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The attorney for the Millers makes several references to the fact that the Hall Association, the holding company, has not filed taxes for several years. That is not the case. I would refer you to our CPA but he is out of the country on a trip he planned more than two years ago and he would be able to give you more specific information and this was one of the reasons they sought to postpone this particular hearing. Their attorney also makes several references to the fact that the lodge lost its tax exempt status. This happened simply due to a filing oversight which has since been corrected and the tax exempt status has been restored. The attorney for the Millers makes reference to the fact that our caterer uses the lodge 96% of the time and the lodge only 4 %. This is untrue. The numbers are based solely on estimates the Millers have conjured from thin air. Lodge use, which includes the other Masonic groups which meet there is much greater and the caterer is off -site doing what caterers do— cater. If we applied those same metrics and assumptions to St. Claire's Church, we would find that their daycare facility comprises over 98% of the use and the church not even 2 %. We have, on each occasion when we've rented to an outside party over the last several years, made diligent use of a sound meter and have taken readings near our fence line at multiple times during the event. In most cases the levels were below the required level. A little experimentation; however, revealed that by judicious selection of ranges and waiting of volumes above those limits could be obtained. It is important to note that the proper setting is dB A as specified in the code. We do not know what the Millers may have used when they made their readings. It also should be known that on rare occasions when volumes were obtained which were above the limits, the person taking those readings immediately affected a reduction in volume, returned to the spot where those readings were taken to confirm that the levels had been reduced and the noise level limits were being met. It should be noted also that during many of the times, particularly at night, the noise level from Hopyard Road traffic exceeded the levels coming from the lodge building and sometimes the road noise along exceeded the limits. We've also heard a number of times that the Millers referred to parties consisting of between 150 and 600 people. That has not happened in quite a long time. They make allegations that we have parties all the time. The last party that we had that involved a group playing music was last August. We do not rent very often. We do rent, however, to Chabad of Tri- Valley which is a Jewish synagogue. So I just wanted to make sure you were informed of all of those little items. Thank you very much. Mike Salazar: Commissioners and staff, hi, good evening and thank you for your time. I'm also a Pleasanton resident and also a member of the lodge here. I just actually wanted to clarify a couple of things because I've actually been involved quite a bit in negotiations with the Millers getting our attorney and coming to the office here to try and be a good neighbor to come up with a solution that would meet our needs. We actually did volunteer some of those recommendations that were up there that basically our attorney said you really don't have to do that, again, trying to be a good neighbor. We've been here over 100 years. Let's go ahead and do it on our own and we proposed it to the Millers with the City and we thought we had an agreement and the Millers disagreed. So, you know, again we pride coming in. We pride having the City becoming the third party to help us come up with solutions. You know, we're open to suggestions. We're just not willing to live with number one. You know, when talking about the fact that we've never used the backyard prior to having the door back there — that's not a true statement. On the 4`h of July, we always PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, June 22, 2016 Page 21 of 56