General Plan Advisory Committee
General Plan Advisory Committee
Thu, August 17, 2023
Agenda items
Vote records
Discussion summary
Transcript
Meeting summaryAI-generated
General Plan Advisory Committee — August 17, 2023
This was a regular monthly meeting of the General Plan Advisory Committee (GPAC), held via Zoom with interpretation services available. The session featured a substantive presentation on housing feasibility, robust member discussion, and a conversation about restructuring working groups for the next phase of the General Plan Update (GPU).
Staff and Project Updates
Brian Oh, eight months into his role as Director of Community Development, led the project update. Key highlights included:
The Housing Element was certified by the state in March 2023 and recently received recognition from YIMBY Law as the best overall housing element in California.
The city is developing Objective Design Standards and will engage stakeholders and City Council on that process soon.
A Climate Action Plan public draft is forthcoming, with open houses and online engagement planned. Two GPAC volunteers were sought for a joint GPAC/Climate Advisory Committee ad hoc group to review the draft.
The North Petaluma Smart Train Station Specific Plan is progressing, supported by a grant award of over $1 million.
Flood resilience modeling — updated sea level rise and flood mapping — is expected to be presented at the September 21 in-person GPAC meeting, and will directly inform the upcoming discussion of land use alternatives.
The Fairgrounds is being considered for a resiliency center grant application before year's end.
A technical issue was noted: the Zoom link published on the public-facing meeting agenda was incorrect, preventing some members of the public from joining.
Residential Feasibility and Affordable Housing Finance Analyses
Derek Braun of Strategic Economics presented findings from two complementary analyses commissioned as part of the GPU.
Market Rate Housing Feasibility
Braun explained that a project "pencils" when its market value exceeds total development costs plus required investor return. He analyzed four development prototypes — a 3-story wood-frame building with tuck-under parking, a 5-story "wrap" product, and two versions of an 8-story podium building — all tested as rentals.
The central finding: none of the four prototypes are currently financially feasible in Petaluma. The reasons are interconnected: construction costs across the Bay Area are high and regionally consistent; project financing has become more uncertain amid interest rate volatility; and achievable rents in Petaluma are lower than in core Bay Area markets, limiting revenue potential. The 5- and 8-story buildings are "farthest off" from feasibility, and the 3-story prototype is the closest — though still not penciling under current conditions.
The analysis tested several city policy levers — reducing municipal impact fees, reducing inclusionary affordable housing requirements, and reducing parking minimums — and found that even combining all three, the feasibility gap is not fully closed, though it narrows meaningfully. Additional policy options discussed included: allowing flexible ground-floor uses rather than requiring retail, streamlining permitting processes, accommodating emerging construction techniques like mass timber, and investing in neighborhood amenities to boost achievable rents.
Braun cautioned that the analysis draws broad lessons and that individual projects may still move forward due to unique circumstances — for example, a long-time landowner with minimal holding costs.
Affordable Housing Finance
For 100% affordable projects (typically developed by nonprofits), the challenge is assembling a "capital stack" of federal, state, and local subsidies to cover the gap between regulated rents and actual development costs — which run roughly $500,000–$700,000 per unit.
The analysis found that Petaluma and Sonoma County together contributed approximately 8% of project costs in recent affordable developments — compared to 30–37% in San Francisco and Santa Clara counties. Braun acknowledged the comparison is imperfect given those counties' greater resources, but noted the gap is significant.
Recommended city actions included: allocating more general fund revenue to affordable housing; exploring voter-approved tax measures (parcel taxes, bonds, or a property transfer tax increase, which is available to Petaluma as a charter city); making it easier for market-rate developers to pay in-lieu fees rather than build on-site inclusionary units; and targeting subsidies to projects in "high resource areas" that score better in competitive state funding processes.
Braun closed on a positive note, citing several recent city actions already moving in this direction: the new impact fee exemption for 100% affordable projects (adopted earlier in 2023), the North Station Specific Plan, internal departmental reorganization, and two new housing staff positions.
GPAC Clarifying Questions
Members asked whether for-sale products like townhomes would fare better — Braun noted townhomes tend to be more feasible than rental multi-family but weren't the focus of this analysis. He added that condominiums are challenging throughout most of the Bay Area right now. Members also asked whether the policy changes modeled would bring projects to full feasibility (answer: not quite, but they help significantly), and what a "land bank" means in practice — Braun described it as a city mechanism to acquire and hold land, removing land costs from future affordable projects, potentially via long-term ground leases.
Heather Hines (Housing Manager) clarified that the city's new fee exemption for affordable housing covers city facilities, traffic, park acquisition, park development, and open space fees — but not water/wastewater capacity fees (which are operationally necessary) or school fees (which are not city-controlled). She also noted that short-term vacation rentals are already prohibited in ADUs permitted from 2017 onward, in response to a member's concern about ADU conversion.
Public Comment on This Item
Three members of the public spoke:
Shakti Naidu expressed concern that the presentation was being made alongside the downtown overlay discussion without adequate public notice. She argued the community would be "shocked" by this discussion and called for more visible outreach — banners, broader advertising — and for meetings not to be held in ways that inadvertently exclude the public (as happened with the broken Zoom link). She opposed five- and eight-story buildings, calling for "gentle density" like duplexes, quads, and ADUs.
Dwayne raised concerns about whether local-level solutions can address what he sees as a structural wage-and-housing-cost imbalance. He asked about mobile home park co-ops as a model for resident ownership, and expressed curiosity about the funding sources available to San Francisco that Petaluma might access.
Susan Simpson echoed concerns about public accessibility, agreed with Dwayne's comments, and suggested the analysis would have been stronger with explicit case studies from Santa Rosa or other nearby cities. She praised GPAC member Joshua Simmons by name for his contributions to the committee.
GPAC Discussion
The discussion was wide-ranging and candid. Key threads:
Several members expressed surprise — and some alarm — that market-rate rental housing doesn't pencil at any of the tested densities. Member Sharon Kirk called for "more radical" thinking: "We're dancing around the edges." Member Bill Wilbur called the finding "stunning."
Mary Dooley highlighted the potential of a city land bank using city-owned properties, the value of investing in town amenities to boost desirability and achievable rents, and the importance of for-sale housing pathways for wealth-building by moderate- and lower-income households.
Sharon Kirk raised the Fairgrounds as a potential site for affordable housing, noting the city may ultimately face a difficult choice about that land.
Bill Reinhart suggested the city explore for-sale townhome and condo products more explicitly, and proposed sunsetting short-term vacation rental permits to reclaim naturally occurring affordable units.
Dave Alden suggested revisiting historically disfavored but potentially relevant housing types — boarding houses, co-ops, SROs, dorms — and not allowing them to remain as regulatory relics.
Ally (on leave but attending) offered several specific policy ideas: flexible-height ground floors rather than mandatory retail, parking maximums instead of minimums, easier access to in-lieu fee payments for market-rate developers, and temporary-use permitting reform to allow pop-up amenities that boost neighborhood desirability.
Brent emphasized that city policy should overwhelmingly target moderate- and low-income housing production, noting the city has already exceeded its market-rate housing targets from the prior cycle.
Heather Hines and Brian Oh reassured the group that the city remains confident it can meet its RHNA targets, pointing to a robust pipeline of 100% affordable projects (MidPen under construction, Burbank preparing to pull permits, Danko in progress, and others).
*No votes were taken on this item; this was a discussion and information session.*
Working Group Restructuring
Ron Whitmore (consultant, Raymond Associates) presented a proposed reorganization of GPAC working groups to prepare for the upcoming public review of draft Policy Frameworks. The original working groups — formed about 18 months ago — produced recommendations that have already been incorporated into the consultant team's policy development work.
Going forward, staff proposed clustering the 14-plus policy framework topics into a smaller number of working groups, with names and compositions to be finalized after gauging member interest. The upcoming near-term GPAC focus (September and beyond) will be on flood resilience and land use alternatives as full-group in-person sessions; working groups would then re-engage when the public draft Policy Frameworks are released for review.
Staff emphasized: membership is voluntary; no commitment is required tonight; people can switch from their original working group; and participation in a working group doesn't limit a member's ability to comment on other policy areas.
Member Chris raised the need for publicly posted working group information and accessible meeting locations to allow broader community participation. Staff agreed to explore that. Member Bill Reinhart asked for a written timeline and process map for the policy framework review sequence; Ron Whitmore confirmed that will be provided before the working groups formally reconvene.
Staff will send a follow-up email asking members to indicate interest in working groups, including a new opportunity to serve on a joint GPAC/Climate Advisory Commission ad hoc to review the Climate Action Plan's greenhouse gas reduction measures.
Public comment on this item: Council Member John Chevas (former GPAC member, now elected) expressed enthusiasm for an Engineering and Facilities working group given the scale of upcoming infrastructure decisions. Susan Simpson expressed strong interest in rejoining an Open Space and Natural Environment working group (advocating for the name change away from "natural resources"), and highlighted the importance of wildlife corridor mapping in the broader regional context.
Brian Oh closed the meeting by noting that staff member Christina Paul has relocated overseas (though remaining on the team remotely), and sharing that Planning Commissioner Kevin Kelly is dealing with a significant medical emergency.
*No votes were taken.*
Key Takeaways
Market-rate rental housing at higher densities does not currently pencil in Petaluma — a finding that surprised many GPAC members and frames the challenge of meeting RHNA targets through private development alone.
The city's local contribution to affordable housing financing (roughly 8% of project costs) is far below comparable jurisdictions, pointing to a need for new revenue mechanisms; the recently adopted impact fee exemption for 100% affordable projects is a meaningful step but not sufficient on its own.
Policy tools the city controls (fees, parking, ground-floor use requirements, permitting speed) can help close the feasibility gap but — even combined — do not fully solve it; broader market conditions and rent levels are also critical variables.
The September 21 in-person GPAC meeting will focus on flood resilience and updated sea level rise/flood mapping, which will directly inform the land use alternatives discussion — the most consequential upcoming phase of the General Plan Update.
GPAC working groups will be reconstituted in the coming months to conduct deep-dive reviews of draft Policy Frameworks; staff will circulate a sign-up email and a detailed schedule before that process begins.
AI-generated summary from voice-to-text transcript. Not the official record. Verify important details with the source documents linked above.
What happened at this meeting
PROJECT AND STAFF UPDATES Updates on initiatives related to the General Plan Update (GPU)
# PROJECT AND STAFF UPDATES: General Plan Update Initiatives
Brian, the new Director of Community Development, opened the meeting and introduced the consulting team led by Ron Whitmore from Raymond Associates, who outlined meeting logistics including interpretation accommodations and the agenda structure. Staff provided updates on the GPU's progress, noting the initiative is currently transitioning from policy development to alternatives discussion—a critical community engagement phase—with Derek Braun presenting housing-related analyses and discussions of working group reorganization to follow. Notable achievements include the state's certification of the Housing Element in March and YIMBY recognition of the municipality's housing element as the best in California. Staff outlined upcoming priorities including implementation of housing policies and objective design standards, advancement of the Active Transportation Plan, North Station construction planning in partnership with SMART and Danko, and a Second Station specific plan supported by over one million dollars in grant funding. The next GPAC meeting is scheduled for September 21st at 6:30 PM at the community center, where staff will discuss flood resilience data, land use alternatives, and working group policy frameworks.
Brian, the new Director of Community Development, opened the meeting and introduced the consulting team led by Ron Whitmore from Raymond Associates, who outlined meeting logistics including interpretation accommodations and the agenda structure. Staff provided updates on the GPU's progress, noting the initiative is currently transitioning from policy development to alternatives discussion—a critical community engagement phase—with Derek Braun presenting housing-related analyses and discussions of working group reorganization to follow. Notable achievements include the state's certification of the Housing Element in March and YIMBY recognition of the municipality's housing element as the best in California. Staff outlined upcoming priorities including implementation of housing policies and objective design standards, advancement of the Active Transportation Plan, North Station construction planning in partnership with SMART and Danko, and a Second Station specific plan supported by over one million dollars in grant funding. The next GPAC meeting is scheduled for September 21st at 6:30 PM at the community center, where staff will discuss flood resilience data, land use alternatives, and working group policy frameworks.
RESIDENTIAL FEASIBILITY AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING FINANCE ANALYSES Presentation by Derek Braun from Strategic Economics summarizing the purpose, methods, and findings from analyses of residential development feasibility and affordable housing finance in Petaluma.
# Summary
Derek Braun from Strategic Economics presented residential feasibility and affordable housing finance analyses examining market-rate and deed-restricted affordable housing development in Petaluma, analyzing three rental prototypes (three-, five-, and eight-story buildings) and finding that all are currently financially infeasible due to high construction costs, project financing challenges, and lower rents compared to other Bay Area locations. The analysis revealed that Petaluma's local funding contribution for affordable housing is only about 8% of project costs (compared to 30-37% in San Francisco and Santa Clara counties) and that a 30-43% reduction in total development costs would be needed to achieve feasibility, though the three-story prototype came closest under specific on-ground conditions. Braun recommended multiple city policy actions including reducing municipal fees and parking requirements, streamlining approvals, accommodating mass timber construction, removing ground floor retail requirements, and leveraging city-owned land banks and fee exemptions to reduce financial barriers. Committee members raised concerns about whether these incremental policy changes would be sufficient to meet Petaluma's Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) targets and whether more radical solutions—such as sunsetting short-term vacation rental policies, encouraging for-sale townhome products, and exploring alternative housing models like co-ops and adaptive reuse—should be considered.
