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PC 04-27-2010 CITY OF CUPERTINO 10300 Torre Avenue Cupertino, CA 95014 CITY OF CUPERTINO PLANNING COMMISSION APPROVED MINUTES 6:45 P.M. April 27, 2010 TUESDAY CUPERTINO COMMUNITY HALL The regular Planning Commission meeting of April 27, 2010 was called to order at 6:45 p.m. in the Cupertino Community Hall, 10350 Torre Avenue, Cupertino, CA, by Vice Chair Winnie Lee. SALUTE TO THE FLAG ROLL CALL Commissioners present: Vice Chairperson: Winnie Lee Commissioner: Lisa Giefer Commissioner: David Kaneda Commissioner: Marty Miller Commissioners absent: Chairperson: Paul Brophy Staff present: Community Development Director: Aarti Shrivastava City Planner: Gary Chao Senior Planner: Aki Honda Snelling Vice Chair Winnie Lee chaired the meeting. APPROVAL OF MINUTES: None WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS: None POSTPONEMENTS/REMOVAL FROM CALENDAR: 1. U- 2009 -09 Use Permit to allow an 8,400 sq. ft. daycare facility to Cindy Cheng (Cupertino operate at an existing commercial building. The application Investment Partners, also includes a new outdoor play area in the existing rear LLC) 19870 Stevens parking lot. Requested postponement to the May 11, 2010 Creek Boulevard. meeting; Postponed from the March 23, 2010 Planning Commission meeting; Tentative City Council date: June 1, 2010. Motion: Motion by Com. Giefer, second by Com. Kaneda, and carried 4-0 -0, Com. Brophy absent, to postpone Application U- 2009 -09 to the May 11, 2010 Planning Commission meeting. Item 3 Com. Giefer: • Suggested postponing the Matrix Study Item 3 until Com. Brophy was present. She said she Cupertino Planning Commission 2 April 27, 2010 was interested in hearing more of his input based on his insight and consideration from the last meeting. Aarti Shrivastava, Community Development Director: • Said the only issue was that the Council wanted to see this as early as possible, but Planning Commission can make the decision. There was a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of continuing the application until Chair Brophy was present, so that a full contingent of the Commissioners was present to provide input. Coms. Giefer and Kaneda were absent from the prior meeting when the Matrix study was discussed. Com. Giefer said she would prefer to wait until Chair Brophy was present to provide his perspective. She said she had many questions with regards to why staff was recommending some of the recommendations and she needed more background information. Com. Kanesa said that he did not have a strong opinion either way, but would support continuing discussion of the item until the next meeting. Com. Miller stated that he would prefer to discuss the item tonight so that those present could express their opinions and provide input, and then continue the discussion to the next meeting when Chair Brophy was present. Motion: Com. Giefer moved, second by Com. Kaneda, Com. Brophy absent; to continue Item No. 3, Application CP- 2010 -01; Vote 2 -2 -0, Com. Brophy absent. Motion failed. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: None CONSENT CALENDAR: None PUBLIC HEARING 2. M- 2010 -01 Modification to a Use Permit (14 -U -96) to remove James Fowler (The Irvine an existing reciprocal access and parking easement Company, LLC & between an existing apartment complex (The Apple, Inc) 19310 -19320 Hamptons) and an existing industrial office And 19500 Pruneridge Ave. property (Apple, Inc.) Aki Honda Snelling, Senior Planner, presented the staff report: • Reviewed the application for Modification to Use Permit to remove an existing reciprocal access and parking easement between an existing apartment complex and an existing industrial office property, as outlined in the staff report. • She reviewed the site access and parking as detailed in the staff report. • Staff recommends that the Planning Commission recommend that the City Council approve the modification subject to the model resolution. Mike Folkes, Apple, Inc. • Said that the easement hasn't been used for parking which it was designed for; the site is currently being used to hold some equipment that the Hampton Apartments use for the refurbishment of their property, and they may continue its current use for a period of time. He noted that the gate was actually locked so it could not have been used for parking, except for emergency access. Vice Chair Lee opened the public hearing. Cupertino Planning Commission 3 April 27, 2010 Jennifer Griffin, Rancho Rinconada resident: • Commented that for any future use of the Hampton apartment complex homes, or any future development that the complex has, she wanted to ensure if the property was ever redeveloped and had higher buildout there, that enough parking would remain on site because it does have excellent access to Highway 280 and Wolfe Road etc. She said obviously you would not want the extra parking out in the Apple lands over there. Motion: Motion by Com. Miller, second by Com. Giefer, and carried 4 -0 -0; Com. Brophy absent; to approve Application M- 2010 -01 per the model resolution. 3. CP- 2010 -01 Review of they Management Study of the Permit Process and City of Cupertino opportunities to enhance the quality of the City's permit services and organizational efficiency. Continued from the April 13, 2010 Planning Commission meeting; Tentative City Council date: May 18, 2010 Aarti Shrivastava: • Said there was no formal staff presentation; comments provided previously by the Commissioners are provided in the staff report. Com. Giefer: • She said in reading the recommendation, the one thing that struck her is they want to improve their processes; but how is community involved in this. They have talked to developers and architects, people who have pulled permits. Out of one of the people who pulled permits, how many of them were residential vs. developers or house flippers, and how do they ensure that the community's voice is heard as part of this. Aarti Shrivastava: • Said it was difficult to get people to respond, and they tried to get a good cross section. They did a comparative study of how Cupertino compares with other studies; which pulled in people who had worked in multiple cities. They also got comments from residents but did not have the exact numbers. It is a good question and staff should be able to get an answer. Gary Chao, City Planner: • Clarified that Matrix conducted a focus group using a cross section of single - family, property owners that had done projects to medium size, business owners who had built their buildings, to large developers including architects, civil engineers, structural engineers and firms that have worked with the city. Matrix interviewed them and went over their opinion about the city's process. In addition Matrix also did an interview with staff members to go through the internal opinion to get input from folks who are working