Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting   1/17/2024

Good afternoon.

I am pleased to call the order of this regular meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on the 17th of January at 1 p.m.

in Lane Auditorium.

I'd like to note at the desk we have Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, Supervisor of the Pisto-Kirtley, of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel, of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, and myself, Jim Andrews,

from the Samuel Miller District, Quorum is present.

We also are joined today with the County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, and the County Attorney, Mr. Steve Rosenberg, and our clerk, Ms.

Claudette Borgerson.

Also, let me please welcome the Albemarle County Police Officer's present, Master Police Officer Dana Reeves and Lieutenant Angela Jamerson.

Thank you.

I believe that our next item is the adoption of the final agenda, and I have heard of no changes suggested.

If there are none, then if someone would like to move the adoption of the final agenda.

We have a motion from Supervisor McKeel and a second from Supervisor Mallek.

Mr. Andrews.

Yes.

Mr. Gallaway.

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Thank you.

Our next item would be proclamations and recognitions.

We have none, so we'll move on to matters from the public, matters on the agenda, but not listed for public hearing or matters previously considered by the Board or matters that are pending before the Board.

I might want to do Board.

Oh, sorry.

Brief announcement by Board Members.

Thank you.

So let's go through the brief announcements.

I apologize.

Thank you.

So I think it's no secret that we're experiencing a lot of serious weather around the county.

We experienced some serious flooding last week, and there's significant ice and snow throughout this week.

some incidents that occur because of this hazards do get reported through normal county channels, but others don't.

So as people continue to exercise caution, especially on some of our more rural roads, I would encourage that if members of the public do encounter situations that are hazardous or situations that they think the county or even the state might have a role in rectifying, that they reach out to us

and so on.

personally keep themselves and their families safe.

But this was not something that was naturally going to come to our attention if they didn't take the necessary steps to bring it to the attention of us and to VEDA so we can take the necessary steps to ameliorate that in the future.

I really appreciate the work of that citizen and I would encourage other members of the public to continue to stay vigilant and help be part of our problem identification process as we go through these more challenging times of the season.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

I'm just going to briefly piggyback on that because there is a VDOT number where residents can call in, not just during inclement weather, but unsafe situations in their area.

So perhaps we can put that on our website, well, website on our newsletter to let people know this is the number you can call VDOT and report a dangerous situation on the road.

Yes, thank you.

Just a couple of items.

Just want to let everyone or make sure everybody is aware that the Albemarle, Charlottesville Regional Jail Authority will be hosting three public meetings seeking input on the renovation project that we're planning for the jail.

You all are aware of that project.

The first meeting will be on January the 25th

from 530 to 730 at Carver Recreation Center.

The second meeting will be February the 12th, 530 to 730 at Carver.

And the third meeting, February 29th, 530 to 730 at Carver Rec.

The nice thing is that all of these

and so on.

and so on.

that Yancy Community Center had a wonderful MLK celebration on Sunday afternoon, which Jim and I attended.

And I really want to just thank Ed Brooks and the folks at Yancy for sponsoring this and providing the great refreshments and the tour of the center.

But it was just wonderful, and I thoroughly enjoyed being there.

Hope I didn't take, you can give us more detail, Jim.

And that's all I have.

Thank you.

I just want to call out that I just learned myself here, not too long ago, that we had the developer, the affordable housing developer, incentives conversation in early December.

and they have their meeting materials out for their January 23 meeting and the developer incentive conversation.

The next step was to go to the Planning Commission for discussion, so that's happening on the 23rd.

So things are progressing as we were hoping to coming out of that December meeting.

So I'm very pleased about that.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson, for alerting me to that info.

So there you have it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Continuing on with the frigid weather.

On the way down here I saw Dominion Cruz trimming a lot of tree branches.

It's really important when residents see trees that have come loose or branches hanging on poles that are hanging on wires that they alert

I get a lot of calls that way and I pass them along to I think each of us has the Dominion contact so that's probably an easy way for folks to share that information in order for the repair crews to get out there and take these hangers off in order to preserve power

It would be absolutely horrific to be facing six degrees overnight with no power in your house.

So I really want everybody needs to help to keep each other safe on this.

And also for animals, I've seen still some animals outside in pens.

This is against the state law.

When it's this cold, you would have to make arrangements for your animals.

You do not leave them out.

Bollow 32 degrees is what the state law is to take special consideration for house pets, cats and dogs, that kind of thing.

So please be aware of that and do everything you can to keep your family pets safe as well.

Thank you.

Yeah, I would sort of second some of the comments already made about being vigilant with respect to the weather and appreciate VDOT's efforts in keeping us safe on our roads.

I did join Supervisor McKeel at a wonderful event at Yancey, led off by Commonwealth Attorney Jim Hingely talking about the John Henry James

Case, and other things that were discussed about restorative justice, which were fascinating.

In upcoming events, I just want to mention, I saw that UVA's outgoing law school Dean, Risa Goluboff, is talking January 23rd at the Center at Belvedere at 5.30.

Charlottesville is legal history and is sponsored by the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society.

She's a renowned constitutional scholar, particularly on the topic of civil rights, and it promises to be an interesting talk.

Does anyone else have anything to add?

All right.

So our next item is proclamations and recognitions.

We have none.

So we can move on to item seven.

Matters on the agenda, but not listed for public hearing or matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board.

And I believe we have at least one.

So I know.

and no online.

During the time set us out for matters on the agenda but not listed for public hearing, individuals may address the Board of Supervisors concerning matters previously considered by the Board or matters that are pending before the Board other than items listed on the agenda for public hearing.

Individuals are allowed one opportunity of up to three minutes to speak at each board meeting during matters from the public.

Sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office.

Timekeeping is conducted through a timer, a light system at the podium,

The green light will go on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time.

The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking.

The red light indicates your time has expired, and you will be asked to end your comments.

To give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the board requests that the speakers adhere to the following guidelines.

When addressing the board, state your name, and if you live in Elmar County, your magisterial district.

Address comments directly to the board as a whole.

Any written statements or other supporting material may be given to the clerk.

If representing a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands in recognition.

Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker.

Back and forth debate is not permitted, and do not speak from your seat or out of turn.

All comments are live, stream, recorded, and published on the Alomar County website.

Good afternoon.

This morning, early, I wrote about some of your goals and objectives for the Comprehensive Plan and utilized an acronym that is famous in

MBA classes, and the like, smart goals and objectives.

Now, smart stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based.

Now, I will say that I don't know that all of your goals meet these criteria, and often the goals I find in comprehensive plans across Central Virginia are siloed and don't recognize the impact of the other chapter's goals on the very goals you're discussing.

One specific objective jumped out at me as I was reading over the housing chapter.

Increase the supply of long-term affordable and workforce housing in Albemarle County by at least 10,000 units by 2040, promoting both the development of new units and preservation of existing units for affordable and workforce housing.

Seems like a very straightforward goal.

seems to misplace the second half of that about existing housing, probably belongs in another objective about existing housing, but you need to do a little math.

I'd look back at your building report, which you receive on a quarterly basis, and I find incredibly helpful.

There were three years in the last, since 2015, three years, that you had over 1,000 units created.

You would need to double

generally double the production of housing units to meet this goal.

Is that an attainable goal?

Or is the A that you're using for this aspirational?

I've been in this room when members of this board and previous boards sought to be aspirational.

It would be great if you could clarify if this is an aspirational document or an attainable document.

Thank you.

First of all, I will ask if there's any anyone wants to pull anything from the consent agenda.

If not, we'll entertain a motion to adopt the consent agenda.

Second.

Motion by Supervisor Mallek, second by Supervisor McKeel.

Mr. Andrews, Mr. Gallaway, Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley, Ms.

Mallek, Ms.

So we'll move now on to our first work session on the AC-44 draft chapters.

This is a fairly long work session, a couple of hours allotted, led by Ms.

Tori Kanalopoulos, the principal planner.

My understanding is we're going to do each of these chapter by chapter, so we'll be able to pause after each one and go from there.

Thank you.

Thank you all and good afternoon members of the board.

My name is Tori Kenelopoulos and I'm a principal planner in the Community Development Department.

And I'm also joined today in the audience by staff topic experts for each of today's topics, who I may ask to step up to the podium during the work session to help answer questions.

And today's work session is on draft goals and objectives for five out of the eight total chapters for the AC44 comprehensive plan update.

So we will start with a brief overview of where we are in the AC44 process, how we drafted goals and objectives, and the purpose of today's work session.

Then we will move to board discussion for each of the five chapters.

I will share a quick overview of each chapter in a summary of the Planning Commission's feedback, and then pause for board discussion and questions for each topic.

So we should have about 20 minutes for discussion for each, and then we will wrap up with next steps.

So AC44 is organized into four phases.

In the first phase, we developed the AC44 framework for an equitable and resilient community, which provides guidance for drafting plan recommendations and envisions a community that is green and resilient, welcoming and equitable, connected and accessible and thriving and prosperous.

We also completed the land use build-out analysis to estimate capacity in the development areas for future residential and non-residential development.

In Phase 2, we are updating goals and objectives for each plan chapter and developing planning toolkits for coordinated land use and transportation planning.

In Phase 3, which we expect to kick off in the spring, we will have updated action steps for each plan chapter and will prioritize plan recommendations.

In Phase 4, which will be later this year, we will bring everything together into a finalized comprehensive plan document and hold public hearings with the Commission and Board for adoption.

The Comprehensive Plan is organized into eight chapters, as shown on the right hand side of the screen.

And I'll note that Environmental Stewardship is the new name for the Natural Resources Chapter, and that there are separate rural area and development areas chapters, but they each have the land use and transportation element combined, so there's not a standalone transportation chapter.

And within each chapter, there are goals, objectives, and action steps.

So goals are high level, where we want to go in the future as a community.

Objectives are the outcomes or targets to get there.

And action steps, which will be in Phase 3, are policies, specific capital projects, planning efforts, or other activities and projects to implement the plan.

There are three main steps for drafting plan recommendations in Phase 2.

In the first step, we asked community members their priorities by plan topic and used that input to guide drafting updated recommendations.

In Step 2, we asked for community input on planning toolkits which are the four coordinated land use and transportation topics shown on the slide and are all topics in the current comprehensive plan.

We asked for the board direction on these toolkits and we heard that we should find ways to encourage more density and mixed use development in the development areas and prioritize using development areas land efficiently over potential expansion.

and that we should continue to explore ways to more equitably allow or provide some services and some small scale uses in the rural area such as mobile health services and community centers.

We are using the board's direction on the toolkits to inform drafting goals and objectives for the land use and transportation chapters.

And in step three, we are sharing draft goals and objectives by plan chapter, including the five chapters we're covering today.

Goals and objectives are drafted through a collaborative and iterative process

and while the core AC44 team leads the process, many county staff and departments are involved in drafting plan recommendations.

We also coordinate with partner agencies and other departments including Albemarle County Public Schools and the Albemarle County Service Authority and we've also been gathering input from county committees.

We review the current comprehensive plan to carry forward recommendations that are still relevant, incorporate updated best practices, make refinements based on community commission and board input,

and use the AC44 framework to guide recommendations.

So the purpose of today's work session is based on the community input herd to date and the planning commission's feedback on these topics.

The purpose is for the board to give direction to staff on any changes or additions to the draft goals and objectives.

And I'll note that the finalized goals and objectives will be used to draft the action steps that will be shared in Phase 3.

and the goals and objectives before the Board today are the same draft recommendations that were shared through online questionnaires and shared with the Planning Commission and several county committees such as the Architectural Review Board, Natural Heritage Committee and the Economic Development Authority and revisions will be made after today's meeting to incorporate feedback from the Community, County Committees, Commission and the Board and as I mentioned many staff topic experts are here today

I think from each topic to listen to the board's feedback and direction and to be available for questions.

So the first topic is environmental stewardship and this chapter is organized into the following goals, climate action, climate resilience, healthy and resilient waterways and water supplies, biodiversity and habitats, and sustainable materials management.

and I have the draft goals and objectives listed on the following slides but since you all received them in your packets I'm going to skip through them but I can return to any of the slides to pull up any specific language if it's helpful to have for discussion.

So during their work sessions, the Planning Commission provided the following feedback.

They recommended that dark skies also be included in this chapter along with the historic resources chapter, highlighting that resilience is a priority and that we should also consider business continuity, assisting community members with staying in their homes, and ways to provide funding for implementation.

We should collaborate regionally for waterways and water quality

Consider how new and emerging uses in the rural area could impact natural areas and find ways to mitigate those impacts and then update some of the objectives to be more measurable.

So we wanted to note this is a high-level summary of the main takeaways from the Commission's feedback and a more detailed summary was provided in the Board's packet from each of the Planning Commission's work sessions.

So we'll turn it over to the Board shortly for discussion and questions.

And we are asking for the Board's input on the draft goals and objectives and for the Board to build on the Commission's feedback, specifically if the Board affirms the Commission's feedback and if there's anything the Board would add or change to the draft goals and objectives.

and I'll also add that we appreciate any more detailed feedback that may fall into action steps.

Our topic expert staff can make note of any potential recommended action steps and consider the board's feedback when drafting plan recommendations.

With that, I'll turn it over to the board.

Thank you.

I will go through the order if there are any questions at this point.

OK.

Tori and I spoke yesterday.

So some of the things that I would like to, well, first of all, I commend you on the entire AC44 phase two.

I think it's a great document.

It has a lot in it.

I mean, it has everything plus a kitchen sink in it.

But that's for us to then navigate

When we talk about goal one, what rose to my mind is the maybe putting or asking our developers to use solar roof panels on developments.

I don't know if that's feasible or not, but that's maybe could be, I don't know if it would be required to be suggested, but we're having large developments, we're having apartments, townhomes, et cetera, two over twos.

perhaps solar panels on top of the roofs that would help in our climate action plan.

