Board of Supervisors — 2018-03-13

Yeah. . .

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Good morning, and I'd like to welcome everybody to the March 13th meeting of the County Board of Supervisors We have a interesting setup today So we'll get mr. Allen could you please call the roll?

Miss wolf Here Ms. Hartman? Here Mr. Adam? Mr. Lavinino?

Here

Mr. Williams?

Here

And I believe it is Mr. Adams intention he'll be here shortly, he's also sick and will be participating remotely but here but remotely Mr. Gazzone.

And Chair Labadino so the meeting today is complying with the Brown Acts teleconference provisions we're in two notice locations both Santa Barbara and Santa Maria and as you'd mentioned the only distinction is that all votes must be by roll call. We have four members at present all within the jurisdiction

Okay, can I get a motion to approve the minutes of the meeting of February 27th? So

moved.

Moved.

Second.

Moved and seconded. Roll call please.

Ms. Wolff? Aye. Ms Hartman? Aye. Mr. Lavinino? Aye Mr. Williams? Aye Passes 4-0.

Okay. I don't believe there will be a CEO's report today so we'll move on Administrative agenda. Are there any items from the public wish to pull?

No request to speak from the public.

Any items from our board? None from Supervisor Hartman, Santa Barbara?

Nothing.

Okay. Not pulling anything. Very good, Mr. Allen has an announcement.

Chair Valadino, members of the board. I did post an addendum to this agenda last Friday and it amended two items on your agenda today. First of all in the closed session scheduled for later this morning it added a public employee appointment and item five departmental item number five from community services. This addendum changed certain recommendations on that item and one of the net results of

public comment This is for items not on today's agenda Do we have any requests to speak from the public?

No request to speak

All right well then that closes the public comment period And I believe that we are going to be taking D3 first, but I think we need to make sure that Supervisor Adam is around at this point. So if we could just take a two minute break, I'll track him down. Okay.

Yes.

So we're going to do a little agenda management switch around here. We're still waiting on Supervisor Adam, and we need him for a four-fifths vote on number three. So we are going to take item one while we're waiting for him to show up. And we will switch over to Mr. Pontus. Oh, Mr. Allen if you could read it in please?

Chair Lavagnino, members of the board. Item one is from the County Executive Office. It's a hearing to consider recommendations regarding an update on the Thomas Fire and January 9 2018 debris flow community disaster recovery efforts. Mr. Pontus?

Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the board. Matt Pontus, Assistant CEO here to provide an update of our efforts on the Thomas fire in 1-9 debris flow As you know, Thomas Fire incident began 12-4 and with subsequent storm and debris flow events occurring on January 9. Since those events the county has been leading and managing the recovery effort in partnership with Cal OES, FEMA and other mutual aid partners.

In addition to county departments many governmental agencies and community groups have joined this recovery effort The report will serve as an update on recovery activities and also includes an update on preliminary costs, as we talked about last week. Our main recovery objectives include returning residents and opening businesses as soon as it was safely possible, supporting the repair and rebuild of homes, businesses, and residents' livelihoods as soon as possible.

And developing resiliency throughout the community through disaster preparedness, mitigation and improvements, and social and individual resiliency. The 1-9 debris flow impacted approximately 50 miles of county roads, over 200 culverts and 20 bridges. Following the event, approximately 30,000 cubic yards of material was removed from roads and cleared from bridges.

Though this was a monumental effort by public work staff, there are still county roads that have some debris. This will be an ongoing activity for the next two to five years. And as a result of the disaster, permanent restoration projects are needed to replace culverts, bridge rail reconstructions and three bridge replacements. While the Thomas Fire was burning, Public Works Flood Control Division responded to the predicted storm event by quickly clearing 11 debris basins located in the Thomas Fire burn area along Montecito and Carpinteria.

This proved to be a life-saving action as all of those debris basins became completely filled during the disaster. Following the event, Flood Control worked tirelessly to clear bridges open roadways and access for mobility. Flood Control requested assistance from the Army Corps of Engineers to clear debris basins and in the end they removed more than 400,000 cubic yards of material.

