Carmel-by-the-Sea City Council
May 4, 2026

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When trees had to be removed, whether on private or public lands, they were quickly replaced. Devendorf “gave away tree saplings like candy” to newcomers developing their homesites. So, when the forest was cut to lay out Ocean Avenue (seen at left in 1888), it was soon re-forested with the same species (seen at right near Monte Verde Street in 1903).

The same founding year of the Carmel Development Company, seventeen-year-old, trained carpenter, Michael J. Murphy built his first house: today’s “First Murphy House,” originally tucked in the forest on Mission Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue (as seen here). The rectangular plan bungalow in the Anglo-Colonial style was small and pared down with no exposed structural members typical of the Craftsman style or even a porch. Yet, it had understated flourishes such as the decorative glass, the slender, double-ogee wood siding, and the flared or bellcast hip roof. Just two years later, in 1904, Murphy became the chief builder for the Company and went on to construct about 350 buildings in town.

At this same time, Ocean Avenue was emerging as a
commercial corridor in the Pioneer style typical of
western towns. The wood-framed buildings had
horizontal, false-front facades, extended vertically above their front-gabled, pitched roofs and sometimes
ornamented with wood trims, panels, and pediments to
give them a larger, more prosperous look. This included L.S. Slevin’s, the post office and first general merchandise store, Fritz Schweinger’s bakery, still operating as a
bakery today, and Robert and Fred Leidig’s grocery store (all seen here circa 1910).

In 1903, Thomas A. Work built the
Carmel Development Company
Building, a commercial block on Ocean
Avenue and San Carlos Street which
housed his hardware store, the Carmel
Development Company office, and
Devendorf’s Preble Grocery. The flatroofed, three bay, fireproof, roughtextured, concrete cinder-block structure, with its large, plate-glass store
windows capped by a ribbon band of
transom lights, was Carmel’s first truly Modern style building. Unadorned and clear in revealing its purpose, if somewhat formal or classical in its tripartite geometries, it is still in active commercial use today (seen here soon after construction).

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Ever nonconformist, Carmel architecture stepped both forward and backward simultaneously. Also around 1903, but perhaps channeling the Late Neolithic, attorney George Richardson built his L-shaped, 600 square-foot, saddlenotched, hand-hewn log cabin on Monte Verde Street between Fourth and Fifth Avenues (seen here circa 1914). This modest structure was poet Robinson Jeffers’ first local rental home.

With a
similarly
archaic
construction technique, Ben Turner (of the
aforementioned first brick house) hand-built the
tower and other native mudstone elements of a
home (now La Playa Hotel) designed by Artist
Christian Jorgenson for his wife, the chocolate
heiress, Angela Ghirardelli. Both the technique
and the quatrefoil window (seen here on the lower
left of the tower, circa 1906) replicate the originals of the Mission basilica.

But with modern building techniques also came freedom to explore many architectural styles beyond the traditional or the simple vernacular, some traditional-looking, some not. In 1905, the First Bay Area Regionalist or First Bay Tradition style, an interpretation of the American Shingle Style, appeared at Philip Wilson’s real estate office on the corner of Ocean Avenue and Dolores Street (seen here soon after construction, it was briefly the town’s first City Hall starting in 1917). With the sculptural qualities of a much smaller, flexible, unit of wood than timber or clapboard, shingles awakened a completely new, uniquely American, direction for architecture. With shingles tautly enveloping all surfaces and junctures, architecture could start to articulate the internal volume of a building, rather than its individual planes or structural components, just as the two dormers appear to swell up from the shingle surface below them to pop through the roof plane. These expressive volumetrics led, in turn, to a relaxation of symmetries and a casual naturalness, apparent in the asymmetrical lower fenestration and emphasized by the untreated, rough and rustic wood, often pre-aged in buttermilk, so that the grays would blend into the local forested surroundings.

This emerging idea that buildings should feel natural, not artificial, should blend exterior and interior, should honestly reveal something intrinsic, such as their internal uses or volumes, this architectural “honesty,” was also explored within the American Craftsman style, which exposed the often concealed craft of construction. In his 1905 Gardener house (seen here on San Carlos Street at Santa Lucia Avenue), M.J. Murphy
exaggerates its raw, rectilinear materials and the care in their assembly. For example, the roof planes overhang well beyond what the walls require for shelter and the roof beams extend even farther and appear stronger than what those roofing planes require for support. Similarly, the oversized porch posts, Enhance. Subordinate. Fit. Retain. Design. Detail.

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the deep shadow lines of the vertical siding battens, the change of siding pattern at the foundation, and the bold ganging and framing of the windows all serve to illustrate both how the structure is made and the unadorned, natural purity of what it is made of.

These innovative, architectural experiments coincided with a number of Revivalist styles, forming an Eclectic Era that coincided with a surge in Carmel’s development after the Great San Francisco earthquake. Architect Eugenia Maybury designed, also in 1905, a Tudor Revival or Mock Tudor style home for the McGowan sisters on Thirteenth Avenue near San Antonio Avenue (seen here soon after construction). The late-medieval, English vernacular Tutor style relied on a heavy timber post-and-beam, perimeter structure, with wattle and daub unevenly hand-packed between the wood members, leaving them partially exposed for a “half-timbered” appearance. Mock Tutor imitates these cottages of the British underclasses, with their vertically proportioned windows, jettied upper stories, soft thatch roofs, and showy chimneys, but with one important exception. Born of the post-industrial 20th century, Mock half-timbers are no longer timbers, but instead non-structural, decorative, trim pieces applied on top of the smooth stucco finish of ordinary modern construction, making it challenging to capture the irregularity, depth, and authenticity of the original.

Perhaps the earliest Mission Revival style structure
appeared, again in 1905, on a Lincoln Street parcel at
Seventh Avenue donated by Devendorf to create Carmel’s
first protestant church (seen here circa 1935 before its eventual demolition). Rather than stylistically diverging, this long-awaited alternative to the town’s Catholic church seems, perhaps paradoxically, to exalt its predecessor.

Despite the freedoms that its modern wood framing and
stucco construction would have afforded, the composition accurately echos the restrictions of the mission’s stone construction, with its structural reliance on blank expanses of stacked stone walls and on the narrow, rounded
openings of stone arches. And though these openings are so shallow and devoid of shadows that they easily betray the thinness of the modern walls, there remains an earnest homage to the mission’s square moorish towers, its asymmetrical massing, and the Baroque arch flourish, reinterpreted here to form the wavy shape of the entire front gable.

By 1911, Frank Devendorf could report that over sixty percent of Carmel residents devoted their lives to work in the “aesthetic arts.” His prophecy that the aesthetically educated would be the best stewards of the environment came true when, on October 31st, 1916, residents voted to incorporate the village of Carmel by the Sea, citing as a main reason the failure of Monterey County government to protect and preserve its unique natural character from the destructive forces of "progress." Unsurprisingly, one of the first actions of the new local government was to pass ordinances to protect the ancient Monterey pines. Perhaps nobody epitomized this twin love of art and nature more than Robinson Jeffers (seen here in 1919) who, while not writing poetry, continued the Carmel tradition of handmade stone towers by building his own out of native granite at his Tor House between Scenic Road and Ocean View Avenue on nearby Carmel Point.

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Just a few blocks away and a few years later, Architect Charles Sumner Greene embraced both modern
construction and expression. In 1919, on Lincoln Street south of Thirteenth Avenue he built one of the first
concrete foundations in town and likely the first
prefabricated board-and-batten, wood walls, which were
tilted up rather than built in place. He designed the home (seen here soon after construction) as a new interpretation of the u-shaped hacienda ranch homes built by early
Mexican-Spanish settlers. Those early ranch buildings used their open courtyards and surrounding porticos to provide shade, to dissipate cooking heat, or to collect water. Here, however, the tree cover precludes the need for roof
overhangs, the simple shed roofs direct water away, and, often in Carmel, open courtyards were oriented southward to collect heat.

In 1923, Greene conducted another architectural experiment with the idiosyncratic studio he added to the east side of his property. By applying his considerable personal artisanship to an array of random materials (brick from a demolished hotel, leftover marble from another job, used bottle glass, fence pickets discarded by a ranch, hand-harvested and donated timber and marble scraps), he resourcefully up-cycled these “found objects” into an unusual interpretation of the Mission Style. Though constructed in the stacked-masonry tradition of the adobe and stone missions, with characteristic barrel tile roofs and small, arch-supported openings, the building has the broad front gable and low-slung, overall form of his famous Craftsman bungalows. Unlike either style, the front facade (seen here in a recent view) appears almost hermetically sealed, with its heavy teak door and conspicuously miniscule fenestration with impenetrable tinted glass, perhaps an adaptation to support his artistic concentration or interior acoustics for piano playing and salon gatherings.

Certainly the diversity of architecture in Carmel sprang from the diversity of people building there. But diversity prevailed even within one person’s work:

M.J. Murphy avoided repetition whenever possible, even though he built more than anyone else. In 1922, he tackled the Monterey Colonial Revival style in the Kluegel home on Camino Real North of Ocean Avenue (seen here in a recent view). Born in California, Monterey Colonial originally fused the shipwright’s simple detailing, roofline, and overall form of the early New England Colonial, the long, sometimes full-height openings and double shading provided by a prominent cantilevered balcony of the Caribbean Colonial, and the adobe wall construction of the Spanish Colonial. Here, the Monterey Revival substyle (of Spanish Colonial) repeats these features, though with stucco over modern wood framing, the four-quarter simplicity of the facade supporting its many asymmetries and irregularities.

The same year, J.S. Cone designed her own home at the corner of Monte Verde Street and Thirteenth Avenue (seen here in a recent view). Clad entirely in vertical planks of redwood bark found in nearby groves, the rough, dark exterior of its asymmetric volumes recedes into the forest.

However, the plentiful windows with sturdy mullions spaced in scale with the cladding, plus the double-height central hall with full-length balconies concealed within the simple main form, allow for a bright and open interior without compromising the home's unsurpassed deference to the natural site.

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Notwithstanding the predominance of the Craftsman style and a general emphasis on simplicity, the Eclectic Era of the early 1900’s continued on in the residential neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, a different trend started to develop in the commercial core. For its 1915 Panama-California Exposition, San Diego aptly selected the revival styles of the first European settlers in California to celebrate its auspicious future as the first west coast port for European ships coming through the new Panama Canal.

The dazzling success of this architectural spectacle is widely credited for repopularizing “New World,” Mexican and Spanish Revival styles of the Southern hemisphere. Perhaps the first glimpse of this trend in Carmel was in 1922, when architect Thomas Morgan overlaid a Spanish Eclectic facade of stucco and barrel tiles onto a typical, wood-framed, Western false-front, infill structure.

The Thomas A. Oakes building (seen here soon after construction) performed important civic functions as the new post office, second city hall, council chambers, and police station. Despite its official role, however, the building did not establish an official style — in contrast to other towns such as Santa Barbara, which legally codified its signature Spanish look in 1925.

Instead, also in 1922, a rival trend emerged downtown looking primarily toward the Northern hemisphere “Old World”. Lee Gottfried built and Edward Kuster designed the Tudor Revival Weavers Studio for his spouse Ruth Kuster (seen here in 1923 after relocation and an added ticket booth serving the Golden Bough theater on Ocean Avenue). Perhaps counterintuitively, Tudor Revival style does not revive the Tudor style itself, meaning the late-medieval style of the royal House of Tudor. Rather, the early twentieth century version revives the modest country cottage vernacular style of Tudor England to satisfy what architectural historian Nicholas Pevsner called “the English flight from reality around the 1914-18 war [WWI].” The modest, handcrafted look, a vision of simpler times and places, offered the British an escape from industrial age ordeals and likely resonated similarly with city dwellers seeking respite in Carmel’s ancient coastal forest.

A romantic accident of history gave the “old-world” trend a sudden boost in 1924, when Hugh Comstock visited his sister in Carmel and she introduced him to Mayotta Browne. The 27-year-old rancher and the doll-maker were married within a few months. That same year, Comstock, fresh off various handyman gigs in Los Angeles, built his new bride a teeny backyard cottage showroom named “Hansel” on Torres Street near Sixth Avenue (seen here at that time with its owners) for her thriving “Otsy-Totsy” felt doll business.

Its Fairytale or Storybook style, was a brief, inter-war phenomenon dreamed up in Los Angeles by film industry creatives influenced by soldiers returning from their first exposure to European countrysides. (In fact, the famous Hollywood sign originally spelled Hollywoodland and was built in 1923 as an advertisement for the nation’s first storybook real estate development.) Thought to be the inspiration for Disney’s immersive and lavish “imagineering” approach to set design, this Tudoresque substyle is characterized by exaggeratedly plastic and sometimes cartoonish interpretation of the medieval. Features can include lopsided walls and undulating roofs with deliberately misaligned shingles wrapped over rolled eaves meant to emulate thatch or puckered around eyebrow windows, fanciful roof rake boards, stucco artificially aged through tinting or patination, implausibly sinewy, false half-timbering or window and door surrounds, hand-whittled and possibly charred or distressed to suggest
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age, irregular door and window shapes, sizes, and placements. The labor intensity of its idiosyncratic craftsmanship fit well with Carmel’s artistic and bohemian culture, but the difficulty of convincingly replicating it virtually guaranteed the style’s demise during the Great Depression. Still, in its decade or so of popularity this theatrical SoCal style spread widely across America, likely finding few places with the deep forest backdrop of actual fairytales to exhibit it so perfectly. Understandably, Comstock was inundated with orders, setting him on a new career path to become Carmel’s next-most prolific builder and causing old-world reverberations from backyards to downtown.

And yet, in exactly the same year, 1924, Carmel saw further exploration into the “new-world" styles as well. On Ocean Avenue and Dolores Street, Earl Percy Parkes designed and built a Pueblo Revival gift shop for owner, Mary Dummage (seen here in a recent view). Perhaps, the oldest continuously occupied architectural style in America, Pueblos were made of balled or bricked adobe and timber roofs with few, if any, windows. In the revival style, if adobe is not used, rounded corners, irregular parapets, and thick, battered walls usually stuccoed in earthtones simulate it. Round vigas or roof beam logs or other rough timbers often project through the parapets or under upper stories as corbeling, as seen here, to imply a structural function. However, the plentiful fenestration, without even a pretense of supporting lintels over its wide openings, betrays this particular building's internal wood framing and compromises the credibility of an otherwise easily- and often-reproduced style.

A year later, in 1925, Fred Ruhl constructed the
first phase of the aptly-named Normandy Inn on
Ocean Avenue at Monte Verde Street (seen here
circa 1930). Berkeley-trained architect, Robert
Stanton designed the complex in the Normandy
Variant of the Tudor Revival style. Because in
that region of France country homes were often
attached to their barns, this style variant is
distinguished primarily by the addition of a tower
element, which reinterprets a barn’s grain or silage
facility, usually as a main entry or stair tower as it
appears here to the left of the main entry.

A year after that, in 1926, the City of Carmel held a design competition for its new library building one block uphill from the inn, on Ocean Avenue at Lincoln Street.

Unconvinced by all nine of the first-round entries, the City hired emeritus Berkeley professor and famed, stylistically eclectic architect, Bernard Maybeck to partner with
contractor M.J. Murphy. When completed in 1928 (seen
here around then), the value of the delay was revealed by the building’s persuasive fidelity to its style. An essay in dignified restraint, the design derives expressive power through its control of volume, proportion, and measured detail, not complex massing or materials. It celebrates its prominent community purpose with its unabashedly prominent reading room and enormous, steel-framed, front window. The ratio of window to wall, however, remains correctly modest with all glass set back as far as possible so as to accurately evoke both the spanning limitation and the deep thickness of older adobe walls. The weight of the barrel tile roof is properly conveyed by the hefty and genuinely structural roof beams and how they extend beyond the walls to easily support the deep overhangs. The perhaps surprising subordinance of the low, recessive, and darkshadowed, side entry wing defers to and thereby re-emphasizes the library’s mission: reading.

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Also in 1926, on Dolores Street south of Ocean Avenue
and, Bonnie Lee commissioned Hugh Comstock to
design and build her Art Shop. His only Fairy Tale
style commercial building (seen here shortly after its
1927 construction), it echos and exaggerates even
further the make-believe of Hansel and his other
residences. Roofs go from wavy to wandering, doors
from curved to camelid, windows from regular
rectangles to lawless lozenges, trims from bumpy to
bulging, and chimneys from quirky to so impossibly
quixotic as to require steel bracing. Now operating as
the Tuck Box, the building represents the epitome of
Comstock’s mischief with this style, inspiring other,
though always more demure, commercial
development.

The same year that “old-world" style peaked
in extravagant fantasy, downtown
development in the “new-world” style also
began to peak. 1927 saw Oakland architects,
Roger Blaine’s and David Olsen’s Eclectic
Spanish Revival designs for Dr. Rudolph
Kocher's medical practice at the La Giralda
building on the corner of Seventh Avenue
and Dolores Street (seen here from each
street respectively in recent views), followed,
in 1928, by their El Paseo building for L.C.

Merrill across Dolores
(seen below in a recent view),
and then, in 1929, their building for Robert and Isabel Leidig on Dolores near Ocean on Avenue (seen below
in a recent view). These buildings, all primarily
concrete, along with several others built around the
same period, diverge somewhat in their influences.

But, they share the hallmarks of the style: an emphasis on the solidity implied by masonry construction, with
its heavily shadowed, small, deep openings in blank
expanses of monotone stucco-coated wall, the
handmade decorative tile and metalwork, the rough,
handcrafted appearance of the clay barrel tile, the
irregular massing and openings, and the like. With
some details drawn from measurements actually
taken on the architects’ trips to Spain, the El Paseo
building in particular provides a veritable dictionary
of vocabulary authentic to its Revival language: the
custom metal window grilles with unique twists in
each bar, the pre-aged wood banisters, the doors and
windows that never match, the eye-catching shadows
of scalloped balconies, and the lintel over the
passageway entrance sized to properly reflect the
spanning strength of wood (though it is painted concrete).

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When the Sunset School outgrew its 1906 “new world”
Mission style building, the town hired Oakland
architect John J. Donovan in 1926, and later
Fresno/Monterey architect C.J. Ryland in 1931, to
shepherd its large, new campus between Mission and
San Carlos Streets, Eighth and Tenth Avenues through
its expansions (seen here in 1937). Ryland,
architecturally educated in France, mimicked the style
of granges dimières cisterciennes (cistercian tithe
barns), to give Sunset its dominant, “old-world”
character of Cistercian Medieval Revival. Monasteries
had pursued the austere Cistercian style, which evolved directly into the early Gothic over a century later, as a pious rejection of Classical ornamentation. And, the abbey barns were even purer expressions of deft, yet practical, engineering. The voluminous spaces (which the church required to store one tenth of local annual produce) found their most sturdy geometry in the massive, triangular roofs that came nearly to the ground, where they received support from disproportionately low, thick, and buttressed walls, in which openings were rare, deep, small, and often ganged together, like the double entry here, usually under larger discharge or relieving arches, all of which also received and expressed the great mass supported above. For these masterfully simple structures, often the only concessions to ornament were the finials atop the gable ends, thought to bring good luck, presumably for abundant harvests.

And so the downtown architecture pendulum swung back and forth for several years between the old world and the new world, albeit with some significant detours. For example, diagonal from the new library at Ocean Avenue and Lincoln Street, contractor Earl Percy Parkes built the Seven Arts complex for arts entrepreneur and Forest Theater founder, Herbert Heron. Designed by Albert B. Coats, the building (seen here in 1926) seems clearly indebted to its Shingle Style neighbor a block uphill: the 1905 Wilson building (see way above). The future mayor, with his principled support for bohemian over business interests, was a logical proponent of this pioneering American style.

His building uses the same taut skin, merging into very shallow overhangs to de-emphasize material in favor of overall volume, which is in turn emphasized by the simple, emphatic gables, punctuated only by single openings of multiple ganged windows and by the cyclopean shed dormer that looks as if it emerged as pressure from the spaces below overpowered and pierced through the thin roof plane. The clear difference between the two buildings is the substitution of a wooden skin over wooden framing for a stucco skin over concrete block. This unconventional, if not unique, mutation was perhaps explained by concerns over fire, addressed
conveniently by the Carmel Thermotite Company, newly
incorporated just a few streets away where it molded its innovative fireproof blocks (also used to construct Flanders Mansion). The building’s unusual combination of durability and originality created an enduring symbol of the many
artists it hosted so famously for so long.

Another intentional stylistic detour downtown came in 1939, when Carmel’s most significant financier, Barnet Segal
rejected the Spanish Revival design of his architects, Swartz and Ryland, and ordered them toward Art Moderne. His bank on Ocean Avenue at Dolores Street (seen here after construction) embodies the style, with its horizontal, yet humanist proportions and symmetries, its concrete solidity, along with a neoclassical, near-white color, a rejection of classical ornament in favor of the new decorative arts, as well as curved gestures of glass and stone.

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Around the time this new international style hit downtown, a new, defiantly local, City Council swept into office.

Having become the first “poet mayor" of Carmel in 1930, Mayor Heron (of the Seven Arts building above) ran and won again in 1938, in part, to address commercial pressures on the natural environment venerated by Carmel’s bohemian residents. The new Council hired the highly acclaimed, Berkeley/Harvard educated Thomas Church, the “first founder” and pioneer of American landscape design and of a movement that became the “California Style.” Church famously believed, as Carmelites did, that rather than providing building decoration, “[a] garden should have no beginning and no end.” Meaning, it should be physically and visually integrated with the predominant natural environment and allow seamless human movement and inhabitation.

Church answered his assignment — to lessen the visual impact of the cars that now dominated the pine forest landscape — with a native stone planter running up the center of Ocean Avenue (seen here in the 1920s and 1940s).

The low height of the wall, the medium height of the native undergrowth, and the columnar forms of the Monterey pine street trees, whose foliage grows primarily quite high, allowed for the clever combination of opacity down at car level and transparency at eye and storefront level, creating both visual access to the commercial corridor and visual screening of the traffic for shoppers.

Throughout the development surge, the same revivalist
and eclectic forces in the commercial areas were at work throughout the residential areas as well, including the perhaps unique 1936 example of the Art Moderne style
built by M.J. Murphy on Thirteenth Avenue at Dolores
Street. Like the Bank of Carmel above, the H.

Markham house has the same horizontal emphasis,
classical proportions, local symmetries, look of solidity, and monochrome, light color. More spare than the
bank, its only curved gesture is the conical chimney
accent to the left.

As the second half of the 20th century approached, Carmel’s stylistic adventures were just beginning. However, with just a few exceptions such as those just mentioned, Carmel tended to derive its aesthetic direction from local and not international cues. For example, Hugh Comstock, never
one to be limited by his Fairytale fame, had always been a stylistically experimental builder and in 1948 he published a trailblazing pamphlet called “Post Adobe” (seen here in a recent view). Within it, he extolled an inventive building technique that wove together two ancient construction
techniques based on local materials and labor, timber post and beam with mud masonry, to create something brand
new and with potent stylistic implications. He argued that the compressive strength of mud brick,
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rendered waterproof with bitumen, when aided by the tensile strength and rectilinear guidance of wood could become an inexpensive, easy, and elegant approach suitable for one-story homes and requiring no additional insulation, interior or exterior finishing, or special details. This made his post-adobe a method accessible to laypeople, even to property owners themselves, leading to an emergence and proliferation of the Ranch style throughout town, such as this 1950 example on Scenic Road at Eighth Avenue (seen here in a recent view).

Also in 1948, Frank Lloyd Wright designed “Cabin on the Rocks” (seen here in a recent view) for Della Walker. Della’s sister, Alma, had deeded her the property on Scenic Road near Martin Way, under one condition: work with a notable architect. Wright, the first radically original American architect, and his former Taliesin apprentice, Mark Mills, delivered Walker’s request for a house “as durable as the rocks and as transparent as the waves” through carefully calibrated responses to the context.

To unify the structure into an “organic wholeness” at every scale from the site down to the detail, Wright relied on his signature tool: the Japanese (and later, De Stijl) principle of expressing irregular forms ordered over the rigor of a regular grid, but in this case using the unexpected module of a four-foot by four-foot parallelogram. This infinitely adaptable, geometric technique allowed Wright to take his signature stylistic invention, the Prairie School, which was inspired by the flatness of the midwestern plains, and
reinterpret it for the flatness of the Pacific shoreline through a casual, natural massing, responsive to the precise location.

He also emphasized the low and the horizontal, with a
bluish-green copper cantilevered roof floating above
minimally-framed glazing and not traditional windows,
deeply shadowed, dark-stained, native wood walls, all
recessed behind an asymmetrical native-stone base emerging from the existing rocks, which, together, masterfully
subordinated his built work to surrounding nature. It is perhaps no accident that the structure points toward Japan, as it was Wright’s fascination with the integrating geometries and natural subjects of Japanese prints that catalyzed his entire approach to design: “The print is more
autobiographical than may be imagined. If Japanese prints were to be deducted from my education, I don’t know what direction the whole might have taken.” (Utagawa Hiroshige’s 1833 “Driving Rain at Shono” from Wright’s collection seen here.) This cross-cultural, cross-discipline sensitivity and synthesis is just one mark of aesthetic genius. Alma Walker can be credited with insisting that such artistry is essential to building in Carmel.

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Around 1953, upon completion of Della Walker’s home, Mark Mills designed “Woodland House,” also for the Walker family, at Mission Street and 13th Avenue (seen here soon after construction). Mills, like Wright, used a roof floating above and around abstracted glazing and nestled within a grounded, solid base of native rock and concrete. This time, however, responding to the verticality of a completely wooded site, the roof tilts upward, sympathetically expresses its heavy timber structure and raw wood finishes, and creates views up into the tree canopy rather than out toward an ocean horizon. Also like Wright, Mills prioritized a building’s permanent responsibility to its natural and human community perhaps above its responsibility to any temporary occupant. In fact, Mills famously said that nature is “my silent client” and even “my client is nature,” sentiments that tie him closely to the environmental preservation mission of Devendorf and the early forest settlers.