I think we also discussed recycling by waste haulers currently.

I think we just have one GIF that does waste hauling in the urban areas and some of the rural areas.

Maybe that could be increased.

And I think we do, I'm hoping there's a way to ensure that they really do recycle.

The other one was regarding the floodplain, future floodplain growth.

That changes evidently, and I know there's a new draft FEMA plan that has not been certified yet.

There's a draft plan, but there's no certification of the actual FEMA plan.

are we keeping an eye with climate change, how that's going to be impacted?

For example, I'm looking at one development in my area where they couldn't build because the parking lot was in a floodplain.

Well, evidently now, that parking lot is not in the floodplain according to the new FEMA draft regulations.

And that's just something, maybe, a question to be addressed by, perhaps, Frank Polk.

Are we just on goal two?

Let me just stop right there.

Okay, that's goal one.

How would you like us to proceed on this?

Yeah, so we would appreciate any recommended, well, any questions, first of all, and then any recommended changes for the environmental stewardship chapter, which can be any of the goals and objectives.

to the chair.

would you prefer we go through, do you think it is prudent that we go through with questions for staff first or should we begin with recommendations and questions bunched together?

And we'll certainly come back to everyone for additional comments.

I originally thought we would do some questions, but I don't have any problem with adding questions and comments together.

It sometimes just happens that way.

And mine were recommendations, but the one regarding the FEMA floodplain, I mean, that's more of a question.

I don't know how that works.

Regarding under climate action, green environmentally friendly businesses, I'm wondering about our county building or other buildings that we own going solar rooftop.

That's just a comment.

The other thing I was thinking of regarding climate action,

is we have a large surface area of asphalt, black asphalt, and there are now reflective paints being used, be it acrylic or latex or different ones.

Some of them are even saying that the heat index is reduced by 10% with painting the asphalt.

So that's something that, look into or that's something that I would suggest because I think it's good that we lead

the County, as we want everyone else to do, I think we should be doing it.

And of course, one of my favorites, adding pollinator gardens on property that we own, and I do understand that we also have pollinator gardens at Cobb.

I would like

a clarification on page 10.

Oh, you probably don't have the book.

It says, considering the existing use of land in any potential future development areas, expansion areas, you're considering that.

For example, land that has already been cleared for agriculture or grazing or views is less important to preserve

compared with mature wooded areas.

at some point, I don't know if we wanted to explain now or explain at some point.

Sure.

And if I'm remembering correctly, I believe that was under the community input summary.

So that's summarizing kind of priorities that we've heard from the community.

So if in the future, you know, there was going to be a development area expansion sometime in the future, that would be a consideration is, you know, looking at areas that have already been cleared and maybe considering those over, you know,

areas that are wooded or have important habitats.

And that wouldn't be superseded by putting into expansion areas water and sewer, which to me seems the most important.

And I think, and that's it for me.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think I have, I don't think I have really any direct questions.

I mean, if we're just asking process questions, a lot of the notes or the feedback that I expect is going to happen on the next pass.

Not knowing what the action steps are is what is tricky in trying to say if the objectives are comprehensive or if they're the right goals and objectives.

Now, that's not a punt.

I'm going to certainly make my comments today.

All right.

Okay, so now I'm more confused.

Because I was prepared to follow what Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley had done to address a couple things.

But my one generic question right off the bat is, can you describe places where the Planning Commission's suggestions were already incorporated in these things?

Okay, then I will continue on with my long-range plan, which was to call out some things that I found were incredibly important, among all the others, because

as I warned everybody three years ago, this is where I live here, this sort of work, so I'm sorry it's going to take a while, but I think there's some important things to think about.

On the 9H, the PC summaries, I think we've heard from several people, in addition to the planning commission, and I've certainly heard from people individually, that the dark skies needs to be an environmental stewardship issue.

as well as a scenic issue as well as an economic development issue because there are communities in Texas and New Mexico and Nelson County who are now welcoming visitors who want to be able to see the stars.

So we have wonderful dark skies right now and if we're very careful to not lose them then and the second half of that is that the lighting ordinance

does not work

these things are all adjustable and the fact that they're left on full blast is destroying the wildlife and everything else in addition to neighbors ability to sleep so anyway going down to the on the PC list I want to emphasize incorporating the biodiversity action plan everywhere not just as an add-on because it has not been well respected so far in our

Decision making, it needs to be in the checklist of things which are regularly considered.

The groundwater study is another thing where the county used to have a well.

that was measured frequently.

And when the recession came, the decision was made to not have it registered any red, but it could easily be picked up again by a citizen scientist group or some of the other water quality people who live right near the well in Mutions River to be able to get that documentation back.

We have learned that

The water information, the drought information from Gucheland is not particularly appropriate for us, and so our area is not getting the kind of details that it needs to have to make good decisions.

Okay.

Parts that we've tried down here.

Very good.

Okay, we're not doing parks yet.

I'm going to stop right there, put that over here.

All right, I'm sorry, here we go.

So under goal one,

The focus on Objective 1.2, we talk about clean energy generation.

One of the hazards of focusing on one element of energy is that there are a lot of other things which get damaged with a siloed approach.

So while there are many people in the Commonwealth and locally who want solar to be the answer,

it has to be one of many answers, otherwise we're sending ourselves backwards.

So there are consequences to forest, there are consequences to climate change, loss of the ability of the ecosystem services provided by forests if we're not careful.

The future floodplain growth term that was already discussed, am I correct in understanding that that means as

Water Levels Rise, our floodplain is actually going to be higher because there are going to be greater impacts as we found with big storms, bigger than the 3,000-year storms we've had in the last two years.

There are going to be more acreage, which is going to be impacted as a floodplain.

Otherwise, I didn't know what those terms meant.

So someone can talk about that later when you're ready.

Let me jump over here.

and many, many, many things I support and I'm glad to share all these with you as well.

We talked about that already.

We'll come over here.

What are you?

Talked about that.

Tree coverage.

Every year of the 16, in which I've been on the board, people have been asking for a tree conservation plan that would be part of our development process.

And I hope that that will become more

Obligatory, rather than just chopping down everything and putting up things which are two inches around instead of, it cannot replace things that are two feet in diameter.

And, oh, and here's a biggie.

Under the toolkits, this may be something that was suggested by public input.

but it troubles me that we are this concept that is under the fourth bullet here on page 10.

Land that's in agriculture most of the time is growing food.

Nowhere in this document anywhere have we talked about food production, even though forest is terrific.

And sixty-some percent of our county is already covered in forest, which is a huge advantage that many others don't have.

But just because somebody is growing crops on something does not mean that it should be less important.

And so if we can figure out a way to recognize soil for food production, that I think would be a good thing for our comprehensive plan.

And I will stop there.

Thank you.

I have just a sort of process question under this.

We have obviously received our draft goals and objectives, and those are being commented on.

But there's also with each a topic report, and how does that come into play with respect to this?

I felt like the topic reports were sort of inconsistent as we go through, and we've got an entire climate action plan, yet little of that is actually reflected in the topic report.

Sure, so we first shared the topic reports early last year as part of the early round of engagement and they were meant to provide kind of a base level of trends and kind of challenges and opportunities by topic so that community members could get a high-level overview of each topic and so we've carried them forward and tried to provide some updated data where we had it and we're planning to use a shortened version of those as part of the plan narrative

Thank you.

They want to work together on making them consistent in their approach.

I think that we need to keep moving, but I want to go through one more time on this one to make sure people have gotten their comments in before we'll be able to move on to the next chapter.

Thank you.

So something that does somewhat leap off the page to me with this chapter.

We touch it in our historic and cultural assets later, but it seems very central when we're talking about environmental issues is

issues of equity and environmental justice.

When you look at my district, the people who are disproportionately paying more for their utility costs, the people who are experiencing higher heat indexes, the people who have less tree canopies, are people who are living in neighborhoods that are currently and or historically more racially diverse and more impoverished.

That seems like it bears explicit, you know, lampshading, highlighting in our plan and how we think about addressing

issues of environmental quality.

I would very much want to see some explicit discussion of how we are going to make sure that we are emphasizing, highlighting, and even prioritizing the needs of historically disadvantaged populations when we're making these kind of environmental decisions so that we don't re-entrench existing environmental justice issues.

I do want to broadly, you know, co-sign a lot of the recommendations that have been made by the Planning Commission, especially with regards to life pollution.

I think this is something that's very critical and I fully endorse everything that Supervisor Mallek also said on that.

And I do agree with the Planning Commission that resilience is a chapter that's really critical.

I am concerned with some of

The things that are left unsaid in our current chapter on resilience, or rather I should say our current goal on resilience, I see a heavy focus on government assets, hardening infrastructure, focusing on green infrastructure, but I don't see much about how we might help deal with either a climate shock or a climate strain in a way that's individually facing.

First off, I should highlight, I don't see much disentangling between the distinction between a climate shock and a climate strain, which I think is an important distinguishing factor, right?

Is this a sudden crisis that we want to know how to deal with?

Or is this an ongoing strain?

Is this ever-decreasing chill hours for our apple orchards?

That's a climate strain as opposed to another period where no one can go outside for five days because of wildfires in Canada, which would be a climate shock.

I would hope that our comprehensive plan might make those distinctions and talk about the different ways we might respond to both of them.

And I would be interested to possibly see greater emphasis on what we're going to do to help individuals, struggling through that possible energy support grants, things focusing on health issues that are raised, infant mortality is something that I know, or not infant mortality, excuse me.

Infant Cooling Hours, something that is discussed heavily when we have our environmental team up here.

These are all things that we could have direct individual-facing services, and I don't see anything in here that would even suggest that.

And lastly, I was curious if any of my, I feel like something we broadly gesture when we talk about environmental stewardship are intangibles.

and this is very much a concrete document and I appreciate Mr. Williamson's discussion of it's important that things be measurable but we also write things in our comprehensive plan to signal values and to provide something we can cite to in the future and reference why we're making a decision.

I wonder if there isn't a place for us to actively speak some of the intangibles that we see as important.

We care about beauty and majesty and wonder in our natural environment

It doesn't seem entirely inappropriate that we would say that out loud.

If we want to be able to invoke that moving forward, I could see that put in some poetic language somewhere in Goal 3, I should say, or elsewhere, maybe Goal 4.

So those were some things that leapt out to me.

Thank you.

If you could go back to

Okay, that's the slide I wanted.

Thank you.

I like the last bullet point especially to make sure that we can track success and implementation because as the board comes and goes, you know, I think it's important to have a history of what we've accomplished and what we've actually done throughout the years.

I think that's very important because we don't all know

what happened before, so I do like that.

Regarding Supervisor Pruitt's suggestion regarding majestic and beauty and such, I think that's not, those words aren't used, but for scenic in our rural areas, scenic byways and everything, it's implied, we can actually, this is a majestic county.

and the rural beauty is what makes Albemarle, Albemarle in my opinion.

With that, that's all I have right now.

Thank you.

Yes.

My comments are not in any particular order.

And I just want to make, just because I don't comment on something doesn't mean that I don't agree with it, right?

In an effort to save time.

I think the Planning Commission did a good job with what they have, what we see in front of us.

I would like to make a comment.

Dark skies, I agree completely.

I think we need to start looking at dark skies.

and our lighting ordinance, which is very outdated.

and some of the newer developments I can stand in the road and read a magazine at two o'clock in the morning.

Should not be able to do that.

That's just one example.

Having said that, I would just add that it seems like to me with dark skies, we're not going to accomplish dark skies in this community if we don't have UVA and the city at the table with us.

Certainly in my district with UVA at the table.

but I think in general.

I would suggest, and I'm not sure how to go about this, but Lupic would be a great organization, well not organization committee.

to begin that discussion, perhaps I don't know, but it does, that is the one opportunity where we have the university and the city and the county together and to sort of perhaps to start that discussion at Lubick and then roll it out to all of us would be a great idea, seems like to me.

The other things that I wanted to just talk about and

My concern for a long time now in the Jewish district, and I'm speaking really in the Jewish district because I'm the densest.

I have lots of apartment complexes.

I have old infrastructure.

And I am concerned about how best to protect our groundwater and our waterways.

And in my opinion,

just an imaginary line drawn does not protect the groundwater in my district.

The jurisdictional area is there and I get that, but in the rural area I have on hydraulic road

and Georgetown Road, right in the rural area, I have failing septic systems because they can't connect to public sewer.

Doesn't seem like to me after 30 years, that's the right way.

We know that there are better ways to protect our groundwater.

in certain areas.

I'm not talking about an expansion of the development area.

I'm talking about trying to figure out how to deal with failing septic systems that are 60 years old, that sometimes people see sewage bubbling up.

I actually have constituents that don't even know that they have a septic system, that they're on septic.

they think they're on public sewer.

I'm just trying to figure out how do we actually protect our groundwater and Ivy Creek for example.

Ivy Creek is in bad shape right now and it is in that same area where we have lots of failing

Sceptic Systems, and that's the rural area, a rural area of probably, I don't know, I could name Lambs Road, Hydraulic, and Georgetown Road.

which is rural, failing septic systems.

You go across the road and we have the development area and we know by our discussions last year staff found 254 failing septic systems in the development area in the district between the Rio and the Jack Jouett district.

That's not the way to protect our groundwater.

So I guess what I would be, and I have to ask staff for you all to think about this, what's the best way to come back to us in this highly dense, highly developed area in the urban ring, how to protect our groundwater, whether it's rural or development?

Does it mean an expansion of the jurisdictional area to just be able to connect to public sewer?

Does it mean, I don't know,

and so on.

concerned about is speaking, and this goes to areas in both the rural area and the development area, our steep slopes, trying to make sure that we have the best software, the best tool, the best way to determine between managed and steep slopes.

