[00:00:01] Speaker A: The Michael Hatfield remax team presents real estate and more.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Bay Area real estate is different than all of America and why? What's up with buyers? What's on sellers'minds? How is the market and much, much more.
[00:00:17] Speaker A: Now here's your host, Michael Hatfield. Welcome back this beautiful morning to the real estate and more show. And thank you for listening. We're unable to finish last week all of our questions for Contra Costa county planning commissioner Ross Hillisheim. The last show, I've invited him back, and I'm so glad I did this beautiful morning so we can get those answers. I'm grateful to him, as I am one of those people who like to know how things work. Welcome back to our show, Commissioner Hillisheim.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Michael, thank you for having me.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Last week we spoke and we were kind of stuck on this housing element situation. And when I say housing element situation is the plan, how the state HCD is requiring Contra Costa county to zone and build 7700 units within eight to ten years. What about that, Ross? I mean, geez, it wasn't that way in the past, was it?
[00:01:16] Speaker B: No, Michael, it wasn't. I think that's one of the major things that the public and people have been alerted to. The last cycle, which was the previous eight to ten years, the state required Contra Costa county to zone and build 1800 new units. So this is more than four times the amount of the previous cycles. I think that's what people are being alerted to.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: When I was in business school, they always talked about how the policing authority at the local level was zoning the policing authority. But now we feel like perhaps it's coming more from the state level. We're getting more policing from the state level, telling our local level people what to do. And if they don't do what they're told to do, then it's an issue. So in your position as a county commissioner, you're having to do a little bit of a dance between what is really good for the community and the county as opposed to what you're being told to do. Is that not saying it accurately or what?
[00:02:20] Speaker B: You're right. I think you hit the nail on the head there. It is a fine line that I walk internally to think, well, I am pro development. I'm also pro smart development and planning things out correctly.
When mandates come down from the state to us local residents and local commissions, it sure sometimes can push us. Know the things for La county are different than Contra Costa county or Kaloosa county or Yolo county. That's one of the great things about the state of California, all these different neighborhoods and environments. Not one mandate from Sacramento works for everyone.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: Not one shoe fits all, that's for certain. A lot of people call us out to take a look at their house and say, well, what would you do? Would you improve the kitchen? Would you improve the bedrooms, the bathrooms? What would you do? And it definitely is actually dependent on what that house is as far as structure deferred, maintenance and so forth. In the county, you have the same kind of thing. One shoe does not fit all. It has to be adapted to fit. In your case, as a planning commissioner, it has to fit the community and the residents of the community, or that shoe does not work.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: You're right. You're exactly right there. I want to bring to your attention and the listeners attention this last Wednesday night. A couple of days ago, there was a public hearing, and about 60 people showed up to hear a subdivision in their backyard. And this is all public information. You can watch the hearing now online, like Contra Costa County's website.
People are getting involved and they're noticing, hey, sometimes ten homes in my backyard doesn't make sense to me.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: No. You know, the problem today is that everybody is working so hard, the man and the woman in a house, or the man and the man, or whatever the situation would be. Everyone is generating an income to make ends meet. And they get so busy that at the end of their day, after they get home, they're not wanting to go to a planning commission meeting. They're not wanting to go to the board of supervisors meeting. They're not wanting to do that because they're tired. And I understand that. But when your interests are to not put 100 houses behind yours, blocking all of the open space and the environmental lands that may be there, you have to become involved. You have to go to the planning commission meetings. You have to be a voice. You have to be a voice with the board of supervisors. You have to be a voice, especially in situations like the housing element report that's coming. Know, there are definitely some places that because of that, the state is facing a housing cris. So they say there has to be some places where these units can be placed that will be good for a developer that would want to come in and take a risk to build these homes, I would think, yeah, you bet.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: There are a lot of properties, county owned properties, privately owned properties that are available for more housing, and that the county has strategically zoned for more density. I think it's really important to note that we want vibrant communities, we want single family residences. We want apartment complex. We want high density.
