. It would be a very lengthy process to do. So those are, you know, at this point, those are all of the questions or issues that were brought up as the time we did the staff report. There have been some other issues that brought up. Most of them have to deal with policy language, both in reference to just in general for the general plan, but also as relates to the environmental impact report. And I think at at this point, we'll just go ahead and move in to the environmental impact report and Mark Teague, and we're gonna be fleshing out this whole issue of policy direction and those sorts of things as we go forward. >> Splendid. Mister chairman, members of the commission, my name is Mark Teague. I'm the managing principal for environmental services for the firm of PlaceWorks. We're a statewide full function planning firm. I also write general plans, zoning ordinances, staff reports for use permits and signs, pretty much all duties as assigned. I've been a planner for about 45 years, and I've got comprehensive general plan and EIR, and I've worked on countless others. Staff asked me to put that in there, so it sounded like I knew what I was talking about. My role today is to to guide you to through the CEQA process, a little bit about what we do with CEQA and why it matters. CEQA is above all an informational document. It provides information to the commission, to the council, and ultimately decision makers on the potential environmental impacts of the action you're about to take. We're not clairvoyant. We can't see the future. We're not psychic. We guess on the potential impacts based on information we have before us and on the information of the project itself. This is a somewhat interesting situation because you made no land use changes. CEQA evaluates change. And with very minimal change in your general plan, there's not a whole lot to evaluate. Had your general plan and EIR not been of a sufficient vintage that it lacked certain that it lacks certain documentation, we could have done an addendum, which is a minor environmental process associated with this. However, the decision was made to do an EIR, and that's what we've done. Now unlike a project EIR, like for a shopping center or for a subdivision, there isn't a project to attach conditions of approval to or mitigation measures. So we're limited to the policy link plan in addition to a couple of standard mitigation measures that seem to show up in every project. And those are included in your EIR. In other jurisdictions, we would have done an addendum. In this particular instance, I've explained why we haven't done that. The difficulty in the tension between a general plan project level EIR is we don't have details. We don't have site specific details. We don't know where all the wetlands are. And if we did, it would likely change between adoption of your general plan and a project on those sites requiring you to go back. That's one of the nice things about biology is they tend to grow back and do things that we hadn't predicted. So that's why in most instances, you have a policy that says follow the law that says you have to evaluate things at the project level at the time you get the application or the time that it's before you. There's very little in here that would allow you to do anything that would physically change the environment without studying again the biological impacts, the cultural impacts of that associated with, the project at hand. And at that point, you would have project details to evaluate where the building is, where the driveways would be, and such. In this instance, you have none of that. You have no idea where things are going. So we talk about process, and that's why the programmatic features of the EIR sit way up high and are, in some cases, just directional. Follow the law, study this, do that, encourage this. From from a a CEQA practitioner standpoint, a programmatic EIR can be empty calories. It's really hard for someone to look at that and see specifics because there aren't any, because there's no specific project to evaluate. We're essentially, projecting potential impacts based on policies and goals in the general plan. And as I mentioned in this instance, we haven't made any land use changes. There's no substantive change to the land use pattern of the city. Is there are there focus areas? Are there intentions? Are there things in there that we're hoping to do within that construct? Absolutely. And you already have a framework of ways of dealing with that. There are a lot of, policies in here that were relied upon in the general plan EIR, to address future potential impacts. And that's where, the level of a programmatic EIR, that's roughly where you end up. So I'm available to answer any questions that you might have on the document. We've been provided with the comments, the final EIR, all of the response to comments, and, our recommendation. >> Any questions for mister Teague? >> To stream corridor protection and special status species. At that juncture, we'll probably pause and we'll leave the plan area discussion until later. And we can, at that time, at the Chair's discretion, invite public comment or answer any questions you may all have. So, Kent will finish up here in the next few minutes. >> I want to kind of deal head on with some responses to, the Shasta Birding Society's letter that