Palm Desert City Council - Study Session, March 27, 2025

Transcript text

AI transcript text.

[00:05:13] Speaker: We started a little late, but that's okay, we're here nonetheless. So today we are... I mean, our study session, it's Thursday, March 27th, 2:48. So let's get started, and who will be presenting first?
[00:05:37] Nick Maloney: Hi, good afternoon. Nick Maloney with the Planning Division. Happy to see you all here. I'm supported by our Consultants, John Kisy and Ami Bot of John Kisy Architects, as well as Matt Goble, who is with Clarion Associates, who's working on the Unified Development Code. Our presentation today is to go over some of our initial assessments and findings before we start delving into the project on the hillside objective design standards. And I will note that this is the beginning of the project and before we've done any community engagement, so it's a summary of some of the issues. But just to begin with a little bit of background, the area of the city that we're focusing on are those that are designated Hillside Planned Residential. These are generally located at the western edge of the city and comprise the foothills of the Santa Rosa Mountains, otherwise known as the West Hills or the Cahuilla Hills formally. For a long time, the city has recognized that those are very important natural scenic resources and has taken steps to implement conservation and protection measures, part of which include a robust discretionary hillside development review process. There are a number of existing single-family homes located in the hillside area which are subject to that process, but we recognize that given the updates in state legislation and the need to balance those conservation needs as well as the rights of those existing homeowners with those developments, that it's important to establish more robust, measurable standards that reflect the values of the city for the conservation of those hillsides and to create a baseline to start off with for review of that development. So to that end, we've begun the process of preparing Hillside Objective Design Standards, which are intended to create clear benchmarks for homeowners and developers to follow, as well as for decision-makers to follow to understand the intent. So on the screen, I'm just cycling through a map which shows all of those hillside development properties that are privately owned and publicly owned, and we'll go through an exercise to see what potential options there are for development standards with this. But with that, I'm just generally going to turn it over to Mr. John Kisy to run through the presentation and share some of our initial insights for your feedback and consideration. Thank you.
[00:08:32] John Kisy: Great. I'm John Kisy, John Kisy Architects. I'm here with Amy Bot, Matt Goble from Clarion, but we're really excited that he's working on the Unified Development Code at the same time, and we're glad to be here. I think this is a very intimidating presentation because it's taken a lot of energy for us even to begin to wrap our heads around the complexity of what's in your hillside areas. You probably know it better than we ever will. So I want to just preface anything we're saying today as we're here to learn as much from you as in any form or manner to be telling you what to do at this point, because we honestly are starting this with a blank slate in our heads. We've done some work, but it really has more to do with looking at your existing regulations, trying to understand some precedents of how other cities have approached hillsides, not because we think they're what Palm Desert should necessarily do, but based on our conversations with Richard and with Nick, we've learned that some types of questions that people have raised have been addressed more directly in other cities, so it's worth thinking about them. We did put together some considerations towards the end of the presentation, which we'll try to get through in about 20 minutes or so, more to stimulate discussion and hearing what you have to say and trying to glean from that directions.
[00:10:00] Chairperson: ...that may make more sense for us to go than others so that when we do come back here, hopefully the work that we produce will be a better fit than would otherwise happen. And what I'd like to suggest is that we hold all of our questions, we can take our notes, and allow you then to get through the process and then have the discussion following your presentation.
[00:10:21] Presenter: That's fine, and I'm happy to be interrupted too, if—
[00:10:23] Chairperson: Okay, well, I want to make sure we get through the process. Okay.
[00:10:28] Presenter: So that's kind of where we're going. And this picture was taken the day that Nick and Richard showed us all around, and we had some exciting moments in one of the city's vans, Nick sort of sweating a lot, worrying about turning it around on one of the dirt roads. But anyway, let's go to the next picture. Or wait, that's me. There we go. So, I think I've sort of described what we're doing today, but in terms of what literally we were hired for—and this is part of the reason why we're trying to wrap our brains about it—we were hired to think about what are called objective design standards for hillside areas. And objective design standards are measurable and they're quantifiable, and the goal of thinking about objective design standards for the hillsides might be that if you could come up with the right ones, it establishes a baseline of community expectations of what's going to happen, and it starts to remove a little bit the amount of discretion that staff and the various commissions, and the Planning Commission and City Council, are dealing with on a project-by-project basis. In the right environment, it might put you in a position of saying, 'Well, if they can't even qualify for this baseline, that is challenging to us in terms of granting them more discretion.' And what we found in going through this is that there's a lot of discretion right now, so that every project becomes a kind of subjective exercise. So, our goal to get to those objective design standards is to explore what's going on in the hillsides right now and understanding from the community's perspective what are the things that aren't working for them. We do hope to engage with residents as we go through this process. We have that in our scope of work. We haven't formulated exactly what the type of engagement is that we're going to do, but in some ways, this is our first engagement opportunity today, talking with you, the decision-makers in the city. And finally, when we gather all this information together and the directions and input, we hope to be producing some measurable and quantifiable standards that will facilitate and make more clear what the city's expectations are for building in such a manner that it would foster the natural identity to the hillsides, maybe create a better balance in the long run between what you see there in the picture and what gets built. Okay, I'm going to go through this project timeline backwards. I just described what we think, at least in terms of our scope of work, is our work product, which is a set of objective design standards. There are going to be opportunities to look at them in terms of an administrative draft, a public review draft, a public hearing draft, which would be what you as council members would ultimately see. In order to get there in terms of these drafts, we're going to do some case studies. We're going to present more rigorous findings and recommendations, which we're starting today, and we're going to have a decision-maker study session, which in essence means that there's other folks in the City Planning Commission, Architectural Review Commission, etc., that we hope to learn from as well. But in terms of what we've done so far, we've had a kickoff, we've toured the hillsides a couple of times with City staff, we've prepared an existing conditions report, which is in essence what you're seeing in this presentation, and we're here to learn from you and get your input. As Nick started to say, the southern and western portions of the city are characterized by hillsides. It's an iconic feature of Palm Desert. It's celebrated, if you will, in all of your basic planning documents, your general plan and various other documents. There's some really kind of special developments up there. I mean, you know, we could have a long conversation about how wonderful it is if you get to live at Canyons at Bighorn, but it's pretty impressive in terms of some of the things that have happened there. And as you come down the highway, there are other areas which are developed or developing, like Stone Eagle. There are portions as we move further to the north that are basically the West Hills, where it's a lot scruffier and there's an—
[00:15:00] Speaker: ...intermixing, much more of an intermixing of public and private properties, and the division of those properties goes way back in terms of, you know, whoever drew that map was probably sitting in an office far, far away and didn't even realize there were those there. They were just drawing rectangles.
