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PC 02-09-04 CITY OF CUPERTINO 10300 Torre Avenue Cupertino, CA 95014 6:45 P.M. CITY OF CUPERTINO PLANNING COMMISSION AMENDED MINUTES FEBRUARY 9, 2004 CITY HALL COUNCIL CHAMBERS MONDAY The Planning Commission meeting of February 9, 2004 was called to order at 6:45 p.m. in the City Council Chambers, 10300 Torre Avenue, Cupertino, California, by Chairperson Taghi Saadati, and the following proceedings were had to wit: ROLL CALL Commissioners present: Chairperson Vice Chairperson Commissioner Commissioner Commissioner T aghi Saadati Gilbert Wong Angela Chen Lisa Giefer Marty Miller Staff present: Community Development Director City Planner Senior Planner Senior Planner Assistant City Attorney Steve Piasecki Ciddy Wordell Colin lung Peter Gilli Eileen Murray APPROVAL OF MINUTES: None WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS: . Chairperson Saadati noted receipt of an e-mail relative to the Rl ordinance. POSTPONEMENTSIREMOV AL FROM CALENDAR: 1. M-2003-08 Todd Lee! Marketplace Use permit modification (16-U-76) to permit new food services and restaurants adjacent to the gated portion of the rear corridor through a use permit process. Property located at 19770 Stevens Creek Boulevard. Planning Commission decision decision final unless appealed Continuedfrom Planning Commission meeting of January 12, 2004. Request postponement to Planning Commission meeting of February 23, 2004. Motion: Motion by Vice Chair Wong, second by Com. Chen to postpone Application M-2003-08 to the February 23, 2004 Planning Commission meeting. (Vote: 5-0-0) Planning Commission Minutes 2 Pebruary 9, 2004 ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: None CONSENT CALENDAR: None The agenda was moved to Item 3. PUBLIC HEARING: 1. TR-2003-09 Joe Byrne Tree removal permit for removal of more than 25% of a Coast Live Oak specimen Tree. Property located at 22762 Alcade Road. Planning Commission decision final unless appealed Colin Jung, Senior Planner, presented the staff report as follows: · Application is for a retroactive permit for tree removal of more than 25% of a Coast Live Oak specimen tree without a tree removal permit. · Arborist report recommends pruning of the tree twice by a certified arborist to balance the canopy, and sprayed with insecticide to prevent decay of the trunk. The applicant did not speak. Chair Saadati opened the meeting for public input; no one was present who wished to speak on the application. Motion: Motion by Com. Miller, second by Com. Chen to approve Application TR-2003-09 (Vote: 5-0-0) The agenda was moved back to Item 2. 2. MCA-2003-02, EA-2003-19 City of Cupertino Municipal Code Amendment to Chapter 19.28 and related chapters affecting single-family residential development in the R I zoning District. Property location citywide. Tentative City Council date: unscheduled. Continued from Planning Commission meeting of January 26, 2004. Peter GiIIi, Senior Planner, presented the staff report as follows: · Noted receipt of the e-mail relating to the survey questions. · Reviewed the four surveys to be used as outlined on page I of the staff report. · Recommendation is to review the surveys, modify them if necessary. Vice Chair Wong: · Brought up a concern that when they talked about it at the last meeting, the study session, there was consensus that they wanted to listen to the public and hear all concerns; and felt they had a good process starting. · Said he at first thought the survey was a good idea but because of the budget crisis, and having it done in-house, he felt that public hearings covering the six different issues would be more Planning Commission Minutes 3 February 9, 2004 appropriate. Mr. Gilli sent mail out to builders and residents, and they have already received e-mails and letters back, and he said he was not convinced that the survey would help more. · Said he had concerns regarding some of these questions, and want feedback from his colleagues. Com. Miller: · Have similar concerns; and said it appears there was some confusion as to exactly how the questions should be tailored. · I think that what we are about here is actually getting into details of the ordinance and looking at specific areas that need improvements or changes and we need information that is more detailed than the general nature of the questions that are currently in here. · Said he felt if the survey was worth doing, it should be done right, by a consultant; and if the funds are not available, it shouldn't be done. · Said they should also have a reasonable process in place as a substitute. Com. Chen: · The Planning Commission made a decision to do the survey because they felt the survey covered a much broader base of customers and could get more input from the residents on how they feel about RI, not just the specifics in Rl. · Said it was the joint decision that they wanted to hear what people have to say about Rl in general and how it meets the purpose, that was originally set up and the purpose is subject to review and revisions also potentially. That is why staff was given direction to develop the survey. · Agreed with Com. Miller that staff doesn't do surveys for a living so there is some potential area for confusion and further discussion. · Want to explore the possibility of doing the surveys. Com. Giefer: · Agreed with Com. Chen that this would allow the opportunity to get more information from portions of the public who have been affected by the RI ordinance. Anything that can be done to reach out to all ofthe people who have been affected by this, provides better data. · Said it was valuable to get information from the public; however, there was no statistical data to fall back on, and the survey would provide hard data to move forward upon and share with others. · Agreed that the survey presented needs more work. Chair Saadati: · Also think that the survey will possibly get more people involved and be able to get more input, not everyone