The new reality is that the stream channel and the debris basin clearing will need to occur after each storm for the next two to five years In order to maintain road traffic and safety, and prevent congestion on the small county roads in the area. The county identified resources to facilitate mud and debris removal on some limited private properties. The debris flow left an enormous quantity of mud soil and rocks and trees, the majority of which was natural debris.

The county continues to develop and distribute guidelines, resources and other methods of debris removal including the new material exchange program where folks can go online and exchange rocks or get soil. We have an ongoing collaboration with other agencies and entities to identify additional outlets The Tahecus Landfill is a short-term solution for sorting, staging and temporarily storing debris due to lack of other local south coast outlets.

We started a Traffic Mitigation Task Force that includes representatives from the Highway Patrol, Caltrans, our County Public Works, the Sheriff's Office, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, City of Santa Barbara and SBCAG. The task force has done several things so far and continues to work on solutions to lessen traffic congestion and identify different ways to move people safely through the community.

With that, I'd like to turn it over to Terri who's going to talk briefly on some communication efforts.

Good morning members of the board. Our communications program is really grounded or anchored with one full time dedicated position of our communications manager. However in an emergency we ramp up what we call our public information team or the PIT team which consists of representatives from throughout the county that we've trained in emergency public information.

We bring all those individuals together in the Joint Information Center as the JIC and together we support the ongoing communications program. When in the JIC, we provide for all of the web content that you see on our newly established website at readysbc.org We also handle all social media on various platforms, press releases, press conferences, town hall meetings. We draft public education materials, we handle all media relations and we handle Spanish translation in the JIC with one or two translators present at all times.

Our communication effort overall is to conduct coordinated messaging to the public and internal and external partners And to aid in response and recovery efforts, we have the following key goals at all times. We want to encourage all residents to sign up for the aware and prepare alerts so that they can receive timely official and vital county information in emergency or disaster.

We also want to clearly convey the likelihood of future storm events and the associated risks with any event. We want to ensure that all evacuations orders are consistent, understood and followed. And we want to highlight progress towards recovery and our comprehensive efforts including work currently underway and what our community should expect in the future.

We also want to ensure that the emergency operations team back at the EOC and Joint Information Center are proactive, timely and consistent and accurate in all of our communications. At this point in time, we're really supporting two communication efforts. One as you saw yesterday which is communicating to the public on incoming storm readiness and when necessary making all aware of evacuations. In addition, we're communicating on our recovery efforts again talking about what is currently occurring in the community with the public immediately needs to know and it also what they should be prepared for in the future.

And when we're talking about all of our storm readiness activities specifically, we're talking about storm readiness as we're communicating across all of our burn areas. Not just that in the Thomas fire necessarily. In order to deliver our communication I'm just going to highlight a couple key tactics that I previously mentioned. One is our aware and prepare alerts as well as our Everbridge and Nixle alert systems. We also have our call center. We use our 211 communication system. We use Spanish language outreach, as I indicated. We have our one-stop website. We use all social media both on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, three different platforms.

And we are heavily using our maps. You've probably heard a lot about our interactive map that we are directing people to as part of our ReadySBC.org website where people can immediately find what their area of risks are by going to that website. We are also in the process of producing a variety of how-to videos to have quick, timely information out and easily understood ways. And those are also going to be released in Spanish. We are doing a series of brochures and public information materials. And then we are getting ready to launch a speaker's program and ambassador's program in addition to the multiple community meetings that we've been doing since the actual Thomas Fire event.

Let's go to the next slide. I think there's one different slide. Okay, there we go. In terms of additional efforts, we are working consistently with our local non-profits with our community long term recovery group. This was established over several months ago now and Daniel Nielsen is our point of contact for this group in working with the community and Barbara Anderson currently chairs the Long Term Recovery Group. This group is meant to be in place as it indicated for the very very long term As state and federal government agencies begin to wrap up work, and as local government begins to complete a lot of the work that Matt described. There is a long-term recovery group that stays in place to continue to aid the public through all of their needs.

And there's really six key components of this. One is the case management component which Unity Shop is handling. And that is really to address unmet needs, that individuals impacted by any disaster may still have. There's a finance and public relations and fundraising component which is headed up by United Way. You see that a lot through the media in terms of the donations that are being collected that may be distributed back to individuals in need. There are also the coordination of the volunteer organizations, construction coordination, community wellness and then ultimately a community assessment to better understand the overall needs at various points in time.