[00:15:20] Speaker: We know that there are a couple of hundred sites which, on theory, on paper, could be developed. The practicality of that is probably a bit more complex. A lot of this land is not that accessible. There likely aren't public roads to it. It would be expensive to build public roads to it. There are fire and life safety issues, so the number of developable parcels is a little bit of a question mark in our minds. But there are rules that if you do happen to have a pad or an existing pad—and there are pads and existing pads up there—that supposedly guide development, but there are a lot of exceptions with them.
[00:15:59] Speaker: And then the other thing that's really interesting to note on this map, we took advantage of the city's GIS mapping, and we tried to illustrate where all the ridges are, which are those red lines like veins. And ridges, of course, are important because when you look at the precedent, some cities regulate them incredibly rigorously, and other cities don't regulate them at all. And you're somewhere towards the not regulating them side, though you do regulate them.
[00:16:26] Speaker: So in terms of existing regulations, there's been a long conversation going back now almost 40 years of the city trying to wrestle with what should happen in these areas. You did get to the point where you created these Hillside planned residential areas in the mid-90s, and then there have been a series of moments where the city has gone back and tweaked the regulations, tried to improve the regulations, but there still are controversies that come up. And it sounds like, from what we've been told anecdotally, that continues to the present. There's the famous example of that one house which seems to manage to not only sit on a ridgeline but is very, very large. Actually, it just obscures the ridgeline, but I'm sure it's a very, very nice house if you were inside of it.
[00:17:16] Speaker: And then there were some rules in 2007 about restricting development along ridgelines, but as you'll see in a moment, it's very, very gray in interpretive language, or objectively interpretive language, which relies on the collective wisdom of the decision-making bodies to decide what is really a ridgeline, when is a ridgeline somehow being violated, because there's not that much in the guidelines that helps you. And so if that's something that you want to see, this is an opportunity to begin to establish that in more detail.
[00:17:57] Speaker: Okay. Okay, in terms of your general plan, I think all of these are like basic things about Palm Desert, but I don't think any of them are a surprise to you as elected officials. But, you know, there's a desire to create high-quality urban areas and high-quality open space, and we're fundamentally talking about a high-quality open space. What does that mean? There's a desire to regulate the density and intensity of development in the hillsides, particularly where you have slopes getting steeper. I mean, in general, and in most cities this is true, as the slopes get steeper, the amount of development becomes less, and you've got the beginnings of that in your regulations as well.
[00:18:42] Speaker: There's a desire to require preparation of grading analyses, minimize the impact of new development on views of the city's hillsides. But in terms of grading analyses, there aren't a lot of guidelines that say how much is too much grading or how much infill and cut and fill is appropriate, what can be left. We saw some cases when we went on the tour where it appeared that there was grading going on that the city wasn't even completely aware of, and so there's a certain amount of volunteerism going on up there, which, you know, you could question a little bit.
[00:19:21] Speaker: There's a lot of conversation, we know, in the city about views and viewsheds. Thank you very much. And the impact of views, but I think we need more direction from you as what do we really mean by that? Are we looking in terms of what somebody sees from a hillside as they look over the city, i.e., do they see other people's properties? Or are we talking about when you're on some of the main roads within the city, what do you see as you look up at the hillsides, and at what point does it become impacted in a way that's unacceptable?
[00:20:00] Speaker: And so getting some more clarity on that we think is very important. And then, of course, limiting light pollution, dark sky types of ideas—those are in your General Plan, and that could probably be more tightly regulated if you wanted to than what your current rules describe.
[00:20:22] Speaker: I'm not going to go through all of this because it's a lot, and we can come back to it. But what we did was we went through all of your existing development standards, and we put them into two different columns. The first column is one that could be construed as an existing standard that can be quantified and measured. So, for instance, your density is basically one dwelling unit per five acres. That's a very easy quantitative standard to figure out. If somebody comes in and wants to put four houses on five acres, it's fairly easy for staff to say, 'You know, this isn't really what you're supposed to be doing.'
[00:20:58] Speaker: On the other hand, if you go to the next one, what it basically says is preserve natural contours of the land to avoid extensive cut and fill, but it never actually describes or defines what is the definition of 'extensive.' So, it's purely left to some type of negotiation between the applicant, staff, and City decision-makers. And, you know, I've done a lot of these types of objective design standards, and sometimes I get asked—not very often—like, 'How do you get really good architecture?' Well, you know, probably you need to hire really good architects. What's a really good architect? Well, that's a little bit subjective, but you know it when you see it, right? But that's a really hard thing to regulate if you're starting off with really nothing.
[00:21:46] Speaker: So, that's a design guideline right now, and that's something where we, at least, feel like we could do the research. We have people on our team to start to define those. We know what other cities have done to try to control that, and you can pretty much go through all of these and start to put them into these two categories and say, 'Well, if the definition of our exercise was to try to take the right-hand column and move it over to the left-hand column, that would, in essence, be the creation of a more robust set of design standards that are yes/no, yes/no.'
[00:22:25] Speaker: And then, combined with the work that's going on in the Urban Development Code, which is looking at processes in the city and what is appealable, what is not appealable, could begin to establish the framework by which a more concrete set of community expectations for development in the hillsides could occur. So, just in looking at these things, I'll just describe what some of the topics are.
[00:22:50] Speaker: We've talked about grading. Within grading, there's the whole issue of what is an undisturbed viewshed or a natural landmark. I mean, I'd love if you have viewsheds and natural landmarks that you know about, or anybody else in the city, we'd love to know them. Right now, there's a set of notions in your regulations about the sizes of building pads, and we know that that is constantly challenged. So, that's something that could be further refined. The whole issue of access roads and driveways and how they're designed is something that could be described in more detail.
[00:23:28] Speaker: This whole issue of what does it mean to renaturalize, with what type of landscape, etc.—all of those things could be described, even in simple ways, to set the standards higher. And then, of course, the one at the bottom, which I think is one of the biggest ones in the hillside, is the maximum size of a dwelling unit. That 4,000-foot number is a completely, in my mind at least, reasonable number, but we understand that almost a lot of the projects that are coming forward are wanting to build larger than that. So, that means that they're immediately putting themselves into the precise plan side of that right-hand column, which all of a sudden is kicking it to discretionary processes, discretionary conversations, and the complexity of that.
[00:24:16] Speaker: And even within that, there's a little bit like if you really start looking at the sites—and this is something that Nick and Richard did a great job of—we went and looked at some of the building pads, and it's very confusing what is really meant by 35% coverage on a building pad. Because if a site is completely flat and the applicant comes in and says, 'Oh, you know, this is an existing building pad, but it's two acres large,' I don't think the intent was to allow 35% of about 86,000 square feet to be built on, and then, of course, have the loophole to go up to 50% with our review, which would mean on a two-acre site...
