April 18, 2024 Commission Meeting

1. Call to Order
2. Roll Call
3. Public Comment Period (Each speaker is limited to three minutes) A maximum of 15 minutes is available for the public to address the Commission on any matter on which the Commission either has not held a public hearing or is not scheduled for a public hearing later in the meeting. Speakers will be heard in the order of sign-up, and each speaker is generally limited to a maximum of three minutes. It is strongly recommended that public comments be submitted in writing so they can be distributed to all Commission members for review. The Commission may provide more time to each speaker and can extend the public comment period beyond the normal 15-minute maximum if the Commission believes that it is necessary to allow a reasonable opportunity to hear from all members of the public who want to testify. No Commission action can be taken on any matter raised during the public comment period other than to schedule the matter for a future agenda or refer the matter to the staff for investigation, unless the matter is scheduled for action by the Commission later in the meeting.
   (Steve Goldbeck) [415/352-3611; steve.goldbeck@bcdc.ca.gov]
4. Approval of Minutes for April 4, 2024 Meeting
   (Sierra Peterson) [415/352-3608; sierra.peterson@bcdc.ca.gov]
5. Report of the Chair
6. Report of the Executive Director
7. Commission Consideration of Administrative Matters
   There is no administrative listing
   (Harriet Ross) [415/352-3615; harriet.ross@bcdc.ca.gov]
8. Public Hearing on 505 East Bayshore – POSTPONED
   The Commission will hold a public hearing and possibly vote on an application by Regis Homes Bay Area, LLC, to redevelop an approximately 2.54-acre industrial parcel with a new residential project consisting of 56 for-sale townhouses, as well as shoreline public access and open space areas, within the Bay and 100-foot shoreline band at 505 East Bayshore Road in the City of Redwood City, San Mateo County.
   (Jessica Finkel) [415-352-3614; jessica.finkel@bcdc.ca.gov]
9. Public Hearing on Enforcement Case ER2015.024.00 – City of San Rafael
   The Commission will consider a Recommended Enforcement Decision and Proposed Settlement Agreement to cause the City of San Rafael by May 10, 2024, to re-open a closed public restroom and pay an administrative civil penalty of $30,000, half of which may be stayed if it complies with certain conditions as enumerated in the agreement.
   (Adrienne Klein) [415/352-3609; adrienne.klein@bcdc.ca.gov]
   Presentation // Public comment letter
10. Briefing on RSAP Subregional Adaptation Plans
    The Commission will have a briefing and a discussion regarding BCDC development of guidelines that local jurisdictions will use as they develop their subregional adaptation required by SB 272’s Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan mandate, particularly about what elements those plans should contain and how they should be developed.
    (Dana Brechwald) [415/352-3656; dana.brechwald@bcdc.ca.gov]
11. Briefing Ben Hamlington SLR Science
    Dr. Ben Hamlington of NASA will brief the Commission on the science underpinning the recently released draft California 2024 Sea Level Rise Guidance.
    (Larry Goldzband) [415/352-3653]
12. Adjournment

Minutes

Audio transcript

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: good afternoon all. welcome to our almost fully hybrid bcdc commission meeting. my name is zach wasserman. our first order of business is to call the role. commissioners please unmute yourself to answer the roll and then mute after responding. sierra, please call the roll. [ roll called ]

>>Sierra Peterson: did i forget anyone?

>>David Ambuehl: ambuehl.

>>Sierra Peterson: thank you.

>>Sheri Pemberton: pemberton.

>>Sierra Peterson: 20 commissioners present.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: we have a quorum and so we’re duly ready to conduct business. are we not showing the video or are we showing the video? we are showing the video. let’s roll the video.

>>speaker: welcome to this meeting of the san francisco bay conservation and development commission. this commission meeting will operate as a hybrid meeting under teleconference rules established by the bagley-keene open meeting act. commissioners are located both at metro center and at publicly accessible venues throughout the bay area as specified on the meeting notice. commissioners who participate virtually will keep their cameras on throughout the meeting so that they will be visible for the public. for members of the public attending virtually, if you would like to speak either during the public comment period, which is item 3 on the agenda, or during a period received for public comment during another agenda item, you will need to do so in one of two ways. first, if you’re attending virtually on zoom, please raise your hand in zoom. to do so, click the participant’s icon at the bottom of your screen. find your name and the small hand to the left and click on that hand. if you’re joining our meeting via phone, you must press star 6 on your keypad to unmute your phone to make a comment. individuals who have raised their hands will be called in the order that they have been raised and they will be unmuted. those attending this meeting in person, either at metro center or at a publicly noticed teleconference location who want to address the commission should follow the protocol at your location. those attending the meeting in person at metro center will use the podium on their right. wherever you choose to attend from, please state your name prior to providing your comments. all members of the public will be allowed three minutes to address the commission at the discretion of the chair. comments must be respectful and focused and each individual has the responsibility to act in a civil manner without using hate speech, direct or indirect threats, and/or abusive language. bcdc has also established an email address to address public comments. its address is publiccomment@bcdc.ca.gov. emails received before 10:00 this morning have been shared with the commissioners and any received since then will also be shared with the commissioners and the public. welcome to this meeting of the san francisco bay conservation & development commission.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: i do want to note that today all but one of our commissioners are participating remotely due to construction in the yerba buena room on the first floor of the metro center. under the bagley-keene rules, we need to have at least one commissioner present at metro center which is deemed bcdc’s primary physical location. i want to thank commissioner Karl Hasz for coming into the city today to represent all of us here — all of us there in the temzacal room. also for agenda purposes, we have postponed our discussion of item 8, the permit application relating to 505 east bayshore in redwood city. we plan to take that up at our next meeting. that brings us to item 3, public comment period. if anyone wishes to address the commission on an item not on today’s agenda or the subject of a public hearing, you are fully entitled to do so and now is the time to do so. sierra, do we have any public speakers?

>>Sierra Peterson: we do have one.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: will you call that speaker, please?

>>Sierra Peterson: gita dev with the sierra club. you may unmute.

>>speaker: thank you, bcdc commissioners and staff. the reason i wanted to take this opportunity with so many commissioners present was to just bring to the attention of the whole commission how much of the shoreline along the peninsula is currently under consideration or under design. and more justly information, it’s all the way from the airport down to san mateo, coyote point. and then leaving aside foster city, it’s redwood city all the way to menlo park. and then leaving east palo alto and palo alto, there is a feasibility study starting up for all of moffett field, sunnyvale down to alviso where work is actually ongoing. so, it’s a large part of the coastline. in addition, the design review committee has been looking at projects in burlingame, in belmont, in redwood shores, yeah. i would say those are the ones. i just wanted to bring it to the commission’s attention because there are a lot of commissioners present how much is being designed right about now along the peninsula. that’s all. thank you very much.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you. all right. with no further public speakers, that brings us to item 4, approval of the minutes of our april 4th meeting. we have been furnished draft copies of those minutes. i would appreciate a motion and a second to approve the minutes. commissioner nelson moves, commissioner gilmore seconds. thank you. little hard to scan on this. if there are no objections or corrections, the minutes are approved. thank you. that brings us to my report. the first item is administrative. since commissioner eisen is out of the country, i’ve asked commissioner gilmore to act as vice chair of our meeting this afternoon. thank you for doing so. i hope the technology i am using today does not require you to step in. i appreciate your willingness to do so if i have a technical failure. commissioner randolph has been kind enough to agree to act as vice chair during our hybrid meetings in the month of may — well, actually both hybrid and real or physical. i do want to remind commissioners that the second meetings in may and june will also be hybrid because of construction at the metro center. the first meetings in those months are — will be hybrid meetings where we will have people physically present at the metro center. i encourage you, particularly for the first meeting in may, for as many as possible for you to be there. we have a full agenda and i’d like to make it a what we labeled as an anchor meeting where as many of us as possible are present in person. i also on an administrative issue wanted to announce an upcoming change to our meetings order of business. we are going to set up procedures that will allow us to approve stipulated enforcement settlement agreements much more quickly than we have in the past. i’ve asked in that regard for staff to create a consent calendar, almost all of you are familiar with those in your own local jurisdictions. bcdc has not used one. i do not know the historical reasons for that, but i think in efficiency we can do that. and we plan to place both minutes and any stipulated enforcement judgments on that consent calendar. there may be other matters that we deem minor enough to put on there. like consent calendars you are familiar with, any commissioner will be able to ask an item taken off the calendar and agendize it at that meeting for full discussion. and we will have public comment on the consent calendar as well. staff is now working on this issue and we expect to have it more detailed and hopefully start implementing it in a couple of weeks. our next meeting will occur in two weeks on may 2nd. it will be an action-packed meeting. and as i stated, i hope all of us or as many as possible can attend in person. at that meeting, we expect to take up the following matters. consideration of a permit application for development at 505 east bayshore in redwood city, which was postponed from today’s agenda. consideration of an enforcement case in the city of richmond, a briefing from the metropolitan transportation commission on its plans for extending the pilot project on the richmond-san rafael bridge that now includes a bicycle lane, and a briefing by our staff on the recent sediment management workshops that are leading the commissioner sediment working group toward create new policies designed to increase the use of sediment as a part of adapting to rising sea levels. a couple of comments, there was an article which was in the “new york times” climate newsletter — not all of you may have gotten or seen that today — which i would label bad news and good news. it talked about a missing trillion dollars, that’s trillion with a t-r-i-l-l-i-o-n, and it’s talking about the world bank commitment to developing countries around the world to address climate change. they have basically estimated that it will take a trillion dollars a year to address climate change issues in those undeveloped countries. the difficulty, of course is they have not identified the sources of that trillion dollars a year, although they have some of it. and the reason that i label it both bad news and good news is the fact that it is necessary and the fact that they don’t have it are both pieces of bad news. but it — i think it helps to put our problem in context. we’re dealing with a billion rather than a trillion. and i think also we’ll help to create a background in which we can better educate people in the bay area of our needs to raise that money to adapt to rising sea levels in the bay. the last item in my report is ex parte communications. if any commissioner wishes to report communication they had outside public meetings about a matter on which we’re going to sit in judgment or have a public hearing that you have not made in writing you may do so now. you do still have to make it in writing. any commissioners who wish to make an ex parte communication report? i do not see any. thank you. that brings us to the report of the executive director, take it away, larry.

