HomeMy WebLinkAbout10/7/2025 Item 8a, Peck
Stephen Peck <
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:Council Work Session WUI Code Changes; 10/7/2025
Attachments:Council Correspondence 10-6-2025 LtrHd (2) copy.pdf
Stephen J. Peck, AICP
Peck Planning and Development, LLC
Steve@PeckPlanning.com
1
October 6, 2025
Mayor Stewart and City Council
City of San Luis Obispo
900 Palm Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
Thank you, Mayor and Council.
My name is Stephen Peck, and I’d like to address the City’s update on its fire safety
regulations. First, let me thank the staff for their focused efforts on this matter. These new
regulations are a significant change and will require us to think differently about
development in the future. Staff has done a good job pointing us in the right direction, with
appropriate caution to not add to the already-significant change in regulations.
These new regulations affect the entire community and all land uses. Once confined
to the community’s edges, the WUI regulations now affect downtown redevelopment and
commercial properties as well as properties in the city’s so -called “annexation areas”.
These new regulations will require us to think differently about what constitutes good and
attractive landscaping, the orientation of our projects to creek corridors and open spaces ,
street and utility improvement standards, and access.
As the project manager for the Froom Ranch project, I’d like to address the
proposed fire regulations as they apply to that project in particular. Even though that
project went to significant lengths to address wildfire-urban interface impacts in its
Specific Plan and the EIR, and has special WUI regulations and mitigations, the mapping
changes have placed the actual development of the project in jeopardy, pending changes
to the Specific Plan itself and changes to the Climate Action and Safety Element (“Safety
Element”). When the Specific Plan was approved, the Very High WUI hazard zone was
confined to the “Upper Terrace” portion of the project that wasn’t proposed for
development; and, the Specific Plan recognized that development on the Upper Terrace
was not permitted through a policy prohibiting development in Very High WUI zones. That
prohibition, unless modified, now applies to the entire property, even if the property meets
and exceeds the development requirements for all other properties in the Very High haz ard
zone.
A policy in the Safety Element is also problematic for Froom Ranch and other
projects in the community. Even though the Safety Element has extensive policies and
programs for acceptable development in the Very High WUI zone, as cited in the staff
report, the Safety Element still has a prohibition on “subdivisions” in the Very High WUI
zone, but not a prohibition on “development” in that same zone. Since virtually every
development project has some form of a parcel map or subdivision map for sales, leasing
for financing purposes, this involves a prohibition on development and well. This policy in
the 2023 Safety Element was carried over from the previous Safety Elements, and pre-
dates special regulations. It will need to be modified.
The Froom Ranch development team is in the process of finalizing its Community
Fire Safety Plan. Based on proposed city fire safety regulations, it will meet and exceed the
current and proposed fire safety regulations. As part of that process, we have had to re-
think many the assumptions and development approaches for landscaping, setbacks,
emergency vehicle access and evacuation that were made 10 years ago when the plan was
originally developed. The resulting project will be better and safer. There are other
modifications that staff and the development believe are desirable at this time, and we look
forward to addressing those with a Specific Plan amendment soon.
Thank you for time and consideration of this matter.
Sincerely,
Stephen J. Peck, AICP