[00:25:01] Speaker 1: ...which there are some that you might—that's flat, you might end up with a 40,000 square foot footprint seemingly being allowed by your code. So, you know, I could see a situation where somebody who could afford to do that would be upset with a set of decision makers if they told them, 'No, we don't think you should build more than 10,000 square feet,' or something. Okay, let's go—whoops, I went backwards. I went backwards again. I'll go forward.
[00:25:25] Speaker 1: There are a couple of other—I just started talking about the coverage. What does that really mean? I think that could be tightened up. Ridges—the way the language is right now, it says development on or across ridges is prohibited. Well, the ridges can be mapped, but when is something on a ridge? If you build a 30-foot-tall house that's four inches from a ridge line, then you've basically damaged the integrity of that ridge, if the intent was that you should be able to see the ridge line on the skyline and not the architecture. So there are possibilities for getting more objective design standards that would sort of say, 'Oh, you have to be a certain distance or a certain height from it,' or 'Your height can't work in such and such a manner in relationship to the ridge line.'
[00:26:14] Speaker 1: Designed to eliminate or minimize any visual impact on the city to the maximum extent feasible—that's classic subjective design guideline language. It works really well if you want to have a project-by-project review and debate these things. Common open space is an interesting issue only because the city owns common open space up there. There are sometimes trails moving through there, and trying to figure out how those things interrelate with private property is an interesting question. There are also, we know, private properties up there where you look at the map and see where their property boundaries are, and then you see where their properties are, and they don't necessarily correlate with each other. It's probably beyond our ability, because it's a non-conforming condition, to address in an exercise like this, but it adds to the complexity of how do you approach this in terms of design criteria.
[00:27:12] Speaker 1: All of those ended up being in the design guideline side, like architectural unity and harmony. That's like—I would love to have long philosophical conversations with you about architectural unity and harmony, and maybe in about 2,000 years we'll figure out what that actually means. You know, the layout of structures and other facilities shall affect a conservation and street and utility improvements. I think there, the interesting challenge is, can you actually build street and utility improvements in some of these locations, or if you do, what standard are they built to?
[00:27:51] Speaker 1: Okay, so in terms of a summary, these were five points that Ivy and I put down. We clearly think the existing municipal code is subjective and open to interpretation by staff, the public, and decision makers. And for various reasons, we think there's an—we're being told that's not the environment that you want to be in. You'd like there to be a little bit more clarity to that, at least that's what we've been told. In essence, there are exceptions available for any standard that's in the code right now, so that could be theoretically tightened down if you wanted to go that way. The objective standards that exist are limited. They could be tightened up, but I think the bigger question is, in terms of direction to us, is how much of an objective standard box do you really want to create? There's no real clear definition of viewsheds or relationship between developments and viewsheds, and so clarity for us in terms of what the city really is trying to accomplish in terms of viewsheds is important. And then, of course, we talked about how the grading design standards are loose at best.
[00:29:02] Speaker 1: In terms of precedents, we looked at a variety of different places, some of which we knew about, some of which we asked Matt, who has a bigger national footprint than we do, if he had any experience, and he pointed us towards a couple, and some of which I have direct experience. Like, I've built on the Mulholland Drive specific plan and in the hillsides in Los Angeles, and the reality is they're much stricter than they are here. And that's hardly ever true—mostly Los Angeles is a junkscape, so it's really interesting when you see that the degree of regulation that exists in the hillsides in comparison to other places.
[00:29:42] Speaker 2: Can you just tell me that again? LA is less restrictive or, no, more?
[00:29:49] Speaker 1: It's more. We'll go through just a couple of quick examples. So, in fact, that's on the right. Like, if you're building in the Mulholland specific plan, there are a lot of regulations that in essence try to make...
[00:30:01] Speaker: ...it impossible to see new construction from Mulholland Drive. Now, it doesn't mean that you wouldn't see it, but it means that you have to go through a whole series of exercises, both in terms of the design process itself and certain types of regulations. So if you look at that diagram at the lower left-hand side is what's called right-of-way. That's where Mulholland Drive would be, and in essence, there are regulations that if you're on Mulholland Drive and your property is within—I can't remember whether it's a half a mile or something of Mulholland Drive—and it's visible, that all of a sudden a whole series of design standards kick in. And it doesn't mean that you don't see stuff, it just means that it's highly regulated in the attempt to preserve the viewsheds from Mulholland Drive specifically. And that was adopted in the mid-to-late 1990s and has undergone a couple of revisions since then. Um, so that's where you see this thing called visibility studies and/or viewshed analyses. If you do a project in that particular specific plan area, you have to provide that viewshed analysis as part of your application.
[00:31:16] Speaker: In Blaine County, we thought that one was really interesting, and Matt had suggested we look at that because they're talking about minimum 30-foot setbacks from federally managed and state-endowed lands. So it's a much bigger setback than would typically exist with a single-family house. But the thing that's interesting about that, since you do have this checkerboard of properties up there, if the goal is to not have houses, you know, I don't know, right next to the trail or something like that, those types of standards might be interesting to think about. And then, of course, the houses themselves have to be 50 feet or more from public lands, which is the opposite thing to try to make sure that, you know, you don't end up with party houses or something like that right on the trail.
[00:32:04] Speaker: And Salt Lake, they actually give people density—this is in the county, not the city—but they give people density bonuses if they cluster development. And I think, since we're talking about single-family homes, it's probably beyond the scope of this exercise to think how much clustering is possible. But the other side of the coin is these are hillside planned residential areas, so if for some reason somebody was able to consolidate parcels or something like that and wanted to come into the city and propose something, you could theoretically think about: would there be an advantage if they clustered it as opposed to just spread it out in terms of what you actually saw?
[00:32:53] Speaker: In Pitkin County, they use what's basically called a slope band analysis to adjust the amount of development that's possible based upon the steepness of the terrain. That's done in Los Angeles as well. There are standards there for retaining walls—same thing in Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, if my memory serves me right, you can't build more than two retaining walls with a cumulative maximum height of 12 feet in the hillside areas. And the reason for that is to do exactly, or to regulate exactly, some of the things that we've heard about here: people building 24-foot walls or something like that in order to get an access drive, and so it's a problem.
[00:33:35] Speaker: There's a lot of stuff in Pitkin County having to do with stormwater drainage and irrigation. We only put that in here because when we went up into the West Hills in particular, we were told anecdotally by staff about some of the water issues that have occurred there when it rains, and I'm not sure exactly how you saw that, but they've had that same issue.
