City of San Mateo
City Council Meeting
POST PACKET
PUBLIC COMMENT
From: Jeremy Levine
To: City Council (San Mateo)
Cc: Zachary Dahl; Christina Horrisberger; Alex Khojikian Subject: Public Comment: Agenda Items 15 & 38, Comprehensive Zoning Update + Inclusionary Zoning Update Date: Monday, June 16, 2025 2:21:22 PM
Good afternoon city council members and staff,
HLC appreciates the work staff have done to implement Measure T with a comprehensive zoning update and implement the housing element with updates to the Below Market Rate housing program. We hope both processes will result in a streamlined, modern zoning code that facilitates development allowed by the voter-approved general plan update. Voters supported the general plan update because they want more housing at all levels of affordability, and the city should move as quickly as possible to make that housing easier to build.
To that end, we write with recommendations for changes and additions to Placework's Proposal for Services
and the Below Market Rate program update.
Comprehensive Zoning Update
First, the city can reduce costs and potentially speed up the timeline by streamlining community input. To the extent additional community input is necessary after the six-year general plan update, it should focus on user input for the zoning code. Focus groups and targeted surveys, as proposed in the Placeworks RFP response, may help generate useful feedback. However, open houses will not yield new information after the many public meetings that the city already held for the General Plan. Instead, the city should encourage interested residents to attend planning commission and city council hearings.
Bigger picture, in order to most effectively promote housing pursuant to the voter-approved General Plan, both phases of the zoning code update should focus on broadly reducing the full spectrum of constraints to housing. Ideally, this update will streamline the code and make it more user friendly in a variety of ways, not just by modifying Floor Area Ratios or revising development standards in special areas. Cities like Cambride, Massachussetes and Spokane, Washington have recently moved to completely eliminate redundant policies like floor area
ratios, which are unnecessary in cities that already regulate height and density.
San Mateo should strive to be similarly innovative. To that end, we recommend adding two additional bullets to the phase 2 scope agreement:
Streamline redundant density controls, including but not limited to Floor Area Ratios, massing requirements, setbacks, minimum lot sizes, minimum unit sizes, and all other development standards
Simplify the zoning code to remove circular references and broaden allowable uses in all districts.
Under today's code, developers in San Mateo regularly use a dozen or more density bonus concessions or waivers to end run around the city's onerous rules. Property owners with less experience simply forego development they might otherwise pursue due to the code's complexity. Emphasizing code simplification will ensure San Mateo's zoning code update results in a better development process--and more homes at all levels of affordability--rather