Planning Commission Meeting   5/4/2021

I thought it was actually the other way around.

Seriously, I mean, you read the statement first and then you take the role.

Okay, well, you know, I'm willing to go with it because when I say this meeting, and if we don't have, if we don't have a quorum, then we don't have a meeting.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance number 20-A16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

Opportunities for the public to access and participate in the electronic meeting will be posted on the www.abemarle.org community county calendar when available.

And with that, would someone please call the quorum for this planning commission

I will be glad to.

Present.

Ms.

Firehock.

Is Ms.

She's trying to search for power.

Okay, okay.

Ms.

Moore?

Present.

Thank you.

So we've got, calling us to order.

at 602 and we have a quorum.

Thank you very much.

Before us we have commissioners, we have items on the consent agenda.

Would anyone care to pull any of the items on the consent agenda?

Make the motion to approve.

Tim, please.

All right, Mr. Bailey.

Hi.

Mr. Keller.

Hi.

Ms.

Not yet, okay.

Okay.

Ms.

Moore?

Aye.

Thank you very much.

So moving into our public hearing, we're going to our first public hearing this evening is SP 2019-14 and SP 2019-15 Blue Ridge Swim Club Amendment.

May we have the staff report, please?

Thank you and good evening.

I'll put this up here.

I'll just note that in my last check of the attendee list, I didn't see Mr. Barnett, the applicant on the list.

We'll proceed and we'll see what happens.

So

So we have two special use permit amendment requests tonight for Blue Ridge Swim Club to use that some of you all may remember from a couple of years ago.

Just to quickly review the history as it's helpful to understand this.

This use, the swimming pool itself, has actually been in this location since about 1905 and operating as a swim club for area residents.

It was a nonconforming use for many years.

And then in 2011, we received approval of two special use permits, one for a day camp with some limited overnight use and one for the swim club itself.

In 2019, the board approved two amendments to that original use to permit the division of this smaller parcel you see here 5875A2 with the idea being that the operator of the camp could put a house on that separate parcel and use it to have a presence on the site.

So tonight's proposals are further amendments to those two special use permits.

And they would add permission for a pavilion with bathrooms in the kitchen for the camp use.

I'll show you that location in a moment.

And also a garage and storage structure by existing parking area.

It would also, for the camp SP, it would extend the season of operation

which is now summer only to April 1st through November 15th and the purpose there is to be able to offer camp and environmental education programs during good weather in the non-traditional off-season of what would normally be a summer camp but extended into the school year so that especially those environmental education programs can go on.

This is an aerial view of the main portion of the property.

You can just make out the historic pool area down there.

This is the swimming pool.

Again, this is the facility that's been there since 1905.

This is a spring fed or stream fed pool.

You can see the stream running right next to the pool there.

And this is the main activity for the swim club.

In the background, you can see an existing pavilion that is one of the main activity areas for the camp portion of these.

This is the conceptual plan that was approved in 2019, which will remain in place because there are many features of the proposals in tonight's amendments that do not appear on the larger plan.

So we're going to keep referring to that.

And then the current amendments are shown on this sketch plan, which takes a portion of that larger plan and shows the new pavilion here.

Some screening trees for that.

New storage building here in the parking area and some screening trees for that.

Those are the proposed changes as far as construction goes.

And again, there's the seasonal change.

Detailed view here.

So to give you an overall layout of what we've been looking at, the pool is located here.

The existing parking is here.

The storage building would go adjacent to the parking area.

and here on this flat area next to the existing drive and where's that pavilion goes.

Important to remember that this area here is significantly elevated above the stream valley where the pool itself is.

Two separate use areas.

And then the pavilion I showed you before for the camp uses back in the corner.

This is the approximate location of the new pavilion on the flat next to the parking area.

This is that parking area, a couple of the camp buses shown, and that's about where that bus is, I believe, is where the storage building would go.

So for our analysis of the special use permit, we didn't feel that there was any substantial detriment.

We were adding two structures with your screen and also extending the season from three and a half months to seven and a half months of the year.

The character of the area, the character of this area has for some time now been a low density residential portion of the rural areas.

That character overall would not be changed, but in the interest of protecting that character, the applicant has proposed screening vegetation to mitigate any visibility of the new structures and we would be maintaining the existing conditions that restrict amplified sound.

So in terms of harmony, item three, those of you who were at the time will remember that the previous amendments were much concerned with the possible impacts on the historic pool, which is listed on the National Register.

These new facilities are farther from that pool area and the elevated above around the parking area.