We had that come up when we had our solar

the, Scottsville, the solar farm that we, and in Grey Star over on Old Ivy Road.

And the developers, both places, had the ability to really, in 21st century technology, really do a great job in determining managed and steep slopes.

and

that could help us determine, because we really do want to preserve the right slopes, but we don't want slopes that were developed that came about because we built a 250 bypass to be considered protected.

And I think for right now, let me just double check my notes.

I think I have covered and I will just add to that that after 30 years our topography has really changed and I'm again talking about getting back to that groundwater study and looking at even in the urban area the topography has changed which means that the water is flowing differently

I can go to Doubt to Hydraulic Road to event what is going to be probably a vineyard, and they have completely changed the topography over the last five years on that piece of property.

And you can see how it has changed Ivy Creek, right?

So, I mean, I just think that looking at perhaps, and I guess that gets back to my groundwater study,

but recognizing that after 30, 35 years, topography is different and we're just living in a very different environment than we had 30 years ago.

And with that, I'll let it go.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

So I'll call out with this, just with the slide that's on there, that last one, the update objectives to be more measurable.

And I happen, I agree with Mr. Williamson's comments about

and I think there's a place for attainable or achievable and aspirational.

So to be able to define that.

So if you just want to go to goal one, I'll kind of walk through these.

I'm not going to deconstruct every goal.

I'll maybe do it on this one.

And then I would say that that applies for all of these, which goes to my earlier comment about what are the action steps to achieve these things.

But I think the Planning Commission calling out measurable things for me

especially if we're going to be programming revenues to do those steps is the only way to decide if it was worth spending the resources on it because otherwise how do we know where we're going.

So however that's captured in here I'm just kind of trusting that by the time we're done all this will coalesce and be able to achieve that.

So I think goal one, from a standpoint of stating a goal that's measurable because it's done by our climate action plan and reducing the emissions by 45 percent, that's a very specific number and a specific timeline.

But then I start looking at the objectives, and it seems reasonable that these will help us do that, although I'm not the expert to be able to say yes or no, if we actually achieved objectives one through four, do we achieve the stated goal?

So somebody along the way has said yes, and then can back that up, and then we'll see it in the action steps.

But objective one, one, I got a little

This is the one I'll deconstruct.

The walking, cycling, and transit, I can see why those three would be lumped together.

In my mind as a supervisor, that goes to our CIP and are we providing the infrastructure to be able to increase the use of walking, cycling, and transit?

So it leads me to really pragmatic standpoints of, are we going to put the infrastructure in place to be able to increase the use of this?

and are those going to show up in the action steps?

Or is this just going to be educating the public that you should walk more.

You should buy electric vehicles.

I don't know how we increase the use of electric vehicles as a government.

I mean we can put out charging stations, we can put infrastructure that support it, but at the end of the day I get real

I don't know what the right word is.

From a standpoint of wanting to take actions, I get leery of things that have to change behaviors of people.

We can be supportive, we can help educate, we can encourage, but when I start making decisions of I'm going to put dollars, tax dollars to it,

and my goals are trying to change behavior that just gets murky for me.

So increase the use of walking, cycling and transit seem concrete because it's infrastructure.

We can't increase the use of transit if our transit system just is dysfunctional.

and we're working on that, so I get it.

Telecommuting, does that mean providing broadband to allow for the capability to telecommute or is this us saying that we're going to enhance telecommuting within the county only?

So these are the things that I'm looking to be teased out as we continue into the specifics, objective one, action step, action step, action step.

Generally speaking, that type of commentary is where I'm at on every single objective throughout all of these chapters.

I'm going to call out some other ones, but when I see things like protect and support and increase and whatever the verbs are that we're going to use, then the how are we going to do that becomes important because I don't know.

It's great if it's aspirational.

That means we don't have to pay for it.

But if it's achievable, then

The Comp Plan is supposed to say, and here's now the backup of how we're going to get in and get at doing these things.

So if you go to, I'll go to, I don't have any specific commentary on goal three.

Yeah, so this is one where in the goal language itself, unlike goal one,

where it states a very specific move by percentage, we'll have natural waterways and we'll have riparian areas that are healthy, plentiful, and diverse.

Okay, I think we know where our current state is and we all probably would agree they all need improving.

then I just start to ask, well, what's the bar that says we've achieved having natural waters and repairing areas that are healthy, plentable, and diverse?

So that's the stuff that I'm getting at.

I see where these objectives are starting to get there.

They seem to make sense and align.

But again, this is to the point of, all right, once we see the action steps, we might go, well, there probably needs to be an objective 3.4 because we're missing a piece of this related back to it.

If you go to four,

4.5.

When I see objectives like increase native plant species and remove invasive species on county owned properties, bam, I got it, clean.

We've got control over our own property, it's doable, let's get at it.

But now it seems like we throw on a tag on on this objective and support adoption of these actions on private land.

All right, is that just a high five?

Go put the invasives.

What are the specific steps for it?

But I don't like doing tag-ons that just seem like good language to throw in there.

Let's say to the, let's say to our community that county is specifically stating that we're going to do this on our land.

And then if we think it's important to encourage or support or

Influence, or whatever the word is, on private land, then that should probably be set up under a different category, in my opinion, or maybe it gets worked out in the action steps again.

I mean, are these incentives that we're giving people to get the invasives?

Is this, hey, we'll come on your land and we'll take those invasives out, we'll get the goats out and get them out there?

I mean, where I don't want to get into anything that states

Tide End of really things that we can get our hands wrapped around with just tag on items and these objectives that say, and by the way, we're going to be supportive of that, too, in this area, outside of what we control, if that makes sense.

If you go to five, five-one seems really specifically connected to economic development.

and I don't mean to be giving Neil this much airtime today, but Supervisor Mallek also commented on the siloed nature sometimes of these chapters, but Project Enable really doesn't get at 5-1 yet and I should move my notes along too, so I'm on the same page.

But Expand the Presence of Industries tells me that, okay, we have target industries that we've stated that we are interested in bringing into the county or keeping and maintaining

and 5-1.

I don't believe it stated.

I'll have to go back.

I glanced it.

I don't think it stated in there that we're trying to bring in industries that are rethinking and redesigning materials.

Now it could be that we're looking for, under the industries we did identify, that they're doing this practice.

but that's a little different than expand the presence of industries that do this.

Companies might do that in some level or measure in their own group without necessarily being a materials repurposer.

So I guess that maybe I should just ask that question.

I will invite up.

The phone, I mean we've had this, we've seen this, yeah, we've got a guy that wanted to repurpose the concrete and you take tires and then you repurpose that into a playground.

But of course, to me when I read this the first time, it meant, yeah, from an economic development standpoint, we want industries like that in the county.

But if it doesn't mean that, and we're just going, we want industries in the county that repurpose their paper that they use, that's a different objective.

Sure, good afternoon.

Jamie Powers, Climate Protection Project Manager with the county.

What we were trying to achieve here- We can't hear you very well.

Can you speak up more, please?

Thank you.

What we are trying to achieve in all of these objectives in Goal 5 was to make sure we had representation from what is called all the levels of the waste hierarchy.

So thinking about all the different actions one can take in the waste sector that include composting, recycling, etc.

and the most important is to think about how we go about redesigning and rethink manufacturing, all that sort of thing.

We do see the connection to Project Enable.

We are in touch with the folks in that department.

I think this would include both.

Okay.

Great.

And I think this, as we work through the action items, will probably get nuanced out and cleaned up as well.

5-5, Reduce the amount of food waste and yard trimmings being land-filled by diverting from the waste stream.

How was my question on that?

I get it.

Like in my mind, it's, again, we provide convenience centers where people can take things and then we divert that material going somewhere else, or we're educating on, hey, you can do this with your food waste versus just putting it in the, so I guess the action items will get there.

but I think when we step out and say this is our plan to achieve the overarching chapter one, I want to make sure that, you know, if it's infrastructure or things that we are tangibly putting in place to help these things, we need to call that out and not have it just be that, again, that aspirational, it'd be nice if people would stop putting their yard trimmings in the trash.

Does that make sense?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Let me run back to my, make sure I don't miss any of my things in yellow here because I've written down some things based on what other people said.

I just, what I shouldn't have, I should have asked before, there's still to come the rural area land use and transportation that, so I didn't miss it in other words.

Okay, I saw that it was referred to.

The values of the comp plan,

was, until this draft, an incredibly important part, and it's why the narrative is 300 pages, because people can look at it and understand what has happened at Albemarle and what's been important to people in Albemarle since, for at least the last 100 years.

Maybe not more than that, but it's, for those who are interested, that is the place to go to have just the history.

and maybe that is a way to use your topic reports, which I think read very well and they may need some cleaning up.

I think in past years, boards of supervisors have had a really hard time dealing with those conflicts of one, you can have great goals that might be going.

You can have two things that are opposite that might both be true.

I'll bring you later a picture of the rabbit and the bird to figure out which one you see that I have learned about over the weekend, but it does happen.

So anyway, I will just ask that we, I think there was some consideration of having it be much shorter, but this is what gets lost when we don't take time to

and all of

The mention of Ivy Creek sort of made my hair stand on end because that is like a quarter mile from the South Fork Reservoir drinking water right there.

But you could not get closer to polluting your drinking water than right there.

So finding a way to, and perhaps there's a wordsmithing bad thing to do right now, but a goal to add

that we should

If they're adjacent and already failing, that meets the criteria right there.

It's just getting people to do, and it's a great expense for people.

So having that, some solution there.

I appreciate what Mr. Powers talked about with the waste hierarchy.

McDonough Brown Dart Design Chemistry was founded here in Charlottesville 50 years ago, and they designed Cradle to Cradle.

They invented it.

They have worked with Mohawk Carpets and all these other places over the last decades to change their manufacturing processes to have nothing left at the end, but to be able to put it all right back in.

So that is certainly possible.

Every time the source materials are so much cheaper to buy new, then we're back to square one again in our national economy.

So I don't have a solution to that.

for food waste we have in Ned's District, the biggest of our local leaf composting and food waste and yard waste people.

So that kind of information can certainly be shared out to help us do better on that.

And I think that's all I had on that.

Thank you.

I want to be able to see if we can summarize to some extent.

But my specific comments, I do want to piggyback on some of those that have already been said by supervisors, particularly Supervisor Gallaway in terms of measurable outcomes, measurable objectives.

And this is all highlighted in the Planning Commission as well.

So I appreciate that the Planning Commission has, I think, done a very good job in highlighting some of the issues.

I think we've already heard several people talk about the overlap between different chapters and the tendency to want to say well that's in this chapter and I think that I personally agree that we probably need it in multiple chapters because

I do not want to be in the situation, for example, with the dark skies where somebody says, well, that's not really a historic, scenic, cultural issue.

So we don't have to worry about dark skies because that's in that chapter.

But it's also an environmental issue.

And some of those things can happen with respect to, I see in the notes from the Planning Commission about the effects of housing and equity and how those relate to environmental justice.

So obviously, there's going to be overlap between those.

And this makes for a long,

Comprehensive Plan, but so be it.

With that, I think that we've heard a lot of support for the Planning Commission and measurable actions.

A lot of specific comments about different items.

Have you received the feedback that you need?

Does anyone have anything else to add on this chapter?

Yes, I just wanted to bring up under the planning tools for Angle 5.

They talked about requiring developers to minimize clear cut, preserve big old trees, plant native species, and replace tree canopy.

And that's what I'm focusing on as far as we haven't been asking that.

How doable is that?

Because when we clear for a

Okay, because that would definitely help with the carbon dioxide problem and we need to do that.

So that was my question, that was my comment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And the next topic will be parks and recreation.

So there are seven draft goals.

Plan for and provide a countywide parks and greenways system.

recommendations for new parks, greenways and blueways, enhancing and updating existing parks, connectivity, usability and accessibility in parks and trails, sustainable land management, strong partnerships, and recreational programs facilities and athletic fields.

So I'll go ahead and skip back through to the Planning Commission's feedback.

So the Commission recommended to provide and equitably distribute parks in the development areas and address gaps in where parks are provided.

Consider if the county should purchase more land for parks and consider creative funding options and partnerships.

Emphasize that there needs to be a system of parks and greenways that are publicly accessible.

and connect those with parks, employment and business centers and housing.

Again, updating the objectives to be more measurable, considering where additional parks may be needed in the rural area and opportunities for recreation on rural roads, which also overlaps with transportation recommendations, and then considering safety and security, including cell towers and parks.

Thank you.

We will go through our order again with the questions first or both.

Just to do both.

Keep us on track, I think a little bit better as well.

Sounds good.

So I want to begin by noting there's a few points in several of the objectives in Goal 1 where we talk about creation of new parks and greenways and later we discuss the role that also community centers play.

And I conspicuously reading through this noted that we are maintaining and improving community centers and we are creating new parks.

but community center creation doesn't seem to be contemplated in the current plan which seems conspicuous to me given that I feel like community centers especially in some outlying rural communities are actually really important methods of service delivery and something that in like existing drafts of our rural area chapter

seem to be an emphasis of how we're going to deliver certain key government services in the rural area.

I wonder if there might be a role for more explicit contemplation of the future role of community centers and the role that they can be serving in, you know, expanding government reach deeper into the community.

I know, you know, on the south side, Yancey is a deeply important community fixture that we think about a lot in our government planning.

and I would hope that other parts of the county have similar things to turn to.

I also just broadly think that there could be some explicit language contemplating the role of

of our parks and our community centers in our community, in our resilience efforts that we were just talking about.

Again, I think there's actual value in, as Chair Andrews would say, in having this explicit overlap.

And I think maybe highlighting that more in this chapter could be helpful, highlighting that parks are not just a place to play.

