whether streamlining can occur without creating gaps in responsibility, monitoring, transparency, and accountability. The City should not allow the speed of project processing to become a substitute for comprehensive planning, cumulative analysis, and meaningful public access to the record supporting those decisions.
I.State Housing Mandates Require Better Local Implementation, Not Less Planning
California's Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) process and related State housing laws represent a significant shift in how local governments are expected to plan for and accommodate housing growth. Through RHNA, the State requires jurisdictions to identify sufficient capacity, adopt compliant housing policies, remove unnecessary barriers to housing production, and establish predictable approval pathways for qualifying housing projects.
Those objectives are important.
This comment does not challenge the importance of housing production, affordable housing, or the State's efforts to address California's longstanding housing shortage.
The issue is whether State housing mandates are being implemented within a framework that recognizes the difference between planning for housing capacity and successfully implementing the communities that result from that capacity.
RHNA is fundamentally a planning obligation.
It is not a complete funding mechanism for all permanent obligations associated with housing growth.
The State establishes housing production expectations. Local jurisdictions inherit responsibility for ensuring that adequate infrastructure, services, transportation systems, environmental implementation, and long-term fiscal planning support the resulting communities.
That distinction is particularly important for San Ramon.
San Ramon is not meeting its RHNA obligations in an undeveloped jurisdiction, where new infrastructure, public services, and community systems can be created simultaneously with initial growth. San Ramon is a mature community with established neighborhoods, infrastructure, service expectations, taxpayers, and a long history of planning decisions that have shaped the City's current fiscal and operational structure.
Additional housing does not occur in isolation.
Each additional household contributes to cumulative demands on:
public safety services;
emergency response capacity;
transportation infrastructure;
roadway operations and maintenance;
pedestrian and bicycle systems;
transit coordination;
parks and recreation facilities;
stormwater systems;
utilities;
public facilities;
affordable housing implementation;
climate mitigation measures;
and long-term capital replacement.
These obligations do not end when a project receives approval.
They continue for decades after construction is complete and after the original entitlement decisions have been made.
The City should therefore avoid treating RHNA compliance as the sole measure of successful housing implementation. A jurisdiction can satisfy housing production requirements while still creating fiscal, infrastructure, transportation, or service challenges if the cumulative consequences of growth are not evaluated comprehensively.
The relevant question is not simply:
"Can the City approve this housing?"
The more important question is:
"Can the City responsibly sustain the community created by this housing?" Those questions are related, but they are not the same.
This distinction becomes increasingly important as State law reduces local discretionary authority over qualifying housing projects. As opportunities for discretionary review narrow, local governments must rely more heavily on upfront planning, objective standards, infrastructure analysis, fiscal evaluation, monitoring systems, and transparent implementation procedures established before applications are submitted.
The City cannot wait until after ministerial approvals occur to determine whether cumulative growth patterns create unintended obligations.
The planning responsibility must occur before approval.
That is not an argument against streamlining.
It is an argument for recognizing that streamlining shifts responsibility.
When discretionary review is available, some community objectives may be addressed through project-specific review, negotiation, conditions, or design modifications.
When discretionary review is limited, those expectations must already exist within:
adopted plans;
objective standards;
mitigation programs;
infrastructure plans;
monitoring systems;
and implementation procedures.
Ministerial approval does not mean the City stops planning.
It means the City must plan earlier, more clearly, and more comprehensively.
This is the same implementation concern identified in my attached comments regarding HCD's SMAP Guidelines. The concern is not that streamlined housing approvals are inherently inappropriate. The concern is that accelerated approval pathways can create fragmented responsibility when housing production, environmental review, transportation planning, climate implementation, infrastructure planning, and fiscal analysis operate through separate processes without a mechanism to evaluate their combined effects.
A housing program may measure units approved.
A transportation program may measure mobility outcomes.
A climate program may measure greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions.
A fiscal program may measure revenues and expenditures.
But residents experience all of those outcomes together.
The City's responsibility is to ensure that those systems remain integrated.
The same principle applies to the implementation of affordable housing. Affordable housing is an essential component of meeting statewide housing needs. Still, affordable housing production often requires additional implementation considerations, including financing sources, subsidy coordination, service partnerships, long-term affordability monitoring, and administrative responsibilities.
A State housing requirement does not eliminate the need to understand how those obligations will be supported locally.
The City should avoid a false choice between supporting housing production and protecting fiscal responsibility.
Those objectives are not in conflict.
They are inseparable.
A community that approves housing without understanding long-term fiscal, infrastructure, transportation, and environmental consequences is not necessarily advancing housing policy successfully. It may simply be transferring costs and obligations to future residents, taxpayers, and decisionmakers.
San Ramon's experience with Dougherty Valley demonstrates why this distinction matters. The lesson from prior growth decisions is not that housing should not occur.
The lesson is that a realistic understanding of lifecycle costs, infrastructure needs, service obligations, and long-term fiscal sustainability must accompany residential growth.
That lesson applies directly to current housing implementation.
The City should not interpret State housing mandates as requiring growth approvals first and evaluation of consequences later.
The appropriate interpretation is the opposite:
Because the State requires increased housing production, local governments must become more disciplined—not less—in evaluating the cumulative fiscal, environmental, transportation, and infrastructure implications of that growth.
The City should therefore ensure that implementation of RHNA obligations remains integrated with:
General Plan 2040 policies and implementation measures; the certified General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report (EIR); General Plan 2040 EIR transportation and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) analysis;
adopted mitigation measures;
the Statement of Overriding Considerations (SOC);
Updated Climate Action Plan (CAP) measures;
CEQA GHG Threshold Report requirements;
Objective Design Standards for Multi-Family Residential and Mixed-Use Development (ODDS);
Transportation Demand Management (TDM) strategies;
infrastructure planning; and
long-term fiscal analysis.
RHNA establishes the need for housing.
It does not eliminate the need for responsible governance.
The State may determine how much housing a jurisdiction must plan for.
The City remains responsible for ensuring that the resulting community can be successfully implemented, maintained, and sustained.
II.Dougherty Valley, Measure N, and the Fiscal Consequences of Growth Dougherty Valley remains San Ramon's most important real-world lesson regarding the long-term consequences of growth decisions.
That lesson should not be misunderstood.
The issue is not that residential growth occurred.
The issue is not that housing was built.
The issue is not that the City pursued opportunities to accommodate population growth, expand the community, or provide additional housing choices.
The lesson is more specific:
Growth creates permanent obligations, and those obligations must be fully understood before approvals are granted.
A development approval is not the conclusion of a planning decision.
It is the beginning of decades of operational, maintenance, infrastructure, and service obligations.
When a jurisdiction approves substantial residential growth, it is not merely approving buildings or assigning land use entitlements. It is accepting responsibility for the systems necessary to support the community that follows, including public safety, transportation, infrastructure maintenance, parks and recreation, public facilities, utilities, community services, and eventual infrastructure replacement.
Those obligations do not disappear when construction is complete.
They do not disappear when the original decisionmakers leave office.
They do not disappear when economic conditions change.
They become part of the City's ongoing responsibility to provide services and maintain the community that was created.
That is the fundamental fiscal lesson of Dougherty Valley.
The question accompanying major growth decisions cannot be limited to:
"Can this development be approved?"
The more important questions are:
"What permanent obligations does this approval create?" "Who will be responsible for those obligations?"
"What resources will sustain those obligations over time?" Those questions are not arguments against growth.
They are the basic questions of responsible growth management.
A jurisdiction that evaluates only whether a project can be entitled, while failing to assess the long-term obligations created by that entitlement, evaluates only half of the decision.
The City must evaluate both sides of the equation:
the benefits and obligations that arise from growth.
Dougherty Valley demonstrates why this distinction matters.
Individual projects may each appear reasonable when evaluated independently. A residential project may comply with applicable standards. A subdivision may advance the adopted land use objectives. A development proposal may satisfy its own approval criteria.
However, the cumulative effect of many individually appropriate decisions can fundamentally alter:
population;
service demand;
infrastructure requirements;
transportation conditions;
fiscal obligations;
and community expectations.
The City's responsibility is therefore not simply to determine whether individual projects satisfy applicable requirements.
The City must also evaluate whether the cumulative pattern of growth remains sustainable.
That is the difference between development approval and community implementation.
Development approval asks whether a project may proceed.
Community implementation asks whether the resulting community can be supported over time.
That requires answering difficult but necessary questions:
How will services be funded?
How will infrastructure be maintained?
How will transportation systems adapt?
How will public facilities and community services be supported? How will future taxpayers avoid inheriting obligations created by decisions made decades earlier?
Those questions cannot be deferred indefinitely.
They must be addressed before growth obligations become permanent.
This lesson is particularly important today because San Ramon is evaluating significant residential intensification while also relying on Measure N as an important component of its current fiscal strategy.
Measure N provides meaningful fiscal support for City operations.
However, Measure N should not be interpreted as eliminating the need for careful fiscal due diligence.
A voter-approved revenue measure provides additional fiscal capacity.
It does not create unlimited fiscal capacity.
It does not guarantee that every future service demand, infrastructure obligation, maintenance responsibility, or operational cost created by new development has an identified and sustainable funding source.
Measure N provides time.
It does not eliminate responsibility.
The City should therefore avoid using Measure N as a substitute for comprehensive fiscal analysis of future growth decisions.
The appropriate question is not:
“Does the City currently have sufficient revenue to approve this project?” The appropriate question is:
"Will the City have sufficient long-term resources to support the community obligations created by this and similar projects after construction is complete?" That requires evaluating whether projected revenues are sustainable, whether service demands increase with population growth, whether infrastructure obligations are funded, whether maintenance costs are understood, and whether future residents and taxpayers will inherit obligations created by decisions made today.
This issue is particularly relevant in the context of Bishop Ranch redevelopment.
Historically, Bishop Ranch has represented a significant employment and commercial center within San Ramon.
As redevelopment increases residential intensity, the City is changing the relationships among residents, employment, transportation demand, municipal services, infrastructure needs, and fiscal resources.
Residential development and employment-oriented development are not fiscally interchangeable.
They create different revenue patterns, service demands, transportation characteristics, infrastructure needs, and long-term maintenance responsibilities.
The City should therefore avoid evaluating residential intensification solely through the lens of housing production or entitlement compliance.
The City should also evaluate how cumulative redevelopment affects the community's long-term fiscal structure.
This is especially important because growth can produce both benefits and obligations.
Growth can create new residents, economic activity, additional property values, and new opportunities.
Growth can also create additional service demands, infrastructure needs, maintenance obligations, and fiscal pressures.
The outcome depends on whether the jurisdiction evaluates both sides of the equation before approving additional commitments.
The same principle applies to affordable housing.
Affordable housing is an important public objective and an essential component of meeting statewide housing needs. However, affordable housing implementation may also require additional funding sources, subsidy coordination, service partnerships, affordability monitoring, administrative resources, and long-term compliance responsibilities.
The existence of a State housing obligation does not eliminate the need to understand how those obligations will be supported locally.
San Ramon should not repeat the institutional mistake of assuming that growth itself will resolve fiscal challenges.
Growth does not automatically create fiscal sustainability.
Fiscal sustainability depends on whether the costs and benefits of growth are understood before decisions become permanent.
The lesson from Dougherty Valley should therefore guide current implementation:
Approving growth is only the first step. Successfully sustaining the community created by that growth is the responsibility that follows.
San Ramon now has an opportunity to apply that lesson to Olive + Oak, Bishop Ranch redevelopment, and future housing decisions.
The purpose of lessons learned is not to prevent future action.
The purpose of lessons learned is to improve future decisions.
The City should ensure that comprehensive fiscal analysis, cumulative infrastructure evaluation, transportation planning, climate implementation strategies, objective standards, transparent monitoring, and public accountability accompany future growth.
Dougherty Valley should not be viewed as a historical issue that has already passed.
It should be viewed as institutional knowledge.
The City has the opportunity to demonstrate that it has learned the difference between approving growth and sustaining the community that growth creates.
III.Bishop Ranch Redevelopment: A Cumulative Transformation Bishop Ranch redevelopment represents one of the most consequential land use transformations in San Ramon's history.
The City should not evaluate Bishop Ranch redevelopment as a collection of independent entitlement actions occurring at different times and under separate approval pathways. It is a cumulative transformation that will reshape the City's land use pattern, transportation system, fiscal structure, infrastructure demands, public service obligations, and long-term community identity.
That distinction matters.
The central planning question is not whether each project can satisfy its own approval requirements.
The central planning question is:
What are the cumulative consequences when these projects are implemented together?
That is the question responsible long-range planning requires.
The broader Bishop Ranch redevelopment program includes, and is occurring alongside, major land use decisions involving:
Orchards/Chevron Park;
BR-7;
BR-11;
BR-12;
Canopy;
Olive + Oak;
CityWalk/City Center changes;
and future redevelopment actions that will continue to alter the relationship among employment, housing, transportation, infrastructure, and public services.
Each project may appear reasonable when evaluated independently.
Each may satisfy applicable zoning requirements, objective standards, housing requirements, or other approval criteria.
However, cumulative impacts are not created because a single project independently causes every consequence.
They occur because multiple individually acceptable decisions collectively change the conditions under which the community operates.
That is precisely why comprehensive planning exists.
The City should not repeat the same institutional risk identified in prior growth decisions: evaluating each approval as reasonable while failing to evaluate the combined long-term consequences fully.
Bishop Ranch redevelopment presents a different form of the same fundamental challenge as Dougherty Valley.
Dougherty Valley primarily involved expansion of residential development into a growing community area.
Bishop Ranch involves transforming a historically significant employment and commercial center into a more mixed-use, residential-oriented environment.
The circumstances are different.
The planning lesson is the same.
Growth changes the obligations of the community that follows.
Bishop Ranch Is More Than a Housing Capacity Opportunity The City should avoid evaluating Bishop Ranch redevelopment solely through the lens of housing production.
Housing production is one important component of redevelopment.
It is not the only component.
Bishop Ranch has historically played a central role in San Ramon's economic identity and fiscal structure. It has functioned as a major employment and commercial center, contributing to the City's revenue base, transportation patterns, and daily activity.
As redevelopment introduces additional residential intensity, the City is changing the relationship among:
where people live;
where people work;
how people travel;
how infrastructure is used;
how public services are provided;
and how municipal revenues are generated.
Those changes may create opportunities.
They may also create obligations.
The City should therefore evaluate Bishop Ranch redevelopment as a comprehensive community transformation rather than simply as a housing production strategy.
Residential development and employment-oriented development are not fiscally or operationally interchangeable.
They create different:
revenue patterns;
service demands;
transportation characteristics;
infrastructure needs;
peak travel patterns;
and long-term maintenance obligations.
The City should not assume that replacing or intensifying one land use pattern with another automatically produces equivalent fiscal outcomes.
A responsible redevelopment strategy requires understanding both the benefits and obligations created by that transition.
The City Should Evaluate Bishop Ranch at the Scale at Which Its Consequences Occur
A recurring challenge in planning is that individual projects are reviewed at a smaller scale than the consequences they create.
A single project may not appear to affect significantly:
transportation systems;
infrastructure capacity;
public services;
fiscal resources;
or climate commitments.
However, the cumulative implementation of multiple Bishop Ranch redevelopment projects can significantly alter those same systems.
The City should therefore evaluate Bishop Ranch redevelopment at the scale at which its consequences occur.
That requires evaluating:
total population growth;
total residential intensity;
service demand;
public safety needs;
parks and recreation obligations;
transportation demand;
VMT;
infrastructure capacity;
climate implications;
revenue changes;
and long-term General Fund impacts.
The relevant question is not:
"Does this individual project create an unacceptable impact?" The relevant question is:
"What happens when all approved and reasonably foreseeable redevelopment occurs together?"
That is the purpose of cumulative analysis.
Fiscal Implications of Transforming a Major Employment Center The fiscal implications of Bishop Ranch redevelopment deserve particular attention.
A significant employment and commercial base has historically influenced San Ramon's fiscal structure.
As Bishop Ranch redevelopment projects change the composition of the area, the City should evaluate how that transition affects:
recurring revenues;
service demands;
infrastructure obligations;
transportation needs;
and long-term financial sustainability.
The City should not assume that additional residential development automatically produces a net fiscal benefit.
Fiscal outcomes depend on the relationship between:
revenues generated; and
obligations created.
A comprehensive fiscal evaluation should consider:
whether new revenues are recurring;
whether service costs increase with population;
whether infrastructure obligations are fully funded;
whether maintenance costs are included;
whether public safety demands change;
and whether future taxpayers inherit obligations created by current redevelopment decisions.
This is not an argument against residential redevelopment.
It is an argument for understanding the full consequences of redevelopment.
The City should not repeat the pattern where economic benefits are considered immediately while long-term obligations emerge later.
Transportation, VMT, and Climate Implications Must Be Evaluated Together Bishop Ranch redevelopment projects will reshape transportation conditions.
The City should not evaluate transportation implications only through individual project access or site-specific circulation plans.
Transportation systems are shared systems.
The consequences are cumulative.
Redevelopment will influence:
travel patterns;
commuting behavior;
roadway utilization;
transit demand;
pedestrian and bicycle activity;
parking behavior;
and VMT.
These transportation changes directly affect the City's climate commitments because transportation remains a significant source of GHG emissions.
The City's General Plan 2040, General Plan 2040 EIR, VMT framework, CAP, and CEQA GHG Threshold Report establish the framework for understanding those relationships.
Those documents should remain connected to implementation.
The City should not allow Bishop Ranch redevelopment projects to proceed through a series of isolated approvals while cumulative transportation and climate implications are addressed only through separate planning documents.
The community experiences transportation, climate, and land use outcomes together.
The City's planning processes should reflect that reality.
Infrastructure and Public Service Obligations Must Be Evaluated Before They Become Permanent
Bishop Ranch redevelopment projects will also affect infrastructure and public service demands.
The City should evaluate whether existing systems can support cumulative redevelopment, including:
transportation infrastructure;
utilities;
stormwater systems;
public facilities;
emergency response;
parks;
recreation;
and maintenance obligations.
Infrastructure planning should occur before capacity constraints become operational problems.
A project that can physically be constructed is not necessarily one that can be sustainably supported.
That distinction is central to responsible planning.
The City should ensure that redevelopment decisions account for the full lifecycle of the community being created.
Bishop Ranch Provides an Opportunity to Demonstrate Lessons Learned The City has an opportunity to approach Bishop Ranch redevelopment differently than prior growth decisions.
The lesson from Dougherty Valley is not that growth should be avoided.
The lesson is that growth must be accompanied by a complete understanding of the obligations it creates.
Bishop Ranch redevelopment provides the opportunity to demonstrate that San Ramon has incorporated that lesson into its current decision-making framework.
That requires moving beyond project-by-project review and evaluating the broader redevelopment program as a cumulative transformation.
The City should ensure that Bishop Ranch redevelopment remains consistent with:
General Plan 2040;
the General Plan 2040 EIR;
VMT and transportation commitments;
CAP measures;
CEQA GHG Threshold Report assumptions;
infrastructure capacity;
fiscal sustainability;
and the long-term interests of San Ramon residents.
The question is not whether Bishop Ranch should evolve.
It will evolve.
The question is whether that evolution will be managed intentionally, with a complete understanding of the consequences, or whether the City will discover those consequences only after obligations become difficult and expensive to address.
Bishop Ranch provides San Ramon with an opportunity to demonstrate that it has learned the central lesson of prior growth decisions:
Approving individual projects is not the same as successfully implementing a sustainable community.
The City should ensure that Bishop Ranch redevelopment represents not merely accelerated growth, but responsible growth.
IV.Objective Design Standards: Existing Foundation Requiring Broader Integration San Ramon has adopted ODDS for Multi-Family Residential and Mixed-Use Development through Resolution No. 2024-105 on November 12, 2024. Those standards provide the City's existing objective design framework for multifamily residential and mixed-use development in an increasingly ministerial housing approval environment.
That distinction is important.
The issue is not that San Ramon failed to adopt objective standards.
The City has adopted them.
The issue is whether those standards are sufficiently comprehensive for the regulatory environment the City now faces, in which State housing laws increasingly rely on ministerial approval pathways and require local governments to establish expectations before applications are submitted.
The City's adopted ODDS provide an important foundation. The standards were intended to establish objective design criteria, streamline the design review process, and implement urban design best practices while addressing important community design considerations, including access, sunlight, privacy, ventilation, outdoor space, landscaping, utilities, parking, circulation, building articulation, entries, frontage, and mixed-use development characteristics.
Those objectives are appropriate.
Clear, predictable, objective standards benefit applicants, staff, decisionmakers, and the public by establishing expectations before individual projects enter the approval process.
However, as San Ramon continues to implement State housing mandates, the City should evaluate whether its objective standards do more than merely regulate the physical characteristics of development.
They should also preserve the broader planning commitments that define what kind of community San Ramon intends to become.
ODDS should not function only as architectural standards.
They should function as an implementation bridge between:
General Plan 2040;
the General Plan 2040 EIR;
adopted mitigation measures;
VMT strategies;
CAP objectives;
CEQA GHG Threshold Report commitments;
TDM strategies;
infrastructure planning;
and long-term fiscal considerations.
This distinction is increasingly important because ministerial approval changes the timing and location of policy decisions.
When discretionary review is available, a local government may have greater flexibility to evaluate project-specific circumstances, negotiate modifications, apply conditions where legally appropriate, and address concerns through the entitlement process.
When discretionary review is limited, those expectations must already exist in objective form before the application arrives.
The City therefore should not view objective standards as a replacement for planning.
They are the mechanism through which prior planning decisions remain meaningful during implementation.
The question is not whether a project complies with an objective standard in isolation.
The question is whether the objective standards collectively ensure that ministerial approvals remain consistent with the community framework adopted through the City's broader planning process.
That is particularly important because the City's adopted planning documents were not created independently.
The General Plan 2040 establishes the long-range vision for growth.
The General Plan 2040 EIR evaluates the environmental consequences of implementing that vision.
The VMT framework evaluates transportation effects associated with growth.
The CAP and CEQA GHG Threshold Report establish expectations for climate implementation.
Transportation planning documents identify mobility objectives and mitigation strategies.
Fiscal planning documents identify the resources necessary to maintain the community created through those decisions.
These documents collectively define the conditions under which San Ramon intends to grow.
Objective standards should help preserve that integration.
Objective Standards Should Incorporate Existing Planning Commitments Before Applications Are Submitted
The City should evaluate whether existing ODDS, and any future project-specific ODDS, should be amended or supplemented to incorporate measurable requirements or implementation references related to:
General Plan 2040 goals, policies, and implementation measures; General Plan 2040 EIR mitigation measures;
General Plan 2040 EIR transportation assumptions;
VMT reduction strategies;
cumulative impact considerations;
CAP measures;
CEQA GHG Threshold Report consistency requirements;
TDM strategies and accountability mechanisms;
infrastructure capacity expectations;
public service obligations;
and long-term fiscal sustainability considerations.
The purpose of this integration would not be to recreate discretionary review through another mechanism.
That would undermine the purpose of objective standards.
The purpose would be to ensure that the City's adopted expectations are established before ministerial applications are submitted and are therefore applied consistently.
This distinction matters because the City's ability to address certain concerns may be significantly reduced after an application is filed under a ministerial pathway.
The solution is not to abandon those concerns.
The solution is to identify them earlier.
If the City determines that certain transportation, climate, infrastructure, or community objectives are important enough to guide future growth, those objectives should be reflected in the standards governing that growth.
Objective Standards Should Preserve, Not Replace, the General Plan 2040 Framework
The City should also avoid creating a situation in which objective standards become disconnected from the implementation framework of General Plan 2040.
A project may satisfy architectural standards while still raising broader questions regarding:
transportation impacts;
VMT assumptions;
infrastructure capacity;
climate commitments;
cumulative growth;
and fiscal sustainability.
Objective standards should therefore be evaluated as part of the City's larger implementation system.
For example, where the General Plan 2040 EIR identified transportation concerns and relied upon mitigation measures, the City should evaluate whether objective standards adequately preserve the assumptions underlying those strategies.
Where the CAP identifies transportation-related GHG reduction objectives, the City should evaluate whether objective standards support those objectives.
Where the City's fiscal planning identifies infrastructure or service obligations associated with growth, the City should evaluate whether implementation standards appropriately account for those obligations.
Again, the issue is not whether every objective standard must independently solve every planning challenge.
The issue is whether the City has established an integrated system where objective approvals remain connected to the broader policy framework adopted by the City Council.
Ministerial Processing Requires Stronger Upfront Planning The broader statewide trend toward housing streamlining makes this issue increasingly important.
As State law reduces opportunities for discretionary review, objective standards become the primary mechanism by which communities establish expectations for future development.
That does not mean objective standards should be used to delay housing production.
It means objective standards must be sufficiently complete before housing production accelerates.
The City should avoid the false choice between housing production and community accountability.
The appropriate question is whether the City has established the right standards before projects arrive.
This is the same implementation concern identified in the attached comments regarding HCD's SMAP Guidelines.
The concern is not that streamlined approvals are inherently inappropriate.
The concern is that streamlined approvals require stronger systems of accountability because fewer discretionary checkpoints remain.
Objective standards, monitoring systems, administrative records, and public reporting therefore become more important.
San Ramon Has the Opportunity to Build on Its Existing Foundation San Ramon has adopted objective standards. The remaining question is whether those standards are sufficiently comprehensive for the implementation environment the City now faces.
The goal should not be merely to ensure that buildings are appropriately designed.
The goal should be to ensure that growth occurs in a manner consistent with the community San Ramon has already planned to become.
Objective standards should preserve:
the General Plan 2040 vision;
the environmental commitments reflected in the General Plan 2040 EIR; transportation and VMT objectives;
climate commitments;
infrastructure expectations;
fiscal responsibility;
and public accountability.
Ministerial approval does not eliminate the need for thoughtful planning.
It underscores the importance of planning before approval.
San Ramon has already established the foundation.
The next step is to ensure that the foundation supports not only streamlined approvals but also sustainable implementation.
V.General Plan 2040, General Plan 2040 EIR, VMT SOC, and Cumulative Impacts:
Adopted Environmental Commitments Must Remain Meaningful During Implementation The City's General Plan 2040 represents San Ramon's adopted long-range vision for future growth, land use, mobility, infrastructure, environmental stewardship, economic development, and community character. It is not merely a policy statement describing desired outcomes at the time of adoption. It is the framework intended to guide the decisions that follow.
The General Plan 2040 EIR is an equally important component of that framework.
The EIR did not simply provide background information to support the adoption of the General Plan. It evaluated the foreseeable environmental consequences of implementing the General Plan, established the environmental baseline against which future decisions should be understood, identified mitigation measures, evaluated transportation and VMT effects, analyzed cumulative impacts, and informed the City Council's decision to approve the General Plan.
Those commitments remain meaningful during implementation.
They do not expire because individual projects proceed through different approval pathways.
They do not become irrelevant because State law has reduced discretionary review for certain housing projects.
They do not become optional because a project qualifies for ministerial processing.
The City should therefore ensure that implementation of State housing mandates remains connected to the planning framework that San Ramon itself adopted.
The concern is not whether Olive + Oak or other housing projects can satisfy a particular approval pathway.
The concern is whether the cumulative implementation of those approvals remains consistent with the assumptions, mitigation measures, and environmental commitments that supported General Plan 2040.
That distinction is fundamental.
A General Plan is not implemented solely upon adoption.
A General Plan is implemented through every subsequent land use decision, infrastructure investment, development approval, transportation strategy, and monitoring program.
General Plan 2040 Is a Living Implementation Framework, Not a Historical Approval Document
The City should avoid treating General Plan 2040 as a historical document that authorized future growth in 2023 but no longer meaningfully guides implementation decisions.
That interpretation would undermine the purpose of comprehensive planning.
The purpose of a General Plan is to establish a coordinated framework so that individual decisions collectively produce the community the City intended to create.
This is especially important in an environment where State housing laws increasingly limit discretionary review.
When a local government retains broad discretionary authority, certain community objectives may be addressed during the review of individual projects.
When discretionary authority is reduced, those objectives must already exist within:
adopted plans;
objective standards;
mitigation programs;
infrastructure plans;
monitoring requirements;
and implementation procedures.
This is why the connection between General Plan 2040 and future ministerial housing approvals is so important.
The City cannot simultaneously rely upon General Plan 2040 as the policy foundation supporting additional housing capacity while treating the environmental assumptions, mitigation framework, transportation analysis, and cumulative impact conclusions underlying that same plan as no longer relevant during implementation.
The General Plan and its EIR must remain connected to the decisions they were intended to guide.
That means the City should evaluate whether future housing and redevelopment decisions remain consistent with:
General Plan 2040 land use assumptions;
mobility policies;
transportation strategies;
environmental commitments;
infrastructure expectations;
climate objectives;
and cumulative growth assumptions.
These elements were not developed independently.
They were developed together.
A change in one area can affect all the others.
The General Plan 2040 EIR Established the Framework for Understanding Future Growth Consequences
The General Plan 2040 EIR evaluated the consequences of implementing the City's adopted growth strategy.
That analysis recognized that growth produces both opportunities and impacts.
The purpose of environmental review is not to prevent growth.
The purpose is to ensure that decisionmakers understand the consequences of growth and establish appropriate mitigation, monitoring, and implementation strategies.
The General Plan 2040 EIR therefore established important expectations regarding:
transportation systems;
VMT;
GHG emissions;
infrastructure;
cumulative development;
and mitigation implementation.
Those expectations should continue to inform future decisions.