the, commission and and staff received because it's perhaps the most succinct, in its comments. And I know we will have probably a lengthy discussion on policy strength, but I I did want to make note of your staff report, relatively, relative to my comments, on policy NR 4 b that has to do with protection of the Sacramento River and and stream corridors and why it is not as definitive as some would like. As I noted in that staff report, the city does not have control over what occurs within the Sacramento River. That is regulated by state and federal agencies. The city does not have control over what happens on stream corridors if it's waters of the United States or it takes a agreement with fish and game to do an interruption. That's why we have language that says prioritize preserving, protecting these resources. The city does have the ability to prioritize working with various agencies, such as we've done with the, side channel work along the Sacramento River for rearing the, the young salmon. Likewise, we can prioritize the city's own workload when we're looking at ensuring that we are protecting those resources from, effects of grading, that we're controlling runoff and those sorts of things. So we just don't have absolute control. So when we develop these policies, and I won't necessarily say that they're a 100% right, we tried to think of where the city does have control, and if those issues are directive, when we don't have control, they're a softer language. Likewise, there's a policy n r 6 a which says strive to preserve native trees. And it's been suggested by by some folks who have written in that, well, it just should say preserve native trees and, of course, the the policy goes on. That puts the commission, and the city in a bit of a bind because preserve the trees basically says to me, you're going to save a 100% of them, 80% of them. We all know from development and given the way things have gone with the state lately of kind of preempting local control, we will be developing in areas where there are woodlands. We cannot we just cannot say that we are going to be preserving all those trees. That again is a reason why we have some softer language. We also have language the plan says, yes, we do need to revisit the tree management ordinance to see if it needs to be strengthened somehow or not. That's a decision, and I know the commission has had one workshop as something that the council will have to to work through as well. But that is another example of of why, specific language can put the, commission in a box. I always like to say, say, you know, you, you need to trust yourselves as a commission. You need to look at that policy language and do what you think is right as a commission and not say you need necessarily a piece of paper to tell you everything and takes away your discretion. That's the point of a discretionary permit. You can talk amongst yourselves. You can talk to your constituents, your friends, your neighbors, and decide what decision can be made within the parameters of the general plan. So I'll get off my my horse on that one. We'll discuss that more, I'm sure, later. The other one of the other main topics, of that letter, as you know, had to do with the stream corridor buffers. It touched on kind of a a a lot of a lot of things, but I wanna give you a little background to put things into context. First of all, the stream corridor buffer exhibit is the same. It has not changed from that which was adopted in 2020. As mister Teague pointed out, general plan EIRs are supposed to be looking at impacts of changing circumstances, changing conditions. This, this has not changed. I also wanna know that those setbacks were developed directly with engagement of of what was known at the Times Department of Fish and Game. We worked with them for a very closely for a number of months. We adopted the setbacks that they requested us at the time. In fact, it was cutting edge at the time when that happened because I know the fish state Fish and Game Commission met, I think, in early 2020, might as 2021, and I was asked to present to the state fish and game commission here in Redding at their meeting. Talking about how that process work, worked, how well did we work with staff, what were our thoughts on, how effective it will be going forward? So there was a lot of, frankly, excitement from, from the state agencies at that point in time. Another major concern, and I and I touched on it briefly on my opening comments with specific plans, had to do with concern about, the Park Marina Convention Center area. There's a note on on the figure in the general plan that says you could have reduced setback for commercial uses within that area. As I indicated, it is all covered by a specific plan. That specific plan and SEIR are still in effect. This general plan needs to be consistent with that specific plan. And as we all know, just from a practical perspective, particularly along, Park Marina Drive, there are are already reduced setbacks. The last thing I'll touch on on the letter had to do with a concern about, allowing encroachments. As I noted, earlier, the general plan is implemented through the zoning ordinance. We do have a river corridor, stream corridor protection ordinance that establishes setbacks. But like any ordinance, like a zoning establishes setback for your house, there needs