They're a place that we can emphasize our overall, like, assets for community well-being.

This is maybe closer in the realm of questions.

Objective 3.1 talks about enhancing and improving and updating infrastructure of existing parks and the amenities in those parks.

As a blanket imperative, this

seems interesting to me because it is nonspecific but seems to create like a constant onus to always be expanding or improving or in some way changing some of our existing parks.

I think about the park I personally visit the most.

Walnut Creek, love it.

I don't know what improving the infrastructure at Walnut Creek looks like.

Maybe this could be something where just a little bit more particularity in our objectives could be valuable.

If we're talking about improving our parks, I'd be curious what that looks like.

The first thing I'd think of is, does that mean there are no longer billy goat trails?

We're going to improve away billy goat trails.

Something I personally wouldn't like.

This is one of my favorite parts of Walnut Creek.

Additionally,

When we're talking about infrastructure and amenities, something that I find deeply resonant about parks is something I immediately notice is whether or not they have publicly available water and restroom facilities.

I think that's very important and that's a critical part of equity, especially when we're talking about using them as connectors and especially as we, you know, in other chapters talk about making sure that people do not suffer and experience pain when they're homeless.

Homeless people use parks for core services, and also people who are going to be traveling through parks need to be able to get water during the hot months they need to be able to use the restroom.

I would like to see highlighted the specific importance of water and restroom facilities in our public parks and on our interconnecting greenways.

That's all I have for now.

Thank you.

This is something near and dear to my heart, as it is with all of us, frankly.

I know we have 14 parks and four community centers.

Does the four community centers, does that include the new one on St.

John Road in a rural area?

I am not sure.

Small, but good.

of the Old Rosenwald School.

I'm wondering, increasing our parks, we receive proffered areas of land when there are new developments, and would that be an area if they're too small for schools?

Because usually the school board says, well, we want to put a school there in that proffered area that

developers have offered to us.

Are those areas that we might consider for future parks if the school district is not going to use it?

I mean, that's just a... Yeah, I'll invite Tim Petalino from the Parks Department.

Just a suggestion.

I'm trying to think of new ways we can increase parks, which is everyone wants to do.

Yes, you're welcome.

Good afternoon, Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley and members of the board.

We absolutely are looking at proffered park properties.

There's a number that are reserved for future dedication to the county for public use.

There are some that have been proffered and transferred to county ownership.

There are others that are under easement, but we are kind of tracking that inventory and working on mapping that in up-to-date fashion and working closely with community development staff just to kind of keep tabs on the status of those things.

Okay, thank you very much.

Yes, you're welcome.

We are coordinating with the Parks Department and Fire Rescue and the climate team and others to work on those recommendations.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sure.

Thank you.

Just a follow-up, I think.

Looking at community centers is really critical, especially with climate change, because we're going to have lots of folks that are needing a space and a place to go.

I believe in a community center could serve that, whether it's in a crossroads community or a boys and girls club.

So I heartily agree with the discussions about community centers.

This chapter is on Parks and Rec.

And again, I'm going to kind of keep it a high level.

I agree with everything that has been said about detailing the specific actions and a way to actually go back and look and see if we've managed to accomplish what we're talking.

I think all of that is great, but I'm going to kind of keep it at a high level.

We have a lot of great parks in this community.

Most of them have been given to us, which is really wonderful.

It's hard to deny when someone wants to give you a park, it's hard to say no thank you.

My concern is, how are we taking care of the parks we already have?

We don't have a public works department.

It gets to bathroom facilities.

We can't put bathroom facilities in all of our parks if we don't have a staff to take care of them.

It's a conundrum, a real conundrum.

And I have to say that when I look at the map of our parks, there's one in the development area, one park

Now, I stand corrected if somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but there's one park in the development area.

Tim, two.

He's showing me two.

So, Charlotte Humphers Park, and what's the second one?

Darden-Towell.

Okay, Darden-Towell, and I was thinking about that as being rural area, but it's development area.

Sorry.

So two.

Now Darden-Towell is large and that's great.

Charlotte Humphress is a little small pocket park.

So when we talk about where our population center is, and through the equity lens,

My constituents can't get to Darden Town much less Walnut Creek.

So trying to figure out how to get to move the county towards thinking about pocket parks in areas where people are actually, where there's density, or how to get folks to

the parks that are in the rural area that are inaccessible.

And I'm not sure how that could be done.

To tell the folks in my district to take a bus, they couldn't even get there and get back.

in two or three hours, much less than any time in the park.

So I'm just something to think about.

So who takes care of all of the acreage we already have?

If we're going to start talking about buying or accepting more, how are we going to handle what we already have?

I said, talked about the community centers.

Can we look at the properties that we already own possibly, for example, Northside Library?

And I'm just throwing that out.

Or maybe

and this is a harder ask working with some of our developers, for example, Stonefield, which is right in the middle of the urban areas, right?

Is there a way that we could work with some of our developers?

That's a harder ask and I get that.

But certainly we have some properties and maybe opportunities with an example of like our laboratory, our Northside Library would be one example.

And I think for right now, I'm going to let that go.

I think the big overarching points I think I've already made from my viewpoint.

Generally speaking, I think of all the chapters in front of us today, this does the best job of aligning specific, more specific achievable goals and the objectives align up to what the goals states.

So I appreciate that.

I mean, these I look through and I'm like, well, okay, some of the action items are still having to be defined.

But for the most part, this seems more concrete in a lot of ways.

We're going to expand land for county-owned land to put parks on.

I mean, that's, all right, I get it.

How are we going to do that?

And we can do that, but that's a very clean cut.

Support, you know, growing available land for parks and not, you know, it's very sane that the county's going to take this on and do that.

The, I think there was a community line in there that called out teens and seniors.

You know, and I think of the urban area, we do have a lot of trails and trailways and things like that, but in addition to just walking trails, not that that's not, you know,

Northwile, and Healthy and Enjoyable.

I do it quite a bit.

But, you know, I don't know that that holds my attention as a teenager when I'm doing the same walk the fourth time.

So what are we doing from that standpoint when we think of diverse populations?

Sometimes the diverse obviously is, you know, different types of folks, but that age bracket when it comes to parks and recreation I think really is important.

and so on.

We're losing an opportunity to provide something that gives us benefits in a lot of other ways when that aged population has something to do.

So I think we're going to get there.

I'll be looking forward to the action items on this one.

Two-two, I had a specific one.

Well that's the development of urban parks, pocket parks, greenways, etc.

So when we're in there

I guess the details will fall out in the action items, but I don't want it to be lost that the how to get to urban areas or the callouts of like in our small area plan where we said that if it gets redeveloped and there's public spaces put on that we're going to take over that we're happy to take that on and then maintain it.

So I don't want things like that that are in these other areas or plans of county documents that we've already decided to get lost in the comp plan.

because if the developer goes in and they go redevelopment and they don't see that stated here and don't think to go to the small area plan, they're, well, wait a minute, the county might be interested in taking that on and maintaining it.

I hope that's going to be in this chapter somewhere as well.

But it's probably under increase the amount of county-owned land that maybe we stated in there somewhere in an action item that we would, in the development area, we take on ownership and maintenance

you know, like the trailhead that's going to come at Parkway Place or what's that one called now?

Rio Point.

That we're going to take that on.

So that's the type of stuff I'm hoping maintains or is captured there.

Thank you.

I think some of my comments are probably spill over into the community themes, which is

I'm trying not to, but I probably will, so I'm sorry about that.

But yes, I agree, running water would be incredibly important, but I don't know how we would have bathroom facilities at a lot of places.

And I'll jump right to, actually, objective 4.3 on page 5, new recreation access improvements at Sugar Hollow with partnership with the SNP.

Yes, to have the kiosk for the park access, but this is drinking water.

We should not be spending money to build bathrooms and do any kind of improvements that are going to bring more people out there to create water problems for our drinking water.

So that is one of these tug of war type things where every university student sees some unwritten law that they have to go drag their beer out to the blue hole, which is now the brown hole because it's been ruined.

unfortunately on the South Fork of the Mormons.

And this has been a nightmare for our rescue and our police department for the last 16 years, at least and probably more than that.

So I guess I would like to have a lot of care and consideration about where amenities are going to be improved.

Ever since the derecho, there's been discussion about making sure that when funds were available that we'd be able to

improved facilities at fire stations and at schools so that they could be used in an emergency like that.

I mean, we have 10 days of 95 degree temperatures and no place for people to get cool.

Fortunately, the fire departments were able to bring water with them, the brush trucks, so that people could go and get water for their livestock out of the dump tank at the firehouse.

I mean, the cattle in Earlyville would never have made it without that because there were so many people who had nothing and our wells were all

Dry, and the streams were dry, too.

So those kinds of existing buildings, which have always been the community gathering places for the country, churches, schools, and firehouses, is where people cross and the country markets, baseball store, those kinds of things, are also incredibly important.

So I know that you've represented a lot of those very well.

Let me jump down here.

regarding the proffered lands for parks.

I know we've gotten in pickles over the last some time about not getting them quickly enough.

And so I would encourage all to think about putting those on fast track to get those property transfers done absolutely as soon as possible so that when ownership changes, we don't get into more of a tug of war about things like that.

The kids have been begging for a skate park in Crozet with Crozet Park Board as well as with the county for a long time.

You're absolutely right.

They need some place to go rather than just hanging out at the Dairy Queen.

So I know we're getting a little better, but it is more than just organized sports.

There's a tremendous interest for things outside of soccer and that kind of thing.

On page eight, and this is a community

theme, but it worries me.

Expand facilities and crossroads communities.

So I would beg you to

and so on.

logging trucks and gravel trucks, et cetera, going through all of these places because of the activities in the country.

So I think that was a, you know, perhaps a wish from someone who didn't live there, and that's a concern.

I appreciate the under accessibility and that I would

and so on.

there are funding opportunities from foundations across the country who are particularly interested in that particular topic.

And jumping back to goal six, partnerships and volunteer programs for collaborating on improving public lands.

Improving has to be in air quotes because what we cannot have is

authorized and ill advised trail making in places where it's not, you look at the destruction of the critical resources at Ragged Mountain by done with people who were trespassing and should not have been allowed to do that.

And it's only going to get worse unless we draw a line in the sand on this to say, no, this is one place in North America where certain plants are growing and you've just run your skid steer right through there to make a trail that you shouldn't have been doing.

So that is something that gets my hackles up very, very quickly.

And it's a danger when we have sort of generic high-level things is that everybody says, oh, well, great, then we'll just go out there.

And people brag about this.

Oh, yeah, we went out there on the weekends and we did all this with no concern about the fact that this was not invited.

So people don't seem to think that their rules apply to them, I guess.

at the last one on Goal 5, Sustainable Land Management.

Protecting biodiversity and ecological integrity is incredibly important, and that is different than using chemicals everywhere and to take out a few elanthus when all you have to do is cut them and put vinegar on them.

So we have to be really careful about chemical use.

We are adopting blessing or anywhere.

We have a safer chemical policy, which we need to strengthen and make sure that it's actually being carried out in the way that it was

in 2010.

So anyway, those are sort of environmental concerns that we can't say we care about natural heritage creatures and then kill them all.

So that's my concern.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I am hearing a lot of different comments.

My personal take is that again the Planning Commission has done a pretty good job addressing some of the needs.

I think community centers, which I've heard several people say is something that I

I feel is mentioned without really having sufficient objectives about what we really want to accomplish with community centers as part of this and I think it's an important component for us to focus on.

I have a question that's not really appropriate for the moment but at some point, Parks and Rec, I'd like to get a better sense of the breakdown of what it takes to care for a park depending upon what kind of park it is because

as we look at different goals, for example, goal six, whether we're working with outside partners or doing it ourselves.

I'm strongly in favor of pocket parks and trying to get more urbanized parks, but I think the care of those is very different from the care

of what we need for Biscuit Run or other large parks.

Back to goal six quickly, I guess in echoing Supervisor Mallek's comments, I just felt that it wasn't clear to me what was meant by partners.

who's the external stakeholders, are these the groups that use those parks or are there other partners that we're contemplating and I'd like to see some of that spelled out, it may come out in some of the actions.

Are there any other comments at this point from any supervisors?

I just wanted to mention that the external stakeholders that could also be partners, that could also be

using the newly formed county parks foundation.

That would help.

Thank you.

That would help make sure that things are done maybe properly addressing Supervisor Mallek's concern about people just going out there and doing whatever.

I would also like to co-sign Chair Andrews' point about I would personally appreciate more information and insight on the

the costs related to maintaining, especially as it relates to, I think, the point of serious disagreement between myself and Supervisor Mallek regarding water and sewage needs at certain parks.

I do see that as a really important element of reducing the accessibility barrier of certain parks by recognizing that there is a serious financial challenge.

and it's interesting as we talk about that because really we're talking about maintaining and even for talking about pocket parks, what to some degree we're talking about is staffing.

and that, of course, becomes a budgetary issue.

And I'm just going to mention that they are putting in a, because Darden-Towell is a very large park and it's co-owned by the city, but with Parks and Rec, they are putting in a

of Restroom Facility.

And I don't know what Tim is, if he's here.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the price tag was approximately a million dollars.

We can get back to you on that.

I think he's receiving your request and we can follow back up with the board and remember LaPisto-Kirtley and McKeel.

I've got the board interrupted here on your thought process.

One of the things that the staff is listening for today is requests that might be more suitable to address in the budget process.

and Ms.

McKeel mentioned that as it relates to analysis of how much does it cost to maintain a park, what are the amenities within the parks and looking at staffing and other resources and so we'll be capturing some of this information

And that's why I mentioned that because there is a huge

There's a price tag, especially if there's not water and sewer there, but there is a price tag to that, which is fine.

