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The San Ramon Planning Commission is set to discuss clarifying and solidifying the city’s Objective Design and Development Standards (ODDS) as part of a continued analysis in a study session at its upcoming regular meeting.
Commissioners are poised to engage with city staff and provide feedback on a report evaluating the city’s current housing standards and zoning ordinance language, and to discuss how to update zoning ordinances and other regulations to make the guidelines objective rather than subjective.
Under recent state laws aimed at facilitating additional affordable housing, residential projects are required to “be reviewed only against objective design and development standards that ‘involve no personal or subjective judgment by a public official,'” according to a staff report prepared by Senior Planner Cindy Yee for the upcoming meeting.
“The objective development standards in the ODDS will work as a baseline, creating citywide standards that apply to residential projects and will work in tandem with other City standards already in place,” Yee wrote.
So far, city staff and consultants have identified nearly 100 standards and guidelines in the city’s zoning ordinance and specific plans that consist of subjective language, according to Yee, with work underway to adopt new language that would meet ODDS requirements.
Following the upcoming discussion with commissioners, staff and consultants are set to continue working on an ODDS draft, with the goal of presenting the full draft to officials in the coming months. The city is poised to adopt the required amendments and objective standards by this fall.Â
In other business, the commission is set to hear an informational report on the implementation of AB 1397, which went into effect in 2018. It consisted of changing to state Housing Element law that limits the discretion of local municipalities to deny applications for housing projects that consist of at least 20% affordable housing.
The legislation means that projects that meet or exceed the affordable housing threshold are entitled to “use by right” without the requirement of conditional use or planned unit development permits, or other discretionary review by local bodies for housing projects that meet the affordability criteria.
“In other words, the City has no discretion to deny any such project,” wrote Debbie Chamberlain, community development director, in a staff report for the upcoming meeting. “Staff can only enforce the objective criteria in its building and zoning codes. But the Community Development Department can enhance transparency and keep the public informed.”
The San Ramon Planning Commission is set to meet at 6 p.m. on Tuesday (April 2). The agenda is available here.
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