>>Lawrence Goldzband: thank you, chair wasserman. april 18th is a red letter date on the american calendar. it was on this evening in 1775 that paul revere and william dawes galloped out of boston towards lexington and concord, towards hancock, adams, and the minutemen as british regulars were headed their way and loaded for bear. in a tremendous coincidence it was exactly eight years later on april 18, 1783 that general george washington issued his general orders announcing that the cessation of hostilities between the united states of america and the king of great britain would be publicly proclaimed the next day. i mention this because today you’ll learn how our planning team has started to gallop through the bay area’s nine counties, to ask local elected officials to work closely with us as we develop the guidelines their jurisdictions will need to use to create their local rising sea level adaptation plans. and unlike george washington who could not foresee when the revolutionary war would end, we know it will be no longer than eight months, not eight years until the commission will adopt those regulations later this year. good news on staffing. unless we hear otherwise from you, we plan to transfer rachel cohen, who not only serves on the enforcement team right now but is sitting somewhere behind me here in this weird temzacal room, we will transfer her to the long-range planning team as an environmental scientist. rachel is a blue hen, having earned her undergraduate degree in energy and environmental policy from the university of delaware. she was originally hired by bcdc as a secretary and supported our sediment team in a number of planning efforts. she was promoted to the enforcement team in october ’22, and you’ll remember her from her presentation two weeks ago. working withh the long-range planning team, rachel will be part of the group that is reviewing how the bay adapt regional shoreline adaptation plan guidelines may lead to future amendments to the san francisco bay plan, and the process by which subregional plans developed under sb272 will be reviewed and approved by bcdc. also on the screen today is rose ahn who joined the bcdc sediment team last month as a sea grant fellow. there you go. she’s waving at you. rose is helping develop the beneficial reuse roadmap and subsequent proposed bay plan amendment and is working to understand outcomes of the sand mining studies. rose is a lady trojan, having earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the university of southern california. prior to starting with us, she completed an internship for the sea grant research arm in which she worked at various outreach events to effectively communicate to the public the importance of marine protected areas, coastal issues and environmental justice. prior to that, she interned for los angeles mayor karen bass, performed research on red abalone and conducted stakeholder outreach on oil well remediation and solid waste management on catalina island. and we’re thrilled to have her with us. with regard to policy, you may remember that several years ago, bcdc approved the creation of the wings landing educational kayak program, which was developed as a way to provide public access to the wings landing tidal habitat restoration project in the suisun marsh. we knew that creating a program that would create public access by putting kids in kayaks would be a grand experiment. it started in 2021. we have received the good news that the program has been fully integrated into the summer school curriculum for crystal middle school as part of a multi-session week-long science camp and is expanding to include additional schools this summer. each year has been met with excitement and overwhelming positive reviews by everyone including the students. and the local soroptimist club is granting the program an additional $20,000 to keep it going. this is a great example of how public access can be developed not just on land but on the water, and demonstrates that bcdc continues to need to be creative as we explore new ways of providing public access in light of rising sea level. assistant planning director Dana Brechwald and i had a terrific discussion with members of the solano county board of supervisors and the mayors of the cities of solano county last week about sb272 and the developoment of the subregional adaptation plans. i want to note this particularly because and pay attention local elected officials, the supervisors and mayors seem to agree that the best way for the county to move forward is to work together on a joint plan to cover the entire county shoreline. we don’t know whether that will happen, or if it does if other counties will take the same approach — hint, hint — but we couldn’t help but be terribly impressed by the seriousness and insightfulness of the supervisors and mayors. we want to thank commissioner vasquez for his help in setting up the meeting. and i’ll let you know now that next week we will have meetings with marin county officials and the week after that we will be in contra costa to meet with their local officials. in what is likely the last time that i will need to mention the oakland athletics, the alameda county superior court dismissed without prejudice the lawsuit filed by east oakland stadium alliance against bcdc and the a’s over the commission’s approval of the howard terminal bay plan amendment almost two years ago. we all know that the athletics have more than just indicated their intent to abandon the ballpark and the city and the mixed use development proposal, so all litigants stipulated to certain terms to dismiss the lawsuit. that being said, staff will continue to apprise the commission of any further issues of note surrounding the bay plan amendment, relevant legislation including ab1191, and the oakland athletics miracle start to the season. finally, here is a notice for the bcdc book club. our friend from uc davis, professor mark lubell, who sits on bay adaptation advisory group, and his former researcher, francesca pia vantaggiato of kings college in london, have written a book specifically about the governance issues surrounding rising sea level policy in san francisco bay. its title is “governing sea level rise in a polycentric system.” and it is available on amazon. we look forward to mark explaining the title much less many of the book’s graphics in the near future. with that, chair wasserman, i’m happy to answer any questions.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: do the commissioners have any questions for our executive director? i see no hands. that brings us to item 7, consideration of administrative matters. we did not have an administrative listing, which means our regulatory director, harriet ross, is spared once again. as i previously noted, item 8 is postponed. so, that brings us to item 9, a public hearing and possible vote on the enforcement committee’s recommendation to require statutory and permit compliance at starkweather in san rafael, marin county, and payment of up to $30,000 in administrative, civil liability to resolve bcdc case — enforcement case er2015.024.00 against the owner of record the city of san rafael. on march 7, 2024, after a duly noticed public hearing on this matter, the bcdc enforcement committee voted to recommend this enforcement proceeding go to the full commission for approval. the recommendation includes a proposal settlement agreement with the city of san rafael that requires it to reopen a required public restroom at the park and pay an administrative civil penalty by no later than may 10, 2024. adrienne klein of our enforcement team will present the item in just a few minutes. first, i would like the representatives for the city of san rafael, if they are virtually present, to identify themselves for the record.

>>Connor Maclean: hello, i’m Connor Maclean, attorney for the city of san rafael.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman. thank you very much.

>>Fabiola Guillen: my name is Fabiola Guillen, i am the senior project manager for the department of public works for the city of san rafael.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you for being with us as well. bcdc enforcement staff will first present the case and the proposed settlement agreement, after which time the respondent will be given an opportunity to comment. after that presentation and comments, we will open the public comment period. public comments will be limited to three minutes per person. after the public comment period has been closed, we will — the floor will be open to members of the commission to ask follow-up questions of bcdc staff and the respondent and to deliberate on the matter. all speakers must limit their presentation and comments to the evidence already made part of the record that has been published online with this meeting’s agenda and/or the policy implications of such evidence. we will not allow the presentation of any oral testimony or new evidence. the public hearing is declared open. adrienne, will you please make the presentation?

>>adrienne klein: thank you, chair wasserman. thank you, director goldzband. i believe everyone can hear me.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: i think you need to boost your volume.

>>Pat Eklund: i cannot hear you.

>>adrienne klein: good afternoon chair wasserman and commissioners.

>>Pat Eklund: needs to be up higher, please.

>>adrienne klein: i have a presentation to share. could it be loaded? the purpose of this formal enforcement proceeding is to resolve a single violation involving a closed public restroom at starkweather park on francisco boulevard in the city of san rafael. the presentation will identify the site where the violation is occurring, briefly review the permit and enforcement history, summarize the terms of the settlement agreement that will resolve the violation and conclude with the staff recommendation. the next three slides identify starkweather park in the city of san rafael near the western terminis of the richmond-san rafael bridge in marin county. with this image showing a site overview with enough detail — oops, sorry. this is zoomed in closer. next slide. now there is enough detail for you to see the restroom building visible inside the red cloud bubble at the bottom left of the image in the parking lot area. francisco boulevard is below the bottom of the image, and the shoreline trail pictured adjacent to that restroom continues to the north and west above the top of the image. there is a beach pictured on the right. next slide. this google earth image shows the view of the restroom looking north, the public shore parking required by the bcdc permit is located in the parking lot where the photo was taken. you can see that shoreline trail behind and to the right of the restroom, beach is off to the right. this formal enforcement proceeding seeks to resolve a single violation, the failure as has been noted to maintain a public restroom in violation of special condition ii.b.4 of a 1978 permit. next. now to the timeline. the 1978 permit authorizes a portion of two commercial buildings and fill placement for paved roads and parking in the commission’s shoreline band jurisdiction. special condition 2b3 of this permit requires among other public access improvements that the permitee provide a public restroom that shall be open to the public prior to the use of any commercial facility and that commercial facility has been in use since at least 1987. while the public restroom was constructed and open to — constructed according to approved plans and open to the public in september 1985 the city closed it approximately six months later in or around march 1986. and it has remained closed since that time. therefore, as noted in the previous slide, the city is in violation of the maintenance condition of its permit which requires the city to maintain a permanent public restroom. and by its closure, the city has failed to maintain the permanent public restroom. between 1986 and 2015, bcdc was unaware of the public restroom’s closure. staff received no reports from the public nor did staff discover the violation. the building was non-descript structure for many years which made it difficult to identify the violation for anyone without knowledge of — detailed knowledge of the permit’s public access conditions. in july 2015, the city submitted a permit amendment request, in fact, to remove the restroom from the permit requirements. this is how bcdc discovered the violation. in october 2015, bcdc staff opened this enforcement case and notified respondent of its permit violation. in april of 2016, one year later, staff requested documentation from the city to support its position that to open the restroom would constitute a public safety hazard. between april and november 2016, the city provided — did not provide that data to bcdc staff. and in november, also in november, bcdc issued a letter that commenced the accrual of standardized fines or the restroom closure violation among others that have since been resolved. in december of 2016, staff understanding the difficulty inherent in reopening this long-closed, unused structure to the public in a manner compliant with building requirements, agreed to allow the city to install a portable restroom and hand washing station at the site on a temporary basis in order to provide the basic service that was — that the city had denied to the public for the past 30 years. staff did not contemplate at the time of this arrangement that the temporary portable restroom would remain in place more than seven years. in january 2017, bcdc staff informed the city with the installation of the portable restroom and hand washing station, staff had determined that the violation had been provisionally resolved, temporarily halting the standardized fine accrual through a specific date of june 30, 2017 by which time staff expected the permanent restroom to be open to the public or standardized fines would recommence accruing. the city unfortunately did not open the restroom by the end of june. so, in july, bcdc staff informed the city that as the restroom remained close, the provisional resolved status of the case was being rescinded and that the standardized fines as of that date accrued to over $18,000 and would continue to accrue to the administrative maximum of $30,000 until the violation had been resolved. staff informed the city of its request to eliminate the restroom from the permit was not approved by the commission that staff may commence a formal enforcement proceeding. in 2018 and ’19, the city prepared and submitted restroom reconstruction plans to bcdc which bcdc staff conditionally approved in december 2019. the approved plans were for a single ada compliant plumed restroom with exterior lighting and the inclusion of a drinking fountain and wattle bottle filling station built into the exterior of the structure in order to offset the loss of the second restroom that was part of the original structure. for most of 2020 there was no contact between the city and bcdc due to covid-19. in november 2020, staff reinitiated contact with the city to request progress on the restroom reconstruction and reopening project. in early 2021, the city informed bcdc that the restroom reconstruction commenced and later that it had also been completed and passed plumbing and electrical inspections. the city stated the restroom might be open by the summer of 2021, but that pg&e would have to first turn on the power. in march 2022, the city reported that pg&e had reported that it would take five to eight months to start work once a construction contract between the city and pg&e was paid for and in place. the city reported to bcdc that pg&e needed to drop a power line from a pole and run conductors and conduit from the pole to the restroom. the city also reported that it was working with san rafael sanitation district to obtain a sewer connection permit and with marin municipal water district to obtain new water service. in january of 2023 the city reported that it had reinstalled the water service, rehabilitated the sewer lateral, installed a metered pedestal and conduit. they also stated that the city was still waiting on pg&e to provide electrical service, the last utility required for the restroom to be functional. for the remainder of 2023, there was no contact between bcdc and the city and on january 30, 2024, bcdc commenced a formal enforcement proceeding to cause the restroom to be opened through issuance of a violation report and complaint to cause resolution of the eight-year long violation. a week prior to issuance of the violation report and complaint, city staff informed bcdc staff that the restroom reconstruction had occurred consistent with bcdc staff approved restroom reconstruction plans. and that pg&e had installed the power conduit to the restroom on a privately owned parcel adjacent to the restroom and would not turn on the electric power service to the restroom building until the city presented pg&e with an easement from the owner of that privately owned parcel. during a telephone conversation at the end of february of this year, bcdc staff received the following further update. that the city had met with the private — the owner of the privately owned parcel who had agreed to enter into an easement with the city, that pg&e had agreed to accept a letter from the owner pending completion of the easement process to enable pg&e to turn on the power to the restroom, and that the city had obtained said letter from said private property owner and submitted it to pg&e who, based on the assurance it provided that an easement would be forthcoming had scheduled an april 10th site visit to turn the power on to the restroom. on march 4th, counsel for the city of san rafael and bcdc held a confidential negotiation which resulted in an agreement to settle this matter as follows. next slide. the city has agreed to pay bcdc $30,000 by may 10th unless it demonstrates that it has made available for use by the public the permanent restroom facilities and water fountain — water fountain, water bottle filling station by april 27th, and restored the site by removing the nearby temporary toilet and hand washing station and restoring some landscaping behind the restroom by may 6th. in that event, the settlement agreement would authorize the executive director to accept a payment of $15,000, no later than may 10th. next slide. on march 27th, the enforcement committee adopted the staff recommended enforcement decision and today the enforcement committee recommends that the full commission adopt the proposed recommended enforcement decision which includes a proposed settlement agreement to resolve enforcement case er-2015-24. if adopted, this case would be transferred from the enforcement to the compliance department for compliance monitoring. that concludes the staff’s presentation. thank you.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you. do the — either or both of the representatives from san rafael wish to address us?

>>Connor Maclean: hi, Connor Maclean, attorney for san rafael. thank you, adrienne, for your presentation. we’ve enjoyed working with you on this and we’ve enjoyed working with other members of bcdc to put together this settlement agreement. i will have fabiola explain a bit more of what’s going on right now. i wanted to update everyone about the progress on this bathroom. unfortunately, you know, pg&e had told the city it would come on april 10th to finish installing power. we were expecting that shortly thereafter the bathroom could be reopened so we could meet the april 26th deadline for a $15,000 reduction in fines. it’s pretty clear the city is not going to meet that deadline thanks to pg&e’s cancellation. we hope to meet the may 10th deadline for compliance to get this bathroom open, but honestly, at this point, i don’t — i’ve never really trusted pg&e, i continue not to trust pg&e, and so, you know, we would like to ask for an extension if you would be willing to grant an extension for the timeline for compliance for opening the bathroom. i think that could benefit bcdc and the city. we understand the reasons for imposing the fines for the past violations. the bathroom wasn’t opened for all this time, the public was harmed, we get that. but at this point, i don’t think that imposing additional fines on the city benefit anyone. it’s just taking funds from one public entity and giving it to another public entity and those are funds that could be used to actually open this bathroom. i understand that there’s an interest in putting a fire under the city’s feet to get this done, the fire is there. you know, we’re working on it. fabiola has been meeting with the neighboring property owner, pg&e, bcdc to get this bathroom open. at this point, the city finds its hands completely tied. we are completely held by pg&e at this point. we were promised they would be here on april 10th. they then didn’t show. we are working with them to get them to come as soon as possible but there’s really nothing that the city can do at this point. so, to impose additional fines if the bathroom were not opened by may 10th on the city would, you know — seems a bit unnecessary given that the city is doing everything it can to get this bathroom open. i’ll turn it over to fabiola to explain a bit of the process of how we got to where we’re at right now. she has been with this process every step of the way. i think can explain a bit better some of the complications that happened with pg&e digging a ditch in the wrong place. making promises to the city to install service and falling through. i will turn it over to fabiola.