One of my college internships was in New York City, and I lived in a one bedroom apartment with three other guys. So I know at that stage of my life, I lived in that small place. That was the stage of life I was in, and I loved it. Now that I have a family, a single family home with a backyard is something that's really important to me. This is one of the lovely things I like about California master planned jurisdictions and communities. We have schools in certain areas, industrial buildings in certain areas, apartment buildings in certain areas, and that's strategically planned. They're not all bunched up together. No one wants to live behind an industrial building, right?
[00:06:38] Speaker A: No.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: So I think our county staff has done a great job of also walking this fine line of listening to the residents and also listening to the state. I know for a fact that the county staff has done a good job of trying to balance or even lower some of the density requirements in certain neighborhoods because those neighborhoods were not open to it and other neighborhoods are more open to it.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: One of the things I learned last week was that you said that there's several steps. Even after this density could be approved for a certain location within the county, there's still several steps before a developer can come in and actually get permits and start building.
Let's just review this housing element proposal. Let's talk about the procedure one more time. In summary, if you don't mind.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: Okay, so the housing element is a mandate from the housing and community department from the state of California, from Sacramento. So the state or the Sacramento goes out to each jurisdiction and says, contra Costa County, Walnut Creek, San Francisco, you're required to zone and possibly build x amount of units over the next eight years.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: Wow. How can they require a county to build them? Simply by changing the zoning. But how can they require a county to build those units? How can they require a county to force the taxpayer ratepayers to pay more money for the infrastructure to support those particular units of addition that they're talking about. How can they do that?
[00:08:21] Speaker B: I know. That's such a great question. And actually, this is where the rubber hits the road for people, right? How is this going to be paid? What's going to happen?
Number one, people should know. As you see your PG e bill, it goes up as PG E has problems. They push those extra costs onto the ratepayer.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Boy, do they ever.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: The same thing will happen with water, sewer, stormwater, as infrastructure needs to be improved because more housing is coming online. The ratepayers will have to pay, will have to pay more.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: Yeah, and we're talking about infrastructure. We're talking about infrastructure to support the additional units, the high density units that they are wanting to put into the areas of Contra Costa county, in this case San Francisco, all of these other counties, too. We're talking about the additional infrastructure required. We're talking about policing. We're talking about fire and emergency services, disaster preparedness. We're talking about things such as water. How are we going to service these new units with water? Is there enough water to do that? What about a drought year? How does that work? And then what about sewage? What about that? What about schools are going to have to build new schools in order to be able to service these new added high density areas? How is that being paid? And your answer is through the taxpayer.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Through the ratepayer and the local community. Now, I feel like it's important to note that as new housing comes online, higher density housing comes online, that developer or property owner who is paying for the development, they're going to have to pay for connections to water and sewer and connections to PG E, but they don't necessarily have to pay for the betterment of the improved infrastructure down the line. In a community here in Contra Costa county, within the last year or two, a water main broke and literally flooded an intersection and almost flooded a school.
I don't know exactly why it broke, but I can tell you this. The water main had been there for, I want to say, 50 or 60 years. So what's going to happen is this new high density or new housing that will be tied into or connected to water lines that are 50 years old? Who's to say those water lines are okay? Yeah, they're going to need to be improved and the ratepayers will have to pay.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: Yeah. We haven't even talked about roads.
There's several communities that where proposed high density housing is at consideration or has been approved. At this point at the state level, we don't know. But these areas, those roads, if there's a single road in and out of the community, I can think of know, what are you going to do? You're going to add a bunch of homes out there in Maraga where there's only so limited access to those areas for police and fire. I know where I live, there's one road, and that road, when the people are picking their kids up from the elementary school, becomes jammed. If there's anything that happens on the adjacent freeway, it's jammed and you can't move, you're stopped. Well, what happens in a natural disaster such as an earthquake? In that case, how do you get out of those areas? How do you protect yourself? And it's definitely a problem. And I'm probably up on my soapbox a little bit too much right now, but I like to see good things happen. I like to see great things happen. We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back.