Also in 1953, Clarence Mayhew, a
prolific, San Francisco-based and Berkeley-educated architect, designed a home for Helen Proctor between Scenic Road and San Antonio Avenue near Thirteenth Avenue (seen here in a recent view). Like most International Style buildings, the home emphasizes volume of internal space through lightweight, skeletal frames and glazed transparency, rather than mass and solidity; visual interest through functional divergences, rather than applied ornamentation; overall simplification of geometries; and flexible modularity, rather than strict classical symmetry. Yet, the undercurrents of classical composition often strongly order such buildings and Mayhew, educated in classical architecture at L'École des Beaux-Arts prior to Berkeley, would have known the standard facade in canonical ancient temple architecture: the hexastyle portico. This deep porch, with its six columns and five openings resting on a plinth of low windows and topped by a textured pediment of sorts, echos the ancient closely and then diverges to the modern with the addition of a solid, sixth module on the left, a chimney accent on the right, an off-center glass door, and only half a triangle for the roofline. This building, like a temple, follows its own mathematical order to sit in deliberate contraposition to natural disorder and therefore, like the International Style, it functions as an unapologetic “machine for living.” However, its modest scale, quirky asymmetry, recessive coloration, and natural wood construction, all push it away from the international and pull it closer to the local and associate the house with the Second Bay Area Regional style.

The Third Bay Area Regional style emerged in
Carmel soon thereafter, exemplified by “Three
Sisters,” a trio of homes on Lopez Street near
Fourth Avenue, including Cosmos House (seen
here on the right in an original site plan and in a
recent view), all designed by Berkeley- and
Harvard-trained architect, Henry Hill between 1961
and 1962. This California style, an even more
relaxed and warm interpretation of modernism,
uses native, unfinished materials and loose
geometries to tailor a respectful response to to the
natural environment. As the plans show, Hill
played freely with an unusual, angled vocabulary to
create three completely unique yet complementary
compositions that deftly avoid both the existing vegetation and one another. The houses maximize the flow of landscape between them by sharing no parallel exterior walls, which can create confining outdoor corridors. Instead they minimize contact, approaching one another only at sharp corners and exploiting the smallest possible geometric unit: the point.

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Also in the Third Bay Tradition, famed architect Charles Moore designed the Warren Saltzman House in 1966, on Palou Street near Casanova Street (seen here in a recent view). Though clad in unfinished wood shingles and nestled well into the existing site as is characteristic of the style, perhaps uncharacteristically the house plays more with traditional domestic shapes, such as the gabled roof (here exaggerated in scale and always in halves). His quotation of historic forms foreshadowed the influence Moore later had in ushering in the reactive Postmodern style of the 1970s to 90s, along with his Princeton colleague Robert Venturi and others. Together they changed the course of modernist architecture with their searing warnings against ignoring traditional urban context and offered instead an architectural language that was extreme in its reference to classical design elements (keystones, pediments, column capitals), often out of proportion or grouped discordantly to highlight the paradox of their resurrection into the modern age.

But Postmodernism did not thrive in Carmel, where the
forest context dominated the urban context. Instead, the bohemian residents and their experimental designers
continued in the more quirky, organic vocabulary of the Bay Tradition, as architect Mickey Muennig did for his
1974 “Owl House” on Dolores Street near Alta Avenue in
nearby Carmel Woods (seen here in a recent view). With
even looser geometries than found at the “Sisters”,
Muennig warps the walls and roofs to create undulations more associated with natural than built forms. The
nearly infinite freedom of this architectural language had the capacity to unify a meandering front path between low, woodsy, mute volumes with a starkly contrasting, bold, sweeping arch of a sheer glass escarpment over two stories tall to the rear, allowing the home to echo the topography and provide panoramic views over the forest toward the sea.

Around the same time, architects Walter Burde and
Will Shaw found this same organic language
appropriate to their 1972 “motor bank” commission
for Northern California Savings and Loan. Though
in the commercial district, the building could not be
a typical party-wall, infill design, because customers
would be primarily arriving by car, driving past all
facades to reach a drive-through window at the
property’s interior. So, much like a residential home
surrounded by forest, the building (seen here in a
recent view) was composed as a stand-alone
sculpture, visible in the round from infinite
viewpoints. The yin-yang interplay of jauntily
angled dark but airy glass-timber sections with light
but solid stucco sections creates a family of volumes
that provide visual distinction from every
perspective as the motorist travels by, yet a strong genetic coherence to the entirety.

Then, in the 1980s, Carmel confronted a new threat: surging commercial speculation in the residential neighborhoods.

The March 22, 1990 Pine Cone reported that multiple spec homes developed within months of one another on the “former Countess Kinnoull estate is usually declared the greatest single offender… built to the maximum the code will allow…[with] surrounding vegetation…torn down, leaving
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barren what was once a lush greenbelt.” (A
portion on Torres Street near Eleventh
Avenue is shown here in street elevation
drawings from the time.) The projects
exemplified an alarming trend: tree removal
permits for construction rising about 375%
over two decades and residential building
applications on track to rise 750% in half that
time. Carmel Planning Director Diane White warned about the oversized, cookie-cutter approach: “You can tolerate a lot of architectural ‘violations ’when the focus is on the landscape. What is happening now is a double-edged sword.

We are losing our predominant landscaping as well as getting a narrower architectural style.” Carmel City Forester Gary Kelly also warned, “according to the city’s tree census…the number of pines on private property is decreasing while the number of ornamentals is increasing…[because] when people come from different areas, they…plant what they are used to. The most serious aspect…is that the medium to small pines…are disappearing. That means we will have fewer trees to replace the mature ones once they die…they are supposed to be replaced. But when I go back to the site, I find that there is no room to plant. We either need to reconfigure the open space or allow for smaller houses.” Complaints flooded local newspapers and public meetings about overblown, pretender “cottages” attempting to camouflage their excessive size with often cartoonishly mis-matched and complicated massing, materials, and styles.

One local builder explained the powerful economic incentives: “[in 1982] there weren’t more than three ‘spec ’homes in all of Carmel…[but now] we have builders from the valley, who used to build in Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield and maybe make $20,000 a house. They come over here and maybe make $150,000 for a spec house. The same amount of work, they get that much more gain.” So, in the mid-1990s, the City conducted a national search for an expert to lead the development of comprehensive design standards that might reverse this “insensitivity” to the natural and built environment. And in 2001, the Council adopted the resulting document “The Design Traditions of Carmel” and legally mandated through its Municipal Code that every required design review “shall” follow it. Many Carmelites had expressed fears that design standards might actually standardize designs. Instead, the ensuing quarter century saw many creative site responses, directly continuing Carmel’s legacy of architects sensitive to and responsive to nature.

In 2007, Carmelite architect John Thodos, designed a
home for himself and his spouse on Torres Street near
Third Avenue (seen here in a recent view). As
Carmel Historic Resources Board Chair, Thodos
strongly supported the modest scale of village homes
and refused to deviate from the small footprint of the
unsalvageable, pre-existing structure. Like most selfassured artists, Thodos embraced constraints as “catalysts for creativity” and used the property’s
limitations to re-invent the very idea of a Carmel
Cottage. While maintaining the archetypal elements
of the classic house, he deconstructed and expressed
all the layers separating inside and outside so as to
blur the distinction between them and celebrate the
immediate surroundings and regional climate. The
home’s foundation of exposed-aggregate poured
concrete reaches out into the foliage to evoke naturally eroded outcroppings. The abstractly-simple, wooden houseshapes come to rest above just parts of these outcroppings, again emphasizing their role as found site features, not structures designed just to hold up walls. Large expanses of the wood walls then dissolve into air, which is, in turn, reenclosed by pure miter-jointed glass volumes that float free like light-filled bubbles into the, often foggy, yard.

Movement in and out is through elongated door-tunnels that extend and savor the interior/exterior threshold. By interweaving modest rooms so persuasively with the surrounding forest, Thodos transforms a traditional enclosure into something infinitely expansive.

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In 2009, Sci-Arc Professor John Bohn took a similarly creative approach to the natural surroundings of “Canopy House” on Ridgewood Road (seen here in a recent view). The site, obstructed throughout by lowhanging oak tree limbs, inspired another reimagining of the simple Carmel Cottage. Hardly a simple task, this time a sophisticated computer model was needed to help break apart and inflect traditional roof shapes and warp them into custom curves around each individual branch. These roof planes, in turn, molded the monochrome walls beneath them into a collection of playfully irregular, modest volumes.

Then, in order to fully connect the home with nature, irregular wood beams and posts branch down into the rooms and curved glass clerestories between the roofs and walls make the visual connection between the harvested timbers inside and the live wood elements, still growing undisturbed, outside.

Around 2012, Berkeley/MIT-trained architect, Justin Pauly designed the county’s first certified “Passive House”on Eleventh Avenue between Lincoln and Dolores Streets (seen here in a recent view). By meeting strict standards for airtightness, thermal bridging, fenestration, heat recovering ventilation, and insulation, the house remains comfortable in all seasons using virtually no energy. Though technically the structure is radically modern, stylistically, this Carmel Cottage is traditional vernacular. The design is clearly inspired by respect for the natural environment, but in ways independent of the architect’s aesthetic approach.

Also around 2012, architect
George Brook-Kothlow, in close partnership with landscape designer Barkley David Smith, completed “Arch House” for Jacquelyn Woodward on Seventh Avenue near Forest Road (seen above just after initial plantings). The construction materials palette of the building is raw and natural: self-rusting, uncoated steel, unvarnished wood, unpainted concrete. And, to an unusual degree, the living plants of the site also became part of the construction materials palette. Some walls are made of living plants as is the entire roof of the carport (seen above left). Most of the home’s glass-walled interior spaces wander casually around existing trees, incorporating corresponding glass-walled exterior garden spaces into the floorplan.

Meanwhile, the main interior space, though set far back on the oversized site, initially appeared more conventionally exposed as a glassy street facade. However, once the native landscape design had matured (seen below in a recent view) the large interior was completed by its corresponding large exterior garden and disappeared from the road, engulfed by nature. Perhaps ironically, this conscious interweaving of building and landscape design pays homage to the most traditional values of the town's founders and yet with a modern approach that they never could have foreseen — though likely would have applauded.

No, the 2001 design standards have not, so far, eliminated the destructive forces and the careless design that emerged in the 1980s. And yet, as the founders predicted, some great aesthetic talents still manage to show us the way. For, Carmel has continued to attract “the right people” who build homes “artistic in character, reflecting the temperament of the town…designed by architects who attemp[t] to…fit the local surroundings…preventing man and his civilizing ways from…marring the natural beauty lavishly displayed here.” Enhance. Subordinate. Fit. Retain. Design. Detail.

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FIRE ALERT
When beginning any residential design or remodel in Carmel-by-the-Sea, fire resilience must serve as the premier guide for the proposed project to ensure long-term sustainability and community safety.

Because significant portions of the city are classified as an extreme fire danger area, wildfire represents the single greatest threat to both the natural environment and architectural character of the community.

True sustainability is not complete without proactive protection against catastrophic fire risk, necessitating design concepts that prioritize ignition-resistant materials, Class A roofs, and emberresistant detailing. To address the critical gap in wildfire resilience, applicants must now utilize ignition-resistant products listed by the Office of the State Fire Marshal (OSFM). This allows projects to honor the village's aesthetic legacy—using materials that convey a natural patina and human scale— while meeting the objective safety requirements of the California WUI Code.

Furthermore, the initial design layout should consider defensible space to ensure proper distance between structures and flammable materials such as vegetation, fences, etc. By making fire resilience the primary driver of a design, homeowners can harmonize Carmel’s unique aesthetic heritage with the objective regulatory standards required to make the built environment both beautiful and survivable.

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1 I. RESIDENTIAL
Design Guidelines
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1. ENHANCE, restore, and preserve the native forest in all improvement projects: private, public, and otherwise
(as seen in the dense, healthy Monterey Pine and Coast Live Oak environment above).

Background: Few newcomers recognize that Carmel hosts the sole surviving “Mother Stand” of the Monterey Pine forest on planet Earth, an ecosystem that has adapted to 25 million years of climate change, from ice ages to searing droughts. So important is this native ecology today that academic and industrial scientists fly in to study it, to determine how to nurture it, and to grow its species in lumber plantations around the world. So important was this ecology to the early developers that they incorporated the town in 1916 because Monterey County was failing to adequately protect it. In fact, their radical founding idea was to promote this place as a refuge for people to live in harmony with nature amidst a majestic, prehistoric forest -- an idea that ran in very stark contrast to the prevailing "pioneer tradition" of the time, which advocated for the conquest of nature. In times of ongoing climatic stresses, how harmoniously we reside within this international treasure will determine its fate and that of this visionary village.

Process: design steps most relevant to this section include… • visiting the site and speaking with neighbors to discover natural assets and shared view issues • commissioning a site survey
• conducting preliminary consultations with city forest and planning staff and commissions • obtaining a preliminary assessment report on site conditions, development standards, zoning, and so on • studying the significant tree evaluation inventory worksheet Enhance. Subordinate. Fit. Retain. Design. Detail. Enhance. Subordinate. Fit. Retain. Design. Detail.

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1.1. Preserve all existing healthy upper canopy and lower canopy trees.

1.1.1. Before beginning design work, have a licensed surveyor or engineer prepare the required survey, showing existing site conditions, topography, drainage features, trees, structures, right-of-way edges and character, views, privacy issues, historical evaluations, nonconformities, neighborhood design contexts, and other features useful in designing a project.

1.1.2. Address comments provided by a City Planner and the City Forester on the required survey and on the required City Forester evaluation of existing tree significance and condition on and immediately adjacent to the project site, including in the right-of-way.

1.1.3. Address the Forest and Beach Commission's project review comments on the effects that proposed work will have on significant trees.

1.1.4. Consult the “Preliminary Site Assessment” tree survey when designing and locating new structures and additions to determine which trees are significant and should be protected.

1.1.5. Provide enough open space on each building site to both preserve and add upper and lower canopy trees at sufficient spacings for growth to maturity (as shown above right by building footprint and path both altered to preserve existing trees).

1.1.6. Locate new construction in accordance with the Land Use Code to minimize impacts on established trees and avoid pruning of limbs and canopies. Set foundations for buildings and walls back far enough from the base of any tree to adequately protect its roots. Plan curb cuts, paving and drainage systems to maintain air transport and water percolation to root systems.

1.1.7. Protect existing vegetation during construction in order to screen buildings, contribute to the forest character of the street, and achieve a settled, mature look upon project completion.

1.1.8. Plan access and site development to protect trees during construction as provided in the Land Use Code. Do not alter the grade level near nor excavate into the root zone or drip-line of any healthy mature tree, whether on or adjacent to the site, including on abutting properties and in the right-of-way.

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1.2. Preserve or enhance the informal, vegetated, open space character of the right-of-way.

1.2.1. Preserve vegetation and trees, especially those with canopies over the street, both in the rightof-way and the periphery of the site so that the pavement curves around and emphasizes natural landscape features and topography, creating the appearance of a meandering forested lane with occasional“ mini-parks” (as shown above by the irregular pavement edges and encroaching vegetation).

1.2.2. Remove any excess existing paving and other non-conforming and easily displaced materials, such as gravel per MC 12.24.020.B. Never keep in the right-of-way irrigation equipment or unpermitted paving, gravel, boulders, logs, timbers, planters, fences, retaining walls, other aboveground encroachments, or any hardscape that would widen the street or create a parking space.

1.2.3. Maintain the existing character of street gutters, which is typically a rolled asphalt curb or, more formally, is a channel faced with large native rock, but is never just plain concrete.

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1.2.4. To create connectivity with adjacent properties, leave the right-of-way as an unpaved, natural forest floor with an informal edge, consisting of trees, naturally occurring vegetation, and organic surfaces, such as pine needles (as shown above by the natural area between the private property line and the street pavement).

1.2.5. When adding plantings to the right-of-way use only naturally occurring natives to the Carmel forest: drought-tolerant and non-irrigated, green foliage, ground covers, or low shrubs, informally arranged. Do not use bedding plants and exotic species in the public right-of-way.

1.2.6. Do not remove trees or add gravel or other “hardened” surfaces to provide parking in the rightof-way, but instead reinforce the forest image by separating parking spaces from driveways with plantings and by using natural soil, or fresh, mini-woodchips as surface materials (as shown above by a nearly undetectable natural area sized to accommodate parking).

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1.3. Preserve and enhance the forested image of the site (as shown above by how the home’s natural pine-bark siding echoes and the sensitive massing avoids the existing trees).

1.3.1. Preserve and supplement trees, especially those that arch over the street, and provide a mix of upper canopy trees for scale and multi-stemmed lower canopy trees for screening. The City Forester determines the mix and CM17.48.080 covers tree replacement ratios and species.

1.3.2. Do not wall off properties at the front property lines but instead extend the forest character of the right-of-way into the visible parts of the site by keeping a large portion of each site as open space, with plantings located to filter views of structures (as shown above by the unimpeded, vegetated zone between the street on the left and the home on the right). Find maximum limits for hardscape site coverage at CM 17.10.030.

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1.3.3. Locate plants and ground surfaces in relaxed, informal arrangements that are consistent with the urban forest character (as shown above at far right), reserving any formal, unnatural arrangements, bedding plants, or exotic flowering plants only for small areas out of public view or small walkway or entry accents (as shown above at center).

1.3.4. Use site plantings that are native, drought-tolerant species, following the Municipal Codez.

1.3.5. For a forest meadow ground cover, use only informal, no-water varieties kept out of public view and do not use manicured lawns or artificial turf per P 2025-002.

1.3.6. Projects that involve a new building or substantial alteration require a professional landscape plan, which identifies areas for low-scale plants, shrubbery, and trees for initial review and shows specific planting plans for final review. Address the special needs of each species, using, for example, high-water-use plants near redwoods but not near oaks, paving materials that minimize tree root impacts, and best practices for fire mitigation.

1.4. Preserve un-altered, pre-development water drainage ways as site amenities.

1.4.1. Minimize stormwater impacts with Low Impact Development principles, including: addressing stormwater close to the source, installing bio-retention, and other planted drainage areas, and using “sand-set”, not “mortar-set”, pervious paving materials to percolate water and aerate soil.

1.4.2. Enhance water quality with stormwater management systems that mimic the natural water cycle, filter stormwater into the ground and direct flows through vegetative buffers and rain gardens where plant and tree uptake can remove pollutants.

1.4.3. Design new on-site stormwater control devices to appear naturally integrated into the forest.

Use green roofs, retention areas, or landscaped areas to capture flow and prevent new runoff toward adjacent properties per CM 17.43.

1.4.4. For new building or substantial alterations, provide a professional landscape plan that identifies areas for low-scale plants, shrubbery, and trees for initial review and shows specific planting plans for final review. Address the special needs of each species, such as using high-water-use plants near redwoods but not near oaks and paving materials that minimize tree root impacts.

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2. SUBORDINATE every built structure to the character and continuity of the forest, natural environment, and to the natural features of its own site (like how the tree above overshadows the street view of the home).

Background: Carmel’s native forest hosts a dizzying array of fascinating native species dominated by a towering upper canopy, primarily of Monterey Pine (Pinus radiata), and a sculptural lower canopy, primarily of Coast Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia). The overstory trees perform the vital work of scaling down larger infrastructure elements such as paved areas or commercial buildings, while the understory trees, often comprising multi-stem varieties, work to screen and soften all shapes and sizes of building elements. Quite wise to the important aesthetic functions of a continuous natural forest weaving through and connecting all properties, the town’s founding developers were famous for gifting trees to new property owners. As urbanization progressed, their aim was to replace and supplement any trees affected during construction, to keep those new structures nestled within the trees, and to use these trees as well as other site features and siting approaches to preserve as faithfully as possible original natural conditions.

Process: design steps most relevant to this section include… • engaging a landscape architect
• developing a conceptual landscape plan
• taking advantage of the Preliminary Application option to get early feedback on landscape ideas • beginning a Historic Evaluation (if the site was deemed historic) Enhance. Subordinate. Fit. Retain. Design. Detail.

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2.1. Nestle a building in the trees to minimize the mass visible from public view.

2.1.1. Position buildings to avoid cutting into the canopy of established trees (as shown above where the architect laser scanned existing tree branches and computer-positioned roof planes precisely beneath them).

2.1.2. Decrease the apparent size of buildings by building less than the maximum allowable floor area, using a compact footprint, minimizing large volume spaces (high ceilings or steep pitches across wide spans), and eliminating large, unused underfloor areas and extensive cantilevers, especially over cut areas.

2.1.3. Reduce perceptible building height by locating some floor area either fully or partially below grade or at a “garden” level with any walkout area, light well, retaining wall, or terrace concealed to the side or rear. When these locations are not feasible, provide more screening with other building elements or landscaping.

2.1.4. Minimize the visual impacts of retaining walls, garden walls, window wells, and other foundation structures by incorporating sloped, planted areas to create a smooth grade transition.

Ensure tall retaining walls, terracing, or revetments are not visible from the public way.

2.2. Follow the site’s natural contours.

2.2.1. Minimize construction on steep slopes.

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2.2.2. Minimize excavation and fill on a site by maintaining existing topography and keeping all grading and excavation completely within the proposed building footprint (as shown above by dashed line directly under house).

2.2.3. Step building height, foundations, and floor levels to follow site slopes and contours (unlike above, where support posts create a single level floating above a downward slope). When floor levels cannot be stepped, larger underfloor spaces (as shown above under most of the building) count as part of the allowed floor area.

2.2.4. Avoid abrupt changes in grade (as shown above left by flattened grade with added retaining walls) within a site and between adjoining properties. If such transitions are unavoidable, then use sloped, planted areas. If a stable planted slope cannot be created, then use multiple landscaped terraces rather than a single tall wall (as shown by short walls above right).

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2.3. Subordinate parking facilities to the house and site.

2.3.1. Minimize the impact of a garage or carport by: concealing them from the street, detaching them at the back of the lot or elsewhere, subordinating them into the building design (as shown above left) tucking them underneath or into the foundation (as shown above right), or locating them partially below grade (while avoiding any three-story appearance), orienting the garage door away from the street, and, on small lots, using only a single, one-car garage door.

2.3.2. Use parking facilities to maintain or enhance variety along the street edge and to maximize landscaped open space, views, and privacy. If a detached, one-car garage or carport benefits the overall streetscape, the City may determine that it can encroach into the front setback. The City does not allow two-car garages in the front setback.

2.3.3. To maintain forest floor continuity, established vegetation, and ample front yard space, keep driveways at grade and without cuts and fills that would create a “ramp” effect or require retaining walls perpendicular to the street.

2.3.4. Minimize the amount of paved surface area for a driveway by using organic materials, “tire track” paving strips, sharing a single driveway between two adjacent properties (as shown above by merged surface spanning property line), and/or limiting each site to the required single curb cut (unless a corner site requires a “through driveway”).

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2.3.5. Minimize the visual impacts of retaining walls, garden walls, window wells, and other foundation structures by incorporating sloped, planted areas to create a smooth grade transition.

Ensure tall retaining walls, terracing, or revetments are not visible from the public way.

2.4. Design all paved areas to be small, informal, and intimate.

2.4.1. Reduce widths of asphalt or concrete, separate a driveway from a front walkway with plantings, soften paved edges with landscaping (as shown above left by planted, and separated, irregular driving and stepstone walking areas), and avoid formal or urban paving treatments (as shown above right by rectilinear pavers, straight edges, and joined driving and walking areas).

2.4.2. Select paving with muted colors and texture authentic to the material (unlike faux stone-colored concrete pavers at above far right), such as Carmel stone (above far left), granite cobblestone (above center left), brick, asphalt, natural-colored poured concrete (above center right), gravel, decomposed granite, and mulch, keeping easily displaced materials on private property only per M.C. 12.24.020.B.

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2.5. Blend private landscape with that of the public right-of-way to make vegetated spaces appear larger and to improve continuity with the forest (as shown above by the continuous natural forest floor extending from the public street paving, through the public right-of-way, and into the private property, creating an uninterrupted forest landscape).

2.5.1. Design without a fence or wall along a street frontage, unless special conditions apply.

2.5.2. Where privacy or enclosure is needed, use native shrubs, hedges, or other vegetated landscaping (as shown above by the lush foliage on private property used as a necessary screen to the glass façade).

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2.5.3. If vegetation does not provide sufficient safe enclosure along a street for children, pets, or others, install an informal, unfinished, wood fence (such as in the foreground above added into the vegetation), which preserves visual access into the front yard and at street intersections, by using open pickets wherein the size of the spaces are at least equal to the size of the material.

2.5.4. When creating an arbor, maintain a narrow, low, light, and open design (such as above, where the arbor is styled like the open fencing), instead of a tall, wide structure with massive timbers or other heavy elements that dominate the street.

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2.5.5. In rare cases, where a fence is needed but the predominant or foundational building material is stone, masonry, or stucco, a low garden wall of the same material and construction may fit into the site if fully integrated with the topography and other hardscape and if kept at four feet or less from grade (such as above where a low, vegetated wall of surfacing matching the home is nestled into a gentle slope).

2.5.6. Place front yard enclosures (such as hedges, fences, or walls) farther back from the front property lines as they become more solid. Refer to Maximum Building Envelope information to determine allowable heights and placements.

2.6. Preserve the nighttime, “dark-sky” character of neighborhoods (as shown above where stars are visible in Carmel by the Sea due to drastically reduced artificial lighting).

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2.6.1. Subdue all exterior lights with shielded and focused fixtures of low lumens and warm white temperatures, as defined in municipal code. Do not use fluorescent lighting.

2.6.2. Use lights only where needed for safety and at outdoor activity areas, such as building entries, gates, terraces, walkways, and patios.

2.6.3. Do not use floodlights, spotlights, or lights to accent or uplight buildings, tree canopies, or other vegetation.

2.6.4. Instead of exposed light sources, locate and shield fixtures, including string lights, to eliminate glare and excess illumination onto neighboring properties and the street.

2.6.5. Size, locate, and shade skylights to eliminate glare or light pollution visible to neighbors or to the public. Use skylights only if interior spaces have no access to exterior windows, such windows have limited access to light, or windows would cause even greater impacts to adjoining homes.

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3. FIT every built structure within its neighborhood context (like how the three homes above relate to one another despite different massing and materials).