to be abilities based on specific circumstances to to deviate for those. Maybe your lot is small and you cannot live with a 20 foot setback. There's not really room to build your house. So there's a process to reduce your building setback. Similarly, there's a process to reduce the setback from riparian vegetation or the top of bank, within the stream corridor ordinance. I can only recall that's been used on 2 or 3 occasions and there may be more. I didn't you know, we didn't do extensive study, but my recollection is 2 or 3 occasions. And I think you need to be, sure or realize that a biological assessment is required by a professional before those are approved. And their discretionary permits, they come to the planning commission. So it's not just a kind of a willy nilly kind of thing. I think the last, major comment had to deal with status species. We appreciate the comments that Shasta Birdie Society made. It's, you start dealing with endangered and threatened and special status species and candidate species and everything else. It did get little muddled. Staff has, proposed some clarifications to that. We've provided those to the, planning commission, this afternoon. We just put that together. We have run it through, mister Teague, and he didn't see any issues with it, either did the city's environmental coordinator and public works. I will say one thing that that's driving the matter of which we did this is not to have a general plan that calls out every government code section or every are working on a project, really knows what they need to be looking at, and that's what we've tried to do to get some consistencies between the terms here. So with that, I think I'm done. >> Thank you, Kent. So at this point, we've I think, covered largely the topics, that we've received comments on, with with the exception of tabling the planning area on, with the exception of tabling the planning area discussion until later. >> Chair, I'd defer to you and the Commission regarding questions and or inviting public comment. >> I'll bring it back here to the dais for questions and comments. I might actually start off first, if that's all right. With this being a 20 year document, you know, it's kind of a big deal. So, you know, it's important that we get this right and that, you know, we make a recommendation at some point whether tonight or a subsequent meeting to counsel and that they, can make, you know, the final decisions here. One of the interesting things is that, you know, there are lots of counties and cities here in the State of California and, as Vishnu was mentioning earlier, the Office of Planning and Research at the state has sort of a guidebook or a how to manual on how to do, you know, general plans like this since all the cities and counties need to do them. And, so I was in the workshops, I referenced that quite a bit, and I wanted to just bring up because this is a perpetual issue of mine, but also an issue that I've seen a lot of comments on. And, that's on, a lot of the, what I'll call subjective language. And, I'm hoping that the city attorney can, perhaps talk to that in just a second. But I wanted to read this from the, Office of Planning and Research, which is the guidebook for general plans and so it says this is on page 382 of Appendix E and it says, A policy is a specific statement that guides decision making. It indicates a commitment of the local legislative body to a particular course of action. A policy is based on and helps implement a general plan's vision. A policy is carried out by implementation measures. For a policy to be useful as a guide to action, it must be clear and unambiguous. Adopting broad, broadly drawn and vague policies is poor practice. Clear policies are particularly important when it comes to judging whether or not zoning decisions, subdivisions, public works projects, etcetera, are consistent with the general plan. It goes on further and says, when writing policies, be aware of the difference between shall and should. Shall indicates an unequivocal directive. Should signifies a less rigid directive, to be honored in the absence of compelling our contributing considerations. Use the word or use of the word should to give the impression of more commitment than actually is intended is a common but unacceptable practice. It is better to adopt no policy than to adopt a policy with no backbone. So, I would like the city attorney perhaps to opine a little bit on, you know, a lot of the subjective language that we do see in this draft general plan. >> There's a few things I'd like to speak to there, but one thing is I would suggest you may also want to refer to your consultant as well for a little bit of insight with respect to, in particular state guidance on the issue. I will say in terms of my own experience and my own interaction with other consultants and attorneys, the policies, which I understand to be the primary concern, of of the state's comments. But really, how you're articulating those and how that's fitting with the other pieces. One thing to remember is that really the planning document is not going to be the laws. The laws, the rules, actual requirements that are gonna get imposed upon people who apply for permits, upon people who are engaged in any sort of development or construction, etcetera, within the city, are going to be coming from