[00:12:02] Speaker C: Welcome to the real estate minute with remax expert Michael Hatfield. Michael, what traits should we look for in selecting an agent?
[00:12:09] Speaker D: Look for a deal maker with a positive attitude who will work tirelessly for you. An agent who is adept in multiple offer situations, drafting contracts, marketing and advertising a client's home is familiar with multiple cultures experienced in mortgage financing, inspections and escrow is a huge asset to his client.
[00:12:30] Speaker C: What can you do as a plus for clients?
[00:12:32] Speaker D: Your agent is your eyes and your ears, one who works behind the scenes on your behalf, a great attitude, working well with others and keeping clients priorities. Number one is a given for us.
[00:12:44] Speaker C: Call 925-32-2775 now to schedule an appointment or complimentary home analysis for excellence in real estate. Call the Michael Hatfield remax team at 925-32-2775 or go to michaelhatfieldhomes.com.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Now back to our show.
Brad from my local area had a question he wanted me to ask you, and he said, what factors does the planning commission consider when increasing the population density of an area targeted for the housing element proposal?
[00:13:20] Speaker B: That's a great question from Brad.
What elements do we consider for a new housing project?
Number one, we're going to take staff recommendation. Staff is going to review the application for months to determine if it's suitable for the neighborhood. Number two, we're going to take neighborhood and community involvement. I would say, I would suggest to your listeners, I have an open door.
You want to contact me, contact me. And actually, as an applicant or developer or a neighbor, you should reach out to the planning commission. You should reach out to them and say, hey, there's a development coming in I want you to be aware of. This is how we feel as neighbors, if it's good or not. I rarely get reached out to by the neighbors, but when I am reached out to, I've for sure take into consideration what they think.
Yeah, go ahead.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: Well, I was just going to know. We're talking with Ross Hillisheim. He is a planning commissioner, Contra Costa county. He has been on the show in the past, like last week. We had to bring him back to share some more questions and answers that we had because we couldn't get to all of them last week. And now we're talking about questions that we have from the community. And he's just talked about the requirements that are considered in order to increase the population density. How is it actually determined for a specific area? There's another question that is somewhat related. This one's from Anna, and it says, does the pc have established limits in how much you can expand a given area before the infrastructure has to be increased to accommodate?
[00:15:01] Speaker B: Yeah, the answer to that is yes. These different properties that are within the housing element, the staff, county staff, county planning Commission and the neighbors have been able to weigh in on how far out we can expand housing at what.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Know, folks, you have to get involved. I know everybody is so busy. Everybody is so busy earning a living, paying their house payments, paying their mortgage, and paying that big pg e bill that we all know suffering with at the moment.
You have to be involved. If you're not involved, what happens is it just goes on and on and, you know, reach out to Ross. We're talking with Ross Hillisheim, county planning commissioner here of Contra Costa county. He'd be happy to talk one to one with you, I suppose, one to one. And to answer your questions in regards to what's going on with the housing elements at this point or any other item or factor that they deal with at the county planning commission, a resident, when they're involved, you feel better about yourself. I'm not trying to say anything other than that you feel better about yourself because you're doing what you can. And it's like with a donation to a charitable organization, you can't solve all of the problems, but you can do what you can do. And when you are involved by going to the planning commission or the board of supervisors meetings, then you're in a position to where you're going to feel better about it. And also you're the result of your own actions, of how many homes are being built right on your doorstep. So anyway, I had a question. Ross, this is me now in Contra Costa county, there's two assembly people, and those assembly people are very important up in Sacramento. How did they vote on this increased housing density where it used to be, 1800. Now they're asking 7700 for Contra Costa county. Who are the assembly people in Contra Costa county?