is going to come to the meetings to give information. · The survey needs to be simplified and having three different formats, it may be a little bit more confusing when the results come in. · Said it was discussed at study session, and he envisioned a one page survey that encourages people to fill it out; too many sheets may not be as successful. · Agreed that the survey would provide help. Said he was involved before when specialists were not available. They looked at other surveys, reformatted it, electronically forwarded it to people and they downloaded it, and completed it. It would be a worthwhile effort, and to reduce the cost as much as possible, electronically is possible, put it on the website and in the newspaper. Planning Commission Minutes 4 February 9,2004 Vice Chair Wong: · Main concern is second story, should it be bigger, should it remain the same; heard about design guideJine reviews, should we have them; concerns about story poles, sidewalks, and light poles. · Don't want to open a Pandora's box, and review the entire ordinance again; just review the six items in Mr. GilIi's letter. · The survey should be narrowed down to one page of questions vs. a more complicated system. Mr. Piasecki: · Suggested that after hearing from the public, if the Planning Commission wants to explore a single page, one survey format, what would that look like given the questions that we have here; how would you structure them if you wanted to do that and you can decide whether it works for you or not. Com. Miller: · If we are going to go to one page, if we had more of an open format, instead of a closed format, that is the only way I can see that we can allow people to truly express what they feel; if you restrict them to yes or no, or one of three choices, you are not really eliciting how they really feel about the subject. · The point of the survey is to get input from people who had not had a chance to speak yet. We don't know what that input is, so it is hard to structure questions. · A decision has to be made on what kind of information to get back, which has not been done thoroughly at this point. Com. Giefer: · Listening to discussion, priorities have been noted, and some of the priorities and the recurring themes that are coming up for all of us and it seems to me that some of the things if we can agree on what our priorities are on what information we want to get, the questions fall out of those priorities, and at that point it would be fairly simple to devise a non biased survey that would apply to the people that were pre-1999, post 1999 permits, homeowners and neighbors, and I don't know if we also want to ask for input from builders or not. We had several in the audience last time. · Just jotting down a few things the ones that are coming up are story poles, yes or no; design review process; the 45% ratio between home and lot size; and privacy. As we talk and hear from the public, we can continue to just prioritize a list of what it is coming up as our highest priorities. Then I think we can devise and write a questionnaire that will provide us the data to help us make better decisions. Com. Chen: · Said she supported Com. Giefer; setting up priorities so as not to go out of the range as Vice Chair Wong said that was defined in the beginning. Com. Miller: · Agreed to move forward. Vice Chair Wong: · Clarified that what he was referring to as 35% to the second floor to first floor area ratio; the City Council said that we could not go beyond 45% total FAR.. Chair Saadati opened the meeting for public input. Planning Commission Minutes 5 February 9, 2004 Jan Stoeckeoius, 22386 Cupertino Road: · Weare not experts on surveys. · If looking for statistics, you cannot allow comments at random, you will not get statistics out of comments; you must give a series of questions. · The generality of the questions are almost look at all that happened in 1999; and there should be much more specific questions if what you want to do is say let's look at small changes to what is now in RI as opposed to completely re-evaluate what happened in 1999. · Along that line, believe 45% was before 1999; it goes back to the change in about 1989, we were building our house at that time. I certainly wouldn't suggest that you try doing that other than perhaps say, that does someone want to argue for larger on very small lots. If you open up more than 45% on all lots there will be so much opinion that you will never know what is commg up. Leslie Burnelli, resident: · Said his opinion would likely be different as he was involved in past efforts and knew a lot of the history of the 1-1/2 years. · You don't want to have it broad, but want to have enough questions that cover it; many of these items and your 35% and privacy were fairly critical. · Most surveys have a place for comment; otherwise people feel like the commissioners determine that this is all they are going to get and in the public meeting it will be very expansIve. Yiton Yan, 20846 Garden Gate Drive: · Said that there were a lot of negative questions, without being neutralized by positive questions. · We should try to construct a code that tries to be optimized fairly. Thanh Nguyen, 10657 Randy Lane: · Participated in one of the surveys done for Lyowood Acres; there were unfair and biased questions and after the survey was done, the result was up to interpretation. · Unless it is chosen to do the survey for the whole city, or a segment of the population here, it should be done right because you will get the wrong result and depending on who participates, in the survey. · The survey was an unpleasant experience. · Put a comment field in the survey with an option to write comments in. Chair Saadati closed the public hearing. Mr. Piasecki: · Said there were no funds to hire an outside survey company. · Staff envisioned that the questions would be simple and relatively generic so that you would get something out of it as commissioners; it may not be perfect; it