Derek Braun from Strategic Economics presented residential feasibility and affordable housing finance analyses examining market-rate and deed-restricted affordable housing development in Petaluma, analyzing three rental prototypes (three-, five-, and eight-story buildings) and finding that all are currently financially infeasible due to high construction costs, project financing challenges, and lower rents compared to other Bay Area locations. The analysis revealed that Petaluma's local funding contribution for affordable housing is only about 8% of project costs (compared to 30-37% in San Francisco and Santa Clara counties) and that a 30-43% reduction in total development costs would be needed to achieve feasibility, though the three-story prototype came closest under specific on-ground conditions. Braun recommended multiple city policy actions including reducing municipal fees and parking requirements, streamlining approvals, accommodating mass timber construction, removing ground floor retail requirements, and leveraging city-owned land banks and fee exemptions to reduce financial barriers. Committee members raised concerns about whether these incremental policy changes would be sufficient to meet Petaluma's Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) targets and whether more radical solutions—such as sunsetting short-term vacation rental policies, encouraging for-sale townhome products, and exploring alternative housing models like co-ops and adaptive reuse—should be considered.
Discussion of Working Group roles in Policy Framework review and a proposed re organization of Working Groups.
# Summary
Members discussed how findings from housing reports can inform the Policy Framework review and future land use patterns for the General Plan update, with particular interest in exploring land banking strategies and wholesale changes rather than incremental adjustments. Staff introduced a proposal to reorganize GPAC's 18-month-old voluntary working groups around 14 policy framework topics, positioning them as focused deep dives during public review periods that complement—not replace—broader public engagement through workshops and online forums. Staff explained that upcoming General Plan phases will address substantial topics like flood resilience and land use alternatives better suited as full GPAC discussions, while working groups would help ensure alignment between land use and supporting infrastructure policies. Bill Reiner requested written documentation of timelines and the policy framework review process, including the order of review and consolidation steps back to GPAC before going to Planning Commission and Council, and staff clarified that all policy frameworks would be made available simultaneously to GPAC, relevant commissions, and the public. Public commenters John and Susan identified the Engineering and Facilities working group as critical for addressing climate change challenges like electrification and facility projects, and advocated for the Open Space and Natural Environment working group to map connectivity and wildlife corridors within the regional context.
Members discussed how findings from housing reports can inform the Policy Framework review and future land use patterns for the General Plan update, with particular interest in exploring land banking strategies and wholesale changes rather than incremental adjustments. Staff introduced a proposal to reorganize GPAC's 18-month-old voluntary working groups around 14 policy framework topics, positioning them as focused deep dives during public review periods that complement—not replace—broader public engagement through workshops and online forums. Staff explained that upcoming General Plan phases will address substantial topics like flood resilience and land use alternatives better suited as full GPAC discussions, while working groups would help ensure alignment between land use and supporting infrastructure policies. Bill Reiner requested written documentation of timelines and the policy framework review process, including the order of review and consolidation steps back to GPAC before going to Planning Commission and Council, and staff clarified that all policy frameworks would be made available simultaneously to GPAC, relevant commissions, and the public. Public commenters John and Susan identified the Engineering and Facilities working group as critical for addressing climate change challenges like electrification and facility projects, and advocated for the Open Space and Natural Environment working group to map connectivity and wildlife corridors within the regional context.
Agenda items (3)
General Business
1General BusinessPROJECT AND STAFF UPDATES Updates on initiatives related to the General Plan Update (GPU)
What happened
# PROJECT AND STAFF UPDATES: General Plan Update InitiativesBrian, the new Director of Community Development, opened the meeting and introduced the consulting team led by Ron Whitmore from Raymond Associates, who outlined meeting logistics including interpretation accommodations and the agenda structure. Staff provided updates on the GPU's progress, noting the initiative is currently transitioning from policy development to alternatives discussion—a critical community engagement phase—with Derek Braun presenting housing-related analyses and discussions of working group reorganization to follow. Notable achievements include the state's certification of the Housing Element in March and YIMBY recognition of the municipality's housing element as the best in California. Staff outlined upcoming priorities including implementation of housing policies and objective design standards, advancement of the Active Transportation Plan, North Station construction planning in partnership with SMART and Danko, and a Second Station specific plan supported by over one million dollars in grant funding. The next GPAC meeting is scheduled for September 21st at 6:30 PM at the community center, where staff will discuss flood resilience data, land use alternatives, and working group policy frameworks.
2General BusinessRESIDENTIAL FEASIBILITY AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING FINANCE ANALYSES Presentation by Derek Braun from Strategic Economics summarizing the purpose, methods, and findings from analyses of residential development feasibility and affordable housing finance in Petaluma.
What happened
# SummaryDerek Braun from Strategic Economics presented residential feasibility and affordable housing finance analyses examining market-rate and deed-restricted affordable housing development in Petaluma, analyzing three rental prototypes (three-, five-, and eight-story buildings) and finding that all are currently financially infeasible due to high construction costs, project financing challenges, and lower rents compared to other Bay Area locations. The analysis revealed that Petaluma's local funding contribution for affordable housing is only about 8% of project costs (compared to 30-37% in San Francisco and Santa Clara counties) and that a 30-43% reduction in total development costs would be needed to achieve feasibility, though the three-story prototype came closest under specific on-ground conditions. Braun recommended multiple city policy actions including reducing municipal fees and parking requirements, streamlining approvals, accommodating mass timber construction, removing ground floor retail requirements, and leveraging city-owned land banks and fee exemptions to reduce financial barriers. Committee members raised concerns about whether these incremental policy changes would be sufficient to meet Petaluma's Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) targets and whether more radical solutions—such as sunsetting short-term vacation rental policies, encouraging for-sale townhome products, and exploring alternative housing models like co-ops and adaptive reuse—should be considered.
3General BusinessDiscussion of Working Group roles in Policy Framework review and a proposed re organization of Working Groups.
What happened
# SummaryMembers discussed how findings from housing reports can inform the Policy Framework review and future land use patterns for the General Plan update, with particular interest in exploring land banking strategies and wholesale changes rather than incremental adjustments. Staff introduced a proposal to reorganize GPAC's 18-month-old voluntary working groups around 14 policy framework topics, positioning them as focused deep dives during public review periods that complement—not replace—broader public engagement through workshops and online forums. Staff explained that upcoming General Plan phases will address substantial topics like flood resilience and land use alternatives better suited as full GPAC discussions, while working groups would help ensure alignment between land use and supporting infrastructure policies. Bill Reiner requested written documentation of timelines and the policy framework review process, including the order of review and consolidation steps back to GPAC before going to Planning Commission and Council, and staff clarified that all policy frameworks would be made available simultaneously to GPAC, relevant commissions, and the public. Public commenters John and Susan identified the Engineering and Facilities working group as critical for addressing climate change challenges like electrification and facility projects, and advocated for the Open Space and Natural Environment working group to map connectivity and wildlife corridors within the regional context.
Verbatim transcript available
86 transcript segments indexed
uh I think we can all appreciate um this little dip in the weather before I roll into some of the warmer months um so I know a handful of you just you know just a small town and just making the connections seeing people um walking across the street and stuff but for those I haven't met I'm looking forward to meeting in person my name is Brian oh I am eight months in as your director of Community Development and so I have the fortunate opportunity to work with our planning staff many of them here the general plan Consulting team led by Ron Whitmore from Raymond Associates um and then working closely with our housing and building divisions as well um and so we're a growing Department um we're evolving and I think what one thing that was a particular draw for me was um you know being able to work on the general plan um in my backyard uh you know and sort of build that Legacy out for uh not just my kids but um you know for for our community and so um I'm so appreciative of everyone's time here um spending um you know your evenings once a month um plus all the time that goes into it um and it's something that it's you know obviously near and dear to the community's hearts um and so again you know thank you for um you know just sharing your wide uh breath of knowledge and expertise and interest in improving our community um and so with that I will I'm not sure who's controlling hope Ron's gonna go again it's like just some housekeeping items so uh we are recording there's
interpretation this will also be available on demand just like any of our meetings and so I'll pause here for introduction to both Monica and Maria thank you good afternoon um Studio thank you we're ready thank you Monica so before we jump in I would love to see who's here roll call and so I'll just start from the top and just um address or acknowledge um you know be creative and besides just the just the here okay Dave Alden be creative thanks Dave for being here Stephanie Blake let's see her Phil Boyle here president hey Phil and Aaron Tamil Lucy and Mary Dooley there we go thank you Mary nice to see you and hear from you uh Jesse is absent and Ally Ally's here hey Ally are you back um from leaves nope I'm not I still have a few more weeks thankfully well thanks for being here um with such an important time and spending with your family Jacoby all right hey hey thank you Sharon Kirk hello hello Sharon Roger here in mind and body and body Iliana and Roberto and Brent here and Chris yo yo what flavor was that ice cream it's a little chocolate a little vanilla just nothing too fancy but just enough for a little lift pre-meeting lift [Music] I'm here I'm in transit though so I'm gonna be off camera for a little bit but I should be back to the office soon see you then yeah not a problem thanks Bill and Joshua here queer and glad to be getting back to the swing of things alrighty welcome Josh held up and Lizzy and last but not least Bill Bill Wilbur here I am all right over email
and over Zoom over the last couple hours there I think we've been emailing on our project okay well thanks to everyone and then let's um before we jump into it can we just um let's see who else is here I'm gonna just do a quick introduction we had our interpreters and looks like there's a few of us joining from uh the public as well and the Consulting team great I think we're all here all right next slide runs thank you Brian and good to see everybody um hope you've enjoyed your summer um just a few additional housekeeping items before we jump in um as usual if you have any technical difficulties please email Daniel or Zoom host Tonight the email address is on this slide likewise if you're having any trouble with interpretation please contact uh Maria at the email address on the screen and this is the regular reminder of people like Ron to please speak slowly makes the job of the interpreters much easier likewise for all of us planners please try to avoid using acronyms Derek there's a number of acronyms I know in your presentation so when you first come to them please make sure you spell them out um but otherwise I still we can to make the important work that the interpreters are doing as easy as possible so um the front end of the meeting is pretty consistent with how we typically handle the gpac meetings get through the logistics open it up for general public comment staff then have some project and other City updates related to the general plan the main item tonight and
featuring our guest speaker Derek Braun from strategic economics is a summary of the methods and key findings from a couple important housing related analyzes Derek will give us a presentation based on the reports that were sent to you last week will then pause actually for some sorry one thing is missing here we'll pause for questions from the gpac just clarifying questions not discussion questions and then we'll open it up to public comment before bringing it back for the topic specific gpac discussion and then we wanted to hold a little bit of time at the end as Ryan already mentioned to talk about working groups and what we have in mind for them in the near future um and then get us and then create explain how we'd like to hear from folks after the meeting about their level of interest in different working group topics So Daniel at this point I will stop sharing screen and turn it over to you for general public comment great thank you Ron and all um so at this point we'll go ahead and start general public comments so if any members of the public who are on this call please utilize the raised hand Zoom feature and you'll have three minutes for your public comment um at this point I don't see any hands raised but we'll give it a moment later on it looks like at this time there's no public commenters so I'll turn it back over to you thank you and I will turn it back over to Brian to take us through the project and staff updates thanks Ron so as you get the PowerPoint uh
slide hold up I think just with some of that formality um I think that was that was sort of um the typical structure I mean I do would encourage any any member of um not just the committee but members of the public that are here or may listen um to the recording and to just reach out right if we if there's any questions or any comments that um any Community member has um you know please just feel free to reach out directly all right project and staff updates next slide run foreign map hasn't been this um quite this uh doing it delineated and uh uniform but um you know many of you um have been through this uh through this process um with us and so with the city um and so we just wanted to take a moment here just to reflect on um all the work that has been done all the input you know whether it's through the working groups to help um create some draft policy Frameworks that we're looking to to bring back and share with this group a lot of work has been done um as part of the general Plan update there's absolutely a lot more that needs to be done and we'll talk a little bit um and sort of highlight some of the things that we're looking as a look ahead um but really we're sort of in this phase here between um policy development and then getting us on track to start talking about Alternatives so this is the big um you know engagement uh point with the community to really understand you know how the community at large wants to grow and wants to evolve uh the city through this
General plan process and so if this is a critical moment so again just wanted to share just some gratitude with this group for your participation and so we are still um you know the initial calendar is you know obviously outdated at this point but if we can hit these marks where we're talking Alternatives again we'll share some dates um at the end of this presentation but then we can really get um you know roll up the sleeves start developing the plan start looking at a drop plan packing to our neighbors talking to the community um and so you know we feel like we're on a good path and today's going to be a really critical uh Point um to quote Us in the right direction next slide so part of that windiness is a general plan is has been all-encompassing right and so with the successful certification of our housing element um you know that that again was a key part of the general Plan update um as is all things climate and so um this is just to talk through some of that so we had the climate emergency framework that was passed uh by the city council and that really identified a nice course for City staff um to embark on and so we have the a number of meetings here and then a request here in red and that we'll get to in a moment but um really the big release is going to be the action plan a public draft or Community review it will be accompanied with a number of ways to engage with the community whether it's through open house content on our website and ways to interact online as