and using the system to see if there are any deficiencies or enhancements that could be made; and the comparative study of other industry practices in other cities similar to ours with similar characteristics comparing processes and seeing where the improvements can be made. Com. Giefer: • Said that having sat on the Planning Commission long enough and involved in several R1 reviews, what she heard loud and strong was that the community felt they didn't have a voice. She said that they have to have continuity in 'the background in terms of how they got to this point; and she felt it was lacking in the report . She said if she were a developer or somebody Cupertino Planning Commission 4 April 27, 2010 pulling permits, she would want to eliminate that straight away; that and the storyboards on the property. She reiterated her concern after reading the report, that the community's voice was not included. • Said there were some recommendations in 1:erms of reopening the R1 and asked for more background information on how that fits in and what that review would be. Aarti Shrivastava: • If you are discussing things such as second story balconies and the like, and changing processes a little, staff is looking for comments from the Planning Commission about what they thought about these ideas; that was not necessarily recommending these. She said they would concur with Com. Brophy where they have gone through an extensive process and made some decisions; it doesn't make sense to shake everything up and start over. • Regarding the plan sets, staffs experience has been the R1 is the only planning application that somebody needs to send plans sets to, most other projects don't do that. There are other options such as putting it on the website, where people can find the links; however the plan sets are small and they are difficult to read and some people do not understand them, and they come back to City Hall with questions; and the process is back where it started; hence it is not seen as very effective. Com. Giefer: • It is not known how many questions are eliminated and how many people you never hear from because they received the plans. Aarti Shrivastava: • Said that was possible; they don't see a lot of difference from prior -to plan sets and post -plan sets in terms of the questions. To say they are eliminating 90% of the questions, usually it is people who don't understand the plan sets, a.nd they are trying to find better ways of doing this, maybe the storyboard helps. • Said that the reference to the handouts to applicants include the Planning application packet. It is a voluminous packet with directions on what to complete, give information to staff; and one of things that staff would like to be able to do is spend more time on the packets, to make it easier to understand. • Said her personal opinion is if you have to create complex charts to explain the ordinance, then that should be the ordinance, and they shouldn't have to create a chart for it. All of the updates to ordinances have been charts because they are easier to understand. They are moving towards that, and if there is one thing they can do as part of this or of future processes, is not change the standards, but make it easier to read the ordinance. • Matrix recommended a 4% technology fee because that number was commonly used; it includes microfiching plans to an online permit system. Costs for a system to process applications electronically range from $.5 million to $1.5 million for a city of Cupertino's size range, which includes the cost of the software as well as upgrading the server, hardware and staff training. Com. Kaneda: • Asked staff if there was any thought of a potential savings of staff time. Aarti Shrivastava: • Staff feels they can save on the time it takes to get from the architect to staff; because there is a cost to that. The estimated cost of printing out 7 sets, twice or three times is over 2 to 2.5% of the cost of an application. You are saving that money as well as time. The time that it takes to coordinate, that is where you save time, because now you know all the departments are going Cupertino Planning Commission 5 April 27, 2010 to see this together, the applicant is going to be able to figure out why it is held back, why there is a hold on this project, he doesn't have to come to City Hall and make sure that he has appointment with a person who is reviewing Eis project; it is something he can look at online. • Said that the application can be monitored online; and if it takes two months to bring the bond down, that won't make the things faster, but they will get the information faster. With the system, staff's demands will go up because they are going to get more information online and they will be more demanding, but staff is okay with that because they think that is where they should be spending their time and answering their questions rather than chasing paper. • She said that likely not much time would be reduced, perhaps 4 days, 2 in getting things to them, and 2 days in getting things back; the remainder of the time would depend on how quickly the applicants respond. A lot of times that is the issue; staff owes them a quick response and they try to keep to those dates. But the little coordination that happens, is where you definitely save time. • Said they estimate 2% to 2.5% of the cost of t:he application would be saved by the applicant in terms of printing costs; delivery has not been added; the city doesn't print the plans, the applicant provides the plans to the city. The applicant doesn't have to make a trip down to City Hall unless he wants to, which is a benefit; it can be monitored online, send emails, and get answers on line; don't have to look around for people as the comments are online also. • Said that it allows simultaneous review by all the departments; it does allow you to tie it in and schedule inspections; it takes you from the front end of the Planning application all the way down to final occupancy. • She continued to explain the various features. of the system, including the ability to compare drawings using Adobe software, fee structures, costs, etc. Aarti Shrivastava: • That is not the Planning plan, but it is a Code Enforcement and they have to go through. Typically in a fee study„ the average number of hours taken for an application are estimated; that forms the basis of the fees. • They also compare their costs to costs in comparable cities to understand how we compare, because it is important to stay competitive. This has been done twice in Cupertino, that is always something that gets brought up and the other place where the Council sometimes makes concessions are when they think there is a public benefit to certain applications where they want to waive reduced fees to a very low level, like appeals or such. • It was done with solar as well; staff tries to make sure that