may not be something you can map on a sign curve, but it was meant to help you arrive at a decision. The simpler and more generic you keep it, the better. Vice Chair Wong: · Agreed that it must be simple and generic if moving forward. Planning Commission Minutes 6 Pebruary 9, 20M · Regarding staff involvement, he said he did not want to put staff in the middle, similar to the situation in the General Plan review where a consultant was not hired. Mr. Piasecki: · The surveys will not supplant the public hearing process. · If it helps you do your jobs, then maybe you would want to structure what the questions would be like and then decide whether that is good, bad or indifferent or whether the surveys we have come up with are workable; if they are not, change them, and if at the end you don't like them, toss them. We can handle sending them out, receiving them back, and collating any of the quantifiable information and any of the comments will go to you purely as comments; we have done that before with community congresses and can do it again. Vice Chair Wong: · Asked that staff start collating the emails and letters received already, and also to give the information to the whole commission regarding the Rl process in neighboring cities such as Campbell, San Jose, and Los Gatos. Mr. GiIIi: · Said he understood that the purpose of the meeting was to present survey options and that has been presented. The other information will be presented at later meetings. Vice Chair Wong: · Said that if they are to move forward, he concurred with Com. Giefer that as a commission they should decide which topics are most important. · Said most comments said to look into the second to first floor area ratio, design review guidelines, privacy mitigation; noticing; story poles; and sidewalks curbs and street lights. Chair Saadati: · Is there any way to consolidate the surveys into one. Comment on pros and cons. Mr. GiIIi: · If the commission wants to use one survey, use Exhibit A or something similar. If you want to go beyond that and get more specific information about builders, then you would use Exhibits Band C; for information about neighbors or builders, you would use Exhibit D. They are separate surveys; you could use one ofthem, all of them, or none ofthem. Comments about the surveys: · Relative to structure of questions, Com. Miller said that he did not favor true/false questions because nothing is black and white; typically a survey is to elicit a level or interest or like or dislike about something; surveys typically had 5 or 7 choices; gives a better feel for the level of response you are receiving; true/false gives a false reading. · Vice Chair Wong said he agreed that flexibility was needed in the questions; true/false questions; everything is not black and white. · Com. Chen said a decision should be made which survey to work on; suggested using Exhibit A and provide specific comments. · Chair Saadati said based on what was heard, go with Exhibit A include all five or six items discussed. · Com. Miller noted in staff's original list there was also setbacks and heights and design review. Planning Commission Minutes 7 February 9, 2004 Mr. Piasecki summarized the options: · Do you like the idea of one survey; would you rather have the speedometer scale, strongly agree, strongly disagree, format because we started with that and found it to be cumbersome, but some of the questions we can re-introduce that, we could just briefly go and say yes, that question is good, go through the exhibits, this one doesn't work; the true/false and get general agreement on that; could have a couple of people with marketing background sit down with two of the commissioners and work through sample questions. We could come back in a couple of weeks to see if we have something that works. Certainly one survey format is better from our standpoint; it probably won't give you the high level of detail about nuances of the ordinance, or perceptions that people who went through it, but if that works for you, it works for us. Vice Chair Wong: · Suggested sending everything back to staff for their review on what was said tonight, including public comments; possibly have a study session to look over the questions and see if that is the direction the Planning Commission wants to go, instead of going back and forth. · There is general consensus that these aren't the questions we want in Exhibit A and felt the key points in Mr. Gilli's letter were more suitable. Chair Saadati: · Suggested listing the item, to get people's reaction fraffi I ta 1Q, on a scale of 1 to 10, and marking as far as where they feel they stand on those items; which will move away from the true/false approach that is included in some of this. Mr. Piasecki: · If the Cupertino Scene is the mechanism to get the survey out, you would have to wait until April to get the results back. The consensus of the Planning Commission was go move forward with a single survey. Com. Miller: · Said he liked Com. Giefer's suggestion about sending out surveys without waiting for the Cupertino Scene. He said the people whose opinions he valued the most are those who have built and the neighbors of those who have built; they have direct experience and they can address specific issues. Other people may have comments but they are not in my view as relevant in looking at how a specific ordinance has been doing over time, if they haven't had direct experience with it. Mr. Piasecki: · There will be separate mailings that go directly to people's homes, developers or neighbors and when the Scene article goes out it will go out separately to everybody and then you will have the feedback. You will have to wait a little longer for the Scene feedback then you will for the more targeted feedback from the builders and neighbors. · Cautioned that they would need to work through the process and come up with something; something like a story pole question, is probably going to be difficult for a generic