I mean, I'm all in favor of that.

It's just you're correct, Mr. Jiffords.

Just following up on that one more quick comment, we do need to recognize, though, and this will be helpful, I think, pocket parks are walkable parks.

They're not parks that you drive to.

So at Charlotte Humphries, to be honest with you, we have had many talks in my CAC about the fact that we don't want a bathroom there.

We don't want a parking lot there.

It is a walkable park for the neighbors.

Thank you.

I think we can now move on to the next to keep us going.

Empty urban spaces, taken possession of derelict properties or whatever, because I know it's in the news now and then, in order to create little half acre, wonderful places with great big trees and a place to sit and have a picnic or whatever.

Thank you.

So the third topic, historic scenic and cultural resources, organized into four goals, identify, document, and increase awareness about resources, protect and adaptively reuse resources,

Community Access to Resources, and then entrance corridors and other scenic roadways.

So I'll skip to the commission's feedback.

Recommended that in the action steps we should have specific recommendations for free town communities in the rural area and other communities with undertold histories.

They said that objective 4.1 seemed like it was two different different ideas together and it may need to be split into one focused on entrance corridors and another on renewable energy.

We should consider a recommendation for a historic preservation ordinance since encouragements and incentives might not be sufficient.

Consider stricter requirements for demolition to encourage adaptive reuse.

And then consider where arts and cultural resources fit into the comprehensive plan and how to build on assets, including to support tourism.

So that would likely overlap with economic development as well.

Thank you.

Again, we'll combine questions and comments.

Yes, I want to begin just by co-signing DANG Near Everything up there by the Planning Commission.

I think these are all well taken and valuable points.

The only thing I might add to kind of continue a discussion that I think we started on the previous section and I think the

the packet that we received helps highlight is the lack of clarity on what we truly want from crossroads communities and what even we consistently mean through them.

There are certainly a lot of places in Southern Albemarle and in my own district that we might identify and think of as crossroads communities that are not

according to the county, Crossroads Communities.

And when you talk to individual citizens, when I've talked to individual citizens, something that I've been consistently struck by is how people think of, occasionally, Crossroads Communities as a place to locate services, a place to locate community needs, where I believe they were originally conceived of as Supervisor Mallek might sometimes point out, has pointed out to me before, as a historical preservation tool.

I think there's still a lot of community confusion on that.

There's a lot of, frankly, sometimes personal confusion on... It does not feel like we've coalesced around what we want and what we think of regarding Crossroads communities.

Thank you.

I also am...

have questions or confusion regarding the crossroads communities.

I know we have seven of those.

Those were seven crossroads communities that were designated.

The map was not very clear for me.

So I could not really tell where all the crossroads communities were.

So that would be helpful to know where they are.

I'm concerned because Supervisor Mallek was saying

So to get a better definition of what crossroads communities would be,

Yes.

Well, I mean, we know what they are.

I'm sorry.

Okay, okay.

So maybe more clarification there, because it's not clear to me.

On page 14 of the recap engagement, you are referencing mitigating the impacts of light and noise pollution to protect dark skies.

And I didn't say it earlier, but I do agree.

LED lights now they're having full force and that's a problem.

And I do agree with identifying and protecting historic cultural resources.

And the other one is tying in historic tourism and increasing the education about our local historic resources and tying that to the CACBB is also, or

to do that I think is also a good tool for us to use.

But I don't have any real concerns.

I like what I'm reading.

Thank you.

Sure.

Victoria, I will say just

in general, six people, six different thought processes and coming at this from six different directions.

And I really appreciate you all and everybody in the audience for listening so carefully because we're all human and we read these chapters and we come at it from a different direction.

And that's okay.

goodness gracious, bless you for having to figure this out.

That's why it's 400 pages.

Well, I'm just saying we really appreciate it.

But I think in a way we are somewhat saying the same thing, we just say it in different ways because we're different, you know, just to say, okay.

I do think that

I agree with what the Planning Commission is saying here.

I think in bullet one is really fascinating because I think we're getting in that bullet to some of our historic black communities, which I really appreciate and really like.

I think that's really good.

The entrance corridors and other renewable energy and sustainability, I would be interested in kind of tearing that apart a little bit.

I will say, and I'm just mentioning this because it's an opportunity,

I have struggled with why the ARB looks at our entrance corridors in the process that they do.

They look at it before it even goes to the Planning Commission, those entrance corridors, the proposals.

and it seems like to me that's backwards.

Before the proposals are approved, the ARB is looking at them and I think that causes some confusion in the community and maybe not with the developers, but certainly in the community.

I've had at CAC meetings the developers say, well, this has already been to the ARB because it's in the entrance corridor and it was approved by them.

So maybe we'll look at that process.

Sorry, but that's just an aside.

And I guess with the only other bullet that I really want to go to on this to expand a little bit on is the arts and cultural.

And let me go to my notes.

I don't have a whole lot.

It is critically important that we continue to support our arts community.

and our arts and cultural community.

And a great place to do that right now, I believe, is in the Broadway Corridor.

I am very concerned that the Broadway Corridor is going to be developed and chased those artists away.

And we need more light industrial.

We're losing our light industrial, and that is a corridor that could provide light industrial space along with arts and culture.

I'm just reading my notes, I'm sorry.

It seems like to me, as we've been talking about all of the enhancements

in that Broadway corridor, and I'm getting very specific here, but we are talking about improvements that will cause the property values to go up and to cause other players to come in, and I'm very concerned about our arts community down there.

I just think we have to be very careful about how we develop that area.

and I will say that getting back to the previous discussion by the two supervisors before me, I think Crossroad, the definition of Crossroad community is like affordable housing.

It means something different to everybody.

And we've got to come to some sort of an agreement on really what we mean

by a crossroads community.

I think the idea that every crossroad community would have a dry cleaners and a Walmart and I think that's crazy land.

But at the same time, there is a need to have food.

Some of these communities are food deserts.

in a way, and we need to figure out how we can get some of the needed services to those communities without having a lot of spread and a lot of development.

So looking at criteria, I don't know how we do it, but I do think we need to come together on what we mean when we're talking about a crossroad community.

Thank you.

If you go to, well actually on

before we leave the Planning Commission.

That hadn't occurred to me, that second bullet.

I guess I'm still brainstorming or thinking that through, but I think I do agree with that, that those maybe need to be split out.

You know, the arts and cultural resources, I like the question, how does it fit into the COMP plan?

They're not necessarily saying it has to go here.

Arts and cultural items sometimes can always be thought of in service of other objectives and things, and we can forget or lose sight of that arts and cultural activities are worthwhile in and of themselves.

So we probably do need to wrestle with that idea.

Are we saying arts and culture items are tools to help achieve other things, or are we saying that it's

Worth, while in and of itself, and if it is, how does that fit into the comp plan?

That's just building on that question there that I'm agreeing with.

If you go to 2.1, I'm assuming in 2.1 that we're going to, well actually let me ask the question, it's one I don't know.

Yeah, so we've got other funding streams that's going to find other funding besides our own.

So if that being the case, then if we're stating here incentives and grant programs, I'm assuming we're going to see

what those programs and incentives are in the action items, and this would be one that the budget's going to have to, I mean all this stuff's going to cost them something.

Well, but you state that in other funding streams.

So other funding streams to me says external to the county, the first two state county.

So if we're saying we're only looking for other funding streams, then we can't be suggesting to folks that we're coming up with incentives and grants.

I mean, it just has to be well defined.

You know, I did appreciate Supervisor McKeel's ability if you stand up there and do all this in front of us.

Do you have a kickstand behind you or something?

It's like propping you up.

If you go to Goal 4, and I'm sure this is probably going to be included in land use and transportation, if it's not, I'll be bringing it up then too.

But I think this is the one place where I'd say we're missing an objective.

And that is, you know, Objective 4-1 is all about the pre of putting things in.

And we all know what high bar we have set in Albemarle County about entrance corridors and view sheds and what ceilings are and the color of tile.

I mean, it's a joke a lot of times where people are like, oh, debating the difference between two different Beiges and things like that.

I'm not making commentary on that, but once the stuff's in place, what are we doing to maintain the quality?

of the design that's been put in place, the built infrastructure.

And this is leading me to our medians and the litter.

We're making steps on it through the street sweeper and we're doing things.

But I think we need to get in this comp plan that we understand, especially in the urban area, that how things, you know, everybody gets head nodding when we talk about the beauty of the rural environment and the rural landscape and protecting and maintaining that.

and I don't think anybody disagrees that the urban areas should be looking that way too but we don't put it at the same level as we do to the protection of the rural environment and we need to because most of the people hit town through the urban ring then go out and enjoy and if it looks like hell then that suggests well wait a minute what are what are we doing so I'd love to see somewhere here when we think of historic and

you know, the historic resources, that it's not just what exists outside of the development area, that the development area is part of the historic resource.

We've got signage and wayfinding and we're starting to do that, but if you're standing at a historic sign and the litter's up to your shin or your knee, then that's suggesting something that's not appreciative of the historic resource.

So I think there needs to be a 4-3 here that states that, that once stuff is in place,

that Albemarle County is going to do the things recognizing that the action items will have to define it because sometimes this is VDOT right away, sometimes this is private land, but we need to get at saying it's important to us of how this stuff looks and here's what we think we can do about it, an action item.

So I throw that out there as one you can add into this section.

The other two items I'd call out in the packet were on page six and seven in the community piece.

It may fall into this incentives and grant programs category.

But somebody in the community mentioned incentives over neglect, I think, or perhaps, and then there was the thing that they don't like to see demolition by neglect.

So those incentives and grant programs, I guess, could help get at that type of thing.

There's a historic structure out there, and since it's on private land that's just not being taken care of, eventually it'll just be, well, it's dilapidated.

We have to take it down.

But if there's a good incentive or program, and we appreciate that, then it can target that we can help with the upkeep and maintain it.

So I'm just trying to connect the line back that I thought that was a good comment in the community section.

Thank you.

The Historic Preservation Committee had some really great discussions several months ago about the concern that sort of equity was dropped in somewhere in this that didn't seem to be working.

And I know they shared very good details with Margaret and Chris, too.

So I'm sure those will be recognized considering, considered along the way.

Calling out for the ordinance and the requirements for demolition from the Planning Commission is incredibly important.

The seeking in ordinance has been ongoing for more than 20 years.

And we just haven't quite gotten the political will to be able to say this is important to our community.

It is important to a part of who we are.

And the fact that other communities, other counties in Virginia have requirements for demolition and we don't.

and it's been told that we don't have the right to do it.

I don't understand that, but anyway, we need to figure out how to get there better.

We also need to more affirmatively recognize it's not just the Monticello's

that we're talking about.

It's a vernacular architecture that is particularly down in the Esmont area, the Keene area.

I was down there for something and part of the historic district down there is all of the workman's houses, all up and down the roads.

I mean, it's so much more valuable than just the big guy.

And so that isn't talked about very much in here, but I hope that

It could be underappreciated vernacular architecture, the regular people's homes.

And those are often the ones that get gentrified right away when things happen.

Now let me jump over here.

Somewhere in here is, or somewhere there's recognition about historic cemeteries, I think, but that is something that needs to be called out because we have a statutory obligation from the state.

to which we have not done anything to carry out.

And so that's something that we should be worried about.

Very supportive of all the things in your overview here, the systemic identification mapping to make sure that we know better where things are.

The Current Historic Preservation Committee has worked very hard to share information about all the tax credit programs outside funding with any new owners who come along.

The detriment is that often they don't get that information in time before the guy with the bulldozer has shown up and run over or torn down and taken home an 1820 log house on the back of the property because the owners didn't appreciate the importance of it.

These are kinds of things that the whole community loses out on.

Preservation and Adaptive Reuse.

Adaptive Reuse makes me grind my teeth because when people buy a historic property and then come and complain that they can't in order to afford the property they've already bought, they have to be able to change it and tear things down and put all sorts of events there, that's degrading the reason that it's on the National Register or whatever and they're wanting the county to change rules and policies because

They want financial support and that troubles me.

The access under Goal 3, I think that all community members to have physical access to properties should be fixed.

because that's not, I don't think, the intent.

And we just need to be careful that we don't do things in print that scare people and make it, what do you mean?

You know, I've spent the last 20 years restoring this house and now I have to have it open to the public.

That's a concern.

Local viewsheds and landscapes, incredibly important.

I'm glad to see the light pollution in there because it is part of those historic and scenic resources in addition

to the environmental things.

And requiring full shielding is something that we can do.

It is within our authority.

We just haven't done it, and we really, really need to.

The entrance corridor.

Renewal, here's the thing.

So here's a renewable energy thing, Objective 4.1, a sustainable building in the historic district.

So I'm not quite sure why that's there.

but it's just not necessarily a place to plunk down an industrial solar scale facility.

This is sort of worshiping at the solar god and ignoring everything else that is contributing to our community.

So I think that we need to be watchful of the consequences for all the other uses when

any kind of industrial project comes before us.

And other counties have actually analyzed their utility need and based their approval of solar installations based upon that.

In other words, they have no interest

Rockingham, for example, and providing all the solar for some other place.

They'll take care of their people, and we're halfway there already with hexagon, but they don't find any need to destroy themselves to take care of others to do outside.

Page 7, historic buildings in the rural area can be adaptably reused as community gathering places.

I would, my note in blue here was only with special permit and no loss of historic asset.

In other words, we need to be careful.

This shouldn't just be a by right, do whatever you want.

Because these places are part of the whole neighborhood.

And I really got carried away with my yellow one here.

Very appreciative of all the work that

Jesse Brickens has done with the marker program and that department, and I think that the HPC wants to merge those two programs together to have them be even more successful, which would be great.

Okay.

I will stop there.

Thank you.

