City Council on 2023-12-05 5:15 PM - SPECIAL MEETING

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Mountain View City Council 5h 29m 4 speakers 8 agenda items transcribed 3 days ago official recording ↗

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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What items are on the agenda and how is roll call conducted?

Alison Hicks 0:00

Study session of the Mountain View City Council of December 5, 2023. We're on item number two now, which is roll call. The assistant city clerk will take attendance by roll call.

Unknown 0:13

All council members present.

Alison Hicks 0:15

Thank you. We're now on item 3.1 on your agenda, which is the gatekeeper process updates. The purpose of this study session is to obtain council direction on updates to requirements for legislative gatekeeper projects, including review procedures, streamlined projects, criteria, and community design principles. Assistant Community Development Director Lindsay Hagan will present the item. Lindsay.

Alison Hicks 0:52

Good evening Council Members. Tonight staff is seeking Council direction on the gatekeeper updates. With

Unknown 0:59

Alison Hicks 0:59

tonight is Amber Blinzinski, Assistant Community Development Director. So we've had a couple study sessions where council has discussed gatekeeper updates including back in April with the council work plan as well as September of this year. And at the September study session, the direction that staff received was to expand the scope of changes. So what you see summarized on your screen here are a series of items where we got clear consensus and direction from council on, as well as some where we didn't get clear consensus on and that we're seeking direction tonight.

How does the staff presentation outline the gatekeeper process updates?

Alison Hicks 1:31

And those are around exempt projects as well as which we're now calling streamlined gatekeepers and as well as just updates to the process overall. So some of the comments we've heard to date are sort of summarized on the screen here. They range from referencing the competitive nature of the gatekeeper process from the development community to having the city consider rebranding the process as well as some comments from council regarding wanting to see fewer gatekeeper applications as well as improve the overall process. One of Council's main directives from the September study session was to look at other cities' procedures. So city staff surveyed 14 cities in total, including all of the cities in Santa Clara County, as well as the cities of Fremont and Redwood City, since they have comparable development to Mountain View.

Alison Hicks 2:25

As part of the survey, city staff looked at the city codes, policies, as well as discussed with each of the city staff. In reviewing the general plan amendment procedures at other cities, staff really found four different models, which are summarized here in this table, which is from the staff report. Some of the key components or differences between these models, the most common model represents cities where they require council authorization and hold study sessions, but do not necessarily have community benefits or specific criteria to evaluate the gatekeepers. Sunnyville is a model where they require a council authorization study, but they focus on the general plan land use first and studying that before accepting a development permit.

Alison Hicks 3:17

San Jose accepts and starts processing all applications and under certain circumstances hold a hearing with council to consider whether to proceed with the application. It's referred to as an early consideration hearing. And this process is at the discretion of the applicant to choose or in certain circumstances staff can initiate this process. And then the last model is really the Santa Clara model where they accept and process all applications with no council authorization or study sessions. So overall the city of San Jose has the most general plan amendments, applications a year, and then followed by Mountain View and Santa Clara. Five of the 14 cities require council authorization before staff processes an application.

Alison Hicks 4:04

Two additional cities have early public meetings where they discuss the project and in many ways those act like a council authorization hearing and that the applicant gets feedback early on and decides whether to proceed or not. Seven of the 14, so 50%, do not require council authorization to accept an application. Moving on to zoning amendment procedures, in reviewing the surveyed city, generally the majority of cities do not require a council authorization hearing to begin processing a zoning amendment.