The community wellness component is headed up by our behavioral wellness department with Suzanne Grimacy and over 13 individual agencies are involved in that effort. Let's go to the next one Matt. In terms of community engagement and donations, First District Supervisors Josh Williams has initiated the Rebuilding Montecito Stakeholder Process which is a framework for encouraging utilizing community input. Fostering stakeholder engagement and sharing ideas with community leaders.

This is really to ensure that there's no duplication of efforts in focusing on some of the critical needs that the community has brought forward or ideas that the community has brought forward to date. Including such things as potential for undergrounding utilities, potential for future memorials etc. The Montecito Center has also been open that's opened last week and that's to have immediate one-on-one contact and support with the community and immediately reach out to affected residents. We have a number of different services at that location as well again including community wellness. Our planning department is there for a period our case managers are there So there's direct contact immediately within the community. And then finally, the county has partnered with what is called Partners for Resilient Communities to assist with immediate and longer term disaster relief efforts.

Various non-profits have committed to donate funds to the county to assist with some of the costs related to the project management, And bring us some disaster expertise. This is a very unique type of incident that we've experienced here in our county, and there are those from throughout the nation that do have some expertise in these areas and we're calling upon them to assist us and help guide us through this effort.

With that I'll turn it back to Matt.

So as we all know, we live in community that experiences wildfires. And we also know that when the wildfires burn through these urban interface communities, they remove the vegetation and sometimes destroy homes. There's an immediate end to that emergency. Communities rebuild hopefully a more fire resilient community. It may take decades before the fuels in that area and in that community have matured and become a threat again to that community.

In our most recent Thomas wildfire, the community experienced evacuations and then a catastrophic January 9th debris flow. The difference between this event and the normal rebuild after a fire is that we are left with a formidable and complex challenge of rebuilding and recovery while the stream channels are still active and able to transport debris from the watersheds above the community.

So unfortunately, this means that the event and the period of danger won't be at an end stage for another two to five years. And that during each storm event we must take precautions. And that has led us towards developing resiliency measures including plans for strategic long-term recovery And identifying future fire and flood mitigations. We have community members, we have experts in-house and experts from around the country providing us some ideas on how to provide a resilient infrastructure in and around the community.

And we're working on coming up with some of those solutions every day as part of this recovery. So to that end and rebuilding I'm going to turn it over to Diane Black.

Planning and development and flood control staff have been working to assist property owners in the rebuild process. This is accomplished through the case management process that we've set up, inspections and consultations. And I'd say Through those interactions that we've had with property owners that have been affected, the most asked questions have been when can I rebuild and what will the standards be?

We put together a draft document which I posted on the board's website yesterday to try and answer those questions. And I'm really interested if the board members or the public members of the public have comments today. Rebuilding after a debris flow is significantly different than after a fire for quite a few reasons, many of which Matt has said. Landforms have changed significantly.

Many survey monuments have been dislodged. Flood maps, the firm maps that we use to determine flood hazards really no longer represent true conditions on the ground and the area is subject to ongoing threats from debris flows for the next two to five years. We don't usually Face ongoing threats from fire after a fires come through. So it's really been, I think challenging for everybody to kind of get their heads around.

Can you put my slides up? So to answer some of the sort of uncertainties with rebuilding after a debris flow, the county is working together needed information and we're expecting to gather quite a bit of information over the next three months. We're working with FEMA on flood hazard and recovery mapping. We're working with consultants on land surveys and engineering studies. So we're really trying to gather information that will help everyone make good prudent decisions about the rebuilding process.

We're advising property owners not to make significant expenditures on design until these studies are complete. And if they want to proceed in advance of these studies that are being sponsored by the county, we are recommending that they meet with their case manager from planning and development and with flood control. And both of those staffs will assist in determining submittal requirements which will vary based upon individual property situations. And might include things like topographic surveys, property line surveys, hydrologic analysis and any number of other things that I've put in this draft document.

Again all of the information is in the draft document that I posted with a clerk yesterday and my intention is to formalize that after receiving input from the board and the public today.