>>Fabiola Guillen: hi, everyone. Fabiola Guillen from the city of san rafael. it’s been an adventure. thank you, adrienne, for the presentation. there’s so much detail there. though it may appear otherwise, the city has been working really hard to try to get this open, this restroom open. it’s not only for our community but it’s a project that’s been lingering for so long that it’s in everybody’s best interest to get completed. i wanted to put it out there, there’s absolutely 100% commitment from the city to get this done. secondly, what connor mentioned, pg&e has kind of put us in a very difficult position. we had an agreement with them, they had — we had a commitment from them that they were going to install this power on april 10th, and originally it was just with a promissory letter from the property owner, adjacent property owner, that they were giving us permission to install this power. later on that changed to requiring the formal easement, which we produced and i have to say in record time, and provided it to pg&e. only on april 8th did they tell us that the easement had to be issued earlier. so that they had bumped us off the schedule basically and we were never notified of this. our city manager got involved and has contacted pg&e about the director’s level and they seem to have committed now to rescheduling our job for may 10th, for installation of the power. i have received the confirmation that that’s going to happen, and the job may take a full week, intermittent — different crews will come at different times and they’re going to install this power. we on our end have made arrangements to fulfill the rest of the agreement, which is to remove the temporary power — the temporary toilet once the restroom is complete and restore the adjacent landscape so we can open the permanent bathroom to the public, as soon as possible — as soon as the power gets connected. i also did a little investigation before the meeting and we have issued a $15,000 check to bcdc as of march — let me double check. april 5th we issued this check for bcdc for the original $15,000 amount. and we will hopefully be ready after all this is done and reopen the bathroom as soon as possible. like connor said, our level of confidence and trust in pg&e’s commitment is —

>>Connor Maclean: i’ll add to what fabiola said, in case people are unaware of kind of the background here. the reason that we needed to get an easement from the adjacent property owner is because — fabiola, you can step in and let me know the year in a second, maybe a year ago or two years ago, pg&e said they would come and install power for the bathroom, they did so, and afterwards they realized they installed it on the neighbor’s property and not the city’s property. the neighbor had to ask pg&e to either, you know, redo it, which was going to cost a ton of money or, you know, negotiate an easement with the neighboring property owner. the neighboring property owner agreed that they would, you know, give the city an easement. that took some time to negotiate. but, again, you know, this delay stems in the first place from once again another mistake by pg&e. you know, i want to kind of highlight that even a year or two years ago, the city was on track to get this bathroom open, pg&e keeps making mistakes that prevent this bathroom from getting open.

>>Greg Scharff: the commission really can’t give an extension on this. the commission could send it back to the enforcement committee if they want, who could look at it. but staff can give an extension. the agreement says that the executive director can modify the agreement, sign a modification. at this point, staff is considering it. we would like the commission to allow the executive director — that would be our preference, modify it assuming the city’s continuing to work in good faith and all of that. we don’t want to make the decision right now if we want to do that. so, if you do nothing and approve this, the executive director may very well grant an extension on this given the circumstances. the other choice you have is to send it back to the enforcement committee, we will work with the city of san rafael and possibly give an extension depending on the circumstances.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you, greg. sierra, do we have any public comments?

>>Sierra Peterson: no public comment.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: then i would entertain a motion to close the public hearing.

>>Pat Eklund: before we do that, zach, i have some questions.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: commissioners will have an opportunity to ask questions after we close the public hearing.

>>Pat Eklund: what if it requires the city of san rafael to do some responses.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: they can do that after we close the public hearing. this is basically saying the time for additional public input is over.

>>Pat Eklund: that’s fine. i raised my hand first, i’d like to —

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: i saw that. i will recognize you.

>>Pat Eklund: thank you.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: do i have a motion to close the hearing? commissioner nelson moves. commissioner gilmore seconds. thank you. unless there’s an objection, the public hearing is closed. now is the time for questions and comments by commissioners. commissioner eklund, go ahead.

>>Pat Eklund: thank you very much, chair wasserman. i have a question for the city of san rafael. connor, you mentioned in your presentation that pg&e didn’t show up, and then later it was said due to a cancellation. can you help me to understand which one was it? did they cancel in advance or can you help me understand that sequence of events?

>>Connor Maclean: yeah. fabiola is more familiar with this. i’ll let her take this question.

>>Pat Eklund: okay.

>>Fabiola Guillen: yeah, so — i guess we’re all familiar with pg&e, they have several divisions and what appears to have happened is the land development department who is in charge of the easements had everything that they needed to re-ease the project, however somewhere in the construction side of things, they didn’t get the easement in times in their mind to proceed with the work. so they basically removed the project from their schedule and we didn’t know until april 8th, two days before that they’re supposed to come out, even though with several follow-up emails and calls, we confirmed that we were on track. it wasn’t until april 8th that we started hearing that that was not going to happen. they needed confirmation from the construction department. so, i would consider it both, a cancellation and, you know, basically took us off the schedule. it took a lot of — a lot of communication with them to try to get that information out.

>>Pat Eklund: okay. help me to understand this lack of an easement. so, the property that the bathroom is going to be on was actually not in a — in an approved location by the city of san rafael?

>>Fabiola Guillen: the bathroom itself is on our property. it’s on a city property parcel. and maybe the presentation that adrienne had might have helped us understand. i don’t know if you remember the picture that we took from the — of the front of the building from the parking lot.

>>Pat Eklund: mm-hmm.

>>Fabiola Guillen: behind that parking lot is the street. that street is where the power is coming from. you imagine a line directly from the street to the bathroom, that part, that section is a private right of way that is private property. that’s where the — where pg&e runs the empty conduit without permission.

>>Pat Eklund: had the city of san rafael talked with the owner of that property and got their approval to actually place the power line through that area?

>>Fabiola Guillen: yes. so, that is the easement that we procured. first, we thought that a letter would suffice and allow us to fully conduct — allow pg&e to do the work and installation of the meter, however they changed their mind and said we needed a formal easement which granted the city — or pg&e the right to use that land. that’s what the city did after negotiating with the property owner.

>>Pat Eklund: okay. great. thank you. chair wasserman, do you want me to make comments now or do you want me to wait until after all the questions are asked?

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: go ahead and make your comments now, please.

>>Pat Eklund: okay. i really feel that the bcdc or the enforcement committee or — should work with san rafael and not necessarily give them the full penalty. obviously for not doing it way back 20 years ago, the city can’t change that. but for the work that is occurring now, it sounds like — the city of novato has also had issues with pg&e. so, it’s not — i think all cities and counties have had some issues with pg&e, it’s just — it’s very hard sometimes to get them committed and they have — you know, they do have high turnover. i would really welcome and would encourage the enforcement committee and bcdc to give the city of san rafael a little bit more time with that additional penalties because obviously they are committed to this, and as a sister organization, having issues with pg&e, you know, i — i would feel for the city of novato any way that we are being penalized for something we didn’t have control over. so, that’s my comment. i would like staff at some point to let me know what i need to do in order to follow up on this if necessary. anyway, that’s my feeling. thank you.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you. commissioner moulton-peters?

>>Stephanie Moulton-peters: thank you. similar comments on my part. i want to thank the enforcement committee for bringing this to us and the staff. i think we’re all familiar with the difficulty pg&e has had in scheduling service and hitting the schedule, whether it’s equipment shortages, work priorities or the wildfire work they prioritize. i would also like to ask for consideration for san rafael be given some more time to pull this together with pg&e and have a reduced fine still in effect. thank you.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: commissioner vasquez?

>>John Vasquez: thank you, chairman. i will take a different route. i have no sympathy at all. the public has gone without a bathroom for 38 years. i think there’s been plenty of time to rectify it. for the last eight years we’ve known that it — the restroom has been closed. right? nine years at least. there’s plenty of time to get it done right. if it is the fact that they put the conduit in the right place, i think the city or — had the power to simply condemn that piece of land and say this is where the easement is, and this is where it’s going to stay. certainly it had power from 1978 to 1986, because it was functioning. i — you know, the — somebody from the city used the word promise a couple times. and i think one of the other speakers used commitment. there was a promise to the public to have these functioning restrooms, and that promise was made 46 years ago. so, i don’t see where there should be anymore leniency. those are my comments.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: commissioner addiego?

>>Mark Addiego: thank you, chair wasserman. i’m feeling a little bit more generous today than supervisor vasquez. i think most of the local elected people that serve on this commission could give you examples of where pg&e has delayed anything from much-needed traffic signals for safety to major developments worth tens of millions of dollars. i’m sympathetic to what san rafael is facing. i guess i’m directing my comments to the director, it sounds like, according to mr. sharpe, that he’ll be the determining body. that was for you, larry.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: commissioner showalter?

>>Patricia Showalter: i’m sympathetic with san rafael on one hand. on the other hand, if you have been having this problem for so many years, why haven’t you thought of an alternative? there’s lots of lights that go on on batteries. i mean, as an engineer, there’s other ways to do things. this doesn’t seem like it’s a very remote place, but, you know, i know there’s other technology. i just want to say in the future, if we’re having a problem like this, let’s ask people to think outside the box a little bit.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: i don’t see any other commissioners. connor, i’ll give you a moment to respond and then i’ll make a couple comments.

>>Connor Maclean: hi again. thank you all for your comments. i just, you know, wanted to point out, i hear concerns and desire to hold the city accountable for not having had the bathroom open in the past. you know, i just want to highlight, again, the city recognizes that that — that the bathroom should have been opened. again, we’re doing everything we can to get the bathroom open. the city was composed 38 years ago, 37 years ago, 36 years ago. 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago of different people than it’s composed of now within city staff. current city staff takes this seriously and is working to get it open. i don’t think it’s fair to — you know, useful in any way to penalize the current composition of the city for past composition of the city. just to the point of commissioner vasquez, you wondered why the city wouldn’t just condemn the land where the conduit was mistakenly built, condemnation is not in that. were it, the city may have considered that option. that’s not even on the table. you know, we appreciate your leniency if that’s possible. we look forward to continuing to work with you.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: given our limited option — i’m sorry, go ahead, commissioner eklund?

>>Pat Eklund: thank you very much for allowing me a second bite at the apple here. so — because i have not had too much experience with this. can you tell me what the process is? i guess is it appropriate for us to have some off-line discussions with the executive director on —

>>Greg Scharff: let me tell you the process. the process is as staff were listening to what the commissioners have said and taken their comments into consideration, the executive director — there’s two choices. you can either send it back to the enforcement committee, which i do not think you should do. my recommendation is to approve what you have before you, the executive director heard everything you said. san rafael and us will have discussions. we may or may not grant an extension. it’s not just granting an extension. it’s for how long an extension will be granted. it’s what milestones need to occur. there’s a whole procedure here so that we make sure that, you know, frankly their feet are to the fire. i don’t disagree that pg&e has caused the problem. i think san rafael has been working in good faith. we’re definitely taking that into consideration. but that’s really what the process is.

>>Pat Eklund: so then, do we have the ability as a commissioner to talk with the executive director on whether or not, you know, staff is going to give them extension, whether or not we have an opportunity to bring it back to the commission if —

>>Greg Scharff: no.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: those are different questions. let’s answer them separately. go ahead, greg.

>>Greg Scharff: the answer is i can’t stop you from sending emails, but the answer is no, it’s not appropriate in an enforcement matter to be weighing in on the executive director. now is your opportunity. you weighed in publicly. at least i took your comment as work with the city of san rafael.

>>Pat Eklund: right.