The City should not create a disconnect where:
the General Plan EIR evaluates growth comprehensively;
the City adopts mitigation measures and policy commitments; but subsequent ministerial implementation proceeds without clear connection to those commitments.
A planning framework is only effective if it continues to influence decisions after adoption.
The City should therefore ensure that the implementation of ministerial housing does not occur outside the General Plan 2040 framework.
It should occur within that framework.
The VMT Framework Must Remain Connected to Housing and Land Use Implementation
Transportation is one of the clearest examples of why implementation integration matters.
The General Plan 2040 EIR evaluated transportation conditions and VMT, as land use decisions directly influence travel behavior.
Where housing is located, how much density is accommodated, how parking is managed, what transportation options exist, where jobs are located, and how residents access daily needs all affect transportation outcomes.
VMT is therefore not merely a transportation metric.
It is an indicator of broader land use decisions.
A jurisdiction cannot evaluate housing implementation separately from transportation outcomes.
This is particularly important for San Ramon because current growth decisions involve significant changes to established land use patterns, including:
Bishop Ranch redevelopment;
increased residential intensity;
mixed-use development;
employment and residential transitions;
and additional housing obligations.
Each project may appear manageable when viewed independently.
However, cumulative transportation effects emerge over time.
The City should therefore evaluate whether future housing implementation remains consistent with:
General Plan 2040 transportation assumptions;
VMT reduction strategies;
adopted transportation mitigation measures;
multimodal objectives;
TDM strategies;
and cumulative transportation conditions.
The City should not assume that consistency with one project-specific approval pathway automatically demonstrates consistency with the broader transportation framework adopted through General Plan 2040.
The transportation system is shared infrastructure.
The consequences are cumulative.
The VMT Statement of Overriding Considerations Is Not a Prohibition on Growth, but It Is Not a Waiver of Responsibility
The City's adoption of the General Plan 2040 EIR included a SOC acknowledging that certain significant environmental effects remained after consideration of mitigation measures.
That distinction is important.
The SOC does not prohibit future housing, redevelopment, or continued implementation of the General Plan. However, it also does not allow the City to disregard the impacts, mitigation measures, and assumptions that supported approval of the General Plan.
The SOC represents an acknowledgment of environmental reality. It recognizes that significant impacts were identified, mitigation measures were considered, some impacts remained, and the City determined that the benefits of the adopted plan outweighed those remaining impacts.
That decision creates an implementation responsibility. The City accepted the benefits of the adopted plan while also accepting responsibility for continuing to implement it consistently with the framework that supported its approval.
The SOC should therefore not be treated as either a veto against future growth or a waiver of future responsibility. It is part of the environmental context in which future growth decisions should be made.
The City should therefore evaluate whether subsequent housing and redevelopment decisions:
remain consistent with the transportation assumptions evaluated in the General Plan 2040 EIR;
preserve the effectiveness of adopted mitigation measures; maintain consistency with VMT reduction strategies;
remain within the cumulative growth assumptions analyzed; and avoid creating new conflicts with adopted climate, infrastructure, and fiscal objectives.
Cumulative Impacts Must Be Evaluated at the Scale They Occur One of the greatest risks associated with increasingly ministerial housing approvals is the potential loss of cumulative perspective.
Cumulative impacts do not arise because a single project independently creates every consequence.
They occur because multiple individually acceptable decisions collectively alter community conditions.
That is why San Ramon should not evaluate Bishop Ranch redevelopment projects and related future redevelopment actions only as separate approvals.
The cumulative question is:
What happens when these decisions are implemented together? The City should evaluate cumulative effects on:
population;
transportation demand;
VMT;
roadway conditions;
transit needs;
pedestrian and bicycle systems;
public facilities;
parks;
emergency response;
infrastructure capacity;
climate commitments;
and fiscal sustainability.
The General Plan 2040 EIR already recognized the importance of cumulative analysis.
The purpose of cumulative analysis was not simply to determine whether one project could proceed.
The purpose was to understand how future growth collectively affects the community.
The City should therefore avoid a process in which each project is individually determined to comply with adopted standards, while the cumulative result departs from the assumptions underlying those standards.
That is precisely the type of implementation gap that comprehensive planning is intended to prevent.
General Plan 2040 Implementation Requires Monitoring, Not Merely Consistency Statements
A recurring challenge in long-range planning is the difference between adopting commitments and implementing commitments.
A policy statement is not the same as an implementation mechanism.
A mitigation measure is not effective without monitoring.
A transportation strategy is not effective without accountability.
A climate commitment is not effective without measurement.
The City should therefore ensure that future housing and redevelopment implementation includes mechanisms to evaluate whether the assumptions underlying General Plan 2040 remain accurate.
That includes:
monitoring VMT trends;
evaluating transportation conditions;
tracking cumulative development;
reviewing infrastructure capacity;
evaluating climate performance;
and reporting outcomes publicly.
This is particularly important because the City is implementing growth in an environment where traditional discretionary review opportunities are increasingly limited.
The City cannot rely solely on project-by-project discretion to address cumulative issues after they emerge.
It must rely on stronger upfront planning and implementation systems.
The General Plan 2040 was not adopted merely to support future approvals.
It was adopted to guide the consequences of those approvals.
The City's responsibility is therefore not complete when the General Plan is certified or when a project receives approval.
The responsibility is fulfilled when the community created through those decisions remains consistent with the commitments, assumptions, and expectations that justified them.
VI.Climate, VMT, and Regulatory Integration: Housing Implementation Must Remain Connected to San Ramon's Adopted Climate Commitments
Housing implementation, transportation planning, and climate responsibility are not separate policy areas.
They are interconnected components of the same growth decision.
Where housing is located, how much density is accommodated, how residents travel, how parking is managed, whether alternatives to automobile travel are realistic, and how transportation systems function all directly affect VMT and transportation-related GHG emissions.
For that reason, the City's CAP and CEQA GHG Threshold Report should not be treated as separate environmental policy documents that exist independently from housing implementation.
They are part of the same integrated planning framework established through:
General Plan 2040;
the General Plan 2040 EIR;
transportation planning;
VMT analysis;
adopted mitigation measures;
and the City's broader efforts to manage future growth responsibly.
The City adopted these documents because it recognized that future growth decisions must occur within a coordinated environmental and climate strategy.
Those commitments must remain meaningful during implementation.
The City should not allow State housing mandates and increasingly ministerial approval pathways to create a disconnect between:
housing production;
transportation planning;
VMT reduction strategies;
climate commitments;
GHG reduction objectives;
and long-term environmental performance.
The issue is not whether housing production and climate objectives are compatible.
They can be.
The issue is whether the City is ensuring that housing production occurs in a manner consistent with the climate framework it adopted.
Climate Commitments Are Implementation Commitments, Not Aspirational Statements
The CAP and CEQA GHG Threshold Report exist because the City recognized that achieving climate objectives requires more than adopting broad policy statements.
It requires implementation.
A climate action plan is only meaningful if its assumptions, strategies, mitigation measures, and performance expectations influence the decisions that shape future emissions.
Housing approvals are among those decisions.
Residential development patterns influence:
travel behavior;
vehicle ownership;
trip frequency;
transportation energy use;
VMT;
and associated GHG emissions.
The City should therefore avoid treating housing implementation and climate implementation as separate administrative functions.
They are interconnected.
A decision that affects where people live, how they travel, and how they access jobs and services necessarily affects the City's ability to achieve transportation-related climate objectives.
This relationship is particularly important because San Ramon is undergoing significant land use changes.
The City is not simply approving isolated housing projects.
It is implementing a broader transformation involving:
Bishop Ranch redevelopment;
Orchards/Chevron Park;
BR-7;
BR-11;
BR-12;
Canopy;
Olive + Oak;
CityWalk/City Center changes;
and future residential and mixed-use redevelopment.
Each project may satisfy applicable requirements.
However, the cumulative land use pattern determines whether the City meets or falls short of its transportation and climate commitments.
The City should therefore evaluate housing implementation through the same integrated framework that supported adoption of:
General Plan 2040;
the General Plan 2040 EIR;
the CAP;
the CEQA GHG Threshold Report;
and related transportation strategies.
Housing Location, Transportation Patterns, and VMT Are Directly Connected to Climate Outcomes
The relationship between housing and climate is not limited to building design or construction emissions.
Long-term climate outcomes are heavily influenced by transportation.
Where people live relative to:
employment centers;
schools;
shopping;
transit;
recreation;
and daily services
affects travel behavior.
Travel behavior affects VMT.
VMT affects transportation-related GHG emissions.
Therefore, land use decisions are climate decisions.
This is especially relevant for San Ramon because the City's current growth strategy includes redevelopment and increased residential intensity in areas historically characterized by employment, commercial, and mixed-use functions.
Bishop Ranch redevelopment illustrates this challenge.
Historically, Bishop Ranch has functioned as a major employment center. As redevelopment introduces additional residential uses, the City is changing the relationship among:
residents;
jobs;
commuting patterns;
transportation demand;
roadway conditions;
and GHG emissions.
That transformation may create opportunities.
It may also create challenges.
The City should therefore evaluate whether redevelopment patterns remain consistent with the transportation and climate assumptions that support the CAP, CEQA GHG Threshold Report, and the General Plan 2040 framework.
The City should not assume that density alone automatically achieves climate objectives.
Density can provide benefits.
However, those benefits depend upon implementation conditions, including:
transit availability;
pedestrian connectivity;
bicycle infrastructure;
TDM;
parking strategies;
proximity to jobs and services;
and actual travel behavior.
Climate outcomes depend on what occurs after approval, not merely on characteristics identified at the time of approval.
The City Should Not Use Climate Policies to Support Growth While Treating Climate Implementation as Separate From Approval Decisions A recurring implementation risk is the separation of policy documents from actual decision-making.
The City may appropriately identify climate objectives as supporting:
compact development;
infill;
redevelopment;
housing opportunities;
and efficient land use patterns.
However, those same climate objectives must guide implementation.
The City should not rely on climate policies to support growth objectives while treating climate implementation as separate from the approvals that shape future transportation patterns and emissions.
The CAP and CEQA GHG Threshold Report should therefore remain active implementation tools.
They should inform:
ODDS;
project-specific ODDS;
TDM requirements;
infrastructure planning;
cumulative redevelopment analysis;
and monitoring programs.
The purpose is not to impose discretionary review where State law limits discretion.
The purpose is to ensure that objective standards governing ministerial approvals reflect the City's existing adopted commitments.
Objective Standards Provide the Opportunity to Integrate Climate Commitments Before Applications Are Submitted
The City has already adopted ODDS through Resolution No. 2024-105.
Those standards establish objective expectations regarding site design, circulation, access, parking, landscaping, and mixed-use development characteristics.
The City should now evaluate whether those standards sufficiently integrate the City's climate framework.
Where ministerial approval limits later discretionary modifications, climate-related implementation expectations should be established before applications are submitted.
The City should evaluate whether ODDS and project-specific ODDS should incorporate measurable or objective requirements related to:
multimodal access;
pedestrian connectivity;
bicycle access;
transit integration;
TDM;
parking management;
transportation emissions reduction strategies;
climate-resilient design;
and other applicable CAP or GHG implementation measures.
Again, the purpose is not to recreate discretionary review.
The purpose is to ensure that ministerial approvals implement adopted policy rather than operate separately from it.
Ministerial approval moves responsibility upstream.
If climate objectives are not incorporated into objective standards before applications are submitted, the City may have limited ability to address those objectives later.
The solution is not to argue against ministerial housing approvals.
The solution is to ensure that the standards governing those approvals reflect the community's adopted climate commitments.
SMAP and Broader Streamlining Trends Reinforce the Need for Integrated Accountability
The same implementation concern identified in the attached comments regarding HCD's SMAP Guidelines applies directly to climate and regulatory integration.
The concern is not that housing streamlining is inherently inappropriate.
The concern is that fragmented implementation can occur when housing, transportation, climate, environmental review, and fiscal programs operate separately without a shared accountability framework.
A housing program may measure:
units approved;
units constructed;
affordability levels.
A climate program may measure:
emissions reductions;
CAP implementation;
GHG inventory changes.
A transportation program may measure:
VMT;
mobility outcomes;
infrastructure performance.
A fiscal program may measure:
revenues;
expenditures;
budget stability.
But residents experience the combined outcome.
The City's responsibility is to ensure that these systems remain integrated.
The broader policy trend toward housing streamlining reinforces this need. Federal and State housing initiatives, including the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (H.R. 6644), increasingly emphasize faster approvals, reduced regulatory barriers, and greater reliance on objective standards. Those changes make local implementation discipline more important, not less.
Streamlining approvals cannot mean streamlining away accountability.
Conclusion: Climate Commitments Must Remain Active During Housing Implementation
San Ramon should not treat the CAP and CEQA GHG Threshold Report as separate environmental documents that apply only during discrete review processes.
They should remain active implementation commitments.
Housing growth, transportation systems, VMT, and climate outcomes are interconnected.
The City's responsibility is not simply to produce housing units.
The City's responsibility is to ensure that the community created through those housing decisions remains consistent with the environmental and climate commitments San Ramon adopted.
A successful housing strategy is not measured only by the number of units approved.
It is measured by whether those units can be integrated into a community that remains:
fiscally sustainable;
environmentally responsible;
transportation-efficient;
and consistent with the long-term vision established through the City's own planning process.
Ministerial approval should accelerate implementation of adopted climate policy.
It should not accelerate the separation of housing decisions from the climate commitments necessary to sustain the community those decisions create.
VII.TDM Accountability: Mitigation Commitments Require Ongoing Implementation, Monitoring, and Public Accountability
TDM represents an important link between land use decisions and actual transportation outcomes. TDM recognizes that transportation performance is not determined solely by roadway construction, traffic operations, or infrastructure investments. It is also influenced by where people live and work, how they travel, what alternatives to automobile travel exist, how parking is managed, and whether programs intended to reduce vehicle trips are actually implemented and effective.
For San Ramon, this issue is particularly important because the City's future growth strategy depends heavily on the relationship between land use and transportation outcomes.
The City is not simply adding individual housing units.
It is implementing a broader pattern of growth involving:
increased residential intensity;
Bishop Ranch redevelopment;
mixed-use development;
employment and land use transitions;
State housing mandates;
climate commitments;
and changing transportation conditions.
Those decisions will affect how people move throughout the community for decades.
The City's ability to achieve its adopted transportation and climate objectives depends not only on which projects are approved but also on whether the City maintains the institutional capacity to monitor, evaluate, and adjust transportation strategies after approvals are granted.
That is why transportation accountability matters.
A transportation strategy without implementation responsibility is not a strategy.
It is an aspiration.
Transportation Commitments Must Continue Beyond Project Approval One of the greatest risks associated with streamlined and ministerial housing approval pathways is that responsibility can become fragmented.
A project may be approved.
A mitigation measure may be identified.
A transportation objective may be adopted.
A climate commitment may be established.
However, unless there is a responsible entity to monitor outcomes, evaluate assumptions, measure performance, report results, and recommend corrective actions, those commitments can gradually become disconnected from actual conditions.
This is particularly important because transportation systems evolve.
The assumptions underlying transportation analysis at the time of approval may change due to:
additional development;
changing employment patterns;
changing commuting behavior;
changes in transit service;
changes in technology;
regional growth;
and cumulative development elsewhere in the City.
A transportation strategy that may be appropriate for one project may not be sufficient when multiple projects collectively reshape travel patterns.
That is why transportation accountability must operate at the community level.
The City should not evaluate transportation performance only as a series of individual project decisions.
Transportation systems are shared systems.
The effects are cumulative.
The Dissolution of TDM Oversight Creates an Implementation Question The City should clarify how transportation accountability is maintained following the dissolution of the TDM Advisory Committee.
The issue is not whether the City must recreate the exact prior committee structure.
The issue is whether the City has established an effective replacement mechanism to ensure that transportation commitments remain active, measurable, and accountable as growth occurs.
The City should identify:
who is responsible for monitoring transportation outcomes; who evaluates whether transportation assumptions remain valid; who tracks VMT-related commitments;
who evaluates cumulative transportation effects;
who monitors TDM programs;
who reports outcomes publicly;
and what corrective actions occur when anticipated outcomes are not achieved.
Without clear responsibility, transportation mitigation risks becoming a one-time entitlement exercise rather than an ongoing implementation obligation.
That concern is especially important because San Ramon is simultaneously implementing:
State housing mandates;
Bishop Ranch redevelopment;
increased residential intensity;
climate commitments;
and transportation-system changes.
The City should not assume that transportation outcomes will automatically result simply because individual projects meet their approval requirements.
The City must evaluate whether the combined effect of those approvals remains consistent with adopted transportation objectives.
TDM Is the Link Between Planning Assumptions and Actual Travel Behavior The importance of TDM lies in its ability to connect planning assumptions with actual transportation behavior.
A development pattern may assume that residents, employees, or visitors will have access to alternatives to automobile travel.
However, those outcomes do not occur automatically.
They require implementation.
Effective TDM may include:
transit access and coordination;
pedestrian connections;
bicycle infrastructure;
transportation information programs;
employer-based transportation programs;
parking management;
shared mobility options;
telework strategies where applicable;
and ongoing monitoring of travel behavior.
Without implementation, assumptions remain assumptions.
This is particularly relevant for Bishop Ranch redevelopment.
Historically, Bishop Ranch has functioned as a major employment center. As redevelopment introduces additional residential uses, the relationship among:
where people live;
where people work;
how people commute;
how transportation systems function;
and how emissions are generated
will change.
The City should not assume that land use changes alone will achieve the desired transportation outcomes.
The City should evaluate whether TDM strategies are sufficiently robust to support the community envisioned through redevelopment.
That evaluation should include:
residential travel patterns;
employment travel patterns;
peak-hour conditions;
transit usage;
pedestrian and bicycle activity;
parking behavior;
VMT trends;
and whether adopted transportation assumptions remain accurate over time.
VMT Reduction Requires Monitoring, Not Simply Adoption
The City's General Plan 2040 framework, General Plan 2040 EIR, the CAP, and CEQA GHG Threshold Report recognize the relationship between transportation behavior and environmental outcomes.
VMT reduction is not achieved simply by adopting a policy.
It requires:
implementation;
measurement;
monitoring;
accountability;
and corrective action.
A jurisdiction cannot determine whether VMT strategies are effective without evaluating actual outcomes.
The City should therefore establish a transparent framework to evaluate whether the implementation of growth is producing the transportation outcomes assumed in adopted planning documents.
That framework should include:
periodic review of VMT trends;
evaluation of TDM effectiveness;
review of cumulative development conditions;
comparison of actual outcomes against adopted assumptions; public reporting;
and corrective actions when expected outcomes are not achieved.
This is particularly important because future growth decisions will increasingly be made through ministerial pathways, where the City's ability to modify projects after approval may be limited.
The City must therefore ensure that monitoring and accountability mechanisms become stronger, not weaker.
SMAP Implementation Lessons Apply Directly to Transportation Accountability The same implementation concern identified in the attached comments regarding HCD's SMAP Guidelines applies directly to transportation management.
The concern is not that streamlined approval processes are inappropriate.
The concern is that multiple programs can become disconnected when each focuses narrowly on its own objective.
A housing program may focus on:
units approved;
units constructed;
affordability levels.
A transportation program may focus on:
infrastructure;
operations;
mobility outcomes.
A climate program may focus on:
emissions reductions;
GHG inventories;
CAP implementation.
A fiscal program may focus on:
revenues;
expenditures;
budget stability.
However, residents experience the combined outcome.
Transportation accountability is one mechanism for ensuring that these separate policy areas remain connected.
Without transportation accountability, the City risks approving growth based on assumptions that are never verified.
That is not responsible implementation.
Objective Standards Should Support Transportation Accountability Because ministerial approval reduces discretionary flexibility, the City should evaluate whether ODDS and project-specific ODDS should incorporate transportation accountability measures where legally appropriate.
The City's adopted ODDS already address important physical design elements, including circulation, access, parking, and pedestrian connections.
The City should evaluate whether future updates should further integrate transportation implementation considerations, including:
pedestrian and bicycle connectivity;
transit access;
multimodal circulation;
TDM requirements;
parking strategies;
and monitoring expectations.
The purpose is not to recreate discretionary review.
The purpose is to ensure that transportation commitments are established before ministerial applications proceed.
Where the City's ability to modify projects later is reduced, the City must ensure that transportation expectations are established earlier.
Conclusion: Accountability Must Continue After Approval San Ramon's transportation responsibilities do not end when a project receives approval. They continue through construction, occupancy, operation, monitoring, evaluation, and adaptation.
Transportation Demand Management (TDM) should therefore not be treated as a historical mitigation concept or optional program component. It is an implementation mechanism connecting land use, housing, transportation, Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), climate commitments, and community sustainability.
Ministerial approval does not eliminate transportation responsibility. It increases the importance of objective standards, monitoring, accountability, transparency, and public reporting.
VIII.Project-Level CEQA, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and Regulatory Integration: Streamlined Approval Does Not Eliminate Environmental Responsibility
The increasing use of ministerial housing approval pathways does not eliminate the need for coordinated environmental review, regulatory integration, or a complete administrative record demonstrating how individual approvals remain connected to the City's adopted planning framework.
It changes the nature of that responsibility.
As discretionary review opportunities become more limited, the City's responsibility shifts toward ensuring that adopted standards, environmental frameworks, mitigation programs, infrastructure plans, monitoring systems, and implementation procedures are sufficiently comprehensive before projects enter the approval process.
This distinction is critical.
Streamlining is intended to reduce unnecessary delay and uncertainty in housing production.
It is not intended to create a system where individual regulatory processes operate independently, cumulative consequences are evaluated only after implementation, or no entity remains responsible for understanding the combined effects of growth decisions.
A successful regulatory framework does not merely process approvals efficiently.
It ensures that approvals remain connected to the plans, commitments, and assumptions that define the community's long-term future.
This is particularly important for San Ramon because current and future development decisions involve multiple overlapping frameworks, including:
CEQA;
NEPA;
State housing laws;
HCD requirements;
General Plan 2040;
the General Plan 2040 EIR;
ODDS;
transportation requirements;
climate commitments;
infrastructure planning;
and fiscal considerations.
Each framework serves an important purpose.
However, they cannot operate as disconnected administrative silos.
The City's responsibility is to ensure that these different processes function together as an integrated implementation framework.
Environmental Review Must Remain Connected to Local Planning Commitments
The City should avoid a situation in which environmental analysis occurs comprehensively at the General Plan or program level, but subsequent ministerial implementation proceeds without a clear connection to the assumptions, mitigation strategies, and cumulative conditions evaluated in those earlier processes.
The General Plan 2040, General Plan 2040 EIR, SOC, CAP, CEQA GHG Threshold Report, VMT framework, transportation strategies, and adopted mitigation measures collectively establish the environmental context within which future growth should occur.
Those commitments should continue to guide implementation.
A planning framework is only effective if it continues to influence decisions after adoption.
The City should therefore ensure that ministerial approvals do not become a separate implementation pathway disconnected from the environmental commitments that supported adoption of the City's long-range planning framework.
Project-Level Review Must Remain Connected to Cumulative Growth Conditions
One of the most important functions of environmental review is to ensure that individual decisions are evaluated in the context of cumulative conditions.
This issue is particularly important in San Ramon because Olive + Oak is not occurring within a static environment. It is occurring alongside Bishop Ranch redevelopment projects and other future residential and mixed-use projects that collectively affect transportation, climate, infrastructure, fiscal, and public service conditions.
The environmental question is therefore not limited to whether a single project satisfies its own approval requirements.
The question is whether the cumulative implementation of multiple projects remains consistent with:
General Plan 2040 assumptions;
General Plan 2040 EIR analysis;
VMT reduction strategies;
CAP and GHG commitments;
infrastructure capacity;
and fiscal sustainability.
Cumulative impacts occur because multiple individually acceptable decisions collectively alter community conditions.
That is why cumulative analysis matters.
The purpose of cumulative analysis is not simply to determine whether one project may proceed.
The purpose is to understand whether the combined effect of many projects changes the conditions under which the community operates.
The City should therefore avoid an implementation approach in which each project is evaluated independently, with cumulative consequences emerging only after multiple approvals have already been granted.
That approach creates the same governance risk identified through prior growth decisions.
CEQA and NEPA Should Be Integrated With Local Planning, Not Operate as Separate Silos
The City should ensure that CEQA and NEPA processes remain integrated with local planning implementation.
A recurring implementation challenge occurs when:
environmental review;
housing approvals;
transportation planning;
infrastructure planning;
climate implementation;
and fiscal analysis
proceed through separate administrative channels.
Each process may appear complete.
However, the overall community outcome may remain insufficiently evaluated.
The City should therefore maintain an integrated administrative record demonstrating how:
environmental commitments;
housing objectives;
objective standards;
transportation strategies;
climate goals;
infrastructure planning;
and fiscal considerations
relate to one another.
This is especially important where federal funding or approvals trigger NEPA review.
NEPA compliance does not replace CEQA compliance.
CEQA compliance does not replace local fiscal responsibility.
Housing approval does not replace infrastructure planning.
Infrastructure planning does not replace climate accountability.
Each component addresses a different responsibility.
The City's responsibility is to ensure that those responsibilities function together.
The SMAP Implementation Lesson Applies Directly to Regulatory Integration The same implementation concern identified in the attached comments regarding HCD's SMAP Guidelines applies directly to CEQA, NEPA, and regulatory integration.
The concern is not that streamlined approval pathways are inherently inappropriate.
The concern is that when multiple regulatory programs are accelerated without corresponding coordination mechanisms, responsibility can become fragmented.
One program may focus on housing production.
Another may focus on environmental review.
Another may focus on transportation.
Another may focus on infrastructure.
Another may focus on fiscal management.
But residents experience the combined outcome.
The City should avoid creating a local implementation gap where each process appears complete while the cumulative result is insufficiently evaluated.
San Ramon should ensure that streamlined approvals are matched by:
stronger coordination;
clearer responsibility;
transparent records;
measurable outcomes;
and ongoing monitoring.
Objective Standards and Administrative Records Should Demonstrate Integration
The City's adoption of ODDS presents an important opportunity to integrate regulatory commitments prior to ministerial applications being submitted.
The City's ODDS already establish objective requirements addressing design, access, circulation, parking, landscaping, utilities, and mixed-use development characteristics.
The City should evaluate whether future updates or project-specific objective standards should further integrate:
General Plan 2040 policies;
General Plan 2040 EIR mitigation measures;
VMT assumptions;
CAP measures;
GHG reduction strategies;
infrastructure expectations;
and monitoring requirements.
This approach would not recreate discretionary review.
Instead, it would ensure that the City's adopted commitments are translated into objective implementation requirements before applications are submitted.
That is precisely the purpose of objective standards in a ministerial environment.
The City should also ensure that the administrative record for major housing and redevelopment decisions demonstrates not only that individual requirements were satisfied, but also that decisionmakers understood the relationship among those requirements.
The record should clearly demonstrate:
applicable objective standards;
General Plan consistency;
environmental framework consistency;
transportation assumptions;
climate implications;
infrastructure considerations;
fiscal considerations;
and cumulative impacts.
A complete administrative record is not unnecessary bureaucracy.
It is responsible governance.
It protects the public by ensuring meaningful transparency.
It protects decisionmakers by demonstrating the basis for action.
It protects the City by demonstrating that approvals were made with an understanding of the full range of consequences.
Regulatory Integration Requires Accountability, Not Additional Silos The purpose of State housing streamlining is to accelerate housing production. The purpose is not to create disconnected approval processes in which no entity remains responsible for the cumulative outcome.
San Ramon should approach the implementation of ministerial housing as an opportunity to improve coordination among housing policy, environmental review, transportation planning, climate implementation, infrastructure planning, and fiscal analysis.
CEQA, NEPA, housing laws, objective standards, and local planning requirements are distinct tools that address different aspects of the same responsibility: creating a community capable of successfully supporting the growth it approves.
Ministerial approval does not eliminate environmental responsibility. Streamlined review does not eliminate cumulative impacts. Housing production does not eliminate infrastructure obligations.
The City's responsibility is to ensure these systems remain connected.
IX.Requested City Council Actions: Establishing a Responsible Implementation Framework for State Housing Mandates and Future Redevelopment
The City Council has an opportunity to ensure that San Ramon's implementation of State housing mandates reflects the lessons learned from prior growth decisions while preserving the City's ability to accommodate housing needs, support redevelopment, and maintain the community characteristics that residents expect.
The purpose of these recommendations is not to delay housing production, create unnecessary procedural barriers, or undermine State housing requirements.
The purpose is to ensure that housing implementation occurs within a governance framework that protects:
fiscal sustainability;
transportation performance;
climate commitments;
infrastructure capacity;
public services;
environmental commitments;
transparency;
and long-term community quality of life.
State housing laws have changed the development approval environment.
The City should respond by strengthening implementation systems rather than relying solely on project-by-project compliance determinations.
The central issue is not whether San Ramon can process additional housing approvals.
The issue is whether San Ramon has established the institutional systems necessary to ensure that the community created by those approvals remains sustainable.
Accordingly, I respectfully request that the City Council direct staff to undertake the following actions.
1.Prepare a Comprehensive Project-Specific and Cumulative Fiscal and Infrastructure Analysis for Bishop Ranch Redevelopment and Major Residential Intensification
The City should evaluate Bishop Ranch redevelopment as a cumulative transformation rather than as a series of unrelated entitlement decisions.
The City should prepare or commission project-specific and cumulative fiscal and infrastructure analysis evaluating the long-term implications of:
Orchards/Chevron Park (all districts);
BR-7;
BR-11;
BR-12;
Canopy;
Olive + Oak;
CityWalk/City Center changes;
and future anticipated residential and mixed-use redevelopment.
