About 50 residents signed a letter sent to the council last month that stated: "I support affordable housing. Please optimize efforts, finish the work and submit the housing plan for certification by the 1/31/24 deadline."
Those who signed the petition included Planning Commissioners Anne Kopf-Sill and Jon Goulden and former Mayors Maryann Moise, John Richards and Steve Toben.
The residents' petition followed the town's Dec. 1 release of the latest draft of a state-mandated plan called the housing element. This marks the town's fourth attempt to get its housing element passed after the state Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) sent back the previous drafts for further work with the most recent occurrence in July.
"I believe the petition put forward represents the majority of people in our community who want the housing element certified by Jan. 31," Mayor Sarah Wernikoff said in an email. "Our staff has been working closely with our HCD reviewer over multiple meetings to ensure items have been addressed. I look forward to the review of these updates by our Planning Commission next week and certification by Jan. 31."
At that Dec. 20 meeting, the commission voted unanimously to recommend that the council adopt the revamped housing element to be filed with HCD.
When the town got word in July that its plan was still inadequate, "it seemed like we were going to have to make a whole bunch of changes," Commissioner Ronny Krashinsky said during the meeting, "but I think what we've arrived at is very minimal changes (and) very palatable, and I just wanted to thank staff — current staff and previous staff — for establishing that productive back-and-forth with HCD and getting to this point."
Kopf-Sill echoed those sentiments. "I'd gotten worried about the comments" from the HCD reviewer, she said, but in the end, "I was pleasantly surprised when I read this all together. It feels consistent with a lot of what the Housing Element Committee did and the work we've done up to now. There's no huge monkey wrench."
For more than a year, Portola Valley has been working on a plan that would satisfy state officials while trying to preserve the town's character to the extent possible.
Under the state Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) program, the town must plan for 253 new units during the current 2023-31 cycle — a significant jump from the 64 in the last eight-year period.
Like the mayor, town Interim Planning and Building Director Jon Biggs expressed confidence that the fourth iteration of the plan is the charm.
"We have been checking in with HCD while developing the amendments so the changes reflect their guidance," Biggs said in an email. "Naturally, we have kept the unique characteristics of Portola Valley at the forefront as we have drafted the changes."
He pointed out that among the issues the new draft addresses include providing "additional certainty with the timing/availability of pipeline projects" and giving a zoning-density range of 20-23 units per acre for multifamily housing.
The revised plan also calls for the town to boost efforts and reassess sites to encourage the production of accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, if numbers are falling below projections.
"If there is a shortfall in anticipated ADU production the reviewer (required) tweaks to the town's existing ADU programs," Biggs said.
If the plan still fails to get certified, Portola Valley would be open to financial penalties, legal action from the state and the so-called "builder's remedy" — a state provision that allows developers to bypass local land-use regulations to build their projects.
"I think we do need a housing element to keep us out of the clutches of any developers and to set our own path," said resident David Cardinal, who signed the letter and spoke at the Dec. 13 meeting. "I think we need to get our jobs done."
Other residents, however, have raised concern over increased housing and upzoning. They have argued that building more homes would damage the town's rural makeup and heighten fire hazards in a region already at risk for wildfires.
Funds for low-income housing efforts
In a related matter, the council on Dec. 13 approved a policy setting aside funds for low-income housing efforts.
According to a staff report, $4.6 million in developer money in lieu of building affordable-housing units is currently available for that purpose. But funding sources can also include grants and money from other kinds of agreements.
While the policy supports the use of money the town already has for affordable housing, Biggs said, the council removed language to clarify that it retains discretion over the expenditure of Portola Valley funds.
The slight revision worries Cardinal in that the present or a future council could repurpose affordable-housing funds for other than that objective.
Financial pressures on the town budget could prompt leaders not to "actually spend our affordable-housing money on encouraging affordable housing," he said.
But Wernikoff assured that the funding program the policy speaks to is "for the sole purpose of affordable housing," she said.
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