>>Greg Scharff: it’s not their fault. i heard you. i heard commissioner vasquez say the opposite. i heard commissioner moulton-peters say work with them. we’re hearing what you’re saying. i think it’s really up to the executive director. but i can tell you what our process will be. it will be to talk to the city of san rafael and to understand the situation and to take into account commissioner comments and figure out how best to move forward.

>>Pat Eklund: great. thank you very much for explaining that. i just hope that the executive director will take what city san rafael said into consideration and try to work with them to urge pg&e to follow through on their commitments when to show up to help with the installation of the electrical connection. thank you very much.

>>Greg Scharff: you’re welcome.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: i would support for my own perspective the position that our general counsel has proposed. i’m sympathetic as all of you are to delays by pg&e that are outside the limits of san rafael. but i think given our choices, which are to totally reject this or to return it to enforcement, or to approve it with the understanding that the executive director does have the power to grant extensions and determine the timing and conditions of those, that that would be the appropriate matter. so i would entertain a motion on the matter. commissioner gilmore.

>>Marie Gilmore: thank you, chair wasserman. i move that the commission approve the enforcement committee’s recommended enforcement decision including the proposed settlement agreement with the city of san rafael.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: is there a second for that motion? i see commissioner moulton-peters and i’ll give you a third to commissioner pemberton. will you please call the roll, sierra?

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner addiego.

>>Mark Addiego: i guess i need a clarification. so, with this motion, it does not go to the executive director?

>>Greg Scharff: no, it does go to the executive director.

>>Mark Addiego: okay. then yes.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner ahn?

>>Eddie Ahn: aye.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner ambuehl?

>>David Ambuehl: aye.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner burt:

>>Pat Burt: yes

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner ecklund.

>>Pat Eklund: aye, with the understanding that the executive director will be able to follow through on this action.

>>Sierra Peterson: thank you. commissioner gilmore.

>>Marie Gilmore: yes.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner gunther?

>>Andrew Gunther: aye.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner hasz.

>>Karl Hasz: aye.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner kimball?

>>Justie Kimball: yes.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner kishimoto.

>>Yorko Kishimoto: aye.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner moulton-peters.

>>Stephanie Moulton-peters: yes.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner nelson?

>>Barry Nelson: yes.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner pemberton?

>>Sheri Pemberton: yes.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner peskin:

>>Aaron Peskin: aye.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner pine.

>>Dave Pine: yes.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner ramos.

>>Belia Ramos: yes.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner showalter.

>>Patricia Showalter: yes.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner vasquez?

>>John Vasquez:. yes.

>>Sierra Peterson: commissioner wasserman — chair wasserman. sorry.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: yes.

>>Sierra Peterson: nine yeses, no nos — pardon me. 19 yeses. no nos. no absentions. my apologies chair and commission. the motion passes.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: we all make math mistakes from time to time. the motion passes. i think that both the city of san rafael and the executive director and staff have clearly heard the concerns of the commissioners. and will act accordingly. that brings us to item 10. a briefing on our progress to create a regional shoreline adaptation plan. developing guidelines that local jurisdictions will use as they develop their subregional adaptation required by sb272’s regional shoreline adaptation plan mandate. these include a list of what elements those plans should obtain and how they should be developed. Dana Brechwald, bcdc’s assistant planning director for climate change will provide a briefing after a brief introduction from our executive director.

>>Lawrence Goldzband: thank you, chair wasserman. and i haven’t told dana i would do this, i want to do two things. number one, i want to give dana props in front of the commission for what she did with the representatives from solano county last thursday night when she gave sort of the same presentation. and i want to draw all of your attention as local public officials to this presentation because this is what you all are going to experience after december when these guidelines are ultimately published. it will be your responsibility to work through them, and we need you to think about them now before they get published, much less before they’re really drafted in, you know, anything other than wet cement. and that’s why we really want you to pay attention to this presentation and as we go around the rest of the counties to be with us so that you understand what it is we’re trying to do, and more important, we get your help to do it right. with that, go ahead, dana.

>>Dana Brechwald: thank you, larry and chair wasserman. good afternoon, commissioners. let me adjust all my moving parts here. okay. success. so, good afternoon, and it’s wonderful to see you all, commissioners. i’m going to talk to you a little bit about our draft concept for subregional shoreline adaptation plans as identified and mandated by 272. you’ve seen the slide before. i know you’re familiar with the basic structure of sb272, but just as a reminder, this bill supports the regional preparation that we know we need by requiring local jurisdictions to develop subregional resiliency plans and for bcdc to develop the guidelines that the plans must follow. the bill also encourages consistency in coordination, that’s what our regional shoreline adaptation plan is seeking to provide around the region. and the bill adds that bcdc is required to review and approve or deny subregional plans based on consistency with these guidelines. and lastly it adds an important carrot that projects within the approved plans are prioritized for state funding which supports our objective of supporting strategic implementation of projects around the region. the bill does contain some minimum requirements, which are fairly basic. use best available science, creation of a local vulnerability assessment that includes efforts to ensure equity for at-risk communities, developing adaptation strategies for recommended projects, developing lead and implementation agencies, a timeline for updates as needed, and an economic impact analysis for critical public infrastructure. obviously, this doesn’t say much about what the plan actually is or what each of these elements should contain. that’s the basis for my presentation today. i’ll share with you our current thinking on what we’re calling plan requirements. and as larry mentioned, the cement is still very wet, so we’re hoping to hear your feedback today. as you know, we’ve been working on developing the regional shoreline adaptation plan guidelines since before the bill was signed. we worked with senator laird to make sure the bill language was aligned with our vision for the regional shoreline adaptation plan and we’re on track to complete the guidelines by december, per the bill’s language. i’ll also note that funding is already available for these plans. this is not an unfunded mandate for jurisdictions, but there is grant funding for developing shoreline adaptation plans through available through the ocean protection council through the sb1 grant program. other pots could be applied to this purpose as well. we’ve been working with ocean protection council on — we worked with them on the grant criteria for the sb1 grants and staff is reviewing proposals from the bay area for alignment. once our guidelines are complete, we will continue to work with opc to update their grant guidance for future rounds of this grant starting in 2025. i’ll also note that while there is a lot of money available right now for adaptation, given our current state budget situation, we don’t know how long this will last. it’s in the jurisdictions best interests to get these plans funded and developed soon. our first step towards establishing a regional process for adaptation planning and fulfilling sb272 was to develop our one bay vision to drive the scope and ambition of regional guidelines and local plans. we shared this with you in detail in february. the one bay vision establishes our ideal in-state if adaptation is successful in each of these eight topic areas you see here. so, in addition to pop-ups around the region, this vision was developed through an online survey and engagement with our advisory group which consists of 40 subject matter experts in various fields related to the topics you see here. sb272 requires bcdc to develop guidelines for subregional shoreline resiliency plans, but that’s just the first phase for getting plans in place around the bay. phase one, which will be completed by december, includes our one bay vision that i just spoke of. the vision will first and foremost inform how local plan guidelines are developed. these guidelines will lay out consistent regional standards for how local jurisditions and create subregional plans and. provides — and develops adaptation strategies that meet minimum criteria to advance the region’s priorities of the one bay vision. the vision will also inform how we select the region’s strategic priorities. this component will identify key priorities for the region and identify where certain types of adaptation are most appropriate and beneficially locally to advance our goals of the region. these are based in products like our art bay area, which was published in 2020, which lays out a comprehensive vulnerability picture for the regions systems. so, our next phase is supporting local jurisdictions to create these subregional adaptation plans, which will include a variety of elements, which i’ll discuss today, such as our vulnerabilities assessments that were identified in 272, and these will ultimately identify adaptation projects and land use changes with implementation strategies that will help get projects on the ground. and lastly, up in — clicked too many times. the last component that we’re developing that you can see up here in the corner is our mapping platform which supports these efforts, and it’s a data mapping designed to provide key information to local governments to support the development of subregional adaptation plans. right now, as we develop an initial draft of the guidelines that specify what goes into subregional shoreline plans, we also have to decide fairly quickly what these plans should look like, what they should include, what is the scale of the subregion and who leads, what should these plans include to maximize effectiveness while recognizing the limited capacity of local jurisdictions to do these plans at the local and county scale, and lastly how are these plans approved, codified and translated into the real world. we have a concept that we developed that i’ll talk about, but this is an important time to pause and say this is — we’re road testing these concepts. both through our commission, this commission briefing today, the meetings that we’re having with the counties that larry has mentioned, and we’ve also been meeting with our advisory group and various focus groups to vet this material as well. it’s really important for us to test drive these concepts with the audiences who will be making the decisions about organizing and developing these plans such as you, local elected officials, local planners and other local staff. working with our stakeholders, here are the guiding principles that we are bearing in mind as we develop our plan requirements. this concept that i’m about to share with you has been developed collaboratively starting with a research phase to look at various plan models throughout the region and the state, working with a subcommittee of our advisory group and holding focus groups with local and county planners, engineering and planning consultants and special districts. we want to make sure that the plans that we are developing through these guidelines are flexible, aligned, right-sized, build on the existing efforts of local jurisdictions and are impactful. they actually have meaning in the real world. so, the foundation for subregional plans is the scale at which they should occur. what we’re proposing is plans happen at the county scale and local scale to ensure we’re covering all portions of the bay shoreline. as a reminder, our plan only covers local governments within bcdc’s jurisdiction, while the coastal commission’s lcp process is being amended to enact sb272 on the outer coast. we learned by talking with cities and counties that every situation is different and we need to account for that as we move forward. so, we anticipate working closely with cities and counties to identify the best scales and combinations of jurisdictions to do these plans. our county plans are intended to cover unincorporated parts of the county, and we also believe the county should play a lead role in coordinating all the local plans within the county. at the local level, jurisdictions may choose to do a single jurisdiction local plan or participate in a multi-jurisdictional local plan. single plans may be suited for large or high capacity jurisdictions, or those that already have an adaptation plan in place. while multi-jurisdictional local plans may be organized around existing relationships, geographic or landscape features such as an operational landscape unit or a watershed, or small jurisdictions with limited capacity, it can be expanded through partnerships. we’re open to any combination of cities and counties or any combination of cities. for example, in a county with a handful of jurisdictions along the bay shoreline, the county and cities may want to partner together to submit one combined plan, such as what we heard may be the preference in solano county last week. staff is currently working to develop the content for the guidelines. here’s an initial outline of two major sections. we want you to take a look at this and think about whether these are the appropriate elements that should be in these plans. our goal here is to keep this document concise and effective without being overly complicated or prescriptive. the focus here is on the guidelines for what should be included in each plan element. that’s the column on the left. this is what should be in those plans. then the minimum standards and considerations for how to fulfill these guidelines. that’s the column on the right. what we’re proposing here is that each subregional shoreline adaptation plan should contain basic planning information, assessment of existing conditions, the vulnerability assessment as outlined in 272, a section that outlines adaptation strategies and pathways for short, medium and long-term for all sections of vulnerable shoreline, a short-term project list, a land use plan that outlines land use changes that need to happen in order to enact the shoreline changes, and then an implementation plan that outlines how all of these adaptation strategies will be enacted over time. we also are coming up with minimum standards over equitable engagement and participation,what time horizons people should be planning for, what are the flood hazards that we think everyone should be planning for, what are the minimum categories that people should be assessing in their vulnerability assessment, and most importantly, what are the adaptation strategy standards. it looks like a tiny little line on the slide here, but that is are several pages for developing adaptation strategies such as looking at nature-based solutions, how do you consider what adaptation strategies should go where given vulnerability and other conditions. one important thing to note is while plans may include multiple jurisdictions within a single plan, each jurisdiction must meet all the guidelines in some way, shape or fashion either on their own or in partnership with other jurisdictions. also really want to note here we are definitely anticipating allowing content that’s been already developed in other plans to be used or incorporated by reference in these plans, especially in local hazard mitigation plans, safety elements, and existing climate action plans or adaptation plans. we recognize there’s a lot of very similar content that jurisdictions may have already developed. we would like to account for that as much as possible. so, the slide talks about process for how we will submit and approve these plans. we want you to think about how might this process play out in the real world. it’s easy to look at it on a timeline, but how would this actually work. once plans are developed, counties and jurisdictions should submit the plans at the same time. plans will be reviewed by bcdc separately and together. together to make sure they’re coordinated in a county, but separately to ensure each plan is reviewed for its own merits, that each plan meets all the minimum requirements. bcdc will provide conditional approval to plans separately. if one plan does not meet requirements but others do, they won’t be slowed down by approval. upon conditional approval, plans should be adopted locally by county boards or local city councils and each participating jurisdiction must adopt their plan separately. once approvals are completed, they’re submitted to bcdc and final approval occurs when all jurisdictions within a county submit for final approval to bcdc. we also believe it’s fundamental that the plan approved by bcdc to provide resilience for the shoreline of the whole county is codified into all the appropriate local plan and policy documents. we’ll be developing guidelines on where certain key strategies for implementing adaptation should be considered for integration into things like zoning ordinances, specific plans, capital improvement plans, and how considerations for how to update general plan elements like housing elements to reflect resilience policy changes. so, this is the timeline that will get us to commission approval of the guidelines by december of this year. we’re here on the left in mid-april. we’re preparing to share a first draft of the guidelines that we’re calling the committee draft that will be reviewed by our advisory group and that we’ll be using as a basis for content at our cbo workshops, which i will talk about in the next slide. after incorporating input from those groups, we’ll create a second draft after another round of review by our internal stakeholders, and this will hopefully correspond with public workshops, and we’ll incorporate any changes from that into a public draft released in early september in alignment with the commission briefing which will kick off our public comment period, that will close with the commission hearing in early november. the vote is currently anticipated for early december. i also want to note here, there’s a line for our electeds road show. we’ve already done two of those events and we have several more scheduled. we’ve been meeting with our local — we’ll be meeting with our local electeds task force on may 1st and plan on meeting with them again over the summer. and we met with our rsl commissioner working group a couple weeks ago and plan on meeting with them several more times before commission adoption. the last thing i just want to mention here is our next major outreach, which is our local workshops in partnership with community-based organizations in may and june. these will be happening at five locations around the bay, and co-hosted by our community-based partners. the goal of these workshops is threefold. we want to make sure the regional guidelines work for local governments and provide the guidance and direction necessary to plan and implement adaptation effectively. so we want to test out guidelines in specific locations. we want to bring people together, local community members, governments, stakeholders to facilitate and kick start the collaborative conversations that are going to need to continue to happen after the guidelines are done and once planning begins, and lastly, we want to continue to build and support cbos to lead adaptation efforts in their own communities. the partnerships we’re offering are paid partnerships, and our hope is by codeveloping the workshops with our community-based organizations they can be set up to play a larger role in the actual develop of the adaptation plans in the future. all commissioners with a workshop in your community will receive invitations to these workshops in the upcoming weeks. invitations have not begun going out yet. so you haven’t missed anything. our first workshop is planned for may 16th in partnership with sustainable solano. i’ll pause there and turn it back to chair wasserman for discussion.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you very much. with the presentation complete, do we have comments from the public, sierra? let’s call them.