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Background: Carmel’s founders laid out neighborhoods with small lots anticipating very small homes that would maintain abundant natural views and privacy. A smaller home remains and effective approach. At larger sizes, new structures must work harder to coordinate with existing structures, while the new outdoor spaces that structures define must also work harder to coordinate with existing outdoor spaces. All this work serves to maximize privacy and natural views for individual properties as well as to create a harmonious whole for the community – one that artfully combines private spaces to increase the sense of forested open space and multiply the visual links across every public and private property line.

Process: design steps most relevant to this section include… • developing a conceptual siting and massing plan
• taking advantage of the Preliminary Application option to get early feedback on siting and massing ideas • beginning a Historic Evaluation (if the site was deemed historic) • considering submittal of a Conceptual Design for feedback from staff and commissioners ATTACHMENT 2

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3.1. Locate open spaces so that they visually link with those of adjacent properties.

3.1.1. Coordinate open spaces in careful response to other open spaces to have an amplifying effect and combine them to increase their apparent size (as shown above right by wide forested space between homes), rather than simply maintaining required setbacks (as shown above left by narrow space with little room for plantings).

3.1.2. On oversized or combined properties, maintain the open space character of Carmel’s typical 4,000sf lot sizes, avoiding the appearance of a “compound” or “estate.”

3.1.3. Relate a building’s mass to the context of other homes nearby. Divide a larger building into forms similar in scale to traditional village houses, placing some mass in a detached secondary structure (garage, guest house, etc.) if necessary to reduce the overall mass of the primary building.

3.1.4. Stagger front setbacks of homes and garages to frame outdoor spaces, avoid uniform alignments, and provide variety in the arrangement of buildings and open spaces along the street (as seen above with the three property layouts different from one another), unless doing so prevents a visual aggregation of open space or endangers significant trees.

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3.1.5. Stagger side setbacks with adjacent properties to avoid the“ canyon effect” of a narrow corridor or tunnel between buildings (see above right where the homes are too parallel and close together).

Provide even more open side yard space when buildings on adjacent properties are two stories or close to the joint property line. Refer to the Municipal Code for setback regulations.

3.1.6. Minimize building mass as seen from adjacent properties by: avoiding long, uninterrupted wall planes, placing tall building walls away from the property line and similar walls on neighboring sites, and providing greater setbacks for any chimney directly opposite a neighboring window.

3.1.7. Preserve access to light between properties.

3.2. Preserve views from nearby properties to natural features.

3.2.1. Locate building volumes to make use of views but not substantially block views enjoyed by others (like the proposed home shown in brown with dashed lines above, which allows all neighboring homes to preserve the primary view to the bottom right), keeping the building height low and the building footprint compact to maintain views over and along sides of properties.

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3.2.2. Keep building elements from blocking views with sensitive placement and sizing, for example use chimneys with narrow profiles or minimalist flues.

3.3. Organize functions on a site to preserve reasonable privacy for adjacent properties (unlike the proposed home shown above in dashed lines with an upper deck that overlooks a neighboring patio).

3.3.1. Screen patios, terraces, and active areas of adjacent properties through the position of buildings and the preservation of significant trees.

3.3.2. Locate and size windows and skylights to avoid views in or out of neighboring indoor and outdoor active use areas. Limit windows to 12sf or less on side walls adjacent to neighbors.

3.3.3. Locate and screen balconies and decks to avoid overlooking active indoor and outdoor use areas of adjacent properties.

3.4. Minimize negative impacts to surrounding properties.

3.4.1. Fully integrate utilities and services, including gas meters, electrical panels, water heaters, and trash receptacles, into the architectural design of the building.

3.4.2. In cases where full architectural integration is not possible, Eliminate the visual impacts of utilities and services by grouping and shielding them with architectural and landscape elements, such as cabinets, walls, fences, or plantings, of integrated material and color.

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3.5. Vary the design of a new building from that of nearby and abutting properties (as shown by how the home above left, with its stone walls and roof ridge parallel to the street, varies from the neighboring home above right, with its wood shingles and roof ridge perpendicular to the street).

3.5.1. Provide variety in building materials along a block.

3.5.2. When using painted or otherwise coated surfaces, provide variety in building color along a block.

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4. RETAIN and build upon Carmel’s established architectural heritage (as exemplified above clockwise from top left by local masterworks in the traditions of Craftsman , Mission Revival, Fairytale , Organic, and Modern).

Background: Carmel’s founders explicitly advertised to attract folks working in the “aesthetic arts” in order to achieve homes “artistic in character” and to avoid destructive speculative development. The town’s visual history testifies to the individual expressiveness and stylistic eclecticism of the architecture that resulted and that must be carefully studied and interpreted so as to meaningfully contribute to this legacy.

Process: design steps most relevant to this section include… • developing a timeless, and perhaps inventive, construction language • assembling a sample materials board
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4.1. Preserve historic and existing resources.

4.1.1. Re-use existing buildings and their components, for example restoring rather than replacing original windows (like the restored antique steel casement window in its original adobe home above).

4.1.2. Respect adjacent historic resources by preserving adequate, light, open space, and views of and around the structure.

4.1.3. Check zoning standards for related incentives, such as expedited processing.

4.1.4. Follow additional standards for properties recognized as having official historic significance, such as the Municipal Code, the Historic Context Statement, and Historic Review Board consideration.

4.2. Continue Carmel’s tradition of architectural diversity.

4.2.1. To avoid uniformity and the appearance of speculative development and to promote individual artistic expression, differentiate a new building’s plan, massing, and overall design from that of nearby and abutting buildings.

4.2.2. When reproducing historic architecture, use the same materials and craftsmanship as those of the reproduced period (for example, the genuine, handcrafted, rolled wood shingle roof above).

4.2.3. For any architectural language, use materials of equivalent quality and craftsmanship to those of historic architecture.

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4.2.4. Do not use designs that resemble those in speculative or “McMansion” developments or that present a commercial or industrial appearance.

4.3. Use traditional, natural building materials (such as the structurally-stacked Carmel stone and the untreated, rough, wood shingles, shown above).

4.3.1. Use the preferred materials traditionally used in Carmel, such as wood, stone, tile, brick, artistically-crafted concrete, and stucco for walls, patios, and decking, as well as wood shingles and shakes, clay, slate, and concrete tiles for roofs.

4.3.2. Use metal roofs only if they are carefully detailed and handcrafted, devoid of stiffening corrugations or striations (unlike the industrial roof shown above left), have narrow flat panels, use genuine, field-installed, standing or flat seams or horizontal lapping, are unreflective, and are of integrated, non-coated, earth-toned color such as anodized aluminum, matte galvanized raw steel, or natural metal such as pure zinc (like the traditional metal roof shown above right).

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4.3.3. Choose materials that will form a desired natural patina over time or that can be maintained in their original condition (such as the unstained, unevenly weathering, wood siding shown above).

4.3.4. Use materials in their natural conditions, scales, and colors.

4.3.5. When adding surface treatments, use matte finishes and muted earth tones, rather than highly polished treatments such as mirrored glass or reflective metals.

4.3.6. Apply materials using methods traditional to Carmel, for example, wood siding in shingles, horizontal clapboard, or board and batten, brick in its traditional modular dimension, or stucco in smooth or lightly textured finishes.

4.3.7. Use unclad wood, solid metal, or recyclable, “designed for disassembly” aluminum-clad wood, with no visible plastic elements, for windows, doors, and garage doors.

4.4. Use manufactured materials according to traditional, natural principles.

4.4.1. Use manufactured materials only if they are ecologically sensitive: able to form a natural patina over time, able to be maintained rather than disposed, able to be fully dismantled and recycled or reused, biodegradable, and environmentally non-toxic or beneficial.

4.4.2. Do not use petroleum-based architectural elements.

4.4.3. Use products that meet or exceed the most current national or international ecological building standards (such as certified Cradle-to-Cradle or Design for Disassembly) meet Carmel standards for manufactured materials.

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4.4.4. Do not use manufactured materials that fake or mimic natural or other materials in their textures or finishes, including machine-stamped faux woodgrains (like the stamped grain cement clapboard at top left, the faux slate-colored and -textured roof tiles at top center, or the tie-dyed, stamped faux stone pavers at top right). Use cast concrete only with monochrome, integral color (like the pavers at middle right and the rooftiles at middle center and bottom center), or with non-uniform, handcrafted patterns such as those provided by human artistry (like the pebbled patio at bottom right) or made with genuine wood formwork (like the site-poured wall at bottom left).

4.4.5. Apply manufactured materials in a manner that conveys a traditional human scale.

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5. DESIGN every built structure with modesty (such as the small-scaled vernacular cottage above with uncomplicated massing, natural materials, and simple construction).

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Background: In Carmel’s early days, many of the artistically-inclined newcomers designed, or even built, their own modest cottages. Though this approach has become vanishingly rare, its emphasis on modesty remains. In Carmel, modesty is valued both in itself, as a visual statement of deference to history and to nature, and also as a practical means to achieve that deference. Modesty discourages individual properties from upstaging one another in unwinnable and environmentally destructive contests and helps avoid imported formulas of grandeur that fit better in estate settings. Instead, modesty helps eclectic structures work together to create a unified texture that coheres the town visually and signals community.

Process: design steps most relevant to this section include… • drafting final design proposal
• incorporating recommendations and/or conditions of approval from Design Concept acceptance.

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5.1. Restrain building forms, materials, and details

5.1.1. Design a building consistently, with the chosen design concept extending to all sides of the building and with no mixing of architectural languages (as shown above by the continuation throughout the entire building of the eccentric, handcrafted masonry vocabulary).

5.1.2. Keep primary building volumes simple, as seen traditionally, limiting the number of subordinate volumes (see just two above) and using basic rectangular, L-, T-, or U-shaped plans.

5.1.3. Avoid visual complexity,“ busy” building forms (like the five protrusions on the two subordinate volumes shown above), too many different materials, excessive and overly ornate or ostentatious details, and materials and details that contrast strongly within a single building or with neighboring buildings.

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5.1.4. Do not use building elements that are complex, monumental, formal, out-of-scale, or that increase the visual prominence of the building.

5.1.5. Use restraint when introducing variation in building planes, use building offsets only for clear purposes such as avoiding tree limbs or expressing a major change of function. (for example, the volume in the foreground above is not an offset but instead clearly provides a separate function with a separate entrance from the building behind). Do not use small, purposeless offsets only for visual interest and do not change wall materials at offsets.

5.1.6. Compose roof forms with just a few, simple planes with limited subordinate attachments such as dormers. For example, traditional gable and hip roofs have basic forms while mansard roofs and sloping roof “skirts” that conceal a flat area add too much complexity.

5.1.7. Subdue the character of the garage by using a rectilinear form with materials and colors that do not contrast with the main buildings.

5.2. Ensure that a building appears to be no more than two stories in height, as viewed from the public right-of-way.

5.2.1. Present one-story heights to the street and locate two story elements away from the street, except where this would appear dominant or out of scale when viewed from the public right-ofway or a neighboring home. Remember that a garage, even sunken below grade, counts as a story.

5.2.2. Make detached garages one story, one-car, and small in scale, with the wall plate height no taller than that of the first-story plate of the main house.

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5.3. Convey human scale in a building’s basic forms (as shown above by the unexaggerated, standard dimensions of the doors, windows, and story-heights).

5.3.1. Use historic Carmel styles only at their traditional, human scales.

5.3.2. Organize building mass into realistic modules to reduce perceived size, breaking a larger house into subordinate modules which appear, not just as minor offsets meant to create interest but instead authentic, in that they reflect real, functioning, interior spaces (as shown by the room above, which protrudes to the right in order to center its fireplace in the room within).

5.3.3. Emphasize the low and horizontal so that buildings appear to hug the ground.

5.3.4. Use a low building plate height, generally not over 8 feet. Keep plate heights and roof eave lines low in scale, tucking upper story rooms under roof slopes, so as to reduce the height of exposed walls. The maximum plate height of 12 established in the Land Use Code is only to accommodate sloping building sites.

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5.3.5. Do not use design features that produce a top-heavy appearance such as large cantilevered building elements, wide chimney structures, or roof forms that dominate the body of the building. Proportion roof forms to the scale of the building.

5.4. Use building details to provide interest but not to exaggerate the scale of a building.

5.4.1. Add details to relieve blank surfaces and achieve a scale compatible with the building’s forms and its architecture (such as shown above where the wavy half-timbering appropriate to the quirky Fairytale language helps shrink the appearance wall down to the required Elfin scale).

5.4.2. Use all materials, natural or man-made, at traditional scales, dimensions, and modules.

5.4.3. Use appropriately sized, never oversized, building elements, such as windows (unlike the out-ofscale arches on an otherwise vernacular home shown above left), doors, entries, chimneys, overhangs, dormers, and porches to reduce scale, especially as visible from public view (like the appropriately small and architecturally integrated fenestration on the Prairie Style home shown above right).

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5.4.4. Keep visible openings subordinate in scale to the building. Do not use “grand", oversized entryways, windows, or doors (like the enormous entry door and clerestory window combination shown above left nor the anomalous rock border emphasizing the door above right).

5.4.5. When reproducing historic architecture, limit the dimension of any glass to that which was possible to span using only the original construction techniques of that historic era (at the above left Mission Style home very thick areas of stucco surround a small arched window, which authentically reflects the limited spanning strength of heavy masonry traditional in mission construction; while at the above right Mission Style home very thin areas of stucco surround large arched windows, which betrays the long spanning strength of steel construction that could have never be used in mission construction).

5.4.6. Limit the use of specialty windows that add to building bulk to no more than one visible from the street. Avoid altogether bay and oriel windows facing the street if this would create a repeating pattern within the context of adjacent structures.

5.5. Keep the overall color scheme muted to blend with the forest palette.

5.5.1. Limit the use of bright colors, if any, to key accent features, such as an entry door.

5.5.2. Avoid starkly contrasting color schemes.

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6. DETAIL every property authentically and consistently (like the homes above with expressive wood detailing authentic to their architecture: heavy carved posts, beams, and other details for the revivalist cottage on the left and light smooth siding, fascia boards, and glazing panels for the modern home on the right).

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Background: Due to Carmel’s history of handcrafted, modest cottages, the town has amassed an enviable collection of richly detailed homes that avoid the tell-tale flimsiness or cheapness of speculative development. In a village with small properties, where views of and around structures are paramount, all parts of a building matter. Hewing to the timeless materials and assembly techniques of the past even when designing for today’s lives ensures that building details remain authentic and inspiring.

Process: design steps most relevant to this section include… • submitting final design proposal
• receiving official staff report on design compliance
• hearing feedback from Forest & Beach, Planning, and Historic Resources (if applicable) Commissioners ATTACHMENT 2

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6.1. Use building materials and features in a manner that conveys authenticity.

6.1.1. Convey a sense of true craftsmanship in architectural details.

6.1.2. Do not use fake, purely decorative building elements such as dummy chimneys, doors, windows, or shutters. Size any shutters so that they would cover their entire window, whether or not they are in active use.

6.1.3. Do not use materials or details inauthentic to the architecture or that appear non-structural, gratuitous, or applied as superficial elements, wall “accents” or veneers.

6.1.4. On multi-paned windows and doors, use true dividers that go from inside to outside between the panes of glass.

6.1.5. Where materials do not simply remain un-coated, finish with a plain, uniform, matte varnish, stain or paint, without faux finishes.

6.1.6. Use details that are true structural elements, such as natural wood exposed rafter tails, beams (like the truly structural roof beams protruding beyond both the house wall and the roof above to provide visual interest), or stacked stone foundations. If costs prove prohibitive, simplify the architectural language rather than mimic more costly methods.

6.1.7. Whether on a building or a landscape element, stack stone traditionally so that it appears, or actually is, structurally load-bearing (as above right, not wallpapered or sprinkled on as above left).

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6.1.8. Use a“ hierarchy” of building materials, with heavier coarser materials below lighter materials (such as the wood clapboard over stacked stone shown above left or the vertical wood siding and glass over the poured concrete foundation above right).

6.1.9. Do not “float” stone above lighter materials or use it purely decoratively, such as framed just around windows or doors, or randomly clustered on corners, walls, or chimneys.

6.1.10. Detail new and/or manufactured materials in ways authentic to their own composition. For example, carefully plan the woodgrain and modules of formwork for exposed poured concrete or use cement board siding with a smooth, untextured surface, rather than an added, faux woodgrain.

6.2. Use building materials or features in a consistent manner.

6.2.1. Use design details and surface materials throughout the full exterior of the building. Do not apply special materials or design treatments to the street facade only.

6.2.2. Do not stop wall materials at corners, instead wrap them around the entire building.

6.2.3. Use only one primary material for all building walls with any additional materials clearly subordinated to foundations and the like (as in the above home, clearly identifiable as “stucco”, with only one secondary material used only on separate features such as the foundation, chimney, and addition).

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6.2.4. Make window and door styles, materials, and finishes uniform throughout a design.

6.3. Make architectural details integral elements of the overall building design concept (such as the corner-mitered glass shown above, which by eliminating an expected structural member, reinforces the lightness and floating of the roof).

6.3.1. Use window and door proportions, sizes, styles, and materials accurate for the architectural style of the building. Traditional historic styles and their reproductions require small openings, in keeping with older technologies (as shown above left by the small punched windows surrounded by enough solid surface to appear like the heavy, stacked, masonry construction -- as seen in traditional Mission Style -- and as shown above right by the use of full glazing rather than actual “windows” filling the space between light, spanning, structural elements -- as seen in modern styles). image(s) tbd.

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6.3.2. Integrate the primary entrance with the overall design of the house (as shown above by the recessed porch of the same material as the overall house, tucked subtly under a slight asymmetrical flare of the roofline and with arched openings of similar height to nearby window openings).

6.3.3. Rather than installing a standard overhead product, craft a garage door either to provide visual interest (like the quirk, handmade double doors above), to recede completely into the materials and colors of the building wall, or orient it so as not to face the street.

6.3.4. Blend any skylights, their size, shape, placement, number, and framing into the overall roof and building design (like the glass ridge integrated into the structural roof members above). Preserve the Enhance. Subordinate. Fit. Retain. Design. Detail.

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CARMEL DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) RESI 38 overall roof form by respecting the maximum allowable percentage of skylight area and the minimum allowable distance from eaves. Ensure that skylights do not appear random, visually prominent to the neighbors, nor visible to the street. Do not use unintegrated high profile, domed, or pyramidal units.

6.3.5. Design a balcony to be subordinate in scale and proportion to the house, while using materials and details appropriate to the overall building design.

6.3.6. Locate and proportion a traditional chimney and its cap to integrate into the overall building design. Make a chimney attached to the side of a building appear to be self supporting (as shown above right where the chimney material sits on the ground and clearly integrates with the foundation material), not “floating” above the ground or foundation (as shown above left).

6.3.7. Choose roof materials and installation details accurate to the architectural style of the building.

Add new energy conservation and generation technologies, including “cool” and planted areas, to roofs only if subdued in appearance.

6.3.8. Handcraft any fences, using unfinished grapestakes (as shown above left) or wood pickets and not ornate wrought iron or chain link (as shown above right).

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6.3.9. Integrate any garden wall with the building architecture and materials, using matte-finished native stone, river rock, brick, or plain-textured plastered masonry (as shown above left where the low garden wall is of the exact same color, dimension, and pattern of adobe brick as the home itself), not unfinished concrete or concrete block (as shown by the store-bought industrial retainage above right).

6.3.10. Integrate an arbor into the fence or wall design, incorporating vines or other landscaping to blend it into the garden.

6.3.11. Distinguish a gate from the adjoining fence or wall with crafted or individualized details, while maintaining filtered views into the property. Do not use vehicle gates except on unusually large estate properties.

6.3.12. Never use gate posts or columns that are monumental or out-of-scale with the building design, nor stone columns that are not integrated into other stone elements. Keep posts and columns the same height as their adjacent fence or wall.

6.3.13. Use house identification devices, such as name and number signage, that is subordinate to and appropriate to the architecture.

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ATTACHMENT 2

DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) COMM
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DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) MUNI
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DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX
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PREFERRED MATERIALS
Planting & Building
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DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX 2
Scientific Name Common Name
TREES
Acer macrophyllum big-leaved maple
Acer negundo box elder
Arbutus menziesii madrone
Aesculus californica California buckeye
Cupressus goveniana ssp. goveniana Gowen cypress
Cupressus macrocarpa Monterey cypress
Myrica californica Pacific wax myrtle
Quercus agrifolia coast live oak
Pinus muricata bishop pine
Pinus radiata Monterey pine
Platanus racemosa sycamore
Salix lasiolepis arroyo willow
Salix scouleriana Scouler's willow
Sambucus mexicana blue elderberry
SHRUBS
Adenostoma fasciculatum chamise
Arctostaphylos tomentosa ssp. bracteosa Monterey manzanita (shaggybarked) Arctostaphylos hookeri Hooker's manzanita
Arctostaphylos pumila sandmat manzanita
Artemisia californica California sagebrush
Baccharis douglasii Douglas's baccharis
Baccharis pilularis coyote brush
Berberis pinnata California barberry
Ceanothus cuneatus var. rigidus Monterey ceanothus
Ceanothus thyrsiflorus blue blossom
Chrysolepis chrysophylla var. minor chinquapin
Corethrogyne filaginifolia branching beach aster
Cornus sericea ssp. occidentalis western red dogwood
Ericameria fasciculata Eastwood's golden fleece
Eriodictyon californicum yerba santa
Eriogonum elongatum long-stem buckwheat
Eriogonum latifolium coast buckwheat
Eriogonum parvifolium seacliff buckwheat
Gaultheria shallon salal
Heteromeles arbutifolia toyon
Holodiscus discolor cream bush, oceanspray
Lepechinia calycina pitcher sage
Lonicera hispidula var. vacillans hairy honeysuckle
Lotus scoparius deerweed
Lupinus albifrons silver bush lupine
Lupinus arboreus tree lupine
Mimulus aurantiacus sticky monkey flower
Oemleria cerasiformis oso berry
Rhamnus californica coffeeberry
Rhamnus crocea redberry
Ribes divaricatum creek gooseberry
Ribes malvaceum chaparral currant
Ribes sanguineum var. glutinosum pink-flowering currant Ribes speciosum fuchsia-flowered gooseberry
Rosa californica California wild rose
Rosa gymnocarpa wood rose
Rosa pinetorum pine rose
Salvia mellifera black sage
Salvia spathacea crimson sage
Solanum douglasii Douglas' nightshade
Symphoricarpus mollis creeping snowberry
Symphoricarpos rivularis common snowberry
Toxicodendron diversilobum poison oak
Vaccinium ovatum huckleberry

HERBACEOUS PLANTS
Achillea millefolium yarrow
Agoseris grandiflora mountain dandelion
Allienz hickmanii Hickman's onion
Arnica discoidea rayless arnica
Aster radulinus rough-leaved aster
Calochortus albus white globe lily, fairy lantern
Calochortus luteus yellow mariposa lily
Calochortus uniflores large-flowered star tulip
Calystegia macrostegia ssp. cyclostegia coast morning-glory Castilleja affinis coast paintbrush
Chlorogalum pomeridianum soaproot
Claytonia perfoliata miner's lettuce
Cordylanthus rigid ssp.littoralis seaside bird's-beak
Cynoglossom grande hound's tongue
Dichelostemma capitatum blue dicks
Scientific Name Common Name
Epilobium ciliatum California willow-herb
Eschscholzia californica California poppy
Fragaria vesca wood strawberry
Fritillaria affinis checker lily, mission bells
Galium californicum California bedstraw
Horkelia cuneata wedge-leaved horkelia
Iris douglasiana Douglas iris
Lomatium parvifolium small-leaved lomatium
Lotus formosissimus bicolored lotus, witch's teeth
Lotis stipularis stipulate lotus
Madia elegans common madia
Madia madioides woodland madia
Osmorhiza chilensis sweet cicely
Pedicularis densiflora Indian warrior
Piperia elegans elegant piperia
Piperia elongata tall rein-orchid
Piperia yadonii Yadon's rein-orchid
Perideridia gairdneri Gairdner's yampah
Polygala californica California milkwort
Potentilla hickmanii Hickman's cinquefoil
Rubus ursinus California blackberry
Sanicula crassicaulis gambleweed
Satureja douglasii yerba buena
Sidalcea malvaeflora checkerbloom
Sisyrinchium bellum blue-eyed grass
Smilacina racemosa fat solomon
Solidago californica California goldenrod
Spiranthes romanzoffiana hooded ladies' tresses
Trifolium polyodon Pacific Grove clover
Trifolium trichocalyx Monterey clover
Trillium chloropetalum giant trillium
Triteleia ixioides pretty face
Xerophyllum tenax bear grass
Zigadenus fremontii Fremont's star lily
FERNS
Adianturn aleuticum five-finger fern
Adiantum jordanii California maiden-hair
Dryopteris arguta wood fern
Pellaea andromedaefolia coffee fern
Pityrogramma triangularis goldback fern
Polypodium californicum California polypody
Polystichum munitum sword fern

GRASSES, SEDGES AND RUSHES
Agrostis pallens leafy bent-grass
Bromus carmatus California brome
Calamagrostis nutkaensis Pacific reed-grass
Carex barbarae Santa Barbara sedge
Carex brevicaulis short-stemmed sedge
Carex obnupta slough sedge
Carex praegracilis clustered field sedge
Carex tumulicula foothill sedge
Cyperus eragrostis tall cyperus
Danthonia californica California oatgrass
Deschampsia caespitosa tufted hair-grass
Elymus glaucus Western ryegrass
Festuca californica California fescue
Festuca rubra red fescue
Juncus balticus wire rush, Baltic rush
Juncus bufonius common toad rush
Juncus effusus common rush
Juncus falcatus sickle-leaved rush
Juncus occidentalis Western rush
Juncus patens spreading rush
Juncus xiphioides iris-leaved rush
Koeleria macrantha junegrass
Leymus condensatus giant ryegrass
Leymus triticoides beardless ryegrass
Luzaida comosa common wood rush
Melica californica western melica
Melica imperfecta Coast-Range melica
Nassella lepida foothill needlegrass
Nassella pulchra purple needlegrass
Poa secunda pine bluegrass
Scirpus cernuus low club rush
Scirpus amiericanus three square

PREFERRED PLANTING MATERIALS
from pages 140-143 of Coastal California’s Living Legacy: The Monterey Pine Forest Enhance. Subordinate. Fit. Retain. Design. Detail.

