When California lawmakers passed Senate Bill 9 in 2021, making all single-family properties eligible for duplexes and lot splits, Palo Alto officials publicly fretted about the law's worrisome implications for local control and neighborhood aesthetics.

Months before the bill became law, the city submitted a letter of opposition to SB 9, arguing that land use policies should be "considered by the cities themselves" and not be subject to state mandates. Palo Alto wasn't alone in feeling this way. The Cities Association of Santa Clara County argued in its own letter that the bill "will not spur much needed housing construction in a manner that supports local flexibility, decision making, and community input."

But more than a year later, the impact of SB 9 has been negligible. In January 2022, the owner of a Matadero Avenue property generated headlines when he filed an application for the first split-lot project under SB 9 to demolish an existing home and build a two-story home and an accessory unit on one parcel and two single-story homes on the other. But that application was subsequently withdrawn, Planning Director Jonathan Lait said.

The city currently has four SB 9 projects going through the planning process, though they have yet to obtain building permits, according to a new report from the Department of Planning and Community Department. Five other lot-split projects are in "preliminary discussion" phases but have not advanced with formal applications.

The four projects currently being reviewed including one on Rorke Way, in the Palo Verde neighborhood, and another on Price Court in Midtown. Both proposals seek to add a two-story home on a lot where a home currently exists (the address of the third project wasn't immediately available). The other two applications are on Orme Street in Barron Park and on Bryant Street, just south of Oregon Expressway. The Orme proposal is the only one that calls for a lot split.

The dearth of applications has done little, however, to halt Palo Alto's multipronged response to SB 9. On Wednesday night, the Planning and Transportation Commission voted to recommend changing the local zoning code to make it consistent with the provisions of the state legislation.

The two ordinances that they supported by a 4-0 vote, with commissioners Cari Templeton and Giselle Roohparvar absent, would supplant and make permanent a virtually identical pair of "urgency" ordinances that the council approved in January and March of 2022 and that basically restate the requirements of SB 9 in the local zoning code.

Deputy City Attorney Albert Yang said that the interim ordinances essentially "parrot state law."

"They say what you can do and what you can't do, but they don't express a lot of local policy in terms of how we want this development to look," Yang told the commission.

But while the Wednesday action was relatively routine, planning commissioners and staff are preparing for a more substantive discussion about design rules and development standards for SB 9 projects in the coming months. This includes further modifications to the city's "objective standards" — detailed and clearly quantifiable design rules that builders must follow to get approval for new projects. The update was spurred by laws such as SB 9 and SB 330, which have stripped cities of their traditional power to deny projects or require revisions based on "subjective criteria" such as neighborhood compatibility or appeal to pedestrians.

Instead, decisions must now be based on objective criteria that, by law, involve "no personal or subjective judgment by a public official and being uniformly verifiable by reference to an external and uniform benchmark or criterion."

Given the new requirement, the City Council approved last June a package of "objective standards" governing everything from porch dimensions and window placements to breaks in building façades. In the spring, the city will also consider new development standards specifically pertaining to SB 9 projects. The Architectural Review Board and the Planning and Transportation Commission are tentatively scheduled to review these ordinances in the spring.

"The ordinance coming later is our municipal response to SB 9 and how to exert some control over what's being foisted upon us," Commissioner Bart Hechtman said during the Wednesday discussion.

Concurrently, the city's Historic Resources Board is evaluating the potential inclusion of about 120 residential properties to the city's historic inventory, a move that would shield them from the by-right provisions of SB 9. The city just hired a consultant, Christina Dikas of the firm Page & Turnbull, to assist with the effort of reviewing each of the properties. The city's Historic Resources Board, which is helping to facilitate the process, kicked off the effort at a Thursday morning public hearing with the consultant.

The first phase of the process will involve re-evaluating the 130 residential properties that had previously been deemed eligible for the National Registry of Historic Places, Chief Building Official Amy French said. Staff and the board have already determined that 11 properties from that list had been demolished. The city also plans to hold several community meetings and conduct more outreach with property owners and stakeholders.

Board Chair Caroline Willis called the update of the local inventory "a huge step" for the city.

"Hopefully in this process we'll discover some community members who are enthusiastic about our historic fabric and are willing to help us maneuver our way through to get a really comprehensive, up-to-date historic inventory," Willis said.