If you could put up the planning commission section here, summary.

Yeah, right there.

So just running through those, I certainly agree with the first bullet, the second bullet, objective 4.1.

Seems like two different ideas.

I very much agree.

and I think it's important to recognize if we discuss the overlap between chapters that when we start talking about renewable energy that that is a discussion that we need to have.

It may not be just in the context of where it fits in the entrance corridors but generally where it fits and so I feel a little bit like that's really a difficult

and Bullitt Point as an objective to try to combine.

But that same objective, 4.1, which was on the previous slide, I think, as Supervisor Gallaway mentioned, the mention of design, certainly maintenance of entrance corridors is something that I think needs to be reflected in this part of the comprehensive plan.

And the

I guess from there my most significant comment would be that I do feel that arts and cultural resources have been not really laid out in here just sort of mentioned in passing as a word cultural without any specific objectives that relate to those and I'd like to see some expansion on that.

I did have one additional thing I wanted to note.

I apologize for letting this slip past me on the first pass, but when I think historic and cultural things, pardon me, when I think assets of historical and cultural value in the Scottsville district, I think,

The Incorporated Town of Scottsville, which is a tremendous asset of essential value and is unique in the county of being our only incorporated town.

I do think it might bear explicit mention and some discussion of the potential to partner with the town in preserving and working toward strengthening cultural and historic assets.

I also would just echo the point that first Supervisor McKeel and then Chair Andrews made about what do we mean when we say culture?

We say it in the same breath, consistently, historic and cultural, but culture means contemporary culture.

We talk about

Street Art, graffiti.

Are we talking about local theater?

Are we talking about artisans and craftspeople?

All of these seem implicated, but our objectives seem to specifically actually be talking to that more rarefied and antique culture.

I guess I'm going to just follow up on that with when you had the previous comment.

We had previously discussed crossroads communities and I know that appears in this section as part of the topic report, but I

And can I just add one thing to piggyback on a couple of things?

We talk about litter and this is addressing the litter issue.

There is litter on the ground that we can pick up and there's visual litter that we see.

I just want to make that point because there's a lot of visual litter as well as just litter on the ground and all kinds of illegal signage and I'm just saying so I would think about it from the viewpoint of not just the bottle, the plastic bottle that somebody throws out

but the illegal signs that suddenly appear all over the place.

Thank you.

Well, right, and this statement would build right on top of that.

It's because this, you know, I'm not just calling out the public areas that we can go in and clean up ourselves or we can have VDOT help us with, etc.

but it's a call out to legal.

It's like we have ordinances that say you can't put that sign up, but apparently we don't have ordinances that say you got to get these damn weeds off your sidewalk that are growing up as tall as they are in the medians.

Maybe we do, but it's not, I don't know how we enforce that or if that's a compliance issue, but my understanding is it's a right-of-way issue as well, just like some of the medians that grow up are private.

They're not public, they're not VDOT, and then you have to get over after the business.

So that's in those elements, it's to say it's not just, oh, we need to necessarily spend more money on street sweepers, it's also put the tools in place to be able to get compliance, especially inside the, or along the paths of entrance corridors.

take responsibility for enforcing the removal of signs and finding $100 per sign for offenders in the highway right of way.

And one of the many, many things that went away after the recession, during the recession of necessity, but I hope will be brought back, is collecting.

Every intersection in the rural area has, first it was the Christmas lights guy and now there's something else.

And then later on, it's going to be the tree trimmings and everything else.

and so on.

to offset overtime when someone's on their way home to stop and pick up all those things and send the bill.

Sounds like an action step as well.

Maybe so.

I just want to take a moment here.

Everyone's recognized how appreciative we are of your patience, your stamina in standing before us.

We have scheduled all five of these in a row.

We have tentatively had said 345 as a recess, which is a full two hours for you to be there.

We're going to continue, but I do want you to alert me if you'd like to take that recess at some point in between before we get to the other.

I'm good.

I typically stand when I work all day anyway, so I'm good if you all are.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So the fourth topic, housing.

organized into six goals and much of this content was drawn from Housing Albemarle as a starting point as well.

So I just wanted to note that since that was the most recently updated comprehensive plan chapter.

So the goals are increase the overall housing supply and housing choice, increase affordable and workforce housing options, preserve and maintain existing housing, fair housing, and share homelessness's rare brief in one time, and enable community members to age in place.

So I'll move to the summary of the commission's feedback.

to prioritize housing recommendations in the COMP plan, evaluating what's most feasible and what should be accomplished first, increase affordable housing options and activity centers and employment areas in the development areas, consider implementation measures such as using county-owned land for affordable housing, community land trusts,

and allowing some additional housing options besides single family detached houses in the rural area without increasing the overall allowable density.

Consider the high cost of assisted living and how that overlaps with other plan chapters.

Look for opportunities for partnerships, multi-generational housing options and accessory dwelling units and consider how aging in place overlaps with service provision in the rural area such as healthcare and transportation.

noting that preserving existing housing is key and to continue to support partnerships and programs to do that and ensure that data is tracked over time and that planned metrics are evaluated to show how progress is being made.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I want to begin by just highlighting the exact same objective that

that Mr. Williamson did because I think it is actually kind of the central and driving one.

That's 2.1.

So everything on the screen there is actually in service of the line that Mr. Williamson pointed out, right?

All of this is here to set us up to that 10K unit.

So I just want to make sure that we're looking at that and everyone's seeing the same thing I am.

So I think it's really important that we drill down

and so on and so forth.

30 year plus guarantees.

I see workforce housing, I think, 80 and below AMI.

But that's me imputing a lot from, you know, being familiar with the vernacular of this space.

So I think what I'm hearing here is that we're trying to get committed affordable, contractually committed affordable units of a volume of 10K or more.

which would be really cool.

That's also wildly ambitious.

So I want to make sure we're familiar with this.

I've highlighted before people know that I'm like weirdly familiar with Arlington County, Virginia's affordable housing policies because of some personal connections.

And I would point out that Arlington is more than twice our size population-wise.

They have an incredibly robust housing trust fund and they've been engaging this problem for a long time and their inventory of committed affordable units is 11,000.

I think this is still an admirable goal, but I want to make sure we're all fully clocking what that means if we're talking about, if we're talking about, first off, if I'm correct in interpreting this as committed, affordable, not inclusive of NOAAs and not inclusive of things that are, say, 80 to 120.

So if that is correct, this is an extraordinary goal.

And I just want to make sure we are aware of that as we think about what it means to enable that goal.

This would require truly extraordinary funding support.

This would require some really generational efforts to enable this, which I should just, I support.

But I want to make sure we crystallize that adequately, if that's what we're saying we're aiming for.

another thing, another very big theme and I will probably support it if this document is written but something that really leaps out to me that I find concerning and I realize I had to interrogate it myself because it's not something I've been thinking about.

I do not feel like I read this and see a strategic approach to rural poverty.

The discussions of

needs in the rural community are primarily focused on the work that we're doing through AHIP, Preservation of Existing Units.

And we do not talk about the need for housing in the rural community.

You can only preserve something for so long.

You can only have a building existent for so long.

I would want to see something that gestures toward a more strategic and thoughtful approach that is specific to the needs of rural communities.

If we say we want people to age in place,

and five a family of more than two children.

And we all want to age in place.

I can no longer do that by preserving existing housing.

And this is not saying that I want to encourage more housing, but I think we're already, we need to reckon with the fact that we're already encouraging more housing by not taking more action on this.

It's just unaffordable housing.

It's developments of two-acre mini-mansions.

So I think we need a strategic approach to this.

I might suggest that we should look at things like land banking, tailored housing grants that allow you to work with private landlords, not things that have the same kind of owner's restrictions as the HCV program.

We can implement a local housing grant and also means-tested tax rebates.

Those are three different strategies that I think are specifically well-tailored to rural poverty that are specifically well-tailored to making sure we have housing opportunity in the rural community.

This is something that's deeply resonant for my district where I have pockets of really severe housing need in the rural community and people who are also deeply connected with that rural community.

I say this as someone who is deeply connected with my rural community that I grew up in and I'm not there because we did not have a systematic focus on that.

and lastly I would just point out I have also closely read Housing Charlottesville and I know that our name is on their tongues in every other sentence when they're talking about solutions and I think we need to grapple with the meaning of that.

We are already being contemplated as a critical regional partner in the housing space.

I think it's important that we grapple very explicitly with that.

If other people are casting their hopes and dreams onto us we need to be

Fully leaning into a regional approach to housing.

Unlike my previous suggestion, I don't have very specific actionables on that, but that's just something I would say I think regional is increasingly kind of the pro word of the next decade, and I think we should lean into that rather than fight against it.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

Well, the good news about affordable housing and workforce housing is we have until 2040.

The bad news is going to be very difficult to achieve our goal, frankly.

I agree with a lot of things were stated before me.

For affordable, for workforce housing, I think there's a good way to achieve that, frankly.

I think we're moving in that direction.

for affordable housing.

I think that's going to be much more problematic.

We have the homeless situation for people that are unhoused.

We have Premier Circle and such.

But for affordable housing, I think we do need to look into something, land trust, purchasing up properties, maybe leasing them to

entities that frankly know how to build really affordable housing, which would be something like Habitat for Humanity, PHA.

They know how to do it best.

But if we have the land, that really makes a difference.

And that land can be in some rural areas as far as a duplex, maybe a foreplex, something like that, without fully going in there.

Because we all know you go into the rural areas, you need water and sewer.

So that's going to be problematic also, but there are

People who are areas, maybe one acre, two acres where you could have a duplex and that could be affordable.

But I do believe that we have to look at it in a different way if we want to get affordable housing.

We're working toward workforce housing, which I think is achievable.

I don't think affordable housing as it is now is achievable without rethinking how we're going to do that.

and just as a side, I'm just going to say on page eight, this is from the community input, but they talked about balconies and I thought, you know, you're right, balconies are really, really important for people who live in apartments or town homes, especially apartments.

Balconies are extremely important.

They give the person the opportunity to be one with nature a little bit.

So that's all I have for right now.

Thank you.

I have to say I'm going to agree with Bea on this one because what she just said about balconies, I am immediately in my

You know, in my, I could see pictures during the pandemic of people standing on their balconies singing across the streets to each other.

So while I really hadn't thought about balconies specifically, it is a good point.

Yeah.

Now, I'm not sure we want a balcony on every window, but I mean, it is something to think about.

Let me go back to my notes here.

We have, it seems like to me we have two types of housing for the most part.

We have housing for those in true poverty, and we have a responsibility to mitigate and to help.

And Premier Circle and the Crossings are two examples of how we're doing that.

Workforce housing, which is what we're talking about here, also has equity in environmental aspects.

But it seems like to me,

that we so often concentrate on first-time housing, first-time single residence housing for folks.

And I'd like to sort of broaden our ability to think about more rental, or at least rental.

And we have been talking about rental, and I understand that.

But I think it's really important

that we not limit this to everybody has to have their own house.

Rental is, there's a place for rental.

And what I'm seeing in this community is that the wealthy are moving as they're downsizing, they're moving to rental.

which is very interesting.

So I'd like us to think a little bit more perhaps of rental being a win-win in a way.

I worry a little bit about, we talk about prioritizing folks, to keep folks in the rural area in their homes, then how are we going to provide services to them?

and so on.

an area that would provide a grocery store or a small drug store or a post office.

I mean I just think that maybe not a post office because that's not critical to health and well-being but although maybe it is.

Yes it is.

I'll take that back exactly because a lot of people get their medicines that way and other things.

But I'm just saying that we need to think about the other flip side of that is how do we get services to them.

I do think as we're talking about what I'm seeing happening in the rural area and how we address this, I'm just throwing this back, it's just a concern I've had.

I see developments that are McMansion after McMansion after McMansion.

That's not workforce housing.

And I understand that many of them are by right, but we have this five acre and 21 acre mindset

and what, how is that helping our stock?

Is there a way that we should be addressing some of the challenges that we see with those incentives, right?

Or maybe we need to come up with incentives outside of 21 acres in addition to this and everything we have.

and I was just looking at my points here.

I think for right now, I have, and I think I've mentioned everything I need to mention right now.

Thank you.

I think for the next two chapters, I don't want to get too far down into the weeds on either one of them.

We do have a housing Albemarle and Project Enable in place, and we are actively wanting to do the things that are set up in that policy.

So I guess at some point, especially for these two chapters, when we get into the action items, making sure we see the threads coming from those two plans that we've said, yep, those are the action steps.

So I'm assuming action steps from those will come out and be prioritized in the COMP plan.

some specifics or overview to this.

Go back to the planning commission's page real quick before I go through the goals.

All right, if we go to page, or I'll hit some of these I think when I go through my notes, so if we go to chapter one, and by the way the 10,000 housing units were that

I forget where that one falls in.

I mean, that was one that I looked at and was like, really?

Is that OK?

But this is specific and immeasurable.

So we got to state what it's going to be and how we're going to get there.

And if it is only aspirational, then it should be stated as such.

But if we state an aspirational goal, we still need to define what we think a realistic path is to achieve a number of units, if that's what we're interested in doing.

1-3, the support and increased use of energy-efficient design elements and new residential development, etc.

This particular item didn't come up this summer when the Regional Housing Partnership had its work session with developers and other stakeholders around the table, but materials did.

So if you front-load any costs

in the construction and building of a home or an apartment building, it's going to increase the upfront barrier to get into the unit.

I don't know, this is a question that I'll probably come back with, I don't know enough about energy efficient items in terms of construction material if it's at a premium cost over items if you didn't use energy items.

I'm not saying that I'm throwing the energy efficient use of materials out, but if the person can't afford to get into the unit because the upfront cost is higher they're not going to be in the unit to be able to recoup the financial benefit of being in there.