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DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX 3

PREFERRED BUILDING MATERIALS

MATERIAL NOTES USES

NATURAL
wood reclaimed or FSC sustainable
redwood or cedar or fir
posts, beams, siding, trim, un-clad windows, doors, garage doors, fireproofed roof shingles or shakes,
bark reclaimed or FSC sustainable
redwood or cedar or fir
siding, roofing
bamboo sustainably cultivated flooring, siding, structural panels cork sustainably cultivated flooring, siding, structural panels living plants drought-tolerant, native species
(see Preferred Planting Materials)
walls, roofs
stone local, dry-set or mortared stacked in dry-set
structurally-feasible patterns only
mudstone/golden granite for walls, foundations, driveways, Carmel stone for walls, patios, walkways
earth locally sourced cob or rammed soils/sands walls
brick locally-sourced clay or adobe walls, patios, walkways bale locally sourced straw walls, insulation
tile genuine ceramic, clay, or concrete mono-chromatic for roofs, patios, walkways multi-chromatic for decorative accents
basic metal uncoated, naturally-aging
zinc, bronze, brass, aluminum
roofing, gutters, hardware, cladding for
deconstructable/recyclable wood windows
glass low-E, clear, or evenly sandblasted,
non-mirrored, non-tinted
windows and other glazed openings
sealing oil penetrating, non-peeling, non-VOC, pure tung, linseed, hemp, teak oils
exposed wood treatment, when natural aging is undesired

MANUFACTURED
poured concrete artistically-crafted in natural or in uniform, integrated color with only non-uniform, handcrafted textures (as
with exposed aggregate or genuine wood formwork)
walls, patios, walkways, pavers
cast concrete integrated, uniform color, and finish without stamped, faux “natural” textures
walls, patios, walkways, pavers, roof tiles
alt-crete e.g. ashcrete, sandcrete, grasscrete, woodcrete, hempcrete: poured or cast, maintain original surface
pattern and color
walls, patios, walkways, pavers, roof tiles
fiber cement e.g. Hardiboard, Equitonesmooth texture only, no mimicry of natural materials
siding
stucco uncoated, non-pigmented, smooth textured wall coating advanced brick e.g. wool brick, shell brick walls, patios, walkways advanced metal steel, galvanized steel, stainless steel, Cor-Ten steel, Zincalume, Galvalume, earth-toned anodized
aluminum
slim-profile windows, siding, landscape elements, standing seam roofing with non-corrugated flat panels, devoid of ribbing
advanced wood FSC sustainable: mass timber, industriallypickled/acetylated, pre-charred/shou-sugi-ban, thermally-modified, bio-based fiberboard super-wood
posts, beams, siding, trim, un-clad windows, doors, garage doors, fireproofed roof shingles or shakes,
stain penetrating, naturally-fading, rather than peeling, monochrome, earthtone pigment
exposed wood treatment, when added color is desired
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DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX 4

PROJECT REVIEW
Process, Checklist, & Narratives
ATTACHMENT 2

DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX 5
CARMEL BY THE SEA remains beautiful because of the community’s rigorous design expectations.

These Design Guidelines are a mandated regulatory tool for the CC, SC, and RC districts that conveys these expectations. They also help explain and illustrate design standards in the City’s other regulations. Existing projects never establish precedent for proposed projects. Instead, all projects must meet or exceed the expectations described by and under the community’s six Core Design Guidelines.

Where uncertainty arises, city officials will interpret guideline adherence on a case-by-case basis. Strict adherence to this document and its related, linked regulations will help ensure that a proposed project will meet community expectations and have a smooth approval process.

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Core Design Principles Narrative Form
Purpose of Completing This Narrative
This narrative is intended to guide applicants in thoughtfully employing Carmel-by-the-Sea’s six core design principles at the earliest stages of project design. For each principle, applicants are asked to briefly describe how their proposed project responds to and harmonizes with that principle. The intent is not for applicants to restate regulations, but to demonstrate design intent and awareness of the heritage that shapes Carmel’s built environment. Completing this narrative helps ensure that projects begin in the right direction, are grounded in the spirit of the Design Guidelines, and are developed with sensitivity to the community, the site, and Carmel’s village-in-a-forest character.

How to use this form
Please provide a brief written narrative for each principle below describing how your proposed project addresses and complies with that principle. We invite you to include visuals and details that illustrate consistency with the guidelines. If additional space is needed, please attach supplemental sheets.

1. ENHANCE, restore, and preserve the native forest in all improvement projects:
private, public, and otherwise.

Design the project as an extension of Carmel’s native forest. The upper and lower canopy should remain the primary site feature, with buildings visually secondary. Projects should retain significant trees, supplement the forest with new planting, and reinforce continuity of the forest character across the site and surrounding area.

Describe how the project addresses this principle:

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Project Address: ___________________________
APN: _____________________________________
Owner Name: _____________________________
Applicant Name: ___________________________
Date: _____________________________________
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2. SUBORDINATE every built structure to the character and continuity of the forest, natural environment, and to the natural features of its own site.

Ensure all buildings are clearly secondary to the site’s natural features and topography. Massing, excavation, and foundations should follow existing slopes, minimize grading, and avoid visual dominance. The design should feel woven into the landscape rather than imposed upon it.

Describe how the project addresses this principle:

3. FIT every built structure within its neighborhood context.

Design the project to respect the scale, massing, setbacks, and open-space patterns of the surrounding neighborhood. New construction should protect neighbors’ privacy, views, and access to light while maintaining Carmel’s informal streetscape, natural slopes, and forested foreground.

Describe how the project addresses this principle:

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4. RETAIN and build upon Carmel’s architectural heritage.

Draw from Carmel’s tradition of individual expression and eclectic architectural styles. Use forms, materials, and detailing that convey human scale, craftsmanship, and a natural patina, while remaining compatible with the village-in-a-forest setting.

Describe how the project addresses this principle:

5. DESIGN every built structure with modesty and restraint.

Keep building scale, form, and mass restrained and appropriate to the site. Designs should reflect traditional proportions, break larger volumes into realistic components, and avoid oversized or speculative expressions that dominate the street or surrounding landscape.

Describe how the project addresses this principle:

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6. DETAIL every property authentically and consistently.

Use architectural details and materials that are genuine, functional, and consistently applied on all sides of the building. Avoid applied or faux elements, and ensure that craftsmanship, materials, and detailing reflect authenticity throughout the entire property.

Describe how the project addresses this principle:

Applicant Certification
I certify that the responses above accurately describe how the proposed project has been designed to comply with the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea’s Design Guidelines.

Applicant Signature: _______________________________ Date: ________________ Enhance. Subordinate. Fit. Retain. Design. Detail.

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DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX 10
Core Design Principles Narrative Form
Supplemental Information

1. ENHANCE, restore, and preserve the native forest in all improvement projects:
private, public, and otherwise.

Project Address: ___________________________
APN: _____________________________________
Owner Name: _____________________________
Applicant Name: ___________________________
Date: _____________________________________
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ATTACHMENT 2

DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX 11
Core Design Principles Narrative Form
Supplemental Information

2. SUBORDINATE every built structure to the character and continuity of the forest, natural environment, and to the natural features of its own site.

Project Address: ___________________________
APN: _____________________________________
Owner Name: _____________________________
Applicant Name: ___________________________
Date: _____________________________________
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DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX 12
Core Design Principles Narrative Form
Supplemental Information

3. FIT every built structure within its neighborhood context.

Project Address: ___________________________
APN: _____________________________________
Owner Name: _____________________________
Applicant Name: ___________________________
Date: _____________________________________
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DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX 13
Core Design Principles Narrative Form
Supplemental Information

4. RETAIN and build upon Carmel’s architectural heritage.

Project Address: ___________________________
APN: _____________________________________
Owner Name: _____________________________
Applicant Name: ___________________________
Date: _____________________________________
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ATTACHMENT 2

DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX 14
Core Design Principles Narrative Form
Supplemental Information

5. DESIGN every built structure with modesty and restraint.

Project Address: ___________________________
APN: _____________________________________
Owner Name: _____________________________
Applicant Name: ___________________________
Date: _____________________________________
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ATTACHMENT 2

DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX 15
Core Design Principles Narrative Form
Supplemental Information

6. DETAIL every property authentically and consistently.

Project Address: ___________________________
APN: _____________________________________
Owner Name: _____________________________
Applicant Name: ___________________________
Date: _____________________________________
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DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX 16
Design Review Tracks
The Design Review process is organized into separate tracks, which correspond to the scale of a project or its complexity.

Some projects may be approved at staff level while others may require comment and/or action by a board, committee or commission of the City. Submittal requirements vary accordingly. Consult with City Planning staff to determine the process for a specific project.

Carmel-by-the-Sea Municipal Code (CMC) Section 17.58.040 Residential Design Review outlines the two established residential design review tracks, Track 1 (Staff Approval) and Track 2 (Planning Commission Approval). Note: Per CMC Section 17.58.040.A.3.b, Track 1 projects that comply with the zoning regulations, but do not comply with the design guidelines or design objectives will be referred to the Planning Commission for resolution or shall be redirected into Track 2.

Track 1 (Staff Approval)
• Staff level discretionary approval
• Limited to:
o Exterior changes or additions that do not increase the floor are by more than 10% o Changes in exterior materials, site coverage, landscaping, fenestrations, chimneys, fences, or walls
o Minor changes to historic resources

Track 2 (Planning Commission Approval)
• Discretionary review process for project that requires public hearing with the Planning Commission
• Include:
o All new construction, demolition, and grading over 25 cubic yards o Additions that increase building coverage by more than 200 square feet or 10% o Projects requiring grading within 6’ of a significant tree (as determined by the City Forester)
o Any project requiring a Coastal Development Permit that is not exempt from Public Hearing
Note:

CMC Section 17.10.010 (Purpose and Design Objectives) establishes the standards and requirements for development in the R1 district. The Residential Design Guidelines implement these design objectives (CMC Section 17.10.060, Residential Design Guidelines).

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DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX 17
Gaining Project Approval
Each project shall follow a series of steps in order to ensure that the proposed work meets all the relevant design guidelines. Compliance review with relevant zoning code regulations occurs concurrently. Check with Planning Staff for specific submittal requirements.

Step 1: Site Assessment

Step 2: Concept Review

Step 3: Final Review
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• Applicant applies for preliminary site assessment. (General Planning application and survey created within a year of application submittal.) • Planning and Forestry staff assess the site.
• The applicant uses the assessment and the core principles in developing the project design.
• Owner develops the Concept Design level information.
• Planning Commission reviews for compliance.
• When approved, applicant continues to Final Design.
• Owner developsthe Final Design, gets a volume study through the city, and addresses any conditions of approval from the Concept Design hearing. • Planning Commission reviews for compliance.
• When approved, applicant applies for other city permits, including building permit.

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ATTACHMENT 2

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GLOSSARY
Selected Definitions
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E
Eden E•den |ˈēd(ə)n| noun. 1. a place or state of great happiness; an unspoiled paradise: pining for the Eden of her childhood. 2. Carmel-by-the-Sea GLOSSARY Enhance. Subordinate. Fit. Retain. Design. Detail. future content
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DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX 21
INDEX
Keywords& Concepts
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DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX 22
A
Arbors _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 14, 39 Asphalt ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________4, 12 B
Balconies ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 12, 15, 20, 38 Beams _________________________________________________________________________________________ 8, 10, 11, 14, 17, 22, 33, 34, 7 Brick ________________________________________________________________________________________6, 8, 10, 12, 17, 12, 24, 25, 39, 7 C
Canopies ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 19, 22, 3, 4, 6, 9, 16 Coatings_________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 16, 34, 7 Colors ___________________________________________________________________________16, 17, 12, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 29, 32, 37, 39, 7 Columns________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 19, 20, 39 Compounds ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________18 Concrete________________________________________________________________________ 9, 12, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 4, 12, 24, 26, 35, 39, 7 Connectivity ________________________________________________________________________________________________________22, 5 D
Decks______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 20, 24 Doors__________________________________________________________________8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 21, 11, 25, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 7 Drainage_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 3, 7 Driveways______________________________________________________________________________________________________5, 11, 12, 7 E
Entries______________________________________________________________________________________ 7, 14, 15, 16, 7, 16, 29, 31, 32, 37 Estates__________________________________________________________________________________________________8, 10, 13, 20, 18, 39 F
Faux _______________________________________________________________________________________________________12, 26, 34, 35, 7 Fences ________________________________________________________________________________________ 12, 24, 4, 13, 14, 15, 20, 38, 39 Finishes ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 11, 19, 25, 26, 34, 36, 7 Forest__________________________________________1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 18, 32, 2 Formality___________________________________________________________________________________________________ 9, 4, 7, 12, 29 Foundations ____________________________________________________________________________11, 12, 21, 3, 9, 10, 11, 12, 34, 35, 38, 7 G
Garages_________________________________________________________________________________________________ 11, 18, 25, 29, 37, 7 Glass ___________________________________________________________ 8, 9, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 13, 25, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 7 Grading ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 3, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 29 Grass ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________6 Gravel ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 4, 5, 12 H
Heights ____________________________________________________________________________________ 12, 17, 9, 10, 15, 19, 29, 30, 37, 39 Hierarchies ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 35 Historic _______________________________________________________________________________________ 1, 7, 13, 20, 21, 23, 30, 32, 36 I
Informality __________________________________________________________________________________________________ 4, 5, 7, 12, 14 Enhance. Subordinate. Fit. Retain. Design. Detail.

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Irrigation _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________4 L
Lighting ______________________________________________________________________________9, 17, 20, 21, 9, 14, 15, 16, 19, 23, 33, 36 Limbs____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 22, 3, 29 M
Manufactured __________________________________________________________________________________________________ 25, 26, 35 Massing ________________________________________________________________ 3, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 6, 9, 17, 18, 19, 23, 27, 30, 7 Materials ____1, 6, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 19, 21, 22, 24, 4, 5, 7, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 7 Metal _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 15, 24, 25, 7 P
Paint_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________15, 21, 34 Parking ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________4, 5, 11 Patina _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 24, 25 Paving ________________________________________________________________________________________________ 8, 3, 4, 5, 7, 11, 12, 13 Planes _________________________________________________________________________________________________ 10, 16, 22, 9, 19, 29 Plants_____________________________________________________________________________________ 1, 6, 8, 21, 22, 5, 6, 7, 12, 18, 20, 7 Plastics _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 13, 25 Porches __________________________________________________________________________________________________7, 9, 10, 19, 31, 37 Posts_________________________________________________________________________________7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 17, 18, 22, 10, 33, 39, 7 Preferred _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1, 24, 7 Private_________________________________________________________________________________ 1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 21, 2, 3, 5, 11, 12, 13, 20, 2 Public______________________________________________________________________________ 1, 3, 8, 9, 21, 2, 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 16, 29, 31, 2 R
Rafters_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________34 Recycling ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________25 Retaining ________________________________________________________________________________________________ 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 39 Rights-of-way ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 3, 4, 5, 6, 13, 29 Roofs ___________________________ 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 7, 9, 21, 23, 24, 26, 29, 30, 31, 34, 36, 37, 38, 7 S
Scale____________________________________________________________________ 12, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 6, 7, 18, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 38, 39 Screening_________________________________________________________________________________________________17, 3, 6, 9, 13, 20 Setbacks _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 11, 18, 19 Shingles ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________10, 23 Shrubs _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 5, 13 Shutters _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________34 Siding ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 7, 9, 11, 6, 25, 33, 35, 7 Signage _________________________________________________________________________________________________ 7, 11, 21, 28, 37, 39 Sizing _________________________________________________________________________________ 14, 21, 9, 14, 16, 18, 20, 30, 34, 36, 37 Skylights _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ 16, 20, 37 Spaces _________________________________________________________ 16, 19, 21, 22, 24, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 23, 30, 36 Speculative __________________________________________________________________________________________________ 20, 21, 23, 24 Stain________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 34, 7 Stone __________________________________________________________________________ 11, 12, 16, 17, 18, 12, 15, 21, 24, 26, 34, 35, 39, 7 Stories ___________________________________________________________________________________________ 11, 14, 18, 20, 11, 19, 29, 30 Streets __________________________ 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 21, 29, 32, 35, 37, 38 Structural_________________________________________________________________________________________ 9, 10, 11, 14, 34, 36, 37, 7 Style________________________________________________ 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 28, 30, 31, 32, 34, 36, 38 Enhance. Subordinate. Fit. Retain. Design. Detail.

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T
Terracing __________________________________________________________________________________________________ 9, 10, 12, 16, 20 Textures _________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 12, 26, 7 Tile __________________________________________________________________________________________________12, 13, 14, 15, 24, 26, 7 Topography ________________________________________________________________________________________________ 20, 3, 4, 10, 15 Trees _______________________________________________________________ 3, 6, 8, 9, 12, 17, 19, 21, 22, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 16, 18, 20, 29 U
Utilities _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________20 V
Vegetation______________________________________________________________________________________ 19, 20, 24, 3, 4, 5, 11, 14, 16 Views ____________________________________________________ 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 19, 20, 23, 31, 39 Volumes____________________________________________________________________________ 10, 12, 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 9, 19, 28, 29 W
Walls ___________ 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 19, 20, 21, 24, 26, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, 37, 39, 7 Windows _____________________________ 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 9, 12, 16, 19, 20, 23, 25, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 7 Wood_________________________________________ 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 14, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 33, 34, 35, 38, 7 Woodgrain ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 35 Enhance. Subordinate. Fit. Retain. Design. Detail.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
It Takesa Village.

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Special thanks to…
Carmel-by-the-Sea Community Planning and Building Division:

Brandon Swanson Acting City Administrator
Anna Ginette Community Planning and Building Director
Jake Olander Associate Planner
Planning Commission:

Michael LePage Chair
Stephanie Locke Co-Chair
Mel Ahlborn Member
Erin Allen Member
Stephan Karapetkov Member
Winter & Company of Boulder CO:

Nore Winter Consultant
Julie Husband Consultant
Design Traditions Steering Committee:

Victoria Beach Co-Chair
Doug Schmitz Co-Chair
Melanie Billig Member
Don Goodhue Member
Mary Ann Schicketanz Member
and most importantly to…
The Citizens of Carmel-by-the-Sea whose determination to protect this singular place and whose willingness to volunteer their observations and insights over countless hours inspired every aspect of this crucial document.

ATTACHMENT 2

DESIGN GUIDELINES (Layout Draft: 20260120) APPX 27
ATTACHMENT 2

Review the proposed Plan, Timeline, & Scope
of Work to finalize the Residential Design
Guidelines 1.5

CITY OF CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA
City Council Special Meeting
May 4, 2026 Slide 1
Design Traditions 1.5 Update:

ATTACHMENT 3

• Recent meetings: November 2025 - March 2026
• Recommended “Steering Committee Draft”
• Ad-Hoc formed: Councilmembers Baron & Delves
• Production Team efforts
Background & The Path Forward
Slide 2
ATTACHMENT 3

• Ad-Hoc Sponsors
• “Contributors”
• Planning Commission Members
• Members of the Public
• Architect(s)
• Staff
Production Team
Slide 3
ATTACHMENT 3

➢ Goal: Produce a useful, adequate final version of the Residential Design Guidelines 1.5, resulting in
Planning Commission support, Council adoption,
and California Coastal Commission approval.
➢Target Council Adoption Deadline: September 1,
2026.

Production Team
Slide 4
ATTACHMENT 3

➢ Start at Adoption by Council and work backwards
Proposed Plan (Timeline)
Slide 5
ATTACHMENT 3

➢ Four (4), one-month “work cycles”
Proposed Plan
Slide 6
ATTACHMENT 3

“Work Cycle” #1 (April)
Slide 7
ATTACHMENT 3

“Work Cycle” #1 (April)
Slide 8 Slide 8
ATTACHMENT 3

“Work Cycle” #1 (April)
Slide 8 Slide 9
ATTACHMENT 3

“Work Cycle” #1 (April)
Slide 8 Slide 10
ATTACHMENT 3

“Work Cycle” #1 (April)
Slide 8 Slide 11
ATTACHMENT 3

“Work Cycle” #1 (April)
Slide 8 Slide 12
ATTACHMENT 3

“Work Cycle” #1 & #2
Slide 8 Slide 13
ATTACHMENT 3

1. Planning Commission Meeting

2. Suggested edits are made to draft document

3. Staff Reviews and Approves changes

4. Production Team Meets___
Document Editing Process
Slide 14
ATTACHMENT 3

❏ Consistency Analysis with General Plan, Local Coastal Program, Municipal Code, Strategy Paper & Other Applicable City
Documents
❏ Update for Fire Safety
❏ Planning Process/Flowchart + Description
❏ Add Council & Planning Commission’s Top “Most Wanted” Topics to be Clarified/Addressed
❏ Staff Content Review
❏ Identify Changes to Other City Docs (e.g. Muni Code)
❏ Index, Glossary, Hyperlinks
❏ Redline
❏ Formatting (LCP/California Coastal Act-Compliant)
A Scope of Work (Tasks)
Slide 15
ATTACHMENT 3

• Do you endorse the proposed Plan, Scope of Work,
and Timeline to finalize the Residential Design
Guidelines 1.5?
• Provide staff a “wish list” of specific items or issues the City Council would like to see addressed or
clarified in the final document.

Council Feedback
Slide 16
ATTACHMENT 3

Thank you.

Questions?
Slide 17
ATTACHMENT 3

CITY OF CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA
City Council
Staff Report
May 4, 2026

ORDERS OF BUSINESS
TO: Honorable Mayor and City Council Members
SUBMITTED BY: Nova Romero, City Clerk
APPROVED BY: Brandon Swanson, Acting City Administrator SUBJECT: Consideration of FY 2026-2027 City Council Discretionary Grant Funding and Direction on Distribution of Grant Awards
RECOMMENDATION:

Receive and consider applications submitted for the FY 2026-2027 Council Discretionary Grant Program and provide direction to staff regarding:

1. The total amount of discretionary grant funding to include in the FY 2026-2027 Operating Budget; and

2. The distribution of grant funds among eligible applicants; and

3. Provide direction on future grant requests.

BACKGROUND / SUMMARY:

Executive Summary
The City Council Discretionary Funds Grant Program provides a process for the City Council to consider financial support for nonprofit organizations and Carmel schools that provide programs or services benefiting the Carmel-by-the-Sea community. Under Council Policy No. 2017-01 (Attachment 1), the program is discretionary each fiscal year, and the City Council may determine whether to offer the program and the amount of funding, if any, to allocate through the annual budget process.

For the FY 2026-2027 grant cycle, the application period was open from February 6 through March 27, 2026. Outreach included the City’s website, Friday Letter, Pine Cone, and direct email notifications. Staff received 18 applications requesting a

combined total of $54,000. A preliminary allocation of $20,000 has been identified in the proposed FY 2026-2027 budget for discretionary grants, subject to City Council direction and final budget adoption in June.

Staff reviewed each application for eligibility, completeness, public benefit, and consistency with Policy No. 2017-01. All 18 applicants were determined to be eligible, with clarification to some applicants that the use of grant funds towards salaries, general operating expenses, or travel-related costs is excluded. Based on recent discussions about the City's budget projections, and to ensure that the grant program remains sustainable, staff recommends allocating $18,000 to award $1,000 to each of the 18 eligible applicants for approved uses, with the remaining $2,000 reserved for potential off-cycle requests during the fiscal year. Attachment 2 summarizes the applications received and staff’s recommendation for each applicant.

Background
The City of Carmel-by-the-Sea has historically included discretionary grant funding as part of its annual budget process in recognition of the important role nonprofit organizations and schools play in providing community, educational, cultural, environmental, and social benefits to Carmel-by-the-Sea residents.

In 2017, the City Council adopted Policy No. 2017-01, City Council Discretionary Funds Grant Program, to establish a consistent process for evaluating grant requests and awarding discretionary funds. The policy states that the program is intended to support nonprofit organizations or schools that provide programs or services benefiting the Carmel-by-the-Sea community, while promoting transparency, accountability, and alignment with the City’s budget process.

Under the policy, eligible applicants must be a nonprofit 501(c) organization or a Carmel school; be located within or serve the Carmel-by-the-Sea community; directly provide the services for which funding is requested; have no outstanding debt to the City; and not be financially dependent on City funding for annual operations. The policy also requires grant funds to be used for a public purpose and prohibits the use of funds for certain ineligible expenses, including scholarships, debt payments, travel, and general operating expenses such as salaries, rent, and utilities.

The policy further states that the program is discretionary each year and that the City Council may decide whether to accept applications and how much funding to allocate. It also encourages local organizations to remain financially self-sufficient and not rely on City funding as an ongoing operational source.

Application Review
The FY 2026-2027 application period opened on February 6, 2026, and closed on March 27, 2026. Staff received 18 applications. Each application was reviewed for eligibility and completeness in accordance with Policy No. 2017-01, and all 18

applicants met the eligibility requirements.

Staff also reviewed the applications based on the public benefit described, the number of Carmel-by-the-Sea residents served, and consistency with the policy’s requirements regarding the use of public funds. A summary of the applications and staff recommendations is provided in Attachment 2. A summary of the applicant responses to the grant application is included as Attachment 3. The full applications and supporting documents submitted to the City are on file in the City Clerk’s Office and available upon request.

Staff recommends that the City Council:

1. Approve a total funding allocation of $20,000 for the FY 2026–2027 City Council Discretionary Grant Program;

2. Approve grants of $1,000 to each of the 18 applicants listed below for eligible expenses identified in Attachment 2, with $2,000 reserved for future or unforeseen needs; and

3. Provide direction on whether future off-cycle requests from Carmel High School student clubs should be consolidated into a single annual allocation to Carmel High School for internal distribution by the High School.

