16 ATTACHMENT 5 - Laserfiche WebLink

ATTACHMENT 5 DAFT Review and consideration of the Introduction and Draft Land Use Element of the General Plan Janice Stern noted that staff required additional time to polish up the Introduction and, hence, only the Draft General Plan Land Use Element would be considered at this time. Ms. Stern stated that the Land Use Element is a required element of the General Plan and serves as a guide to planners, the general public, and decision-makers with respect to development at build-out. She added that the Land Use Element is where all land use issues are correlated into a set of coherent development policies and requires the designation of the proposed distribution, location, and extent of land for housing as shown in the Land Use Map, business, industry, open space, public buildings, and natural resources, as well as the standards for population density and building intensity. Ms. Stern indicated that several objectives have emerged from discussion at multiple Joint City Council-Planning Commission workshops and other meetings and are expressed in the Draft Land Use Element as follows: • Sustainable development to help the City move to a more sustainable community; • Providing flexibility in determining the location of remaining residential units; • Providing additional opportunities for development of affordable housing, which will mean looking back at the Housing Element policies and completing what needs to be done in terms of designating additional land for multi-family and high-density housing as well as looking at affordable housing by design and the types of housing that can be developed in the future to meet that need; and • Contemplating future Specific Plans in East Pleasanton and at Hacienda Business Park, which are future change areas discussed in earlier workshops. Ms. Stern then presented a table with information regarding the remaining residential units and the 29,000-unit cap. She explained that in this discussion, an assumption has to be made that development will take place at midpoint of the density range. She added, however, that this is not always the case as approval in the past few years has been slightly lower than midpoint; high-density development has no upper limits which results in large variations; and each individual site being unique and, therefore, the actual number of units developed will be different from the midpoint. Ms. Stern continued that staff has been consolidating several different data bases in the process of arriving at a more sophisticated land development system and found some double-counting that led to fact that the actual number of units remaining to be planned is not 1,685, as determined in January 1, 2004, but 2,007 units. She noted that it would be necessary to build flexibility into the General Plan to accommodate these changes in the number of units so as not to require multiple General Plan amendments; and to look at the proposed Mixed-Use designation to accommodate any surplus units. In response to Commissioner O'Connor's inquiry regarding the distinction between "Potential Future Units - No Approvals" and "Remaining Units to be Planned," Ms. Stern explained that "Potential Future Units - No Approvals" refers to lands which DRAFT EXCERPTS: PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES July 11, 2007Page 1 of 24