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Yeah, that's another great question.
These laws are started in the state assembly, so I would recommend to the listeners to reach out to your state assembly person and let them know how you feel about certain issues. Our two state assembly people are Rebecca Bauer Cahan and Tim Grayson. Both of them have voted for increased density and increased housing in every jurisdiction in the state.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: So if your listeners have an opinion on this, they should reach out to those assembly people. They're up for reelection every two years, and I'm sure they want to hear from their voters also.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: The board of supervisors for your specific county is really important. The people in your county that actually transacts the business that you advise on items such as this. People should reach out to the board of supervisors, maybe attend the meeting once in a while, be involved, be part of it. It's an important activity for anybody, I would say. You bet. I agree.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: Our board of supervisors is a vibrant, great group of five people, and they do oversee these land use issues from a county level.
The planning commission is advisory on many issues. The buck stops at the board's level. And you know what? It should be that way because they're held accountable to the voters.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: Okay, so let's semi close the door on this housing element for the moment. Let's talk about infrastructure planning in Contra Costa county. I'm sure that there has to be key infrastructure projects that are currently underway. What are some of these projects, and how will these infrastructure projects impact the county's growth and development?
[00:18:52] Speaker B: Another great question. I think one of the things that's commonly overseen or not seen in our county is the amount of heavy industry and refineries that are in Contra Costa county. The Bay Area has five refineries. Contra Costa county has four of those five. Chevron, Phillips, marathon, and one other, a smaller refiner.
Two of those refineries are going through, I believe, $1 billion renovations to now refine and process cleaner fuels. This is a little bit of the business that I'm in, but this came to the planning commission from a Eir perspective years ago, and each two of the refineries are now hiring local labor to renovate each one of the refineries. I think it's really special. I don't think very many people in the county know about it. Those refineries have been here for longer than all we have, literally since the early 19 hundreds. And they provide a lot of jobs. They provide energy, and the county works with those refineries to make sure we have energy and to make sure they're compliant with clean air and clean water, which we all want to.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: Exactly. Is there any other infrastructure projects currently underway before the housing element causes there to be?
[00:20:12] Speaker B: I can't think of any at this moment. Right.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: You know, when I was a kid. There were vibrant small business on every corner. You'd go down to the corner grocery store, you would buy candy, you would pick up this or that for mom. Everyone would trade in a particular small business. And as the large box stores came into existence, the little man has found it very difficult to compete. They've actually went away.
It reminds me of a song, know, I love country music. Alan Jackson wrote it called the little man. And I realized that if I trade my business where I have some relationship with the business owner, not only am I supporting this business, small business, which is better because you're supporting residents when I buy there, but I'm actually receiving valuable customer service. Have you tried to get any type of customer service in a box store lately? You can't get anybody to help you. But how much is trading at a small business worth to you personally? That's what I'm asking our listeners and I love to see small business come in and develop in a specific area in lieu of a huge, huge operation. Have we had anything going on for economic development to help small businesses come into your county?
[00:21:29] Speaker B: I love it. This is something that strikes home with me. I was raised by a business owner. My father was a mechanic, had five or seven employees for probably 40 years. I grew up in the mechanic shop, literally cleaning the walls and sweeping the floors and every car that went in and out of my dad's shop, I vacuumed and cleaned. So small business is really important to me. I'm a small business owner. I know that within our general plan, the county has identified economic incentives to help small business and drive business to this county. It's one of the things that if we're going to have more housing and more people living in the county, they need places to work. And these local small business owners and businesses are the backbone of our economy. When I look at Amazon, we get an Amazon package delivered. There's no customer service. The package just shows up. It's great. We love it. At the same time, going to the local store, working with the local contractor, working with the local, whoever it is, agent, is super important. So to me, this is something that.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: We need to focus on, disaster preparedness and response. I know that the planning commission is involved with that particular area. So turning our attention to disaster preparedness and response, we're all familiar with what occurred as a result from the wildfire disasters. We're in residential real estate. We do some commercial real estate, but we're constantly plagued now by who is going to insure the homeowner when we sell a new home.