Organization Name Suggested Grant
Amount
Carmel Bach Festival, Inc. $1,000
AIM Youth Mental Health $1,000
Carmel Little League $1,000
Carmel Chamber of Commerce
Foundation
$1,000
Carmel Residents Association $1,000
Carmel High School Mock Trial Team $1,000
Carmel Padre Parents - Sober Grad
Night
$1,000
Monterey County Rape Crisis Center $1,000
Community Emergency Response
Volunteer of Monterey Peninsula
$1,000
Pacific Repertory Theatre $1,000

American Legion Post 512 Carmel
Patriots
$1,000
Carmel Woman's Club $1,000
Carmel Dance Festival $1,000
I Cantori di Carmel $1,000
Monterey Peninsula Ballet Theatre $1,000
Loaves, Fishes & Computers $1,000
Community Human Services $1,000
Carmel Heritage Society $1,000
Total $18,000
FISCAL IMPACT:

No immediate fiscal impact would result from this action. A preliminary allocation of $20,000 has been identified in the proposed FY 2026-2027 budget for City Council Discretionary Grants, subject to City Council direction and final budget adoption. If approved through the budget process, funds would be disbursed after July 1, 2026.

PRIOR CITY COUNCIL ACTION:

In June 2024, Council allocated $36,000 for Discretionary Grant Funds for the FY 2024- 2025 Budget.

In June 2025, Council allocated $36,000 for Discretionary Grant Funds for the FY 2025- 2026 Budget.

ATTACHMENTS:

1. Policy No. 2017-01 City Council Discretionary Funds Grant Program

2. Summary of Grant Applications and Recommendation FY 26-27

3. Grant responses by applicant spreadsheet

2017-01

CITY OF CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA

POLICY AND PROCEDURE
Subject: City Council Discretionary Funds Grant
Program
Policy/Procedure No: 2017-01
Effective Date: 3 January 2017 Authority: Resolution No. 2017-011 Purpose:

The City Council Discretionary Funds Grant Program serves as a funding resource to nonprofit organizations or schools that provide programs or services that benefit the Carmel-by-the-Sea community. With clearly defined goals, criteria, and evaluation measures, the program will result in a granting process that:
• Provides equal opportunity for all interested community service providers to be considered for funding
• Aligns funding requests with the City’s budget process • Identifies the community benefit associated with funded programs or services • Establishes a reporting process that demonstrates transparency and accountability for public funds
Policy/Procedure:

As set forth fully in the policy document attached.

Responsible Party:

City Council
Department of Origin:

Community Activities
Revision Dates:

Rescinded Date:

ATTACHMENT 1

City of Carmel-by-the-Sea

CITY COUNCIL

DISCRETIONARY FUNDS GRANT PROGRAM
________________________________________
POLICY 2017-01
Office of the City Administrator
Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA 93921
2017-01
ATTACHMENT 1

GENERAL

INTRODUCTION
The City of Carmel-by-the-Sea recognizes and appreciates the value of local organizations that provide community, environmental and social services that benefit the City’s residents and businesses and enhance the well-being of its citizens. Community service is defined as voluntary work performed that supports the wellbeing of the citizens of Carmel-by-the-Sea and serves a public purpose. As such, each year, the City Council may set aside discretionary funds to support a City Council Discretionary Funds Grant Program that supports such purposes. Organizations that serve the community of Carmel-by-the-Sea are eligible to apply. The functions or services to be provided should be of such a nature that the interests of the City are better served by an agreement with a private nonprofit organization than by the performance of the services or functions by the City. Every organization that applies will be considered, but not all groups may receive funding.

PROGRAM PURPOSE AND DESCRIPTION
The City Council Discretionary Funds Grant Program serves as a funding resource to nonprofit organizations or schools that provide programs or services that benefit the Carmel-by-the-Sea community. With clearly defined goals, criteria, and evaluation measures, the program will result in a granting process that:
• Provides equal opportunity for all interested community service providers to be considered for funding
• Aligns funding requests with the City’s budget process • Identifies the community benefit associated with funded programs or services • Establishes a reporting process that demonstrates transparency and accountability for public funds
The City Council Discretionary Funds Grant Program is discretionary, meaning that it is up to the Council as to whether or not to accept applications for this program each year. Due to limited funds, Council has the option to not accept applications or limit the amount of funding to be allocated under such a program in any given fiscal year. If the City decides to administer the program in any given year, requests for funding received from organizations will be considered only during a specified time period. It is not the City’s intention to fund each request received, but rather to evaluate each proposal and provide funding to those organizations that most effectively serve the needs and improve the well-being of the community of Carmel-by-the-Sea.

The City encourages a goal of self-sufficiency for all local organizations and discourages an overreliance on its financial assistance to maintain such programs on an ongoing basis. Therefore, all organizations requesting funds from the City should continue efforts to develop stable private funding sources.
2017-01
ATTACHMENT 1

ELIGIBILITY STANDARDS

ELIGIBILITY
To be eligible for funding, an organization:
• Must be located within the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea or provide community, environmental or social services to the community of Carmel-by-the-Sea • Must be a nonprofit community based 501(c) organization or a Carmel school • Must directly provide the community service(s) for which City funds are sought • Must have no outstanding debt due to the City
• Must not be financially dependent upon receiving City support to meet the organization’s annual budget and operational requirements

INELIGIBILITY
The City will not provide support to:
• Individuals
• For-profit enterprises
• Special events (special event organizers are encouraged to review the City’s special event grant funding application guidelines and apply for grants under that process)

PUBLIC PURPOSE
By law, all public funds, however awarded, must be used for a public purpose. In general, a public purpose is defined as an activity or service that is open and accessible to all members of the public regardless of race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, etc., without restriction, and which does not promote a particular religion. It is therefore imperative for the organizations requesting funding through this program to clearly demonstrate the benefit that funded programs or services will have on the community of Carmel-by-the-Sea.

City grant funds may not be used for any of the following activities:
• To support political activities (including, but not limited to, lobbying, campaigns, or endorsements) and/or private interests
• Scholarships to high-school or college students
• The payment of outstanding debts
• The purchase of alcoholic beverages
• Travel, meals, lodging, or entertainment expenses
• Services which are primarily commercial, religious or political in nature • Permanent improvements to any non – City owned structure or property so that it becomes an integral part of the real property and its removal would do harm to the building or land, including those improvements that are bolted, nailed, screwed or wired into the wall, ceiling or floor
2017-01
ATTACHMENT 1

• General operating expenses or expenses to support on-going operation of the applicant, including, but not limited to, salaries, utilities, and rent expenses

DEMONSTRATING PUBLIC BENEFIT
Circumstances under which it is appropriate for the City to grant public funds include the following:
• When an organization provides a service that complements or enhances a service that the City also provides
• When there is an identifiable secondary, or indirect, benefit to the City • When the organization provides a service the City could provide, but chooses not to The following chart contains examples that illustrate public benefit:

Relationship to City Programs Example Benefit
Complementary service Donation to the Tree
Foundation in return for
agreement to replace
trees that have been
removed by the City due
to disease
The Tree Foundation has
specialized knowledge about
planting trees suitable for the
area. New trees will enhance
property values. The service will
also increase the number of
planted trees beyond that which
the City would be able to plant.

Demonstrable benefit Youth organization’s
after-school program
After-school programs can boost
academic performance, reduce
risky behaviors, promote
physical health, and provide a
safe, structured environment for
the children of working parents.

Service the City could provide, but
does not
Homeless shelter and
placement programs
Programs such as this help end
the cycle of homelessness.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE
All eligible entities seeking funding shall complete an application. Eligible entities include any Carmel school, or any nonprofit agency/organization either located within the City of Carmel-bythe-Sea or providing services to City of Carmel-by-the-Sea residents. The application must include a full explanation of the proposed used of the money and include a detailed budget and be submitted to the City by the specified deadline. City staff will then review the application for completeness and compliance with the evaluation criteria. Deadlines for funding requests correspond to the City’s budgeting cycle. The application process for an upcoming fiscal year will open early in February and close in March so as to give the City Council sufficient time to 2017-01
ATTACHMENT 1

include the funding in the fiscal year budget, if it so chooses to administer the program that year.

Grants are limited to schools, or organizations that are designated a 501(c) nonprofit organization by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Formal nonprofit status must be up to date and submitted as requested on the application. 501(c) organizations must be in good standing with the IRS. Nonprofit organizations may apply for funding only if the Project/Program serves a public purpose and follows the laws governing use of public funds.

PROCESS
All interested nonprofit organizations must complete an application form, which will include the following information:
• Name and address of the nonprofit organization (applicant is required to list the local branch if it represents a national or statewide organization) • Description of the community project/program/service provided and the benefit to the community that will be provided, including the number of Carmel-by-the-Sea community members served by both the organization and the specific project/program/service for which grant funds are sought
• Amount of funds requested
• Proposed project and budget plan for the use of the grant funds • A current, detailed operating budget that includes information on the organization’s annual sources of revenue received
• Proof of 501(c) status with a copy of the letter from the IRS as applicable • The past two year’s financial statements, including the current year, with balance sheets, sources of revenues, profit/loss statements and indicating the percentage of revenue that is used for administration, salaries and program costs
• Applicant(s) receiving City grant funds in the past must indicate when the funds were received, the amount received, and document how the funds were utilized • The application must be completed by an officer or employee of the organization that is applying for funding and authorized by the organization to complete the application Incomplete applications and applications not submitted by the deadline will not be considered.

EVALUATION OF APPLICATIONS
Following the application deadline, the City will review proposals from applicants. Applicants will be asked to send one representative to attend a public meeting to address the City Discretionary Funds Grant subcommittee, answer questions, and demonstrate the public benefit of the funds requested. All proposals will be evaluated to ascertain which nonprofit organizations will best serve the community of Carmel. Factors considered include, but are not limited to:
2017-01
ATTACHMENT 1

• The organization’s documentation of its current nonprofit status • The extent to which the organization provides a benefit to the Carmel-by-the-Sea community, including demonstrating the number of residents or businesses served • The organization's history of providing satisfactory services to the community of Carmel-bythe-Sea as applicable • The organization’s submittal of financial statements prepared using an appropriate method of accounting that demonstrates sound financial management practices • The organization’s approach to monitoring and evaluate the success of the project/program/service provided

EXECUTION OF AGREEMENT
Nonprofit organizations selected to receive funds will be required to sign and execute an agreement with the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea. If an award of funds is made, a recipient nonprofit organization will be required to expend grant monies prior to the close of the fiscal year (June 30) in which it received the funding.

COMPLIANCE
Each awarded entity shall submit a report and proper backup documentation to substantiate that funds were expended appropriately. The report shall be submitted within 30 days of the end of the project or no later than June 30 of the fiscal year in which funds were awarded. Such documentation shall include the following:
• Invoices/receipts documenting the expenditure of funds • A brief summary that explains all expenditures, including how they specifically benefitted Carmel-by-the-Sea residents, that may also include pictures or other documentation illustrating the use of the grant funds
• The organization’s progress towards meeting the goals and objectives outlined in the application, and a schedule of the Project/Program’s revenues/expenditures If funds are not expended in accordance with the City’s approved purpose, the organization may be required to refund the granted funds. The City reserves the right to require additional back-up information to substantiate how funds received from the City were expended. Failure to spend the funds in a timely manner, to provide proper documentation and/or to utilize the funds for the intended purpose may jeopardize future funding.
2017-01
ATTACHMENT 1

Organization Name Fund Use Community Benefit Staff Recommendation Grant Amount
AIM Youth Mental
Health
The grant will underwrite the full
cost for three local high school
students to participate in the 8-
week 2026 AIM Ideas Lab.

Students will learn research
and leadership skills to design
peer-to-peer mental health
surveys, ultimately generating
youth-driven recommendations
that build mental health literacy
and reduce stigma.

Approve $1,000
American Legion
Post 512 Carmel
Patriots
The funds will be used to purchase
outdoor furniture, including
Polywood chairs, tables, and
umbrellas, as well as landscape
plants and equipment.

The beautification will create a
more welcoming space that
fosters connections and honors
the history of veterans.

Approve $1,000
Carmel Bach
Festival, Inc.

The grant will pay for musicians,
sheet music, and program printing
for up to three free 1-hour
professional chamber music
concerts.

The free music series will
provide accessible, world-class
music to the public,
encouraging intergenerational
attendance at the City's
Library.

Approve with a note:

Funds may not be used
towards salaries for
musicians. Funds may be
used towards sheet music,
performance supplies, or
community outreach.
$1,000
Carmel Chamber of
Commerce
Foundation
The grant will support the
purchase of durable outdoor
musical instruments for the
"Harmony Habitat" in Forest Hill
Park.

The permanent musical garden
will promote health and outdoor
play, and provide additional
accessible features for children
at Forest Hill Park.

Approve $1,000
Carmel Heritage
Society
The grant will cover graphic
design, printing, and mounting of
display panels for an exhibit titled
“Designing Women: Noted
Architects, Designers and Builders
of Carmel”.

The exhibit will educate the
public on the historical
contributions of female
architects and designers and
will be integrated into the
history curriculum for local
third-grade students.

Approve $1,000
Carmel High School
- Sober Grad Night
The grant will help pay for the CHS
Sober Grad night entertainment
and event supplies, including a
hypnotist, a DJ, a photo booth,
decorations, food, etc.

The program provides a free,
fun, supervised, and
completely substance-free
overnight celebration to keep
graduating seniors safe.

Approve $1,000
Carmel Residents
Association
The funds will cover graphic
design, printing, and postage costs
to distribute an issue of The
VOICE Newsletter to every
resident in the city.

The publication informs
residents about civic topics and
local history, encourages
community volunteerism, and
promotes participation in City
Commissions and Boards.

Approve $1,000
Carmel Woman's
Club
The grant will be used to offset the
printing and postage costs for their
four quarterly newsletters.

The newsletters keep current
members informed and serve
as a vital tool to connect new
residents to the broader
Carmel community.

Approve $1,000
Summary of Grant Applications
Received for Fiscal Year 2026-2027ATTACHMENT 2

Organization Name Fund Use Community Benefit Staff Recommendation Grant Amount
Monterey Peninsula
Ballet Theatre
The grant will pay for Sunset
Center equipment rentals (light,
sound, dance floor), snow cleanup,
and guest artist fees for a free
community outreach program.

The funding allows local fifthgrade students to experience a free, pre-professional
performance of The
Nutcracker, while giving local
student dancers the
opportunity to hone their
performance skills and build
self-esteem.

Approve with a note:

Funds may not be used
towards artist salaries.

Funds may be used to
offset costs of equipment
rentals and towards the
free tickets for students.
$1,000
Pacific Repertory
Theatre
The application requests funds to
support the School of Dramatic
Arts (SoDA) by listing overarching
operational budgets for Facilities,
Marketing, Payroll, and
Productions.

SoDA offers low-cost classes
and camps that help youth
develop critical thinking, selfesteem, teamwork, selfmotivation, and verbal skills through theater arts education.

Approve with a note:

Funds may not be used for
payroll or general operating
expenses. Funds may be
used for production props,
materials, lower student
tuition fees, and outreach
for the SoDA program.
$1,000
Carmel Dance
Festival
The grant will go towards
costumes, production costs, and
outreach for the free community
classes and performances during
the festival.

Residents will benefit from free
wellness programming (like
yoga and sound baths),
contemporary dance classes,
and behind-the-scenes access
to world-class visiting artists.

Approve $1,000
Carmel High School
Mock Trial Team
The grant go towards student entry
fees and their travel expenses to
participate in the team's trip to the
Mock Trial World Championships
in Chicago.

The program teaches students
teamwork, analytical
reasoning, and persuasive
writing, while providing them
with a highly educational
experience representing
Carmel on an international
stage.

Approve to support
student participation in
World Trial Championship.
$1,000
Carmel Little League
Funds will purchase new
commercial refrigeration and
freezer equipment for the snack
shacks located at the league's
baseball fields.

The new equipment ensures
the safe storage of food and
beverages, and the revenue
generated from the snack
shacks helps keep youth
baseball registration affordable
while funding field
maintenance.

Approve $1,000
Community
Emergency
Response Volunteer
of Monterey
Peninsula
The funds will pay for training
materials, safety gear (vests,
helmets, first-aid supplies), and
communication equipment like
radios and flashlights.

CERV strengthens community
safety by equipping trained
volunteers to assist the City's
Police and Fire Departments
with evacuations, search and
rescue, and welfare checks
during major emergencies.

Approve $1,000
Community Human
Services
Funds will be used for direct client
support at Shuman HeartHouse,
providing meals, hygiene supplies,
laundry, bedding, and
computer/internet access.

The program provides
emergency shelter and
supportive services to women
and families, helping to reduce
homelessness and improve
regional housing stability.

Approve $1,000
Summary of Grant Applications
Received for Fiscal Year 2026-2027ATTACHMENT 2

Organization Name Fund Use Community Benefit Staff Recommendation Grant Amount
I Cantori di Carmel
Funds will subsidize a reducedprice ticket access program for Carmel residents and pay for
printed programs and audience
materials.

The program ensures Carmel
residents have affordable
access to large-scale choral
and orchestral performances,
while printed translations and
context make the music more
engaging.

Approve $1,000
Loaves, Fishes &
Computers
The grant will purchase materials
for digital literacy workshops,
including printed guides,
accessibility tools like headphones,
and technology support supplies.

Hands-on workshops will help
local seniors build the skills
and confidence needed to use
technology, avoid online
scams, and independently
access City services.

Approve $1,000
Monterey County
Rape Crisis Center
Funds will pay for flights, lodging,
and registration fees for two staff
members to attend the National
Sexual Assault Conference in
Washington, D.C..

The conference provides
crucial ongoing education for
the Prevention Education staff
who deliver required Child
Abuse Prevention workshops
to students in local public
schools.

Approve with a note:

Funds may be used
towards the conference
registration fees (not travel
related costs).
$1,000
Total Grant Amount: $18,000.00
Summary of Grant Applications
Received for Fiscal Year 2026-2027ATTACHMENT 2

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
Carmel Bach
Festival, Inc.

Suzanne
Mudge, Director
of Community
Engagement
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
Yes No
(Summarized) The Carmel Bach
Festival requests funding to
present up to three free, onehour chamber music concerts in Carmel in 2026 and early 2027
as part of its year-round “In the
Stacks” series. Possible venues
include the Carmel Foundation,
Harrison Memorial Library,
Carmel Youth Center, and
Devendorf Park. The concerts
will feature professional Bach
Festival musicians performing
diverse repertoire from Baroque
to Contemporary in an informal,
interactive setting for all ages.

Musicians will also meet with
attendees after each
performance. Grant funds would
support musician compensation
and a modest amount of sheet
music, helping provide
accessible, high-quality cultural
programming for Carmel
residents.
300-400 $3,000.00
$2,750 for musicians (for 3
concerts)
$100 for program design
and printing
$ 150 for Sheet Music
Total = $3,000
Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
AIM Youth
Mental Health
Jolie Delja,
Executive
Director
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
Yes No
(Summarized) AIM Youth Mental
Health requests $3,000 to fully
fund three local high school
students’ participation in the
2026 AIM Ideas Lab, an eightweek youth research and
leadership program focused on
mental health access, stigma
reduction, and school-based
solutions. Students will conduct
peer surveys, analyze data, and
present findings and
recommendations to the
community. The program
includes trained mentors,
curriculum, materials, and
supervision, and each student
earns community service hours
while building leadership and
mental health literacy. The grant
would support local youth directly
and provide broader community
benefit through youth-informed
recommendations that promote
healthier school culture and
wellbeing.
approximately
1,000 Carmelby-the-Sea
residents,
including
students,
families, and
educators.
$3,000.00
Per Student Cost: $1,000
$450 – Program instruction
and mentor facilitation (8-
week cohort leadership,
mentor training, and
supervision)
$200 – Curriculum materials
$150 – Peer-to-peer survey
platform access, data tools,
and data analysis support
$100 – Local program
coordination and school
partnership management
$100 – Evaluation, data
collection, quality assurance,
and reporting
Grant Request: 3 Carmel
students x $1,000 = $3,000
Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
Carmel Little
League
Kristin Torrice,
CYB Director of
Sponsorship
and Board
Member
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
No, but we
provide
services to
its
residents
No
(Summarized) Carmel Youth
Baseball requests grant funding
to purchase new refrigeration
and freezer equipment for the
snack shacks serving its two
baseball fields. The upgraded
equipment would improve food
storage safety and support
service during games, practices,
and community events attended
by local youth, families, and
residents. CYB is a volunteer-run
nonprofit that promotes youth
recreation, teamwork, and
sportsmanship, and snack shack
revenue helps fund equipment,
safety gear, field support, and
affordable registration. The
project would help sustain a
longstanding community baseball
program and enhance the
experience for families using
Carmel’s recreational fields.
approximately
200–300
Carmel-by-theSea (93921)
$3,000.00
$1,200 – Commercial
refrigerator unit
$900 – Chest freezer unit
$450 – Secondary compact
refrigerator
$250 – Food-safe storage
containers, shelving
$200 – Delivery, installation,
and electrical safety
materials
Total = $3,000
Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
Carmel
Chamber of
Commerce
Foundation
Tara Leweling,
Member,
Leadership
Carmel, Class
of 2026
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
Yes No
(Summarized)
The grant would support
installation of Harmony Habitat, a
permanent outdoor musical
garden at Forest Hill Park
featuring durable, professionally
designed instruments that
residents and visitors of all ages
can play freely. Led by the
Leadership Carmel Class of
2026, the project would fund
instrument purchase and a
community launch event.

Harmony Habitat is intended to
encourage intergenerational
connection, creativity, outdoor
activity, and community gathering
while enhancing a public park
with an accessible artistic
feature. Designed for long-term
outdoor use and minimal
maintenance, the installation
would provide a free, lasting
community asset that reflects
Carmel’s commitment to arts and
public spaces.
350 - especially
families with
children under
18 $3,000.00
We are requesting $3,000 to
help support purchase of
instruments:
- $27,065.52 - instrument
purchase and shipping,
inclusive of tax
- $5,000 - community launch
event
- $16,400 -- signage (if
appropriate), insurance,
maintenance, landscaping,
installation materials
Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
Carmel
Residents
Association
Tim Twomey,
Treasurer
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
Yes No
(Summarized) The Carmel
Residents Association requests
grant funding to expand
distribution of its eight-page
VOICE newsletter by mailing one
issue to all Carmel-by-the-Sea
residents. Funds would cover
graphic design, printing, and
postage. Published five times
annually for 950 members, the
newsletter would reach
approximately 3,200 residents
and businesses through this
expanded issue. The publication
is intended to inform the
community about civic issues,
City meetings, local history,
events, and nonprofit programs,
while encouraging residents to
participate in boards,
commissions, volunteer
opportunities, and other
community activities that
strengthen civic engagement and
community connection.
3,200 $3,000.00
- $2,300 for graphic design,
printing, and stitching of the
VOICE Newsletter (3,200
qty)
- $700 for postage and
mailing of the VOICE
Newsletter (3,200 qty)
Total = $3,000
Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
Carmel High
School Mock
Trial Team
Bill Schrier,
Coach
We are a
Carmel
School
No, but we
provide
services to
its
residents
No
(Summarized) The Carmel High
School Mock Trial Team
requests grant support for its trip
to the Mock Trial World
Championships in Chicago on
November 7–10, 2026. The
program helps students develop
persuasive writing, oral
advocacy, analytical reasoning,
collaboration, and legal
reasoning skills. Over 21 years,
the team has built an exceptional
record, including 15 Monterey
County championships, a 2016
world championship, a 2017
state championship, and
consistent state-level success.

Beyond competition results, the
program provides significant
educational and characterbuilding benefits by teaching teamwork, integrity, discipline,
and sportsmanship.
14 $3,000.00
Estimated expenses for 12
students:

Monterey to Chicago round
trip airfare: $6000
Estimated baggage
charges: $1000
Round trip transportation
between O’Hare and Hilton
Chicago: $600 Lodging for 6
nights: $10,000
Tournament entry fees:
$2050
Estimated food: $2000
Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
Carmel Padre
Parents - Sober
Grad Night
Bahar
Iranmanesh -
Grant
Coordinator
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
Yes No
(Summarized) Sober Grad Night
is an annual, parent-sponsored
event created by the California
Highway Patrol in 1985 in
response to the growing number
of unsupervised graduation
parties involving alcohol and
drugs. Its purpose is to provide a
fun, safe, supervised, and
substance-free celebration for all
graduating seniors. We know our
seniors want to celebrate with
their friends on graduation night,
and our goal is to make that
celebration both spectacular and
safe. The event is held on
graduation night and lasts all
night long.
200 $3,000.00
Hypnotist performance –
$600
DJ services – $400
Photo booth – $500
Decorations (balloons and
event décor) – $300
Senior gifts
(commemorative
sweatshirts) – $1000
To-go breakfasts – $200
Total: $3,000
Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
Monterey
County Rape
Crisis Center
Lauren DaSilva,
Executive
Director
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
No, but we
provide
services to
its
residents
No
(Summarized) The Monterey
County Rape Crisis Center
requests support for its Child
Abuse Prevention (CAP)
Program, which provides
required prevention education to
public school students, including
those in Carmel. Offered in
English and Spanish to 1st, 3rd,
and 6th graders, the program
teaches personal boundaries,
mental wellness, safe and unsafe
touch, trusted adults, and internet
safety. The workshops also
create opportunities for children
to disclose abuse to trained,
trauma-informed educators, who
can report concerns and connect
families with support services.

The program helps educate
students, promote safety, and
provide early intervention for
children experiencing abuse.
190 $3,000.00
-$1,200 for 2 registrations to
the National Sexual Assault
Conference which provides
crucial ongoing education for
MCRCC's Prevention
Education staff
-$1,000 for 2 flights to
Washington, D.C.