occurs, but the reality of making sure that they have enough resources to have enough people to review projects, is important because the developers say that time is of the essence. Com Giefer: • Said she thought about the commentary about the politically charged nature in the city; and those kinds of things were spot on; but not sure they can necessarily influence that, and it is not anywhere in the recommendations that they tried to, which makes sense. Com. Kaneda: • Said as a member of the Planning Commission, he has experienced a politically charged atmosphere that can happen when somebody brings up a fairly small change to a house and a neighbor objects. It is not a Council thing, but is a resident in the community thing, but things happen where the same house in a similar ;neighborhood, in one pass it will pass with no problem, and in another case because a neighbors objects will get taken out. It has happened several times and is one area in this community he has seen a fair amount of inconsistency where the rules are not necessarily applied uniformly. Cupertino Planning Commission 6 April 27, 2010 Com. Giefer: • Under Comparison Chart for Permit Processes for Various Cities, one of the things that comes to the Planning Commission is cellular antennas; and I thought on one of the documents recommending change to that review process, wouldn't it be great if it went to the technology; was that part of the process as well as trying to determine if there are other commissions or committees that should be involved in the deci sion making process. Aarti Shrivastava: • Mountain View handles it differently in that they approve all current planning applications at staff level. At this point the recommendation wasn't for the TIC Committee, but was something you could recommend, review and see if that is something that could happen. They would like to be more involved in those decisions and usually it is a built outside that they are trying to decide if it makes sense. • Said she did not know what their responsibilities and duties are; so that may or may not have to be revised. If that is their recommendation they can look at it; they already have parameters for improving cellular antennas in the Wireless Master Plan and if they meet those, it may be a simple discussion. Com Giefer: • Questioned why the report identified daycare, since some organizations had daycare and senior care on their facilities. Was the reason because there is more demand and there is more data on it? Aarti Shrivastava: • Said that most of the applications are for straight day care /child care applications and they gave some examples of how that can be simplified. Mountain View for example has a number of uses they called out and they talk about some performance standards for those uses; instead of doing this repeatedly with applications, it his some best practices. They could create such a document in the ordinance so that people are aware from the beginning what they need to do. • Said that they could expand that to care facilities for children, special needs and elder care; but noted that sometimes the needs of child care may be different from elder care; for example there is the play area; so we could create something for both but then have different programs. Com. Giefer: • Said what was brought up was a good differer.tiator, you need more open space for kids to run around, whereas seniors don't need that. Com. Kaneda: • One of the recommendations was for the training for staff development in the Building Division, Engineering Division and Planning Division; what did they have in mind. Aarti Shrivastava: • They need to be up to date on new codes coining in, need to know what is going on so that they can review plans, and make sure they are able to answer questions. Staff training is important because things change rapidly with rules and laws and you not only need to know what the laws are, but also need to know what an application needs to do in order to comply with those rules, because that is what gets translated into something meaningful for the applicant. Cupertino Planning Commission 7 April 27, 2010 Com. Giefer: • Said that the Matrix report talks about the appeals process from the applicant's side, but did not capture the process from the community's side. In some neighborhoods is not acceptable to have a balcony, but in another neighborhood they are more receptive to it. Did they talk to the people who filed appeals to see how they felt the process worked? Aarti Shrivastava: • Said she did not know if they talked to the people who filed appeals; staff provided a list to the consultant of residential people who had applied for residential projects; but generally stayed out of the focus groups because they felt it should be an independent discussion. Com. Giefer: • Said there is nothing in the verbatim that led her to believe that the community had been involved. There are two sides to it; she said they want to be as efficient as possible for developers who do business in the community, but don't want to alienate the residents. She said she did not see anything particularly worrisome in terms of Matrix's recommendations, but felt that some of the continuity and background on how they came to be there was lacking. Aarti Shrivastava: • She said they relayed that to the consultant; what they tried to do was to look for ways in which staff could become more efficient; that doesn't mean that all of these will work; you are trying to balance these against community interests and to the extent you that you have process without value, it bears looking at, but if we think we have process for a reason, then that needs to stay. Com Kaneda: • One thing about this report is you are benchmarking yourself against other similar cities and it looks like Cupertino is one of the best of the cities in this area as far as what the process is and how they do things, and we are looking at how we do business the way we do it today. • He said they are currently entering into a time when the building industry is changing quite radically compared to the last 50 or 100 years; and where both electronic permitting and electronic design is possible. In ten years there will likely be a requirement in California that all homes have to be zero energy and 20 years all commercial residences have to be zero energy and the goal is half of remodels are zero energy too. There are many changes happening, and he wondered how much Matrix tried to at least look at some of those changes coming down the road like an out -of- control train that you are not going to be able to avoid and say no to. Did they at least talk to staff about what the implications are for Cupertino, because some of those changes are very radical. Aarti Shrivastava: • Said it was a good point; and said that Matrix tried to address it by addressing training and addressing a process of online