[00:34:01] Speaker: I only put Palm Springs in here because Palm Springs is obsessive about the roads that the city does allow to be built within the hillsides. And I only put that in here with Amy because we felt that we know that there are questions about: A, whether there are roads up there; B, who owns those roads up there; C, is the city even willing to have anything to do with roads at all up there; and then how does that relate to things like upgraded fire protection, provision of city services, etc. That's probably beyond our scope for sure, but it's hard not to mention that.
[00:34:38] Speaker: In Santa Barbara, if you're—and this gets to this ridgeline thing to a certain degree—if you're within 16—if where you're building, if within 100 feet of that there's more than a 16-foot drop, they limit the height. And the whole idea basically is that as you get into the steep terrain and you start to move towards some of these ridgelines which have terrain...
[00:35:01] Speaker: associated with them, your height allowances start to drop to try to lessen the impact of development. In Monaco, there's a strict limit of 1,500 cubic yards of cut and fill, and then they do leave a certain amount of discretion to the director of planning to allow that with certain types of findings to be exceeded. We've done one house in the Mount ofo hillsides. Staff really, based upon direction from the council, is very, very reluctant to ever let you exceed that 1,500 cubic yard limit, which is not a very big amount of dirt that you can move around. Okay.
[00:35:43] Speaker: So what did we think after looking at all of this? And before we go off into more technical work, we want to know more about the use. We want to know more what we're trying to protect. We know the mountain sides are considered iconic, and we also know that if every single one of these pads got built out, some of that iconic nature would be challenged. But we're trying to get a better grip from the city's point of view as to what would be an ideal thing to try to achieve. You could develop more robust viewshed standards to the hillsides from the roadways. We could deal with things like materials, colors, height, rooflines, closeness to ridgelines, and things like that that would start to mitigate some of that stuff. But at the same time, we want to make sure that's where you really wanted to go.
[00:36:50] Speaker: A second consideration is views from the hillsides. This is not one of the better views from the hillsides, though if you look up instead of looking down, if you look up a bit, it gets pretty fantastic. But what compromises views from the hillsides? And I think this probably has more to do with, since there are public lands up there and people walking around on public trails, like, are there things you want them to—you want individual developments to do that maybe screen the properties better, better regulate them in terms of height, massing, bulk, etc., so that the environment that people are moving through to enjoy those hillsides is mitigated in some form or manner? I mean, you could obviously look at, on a property-by-property basis, the amount of grading, height in relationship to ridgelines, rooflines, and silhouettes, and the extent of scale, mass, bulk, and transparency. I mean, I kind of like them, but there's some very long houses, and I mean literally hundreds of feet long, that are traveling along ridgelines. I mean, is that the right thing? Do you want to regulate that? Do you not want to regulate that?
[00:38:04] Speaker: Use of materials—we went through this exercise when we did the multifamily and mixed-use objective design standards in the city, where we were asked to try to come up with the beginnings of what does it mean to build in Palm Desert in terms of Palm Desert design character. To some extent, that could be extended to this exercise as well. And then the extent of visible exterior lighting. I mentioned at the beginning, landscape we think is a big thing. There could certainly—I don't think, if my memory serves me right, there's much set at all other than some platitudes about use of native or drought-resistant landscape. There could certainly be more robust standards for that in the hillside areas, and that would in some way start to relate to the character of the landscape as it existed at one point or it might exist again in the future.
[00:38:53] Speaker: Site access standards—those can be fairly focused. Like, if you do have to build an access road onto your property from whatever the public right-of-way is, what are the limitations of that? So there could be more base standards for that.
[00:39:09] Speaker: And that kind of culminates with what are these questions which I've been mentioning all along. Like, where do you think we should concentrate our efforts? Should we develop a lot more design standards for architecture and landscape in the hillsides that create a set of community expectations? Are there particular viewsheds that are important that we need to know about, or an approach towards viewsheds that you want us to dive into? To what extent—I mean, I think it's a little bit beyond our scope of work, but to what extent are we talking about hazard issues and opportunities for cluster development? I don't think much, but it might be an issue that we should at least hear about. And are there issues and ideas that we...
[00:40:01] Staff: haven't brought up at all in this preliminary assessment of what you have right now that we should be sensitized to. So with that, I'll stop, and all of us are here to probably answer your questions or listen to your comments.
[00:40:16] Council Member: Okay, thank you. Any comments and questions today? They need some feedback to help with direction. I'll start. In terms of the West Hill area, you're talking about the area you just presented, right? The Cahuilla Hills? Yes, so I believe we should concentrate on that. Yes, we need development design standards, but from everything you said, I believe protecting the ridgeline is the most important, and it needs to be better defined. And also, to better define extensive cut and fill—it's too loose of a standard, in my opinion. View sheds are important. I would not be a fan of cluster development up there. And those are my answers. Any other comments or questions?
[00:41:19] Council Member: I saw in the report that you'll be having staff going and taking tours or viewing. Can any one of us tag along to that as we look at the...
[00:41:29] Staff: Actually, we had hoped that some of you were going to be on that one tour that we went, but there is a subcommittee, and unfortunately, the tour was not scheduled at a time the subcommittee could go. I guarantee you the subcommittee would like to go.
[00:41:43] Council Member: Okay, well, I'm sure we can figure that out. In addition to the subcommittee, I think as all five of us would vote, I think at different times, I don't know if you need us separately or if we can each go...
[00:41:58] Staff: Just to clarify, is that if additional council members other than those that are currently on the subcommittee...
[00:42:04] Council Member: ...absolutely, I definitely want to go. And I'm not sure, obviously because of the Brown Act we can't have three of us, but it's certainly something that we could potentially explore.
[00:42:16] Staff: We'll work with the clerk to understand what the implications are for the Brown Act and see if, as long as we're going no more than two at a time, to coordinate so everyone gets a sense of the feel.
[00:42:27] Council Member: And my other question: is there a standard width that needs to be preserved for EMS or fire? I mean, if we've got some windy roads, we need to be sure that there's a sufficient turning radius.
[00:42:38] Staff: Yeah, those standards exist. In terms of, say, statewide, they exist within the fire code, State Fire Code. And then each city has discretion with your Fire Marshal about how those are interpreted. But generally, you start off at 20 feet and you get up to 28 feet as the absolute minimum. And your cul-de-sac, or you have actually five or six different ways that engines can turn around, and you have a certain depth, 150 feet, that they can go down a dead end. So all of those rules exist, and I'm sure your Department of Public Works is super aware of...
[00:43:19] Council Member: Perfect, perfect. Thank you. I'm sure nobody wants a 150-point turn as we need somebody on their way out. Thank you.
[00:43:29] Council Member: Please. There are a number of lots that are less than five acres that have existing pads. One of them high up on Upperway West, several lower on Calle Los Campos, and then, of course, just behind the park. Help me understand how they build when they can't meet the one unit per five-acre density.