Conference
-$800 for lodging for
Conference
Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
Community
Emergency
Response
Volunteer of
Monterey
Peninsula
Sarah
Blackstone,
CERV Board of
Directors,
Secretary/Treas
urer,
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
No, but we
provide
services to
its
residents
No
(Summarized) Carmel-by-theSea CERT requests a $3,000
grant to support volunteer
emergency preparedness and
response efforts that assist the
City’s Police and Fire
Departments. Grant funds would
help maintain FEMA-compliant
training, refresher courses, safety
gear, radios, medical supplies,
and other response equipment,
while also supporting community
outreach on emergency
preparedness. CERT volunteers
provide practical assistance
during disasters and local
incidents, including evacuation
support, first aid, welfare checks,
traffic control, and public
information. The project would
strengthen local readiness and
help protect residents in
emergencies, particularly given
Carmel’s limited access routes,
aging population, and other
unique vulnerabilities.
3,200 $3,000.00
Instructor/Training Support:
$600
Training materials, manuals,
and printed guides: $600
Vests and CERT‑standard
apparel: $300
Helmets, gloves, goggles,
masks: $350
Basic first‑aid supplies for
volunteer kits: $250
radios and batteries: $400
Flashlights, headlamps, and
safety lighting: $200
Community Preparedness &
Outreach – $300
Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
Pacific
Repertory
Theatre
John Newkirk
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
Yes No
(Summarized) PacRep requests
discretionary grant funding to
support its School of Dramatic
Arts, which provides low-cost
after-school classes, summer
camps, and Saturday Academy
programs for Monterey Peninsula
youth. The program uses theater
arts to help students build
creativity, critical thinking, verbal
skills, confidence, teamwork, and
self-motivation. PacRep also
emphasizes performance
opportunities through fully staged
productions and seeks to expand
access to live theater for young
people who might not otherwise
have it. Over 25 years, the
program has helped students
develop lasting friendships,
continue in theater education,
and return as teachers, directors,
actors, and arts supporters in the
community.
approximately
425 Carmel-bythe-Sea
residents
$3,000.00
SoDA Teachers $ 40,000.00
SoDA Administrator $
12,000.00
Administration Salaries $
191,489.20
Administrative/Facility
Overhead $ 61,500.00
Designers/Directors $
15,500.00
Actors/Musicians $
21,300.00
Production Salaries $
71,125.00
Payroll Taxes/Benefits $
38,297.80
Marketing $ 30,000.00
Production Costs
$ 62,585.00

EXPENSES
$ 543,797.00
Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
American
Legion Post 512
Carmel Patriots
Gerry Paratore,
Commander of
Post 512
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
Yes No
We would use the grant to
purchase some decent quality
outdoor furniture: Polywood
chairs, tables and umbrellas. We
would also use funds to continue
to improve the landscaping
around the American Legion so
that it is more welcoming,
especially needed since the
Carmel Foundation has improved
the property next to us. Carmel
Patriots are focused on creating
connections between military and
the Carmel community.

Beautification of the Legion will
improve property values an show
others how important the care
and history of veterans ae to all
members of our Carmel
community and government.
1000+ $3,000.00
$1400 for 4 chairs and a
table
$800 for 2 umbrellas for the
2 tables (one from last year's
grant)
$800 for landscape plants
and equipment
Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
Carmel
Woman's Club
Christina
DeMaria,
President
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
Yes No
We would utilize the City Grant to
produce and mail our quarterly
newsletters to our 459 members.

Additionally, we post the
newsletters on our website to
provide access to the general
public worldwide. We regularly
have new residents review the
website and then become new
members to be part of the
Carmel community.

Over 500
residents $3,000.00
We would use the $3000 to
offset printing and postage
costs for the four newsletters
we send out each year.

Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
Carmel Dance
Festival Lillian Barbeito
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
No, but we
provide
services to
its
residents
No
(Summarized) Carmel Dance
Festival requests $3,000 to
support free community dance
and wellness programs for
Carmel-by-the-Sea residents and
the creation of new artistic work
in summer 2026. In partnership
with the Carmel Bach Festival,
visiting professional dancers will
offer a free yoga and sound bath
workshop, an intergenerational
dance class, and an open
rehearsal. Grant funds would
also support custom costumes
essential to the new work’s
artistic development and
community presentation. The
programs are expected to directly
serve 125–150 residents while
expanding access to arts
education, wellness, and behindthe-scenes cultural experiences.

Approximately
125–150
Carmel
residents will
directly benefit
$3,000.00
$1,000 for costume design
$500 for costume
materialslandscape
$900 for artist-led
community programming
(teaching fees for a free
contemporary dance class
and a yoga and sound bath
workshop open to Carmel
residents of all ages and
experience levels)
$600 for studio space rental,
insurance, and required
summer custodian fees
associated with hosting free,
public community programs
at Carmel High School
Total = $3,000
Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
I Cantori di
Carmel
Alexa Dieterle,
Board Member
(Publicity)
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
No, but we
provide
services to
its
residents
No
(Summarized) I Cantori di
Carmel requests $3,000 to
support a Carmel Resident Ticket
Access program for FY 2026–
2027. The grant would help
provide reduced-price tickets for
Carmel residents attending five
local performances and support
printed programs and audience
materials that enhance
accessibility and understanding.

A longtime part of Carmel’s
cultural life, I Cantori performs
major choral and orchestral
works at venues including
Carmel Mission Basilica and
Sunset Center. Using ticketing
data to identify local attendees,
the program would expand
affordable access to
performances for residents while
strengthening community
participation in the arts.
approximately
480–540
Carmel
residents
overall.
$3,000.00
$2,000 to support reducedprice ticket access for
Carmel-by-the-Sea residents
(ZIP code 93921)
$1,000 for printed programs
and audience materials
associated with
performances in Carmel
venues
Total = $3,000
Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
Monterey
Peninsula Ballet
Theatre
Jennifer Watts,
MPBT Board of
Directors
President &
Grant Writer
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
Yes No
(Summarized) Monterey
Peninsula Ballet Theatre
requests grant support for its
2026 Free Youth Arts Community
Outreach Program, which will
bring 650 fifth-grade students
from Salinas City Elementary
School District to a free
performance of The Nutcracker
at Sunset Center in Carmel.

Funds would help offset
production costs such as venue
labor, equipment, and guest
artists. The program expands
access to the arts for students
who might not otherwise attend
live ballet, while also providing
educational value through
discussion of the production
process. It additionally benefits
local student dancers, including
Carmel-area youth, by giving
them performance experience
and opportunities to share their
talents with peers.
50-75 young
artists (and the
many residents
who will see the
annual
Nutcracker
performance at
the Sunset
Center)
$3,000.00
MPBT is requesting $3000
for the following: $2,168 for
the Sunset Center light,
sound, dance floor
equipment rental, $125 for
snow clean up, and $708 for
guest artists/guest backstage
support fees (24% of total
guest - non-Sunset, nonMPBT - temporary labor
expense for this Program
only).

Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
Loaves, Fishes
& Computers
Jacqueline
Leon
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
No, but we
provide
services to
its
residents
No
(Summarized) Loaves, Fishes &
Computers requests support for
its Connecting Seniors to
Technology initiative, which will
provide three in-person digital
literacy workshops for
approximately 50 Carmel
seniors. Hosted with partners
such as the Carmel Foundation,
the workshops will cover practical
topics including smartphones,
email, video calls, and online
safety. Grant funds would
support workshop materials and
supplies, such as printed guides,
internet safety handouts, and
simple assistive tools. The
program aims to help local
seniors build confidence using
technology, avoid scams, and
access services and information
more independently while staying
connected to family and
community.

We estimate
that
approximately
50 Carmel-bythe-Sea (93921)
residents will
directly benefit
$3,000.00
$600 - Printed Materials &
Guides
$300 - Workshop SuppliesNotebooks, pens, folders
$800 - Accessibility Tools -
Headphones, device stands,
magnifiers
$500 - Technology Support
Supplies - USB drives,
adapters, cables, etc.
$300 - Outreach &
Educational Materials -
Flyers, informational
brochures
$500 - Program Materials
Development - Updating and
creating easy-to-follow
instructional materials
Total = $3,000
Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
Community
Human
Services
Ana Mohamed,
Grants Manager
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
No, but we
provide
services to
its
residents
No
(Summarized) Shuman
HeartHouse requests grant
support for direct client needs
such as internet access, meals,
and personal supplies for women
and families with children
experiencing homelessness,
including residents of Carmel-bythe-Sea. As Monterey County’s first shelter dedicated to
unaccompanied women and
families, SHH provides
emergency shelter, case
management, housing
navigation, and connections to
employment, benefits, and rapid
rehousing resources. Operating
under a Housing First model, the
program offers safe shelter and
supportive services that help
guests address barriers, stabilize
their lives, and move toward
permanent housing, while also
providing broader public benefit
through reduced homelessness
and improved community
wellbeing.
28 residents
from Carmel-bythe-Sea
(93921), and an
additional 28
individuals from
nearby zip
codes (93922,
93923, 93924)
$3,000.00
A $3,000 grant from the City
of Carmel-by-the-Sea would
be used to support direct
client benefits such as
meals, hygiene supplies,
laundry supplies, bedding,
and computer/internet
access. Given the scale of
the program, grant funds will
be fully utilized to support
these direct benefits for
participants, including
residents from Carmel-bythe-Sea.

Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

Name of NonProfit
Organization
(or Carmel
School)
Point of
Contact
501(c)
nonprofit
or a
Carmel
school?
Located
in CBTS?
Any
outstanding
debt to the
City?
Describe the specific proposed
use of the grant by your
organization
Estimated
number of
CBTS
residents that
will benefit
Amount
requested
Detailed Program Budget
(how the grant funding will
be used)
Carmel
Heritage
Society
Alexis Speidel,
Board Member
We are a
501(c)
nonprofit
Yes No
(Summarized) Carmel Heritage
Society requests grant funding to
support “Designing Women:

Noted Architects, Designers and
Builders of Carmel,” a museum
exhibit at the First Murphy House
highlighting women’s
contributions to Carmel’s
architectural and design history.

The exhibit will complement a
July 2026 home tour and lecture
series, remain on display for at
least one year, and serve both
visitors and local students
studying Carmel history. Grant
funds would be used for graphic
design, printing, and mounting of
the display panels, while
volunteers will provide the
research and writing.
2500
museum/tour
attendees, 90
students
$3,000.00
We are requesting $3000
towards the $5000 total cost
of our exhibit “Designing
Women: Designing Women:

Noted Architects, Designers
and Builders of Carmel.” If
awarded it will be used
towards our budget as
follows:
-$1000 towards the $3000
graphic design estimate
-$2000 color printing of 6
panels
Total=$3000
Grant Application Responses
FY 26-27ATTACHMENT 3

CITY OF CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA
City Council
Staff Report
May 4, 2026

ORDERS OF BUSINESS
TO: Honorable Mayor and City Council Members
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Pierik, City Attorney
APPROVED BY: Brandon Swanson, Acting City Administrator SUBJECT: Discuss draft Resolution Of The City Council Of The City Of Carmel-By-The-Sea Ordering The Submission To The Qualified Electors Of The City Of Carmel-By-The-Sea At The November 3, 2026, General Municipal Election A Measure To Increase The Transactions And Use Tax Rate By 0.375% To Make The Total Tax Rate 1.875% and Extending the Duration of the Transactions and Use Tax so that it remains in effect until ended by Voters; and provide direction
RECOMMENDATION:

Discuss draft Resolution Of The City Council Of The City Of Carmel-By-The-Sea Ordering The Submission To The Qualified Electors Of The City Of Carmel-By-The-Sea At The November 3, 2026, General Municipal Election A Measure To Increase The Transactions And Use Tax Rate By 0.375% To Make The Total Tax Rate 1.875% and Extending the Duration of the Transactions and Use Tax so that it remains in effect until ended by Voters and provide direction including whether to return to the Council at a future meeting with a Resolution for adoption and whether to submit the draft Ordinance to the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration for review.

BACKGROUND / SUMMARY:

I. Background
Pursuant to direction from the City Council on April 7, 2026, a Resolution has been prepared for discussion on whether to submit to the County of a ballot measure to be voted upon at the November 3, 2026 general municipal election, a summary of the proposed increase of the transactions and use tax1(“TUT”) rate by 0.375%, the form of 1 Also commonly referred to as a “sales tax”.

the proposed ballot question, and a discussion on potential City information activities.

Attachment 1 is a draft Resolution. The current transactions and use tax rate in the City is 1.5% and is set to expire in 2040.

Part 1.6 (commencing with Section 7251) of Division 2 of the California Revenue and Taxation Code, and Section 7285.9 of the California Revenue and Taxation Code, authorizes the City to levy a transactions and use tax ordinance as a general tax, which is operative if a majority of the electors voting on the measure vote to approve the imposition of the tax at an election called for that purpose. Accordingly, the draft Ordinance which will be attached to the Resolution has been drafted as directed by the City Council on April 7, 2026. Pursuant to the Revenue and Taxation Code’s requirements, the California Department of Fee and Tax Administration (“CDTFA”) is the State agency that collects the transactions and use taxes on behalf of the City and remits the same to the City. Attachment 2 is the draft Ordinance.

In considering placing this measure on the November ballot alongside a Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) measure, Council requested a consultant to discuss issues with placing two tax measures on the same ballot and how it may be received by the residents in Carmel. Staff contacted four separate experts, all of whom provided the general guidance that each additional tax measure adds complexity and uncertainty to the outcome of an election. However, all the experts said that the people who are best positioned to know how our community would respond to two measures are the City Council, the City Administrator and the Assistant City Administrator. The experts said they could not provide any guidance about how the residents of Carmel would react to two separate tax measures on the ballot without conducting formal polling.

II. Discussion
In order to submit the TUT measure to the City’s qualified voters, the City Council must carry out certain acts, including the adoption of the attached Resolution to send the TUT measure to the voters. This Staff Report provides background information that is relevant to the City Council’s discussion and direction on the attached draft resolution and ordinance.

A. Draft Ordinance
As stated above, the draft TUT Ordinance would increase the existing TUT rate from

1.5% to 1.875% and, further, would extend the duration of the tax so that it remains in effect until ended by voters. However, City Council may instead provide a termination date for the tax. For example, the ordinance can be revised to state that the TUT will terminate in 20 years.

The draft TUT Ordinance is attached to this report as Attachment 2. It is recommended that this draft ordinance be submitted to the CDTFA for their approval. This is not a required step, but the purpose of the review will be to give the CDTFA an opportunity to identify any concerns or issues they may have with the City’s draft TUT Ordinance,

which would in turn allow those issues to be addressed. Any revisions required by the CDTFA would then be incorporated into the draft TUT Ordinance. Based on past experience, the review by the CDTFA would likely be completed prior to the Council meeting on June 2, 2026.

B. Votes Required to submit the TUT measure
Under Proposition 2182, the City may only impose a general tax if: (a) two-thirds of the members of the City Council (which would be four affirmative votes) approve placing a tax measure on the ballot for voter consideration, and (b) the ballot measure is approved by a majority vote of the electorate at a general municipal election (for the election of members of Council).3 Similarly, Revenue and Taxation Code Section 7285.9 requires that any ballot measure/ordinance increasing a transactions and use tax must be approved by a 2/3 vote of all members of the City Council and by a majority vote of the qualified voters of the City voting on the ballot measure. The next general election is November 3, 2026.

C. Form of Ballot Question
The TUT measure’s ballot question must meet the following requirements: (1) no more than 75 words and in the format of a “yes” or “no” question; (2) include “the amount of money to be raised annually and the rate and duration of the tax to be levied”4; and (3) “be a true and impartial synopsis of the purpose of the proposed measure, and shall be in language that is neither argumentative nor likely to create prejudice for or against the measure.”5It must also be in the form of “Shall the measure … be adopted?”6 As such, the City Council should discuss and provide direction on the wording of the ballot question. A sample ballot question for a transactions and use tax that is a general tax is as follows:7
Shall the measure funding the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea’s general government purposes, such as, for example, infrastructure improvement, public safety, and other general municipal purposes, increasing the transactions and use tax rate by 0.375% so that the total tax rate is 1.875%, extending the duration of such tax so that it remains in effect until ended by voters, and the 1.875% providing approximately $9,437,087 annually, be adopted?
D. Election Procedures
2 Cal. Constitution Articles XIIIC and XIII D.
3 Cal. Gov. Code Sections 53723 and 53724, subject to limited exceptions for the timing of elections for declared emergencies.
4 Cal. Elections Code Section 13119(b).
5 Cal. Elections Code Section 13119(c).
6 Cal. Elections Code Section 13119(a).
7 The City is authorized to identify sample expenditures of anticipated TUT revenue without converting the general tax to a special tax, as long as a phrase similar to “and general government use” is included in the list.

The following section provides information to the City Council on the election procedures that will need to be followed when submitting the TUT measure to the City’s qualified voters.

1. Getting the Measure on the Ballot
The City Council previously called a General Municipal Election for November 3, 2026, for the purposes of electing the Mayor and two City Councilmembers and requested the Board of Supervisors for the County of Monterey to consolidate the same with the Statewide General Election to be held on the same date. Accordingly, in order to submit a TUT measure to the voters at the November 3, 2026, general municipal election, the City Council must adopt a resolution that (1) submits the measure to the voters and includes the TUT ordinance increasing the TUT rate; (2) for the purposes of the measure, requests the consolidation of the November 3, 2026, general municipal election with the Statewide General Election to be held on the same date; and (3) authorizes the drafting of primary arguments by all or some councilmembers, directs the City Attorney to draft an impartial analysis of the measure, and authorizes rebuttal arguments.

In order to be adopted, this resolution must be approved by a 2/3 vote (i.e., 4/5) of the City Council and submitted to the County no later than 88 days prior to the election.8 Measures may be withdrawn no later than after the 83rd day prior to the election.9 a. Submitting the ballot measure to the voters
The City Council is generally permitted to submit measures to the voters by adopting a resolution to that effect.10 This resolution must also include a ballot question pursuant to Elections Code Section 13247, which must meet the requirements referenced and discussed above. The ordinance increasing the TUT rate must also be attached to the resolution. However, as stated above, general taxes must be submitted at a general municipal election unless an emergency is unanimously declared by the City Council. b. Requesting the consolidation of General Municipal Election with the Statewide General Election on November 3, 2026
For the purposes of the proposed measure, the City Council may request that the November 3, 2026, general municipal election be consolidated with the Statewide General Election held on the same date.11 Although the City will have to pay the County for the associated costs of consolidation, this is a standard practice that virtually all cities in California follow, because the costs for a city to run its own election are typically prohibitive.
8 Cal. Elections Code Section 9222.
9 Cal. Elections Code Section 9605.
10 Cal. Elections Code Section 9222 and 10201.
11 Cal. Elections Code Section 10403.

c. Authorizing the drafting of primary arguments, directing the City Attorney to draft an impartial analysis of the measure, and authorizing rebuttal arguments

(1) Primary Arguments
Elections Code Section 9282(b) permits the City Council to authorize a member or members to author and submit primary arguments relating to a ballot measure placed on the ballot by the City Council; however, if the City Council authorizes a quorum of its membership to draft the primary argument, such drafting and approval thereof is subject to the Brown Act. In other words, a majority of members of Council must not discuss the arguments outside a public meeting. Such arguments may not exceed 300 words.

If more than one primary argument is submitted, then the City Clerk chooses the argument to appear on the ballot based upon the priorities provided in Elections Code Section 9287. Primary arguments are typically due 14 days after the call of the election pursuant to Elections Code Section 9286(a); however, for consolidated elections, as is the case here, this deadline does not apply. Instead, the City Clerk may set the deadline based upon the election calendar provided by the County. After primary arguments are filed, the 10-day public examination period commences.12 (2) City Attorney’s Impartial Analysis
When a measure qualifies for the ballot, the city attorney, on direction of the City Council, must prepare an impartial analysis of the measure showing the effect of the measure on existing law and the operation of the measure.13 The impartial analysis must include a statement indicating whether the measure was placed on the ballot by the voters or by the City Council and is limited to 500 words.14 Similar to the primary arguments, there is a 10-day public examination period after the deadline to impartial analysis.
(3) Rebuttal Arguments
The City Council may also authorize rebuttal arguments.15 Rebuttal arguments cannot exceed 250 words and may only be written by the authors of the selected primary arguments, and must be filed no later than 10 days after the final filing date for primary arguments.16 Similar to the primary arguments and impartial analysis, there is a 10-day public examination period after the deadline to submit rebuttal arguments.

E. Informational Activities
12 Cal. Elections Code Section 9295.
13 Cal. Elections Code Section 9280.
14 Cal. Elections Code Section 9280.
15 Cal. Elections Code Section 9285.
16 Cal. Elections Code Section 9285(a).

It is important to consider that, after a measure is “certified to appear” on a particular election ballot, the City is prohibited from spending any City resources to support or oppose the ballot measure per Government Code Section 54964. Nevertheless, although there is no brightline rule on what is or is not permissible, courts consider the style, tenor, and timing of such materials to determine whether they engage in impermissible campaign advocacy.17
Although the City is not able to engage in advocacy as it relates to a ballot measure, the City is able to provide information to the public in a neutral and unbiased manner and in a format that is not argumentative. This involves utilization of the City’s standard methods of communication with the public. It is recommended that any informational efforts (e.g., flyers, social media posts, etc.) be reviewed by the City Attorney’s Office prior to dissemination.

As noted above, from a broad legal perspective, after a ballot measure is certified to appear before the voters, the City may only use City resources to communicate factual, impartial, and balanced information regarding the ballot measure with a goal of informing the public. The City must not use public resources for the purpose of advocating a particular result for the election.18
The City Council should discuss and provide direction as to whether it would like the City to engage in these informational activities.
_____________________________
18 See League of Women Voters v. Countywide Criminal Justice Coordination Comm. (1988) 203 Cal.App.3d 529.

FISCAL IMPACT:

If the ballot measure is approved by the voters at the election on November 3, 2026, the estimated annual revenue from the additional 0.375% tax would be approximately $1,887,417 when it goes into effect. The total annual revenue at the 1.875% rate is $9,437,087.

The City would have to pay the County of Monterey for the costs associated with including the ballot measure on the November 3, 2026, ballot, and that cost is estimate between approximately $5,000 to $10,000.

PRIOR CITY COUNCIL ACTION:
17 Vargas v. City of Salinas (2009) 46 Cal.4th 1, 27.

Discussion and direction at the City Council Meeting on April 7, 2026 as described above.

ATTACHMENTS:

1. Draft Resolution – Ordering the submission of a sales tax ballot measure to the qualified voters at the November 3, 2026, Election

2. Draft Ordinance – Increasing the TUT (Sales Tax) by 0.375%

ATTACHMENT 1
4908-8280-4642 v3

CITY OF CARMEL-BY THE SEA

CITY COUNCIL
DRAFT RESOLUTION NO. 2026-___

A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA ORDERING THE SUBMISSION TO THE QUALIFIED ELECTORS OF THE CITY OF CARMELBY-THE-SEA AT THE GENERAL MUNICIPAL ELECTION TO BE HELD ON NOVEMBER 3, 2026, A MEASURE INCREASING THE CITY’S CURRENT TRANSACTIONS AND USE TAX RATE FROM 1.5% TO 1.875%, EXTENDING THE DURATION OF SUCH TRANSACTIONS

AND USE TAX SO THAT IT REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL ENDED BY VOTERS OF THE CITY

OF CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, AND APPROVING THE ORDINANCE TO BE SUBMITTED TO THE VOTERS PURSUANT TO REVENUE AND TAXATION CODE SECTION 7285.9;

REQUESTING THE MONTEREY COUNTY ELECTIONS DEPARTMENT TO CONDUCT THE

ELECTION AND REQUESTING CONSOLIDATION OF THE GENERAL MUNICIPAL ELECTION WITH THE STATEWIDE GENERAL ELECTION TO BE HELD ON NOVEMBER 3, 2026; DIRECTING THE CITY ATTORNEY TO PREPARE AN IMPARTIAL ANALYSIS CONCERNING SUCH MEASURE; AUTHORIZING THE DRAFTING OF PRIMARY

ARGUMENTS AND REBUTTALS CONCERNING SUCH MEASURE
WHEREAS, pursuant to Resolution No. ______, the City Council has called a general municipal election on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, for the purpose of electing council members as provided therein (“General Municipal Election”) and requested that the Monterey County Board of Supervisors consent to the consolidation of the General Municipal Election with the Statewide General Election to be held on the same date; and
WHEREAS, pursuant to Article XIIIC of the California Constitution, Section 53720 et seq. of the California Government Code, the City has the authority to levy a general tax, including, but not limited to, increasing an existing tax; and
WHEREAS, Article XIIIC, Section 2, of the California Constitution requires that the election at which a general tax increase is submitted to the electorate shall be consolidated with a regularly scheduled general election for members of the governing body of the local government, except in cases of emergency declared by a unanimous vote of the governing body; and WHEREAS, Part 1.6 (commencing with Section 7251) of Division 2 of the California Revenue and Taxation Code, and Section 7285.9 of the California Revenue and Taxation Code, authorizes a city to adopt a transactions and use tax ordinance, which shall be operative if a majority of the electors voting on the measure vote to approve the imposition of the tax at an election called for that purpose; and
WHEREAS, Revenue and Taxation Code Section 7285.9 requires that any ballot measure/ordinance establishing a transactions and use tax must be approved by a 2/3 vote of all members of the City Council and by a majority vote of the qualified voters of the City voting on the ballot measure; and
WHEREAS, pursuant to Article IV of Chapter 3.28 of Title 3 of the Carmel-by-the-Sea Municipal Code, the City currently has a general transactions and use tax at the rate of 1.5% which is set to expire in 2040 (“Transactions and Use Tax”); and WHEREAS, the measure proposed by this Resolution would increase the Transactions

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and Use Tax rate from 1.5% to 1.875% and extend the duration of the Transactions and Use Tax so that it remains in effect until ended by voters of the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea and the City Council desires to submit such measure to the voters of the City at the November 3, 2026, General Municipal Election which was called pursuant to Resolution No. _________; and WHEREAS, pursuant to Elections Code Section 10400, whenever two or more elections, including bond elections, of any legislative or congressional district, public district, city, county, or other political subdivision are called to be held on the same day, in the same territory, or in territory that is in part the same, they may be consolidated upon the order of the governing body or bodies or officer or officers calling the elections; and
WHEREAS, pursuant to Elections Code Section 10403, whenever an election called by a district, city or other political subdivision for the submission of any question, proposition, or office to be filled is to be consolidated with a statewide election, and the question, proposition, or office to be filled is to appear upon the same ballot as that provided for that statewide election, the district, city or other political subdivision shall, at least 88 days prior to the date of the election, file with the board of supervisors, and a copy with the elections official, a resolution of its governing board requesting the consolidation, and setting forth the exact form of any question, proposition, or office to be voted upon at the election, as it is to appear on the ballot. Upon such request, the Board of Supervisors may order consolidation. The resolution requesting the consolidation shall be adopted and filed at the same time as the adoption of the ordinance, resolution, or order calling the election; and
WHEREAS, it is desirable that the General Municipal Election to be held on November 3, 2026, be consolidated with the Statewide General Election to be held on the same date and that within the City the precincts, polling places and election officers of the two elections be the same, and that the County of Monterey Election Department canvass the returns of such General Municipal Election and that the election be held in all respects as if there were only one election; and
WHEREAS, The City Council exercises its independent judgment and finds that this Resolution is not subject to the California Environmental Quality Act ("CEQA"), because the enactment of this Resolution: (1) does not constitute a “project” as defined by CEQA pursuant to California Code of Regulations, Title 14, Sections 15060(c)(3) and 15378; (2) will not result in a direct or reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment pursuant to California Code of Regulations, Title 14, Section 15060(c)(2); and (3) is covered by the general rule that CEQA applies only to projects which have the potential for causing a significant effect on the environment pursuant to California Code of Regulations, Title 14, Section 15061(b)(3).