permitting which allows transfer of some of that information electronically where it actually has some real meaning. They are a management consultant and probably have some limitations in their ability to understand a lot of the future. • The life of a permit system is about 10 years at which point you should migrate to different software or an updated software. After the system is working, in about 8 years they should be looking at what else they should be doing; because at some point it is not going to make sense to put money into this particular system or get to the next level. • Relative to other information, training will be key, where they understand what some of the new information they will get from architects is going to mean and that is going to have more information, so you are not going to be looking at schedules because it is right there, such as Cupertino Planning Commission 8 April 27, 2010 window, door, material schedules because they will all be in the plans • Said that the current permit system is between 12 to 15 years old, and does not anticipate things such as online permitting. The annual maintenance cost is similar to the new system and depending on the customizing, it is about $30K to $50K per year. The cost was built into the Building fee schedule because only Building is using it; the proposal was to replace it with a new cost, but only 75% of it. Vice Chair Lee: • Somewhere in the report it said something about the building inspectors, that they would go to the site and would input all their findings and data into their laptops, and even print up a permit on the spot. Would that software and hardware be included in this, too; the whole revamping, the entire system? Aarti Shrivastava: • Said they were still looking at what that would be and had built some of it in. It is emerging technology and people have talked about on vs. the other, but staff feels comfortable that would be accommodated within the $500K they are discussing. • Public Works is working on a stormwater master plan; don't have information on whether we have one currently. The last time we did a fee study for Planning, Building and Public Works together was in 2003 and then updated a study only for Building and that was primarily because the last fee schedule was based on valuation and there was litigation that said you couldn't use valuation anymore, and you need to use a cost basis. It was changed in 2009, and some minor adjustments were made to reduce costs for solar permits in 2009. Gary Chao: • There is an Appendix in the Matrix report that summarizes in percentages the categories of the people who participated in the Matrix focus groups, but no list. Com. Miller: • It would be more helpful if we knew who they were. If the names are available; if it was intended as a blind study, then so be it. We Have no idea who is in the focus groups, and it would be nice to know if it was a representative sample from our standpoint. Aarti Shrivastava: • We can certainly ask; but that doesn't mear we forget single- family residents / residence; many of our comments do speak to things W3 have heard from people who were sometimes frustrated and I think the inconsistency is a good point but is something that gets built into the public input part; and we do get it but on a particular feature of the home that hadn't gotten input in another part of town, we have to address it and so sometimes those get applied a little less consistently than one might like. • Page 133 in the Matrix report answers the questions about the makeup of the focus groups. 30% were developers, 30% were major landowners, building contractors, and 10% were professionals. Presently the applicant has to provide between 5 and 7 sets of every application; if that is found incomplete or they have to make changes, they have to give us a new set of 7, those are examples of what they would not get. If we went totally green and you had laptops, then you wouldn't have paper. Said that viewing it online would eliminate a lot of paper. She said they were not focused on a specific software package, but have surveyed cities that use online systems. Should the city decide to move forward on the system, there is a lot more research to be done. Ideally the Building Dept., Planning Dept., IT department should talk to each other so that we know what the pros and cons of the system are; we have done some preliminary homework to get to those numbers and get a sense that this is a system worth Cupertino Planning Commission 9 April 27, 2010 having, but beyond that, there is a lot more work to do. We estimate based on what we hear from other people; our new building official implemented a new online permitting system in the last place he worked in the County of Monterey; and he said it took him about 18 months once a decision was made to have a system, so having the RFP, having the RFQ, doing the work flow, getting the system designed and going online took about that long. • Relative to the $50K maintenance fee, she said their goal was to make sure that they were able to make enough adjustments in a system selected without doing customs, because those are very expensive. In the current system everything is a custom, so you cannot change a lot; maintaining that, updating that, having some room for customs should you need some is a $30K to $50K cost and that is approximately what is now spent with the current system. • Staff discussed/answered questions about annual fees involved with the system. Vice Chair Lee opened the public hearing. Jennifer Griffin, Rancho Rinconada resident: • Said that a description of life in Cupertino is basically building uses. Said she was concerned with who made up the focus groups. She said the building community are wonderful people; they build in Cupertino, build many homes; but she felt the document is how to make it easier to build whatever they want to in Cupertino and that is not the history of us, of Cupertino, the citizens who live here. • It is a two -way street and that is why we have such sticky wickets as extra notification of plan sets to neighbors; I have lived that for 10 years; that is the history of my neighborhood. The history of balconies, you don't want to wake up one morning and have the builder who lives in San Jose, building a home across the street with a balcony that looks into your master bedroom which is the reason for the noticing about that. • Covenants run with the land, the documents are attached to the title and there is no reason to toss them out. They need to explain why they are abandoning and throwing out everything that the public is aware of in this document. • Although the Matrix group likely did what they were asked to do, as a member of the public she said she did not like what the recommendations were; it is not Cupertino, the public was left out and she would like to have the focus group list