That analysis should evaluate:
projected population growth;
service demand;
public safety needs;
parks and recreation obligations;
infrastructure capacity;
transportation demand;
VMT implications;
climate commitments;
revenue changes associated with changing land use patterns; and long-term General Fund impacts.
The City should not wait until future budget cycles reveal whether cumulative redevelopment has created obligations greater than anticipated.
Fiscal analysis should occur before obligations become permanent.
The purpose of this analysis is not to determine whether redevelopment should occur.
The purpose is to ensure that redevelopment occurs in a manner that is financially sustainable and consistent with the long-term interests of San Ramon residents.
2.Evaluate Whether ODDS Should Be Amended or Supplemented to Integrate Existing City Commitments
The City has already adopted ODDS for Multi-Family Residential and Mixed-Use Development through Resolution No. 2024-105 on November 12, 2024. Those standards appropriately establish objective requirements addressing site design, access, circulation, landscaping, utilities, parking, frontage, articulation, and mixeduse development characteristics.
The next step should be to evaluate whether those standards are sufficiently comprehensive for an environment in which State law increasingly limits discretionary review.
The City should evaluate whether ODDS, Housing Element implementation standards, and any project-specific ODDS should incorporate measurable requirements or implementation references related to:
General Plan 2040 goals, policies, and implementation measures; General Plan 2040 EIR mitigation measures;
General Plan 2040 EIR transportation assumptions;
VMT reduction strategies;
cumulative impact considerations;
CAP measures;
CEQA GHG Threshold Report consistency;
TDM accountability;
infrastructure capacity;
public service obligations;
and long-term fiscal sustainability.
The objective should not be to recreate discretionary review through objective standards.
The objective should be to ensure that the City's adopted commitments are embedded prior to ministerial applications being submitted.
Where discretionary review is reduced after an application is filed, the City's policy decisions must already be established.
3.Establish a Transparent Monitoring and Reporting Framework for Growth, Transportation, VMT, Climate, and Fiscal Commitments The City should establish a publicly accessible monitoring framework demonstrating whether the assumptions underlying General Plan 2040, the General Plan 2040 EIR, the CAP, transportation strategies, and related growth commitments remain valid as implementation proceeds.
That framework should identify:
responsible departments or officials;
performance measures;
reporting schedules;
data sources;
corrective actions;
and public reporting mechanisms.
At a minimum, the City should monitor:
VMT trends;
TDM performance;
transit and multimodal conditions;
cumulative development patterns;
GHG reduction progress;
infrastructure capacity;
fiscal impacts;
and service-level impacts.
Adopted policies are only effective when implementation is monitored.
A mitigation measure without monitoring is not an implementation strategy.
A climate commitment without measurement is not a climate strategy.
A transportation objective without accountability is not a transportation program.
The City should ensure that adopted commitments remain active implementation obligations rather than historical planning statements.
4.Establish a Clear TDM Accountability Structure
The City should identify a replacement accountability mechanism following the dissolution of the TDM Advisory Committee.
The City does not necessarily need to recreate the prior committee structure.
However, the City does need a clear mechanism to ensure that transportation commitments remain active, measurable, and publicly accountable.
That mechanism should identify:
who evaluates transportation assumptions;
who monitors VMT-related commitments;
who evaluates cumulative transportation effects;
who coordinates transportation programs;
who reviews TDM effectiveness;
who reports results publicly;
and what corrective actions occur when expected outcomes are not achieved.
Transportation accountability cannot end when a project receives approval.
Transportation impacts occur:
after occupancy;
over time;
and cumulatively.
The City should therefore maintain transportation accountability throughout implementation.
5.Require Ministerial Housing Implementation to Demonstrate Consistency With the City's Adopted Planning Framework
The City should establish a consistent implementation procedure requiring ministerial housing projects to document their relationship to:
General Plan 2040;
the General Plan 2040 EIR;
VMT strategies;
Climate Action Plan objectives;
GHG reduction strategies;
infrastructure assumptions;
and applicable objective standards.
This documentation should not be interpreted as an additional discretionary approval process.
Rather, it should provide transparency regarding how ministerial approvals remain connected to the planning framework adopted by the City Council.
The City should ensure that ministerial approval means:
"Approved according to established community standards." It should not mean:
"Approved without connection to community planning objectives."
6.Integrate CEQA, NEPA, Housing, Climate, Transportation, Infrastructure, and Fiscal Review Processes
The City should establish procedures ensuring that applicable regulatory processes function as an integrated implementation framework.
Depending on project characteristics, funding sources, and legal requirements, projects may involve:
CEQA;
NEPA;
HCD housing requirements;
transportation agency review;
infrastructure coordination;
climate implementation requirements;
and local objective standards.
These processes should not operate as separate administrative silos.
The City should maintain an integrated administrative record demonstrating how:
environmental commitments;
housing objectives;
transportation strategies;
climate goals;
infrastructure planning;
fiscal considerations;
and cumulative impacts
relate to one another.
A complete administrative record protects both the public and the City by demonstrating that decisions were made with an understanding of the full range of consequences.
7. Incorporate Lessons From the HCD SMAP Comments Into Local Implementation
The attached comments regarding HCD's SMAP Guidelines identify broader statewide implementation concerns involving:
regulatory fragmentation;
insufficient accountability;
siloed programs;
unclear responsibility;
limited outcome monitoring;
and the risk that individual programs achieve their immediate objectives while cumulative impacts remain unmanaged.
Those concerns apply directly to local implementation.
San Ramon should use this opportunity to avoid reproducing the same implementation gap locally.
The City should ensure that accelerated housing production is matched by:
stronger coordination;
clearer responsibility;
better reporting;
measurable outcomes;
transparent records;
and public accountability.
The objective is not to slow housing production.
The objective is to ensure that housing production creates successful communities.
Implementation of State Housing Mandates Requires More Than Approval Authority
The City Council has an opportunity to demonstrate that San Ramon can meet State housing obligations while maintaining responsible local governance.
Successful implementation requires more than approval authority. It requires planning discipline, fiscal responsibility, environmental integration, transportation accountability, infrastructure foresight, and transparent public engagement.
The goal should not simply be producing additional approvals. The goal should be ensuring that the community created through those approvals remains successful over time.
X.Conclusion: Comply With State Mandates Without Repeating Dougherty Valley
San Ramon is at an important crossroads in implementation.
The City has a responsibility to comply with State housing mandates, accommodate the production of needed housing, provide opportunities for affordable housing, and implement adopted housing policies consistent with State law. Those objectives are important, and this comment does not challenge the importance of housing production or the City's responsibility to help address California's housing needs.
However, implementing responsible housing requires more than just approving units.
It requires ensuring that the community created through those approvals remains financially sustainable, environmentally responsible, transportation-efficient, and consistent with the City's long-term planning framework.
The central question presented by Olive + Oak is therefore not whether San Ramon should support housing.
The central question is whether San Ramon can implement State housing mandates without repeating the institutional mistakes of prior growth decisions.
Dougherty Valley provides the clearest lesson.
The issue was never that residential growth occurred.
The issue was that growth created permanent obligations that continued long after individual approvals were complete.
The infrastructure remained.
The service obligations remained.
The maintenance responsibilities remained.
The transportation demands remained.
The fiscal consequences remained.
That is the lesson the City should carry forward.
Growth decisions are not temporary decisions.
They shape the community's financial structure, transportation systems, infrastructure needs, public services, environmental conditions, and quality of life for generations.
San Ramon now has an opportunity to apply that lesson as it evaluates Olive + Oak, the Bishop Ranch redevelopment, and the implementation of future housing.
The City should not view State housing mandates as requiring a choice between compliance and responsible local governance.
That is a false choice.
The City can comply with State housing requirements while still exercising appropriate planning discipline, fiscal responsibility, environmental stewardship, and public accountability.
In fact, those responsibilities are necessary for successful implementation.
The appropriate response to ministerial approval pathways is not to stop planning.
It is to move planning earlier.
It is to ensure that:
objective standards are comprehensive and meaningful;
adopted plans remain connected to implementation;
General Plan 2040 commitments remain active;
General Plan 2040 EIR mitigation measures remain relevant; VMT assumptions are monitored;
climate objectives remain integrated;
infrastructure needs are understood;
fiscal consequences are evaluated;
transportation commitments remain accountable;
and the public can meaningfully understand how growth decisions affect the community over time.
San Ramon has already established many of the necessary planning tools:
General Plan 2040;
the General Plan 2040 EIR;
adopted mitigation measures;
SOC;
the CAP;
CEQA GHG Threshold Report;
ODDS;
transportation planning frameworks;
and fiscal planning processes.
The challenge is not the absence of planning documents.
The challenge is ensuring that those documents remain active implementation tools rather than historical records referenced only when convenient.
The City should also recognize that faster approvals increase the importance of transparency and accountability.
When discretionary review is reduced, the public and decisionmakers need greater confidence that objective standards, monitoring systems, environmental commitments, and implementation procedures are sufficiently robust to protect community interests.
Streamlining should not mean less responsibility.
It should mean clearer responsibility.
The City should not repeat the pattern where individual projects appear successful while cumulative obligations emerge only after they become difficult or expensive to address.
That is the risk of evaluating growth one approval at a time.
The City should instead evaluate growth at the scale at which its consequences occur.
That means evaluating:
cumulative fiscal impacts;
cumulative transportation effects;
cumulative infrastructure demands;
cumulative climate implications;
cumulative public service obligations;
and cumulative changes to San Ramon's land use and economic structure.
Bishop Ranch provides San Ramon with an opportunity to demonstrate that it has learned the Dougherty Valley lesson.
The City can pursue redevelopment and housing production while also maintaining:
fiscal discipline;
environmental responsibility;
transportation accountability;
infrastructure planning;
and long-term community sustainability.
The question is not whether San Ramon should grow.
San Ramon will continue to grow.
The question is whether that growth will be managed intentionally, with a complete understanding of the obligations it creates, or whether the City will discover those obligations only after they have become permanent.
Responsible planning means understanding those obligations before they are created.
Responsible governance means ensuring that future residents, taxpayers, and elected officials inherit a sustainable community rather than deferred commitments.
The City should therefore comply with State housing requirements while preserving the local responsibility necessary to make those requirements successful in practice.
The choice before San Ramon is not housing versus no housing.
The choice is whether housing production occurs through disciplined planning or through deferred obligations.
Dougherty Valley demonstrated the cost of failing to account for lifecycle consequences fully.
Bishop Ranch redevelopment provides San Ramon with the opportunity to demonstrate that those lessons have been learned.
Ministerial approval is not a reason to stop planning.
It is a reason to plan better.
Respectfully submitted,
Brian C. Swanson, AICP
San Ramon Resident, Voter, and Taxpayer
Attachment
Public Comment on HCD's SMAP Guidelines, incorporated by reference.
On Fri, Jul 10, 2026 at 5:45 PM City of San Ramon <[email protected]> wrote:
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Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines
1 message
Brian Swanson Mon, Jul 13, 2026 at 6:33 PM
To: [email protected]
Cc: "TOD@HCD" <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected] Dear California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) Staff:
I submit these comments on the Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines implementing Government Code section 65913.4. I am an AICP-certified planner with experience involving transportation planning, land use implementation, California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review, mitigation monitoring, and regulatory program implementation. These comments are submitted in my individual capacity as a practitioner.
These comments should not be read as opposition to housing generally, nor as support for state housing mandates, ministerial override of local discretion, or the use of streamlining to move projects through local approval systems without adequate implementation safeguards. The issue is narrower and more practical: when the State converts traditionally discretionary local land use decisions into ministerial approvals, the implementing guidelines must ensure that the resulting process does not become a box-checking exercise that bypasses transportation, vehicle miles traveled (VMT), infrastructure, public service, administrative record, climate, greenhouse gas (GHG), and mitigation monitoring realities.
My concern is that SMAP, if implemented without stronger guardrails, can become a pathway to move housing projects through local approval systems while compartmentalizing or obscuring the transportation, CEQA, VMT, Climate Action Plan (CAP), GHG threshold, and Statement of Overriding Considerations (SOC) issues that ordinarily would be tested through CEQA, staff analysis, local infrastructure review, administrative record development, or discretionary conditions.
This concern is especially important when SMAP is viewed alongside the Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation's (LCI) newly released Assembly Bill 130 (AB 130) Statewide VMT Mitigation Program Guidance and HCD's Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Implementation Program Guidelines. Those programs recognize that VMT, location efficiency, transit access, mitigation credit, monitoring, additionality, and implementation performance matter. SMAP should not operate in a separate housing-approval silo that assumes those issues are somebody else's responsibility.
These comments, therefore, ask HCD to revise the final Guidelines more narrowly. If SMAP limits local discretion and restricts local governments to objective standards, then SMAP should also require or strongly encourage a durable, nondiscretionary informational record documenting the assumptions that make streamlined approval implementable. That record should not be used to create subjective local vetoes. It should be used to ensure that local implementation realities, transportation assumptions, VMT-related assumptions, public works requirements, affordability commitments, CAP/GHG obligations, existing SOC contexts, and post-approval modifications remain visible, consistent, and monitorable.
Source links: Government Code section 65913.4; HCD Draft SMAP Guidelines; HCD SMAP statutory determinations page; HCD SMAP Dashboard; HCD SMAP Determination Methodology; LCI AB 130 Statewide VMT Mitigation Program Guidance; HCD TOD Implementation Program Guidelines; CEQA Guidelines section 15268; CEQA Guidelines section 15093; CEQA Guidelines section 15064.4; CEQA Guidelines section 15183.5 7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-309265634721455071… 1/22 Summary of Requested Revisions
The final SMAP Guidelines should be revised to make clear that local implementation accountability is not the enemy of streamlining. The Guidelines can preserve ministerial approval while still requiring documentation of objective standards, transportation assumptions, public works requirements, infrastructure dependencies, modifications, and delivery outcomes. The key revisions requested are:
Clarify that SMAP approval is not a VMT determination, a transportation capacity determination, an infrastructure capacity determination, or a finding that a project's location-efficiency assumptions remain valid for all purposes.
Require a non-discretionary implementation record that documents the objective standards applied, materials reviewed, public works requirements, transportation/access assumptions, and approval conditions.
Add assumption-change documentation for post-approval modifications, especially changes affecting unit count, affordability, parking, access, phasing, public improvements, or prior-use replacement.
Expand Section 500 reporting beyond applications, approvals, permits, and constructed units to include modifications, delivery status, geographic distribution, prior-use conversions, public works requirements, parking changes, and transportation/access assumptions where relevant.
Coordinate SMAP with AB 130 VMT mitigation, TOD Implementation, the Housing Element/Annual Progress Report (APR) reporting, Senate Bill 743 (SB 743) implementation, and local public works processes to reduce program silos and prevent contradictory assumptions.
Preserve local authority to apply objective, generally applicable standards for infrastructure, utilities, fire access, emergency access, pedestrian, bicycle, transit, construction access, drainage, and public works.
Provide implementation ramp-up, model forms, checklists, training, and technical assistance so local agencies do not reduce SMAP to an approval checklist disconnected from outcomes.
Recognize that jurisdictions with current General Plan Environmental Impact Report (EIR) Statements of Overriding Considerations (SOCs), CAPs, CEQA GHG thresholds, or mitigation monitoring obligations face additional compliance risk when SMAP approvals bypass discretionary CEQA checkpoints.
Encourage jurisdictions with SOC/CAP/GHG conflicts to update objective design, zoning, subdivision, and public works standards in advance, so that ministerial approvals do not ignore already-disclosed VMT, GHG, transportation, safety, or infrastructure obligations.
Clarify that project-area-specific or plan-area-specific objective standards may be an appropriate local implementation tool when adopted in advance and applied objectively, especially for jurisdictions with unresolved VMT, GHG, transportation, or public-safety impacts in current General Plan EIRs.
Require or strongly encourage non-discretionary public notice, durable public posting, and applicant/public access to application, completeness, eligibility, consistency, approval, modification, and subsequent permit records. These transparency requirements should preserve public accountability and planning integrity regardless of whether a particular project proceeds through discretionary review, ministerial review, or another statutory approval pathway.
Comment 1 - Sections 100 and 101: Purpose and Applicability Should Not Be Framed as Pure Approval Acceleration Without Local Implementation Accountability Source links: Government Code section 65913.4; HCD statutory determinations page Existing Framework
Section 100 states the purpose and scope of the Guidelines and emphasizes that they implement, interpret, supplement, and clarify Government Code section 65913.4. Section 101 addresses applicability. The Draft Guidelines also emphasize that the provisions are intended to facilitate and expedite housing approvals, and that local governments subject to SMAP must make the streamlined ministerial approval process available for qualifying projects.
Implementation Concern
The Draft Guidelines are strong on accelerating approvals, preempting inconsistent local requirements, and limiting local discretion. They are less developed on implementation accountability. This creates a one-sided structure: local governments are told what they cannot do to slow or condition projects, but the Guidelines do not equivalently state what must be documented to ensure the project remains implementable after discretionary review is removed or narrowed.
That imbalance matters because ministerial approval is not merely a procedural shortcut. It changes which issues may be evaluated, which project assumptions become visible, which public-facing review opportunities remain meaningful, and which local implementation conditions can be imposed. When a state mandate limits local discretion, the implementing guidelines should be especially clear that local governments retain authority and responsibility to apply objective, generally applicable implementation standards and to maintain the records needed to verify compliance. 7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-309265634721455071… 2/22 Why This Matters
A local control perspective does not require opposition to housing. It does require recognition that local governments are responsible for the physical implementation of approvals: streets, utilities, emergency access, stormwater, construction access, sidewalks, bicycle facilities, transit interface, encroachments, grading, drainage, and public works. A ministerial approval that clears an entitlement step but leaves these implementation issues under documented can shift risk to local agencies, nearby residents, future staff, public works departments, and subsequent permit processes.
The risk is heightened when streamlining is implemented through multiple program silos. SMAP asks whether a qualifying housing development must be approved on a ministerially designated basis. AB 130 asks how VMT mitigation contributions may be calculated, assigned, monitored, and credited. TOD Implementation asks whether a locationefficient affordable housing project may receive funding. APR reporting asks whether jurisdictions are making progress on permitting. Each program may answer its own question while no single program asks whether the combined assumptions, commitments, and outcomes remain aligned. The final SMAP Guidelines should close that gap at the level HCD controls: application documentation, objective standards records, modification tracking, and reporting.
Recommended Revision
HCD should revise Section 100 or add a new implementation-accountability subsection stating that SMAP approval is intended to accelerate eligible housing approvals, but does not eliminate the need for transparent documentation of objective standards, implementation assumptions, public works requirements, and post-approval changes. This should be framed as an implementation record requirement, not a discretionary approval standard.
Suggested Language
Nothing in these Guidelines shall be interpreted to eliminate a local government's authority or responsibility to apply objective, generally applicable implementation standards, including standards related to public works, utilities, fire access, emergency access, stormwater, pedestrian access, bicycle access, transit access, construction access, grading, drainage, and subsequent permits. Local governments should maintain a nondiscretionary implementation record that identifies the objective standards applied, the documents reviewed, the approval basis, the required subsequent permits, public improvements, and any assumptions material to implementation.
Comment 2 - Section 102: Definitions of Ministerial Processing and Objective Standards Should Be Paired With a Clear Documentation Standard
Source links: Government Code section 65913.4
Existing Framework
Section 102 defines key terms, including "ministerial processing" or "ministerial approval," "objective standards," "objective zoning standards," "objective subdivision standards," and "objective design review standards." The Draft Guidelines correctly emphasize that ministerial approval involves little or no personal judgment and that the official determines whether the development meets objective standards in effect at the relevant time.
Implementation Concern
The Guidelines define the legal character of the review but do not sufficiently define the record that must support it. If the local government is limited to objective standards and cannot use subjective judgment, the written record becomes the primary accountability mechanism. Without a minimum record standard, the process can become opaque: the applicant asserts consistency; staff checks compliance; the approvals are issued; and the public record may not clearly identify which standards were applied, how conflicts were resolved, or which conditions and subsequent permits remain necessary.
Why This Matters
The purpose of an objective standard is not simply to reduce debate. It is to provide a standard that is knowable, verifiable, and consistently applied. Verification requires a record. A durable administrative record is especially important when later disputes arise over modifications, subsequent permits, affordability restrictions, labor provisions, public works permits, or whether a local government improperly delayed a project. A transparent record protects applicants, local agencies, and the public. It reduces litigation risk by clarifying what was actually decided and what remains for later ministerial implementation.
7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-309265634721455071… 3/22 The need for record clarity is also connected to VMT and transportation assumptions. Even where VMT analysis is not part of SMAP eligibility, a project may rely on transit proximity, reduced parking, infill status, location efficiency, or prior planning assumptions in public-facing materials, staff reports, or related programs. If those assumptions are not recorded, they become difficult to evaluate later when the project seeks subsequent permits, modifications, TOD-related funding, AB 130 mitigation credit interactions, or local infrastructure approvals.
Recommended Revision
A local government's ministerial consistency determination should be documented in a written objective standards checklist, staff memorandum, approval letter, or equivalent record identifying the applicable objective standards, the materials reviewed, the basis for consistency, any objective conditions of approval, and any subsequent permits or public improvements required to implement the approved development. This documentation shall not authorize subjective review but shall provide a durable record of the ministerial determination.
Suggested Language
A local government's ministerial consistency determination should be documented in a written objective standards checklist, staff memorandum, approval letter, or equivalent record identifying the applicable objective standards, the materials reviewed, the basis for consistency, any objective conditions of approval, and any subsequent permits or public improvements required to implement the approved development. This documentation shall not itself authorize subjective review, but shall provide a durable record of the ministerial determination and the objective standards supporting that determination.
Comment 3 - Sections 200 and 201: APR-Based SMAP Determinations Are Necessary but Do Not Evaluate SMAP Effectiveness
Source links: Government Code section 65400 APR statute; HCD Housing Open Data Tools; HCD SMAP Dashboard Existing Framework
The Draft Guidelines and the June 2026 SMAP Determination Methodology use APR data and regional housing needs allocation (RHNA) progress to determine whether jurisdictions are subject to SMAP and what affordability level applies.
This is an appropriate statutory method for determining jurisdictional status. The Dashboard provides a useful transparency function by making jurisdictional determination information more accessible.
Implementation Concern
APR-based determinations answer a threshold question: whether a jurisdiction has permitted sufficient units in relevant income categories for the reporting period. They do not answer a broader implementation question: whether SMAP approvals are producing completed projects, preserving affordability commitments, avoiding repeated modifications, maintaining local implementation assumptions, or producing consistent outcomes across regions.
The prior LCI and HCD VMT/TOD comments emphasized that program tracking must measure more than activity. For VMT mitigation, contributions and credits must be tracked to ensure additionality, enforceability, credit retirement, monitoring, and anti-double counting. For TOD implementation, funding eligibility should not substitute for verified delivery and performance. The same principle applies to SMAP. A program can be heavily used but poorly understood, poorly documented, or weakly monitored.
Why This Matters
If SMAP reporting stops at eligibility, applications, approvals, permits, and constructed units, HCD will have only a partial view. It will know where the mandate applies and how many units move through the pipeline. Still, it may not know whether ministerial approvals create recurring implementation conflicts, whether modifications materially change approved projects, whether transportation or access assumptions change, whether local public works issues delay delivery, or whether reduced local discretion creates conflicts in subsequent permitting.
Recommended Revision
HCD should maintain the existing APR-based determination framework while adding SMAP-specific implementation metrics. This should be framed as program evaluation, not as a new discretionary approval requirement. HCD should 7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines also consider evolving the Dashboard from a jurisdictional status tool into an implementation transparency tool that includes aggregated project-level metrics.
Suggested Language
HCD shall continue to use APR data for SMAP determinations as required by Government Code section 65913.4. In addition, HCD should evaluate SMAP implementation through supplemental performance metrics, including applications submitted, approvals issued, building permits, construction starts, completed units, affordability delivery, post-approval modifications, and recurring implementation barriers identified by local governments.
The SMAP Dashboard should, where feasible, provide implementation-performance information in addition to jurisdiction eligibility determinations. Such information may include aggregated applications, approvals, permits, completed units, affordability outcomes, modifications, and geographic distribution.
Comment 4 - Section 300: Limits on Required Information Should Not Create a Transportation, VMT, or Infrastructure Blind Spot
Source links: OPR/LCI Technical Advisory on Evaluating Transportation Impacts in CEQA; Public Resources Code section 21099
Existing Framework
Section 300 provides that a local government subject to SMAP must provide information about the locality's process, required materials, and objective standards. It also states that local governments may require only information relevant to determining compliance with objective standards and Article IV eligibility criteria, and may not impose application requirements that inhibit, chill, or preclude streamlined approval.
Implementation Concern
This limitation may be consistent with the statute's ministerial purpose, but it can create a transportation- and VMT-blind spot. VMT, trip generation, trip length, displaced travel, parking behavior, transit service, transportation demand management, and multimodal access may not always be expressed as objective zoning, subdivision, or design standards. If they are not objective standards, local governments may hesitate to request documentation even where the project's implementation clearly depends on transportation assumptions.
That is a serious problem when SMAP projects are evaluated in the broader statewide context. The LCI's AB 130 guidance recognizes that VMT mitigation requires substantial evidence, nexus, quantification, additionality, enforceability, monitoring, and anti-double-counting. HCD's TOD Implementation Program guidance recognizes that location-efficient affordable housing funding, legal documents, reporting, and performance matter. SMAP should not create a separate housing-approval channel where transportation assumptions become invisible simply because they are not framed as objective standards.
Why This Matters
A ministerial approval can be legally constrained and still require a non-discretionary informational record. For example, a project replacing a large office, retail, commercial, institutional, or parking use may change travel patterns. It may reduce some commute trips, increase residential trips, displace customer trips to other locations, change trip lengths, increase or decrease parking demand, alter transit demand, or require improvements to pedestrian, bicycle, curb, driveway, bus stop, or intersection facilities. None of those facts should automatically create discretionary review. But if no record exists, HCD, the local agency, and the public cannot evaluate whether the project's implementation assumptions were accurate.
Recommended Revision
HCD should clarify that local governments may require non-discretionary informational materials necessary to document compliance with objective standards and implementation assumptions. These materials should not be used to deny projects based on subjective judgments, but should be available for reporting, subsequent permits, public works coordination, and cross-program accountability.
7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-309265634721455071… 5/22 Suggested Language
A local government may require non-discretionary informational materials necessary to document compliance with objective standards and to identify subsequent permits, public improvements, transportation access, parking, transit access, pedestrian access, bicycle access, utility, drainage, emergency access, or other implementation requirements. Such materials shall not authorize subjective discretionary review, but may be used to maintain a complete implementation record and coordinate subsequent ministerial permits.
Comment 5 - Section 301(a): Ministerial Approval Should Not Erase the Transportation and VMT Assumptions Needed to Evaluate Implementation
Source links: OPR/LCI Technical Advisory on VMT; LCI AB 130 Final Guidance Existing Framework
Section 301 provides that ministerial approval of a qualifying project is non-discretionary and cannot require a conditional use permit or other discretionary local government review. It also states that ministerial design review and public oversight must operate within the statutory framework governing objective standards. The final Guidelines should clarify that objective standards are not intended to eliminate legitimate planning analysis, public accountability, or consideration of adopted community objectives, but rather to provide predictable and transparent standards when ministerial processing applies.
Implementation Concern
That structure may accelerate approvals, but it also narrows the points at which assumptions about transportation, access, parking, VMT, infrastructure, and public services are visible. When public-facing review is limited to objective standards and discretionary judgment is removed, issues not codified as objective standards may drop out of the record entirely. The result is not simply faster review; it can be a less complete implementation record.
This concern is particularly acute through the VMT lens developed in the AB 130 and TOD comments. SB 743 shifted CEQA transportation analysis from automobile delay to VMT. Still, it did not eliminate the need for disciplined assumptions about trip generation, trip length, mode choice, parking, transit access, and travel markets. If SMAP narrows the local review before those assumptions are documented, the system risks approving projects characterized as infill, transit-accessible, or location-efficient without a durable record of the assumptions supporting that characterization.
Why This Matters
The problem is not that every SMAP project should be forced into discretionary CEQA review. The problem is that state streamlining should not make transportation assumptions disappear. A project can be ministerially eligible and still require implementation records concerning access, parking, frontage improvements, bus stop conditions, sidewalk gaps, bicycle connections, construction access, curb management, emergency access, and subsequent public improvement permits.
Without such a record, the approval can become disconnected from the physical systems that must absorb and serve the project.
Recommended Revision
HCD should add language clarifying that SMAP approval is not a determination of transportation, VMT, parking, infrastructure, or public-service adequacy. Where projects rely on transportation-related assumptions, the local government should preserve a non-discretionary informational record. This record should not be used as a subjective veto, but it should prevent the ministerial process from becoming a transportation blind spot.
Suggested Language
Ministerial approval under these Guidelines does not constitute a determination that a project's transportation, VMT, parking, access, infrastructure, or public-service assumptions are adequate for any other state or local program. Where a SMAP project relies on location efficiency, transit accessibility, reduced parking, infill status, mixed-use context, or prior planning assumptions, the local government should maintain a non-discretionary informational record identifying those assumptions. Such documentation shall not be used to impose subjective discretionary review but shall support implementation monitoring, reporting, and coordination with applicable transportation, VMT, infrastructure, and mitigation programs. 7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-309265634721455071… 6/22 Comment 6 - Section 301(b): Public Oversight Limited to Objective Requirements Should Still Require Publicly Accessible Evidence of Consistency
Source links: Government Code section 65589.5 Housing Accountability Act Existing Framework
Section 301(b) addresses consistency determinations, time frames, design review, and the need to approve projects meeting objective standards. The draft appropriately attempts to prevent subjective design review from becoming a disguised discretionary approval process.