>>Sierra Peterson: carin high, you have three minutes. you may unmute yourself.

>>speaker: good afternoon. thank you. this is carin high, citizens committee to complete the refuge. i would like to begin by expressing my thanks to dana and jackie and the rest of the staff and to the bcdc working group for their efforts they’ve put into this. rsap is definitely an extremely complex process and we recognize that there are many voices that must be considered and in a really short period of time. we deeply appreciate the manner in which staff have incorporated the importance and value of the bay’s ecosystem into the vision statement. we recently expressed to staff our concern regarding a previous version of the outline provided on slide 10, and our concern was that putting nature first and equity should be conveyed in the higher level headlines as well as in the detailed language that will follow. for example, headings regarding the need to put nature first and equity could be incorporated into the higher level headings of the outline that discuss the plan element guidelines and the minimum of standards and considerations and dana, in fact, just referenced the use of nature-based solutions under a heading of adaptation strategies and pathways. thank you for that. we understand the requirement to put nature first will be incorporated into the details developed for each of the outlined sections, however, the only place nature occurs in the draft outline heading currently is under the one bay vision section. our concern is that we totally support the vision that has been stated, visions are not always reflected on what actually happens on the ground. and as just one recent example of why we think nature and equity need to be more prominent, cccr recently received and reviewed and submitted comments regarding the redwood city sea level rise vulnerability assessment, which was a good document. but while the vital of tidal wetlands was mentioned in the document, discussion of the need to protect these habitats was largely absent as was any discussion of the use of natural infrastructure or nature-based solutions. of course, we raised these issues in our comment letter. this underscores the need to elevate the issues of putting nature first and equity into every aspect of the draft outline and guidelines as possible. thank you very much for the opportunity to provide comments and we look forward to continuing working with staff.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you. do we have any other public speakers?

>>Sierra Peterson: yes, chair. Arthur Feinstein, you may now unmute.

>>speaker: hi, chair wasserman and commissioners. Arthur Feinstein, chair of the sierra club of san francisco bay. i second everything that carin said. so i just don’t repeat, i want to recall to all of you in sb272, one of these requirements is that the guidelines reflect and implement the principles found in the bay adapt process that you adopted a year or more ago. the second bullet in those principles of bay adapt is put nature first. so, it’s not just a nice thing, it’s actually a requirement that put nature first be put first whenever possible as the rest of the language goes. and as carin says, unless that is emphasized consistently throughout the guidelines, it’s really quite possible for communities to sort of ignore that because most communities, most planners i believe, most people think of the shoreline and sea level rise and flooding as let’s put up a wall because that’s what one does. foster city, you know, a wall. so, it’s an educational process. so, just putting it down at the bottom of, oh, one of the adaptation strategies is put nature first, yes, but maybe no. but if it’s right at the top, more than once in the headings of what you need to do, then it becomes more clear to the cities and the preparers of these plans that they have to educate themselves, learn what it means to do nature-based solutions and put them into their planning. we just — we do thank staff very much for being very responsive to all of these thoughts. we just feel we have to keep reminding it because this is the one shot to save san francisco bay’s health. another reminder, 78% or more of the state’s entire tidal wetlands are found in san francisco bay. a large percentage of them will drowned under sea level rise. i hope you all realize how important tidal marshes are to our aquatic environment and our own environment and our own lives. we don’t want to lose those. one of the only ways we’ll have to make sure that we continue to have tidal marshes and a healthy ecosystem is if when we adapt our shorelines, we remember to put nature first. thanks very much. i look forward to working with all of you and hope we come to a very happy solution and that the bay survives into 2100 and beyond. thank you very much.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you. sierra, any others?

>>Sierra Peterson: yes. next we have gita dev. you may now unmute.

>>speaker: thank you. thank you. is it possible to put up the slide that has the draft guidelines of the key elements? it’s quite — it’s got a lot of information on it. thank you so much. appreciate it. good afternoon, all, i’m gita dev with the sierra club, at the risk of sounding like we’re all saying the same thing, i want to endorse what carin high and Arthur Feinstein have just said. i would like to put a slightly different slant on it. i want to acknowledge we really appreciated staff having listened to our comments so far. and in this case, we have this particular request — acknowledge it’s a tough task to codify the vision and to get our goals on paper, but i work at sierra club, work very closely with city councils, speak with developers, i’m an architect, i’m accustomed to responding to rfps, i can tell you how these projects actually work. that’s why the redwood city project came out the way it did. the capital improvement projects staff are public works staff, and they are mostly engineers. the consultants who they hire, the rfps are responded by rpr firm — rpr staff. they look only at the outline. they don’t look much further. they are extremely time-constrained. so it’s really important to get it in the — you know, in the plan element guidelines and particularly in the minimum standards. because if it’s not there, they may not actually put in a fee for that. they may not have some consultants that respond to that. these are the reasons why we’ve got to understand how projects actually work so that — the redwood city project did have element a, b, c, and d. it went through the very good process of the existing conditions and the vulnerability assessment as carin high pointed out did not include anything offshore from the shoreline except to acknowledge they exist. they did not have a discussion about them. the adaptation strategies unfortunately were purely engineering. they were walls, levees and storm water pumps and pipe incisors. in talking to them yes, i did. i met with them yesterday, they said, you know, we’re the engineers —

>>Sierra Peterson: your time is now complete.

>>speaker: that’s the reason i would ask you to bring this into the outline. thank you very much.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you.

>>Sierra Peterson: there are no more hands raised, chair wasserman.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you very much. commissioner eklund?

>>Pat Eklund: thank you very much. great presentation. reminds me so much of working for epa where we did this for state agencies. anyway, question first on the local workshops. i think it would be helpful if staff would contact the bcdc representatives for that particular county and talk with us about our availability because i think that this is going to be really important for — to make sure that those of us who serve on bcdc be there so that we can hear some of the concerns or comments of the folks that are at that workshop. that’s the first one. may 16th in solano, is that going to be also through zoom as well or is it just going to be in person?

>>Dana Brechwald: i believe that one will be in person.

>>Pat Eklund: will it be zoom as well or not?

>>speaker: i don’t know the answer right now.

>>Pat Eklund: the other question i have with sb272, was there any funding designated for local government cities and counties to not only help develop the plans but to codify the local plans that are developed into the zoning and housing elements, general plans, all those other documents that we have? is there any funding that is going to be given to each of the cities and the counties to implement 272?

>>speaker: i think Justine Kimball is online and better answer that question than me about the suitability of funds for that. sorry to put you on the spot, justine.

>>Justine Kimball: yeah, no worries. i may have to get back to you on the specifics. our funding is specifically towards development and the steps along the way including vulnerability assessment, capacity building, visioning, to get to a sea level rise adaptation plan that can be a subregional plan. i don’t know about the piece of, like, integrating it — i didn’t quite get that, integrating it into the other plans.

>>Pat Eklund: dr. kimball, in order to make this enforceable, cities and counties need to put it into their regulatory documents, i’ll talk — i’ll talk as a state or local — state or federal, they have to put it into their regulatory requirements in order to be able to enforce it. so, for example, some of the adaptation strategies would obviously have to be recorded into the housing element or even in the general plan, and then we have to develop enforcement mechanisms. so, that takes funding to do that. cities and counties do not have enough money to implement, let alone yet another state law and put it into our regulatory requirement. i guess i need to get some feedback as to what funding is going to be available for all. this is statewide, so all this — i don’t know how many cities there are along coastal zones or waters of the state of california, but cities and counties i would — would need direct funding from sb272 in order to implement some of the requirements. maybe we can have that discussion a little bit later or if bcdc staff know the answer to that question, that would be helpful. i have other questions as well, but —

>>Justine Kimball: i can check back on the opc side of things. again, the language for sb1 is very specific, adaptation and plans. i can see about the inclusion integration into other plans and how that would fit into our funding eligibility and get back to dana with an answer. or directly to you.

>>Pat Eklund: but dr. kimball, you don’t have the regulatory authority to change our zoning standards, for example. the cities and the counties would have to do that.

>>Justine Kimball: i thought you were asking about funding for the work.

>>Pat Eklund: funding for cities and counties to do the actual implementation of the standards. absolutely.

>>Justine Kimball: yeah. our funding goes directly to cities and counties, those are the eligible grantees, i just need to check on that question about — yeah, about how far the funding would go.

>>Pat Eklund: maybe we can have an off-line discussion, too, to get more detail. i have done this at the federal and the state level, and, so, i definitely have a real good understanding of the staff implications. for the city of novato, there’s no way on this earth we’d ever be able to change our regulatory documents without funding. the other question is is that novato already has — i think san rafael does, too, to some degree or other cities around the bay, we already have existing housing that is over the bay, that’s — that’s in the regulatory jurisdiction of bcdc and others. and these houses are owned by individuals. they actually own i think the airspace above the water. i’m not sure what their deed looks like. so how is the local jurisdiction expected to develop requirements when we may not have the legal authority to remove some of those homes? i just — you know, i — we’ll have to have some conversation about how do we deal with some of those that are already on the water or over the water or within the regulatory jurisdiction of bcdc and/or the state or federal agencies. can you help me to understand how that would be approached?

>>speaker: i can’t say specifically how we would approach that specific situation. we’re trying to address as many situations as possible in the guidelines, i think as you well know, the bay area is vast and it’s — the types of manifestations of development along the shoreline and the issues and the priorities of each individual community, i do anticipate we will be working closely with cities and counties. in fact, we have an rfp out right now to help us develop a technical assistance program starting in 2025. in most cases, i believe the guidelines will — we will work with cities and counties to understand how the guidelines apply in their particular situation. if that’s the case, you know, in marin or novato or anywhere along the shoreline, we would welcome a one-on-one conversation about that.

>>Pat Eklund: okay. how do we do that? how do we initiate and say let’s have some discussion, not only with the staff but also the elected officials, too, so we can have a better understanding of what the implications are, as well as legally.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: i think these are important questions, we’re also getting into a level of process that is beyond the level of this presentation. certainly with our workshops and the local government officials, we’re doing some of that, which is not to say enough. so i think we will take those questions and issues into our staff’s planning and into the next presentations to the commission.