your zoning code, they're going to be coming from design standards, they're going to become from use permit terms, and all of these are documents that are to be created separate. They're going to be guided by the general plan and they're going to need to be consistent with the general plan, but they're going to involve a lot of detailed analysis that you're not really going to be able to get into this stage. And, as some of your, staff and consultants have spoken to, some of that's because you can't make a decision as to exactly what project is going to go on every single site, just in the abstract. There are things you're going to have to determine on a case by case basis. Even from the zoning code perspective, in terms of a lot of the specific rules, that tends to be a much more detailed process and also one that goes through, sort of its own hearing process, its own, you know, very sort of public, careful crafting to be able to articulate rules, that are of help or that can be clearly applied going forward. So, in terms of I don't know that I particularly have any concerns about the language that you have in your plan at the moment. You know, I would say one thing to be careful about is actually not to be too strict, not to have language that is going downstream effects that are going to tie your hands in a way that you're not anticipating. You want to be able to be clear about identifying what your policy goals are. You don't want them so vague that, no one knows what that means. You have no idea how you're going to apply that when you're actually in the context of drafting an ordinance or drafting a used permit condition or whatever that's going to be. But you do need to have that, flexible enough. You haven't essentially tried to create the rules here, and then found out when you've gotten down into the weeds that some broad proclamation at this stage really is not something that you can apply, in an individual context. So, I would suggest, maybe if you might want to get a little bit of input from the... >> Yes. I think we're going to sort of roundtable this a little bit. I just want to add a couple of comments and invite, Mark Thie to come up and provide his comments as well. But I think it's important to, I would just piggyback on that that we're the more standard, the more mandatory the language is, the less discretion this body has, the less discretion city council has. And looking at OPR's document, which, Mark will come up and speak to in a second, you know, even their own example language, though, for policy, you know, statements does have words like, avoid and encourage and support and prevent and, you know, it's not all their very own language that OPR uses isn't as mandatory or as and so I caution this body, I think, that if we go with overtly mandatory language, we we put your discretion, the the discretion goes away. You're we don't know what we don't know. We don't know what projects will come down the pipe in 5, 10, 15 years. And so, that that's and too mandatory. And then we also run into issues too in terms of, with CEQA. So, if, say, a project comes down in the future and, you review that project and there's an environmental impact that's significant and unavoidable. Now, you could, in that context, perhaps do an overriding consideration, but what if that's in conflict with mandatory language in a general plan? The only way out of that or the only way to have project to be approved would be a general plan amendment, which, of course, is a huge undertaking. And so, at this point, we have, I think, done up to a 100 revisions of the of the policy statements to make it more mandatory where staff felt it was appropriate. We've wrestled with this issue for a very long time. But again, in consultation with our city attorney and our new city attorney here as well as Mr. Teague, and all staff, staff at this point feels as though the language is really good as it is. Mark, would you come up and speak maybe to the OPR guidelines? We were discussing this today. Chair Hatch, as you mentioned, the guidelines are not statute. They're not law, but they are they are guidelines and they're good to follow. But Mark had some some recent information on the guidelines and with respect to where they're at now and where they're going. >> The guidelines were adopted 2013, I think, 2014, something like that. And in the profession have roundly been considered pretty much written by committee and not really useful. So much so that OPR has set aside $2,000,000 to revise them. Their RFP for that should be out in the next week or 2. And a lot of us have been involved. One of the things I note, and believe you me I enjoy OPR, they don't implement general plans. They don't implement development projects. They don't have to sit as you do to judge and govern over a city to implement projects. They are at a really high policy level and unfortunately that's a little bit what got into the guidelines this time. It was a little prophetic and a little, preachy, what's in there. And what they're doing now is they're reaching out to practitioners, cities, counties, consultant teams to help, formulate revisions to the guidelines. Now I won't I won't disagree with anything that has been said on the policy language, but it seems to me this is a general plan on purpose, and I would like to emphasize the word general. You