So that's a dilemma that's going to have to be or at least a dialogue that needs to be figured out.

Electric vehicles is a good example of this.

Electric vehicles are going terrible right now over the past year.

There is a premium to buy an electric vehicle, right?

Now down the road, after a certain amount of time, you should be able to recoup the cost of that upfront premium.

But if you can't get in the door, you can't recoup it down the road.

So this is something that I think has to be discussed.

We shouldn't just assume that people can afford to get in and have it be a little bit higher, or maybe we do assume that, and we should state as much.

or we have to figure out now not just subsidizing getting the units online and making the rent affordable, but taking it further because we want premium things done in addition to just getting the unit online, if that makes sense.

And I'd say the same for design concepts.

This is when it comes up like setbacks, like, you know, it costs money to get the floor floor and have to set it back.

Well, okay, but that's going to then make it more expensive for all those units in that particular building.

So those are conversations we have to have when we're talking about reducing barriers to affordable and workforce housing, and I'm assuming some of that's going to come out in the action item steps.

3.4, if you jump to goal three.

Ensure safe, decent, and sanitary living conditions for tenants.

This is a big how.

Because I've had, I'm sure, Supervisor McKeel and others have had it.

I know Supervisor McKeel's jurisdiction, some in the urban rings, where we get the emails about the facility being overrun by insects and things like that.

And it seems like when I push that forward for assistance, the county is limited sometimes in how to help.

and that can be, you know, whether it's mold or whether it's whatever.

So this is the action items here I'm calling out both from a legal standpoint and like what are we doing to ensure this and what control and what authority do we have to enforce it and enforce it?

Not just enforce it but force the matter.

3-5, I appreciated the call out for the especially for manufactured home parks.

I mean this is specific for displacement

but I also don't want to just presume, like right now, like we'd all think of Southwood as what we're addressing here.

And we're getting rid of a mobile home park or a manufactured home park but they're going into a different type of housing type.

But we also have manufactured homes and mobile home parks where that's their home and they don't want to be in a different type of housing type.

And if we end up getting somebody that buys a mobile home park, like out RIO or out Burkmaar,

and at some point the rents go where they have to get their mobile home park out of there.

There's nowhere for them to go in the county or there's limited options for them to go in the county to relocate the piece they own, which is the mobile home park, not the land underneath of it.

So I'm calling this one out to make sure this tag on is not just about what we're doing in Southwood.

but the action items are about, if people get displaced and they want to continue to live in the part they own, where in the county are they going to go and put it, and what are we going to do to help that?

Goal six.

To me, the way these objectives read, and I don't think it necessarily gets teased out in just action items, I don't think the two words at home is captured here in these objectives.

I think it assumes somebody's put into a new unit and then they age in that place or the community is the place they're going to age in, which is fine.

That may be the case.

That's what the senior, the assisted living and the other elements are.

But when we say at home, we have to realize that well if they're aging in place and in their community, they've been in the home for a long time.

and I don't see objectives here that are going to continually help them stay in the home long term.

And it probably gets to like what Supervisor McKeel said about services.

I know that our tax incentives for the elderly is going to help with that.

So I know there's elements of this there, but when I read those objectives it just stood out that it doesn't seem to me that at home is being addressed.

The other part of the statement is.

And then this is a general statement for the whole housing piece.

and I forget which goals it's in, but I don't need to go find it.

But we often, when developers bring us rezonings when we're increasing density, and then it seems when I was reading through this language a lot of time, we presume we've got, and I've said this before, effective transit systems in place, effective pedestrian infrastructure in place, and that everywhere is an employment center.

but we don't think about in terms of a cross town and somebody living in hydraulic that works on pan tops.

Well, they're not gonna walk, they could, it's gonna take a while.

And there's no transit system that gets them to work in a way that jumping in a car can make it happen, well, depending on the time of day, it can take a half an hour or more.

So, I get real leery sometimes when we talk about making sure we do housing development, workforce and affordable housing in areas

that are on transit lines, near employment centers, and are walkable when we know that we don't necessarily have the effective transit walkable communities and employment centers there.

So in the action items versus getting to the nitty gritty of the housing pieces, we need to make sure we're saying, well, here's what we're, you know, this has to pull in.

We're going to put the sidewalks in here.

We're going to put the microtransit.

I mean, hopefully if it works out that that becomes this workable system.

But let's not presume that, you know, we're going to just say yes to developments in places where we know the transit comes once every half an hour or once every hour.

And that's not functional for somebody that has to go to work without a car.

I happened to be doing a driving tour yesterday of my district, and a gentleman was walking into, around the corner, into Mallside Forest with a food lion bag.

And this is rounding putt putt.

So the grocery store that he went to was, you know, maybe, I presume that he got to food lion at some point, but probably then walked from there, because there is a transit stop right behind the food lion on Hillsdale.

but then he has to get across, it's four o'clock in the afternoon, he had to get across Rio Road at Putt Putt, which, there you go, I can't run that fast, but yet we would say if any development came right now and around Putt Putt and they said the rationale that would be given for putting a development there and density there is because

It's an urban center.

It's on a transit line.

It's got access to workplaces and employment centers.

Well, I'd like to tell that guy that and see what he thinks.

So when we're doing these big type of planning at the comprehensive plan level, we've got to address that in some way that the county says we're going to take responsibility for that and just not assume our urban ring is set up to support the density that we all say needs to be there.

There are other elements that have to be put in place for folks that are going to be in those affordable units.

Jim, can I just piggyback on something Ned just said?

Do you mind?

It's quick.

Thank you.

It's quick.

I turned my page and Ned is exactly right when he mentioned the current housing stock because I had a note on my second page that says preservation of existing affordable and workforce housing.

My concern in my district over folks that are living in apartment complexes that are run by property management companies, I get calls about them all the time and we've got to figure out a way

to wrap our arms around this and get them inspected.

I don't know what it is, but we're talking mold.

I mean, I could go on and on with some of the issues and we have no ability in the county to do anything.

We have property management companies that are probably doing a really good job.

It's just that I hear about the ones that aren't and it's a problem because that is a lot of our workforce housing in the older, you know, urban areas.

Thank you and I agree with that.

Many, many things that have already been said.

I very much support and appreciate the comments about housing having so many other components with it, that affordable, housing affordability goes way beyond the housing unit itself and I agree because it's the budget at the end of the month or maybe in the third week of the month when the money is gone and what do you do from there on.

and so on.

and so on.

The failure of the 21-acre minimum that was adopted in 1980, no one then thought that anyone would ever have a 21-acre front yard.

It was supposed to be the building envelope and septic field and well safe enough, two acres at most, and everything else, the ideal was that it was going to be maintained in agriculture.

and so on and so forth.

that costs are out of this world, and there may be some other thinking that can happen.

Probably not in the comp plan, but I thought I'd better mention it now so that it didn't get away from me.

But that has been something that has been said to me many, many times.

Only in passing in this document so far our real emphasis on the smaller housing types that we've talked about a lot the middle density that wasn't so much the 12 units per acre but it was going to be met by having the bungalow courts and the smaller houses and this brings to mind what an elder in 2008 at Southwood said to me

Don't make me go live in some apartment.

I'd rather stay in my decrepit trailer and have a place for my chicken and my garden.

Don't make me go there.

I won't.

So regarding what you said about different people want different places to live, we have got to emphasize where we can, our expectations for if

There is higher density for something.

It needs to be something other than twice as many apartment units.

It needs to be different choices for people.

So that, I just want to mention that before that got away.

Energy materials are the costs really higher to have decent insulation.

They may be a little higher to have really good windows, as opposed to the windows that lots of our track developers put in.

that are leaving daylight all around.

I mean, we've all heard the horror stories when Leap started their weatherization visits, brand new house at $600 a month in August for electricity, to find that it was daylight around the houses when they ripped the frame off to look at it.

And so it had not been done properly, and we all need to make sure that that does not happen.

There are many manufactured home neighborhoods in the White Hall District and provides really good housing for people.

The one of the Berbergen-Breitz Place on three-notch right across from the Highlands in Crozet is the 55 and older place.

And about 25 years ago, as Lisa's were up, she took away the old

trailers on wheels and replace them with very well done modular units.

And the ones I visited in 2008, people were buying brand new ones for $80,000, three bedroom, well insulated in, you know, with everything they needed.

So I understand the benefits of that.

I understand there are, if they're talking about zoning barriers, one zoning barrier that I do understand is that they are not welcome in the county without

Straining was difficult.

There was one that wanted to put in on Dickerson Road, right there by GE.

And I don't know where it went, but I met with the folks a number of years ago and thought it was a good idea.

So I'm glad that that is happening, but there needs to be a non-displacement policy that's much stronger.

The Crozet Park that was just approved for renovation and 14 extra units on Adele Street and Park Road.

I'm very worried.

about those tenants because there is no nondisplacement for them.

No nondisplacement policy to protect them.

There is a limited one.

I know when Riverview came up for those homes, those were actual homes, but there was some discussion about it back then, and many of those residents were helped to find other places when that redevelopment was approved.

But it is a really big concern for me because people have

spent their lives here and working here, just like many of those residents who would benefit from our real estate tax waiver program.

They've done their 50 here, and they've really deserved to be able to stay in their community with their neighbors and churches in their old age.

A couple of quick things.

Let me run through these things here.

I don't know exactly whether the 10,000 units in 2.1 is all building permits or just

just strictly affordables of all different income levels so someone can write that down for me later.

When we take on changes in the densities, having the public process before adoption is really, really important to get those to be fully understood so that there can be support

I talked already about the smaller lot sizes and smaller house sizes in 2.3, very, very important.

3.1, the NOAAs, that's absolutely the core of it.

The 6.3, the universal design is something where many longtime residents have made those modifications to their home.

And if they're forced out, then they have to start all over the place and try to bring the counters down or find a place which is very hard to find that is made for someone in a wheelchair, for example.

So anyway, I appreciate all of the good work that all of you have done on this chapter and look forward to more.

Thank you.

If you could go to the objectives and start from the beginning and I'll try to be efficient here.

On this one, just to piggyback on the comments, I do think that this question of energy efficiency is something that we'll need to discuss how we go about doing that because there may be costs associated with that and whether there are ways to do that without necessarily burdening our affordable housing with those.

that said we've had discussions about solar in the rural areas and things like that and if we don't find a way to get that kind of alternative energy somewhere we're going to be in trouble so this is of course one of those places but going on to goal two

I guess there's been some question about whether there's mixing things up here with the idea of supply being increased by 10,000 units, but also preserving existing units for affordable and forced housing.

So I had to question as to whether or not in that 10,000 units, are these two separate concepts, or are we somehow saying that we will add to affordability through existing units?

There could be existing units that aren't affordable, that could be made affordable that would help.

I'm just trying to understand it better.

Good afternoon, Stacey Pethia, Assistant Director of Housing.

It's a little bit of both, exactly what you were talking about.

So the idea is not to necessarily build 10,000 affordable units by 2040.

Some of those will be new construction.

Others will be finding ways to make existing units affordable for the people who live in them.

Some of that is done with, for instance, the Housing Choice Voucher Program.

So they can use those vouchers to move into privately owned rental housing.

The housing is affordable for them as they pay 30% of their income and the rental assistance takes care of the rest.

So that's really what we're looking at here.

But also preserving what we have, if we lose units that are already in existence that are naturally occurring affordable housing,

that we just need to build more to replace them.

Thank you.

Don't go far.

I guess maybe I'll bring it up at this point or maybe bring it up in connection with Goal 5 that we had some conversations about this and the idea that

Correct.

So of the families, individuals and families, households that pay 30% of more of their income towards their housing cost, 48% of those spend 50% or more of their income for their housing.

And that's really concentrated in households with incomes that are 50% of area median income and below.

So it's really the

the families that make the least amount of money or are extremely poor that are really suffering the most and they are the hardest group for us to provide housing for due to the extreme really high subsidies that are required to construct those units and to maintain them over the long term due to the decreased revenue that comes in through rent collection it's really hard to keep those properties maintained over the long term

And then if we go to goal six and again this is sort of filling in some conversations that we've had about this and there's a bar graph I believe in our materials where it discusses single family households and shows based on generation.

and one of the statistics is, of course, that graph doesn't include people who are 65 or older.

It only adds up to 80%.

So basically it means 20% are 65 or older and I think the number you gave me, which is over 8,500 seniors living alone and 5,500 plus age 75 or older.

and I think we will need to have the discussion as to what it means to age and place and I guess I offer here that one of the things that we explore in several places and we want to think about the purposes is accessory dwelling units and how they might be utilized to help people stay in their homes in addition to providing affordable homes and that may be extended not just in the development areas but into the rural areas as well

These are the goals that are laid out here.

I've heard a lot of discussion about the 21 acre rule, and it doesn't seem to be reflected anywhere in here as something to revisit, but I certainly do hear people saying that we have unintended consequences with that when we end up with 19 acre lawns instead of actual working agricultural areas or forest areas.

and maybe an important topic for another day.

And that's pretty much my comments.

I just have a question for Stacy, if that's okay.

And Stacy, you led me down this road, so I apologize for the question.

but you heard my earlier rant about failing septic systems so we have what is a very affordable apartment complex of some size just outside of the jurisdictional area right off hydraulic road that backs up to Ivy Creek with failing septic system, right?

So my theory is if we don't help alleviate that even though it's in the rural area

then the person that owns that apartment complex is liable to sell it and a developer would come in and we're not going to have that good size apartment complex left in our.

Do you see what I'm saying?

I do, yes.

So those are some of the things that we need to consider if we if we see a property

in that type of condition where the current owner may not be able to maintain it as is or bring it up to code.

Sixty-year-old infrastructure.

Right.

It's already affordable there.