So with that, our recommended actions today are that the Board of Supervisors receive and file an update with the County Executive Office on the 1-9 debris flow community disaster recovery efforts. Receive an update from Planning Development and Flood Control on the expected permitting rebuild process in the areas affected by the debris flow. Further direction to staff as appropriate, and determine the above actions are not a project subject to CEQA review.

Do we have any questions of staff? Supervisor Hartman first, then we'll go to Supervisor Williams.

I just had a question about the how-to videos and the speakers and ambassadors if you could just touch on some of those subjects.

Yes, certainly Supervisor Hartman. There's a couple things that we're adding to our tactics for our communication program and one, well there's the three that you mentioned. The how-to videos are, there's a couple different aspects to those or at least the initial ones. The first is how to actually get information. The second is how to prepare for evacuations, how to stay alert. And then we're also working on producing some specific videos about debris flows and what to expect long term. So in addition to everything that we're doing a narrative on, our press releases and everything else, we're really trying to also produce snippets of information so people can consistently refer back.

And then in terms of the, and all that will be on ReadySBC.org and can be used also on our social media platform so it serves a number of different purposes in a number of different ways. In terms of the speakers program with the Speakers Bureau what that is and that's currently under development and that using county staff individuals that have been very involved in this particular effort or have specific expertise That will go out and speak to various community groups, more on a one-on-one basis to answer questions as well. In a smaller format than we would typically do in the larger community meetings. The ambassador program is a bit different than that. The ambassador program is actually working directly with our community members and will be working with the Montecito Center on this Training community members and a lot of the information and placing them out in the community.

So they're basically an extension of staff, and one more way to get information out more broadly within all of our communities. So those two things, the Speaker's Bureau and the Ambassador Program are still under development as well.

Very good. Supervisor Williams?

Well I would Given that I've spoken with planning staff before this hearing, one of the issues is that some of the differences in this Debris flow from a fire necessitates us to relook at some of the rules that we allowed under rebuilding. So for the T-fire, we allowed the rebuilding of like for like structures without a land use permit. Now in the case of this debris flow, We want to streamline folks where it's safe, but we want to move them away from the creek.

So folks who under the old T-fire definition would not qualify for a like for like building if they moved their structure away from the creek so my sense is we need to make some changes To our planning practices, and particularly our streamlining practices in order to incentivize folks to rebuild in a way that's safer and increases the community's resilience. And since the subject matter is agendized I was going Today, if Ms. Black would return to us on another day with some ordinance changes that would be necessary for streamlining building in parcels where the geology has been deemed safe.

Ms. Black?

Yes, Supervisor Williams and members of the board. So both the Montecito Land Use and Development Code and Article 2 have specific provisions that allow for rebuilding of like-for-like structures following a natural disaster And I think Supervisor Williams is right. It will be very difficult to substantially change the location of the structure given the way that those two sections are written now So if the board would like we can initiate a process To update those ordinances they will have to go to the Montecito Planning Commission and then up to the board and If that's the direction of the board, I think we could probably get to the Montecito Planning Commission at their April meeting

Okay Supervisor Wolf.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Do people just along the same subject, I'm sure that The fact that you have planners that are working with individual homeowners. What I'm not clear about is if we do the, do people have to wait for this ordinance change to go into effect? Or can they move forward with the planners so that they can get issues resolved if there are issues?

Because I just know that, and I think we probably all agree that's so important for people which is to get back into their homes and rebuild. So I just want to make sure that this won't delay that process.

Supervisor Wolf and members of the board So in in order for a property owner to avail themselves of criteria that don't exist in the ordinance now, they would have to wait For their exemption but we can certainly do a lot of work with those property owners. We already are To try and figure out what the best process or best place best way for them to rebuild is in the meantime so Yes and no. Yes, it will delay their ultimate exemption but no, it won't delay them from starting the process.

Okay, thank you for that. And just a question for Ms. Nesich. How are we doing with folks that have been signing up for Aware and Prepare? What percentage are we at right now?