>>Pat Eklund: thank you, chair wasserman. i think it would be helpful if i could have some more discussions with staff on this issue so that i can have a better understanding about it, so i can better communicate it. probably one of the rare elected officials that has worked for over 40 years for regulatory agencies. involving these issues. anyway, so, thank you very much for answering my questions. i look forward to getting more engaged in this process. thank you.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you. commissioner showalter.

>>Patricia Showalter: well, i have sort of similar things from the view of somebody who has been involved in flood protection for quite a long time, too. in santa clara county we’re blessed by being wronged by old salt ponds that we can convert to marshes. we’ve been working on this for quite awhile. and most of us know this as the south bay salt pond project, which was really started as a habitat project. all the engineers involved knew, and it was also was just dandy sea level rise protection but that wasn’t something that resounded with our public at the time so we didn’t talk about it very much. as time has evolved, we continue on the south bay salt pond restoration effort and we talk more about how indeed it’s really good for sea level rise. what i’m getting to is in the south bay, in santa clara county, the county in a sense isn’t really the lead in this. i mean, the lead is really the coastal conservancy and the santa clara valley water district. i’m — it sounds like from, you know, when you really talk about this, dana, that when you talk about county, it’s — i don’t know if you actually mean the formal county or what’s appropriate in that general area. i wanted to bring up that it may vary who are the really appropriate stakeholders from place to place. we just want to make sure that those — you know, whoever they are are the ones who are brought to the table. i — i don’t honestly know what they are, other localities, i know in santa clara county, if we don’t have the coastal conservancy and the santa clara water district taking part in this, we won’t have, you know, all the stakeholders that we need to. i hope i’ll be able to set up a meeting with you and larry in the not too distant future about this. i do want to say i think it’s very important to give credence to the plans that exist. and that are moving forward. and to kind of fill the holes that haven’t been made in them. for instance, mountain view has a plan. we passed it in 2012, we’ve updated it a couple times. we’re actually — it includes 14 projects. we’re actually implementing it as we speak. but one of the things that wasn’t a part of it was an explicit conversation about equity. so that would be something that we’d need to include. i’m sure that if you look around at many of the other plans that were put together, there are pieces that are just not there that we need to bring up. so, i think that in lots of cases, this is going to be a bit of putting together a beautiful patchwork quilt. we all have different patches finished and we have new ones we need to construct before we put it altogether. i think we want to be really cognizant of using good, existing work that we have and using the good will that’s been built up to develop these and just kind of moving — particularly since we have to move quickly. we don’t want to be reinventing the wheel in things we’ve already done. that’s all i want to say. i’m just delighted to see this. i hope that i can serve as a resource for santa clara county.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you. commissioner —

>>i wanted to clarify a point for the commissioners.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: sure. go ahead, steve.

>>speaker: which is the law is clear on who has to prepare a plan, and it’s the local governments that are on the bay shoreline. it’s the cities and counties. it does not include special districts. that being said, everything you said is very important in terms of special districts like the valley water and other land holders, and state agencies like caltrans should be involved, but the folks who have to submit the plans are the counties and cities.

>>Patricia Showalter: steve, along those lines, is it the shoreline cities or — it’s the shoreline cities, right? it’s not necessarily the counties.

>>speaker: correct. it is — the counties are on the shoreline. it’s the counties and the cities. they all have to prepare and submit a plan. they can do them collaboratively — i’m sorry, i didn’t mean to interrupt.

>>Patricia Showalter: i was saying the same thing you are. very good.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you. commissioner pemberton?

>>Sheri Pemberton: thank you, chair wasserman. i just wanted to thank staff for the presentation and really excited to have the information and see this progress. i think the timeline looks great. i think the guiding principles look really good. one question is whether there will be collaboration with the state lands commission to factor in or address the public trust.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: larry, you want to take that one or —

>>speaker: i can take that one. the yes, absolutely. we love working with the state lands commission. we work together through the — there’s a statewide body that opc convenes, a statewide coordination group that we’ve already been presenting to, which the land commission particiaptes in. and i think another exciting way that we will hopefully be coordinating even more is through a study that we’re just starting to develop around public trust needs for the bay and sea level rise that we’re scoping out right now. i think that’s another level in which our agencies can work together even more.

>>Sheri Pemberton: thank you.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: commissioner nelson?

>>Barry Nelson: first, i’m really excited that we’re at this point in the process. it’s really encouraging. i really like the outline of the guidelines. but i do have a question to follow up the testimony we heard from the citizens committee and others. i’m hoping staff can help me. i’m trying to figure out if there’s a disagreement between the citizens committee and staff in terms of what’s in these documents or if that’s just input on the merits? the commission is very supportive of nature-based solutions. i think we absolutely want to encourage them. we heard this input a number of times. i’m hoping staff can help me understand if there’s a disagreement here or if that’s input the commission staff is planning to incorporate in the documents as they move forward and how you think about that.

>>speaker: i hope that they will — Carin, Arthur and Gita will agree that there’s not a necessarily a disagreement. we’ve incorporated nature-based solutions in an approachh to putting nature first throughout every component of the plan. the point they’ve been communicating to us recently is that it needs to be elevated to the level of being visible in an outline. and we are not ignoring that information. we’re simply — for version control issues, we’re keeping versions consistent until we incorporate a lot of feedback at once. we’re also working with all three of those individuals on our advisory groups and various leadership groups. so, there are plenty of opportunities for us to work together to come up with a solution that’s mutually acceptable.

>>Barry Nelson: thank you. we obviously want to highlight those nature-based solutions,. so — but i won’t offer my ill-informed thoughts about how best to do that. let staff keep working with those members of the public. thank you.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: commissioner john-baptiste?

>>Alicia John-baptiste: thanks, and kudos to the staff for their work on this. i share the enthusiasm of my fellow commissioners. i did have a question around how you’re planning to incorporate olus into the subregional plans. it seems like you had a potential fork in the road around organizing subregional plans according to jurisdictional lines or organizing them around olus. i can understand given the way we’re set up as a region why you might go to the jurisdictional direction. going in that direction then requires some kind of backstop in my estimation to ensure we’re not missing the lens of olu, i think it creates some missed opportunity to connect yours dictions that share olu space but may not be connected either through county or through other forms of relationship. so to. me — my interpretation is there’s more responsibility placed on bcdc as the ones holding the point of view of the big picture. i don’t know if this is consistent with how you thought about it, i’m wondering if there’s another level of detail below what you’re speaking about today that incorporates that. if you can share what you can at this point, i would appreciate it.

>>speaker: yeah. we certainly thought about looking at operational landscape unit as a form of analysis for developing solutions. and that’s why we’re offering a multi-jurisdictional plan option. we’ll provide some basic analysis that shows where operational landscape units can bring together multiple jurisdictions that might be particularly suited to doing a multi-jurisdictional plan. those plans can cross county boundaries as well. we did choose city and county boundaries because that’s where land use planning takes place and it can get a little bit messy when you’re going outside of those jurisdictional boundaries. the other place where we’re really going to be incorporating the concept of operational landscape units is in the guidelines themselves. there will be a guideline telling people to look at the operational landscape unit they’re in and look at all of their neighbors that share a similar set of suitability for adaptation strategies and incorporate them — if they’re not doing a multi-jurisdictional plan with them to incorporate those stakeholders into their planning process. we’re hoping to encourage it as much as we can without mandating it.

>>Alicia John-baptiste: sorry. just a quick follow-up on this, though. so, part of what i think we’re trying to avoid is for one jurisdiction to put in place strategies that have either negative or suboptimal consequences to their neighbors. and if jurisdictions are not required to consider what — how nature will actually behave relative to what they are planning, i don’t know that we will achieve that goal. so, there’s a balance, i’m sure, between what we require up front and what we solve for on the back end. i do encourage — i encourage us to think about what the right balance is. because the point of having a regional agency in my view holding responsibility for setting these guidelines is so that we can ensure the whole is actually taken care of in the best possible manner. it’s really hard to do that from a more fractured perspective that we otherwise fall into as a region. i hope that makes sense.

>>speaker: just to clarify, we will be requiring people to work across jurisdictional boundaries as they develop their strategies. what we’re not requiring is that people submit a multi jurisdictional plan with their neighbors if they don’t want to. so, that’s — in all other cases, we are requiring people to work with their neighbors to look at the shared characteristics and operational landscape unit and to consider adaptation strategies impacts on neighboring jurisdictions.

>>Alicia John-baptiste: thanks.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: commissioner vasquez?

>>John Vasquez: first, i want to thank dana and larry for the presentation. we have and organization call “for seas,” and these kinds of things are made available to all the cities and the counties to talk about these regional concerns, no matter what they are. and as larry indicated there is, i think, a willingness on the part of the cities and the county to work together with one plan. the other thing was, we had a brief conversation afterwards about looking across to our neighbors, contra costa and napa. so, we fully plan to at least engage them so we’re not doing something that might impact them or influence water to go one way or the other. we can all be — as some of the other commissioners have said, we can be concerned about our own area and not think about our neighbor. i’m glad dana said that. it encourages me to do more work then. thank you.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you. i don’t see any other commissioners. i certainly want to join in my thanks and praise to larry and dana and the full staff for the work that has led up to this and is ongoing. there have been times in this process — i suspect there will be times in the future when i become a little bit concerned about how much progress we’re making and how long it’s taking. but i think this indicates that we’re making very good progress, at least at this moment in time. that brings me to item 11, a certainly relevant follow-up, a briefing from nasa on science underpinning of the new state of california guidance on rising sea levels. dr. Ben Hamlington of nasa who led the state and california’s science panel that formulated the basis underpinning the new state of california guidance on rising sea levels will make the presentation. we have heard from dr. hamlington before and his briefings have been interesting and especially tuned for those of us who are not scientists. Cory Copeland, bcdc’s lead scientist will introduce the topic.

>>Cory Copeland: thank you, commissioner. my name is Cory Copeland, i’m the bcdc adapting to rising tide state and science manager. i’m excited to introduce the latest on sea level rise science that informs new statewide guidance. as a reminder for the commissioners on february 1st, you received a briefing from dr. Justine Kimball on sea level rise guidance. the public comment period for that draft has closed. bcdc staff are actively working with the opc to support the final draft. we’ve been told that opc anticipates adopting the guidance in june. at that point, us — bcdc will be updating their own climate policy guidance with respect to the latest science and guidance from opc. that document will be used to inform bcdc permits and planning activities as it relates to our policies. if you look closely at the authorship of the draft guidelines, you’ll see sections are written by opc staff, which dr. kimball spoke to you about already, and others are written about external scientists. today’s briefing is by dr. Ben Hamlington, one of the external scientists, author of the draft california state sea level rise guidance. he will specifically offer information on the scientific basis for projections. Ben Hamlington is a research scientist at the sea level rise and ice group at the nasa jpl. dr. hamlington is a preeminent expert on sea level rise science. he authored more that 50 scientific publications on sea level rise and related topics. i personally read and cited some of his work. within the guidance, dr. hamlington is the lead author of the section on the report on the selection and creation of the california sea level rise scenarios. and so without further ado, i’d like to pass it over to him to present some of the scientific updates that went into our new california sea level rise scenarios.

>>Ben Hamlington: thank you, cory. thank you for the invite to present. i hope i make this as accessible as i was given credit for in past presentations. but let me share my screen here. so, i have a few slides going over the framing of the report. some of you may have seen a presentation. so, justine and i did a roadshow of going around and sharing some of the findings in a brief overview of the report. so, i’m going to go through some of those same elements, maybe a little bit quickly. i have a couple new items here that are responsive to the public comments we received. so, i do want to hit those as well. a goal of mine is to leave time for questions, which i know based on the public comment just in this process, that there are potentially many of those questions. hopefully we can address some of those here. let me share my screen. if i can confirm you guys can see that okay?

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: yes.