We've seen State Farm leave the state. We've seen other insurance carriers leave the state because of the result of the wildfire disasters that we had before. What in planning commission's purview is being done to perhaps stop that chain effect from affecting the taxpayer ratepayer residents as the wildfires have?
[00:23:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Another hot topic item. I would say two things. There's many things to answer that, but two that come to the top of my mind. Number one is fire safety. When there are fires in neighborhoods, we need to, number one, make sure people can get out safely right through roads, roads, intersection. That's very important. We also need to make sure that fire trucks can get in. So when you plan a subdivision or plan a housing development, you, as an applicant developer, need to work with the local fire department to make sure their equipment, the high rise engine, whatever it is, can get close enough to the property to extinguish the fire. That's one of the major things that the county staff and us planning commissioners oversee in an approval process. And it's very interesting.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: As we have a lot of parks and a lot of vegetation in this community or in this county, which we love, we need to make sure that those fire hazards are actually extinguished or mitigated the best we can. Wow. The second point is traffic. If there's a traffic jam, and if there's an emergency and there's a traffic jam, we have a big problem. People sit in cars, they can't get out.
Emergency services can't get in. So we look at traffic a lot. We rely on traffic engineers from the city or from the county. We rely on traffic engineers from the developer to basically, quote, battle it out to make sure traffic is okay and suitable for any kind of event. Now that's a hot topic issue. And this is, again why I would say come and get involved. See this?
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Yeah. For the county of Contra Costa county, the planning commission advises with all of these sizable components, they advise on housing, environmental, community engagement, infrastructure planning, economic development, disaster preparedness and response. What are some of the biggest challenges you see, Commissioner Hillisheim?
[00:25:21] Speaker B: I'm seeing the things that we've been speaking about, housing. This is it. People want more housing, yet they want appropriate, planned housing and at what densities. That's the biggest issue. I see. And then I also think community involvement. Yeah.
[00:25:38] Speaker A: Come back to that meeting again. Everybody needs to be at the planning commission meetings once in a while. Go to the board of board meetings, go to the local Alamo Improvement association, go to these little local places and become involved. What are the biggest opportunities that you see in Contra Costa county?
[00:25:58] Speaker B: I'm going to kind of wrap it up. I love Contra Costa county because of the diversity. Let me go to, I used to do Ironman triathlons and used to run marathons. I love running and riding my bike on Mount Diablo or through los trompas or out in Briones or out in the Pittsburgh area. These are phenomenal open space areas that are on one end of the spectrum. Number two, we have the heavy industry, the refineries and the heavy industry that create jobs and energy in this community.
We're not another county. Like, I don't know, maybe Marin county has no heavy industry. They're all just expensive homes. Here we have a melting pot of blue collar labor, moms and dads, people who love the environment and want to protect the environment. What do I see us doing? We need to come together and stop pointing fingers at one's bad and we're good and they're bad. We all love these things and need these things in our community. The dialogue needs to happen and the divisiveness needs to be ratcheted down.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: What a great show. So informative and useful to us all. A big, hearty thank you to Contra Costa County Planning Commissioner Ross Hillisheim for cluing us in on how the planning commission works. Items on the table currently at the moment. Thank you, Commissioner Hillsheim, for sharing two times with us.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: Michael Hatfield, thank you so much.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: It's time for a short break. You've been listening to the real estate and more show interesting people, hot topics and Bay area real estate. Listen to archived real estate and more
[email protected]. Slash radio or the real estate and more show can be heard on demand on podcast platforms such as Spotify, Amazon, Apple, iHeart, Pandora and most other platforms as well. I'm your host, Michael Hatfield. I'm thanking you. And we'll be right back with our next special guest. Stay tuned.