well as a focused um effort with our climate advisory committee and so and I Josh I see your hand let me just finish this part so one of the things that we are looking for and maybe you're raising your hand for this uh we're looking for two volunteers um that will spend roughly a month as part of a joint General plan advisory committee and a climate advisory committee ad hoc to review the action plan and while it's in draft form so just um think about that and think about if that's um you know whether it's yourself or someone on the committee that is not joining us today that may be a good fit for that and then sort of overarching themes uh is you know how do we make sure that all these parallel efforts whether it's the climate action plan whether it's the active Transportation plan General Plan update all of the ongoing policies that we are working on as a city and to get to those carbon neutral goals to get to those climate goals you know how are these all working in lockstep there's going to be a lot of content that's going to come out over the next handful of months and so we're looking to roll out more regular communication just to ensure that people are informed and they can find ways to engage and be part of the discussion gosh just yes uh so sorry for the introduction I just wanted to flag a member of the public reached out to let me know that the zoom link uh on the publicly posted meeting agenda um is uh is not working for them and I verified it is different than
the one that we received tonight okay so if this is go ahead no no go ahead this is Daniel um I got a couple emails about that um so I we can chat offline um kind of behind the scenes to get that right um but I think at this point we should move forward with the meeting and I'll continue to provide the correct link thanks Daniel you have somebody could log into the other Zoom meeting is that possible and redirect people I'll try that thank you uh just real quick um uh Jesse and I had put together a climate change working group is that and that's um we produce some stuff like the other working groups Is this different than that in addition uh maybe you're going to come to this later I'm not sure this one yeah thanks for understanding together yes so we there's we'll have a whole uh agenda item but this is essentially extra credit um in addition to the working group so we'll talk through and we'll spend a lot of time today just talking through um how best to reorient um and re re-engage the gpac through the working groups and so this is this would be sort of separate ad hoc Focus um thanks thanks Roger okay next slide all right the big one so this is something we've communicated um you know over email we've um these sort of signaled that this is uh going to be um another uh big topic that we're rolling out and so we're fine tuning um the content here we've been working with some of our experts uh Rogers Roger has also been part of that exercise and so we're getting ready um to
start you know you know hopefully I think the idea is to be in person have the maps out um it is a lot so I think you know we want to um you know we want to put the information out there we want to have an informed discussion about it and then allow um the community to have an opportunity to ask questions so we're looking at an open house format um but before we would do that um I believe the next step would be with gpac um and that is we are planning that to be in person and so we'll talk about that a little bit more the later um part of this meeting next slide okay um I think there's just there's been some comments and you know just general genuine curiosity about [Music] um you know what we've been working on and so I highlighted the housing element that was sort of certified adopted by city council certified by the state back in March and so that was a big milestone as part of the general Plan update effort it we also uh recently received recognition from um EMB so that's an acronym for yes in my backyard it's a advocacy organization throughout the state of California recognizing the um how our housing element has the best overall in the state and so um you know that was uh you know really exciting to to get that recognition but um you know I think uh you know small win and then you know really what we need to do is Implement right how do we achieve those policies and the goals that we identified in the plan objective design standards so this is something that is
increasingly important so we've been spending a lot of time past staff um and so we're uh shortly going to start engaging with stakeholders in the community and so we can help us facilitate a discussion with City Council on what those design standards should look like our colleagues with the public works department um have been actively working on um our update to the active Transportation plan and so there is a workshop with City Council and that staff is uh working diligently on and so something that we can definitely share out um as we get closer than a staff report is released on that and I'm going to just skip Fairgrounds for a moment um North Station construction and we have as a city um largely led by our planning Division and have been working with smart and um Danko and so we're on a pretty good path here to start construction and so we've been working with them um on getting that out and so we should start to have some news to share um and have a Communications Outreach on that as well specific plan funding Awards so this is related to sad North Station and so this is uh this um a grant that we were awarded over a million dollars to start a specific plan effort uh focused on our second station and so this is really exciting it dovetails really nicely with the general plan and I suspect a lot of the work and what we hear throughout this process um for the general plan will absolutely carry over um as part of that effort and so we're starting to think about um how to
roll that out timing what makes the most sense and so lots going on and then I'll just conclude here with the fairgrounds a number of you have been involved um over the the last couple of months and to really reimagine and really implement the community's vision for um you know how to evolve and um and you know re not repurpose but maximize the great community space that the fairgrounds could be and so um sort of a jump off from the healthy democracy effort uh city council Direction and then sort of a a nice um Groundswell of interest from our local Partners non-profits our Public Safety um counterparts we were looking at grant opportunities to help reimagine the fairgrounds and have a component of it via resiliency Center and so um more to come on that but that's something we're looking at um applying for before Year's End and run next slide and then next steps I mentioned the introduction to the the modeling and the the data and what do we do with this new data how how is the city um taking this data applying it to uh policies um that live in the general plan how do we um we incorporate it into our zoning code and so this will be the first introduction to it so we're really looking forward to it um and we're looking and targeting a September date for that um and so part of that will involve a discussion on flood resilience so we have this great data we've spent a lot of time with it and how do we use that data to ensure that the city can be more resilient to our change in
climate and so um that is a topic that we are partnering up with our public works department as well as our general plan um Team here as well so look forward to that and then that's really going to be the um you know there's there's somewhat of a sequence here we can cover some of the um inputs like sea level rise and flooding and then that's really going to help us have a more informed discussion on land use Alternatives and how do we project uh what our city looks like over the next 20 years and so again big topics um and and more to come there and then the final one here I think there's there's been a lot of questions just about the the work that the working groups put in at one of those primary deliverables was um some working parameters on policy Frameworks and so this is something that's probably it's not gonna be quite sequential and we're we're sort of buttoning that up and and that's going to be another big new content that we are looking forward to sharing um and hope that it's reflective of all the work that the working groups have put into them to date and so more to come but I just I wanted to just flag those as key discussion points and so save the date we'll share this um over email as well but the next gpac meeting um uh September 21st 6 30 um at the community center um and so again looking forward to it thanks for the time and looking forward to the discussion and so with that I will turn it over and believes to run yeah we just always like to pause at this
point thank you Brian um for those updates to see if there's any additional questions from gpac Members before we move on to the presentation from Derek any questions about Brian's updates all right seeing none um this point I'm actually going to stop sharing screen and Derek's gonna handle his own slides while he does his presentation while we're swapping out here I'll introduce Derek I think you've seen him at previous meetings but as a reminder he's with strategic economics who is on the Consulting team taking the lead on all things Economic Development and related including they have quite robust in-house um analytical skills which you'll see on display this evening and so as part of the scope the very robust scope your city was able to um engage with these supplemental analyzes that aren't commonly done for General plans but are extremely helpful and informative as a means to inform a variety of policies in the general plan housing land use and others and so we thought it was would be really important and useful to share the findings from these analyzes with the gpac specifically and have a discussion about what it might mean for the general plan as it evolves so with that as a reminder Derek's going to do his presentation we'll then pause for clarifying questions before we get into discussion and a public comment on this item then come back to discuss the findings and what to do with the findings for the general Plan update Derek thank you for the introduction Ron uh
can you hear me all right great got a thumbs up okay um so before I begin I just want to say thank you to all the members of the gpac for your service I know that this is a labor of love and it can be a little intense and it's a but it's also a great way to be contributing to your community and I'm really grateful for that and for your time today so I'm going to share the results well some background information and results of two analyzes that strategic economics completed related to the general Plan update you received these reports earlier but um we basically completed two reports that identified barriers and opportunities for the production of higher density market rate Housing Development and I'll Define these terms more down the road and deep restricted affordable housing development projects and the goal of this work was to inform policy decisions about how Petaluma can accommodate its housing needs in the future and speaking of those housing needs uh those the gpac previously saw the work that was on the housing element that was adopted recently or um by the state um but basically the city is under its obligation to meet the regional Regional Housing needs allocation goals set forth for it in this upcoming housing element Cycles as the arena goals are hna and historically Petaluma has fallen short of its housing production goals for lower income households the chart on the right the bottom bars show the 2023 to 2031 goal for this upcoming period the middle bars in red
show the 2015 to 2022 production during this past housing element cycle and then the yellow bars show the goal that was set forth for that housing limit cycle and what you can see here is that the the city performed well in producing moderate income housing and above moderate income housing basically at the higher income bans but fell short of its production goals for low and very low income housing and now the goals are much more aggressive for this upcoming period so the city has done that work on its housing element which include identification of opportunity sites for development including for affordable housing and also potential policy adjustments and our work is sort of complementary to that to look at what are some of the key issues they're posing constraints to housing production I want to start by defining a number of terms and Concepts that that were used in this work so I've already said market rate housing versus deed restricted affordable housing units well what I mean by that is basically market rate housing has no restrictions on prices or rents that can be charged for the tenants of those properties whereas affordable housing refers to housing units with deed restrictions that limit the occupants to households who earn certain income levels you can't exceed a certain income level and the rents have to be based on no more than 30 percent of that household's income or the total housing costs no more than 30 percent so what you can see on the right here is the
standard breakdown by California Housing and Community Development Department for different income levels and so the Ami refers to area median income it's based on the County's income level and then you define a percentage of that for different income bans when you're talking about affordable housing and I should also note that the there's two forms of delivering housing units and so I'm also going to be referring to market rate development in this presentation and now a market rate development projects can include some deed restricted affordable units that's called inclusionary housing production uh but for when I talk about 100 affordable housing developments that refers to projects in which all or nearly all the units have deed restrictions on them for affordability and are delivered typically by non-profit housing Developers so I've got to open with the analysis that focused on the market rate Housing Development uh and this was a financial feasibility analysis which explored barriers to producing that market rate housing so just to run through a few key Concepts here basically a housing development project is considered to be financially feasible when its revenues exceed the cost and investment return that's required for building that project so a private developer is only going to build a development project when it's going to pencil as we say which means it is financially feasible the market value supports or exceeds the overall cost of getting the project built a lot
of costs and revenues are Dynamic and a lot of these factors are beyond the city's control but that's why it's important to run an analysis like this to look at well how is housing performing market rate housing performing in place what are some barriers to getting it built this chart on the right shows basically the a very very simplified version of the the math that goes into building a market rate housing development project in which the overall project value has to cover a variety of costs and investment return and I'll walk through these one at a time so the biggest component of any development projects costs are hard costs these are the costs associated with physically building the development projects this includes things like building materials construction labor work and Grading and Paving and Landscaping the site Etc now over time construction material and labor costs have been increasing especially in the last few years some of those cost increases are monitoring a little bit right now and some I won't get into all the details but you know depending on the building type its height its size construction costs can vary construction cost per square foot of building it just depends on how robust the life safety the fire safety standards need to be based on Building height and the ability to exit the building now construction costs tend to be Regional they tend not to vary too much from location location within a region because material costs labor costs don't tend to
shift a lot between within a region the next component of a housing development project are soft costs these are typically the next largest they they include costs associated with design implementation and fees for the project so it's things like architecture engineering Texas Insurance legal and accounting costs City fees and then also financing costs from lenders land costs are a component of course the acquisition of land to build a project these are much more variable than the other development costs land costs vary a lot from not just City to city but individual sites within a city they depend on things like the location of the desirability how much capacity for development exists in the site based on the city's zoning how much does it allow to get built on it what kinds of uses can be built on it it depends on the local market strength that drives rents or sales prices what's the infrastructure in the area that serves the site what's the condition of the land does it need remediation for contamination issues or anything like that so we we view in this type of analysis these feasibility analyzes we look at land costs as being residual that is what's left over to pay for the land after you've taken into consideration the project value versus the other cost to deliver the project and residual land value allows for a comparison between a lot of different product types because it's sort of standardizes and equalizes what the how you're looking at the results for the project
and it also points to the fact that sometimes non-residential developers can outbid housing Developers for land if a variety of uses are allowed on them if you have a strong office Market it's possible that an office developer will outbid a housing developer because they can simply afford a higher price for the land lastly there's the concept of investment return so developers real estate developers decide to build projects based on the investment return a pro a project being pursued by a developer will only attract funding if the return is considered to be competitive with alternative Investments and that could be anything it doesn't have to be real estate investment necessarily individual projects required return level is going to vary depending on how risky the project is viewed to be and so the more certainty there is that a project is likely to pencil to perform well the less risk is perceived by developers and the easier it will be to access funding and and potentially have a lower investment return requirements now I should say this is all for this concept is for market rate development housing a similar situation of costs and market value for a project exists with 100 affordable projects except the investment return is not driven by market conditions so much but there might be a fee that is a sort of management administration fee that is taken by the developer the nonprofit developer of the housing foreign so on the revenue side we've kind of talked about what's the