Implementation Concern
The draft's emphasis on strict objective review is understandable, but it should not be read to reduce public access to the evidence supporting the consistency determination. Where ministerial processing limits the role of discretionary review, the written record becomes even more important. The public should be able to see the objective standards checklist, the materials supporting consistency, any density bonus waivers or concessions that affect objective standards, and any subsequent permits required to implement the approval.
Why This Matters
Objective standards are only meaningful if they are verifiable. A local government determination that a project is consistent with objective standards should not be a black box. This is particularly important where local standards interact with density bonus waivers, parking limitations, public works permits, subdivision requirements, and subsequent permits.
A record that says "consistent" without showing the supporting materials invites disputes later and undermines confidence in both streamlining and local implementation.
Recommended Revision
HCD should require or strongly recommend a publicly available consistency determination packet. The packet should be streamlined, but should identify the project, applicable standards, requested waivers or concessions, consistency findings, required objective conditions, and subsequent permits. The packet should be maintained as a durable administrative record.
Suggested Language
For each SMAP approval, the local government should maintain a publicly accessible consistency determination record that identifies the application materials reviewed, the objective standards applied, any density bonus concessions or waivers affecting those standards, the objective conditions imposed, the required subsequent permits, and the basis for finding the development consistent with applicable objective standards.
Comment 7 - Section 301(c): Modifications Require Assumption-Change Documentation, Especially for VMT, Parking, Affordability, and Public Improvements
Source links: Government Code section 65913.4; HCD TOD Guidelines Existing Framework
Section 301(c) addresses modifications after approval and before issuance of a final building permit. The draft recognizes that modifications may occur and identifies circumstances in which later objective standards may apply.
Implementation Concern
The modification framework is incomplete because it focuses primarily on whether a modification remains consistent with applicable objective standards. It does not clearly require an assumption-change comparison to show whether the delivered project remains consistent with the assumptions that supported the original approval. This matters because a modified project may still pass objective standards while materially changing implementation realities.
Examples include reductions or increases in unit count, changes in the affordability mix, revised parking supply, altered phasing, changes to public improvements, relocation of access points, revisions to frontage improvements, changes in 7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-309265634721455071… 7/22 transit assumptions, or changes affecting whether prior commercial, office, retail, parking, or institutional uses are replaced. These changes may matter for APR reporting, transportation assumptions, VMT-related analysis in other programs, local infrastructure planning, public works permits, and public accountability.
Why This Matters
The issue of modification is where box-checking regulatory processes often fail. A project may satisfy a formal modification standard even as the underlying set of assumptions changes. If the approval record does not preserve the difference between the original and modified project, future reviewers cannot determine whether the streamlined process delivered what was approved. For a mitigation monitoring and implementation practitioner, that is a core failure mode:
the obligation exists on paper, but the delivered outcome is not tracked against it.
Recommended Revision
HCD should require a modification comparison memorandum for modifications that affect assumptions material to implementation. The memorandum should not create a new discretionary approval standard. It should simply identify whether the modification changes assumptions relevant to reporting, affordability, parking, access, public improvements, transportation, or other implementation factors.
Suggested Language
A request to modify a development approved under SMAP should include an assumption-change comparison when the modification affects unit count, affordability, parking, transportation access, public improvements, phasing, prior-use replacement, or any other assumption material to implementation monitoring. The comparison should identify the original approval assumption, the proposed modified condition, and whether the modification affects reporting, affordability commitments, compliance with objective standards, subsequent permits, or implementation outcomes. This documentation shall preserve the public record needed to evaluate whether the delivered project remains consistent with the assumptions that supported streamlined approval.
Comment 8 - Sections 301(c), 302, and 500: HCD Should Add a Modification and Implementation Comparison Table
Recommended Comparison Framework
HCD should include a sample comparison table in the final Guidelines or in an implementation appendix. A table would reduce local burden while improving consistency across jurisdictions.
Original Approval Assumption Modified Proposal/Later
Condition Why It Matters
Unit count Increase or decrease in units APR reporting, infrastructure demand, housing delivery
Affordable units Changed affordability mix or
covenant timing
Affordability delivery and possible
travel behavior assumptions
Parking supply More or less parking than approval
record assumed
VMT, Transportation Demand
Management (TDM), parking
spillover, mode choice assumptions
Transit access Changed stop, route, frequency, or
service status
Location-efficiency and accessibility
assumptions
Public improvements Changed timing, scope, or funding
of improvements
Implementation feasibility and
subsequent permits
Prior use replaced Changed treatment of office,
commercial, retail, parking, or
institutional uses
Displaced travel, trip lengths,
project description integrity
Phasing Delayed or re-sequenced
construction
Delivery timing and monitoring
This type of comparison would make SMAP more transparent without creating a new discretionary approval process. It would also align SMAP with the monitoring and credit-tracking logic reflected in the AB 130 and TOD implementation frameworks.
7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-309265634721455071… 8/22 Comment 9 - Section 302: Subsequent Permits and Public Improvements Should Preserve Local Objective Implementation Authority
Source links: Government Code section 65913.3
Existing Framework
Section 302 addresses subsequent permits, also known as post-entitlement permits, and states that local governments must issue required permits if the application substantially complies with the approved development. It also states that local governments shall not impose procedures or requirements that are not imposed on projects not approved under SMAP.
Implementation Concern
The subsequent permit language could be read too aggressively by applicants as a basis to resist local implementation requirements. Local objective standards are not anti-housing obstacles merely because they address circulation, access, drainage, fire access, utilities, public works, construction access, haul routes, sidewalk construction, bicycle facilities, transit stop access, or encroachment conditions. They are often the mechanism through which an approval becomes physically implementable.
Why This Matters
Local control is most important at the implementation stage. A statewide ministerial approval may establish entitlement to proceed, but the project must still connect to streets, utilities, drainage systems, sidewalks, fire and emergency access, and other local systems. If local agencies believe that applying objective public works requirements will be characterized as delay, they may under document requirements or defer conflicts to later stages. That creates worse outcomes for everyone: applicants, residents, public works staff, and decisionmakers.
Recommended Revision
HCD should make clear that objective, generally applicable subsequent permit standards remain fully enforceable. The final Guidelines should distinguish prohibited discretionary obstruction from legitimate objective implementation standards.
Suggested Language
Nothing in these Guidelines shall be interpreted to prevent a local government from applying objective, generally applicable standards necessary to implement the approved development, including objective standards for public works, utilities, fire access, emergency access, drainage, circulation, pedestrian access, bicycle access, transit access, construction access, encroachment, grading, and public improvement permits. State streamlining shall not convert objective local implementation requirements into prohibited discretionary barriers.
Comment 10 - Sections 400 and 401: Infill and Urban-Use Eligibility Should Not Obscure Displaced Travel or Changed Trip Patterns
Source links: OPR/LCI Technical Advisory on VMT; LCI AB 130 Guidance Existing Framework
Sections 400 and 401 address housing type and site requirements. The Draft Guidelines define urban uses broadly, including current or former residential, commercial, public institutional, parking lot or structure, transit or transportation passenger facility, retail, and other urban uses. That breadth may make sense for housing eligibility.
Implementation Concern
The same breadth can obscure transportation effects when former office, commercial, retail, institutional, parking, or mixed-use sites are converted to residential use. A project can be infill and still materially change travel patterns. Former customers, employees, visitors, and service trips do not simply disappear because the parcel is redeveloped. Travel may be redistributed, lengthened, shortened, or shifted across jurisdictional boundaries. 7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-309265634721455071… 9/22 This is a key bridge to the VMT comments already submitted to LCI and HCD. The VMT issue is not whether housing is desirable or whether infill can reduce VMT in general. The issue is whether the assumptions are disclosed and monitorable. SMAP should not allow "infill" or "urban use" to serve as a label that substitutes for a record of changed travel patterns when the approval replaces an existing VMT-generating use.
Why This Matters
Many California infill opportunities involve redevelopment of office parks, shopping centers, retail corridors, institutional campuses, and large parking areas. These sites often sit near regional corridors or jurisdictional boundaries. Replacing those uses with housing may reduce some trips, increase others, or shift travel to other locations. In a discretionary CEQA pathway, those assumptions may be evaluated through project description, baseline, VMT, transportation, parking, circulation, or cumulative analysis. In a ministerial SMAP pathway, they may not be evaluated unless HCD requires a non-discretionary informational record.
Recommended Revision
HCD should add a prior-use and transportation-assumption field to SMAP implementation records and reporting. This should not create a discretionary review test. It should document whether the site replaces office, commercial, retail, institutional, parking, or transportation-related uses and whether relevant assumptions about travel, parking, transit, or public improvements were identified.
Suggested Language
Where a SMAP project replaces an existing or former commercial, office, retail, institutional, parking, or transportation-related use, the local government should maintain an informational record identifying the prior use, proposed use, parking assumptions, transit accessibility, and whether the project materially changes travel patterns or requires transportation-related public improvements. This record shall not create discretionary review but shall support statewide implementation monitoring and coordination with VMT, TOD, and transportation programs.
Comment 11 - Section 402: Affordability Requirements Should Not Become a VMT Proxy or a Substitute for Delivery Monitoring
Source links: HCD TOD Implementation Guidelines
Existing Framework
Section 402 addresses affordability provisions, affordability calculations, and covenant or restriction requirements. The Draft Guidelines require affordability commitments and recorded restrictions for qualifying developments.
Implementation Concern
Affordability commitments are important, but they should not be used as a generalized proxy for transportation performance, VMT reduction, or implementation success. A project can include affordable units and still require documentation of transportation access, transit service, parking assumptions, public improvements, and delivery.
Conversely, a project can receive streamlined processing for affordability reasons without necessarily proving that its VMT or infrastructure assumptions are valid.
Why This Matters
The HCD TOD and LCI AB 130 guidance both recognize that VMT-related claims require documentation, monitoring, and performance. Affordability can be relevant to travel behavior and location efficiency, but it is not itself a transportation analysis. If SMAP treats affordability as sufficient to trigger ministerial processing, and if another program treats affordability or TOD funding as evidence of VMT benefit, the combined system can overcount benefits without verifying assumptions.
Recommended Revision
HCD should add reporting and documentation fields that distinguish affordability approval from affordability delivery and should avoid treating affordability as a proxy for transportation or VMT performance. The final Guidelines should make clear that affordability eligibility under SMAP does not substitute for any VMT documentation required under other applicable programs.
7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-30926563472145507… 10/22 Suggested Language
Affordability requirements under these Guidelines establish eligibility and compliance obligations for SMAP purposes. They do not, by themselves, constitute a VMT determination, transportation analysis, infrastructure adequacy finding, or evidence that location-efficiency assumptions remain valid for any other state or local program. SMAP reporting should distinguish affordable units approved, permitted, constructed, occupied, and maintained under recorded affordability restrictions.
Comment 12 - Section 500: Reporting Should Include VMT, Transportation, Parking, and Public Works Implementation Fields Where Relevant
Source links: Government Code section 65400; HCD SMAP Dashboard Existing Framework
Section 500 requires local governments to report the number of SMAP applications submitted, the location and number of developments approved, the building permits issued, and the total units constructed by tenure and income category. That is a useful baseline.
Implementation Concern
Section 500 does not yet ask for information to determine whether SMAP approvals create recurring transportation, access, parking, or public works implementation issues. Because SMAP narrows discretionary review, reporting should help HCD and the public understand whether projects relying on streamlined approval also rely on assumptions about transit access, reduced parking, infill location, replacement of prior uses, or subsequent public improvements.
Why This Matters
The LCI and HCD TOD guidance documents focus heavily on monitoring, tracking, reporting, and implementation. SMAP should not be the exception. If the State wants to understand whether ministerial housing approvals are functioning as intended, it needs reporting that captures more than the number of units. It needs to know whether the project was modified, whether it relied on reduced parking, whether it replaced a prior nonresidential use, whether significant public improvements were necessary, and whether subsequent permits became the actual bottleneck to implementation.
Recommended Revision
HCD should add optional or required reporting fields that can be completed without creating discretionary review. These fields should identify whether the project relied on transit proximity, location efficiency, reduced parking, infill status, or mixed-use context; whether the site replaced commercial, office, retail, parking, institutional, or transportation-related uses; whether subsequent public works or transportation permits were required; and whether modifications changed unit count, affordability, parking, density, phasing, or public improvements.
Suggested Language
SMAP reporting should include implementation fields sufficient to evaluate whether approvals relying on infill, transit access, reduced parking, location efficiency, or redevelopment of urban uses are delivering projects consistent with the assumptions supporting approval. Such fields should identify relevant project modifications, required public improvements, parking assumptions, transportation-related subsequent permits, and whether prior nonresidential uses were replaced.
Comment 13 - Cross-Program Coordination: SMAP, AB 130 VMT Mitigation, TOD Implementation, Housing Element Reporting, and CEQA Should Not Operate in Silos Source links: Public Resources Code section 21080.44; LCI AB 130 Guidance; HCD TOD Guidelines Existing Framework
California is implementing multiple statewide programs addressing related objectives. SMAP addresses streamlined ministerial housing approval. AB 130 addresses VMT mitigation contributions and the mechanics of the statewide 7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-30926563472145507… 11/22 mitigation program. HCD's TOD Implementation Program addresses funding for location-efficient affordable housing and related infrastructure. Housing element and APR systems address accountability for housing production. CEQA and SB 743 address environmental review and VMT impacts.
Implementation Concern
The risk is not that any single program is necessarily defective. The risk is fragmentation. Each program may verify its own narrow requirement while no program evaluates whether the combined assumptions, commitments, and outcomes remain aligned. SMAP can approve a project ministerially. TOD can fund a location-efficient project. AB 130 can process a VMT mitigation contribution. APRs can count units. CEQA may be avoided, limited, or satisfied through a separate pathway. But if those systems do not share assumptions, a project may pass through every program while the real implementation question remains unanswered.
This concern is now reinforced by the broader federal housing-policy direction reflected in the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (H.R. 6644). H.R. 6644 is not a California SMAP statute and should not be treated as authority for HCD to expand or contract Government Code section 65913.4. However, it is relevant implementation context. The federal legislation reflects the same general trend toward accelerating housing production through multiple targeted regulatory changes, funding tools, program modernizations, environmental review streamlining, public land inventories, and standardized design or review tools. That trend strengthens, rather than weakens, the need for local implementation accountability. As State and federal programs increasingly emphasize faster housing delivery, reduced regulatory friction, and standardized approval pathways, HCD should ensure that SMAP does not become a housing-only approval silo disconnected from VMT, infrastructure, public works, climate, CEQA, reporting, and public-access systems.
Why This Matters
Program silos are especially risky when mandates are involved. A local government facing overlapping housing mandates, VMT mandates, climate goals, infrastructure duties, and public works responsibilities may be forced to implement state policy through disconnected compliance pathways. Staff may check one box for housing eligibility, another for APR reporting, another for VMT mitigation, another for TOD funding, and another for public works permits.
The public outcome depends on the integration of those boxes, not the mere completion of each one.
Recommended Revision
HCD should add an explicit cross-program coordination provision. The provision should state that SMAP implementation should be coordinated with related state housing, transportation, VMT, climate, CEQA, TOD, APR, and infrastructure programs. It should encourage consistent documentation of assumptions, commitments, modifications, and outcomes across programs.
Suggested Language
HCD should administer SMAP in coordination with related statewide housing, transportation, climate, CEQA, VMT, TOD, APR, and infrastructure implementation programs. The final Guidelines should recognize that statewide mandates increase the need for integrated implementation systems. Where SMAP approvals rely on assumptions also used in VMT mitigation, TOD funding, housing element reporting, infrastructure planning, or local public works approvals, HCD should encourage consistent documentation of those assumptions, commitments, modifications, and outcomes.
Comment 14 - Transit Proximity and Location Efficiency Should Reflect Actual Service Where Relied Upon Source links: HCD TOD Guidelines; OPR/LCI Technical Advisory on VMT Implementation Concern
Transit proximity and location efficiency are often used as shorthand for reduced transportation impacts or improved access. The TOD comments already addressed the risk of treating mapped proximity as a substitute for actual service.
SMAP should incorporate the same caution when local records, applicants, or related programs rely on transit access or location efficiency to justify assumptions about project implementation.
Why This Matters
Transit service changes over time. Routes are added, reduced, rerouted, suspended, or restored. Headways, service span, reliability, stop quality, pedestrian access, and bicycle access all affect whether a project is actually accessible. A 7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-30926563472145507… 12/22 project near a bus stop on a map may not provide meaningful service to residents' actual destinations. Conversely, a project with strong service should be able to document that fact easily.
Recommended Revision
Where SMAP implementation records identify transit access, reduced parking, location efficiency, or multimodal access as material assumptions, the record should identify actual transit service and access conditions. This should not create discretionary review. It should provide a factual record of the implementation.
Suggested Language
Where SMAP implementation records identify transit access, location efficiency, reduced parking, or multimodal access as part of the project assumptions, the record should also identify actual transit service, route availability, stop locations, service frequency, service span, and whether service is existing, funded, suspended, reduced, or planned. A mapped transit proximity assumption should not substitute for actual service documentation.
Comment 15 - Parking Reductions Should Be Documented as Assumptions, Not Treated as Automatic Transportation Benefits
Source links: LCI AB 130 Guidance; OPR/LCI Technical Advisory on VMT Implementation Concern
Parking limitations and reductions are increasingly embedded in state housing and VMT policy. Reduced parking can reduce automobile ownership and VMT in some contexts, but the effect depends on location, transit, pricing, management, household characteristics, parking spillover, and surrounding land uses. If SMAP projects rely on reduced parking, local governments should preserve that assumption in the implementation record.
Why This Matters
The AB 130 and TOD comments emphasized that the same parking reduction should not be counted repeatedly as project design, baseline assumption, VMT mitigation, affordability support, and location-efficiency evidence. SMAP creates another place where parking assumptions can become implicit rather than explicit. If a project is approved with reduced parking and later modifies parking, changes unit count, or shifts access assumptions, the record should show what changed.
Recommended Revision
HCD should add documentation for parking assumptions to the modification and reporting framework. The record should identify whether parking supply is part of the approval, whether parking is reduced, whether parking is unbundled or managed, and whether later modifications change the parking assumption.
Suggested Language
Where parking supply, reduced parking, unbundled parking, parking pricing, or parking management is used to support a SMAP project's implementation assumption, the record should identify the parking supply, applicable objective standards, and any later modifications affecting parking. Parking assumptions should be documented for implementation and reporting purposes and should not be treated as automatic evidence of VMT reduction for other programs unless separately supported by substantial evidence.
Comment 16 - HCD Should Provide Implementation Ramp-Up, Model Forms, and Technical Assistance Focused on Local Implementation and VMT/Transportation Assumptions Source links: HCD statutory determinations page; LCI AB 130 Guidance; HCD TOD Guidelines Implementation Concern
Statewide programs fail when local implementation capacity is assumed rather than built. The transition from Level of Service (LOS) to VMT under SB 743 demonstrates the problem. Even years after VMT became the CEQA transportation metric, implementation remains inconsistent. Some agencies use rigorous screening and modeling; others rely on 7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-30926563472145507… 13/22 conclusory references to infill, transit proximity, prior EIRs, or regional policy. SMAP risks the same pattern if HCD assumes local agencies can implement the revised Guidelines without model records and training.
Why This Matters
The final SMAP Guidelines will be used by planning staff, city attorneys, public works staff, applicants, consultants, elected officials, appointed commissioners, and members of the public. Many will read the document as a compliance checklist. The need for model forms and technical assistance is also consistent with the direction of federal housing reforms. H.R. 6644 includes provisions supporting standardized tools, federal program modernization, planning support, and pattern books or pre-reviewed designs. Those tools can help reduce uncertainty, but only if they are paired with clear implementation records and local coordination. SMAP should follow the same logic: faster approval pathways should be supported by better checklists, clearer records, consistent tracking of modifications, public works coordination, and technical assistance, not by undocumented assumptions. If the checklist does not include implementation records, modification tracking, cross-program coordination, and transportation assumption documentation, those issues will be missed.
Recommended Revision
HCD should provide implementation resources: model application checklists, objective standards checklists, modification comparison forms, public works coordination forms, transit/access assumption worksheets, prior-use replacement worksheets, Dashboard/reporting guidance, and training materials explaining how to implement SMAP without turning it into either a discretionary veto or an unaccountable approval pipeline.
Suggested Language
HCD shall provide implementation resources to support consistent application of SMAP, including model objective standards checklists, modification comparison forms, implementation record templates, public works coordination forms, reporting instructions, and technical assistance addressing transportation, parking, transit, access, infrastructure, and cross-program assumptions.
Comment 17 - Local Objective Standards Should Not Be Treated as Mere Barriers to Housing Source links: Government Code section 65913.4; Government Code section 65913.3 Implementation Concern
The Draft Guidelines repeatedly and understandably guard against the use of local standards to inhibit, chill, delay, or preclude ministerial approval. That guardrail is important. But the final Guidelines should also recognize the opposite risk: applicants may characterize legitimate objective implementation requirements as delay tactics simply because they create work after approval.
Why This Matters
Local agencies are responsible for ensuring that projects can actually be built and serve their intended purpose.
Objective standards for stormwater, grading, access, utilities, fire apparatus access, emergency response, encroachments, curb cuts, sidewalks, bicycle facilities, construction traffic, and public improvements are not merely local preferences. They are the mechanisms by which physical development safely connects to public systems.
Recommended Revision
HCD should add a balance provision stating that state streamlining does not convert objective local implementation requirements into prohibited barriers. This would protect local control while preserving ministerial review.
Suggested Language
Objective local standards and subsequent permit requirements that are generally applicable to comparable development and necessary to implement the approved development shall not be deemed to inhibit, chill, or preclude ministerial approval solely because they require documentation, engineering review, public works coordination, or compliance before construction or occupancy. Such standards shall be applied in a ministerial manner and consistently with these Guidelines.
7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-30926563472145507… 14/22 Comment 18 - Final Guidelines Should Define Success as Implemented Outcomes, Not Approval Throughput Implementation Concern
The most common failure in box-checking regulatory systems is that the process measures whether steps were completed rather than whether outcomes occurred. SMAP is vulnerable to that failure if success is measured by how many jurisdictions are subject to the program, how many applications are submitted, or how many approvals are issued, without evaluating delivery and implementation.
Recommended Revision
HCD should adopt an implementation-performance statement in the final Guidelines or a companion implementation memorandum. That statement should define program success as approval plus delivery, transparency, affordability performance, compliance with objective standards, subsequent permit coordination, and continuous improvement.
Suggested Language
The effectiveness of SMAP should be evaluated through measurable implementation outcomes, including housing delivery, affordability performance, transparent approval records, subsequent permit coordination, modification tracking, and ongoing program improvement. Streamlined approval is a means of implementation, not the sole measure of program success.
Comment 19 - SMAP Should Not Become a CEQA/VMT Bypass When Applicants Rely on Location-Efficient, TOD, or VMT-Benefit Claims
Existing Framework
The Draft Guidelines properly recognize that SMAP is a ministerial approval pathway under Government Code section 65913.4. The Guidelines do not purport to amend CEQA, SB 743, Public Resources Code section 21080.44, or the statewide VMT mitigation framework. At the same time, SMAP projects may be described in local records, funding applications, staff reports, or applicant narratives as infill, transit-oriented, location-efficient, low-parking, mixed-use, or VMT-reducing. Those descriptions can migrate across program silos if the Guidelines do not require clear boundaries.
Implementation Concern
The risk is that ministerial eligibility becomes functionally conflated with transportation or VMT adequacy. A project may be streamlined under SMAP, then described elsewhere as location-efficient or transit-accessible, then used in a TOD or VMT mitigation narrative. At the same time, no single record identifies the transportation assumptions being carried from one context to another. That is the same failure mode raised in the AB 130 and TOD comments: a program label should not replace evidence, monitoring, additionality, or implementation tracking.
This concern is not theoretical. State programs increasingly use overlapping concepts: infill, transit proximity, affordability, location efficiency, parking reduction, VMT mitigation, and housing element progress. Those concepts may be valid in some settings, but they are not interchangeable. A project can qualify for ministerial approval without demonstrating VMT mitigation. A project can be near transit without having frequent or reliable service. A project can reduce parking without demonstrating a reduction in VMT. A project can be affordable without proving transportation benefits. The final SMAP Guidelines should make these boundaries explicit.
Why This Matters
If SMAP is treated as a housing-only process detached from transportation, CEQA, VMT, and local infrastructure implementation, applicants and local agencies may inadvertently create inconsistent records. One document may say a project is streamlined and therefore should not be delayed. Another may say the project is location efficient. A third may reference VMT benefits. A fourth may rely on APR production numbers. A fifth may leave public works issues to subsequent permits. Without a common implementation record, the overall picture becomes fragmented and difficult to evaluate.
Recommended Revision
HCD should add a non-substitution provision clarifying that SMAP eligibility and ministerial approval do not constitute a VMT determination, a transportation-impact determination, a location-efficiency finding for other programs, or a CEQA 7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-30926563472145507… 15/22 mitigation finding. The provision should not require discretionary review. It should prevent cross-program misuse of SMAP approvals as evidence of matters that SMAP did not analyze.
Suggested Language
SMAP eligibility or approval under these Guidelines shall not be cited as a substitute for a CEQA determination, VMT screening determination, VMT mitigation determination, TOD funding eligibility determination, infrastructure adequacy finding, or transportation-access finding under any other state or local program. Where a SMAP project is described in another program as infill, transit-accessible, location-efficient, reduced-parking, or VMTreducing, the relevant agency or applicant should identify the factual basis for that claim in the record for that program.
Comment 20 - Sections 100, 300, 301, and 500: Jurisdictions With General Plan EIR SOCs, CAPs, and CEQA GHG Thresholds Face Compliance Risks That the Guidelines Should Address Source links: CEQA Guidelines section 15093; CEQA Guidelines section 15064.4; CEQA Guidelines section 15183.5; CEQA Guidelines section 15268; Government Code section 65913.4 Existing Framework
The Draft Guidelines correctly treat SMAP as a ministerial approval pathway under Government Code section 65913.4.
CEQA Guidelines section 15268 provides that ministerial projects are exempt from CEQA. The Draft Guidelines therefore emphasize objective standards, ministerial approval, limited public oversight, and restricted local discretion.
Implementation Concern
That ministerial structure creates a serious compliance problem for jurisdictions whose current or most recently certified General Plan EIRs include SOCs, especially for VMT, transportation, GHG, air quality, public safety, or cumulative impacts. A SOC is not a mere historical artifact. Under CEQA Guidelines section 15093, it is part of the project approval record and indicates that significant effects remain after feasible mitigation. A jurisdiction that has adopted a SOC for transportation or climate impacts has acknowledged a significant environmental condition that must be managed through General Plan policies, mitigation monitoring, CAP implementation, CEQA GHG thresholds, public works standards, and future updates.
Why This Matters
SMAP can place a jurisdiction in a legally and administratively unstable posture. The jurisdiction may be obligated to implement its General Plan, Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program (MMRP), CAP, CEQA GHG Thresholds Report, VMT policies, and public works standards. At the same time, SMAP may require the jurisdiction to approve a qualifying project ministerially, outside discretionary CEQA review, without project-level CEQA mitigation, SOC analysis, CAP consistency findings, or cumulative impact analysis. That conflict is not merely theoretical. Where the unresolved impact is VMT or transportation sector GHG emissions, a SMAP project may add trips, change trip lengths, alter parking assumptions, replace office, or retail uses, or rely on transit/location-efficiency assumptions without creating the CEQA record that would normally test those assumptions.
Recommended Revision
HCD should add guidance acknowledging this compliance tension. The final Guidelines should state that jurisdictions with current General Plan EIR SOCs, CAPs, CEQA GHG thresholds, or related mitigation monitoring obligations should proactively translate those existing obligations into objective, generally applicable standards that can be applied ministerially. This would not reintroduce discretionary CEQA review. It would help jurisdictions avoid proceeding blind under SMAP when they have already adopted environmental commitments that depend on VMT, GHG, transportation demand management, mode shift, or infrastructure implementation.
Suggested Language
Where a local government has adopted a current General Plan EIR, specific plan EIR, program EIR, SOCs, CAP, CEQA GHG thresholds, mitigation monitoring program, or similar adopted environmental implementation framework identifying significant or cumulatively considerable impacts related to VMT, GHG emissions, transportation, circulation, public safety, infrastructure, or public services, HCD encourages the local government to review and, where appropriate, amend its objective zoning standards, objective subdivision standards, 7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-30926563472145507… 16/22 objective design review standards, and objective public works standards so that SMAP approvals can be implemented consistently with those adopted obligations in a ministerial and non-discretionary manner.
Comment 21 – Sections 300, 301, and 302: Objective Standards Are the Appropriate Tool for Reconciling SMAP With Existing CEQA, CAP, and GHG Commitments
Source links: Government Code section 65913.4; Government Code section 65589.5; Government Code section 66300; CEQA Guidelines section 15183.5; CEQA and Climate Change The preceding comment identifies the compliance risk. This comment addresses the implementation tool HCD should emphasize: objective standards adopted in advance and applied ministerially.
Existing Framework
The Draft Guidelines properly limit local governments to objective standards and ministerial implementation. The Housing Accountability Act also focuses on objective, quantifiable, written standards when evaluating whether a project is consistent with applicable requirements.