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF CARMELBY-THE-SEA DOES HEREBY:

1. Recitals. The recitals set forth above are incorporated herein by this reference.

2. Submission of Measure. Pursuant to the laws of the State of California, including, but not limited to, Elections Code Sections 9222 and 10201, the City Council, pursuant to its right and authority, does hereby order the submission to the voters of the City at the General Municipal Election to be held on November 3, 2026, which was called pursuant to Resolution No._________, a ballot measure that, if approved, increases the City’s current transactions and use tax rate from 1.5% to 1.875% and extends the duration of such transactions and use tax so that it remains in effect until ended by voters of the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea (“Measure”). As

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required by Elections Code Section 13247, the abbreviated form of the Measure to appear on the ballot is specified below in Section 3.

3. Question. Accordingly, the City Council hereby orders the following question to be submitted to the voters at the General Municipal Election:

YES
Shall the measure funding the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea’s general government purposes, such as, for example,
infrastructure improvement, public safety, and other general municipal purposes, increasing the transactions and use tax rate by 0.375% so that the total tax rate is 1.875%, extending the duration of such tax so that it remains in effect until ended by voters, and the 1.875% providing approximately
$9,437,087 annually, be adopted?
NO

4. Proposed Measure. The proposed complete text of the Measure with the proposed Ordinance No. 2026-______ to be submitted to the voters is attached to this Resolution as Exhibit A and incorporated herein by this reference. Further, pursuant to Revenue and Taxation Code Section 7285.9, the City Council hereby approves the proposed complete text of the Measure with the proposed Ordinance No. 2026-_________ in the form as provided in Exhibit A and the submission thereof to the voters of the City.

5. Voter Approval Requirement. The vote requirement for this Measure to pass shall be a majority of those casting ballots on the Measure (50% plus 1).

6. Publication of Measure. The City Clerk is directed to publish a synopsis of the Measure in a newspaper of general circulation in the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea as required by applicable law.

7. Coordination. The City Clerk is authorized, instructed, and directed to coordinate with the Monterey County Elections Department to procure and furnish and all official ballots, notices, printed matter, and all supplies, equipment, and paraphernalia that may be necessary in order to properly and lawfully conduct the election.

8. Request for Consolidation.
a. Pursuant to the requirements of Elections Code Section 10403, the Board of Supervisors of the County of Monterey is hereby requested to consent and agree to the consolidation of the General Municipal Election with the Statewide General Election on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, for the purpose of submitting to the voters the abovementioned Measure. b. The Monterey County Elections Department is authorized to canvass the returns of the General Municipal Election. The election shall be held in all respects as if there were only one election, and only one form of ballot shall be used. The election will be held and conducted in accordance with the provisions of law regulating the statewide elections, including, but not limited to, Elections Code Section 10418.
c. The Board of Supervisors of the County of Monterey is requested to issue instructions to the Monterey County Elections Department to take any and all steps necessary for

ATTACHMENT 1
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conducting and holding the consolidated election.
d. The City of Carmel-by-the-Sea recognizes that additional costs will be incurred by the County of Monterey by reason of this consolidation and agrees to reimburse the County of Monterey for any costs.

9. Filing with County. The City Clerk shall file a certified copy of this Resolution with the Monterey County Board of Supervisors and Monterey County Elections Department.

10. Arguments and Impartial Analysis.
a. Primary Arguments.
i. Pursuant to Elections Code Section 9282, the City Council authorizes _________ to author and submit the primary argument in favor of the Measure not exceeding 300 words, accompanied by the printed name(s) and signature(s) of the author(s) submitting it, in accordance with Article 4, Chapter 3, Division 9 of the Elections Code, and authorizes the ________ to submit a rebuttal argument to the argument against the Measure pursuant to Section 10(c).
ii. A primary argument in favor or against the Measure shall not exceed 300 words in length and shall be accompanied by the printed name(s) and signature(s) of the author(s) submitting it, or, if on behalf of an organization, the name of the organization, and the printed name and signature of at least one of its principal officers who is the author of the argument, in accordance with Article 4, Chapter 3, Division 9 of the Elections Code. Primary arguments shall be accompanied by the Form of Statement to Be Filed By Author(s) of Argument.

Submittals of primary arguments are to be delivered to the City Clerk no later than ______ p.m. on ______, 2026, and may be changed or withdrawn up and until such date and time. iii. In the event that more than one argument in favor or against the foregoing Measure is timely submitted, then consistent with Elections Code Section 9287, the City Clerk shall select the argument to be included with the ballot materials, giving preference and priority first, to arguments submitted by member(s) of the City Council, and second, to individual voters, or bona fide associations of citizens, or a combination thereof, in the order set forth in Elections Code Section 9287.
b. City Attorney Impartial Analysis. The City Council directs the City Clerk to transmit a copy of the Measure to the City Attorney. Pursuant to Elections Code Section 9280, the City Attorney shall prepare an impartial analysis of the Measure not exceeding 500 words showing the effect of the Measure on existing law and the operation of the Measure. The analysis shall include a statement indicating whether the Measure was placed on the ballot by a petition signed by the requisite number of voters or by the City Council. In the event the entire text of the Measure is not printed on the ballot, nor in the voter information portion of the voter information guide, there shall be printed immediately below the impartial analysis, in no less than 10-point type, the following: “The above statement is an impartial analysis of Ordinance or Measure _________. If you desire a copy of the ordinance or measure, please call the election official’s office at (insert phone number) and a copy will be mailed at no cost to you.” The impartial analysis shall be filed by ______ p.m. on ______, 2026.
c. Rebuttal Arguments.

ATTACHMENT 1
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i. Pursuant to Section 9285 of the Elections Code of the State of California, rebuttal arguments shall be permitted for the Measure. ii. When the City Clerk has selected the primary arguments for and against the Measure (not exceeding 300 words each), which will be printed and distributed to the voters, the City Clerk shall send a copy of an argument in favor of the Measure to the authors of any argument against the Measure and a copy of an argument against the Measure to the authors of any argument in favor of the Measure immediately upon receiving the arguments. iii. The author or a majority of the authors of an argument relating to a city measure may prepare and submit a rebuttal argument not exceeding 250 words or may authorize in writing any other person or persons to prepare, submit, or sign the rebuttal argument.

A rebuttal argument may not be signed by more than five authors. iv. The rebuttal arguments shall be filed with the City Clerk, signed, with the printed name(s) and signature(s) of the author(s) submitting it, or if submitted on behalf of an organization, the name of the organization, and the printed name and signature of at least one of its principal officers, by ______ p.m. on ______, 2026. The rebuttal arguments shall be accompanied by the Form of Statement to Be Filed By Author(s) of Argument. Rebuttal arguments shall be printed in the same manner as the direct arguments. Each rebuttal argument shall immediately follow the direct argument which it seeks to rebut. v. The provisions of Section 10(c) shall apply only to the election to be held on November 3, 2026, and shall then be repealed.
d. Printing. The City Clerk shall cause the City Attorney’s impartial analysis, and duly selected arguments, to be printed and distributed to voters in accordance with State law regarding the same.

11. Notice of Election. Notice of the time and place of holding the election is given and the City Clerk is authorized, instructed and directed to give further or additional notice of the election, in time, form and manner as required by law.

12. Conduct of Election as Provided by Law. In all particulars not recited in this Resolution, the General Municipal Election shall be held and conducted as provided by law for holding municipal elections.

13. Implementation. The City Clerk and City Administrator are authorized to take all actions as necessary to effectuate the purposes of this Resolution and the election. The City Administrator is authorized to execute all documents and to perform all other necessary City acts to enter into a service agreement for the provision of election services with Monterey County Elections Department. The City Administrator is authorized to make any typographical, clerical, and non-substantive corrections and such other revisions as may be required by the California Department of Fee and Tax Administration to this Resolution and its exhibits/attachments.

14. Printing of Measure. The City Council of the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea hereby requests that the Monterey County Elections Department print the attached full Measure text as provided in Exhibit A exactly as filed or indicated on the filed document in the voter information guide for the November 3, 2026 Statewide General Election.

15. Environmental Compliance. The City Council finds the adoption of this Resolution

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and the Proposed Ordinance are not subject to the California Environmental Quality Act ("CEQA"), because the enactment of this Resolution and the Proposed Ordinance: (1) do not constitute a “project” as defined by CEQA pursuant to California Code of Regulations, Title 14, Sections 15060(c)(3) and 15378; (2) will not result in a direct or reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment pursuant to California Code of Regulations, Title 14, Section 15060(c)(2); and (3) is covered by the general rule that CEQA applies only to projects which have the potential for causing a significant effect on the environment pursuant to California Code of Regulations, Title 14, Section 15061(b)(3).

16. Effective Date. This Resolution shall take effect immediately following passage and adoption by the Carmel-by-the-Sea City Council.

PASSED AND ADOPTED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA this ____ day of ____ 2026, by the following roll call vote:

AYES:

NOES:

ABSENT:

ABSTAIN:

APPROVED: ATTEST:
_____________________________ _____________________________ Dale Byrne, Mayor Nova Romero, MMC, City Clerk

ATTACHMENT 1
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Exhibit A
Text of Measure/Ordinance

ATTACHMENT 2
4901-7809-6034 v2
DRAFT ORDINANCE NO. 2026-___

AN ORDINANCE OF THE CITY OF CARMEL-BY-THE SEA, CALIFORNIA, INCREASING THE CITY’S CURRENT TRANSACTIONS AND USE TAX RATE FROM 1.5% TO 1.875% AND

EXTENDING THE DURATION OF SUCH TRANSACTIONS AND USE TAX SO THAT IT

REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL ENDED BY VOTERS
WHEREAS, pursuant to Article XIIIC of the California Constitution, Section 53720 et seq. of the California Government Code, the City has the authority to levy a general tax; and WHEREAS, Article XIIIC, Section 2, of the California Constitution requires that the election at which a general tax increase is submitted to the electorate shall be consolidated with a regularly scheduled general election for members of the governing body of the local government, except in cases of emergency declared by a unanimous vote of the governing body; and WHEREAS, Part 1.6 (commencing with Section 7251) of Division 2 of the California Revenue and Taxation Code, and Section 7285.9 of the California Revenue and Taxation Code, authorizes a city to adopt a transactions and use tax ordinance, which shall be operative if a majority of the electors voting on the measure vote to approve the imposition of the tax at an election called for that purpose; and
WHEREAS, pursuant to Article IV of Chapter 3.28 of Title 3 of the Carmel-by-the-Sea Municipal Code, the City currently has a general transactions and use tax at the rate of 1.5% which is set to expire in 2040 (“Transactions and Use Tax”); and WHEREAS, this Ordinance would increase the Transactions and Use Tax rate from 1.5% to

1.875% and extend the duration of the Transactions and Use Tax so that it remains in effect until ended by voters; and
WHEREAS, by Resolution No. _______, the City Council of the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea submitted this Ordinance to the voters at the General Municipal Election to be held in the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea on November 3, 2026 (“General Municipal Election”); and WHEREAS, by Resolution No. _______, the City Council has approved this Ordinance pursuant to Section 7285.9 of the California Revenue and Taxation Code; and WHEREAS, the General Municipal Election was also a regularly scheduled general election for members of the Carmel-by-the-Sea City Council.

NOW THEREFORE, ON THE BASIS OF THE FOREGOING, THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY OF CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, DO HEREBY ORDAIN AS FOLLOWS:

SECTION 1. AMENDMENT TO SECTION 3.28.170: Section 3.28.170 (entitled “Imposition”) of Article IV of Chapter 3.28 of Title 3 of the Carmel-by-the-Sea Municipal Code is hereby amended in its entirety as follows:
“A transactions and use tax is hereby imposed as a general tax on the gross receipts of any retailer from the sale of all tangible personal property sold at retail in the City for a period of 20 years, and upon the sales price of tangible personal property stored, used or otherwise consumed in the City as further set forth below.”

ATTACHMENT 2
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SECTION 2. AMENDMENT TO SECTION 3.28.210: Section 3.28.210 (entitled “Transactions Tax Rate”) of Article IV of Chapter 3.28 of Title 3 of the Carmel-by-the-Sea Municipal Code is hereby amended in its entirety as follows:
“For the privilege of selling tangible personal property at retail, a tax is hereby imposed upon all retailers in the incorporated area of the City at the rate of one and one-half percent1.875% of the gross receipts of any retailer from the sale of all tangible personal property sold at retail in the City on and after the operative date of the ordinance codified in this article for a period of 20 years following the effective date of the taxand remaining in effect until repealed by the voters of the City of Carmel-by-the-Seaand shall then be terminated.” SECTION 3. AMENDMENT TO SECTION 3.28.230: Section 3.28.230 (entitled “Use Tax Rate”) of Article IV of Chapter 3.28 of Title 3 of the Carmel-by-the-Sea Municipal Code is hereby amended in its entirety as follows:
“An excise tax is hereby imposed on the storage, use or other consumption in the City of tangible personal property purchased from any retailer on and after the operative date of the ordinance codified in this article for storage, use or other consumption in the City at the rate of 1.875% one and one-half percent of the sales price of the property for a period of 20 years following the effective date of the tax, and remaining in effect until repealed by the voters of the City of Carmel-by-theSea and shall then be terminated. The sales price shall include delivery charges when such charges are subject to sales or use tax regardless of the place to which delivery is made.”
SECTION 4. AMENDMENT TO SECTION 3.28.310: Section 3.28.310 (entitled “Termination Date”) of Article IV of Chapter 3.28 of Title 3 of the Carmel-by-the-Sea Municipal Code is hereby amended in its entirety as follows:
“The authority to levy the taxes imposed by this article shall remain in effect until repealed by the voters of the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea expire 20 years from the operative date, unless extended by the voters.”
SECTION 5. COUNCIL AUTHORITY TO AMEND: The City Council has the right and authority to amend this Ordinance, to further its purposes and intent (including but not limited to amendment for more efficient administration as determined by the City Council), in any manner that does not increase a tax rate, or otherwise constitute a tax increase for which voter approval is required by Article XIII C of the California Constitution, pursuant to Section 9217 of the California Elections Code.

SECTION 6. SEVERABILITY: Should any section, subsection, paragraph, sentence, clause, or phrase of this ordinance be declared unconstitutional or invalid for any reason, such declaration shall not affect the validity of the remaining portions of this ordinance.

SECTION 7. DATE OF ADOPTION; EFFECTIVE DATE: Pursuant to Elections Code Section 9217, this Ordinance shall be considered adopted on the date that the City Council declares that the voters of the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea have approved the Ordinance by a vote of no less than a majority of the votes cast by the electors voting at the General Municipal Election held on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, and shall go into effect ten (10) days thereafter.

Following a declaration by the City Council that this Ordinance was approved by a majority of the voters, as set forth in Elections Code Section 9217, the Mayor is hereby authorized to

ATTACHMENT 2
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approve that this Ordinance was adopted on November 3, 2026, by signing where indicated below.

SECTION 8. APPROVAL OF ORDINANCE: The City Council hereby approves this Ordinance pursuant to Section 7285.9 of the California Revenue and Taxation Code and authorizes the Mayor to sign as to the City Council’s approval thereof.

SECTION 9. PUBLICATION: The Clerk shall cause this ordinance to be published in the manner required by law.

SECTION 10. ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW: The City hereby determines that this Ordinance is not in-and-of-itself a “project” pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act, Public Resources Code section 21000 et seq., including without limitation California Code of Regulations, Title 14, Sections 15378(b)(4) and 15061(b)(3), as it can be seen with certainty that there is no possibility that the adoption of the ordinance itself may have a significant effect on the environment. This Ordinance relates to a transactions and use tax and relates to the creation of City funding mechanisms and City fiscal activities, which does not involve any commitment to any project which may result in a potentially significant physical impact on the environment.

PASSED, APPROVED AND ADOPTED BY THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY OF CARMELBY-THE-SEA at the General Municipal Election held on November 3, 2026.

APPROVED,
________________________________
Mayor
ATTEST:
________________________________
Nova Romero, MMC
City Clerk

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CITY OF CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA

CITY COUNCIL
Staff Report

Discuss draft Resolution Of The City Council Of The City Of Carmel-By-The-Sea Submitting To The Qualified Electors Of The City Of Carmel-By-The-Sea A Measure To Adopt A New Two Percent Transient Occupancy Tax, In Addition To Existing Ten Percent Transient Occupancy Tax, And Approving The Form Of The Ordinance To Be Submitted To The Voters; Requesting The Monterey County Elections Department To Conduct The Election And Requesting Consolidation Of The General Municipal Election With The Statewide General Election To Be Held On November 3, 2026; Directing The City Attorney To Prepare An Impartial Analysis Concerning Such Measure; Authorizing The Drafting Of Primary Arguments And Rebuttals Concerning Such Measure (Attachment 2) and provide direction.

BACKGROUND / SUMMARY
I. Background
On February 3, 2026, the City Council directed staff to prepare a ballot measure to be presented to the voters for the general municipal elections on November 3, 2026 that would propose an effective increase in the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) from 10% to 12%.

On April 7, 2026, Council was presented with a Staff Report and proposed Resolutions for a ballot measure to increase the City’s transient occupancy tax from 10% to 12%. This Staff Report is Attachment 1. The first Resolution including a calling of the election, but City Clerk Nova Romero advised that she would be May 4, 2026
Public Hearing
TO: Honorable Mayor and City Council Members
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Pierik, City Attorney
APPROVED BY: Brandon Swanson, Acting City Administrator SUBJECT: Discuss draft Resolution Of The City Council Of The City Of Carmel-By-The-Sea Submitting To The Qualified Electors Of The City Of Carmel-By-The-Sea A Measure To Adopt A New Two Percent Transient Occupancy Tax, In Addition To Existing Ten Percent Transient Occupancy Tax, And Approving The Form Of The Ordinance To Be Submitted To The Voters; Requesting The Monterey County Elections Department To Conduct The Election And Requesting Consolidation Of The General Municipal Election With The Statewide General Election To Be Held On November 3, 2026; Directing The City Attorney To Prepare An Impartial Analysis Concerning Such Measure; Authorizing The Drafting Of Primary Arguments And Rebuttals Concerning Such Measure and provide direction.

RECOMMENDATION

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presenting a separate Resolution to call the election for the positions of Mayor and two Councilmembers.

The second Resolution was to submit the ballot measure to the voters assuming the Council had adopted a Resolution calling the Election. The Council expressed support for the second Resolution and directed that a Resolution be brought back to the Council for further discussion on May 4, 2026.

At the Council meeting on April 7, 2026, the Council also discussed the draft Ordinance to amend the City Municipal Code regarding the transient occupancy tax and there was a discussion regarding alternative language for the ordinance which was presented in a power point and that alternative language is set forth here:

AN ORDINANCE OF THE VOTERS OF THE CITY OF CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA AMENDING CARMEL-BYTHE-SEA MUNICIPAL CODE CHAPTER 3.32 (TRANSIENT OCCUPANCY TAX) TO ADOPT A NEW TWO

PERCENT INCREASE THE TRANSIENT OCCUPANCY TAX, IN ADDITION TO EXISTING BY TWO

PERCENT FROM TEN PERCENT TRANSIENT OCCUPANCY TAX TO TWELVE PERCENT

3.32.020: Tax Imposed.

A. For the privilege of occupancy in any hostelry, each transient is subject to and shall pay a tax in the amount of 10 percent of the rent charged by the operator, plus a new tax in the amount of 2 percent of the rent charged by the operator, for a total tax in the amount of 12 percent of the rent charged by the operator.

The tax constitutes a debt owed by the transient to the City which is extinguished only by payment to the operator or to the City.

SECTION 4. Title 3, Section 3.32.130, Disposition of Proceeds, shall be amended to add a new Subsection C, as follows:

3.32.130: Disposition of Proceeds.

C. The additional two percent added by Ordinance No. 26-_ shall be added to the General Fund for usual and current expenses.

The Council also discussed on April 7, 2026 alternative language for the Ballot Question as follows:
“Shall the measure providing funding for City of Carmel-by-the-Sea’s general government purposes, such as, for example, infrastructure improvements, public safety, and other general municipal purposes, by increasing the establishing a new transient occupancy tax of 2%, paid by lodging guests to the operators of hotels and hostelries motels, in addition to the existing 10% transient occupancy tax, from 10% to 12%, with the new 2% tax providing approximately $1.9 million annually until ended by voters, be adopted?” Pursuant to the direction from the City Council on April 7, 2026, a Resolution has been prepared with the changes directed by City Council for submission to the County of a ballot measure to be voted upon at the November 3, 2026 general election, a summary of the proposed increase in the TOT, the form of the proposed ballot question, and a discussion on potential City information activities. The Resolution is Attachment 2.

Some of this discussion is also provided below, but updated pursuant to Council direction at the April 7, 2026, meeting and, for Council’s convenience, a summary of the procedural requirements to put the TOT measure on the ballot is also provided below.

Accordingly, the draft Ordinance which will be attached to the Resolution has been revised as directed by the City Council on April 7, 2026. Attachment 3 is a redline version of the Ordinance showing the proposed changes to Chapter 3.32 of the City’s Municipal Code. Attachment 4 is a clean version of the Ordinance which accepts the redline changes.

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II. Discussion
In order to submit the TOT measure to the City’s qualified voters, the City Council must carry out certain acts, including the adoption of the attached draft resolution sending the TOT measure to the voters. This staff report provides background information that is relevant to the City Council’s discussion and direction on the attached draft resolution and ordinance.

A. Votes Required to submit the TOT measure and to Increase TOT Rate Under Proposition 2181, the City may only impose a general tax if: (a) two-thirds of the members of the City Council (which would be four affirmative votes) approve placing a tax measure on the ballot for voter consideration, and (b) the ballot measure is approved by a majority vote of the electorate at a general municipal election (for the election of members of Council).2 The next general municipal election is November 3, 2026.

B. Proposed New TOT and the Current TOT
As noted above, the City’s existing 10% TOT is codified at Carmel-by-the-Sea Municipal Code (“Municipal Code”) Chapter 3.32. The proposed new TOT would be at the rate of 2% and would effectively raise the TOT rate to 12%. The City Council may discuss and provide direction on whether this 2% increase is what the City Council desires to submit to the voters.

C. Form of Ballot Question
The TOT measure’s ballot question must meet the following requirements: (1) no more than 75 words and in the format of a “yes” or “no” question; (2) include “the amount of money to be raised annually and the rate and duration of the tax to be levied”3; and (3) “be a true and impartial synopsis of the purpose of the proposed measure, and shall be in language that is neither argumentative nor likely to create prejudice for or against the measure.”4It must also be in the form of “Shall the measure … be adopted?”5 As such, the City Council should discuss and provide direction on the wording of the ballot question. A sample ballot question for a transient occupancy tax that is a general tax is as follows:6
Shall the measure providing funding for City of Carmel-by-the-Sea’s general government purposes, such as, for example, infrastructure improvements, public safety, and other general municipal purposes, by establishing a new transient occupancy tax of 2%, paid by lodging guests to the operators of hotels and hostelries, in addition to the existing 10% transient occupancy tax, with the new 2% tax providing approximately $1.9 million annually until ended by voters, be adopted?
D. Election Procedures
The following section provides information to the City Council on the election procedures that will need to be followed when submitting the TOT measure to the City’s qualified voters. 1 Cal. Constitution Articles XIIIC and XIII D.
2 Cal. Gov. Code Sections 53723 and 53724, subject to limited exceptions for the timing of elections for declared emergencies.
3 Cal. Elections Code Section 13119(b).
4 Cal. Elections Code Section 13119(c).
5 Cal. Elections Code Section 13119(a).
6 The City is authorized to identify sample expenditures of anticipated TOT revenue without converting the general tax to a special tax, as long as a phrase similar to “and general government use” is included in the list.

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1. Getting the Measure on the Ballot
In order to submit a TOT measure to the voters at the November 3, 2026, general municipal election, the City Council must adopt a resolution that (1) submits the measure to the voters at the November 3, 2026, General Municipal Election and includes the TOT ordinance with a new two percent transient occupancy tax, in addition to existing ten percent transient occupancy tax, and (2) authorizes the drafting of primary arguments by all or some councilmembers, directs the City Attorney to draft an impartial analysis of the measure, and authorizes rebuttal arguments.

In order to be adopted, this resolution must be approved by a 2/3 vote (i.e., 4/5) of the City Council and submitted to the County no later than 88 days prior to the election.7 Measures may be withdrawn no later than after the 83rd day prior to the election.8
a. Submitting the ballot measure to the voters
The City Council is generally permitted to submit measures to the voters by adopting a resolution to that effect.9 This resolution must also include a ballot question pursuant to Elections Code Section 13247, which must meet the requirements referenced and discussed above. The ordinance establishing the new 2% TOT must also be attached to the resolution. However, as stated above, general taxes must be submitted at a general municipal election unless an emergency is unanimously declared by the City Council. b. Authorizing the drafting of primary arguments, directing the City Attorney to draft an impartial analysis of the measure, and authorizing rebuttal arguments (1) Primary Arguments
Elections Code Section 9282(b) permits the City Council to authorize a member or members to author and submit primary arguments relating to a ballot measure placed on the ballot by the City Council; however, if the City Council authorizes a quorum of its membership to draft the primary argument, such drafting and approval thereof is subject to the Brown Act. In other words, a majority of members of Council must not discuss the arguments outside a public meeting. Such arguments may not exceed 300 words.

