Saratoga residents will no longer be automatically notified about certain types of proposed housing developments in their neighborhoods, following a controversial city council vote on Feb. 19.
The 4-1 vote establishes objective design standards for the city as part of an effort to implement the requirements laid out in its state-mandated housing element. Council also approved a new process for reviewing construction projects that are larger than 250 square feet, as well as for second-story additions or expansions and for the addition of more than 50% of floor area to a building.
Adopting these standards means that city staff can immediately approve these housing developments without planning commission input.
State housing officials have in recent years encouraged more housing to be built to address California’s growing housing crisis. At the local level, Saratoga city attorney Richard Taylor said, that means that the California Department of Housing and Community Development, or HCD, has been resistant to procedures that could slow housing development, including automatically notifying residents or getting public input on new projects at the planning commission level.
“From the state’s perspective, every minute that is spent doing anything other than getting the house, the hammers and nails and concrete in the ground, is contrary to the state’s housing goals. That seems to be the direction,” Taylor said at the Feb. 19 meeting. “I don’t want to suggest that this is something that can’t be done; it’s just that I also do need to let you know that HCD has been very aggressive in terms of what they see to be burdens.”
The city’s planning commission in January approved the objective design standards in a 4-3 vote, with the addendum that neighbors within 500 feet of the site of a proposed development should still be notified of the proposal within 15 days of its submission.
Instead, the council voted to utilize the city’s website to publicize these new projects so residents must opt in to be notified of these projects.
Residents have largely spoken out in favor of maintaining automatic notification procedures.
“Public input helps identify safety concerns that may have been overlooked; it encourages dialogue between applicants and neighbors, fostering cooperation rather than conflict, and it enhances transparency and trust in the city’s decision-making process,” resident Mona Kaur Freedland said at the meeting.
Part of council’s reasoning around the notification procedures comes from concerns that HCD would retaliate against the city if it became aware of the notification procedure.
While waiting for state approval of its housing element, Saratoga received applications for over a dozen builder’s remedy projects, which allow developers to propose projects of any height and size in cities without an approved housing element.
If during an audit of the city’s progress toward implementing its housing element, state officials became aware of a noticing procedure that they took issue with, they could take action to decertify the city’s housing element and again make it vulnerable to builder’s remedy projects — as it has done in the Peninsula town of Portola Valley. Community members in cities like Saratoga that are particularly prone to wildfires have objected to these projects, particularly proposals for more dense housing, in the interest of public safety,
“This isn’t because I don’t want noticing; it’s just because I don’t want to be the guy that opened up builder’s remedy again,” said Vice Mayor Chuck Page, who voted to approve the new standards. The lone “no” vote came from council member Yan Zhao after her motion to implement the 500-foot noticing procedure failed.
Planning commission chair Jojo Choi, who has been in favor of maintaining some sort of notification process, said city council members should have risked implementing the 500-foot noticing policy because even if HCD took issue with it, Saratoga’s housing element wouldn’t immediately be decertified.
“Through ministerial review, the state legislature has created this situation where developers can build without regard to the local community,” he told this publication. “This is going to be a statewide problem, and I was hoping that the city of Saratoga would have the courage to be one of the first cities in the state to actually say ‘No, even with ministerial review, public participation is such a crucial part of democratic governance, and we need to continue doing public noticing’.”