[00:44:02] Staff: It's not directly addressed in the hillside development standards section, but there's an overarching allowance through our non-conforming section where if a lot doesn't meet the minimum lot standard, generally in the city, it can still be developed on. There is some—the process that's laid out that it goes through, whether it's through ARC or a hillside development, is a little unclear currently with the way the hillside ordinance is currently drafted, and that's something that we would explore through the UDC.
[00:44:48] Council Member: Would it be possible to make the carve-out in the hillside areas such that you have to have the one unit per five-acre? Meaning, do we have to honor the ability for some of...
[00:45:00] Staff: ...these land owners to build on lots that are less than five acres. We, I can do some more research on the record, but I believe there's previously been statements that would allude to that. So we'll have to address those specific instances on certain subdivisions that have been approved in the past that have those smaller lot sizes. There's a couple of instances where that has happened where we might have to explore that further in order to really address that concern. So we'll certainly explore it as a part of this exercise in unified development code. And then in terms of, you know...
[00:45:43] Staff: Councilman Trubee is ready to ask some questions.
[00:45:49] Councilmember: So, the 35% coverage, I'm glad you brought that up because that's one instance in which I'm very unclear on what that looks like. If we have a 4,000 square foot cap on the size of a structure and then they come in and, you know, so I'm glad you brought that up. That is a concern of mine. One question I have is, as we go through this process of objective design standards, could we amend the Hillside Ordinance to remove the precise plan process immediately and let that just get that off of the books so that future projects can't come through that process while we work through the objective design standards? Will that require an extensive CEQA, or is that something we could do pretty quickly?
[00:46:44] Staff: Is this to remove that process as an exception, or is this more to not accept new development applications, to just remove that exception process?
[00:46:55] Staff: I think we can have that discussion. It's really more of a comprehensive look at the hillside development chapter. It would require an ordinance amendment, but if that is a direction for us to explore, we could look into it.
[00:47:11] Councilmember: Yeah, I'm okay with the ordinance change. I'm just more concerned—I don't want to trigger hundreds of thousands of dollars in CEQA work if we're already heading this process. But if it's something where we have a categorical exemption where we could just do it more quickly, I would be interested in at least removing that variable as we move forward through this process.
[00:47:32] Staff: We can explore that process.
[00:47:34] Staff: If I may just make one comment. I want to make sure we vet this more thoroughly with our legal department, just given the state we're in with housing restrictions. I don't want it to—it could be viewed as a moratorium. I'm not saying we couldn't do it, but there might just be a number of things associated with that that I just want to make sure we vet with the City Attorney.
[00:47:58] Councilmember: Okay, I appreciate that, and I'm not asking that we jump into it. But if we have a process that has some objective standards, I would think that that's something that we would prefer to work through than having two processes: one that has some objective standards and one that has zero. And so that was just my thinking, is if it's something that we can do without significant legal trouble or extensive cost, at least we kind of eliminate that unknown process for now. So, and then one last thing: can you walk through the impacts of the state laws that allow for subdivisions and whatnot? So if you have a property in the hillsides and you have five acres, you subdivide it, can you follow that process and build another 4,000 square foot structure on the subdivided property, or walk me through that, please?
[00:48:53] Staff: Yeah, following the general standards, a tentative parcel map is the typical route that a subdivision would go through. As a finding of approval for a tentative subdivision, each of those lots would have to meet the minimum lot standards, which are currently set at five acres. So if someone were to propose a subdivision under the standard subdivision procedures of the city, they would need at least 10 acres theoretically of a parcel to create two lots. If it's any smaller, they wouldn't be allowed to subdivide it further, and that's the general process for a tentative subdivision. Senate Bill 9, the urban lot split, which enables an administrative subdivision, does allow for further subdivision of these areas. However, they do need to comply with all of the requirements of the ordinance, one of which is access to a legal right-of-way. So depending on...
[00:50:00] Staff: ...that property, if it has access to a legal dedicated right-of-way, which is a requirement of our ordinance, then they could theoretically subdivide it below the minimum five-acre threshold. But if there is no access to a dedicated right-of-way, then they would not be able to do that.
[00:50:49] Staff: Yeah, Senate Bill 9 does allow for those administrative subdivisions regardless of the base standards for minimum lot size or the general plan. So we have a five-acre threshold minimum lot size for these lots. If someone were to propose an SB 9, we would look at it closely to see if it is even eligible for a subdivision and then follow the appropriate state laws for that. There are some exceptions if an area is classified as a very high fire hazard area. These areas are not classified; those are classifications that are issued by the State Office of the Fire Marshal. Or the key one is access to a legal public right-of-way that's dedicated, which in many cases doesn't exist on these lots.
[00:51:40] Legal Counsel: Thank you. If I may add a little note on SB 9, that is one of the few pieces of legislation that purported to apply to charter cities and was successfully challenged by a group of four charter cities out in the South Bay Area. That case was struck down just as to those four plaintiff cities and is up on appeal, so we are watching that as Palm Desert is a charter city as well. So if a higher court upholds that ruling, it may end up applying to Palm Desert and we wouldn't have to worry as much. But that's just sort of percolating in the background as we sort out all the legislation that's passed and what applies to whom. Thank you.
[00:52:22] Councilmember: Please. All right, thank you. You spoke earlier about several hundred lots in the West Hills, and I just want to clarify: do you mean several hundred lots that are currently privately owned and exist, or several hundred that are potentially buildable?
[00:52:39] Staff: That are privately owned. We haven't done the full assessment on if they're buildable. There's a lot of factors: whether or not the lot has access, the terrain of the site, or if there's existing... The maps that were provided simply show lots which are privately owned and those that are publicly owned.
[00:52:57] Councilmember: Okay, so we have no idea how many lots may or may not be affected by any ordinances we decide to go with or change through this exercise?
[00:53:06] Staff: There will be examination of that and testing to see how that applies.
[00:53:09] Councilmember: Cool. So the number of buildable lots will be given to us at some point in the future?
[00:53:14] Staff: You know, a rough assessment. I mean, I'm not expecting specific...
[00:53:16] Councilmember: Okay, that's cool. And that kind of leads to my next question. I understand that some of the roads in the West Hills are actually privately built and maintained, is that right? Like Upper West Way, West... I think, are they private roads?
[00:53:32] Staff: Yes, those are privately... they were privately constructed and maintained. Historically, these were properties that were created through the Small Tracts Act of 1938 or 1950, where the federal government sold off five-acre plots of land. With that, there were common law dedications along the edges for access, and these roadways were placed prior to the city incorporation by those landowners, and generally wherever it would work.