>>Ben Hamlington: cool. okay. as i said, and as cory nicely updated on, i’m really focusing just on chapter 2 of the report. this is the science update. there is a chapter 4. so, chapter 3, for those of you who have not seen the report, that’s the guidance. that’s the section led by opc and justine. there is a section 4 of the report that talks more about impacts. i know those impacts in section 4 is tremendously important to all of you and the discussions you’re having here talking about the prevalence and the potential expansion and increased frequency of flooding as we go forward, as well as other impacts of saltwater intrusion, erosion, things like that. this is my way of saying i’m focused on chapter 2. it’s not at all to diminish the important work in chapter 4. it exists. it’s well-described in the report. and it’s being responsive to the public comment. again, i’m just trying to set the framing for what i’m covering here. this is not the entirety of what’s in the report. okay. so, what’s included in the report? there’s five sea level scenarios. that sea level scenario, term, phrase is based on some of the changes that occurred. i want to spend some time today explaining what those sea level scenarios are and how they’re different than what we’ve seen in past guidance. these span the range from 2020 to 2150. they span the range of plausible sea level rise. we do define what plausible means within the report. i’ll touch on that briefly here in the coming slides. these have been localized to california. one thing to note is the source material for this is the ipcc sixth assessment report and this federal technical report which came out in 2021 and 2022. billy sweete and i were authors of the federal report. wehat we’re doing is we’re using that scientific basis, that consensus as the starting point to then build something that is let’s say both specific to california but also responsive to some of the gaps that existed coming out of that federal report. we did the same kind of thing after that, we briefed it to other agencies, states, localities, we got feedback that made it clear there are things we could be doing to make that information more accessible and easier to adopt into guidance. so within this update we’re trying to take some of those lessons learned and provide this update. so, in that respect, the california update i’m talking about here is certainly reflected and consistent with those documents, but hopefully is continuing to advance our state of knowledge and how we’re describing that state of knowledge. and a couple of ways it does this is that within this report, we evaluate the most likely scenario. so, based on multiple lines of evidence, we can actually start to weigh in a little bit more heavily based on our scientific understanding about not just here as a range of scenarios, pick the one you want, but here is a range of scenarios and here is what we can consider most likely and here’s why. so we’re trying to describe that in more detail to support the implementation and use of these scenarios. one way we do this is increased use of observations. we have good tide gage observations. obviously, i’m biased, we have satellite observations here at nasa, but we have these increasingly long records from satellites that we can use alongside the models to say something more certain and definitive than ever before. then one last thing to note here, we do a lot to provide story lines and context for each of our scenarios. i will get into that in a second. i’m not going to dwell on that in this slide. an important thing here is that there have been meaningful changes since the 2017 rising seas report. these are driven by the science. this is not some additional research i did while preparing this report, this is the consensus in the ar6, the state of publications here in california and how we can translate that into a consensus document that meets — hopefully checks the box of what we need here. the sea level scenarios. there’s five of them. there’s the low, intermediate-low, intermediate, intermediate-high, and high scenario. the ways these are defined — and this is the only point i’ll meters on this slide, but it’s just because — meters instead of feet, it’s just because these are nice round numbers. these scenarios are defined by amount of global sea level rise by 2100. and the reason for that, the way we build the model-based projections that lead into the scenarios is from a global value and we regionalize off of that. if we go back to the starting point with the regional — with the global projections of sea level, we look across the available model results in the scientific literature, and we can come up with a plausible range of sea level rise. in this case, in 2100, that’s 30 centimeters to two meters. certainly beyond 2100, that number can go far beyond that. before 2100, that plausible range will be narrower to that. this is how we start out our scenario formation. then from there, you can start to build in story lines. we do that in detail in this report. i think we’re doubling down on that within our revisions associated to the public comment. we can interpret exactly what the future looks like under these different scenarios. under the low scenario, the global communities really got its act together, really driven emissions lower, basically got to net zero as quickly as possible. that’s the most optimistic future. on the other hand, if we talk about the high scenario, that’s kind of the worst case. emissions have gotten out of control. not only that, we triggered some of the rapid ice-sheet processes, ice-sheet instabilities that we think could be a factor and they’re contributing heavily to sea level rise. then you have the other three scenarios in between. i do want to point out two important ones. intermediate-low at 50 centermeters by 2100 and intermediate a 1 meter by 2100, those bound what we’re calling the most likely range by 2100. those are important scenarios if we consider the future sea level rise and where we might be headed. there’s one last point i want to make in terms of the — some of the terminology used in the report. we talk about medium confidence and low confidence. this is mapping directly from the ar6 and the technical report. the key here is the level of scientific agreement or consensus. that’s what’s being described here. medium confidence, and maybe you would like to say there’s high confidence among scientists on what’s going to happen in the future, medium confidence is as far as we’ll go based on our current modeling and our understanding of the physical processes, but we talked about medium confidence which collects a series of physical processes that we can model as part of these large ensemble efforts. the low confidence processes start to bring in physical processes that are of less agreement and more uncertain about what’s going to happen in the future. those are your rapid ice-sheet loss processes. those instabilities, okay. so, we denote between those two and those are built into the scenarios we’re using here. i’ll talk more — a key question is the difference between probalistic projections and sea level scenarios. i have a slide i’ll go through theses — these others quickly so i can answer some questions there. just looking at some of the numbers, i’ll go through this briefly. you all can read the report and get these numbers, but in terms of the sea level scenarios themselves and the numbers, here on the right, those color bars are the five — colored lines are the five sea level scenarios, then the dashed line is showing the 2018 h plus plus scenario. i’m just showing one of these for comparison to tell you something about that high-end process — or the high end scenario. so, again, the low to intermediate scenarios kind of span. the medium confidence scanriros are those processes that we have a good understanding of. the intermediate to high scenarios explore that upper range, where we have less confidence in what’s going to happen but want to capture those higher-end possibilities. the one thing to note here, that dashed line, you can see at every point in time it’s higher than the high scenario. so we have had the high-end scenario come down as a result of the science — again, i have a slide on that in a couple minutes here. i’ll get into that in a second. one other important thing to note as you go through the report is that vertical land motion is the primary driver of local variations. if we think about the ice sheets, the ocean and what’s happening there, it’s a fairly similar signal whether you’re talking about san diego or crescent city. so, the contribution from the antarctic ice sheet, you’re so far away, this should make sense, it doesn’t change that much across the california coastline, same thing with greenland. however, if we think about what does drive differences locally, it’s subsidence or uplift that may be occurring in different parts of california. we can represent a lot of the ocean-driven contributors to future sea level rise by one consistent scenario as we look out across california, and then we can bring in the vertical land motion piece. there’s almost a separation between the two. here are some of the numbers that are — i’m showing from the report. this is to note we do have numbers of each decade going out to 2150 for each of these scenarios. within the report, we also do kind of hone in on this near-term sea level rise. these next three decades, 2020 to 2050. an important thing here is the range in 2050 is much smaller than it has ever been before in any of these consensus reports. in 2050, the range is less than 8 inches between the low and the high scenario. it’s much lower than in past reports, as i said. the primary reason for that is actually connected to the high-end possibilities and the rapid ice sheet loss processes. i’ll talk about why that’s the case in a minute. and it’s important to note that our observations are consistent with intermediate scenarios. it’s a little bit hard to see, but this red line here is actually trajectory based on observations around california. it tracks extremely closely to the intermediate scenario. this allows us to say the intermediate scenario, which is about 0.8 feet in 2050, plus or minus a couple inches should be considered the most likely sea level rise in 2050. for california we’re almost collapsing future sea level rise down to a single scenario if we look out the next three decades. all right. so, one last slide here before i get into some of those points that are responsive to the public comments we received. if we’re interpreting the sea level scenarios, one thing we’re trying to do in this report, because we’re building the scenarios, we’re trying to add context to them with probablistic projections. the scenarios are formed using the probablistic projections, we set these targets and find the probablistic projections to get to those targets. and then from there we can start to say something about what is your likelihood of reaching different scenarios. so, if i look at this middle row here, what’s the probability of passing roughly one meter of sea level rise in 2100 in a three degree sea warming future? my probability is 5% of exceeding that. on the other hand, i have 82% chance of exceeding the intermediate-low, 50 centimeters by 2100. the reason that’s important is that we can make an evaluation of different warming levels and the path we’re on and the likelihood of getting there. right? three degrees c is our current trajectory of warming as evaluated by ipcc, working group 3. so you can look down here, that’s part of the reason we make this evaluation of a most likely scenario. so 50% is between intermediate-low and intermediate. this is our most likely trajectory. this table becomes very informative to interpret those scenarios. that’s what i said in the first bullet. one other thing to note without rapid ice sheet loss — so that’s these low confidences, the last two columns — the chance of reaching two meters by 2100 is effectively zero at warming levels below 5 degrees c. so we have in here less than 1%,but these are again effectively zero. they’re extremely small given the number of actual projections that get us to that value. so, in order to get to the high-end estimates of sea level rise, like 2 meter by 2100, you really need to have triggered the ice sheet instabilities and the rapid ice sheet loss. one thing we tried to hammer home in this report is that there’s no scientific consensus on rapid ice sheet loss and the associated processes. that’s why they’re called low confidence, but it’s important when we consider the interpretation of the scenarios and ultimately the application of the scenarios. that’s the work opc is trying to do to understand what these scenarios mean and then how to interpret them going forward. okay. i have a couple slides left, then i’ll stop for questions here. one thing that’s come up, in the 2017/2018 guidance, the starting point was these probalistic sea level projections. i’m using the term here implicit versus explicit construction of scenarios. the whole goal of these activities is to go from what is a very large number of projections — these probablistic projections, even though there’s seven scenarios in the ar6, encompass tens of thousands of sea level projections. right? because you have different percentiles and you have these different ranges. ultimately, you need to get down to a discrete set of sea level scenarios. right? you need to have that down to a set of three, five, whatever the case may be. the way that was done in 2017 and 2018 was to start with the probablistic projections and then to go to the right to form the scenarios. right? here, what i say is the advantages of doing that, you can attach probabilities directly to the sea level scenarios, which i think you’re all familiar with. you would pick a scenario, you would see the liklihood or the different range of probabilities associated with that scenario and then you’re off and running. however, based on the previous report, how it was interpreted as well as other examples throughout the landscape of planning, there are a lot of downsides to doing this. so, the underlying assumptions you make in doing this kind of get lost. if i’m looking at a probability, it’s important to consider that there is a probability associated with the scenario or the ssp or the warming level that you have selected. right? so, if i go and just use my probability as is, my probablistc projection, and you’re making scientific decisions. the process of getting here to here, you’re saying something about what you think the science is saying about the likelihood of different scenarios and projections. it’s blurring that gap between chapter 2 in this report and chapter 3 in this report. right? we’re not providing the clear scientific evidence that allows guidance to be built. and the last point here, there are possible big shifts that can occur from one update to the next. we see that with the h plus plus. if we work back the other way, and i’ll just go over this quickly, here what we’re doing is defining the discrete sea level scenarios on the right and providing the context with the probablistic projections on the left. the pros of this, the underlying sea level assumptions are explicit, they’re very clear, they’re directly attached. the likelihood of assumptions themselves can be factored in. that type of statement i said about the 3 degree c future, i can say something about the most likely scenario as a result. they are intended to be more robust to scientific updates, which is important. and i think an important thing here is they’ll be in line with the federal guidance and national climate assessment going forward. that will make the process of updating — of writing a report like this easier in the future. there are certainly some downsides to this. one, you have to start and define the plausible range in the scenario definitions of the starting point. i say that’s a con, but it’s not that difficult to do because we can look at the projections in advance, look at the scientific literature, the ar6 provides the guide for coming up with that plausible range. the last thing is the exceedance probabilities come at the end. it’s not an either/or. these thiings are directly related to each other and very important to consider. this is why we’re adopting the sea level framing as opposed to the probablistic projections. okay. so, what happened to the h plus plus? nothing, it’s being updated. i kind of hit on this already. the exact same modeling group using a similar but updated model that was used to support the formation of the h plus plus scenario in 2017/2018 has been used here in these low-confidence scenarios that help build the high estimate. so, we have not changed anything. there’s not a new model that we said, now we need to consider this. it’s the same line of evidence that’s been updated. a simple way to put it. if you want to call that same line of evidence h plus plus in the past, you can call the same line of evidence that leads to our high scenario similar to h plus plus or interpret it in that here. the key finding there is more warming is needed to trigger instabilities that would lead to significant sea level rise. so in order to get to more warming, that’s further out in the future, and it just pushes the high level sea level rise further out into the future. it’s the when, not if. we’ve pushed those possibilities futher out. one of the things to note is that the ar6 only generated two low confidence scenarios looking at one high warming, one low warming. you could generate these low confidence scenarios for any level of warming. just because they’re not in the report, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. it just means they weren’t computed. if you are trying to interpret one of those versus the other, you have to be careful how you interpret those probablistic projections. there were methodological choices made to generate that suite of scenarios and then those then impact your guidance. one last note, we have gotten a lot of feedback about not considering these low-confidence scenarios. and example of this is a report came out of new zealand and also one came out of maryland. they largely — they acknowledge the existence of the low-confidence scenarios and largely say they will not consider them in the production of guidance. so, based on scientific understanding and our level of consensus within the ar6, there’s very little scientific justification for doing this, for disregarding them entirely. they are plausible, to use that word. they are still being evaluated from a research perspective. one thing to note is that we can really do a good job of explaining these processes, these scenarios, in a way that helps support the formation of guidance like that in chapter 3. i don’t think they should be disregarded but they should be communicated clearly and then that should impact how they’re used in guidance. last slide. the vertical land motion is another one. in particular for the bay area, there were questions about the alameda tide gauge versus the san francisco tide gauge. the reason i bring those up, the alameda tide gauge had a positive rate of vertical land motion. it was evaluated to be uplifting slightly. the san francisco gauge was identified to be stable or slightly subsiding. so, i’m showing — this is a very complicated figure. we’ve gone into more detail within the past couple months here looking at satellite observations, looking at gps, looking at tide gauges, looking at the difference between satellite altemetry and tide gauges, and we’re able to provide much better context for the vertical land motion we see. as an example, for alameda, two of our methods indicate uplift. two of our methods more directly tied to the observations indicate a similar level to what you see in san francisco. i think this is information we can help communicate and then allow people understand how to implement that. that really goes back to the point that a lot of the drivers of sea level rise are consistent across the california coastline and then we can make adjustments based on the vertical land motion that you choose to adopt and implement. i think in particular, the — there’s an example in san rafael, very high rates of subsidence present there that we see in the satellite observations but are just not captured, there’s no gps station there, they’re not captured in the projections. that kind of analysis and additional information that we need to try to support the implementation of these scenarios. so, i have key takeaways, i will leave those up because i’ve said them four different ways by now and i’ll be happy to take any questions.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: commissioner eklund. i’m sorry. i apologize. any comment or questions from the public, sierra?