Supervisor Wolf, I actually don't have the exact numbers. I do have not for all the communities but I can tell you for the community of Montecito specifically which I looked at the other day it's 1300 total registrants which is an indication that we certainly need to get more signups in that area as well given the population. But that is something that we've been working on for some time, increasing our aware and prepared registrations throughout the county. I just happen to have that particular number with me.

Okay well thank you for that. I just want to say that all of these different platforms that you and your team and the PIO have put together, very beneficial to the community. So even if one is not necessarily signed up with Aware and Prepare as much as we encourage that, I do think that there are so many other opportunities for people to get information. So I think your staff, I think our media partners have done an exceptional job in getting messaging out to the community.

The one thing that I've just noticed And maybe it's just me, but you know we've changed the evacuation language from I think it's from one is the mandatory order and then the other is recommended evacuation. Yes. And what I've been hearing sometimes is people still going back and using the word voluntary evacuation rather than recommended so I don't know if you're seeing that, but I think that messaging may need to be hit a little bit harder so we don't go back to the old language that we had.

Also, I talked to Ms. Miyasato earlier about some things that we had in our board packet dealing with It was the organizational chart, and I don't know if the community has seen this. I think it's...I had some questions. We have a lot going on, a lot of consultants without their names necessarily being mentioned. So I think it would be good once this, and what I understand is that this is still an ongoing process but once this organizational chart has been finalized, I think that it would be important for us to have a final copy and to ensure that the public is aware of the services that are available to them as well.

So do you think that's something that we can get done? I don't know if this is to Mr. Pontes or Ms. Nessich.

Supervisor, move through the chair. We're happy to bring that back once it's finalized and have a discussion and have some clarity on where the public can go and what services were providing.

Okay, and also because the community has been very generous in providing funds. As I understand it for some of these consultants it would also be good to perhaps have an asterisk by that so that people know about the funding source as well. I think that's it except Well, there was mention in here about Tejiguas. And maybe you can explain that a little bit more because it's different than just Tejiguas being used as a debris site that there is something else going on and that the cost for sorting etc., is reduced from what it would normally be.

So can you talk about that a little bit?

Supervisor Wolf through the chair. Mark Schleich is going to brief us a little bit on that new change in the program.

Chair, board members we have a board item coming to you next Tuesday to establish a rate for the processing of debris material it's a mixed load of what's typically rocks mud and trees Thank you, Mr. Schlick. Have we had any other

Successes in locating locations for the debris. I know you were looking at mining sites in Ventura and other locations.

Excuse me, Supervisor Wolf. Board members? Okay, sorry. We have put together a sheet of information where people could find outlets. There's probably half dozen to a dozen locations that are listed on there. We update that as we find more sites. The most recent one we're looking into is a mining site down in Ventura County. That information can be found on lessismore.org, and it'll take people on how to manage their debris and what outlets and typically what prices those facilities will be charging. Yes, we're constantly looking for outlets.

The cost of the material or the cost of transporting the material becomes somewhat cost prohibitive or costly to the property owner. I've heard upwards for a half acre lot, it could be as much as $70,000. It's a challenging thing that we are constantly working on to resolve. The item next Tuesday will help the private property owners with a more cost effective solution, but we're always looking for more and more outlets that are available to the public.

Thank you. Mr. Slyke, while you're there I just want to compliment your staff and you for your creative approach to the debris exchange website and I also understand that it's been effective I've never had heard anything like that before, so I just think it's a very creative solution. So kudos to, I think it's Leslie who's been spearheading that, so good job.

Thank you.

Any other questions from the board? Do we have any comments from the public?

One request to speak Mr. Caldwell

Chair Lavinino, members of the board. I'm Andy Caldwell representing Coal Lab. I kind of want to take a big picture approach. Later on in your agenda you have this coastal resiliency project briefing which the county and other people have been working on for a long long time basically trying to predict what the climate will be in 80-100 years but what is this item?

This item is dealing with the aftermath of fires and floods in debris basins. And the bottom line here is this is much more of an exact science than climate change, yet like yesterday on the radio we covered that evacuation. We could not even peg when the storm was going to hit within 12 hours but somehow we know what the climates gonna be in 100 years. The bottom line is we have had a long history of fires and floods. And I was glad to see finally on this bullet point, you're talking about more debris basins.

