AgdaPkt 2020-11-09 Joint SA PFA - Laserfiche WebLink

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Ms. Lindy Chan, Principal Planner City of Redwood City, Planning Services October 27, 2020 Page 2 of its rights to object to the Project on CEQA grounds, including on those grounds listed in the July 13 letter, should the District's concerns remain unaddressed. The District, by inclusion of certain objections within this letter, does not waive any other objections it may have to the Draft and Final EIRs, including those raised in the District's July 13 letter but not addressed in this letter. The District appreciates that the Developer was willing to meet with the District to discuss the District's concerns regarding the Project. Unfortunately, due to the outbreak of COVID-19 and associated demands placed upon District staff, the District has had to put its resources and focus into educational issues and the reopening of schools virtually. In order to allow the District to meet with the Developer in the near future and discuss specific ways of alleviating the District's concerns, the District requests that any decision by the Planning Commission to recommend certification of the Final EIR to the City Council be postponed. I. Background The District's prior comment letters on this Project, including the July 13 letter and those submitted on August 9, 2019, and February 28, 2020, have consistently requested that the Draft EIR include a description and evaluation of certain information needed to determine whether impacts related to schools are potentially significant. The prior comment letters contained six general areas the District believed must be addressed by the Draft EIR in order to adequately evaluate the school impacts: population, housing, transportation/traffic, noise, air quality, and public services (including schools). Within those categories, the District described 27 subcategories that it requested be evaluated in the Draft EIR. As discussed in more detail below, most of the categories and subcategories of information requested by the District remain unaddressed or inadequately addressed in the Draft EIR and Final EIR. II. Environmental Setting The District, through its July 13 comment letter, noted that the Draft EIR did not meet its purpose as an informational document because it failed to provide an adequate description of the environmental setting related to schools. In fact, the Draft EIR painted a misleading picture of the Project's impacts on the District by assuming that the District's Sequoia High School was 1.5 miles away from the Project site. As noted, the Project's Parcels A-E and Parcel F are located a mere few blocks southeast of the District's Sequoia High School and Administrative Offices, along El Camino Real. While the Final EIR finally corrects the Initial Study's and Draft EIR's error regarding the Project's location in respect to the District's school facilities, the Draft EIR, as modified by the Final EIR, continues to fail adequately to describe the environmental setting as it relates to schools. For instance, the Draft and Final EIRs fail to analyze the current vehicular and pedestrian paths of travel used by District staff, students and their families to get to and from school or the District Office, in the context of a neighborhood that has already been severely impacted by traffic. (See, Final EIR at 3-15 ["The CEQA analysis evaluates impacts on the physical environment and