Implementation Concern
The Guidelines currently emphasize the risk that local governments will use standards to inhibit, chill, or preclude SMAP approval. That concern is legitimate, but the inverse risk is also real: local governments may underuse objective standards because they fear HCD enforcement, Housing Accountability Act disputes, Senate Bill 330 (SB 330)-related constraints, or claims that any transportation, CAP, GHG, or VMT standard is an unlawful barrier to housing. The result can be a regulatory vacuum. Existing CEQA, CAP, and GHG obligations remain in policy documents but are not translated into objective standards for ministerial review.
Why This Matters
If a jurisdiction has already adopted a qualified CAP, CEQA GHG thresholds, a General Plan EIR MMRP, or a SOC for VMT or transportation impacts, the legally coherent posture is not to ignore those adopted commitments during SMAP implementation. The better posture is to convert feasible implementation measures into objective, pre-adopted standards that can be applied without discretion. Examples include objective TDM requirements, objective multimodal access standards, objective parking management requirements, objective electric vehicle infrastructure requirements, objective bicycle/pedestrian connectivity standards, objective transit stop access standards, objective frontage improvement standards, objective construction access standards, and objective public works requirements tied to adopted plans.
Recommended Revision
HCD should provide a safe-harbor style explanation for local governments. The final Guidelines should make clear that objective standards adopted in advance and applied uniformly are not prohibited merely because they help implement a jurisdiction's General Plan EIR, SOC, CAP, CEQA GHG thresholds, VMT policies, or public works standards. HCD should also distinguish between prohibited discretionary CEQA-style mitigation and permissible objective standards adopted before an application is submitted.
Suggested Language
A local government may apply objective, generally applicable standards adopted in advance of a SMAP application, including objective standards that implement a General Plan, specific plan, CAP, CEQA GHG thresholds, mitigation monitoring program, public works standards, transportation demand management program, or other adopted regulatory framework, provided those standards are objective, quantifiable, written, uniformly applicable, and applied ministerially. Nothing in these Guidelines prohibits local governments from adopting objective standards to implement existing environmental, transportation, climate, public safety, public works, or infrastructure obligations, so long as those standards do not authorize subjective or discretionary review and do not conflict with Government Code section 65913.4.
Comment 22 - Sections 301, 400, 401, 402, and 500: SMAP Should Not Allow Projects to Ignore Existing SOC, CAP, and GHG Threshold Contexts
7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-30926563472145507… 17/22 Source links: CEQA Guidelines section 15093; CEQA Guidelines section 15064.4; CEQA Guidelines section 15183.5; Government Code section 65400; HCD SMAP Dashboard
Existing Framework
Section 500 already requires reporting on SMAP applications, approvals, building permits, and constructed units. The HCD SMAP Dashboard also provides jurisdiction-level transparency regarding SMAP status.
Implementation Concern
Neither the reporting framework nor the Dashboard appears to capture whether a SMAP project is being approved in a jurisdiction with an unresolved SOC, CAP implementation obligation, CEQA GHG threshold, or General Plan EIR mitigation monitoring commitment that is relevant to VMT, GHG emissions, transportation, parking, infrastructure, or public safety. That omission limits the State's ability to evaluate whether SMAP approvals are creating compliance pressure elsewhere in the local regulatory system.
Why This Matters
This issue is especially important because SMAP is often triggered where a jurisdiction has not met housing production benchmarks. Those same jurisdictions may also be relying on recent General Plan EIRs, CAPs, CEQA GHG thresholds, or VMT mitigation assumptions to maintain legal compliance. If SMAP approvals are not tracked against these contexts, HCD will know that approvals occurred but will not know whether the approvals exacerbated an existing VMT/GHG/transportation compliance problem or highlighted a need for updated objective standards.
Recommended Revision
HCD should add non-discretionary reporting fields that identify whether a jurisdiction has an active General Plan EIR SOC or a CAP/GHG threshold framework relevant to VMT, GHG, transportation, or public safety. This should not serve as a basis for denying a SMAP project. It should be used to identify jurisdictions that need updates to objective standards, technical assistance, or cross-program coordination.
Suggested Language
SMAP reporting should include optional or required implementation context fields identifying whether the local government has a current General Plan EIR, specific plan EIR, program EIR, Statement of Overriding Considerations, Climate Action Plan, CEQA GHG thresholds, mitigation monitoring program, or other adopted environmental implementation framework relevant to VMT, GHG emissions, transportation, parking, public safety, infrastructure, or public services. These fields shall not authorize discretionary review but shall support statewide implementation monitoring, technical assistance, and future updates to objective standards.
Comment 23 - Sections 100, 200, 300, 301, and 500: State Mandates Without Adequate Implementation Funding Increase Local Compliance Risk
Source links: HCD Draft SMAP Guidelines; LCI AB 130 Statewide VMT Mitigation Program Guidance; HCD TOD Implementation Program Guidelines; HCD SMAP Determination Methodology Existing Framework
SMAP is one component of a larger statewide housing implementation system. The Draft Guidelines implement a ministerial approval mandate under Government Code section 65913.4. The AB 130 Statewide VMT Mitigation Program Guidance addresses a separate VMT mitigation framework. HCD's TOD Implementation Program Guidelines address funding for location-efficient affordable housing and related infrastructure. The Housing Element and APR systems track housing planning and production. Together, these programs reflect a statewide policy emphasis on accelerating housing delivery, increasing production, and moving eligible projects through local approval systems more quickly.
That statewide objective is clear. What is less clear is whether the implementation system provides local governments with the funding, staffing, technical assistance, infrastructure support, and cross-program coordination necessary to make those approvals physically, legally, and operationally workable.
SMAP is primarily an approval mandate. It does not, by itself, fund housing construction, public works upgrades, transit improvements, VMT mitigation, utility capacity, emergency access improvements, CAP implementation, GHG reduction 7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-30926563472145507… 18/22 measures, or local staff capacity.
Implementation Concern
Approval mandates do not automatically fund implementation.
A jurisdiction may be required to process qualifying SMAP projects while lacking the resources to implement the infrastructure, transportation, public safety, utility, drainage, transit, public works, or climate-related improvements needed to secure those approvals. This creates a local compliance risk: the State may require faster approvals, while the local government remains responsible for the practical systems needed to support the approved development.
That risk is not limited to funding. It also includes staffing, technical capacity, public works coordination, monitoring, reporting, and the ability to update objective standards before ministerial applications arrive.
The problem is not that SMAP accelerates approvals. The problem is that approval acceleration can outpace implementation capacity.
A local government may be required to approve a project ministerially while also remaining responsible for:
· public works permits;
· utility coordination;
· frontage improvements;
· stormwater and drainage systems;
· fire and emergency access;
· pedestrian, bicycle, and transit access;
· VMT-related commitments;
· CAP and GHG implementation;
· affordability monitoring;
· subsequent permit processing; and
· public record transparency.
Those obligations do not disappear because the entitlement pathway is ministerial.
Why This Matters
This funding-and-implementation mismatch can deepen the compliance risks identified in the preceding comments regarding SOCs, CAPs, CEQA GHG thresholds, VMT, TDM, and mitigation monitoring.
A jurisdiction may have adopted a General Plan EIR with a SOC for VMT, transportation, GHG, or cumulative impacts.
It may have adopted a CAP that depends on mode shift, transit access, reduced VMT, TDM, electrification, or infrastructure improvements. It may have adopted CEQA GHG thresholds or mitigation monitoring obligations that assume continued implementation of local transportation, climate, and public works measures.
Yet SMAP may require ministerial approval of additional projects without discretionary CEQA mitigation, without projectlevel cumulative impact review, and without dedicated funding to implement the local improvements needed to make those projects consistent with adopted transportation, climate, infrastructure, and public-service objectives.
That is the core implementation concern.
The issue is not whether the State may streamline housing approvals. The issue is whether the State's implementing guidance recognizes that local governments are left to manage the physical and fiscal consequences of those approvals. A project can be legally eligible for ministerial approval and still require substantial local implementation work after approval.
If HCD measures SMAP success solely by jurisdictional eligibility, applications submitted, approvals issued, permits pulled, or units constructed, it may overlook the local implementation burden imposed by the approval mandate. The State should also be able to identify whether recurring implementation barriers involve infrastructure, public works, transportation access, VMT, GHG, public safety, utilities, or local staff capacity.
Recommended Revision
HCD should acknowledge in the final Guidelines that streamlining mandates require implementation support. This should not create a new discretionary approval standard or allow local governments to deny eligible SMAP projects 7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-30926563472145507… 19/22 based on generalized funding concerns. Instead, it should recognize that SMAP implementation requires coordination among approval mandates, objective standards, infrastructure funding, public works permitting, VMT mitigation programs, TOD funding, CAP/GHG implementation, APR reporting, and technical assistance.
The final Guidelines should encourage local governments to identify recurring implementation barriers. They should direct HCD to use that information for technical assistance, model forms, objective standards guidance, Dashboard/reporting improvements, and coordination with related State programs.
HCD should also clarify that local governments may maintain an implementation record identifying infrastructure, public works, transportation, utilities, public safety, climate, staffing, and other local implementation constraints affecting project delivery. Such records should preserve transparency regarding the conditions necessary for successful implementation, identify potential conflicts with adopted plans or obligations, and inform coordination among applicants, local agencies, and State programs.
Suggested Language
HCD should evaluate SMAP not only as an approval pathway, but also as an implementation mandate that may require coordinated funding, technical assistance, updates to objective standards, public works coordination, infrastructure planning, and cross-program monitoring.
Where local governments identify recurring barriers related to infrastructure, transportation, VMT, GHG, public safety, utilities, public works, subsequent permits, staffing, or implementation capacity, HCD should coordinate with relevant State programs and provide guidance or technical assistance to support lawful, objective, and feasible implementation.
A local government may maintain a non-discretionary implementation record that identifies objective constraints on infrastructure, public works, transportation, utilities, public safety, climate, and staffing relevant to project delivery. Such documentation should support technical assistance, funding coordination, updates to objective standards, public works coordination, and statewide implementation monitoring, while preserving the distinction between documenting implementation constraints and making project-level approval determinations.
Comment 24 - Public Notice, Public Access, and Durable Posting Are Especially Important When Review Is Ministerial, and the Administrative Record Carries More Weight Existing Framework
The Draft Guidelines limit public oversight following application submission to ministerial design review or public oversight focused strictly on objective requirements. This limitation is central to the statutory streamlining design. As opportunities for discretionary review become more limited, the information function becomes increasingly important. Because ministerial approvals may not include the same environmental review and discretionary processes applicable to other projects, non-discretionary public notice and durable public posting become more, not less, important.
Implementation Concern
Where review is limited to objective consistency, the public must have timely and durable access to the records showing the objective basis for approval. HCD should not treat public notice, online posting, or durable access to the application record as equivalent to discretionary review. These transparency tools can be required or strongly encouraged while preserving the ministerial nature of the process and maintaining appropriate local responsibility for objective standards, adopted planning commitments, and implementation accountability. A streamlined ministerial process should not become low visibility simply because the approval pathway is streamlined.
This is also a local control issue. Local governments are often criticized for delay, but unclear records and disappearing materials can create confusion for applicants, residents, public works staff, and decisionmakers. A durable record reduces unnecessary disputes. It also ensures that if a project is modified, delayed, or challenged, the original assumptions remain available.
This transparency principle is consistent with the broader housing-policy trend toward public-facing implementation tools, including H.R. 6644's emphasis on public land inventories and standardized housing implementation resources. 7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-30926563472145507… 20/22 Why This Matters
The LCI and HCD TOD comments emphasized public registries, credit retirement, monitoring, legal documents, and reporting because VMT mitigation must remain traceable. SMAP needs an analogous transparency principle. It may not involve mitigation credits, but it does involve a state-mandated approval pathway that limits local discretion. When state law narrows traditional discretionary review opportunities, the implementing agency should strengthen public access to the objective record and preserve transparency regarding the assumptions supporting implementation.
Recommended Revision
HCD should add a public notice, public record, and durable posting recommendation. The language should preserve ministerial decision standards while requiring or strongly encouraging local governments to post and maintain records for the notice of intent, application, completeness or eligibility determination, objective standards checklist, approval or denial letter, modifications, subsequent permits, and implementation status. Public notice is especially important where a jurisdiction has SOC, CAP, CEQA GHG threshold, VMT, infrastructure, or public safety issues that may be affected by ministerial approvals and must be understood through the objective administrative record.
Suggested Language
For each SMAP application, the local government should provide non-discretionary public informational notice and maintain a durable public record, preferably through a stable online posting, that identifies the notice of intent, application materials, completeness or eligibility determination, objective standards checklist, consistency determination, approval or denial letter, objective conditions, modification requests and determinations, and required subsequent permits. The public record should remain available through project implementation and should be updated when material modifications, subsequent permit determinations, or implementation milestones occur. This notice and posting framework shall preserve the ministerial nature of SMAP review while providing transparency and protecting accountability in local implementation.
Consolidated Suggested Additions to the Final Guidelines To integrate the revisions above, HCD should consider adding a short implementation-accountability article or appendix.
The following consolidated provisions would help ensure the final Guidelines do not operate as an isolated approval pathway disconnected from VMT, transportation, infrastructure, and monitoring realities:
SMAP approval is a ministerial eligibility and approval determination; it is not a transportation, VMT, infrastructure capacity, TOD funding, or CEQA mitigation determination.
Local governments may require non-discretionary informational materials necessary to document objective standards compliance, subsequent permits, public works requirements, transportation/access assumptions, and implementation conditions.
Each SMAP approval should include a durable objective standards record identifying the standards applied, evidence reviewed, approval basis, conditions, and subsequent permits.
Modifications should include an assumption change comparison when changes affect unit count, affordability, parking, transportation access, phasing, public improvements, prior-use replacement, or other implementation assumptions.
Section 500 reporting should be expanded to include implementation status, modifications, parking assumptions, prior-use replacement, public works requirements, and delivery outcomes where feasible.
HCD should coordinate SMAP with AB 130 VMT mitigation, TOD Implementation, SB 743, APR reporting, CEQA, and local public works processes to avoid program silos.
HCD should provide model forms, checklists, technical assistance, and training to help local governments implement SMAP consistently while preserving objective local implementation authority.
Where a jurisdiction has a current General Plan EIR SOC, CAP, CEQA GHG threshold, or MMRP identifying unresolved VMT, GHG, transportation, public safety, or infrastructure impacts, HCD should encourage the jurisdiction to review and update objective standards so SMAP approvals can be implemented consistently with adopted local obligations.
HCD should clarify that objective, generally applicable standards implementing General Plan EIR mitigation, SOC contexts, CAP measures, CEQA GHG thresholds, VMT policies, or public works requirements are not prohibited merely because they address environmental or infrastructure implementation, provided they are adopted in advance and applied ministerially.
Section 500 reporting should identify whether SMAP approvals occur in jurisdictions with SOC, CAP, CEQA GHG threshold, or mitigation monitoring contexts relevant to transportation, VMT, GHG, infrastructure, or public safety.
HCD should require or strongly encourage non-discretionary public informational notice and durable online posting for SMAP applications, completeness or eligibility determinations, consistency determinations, approvals, modifications, subsequent permits, and implementation milestones, with the record maintained through project implementation.
7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-30926563472145507… 21/22 HCD should coordinate SMAP implementation with funding, technical assistance, public works coordination, objective standards guidance, and infrastructure capacity monitoring, because approval mandates without implementation support can increase local legal, fiscal, transportation, climate, public service, and infrastructure compliance risk.
HCD should recognize the broader State and federal trend toward housing streamlining, including H.R. 6644, and ensure that faster approval pathways are matched with objective standards, implementation records, modification tracking, public works coordination, durable public posting, technical assistance, and outcome reporting.
Conclusion
The Draft Updated SMAP Guidelines present HCD with an important implementation choice. The final Guidelines can be written as a narrow approval manual, focused primarily on what local governments may not do. Or they can be written as an implementation framework that recognizes the practical consequence of converting discretionary local review into ministerial approval: fewer discretionary checkpoints require stronger objective records, clearer assumptions, better cross-program coordination, and more transparent monitoring.
These comments urge the second approach. This is not an argument against housing generally. It is an argument for local implementation accountability. If the State mandates streamlined approvals, the State should also ensure that the implementing guidelines do not turn transportation, VMT, infrastructure, public works, affordability, and modification issues into disconnected program silos. That approach is especially important for jurisdictions operating under current General Plan EIR SOCs, CAPs, CEQA GHG thresholds, or mitigation monitoring programs. Those adopted documents may identify unresolved VMT, transportation, GHG, climate, public safety, or infrastructure conditions that do not disappear simply because a later project is ministerially approved.
The final Guidelines should therefore clarify that SMAP approval is not a VMT determination, a transportation adequacy determination, an infrastructure capacity determination, or a substitute for the implementation safeguards in related state and local programs. HCD should require a non-discretionary implementation record; preserve local objective standards; track modifications; expand reporting; validate transit, parking, and access assumptions where relied upon; and coordinate SMAP with AB 130, TOD Implementation, APR reporting, CEQA, SB 743, and local public works processes.
The final Guidelines should also encourage jurisdictions to convert adopted CEQA, CAP, GHG, VMT, transportation, and public works obligations into objective standards for use during ministerial review. They should provide technical assistance to do so without creating a disguised discretionary review.
That need for implementation accountability is reinforced, not reduced, by the broader State and federal movement toward housing streamlining, including H.R. 6644's emphasis on regulatory modernization, NEPA streamlining, public land inventories, flexible funding, and standardized implementation tools.
California should move beyond regulatory checkbox compliance. A streamlined process should not be considered successful merely because it produces approvals. It should be considered successful when approved projects are physically implementable, transparently documented, consistent with their assumptions, coordinated across programs, supported by objective local implementation standards, noticed in a durable and timely way, and delivered in a manner that local agencies and the public can verify.
Thank you for considering these comments.
Respectfully submitted,
Brian C. Swanson, AICP
San Ramon, California
- mobile
7/13/26, 6:34 PM Gmail - Public Comment on Draft Updated Streamlined Ministerial Approval Process (SMAP) Guidelines https://mail.google.com/mail/u/2/?ik=2d0fbfffac&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r5258438534188376829%7Cmsg-a:r-30926563472145507… 22/22
The attached July 7 comment should be understood as addressing issues applicable to:
the City Council;
the Planning Commission;
commissions;
committees;
advisory bodies;
other Brown Act bodies;
and other City decision-making processes.
The primary issue requiring the City Council's attention is the City Attorney's June 30, 2026, presentation at the Special City Council Meeting regarding meeting procedures, public participation, and procedural authority.
The June 30, 2026 Special City Council Meeting was scheduled for 5:00 p.m. and addressed meeting procedures. However, the meeting itself raised transparency concerns because it was not streamed, and the available information did not provide sufficiently clear instructions on remote observation, access, or participation.
More importantly, the City Attorney's Agenda Item 2.1 presentation materials were not posted to the CivicClerk platform until after the June 30 meeting.
As a result, members of the public who attempted to comment on the meeting procedure did not have access to the presentation materials before the meeting.
My June 30 public comments therefore could not fully address the substance, framing, and legal hierarchy presented in the City Attorney's materials because the materials were not publicly available at the time of the meeting.
The July 7, 2026 Planning Commission meeting was the next meaningful City public meeting opportunity for the public to address the substance of the City Attorney's presentation, with the benefit of reviewing the actual presentation materials. The attached July 7 comment therefore addressed the broader City-wide implications of the presentation, including:
the relationship between Robert's Rules of Order and controlling legal authority; Brown Act obligations;
constitutional protections;
public participation rights;
written public comments;
meeting writings;
CivicClerk posting practices;
and administrative record integrity.
The issue is not whether Robert's Rules of Order can be useful.
They can be.
Robert's Rules may assist with motions, recognition, debate management, reconsideration, and orderly meeting procedures where adopted by the City.
The issue is the legal hierarchy.
Robert's Rules of Order are not an independent source of governmental authority and should not be presented in a manner that could reasonably suggest that parliamentary procedure supersedes:
1. the United States Constitution;
2. the First Amendment;
3. the California Constitution;
4. the Ralph M. Brown Act;
5. other applicable statutes;
6. the San Ramon Municipal Code;
7. City-adopted rules and procedures; or
8. other controlling legal authority.
Robert's Rules apply only because and to the extent a public agency has adopted them, and only where consistent with higher legal authority.
That distinction is fundamental.
Public meetings are not private meetings of governmental bodies with the public merely observing.
They are the people's business conducted by public bodies in public.
Government Code section 54950 recognizes that public commissions, boards, councils, and other public agencies exist to aid in conducting the people's business and that the people do not surrender their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them.
Accordingly, City meeting-procedure training and guidance should clearly establish the proper hierarchy of authority.
The City should not unintentionally create confusion among elected officials, appointed officials, staff, applicants, or members of the public regarding whether parliamentary procedure controls over statutory and constitutional obligations.
This issue applies City-wide.
It affects:
City Council meetings;
Planning Commission meetings;
advisory commissions;
committees;
task forces;
and all other Brown Act bodies.
It also affects:
public comment;
meeting decorum;
speaker recognition;
written comments;
public records;
remote access;
and administrative record development.
The City should therefore review and revise meeting procedure training materials to ensure that:
Robert's Rules are clearly identified as subordinate parliamentary procedure; Brown Act requirements are accurately described;
constitutional protections are recognized;
public participation rights are preserved;
written comments and meeting writings are addressed;
and administrative record responsibilities are incorporated.
The City should also ensure that future meeting-procedure presentations, legal guidance, and training materials are posted sufficiently in advance of the meeting at which they will be discussed so that members of the public have a meaningful opportunity to review and comment on those materials.
This is not merely a transparency issue.
It is a planning and governance issue.
Planning decisions depend upon public trust, meaningful participation, reliable records, and confidence that decision-making procedures are fair and accessible.
The American Planning Association Ethical Principles in Planning and the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct emphasize:
serving the public interest;
meaningful participation;
access to information;
equity;
fair treatment;
long-range consequences;
and public trust.
Those principles apply not only to individual planning approvals, but also to the procedures through which public decisions are made.
Accordingly, I respectfully request that the City Council:
1. Include this written public comment in the July 14, 2026 City Council Agenda Item 4 Public Comment record.
2. Incorporate Attachment A, the July 7, 2026 Planning Commission written public comment, into the City Council record.
3. Recognize that the issues identified in Attachment A are City-wide governance issues applicable to the City Council, Planning Commission, all Brown Act bodies, advisory bodies, commissions, committees, and other City decision-making bodies.
4. Direct review and correction of meeting-procedure training materials to ensure that Robert's Rules of Order are accurately described as subordinate parliamentary procedure and not as controlling authority over the Brown Act, constitutional protections, municipal law, or other controlling legal requirements.
5. Ensure future meeting-procedure training includes:
written public comments;
meeting writings;
CivicClerk posting;
public visibility timestamps;
Government Code section 54957.5;
remote access procedures;
and administrative record preservation.
6. Continue improving City-wide transparency practices so that public participation is meaningful, timely, and consistent across all City decision-making bodies.
The City should view this issue as an opportunity to strengthen public trust.
Orderly meetings and meaningful public participation are not competing objectives.
A well-designed public process requires both.
Robert's Rules can help organize a meeting.
They cannot define the public's rights.
The law does that.
Thank you for considering this comment and Attachment A.
Respectfully submitted,
Brian C. Swanson, AICP
San Ramon Resident, Voter, and Taxpayer
Attachment A:
Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 – Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 – Year in Review – Access, Meeting Procedures, Planning Ethics, Year in Review, CEQA, VMT, Appeal Access, Regulatory Baseline, Fiscal Analysis, and Administrative Record Integrity – Planning Commission Meeting – July 7, 2026 On Fri, Jul 10, 2026 at 5:45 PM City of San Ramon <[email protected]>
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City of San Ramon | 7000 Bollinger Canyon Road, San Ramon, CA 94583 | (925) 973-2500 | www.sanramon.ca.gov Brian Swanson < >
Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 - Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 - Year in Review - Access, Meeting Procedures, Planning Ethics, Year in Review, CEQA, VMT, Appeal Access, Regulatory Baseline, Fiscal Analysis, and Administrative Record Integrity - Planning Commission Meeting - July 7, 2026
Brian Swanson > Mon, Jul 6, 2026 at 11:54 AM
To: Clerk City <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected], Council City <[email protected]>, Finance <[email protected]> Dear Planning Commission Members:
Please accept this written public comment for the City of San Ramon Planning Commission regular meeting of July 7, 2026. Please place this comment in the red binder and post it online under the July 7, 2026 meeting date within Public Comment, consistent with the agenda's written comment instructions.
Please associate this comment with Agenda Item 4, Public Comment, to the extent it addresses general Planning Commission access, transparency, written comment procedures, meeting procedures, appeal access, California Environmental Quality Act procedures, public records, planning ethics, and administrative record issues within the Planning Commission's subject matter jurisdiction. Please also associate this comment with Agenda Item 8.2, Year in Review, to the extent it addresses the Planning Services Year in Review presentation, the public's ability to review and comment on that presentation, and the continuing disconnect between the City's planning success narrative and the public's ability to meaningfully review, verify, comment on, appeal, and challenge the City's planning record.
This comment is not a substantive comment on Agenda Item 7.1, Windflower Fields, or Agenda Item 8.1, Olive + Oak.
References to those items are included only to compare agenda treatment, public access, staff report completeness, public comment clarity, appeal access, fiscal analysis, California Environmental Quality Act practice, and administrative record issues that also bear directly on Agenda Items 4 and 8.2.
I. Summary of Requests
I respectfully request that the Planning Commission and City staff do the following:
1. Confirm on the record whether Agenda Item 8.2 is informational only and whether the public will be invited to comment on Agenda Item 8.2 before or during the Commission's consideration of the item.
2. Post any Agenda Item 8.2 Year in Review slide deck, outline, handout, written summary, or other presentation material in CivicClerk before the item is heard, if such material exists before the item is presented.
3. If the Year in Review slide deck is not posted until the meeting or after the meeting, keep the written comment record open for a reasonable period after the materials are posted and post any timely later comments in the same CivicClerk Public Comment location for the July 7, 2026 meeting. 7/13/26, 7:47 PM Gmail - Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 - Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 - Year in Review - Access, Meeting Procedures… https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=73ed25eff8&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-a:r-3615012802210439113&simpl=msg-a:r-36150128022104… 1/14
4. Do not treat materials provided only at the dais, only in the red binder, only in the meeting room, or only after the meeting as a meaningful substitute for public access before or during the item, especially where the City's own agenda creates a two-hour written comment cutoff and promises online posting of timely comments.
5. Use the Year in Review to identify not only entitlement activity and project processing, but also unresolved public access, written comment, CivicClerk, California Environmental Quality Act, appeal deposit, fiscal impact, regulatory baseline, Vehicle Miles Traveled, planning ethics, and administrative record issues that affected the planning process during the review year.
6. Update the City's meeting procedure guidance to clarify that City Council, Planning Commission, committee, and commission meetings are the people's business conducted by public bodies, not proceedings that "belong strictly" to the body itself.
7. Correct any meeting procedure guidance that places Robert's Rules of Order above, or appears to place Robert's Rules above, the Brown Act, the First Amendment, the California Constitution, the Municipal Code, City-adopted rules, or other controlling law.
8. Clarify that Robert’s Rules of Order apply only because and to the extent adopted by the City, and only where not inconsistent with higher legal authority.
9. Update remote access guidance to distinguish AB 2449 from the newer SB 707 and Government Code sections 54953.4 and 54953.8 framework, and to distinguish City Council obligations from Planning Commission, committee, and advisory body procedures.
10. Add written public comments, meeting writings, CivicClerk posting, supplemental materials, red binder access, public visibility timestamps, and Government Code section 54957.5 to any City meeting procedure training.
11. Review the agenda's attendee conduct language to ensure it does not prohibit protected criticism or speech that does not actually disrupt the meeting, merely because comments are harsh, critical, uncomfortable, unfavorable, or disagreeable.
12. Acknowledge in the Year in Review that the Planning Commission appeal deposit was reduced effective July 1, 2026, but that the prior $4,500 Planning Commission appeal deposit operated during the planning year being reviewed and during a period of rapid Planning Commission and City Council approvals.
13. Acknowledge that the City's public Zoning Appeal webpage still appears to list the prior July 1, 2025 fees, including $4,500 Planning Commission appeal deposits, even though the FY2026/27 Master Fee Schedule now lists $1,500 deposits for Zoning Administrator appeals and $2,500 deposits for Planning Commission appeals. (San Ramon)
14. Include in the Year in Review a candid discussion of how the City's appeal deposit structure affected public oversight during the review year, including whether the prior $4,500 Planning Commission appeal deposit chilled appeals by residents, neighborhood groups, members of the public on fixed incomes, and other interested parties.
15. Include in the Year in Review a candid discussion of whether the City's appeal deposit structure, fast and furious sequencing of approvals, and reliance on prior California Environmental Quality Act review are consistent with American Planning Association ethics principles and the American Institute of Certified Planners Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, including public interest, meaningful participation, equity, transparency, fair treatment, long-range consequences, and public trust.
16. Include in the Year in Review a candid discussion of how the City is using the General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report, the Updated Climate Action Plan, the California Environmental Quality Act Greenhouse Gas Emissions Thresholds and Guidance Report, Ordinance 529, Ordinance 534, the Objective Design and Development Standards, later project-specific design guidelines, State Density Bonus waivers, and later project approvals together.
17. Do not present General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report consistency as a complete substitute for analysis of the current regulatory baseline, current cumulative setting, actual approvals granted after General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report certification, and current cumulative environmental consequences.