project value and so we have to think about market demand and potential revenue of the project and the key idea here is that market demand was the price that buyers and renters are going to pay for projects that price is very local if a if a housing unit is located in a place that's very desirable it has a lot of amenities nearby it's going to command a higher sales price or rent than something that's pretty isolated and uh not well served by other amenities so demand is ultimately based on many factors including location type of products and other menus in the area I there are some policies and incentives from the public sector side that can impact development a development projects Financial feasibility and so that's where this analysis that we performed can really help to inform potential policy Decisions by the city so there's not a lot of control over things like uh the costs of construction materials for example but some examples of policy levers that the city does have are let's say parking ratios if a development project does not actually need the level of parking required by a minimum parking standard in the city then it might benefit a developer if the parking ratio is reduced now developer still wants to have enough parking to market the units but still if they have some options and they can provide less parking that that's less of a cost to build that parking another example is density controls uh you know how much can be built in a given location based on the
allowable unit density or Building height or the overall amount of space that can be built relative to the site the four area ratio there's also incentives the city can provide such as reducing its fee requirements which helps to reduce this soft cost category the city can provide a density bonus which could potentially increase the market value of the project not always though it depends on whether or not getting that extra space actually delivers more return and then the city can also potentially streamline project approvals to reduce financing and holding costs for the project and so this is just a sample but there are a variety of different policy mechanisms the city can use to to move these market value or some of the cost levers up and down so that with that all in mind uh let's move into the results of the analysis uh for the financial feasibility of market rate housing projects so We examined those financial feasibility barriers for the higher density market rate housing now the the idea here is that higher density housing has pretty rarely been built in Petaluma most projects have been shorter they haven't been especially dense we analyzed for Housing Development prototypes which are sort of Exemplar projects illustrative projects that are based on what the types of projects that do get built and we use those prototypes to look at the financial feasibility of them in Petaluma specifically how they perform Petaluma we examine whether these types of development
projects are currently feasible in the city what drives the costs and revenues for each development prototype and how City policies can enhance the feasibility Financial feasibility of the prototypes this chart on the right just demonstrates uh how rarely taller projects have been built in Petaluma as sort of a stand-in for density as well but basically what you can see is and this is just rental projects that currently exist and are tracked by a real estate service called co-star so it may not cover everything but what you're seeing here is that the 1980s these rental projects three of them were one story eight of them were two-story and as you move through time through the decades you start to see more and more slightly taller buildings more three-story buildings in the 2000s and 2010s and in 2020s even a five-story development project there's a four-story in the 2000s but for the most part most development of the city has historically been two or three stories so the development prototypes that we created uh were a three-story a five-story and an eight-story product they're all tested as rentals and the idea with looking at these higher density products is really they reflect the type of infill development products that can enable the city to accommodate population growth within the urban growth boundary and I'm not you know we're not the idea here is not that all development would be like this but in places where it might make sense the question is how do these perform
and they have these benefits of enabling some growth in the urban growth boundary uh and enhancing pedestrian and Transit trips placing people close potentially close to places a lot of amenities and good Transportation so they don't need to drive as much maybe a two-car household drops to a one-car household and so this also has a benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation so the products are the prototypes are Illustrated here we're just these are just example pictures they're not you know exactly what the prototypants are but you see the three-story multi-family building with tuck under parking that's a relatively inexpensive to build largely wood frame development project parking tucked underneath there were two versions of an eight-story development project this is what we call Podium product meaning that there is a parking Podium made of type one we call it it's it's concrete or Steel in this case concrete parking levels and then wood frame uh housing built on top of that this is a very common development approach in denser sort of infill development settings and then the last prototype is a five-story wrap product rap just refers to having the housing which is wood frame housing built around a parking garage in the center which is a concrete parking garage and often you see these products on slightly larger sites and this often there's a lot of amenities put on top of that Central Parking Garage so it kind of just there's a pool on it or something
like that what the analysis found the financial feasibility analysis found is that all those development prototypes are currently not financially feasible in Petaluma from a developer's perspective the construction costs to build them there's a number of drivers for this number of reasons this is true so as I mentioned before construction costs tend not to vary substantially across the bay area cost for materials the cost for labor there's not huge differences from one part of the Bay Area to another and then on top of that there have been worsening project financing challenges it's unclear what interest rates are or should be there's been a lot of changes lately and so a lot of the investment and capital markets have sort of Frozen up for project investment on top of this you have rents and sales prices that can be achieved in Pelham whether people are willing to pay in Petaluma are lower than in many other Bay Area locations to some extent you're competing against from a developers perspective you're competing against some of the sort of core Bay Area locations there's a number of different development opportunities and Petaluma depends to command in the north band General the Sonoma County General test command lower rents and sales prices and then so they're there need to be additional measures to address this cost and revenue challenge for development we've found that the five-story and eight-story prototypes are especially unlikely to become financially feasible in the
immediate future that's not to say they never will be a lot of conditions change over time but they are sort of farthest off from becoming financially feasible I always want to caution with this kind of analysis some real world development projects that may still proceed due to Unique factors like if somebody has owned land for a long time and has a very low holding costs it's possible they could still build a three-story project let's say the charter on the right uh illustrates the results it's a lot to absorb but basically the dashed line is the typical land sale price cost that's expected in Petaluma so that's the threshold the hurdle you need to achieve with this greenish bar the residual land value so the other bars are just project value versus development costs but the key one to focus on here is the residual land value that's that amount left over to pay for land in each of these development prototypes after you account for revenues and costs or project value and costs and that's all negative for these prototypes We examined some illustrative City actions that could potentially impact this feasibility Gap total development costs for these prototypes must be reduced 30 to 43 percent if you hold rents constant so we analyze well what's the impact of reducing the city's Municipal fees what's the what's the impact of reducing the city's inclusionary affordable housing requirements or their fees that can be paid in lieu of that and what are the impacts of reducing the
city's parking requirements ultimately we found that about like it says at the top you could kind of have the feasibility Gap here the chart on the right shows as you add in these these things to help it improve feasibility what's the impact on the residual land value you get this the picture improves but you're still not at that that black bar that's shown that's the threshold for achieving feasibility and I also always want to point out changes to City policies that affect housing feasibility must consider other critical policy goals and priorities uh you know impact fees pay for actual infrastructure needs in the city uh the inclusionary housing requirements ensure that you get mixed income housing so there's always trade-offs to consider in all these decisions additional policy options to improve Financial feasibility of these development projects include accommodating new and emerging construction techniques such as mass Timber which is a essentially a wood framing technique that that can potentially reduce the cost per square foot of housing while still going taller than you can today and some of the less expensive development materials also potentially removing ground floor retail requirements were appropriate in order to save on the cost of building up the retail which often does not provide return based on its rents another option is providing greater certainty and speed for approving development projects we heard this a lot from developers in the city that there's
some challenges in navigating the processes at the city side and that's improving I'll talk about in a moment and then investing in District amenities and desirability to help enhance uh desirability of places in Petaluma and boost those achievable rents and sales prices so with all that said ultimately at the end of the day there will need to be some bigger picture changes uh in the development uh development costs and also increases in local achievable rents and sales prices so the city can help with this process but ultimately the end of the day there there has to be some bigger shifts as well which could happen over time and just to illustrate this point on the right here there's a chart that shows the overall city-wide average asking rent for housing units in Petaluma Santa Rosa Oakland and San Francisco and you can really see here how much higher San Francisco is it's a whole other category of its own um Oakland city-wide is also pretty much higher and then within Oakland there are a number of different sub-markets so developers are always thinking about this picture of you know what are the rents and um and what do they have to consider when they're putting forward a development project moving into the 100 affordable housing development projects and that affordable housing Finance analysis that we performed so when we talk about 100 affordable housing development projects pursued typically by non-profit housing developers these require subsidy because the market value
of the project supported by the reduced rents for the households in these these development projects it's going to be lower and so they're neat there's a funding Gap challenge for affordable housing projects these projects have rents and sales prices that are regulated to the low Market rates um usually these projects might Target lower income levels than an inclusionary housing policy for market rate projects so they might Target extremely low very low and low income households and the deeper the affordability level the larger the funding gap for these projects so the benefits of 100 affordable housing are the projects leverage many funding sources the challenges are that they have limited or competitive resources for filling that funding Gap their public sources and these projects typically do not provide housing options for moderate income households although it's possible in a sort of a mixed income affordable housing project so there's a variety of sources a subsidies for development financing for these affordable projects affordable housing developers such as Ali on the gpac have to assemble a capital stack of federal state and local sources it's Capital stack just refers to the mix of funding sources for the project and here on this bar chart on the right you see a stack of typical funding sources for affordable housing projects in Petaluma of 2020 to 2021 these are just two projects but this is typical Federal sources which are low-income housing tax credits uh are
usually the highest the largest portion of this uh this stack you have state sources and they also have the local sources which consist in this case of city and county funding now City contribution has helped products compete for development interest and outside funding because uh you know they provide essentially a form of matching funds for other sources now the local funding source in Petaluma are relatively limited uh examples of City sources that provide affordable housing funding include commercial linkage fees which are applied to non-residential development projects like offices you have housing and Lou fees which are paid in lieu of providing inclusionary affordable units and market rate housing projects and there's also impact fee waivers which are new this year in which the city is providing waivers to 100 affordable projects from its impact fees which pay for infrastructure needs and Facilities needs so when you look at affordable housing development in the county typical project costs are half a million to 700 000 per unit sometimes they're higher than this range but that's kind of typical and what the data that we've examined uh I don't limit some accounting together contributed about eight percent of project costs in recent development projects this predates the city's fee waiver policy and so the amount might be higher now with the fee waiver policy but that's what we saw on the projects we reviewed just for a point of comparison honestly because we had the
data from prior projects we looked at San Francisco and Santa Clara counties and found that they contributed the local funding attributed 30 to 37 percent of project costs they're very different contexts they're Urban well-resourced counties but still this is a big difference eight percent local contribution versus 30 or 37 contribution so a recommended City actions to expand running or potential City actions to expand funding for 100 affordable projects include potentially allocating more general fund Revenue this is the city's unrestricted operating fund potentially more that Revenue could go towards affordable housing production there's the option of voter approved tax measures such as a parcel a bond measure with parcel taxes or as a charter city the city can potentially increase its property transfer tax and dedicate that Revenue to affordable housing for example uh another option is providing greater flexibility for market rate housing developers to pay in lieu fees which provides funding for those more deeply affordable housing projects but has a downside of now you don't get the on-site inclusionary affordable housing and the market rate project so you don't get those mixed income projects there's there's trade-offs to all of this another option is to incentivize market rate housing developers to provide greater and loop fees such as providing some sort of density bonus or maybe even an impact fee waiver for them if they provide um more or I'm sorry uh yeah you can
provide incentives for in-lu fees and then lastly potentially targeting funding to projects that are more competitive for outside funding such as the projects that are located in high resource areas so every funding source has a a scoring system based on its attributes its location and the big push right now from Housing Community Development from the tax credit application committee at the state is to emphasize development of affordable housing projects in high resource areas and I'm sure you heard a lot about this during the housing element other options to reduce barriers to affordable housing unit development so now I'm speaking more broadly this is just how do you get affordable housing units through not necessarily just 100 affordable housing development projects well there's reducing cost barriers mentioned earlier the idea of revisiting ground floor retail requirements the city can also potentially waive impact fees for market rate development projects that provide higher levels of inclusionary units and then there's a possibility of enhancing the certainty and timeliness of approvals processes through things like specific plans objective design standards internal City staff process improvements and expanding overall staff capacity and then I didn't really speak about this much but there's also some options for enhancing accessory dwelling units these are those granny Flats the you know basement use the backyard units they're considered to be sort of an affordable by
Design product they don't have price and rent restrictions but they're small and they tend to be less costly and maybe affordable to moderate income households and the city is taking efforts right now to support production of those adus through its ongoing Partnerships with the Napa Sonoma Adu Center I'm going to close on a very cheerful and positive note about recent City actions so the city is already starting to implement many of the changes and recommendations of this work I think a lot of these issues have been to some to varying extents recognized for some time and the housing element also provides some guidance on this and so the city has recently adopted that and implemented those impact fee waivers that I mentioned for 100 affordable projects that came into effect this year the city is as Brian mentioned earlier uh preparing to develop this North Petaluma station specific plan hope they got the name quite right and uh there has been a new city internal organ reorganization creating the Community Development Department reorganization and and the creation of a departmental strategic plan which can help with that processing development processing actions and the city is added to staff positions in the housing department so great progress is being made I want to recognize that and so with that I'm going to close and I don't know if Ron you want to take the questions or if I should lead this um I'll help moderate um just a reminder to gpac members and the public will
