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the direction of Council was, and that item relates to the subject of roads: what the Council's conclusions were and whether or not there should be an exception process. Mr. Dolan stated that while writing the report, Marion Pavan, Associate Planner, reviewed the video recording tape three times. He added that he and Mr. Pavan took a look at it once again about 45 minutes ago, and he [Mr. Dolan] believes staff got it right. He noted that anyone watching the dialogue can think that it is possible something else was intended. He indicated that he thinks the Council would benefit from the Planning Commission's position on this issue regardless of what its direction was. He added that he thinks the Councilmembers are going to want to hear from the Commission whether or not it agrees with that because obviously this will move on to them for the final decision. He noted that with the exception of this area, what this ordinance includes is basically implementing the direction directly from that Council Workshop. Mr. Dolan stated that, as earlier mentioned, Measure PP applies to developments greater than ten units, but it also refers to the fact that it applies to commercial developments, which would relatively be unlikely in our hillside area. He noted that it is not out of the question to see a commercial development in the hillside areas, such as a commercial equestrian center or something which actually could have a big impact. He indicated that as written, it now technically applies to public and private streets that are intended to accommodate residential and commercial development, as well as to City facilities such as water tanks, park, recreation areas, public and private pedestrian, bicycle, and equestrian trails and staging areas. He added that there obviously would be an exemption for smaller projects. Mr. Dolan then discussed the first question of how a 25- percent slope is measured. He indicated that measuring slopes involves looking at topographic maps and the contour lines shown on those topographic maps: if the contour lines are far apart, the slope is flatter, and if they are closer together, it is steeper. He noted that the biggest question in terms of implementation is how detailed it can get and what the contour interval is. He further noted that each line represents a different elevation above sea level, and when they are all connected, they turn into a line. He stated that staff suggested to the Council that a two -foot contour was the appropriate one and is actually very, very detailed. He explained that going down to a one -foot contour would suggest a level of accuracy that probably would not be possible to have with the methodology used, and that a five -foot or ten -foot contour would probably be fine as well, but a little bit of detail would be lost; hence, staff decided to be conservative and go with the two -foot contour, and the Council agreed. Mr. Dolan stated that the second thing was trying to define what a ridgeline was because that is what the City is trying to protect, and staff came up with this definition which the Council approved: "A continuous ground line, connecting a series of hills located at their highest elevations, ending at the last peak on each end of the landform at which the elevation of the ridgeline no longer rises in elevation, and only decreases in elevation." He explained that the problem with the implementation of ridgeline protection is to determine where the ridgeline actually ends because going all the way PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, January 23, 2013 Page 5 of 44