18. Do not treat the absence of appeals as evidence of public acceptance where a substantial deposit requirement shaped appeal access during the year being reviewed.
19. Preserve any records showing when the Agenda Item 8.2 slide deck or related materials were created, finalized, routed, distributed, uploaded, made visible to the public, or posted after the meeting. 7/13/26, 7:47 PM Gmail - Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 - Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 - Year in Review - Access, Meeting Procedures… https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=73ed25eff8&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-a:r-3615012802210439113&simpl=msg-a:r-36150128022104… 2/14 II. Access and Transparency Should Be the First Part of the Year in Review Agenda Item 8.2 is listed only as:
8.2. Year in Review
Presentation by: Lucas Haase, Assistant Planner
No staff report, staff report shell, executive summary, topic list, slide deck, outline, written summary, recommendation, or public comment procedure for Agenda Item 8.2 appears in the posted agenda packet. By contrast, Agenda Item 8.1 includes a staff report and expressly states that staff recommends the Commission receive the staff report, take public comment, and provide feedback.
I understand that Agenda Item 8.2 appears under Commissioner Reports and Staff Updates and appears to be informational only. I am not asserting that every informational update requires a full staff report. But a Year in Review is, by its nature, a staff narrative about the City's planning year. If that narrative is presented through slides, written materials, charts, lists of projects, housing production claims, entitlement updates, California Environmental Quality Act summaries, appeal statistics, public comment summaries, or administrative process metrics, the public should be able to review those materials before the item is heard, or at least have a meaningful opportunity to submit written later comments that are posted in the same Public Comment location linked to the meeting.
The City's agenda creates a written comment cutoff. It states that comments received up to two hours before the meeting will be emailed to the Commission, placed in the red binder at the back of the meeting room, and posted online in CivicClerk under the meeting date within Public Comment. That is an important procedure. But that procedure becomes hollow if the public does not receive the substance of an informational presentation until the dais, the meeting room, or one or two days after the meeting.
After the meeting, a written comment becomes archival rather than participatory. By then, the Commission has already received the staff narrative, the item has already been presented, and other interested members of the public have no realistic opportunity to read and respond to written comments before the item is complete. That imbalance matters even where no formal action is taken.
Government Code section 54954.3 protects the public's opportunity to address the body before or during consideration of agenda items within the body's subject matter jurisdiction. It also states that the body may not prohibit public criticism of agency policies, procedures, programs, services, or the acts or omissions of the legislative body. (Legislative Information) If the City's expected response is that the Year in Review will also be presented to the City Council later, that should be stated on the record. The City should also ensure that the City Council version includes a posted slide deck or agenda summary before the Council receives the presentation, along with a clear opportunity for written public comments to be posted online before the item is heard.
A later City Council presentation should not be used to justify minimizing public access at the Planning Commission stage. If anything, the Planning Commission presentation should be the opportunity to identify what the public needs to see before the City Council receives the same or similar Year in Review narrative.
III. Agenda Item 4 and Agenda Item 8.2 Both Raise Public Comment Clarity Issues The agenda's general Public Comment section appears to focus on non-agenda items and Consent Calendar items. It does not clearly state how the public may comment on an informational item such as Agenda Item 8.2. By contrast, Agenda Item 8.1 expressly states that staff recommends the Commission receive the staff report, take public comment, and provide feedback. Agenda Item 8.2 contains no comparable statement.
To avoid confusion, the Chair should expressly invite comment on Agenda Item 8.2 before or during the Commission's consideration of the Year in Review. The public comment right should not depend on whether the item is framed as a public hearing, a study session, a special presentation, a staff update, or an informational presentation.
IV. The City Should Not Use a Dais or Red Binder Timing Practice to Defeat Meaningful Written Comment The City controls when staff materials are finalized, routed, uploaded, made public, received by Commissioners, and when public comment is taken. The public does not control any of those steps.
That creates a structural imbalance. The City may impose a written comment cutoff. But if the City withholds the substance of an informational presentation until the dais, or posts the slides after the meeting, interested members of the public cannot review the material, prepare informed written comments, and have those comments posted online for other members of the public to see before the item is presented. 7/13/26, 7:47 PM Gmail - Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 - Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 - Year in Review - Access, Meeting Procedures… https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=73ed25eff8&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-a:r-3615012802210439113&simpl=msg-a:r-36150128022104… 3/14 The issue is not whether a copy exists somewhere in the room. The issue is whether the public can actually participate in the written comment process the City itself created. A red binder in the back of the meeting room, made available at or near the start of the meeting, does not give remote viewers the same access. It also does not give any member of the public time to read a presentation, draft a comment, submit it before the City's cutoff, and have it posted online before the item is heard.
Government Code section 54957.5 requires public access to qualifying writings related to agenda items when distributed to all or a majority of the body, and it separately addresses writings distributed during a meeting. That statute should not be treated as permission to manage the timing of releases in a way that technically places a copy in the room while circumventing meaningful written comments and public review before an informational item is presented. (Legislative Information)
The City should therefore treat the following as separate duties and best practices.
First, any materials distributed to the Commission should be made available as required by Government Code section 54957.5.
Second, any materials prepared for an informational presentation should be posted early enough for the public to understand the presentation's subject matter before the item is heard, whenever practicable.
Third, if the City chooses not to post those materials before the meeting, it should not close the public comment record before the public has had a meaningful opportunity to review them.
Fourth, if the materials are posted only after the meeting, the City should keep the written comment record open for a reasonable period and post later comments in the same CivicClerk Public Comment location for the meeting.
This is a requested transparency standard and public participation practice. It is also a record preservation issue. If the City believes the Brown Act allows a lower legal minimum for informational presentations, the Year in Review should be candid about that. The public should know whether San Ramon's policy is meaningful participation or minimum compliance.
V. The June 30 Meeting Procedures Special Meeting Demonstrates the Problem There is an irony in the City holding a special meeting about public hearings and meeting procedures, even as the meeting itself raised questions about access and transparency.
The June 30, 2026 Special City Council meeting on public hearing procedures was held in the City Hall Training Room.
The agenda identified the Training Room, but the public materials did not clearly or prominently state whether the meeting would be streamed, whether remote observation would be available, or whether the Training Room lacked the same viewing infrastructure as the Council Chamber.
That matters because a meeting about meeting access and procedures should model the same public access clarity it teaches. A member of the public should not have to infer from the room name, technology assumptions, or prior experience whether a meeting will be viewable remotely. At a minimum, the agenda should clearly state whether streaming, remote observation, and remote comment are available, whether the room has cameras, and whether the meeting will be archived.
The same concern applies to CivicClerk records. The public should not have to guess whether a document date, agenda packet date, "posted on" date, event view date, or portal feed date is the actual public visibility time. Public participation depends on knowing when materials became visible, where they were posted, and whether written comments were available to other interested members of the public before the item was heard.
The Year in Review should not simply report planning activity. It should also acknowledge whether the City's meeting material, supplemental material, public comment, and CivicClerk practices have become more reliable, more transparent, and more usable for the public.
VI. The City's Meeting Procedure Guidance Should Be Corrected and Completed The City Attorney's recent presentation usefully distinguished actual disruption from protected criticism in several examples. However, the presentation also reflected gaps that should be corrected before those concepts are carried forward to commissions and committees. The uploaded analysis of that presentation identifies the "Council Sovereignty" framing, the Robert's Rules issue, the AB 2449/SB 707 issue, and the omissions of written comments, CivicClerk posting, red binder procedures, posting timestamps, and Government Code section 54957.5. 7/13/26, 7:47 PM Gmail - Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 - Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 - Year in Review - Access, Meeting Procedures… https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=73ed25eff8&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-a:r-3615012802210439113&simpl=msg-a:r-36150128022104… 4/14 First, the statement that a City Council meeting "belongs strictly to the Council itself, not to the audience" should be corrected. A City Council meeting or Planning Commission meeting is not private property of the body. It is the PEOPLE'S business conducted by the public body in public. Government Code section 54950 states that public commissions, boards, councils, and other public agencies exist to aid in conducting the PEOPLE'S business, and that the people do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them. (Legislative Information)
Second, Robert's Rules of Order should be described as subordinate local procedure, not independent controlling law.
The problem is not that Robert's Rules were mentioned. Robert's Rules can be useful for motions, recognition, deliberation, debate management, reconsideration, and meeting order where the City has adopted them. The problem is any presentation, ordering of authorities, or training approach that suggests Robert's Rules take precedence over the Brown Act, the First Amendment, the California Constitution, the San Ramon Municipal Code, Cityadopted rules, or other controlling law.
The correct hierarchy should be stated plainly:
1. Federal and state constitutional law;
2. the Brown Act and other applicable statutes;
3. the San Ramon Municipal Code and City-adopted rules; and
4. Robert’s Rules of Order only to fill procedural gaps, and only where not inconsistent with higher authority.
Robert's Rules cannot be used to narrow public comment rights, public access to meeting writings, recording rights, speaker protections, or viewpoint-neutral participation rights. The City Attorney's presentation should therefore be corrected to make clear that Robert's Rules are subordinate to controlling law and cannot be used as a procedural shortcut around public access, public comment, or constitutional protections.
Third, the City should clarify whether City Council rules apply directly to the Planning Commission and other appointed bodies, whether each commission or committee has separate bylaws or rules, and whether the Council is adopting any common meeting procedures for appointed bodies. Training titled for City Council, Commission, and Committee meetings should not rely on a Council-focused resolution without explaining how that resolution applies to each body.
Fourth, the discussion on remote access should be updated. A training deck should not use AB 2449 as the leading shorthand for the current 2026 framework without also distinguishing the newer SB 707 and Government Code sections 54953.4 and 54953.8 framework, the July 1, 2026 operative issues for certain eligible bodies, and the difference between City Council meetings, Planning Commission meetings, committee meetings, traditional teleconferencing, alternative teleconferencing, disability accommodation, and optional greater access practices.
Fifth, written public comments and meeting writings should be addressed directly. Any meeting procedure training that focuses on disruption, decorum, speaker cards, and Robert's Rules but omits written public comments, supplemental materials, CivicClerk posting, red binder access, public visibility timestamps, and Government Code section 54957.5 is incomplete. These are not minor administrative details. They are central to the public's ability to participate meaningfully.
Sixth, the City should review the attendee conduct language used in agendas. The July 7 Planning Commission agenda includes categorical language such as "No profanity or obscenity" and references to "excessive profanity or slander." The City has legitimate authority to prevent actual disruption, enforce reasonable time limits, keep comments related to the item or subject matter jurisdiction, and address true threats or conduct that prevents the meeting from proceeding. But categorical language should not be used to suppress criticism merely because it is harsh, pointed, uncomfortable, or unfavorable to City officials, staff, applicants, consultants, or policies.
Government Code section 54957.95 defines disruption as behavior that actually disrupts, disturbs, impedes, or renders infeasible the orderly conduct of the meeting, or behavior involving force or a true threat of force. (Legislative Information) The cleaner standard is actual disruption, true threats, refusal to comply with reasonable time and topic rules, or conduct that prevents the meeting from continuing, not viewpoint, tone, or the fact that criticism is directed at City policies, procedures, programs, services, acts, or omissions.
Seventh, the agenda should refer to "members of the public," not "citizens," when describing public meeting rights. Brown Act access and comment rights are not limited to San Ramon residents, voters, taxpayers, or United States citizens.
VII. The Year in Review Should Acknowledge the Appeal Fee Moat During the Review Year The Year in Review should accurately acknowledge the appeal fee issue and provide temporal context.
I understand that the City reduced appeal deposits effective July 1, 2026. The current Fiscal Year 2026/27 Master Fee Schedule lists $1,500 deposits for appeals from Zoning Administrator decisions and $2,500 deposits for appeals from Planning Commission decisions. That reduction should be acknowledged. 7/13/26, 7:47 PM Gmail - Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 - Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 - Year in Review - Access, Meeting Procedures… https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=73ed25eff8&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-a:r-3615012802210439113&simpl=msg-a:r-36150128022104… 5/14 However, the reduction does not erase what occurred during the fiscal year under review, nor does it resolve the ongoing access problem.
During the relevant review year, the City maintained a much higher appeal deposit structure, including a $4,500 Planning Commission appeal deposit. The City's own Zoning Appeal webpage still states "Fees effective July 1, 2025" and lists $4,500 deposits for Planning Commission appeals of decisions on residential and nonresidential property. That same page appears not to have been updated to reflect the Fiscal Year 2026/27 reductions. (San Ramon) That distinction matters because the Year in Review is retrospective. The issue is not only what the fee will be after July 1, 2026. The issue is what appeal access existed while the City, Planning Commission, and City Council were processing and approving a rapid succession of major redevelopment actions.
The July 7 Planning Commission agenda states that Planning Commission decisions may be appealed within 10 calendar days by filing a letter with the City Clerk's office stating the grounds for appeal and paying the appropriate filing fee. That statement preserves the existence of a "zoning" appeal right on paper. It does not tell a member of the public, at the point of decision, what the fee is, what the deposit risk is, whether additional deposits may be required, how refunds are handled, whether the City's website is current, or whether any hardship process exists.
For the planning year under review, the practical effect was significant. The City was processing major redevelopment approvals for Bishop Ranch and the former Chevron headquarters in rapid succession. Interested parties facing a 10-day appeal window had to evaluate complex issues related to the California Environmental Quality Act, Vehicle Miles Traveled, fiscal impacts, infrastructure, public services, traffic, regulatory baselines, design guidelines, parking, and cumulative impacts, while also confronting substantial appeal costs. In that setting, the appeal deposit did not function as a neutral administrative detail. It functioned as a barrier to review.
The prior $4,500 appeal deposit was astronomically high compared with ordinary public participation expectations. I am not aware of a national appeal fee survey sufficient to state definitively that it was the highest planning appeal deposit in the nation. Still, it was possibly among the highest such appeal deposits in ordinary municipal planning practice. Even after the July 1, 2026 reduction, the current $2,500 Planning Commission appeal deposit remains high, especially when compared to surrounding jurisdictions and when viewed through the lens of public participation, equity, and access to administrative review.
The City's later reduction of the appeal deposit is relevant. Still, it does not cure the access problem for approvals that already moved forward while the higher deposit was in effect. Nor does it answer whether the City has evaluated the chilling effect of the prior fee structure during the year being reviewed. The fee reduction also does not resolve the continuing concern that even the reduced $2,500 Planning Commission appeal deposit remains a practical barrier for many residents, neighborhood groups, members of the public on fixed incomes, and other non-applicant appellants.
The problem is sharper in the Bishop Ranch context. Sunset Development Company and related Bishop Ranch entities have pursued a series of redevelopment approvals implementing the transformation of the Bishop Ranch Business Park, including the former Chevron headquarters site. The City Council created and maintained the appeal cost structure during the relevant period, while the Planning Commission and City Council then approved or advanced major redevelopment actions under a record that repeatedly relied on the General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report and prior California Environmental Quality Act determinations.
With the partial exception of the Orchards record, the public has not received serious analysis specific to each project or cumulative fiscal impact analysis for the combined Bishop Ranch Business Park redevelopment program. Even for Orchards, the adequacy of the fiscal, California Environmental Quality Act, Vehicle Miles Traveled, transportation demand management, public services, infrastructure, regulatory baseline, and cumulative analysis remains disputed. The same concern applies to BR-7, BR-11, and related Bishop Ranch redevelopment actions.
The City's appeal deposit system therefore does more than make appeals expensive. It narrows who can force City Council review before a project becomes another completed step in the City's planning narrative. Then, if no appeal is filed, the City and applicants may later argue that administrative remedies were not exhausted. That is the structural unfairness: the City creates a high-cost barrier to local appeal, proceeds with approvals, and then treats the lack of appeal as a litigation defense.
The Year in Review should not omit that reality.
A candid Year in Review should identify how many Planning Commission decisions were appealable, how many were appealed, what appeal deposits applied at the time, what refunds were issued, how many appeals were not pursued because of cost, and whether the City Council has evaluated the effect of its fee structure on public participation, equity, and administrative exhaustion.
7/13/26, 7:47 PM Gmail - Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 - Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 - Year in Review - Access, Meeting Procedures… https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=73ed25eff8&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-a:r-3615012802210439113&simpl=msg-a:r-36150128022104… 6/14 The City should not treat the absence of appeals as evidence of public acceptance when a substantial deposit requirement shaped access to appeals during the year under review. A later reduction is welcome, but it does not alter the historical fact that the higher appeal structure operated during a key period of rapid approvals.
VIII. The Appeal Fee Moat and Fast Approval Sequencing Raise Planning Ethics Issues The issue of appeal fees is also a matter of planning ethics.
The American Planning Association's Ethical Principles in Planning are not limited to certified planners. They are expressly framed as principles for "certified planners, other practicing planners, appointed and elected officials, and others who participate in the process of planning." They state that planning exists to serve the public interest and that planning issues often involve large private interests, which makes high standards of fairness and honesty necessary. (American Planning Association).
Those principles also call on planning process participants to give the public full, clear, and accurate information and a meaningful role in developing plans and programs, to make nonconfidential information available to the public in a convenient format sufficiently in advance of decisions, and to pay special attention to the interrelatedness of decisions and the long-range consequences of present actions. (American Planning Association) The American Institute of Certified Planners Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct similarly states that its aspirational principles apply to all who participate in the planning process, including planners, advisory bodies, and decision makers.
It calls for timely, adequate, clear, accessible, and accurate information; meaningful, timely, and informed participation; attention to equity, diversity, and inclusion; and identification of human and environmental consequences, including shortand long-term costs and benefits. (American Planning Association) Measured against those principles, the City's approach during the review year raises serious concerns. A $4,500 Planning Commission appeal deposit, imposed during a year of fast-and-furious redevelopment sequencing, is difficult to reconcile with meaningful participation, equity, fair treatment, and public trust. Reducing the fee after the fact does not erase the chilling effect during the year being reviewed. Nor does it cure the effects of rapid approvals, in which members of the public were expected to absorb large packets, evaluate California Environmental Quality Act and fiscal issues, preserve administrative objections, and decide whether to pay thousands of dollars in appeal deposits within a short appeal window.
The rapid-fire approval pattern also matters ethically because planning is not merely about processing applications quickly. Efficient processing is valuable only if the process remains transparent, equitable, candid, and durable. A planning program that rapidly advances major redevelopment approvals while limiting access to practical appeal, repeatedly relies on prior environmental review, fails to disclose or post materials in time for informed comment, and omits cumulative fiscal and environmental consequences is not merely a faster planning program. It risks becoming a process that excludes the very public participation planning ethics are intended to protect.
The Year in Review should not treat rapid sequencing as a success metric without also assessing whether the sequencing gave the public, Planning Commissioners, City Councilmembers, and affected agencies sufficient time to understand the combined effects of the approvals. Planning ethics require more than counting applications, study sessions, approvals, and housing units, and will be treated accordingly. They require public trust, meaningful participation, equity, fair treatment, and a record that the public can understand and test before decisions become effectively locked in.
IX. The Year in Review Should Acknowledge the Missing Regulatory Baseline, Not Merely Prior EIR Tiering
A Planning Year in Review should not present entitlement activity, housing approvals, climate planning, and redevelopment as separate success stories while omitting the common California Environmental Quality Act pattern connecting them.
The issue is broader than tiering from the General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report. It is also broader than the absence of serious analysis specific to each project and cumulative fiscal analysis. The more complete concern is that the City has repeatedly relied on prior environmental review while failing to provide a current analysis of the regulatory baseline, current project configuration, and current cumulative setting.
That matters because the regulatory baseline after the General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report was not static.
After certification of that Environmental Impact Report, the City adopted or applied multiple later actions that changed the development and environmental context for Bishop Ranch and the former Chevron headquarters area, including:
1. Ordinance 529, reducing the minimum sitewide Floor Area Ratio in Downtown Mixed Use North; 7/13/26, 7:47 PM Gmail - Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 - Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 - Year in Review - Access, Meeting Procedures… https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=73ed25eff8&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-a:r-3615012802210439113&simpl=msg-a:r-36150128022104… 7/14
2. Ordinance 534, changing multi-family parking standards, guest parking standards, parking reduction procedures, and shared or collective parking concepts;
3. the City's Objective Design and Development Standards;
4. later project-specific design guidelines, including the Orchards Design Guidelines;
5. the Updated Climate Action Plan;
6. the California Environmental Quality Act Greenhouse Gas Emissions Thresholds and Guidance Report;
7. multiple later Bishop Ranch and downtown approvals, including BR-7, BR-11, Orchards, and other related redevelopment actions; and
8. current construction, demolition, circulation, transportation demand management, parking, public service, infrastructure, and cumulative development conditions.
Those are not background facts. They are part of the current planning and environmental setting.
The former Chevron headquarters redevelopment is the clearest example. The City approved a 20-year Orchards Master Plan, the first implementing Neighborhood District, project-specific Design Guidelines, State Density Bonus waivers, demolition, grading, phasing, circulation assumptions, and a California Environmental Quality Act determination that no further review was required. That was not merely confirmation that the site had been identified for future redevelopment in the General Plan. It was a major redevelopment approval package with its own current facts, departures, phasing, and cumulative consequences.
The City's record should have analyzed that full current setting. It should have explained how Ordinance 529's Floor Area Ratio reduction, Ordinance 534's parking changes, the substitution of Orchards Design Guidelines for citywide Objective Design and Development Standards, the State Density Bonus waivers, and the evolving Bishop Ranch redevelopment pipeline affected Vehicle Miles Traveled, greenhouse gas emissions, air quality, noise, safety, circulation, public services, infrastructure, and cumulative impacts.
Instead, the City's approach has often treated General Plan consistency as a complete answer. It is not. General Plan consistency may be relevant to streamlining under the California Environmental Quality Act. Still, it does not erase the need to address project effects that are peculiar to the project or site; effects not previously analyzed; off-site and cumulative impacts not adequately evaluated; or substantial new information showing that impacts may be more severe than previously understood.
The City's own General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report did not eliminate the Vehicle Miles Traveled issue. It identified significant and unavoidable Vehicle Miles Traveled impacts and adopted a Statement of Overriding Considerations. A Statement of Overriding Considerations is not a hall pass for later approvals. It is an acknowledgment that the City approved a plan despite a significant impact. When later approvals change the regulatory setting, reduce intensity standards, revise parking rules, apply new project-specific design guidelines, grant State Density Bonus waivers, and advance a series of redevelopment approvals in the same area, the City must explain why those later actions do not create new, more severe, or insufficiently analyzed environmental effects.
That is the missing analysis. The problem is not merely that the City tiered from the General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report. The problem is that the City tiered from that Environmental Impact Report without adequately confronting the later regulatory baseline and cumulative setting that the City itself created after the Environmental Impact Report was certified.
The regulatory baseline issue is not a technical footnote. It goes to whether the City's planning decisions are being evaluated against the actual rules, standards, waivers, approvals, and cumulative conditions in effect when the City makes later decisions. A Year in Review that lists approvals without acknowledging this issue would give the public an incomplete planning narrative.
X. The Chevron Headquarters Irony Goes Directly to Climate Credibility and Public Trust The former Chevron headquarters redevelopment also creates a planning and climate irony that should not be omitted from the Year in Review.
In California, Chevron is not merely a former San Ramon corporate tenant. The California Attorney General has sued Chevron and other oil and gas companies, alleging a decades-long campaign of deception and statewide climate harm related to fossil fuel products. Those allegations are not findings after trial. They are, however, official California enforcement allegations, making the climate context impossible to ignore. 7/13/26, 7:47 PM Gmail - Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 - Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 - Year in Review - Access, Meeting Procedures… https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=73ed25eff8&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-a:r-3615012802210439113&simpl=msg-a:r-36150128022104… 8/14 That makes the local planning irony unusually sharp. The City approved the Updated Climate Action Plan and California Environmental Quality Act Greenhouse Gas Emissions Thresholds and Guidance Report on June 10, 2025, while relying on or treating those actions as within the scope of the General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report. The City then continued to rely on the same General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report framework for major Bishop Ranch redevelopment approvals, including BR-7, BR-11, and the Orchards redevelopment of the former Chevron headquarters.
That would be less troubling if the General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report had resolved transportation impacts.
It did not. The City's own Statement of Overriding Considerations for the General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report identified transportation impacts related to Vehicle Miles Traveled as significant and unavoidable at the project and cumulative levels. A Statement of Overriding Considerations does not erase that impact. It acknowledges that the City approved the plan despite the impact.
The City should therefore not treat the same unresolved Vehicle Miles Traveled record as a hall pass for later approvals.
For Orchards, the issue is not merely that the site was designated for future redevelopment in a broad General Plan document. The City approved a 20-year Master Plan, the first implementing Neighborhood District, project-specific Design Guidelines, State Density Bonus waivers, demolition, grading, phasing, circulation assumptions, and a California Environmental Quality Act determination that no further review was required. That is not simply a confirmation of a land use designation. It is a major redevelopment approval package.
The City's own transportation and mitigation record also undercuts any simple "no further review" narrative. The public record has identified concerns about Vehicle Miles Traveled, changes in regulatory conditions, changes in parking and circulation, uncertainty in transportation demand management, and phased redevelopment issues. The question is not whether a prior General Plan Environmental Impact Report exists. The question is whether the City has provided a current, project-specific, cumulative, and enforceable explanation showing why later approvals remain adequately covered.
At the Orchards appeal hearing, I observed a Council Member physically slamming two recently prepared, reasonably thick, 11" x 17" design-related packets against the dais edge or railing as purported evidence of the work performed in evaluating the Orchards Development Project. That action is directly connected to a substantive record issue:
those two recently prepared, reasonably thick design-related packets contained extensive material that was not contemplated, analyzed, or evaluated in the December 2023-certified General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report, from which the Orchards project tiers.
Separately, and as a distinct procedural concern, the record appears to rely heavily on consultant-prepared materials and presentation-level summaries, including consultant live testimony regarding their own prepared work product, rather than demonstrating clear evidence of independent agency evaluation by City staff acting as the CEQA lead agency. While consultants may prepare technical studies and present their work, CEQA requires that the lead agency independently review, evaluate, and exercise judgment regarding the adequacy and conclusions of that material.
The physical act of emphasizing the thickness of the design packets is therefore connected to the first issue above, in that it underscores the volume and later-stage introduction of project material that was not fully reflected in, and in material respects exceeds, what the CEQA Section 15138 Initial Study checklist tiering framework carried forward from the certified General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report. The second issue follows directly: the presence of extensive consultant-prepared documentation and live testimony does not itself demonstrate that the City exercised independent analysis of whether that material was adequately incorporated into, or consistent with, the December 2023-certified General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report, or whether additional environmental review was required based on changed conditions, project-specific impacts, or cumulative effects.
Design effort, consultant presentation, or the physical volume of submitted materials is not a substitute for independent agency evaluation of environmental impacts, including Vehicle Miles Traveled, traffic operations, mitigation enforceability, construction phasing, fiscal impacts where relevant to infrastructure obligations, public service capacity, regulatory baseline consistency, or cumulative environmental effects.
The irony is broader than Orchards. The City approved the Updated Climate Action Plan and Greenhouse Gas thresholds, allowing BR-7 and BR-11 to proceed. It approved the redevelopment of the former Chevron headquarters, all while relying heavily on the General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report and its already unresolved Vehicle Miles Traveled record. For a former Chevron headquarters site, that disconnect is not just technical. It goes to public trust, climate credibility, and whether the City's planning narrative matches its California Environmental Quality Act practice.
A candid Year in Review should therefore identify the unresolved issues, not simply the approvals. It should acknowledge:
1. the City's continued reliance on the General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report; 7/13/26, 7:47 PM Gmail - Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 - Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 - Year in Review - Access, Meeting Procedures… https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=73ed25eff8&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-a:r-3615012802210439113&simpl=msg-a:r-36150128022104… 9/14
2. the General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report's significant and unavoidable Vehicle Miles Traveled impacts;
3. the City's use of Statements of Overriding Considerations for transportation impacts;
4. the City's approval of the Updated Climate Action Plan and Greenhouse Gas thresholds without resolving the broader subsequent review dispute;
5. the City's approval or advancement of BR-7, BR-11, Orchards, and other Bishop Ranch redevelopment actions under the same broader environmental framework;
6. the later regulatory changes, including Ordinance 529, Ordinance 534, Objective Design and Development Standards, project-specific design guidelines, and State Density Bonus waivers;
7. the absence of serious cumulative fiscal impact analysis for the combined Bishop Ranch Business Park redevelopment program;
8. the absence of a clear current cumulative environmental analysis addressing the later regulatory baseline and redevelopment pipeline;
9. the appeal deposit structure that chilled local administrative review during the planning year; and
10. the public access and administrative record issues that make it difficult for the public to verify the City's planning narrative in real time.
The Year in Review should not turn disputed approvals into a clean success story simply because the approvals have already occurred.
XI. Fiscal Impact Should Not Be Treated as "No Fiscal Impact" Merely Because No Action Is Taken at a Study Session or Presentation
The City often treats study sessions or informational presentations as having no fiscal impact because no formal action is requested at that meeting. That may be true in a narrow, staff report sense. It is not true in the broader planning sense.
A year-in-review of planning activity should include the fiscal consequences of the City's land use choices. The transformation of Bishop Ranch from an office park and corporate employment center into a housing and mixed use district has major implications for City revenues, service costs, infrastructure maintenance, parks, public safety, transportation, school capacity, utilities, construction impacts, and long-term municipal finance.
The City should not wait until each project is too far along to discuss fiscal impacts in isolation. Nor should it rely on developer-paid fees as if that resolves the cumulative fiscal question. A serious Planning Year in Review should explain whether the City has prepared or intends to prepare cumulative fiscal impact analysis for the combined Bishop Ranch redevelopment program, including the former Chevron headquarters site, BR-7, BR-11, Annabel, Canopy, and related redevelopment actions.