first see if any gpac members have any questions about the material that Derek presented this whole discussion for the time being just any clarifying questions you may have because then we want to first go to public comment before we return to gpac discussion we do that so that the gpac discussion can be informed by what we hear from the public so first just any clarifying questions before we go to public comment I see Bill and then Ally should I go please thank you great great um just a couple questions um thanks for the analysis uh kind of a downer really to find out that none of these housing types will pencil um but I imagine there are two questions one is imagine there's a corresponding analysis for um for sale product for urban housing like condos and Townhomes and I just wonder are the findings generally the same that we can't generate the revenues to make those feasible so that's question one and question two it's a two-parter is um did we identify any housing types especially Urban housing types that would be feasible in Petaluma for rentals so my two-part question thanks sure sure thank you for that so this analysis we did not perform a detailed Financial feasibility analysis for ownership housing product types like condos and Townhomes I can say that working in a variety of different Market contexts in the Bay Area recently um It's Not Unusual for Town Homes to perform fairly well right now especially in markets kind of similar to Petaluma just because it's a
relatively inexpensive to build product type um and it's you know commands a fairly High sales price in most situations it's pretty it tends to perform fairly well condos are challenging to deliver throughout most most Bay Area communities almost actually almost universally right now so I but I but we didn't do the actual analysis specifically for Petaluma on that um I think that the town of Townhomes can certainly be a great contributor to a denser walkable Urban Fabric and but our part of our work was more focused on higher density even higher density kinds of development projects because you don't often get out inside of 30 going ins per acre with with Townhomes um and then on the question about identifying housing types that do work in Petaluma uh again the emphasis was more on the higher density housing product types so we didn't get into a whole lot of depth on that but uh I would say as we saw in the results the three-story development product prototype that product was closest to being financially feasible and I think it's most someone that's most likely to maybe find the right combination of actual on the ground conditions in which let's say it's a long time property owner the property owner that has lower costs or has access to different Capital sources or has different Professionals of return then maybe the three story is probably closest to to being financially feasible but this is a little honestly a little speculative thanks Derek I see Ali's hand and then
Sharon and just quickly before you go Ally I see Shakti your hand is raised I believe you're a member of the public we're going to have public comment immediately after these questions from the gpac so um so hold your comment or question it'll be public comment shortly Ally thank you um and thanks Derek for these analyzes I think the reports were really well done and really well written and easy to follow so thank you um just one question on the policy um about recommendation about potentially waiving fees for additional in lieu units for market rate development would that trigger prevailing wage for those market rate Developers I honestly don't I don't know the answer to this question and so I think that's something that we would have to follow up on I was I will correct one thing I said I started out on the path of citizing waving views for the in lieu fees uh it was a little more targeted to the idea of um potentially developers providing more on-site inclusionary units but either you could use it as an incentive either way but as far as whether it triggers prevailing wage that's uh something I could research thanks Derek I'm Sharon there we go thank you very much for the analysis Derek it is a little uh depressing I have to say um it doesn't get us where we need to be so I had questions along those lines was there was there analysis completed to determine if the recommended policy changes would enable the projects to pencil I mean did we ever get to go with um the
recommended changes yes yeah thank you um so there was one I'll share my screen when I I pull this up so there was the one uh sort of I referred to as an illustrative analysis in which we looked at these these deserve examples of what happens if you reduce the municipal Municipal fees what happens if you reduce the inclusion requirements and reduce the parking requirements and so we didn't test all of the different recommendations in this way some of them are also harder to capture in a financial analysis but this is where we saw that the you know they still don't bring these projects to the level of financial feasibility but they do help tremendously they do sort of have this financial feasibility Gap that we saw in the in their results okay and then the um I had two other quick questions were there nearby cities considered in the analysis and I and I asked this question it's kind of a leading question because I spend a fair amount of time in Santa Rosa and they have many multi-story apartment complexes going up and I have a hard hard time understanding how they can do this in Santa Rosa where the rents are lower than they are in Petaluma and have those projects pencil where they don't in Petaluma so I'm just I'm just kind of curious if we looked at at area cities we did look around to see where where there were um taller higher density projects being built in Santa Rosa I believe even has an eight-story project going up but if memory serves it might be an affordable project
um so even in Santa Rosa we didn't see a whole lot of Market rates higher density projects being built but that I I don't know off the top of my head if that's comprehensively true but from our scans yeah we didn't see a whole lot of of that happening yeah I would I would be really curious about that because it seems like they are building uh quite a lot and and like you say I don't I don't know if they're Market Raider affordable so that would that would you know any determination would vary based on that information I also read the reports before you made the presentation the presentation was really um well well thought out thank you but then the report you also suggested a city land bank as an option for affordable housing to reduce some of the the stress on those projects can you describe that in a little bit more detail what is a city land bank it was it wasn't defined in the report and I'm just curious um I have some assumptions but I want to make sure I understand sure sure I mean essentially the there would have to be an acquisition a land acquisition mechanism established in the city to start acquiring land um or holding the city's land in order to have affordable housing development on it in the future and it essentially removes the land acquisition costs for these future development projects and then it's also possible in using the land bank to come up with different sort of structures and approaches for how you deliver the housing and so it could potentially be on
a long-term ground lease in which the city holds the land in the land bank permanently and has control over you know what gets built and what their rents are and and eventually the project might you know return back to the city after a period of time okay great thank you very much I see your hand Heather do you have a clarifying yeah I just wanted to respond to something that Sharon brought up um so city of Santa Rosa was having a very hard time um they would entitle those projects and they weren't getting built and that was the case for quite quite a while um I know they were doing quite a few things like uh and don't hold me to the exact numbers but things like above the four stories no no impact fees or even for market rate or um things like a larger project being able to be processed as an administrative project so not going through the public hearings to increase the the processing time and the costs associated with that I would be happy to check in with colleagues um in Santa Rosa to kind of get an update it's been a little while since I chatted with them um but I do also notice I live in Santa Rosa and so I do notice that all of a sudden there's a number of them that are actually under construction and and going up in Santa Rosa so I'd be happy to follow up on that and get some information from our colleagues with Santa Rosa on some of the more recent things they've done yeah that would be great it's just I know this is this isn't the comment area but it would be great
to understand if there are things we can learn from area communities so it sounds like just making little tweaks around the edges isn't going to get us where we need to be it's so thank you I would also just add on to that that uh you know we've we've done Financial feasibility analyzes in communities and they show things are just totally infusible but then we do see sometimes oh but this exactly basically this prototype is getting built and it's often because it turns out um you know maybe that project has been in the works for a really long time the land was purchased a long time ago and for that developer it was just you know they were able to move forward now and so that's the we're drawing these broad lessons and trying to make some policy recommendations out of this analysis but it won't apply to every every circumstance and every developer thank you that makes sense yeah thank you Sharon Heather Derek I see Mary's hand raised and again Shakti will come to public common in just a moment Mary thanks um I wanted to ask about the impact fee waiver for 100 affordable um just if you happen to know the the history on that like was there no were we not getting enough applications um because we have these state laws that allow um 100 affordable to come in with uh and build by right and I I would think that that would be enough incentive so I was just wondering what was the trigger to or what pushed it to completely waive the impact fee I mean the 100 it's a complete waiver like
a hundred percent waiver is when I I'm here come in take that one yes I'm gonna defer to you Heather sure um so Mary what we were hearing um repeatedly from our our affordable housing development Partners was the impact fees were just you know kind of another another gut punch right so trying to make it work trying to go after so many um sources and the amount that the city's impact fees added was millions of dollars for an affordable housing project and so we have been looking at this as a city for every possible way we can incentivize affordable housing right so um even if the ministerial review through state law requirements I guess b35 or ab2162 yes that was speeding up the review process or cutting costs with the review process um but it still was a big a big cost so what we looked at and I I don't I'm going to be nitpicky about language it's not a fee waiver it is um it is a fee exemption so what we did was we created an exemption to specific impact fees four projects certain projects and their their affordable projects and I'm gonna not have the exact language but that have been supported or partially funded or a partnership with the city um but a hundred percent affordable and it waves the city facilities the traffic the uh Park acquisition Park development open space acquisition um it does not waive the Wastewater and water capacity fees because those are you need that to supply the water in the Wastewater so it was all the ones it doesn't waive the school fees
because those aren't our fees but it waved all the ones we could but I want to be really clear it is not a waiver for the inclusionary so if a market rate developer comes in and they've got to have their 15 percent um affordable unit it does not that that fee exemption doesn't apply to the affordable units of a market rate project it's for affordable housing projects thank you yeah just to add to that I mean it's you know we're talking millions of dollars and so you know obviously the projects cost much more and so I think the the you know impetus really was how do we help support um and be creative and so um not just from a fee exemption perspective um but we are seeing some successful projects and you know this has essentially been implemented for you know just eight months I think it happened right before I started and so there have been projects that have utilized this um and there's been an added benefit of um outside Source um outside financing considering it as a local match and so again that helps with that Capital stack that Derek was uh presenting on so we're you know maybe um it's one strategy we have a number of um you know there's sort of this clear objective on how do we produce and incentivize more and and help reach our goals and and you know get us the housing that we need for our community and so that's part of what we're doing as part of implementing the housing element so you know a lot of really great recommendations there and and so um more to come but
you know things that we're looking at implementing as well thank you Brian and Heather um bill wolberg thank you Ron um I guess another quick two-part question one is in the fourth scenarios that didn't work didn't pencil out I wasn't clear other than the fact that they were trying to be affordable housing what what income level were they shooting for was it anything that qualified as affordable um and my second question is it seems like the the design constraints or the context by which these potential projects were imagined were of the greater bear Bay Area not not Petaluma I'm really surprised to see uh considerations of eight-story buildings when when they completely exceed anything that's allowed by our zoning we have a specific plan for our downtown core uh under the smart code that allows buildings up to six stories and as you mentioned we haven't seen any of those developed um and especially with the downtown core the proximity to the Smart Station but it's also within a historic district I think eight-story buildings are completely out of context so I'm I'm just curious on was that even a consideration in these scenarios or this just kind of you know Blue Sky Pencil pushing and and this is this doesn't work I I was just really surprised that um I don't know I just by the context surprised me sure sure so I'll take those one at a time um so on the this is I may not have been clear so I the prototypes that we looked at and the financial feasibility analysis that we
performed that was all for market rate development projects so we had we had two different sets of analyzes in this presentation you know LED with the market Rate Financial feasibility analysis and then led to more of the policy analysis around affordable housing finance and maybe that that line wasn't so clear um so these those were that was all testing market rate development projects and if they were affordable development projects then there would be a very different approach you know to how that would be would have been um funded via a variety of of outside subsidy sources for its development um on the design of the prototypes that were examined you know they're you're correct there is no place in the city right now that allows an eight-story development project and this is also not intended to be an exercise that assumes that's going to happen um and we did also have the three-story and the five-story development projects which can be built in in Petaluma under its existing regulations the eight story was sort of viewed as being a yeah let's let's take the sort of tallest yet still closest in many ways to being feasible because once you get above eight stories your construction technique changes your cost per square foot goes up quite a bit and then it becomes much more challenging to get anything built even in really strong Market locations eight stories as a cut off before you then have start having to look at some real high-rise types of buildings um and so that yeah
the goal was basically to test that it's waiting for the fences type of scenario with the ape story development project I'd say yeah and thanks Jack Bill the other thing I think just it's Illustrated right we're not really it's not to say you know we want to explore something above and beyond I I do think what had you know it's for the comparison right it's a pure comparison of as Eric point out there's the ability to do three and five there's challenges to that I think there's a natural response from many people to say okay well same amount of land how do we increase the land value and so what does it look like and so to me like what stood out is it's not as simple as just saying if you build taller that's going to solve the financial component right there's still um it's not that black and white it's not that simple and so um to me it's it was just purely a comparison of what may happen what you know maybe a product in other parts of the Bay Area that at the end of the day we're we're sort of competing um in the joint um labor market and those are projects we see in other parts of the Bay Area right and so those are you know in many ways um seen as sort of competition when it comes to the labor pool had were the market rate projects that have come through there's been discussion like at the council or the Planning Commission in an effort to try to get more housing well can't you can't you add another story um can't you go taller on what we were hearing from developers is no
it doesn't pencil but we also wanted to kind of have a an objective analysis of that because sometimes when a developer said it doesn't pencil you're like well what if this or why not that or right so we saw this also as the as an opportunity to say okay well is it true that going taller like Brian was saying doesn't change the dynamic because in your head you're thinking more units then then it'll pencil so I think it was not a an effort to say yeah let's put eight stories all over but it was an effort to say if it went taller would that address some of the market challenges that we're hearing anecdotally from applicants we don't require you know performers for applicants and stuff that's not isn't something that's part of the required submittals so we don't we don't often have the teeth to say We'll prove it so this was our opportunity to say well let's let's throw in two extra stories and does that change the dynamic and what we are seeing is no it doesn't seem like it really does in this case so well I mean that that's the takeaway I'm getting and I'm I'm stunned that that market rate housing doesn't even pencil out I that's really uh shocking Discovery um for me anyway uh you know affordable housing is one thing when you're dealing with subsidies but when market rate housing doesn't pencil out at eight stories I'm I'm stunned and I'll say you know conditions do change over time so uh that's not to say that this is going to be true necessarily five years from now but one