shown. Darrel Lum, Cupertino resident: • Said it would be helpful to have the list of projects from the last two or three years that would denote how each would have been affected by the consultant's recommended level of reviews. • With regard to the focus group's comment that one of the two major problems is the city's politically charged atmosphere relative to development and growth; that was the result of the development and growth in the early 2000s. • The consultants do not recognize the importance of notification to this community and what the State requirements for noticing are. He said he was not sure that the $5,000+ postal cost for citywide noticing was cost effective; and he felt improvement was needed in that area. • The consultant is not familiar with the City Council meetings; in their recommendation No. 104 states that the Mayor and City Council should develop alternatives for the consideration of the City Council to avoid conducting public hearings for City Council meetings in the early morning; he said there weren't too many early morning City Council meetings. • Also, the consultant is not familiar with the Planning Commission meetings; recommendation No. 111 suggests amending the Planning Commission by -laws to clarify the responsibility of the Planning Commission Chairperson to manage commission meetings. He said in the past, those meetings have been very well conducted. • Recommendation No. 112, is to amend the Planning Commission by -laws to reduce the amount of time available to public speakers to the same as that provided at the City Council Cupertino Planning Commission 10 April 27, 2010 meetings. He said he was sure that the speaking time allotment is the same at both meetings. • He said that the incorrect information in the report relates to the inadequacy of the consultant report. Vice Chair Lee closed the public hearing. Com. Miller summarized his suggestion for goals: • Improve efficiency and reduce costs both for the city and the applicant. In that frame, it is a good goal to shorten approval time; it doesn't imply that the public hearings be shortened, but they should look for ways to reduce the amount of time between when an applicant first submits an application to when an approval or denial is obtained. • It is important in this day and age, when thinking about the number of commercial developments that have been approved and are not getting built; and having sufficient revenue to run the city is becoming more and more challenging, with no end to that. Having desirable projects done in Cupertino that for example increase commercial development, where generally there is not disagreement in the city that commercial development is valuable; it provides more shopping locally in Cupertino so residents don't have to go out to other cities and at the same time, increases the city's sales tax revenues and also real estate tax revenues. • A goal of increasing customer satisfaction in doing business with Cupertino is important from the standpoint that they are competing with other neighboring cities in order to do a commercial development; an example is Sunnyvale Mall which compared to a few years ago, Sunnyvale Mall was going great guns and it was thought that Vallco was going to be a big success; and now both of them are not doing anything; whichever town gets their mall done first, it is clearly going to take business away from the other towns. • Despite the fact that we are friendly neighbors, we are also competitors, and getting a reputation for customer satisfaction, is a goal worth having in terms of that competition. Said when referring to commercial, he lumped it in terms of what is desirable in town; retail is desirable and there is certain office developments that are desirable also. • Another worthy goal is increasing flexibility and the ability to adjust the changing economic conditions, which is something they have been aware of in the last few years. • The last goal is to ensure that there is truly a nexus between the fees charged and the cost benefits that those fees are intended to provide. Com. Kaneda: • Said they were extraordinary goals. Vice Chair Lee: • Said she wanted to add increase consistency among applicants; some applicants will question how someone else got it and they couldn't. It may be related to education, how to get there, training, more communication, training Building staff, training developers, just community training, and education. • About one year ago this was done, the consultant was asked to look at organization, at our efficiency, look at what kind of things can make the process for getting permits easier, just the whole experience. Nowhere in the consulting packet does it say this will decrease applicant expenses; can they actually decrease applicant expenses? She said she was no sure if the consultant had any recommendations on how to decrease their expenses. Com. Kaneda: • Relative to Com. Miller's comment about increasing efficiency, he said to him the assumption is if you can increase efficiency, you should save money, because time is money in this case. • One of the recommendations was related to keeping staffing level the same for building permit Cupertino Planning Commission 1 l April 27, 2010 plan checking. In meetings of the Santa Clara County Cities Association, the Green Building Ordinance, the Bay Area Climate Collaborative, and the Green Building Codes, one constant comment from city officials and also Building Green has a meeting of city officials in the Bay Area, is that as ordinances are developed ghat require buildings to be green, cities now potentially are in the position where they need to understand and check to make sure what is supposed to be built is in fact being built. • Asked if the consultant was aware of what is going on, both at the State code level and also in this community looking at the recommendations of the Cities Association and the implication it could potentially have on staff time reviewing and/or inspecting buildings. Aarti Shrivastava: • Said that she did not know if the consultant was completely focused on that; but he did address that in the training. Training is the key, and as more are hired in the future in terms of replacing to attrition, they will be looking more and more for those skills. Building inspectors will be sent to training, so they are familiar with the codes. • In talking to other Planning officials in the area, what we have heard is that they are going to rely a lot on self - certification to some extent and if LEEDs is a requirement, there is a process to do that. It will not mean they will advocate their responsibility in training inspectors, but they weren't planning at this point to have a very onerous process yet. • Said at this point they are not recommending the Palo Alto approach which is having a person on staff to certify everything. Cupertino has always been a