The fiscal issue is also linked to the appeal-fee moat. If the City imposes high appeal deposits on members of the public during the same period that it fails to provide a transparent cumulative fiscal analysis of the redevelopment program, then the City is simultaneously limiting public oversight and avoiding clear public accounting of the fiscal consequences.
That should not be the planning record San Ramon presents to the public.
XII. The Year in Review Should Distinguish Housing Production from Planning Accountability Housing production is important. The City can and should process housing applications lawfully, efficiently, and transparently. But housing production should not be used as a shield against public access, fiscal analysis, transportation analysis, environmental review, appeal access, or current regulatory baseline analysis.
A Year in Review should not merely count applications, units, study sessions, approvals, and permits. It should also ask whether the City's process is producing a durable record that the public can understand and test. That includes whether:
1. staff reports and attachments are posted early enough for meaningful review;
2. slide decks and presentation materials are posted before the item is heard;
3. written public comments are posted in the correct CivicClerk location before the body considers the item; 7/13/26, 7:47 PM Gmail - Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 - Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 - Year in Review - Access, Meeting Procedures… https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=73ed25eff8&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-a:r-3615012802210439113&simpl=msg-a:r-3615012802210… 10/14
4. public comments are labeled as public comments rather than hidden under generic supplemental material headings;
5. members of the public can determine when materials became visible online;
6. red binder procedures are described clearly enough for in-person participants and do not disadvantage remote viewers;
7. the City distinguishes the Brown Act minimum from the stronger transparency policy the public reasonably expects;
8. appeal deposits are excluding ordinary residents from administrative review;
9. the City provides serious cumulative fiscal analysis for major redevelopment programs;
10. the City provides current Vehicle Miles Traveled, greenhouse gas, traffic operations, public service, infrastructure, parking, design guideline, regulatory baseline, and cumulative environmental analysis for later approvals that rely on prior environmental review; and
11. the administrative record is complete before the decision, not reconstructed or discovered only after the practical opportunity to participate has passed.
These are planning issues. They are not merely City Clerk issues, legal issues, or litigation issues. They affect the quality, legitimacy, and durability of the City's planning decisions.
XIII. Specific Requests for Agenda Item 8.2
For Agenda Item 8.2, I respectfully request that the Planning Commission and staff:
1. Identify whether a Year in Review slide deck, outline, handout, or written presentation material exists.
2. Identify where and when any such material was or will be posted in CivicClerk.
3. Invite public comment on Agenda Item 8.2 before, during, and after the Commission's consideration of the item.
4. If the slide deck is not posted before the item is heard, keep the written comment record open after the slide deck is posted and post any timely later comments in the same July 7, 2026 CivicClerk Public Comment location.
5. If the Year in Review will later be presented to the City Council, ensure that the City Council agenda packet includes the slide deck or an agenda summary before the Council receives the presentation.
6. Include in the Year in Review a discussion of public access and administrative record improvements, not only project processing activity.
7. Include in the Year in Review a discussion of how many Planning Commission decisions were appealable, how many were appealed, what appeal deposits applied at the time of each decision, what refunds were issued, and whether the City has evaluated the chilling effect of its appeal deposit structure.
8. Acknowledge that the Planning Commission appeal deposit was reduced effective July 1, 2026, while also acknowledging that the higher $4,500 appeal deposit structure operated during the planning year being reviewed.
9. Identify why the City's Zoning Appeal webpage still appears to list the July 1, 2025 fees while the current FY2026/27 Master Fee Schedule lists reduced appeal deposits.
10. Identify whether the City has evaluated the equity and public participation effects of its appeal deposit structure, including whether the prior $4,500 deposit and the current $2,500 deposit are consistent with meaningful planning participation for residents, neighborhood groups, members of the public on fixed incomes, and other interested parties.
11. Do not treat the absence of appeals as evidence of public acceptance without acknowledging the cost barrier that existed during the review year.
12. Identify whether the City has prepared any cumulative fiscal impact analysis for the combined Bishop Ranch Business Park redevelopment approvals, including BR-7, BR-11, Orchards, and related Bishop Ranch housing and mixed use approvals.
7/13/26, 7:47 PM Gmail - Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 - Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 - Year in Review - Access, Meeting Procedures… https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=73ed25eff8&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-a:r-3615012802210439113&simpl=msg-a:r-3615012802210… 11/14
13. Identify whether the City has prepared any current cumulative environmental analysis for the combined Bishop Ranch redevelopment program after adoption of Ordinance 529, Ordinance 534, the Updated Climate Action Plan, and the California Environmental Quality Act Greenhouse Gas Emissions Thresholds and Guidance Report.
14. Identify whether the Year in Review will discuss Ordinance 529 and how the Downtown Mixed Use North Floor Area Ratio reduction affected the planning year, including BR-7, BR-11, and related Bishop Ranch approvals.
15. Identify whether the Year in Review will discuss Ordinance 534 and how the City's revised multi-family parking standards, guest parking standards, parking reduction procedures, and shared parking concepts affect Vehicle Miles Traveled, circulation, parking supply, and cumulative transportation assumptions.
16. Identify whether the City has evaluated the environmental consequences of substituting project-specific design guidelines for citywide Objective Design and Development Standards, including the Orchards Design Guidelines used for the former Chevron headquarters site.
17. Identify whether the City has evaluated the California Environmental Quality Act consequences of State Density Bonus waivers that affect Floor Area Ratio, design standards, parking, circulation, street medians, driveway location, open space, and other physical development assumptions.
18. Do not present General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report consistency as a complete substitute for analysis of the current regulatory baseline, current cumulative setting, and actual project approvals granted after the General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report was certified.
19. Include in the Year in Review a candid discussion of the City's reliance on the General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report, the Updated Climate Action Plan, the Greenhouse Gas thresholds, and prior Statements of Overriding Considerations for later Vehicle Miles Traveled sensitive approvals.
20. Include planning ethics in future planning process improvements, including American Planning Association ethics principles and the American Institute of Certified Planners Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct principles concerning public interest, equity, meaningful participation, timely and accurate information, fair treatment, longrange consequences, and public trust.
21. Clarify in future meeting procedure training that Robert's Rules of Order are subordinate to the Brown Act, the First Amendment, the California Constitution, the Municipal Code, City-adopted rules, and other controlling laws.
22. Preserve any records showing when the Agenda Item 8.2 slide deck or related materials were created, edited, finalized, routed, distributed, uploaded, made visible to the public, or posted after the meeting.
XIV. Requested Future Protocol
The City should adopt a durable protocol for written public comments and presentation materials. At a minimum, the protocol should provide that:
1. agendas identify where written comments will be posted;
2. CivicClerk uses a clear Public Comment label for written public comments;
3. public comments are linked to the meeting and, where feasible, to the agenda item;
4. materials are not hidden under generic supplemental material headings without description;
5. red binder procedures identify the location, time available, organization by agenda item, and relationship to any online posting;
6. staff presentation materials are posted before the item is heard whenever practicable;
7. if presentation materials are first posted after the meeting, later written comments are accepted for a reasonable period and posted in the same public comment location;
8. public visibility timestamps are preserved and, where feasible, made visible;
9. Special meeting agendas clearly state whether the meeting will be streamed, whether remote observation is available, whether remote comment is available, and whether the meeting will be archived; 7/13/26, 7:47 PM Gmail - Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 - Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 - Year in Review - Access, Meeting Procedures… https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=73ed25eff8&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-a:r-3615012802210439113&simpl=msg-a:r-3615012802210… 12/14
10. meeting procedure training covers written comments, meeting writings, supplemental materials, public visibility timestamps, and Government Code section 54957.5;
11. the City distinguishes minimum Brown Act compliance from the higher transparency practices needed for meaningful public participation;
12. appeal notices identify the actual applicable appeal deposit, whether additional deposits may be required, how refunds are handled, and whether any hardship process exists;
13. appeal webpages are updated promptly when a new fee schedule takes effect;
14. future Year in Review presentations report appeal statistics, public comment posting performance, records access improvements, and any unresolved administrative record issues;
15. future California Environmental Quality Act streamlining determinations identify the current regulatory baseline, later ordinances, design standards, waivers, parking rules, climate thresholds, and cumulative development setting that postdate the prior environmental document; and
16. future meeting procedure training correctly states the legal hierarchy, including that Robert’s Rules of Order may be used only where consistent with the Brown Act, the First Amendment, the California Constitution, the Municipal Code, City adopted rules, and other controlling laws.
XV. Preservation and Public Records Request
Please preserve all records showing when the Agenda Item 8.2 Year in Review slide deck, outline, handout, written summary, presentation file, or related material was created, edited, finalized, routed, distributed, uploaded, made visible to the public, or posted after the meeting.
Please also treat this written comment as a request under the California Public Records Act for existing nonexempt records sufficient to show:
1. the Agenda Item 8.2 Year in Review slide deck, outline, handout, written summary, or presentation file;
2. when any Agenda Item 8.2 materials were created, edited, finalized, exported, uploaded, routed, distributed, or scheduled for publication;
3. when any Agenda Item 8.2 materials were or will be provided to any Planning Commissioner;
4. when any Agenda Item 8.2 materials were or will be made available to the public, whether online, in the red binder, at the dais, in the meeting room, or after the meeting;
5. any CivicClerk upload, publication, visibility, file status, or timestamp record for Agenda Item 8.2 materials and this written comment;
6. any record showing when the City's Zoning Appeal webpage was last reviewed or updated after the FY2026/27 fee schedule took effect; and
7. any record showing whether staff has evaluated or discussed the public access, equity, or participation effects of the City's prior $4,500 Planning Commission appeal deposit or current $2,500 Planning Commission appeal deposit.
If the City believes any portion of this request should be processed separately through the City's public records portal, please advise and preserve all responsive records in the meantime.
XVI. Conclusion and No Waiver
The public should not have to choose between submitting written comments before the City's cutoff without knowing the substance of an informational presentation, or waiting until after the presentation materials are posted and submitting comments that no other interested member of the public is likely to see before the meeting is complete.
That imbalance is not cured by saying the item is informational only. If anything, it makes the problem more important because informational items often create the City's public narrative without a later formal decision point.
A Planning Year in Review should not turn rapid approvals, cost-prohibitive access to appeals, unresolved California Environmental Quality Act issues, missing current regulatory baseline analysis, missing cumulative fiscal analysis, 7/13/26, 7:47 PM Gmail - Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 - Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 - Year in Review - Access, Meeting Procedures… https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=73ed25eff8&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-a:r-3615012802210439113&simpl=msg-a:r-3615012802210… 13/14 incomplete public access practices, and incorrect meeting procedure hierarchy into a clean planning success narrative.
Planning ethics require more than technical processing speed. They require public trust, meaningful participation, equity, fair treatment, and a record that the public can understand and test before decisions become effectively locked in.
The missing analysis was not only fiscal; it was not only tiering. The missing analysis was the City's failure to evaluate the current regulatory baseline and cumulative environmental setting after it changed Floor Area Ratio standards, parking rules, climate guidance, design standards, project-specific guidelines, State Density Bonus waiver assumptions, and the Bishop Ranch redevelopment pipeline itself.
Please include this comment in the July 7, 2026 Planning Commission record for Agenda Items 4 and 8.2, post it online in CivicClerk under Public Comment, and ensure it is available to the Commission and the public before Agenda Item 8.2 is heard.
Nothing in this comment waives any objection to delayed posting of written comments, delayed posting of materials prepared by staff, reliance on undisclosed or after the meeting materials, unclear public comment procedures, incomplete administrative records, appeal deposit barriers, inadequate cumulative fiscal analysis, inadequate current regulatory baseline analysis, inadequate cumulative environmental analysis, improper reliance on Robert's Rules over controlling law, or the City's continued reliance on disputed California Environmental Quality Act and Vehicle Miles Traveled positions.
Respectfully submitted,
Brian C. Swanson, AICP
San Ramon Voter, Taxpayer, and Resident
On Wed, Jul 1, 2026 at 4:29 PM City of San Ramon <[email protected]> wrote:
The Planning Commission meeting will begin at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 7, 2026.
The meeting agenda is now available at, Planning Commission Meeting • Agendas & Minutes • CivicClerk Update your subscriptions, modify your password or email address, or stop subscriptions at any time on your Subscriber Preferences Page. You will need to use your email address to log in.
If you have questions or problems with the subscription service, please contact [email protected] or visit subscriberhelp.govdelivery.com.
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City of San Ramon | 7000 Bollinger Canyon Road, San Ramon, CA 94583 | (925) 973 2500 | www sanramon ca gov 7/13/26, 7:47 PM Gmail - Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 - Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 - Year in Review - Access, Meeting Procedures… https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=73ed25eff8&view=pt&search=all&permmsgid=msg-a:r-3615012802210439113&simpl=msg-a:r-3615012802210… 14/14
The attached July 7 comment should be understood as addressing issues applicable to:
the City Council;
the Planning Commission;
commissions;
committees;
advisory bodies;
other Brown Act bodies;
and other City decision-making processes.
The primary issue requiring the City Council's attention is the City Attorney's June 30, 2026, presentation at the Special City Council Meeting regarding meeting procedures, public participation, and procedural authority.
The June 30, 2026 Special City Council Meeting was scheduled for 5:00 p.m. and addressed meeting procedures. However, the meeting itself raised transparency concerns because it was not streamed, and the available information did not provide sufficiently clear instructions on remote observation, access, or participation.
More importantly, the City Attorney's Agenda Item 2.1 presentation materials were not posted to the CivicClerk platform until after the June 30 meeting.
As a result, members of the public who attempted to comment on the meeting procedure did not have access to the presentation materials before the meeting.
My June 30 public comments therefore could not fully address the substance, framing, and legal hierarchy presented in the City Attorney's materials because the materials were not publicly available at the time of the meeting.
The July 7, 2026 Planning Commission meeting was the next meaningful City public meeting opportunity for the public to address the substance of the City Attorney's presentation, with the benefit of reviewing the actual presentation materials. The attached July 7 comment therefore addressed the broader City-wide implications of the presentation, including:
the relationship between Robert's Rules of Order and controlling legal authority;
Brown Act obligations;
constitutional protections;
public participation rights;
written public comments;
meeting writings;
CivicClerk posting practices;
and administrative record integrity.
The issue is not whether Robert's Rules of Order can be useful.
They can be.
Robert's Rules may assist with motions, recognition, debate management, reconsideration, and orderly meeting procedures where adopted by the City.
The issue is the legal hierarchy.
Robert's Rules of Order are not an independent source of governmental authority and should not be presented in a manner that could reasonably suggest that parliamentary procedure supersedes:
1. the United States Constitution;
2. the First Amendment;
3. the California Constitution;
4. the Ralph M. Brown Act;
5. other applicable statutes;
6. the San Ramon Municipal Code;
7. City-adopted rules and procedures; or
8. other controlling legal authority.
Robert's Rules apply only because and to the extent a public agency has adopted them, and only where consistent with higher legal authority.
That distinction is fundamental.
Public meetings are not private meetings of governmental bodies with the public merely observing.
They are the people's business conducted by public bodies in public.
Government Code section 54950 recognizes that public commissions, boards, councils, and other public agencies exist to aid in conducting the people's business and that the people do not surrender their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them.
Accordingly, City meeting-procedure training and guidance should clearly establish the proper hierarchy of authority.
The City should not unintentionally create confusion among elected officials, appointed officials, staff, applicants, or members of the public regarding whether parliamentary procedure controls over statutory and constitutional obligations.
This issue applies City-wide.
It affects:
City Council meetings;
Planning Commission meetings;
advisory commissions;
committees;
task forces;
and all other Brown Act bodies.
It also affects:
public comment;
meeting decorum;
speaker recognition;
written comments;
public records;
remote access;
and administrative record development.
The City should therefore review and revise meeting procedure training materials to ensure that:
Robert's Rules are clearly identified as subordinate parliamentary procedure; Brown Act requirements are accurately described;
constitutional protections are recognized;
public participation rights are preserved;
written comments and meeting writings are addressed;
and administrative record responsibilities are incorporated.
The City should also ensure that future meeting-procedure presentations, legal guidance, and training materials are posted sufficiently in advance of the meeting at which they will be discussed so that members of the public have a meaningful opportunity to review and comment on those materials.
This is not merely a transparency issue.
It is a planning and governance issue.
Planning decisions depend upon public trust, meaningful participation, reliable records, and confidence that decision-making procedures are fair and accessible.
The American Planning Association Ethical Principles in Planning and the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct emphasize:
serving the public interest;
meaningful participation;
access to information;
equity;
fair treatment;
long-range consequences;
and public trust.
Those principles apply not only to individual planning approvals, but also to the procedures through which public decisions are made.
Accordingly, I respectfully request that the City Council:
1. Include this written public comment in the July 14, 2026 City Council Agenda Item 4 Public Comment record.
2. Incorporate Attachment A, the July 7, 2026 Planning Commission written public comment, into the City Council record.
3. Recognize that the issues identified in Attachment A are City-wide governance issues applicable to the City Council, Planning Commission, all Brown Act bodies, advisory bodies, commissions, committees, and other City decision-making bodies.
4. Direct review and correction of meeting-procedure training materials to ensure that Robert's Rules of Order are accurately described as subordinate parliamentary procedure and not as controlling authority over the Brown Act, constitutional protections, municipal law, or other controlling legal requirements.
5. Ensure future meeting-procedure training includes:
written public comments;
meeting writings;
CivicClerk posting;
public visibility timestamps;
Government Code section 54957.5;
remote access procedures;
and administrative record preservation.
6. Continue improving City-wide transparency practices so that public participation is meaningful, timely, and consistent across all City decision-making bodies.
The City should view this issue as an opportunity to strengthen public trust.
Orderly meetings and meaningful public participation are not competing objectives.
A well-designed public process requires both.
Robert's Rules can help organize a meeting.
They cannot define the public's rights.
The law does that.
Thank you for considering this comment and Attachment A.
Respectfully submitted,
Brian C. Swanson, AICP
San Ramon Resident, Voter, and Taxpayer
Attachment A:
Public Comment #1: Agenda Item 4 – Public Comment and Agenda Item 8.2 – Year in Review – Access, Meeting Procedures, Planning Ethics, Year in Review, CEQA, VMT, Appeal Access, Regulatory Baseline, Fiscal Analysis, and Administrative Record Integrity – Planning Commission Meeting – July 7, 2026 On Fri, Jul 10, 2026 at 5:45 PM City of San Ramon <[email protected]> wrote:
The City Council meeting will begin at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 14, 2026.
The meeting agenda is now available at,
https://sanramonca.portal.civicclerk.com/event/13/files/agenda/1530 Update your subscriptions, modify your password or email address, or stop subscriptions at any time on your Subscriber Preferences Page. You will need to use your email address to log in.
If you have questions or problems with the subscription service, please contact [email protected] or visit subscriberhelp.govdelivery.com.
This service includes a Public Alert System for San Ramon. Subscribers will receive real-time Public Safety and Emergency Alerts both via email and wirelessly. In order to receive these time-sensitive emergency notifications, you MUST subscribe to the service. To subscribe, please click here. For wireless alerts, text message and data rates may apply.
This service is provided to you at no charge by City of San Ramon.
City of San Ramon | 7000 Bollinger Canyon Road, San Ramon, CA 94583 | (925) 973-2500 | www.sanramon.ca.gov From: filter
To: City Council; City Clerk (Public)
Subject: FW: @City of San Ramon Clerk regarding Register of Demands for Written Public Comment since Ms. Wakeman could not be connected and council won’t grant discussion as they never did once if requested by Elena Formosa Date: Tuesday, July 14, 2026 2:02:18 PM
From: AIArthur du Camelot <[email protected]>
Subject: @City of San Ramon Clerk regarding Register of Demands for Written Public Comment since Ms. Wakeman could not be connected and council won’t grant discussion as they never did once if requested by Elena Formosa
***| EXTERNAL EMAIL: Think before you click and do not open attachments unless you know they are safe. |*** @City of San Ramon Clerk regarding Register of Demands for Written Public Comment since Ms. Wakeman could not be connected and council won’t grant discussion as they never did once if requested by Elena Formosa:
The staff who prepared register of demands on the past was Miaoxia Joe, aka Michelle Joe, who is a national by origin. She can never be questioned because she claims ethnic protection and “feelings”(under mental health?) whenever Elena Formosa questions her item.
Therefore, we list below suspicious spendings that Miaoxia requests council approval totaling over $3 million as consent agenda that the public cannot pull for public discussion per design by City Attorney Martin Lysons who has a paralegal Naomi Yun.
1. What kind of tape autoloader costs over $10,000 to replace? What department is it for?
2. What kind of phone services by AT&T recur endlessly in different monetary denominations? Is this related to stay home work?
3. GHAD meetings are usually announced paperlessly. What were the total amount for and for how many residents to match the total GHAD residents in DV and NWSR?
4. Why do we need to pay $1,000 for every encroachment release by outside attorney offices? Can’t Naomi Yun do that or Deputy City Attorney? What do they do: stay home or go to doctor’s office per Ms. Snashall today is why many city employees are not reachable during office hours?
5. We as a city spend $250,000 a month on animal control services? Really????
6. Why do we spend around $200,000 on land development review? To help builders the city is connected with? Do we must bring in 1/3 of and 1/3 of to City of San Ramon? Have you guys not heard that are not having kids??? Or this is a Everyone is Welcome campaign to bring Berkeley to San Ramon and this we raise ?
7. What are “inventory tools”?
8. Why do we buy BMW motorcycles? For which department? Doesn’t City Attorney Lysons ride motorcycle?
9. Legal services by different attorney offices as registered demands seem unjustifiable since we have our 3 staffed in the legal department who seem to work for Sunset LLC, builders, consulting companies and how to arrest public speakers who exercise Brown Act right to hold government transparent, so please disclose what are these outside legal firms hired to do? Thank you.
Item No. 5.3 Public Comment
#1 and 2
#3, 4 and 5
#6 and 7
#8 and 9
3. Identify the project approval date supporting the City's May 20, 2026 NOE filing.
4. Identify the City official or body that made the CEQA exemption determination and the legal authority or delegation supporting that action.
5. Clarify whether Deborah Fehr, as Senior Civil Engineer/Project Manager, was authorized to make and file the CEQA exemption determination on behalf of the City as lead agency, identify the source of that delegated authority, and identify the City action that constituted project approval before the May 20, 2026 Notice of Exemption filing.
6. Direct staff to prepare a corrected CEQA record addressing:
·
CEQA Guidelines sections 15301(c), 15302(c), 15303(d), and 15304(f);
·
the exceptions to categorical exemptions under CEQA Guidelines section 15300.2;
·
VMT and transportation impacts under CEQA Guidelines section 15064.3;
·induced or redistributed vehicle demand;
·increased throughput;
·
signal progression;
·changed vehicle speeds;
·public safety;
·
pedestrian, bicycle, transit, school, senior, disabled-user, and emergency-response effects;
·cumulative transportation effects from approved, pending, and reasonably foreseeable Bishop Ranch, City Center, Chevron Park, Camino Ramon, Crow Canyon, Bollinger Canyon, San Ramon Valley Boulevard, and I-680 access area projects;
·
whether the project involves negligible or no expansion of existing or former use;
·whether the project involves negligible or no expansion of capacity;
·whether Class 3 and Class 4 cover only construction components or the full operational ITS project.
7. Direct staff to evaluate the project against the City's CAP and CEQA GHG Emissions Thresholds and Guidance Report, including any applicable CAP consistency checklist, transportation-sector assumptions, the VMT/GHG relationship, and the quantitative threshold pathway, where applicable.
8. Withdraw and re-file the NOE, if necessary, after a valid project approval and an adequate CEQA exemption determination.
II.CEQA Applies; the Issue Is Whether the Claimed Exemptions Are Valid
This project constitutes a CEQA project unless a statutory or categorical exemption applies. The existence of a claimed exemption does not eliminate CEQA obligations; it requires the lead agency to establish that the project qualifies for the exemption and that no exception to the exemption applies. A categorical exemption is not the absence of CEQA; it is a CEQA compliance pathway that requires the lead agency to determine that the project fits within the claimed exemption and that no exception to the exemption applies.
Public Resources Code section 21065 defines a CEQA "project" to include an activity that may cause a direct or reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment, and that is directly undertaken by a public agency or supported by public agency contracts, grants, subsidies, loans, or similar assistance. This ITS and Communications Infrastructure Project is a City public works and transportation infrastructure project, supported by a $2 million HUD Community Project Funding grant, involving physical work in public rights-of-way and reasonably foreseeable operational transportation effects.
The City's own record confirms that CEQA applies. The staff report includes a "CEQA Compliance" section stating that staff filed an NOE with the Contra Costa County Clerk on May 20, 2026, and that the project is exempt under CEQA Guidelines sections 15301(c), 15302(c), 15303(d), and 15304(f). The County-filed NOE likewise identifies the project as categorically exempt and includes a Verdantas memorandum titled "CEQA Notice of Exemption: Memorandum of Findings." The City therefore cannot treat CEQA as irrelevant. The question is whether the City's exemption record is legally sufficient.
III.The City Should Not Conflate HUD/NEPA Review With CEQA Compliance
Agenda Item 5.5 is primarily framed as a HUD/NEPA action. The staff report states that HUD-funded projects are subject to NEPA and HUD's NEPA-implementing regulations, that the NEPA environmental review was uploaded to HUD's Environmental Review Online System (HEROS), and that the project was "converted to exempt" in HEROS. The recommended action is to authorize the Mayor to execute the HUD "Environmental Review for Activity/Project that is Categorically Excluded Subject to Section 58.5."
That is a federal environmental review action. It does not, by itself, constitute the City's CEQA determination. The City separately prepared and filed a CEQA Notice of Exemption and relied on a Verdantas CEQA memorandum; however, the administrative record should clearly distinguish the federal HUD/NEPA determination from the separate California CEQA determination and identify the City action, authority, and substantial evidence supporting the CEQA exemption decision.
The HUD environmental review package evaluates the project under 24 C.F.R. Part 58 and federal laws and authorities, including airport hazards, flood insurance, Clean Air Act conformity, contamination and toxic substances, endangered species, explosive and flammable hazards, farmland protection, floodplain management, historic preservation, noise, sole-source aquifers, wetlands, and wild and scenic rivers. Those federal compliance factors do not substitute for the City's obligation to determine whether the California CEQA categorical exemptions apply, whether any CEQA Guidelines section 15300.2 exception applies, or whether VMT and transportation effects have been adequately addressed.
The HUD package itself confirms this federal orientation. It identifies the project as categorically excluded under 24 C.F.R. section 58.35(a), subject to federal laws and authorities, and converted to exempt under 24 C.F.R. section 58.34(a)(12) because no mitigation, formal permit, or license is required under those federal authorities.
That federal conclusion does not answer CEQA's separate questions about categorical exemptions, VMT, cumulative impacts, unusual circumstances, or GHG consistency.
CEQA is intended to inform government decision makers and the public about the potential environmental effects of proposed activities and to prevent significant, avoidable environmental damage. NEPA/HUD compliance may be required to preserve HUD grant funding, but it does not replace CEQA. The City's staff report provides substantially more discussion of the federal HUD/NEPA environmental review pathway than the separate CEQA exemption determination. The CEQA discussion should therefore be evaluated independently to ensure that the record contains substantial evidence supporting the claimed CEQA exemptions. That is not adequate for a project whose own description includes smart-signal expansion, ALPR connections, autonomous vehicle testing support, and citywide communications functions.
IV.Resolution No. 2026-098 Does Not Appear to Make a CEQA Determination
Resolution No. 2026-098 appears primarily intended to authorize the Mayor's execution of the HUD/NEPA environmental review document rather than to adopt a new CEQA exemption determination. The resolution recites the HUD grant, NEPA compliance requirements, HEROS process, Programmatic Categorical Exclusion, and the need for the Mayor's signature on the federal environmental review document.
The existence of a CEQA Notice of Exemption and Verdantas CEQA memorandum confirms that the City undertook a separate CEQA exemption pathway. The unresolved issue is whether the administrative record clearly identifies the City action that approved the project for CEQA purposes, the official authority under which the exemption determination was made, and the substantial evidence supporting that determination before the May 20, 2026 NOE filing.
The record, therefore, raises questions regarding its timing, authority, and clarity. The County-filed NOE reflects a May 20, 2026 filing date and identifies Deborah Fehr as the City contact and project manager. The Verdantas CEQA memorandum, dated May 13, 2026, states that the City, as the lead agency, determined the project was categorically exempt. The City should identify the administrative action that constituted project approval before the NOE filing, the delegation or authorization allowing staff to make the CEQA determination, and the record supporting that determination.
The Council should identify what City action constituted project approval before the May 20 NOE filing. If the project was approved by staff, the City should identify the delegated authority. If a prior Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) budget action approved the project, the City should identify the approval date and explain whether that action included or relied upon the CEQA exemption determination. If the project was not approved before the NOE was filed, the City should explain how the NOE complied with CEQA Guidelines section 15062.
The City Council should also identify whether tonight's action is:
a HUD/NEPA signature authorization only;
a CEQA approval;
a project approval;
a ratification of a prior CEQA determination;
or all of the above.
The present agenda packet does not make that clear.
V.The Verdantas CEQA Memorandum Exists, But the City Must Demonstrate That It Supports the City's Exemption Determination The County-filed materials include a Verdantas "CEQA Notice of Exemption:
Memorandum of Findings" dated May 13, 2026. That memorandum states that the project is exempt under Classes 1, 2, 3, and 4. It also states that the City has determined the project would not result in a significant adverse impact and that none of the exceptions under CEQA Guidelines section 15300.2 apply.