way or another we do see it's the one that's farthest off thank you all um Josh yeah thank you um I'm thinking a bit about the contrast in uh local funding to support projects um so there was that figure of like okay eight percent you know Petaluma Sonoma County versus 3037 and and granted much more uh urban areas that that are better resourced um this may be a little bit into the weed so please forgive me if this is like maybe not the right form to ask this particular question but I'm thinking about we we have this whole discussion going on about the the overlay around downtown and um and I'm wondering if there are ways to you mentioned like tax measures for instance as a way to create more funding for these prod for projects I'm wondering if there are mechanisms that maybe you've seen in other in other areas where uh incremental tax from uh greater infill in an area like in this overlay should this come to pass could that be earmarked for that kind of thing um for for you know whether that be uh bead restricted affordable housing or or just to support projects more generally is that is that is that a done thing is that does that exist the the uh sort of purest form of what you just described the was where Redevelopment agencies in California it was a whole system of capturing tax increments so basically the capturing and reinvesting the increase in the property tax base within a given area um that went away several years ago the readable agencies were dissolved and no
replacement tool of that nature has quite matched the way it worked for redevelopment agencies there are some possibilities of using some of the sort of tax increment replacement measures like enhanced infrastructure financing districts they they have a similar mechanism in them um but they're not the resources that are used for affordable housing out of those those newer tools don't really there's very they generate very little Revenue um specifically for affordable housing typically they're not usually used that way and they also don't capture nearly as much uh Revenue in the first place because the Redevelopment agencies the criticism of them is that they sort of took money away from all the taxing entities for reinvestment in a given location whereas these newer mechanisms basically every uh taxing entity needs to opt into it so unless you can get cooperation from the county or School District or whatever it might be then the uh the revenue is kind of limited to the city and it's just sort of in many ways similar to the city just paying itself with that Revenue so there are some barriers the the biggest version of that mechanism doesn't exist anymore so there are some challenges with this now awesome thank you thank you hey I don't see any additional hands I think we'll shift at this point Daniel to public comment and then gpac will come back to further discussion about kind of what to do with this information to inform the general Plan update foreign thank you Ron so at
this time we'll go ahead and open uh reopen uh public comments um I see we have at least one hand raised so once again um if you're a member of the public and you'd like to speak please utilize the raise hand feature I'll go ahead and call on you I'll share my screen when the timer starts you'll have three minutes for your comments and please just remember to keep everything civil avoid any obscene language and with that I see at least one hand so Shakti I hope I have that right I will go ahead and share my screen and we'll move forward with um general public comments see okay so you shouldn't have the ability to unmute yourself um whenever you're ready we'll start the timer and the floor will be yours thank you for the presentation it was very informative um adjusting impacts and promoting affordable building techniques like modular buildings no to the five eight story buildings I see this presentation as being made alongside the downtown overlay as City staff in our local urbanistas who live in single-family homes are trying to push this change you're gonna ruin the character of this town balancing density with quality of life should be our goal and if we add density it should be gentle density like duplexes and quad plexes and adus um don't destroy the design and character of this town I've lived here all my life not every city has to grow infinitely so it's about sustainability and it's about homeostasis and environment not out of control development so also it doesn't
feel right to have this discussion excluding the public this topic is not heavily publicized and the zoom link for this meeting didn't even work and I think many citizens would be shocked by this discussion if they knew that this was happening and bringing this into the public I mean we need banners like they do for the all the different things on Kentucky Street D Street engagement on this issue needs to happen and not canceling meetings and keeping people out of it out of out of this conversation okay great uh thanks for your comments we'll go ahead and restart the timer uh looks like Dwayne has his hand up um so I'll go ahead you should be able to unmute yourself and when you're ready the floor will be yours thank you thank you very much and um thank everybody for being here and for putting in their time I don't see if there's any way that the real problem the wages the housing costs the imbalance is going to be solved at the local level certainly not by taxing the middle class um to pay for housing for the lower class um there's just so um a discussion of the real cause of the problem and to get into any resolution of the two minor things I'd like to bring up though that is um one is a discussion of mobile homes and uh I didn't hear anything about mobile homes the people who live in mobile homes does deserve to have co-ops or condos arrangements so that they're not on land owned by the speculators that they're able to as a co-op on the the property and the second you
mentioned San Francisco and seem to be successful and I would like to know these sources of funds that San Francisco is able to get to deal with their problem um that are that maybe we should be paying more attention to as to how we get some of those funds and I I assume that that I shouldn't be referring to the fact that they loot our gas tax in order to um uh use the money in San Francisco however they like um what else is is needed to be said uh we we need to be talking about uh the long-term effect of their floods and we'll be discussing that in a future meeting and how that's going to affect especially the lower class people because that's generally where we put lower class people as in the way of of floods in danger um so we'll discuss that in another meeting thank you great thank you Dwayne and uh next up um Simpson um the flurries here is when you're ready we'll start the timer thank you thank you Daniel and thank you for responding to my emails in the beginning of the meeting I want to lift up and really agree with the comments before me that Shakti naid and Dwayne made they were very thoughtful and relevant comments for our city and Community here in Petaluma I think it would have been very helpful even though this appears to be kind of a high level discussion uh would have been practical and helpful for many of us to for you to have brought in the information that was mentioned earlier the questions that were raised about Santa Rosa why don't we know what they're
doing what their zoning codes are how they're able to do what they're doing where they're doing it how successful they've been Santa Rosa and perhaps at least one other city in um in Sonoma County as case studies to then compare to how we in Petaluma are approaching both market rate and affordable housing I just think it would have been most helpful to have and we should know that information so um anyway I just felt a little uncomfortable about that and I also want to acknowledge Joshua's Joshua summons Simmons who were a gpac member as someone who is responsive responsible intelligent thoughtful and a person of integrity um I just feel he's a really great representative on your committee and I appreciate him so much and I wish that the committee members that have been appointed to this committee would attend the meetings um you know it's just it's disheartening for those of us who have really in-depth experience in certain areas and to be basically tossed off you know tossed off the list and misrepresented as considerations were given for appointments so um and again thank you Daniel for your responsiveness tonight and you didn't have general public comment because where were the members of the public we couldn't get in the agenda link the zoom link was wrong on the published agenda thank you uh thank you Susan and um yeah sincere apologies for um if there was a a link that was incorrect in any of the agenda items we'll certainly huddle and make sure that doesn't happen
again um so with that I don't see any more hands raised I'll turn it back over to your uh euron and we'll close general public comment thank you great thank you Daniel and thank you members of the public so we wanted to hold a little agenda time tonight for a broader discussion about the takeaways and some of the recommendations from the two reports that Derek profiled um there's clear connections to the housing element I I took the time to kind of compare some of the recommendations from the reports with the housing element and kind of as the UMB law folks confirmed the city already is being extremely Progressive in many respects and implementing many of their recommendations that the reports recommend through its housing element and other means but as we look forward in the planning process to policy framework specific to a broad range of topics that the GP will address and probably more specifically the future land use and settlement patterns for Petaluma I'm curious about any thoughts gpac members have about how the findings from this analysis and some of the recommendations can inform the general Plan update moving forward Mary does does this time to talk is that what you meant yes yes it's the time for gpac discussion about the reports we finished clarifying questions got public comments announced by the discussion yes um I really like about Santa Rosa as being probably all under SB 35 or something that's built by Wright but Heather Heather will will confirm um just
having known what's got been going on in Santa Rosa that was an answer to Susan's comment um I think this uh feasibility Gap is really interesting and the uh combination of reducing impact fees um not forcing retail or as we've done in the past consideration for Flex space on the ground floor which can be adapted to housing or some other use that makes sense as as things change as they always do um the comment about the slow approval uh process which it sounds like it's already being addressed um the the one that really struck me and this is kind of something I think that the G the general plan can um spend more time on is this idea of investing in town amenities like the idea that we can't get and we need all types of housing obviously we have um the market rate housing is doing better but the as we're working on and the impact fee uh exemption great move we'll see Improvement there um but I'm interested in investing in town the town's amenity and primarily um the open space that we have as our largest natural resource that um is unique and it makes Petaluma a desirable place to be but there's so many things as you look at the town and you know you get it we all like adapt to our surroundings and stop noticing things that are basically falling apart um it you could imagine people coming in and saying well I'm not so sure about this so I I think the feasibility Gap comments were right on and um maybe we can take on some of these ideas of how to invest in our towns amenities
um and lastly uh the land Banks um thank you for bringing that up um earlier Sharon I we have city-owned property and there's places that make sense for housing affordable housing and that don't make as much sense for um Civic buildings and I I'm looking forward to sinking into that when we get into the land use portion and I'd love to hear other people's opinions on this any of it thank you Mary uh Sharon I see your hand raised yeah so one of the you know I read I've been ruminating on the reports uh prior to the meeting and what I'm just struck by is it doesn't look like we can get there from here I mean in terms of meeting our Arena targets and I'd I'd like to understand if that's if that's an accurate under you know understanding a reading over the reports um and if so then we have to become much more radical in what we're looking at in terms of solutions so we've got we're kind of picking at things but we're not we're not really thinking wholesale how can we do things differently so the the um land bank to me was a really interesting idea I think it also um you know if we're talking about transferring limited General funds uh General general fund Monies to affordable housing um then what are we doing to bolster general fund monies and this is where big projects like the hotel downtown come in with you know massive Transit um um transient occupancy taxes and other revenues that are brought into the city really unpopular ideas but still taken in their whole uh you know
everything's connected so it just seems that we're that we're just dancing around the edges of the solutions that will really get us to the Arena targets and maybe maybe I'm reading this incorrectly and there's another way to get there from here um I would actually love to hear from the planning team about that reading this report do you still think we can build you know four times what we've built in the last in the last housing cycle um so that's a rambling um rambling concern um the other uh the other thing I wanted to admit at the point I wanted to make and this is this is this is um you know borders on the on the what's the word I'm looking for I'll be I'll be burned as a heretic for this but but we have we have a huge property in the middle of town that is owned by the city it's called the fairgrounds so we either need to get serious about making way for affordable housing in other places or we're going to be push come to shove we're going to be offering up that land for affordable housing I just don't I just don't see um I just don't see how we get there from here so I love to hear from bigger thinkers than me on this one thanks well Sharon I definitely don't shortchange yourself um I would just from the short um time that we've spent here I mean it definitely consider you a big time thinker so um all good um ideas I think you know ultimately it's you know as in as one of the public commenters mentioned you know the greater discussion around General plan and how do we
build and how do we be responsive to the the need for housing how do we be responsive to The Climate emergency um with the context of you know how we want to grow and evolve as a city and all that is happening right it's happening tonight as we you know have this informed discussion and so um every one of these voices are critical to that I think um and two you know just to to close I mean short response um I 100 you know genuinely believe and know that we will meet those Rena numbers it's um you know just uh just for starters uh with the housing element and that was informed by a lot of really good thinking um that came out of the community um it provides a nice roadmap right um the hard work is ahead of us you know there's a number of policies and programs that we would have committed to um first up is before the end of the calendar year next year so you know we're starting to move on that stuff and it's going to take a number of different approaches and strategies but um at the end of it you know I'm I'm quite confident that we'll get there and I also add to that Brian that you know one thing I want to remind people about is we have a number of affordable housing projects that are in the in the pipeline so that's that's a positive right we have the midpen project that is currently under construction we have you know we just finished the home key project um at the Americas best value was that and for yeah okay I see Josh nodding at me um we have the Burbank project on
Petaluma Boulevard South that is getting ready to pull permits we have the Danko project that is we're trying to stay really engaged and creative and and um you know we're very still very positive about that um coming to fruition so one when you think about our our Arena and our sixth cycle we have a number of 100 affordable projects that have already gone through the pipeline um gotten their approvals and hopefully those are going to start coming online so our Focus has very much been with those projects we've been trying to be flexible and creative and pivot and understand we don't have we're not generating a lot of money through um housing and Luffy's because we changed our in lieu um regulations so that we don't allow people to fee out anymore so that while that's getting you know those funds aren't generating as much that's why we were looking at things like the fee exemptions because we have to continue to get creative and we are to Mary's Point um you know exploring ideas around city-owned properties you know and how do we look at those differently and how do we leverage those so I just want to kind of there's things about and I know Derek is such a pleasant human being and he had to deliver such somber news but um we are really committed and you know kind of trying not to leave any stone unturned to come up with new ideas and that's what this is so exciting about this process that we're undertaking and that's why the hard work of our housing element recognized for you
know yeah petaluma's housing element has a lot of great stuff in it those are all the things to kind of keep us energized and keep us working towards towards what we're doing the other thing that we called for in our housing element that I I think would have a could have a good positive effect on housing is you know our code and our fees they don't um they don't regulate by size of housing units so for instance a 2 000 square foot single family home versus a tiny home they're both a single family detached you know what I mean so those are other things that we can be looking at our codes so don't I just want to like pump you up a little bit like we're we're all in this and we're all looking for those great ideas and we're trying to think big and think different and and come up with the right solutions for Petaluma and as part of this General plan thank you heather yes thank you Heather and Brian I see several hands raised so please be cognizant of that you have many of your fellow gpac members that would like to speak so please keep your comments concise if you could thank you bill uh yes uh tagging on to what my heretic friend mentioned a few minutes ago um I was just kind of free thinking about other communities that have a lot of residential projects under construction and heelsberg came to mind and um very expensive well over a million million dollars a unit from what I understand at the old lumber yard site and um I know we have opposition in town for this hotel and with