very lean city in terms of that and relies on either self - certification or third party certifications, which is the case when doing geology, traffic, and anything else. Com. Kaneda: • If somebody is self - certifying in some of these other areas, is there any kind of check -back mechanism? Aarti Shrivastava: • Relative to the check -back mechanism, people- will be trained to at least know how to pick out the obvious things. If somebody certifies at the Planning level, that this is going to be LEED silver, we will look for the basic stuff, but at the Building level, we might have our inspectors trained enough to question something. It would be the architect who would certify that this will meet building, and depending on the way we write up our ordinance, they will need to go through the certification process. At this point, it is very time consuming and not something the city wants to be in the business of; leave it up to the professionals. Com. Giefer presented objectives to consider: • Employing technology to reduce costs and streamline the process, support current and future green building requirements because this is going to change and the system will not be changed in the short term. • Said he was concerned that although he agreed that improving customer satisfaction should be part of their objective; we haven't objectively measured what that is today; and how do they know they have achieved that. Aarti Shrivastava: • In terms of customer satisfaction, Matrix has looked at time; how long it takes to get from beginning to end; and quality which is harder to quantify. The focus groups tried to get to that, it would have been ideal to have more input because that would have given a better sense of not just how long do you take to get from beginning to end, but what the experience is. Cupertino Planning Commission 12 April 27, 2010 • Added that while the study is a point in time that provides some information, they see it as a continuous improvement process that won't end with this study. As they hear from people, they keep lists of those things and when there is time to go back and look at the ordinance, such as the sign ordinance, they build those into it to say these are some of the big sticking points, and here is how they can be addressed. It is their goal to keep track of things that do frustrate people and to try to eliminate it to the extent possible, while still balancing the community's interest in being informed. Com. Giefer: • She said in the laundry list of objectives they have come up with, they need a goal that speaks to the community and ensures their involvement as well. Aarti Shrivastava: • While a lot of the measures can be very efficient, they should not forget that there is a community interest and it is very important for people to feel like they do have input into the process to the extent they can all be balanced. Com. Kaneda: • Assuming that this report is correct, Cupertino's permit process is one of the best in the Silicon Valley; he said he wouldn't say that someone should strive to improve, but if it is already one of the best, try to ensure that it stays one of the best, not necessarily take great efforts to go for a 1% or 2% improvement. Aarti Shrivastava: • Said it provides a good comparison which they are happy with; the fact that they have tried to compare cities, gives some idea of the people who responded to that question obviously had developed in a number of cities, so they might have been some of the larger developers. Com. Kaneda: • Said the key was to benchmark against other cities and make sure you they are one of the best. Aarti Shrivastava: • Said staff would attempt to keep it up. Com. Miller: • Said he was sensitive to the comments made by Dr. Lum and Jennifer Griffin in terms of the importance of community input and in no way was intending to lessen that. • When he looked at the study, he thought it was primarily focused on the processes that staff uses in managing both small and large applications, and they tend to think about applications as being the big developers coming in. The majority of the applications are Cupertino homeowners who are trying to do a remodel or something relative to their house and that is where a lot of staff time goes. To the extent they can improve that process for the residents, it is very important and the study does address that. • Said he went through a lot of the ideas with the objectives in mind and how they can improve the processes, not just for large developers but also for residents. Some did not make sense, such as the Council and the Planning Commission don't use the same timeframe for input or reduce noticing; he ignored that as being people who did not take the time to understand what is unique about Cupertino; they just had some boilerplate objectives that they added along with the specific ones that they came up with based on where they did interact with the community. • There were clearly some good ones, such as having the case manager manage the entire process and take on the responsibility of not necessarily resolving interdepartmental issues, but Cupertino Planning Commission 13 April 27, 2010 at least bringing the resources together for all of the departments. For an individual homeowner, it is very daunting, and would be helpful to have a single point of contact, and have someone help you work through that. • Training applicants on the application process. • Automating the submittal process. • Developing checklists was a good idea; having a checklist at the Planning Commission to go through when each particular project came in would be helpful also. Aarti Shrivastava: • Said many of the comments were things they already do. They have a checklist process in the application packet so that the applicant is able to go through that checklist and the planner sits down with them when they submit, and checks off what they have given. Com. Miller: • Said when he started on the Planning Commission, a workshop was help guiding the Commissioners through what happens in an application, what staff looks for, and what is important and what is not. It would be of value to have a similar workshop with staff, where the focus is on what staff does when an application comes in, and what do you look for, what's important and what is not important; and perhaps some staff recommendations to the Planning Commission in terms of when the application comes up here, what are you looking for from us, and what things do you think are really important that we make sure we touch on as we review this application at the Planning Commission level. • Said that when they were reviewing the first application this evening to eliminate the easement, the question came to mind as to why it had to go onto City Council. Aarti Shrivastava: • Said it was an example of too much process, wherein the code currently states that if something was