need to have policy direction, but I think to to bake things into concrete, could have unintended consequences. And certainly in the secret world, it becomes an issue later on when you're evaluating against an absolute. Well, we have absolutes in the law now. You cannot, no net loss on wetlands, for example. But that doesn't mean that no project can fill a wetland. That means that you have another spot that you put the wetland. That means that you have a process to go through to deal with that. Same with an endangered species. A burrowing owl, for example, you know, doesn't mean you can't develop the site. It means you have to follow a protocol. So what should your policy be? Should it be no wetland fill? In which case, no development on wetlands regardless of what the federal government allows you to do with their permitting process, you can see the conundrum you can get into with things that are beyond your jurisdiction, with absolutes. It ties your hands. It doesn't tie the hands of the property owner nor does it tie the hands of the project. So, the example I use, if you're a farmer and you have a wetland, you can go through the federal government and get a permit to fill said wetland. Land whether or not the city cares or has has a policy on that at all. It definitely you know, my kids would say, you know, we have to stay in our lane on some of these things. And so, what's useful in the policy is to work with these agencies to have a coherent path forward and the city has a good track record of that with fish and game, for a while ago. And indeed, with each secret process that touches a resource that's important to the community, you have to go through your own level evaluation. Having a policy that allows you, the commission, to make that interpretation is helpful. Having a policy that takes you out of the process just makes it more difficult to make those decisions later on. >> And if I may add to that just a little bit, Mr. Chair, I would say I concur with everything that was just said, but, I would say where I see that most commonly is where you have some assertion individual application is somehow in conflict with the general plan. And there are times when hard choices of wording, or maybe things that wanted to sound very strong, but hadn't really been thought out as to exactly how they were going to impact the ultimate decision making authority, can sort of create some, fodder for some of those arguments. And sometimes that that can just sort of, create litigation that maybe doesn't need to exist. It can create, things that will slow down the process or make it unnecessary, when when really the decision making body that should be, interpreting potential for challenge. Even if the challenge goes nowhere, it can, you know, it can be costly, it can, cause delays, and it can sort of unnecessarily undermine the planning process. >> One thing I might add to close here, is the same OPR guidelines, which mister Teague mentioned has there are issues with these guidelines. But, in terms of the goal, it talks about goal being a general direction setter. It's an ideal future and related to the public health, safety, and welfare. A goal is a general expression of community values and therefore may be abstract. Consequently, a goal is generally not quantifiable or time dependent. So as Kent and I were talking about this and really wrestling with this because it is a difficult issue in terms of how how far do we go in terms of soft versus harder mandatory language. You know, I was realizing in the natural resources element, for instance, a lot of those goals are actually not that abstract. They do say protect and conserve or protect you know, they they are more mandatory in tone with underlying policies that are a bit softer. And so we've actually sort of taken an approach where the goal isn't so abstract, which is what OPR sort of mentions as a recommendation. Our goals are pretty definitive and they're, you could say, maybe quantifiable, but the policies are a little softer, so it's sort of flipping it on on its head. But for OPR to say the goal should be not quantifiable and based on values and sort of abstract, but then to have mandatory policies to achieve an abstract goal seems a bit that's a tough one. So I think in that sense, we've we've made goals more definitive with softer language to support meeting the goal without putting us into a box or tying the hands of this commission or council or future commissions in council. So, with that, I'll close. I don't know. Kent, do you have anything to add at this point? Happy to have any questions from the commission. >> As a follow-up question to that, with regard to some of the new state laws which, mister Manuel, brought up, s b 330 and s b 35. We've discussed this at various other other meetings, but that you know, the state of California is taking some of the local local control out of, you know, our hands, the city council's hands unless we have, objective, development standards. And as I understand it, SB 330, you know, you if you have, objective standards within the general plan and others, you know, specific plans, zoning ordinances, you can you can actually condition projects or deny projects that don't meet those development standards. And I wonder if having words like strive to and encourage actually do you know, have those