comments like uh it's it's it it's too expensive it's not something I could afford to stay there we don't want to be heelsburg we don't want to be Napa but it's those kinds of projects that bring the money into town that provides the taxes that allows us to pay for affordable housing and so I I would really like to see us try to help some of those projects come to fruition so that we can afford to do more affordable housing that's all I have to say thank you Bill walkert and now Bill Reinhardt sorry about that couldn't find the mute button um I want to thank Heather for a little bit of uplifting um that was good news I a couple trying to make sense of the purpose of the reports and the findings and um my takeaways I I generally agree with you know the recommendations for you know letting go of ground floor retail in certain locations and you know I guess um the waivers and places um but I wonder what's what's the real um takeaway from this uh the fact that rental housing is not um feasible in Petaluma and so I'm wondering are we to should we be looking towards in order to get the urban housing the density downtown that we want and also to get affordable housing perhaps we should be looking at for sale you know encouraging the three to five story for sale townhome condo type projects and figure out how to make those you know whether it's new building type or whatever figure out how to make those um a good model for Petaluma and um and encourage that and make it work and um and
find the new the building types that do work and I think we you know this is good for us to be having now because I think we've been down this going down this road of um you know looking at the overlay and everything about density and everything but if if this stuff doesn't pencil out and Rental housing is not affordable or feasible we need to somehow figure out how to bridge that Gap um so one thing I I think of so the reason I was getting at Mar um for sale housing is that another Factor was pointed out is that the in-loop fees are cheaper than actually providing units so that tells me that the in-lu fees are maybe um not commensurate with the cost of the affordable housing maybe what we need to do is focus on um building for sale houses and have or homes and then have uh Inland fees that are commensurate with the rates you know the appropriate rates in order to allow the city to collect those fees and then provide a greater contribution you know the eight percent yeah that's a just a huge gap I mean I know that San Francisco has the funding sources that we'll never have but um anyway somehow to bridge that Gap I just to me it was pretty dire to find out that rental housing is at those any of those types were in feasible um so sorry to ramble about that there's one other topic I want to um just touch on and this might not be the best place for it but I'll try and be quick um just thinking about affordable housing stock in general and certainly it's great to hear that we're
building these new projects but um you know a lot of the naturally occurring affordable units that we have the adus and the grannies um that we have a lot in town but what I've seen in the past see what we're all seeing in the past several years since we've um began allowing short-term vacation rentals is that so many of these units are being taken offline and being converted to Vacation Rentals and you know my neighbors and I'm sure the council members are all going to hate me for this but I think something we we should talk about and something we can possibly do is to Sunset that policy in order to reclaim these housing units um these are the things that make neighborhoods great you know to have mixed you know integrated housing in neighborhoods to have affordable units in backyards and in houses and we're just not having those we're having you know people come to town for the weekend and so I just want to throw that out there maybe it's there's another point where we'll get to discuss this but I think we need to consider sunsetting that policy and reclaiming that housing stock for affordable units okay thanks that's it for me thank you Bill and I hope before the end of the meeting you share with us where you are where it's getting dark very quickly um it looks like a beautiful setting hey Derek I don't want to put you on the spot but um I was I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the first part of Bill's comments related to the idea of like hey if if for sale
Townhomes or similar products are due pencil is that a route to addressing some of the issues I'm not sure if you you guys have looked at this or have any thoughts on that we we haven't looked at that specifically in this analysis um I think that you know a shortcut way of thinking about this might be sort of looking at what's been proposed recently in the city for market rate projects although let's not get no guarantee that they'll actually get built but um certainly something like Townhomes as I said that's that tends to be a relatively feasible product type it's maybe not something that you necessarily want right in the core of your town but you know it's it's a it's sort of that gentle density that was referred to earlier and potentially could pencil more easily the condo question um getting multi-family condos to Pennsylvania and a lot of different Market context in the Bay Area is often difficult but while we've been having this conversation I've been going back to the earlier um economic market analysis that strategic economics completed for sort of one of the earliest deliverables that came up from the general plan work it was a team-wide sort of deliverable and we looked at building permits from at the time 2010 to 2020 in Petaluma and uh you know what I'm just going to share my screen and bear with me for just one second here won't take long um and what we saw is a pretty uh simple comparison of just single-family and multi-family number of housing units that were
permitted and this comes from a federal source so there might be some variation from actual local numbers but still um you can see a lot of the way the city has historically met it's it's uh housing production goals has been through a single family which I believe also includes townhomes in the way this data was sorted um over time so I just want to you know at support that these aren't the only housing products out there and so there are some other alternatives can I just clarify something with Bill's comment too Bill are you still there he's gone to get a marshmallow roasting marshmallows yeah well just for just for your own uh just to put it in a b in your Bonnet um short-term vacation rentals actually are prohibited from going in adus that were built in 2017 or later and when we um when all the state laws started coming down making you know reducing parking increasing size of adus decreasing setbacks um the city really saw that as this is really important to keep these if we're going to be permitting adus with all these reduced development criteria it's really important to keep them in the housing market and not let them become adus so in the code it does say that if you're aw I think it was 2017 but it might so whenever that year was that they cannot that new short-term vacation rentals can't be permitted in them just FYI thank you good to know I just see a lot of the historic ones in my neighborhood are getting converted but that's that's good news thank you thank you
Bill and Heather and I see Four Hands raised it's 8 25 I do want to make sure we have time to talk a little bit about working groups um and also honor our our agreement to aim for nine o'clock closing so uh for remaining um don't wanna sign for the conversation but just be Please be aware uh go ahead Dave okay to continue on the theme of heresy in fact I feel guilty because I'm going to mention something here that Sharon has talked to me to me about multiple times there are types of housing that went away middle of the last century when we probably thought for good uh on my list uh boarding houses co-ops sros dorms even um and I know there's no market now that's not the style but Styles change I know in going through our zoning code now I bump into boarding houses once in a while which always struck me as a relic of the past but it strikes me that we ought to be at least leaving the door open to those if a developer comes in with a very clever idea uh and he thinks the market is changing to accept that because Mark because housing is getting so difficult we ought to be open to that idea and not have not have a relegated in the past thanks it's thank you Dave uh Josh yeah just just real briefly uh I I guess I'm joining a whole chorus here of uh folks who are interested in in bold and creative proposals um I remember one of the meetings we had earlier this year uh proposed like you know what could we do with East Washington and if we can do it with East Washington we can do it
anywhere and for me I found that like a a fantastic provocation um and so I I just Echo like let's let's think creatively let's think bold and you know if we swing for the fences and maybe we get a little closer to where we actually need to land thank you Mary um just ly and ending about um how to promote uh wealth building by having for small for sale units in um in multi-family um just a way to if everything's a rental then there's there's never an opportunity to get a piece of the pie and um this is an old idea but if you allow smaller units and and I'm not sure micro units are are big enough for this idea but Micro units is another building type Dave didn't mention that we don't really have a code for um so that's one thing and then the other thing is is our just conversion of these empty um a big box and medium boxes in areas that are already developed we talk about this but uh we've talked about it a long time ago but to make to allow for these things to be adapted and um because the infrastructure is all in is is another important way to to get housing that's all thank you just a quick note your housing element does include the exploration of Community Land trusts and land Banks which are also innovative ways to help families build equity throughout through a different ownership model so um Ali hi um I'm gonna try and be quick but I just have a few things that might be a little bit of a reiteration of things people have said before but I just want to make sure um some
points are lifted up so I think in regard to the um question about retail on the first floor just one suggestion is to um have a higher floor plate floor plate height required on the first floor not necessarily require it to be retail but that way it could be flexible between retail or residential and who wouldn't want to live in a unit with 14 foot high ceilings on the ground floor that would be great um the second um I think Mary touched on this but adding amenities near sight that was recalling the 15-minute neighborhood presentation from the estat that we had earlier that I think a lot of people were really motivated and engaged on so I think that and then something in the general plan and maybe zoning an ordinance too but allowing temporary uses to be able to put um some of these amenities in like actually putting in food trucks or something is really a difficult thing to do and you can't get temporary uses permitted very easily you end up going through you know like a three year long planning process just to get temporary stuff put in so some way to be able to um add those amendes so that the land values can you know I guess go up and support some of this development um parking maximums I don't think anybody touched on that yet I know there was a lot of parking discussion in the reports um and I think just by having a policy of parking maximums and set of minimums at least allows that flexibility and so if market rate developers want to pay for the you know the parking
and things that that makes a good product then they're allowed to do that but they're not required to um and the last thing I wanted to mention is inclusionary um so I don't think the report was super clear but it it is a policy now that that market rate developers have to do on-site inclusionary um or else they have to go to City Council and ask for you know mitigation and I think it needs to be easier to allow developers to pay the in-lu fees so that we can get more funding for 100 affordable housing again I think that the fees need to be you know analyzed and updated often to make sure that they're the right fees um so that's it thanks thank you for that well the experience well in foreign experience based perspective Ally thank you um Brent yeah I want to acknowledge Derek and the the team of strategic economics for really excellent uh and well-written report presentation it was very informative I was struck by the um the fact that that market rate housing wasn't Pennsylvania out um and the variety of policy options available from both market rate and and uh um affordable housing and you know really what I came down to my my final thinking here and I think others share it which is you know whatever City policies are part of the general plan whatever City new policies are part of the general plan they need to overwhelmingly Target uh building out affordable housing the arena numbers show that we certainly do not need more um above um uh the median or whatever it is the
high-end uh housing looks like we've already met our next Target uh because we over built uh during the previous period uh so you know whatever City policy should definitely Target um any moderate and and uh low-income housing um I also want to acknowledge Mary's point about uh housing for moderate and low income that that utilizes ownership uh as a as a means uh for providing that housing and and for Building Wealth you know Petaluma has the petalum of first-time homebuyers program uh which has been an excellent program I I know from personal experience um that that program has benefited me and and a lot of my neighbors um uh to provide affordable housing so that should we I I would urge the city to double down on that type of of housing option for for modern and low income housing that's it thank you Brent and thank you everybody lots of as usual very thoughtful comments from the gpac last call for any comments before we move on to the final agenda item okay well thank you again Derek for the great analysis and the the nice concise clear presentation um and fantastic comments thanks also not to Michelle who's behind the scenes taking notes making sure we capture all the good ideas which we'll be sure to consider as we continue to build out the policy Frameworks and and for the land use alternatives so with that I'm going to shift to the next agenda item that's gpac working group refresh let me share a screen again no apologize in advance my computer is behaving like it's
about to die on me so hopefully it makes it the next through the next few minutes um let me just move here through so um mentioned this in the connected to Ryan shared earlier um we want to talk tonight a bit about how we are thinking of using gpac working groups moving forward um a little context and then I want to just refresh all of our memories on how we originally thought about the gpac working groups and how we've used them so far but first the larger context as Brian noted earlier the upcoming phases are are really some heavy topics focused initially on blood resilience and formed by the updated flood and sea level rise modeling and mapping which informs and is a direct connection to a broader discussion um about other both land use related to flurries lands but also this bigger discussion about land use Alternatives which is really a discussion about the future settlement patterns for Petaluma which is also very relevant to tonight's conversation um and we want to get through that stuff to kind of get get that solid understanding which then we can come back and circle back to the policy Frameworks and make sure our thinking about land use supporting infrastructure is aligned with the policy across the full range of General plan topics and so as we thought about that we thought these heavy topics coming up soon are really good overall full gpac sorts of discussions which we why we would have thought of them as topics of um and focus of upcoming gpac meetings as a whole
group and much of that in person because a lot of it is looking at maps and talking through what different options may look like in future scenarios but then when we come back after that to the policy Frameworks as you know I think there's 14 different topics back last fall and earlier part of this year you got presentations on many of them and provided lots of fantastic preliminary feedback on the ideas that were being considered at the time all that was used along with extensive City review and comment to prepare public drafts which are kind of in process right now and so we thought as we bring those back to you and the public the most effective efficient way to do that is through working groups that can take a deep dive and a focused look at each of these these policy framework topics so that's that's kind of the context for this agenda item so um quickly before we get to some ideas we have about how to organize working groups moving forward I just wanted to refresh all of our memory about what we've how we've been using them so far and so we we form these I believe it was a year and a half ago or so with the idea that recognizing that there's so many active well-informed members of the Petaluma community that one of the unique roles the gpac members can play is working with those community members uh directly and and spending time outside of gpac mean he's talking with them brainstorming ideas exploring options um and bringing that all back to the gpac to inform the
broader General Plan update conversation so that was really their fundamental purpose we didn't want we know it's already a big commitment to you to be a gpac member and so we wanted to make sure these people understood these are voluntary and that people can participate in an ongoing way or ad hoc depending on their other commitments and and life situation we did want to make sure each gpac working group had two members with one being identified as the coordinator and another the co-coordinator beyond that they're welcome to involve other community members have open meetings that sort of thing whatever worked well for the the focus at hand and then I also just recognize that given capacity uh these largely had to be self-directed self-coordinated and self-facilitated by those gpac members who are coordinating and so um lots of fantastic work has been done by the working groups so far so we started them yeah February of last year um many of them had a lot of meetings in the spring and summer culminating in some very helpful recommendations all of which were looked at very closely as we began to think about specific goals and policies for the general plan um and then those those ideas were brought back for broader gpac discussion and then in addition um there's been opportunities both with the housing element and as Brian mentioned earlier more recently with some of the sea level rise modeling and mapping to engage working group members directly in a closer look at some of the