What about more dams and reservoirs for the drought, because they double. They serve dual purpose. The other thing we've talked about to this board for nearly 30 years is we no longer maximize the conveyance capacity of rivers, streams and creeks. And in fact, what had happened with the Flood Control Program EIR which started COLAB. It was one of the issues that started COLAB is we wanted these river streams and creeks to go back to the natural state for habitat value instead of their state for maximum conveyance of floodwaters.

I've not heard anybody talking about we're going to change that policy. I also in previous commentary talked to you about 1960s after a couple of these devastating fires, they spread Agent Orange. They sent bulldozers up and they thought about suing the federal government because most of the land that burned and most of the land that slid is owned by the federal government.

And I have not seen you engage either the federal or state government asking them to change their policies. To prevent these disasters from occurring again. Another issue, we've been talking to private landowners between Colab and the Cattlemen most of the large ranches in this region are in one of our organizations or both. Some of them would take this mud but they can't get through a permitting process and or somebody's asking them Be responsible for whatever is in that debris for ad infinitum, for eternity. And they're not willing to assume that risk. So you need to talk to some people about that and then finally the tunnels. You almost got your water supply cut off.

Another major project, we need redundancy with regard to the tunnels bringing the water from Lake Kachuma over the hill. These are big picture items. I get the impression that county's trying to hold on to that ball but you ain't really riding it, you're just holding on right now. And there is a lot of long term stuff especially if the feds come through with additional funding or you can get some more funding out of the state. You need to be thinking big picture because we've been in this cycle for far too long. Thank you.

Thank you very much

concludes public comment.

Okay, I'll bring it back to the board staff have anything else we're good okay I'm bringing back to the board supervisor Williams I think he'd like to make a motion

Sure, and first I did want to let Mr. Caldwell know that the county public works and various other players including myself have been trying to convince the state to grant us some CEQA relief for the moving of the materials. To facilitate such a alternative placement, either on a farm or on one of our facilities. But that we have been unsuccessful in that regard but it is not for want of trying.

But going back to the rebuilding, I think this like for like question in rebuilding is really important after a disaster. And in the past because we faced after fires it's been simple with the flood. I do think we need to change the flexibility that like for like should still be granted if the same footprint of the building is moved away from the creek and Resilient location on the parcel as long as the front and rear yard and side yard setbacks are respected. So I would just make the motion that we ask staff to return with an ordinance amendment on the like for like, the definition of like for like to allow flexibility for resilience as long as setbacks are respected.

Along with the other recommended items A, B, C and D. That's right. Okay.

I would second that.

All right we have a motion in second roll call please.

Ms Wolfe? Aye. Ms Hartman? Aye. Mr Lavinino?

Aye

Mr Williams? Aye 4-0

Okay, very good. Thank you very much to our staff for that presentation and I've heard that Supervisor Adams is in the building? So let me just as we bring forward staff for item three, I'll just pull him into the conference room. He's on his way in. He's going to start up on the dice, or maybe I heard that wrong. So there are a number of our board members that are in different stages of-

Disrepair.

Disrepair today.

Well, I have postponed my own death to show up for this item. Okay But i'm going to uh, so so I'd inoculate the least number of people i am going to move into the back room All right,

great chair levinino and supervisor adam. I understand that supervisor adam will be um participating in this hearing item Of d3 he'll be in the closed session room with the doors closed monitoring it on the tv screen there and coming out Doors closed other than the door into the main entrance there and coming out for any comments, so it'll be on the record.

Alright, great. Mr. Allen can you read D3 please?

Chair Labagnino and members of the board item D3 is from planning and development it's a hearing to consider recommendations regarding a request for hearing filed by David Swank agent for Oak Hills Estates LLC owner of the proposed Oak Hills Estate project this is located in the third district.

All right very good we have Mr. Rodriguez and Mr. Zorovich with us today who's going to kick off Mr. Zorovich

Yes, good morning members of the board. My name is John Zorovitch. I'm the supervising planner and development review. I'll give a short presentation with me today as Mr Steve Rodriguez as well the project planner and manager to my immediate right is Mr Brett McNulty he works for Recon that was a consulting firm that prepared the environmental impact report for this project and then further down the table is Mr Jeff Wilson deputy director for development review so with that Overview of who's available. This project is located in the Vandenberg Village area It's located on the northern portion of the Vandenberg village that's identified here and or the project site in a red line Immediately north and west of the project is the Burton Mesa Ecological Preserve immediately to the south and east Or in West are some single-family homes also lives the Vandenberg Village County Country Club also known as the Mission Country Club The project consists of essentially four entitlements.