[00:54:08] Councilmember: Perfect. So does the potential exist for current landowners to build their own private roads and create more access moving forward to what are heretofore unbuildable lots, or inaccessible lots rather?
[00:54:23] Staff: Well, it would have to meet a set standard which the city would have to establish, and would also have to meet the access and disturbance limitations that are currently in the ordinance, which again allow exceptions. There's a specific square footage of how much area development can create for access to the building pad. So it's something that is theoretically possible but would need to follow through the hillside development process, which is... so we can also address grading standards for roads.
[00:55:01] Staff: During this process as well, yes, okay. And we currently have some on the books, but we can visit those. I mean, that wasn't really addressed here in the presentation, but yeah, we'll explore it further once we get into the technical work.
[00:55:13] Councilmember: And I think I know the answer to this question, but I'll ask it anyway just to have it out there in the public domain. I think Isra could probably answer this one. Is there a tool in our toolbox that exists for us to just say prohibit all future hillside development in that area?
[00:55:32] Staff: I always hesitate to make a broad prohibition such as that.
[00:55:37] Councilmember: Right, okay. We could if we got crazy, but okay, I understand that. Okay, good. I just want to make sure. And it seems to me like on page eight, if we were simply to substitute the word 'prohibit' for the word 'limit', that would... 'limit' is subjective, you know? It says, well, it doesn't put an outright ban on developing and grading in areas with slopes greater than 20%. You know, it could almost go case-by-case. If we were just simply to substitute 'prohibit' for 'limit', that would solve a few problems. Could it?
[00:56:10] Staff: Is that based on the percentage slope of a site? 20%?
[00:56:13] Councilmember: Yeah, yeah.
[00:56:17] Staff: As it currently stands, somebody could do it. It would just be up to staff or through the hillside processes as it's currently laid out in the ordinance. But a direct prohibition in certain areas may prevent that.
[00:56:29] Councilmember: And I think Joe might have asked this, and you presented it, but I just want to make sure I've got it correct. There's a... on page nine, maybe, I'm sorry, page 10, there's a limit of 35% coverage. Now, you're talking about this 35% of the actual total lot size can be considered buildable under existing development standards?
[00:56:56] Staff: Yes, the existing code says explicitly lot size. We believe the intent was the pad, just given the size of the lots and the size limitation on the building. There's some conflicting...
[00:57:12] Councilmember: Okay, so we already thought it's not really completely reconciled with the 4,000 foot. We need to reconcile those two.
[00:57:19] Staff: Yes, right.
[00:57:22] Councilmember: Okay, great. That's all I have. Thank you.
[00:57:24] Councilmember: Okay, I have a few things. First, thank you for some of the definitions you gave us where we're establishing a baseline of expectations, which is very helpful, and measurable and quantifiable standards. Also, just a little detail: when we have the map that lacked a lot of detail right at the beginning, where you pointed out... it probably was like the third slide in or so. Okay, right there. Canyons at Big Horn is only on the west side or east side? It's canyons and mountains.
[00:57:58] Staff: Yeah, it's... okay, so you have the east side of 74 is Canyons, on the other side it's Big...
[00:58:03] Councilmember: ...just for accuracy. In 2011, '12, or and/or '13, there were some rigorous and detailed discussions on definitions, lengths, etc., of ridgelines. I don't know what the result of those were, but I have to think they showed up somewhere. Do you recall those, Martine, at all? I mean, we had some big... between Planning Commission and... there was a lot of detailed discussion on ridgelines.
[00:58:36] Staff: There was a significant amount of discussion along for zoning requirements and...
[00:58:40] Councilmember: Well, we can look into that. I'm wondering how that showed up on our books at all, because there was a lot of discussion. 'Significant' is a good way to put it. So, you kept on saying about the iconic mountains, and they are. It's open space, it's, you know, the conservation and preservation that we talk about and we hold so dear in Palm Desert. And I want to make sure that we are looking at all of those mountains, because it's about the character of the community, and it's always about preserving. You know, we talked... we went all out for the Chuckwalla National Monument because we want to have that all around our valley, and it's important that we protect those mountains. I was floored that LA was tougher than Palm Desert. That just... just shaken me to the base. So, you know, recently this Council unfortunately okayed a guest house that will be potentially, as it was before, used probably, as you called it, a party house, short-term rental. So we have to be careful with that. I know this won't be covered. I'd just like everyone to make a note that we want to make sure that that...
[01:00:00] Speaker 1: ...does not happen again. The view sheds are incredibly important. The trails are also character of Palm Desert. It's something for everybody that everyone has the opportunity to enjoy, and we have to make sure that we don't lose that. The evidence of erosion due to water, and we have seen, I mean, we put in years ago with Redevelopment funds, we put in those storm drains because of those issues up there, but now we're seeing a little shift in weather patterns, and that erosion is not going anywhere. We have to be cognizant of that as we go forward. Can you switch to the question so I make sure I answer really what you're here for? You asked about, 'Should we focus on the West Hills?' My answer to that would be we should focus on every hillside that we have influence over because it is about the character of our community. The West Hills are very important, but there is not a hill that is not important in Palm Desert. It is significant to the character of our community. I mean, we talk about the Hagedon house in there, and last week it was in Wall Street Journal because it's such a behemoth. It was actually in the newspaper because it had been purchased from someone else from Hagedon, and they talked about the shark tank in it and how amazingly huge it is and in that place. So we really have to be careful that there is not a hillside that we should not be paying attention to in Palm Desert. It is preservation of our open space, it is our trails, it is a gift to everyone who visits or lives here. The second one, I, for some reason, I can't process this: 'Should we develop design standards for architectural and landscape fit in the landscape?' Can you say that so that I can understand it?
[01:02:08] Speaker 2: Fit may be throwing you off, but fit is basically the specificity of the architecture and landscape, the fit of it in terms of what's actually there.
[01:02:21] Speaker 1: So is that the, in the natural landscape, is that...
[01:02:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that, I think that, you know, maybe the most banal way of describing it is that if you go to Santa Barbara, to fit in, you pretty much, in the downtown in particular, they require you to build a Spanish Revival building, okay? And so when we worked previously in what you could call the flats, the Architectural Review Commission spent a lot of time talking about what does it mean, or asking the question that they wanted us to try to answer in our work: what does it mean to make Palm Desert architecture? And I think that is, in essence, what we mean by fit, which is that single-fam... first of all, single-family homes are a dicey prospect, and I think the City Attorney kind of alluded that you can't just like take people's rights away because you'll engender a conversation that will be an interesting one.
[01:03:22] Speaker 1: Sacramento does it all the time, but anyway, go ahead, I'm sorry.