The whole complex is affordable, but it's outside of the jurisdictional area, but just by a little bit.

I'm just saying.

So I'm hoping that, and I hope we wouldn't wait until he had a for sale sign in the front yard.

I hope not.

Anyway, but that's what I'm seeing in the in the in the urban ring rural area.

Yeah.

Okay.

I would like to, if I may, so thank you for the clarity you offered, Chair Andrews.

I would, with that in light, suggest that maybe Objective 2.1 could stand for some revision.

I'm concerned that it sounds like it's currently blending households served with inventory.

And I worry about this just because I think it's important that we do our best job.

and so on.

Stepp's necessary to fill an inventory gap.

Things, and I would be concerned if we're blending households served and inventory together in the way that it sounds like you're describing, including things like people who are recipients of mobile vouchers.

Then that's something that's very much behind the scenes and hard to track, and that's something that the public can't reasonably hold us accountable for.

I personally would prefer to see goals concretely about committed affordable inventory that we're aiming to create.

In addition to, I mean, household serve, but I do think that would be valuable to have those as separate metrics that we're tracking against.

I actually did have a few brief just comments in response to things other supervisors had addressed.

I completely co-signed the concern that Supervisor Gallway brought up with Objective 3.6.

I would also just note, though, that this is something that enabling legislation has been carried recently.

Delegate C, a price last session, carried a bill that would enable counties to independently investigate and prosecute instances like what we're seeing with housing conditions.

And I do think that

deserves continued presence in our comprehensive plan, because frankly, she's already said she's going to carry it again.

I haven't looked at LIS lately to see if she is by trust that she is.

And if it doesn't get past this session, then I think that's creating an affirmative obligation that this needs to continue to be a priority when we're coordinating with our delegation.

Even if it's something we lack the power, it's something that we still have a next step that's identified.

And I think that's still valuable.

I also do take, well, Supervisor Gallway's point about when we're talking about making sure that people aren't displaced specifically in mobile home communities.

That means that they are not displaced from their mobile home community.

We're all very familiar how our current governor made all his money with Carlisle, and it's by doing just that.

And that's kind of the origin story of Habitat's ownership of the Southwood development.

I do hope

Action plans identified around that in the future.

Again, I might come back to land banking and having money set aside to help communities exercise their right of first refusal that I believe mobile home parks residents have.

Correct me if I'm telling tales out of school, but I believe mobile park residents have the right of first refusal if they choose to form a coalition to acquire their own, their own lots when they're offered for sale.

That seems like a role that we could potentially intervene in.

Lastly, this is just something I noticed while I was looking at it.

Goal five, I feel like we dance around and don't explicitly state something that, again, talk about public education and helping the public keep us accountable.

This seems to be gesturing toward, but not explicitly stating.

I recognize, you know, our goal says that we shouldn't share that homelessist's rare brief one time.

That's because we can't truly eradicate homelessness.

Homelessness is a state one drifts into and drifts out of, could be as short as an afternoon that your homeless could be as long as each year.

I do think we could say and set as a very clear objective that we want to eradicate non-voluntary chronic homelessness.

I think that's achievable, and I think we're gesturing toward it.

Thank you.

I just, because it keeps coming up regarding displacement of people who live in mobile home parks

I know that we went through that with RST where they removed everyone and supposedly found places and everything.

Do legislatively or legally, I guess this might be for Mr. Rosenberg, legally do we have anything that says that we can prevent the owner of that property, that they have to remain or that he can't sell or that he

has to make sure that they all have a place.

Do we have that in place now?

I believe it's in 2019 the board adopted a policy of non-displacement, particularly associated with rezoning, which would have addressed exactly what happens with mobile home parks.

What the board has not yet adopted are the guidelines to enforce that policy.

The ones that were brought forward back in 2019, early 2020,

when you all weren't happy with them.

Let's just put it that way.

As far as from my understanding, no.

We would need to be something that the board is directly involved in approving or giving money towards.

Okay, and actually if someone's going to sell that mobile home park,

It wants to have everyone move.

They would want to rezone, so we would have that authority.

I mean, that's an assumption, but I would think they'd want to do that.

Okay, thank you.

It's quick.

Just have to say, when asked where I want all that solar energy to go, every parking lot, every rooftop, every redfield, urban, but not cutting down forest and productive land.

So we have lots of rooftops.

Another day.

If you have the stamina, we will move to our last chapter, Housing.

I apologize to Mr. Lynch that we are running behind, but we knew that this might happen today.

Let things go.

Thank you.

So the final chapter for today, Economic Development, which is organized by four goals.

Lead growth of target industries and primary businesses consistent with the growth management policy.

Support job creation and employment opportunities, collaborate with partners to support small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs, and collaborate to enhance career pathways and workforce development and training.

So moving to the commission's feedback, the commission noted that there is significant overlap with other comprehensive plan chapters, including land use and transportation and housing.

Look for opportunities to leverage partnership and funding.

Provide support for small businesses and startups, noting that it's very expensive to find space to rent or to try to renovate a space when you're a new business that's starting out.

Finding opportunities for career ladder, jobs, and career mobility, including collaborating with schools, colleges, and universities.

Exploring sustainable land uses in the rural area that could potentially create jobs, but also considering possible impacts.

to consider strengthening the language of objectives 1.1 and 1.2, which relate to development area capacity and having a diversity of sites available in the development areas and having land that is designated office flex, research and development and light industrial.

And then to consider adding more specific language regarding recreational tourism with associated action steps.

Thank you.

to spare our schedules.

I'm going to have very few pieces of concrete feedback other than to echo specifically what the Planning Commission has already done as the pleasure of highlighting.

And that is, I do think it bears repetition and perhaps further highlighting in the draft goals and objectives that

Economic Activity does occur in the rural area.

It's normally going to be small businesses.

It's normally going to be independent contractors, all manner of things.

But there are types of economic activity and economic development that can occur in these spaces that are important to making sure that people can continue to live in and sustain these communities.

Thank you.

I agree with what the Planning Commission, their feedback.

I also applaud the employment by the industry.

I know it's important for a project enabled to regarding bioscience and medical devices, business and financial services, information and technology and defense and security.

Agribusiness, and Food Processing.

Barry Albrecht, board.

I wanted to address this first.

I reviewed the plan and also I've compared it.

I want to congratulate the team.

They've done an exceptional job of not only leveraging technical resources and overlapping the different plans that we've agreed to in the past.

But they've also brought the spirit of smart growth to a comprehensive plan that I don't see very often.

So I want to make sure you realize that this team did an exceptional job of not only bringing in the tactical resources, but also the spirit that we maintain about smart growth.

To address that particular issue, JT, the deputy, will address that.

Thank you, JT Newberry Economic Development Office.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, the food processing target comes from a reflection of the density of those types of firms across our region.

So we have some very big food processors.

You think about like the Pepsi plant in the city, but then we also have a number of other smaller firms that are producing a variety of food products.

Would that be like Bonumos?

Yeah.

It's a good example.

Got it.

And that's what I like about this is there's a lot of science biotech and differing with different partners intellectually and in the area too.

to get to the goals of this.

And that I'm very appreciative.

I know they talk about, and I'm going to have to bring it up, the development areas and rural areas based on the growth management policy.

Could you address that?

Sure, so the intent with that goal, one, with mentioning the growth management policy is to distinguish between the different expectations for the development areas and the rural area.

So while there may be some opportunities for some development in the rural area, the intent with the growth management policy is the rural area is primarily intended for agriculture

and forestry uses and protection of the natural environment and the majority of new businesses and growth should be directed to the development areas.

Thank you.

I'm sorry.

I was thinking.

I wasn't even thought about this, that I lost track of where I was.

I apologize for where we were in the order.

I wonder if this, well, it seems like to me this is an opportunity at some point, certainly not today, to look at our target industries.

It's not that I don't disagree with the ones that we have, but I think going back is always a good idea to go back and look at exactly what our target industries might be because they can change.

And I would say that

I think we need to have a careful balance between UVA startups and sometimes industry relocations or industry startups.

And I say that because UVA startups

are often lead to purchasing and then they leave.

I mean, many of the UVA startups end up in a few years being purchased and they're gone.

and I just think it's something we need to keep in mind when we're looking at all of our focus being on UVA, or not all, but a good amount of our focus being on UVA startups, coming out of the University of Virginia.

The other thing that I would add is that Richmond, right now and has been talking about reducing their headcount,

and when Richmond is talking about reducing their headcount, that's cuts to budgets.

Budget cuts means cuts to UVA.

So it's just something to keep in mind as we're going through and we're thinking about what we're focusing on.

And I would also add that diversifying our tax, what we're talking about is diversifying our tax base to a great degree.

The economic development reward from our purchase of the land and the Department of Defense is a win-win.

And I just want to point that out that I'm in no way talking about what we're doing with the Department of Defense because that is a win for this community and that is not dependent upon Richmond.

Just saying.

I would also like to stress that partnering with public schools and PVCC is really critical because career pathways, connecting to career pathways for this community is critical because whether it's a UVA startup or whether it's some sort of

the right type of industry that we want, which we have many of in this community and people don't even know they're there, but they need a workforce.

So partnering with Almar County Public Schools as well as other schools is really critical.

And I would add to that, taking advantage of Almar County Public Schools' center model.

The center model is a 21st century model for career and technical education.

That's what it really is.

And we need to make sure we're partnering with them and taking advantage of that model.

Let's see what my other notes here are.

I want to make sure I look at the second page this time.

We do need to update our employment, our large employers, because I think that list is outdated.

I noticed that, for example, State Farm is listed.

I just think that list needs to be updated, and I'm sure you would have done that, but it just jumped out at me.

And as we're looking at economic development, we have to remember that properties that are, and this is just in our

properties that are designated for land use taxation, we recognize that those lands are not contributing to revenues.

It just has to be in the back of our mind.

For better or worse, we have to recognize that.

and also how that plays into our perceived ability to pay in this community, which really comes back to haunt us fairly often.

So I guess those, let me just double check my other notes here.

I have notes everywhere.

Career pathways, center model, integrating, taking advantage of the center concept, target industries and

Careful Balance of Mix between startups and industry business.

And when I say industry, I'm not talking about smokestacks and manufacturing.

I'm talking about what we want in this community.

And I think, Jim, I am through.

Thank you.

I didn't have any notes on the planning commission feedback, so I'm just re-looking at that.

Can you go to goal three?

Generally speaking, I'm happy with the way these goals align with the objectives.

I think it would be helpful to make my point here with this goal in front of me, but I don't know necessarily that the whole point is only captured in goal one.

and I've been trying to convince myself, or in goal three, I've been trying to convince myself for what I'm about to say is captured in goal one.

We have a lot of target to bring in new and we say we're going to support primary businesses and industries that are existing.

I'm not satisfied that we go far enough to how to grow and expand for something that already exists.

And JT, you know we've lost the RIO district specifically, has lost some really

Good, productive businesses outside of the jurisdiction because they didn't have anywhere to relocate to in the county.

So I'm assuming that we get at that through site readiness, diversity of sites that are there.

Yeah, it's great that they know how to start a business and we have places for them to start, but where's step two when they are successful?

And their employees increased by 50% or 75%.

now maybe that could be teased out in these action steps but I think some of that kind of sense needs to be in here somewhere and like I said I was trying to convince myself in goal one that will lead to growth of targeted existing primary businesses recognizing the different but I don't know that it's in there so I'm just throwing this out there as a concern that I think needs to be addressed somewhere in the goals and objectives now three two

specifically states, provide clear guidance and pathways for starting a business.

Great, no problem there.

But maybe we need a 3-4 or bump 3-3 to 3-4 and 3-3 says provide clear guidance and pathways for how to grow and expand a business in Albemarle County.

So starting a business means that we're going to be a resource, I'm assuming, that it's going to be a resource to them of how to do that, how to set up what you got to do.

Here's inventory that we know of.

But in similar fashion, because I know your office does the work,

that if I own a company that has 20 employees and we're going to double, where can we go?

And then you start helping do that.

So that's just outlined and defined up front.

It's the same way as saying, here's what you do to start a business.

Well here, if you're successful in Albemarle, we want you to stay in Albemarle.

We should tell them up front, here's what you do to do that.

And then figure out how to help them, because that's a worthwhile activity.

I don't know if it's an objective or if it's a goal, perhaps it's in action items for diversity of spaces available.

But getting at how we have so few tier four sites in the county, how we're starting to focus tier four readiness in one very big section of the county now, but how does that having different sites at different tiers not just get all the oxygen sucked out of the room because one big segment

but still thinks countywide to say we still have to have other tiered sites ready for the other things that Project Enable says and where can we fit that in here, either as an objective, I think that should rise to the goal or objective level, not just be at the action step item.

Now Project Enable, where was that?

I lost my page number.

I mean, Goal 1 of Project Enable says strengthen existing business retention and or expansion to help existing businesses be successful.

So it's our Goal 1, and so we need to get that elements of that, I think, more into the comp plan in addition to what's already there, which I think is well done.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, and yes, I

I appreciate everything that has been written here.

Just a couple of things.

I can't resist being a grammar monster here in goal one.

How will the county lead?

the growth as opposed to support or encourage.

I'll just leave that thought with you all to think about because I don't have anything else.

Objective 1.2, I agree completely and we need to be very careful to stop changing our light industrial zoning to residential every time we have to or even asked.

We need to say no, we're saving that for something else because this is how we got into this mess to begin with. 1.3,

It's not always county barriers and getting waivers.

It is investing in poor quality land that has a lower cost because of its constraints and then expecting the county to just get rid of all the rules so they can do whatever they want.

So that's always been a frustration for me.

The tourism agent success in 2.6, we have a real tendency to kill the goose that lay the golden egg and we need to be really careful.

about that always.