03 ATTACHMENT 4 - Laserfiche WebLink

Planning Commission City of Pleasanton December 14, 2022 Page 5 standards for some HEU sites, stakeholders and the community have not had sufficient time to analyze them and provide input. If the ODS and IZO amendments are unworkable, all, or nearly all housing development projects on HEU sites will need to undergo the City’s time-consuming traditional and discretionary PUD rezoning process that HCD correctly requested the City to specifically analyze. Finally, it appears that several of the ODS necessarily require staff to exercise subjective judgment to determine whether a project is consistent with them.9 As a result, these standards do not meet the narrow definition of “objective” standards provided in controlling state housing law. As noted in the staff report, state housing law discourages such subjective standards and prohibits the City from relying on them to deny a qualifying housing development project or require that it be developed at a lower density. With the above in mind, the City should focus its time and resources only on adopting the HEU with corresponding General Plan land use element amendments by January 2023. The City could then proceed with a comprehensive adoption process for the ODS and IZO amendments over the following months with sufficient opportunity for community review and input.10 9 A non-exhaustive list of some of these inherently subjective standards include: ODS A9.a, landscape plans “should incorporate seasonal variety and color to the maximum extent feasible”; ODS B2.a, entries “should be the predominant feature of front facades” and larger buildings “should have a prominent, centralized primary building entrance”; ODS B3.a, “[w]indows are a very important element of building form and should be well organized on a building façade to create a pattern of multiple hierarchies”; ODS B4.b, providing that “[s]uccessful roof design should emphasize the vertical proportions of individual units rather than horizontal building massing”; ODS B5.c, “[c]hanges in material and/or color should be used to articulate building elements such as building entries; base, body, and parapet caps; or bays and arcades..”; ODS B5.d, providing that “[a]rchitectural details and elements…should be scaled appropriately based on viewing distance from ground-level.” There are several other inherently subjective ODS not listed here. 10 In doing so, the City’s HEU would be focused on providing the program-level detail state law requires, while also allowing for a sufficiently comprehensive adoption process for ODS and IZO amendments. State law requires Housing Elements to include an “identification and analysis of existing and projected housing needs” with a corresponding “statement of goals, policies, quantified objectives, financial resources, and scheduled programs for the preservation, improvement, and development of housing…” It does not require contemporaneous adoption of detailed design and affordability standards. (Gov. Code, § 65583.) Attachment 4 - ODS Public Comments - 01-26-23 CC - Page 5