[01:03:25] Speaker 2: But the point is, is that a lot of people feel when they're building single-family homes, particularly larger or more upscale homes, that they should be allowed to do whatever they want, and that's, you know, their property rights, that's their speech, in essence. There's plenty of case law and everything else that allows cities to regulate those things within reason, but how far do you want to really push that is the question in terms of fitting to your definition of what fit is. And I think, like I said earlier, you know it when you see it. Like, it isn't that hard for us to drive around Palm Desert and drive around this Coachella Valley in general and say there's certain architecture that has exemplified what it means to sit within a desert landscape, and then there's some that just doesn't pay any attention to it at all. And we can, we can move that needle to a certain extent, but I don't want to move the needle on single-family houses unless we're told to, because when you go to a lot of communities and you work on single-family design standards, they fundamentally tell you that we don't want to deal with any of those issues. You know, the most famous example, which has been public, is the woman, famous author, who painted her house purple in a San Antonio historic district, and it got everybody upset, like, 'Oh, that doesn't fit, that's not what it's supposed to be.' And in the end, she got to do it, but a lot of communities...
[01:05:02] Council Member: ...don't want to have anything to do with that type of conversation.
[01:05:05] Council Member: Well, certainly we would want the landscape and architecture to at least give a nod to the nature of the desert and respect the beauty of the desert. Okay, so are there any, are there particular view sheds that are important? I would go so far to say there isn't one that isn't important, and I know that's a stretch, but our mountains are important, preserving the natural beauty of the desert is important, those open spaces are important. Uh, so those are just a few of my comments. Um, and are there any issues we haven't brought up that we should consider in this exercise? One of the things I'd like to do is if we could have somebody, and I don't know exactly how we go about doing this, but if we could have a member of the Planning Commission on the subcommittee, I think that would be a tremendous asset. And we have a planning commissioner who worked on the hillside ordinances in Palm Springs, and I think he would be a tremendous asset not only to the process but to then the Planning Commission when they're presented with these sorts of things. Uh, and I wonder if any of my colleagues see any other issues that might be considered that haven't been brought up, please.
[01:06:27] Council Member: In terms of, as we progress, giving direction of my preferences, I share many of yours, uh, and I would simplify mine as as little, limited structures and limited size for each individual house. In terms of, as we progress, I just smaller houses, limited development. And I know that one of the reasons people buy lots up there, you're absolutely right, is they want to look down on everyone. It's, it's beautiful up there. I've spent some time up there, but, and you've mentioned this yourself, you turn around, you look up into the hills and those views are amazing. And when people move into this area from out of the area, they're not familiar with that. They just want to build this beautiful thing overlooking, um, that we then have to look at too. But when we look at terms of views, um, preferring the views of, of the residents down below of the hillsides over the rights of the people developing to look down on us. Uh, there's plenty of views to be had up the other direction. So, uh, those are kind of my comments. Do you have...
[01:07:41] Council Member: Yeah, just actually one more question that I thought of when she brought up the Hagedon house is, uh, the Hagedon house was built in Ironwood Country Club, wasn't it?
[01:07:49] Council Member: No, Bighorn.
[01:07:51] Council Member: Bighorn, okay.
[01:07:52] Council Member: So, and we didn't address anything within, uh, the boundaries of private country clubs. So how do our rules apply to private country clubs?
[01:08:04] Mayor Harnik: They, no, they do apply on the hillsides, and they, they use Peron, they go all out at Bighorn to try and comply, and with the ridge lines and with the roof lines, they, they have to. Okay, so, and we're, I mean, the nature of this discussion was simply the West Hills, and it was kind of cut out that section, but yes, anything we talk about is going to also apply within private country clubs.
[01:08:29] Staff: If I may, um, to just to go back to, um, Mayor Harnik's statement that, uh, when those developments, those are master plan developments that were all subdivided at the same time, they have a, uh, they're subject to design guidelines that were originally agreed to with the city that control for, um, many aspects: the color, the form, the materials of those houses. So those, um, many of those, uh, structures are permitted through, uh, administrative processes and don't go through our Architecture Review Commission except in some limited instances historically. And our approach would, uh, and recommendation would be to respect those existing design guidelines and procedures that, uh, are already in place for those master plan developments, namely Stone Eagle, uh, and Bighorn, both the mountain and the canyon. And there's no, um, hillside plan residential on the mountain side, but certainly on the canyon side where the Hagedon house is. Um, in our analysis, we found that the Hagedon house did go through a hillside development process, um, which is, um, perhaps a special case or a one-off case there, but...
[01:09:38] Mayor Harnik: Can I share?
[01:09:40] Staff: Certainly.
[01:09:42] Mayor Harnik: Well, let me, that there was, uh, the case was made that, 'Oh, gee, it will be used a lot for an event space for nonprofits, and won't that be great?' So if you go back and look, that was how they appealed, and it won over the council at that time. There was that, that was the...
[01:10:00] Councilmember: ...kind of thing that happened to make that happen. I think we have to respect the natural beauty of the desert in everything we do. That has to be our guiding principle. Got it. And one more, I mean, if you're looking for our feedback, I definitely think we need to codify and make very clear and well-defined rules, particularly with, obviously, building size on each pad, but also the viewscapes, like clearly defined numbers. You know, the 16-foot per 100-foot, I thought was great in Los Angeles. It was...
[01:10:31] Councilmember: There's no...
[01:10:33] Councilmember: Idaho? I thought Idaho dealt with all the public land setbacks. But anyway, so I would like to see those moving forward if possible. So that's my direction or input and opinion. Thank you.
[01:10:44] Councilmember: One final question. So, I just, again, everything has been set up as mentioned: how many per lot, per size, setback. And in terms of going through ARC, I just want to confirm that we already have the objective design standards for housing across the city. So is this going to say we are going to modify the currently approved objective standards to be a different objective for a different area, which then means it wasn't entirely objective for the other one?
[01:11:17] Staff Member: Well, the hillside standards are apart from the other document. The current objective design standards only applied to multifamily and mixed-use development where a mixed-use development, two-thirds or greater of that development is residential. So that is a separate, and that applies to different areas of the city. This would be a separate document focused on...
[01:11:41] Councilmember: Thank you, I appreciate...
[01:11:42] Staff Member: ...areas of the hillside.
[01:11:44] Councilmember: And I want to mention one thing. It was after that guest house was approved on the hillside is when I asked that we review this, because not only do the planning commissioners, the council, the staff, they're not completely familiar with the efforts that have been gone through to protect those hillsides. So I ask that this be done. I never asked that it was specifically the West Hills. I want the hillsides in general throughout Palm Desert to be addressed and protected. That's the natural beauty of our desert and what we appreciate so much. So those are my comments.
[01:12:25] Mayor: Do you have any questions of us? Did we leave anything ambiguous?
