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ATTACHMENT 7 DRAFT P13-2446, P13-2447, and P13-2448, City of Pleasanton Consider amendments to the General Plan, Downtown Specific Plan, Downtown Design Guidelines, and Municipal Code relating to historic preservation, residential design, story pole requirements, and demolition by neglect within the Downtown Specific Plan Area. O'Connor recused himself, indicating that he owns property in the Downtown. Commissioner Posson joined the other Commissioners on the dais. Brian Dolan presented the staff report and stated that after a very long and interesting process, staff is bringing forward the recommendations of the Historic Preservation Task Force. He then made a brief presentation of the history of the Task Force. Mr. Dolan stated that the Task Force was created in October of 2011 by the City Council and consisted of seven members, two of which were Planning Commissioners and five were at-large members selected by each Councilmember. He indicated that the primary focus of the Task Force was to review the City's current preservation policies, guidelines, and processes, pointing out that there were two points of emphasis: (1) to see if some of the "brain damage" from the previous processes and projects that had been evaluated through the existing procedures could be eliminated; and (2) to explore whether or not the historic resources in town were actually being protected enough. Mr. Dolan stated that the Task Force met twelve times, held a public workshop and four outreach meetings, and had "check-ins" with both the Planning Commission and the City Council. He indicated that when the Task Force had formed a tentative plan or path forward, it went back to the City Council and brought forward several issues: 1. The Task Force spent a fair amount of time talking about the potential creation of a local historic district, but the Council did not believe that was something it could support. 2. The Task Force explored whether or not the City should be pursuing local standards and something different than what the criteria currently are for determining a historic structure or property, and there was no support for that; one Councilmember said that she would be interested in more information. He stated that ultimately, the Task Force, with one minor exception, took that feedback from the Council and did not recommend the creation of additional local standards. 3. The HFTP proposed the creation of a definition of demolition. The City was operating in a kind of vacuum in this regard which came up time after time in various projects. The Council was supportive of that and actually selected one of the options that was presented at the check-in. Based on some of the public input at one of the more recent meetings, the Task Force has subsequently made some minor amendments to that, but staff believes those are going to be acceptable to the Council. DRAFT EXCERPT: PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, 11/13/2013 Page 1 of 28