ongoing City work and that has proven incredibly helpful for the city and the rest of the planning team to develop specific work products so with that in mind um looking ahead we're just kind of trying to preemptively plan for when the public draft policy Frameworks come out and prepare ourselves so you know a lot of information on this slide but it's really quite simply on the left hand column the original composition well the original groups that we formed and those who were members the italicized names are folks who are no longer on the gpac either because they are elected to other office um or had other personal commitments the middle column is what we're thinking might be the most useful way to organize the working groups moving forward and that's very much informed by the right hand column which is a reasonable clustering of some of the policy framework topics and so we thought we'd do tonight well actually one last thing um we don't expect a commitment tonight City staff will be following up by email after tonight's meeting to gauge your interest I think much in a similar way that we did first time we initiated the working group so I don't feel compelled to like make any kind of commitment tonight we know there's lots of other considerations that go into this but we did want to share these ideas with you and get you thinking about which of these topics you might have time and interest in focusing on um probably starting really towards the latter part of this year and
um I'll pause there I'll see if Brian or Heather have something to add anything I've missed no what else also don't feel like you have to memorize this slide I see everyone looking very intently so what we'll do is we'll send out an email um and include this this slide so you're remembering where you were and maybe where you'd like to be as we kind of reorganize and reconstitute these working groups um so we'll send an email out um probably next week and just kind of ask for people to follow up and let us know which ones if any you want to be on maybe what's your first choice obviously if everyone is just dying to do engineering okay because I have a feeling feelings first choice but but you know um we'll have to you know obviously we don't want 20 people saying one working group and then you know Mobility gets nobody um so we'll we'll have to look at maybe what are your first three options three requests or something like that um so we'll send that out and then have you respond and we'll start putting those together um and hopefully everyone can join in as much or as little participation as as they as fits with their life and as their interest in it one other quick piece I realized I forgot is there's this plus what Brian mentioned earlier the opportunity in the nearer term um to collaborate with the climate action Commission on a deep dive review of the climate action plan the ghg reduction the greenhouse gas reduction measures um so that's that'll be part of the mix too
and we'll just I've seen the city will make that all part of a single email inviting interest in all of the above or none of the above as your desire and time allows and I think it's also important just to it this doesn't mean you won't be able to participate in any discussion or review or comments on any of the other policy framework it's just a it's just a massive amount of of documentation and this is so important to go deep on and so we just want to allow people to go deep on those things that they have particular interest or experience or um so and then and then report out very similar to how we did when we started these policy Frameworks when we were looking at recommendations for policies um so just really want to make sure everyone knows it's not it it's the touch isn't just limited to the working groups it's just kind of a different level from the working groups to then report out to the larger group thank you heather I see several hands either eagerly willing and ready to volunteer or they're really baffled and have a lot of questions um Chris go ahead sure so just um it would be great once people you know pick their pick their Lane to have this posted someplace publicly and as their help with facilitating location I mean if we want to encourage other people in the community to come join in it it probably would be good to have a place rather than you know my backyard for people to get together and you know I I could see myself wanting to pop into these other ones so
it it seems like there's there needs to be some sort of General organization is that part of the thinking of this whole thing we can definitely explore that Chris definitely putting him up on the general plan website the working groups um that's that's yes um and we'll we'll start thinking about uh location or help with that last time it kind of more organically happened I think but um we'll see what what resources we might have well I I think Chris what your um what's piqued my interest too is I I had always seen this portion to be you know as the advisory committee you know bring in your thoughts and sort of helping form prior to you know there's sort of this sequencing to inform a larger discussion but that's not to say that's the only way to do it so we can start thinking about you know is there sort of this more larger discussion um if I think that's where you're getting it but if you're talking about sort of closed yeah well there was some there was some I mean I think it's both there's there's some uh there's some comments earlier I think from from you guys about you know being Champions out in the community talking to people talking to other people who care about the same thing so I'm going okay so that's part of it you know we should figure out a way to do that and then I think it is good for you know I mean the housing working group we had we had a pre-gpac meeting you know just to kind of get clear in the concept I didn't have hardly anything to say tonight but it
was valuable to help me get my head wrapped around what was going to happen tonight so I I you know it's uh it doesn't have to be just one way or the other but if if we're going to include the public we need to figure out how to do that or decide well in this case the working groups are just going to be working groups I I don't have an opinion but you guys mentioned the public and I thought oh boy you know like that needs to come into the to the equation um as we just try to figure out this going to you know going forward yeah yeah I was remiss I should clarify too so a couple things one is our thought is that the working groups take these deep Dives on specific policy Frameworks during the public review of the policy Frameworks and so during that time there'll be you know workshops orientations um online formats for people to provide input and so like there'll be lots of opportunities for the general public to review look at comment on the policy Frameworks so the working groups we're seeing in part is kind of complementary to supplemental to that work um and if if you're in common when we first did the working groups the idea was to not put the burden of the working groups to engage the entire community on a topic it was to identify those key stakeholders people who we knew already had knowledge interest experience with the topic um to take that deep dive and and take and take a look at our focused way as opposed to like putting the onus of broad Community engagement on
these working groups that was never the expectation yeah Mary then John then Bill Reiner okay Ron that helped helped me um your explanation I was first of all curious about the efforts that were put forth with the original working groups and how that because I I kind of liked it for example possibly switch groups um because we did so much and for our with our working group I want to know what's going to happen with that um because I you know if it's if we don't feel like it's getting any sort of traction it's hard to get excited about the next working group so what what's going to happen with what we already did like rest assured it's going to be looked at and then I can go look at another group or or do I need to stick with this group because if I don't it's all going away whoops turning that off no you don't have to stick with the same working group we only put the names up there as a reminder so there's no expectation that you necessarily would that being said some people may very well want to maintain focus on a limited number of areas and in terms of what that was done with the recommendations from the gpat group so we've mentioned this before but we took those and used them to inform initially strategy conversations that consultant team members had with City staff and then again when the consultant's working from that and the two pack working recommendations put pencil to paper to generate ideas they refer that was one of the primary sources for ideas for goals
strategies policies other approaches to achieving the vision and guiding principles that have been adopted um and and so and then they were as you may recall when we brought back those ideas generated by the consultant team to a series of TPAC meetings in the fall and early part of this year you know we always like here's what we heard from you and here's how it was incorporated into these ideas and so it's been very much a driver for everything that's been done with the policy Frameworks to date but again I think it's a totally legitimate approach if if you're a member of a former working group to get that those recommendations out and use them as a checklist to make sure everything's been covered other people have been doing that but certainly that'd be a very appropriate approach to part of a review of a policy framework so excellent point Mary uh John trips welcome oh wait this is I'm sorry you're no longer a gpac member the gpac people first yes he called me I almost forgot that you're now council member welcome um Bill reinert and then um yeah Bill Reiner great thanks Ron uh say I I want to start with a plea to Mary to not jump off the working group um but I get it we did a lot of work and that sort of fuels one of my comments um in that you know we engaged a lot of stakeholders in the particular open space and natural resources working group and of course we lost John and Janice to council um but you know the consultant brought back a report that we felt was not
reflective of all of the Outreach that we did and um and so you know we've been looking forward to this as an opportunity to see the draft policy framework and to respond or you know at least to to use our original work as a checklist um but so I'm kind of hoping that Mary you're still on board with that and John you too um but um so really my big comment is that I think to make the most of this effort and we've all been looking forward to this as what we figure is the useful part of the working groups is review of the policy Frameworks I would like to see a kind of a more detailed timeline you know what's the rollout schedule which elements will be rolled out how many at a time what will be the process for development you know will there be working group review then another draft and then public review or is it just one review you know let's see let's have kind of a a timeline for or a a specific process for a review of each of these elements and that the Jeep back and the working group members can be aware of this so that we can sort of coordinate the effort and um and constant and focus our time where it's you know best spin and we're we're you know to get into our schedule so looking for a detailed schedule of the rollout the amount of time we would expect to have to review a draft policy framework and you know what will be the steps in the process so I think that would be really great if you can give us a more detailed road map either at the next meeting or sometime
before you know before we have to launch this effort okay thanks a lot you know it's a great comment uh Bill we don't have a specific timeline at this point um because various Frameworks at various stages of development but by the time the public drafts are ready we certainly can have that what do we do know is generally the process to answer that part of your question and so the idea is to make all of them available at the same time and as I mentioned earlier variety of means designed to help people understand what's in them provide feedback in addition to the gpac's work the plan is to also bring them to the relevant uh commissions committees and boards at the same time and the idea is to bring all of that input gpac public boards together back to the gpac for final recommendations which would then go to PC and onto Council to kind of close out that phase of the project all that guidance then would inform the admin draft of the general plan which as you know would then ultimately become a public Draft before going into the adoption process so this is you know one in what is a series of one two three four opportunities for you and the public to weigh on weigh in on specific strategies and policy ideas for the general plans that answer that part of your question nice roasted marshmallows again yeah no I I think that does answer we would like to just see it in in writing so we can get a sense of you know I'd like to spread it out on a calendar and actually yeah absolutely by
the time we get there we'll definitely have that information for you that's great thank you Ron Brian I see you're unmuted did you want to add to that oh just I was gonna you said yes and that was going to be my um response so I'll leave it at that any other gpac comment at this point if not City staff I see a couple hands raised by members of the public would you like to open public comment again yes please okay Daniel can you do that for us I I'm not sure that we need um uh the timer or anything I mean I'm hoping that John and Susan if you have something on the working groups keep it right I mean I'm just trying to not be quite so formal get get comments and yeah okay I think in the interest of time um let's see so John um go ahead okay let's uh I'll keep this short the um the working group the engineering even though I worked on the other one the open space Naturals uh I think the engineering group is going to be a huge topic coming down the line with climate change because we specifically work on all of those uh our highly needed facilities we're talking about in improving our soccer fields artificial turf because got rejected by the rec group we have facilities we have uh post police station and fire station need to get built somewhere possibly the fairgrounds at the and on the noise level we have lots of things going on with noise whether it be the race track the the Smart Train car shows that are going on in late at night and other things so there's lots of noise
issues that we need to worry about including like the cement plant is worried about noise and impact on neighbors that are going to be moving next to them so the engineering and Facilities The Swim Center the Lucchesi uh Center all needing improvements this there's a that's a huge topic and then the biggest one of course is going to be the electrification of P getting PG e to do what's needed to Electrify the city uh whether whether and then the discussions coming up on solar panels and the battery storage that's coming up along with improving our entire grid and microgrids that we might want to do those are all huge topics and it should be very exciting for folks from this group to join in on and I wish I could be participating but I think I'm uh because I'm a city council now I won't be able to participate but hopefully I'll be able to give some feedback to folks on several of these topics along the way um so that's my uh comment for the moment great thank you council member and uh Susan will turn the floor over to you thanks thank you um well I sent an email to Bill Reinhardt while you all were talking so bill please check your emails I'd really like to see the open space and actually natural environment not natural resources which is an extractive term many of us in conservation are trying to move away from using so open space and natural environment working group and encourage others who feel the connection to our environments here in Petaluma to potentially be
interested in revisiting that I think there's a lot of additional consideration that could be given to recommending literally recommending open space policy looking at the city and quadrants for existing open space and natural features how the areas are connected or not connected in Petaluma what the priorities are and of course Wildlife corridors are extremely important always have been but more so than ever now with the climate emergency and our Consulting team unfortunately got that 100 incorrect in the original iteration that was provided to you and that happens to be a mapping project that I've been working on for several years for Sonoma County and Marin County and how Petaluma has one of my corridors and how our environment uh fits into the larger picture I think we also need to look at that too so I'm very interested in participating in that work group if it does reopen thank you thank you and thank you Daniel um it's just about nine o'clock um Ryan would you mind closing this out I will just 30 seconds I see we're we're joined by our four-legged friends here so um want to be respectful of everyone's time and thank you so much I mean the fact that we're still holding strong at 28 participants is uh pretty impressive and um shows the commitment and dedication of this group so really looking forward to it um I just I'll close with just two um you know this is all about Community we have uh two members that um aren't with us here on the screen today and so Christina Paul
had um sent um through email and I think it was just a little buried in the um inner correspondence but uh she's sort of in transit this week uh her and her family made a really tough decision to um to relocate um overseas and so um that's why you're gonna start to see how more of Heather and myself so Christina is still very much a part of the team and albeit um on a completely different time zone and so you'll still see her I mean I've been seeing emails pop up the last half hour from her and so she's very much an active participant but obviously just uh um it'll be challenging um and to have a sort of front-facing um uh role here and then the other one I'll just close with uh commissioner Kevin Kelly who many of you know he is previously a gpac member current more recent addition to our Planning Commission and so just sort of scratching the surface but I just did want to share if you do know him and know his family um you know he's going through a pretty significant medical emergency and so um he has not been um uh able to connect with us directly and participate on the commission and so we've just gotten some news from from his wife just um on his medical condition so I just you know um she was okay with her sharing that out um and so if you do know her know him you'd like to just connect with them just wanted to um just mention that um news here and so um again it's it takes the village it takes the community and so um again just uh note of gratitude and and thanks again