If more than one primary argument is submitted, then the City Clerk chooses the argument to appear on the voter informational materials based upon the priorities provided in Elections Code Section 9287. Primary arguments are typically due 14 days after the call of the election pursuant to Elections Code Section 9286(a); however, for consolidated elections, as is the case here, this deadline does not apply. Instead, the City Clerk may set the deadline based upon the election calendar provided by the County. After primary arguments are filed, the 10-day public examination period commences.10 (2) City Attorney’s Impartial Analysis
When a measure qualifies for the ballot, the city attorney, on direction of the City Council, must prepare an impartial analysis of the measure showing the effect of the measure on existing law and the operation of the measure.11 The impartial analysis must include a statement indicating whether the measure was placed on the ballot by the voters or by the City Council and is limited to 500 words.12 Similar to the primary arguments, there is a 10-day public examination period after the deadline to impartial analysis. 7 Cal. Elections Code Section 9222.
8 Cal. Elections Code Section 9605.
9 Cal. Elections Code Section 9222 and 10201.
10 Cal. Elections Code Section 9295.
11 Cal. Elections Code Section 9280.
12 Cal. Elections Code Section 9280.

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(3) Rebuttal Arguments
The City Council may also authorize rebuttal arguments.13 Rebuttal arguments cannot exceed 250 words and may only be written by the authors of the selected primary arguments, and must be filed no later than 10 days after the final filing date for primary arguments.14 Similar to the primary arguments and impartial analysis, there is a 10-day public examination period after the deadline to submit rebuttal arguments.

III. Campaign and Election Activities
This section of the Staff Report provides general guidance on campaign and election activities related to ballot measures that elected officials and staff may permissibly perform.

California law proscribes certain campaign and election activities of municipal governments and their elected and appointed officials, officers, and employees (collectively “City Officials”). As a result, it is important to pay close attention to election-related conduct because failure to do so can result in personal civil and criminal liability. This liability could arise from impermissible authorization of expenditures of public funds, improper use of public resources, or failure to act with due care.15 While this section of the Staff Report provides a number of practical guidelines for City Officials to follow during local elections, it is not intended to universally address the specific facts of each individual act or occurrence.

Thus, we recommend that questions concerning specific campaign and election conduct not specifically addressed herein be directed to the City Attorney’s office.

A. General Guidelines
Laws governing the personal activities of City Officials during elections are intended to strike a balance among the duties of public officials, permissible uses of public funds, and voter protections. City Officials have free speech rights that they are entitled to exercise in their individual capacities, the use of public funds is strictly limited in the context of election activities, and voters are entitled to a fair election process that is free of undue influence.16 In recognition of these interests, a general principle emerges: City Officials may not use taxpayerfunded resources to support, oppose, or promote a candidate for public office or ballot measure. However, City Officials may act in their individual capacities to engage in political activities in limited circumstances. What follows is a more detailed discussion, separated for ease of reference into sections covering both permissible and impermissible activities.

B. Permissible Activities
The following provides a convenient summary of the most commonly encountered permissible activities that City Officials may engage in related to ballot measures and campaign activities:

1. Council May Take a Position: The City Council may take a position on a ballot measure in an open and public meeting where all perspectives may be shared;17 13 Cal. Elections Code Section 9285.
14 Cal. Elections Code Section 9285(a).
15 Cal. Gov. Code §§ 8314, 83116, 89001, 91000, 91004; 2 Cal. Code Regs. §18901.1; Cal. Penal Code § 424; Vargas v.

City of Salinas (2009) 46 Cal.4th 1, 36; Stanson v. Mott (1976) 17 Cal.3d 206, 226-27. 16 Fort v. Civil Service Comm. (1964) 61 Cal.2d 331, 334 (right to participate in political activities as an individual); Stanson, supra, 17 Cal.3d at 217 (use of public funds in election campaign can lead to an “improper distortion of the democratic electoral process”).
17 Vargas, 46 Cal. 4th at 36-37.

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2. City Staff May Prepare Impartial Reports: City staff may prepare impartial staff reports and other analyses of ballot measures to assist decision-makers in determining the impact of the measure and what position to take;18

3. Informational Material: City Officials acting within the scope of their duties may provide strictly informational material concerning a proposed ballot measure, but may not promote a particular position

4. City Communication Channels: City Officials may communicate about a measure through regular City communication channels (e.g., City website or newsletter), in a way that impartially emphasizes factual information, and does not use advocacy, persuasive, or argumentative language.19

5. Respond to Inquiries: City Officials may respond to inquiries about ballot measures in ways that provide a fair presentation of the facts about the measure and the City’s view of the merits of a ballot measure including, if applicable, the City Council’s position on the measure;20

6. City Facilities: In limited circumstances, certain public facilities (like libraries and community centers) may be used for private political or campaign purposes.21 Such public facilities may be used in this way if: the facilities are generally made available to the public for private functions; the organizers of the event comply with all standard requirements of the facilities; no public funds or resources are used to support the event; City Officials attend only in their individual and personal capacities; and the facilities are otherwise open and available for the expression of other points of view.

7. Presentation of City Position: City Councilmembers may accept invitations to present the agency’s views before organizations interested in the ballot measure’s effects including, if applicable, the City Council’s position on the measure.22

8. Off-Duty Political Activities: City Officials may engage in political activities while off-duty.23 City Officials are considered to be off-duty at times when they are away from City Hall or when they are not otherwise conducting business of the City. When speaking or appearing at functions in their official capacities, City Officials are considered to be on-duty. While off-duty, City Officials may engage in political activities such as attending a political rally, participating in a campaign committee, making calls at a phone bank, performing campaign-related work, posting campaign signs, registering voters, or advocating that persons contribute or vote for or against a candidate or ballot measure.

9. Contact with City Vendors and Solicitation of Campaign Contributions: City Officials may while off-duty request a list of City vendors and may contact those vendors and solicit campaign contributions for individual candidates and ballot measures.24

10. Endorsements: City Officials may make endorsements in an individual capacity. For example, a Councilmember may endorse a particular position on a ballot measure and may reference their official position; however, the endorsement cannot suggest that they are representing the City or the City Council.25
18 Vargas, 46 Cal. 4th at 36-37.
19 Vargas, 46 Cal. 4th at 34, 40
20 Vargas, 46 Cal. 4th at 24-25, 33.
21 Gov. Code § 3207.
22 Vargas, 46 Cal. 4th at 25, 36, citing Stanson, 17 Cal. 3d at 221. 23 Fort, 61 Cal.2d at 334; see also Gov. Code § 3201 & § 3203. 24 Government Code § 82030; Breakzone Billiards v. City of Torrance, (2000) 81 Cal.App.4th 1205. 25 CA FPPC Adv. Letter I-00-216.

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C. Impermissible Activities

1. No City Funds: City Officials may not use City funds or resources to advocate for or against, a local ballot measure or candidate.26

2. No Use of City Communications: City communications regarding a ballot measure may not encourage the public to adopt the agency’s views, vote one way or another, or take any other actions in support of or in opposition to the measure.27

3. On Duty: City Officials may not engage in political activities, such as attending campaign meetings, rallies or other campaign-related functions, distributing political materials, posting political signs, making campaign calls, or performing any other campaign-related tasks while on duty.28
Note: The “on duty” restrictions developed through the evaluation of traditional City employees where it is relatively easy to determine whether City employees are acting on City time and using City resources. This evaluation is more subtle with City Councilmembers who do not have an hourly schedule. It is therefore best to evaluate Councilmembers’ activities in the framework of whether they are acting in their individual capacity vs. their capacity as a Councilmember performing Council-related duties, and whether the Councilmember is using City resources when engaging in political activities.

4. No City Resources: City Officials may not use City funds or resources including City office space and equipment, City phones, or City email, to advocate a position or otherwise use City funds or resources to support personal political activities.29

5. Not While in Uniform: City Officials who wear a City-provided or required uniform as required by their employment may not participate in any political activity while in uniform, even during off-duty time.30

6. No City Funds To Advocate: City Officials may not use public funds for communications that expressly advocate a particular result in an election, or disseminate advocacy materials prepared by others.

7. No City Funds for Campaign Materials: City Officials may not purchase campaign materials such as buttons, stickers, posters, advertising floats, television and radio spots, and billboards.

8. No City Funds for Campaign Brochures: Producing and mailing promotional campaign brochures is also prohibited, even when those documents contain some useful factual information for the public.31

9. No Solicitation of Contributions from City Officers or Employees: City Officials may not knowingly, directly or indirectly, solicit a contribution or donation for a political campaign from 26 Stanson, 17 Cal. 3d at 217; Schroeder v. Irvine City Council (2004) 97 Cal.App.4th 174; Gov. Code § 8314; California Legislative Counsel Opinion No. 154 (09-18-80).
27 Vargas, 46 Cal. 4th at 40.
28 Government Code § 3207.
29 Government Code § 54964; Stanson, 17 Cal.3d at p. 209-210. 30 Government Code § 3206.
31 Vargas, 46 Cal. 4th at 24, 25, 39 n. 20.

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any City officer or employee, even when the City Official is off-duty.32 Prohibited solicitation activities include obtaining address lists, direct solicitation, and mass mailings.

10. No Use of Authority or Influence: City Officials may not use the authority or influence of his or her official position to persuade or induce any officer or employee to take or refrain from taking any type of political action, including persuading or inducing any individual to vote, contribute, or campaign for or against a measure.33

11. No Promises of Compensation: City Officials, whether on or off-duty, may not promise to provide any person with a gift, money, promotion, job, or other form of compensation in return for a contribution or vote.34

12. No On-Duty Advocacy: For candidate campaigns, City Officials acting within the scope of their duties may not advocate for or against a candidate for office. 35 D. Conclusion And Additional References
Laws governing campaign and elections activities are complex. However, the general principles are that City Officials may not use taxpayer-funded resources to support, oppose, or promote a candidate for public office or ballot measure, but City Officials may, in limited circumstances, act in their individual capacities to engage in political activities.

In addition to the information provided above regarding campaign and election activities relating to ballot measures, included here are two helpful references published by the Institute for Local Government which provide additional information on the above rules:

Institute for Local Government Publication: Ballot Measures and Public Agencies:
https://www.ca-ilg.org/sites/main/files/file-attachments/ballot_measures_and_public_agencies.pdf Institute for Local Government Publication: Ballot Measure Activities & Public Resources:
https://www.ca-ilg.org/sites/main/files/file-attachments/ballot_measure_activities_2018.pdf

FISCAL IMPACT
If the ballot measure is approved by the voters at the election on November 3, 2026, the estimated annual revenue from the new 2% TOT would be approximately $1.9 million.

The City would have to pay the County of Monterey for the costs associated with including the ballot measure on the November 3, 2026, ballot and that cost would be between approximately $5,000 to $10,000.

PRIOR CITY COUNCIL ACTION
Discussion and direction at the City Council Meeting on February 3, 2026 as described above.

Discussion and direction at the City Council Meeting on April 7, 2026 as described above. 32 Government Code § 3205(a).
33 Government Code § 3204.
34 Government Code §§ 3204 & 3205.5; Elections Code § 18520. 35 Stanson, 17 Cal. 3d at 206 & 220; Governor Gray Davis Committee v. American Taxpayer’s Alliance (2002) 102 Cal.App.4th 449.

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ATTACHMENTS

1. Staff Report to City Council for meeting on April 7, 2026

2. Draft Resolution Of The City Council Of The City Of Carmel-By-The-Sea Submitting To The Qualified Electors Of The City Of Carmel-By-The-Sea A Measure To Adopt A New Two Percent Transient Occupancy Tax, In Addition To Existing Ten Percent Transient Occupancy Tax, And Approving The Form Of The Ordinance To Be Submitted To The Voters; Requesting The Monterey County Elections Department To Conduct The Election And Requesting Consolidation Of The General Municipal Election With The Statewide General Election To Be Held On November 3, 2026; Directing The City Attorney To Prepare An Impartial Analysis Concerning Such Measure; Authorizing The Drafting Of Primary Arguments And Rebuttals Concerning Such Measure

3. Redline Version of proposed Ordinance showing changes to existing sections of City Municipal Code

4. Clean Version of proposed Ordinance showing changes to existing sections of City Municipal Code

CITY OF CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA
City Council
Staff Report
April 7, 2026

ORDERS OF BUSINESS
TO: Honorable Mayor and City Council Members
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Pierik, City Attorney
APPROVED BY: Brandon Swanson, Acting City Administrator SUBJECT: Discussion of draft resolutions and ordinance relating to a potential ballot measure to increase the City’s Transient Occupancy Tax from 10% to 12% and Direction regarding the submission of such ballot measure to the City’s voters at the November 3, 2026, general municipal election
RECOMMENDATION:

1. Discuss the attached draft resolutions and ordinance relating to a potential ballot measure to increase the City’s Transient Occupancy Tax from 10% to 12%.

2. Motion providing direction regarding the submission of such ballot measure to the City’s voters at the November 3, 2026, general municipal election.

BACKGROUND / SUMMARY:

I. BACKGROUND
The City’s current Transient Occupancy Tax (“TOT”) rate is 10%. Staff requests the City Council discuss and provide direction on the attached draft resolutions and ordinance, which would submit to the City’s qualified voters a ballot measure that would increase the TOT rate from 10% to 12% if approved by the voters.

There are two draft Resolutions attached to this Staff Report. Resolution No. 1 would call for the election and submit the ballot measure to the voters (Attachment 1). If the Council has already adopted a Resolution calling for the election, Resolution No. 2 would just submit the ballot measure to the voters (Attachment 2). Attached to whichever Resolution is adopted would be a proposed Ordinance to increase from 10% ATTACHMENT 1

to 12%. A redline version of the Ordinance with track changes of the current City Municipal Code is Attachment 3. A clean version of the Ordinance accepting these track changes is Attachment 4.

The attached draft Resolutions also request that Monterey County conduct the City’s November 3, 2026, General Municipal Election and to consolidate the same with the Statewide General Election to be held on the same date; direct the City Attorney to draft an impartial analysis for the ballot measure; and authorize the drafting of primary arguments and rebuttals. Approval of either Resolution requires an affirmative vote of four members of the City Council. In order for the TOT ballot measure to pass, it will require a 50% plus 1 approval vote from the City’s qualified voters.

The City currently imposes and collects a TOT in the amount of 10% of the “rent” paid by each “transient” for the privilege of temporarily occupying (for thirty days or less) a “hostelry” (e.g., a hotel or similar structure), and the City imposes an obligation on each “operator” of a hostelry to collect the TOT from each transient and pay the TOT to the City.

At the City Council meeting on February 3, 2026, the Council directed staff to prepare a ballot measure to be presented to the voters for the general municipal election on November 3, 2026, that increases the TOT rate from 10% to 12% (“TOT Measure”).

Consistent with Council direction, the attached draft Resolutions and draft Ordinance were prepared for the City Council’s discussion and direction.

If the Council gives direction to return at the Council meeting on May 5, 2026, with one of the draft Resolutions, then staff can determine include in the Agenda Packet for that Council meeting the appropriate Resolution based on whether or not the Council has adopted a Resolution calling for the election.

II. DISCUSSION
In order to submit the TOT measure to the City’s qualified voters, the City Council must carry out certain acts, including the adoption of one of the attached draft resolutions sending the TOT measure to the voters. This staff report provides background information that is relevant to the City Council’s discussion and direction on the attached draft resolution and ordinance.

A. Votes Required to submit the TOT measure and to Increase TOT Rate Under Proposition 2181, the City may only increase a general tax if: (a) two-thirds of the members of the City Council (which would be four affirmative votes) approve placing a tax measure on the ballot for voter consideration, and (b) the ballot measure is approved by a majority vote of the electorate at a general municipal election (for the election of members of Council).2 The next general election is November 3, 2026. 1 California Constitution Articles XIII C and XIII D.
2 California Government Code Sections 53723 and 53724, subject to limited exceptions for the timing of elections for declared emergencies.

ATTACHMENT 1

B. Current TOT Rate and Proposed Increase
As noted above, the City’s existing 10% TOT is codified at Camel-by-the-Sea Municipal Code (“Municipal Code”) Chapter 3.32. The proposed increase in the TOT would raise the TOT rate to 12%. The City Council may discuss and provide direction on whether this 2% increase is what the City Council desires to submit to the voters.

C. Form of Ballot Question
The TOT measure’s ballot question must meet the following requirements: (1) no more than 75 words and in the format of a “yes” or “no” question; (2) include “the amount of money to be raised annually and the rate and duration of the tax to be levied” 3; and (3) “be a true and impartial synopsis of the purpose of the proposed measure, and shall be in language that is neither argumentative nor likely to create prejudice for or against the measure.” 4 It must also be in the form of “Shall the measure … be adopted?” 5 As such, the City Council should discuss and provide direction on the wording of the ballot question. A sample ballot question for a transient occupancy tax that is a general tax is as follows: 6
“Shall the measure providing funding for City of Carmel-by-the-Sea’s general government purposes, such as, for example, infrastructure improvements, public safety, and other general municipal purposes by increasing the transient occupancy tax, paid by lodging guests to the operators of hotels and motels, from 10% to 12%, providing approximately $1.9 million annually until ended by voters, be adopted?” D. Election Procedures
The following section provides information to the City Council on the election procedures that will need to be followed when submitting the TOT measure to the City’s qualified voters.

1. Getting the Measure on the Ballot
In order to submit a TOT measure to the voters at the November 3, 2026, general municipal election, the City Council must adopt a resolution that (1) submits the measure to the voters and includes the TOT ordinance increasing the TOT rate; (2) requests the consolidation of such general municipal election with the Statewide General Election on November 3, 2026; and (3) authorizes the drafting of primary arguments by all or some councilmembers, directs the City Attorney to draft an impartial analysis of the measure, and authorizes rebuttal arguments. 3 Cal. Elections Code Section 13119(b).
4 Cal. Elections Code Section 13119(c).
5 Cal. Elections Code Section 13119(a).
6 The City is authorized to identify sample expenditures of anticipated TOT revenue without converting the general tax to a special tax, as long as a phrase similar to “and general government use” is included in the list.

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This resolution must be approved by a 2/3 vote (i.e., 4/5) of the City Council and submitted to the County no later than 88 days prior to the election.7 Measures may be withdrawn no later than after the 83rd day prior to the election.8 a. Submitting the ballot measure to the voters
The City Council is generally permitted to submit measures to the voters by adopting a resolution to that effect.9 This resolution must also include a ballot question pursuant to Elections Code Section 13247, which must meet the requirements referenced and discussed above. The ordinance making changes to the TOT must also be attached to the resolution. However, as stated above, general taxes must be submitted at a general municipal election unless an emergency is unanimously declared by the City Council. b. Requesting the consolidation of general municipal election with the Statewide General Election on November 3, 2026
The City Council may request that the November 3, 2026, general municipal election be consolidated with the Statewide General Election held on the same date.10 Although the City will have to pay the County for the associated costs of consolidation, this is a standard practice that virtually all cities in California follow, because the costs for a city to run its own election are typically prohibitive.
c. Authorizing the drafting of primary arguments, directing the City Attorney to draft an impartial analysis of the measure, and authorizing rebuttal arguments (1) Primary Arguments
Elections Code Section 9282(b) permits the City Council to authorize a member or members to author and submit primary arguments relating to a ballot measure placed on the ballot by the City Council; however, if the City Council authorizes a quorum of its membership to draft the primary argument, such drafting and approval thereof is subject to the Brown Act. In other words, a majority of members of Council must not discuss the arguments outside a public meeting. Such arguments may not exceed 300 words.

If more than one primary argument is submitted, then the City Clerk chooses the argument to appear on the ballot based upon the priorities provided in Elections Code Section 9287. Primary arguments are typically due 14 days after the call of the election pursuant to Elections Code Section 9286(a); however, for consolidated elections, as is the case here, this deadline does not apply. Instead, the City Clerk may set the deadline based upon the election calendar provided by the County. After primary arguments are filed, the 10-day public examination period commences.11 7 Cal. Elections Code Section 9222.
8 Cal. Elections Code Section 9605.
9 Cal. Elections Code Section 9222 and 10201.
10 Cal. Elections Code Section 10403.
11 Cal. Elections Code Section 9295.

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(2) City Attorney’s Impartial Analysis
When a measure qualifies for the ballot, the city attorney, on direction of the City Council, must prepare an impartial analysis of the measure showing the effect of the measure on existing law and the operation of the measure.12 The impartial analysis must include a statement indicating whether the measure was placed on the ballot by the voters or by the City Council and is limited to 500 words.13 Similar to the primary arguments, there is a 10-day public examination period after the deadline to impartial analysis.
(3) Rebuttal Arguments
The City Council may also authorize rebuttal arguments.14 Rebuttal arguments cannot exceed 250 words and may only be written by the authors of the selected primary arguments, and must be filed no later than 10 days after the final filing date for primary arguments.15 Similar to the primary arguments and impartial analysis, there is a 10-day public examination period after the deadline to submit rebuttal arguments.

E. Informational Activities
It is important to consider that, after a measure is “certified to appear” on a particular election ballot, the City is prohibited from spending any City resources to support or oppose the ballot measure per Government Code Section 54964. Nevertheless, although there is no brightline rule on what is or is not permissible, courts consider the style, tenor, and timing of such materials to determine whether they engage in impermissible campaign advocacy.16
Although the City is not able to engage in advocacy as it relates to a ballot measure, the City is able to provide information to the public in a neutral and unbiased manner and in a format that is not argumentative. This involves utilization of the City’s standard methods of communication with the public. It is recommended that any informational efforts (e.g., flyers, social media posts, etc.) be reviewed by the City Attorney’s Office prior to dissemination.

As noted above, from a broad legal perspective, after a ballot measure is certified to appear before the voters, the City may only use City resources to communicate factual, impartial, and balanced information regarding the ballot measure with a goal of informing the public. The City must not use public resources for the purpose of advocating a particular result for the election.17
The City Council should discuss and provide direction as to whether it would like the City to engage in these informational activities.
12 Cal. Elections Code Section 9280.
13 Cal. Elections Code Section 9280.
14 Cal. Elections Code Section 9285.
15 Cal. Elections Code Section 9285(a).
16 Vargas v. City of Salinas (2009) 46 Cal.4th 1, 27.
17 See League of Women Voters v. Countywide Criminal Justice Coordination Comm. (1988) 203 Cal.App.3d 529.

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On March 24, 2026, the Carmel Innkeepers Association submitted a nine-page analysis (Attachment 5) expressing opposition to a TOT increase and discussing the potential impacts of total visitor costs on demand, competitive positioning, and long-term tax generation.

FISCAL IMPACT:

If the TOT measure is approved by the voters at the election on November 3, 2026, then the City would annually receive approximately $1.9 million in revenue.

The City would have to pay the County of Monterey for the costs associated with including the ballot measure on the November 3, 2026, ballot and that cost would be between approximately $5,000 to $10,000.

PRIOR CITY COUNCIL ACTION:

At the City Council meeting on February 3, 2026, the Council directed staff to prepare a ballot measure as provided in the attached Resolution to be submitted to the City’s qualified voters at the November 3, 2026, general municipal election.

ATTACHMENTS:

Attachment 1: Draft Resolution #1 – Calling the Election/Submitting the Ballot Measure Attachment 2: Draft Resolution #2 – Submitting the Ballot Measure Attachment 3: Proposed Redline Version of Ordinance (Exhibit A of Resolution) Attachment 4: Proposed Clean Version of Ordinance (Exhibit A of Resolution) Attachment 5: Letter from the Carmel Innkeeper’s Association (March 24, 2026) ATTACHMENT 1

4933-6242-4738 v5
Attachment 2

CITY OF CARMEL-BY THE SEA

CITY COUNCIL
RESOLUTION NO. 2026-___

A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA ORDERING THE SUBMISSION TO THE QUALIFIED ELECTORS OF THE CITY OF CARMELBY-THE-SEA A MEASURE TO ADOPT A NEW TWO PERCENT TRANSIENT OCCUPANCY

TAX, IN ADDITION TO EXISTING TEN PERCENT TRANSIENT OCCUPANCY TAX, AND APPROVING THE FORM OF THE ORDINANCE TO BE SUBMITTED TO THE VOTERS;

REQUESTING THE MONTEREY COUNTY ELECTIONS DEPARTMENT TO CONDUCT THE

ELECTION AND REQUESTING CONSOLIDATION OF THE GENERAL MUNICIPAL ELECTION WITH THE STATEWIDE GENERAL ELECTION TO BE HELD ON NOVEMBER 3, 2026;

DIRECTING THE CITY ATTORNEY TO PREPARE AN IMPARTIAL ANALYSIS CONCERNING SUCH MEASURE; AUTHORIZING THE DRAFTING OF PRIMARY ARGUMENTS AND

REBUTTALS CONCERNING SUCH MEASURE
WHEREAS, pursuant to Resolution No. ______, the City Council has called a General Municipal Election to be held on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, for the purpose of electing council members as provided therein (“General Municipal Election”) and requested that the Monterey County Board of Supervisors consent to the consolidation of the General Municipal Election with the Statewide General Election to be held on the same date; and WHEREAS, the City imposes a transient occupancy tax pursuant to Chapter 3.32 of the City of Carmel-by- the-Sea Municipal Code (“TOT”); and
WHEREAS, pursuant to Article XIIIC of the California Constitution, Section 53720 et seq. of the California Government Code, the City has the authority to levy a general tax, including, but not limited to, increasing an existing tax; and
WHEREAS, Article XIIIC, Section 2, of the California Constitution requires that the election at which a general tax is submitted to the electorate shall be consolidated with a regularly scheduled general election for members of the governing body of the local government, except in cases of emergency declared by a unanimous vote of the governing body; and WHEREAS, the City Council desires to submit a measure proposing a new 2% TOT that would be in addition to the existing 10% TOT to the voters of the City at the General Municipal Election to be held on November 3, 2026, that was called pursuant to Resolution No. _______; and
WHEREAS, the proposed measure contemplated by this Resolution establishes a general tax in which the proceeds will be deposited in the City’s General Fund for general government use; and
WHEREAS, pursuant to Elections Code Section 10400, whenever two or more elections, including bond elections, of any legislative or congressional district, public district, city, county, or other political subdivision are called to be held on the same day, in the same territory, or in territory that is in part the same, they may be consolidated upon the order of the governing body or bodies or officer or officers calling the elections; and