[01:12:31] Staff Member: No, we have quite a bit to look into.
[01:12:33] Mayor: Okay, and we look forward to being able to go on a tour. I know, I believe that all of us would like that, and we'll just figure out how to do it so we don't violate the Brown Act.
[01:12:46] Staff Member: Thank you. Thank you very much.
[01:12:50] Mayor: Okay, and then we have one more, do we?
[01:12:54] Staff Member: Yes, we have time for it. Yes, we have Erica coming up with this next one.
[01:12:58] Mayor: Okay, great. Thank you.
[01:13:07] Erica (Staff): Hello Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Councilmembers. Today's session will outline the proposed redesigning of the city seal in response to a council request. After addressing the request in November 2023 to update the current city seal, feedback from city council has led to a more thorough approach for a redesign. The approach outlines key phases, including design development, public engagement, and the approval process. Staff is recommending a structured approach with the following key steps: a steering committee formation. Staff proposes forming a working group that includes an artist, an art influencer, and a marketing professional. Their role will be to outline submission requirements, shape the artistic and historical vision, and evaluate and select submissions as part of a selection process. Design development: establishing core values informed by the city's history and community identity. These core values will shape the call for commission, ensuring submissions align with the city's vision. Public engagement will rank the final decision selections with public input through surveys, meetings, and outreach to ensure broad community engagement. We will also collaborate with partners such as schools, nonprofits, and cultural organizations to gather diverse perspectives. At the final stage, Council will review and approve with the presented final design selections for consideration and selection along with the public engagement results. So our next step, following this session, staff will incorporate your feedback today into a final framework.
[01:15:01] Staff: Additionally, staff is requesting an appointment of an ad hoc city council subcommittee to provide guidance throughout this process. A companion report on today's regular meeting agenda will formalize that appointment. So with that, I welcome your feedback.
[01:15:21] Councilmember: Feedback. Love that part of the plan. I love the part of the plan is to include schools because these are the people that are going to see the seal for the years to come, long after we are here. So I think that's a great idea. And to the mayor, I would love to be on this subcommittee or this...
[01:15:40] Mayor: I feel like—oh, sorry, I feel like I'm going to progress under duress because I have a colleague up here who's looking at me like, 'Don't touch this thing.' I was just going to say, I know this was the mayor's—you really wanted the seal reimagined, and it's been important to you for years.
[01:15:59] Mayor: Relevant, so I would appoint you as well.
[01:16:05] Councilmember: Then, well, any feedback though is what we need because we have that later on in our agenda.
[01:16:10] Councilmember: Sure. So this is the proposed...
[01:16:15] Mayor: No, no, this is our right now. Let me just share, I have this thing I keep on my corkboard. It said, 'If you don't like change, you're really not going to like your relevance.' That's irrelevant, and it's time to update it. That's 50 years old, and let's progress as a city. I have never seen anybody swing a golf club, hit a tennis ball with a bighorn sheep overlooking a fir tree, all in the same space. It's just—I'm sure it was great at the moment, and the palm trees, I'm sure it was great at the moment. We must remain current in order to be relevant, and that is just anachronistic, I would say.
[01:17:04] Councilmember: Yeah, I recall that we had other samples, right? So we're not—they're going to go through the process and like Councilmember Konia said, we're going to go to schools, we're going to go to artists, we'll go to all sorts of people to get their feedback and input to give us something that reflects the character of our community a little bit, right? I was just remembering a meeting about a year ago or so that we had five or six other samples. So we're starting from scratch again, is that correct?
[01:17:31] Staff: There was an attempt to update the current seal, which removing pieces of the current seal, it was obvious that a redo was not the direction that the council wanted to take. So we're now looking at a complete overhaul of the seal. So we'll take the steering committee, we'll get the artistic vision and historical pieces into a call for commission, and then we'll go out to a graphic artist to actually redo this seal. And those new options will be selected and presented to the public and to the council.
[01:18:08] Councilmember: Very good, thanks for clarifying. Yes, I'm—and I know everybody looks, you know, looking for direction, etc. I'm a little more nostalgic. I love it just the way it is. I don't want to touch it. I love the warmth with the gold. I love, you know, the bighorn sheep, the tennis, golf—that's kind of our history and heritage. I think all you would need to add is a bike. We see a lot of bikers now.
[01:18:31] Councilmember: Well, we'll make sure to incorporate that into the next one.
[01:18:35] Councilmember: But you know, I was just sitting at the luncheon, the Inspiration Awards today, and we had David McFarland, all the Citizens on Patrol there, and of course they had that on their sleeve. I was just admiring how handsome and distinct it was there on their shoulders.
[01:18:49] Councilmember: Those were the people wearing it, it wasn't actually the seal, man.
[01:18:53] Councilmember: Oh, that's all right. That's my two cents.
[01:18:56] Councilmember: One additional detail to that is the cost, right? That it's very expensive for some of these things to be printed with the amount of granular detail in trying to get these things done. I think it may have been Anthony that said when it comes to like a seal, just how difficult it would be to get all of those details moving forward.
[01:19:15] Staff: Absolutely. The official City seal has elements of the seal removed because we couldn't get the detail in it.
[01:19:23] Councilmember: Yeah, and I believe that needs to be redone, correct?
[01:19:25] Staff: Correct. So we're at that stage of needing that actual City seal replaced.
[01:19:30] Councilmember: So let's—we don't have time to do it right the first time, how can we have time to do it right the second time? Let's do it right.
[01:19:36] Councilmember: One question: what is an art influencer?
[01:19:40] Staff: An art influencer—we're looking at a couple of different gentlemen from Palm Springs Life who have been involved with the City of Palm Desert for many years. So, people that have a lot of historical background within the City of Palm Desert to help shape that artistic...
[01:20:02] Speaker: Vision, do you have enough direction from us?
[01:20:04] Speaker: I do, unless anybody has any other comments.
[01:20:06] Speaker: Thank you for your bravery.
[01:20:11] Speaker: Okay, that marks the end of our study session. Is that accurate? So we are going to go into closed session at this point, but I guess we have to call this to order officially, correct? So let me do that. So we've closed the study session, and now we will open the Palm Desert City Council meeting of Thursday, March 27th. And it is 4:03, and it is a joint meeting of the Palm Desert City Council, Successor Agency to the Palm Desert Redevelopment Agency, Palm Desert Housing Authority, and the Palm Desert Board of Library Trustees. Did you want to do attendance, or...
[01:20:58] Clerk: I'll have the record reflect all council members are present.
[01:21:01] Speaker: Thank you very much. We're going to go into... unless there's somebody who would like to make a comment on closed session? Is there anyone who would like to do that? We will go into closed session now. We'll be back as soon as we finish that business.