With a state deadline looming next week, Portola Valley's long-range housing plan has hit a new snag.

Central to the very latest conundrum is the state Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) wanting the town to open additional areas for housing opportunities by revising a minimum lot requirement in a particular program.

"The iterative updates from HCD over the last few weeks have the impact of moving the goalpost at a critical juncture in the process," Mayor Sarah Wernikoff said in an email to The Almanac. "The process with HCD has been expensive and time-consuming and has cost us disproportionately given our town's small size, staff and budget."

Jon Biggs, Portola Valley's interim planning and building director, detailed the most-recent hurdle in a Jan. 18 update to the Town Council ahead of its next meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 24.

At that meeting, council members were hoping to consider approving what's called the housing element and sending it to the state by the Jan. 31 deadline. This would be the town's fourth attempt to get its state-mandated plan certified by HCD.

The council earlier this month was already set to send the plan to HCD, but on Jan. 8, the town received an email from the state requesting fresh edits involving how to enhance housing mobility and other issues.

The town made the changes — most of which "were straightforward and provided clarification," Biggs said in his update.

But the HCD reviewer for the town has been working with pointed out that the Opt-In Diversification Program required adjustment "so that it facilitated housing mobility to a greater degree," Biggs said.

The town agreed on further changes, he said, but now "we learned from our reviewer that the edits to the Opt-In program were not sufficient. ... Key among these new edits was a change to the minimum lot size from one acre downward to one-half acre, which would open this program to additional sites in town."

The town asked the reviewer "if the half-acre minimum was a new requirement or if it could be changed back to one acre," he said. "We received a response from our reviewer that the lot-size minimum was 'flexible;' however, there was nothing in the response clarifying the intended degree of flexibility."

The town continues to reach out to HCD to get clarification as "the half-acre minimum lot size is an issue for the town," he said.

In an email to The Almanac, Biggs indicated that the community has already put a lot of discussion and feedback into the Opt-In program.

"A one-acre lot-size minimum has always been an element of this program, including all the submittals provided to HCD," he said. "Changing this now without giving the community a chance to review and provide its feedback is very concerning."

The town has been working with the reviewer "to craft language that is acceptable," he added. "However, we have yet to get a final determination agreeing to the language we have provided. Unfortunately, this leaves a door open for HCD to require additional modifications to this program, which has the potential to impact our schedule."

For now, Biggs said in his update, town staff is recommending that the council consider adopting the housing element with the one-acre minimum as originally laid out.

But if HCD responds that a half acre is indeed the required minimum, he said, the issue would then be deemed "a significant enough change that it should go to" the town Planning Commission for deliberation before returning to the council.

Portola Valley must plan for 253 new units during the current 2023-31 period of the state Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) program — a 295% increase from the 64 in the previous eight-year cycle.

HCD kept sending back the town's drafts of its 2023-31 housing element, citing more work was necessary each time.

The town's fourth version, released Dec. 1 for public review, attempted to address concerns the state raised in July by providing a zoning-density range of 20-23 units per acre for multifamily development and bolstering efforts to encourage the production of accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, among other strategies.

If the plan continues to fail to garner HCD certification, Portola Valley would remain open to state penalties, including what's known as "builder's remedy," which allows developers to bypass local land-use rules for their projects.

"We are now one year into our eight-year cycle," Wernikoff said. "And it's undermining our ability to get to the work of actually building housing."

An HCD spokesperson could not be reached for comment.