unintended consequences with regard to those new state laws? >> What I would say, mister chair, is that it depends very much on the extent to which you were, planning to use any requirements to any of of the the, the developers, any permit applications, etcetera. It's tying your hands. It's not tying the hands of the public. The law itself is gonna be in the ordinance. Now, as a general matter, I recommend having all of your objective standards, focused more on your your ordinances and your other, documents that, are going to be, the first things that your, potential applicants are going to be looking to. You don't wanna make it too hard, too confusing in terms of having to look both at the the zoning code than the the the general plan to be able to piece together what is required. Really, it's only if we're talking about does the general language cause a potential problem in terms of it being a vague standard. I would say that's only if in your ordinances, you are relying on general plan standards, as something that's going to have to be applied through a discretionary, use permit process. And if you have that squared up on the ordinance side, it it really shouldn't be something, that's creating a problem on the, on the general plan side. >> I might too add that, you know, as I was researching this, the the sheer avalanche of housing laws that have come down through the state in the last 5 years is tremendous. I mean, I think there's over a 100, in the last 5 years, and, really, the state is going towards, as you mentioned, chair, taking away some discretion and local control to incentivize housing because the reality is we don't have enough housing, and so they're trying to make it faster, quicker. And so, to the city attorney's point as well, SB 35 and 330 in some instance instances bypass this commission altogether, and there's no discretionary approval. It goes straight to a building permit. And in that instance, we need to be relying on our zoning code when we go to plan check those building plans to make sure they meet objective standards. We wouldn't be now our zoning code, of course, has to be consistent with the general plan, but the objective design standards will live in that codified ordinance so that we can then, maintain some level of of local control when we're permitting those largely housing projects, right, or mixed use. And so it's tough to keep up with. You know, there's, like I said, over a 100 of those laws that keep coming and in some instance exempt these projects altogether from CEQA or bypass, discretionary projects and go straight to ministerial approval and so on and so forth. But I I would say it's important that we have those objective standards in the code for that reason because a lot of these laws are taking away discretion of this body and council. They're just gonna come in, pull their pull their building permit, and we'll, at that point, really only be able to hold them to the letter of the law as identified in our zoning code. And so, that was sort of as I was sort of wrestling with that sum this week, I thought that might be helpful. It helped me in any way frame up the issue in terms of where does the objectivity need to land, and and the zoning code seems, and other ordinances seems seems to be the best place. >> I don't know if that's helpful but just thought I'd add that as a tag. >> Thank you. I'll open it up, commissioner Goddard. >> I'm gonna continue this discussion, please. And, so, I do appreciate staff's efforts to beef up what the community and the many of the planning commissioners considered to be weak language. However, they did add, in the general plan's introduction, other language that essentially defeats their good intentions. And that language reads, terms used in this document such as require, shall, prohibit, protect, and similar words are not intended for purposes of policy, implementation, or general plan consistency determination to provide absolute certainty, direction, agent urgency, or otherwise, dictate precise and immediate action. So to me, there's a immediately, a contradiction set up within this plan. I would like the city attorney if you could speak to that. >> I don't know that I would necessarily say that is a contradiction. Right? This is essentially an interpretive guide for the plan going forward. And, you know, as I understand that language, the intent is really to make sure, again, that we're preserving the discretion of, of this body, of the city council, to be enacting ordinances, to be, making the determinations, on on individual case by case cases. You know, what do you have? Let's say you have, an individual use permit application coming forward. You may have someone who's very opposed to it and then makes an argument that, something is not consistent with the general plan. If the bulk of you disagree and you, you know, the majority goes ahead and and approve or sets a condition or or, you know, it could be the other side as well. It could be, an argument that that a condition that was imposed was not consistent with the general plan as well. The the the goal is generally to have language from my perspective in the general plan that allows me to defend your determination and, not just to defend the determination but to, defend it sort of as quickly and efficiently as possible. And part of that comes down to the