>>Sierra Peterson: no public comment.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you. commissioner eklund.

>>Pat Eklund: thank you very much, chair wasserman. great presentation. very interesting. to what extent is your report going to be looking at the extrapolation of sea level rise at different points throughout the san francisco bay? so, for example, when we get the report am i going to be able to look at it to see what the potential sea level rise is for, like, bahia or some others as you go up towards the bay? obviously there’s a lot of different ramifications that could influence your projections. curious on that. and i’ll probably have a follow-up.

>>Ben Hamlington: quick answer to that. so, the projections themselves, the scenarios, are on a one-degree grid. we provide greater levels on the vertical land motion. if we do choose to include that map, it’s like 50-meter resolution. extremely high resolution information. but i think the important point here is that the processes that we’re modeling and representing within the scenarios are known to vary only on large spatial scales. they vary on a regional level. now, when you start to think about the impacts that that background sea level rise can drive in the bay area, these areas, that’s where you need more local information and more detailed study. this is just providing the foundation. it’s a starting point upon which, yeah, more detailed information is needed to be brought in to understand the impacts of specific locations.

>>Pat Eklund: so, how would we be doing the next step so that if we needed to do that additional level in order to project whether bahia will be completely under water, the houses, for example, because they have wetlands underneath them. so how is that going to do be done? how is that going to be paid for?

>>Ben Hamlington: so, i should separate things here. we’re looking at the mean sea level. i could easily take — this work is done in a lot of areas. you could take a digital elevation model and i could couple that background sea level rise, and look at areas that could be at a threat of being under water. so, i can bring in higher resolution. i think the way i was answering that is a nod to what’s in chapter 4 where you think more about the flooding, the frequency of flooding, the severity and more detailed information. so, from like a screening level assessment, you could use that mean sea level i’m talking about here relevant to elevations and say something, but to do something more comprehensive that gets into a subsection of the report and there’s expertise to do that work and support that transition from this foundational sea level rise into something more meaningful at a local level.

>>Pat Eklund: would you be amenable to working with the cities and the counties specifically to get down to that level of detail to help us in development of these plans?

>>Ben Hamlington: my rule is to support the projections. at — so, just my role to be clear at nasa, it’s pretty large-scale. we look at global scales and how that relates to the local level. that being said, our other authors in the report are experts in these topics. we have members from usgs, from academia, people who have worked in detail and i know who support the state and local communities a number of ways, in addition to opc and other areas who support the rollout of this and implementation of it, i guess i should say.

>>speaker: if i could jump in for a second. i see cory nodding his head, i wanted to give cory a chance to talk about the locality that he’s working on, meaning the bay shoreline.

>>Cory Copeland: yeah. thank you so much. i just wanted to highlight some of the work that — thanks to the close coordination that opc has done with us, we have been able to see some of these numbers and start to integrate it into how we’re approaching developing the hazard scenarios for the regional shoreline adaptation planning. so, we have taken these scenarios for timelines 2050/2100 and used existing regional hydrological models that do a better job expressing some of those local variances, both baseline sea level rise scenarios, scenarios with storm surge as well as ground water rise. so, we’re doing the work to try to translate this guidance into really meaningful information that will hopefully support local governments as they’re preparing the plans and also ourselves as we do our own planning work and regulatory reviews and things like that.

>>Pat Eklund: cory, at what point would that information be available? i think that the sooner we become aware of implications for current land uses, the better we are able to help make sure that this is going to be a smooth transition.

>>Cory Copeland: yeah. well, i guess there are two sides of it. one side is on the opc side, the other is on our side. on the opc side, which probably would wait until it’s officially adopted hopefully in june to just make sure it’s the official state guidance. and then, you know, additionally on our side, we’ve been going through a rigorous process with a data and mapping subcommittee under the rsap to review all this and to make sure that our regional experts on these things are in agreement that our approach is reasonable to translating this data. once we’re confident in that, that’s when it would become available. minimally before the guidance is complete, you know, we definitely are going to have this available for people as a form of technical assistance to anyone developing the plans.

>>Pat Eklund: great. i think it’s important that, you know, that at least the elected officials and the staff in each of the counties have an opportunity to get sort of a heads up on that information. don’t forget to involve the elected officials in that. because if we’re not kept informed what the implications are and we could get blind-sided. i think that based on the potential implications and ramifications in different areas, it could be problematic. the sooner we can start sitting down and having some discussions, i think the better.

>>speaker: thank you.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: commissioner gunther?

>>Andrew Gunther: can you hear me now?

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: yes.

>>Andrew Gunther: great. just a couple of things i want to make sure i understand and a couple questions. if i understand this correctly, no matter what the scenario that we’re considering, the rate of sea level rise that we’re considering going up will be higher at the end of the century than it is right now. is that correct?

>>Ben Hamlington: except for the low scenario. so it is a correct statement. the low scenario — an underlying assumption of the low scenario is that the current rate continues. every other scenario, your statement is correct. the rate will accellerate and it will be higher at the end of the century. yet.

>>Andrew Gunther: and no matter the scenario — i guess we’re defining the low scenario as this. but sea level will continue to rise into the 23rd century.

>>Ben Hamlington: that’s correct.

>>Andrew Gunther: okay. and. for — the fact that h plus plus is gone, that’s lovely news. you don’t get to hear that kind of thing too much, is that because we’re projecting less warming than we were ten years ago or because we have a different understanding of ice sheet dynamics.

>>Ben Hamlington: yeah. so, i wish it was gone. it’s more updated. it’s the latter. we’ve updated our understanding of those potential processes, at least that one modeling group has. when i say that there’s more warming needed to trigger those processes, that’s the evaluation. it’s basically having the same underlining assumptions about how we get to different warming levels in the future. it’s just instead of — i’ll throw out only numbers. instead of using 3 degrees celsius of additional warming by 2100 to potentially trigger those ice sheet processes, now it’s maybe 4 degrees celsius. the h plus plus, i use that when not if framing. instead of two meters being possible by 2100. if i were to look out 2120, 2130, it comes back on the table. so we have pushed things out a couple decades.

>>Andrew Gunther: great. my last question is about vertical land motions. so, are — have you considered or — i don’t — in terms of what might happen here in the bay area, vertical land motions are gradual processes as opposed to, say, vertical land motions in places where you get subduction earthquakes where the land can move a foot or two in a minute. so, we’re not considering those kinds of land motions in california when we talk about the future relative to sea level rise.

>>Ben Hamlington: that’s correct. we’re assuming certain processes and ones that we think we can reasonably predict or project on to the future. that’s the slower scale processes. it’s largely driven by the current rate we see in vertical land motion.

>>Andrew Gunther: if we were actually in seattle or we were in prince william sound or somewhere where those kind of subduction earthquakes are more common, there could be vertical land motions that could happen very quickly that would change sea level.

>>Ben Hamlington: yep. american samoa is kind of the poster child for that. there was an earthquake in 2010 that caused a shift, and then the rate of subsidence increased by almost an order of a magnitude as a result of that. they have an extremely high rate of relative sea level rise as a result. those things can happen.

>>Andrew Gunther: there are parts of prince william sound where old intertidal habitat is way above current sea levels because of the great alaska earthquake. that happened in a matter of minutes. great. thank you very much. great presentation.

>>Ben Hamlington: thanks.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: commissioner showalter.

>>Patricia Showalter: sorry, i was having trouble with my mute button. to respond quickly to andy gunther’s comment about land motion. in the south bay we’ve had land motion due to ground water extraction. san jose has dropped over 12 feet in the early 1900s. and that ground water — that land subsidence has been stopped because of really aggressive ground water motion. but there is quite a bit of subsidence occurring in the central valley due to ground water extraction. i wanted to mention it’s not just earthquakes, it’s ground water extraction. at the moment, that’s not one of our problems. thank you.

>>Ben Hamlington: that’s a good point. that’s part of the satellite we’ve done. it’s for the entirety of california, not just the coastal areas. you can see a lot of those signals pop out. katie hageman in san rafael has been looking at this in detail. there’s an extremely high rate of subsidence on the order of almost a centimeter per year. it’s an order of magnitude greater than the sea level rise we see in a lot of locations. so, with satellite observations, we’re able to identify that. with that understanding allows her to better plan for her community and provide better projections. i do think these other types of data analysis that are very available here in california should be relied on to really start to constrain some of those additional factors. it’s a very good point. there are a lot of drivers of vertical land motion that we need to consider.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: i don’t see any other hands up for questions or comments.

>>Larry Goldzband: can i make one comment?

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: of course.

>>Lawrence Goldzband: cory and i had a conversation this morning knowing ben would be presenting what he’s presenting. we talked through how do we talk about this to the commission ultimately? so, after the opc approves whatever it is going to approve, cory and the team will be analyzing it — not that they haven’t already started, and we will schedule a presentation for the commission about how we will use that guidance in the future. as i think we did in 2018 or 2019. but we’re looking that up just to make sure. because your permit staff uses this kind of information on a daily basis. and we want to make sure that you understand how our staff will be using it and we’re going to — this is news to ben, but we’ll invite him back for that. just so he can take a look at it and — and give his analysis, which he will do certainly through the system. you’ll see him again soon.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you. all right.

>>Ben Hamlington: i appreciate the opportunity to present. thank you for your questions.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: thank you very much for the presentation. we look forward to the next one as larry indicated. that brings us to adjournment. who wishes to take the honor of moving adjournment? nobody wants to move —

>>Pat Eklund: i’ll move it.

>>chair, Zachary Wasserman: commissioner eklund moves. commissioner nelson seconds. seeing no objections. we are adjourned. thank you as always.

>>Pat Eklund: see you may 3rd.

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If you have any questions concerning an item on the agenda, would like to receive notice of future hearings, or access staff reports related to the item, please contact the staff member whose name, email address and direct phone number are indicated in parenthesis at the end of the agenda item.

Campaign Contributions

State law requires Commissioners to disqualify themselves from voting on any matter if they have received a campaign contribution from an interested party within the past 12 months. If you intend to speak on any hearing item, please indicate in your testimony if you have made campaign contributions in excess of $250 to any Commissioner within the last year, and if so, to which Commissioner(s) you have contributed. Other legal requirements govern contributions by applicants and other interested parties and establish criteria for Commissioner conflicts of interest. Please consult with the staff counsel if you have any questions about the rules that pertain to campaign contributions or conflicts of interest.

Access to Meetings

Meetings are physically held in venues that are accessible to persons with disabilities. If you require special assistance or have technical questions, please contact staff at least three days prior to the meeting via email. We will attempt to make the virtual meeting accessible via ZOOM accessibility capabilities, as well.