approved by the Council, even the smallest modification goes back to the Council. This differs from other cities where there are levels of modification and they get approved at various levels; if it is a large enough one where a substantial part of the project is changing, then it can go to the Council. She said it was an example of where they could look at a different way of doing things. Com. Miller: • Relative to Director's Minor Modifications, how much time, effort and process goes into that and how many of those on a percentage basis do you not approve for one reason or another. Aarti Shrivastava: • Very few, primarily because when somebody comes in to the counter and tells us they want to do something; we give them some understanding of whether it meets the criteria or not, so right there, there is a sense of okay this is going to work or isn't, so they are not going to spend additional time on the project. If people want to still go ahead that is another issues, but they get a sense of ... here is why it doesn't meet code or here is why it does; we think that is important. • Added that one thing unique to Cupertino, is that other cities have very costly pre - application process where people go through and they get to meet with all the other departments and get input prior to their applying. Cupertino provides that service for free, and many times it is multiple iterations of a project, so a lot of staff time does not get charged to a project, but they do spend a lot of time on these and that can include single family all the way through the larger ones; so that when a person does submit they have a complete packet and they know what they need to do. Cupertino Planning Commission 1 April 27, 2010 Com. Miller: • Said he felt it was excellent that Cupertino is doing that; particularly the idea of the case manager giving feedback as early as possible. If you made a submittal and you have some major errors, you don't have to wait 30 days in order to figure out what they are and submit and wait another 30 days. Aarti Shrivastava: • She said that perfect streamlining is 30 days, but their goal is if you know there is a big problem don't wait for everybody's input; you collect it and send it in 30 days; it is more of a personal department goal, a city goal that we have; give that news as early as possible so that they are able to react to it and figure out soluti Dns. Com. Kaneda: • He asked staff if they were saying that there is a significant amount of additional staff time that other cities don't have. Aarti Shrivastava: • Other cities charge, Cupertino does not charge for that. In terms of getting reimbursed for staff time, they spend a great deal of staff time working with applicants prior to applications so that the application process is simple and smooth and the fees reflect only the application process, not the pre - application process. Many times the cost is absorbed by the work that staff does; that is why there is such a lean staff. They work extremely hard; there are 3.5 planners now down to 2.5; for a city of 52,000 that is not a lot. • She said they are actually putting themselves in a position where they are getting less money than other cities. She said they did tell Matrix that; but they don't tell them what to put in the report; they merely give them the information. • She said that most large applicants know that Cupertino does not charge, while other cities do, because they do papers in other cities. Single family homeowners typically other cities do not have pre - application costs for single family homeowners. By working with them ahead of time, they give them a higher chance of getting an application through very quickly; we do the work ahead of time so when they do apply, it goes a lot smoother. They do not specifically tell developers, occasionally they mention it. • Said they do not get cost recovery for their time spent; and it is not built into the overhead. Aarti Shrivastava: • Relative to cycle times, she said they need a lot of that; Planning applications they have State streamlining requirements. They often have tried to exceed that, and feel their pre- application process ensures that there is a very high rate of success and in terms of getting deemed complete which is always the trigger point, they try to ensure that you are complete when you apply; you have everything you need and that :is how the checklist helps. • Cycle time refers to the time between getting an application and the applicant getting feedback and comments. • Said there was a specific cycle time for plan checking. Gary Chao: • For small projects, for Planning, we always go over the turnaround time; for Building plan check there is set cycle times, there are options for people to expedite their turnaround; there is over - the - counter; there is the normal two weeks, it is not the fault of the city, usually it is incomplete information or something similar. Cupertino Planning Commission 15 April 27, 2010 Aarti Shrivastava: • Noted that Matrix realized that they don't have a permitting system that is able to capture the nuances of what happens when somebody applies to the very end, when they get approval or a decision; because many times there is lag time between the time the applicant responds and our system now doesn't capture a lot of that. but we meet all state requirements and exceed that to a great extent. Com. Miller: • Referring to guidelines for commercial deve] opment, he said he thought it was important if setting up guidelines, they should also be looking at strategy for commercial development. A lot of time is spent on residential, and not nearly as much time on commercial development. • He said regular meeting with customers to get feedback and address issues was important. • How to Develop in the City: again just providing the training, whether it is an online document or something if someone hasn't been through the process. Go to the city website and follow directions that say "if you want to this, follow Step 1, Step 2, etc." It would be helpful to cut down the amount of time staff has to explain it to every individual. • Also, when he first joined the Planning Commission there was a joint meeting between the Council and the Planning Commission which was important from the standpoint that the Councils change every couple of years and very often there is the complaint that the Council and the Planning Commission are not on the same page. It is important; the Planning Commission works for the Council, they appoint the Commission and the Commission advises the Council; and it is important that they understand exactly where they are coming from. If there was some type of meeting where everybody understood to the extent that there is some kind of agreement on the Council or not, if they understood a little better here what they are looking for, it would be helpful. It should be held at