fact that a planning document and in particular general plan is always going to be something that's going to be vague enough, in terms of the, the rules that are going to get applied that you're going to have to be able to make judgment calls going in the future. And we want to be able to preserve the ability, to defend those that not necessarily have those subject, to an argument that you you tied your own hands, back in the day. >> In that case, would the planning commission have the discretion to determine that if if a policy or says preserve and it's was beefed up to be basically, I'm feeling like this is like feel good language at this point. Is it that amongst the commission's discretion to treat that this particular case that might become for us as, what's the word, absolute certainty? >> I may need you to repeat the question. I didn't entirely follow-up. What I'm hearing from you is discretion. So it is at the of the commission in the future at a future hearing when the the applicable policy uses the term preserve to treat that as absolute certainty in specific case. I mean >> The way I would say it is that you have a policy that's going to say that you may have to preserve something. And then when you get to the decision on the individual use permit, you're going to look to that policy and you're going to determine is this application consistent with that policy and, are there anything that anything that we may have to do in terms of the conditions on the use permit to make it consistent with that policy. When it comes to the terms of absolute certainty, you know, my understanding of that language and I think from a legal drafting perspective, it makes a lot of sense and is very, prudent is that we're we're not intending to imply that because it said you're going to preserve something, let me let's say it's preserved trees, that you could never be able to remove a tree. You would never have the discretion to do that. I don't you know, you when you're putting in that policy language, I think that you don't have the discretion to say we don't care about that policy statement anymore, because that is part of the general plan. It is something you have to consider. But how that fits into an individual project, and what exactly are the conditions that are going to be imposed on that, really is something that you're going to have to make on a case by case basis, or or through more, specific ordinances, as they come forward. >> If I may, as a follow-up, if you can hear me, I think it's important to look at the last sentence of that preamble because as it says, yeah, these are not necessary to be precise, but it finishes up with they are intended to provide strong guidance to city staff, commission, city council, community members, development community in the course of day to day implementation of the general plans policies. So if it says strive to do something that's giving you guidance as you're using your discretionary, authority to do something. But it also, says that, you know, you do have some flexibility as indicated by the city attorney, but I think you shouldn't take that one sentence totally out of context. >> Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, then I will open up, public comment at this time. As I mentioned before, if you'd like to speak, there are blue cards in the back. Feel free to fill it out and bring it up here to the front. Each person, will get 3 minutes. There are a couple of lights. Green means go. Yellow means, you know, 3 or 30 seconds, and, red means stop. So, the first speaker that I have here is, Cheryl Bullock followed by David Ledger. >> We represent the safety concerns of over 3,000 house holds located on the hill and 2 assisted living facilities. One safe place and a senior center are close by as well. We are not anti development. We are pro safety and responsible planning. 6 weeks before the Carr Fire, Redding fire chief Jerry Gray came to the River Ridge neighborhood at our request to talk with us about how to get out should we have a fire and get trapped. But the reality was that there was only one way out, Quartz Hill Road. Chief Gray knew the danger our neighborhood faced and what his Redding Fire personnel would face when we get trapped well, if we would have gotten trapped. Stay on the streets, he said, we'll come for you. Little did we know that 6 weeks later, we'd be putting all this to the test. When the fire tornado hit in late, July 2018, thousands of residents tried to escape the flames and found themselves stuck and unable to move in a giant choke point on the hill, which then totally clogged the streets through called Caldwell Park and on into downtown. We were not safe then and we are not safe now. At the December 19th city council meeting, mayor Tanesa Audette made the statement that a high density housing development on Quartz Hill would be a firebreak for those of us on the hill. We totally disagree with that statement. Homes are not a firebreak. They are fuel. They are flammable. And in no way do they provide a safety barrier for residents. Tonight, we're here to bring awareness to the safety problems and dangers ahead for residents on the hill, which are reflected in this proposed general plan. Mister Manuel, had the map up there and we can see where future development is planned for the top of Quartz Hill. There's a high density development planned, using 22,500,000 in grant money designated for repair and restoration of damaged infrastructure from the fire. Since there were only trees on that acreage, I failed to see how the city can even consider the expenditure of the grant money on this. What is needed is a second way off the hill. So we're requesting that the general plan include consideration of a second way off the of off the hill, a bridge at Buena Ventura, and that no subdivisions or high density projects be built on top of the hill or on the hill until the situation can be made safer. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. I have David Ledger followed by Victoria Peterson. Can you turn on your mic there, please? >> I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today. And, first of all, I appreciate all the work that the staff did. One thing as far as the focus groups, I mean, they really got a lot of people from, you know, the community. I was actually on 3 of those focus groups. And, and so I appreciated that and I'm sure they had a lot of people on the other groups. And so most of the general plan I like, especially after you took out all of that weak language. It was really bad. But I am concerned still as commissioner Goddard is that they still have that terms, you know, as such terms shall require, shall, prohibit, protect, and similar words. It just seems like a disclaimer you know, never mind. I just don't really like the wording of that. And so I'm not an attorney, so I can't really interpret it. But it sounds to me like all of the strong words, you know, we could throw out later should we so desire. One of the things, Vishnu, mister Kirshan did a great job, you know, he took in all these, you different opinions that people had on these focus groups and, you know, condensed it down. And then on the climate action plan, we kept saying, no. We need stronger language. And it kept coming back as considered and, which is really weak because, you know, I figured it went to the city attorney and he goes, no. Just have it, you know, consider. Don't have it adopt a, a climate action plan. We're the, like, 17th hottest city in the US, the 3rd hottest in in in Redding likes the hot pavement, the lack of trees along the sidewalks, and lack of trees, you know, in parking lots or poorly shaded parking lots. Real quickly, I know that what Kent did with that plan as far as setback was great, that policy they wrote up, I guess, you know, several decades ago. The thing is along the river north of, Cypress Street Bridge, there's a 10 foot wide city trail. It's 10 feet back from the bank. 1 of the buildings is 45 feet back from the bank. That's a concern I have with any weaknesses. So otherwise, since my time is kinda running out, I I appreciate the, infill development aspects of the general plan. I appreciate the bringing all the people in the community together. But that weak language that is still in some sections that I sent in a letter to you, I still think should be strengthened. Thank you very much. >> Thank you very much. I have Victoria Peterson followed by Rebecca Ladrone de Guevara. >> It's really nice to be here today. I have not spoken to an official group, I don't think ever. So hello. Thank you everyone for doing all your planning. And I just wanted to say something about the strength of words chosen to convey the the ideas of expectations. People, in my experience, meet, set out expectations that includes developers. Weak to require new development projects to integrate resource conservation while centering environmental and cultural sensitivity in every project design and construction. And I don't think that's too restrictive. In other words, please use stronger and specific language in the plan to lead people to meet our expectations. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. I have Rebecca Ladron de Guevara followed by Sarah Thomas. >> Hello. Good afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity to let me speak. My name is Rebecca Ladrone de Guevara, and You got that really well. I am president of the Shasta Birding Society formerly known as Wintour Audubon Society. And, mister Manuel already brought up our letter and he gave it a really nice compliment. You said it was the most succinct letter one of most succinct letters you received. Thank you for that. So we have the as you saw, the the letter was pretty long and extensive, so I'm not gonna belabor the part of the language and and the climate, part that, mister Ledger brought up. But I will go off of what you said earlier. Because one of as you as you mentioned, one of our, points in the letter was that the clarification of the, that's that's great. We really appreciate that. So what we're requesting is maybe that the commission could delay accepting the passing on the final EIR until we get a clear picture of what let let me give you an example of of what the the complexity of this. So what our letter says is, the term special status species appears several times in the plan with potentially inconsistent and unclear meanings. Special status species can mean all rare species identified by federal state and local designations which must be considered during CEQA compliance review. In addition to endangered or threatened species listed under the Federal Endangered Species Act and California Endan