The first is a rezone, to rezone the property from residential Ranchette ten acre minimum parcel size to design residential 1.8 units per acre. Second is a vesting tentative track map that would take the 16.8 acre parcel and divide it into 30 lots. 29 of those lots would be identified for single family homes and the other lot would be a large open space lot.

Project also includes a development plan, which includes all the amenities for the development. The project does not propose any development at this time. It's for a phased development. However, any future residences that come forward would need to comply with the provisions of the design guidelines which are part of the development plan. In addition there is a road naming application for two proposed roads identified on the site So this slide here shows kind of just what I described verbally, so kind of on the, oops sorry.

The eastern portion of the site and western portion of the site are the two areas identified for residential development. Dividing the parcel in the center is an ephemeral drainage, and then along the northern property boundary line and the western property line are open space areas as part of that open space lot. Those open space areas provide for open space areas as well as a buffer adjacent to the Burt Mesa Ecological Preserve.

So approximately about a year ago in February 2nd to March 20th, plan development released their circulated for public review. A draft EIR, Environmental Impact Report for the proposed project. Comments were received on that from Seven different agencies, specifically we got some impacts from the Fish and Wildlife Agencies, Federal and California. Related to that they felt that the EIR did not fully evaluate the project's impacts on certain sensitive species plant and animal. The El Segundo blue butterfly, the California red-legged frog, and the Vandenberg monkey flower specifically. They also identified some potential impacts with the fairy shrimp.

Based on those comments, staff evaluated the comments and decided that a revised draft EIR was needed. And that EIR was circulated in last summer July to August of 2017. So the environmental impact report identified one class one impact, one potentially unavoidable significant impact to aesthetics. Essentially related to taking an unbuilt site and creating a built environment so therefore public views of the Burke Mesa Ecological Preserve would be changed as well as this is the visual character of the site.

Project also identified in nine different issue areas potentially significant but minimal impacts to the environment related to aesthetics, biological and cultural resources, geology, water quality, noise, solid waste, traffic hazards and fire protection. With respect to the biological resources, the project proposes both on-site mitigation as well as this is a little unique an off site mitigation site. This is located in the southern end of the entry into the Vanderbilt Village area. The off site areas identified kind of in an orange or yellow line here.

It's at the base, it's located just south of what was originally known as the Clubhouse Estates project subdivision. And it's about a 123 acre site and in this area the applicant is proposing to mitigate some of the project impacts on this site. Those are identified, the areas where they're proposing to do the offset mitigation are identified kind of in a pink color.

Mitigation that's currently going on, this was identified as an open space lot for the Clubhouse Estates. And so the Clubhouse Estates is also mitigating some areas here and here with some reseeding. They're also doing some weed abatement. This project is currently owned by the Vandenberg Village CSD, and staff has contacted Vandenberg Village CSD. And they are amenable to having additional mitigation being conducted on their property.

So with regards to the EIR, there were three alternatives that were identified in the EIR. One was the no project alternative which allowed for one residence on the project site. Project Zonto looked at a clustered project of 29 condominium units. This is kind of identified in the lower left corner of the slide where it kind of clusters Two developments similar in the same location as what's being proposed, but cluster more together. Provide a little bit larger buffer between the development and ecological preserve.

Also another alternative that was identified was a reduced unit alternative of 20 single family homes. This is identified or depicted in the picture on the right. Again, similar to where there's two areas of development separated by the ephemeral drainage. This one obviously has less development, so less single family homes. So obviously impacts related to less development such as less traffic, less air quality were the benefits of this alternative. The no project alternative was identified as the Environmentally Superior Alternative, ESA is what we refer to. However, CEQA suggests that when the ESA is the no project alternative that you need to look at other alternatives and look at the ones that were looked at to identify what would be the other ESA.