least every other year. Vice Chair Lee: • 1/3 of all the consultant's recommendations are practices already in place; and less than 1/3 can be implemented internally; the ones that stood out in my mind were customize applications, and also develop a home improvement center web page on our web site to help the do- it- yourselfers; more people are installing things by themselves. • Another thing that stood out that Com. Miller did not mention was make a how -to manual and publish it to the website, he also liked the idea of making a planning application guide for each type of planning permit. She said she liked he things that could be implemented internally. More than 1/3 of the recommendations that the consulting group wrote down, require City Council's review. The first one was the online permit and informational system; hence there are five reasons why she felt they should get it, perhaps not this year, but soon. • Said she liked the ability to go online and print out permits; the second thing is applicants are going to be able to submit plans over the inte:rnet. It makes sense, you can make a correction and the architect can send it to the city. • The applicant can view the department notes and their comments regarding the plans; and since the online system is going to be an automated work flow, the permit doesn't have to sit on a desk too long or get misplaced. • The interactive voice response system allows people to call in; applicants can call in and get information on the permit status or schedule an inspection or they can get their inspection results. The online permit system is an investment; it will not replace a full time employee, but the customers are out there and they expect certain things. Hopefully City Council can look into it and have the funds absorb some of the cost. • Relative to updating ordinances and specific plans, the report talked about their zoning ordinances; it needs to be more readable, clarify tables; it talked about having performance requirements for signs, fences, garages, etc. instead of having all the minor planning permits. Cupertino Planning Commission 16 April 27, 2010 She said it should be clarified. • The specific and conceptual plans were done in the 80s and 90s, so they need to be updated. • Some Commissioners like the noticing requirements as is; sending a postcard with a link where the plans are available for viewing is acceptable. • Having interested parties sign up for e-lists and applications is already being done. • The last thing to weigh in on was the review authority, Attachment 1. City Council should strongly consider the following: not going to DRC any longer and go to the Community Development Director; duplex, fence exceptions and right now the extensions to subdivisions, they go to City Council; they can stop at the Planning Commission; there were 13 items you wanted to lower the authority; four can be lowered; R1 exceptions, duplex, fence exceptions, and extensions to subdivisions. She said she was not on the Planning Commission long enough to offer comment on the remaining 9 items. • See if the City Council could look into the fee study. • Planning Commission input was requested on remodeling the permit center. She said there is something to be said for having a place for customers to sit down with each planner at their own work station; individual conference rooms are not necessary. • Those are all the things City Council should look into. All need money, findings and ordinance changes. Com. Giefer: • In the Matrix report there are some proposed cycle times that they are trying to achieve; how have they come up with the numbers? If you are referring to the proposed cycle time objective at the median, I assume it has to do with the median of the comparable cities, so I would like more definition on that. My question is how do we stack up in terms of cycle time for different processes compared to our neighboring cities. What does it take Sunnyvale to process an R1? Aarti Shrivastava: • The cities used were different from Sunnyvale and Mountain View; they used Petaluma as a comparable. She said they can find out the exact defmition of median by what they meant. Com. Giefer: • Said she would like to have more comparative data on that, because if may be an objective they can meet or beat. If it is unachievable, they need to understand that. Aarti Shrivastava: • Page 65 No. 20, responding to Page 68 they Say the engineering division is meeting their cycle time objectives for plan checking building permit plans in 5 to 10 days, so throughout this Matrix report they are reviewing building, engineering, etc. Com. Miller: • Said that one of the comments about the online system was, the biggest challenge was getting people to do the input which is true. Unless there is an effective process for entering the data it is not going to be of very much value. Com. Giefer: • Said that in general, when looking at the plans associated with the Director's Minor Modifications received, it is difficult to review plans online because one is looking at a full architectural sheet on an 1 1x17 terminal so some of the definition is lost. She said she was not a fan of the online review and did not feel that one could do a proper review online. Cupertino Planning Commission 17 April 27, 2010 Aarti Shrivastava: • Said that larger terminals would be available for staff who are reviewing the plan sets. Vice Chair Lee: • She reviewed some of Chair Brophy's comments, including that he would like to have the opportunity to identify regulations that provide limited or no public benefits to adjoining property owners or the community at large, and to modify them accordingly. He also was interested in who was in the focus group and said he would like to review the fee structure also. He said it would be useful to see if the fee structure might better support their efforts to support both affordable housing as well as the objectives of the upcoming Green Building Code revisions. He suggested avoiding getting into areas that had been subject to extensive review and controversy in the past, such as density, FAR. Motion: Motion by Com. Giefer, second by Com. Miller, and carried 4 -0 -0, Com. Brophy absent; to continue Application CP- 2010 -01 to the next Planning Commission meeting. OLD BUSINESS: None NEW BUSINESS: None REPORT OF THE PLANNING COMMISSION Environmental Review Committee: No Meeting. Housing Commission: No meeting. Mayor's Monthly Meeting With Commissioners: April meeting report provided at previous Planning Commission meeting.. Economic Development Committee: No meeting. REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: • Written report submitted. Adjournment: • The meeting was adjourned to the next regular Planning Commission meeting scheduled for May 11, 2010 at 6:45 p.m. Respectfully Submitted: Elizabe llis, Recording Set f Approved as presented: May 11, 2010