The existence of a CEQA memorandum does not end the issue. The question is whether the memorandum provides substantial evidence supporting each claimed exemption, whether the City relied upon that memorandum through an authorized CEQA decision process, and whether the administrative record clearly demonstrates that the exemption determination preceded the NOE filing.
The memorandum is inadequate because it treats the project primarily as replacement or modernization of physical communications infrastructure within existing public rights-of-way. That is an incomplete description of the project's environmental function. The project description states that the project will remove existing copper signal interconnect cable, upgrade pull boxes, install new conduit, install 288-strand fiber optic cable, and upgrade network equipment to accommodate fiber optic cable. It also states that the project's goal is to replace antiquated traffic signal communication infrastructure with a publicly owned comprehensive fiber optic network allowing expansion of the City's smart traffic signal system, improved ALPR connections, secure high-speed internet connections to public facilities, continuation of autonomous vehicle testing on public roadways, and many other public uses.
The CEQA memorandum does not meaningfully analyze the operational transportation consequences of that system.
VI.The Class 1 Existing Facilities Exemption Is Not Adequately Supported
The City relies on CEQA Guidelines section 15301(c), the Class 1 Existing Facilities exemption. Class 1 applies to operation, repair, maintenance, permitting, leasing, licensing, or minor alteration of existing facilities involving negligible or no expansion of existing or former use; the key consideration is whether the project involves negligible or no expansion of use. (Justia)
The Verdantas memorandum concludes that the project does not entail an expansion of existing use because it renovates existing facilities, brings them up to modern standards, and does not substantially expand the physical size or scale of installations located in the public right-of-way.
That analysis is too narrow.
For an ITS project, "use" cannot be reduced to the physical size of pull boxes, conduit, or fiber. The relevant use includes the operational function of the traffic signal communications system. A project that replaces copper interconnect cable with 288-strand fiber, fills system gaps, upgrades network equipment, expands smartsignal capability, improves ALPR connections, and supports autonomous vehicle testing may change the nature or degree of the facility's use even if the physical construction footprint is mostly within existing rights-of-way.
The California Supreme Court's decision in Sunflower Alliance v. Department of Conservation provides important guidance regarding interpretation of the Class 1 "negligible or no expansion of existing or former use" standard, emphasizing that the analysis concerns the nature and scope of the proposed use rather than merely the degree of environmental harm or physical alteration. (Justia) The City's CEQA memorandum does not apply that framework. It focuses on the physical footprint and construction disturbance, not on changes in operational function. The City should provide additional substantial evidence explaining why replacing the copper traffic-signal interconnect infrastructure with a comprehensive fiber optic network supporting smart signals, ALPR connections, autonomous vehicle testing support, and other public uses constitutes a negligible or no expansion of existing or former use. The issue is not the physical size of the improvements alone; it is whether the operational function and capacity of the transportation communications system remain within the scope of the existing use contemplated by CEQA Guidelines section 15301(c).
VII.The Class 2 Replacement or Reconstruction Exemption Is Not Adequately Supported
The City also relies on CEQA Guidelines section 15302(c), the Class 2 Replacement or Reconstruction exemption. Class 2 applies to the replacement or reconstruction of existing utility systems or facilities that involve negligible or no expansion of capacity.
The Verdantas memorandum states that the project serves substantially the same purpose and capacity as the infrastructure being replaced. But the same memorandum acknowledges that the project would install new conduit, pull boxes, fiber optic cable, required ancillary components where system gaps exist, 288-strand fiber optic cable, and upgraded network equipment. The staff report likewise describes the project as a Citywide ITS Upgrade Project and identifies its purpose as expanding smart traffic signal capabilities and improving communications infrastructure.
The City has not adequately explained what "capacity" means for a traffic signal communications and ITS system.
Capacity for this project may include:
communications bandwidth;
number of connected intersections or devices;
signal coordination capability;
real-time traffic management capability;
network reliability and redundancy;
ability to support ALPR connections;
ability to support autonomous vehicle testing;
ability to support active traffic management;
ability to improve signal progression;
ability to increase effective vehicle throughput;
ability to support additional traffic cameras, sensors, or connected devices.
The City should identify the baseline operational capability of the existing traffic signal communications system and compare it with that of the proposed fiber optic network.
Without that comparison, the record does not clearly establish whether the project represents replacement within existing capacity or an expansion of system capability.
The CEQA memorandum does not compare the existing copper signal interconnect system to the proposed 288-strand fiber optic system in terms of operational capacity. Without that comparison, the Class 2 exemption is not adequately supported.
VIII.The Class 3 and Class 4 Exemptions Do Not Address the Full Operational Project
The City also relies on Class 3 and Class 4. Class 3 covers certain limited new construction of small structures and utility extensions; Class 4 covers minor alterations to land, including minor trenching and backfilling where the surface is restored. The City's memorandum relies on those exemptions for the installation of conduit, pull boxes, fiber optic cable, network equipment, and localized trenching.
Those exemptions may address discrete construction components. They do not automatically exempt the full operational ITS project that those components enable.
The project spans approximately 2 miles of Crow Canyon Road, 1.4 miles of Camino Ramon, and 2.9 miles of San Ramon Valley Boulevard, for roughly 6.3 corridor miles.
It is not merely a single utility extension or isolated trenching activity. It is a multicorridor traffic signal communications and ITS backbone project that the City says will enable smart signal expansion, ALPR connectivity, high-speed public-facility communications, autonomous vehicle testing, and other public uses.
The City should clarify whether Classes 3 and 4 are being used only for physical construction components, or whether the City is using those construction-related exemptions to exempt the full operational project. If the latter, the record is inadequate.
IX.VMT and Transportation Effects Are Missing or Inadequately Addressed
CEQA Guidelines section 15064.3 provides that VMT is generally the most appropriate measure of transportation impacts. For transportation projects, projects that reduce or have no impact on VMT should be presumed less than significant. At the same time, agencies must analyze roadway capacity projects under an appropriate transportation impact measure consistent with CEQA. The regulation also recognizes that effects on transit and non-motorized travel may be relevant, and that assumptions used to estimate VMT should be documented and explained. (Legal Information Institute)
The City's CEQA memorandum does not evaluate whether the project's operational characteristics raise transportation-related considerations under CEQA Guidelines section 15064.3, nor does it explain why VMT-related assumptions, travel behavior, or transportation system effects are not relevant to the exemption determination.
It does not explain whether the ITS project will:
reduce VMT;
have no impact on VMT;
increase effective vehicle throughput in a way that could increase VMT; change route choice;
change trip timing;
change trip lengths;
change signal progression;
increase effective corridor capacity;
alter vehicle speeds;
affect pedestrian, bicycle, or transit operations;
affect safety for non-motorized users;
interact with approved and foreseeable development in the same corridors.
The HUD/NEPA package does not fill that gap. The HUD review includes federal air quality, historic preservation, floodplain, noise, contamination, wetlands, and related federal compliance screens. It does not provide a CEQA VMT analysis under CEQA Guidelines section 15064.3. That is especially important because the project's purpose is tied to traffic signal communication, smart traffic signal expansion, support for autonomous vehicle testing, and active transportation system management.
VMT is not evaluated through the NEPA/HUD checklist in this record. It is a CEQA transportation-impact consideration that must be evaluated within the context of the project's actual operational purpose and reasonably foreseeable effects. The City should not treat the HUD/HEROS conversion-to-exempt status as a substitute for a CEQA analysis of whether this ITS project's operational functions may affect transportation conditions, VMT assumptions, travel behavior, or related environmental effects.
The issue is not whether every Intelligent Transportation System project necessarily requires a standalone VMT analysis. Rather, the issue is whether the City has provided substantial evidence supporting its conclusion that this specific project — which is intended to expand smart traffic signal capabilities, improve transportation communications, support connected and autonomous vehicle testing, and enhance active traffic management capabilities — will not result in transportation-related environmental effects requiring further consideration under CEQA Guidelines section 15064.3.
The City should therefore explain whether and how the project's operational characteristics affect, or do not affect:
·VMT assumptions underlying the General Plan 2040 Environmental Impact Report (EIR), CAP, and CEQA GHG Thresholds Report; ·
vehicle throughput and effective corridor capacity;
·route choice and travel behavior;
·signal progression and vehicle speeds;
·
pedestrian, bicycle, transit, school, senior, and disabled-user conditions; ·emergency response operations; and
·cumulative transportation conditions associated with approved and reasonably foreseeable development within the affected corridors.
Without that analysis, the CEQA record evaluates the physical installation of infrastructure while failing to address the operational transportation functions that the completed ITS system is specifically intended to enhance.
X.Increased Throughput, Signal Progression, Vehicle Speeds, and Public Safety Were Not Adequately Evaluated
The project is an Intelligent Transportation System project. Its stated purpose includes expansion of the City's smart traffic signal system and improved communications for public infrastructure.
Coordinated signals and upgraded traffic communications may improve operations.
But operational efficiency is not automatically environmentally neutral. Signal coordination and active traffic management can:
increase vehicle throughput;
increase effective corridor capacity;
stabilize or increase vehicle speeds;
change platooning;
affect left-turn and side-street gaps;
reduce crossing opportunities for pedestrians and bicyclists; change pedestrian and bicycle exposure at crossings;
affect school, senior, disabled user, and transit user safety; shift traffic from parallel routes;
interact with freeway access and ramp operations;
affect emergency response movement.
The CEQA memorandum does not address these issues. It states that the project supports General Plan 2040 and ITS Master Plan goals for smart traffic engineering, connected and autonomous vehicle support, active traffic management, and freeway operations. Still, it treats those as planning-consistency points rather than as operational changes that require environmental analysis.
Automobile delay itself is no longer the CEQA transportation-impact metric. But that does not mean changes to the transportation system disappear from CEQA. VMT, transit effects, non-motorized travel, public safety, speeds, and cumulative transportation conditions remain relevant where supported by the project record.
The City should analyze whether the ITS project affects vehicle speeds, signal progression, throughput, conflict exposure, pedestrian/bicycle crossing conditions, or other public safety conditions along Crow Canyon Road, Camino Ramon, and San Ramon Valley Boulevard.
XI.The Cumulative Impact Analysis Is Woefully Inadequate CEQA Guidelines section 15300.2(b) provides that categorical exemptions are inapplicable when the cumulative impact of successive projects of the same type in the same place over time is significant. Section 15300.2(c) also prevents use of a categorical exemption where there is a reasonable possibility of a significant effect due to unusual circumstances. (Legal Information Institute) The Verdantas memorandum acknowledges the cumulative-impact exception but does not conduct a meaningful cumulative impact analysis. Instead, it relies heavily on consistency across the General Plan 2040 Traffic and Circulation Element, ITS Master Plan integration, fiber optic network expansion, traffic cameras, Internet of Things devices, smart traffic engineering, connected and autonomous vehicle support, active traffic management, freeway operations, and CIP consistency. It then concludes that the annual review and approval of the CIP, including this project, ensure consistency with the General Plan 2040 and therefore "avoids any potential for adverse cumulative impacts."
That is not a cumulative impact analysis. It is a consistency assertion. Consistency with adopted planning documents may inform a CEQA analysis. Still, it does not replace project-specific evaluation of whether the project contributes to significant cumulative effects or whether a categorical exemption exception applies.
A project may be consistent with the General Plan 2040, ITS Master Plan, and Capital Improvement Program and still contribute to cumulative transportation impacts on VMT, throughput, speed, safety, or multimodal impacts. Consistency with a plan does not automatically establish that no CEQA Guidelines section 15300.2 exception applies.
The cumulative analysis is also too narrow. It should not be limited to successive ITS, signal coordination, fiber, communications, roadway, and transportation projects. Those projects matter, but they are not the whole cumulative setting.
The City must also evaluate the approved, pending, and reasonably foreseeable development projects that will use the same transportation network, affect the same intersections and corridors, and rely on the same traffic, VMT, signal timing, throughput, public-safety, and circulation assumptions.
That includes the broader Bishop Ranch/City Center/Chevron Park growth context, including but not limited to:
approved Bishop Ranch and City Center projects;
the Orchards/Chevron Park redevelopment;
BR-7 and BR-11;
BR-8/Canopy;
BR-12/Annabel;
the Bishop Ranch affordable housing/service center project; CityWalk/Bishop Ranch redevelopment concepts;
DMU-N zoning and floor-area-ratio changes;
parking reductions and exceptions;
cumulative development along Camino Ramon, Crow Canyon Road, Bollinger Canyon Road, San Ramon Valley Boulevard, and I-680 access routes; future projects identified in the General Plan 2040, CIP, ITS Master Plan, specific plans, or related planning documents;
reasonably foreseeable projects affecting the same intersections, signal systems, crossings, sidewalks, bicycle facilities, transit stops, and emergency response routes.
The cumulative transportation setting is the network into which all of these projects feed. The ITS project may increase system efficiency, signal coordination, throughput, and active traffic management at the same time the City is approving substantial development in the Bishop Ranch/City Center/Chevron Park area.
A meaningful cumulative analysis should ask whether this ITS project, together with approved and reasonably foreseeable development and transportation projects, may:
increase vehicle throughput;
increase effective corridor capacity;
improve signal progression in a way that changes route choice or trip timing; induce or redistribute vehicle demand;
increase or stabilize vehicle speeds;
change VMT or trip length;
affect pedestrian and bicycle exposure;
affect school, senior, disabled user, and transit user safety; affect emergency response movements;
affect transit operations;
compound transportation impacts from nearby housing and mixed-use approvals;
rely on stale or generalized assumptions from the General Plan 2040 EIR rather than on current conditions.
The CEQA memorandum does not do that work.
XII.The General Plan 2040 EIR Statement of Overriding Considerations Undermines the City's Conclusory Cumulative-Impact Reasoning The City's CEQA memorandum relies on consistency with the General Plan 2040 and CIP to dismiss cumulative impacts. But the City's own General Plan 2040 page states that on December 12, 2023, the City Council adopted Resolution No. 2023- 132, which adopted CEQA Findings and a Statement of Overriding Considerations, and certified the Final EIR for the San Ramon General Plan 2040 Project, related applications, and the Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program. (San Ramon) That prior Statement of Overriding Considerations cannot be used as a substitute for project-specific analysis or as a basis to assume that later transportation system projects are automatically within the scope of prior environmental conclusions. A Statement of Overriding Considerations is not a finding that impacts do not exist.
Rather, it is adopted when significant environmental effects remain after consideration of feasible mitigation measures, and the agency determines that the project benefits warrant approval despite those remaining impacts.
Nor does the existence of a prior Statement of Overriding Considerations automatically require additional CEQA review for every subsequent activity. Rather, where a later project relies upon the same transportation-system assumptions, planning documents, and cumulative growth context, the agency should explain why the prior environmental conclusions remain applicable and why the later activity qualifies for the claimed exemption.
If the General Plan 2040 EIR identified significant and unavoidable transportation, circulation, or VMT impacts, then General Plan 2040 consistency alone does not establish that later transportation system projects are exempt from further consideration. Instead, the City should explain whether the later activity remains within the assumptions, mitigation framework, and cumulative conditions evaluated in the prior program-level analysis. It underscores the need for later analysis, especially where the subsequent project implements transportation-system technology, smart signal coordination, active traffic management, freeway operations, fiber optic network expansion, and connected/autonomous vehicle support.
The City should not rely on General Plan 2040 and ITS Master Plan consistency as both:
1. the policy basis for expanding smart signal, active traffic management, fiber optic communications, and connected/autonomous vehicle support; and
2. the reason no cumulative transportation analysis is needed.
Such reasoning would create an internal inconsistency in the administrative record: the City relies on transportation system expansion objectives to justify the project's purpose, while simultaneously relying on those same objectives as evidence that expanded transportation system effects do not require further analysis.
If the City intends to rely on the General Plan 2040 EIR or ITS Master Plan as context for this project, it should explain whether this later ITS project:
implements or extends transportation-system improvements assumed in the General Plan 2040 EIR;
contributes to impacts previously found significant and unavoidable; changes corridor throughput, signal progression, speed, route choice, or VMT; interacts with approved and foreseeable Bishop Ranch/City Center/Chevron Park growth;
remains within the scope of prior program-level analysis; requires additional project-level analysis before the City may rely on categorical exemptions.
CEQA Guidelines section 15168 provides that whether a later activity is within the scope of a program EIR is a factual question based on substantial evidence in the record. The City's current CEQA memo does not appear to make that factual showing. It instead treats General Plan 2040 and CIP consistency as the conclusion.
XIII.The City Must Also Evaluate the Project Against the CAP and CEQA GHG Thresholds Report
The City's CEQA memorandum relies on consistency with the General Plan 2040 and the Capital Improvement Program to dismiss cumulative impacts. It also invokes the General Plan 2040 Traffic and Circulation Element, the ITS Master Plan, smart traffic engineering, support for connected and autonomous vehicles, active traffic management, fiber optic network expansion, traffic cameras, Internet of Things devices, freeway operations, and "Sustainability & Smart City" policies.
That reliance creates an additional omission: the City does not appear to evaluate the ITS and Communications Infrastructure Project against the City's CAP and CEQA GHG Emissions Thresholds and Guidance Report.
That omission matters because the City adopted the CAP and CEQA GHG Emissions Thresholds and Guidance Report on June 10, 2025, by Resolution No. 2025-073, effective immediately, replacing the 2011 CAP. The City describes the CAP as the primary implementation strategy of the San Ramon General Plan 2040 for establishing a long-term GHG reduction strategy consistent with State GHG reduction targets for 2030 and 2045. (San Ramon)
CEQA Guidelines section 15064.4 provides that a lead agency shall make a goodfaith effort, to the extent possible, based on scientific and factual data, to describe, calculate, or estimate project GHG emissions. CEQA Guidelines section 15183.5 provides a framework for GHG reduction plans, including quantification of emissions, substantial-evidence-based reduction levels, measures or performance standards, monitoring, and amendment mechanisms. (Legal Information Institute) The City's own CEQA GHG Thresholds Report states that CEQA requires discretionary plans and projects to undergo environmental review that includes evaluation of plan- or project-related GHG emissions, and that CEQA Guidelines section 15183.5 establishes a framework for qualified GHG reduction plans that cumulatively reduce GHG emissions and allow lead agencies to analyze and mitigate plan- and project-level GHG emissions. (Plan San Ramon) The ITS project is not merely a neutral administrative or paperwork item. The project description states that the project would replace antiquated traffic signal communication infrastructure with a publicly owned fiber optic network, enabling expansion of the City's smart traffic signal system, improved ALPR connections, secure, high-speed internet connections to public facilities, the continuation of autonomous vehicle testing on public roadways, and other public uses. The Countyfiled CEQA memorandum similarly describes the installation of 288-strand fiber optic cable, the upgrade of network equipment, and the modernization of traffic signal and communications infrastructure.
Those operational features may have implications for GHG emissions in the transportation sector. Signal coordination and active traffic management may reduce idling in some circumstances. Still, they may also increase vehicle throughput, stabilize or increase travel speeds, change route choice, affect trip timing, affect mode choice, or interact with induced or redistributed demand. Those same operational issues are directly related to VMT, transportation sector emissions, and public safety.
The City's current CEQA record does not explain how the project relates to the City's own adopted CAP and CEQA GHG Thresholds framework, despite relying on General Plan 2040 policies, ITS Master Plan objectives, smart-city strategies, sustainability objectives, and transportation-system improvements to support the exemption determination.
This comment does not suggest that every categorically exempt project requires a separate GHG analysis or CAP consistency checklist. Rather, where a lead agency relies upon adopted climate policies, transportation-system strategies, smart-city objectives, or General Plan consistency as evidence supporting a CEQA exemption determination, the administrative record should explain how the project relates to the City's adopted climate framework and whether the operational assumptions underlying those policies remain valid.
The ITS project presents precisely that question. The City describes the project as enabling expansion of the smart traffic signal system, improved ALPR connections, secure high-speed public facility communications, continued autonomous vehicle testing, and other public uses. Those operational changes may provide benefits, including reduced delay or improved efficiency. Still, they may also affect vehicle throughput, travel speeds, route choice, travel behavior, VMT assumptions, and transportation sector GHG emissions.
The City should therefore explain whether the project:
·implements a CAP transportation sector measure;
·relies upon transportation or VMT assumptions incorporated into the CAP or CEQA GHG Thresholds Report;
·reduces or increases transportation-sector GHG emissions; ·changes transportation demand, travel behavior, or operational conditions in a manner relevant to CAP implementation; and ·remains consistent with the assumptions supporting the City's adopted climate strategy.
The City should not rely upon the CAP, General Plan 2040, ITS Master Plan, and sustainability policies as affirmative evidence supporting a CEQA exemption determination while omitting discussion of whether the project remains consistent with the City's adopted CAP/GHG assumptions and implementation framework. If the project is exempt, the City should explain why the exemption remains valid after considering the City's own CAP/GHG framework. If the City relies on CAP/GHG consistency to support that there is no significant GHG or cumulative impact, the record must contain the consistency analysis and substantial evidence supporting it.
The present record does not clearly demonstrate that analysis. It relies on consistency with the General Plan 2040 and CIP, invokes smart-city and sustainability objectives, and concludes that there are no cumulative impacts without evaluating the City's own adopted CAP/GHG Thresholds Report. That is not an adequate CEQA record for a project whose purpose is to expand smart signals, fiber optic, transportation communications, and roadway operational capabilities.
The issue is therefore not whether the ITS project is beneficial or whether improved communications infrastructure may support climate objectives. The issue is whether the City has demonstrated, through substantial evidence, that the operational consequences of this transportation-system investment are consistent with the same VMT, GHG, and implementation assumptions that the City relies upon elsewhere in its planning and regulatory framework.
XIV.The Significant Effect/Unusual Circumstances Analysis Is Conclusory
The Verdantas memorandum states that there are no unusual circumstances on or next to the project site and that no unusual circumstances are anticipated with construction. It also states that nearby sensitive receptors include residential homes adjacent to San Ramon Valley Boulevard, but that construction and operation would not create unusual circumstances resulting in significant environmental impacts.
That analysis is conclusory.
The unusual circumstance is not merely the presence or absence of sensitive receptors. The unusual circumstance is that this project is not simply small-scale underground utility maintenance. It is a multi-corridor ITS communications backbone supporting smart traffic signals, active traffic management, ALPR connections, autonomous vehicle testing, and other public uses.
The City should analyze whether those operational functions create a reasonable possibility of significant effects related to VMT, throughput, vehicle speeds, public safety, pedestrian/bicycle exposure, transit operations, emergency response, GHG emissions, or cumulative transportation conditions.
XV.The Scenic Highway and Hazardous Materials Discussions Do Not Cure the Transportation and GHG Defects
The Verdantas memorandum recognizes that a portion of the project would occur along San Ramon Valley Boulevard, adjacent to Interstate 680, an officially designated State Scenic Highway, but dismisses the issue because the improvements are primarily subterranean and would not affect the visual character after completion.
That may address part of the scenic-highway exception, but it does not address transportation operations, VMT, throughput, speed, safety, or GHG implications.
The memorandum also identifies the Department of Toxic Substances Control Soil Management Agreement for aerially deposited lead-contaminated soils and notes that the Electro Test Inc. site, located approximately 0.2 miles north of Crow Canyon Road, is listed on EnviroStor. The City may be able to manage those issues through construction specifications and monitoring. Still, the memorandum does not explain how those controls will be incorporated into project plans, specifications, contracts, or construction oversight. That is an implementation issue, separate from the missing transportation and CAP/GHG analysis.
Neither the scenic highway discussion nor the hazardous materials discussion cures the absence of meaningful VMT, throughput, speed, safety, cumulative transportation, and CAP/GHG analysis.
XVI.
The Agenda's Generic CEQA Disclaimer Is Not a Substitute for ItemSpecific CEQA Review The first page of the agenda states that unless otherwise stated, every item on the agenda is exempt from CEQA Guidelines sections 15060(c), 15061(b)(3), 15273, 15378, 15301, 15323, and/or Public Resources Code section 21065.
That generic agenda language is not an item-specific CEQA determination.
For Agenda Item 5.5, the staff report separately relies on CEQA Guidelines sections 15301(c), 15302(c), 15303(d), and 15304(f). The City cannot rely on generic agenda boilerplate, NEPA/HUD forms, or a conclusory CEQA memorandum to support a categorical exemption for a multi-corridor ITS and communications infrastructure project.
XVII. This Item Reflects the Same CEQA Posture at Issue in Pending Matters Involving the City
I recognize that the City Council is not adjudicating pending litigation through this agenda item. However, this project raises similar implementation concerns regarding CEQA process, transportation assumptions, cumulative analysis, mitigation implementation, and administrative record completeness. Agenda Item 5.5 reflects the same recurring CEQA posture that is at issue in pending matters involving the City:
reliance on abbreviated or streamlined CEQA pathways;
use of prior planning consistency as a substitute for current analysis; insufficient cumulative impact analysis;
insufficient VMT and transportation documentation;
insufficient analysis of mitigation, implementation, and monitoring; lack of integration with the City's CAP and CEQA GHG Thresholds Report; reliance on exemption paperwork without a clear Council-level CEQA finding or identified delegation.
Those concerns are directly relevant here. This project affects the same transportation system that must accommodate growth and transportation assumptions related to Bishop Ranch, City Center, Chevron Park, Camino Ramon, Crow Canyon, Bollinger Canyon, San Ramon Valley Boulevard, and I-680.
The City should not continue to treat CEQA as a form-processing exercise. CEQA exemptions are intended to provide administrative efficiency where the factual circumstances support them. They are not intended to replace project-specific analysis of operational changes, cumulative conditions, or consistency with the City's own adopted environmental and climate planning framework.
XVIII.Conclusion and Requested Action
The City may be able to pursue HUD funding and modernize traffic signal communications infrastructure. But it should not do so through an inadequate CEQA record.
Before approving Agenda Item 5.5, the City Council should clarify:
1. whether the Council is making a CEQA determination tonight;
2. whether the May 20, 2026 NOE was filed after a valid project approval;
3. whether Deborah Fehr, Public Works/Engineering Services, or Traffic Engineering had delegated authority to make and file the CEQA exemption determination, and identify the ordinance, resolution, administrative policy, or other delegation document supporting that authority;
4. whether the Verdantas CEQA memorandum adequately supports Classes 1, 2, 3, and 4;
5. whether the project involves negligible or no expansion of existing or former use under Class 1, especially after Sunflower Alliance;
6. whether the project involves negligible or no expansion of capacity under Class 2, given the 288-strand fiber, network upgrades, smart signal expansion, ALPR connections, and autonomous vehicle testing support;
7. whether Class 3 and Class 4 apply only to construction components or to the full operational ITS project;
8. whether CEQA Guidelines section 15300.2 exceptions apply;
9. whether VMT, induced or redistributed demand, signal progression, throughput, vehicle speeds, public safety, pedestrian/bicycle exposure, transit effects, and cumulative transportation effects have been adequately evaluated;
10. how the City's December 2023 General Plan 2040 EIR Findings and Statement of Overriding Considerations affect the City's ability to rely on categorical exemptions for this ITS and Communications Infrastructure Project;
11. whether the project was reviewed for consistency with the City's CAP and CEQA GHG Emissions Thresholds and Guidance Report, including the CAP consistency checklist, transportation sector assumptions, VMT/GHG relationship, and quantitative thresholds where applicable.
For these reasons, I respectfully request that the City Council pull Agenda Item 5.5 from Consent, direct staff to correct the CEQA record, and refrain from relying on the May 20, 2026 NOE unless and until the City identifies the valid project approval, delegated authority, and substantial evidence supporting the claimed exemptions.
Respectfully submitted,
Brian C. Swanson, AICP
San Ramon Resident, Voter, and Taxpayer
On Fri, Jul 10, 2026 at 5:45 PM City of San Ramon <[email protected]> wrote:
The City Council meeting will begin at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 14, 2026.
The meeting agenda is now available at,
https://sanramonca.portal.civicclerk.com/event/13/files/agenda/1530
From: filter
To: City Council; City Clerk (Public)
Subject: FW: @ City of San Ramon city council : Request to pull Consent Agenda Item 5.5 for lack of transparency in staff report on what the intelligent transportation system means for residents, i.e. personal transportation data collection and transmission? ...
Date: Monday, July 13, 2026 12:28:24 PM
From: AIArthur du Camelot <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, July 13, 2026 12:27:30 PM (UTC-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada) Subject: @ City of San Ramon city council : Request to pull Consent Agenda Item 5.5 for lack of transparency in staff report on what the intelligent transportation system means for residents, i.e. personal transportation data collection and transmission? Fib...
***| EXTERNAL EMAIL: Think before you click and do not open attachments unless you know they are safe. |*** @ City of San Ramon city council :
Request to pull Consent Agenda Item 5.5 for lack of transparency in staff report on what the intelligent transportation system means for residents in terms of their transportation experience after execution of the project, i.e. personal transportation data collection and transmission? Fiber optic cable and appurtenances made by
?
How will the installation impact our daily drive with road closures, if any, etc…. We’re never mentioned in staff report! Why is this desirable in our city?
Staff is making city council to be mere rubber stamps by depriving your authority to question why the staff applied for this grant in the first place and why is this desirable by the city residents. Your role was defined by the staff and you are told what to do.
Please allow pulling of this item for discussion!
Our roads need money for paving and maintenance, not tearing up to install fiber optic cables!
Item 5.6 is an A+ staff report!
Transparent, pertinent, and competent!!!!
Keep this report for training purposes!