Cupertino Scene type survey; a lot of people are not going to know what a story pole is. · Said the City Council has a separate set of policies on sidewalks, curbs and streetlights and wasn't one of the things they authorized the Planning Commission to study. He cautioned about going in that direction as they already have a policy that allows neighbors to petition for different standards. Planning Commission Minutes & February 9, 2004 · Clarified that the Planning Commission is directing staff to sit down with Corns. Giefer and Miller to work on a single survey format that would be generic that can be sent out to aU the groups and try to get as much information as possible. · Staff will work with them on the final questions and return to the Planning Commission in two weeks. Com. Chen: · Said Mr. Gilli was correct; they have a main purpose and have these rules to support these purposes; now they are commenting on the rules. We try to prioritize the rules that we would like to comment on; that is what the survey is about, so we either go into the specifics such as the setbacks, or we go into the generic, the purpose; it is the rules to support the purpose and it doesn't matter how it is written. · The message needs to be clear in the beginning paragraph that we are designing this for this purpose. The general policy is to encourage remodels, a new design, which is really important for a city, we need to bring the city up to date. When people are interested in providing private money, investing their money in their homes, we should encourage that. That message should be important; should be highlighted in the beginning paragraph as well. Then we start asking questions, and if it is only one survey we need to qualify this person; are you a builder, are you a person who has done remodeling, and then we start going into detail questions that provide us with information we want to know to make decisions on those rules. · She said this was how she envisioned the survey and said it was important to give more specifics to everybody as to what we believe are the right questions to meet all the purpose. The priorities for the survey were summarized: · Second story to first story ratios · Privacy · Design review process · Story poles · Sidewalk and curb · Massing · Architectural Appeal · Setbacks · Noticing Chair Saadati: · In some neighboring cities they do focus on architecture more than mass and bulk because the outcome should be pleasing to the eye; that is worthwhile in putting in a survey Com. Miller: · Said beauty is in the eye of the beholder; and it's opening up a can of worms if you start talking about architectural appeal. Mr. GiIIi: · Said that Larry Cannon reviewed most architectural designs; however, he is not looking at architectural quality, but more of other ways to reduce the mass and bulk of the house; so he is not really looking at architectural appeal as much. Planning Commission Minutes 9 ¡:'ebruary 9, 2004 Mr. Piasecki: · Said that cities that do the architectural review you are referring to focus a lot on the basics of architectural review like symmetry, balance, alignment. They don't necessarily dictate that it shall be a particular architectural style but there are some fundamentals of architecture, that some of your average building designers and some of your poorer architects and certainly people who design their own homes really don't have a concept of. Chair Saadati: · In the past staff has recommended material changes and roofing materials, to be compatible with the neighborhoods. Mr. GiIIi: · There have been occasions where we have made recommendations about exterior wall materials; I don't believe we frequently talk about roof materials, but we have talked about issues like alignment, symmetry, as Mr. Piasecki mentioned. Chair Saadati: · Need to prioritize the items for the survey, discuss these items, to see which will stay and which will go away. Vice Chair Wong: · Massing is already written in the 1999 ordinance that we want to avoid mass and bulk. Remove things from the list before it gets too large. · Architectural appeal, I agree with the chair and Com. Miller that it's in the eye of the beholder and it goes back to the six items Mr. Gmi included in his letter, we should concentrate on the survey. Chair Saadati summarized: · Second story to first story ratio · Privacy · Design review process · Height · Setbacks · Noticing Com. Giefer: · Recommend that we do get feedback on story poles, because I believe that is part of noticing that there is something happening; either we include it as noticing or we ask something specifically about story poles explaining what they are. Com. Miller said he agreed. Com. Miller and Com. Giefer will meet to further define the survey and bring it back in two weeks. OLD BUSINESS: None NEW BUSINESS: None REPORT OF THE PLANNING COMMISSION Environmental Review Committee: · No meeting held; next meeting Wed. February Il'h Planning Commission Minutes 10 February 9, 2004 Housiol! Commission: . No meeting held; next meeting Thursday, February 12th Mavor's Monthlv Breakfast: · Next meeting is scheduled for November 17th, 2004. Chair Saadati will attend the breakfast. REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT · March 1, 5 p.m., and March 2 at 3 p.m. are Joint Study sessions to hear the report out from the General Plan Task Force and then questions, comments from the public and council and perhaps direction from the City Council on how they want to frame the public review document that is going to be going out for the General Plan. They may need a third meeting if they decide to provide direction that requires some additional work on staff's part. Vice Chair Wong: . Requested the list of Mayor's breakfast meetings; and the new positions of each of the commissioners. ADJOURNMENT: The meeting was adjourned to the next regular Planning Commission meeting at 6:45 p.m. on February 23, 2004. SUBMITTED BY: ~ Approved as amended: February 23, 2004