So there isn't really the visual impact concern here that we had last time.

and the other thing I wanted to mention here specifically was the VDOT review.

VDOT has reviewed all three of these special use permits, of course, six, but three sets of original amendments.

And they found that the proposed changes were acceptable.

Just to be absolutely sure, I checked back with them to make sure that the extension of the season was not going to raise a concern for them.

Since that's more than just the buildings, it's a longer time people using the road.

They said they had no concerns raised by that.

Finally, under the consistency with the comprehensive plan criteria, we felt that extending the season and allowing these additional structures to support the use would help to keep this historic resource going, which means funding coming in for its maintenance, which helps to preserve the historic resource for the future.

In summary, favorable factors included lack of concern from BDOT for transportation impacts and longer camp season providing more economic viability for the historic resource.

One, the most significant I think factor unfavorable was some of the visibility from the lots to the south.

I can show you a map if you're concerned about that or would like to see more illustration of it.

However, as shown on the conceptual plan, the applicant has added screening vegetation to the proposed plan to reduce visibility.

So we were recommending approval of both amendments with conditions.

I won't read all of these to you, but they are extensive and there are a couple of new changes I need to mention to you.

So these are the edited conditions.

We can come back and address any questions you have about any of these.

For both permits,

There is a condition that said food prepared offsite may be sold from a concession stand that is depicted on the conceptual plan.

The applicant was concerned about potential confusion about this requiring offsite food preparation when he's adding a pavilion with a kitchen to help with the camp use.

In discussing that, we found that in fact he doesn't use the concession stand.

and so there's no need for this.

It was simpler to avoid the confusion by simply deleting this condition.

And we've done that in both of the sets of conditions.

This is new since your staff report came out.

This was okay with the applicants and we felt this was the simplest solution.

The other change that's new today that I need to point out is this one in number one for the camp use.

This section was included in the

Swim Club SP amended text, but I failed to put it into the condition and realized this morning this was missing the amended guidelines for remaining

in accord with the conceptual plan.

There's supposed to be the second sentence requiring that the screening vegetation be native evergreen species and only six feet above ground height in time of planting.

So my apologies for having left that out.

That is part of our recommendation.

And again, there's the concession stand condition being deleted.

Thank you, Scott.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Scott, I have a question that will lead on to another question.

Under this proposal, is there any limitation as to the nature of the up to 200 people that could be in this venue at any particular time?

Is it limited only to members?

and their friends and family?

Are there any conditions under the proposal that I see there are no conditions on this?

So what I'm raising is the possibility that weddings, this venue could be used for weddings for up to 200 people.

Well, no, weddings couldn't happen because weddings would be a separate use that is not yet permitted on the site.

We've actually, I've talked to several neighbors about this because they were concerned about that.

I've also talked to Mr. Barnett, who I believe is now logged into the meeting and can talk more about this.

But in order to operate legally, weddings would have to be permitted through a special use permit for special events, which has not been applied for in this site.

So therefore, under this proposal,

the 200, up to 200 people that could be here at this site at one particular time.

Their primary activity has to be focused on the swim club and swimming, i.e.

And or the camp.

Or the camp, for that matter.

Okay, all right, good.

I just wanted to make sure because I didn't, I saw that you had spelled out very clearly that there is no public special

events, and that they would require an SU permit, but I was concerned about a gray area with members.

Okay, second question is, with potentially 200 people in a camp, there's going to be more trash generated on the site.

And with more trash, there's probably going to need to be a commercial holder.

And is that something that

Our transportation planner and VDOT has really factored in on Owensville Road, which the board worked two years, no, three years ago to designate this road along with Miller School Road as two highways where the board has limited truck traffic on it and

One of the reasons is because of the nature of the curves and the line of sight.

I'm just concerned with more people on the site, more trash.

You're going to see a different sized vehicle coming in to service this facility.

And I wonder if there had been any discussion by staff that for trucks, there would be a right turn in and right turn exit only.

So we didn't have a scenario

with a large trash truck coming out of the exit and trying to make a left-hand turn onto Owensville Road.

We didn't first need to point out that actually the number of people on site is not part of what's changing under this proposal.

The applicant's asking to add a couple more structures and change the season, but the number is the same.

To more directly answer your question, no, we didn't specifically talk about trash trucks.

It would be good to hear from the applicant what the current arrangements are.

Okay, terrific Scott.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Is there anyone else who wanted to go to Scott before we go to the applicant?

And welcome, Karen.

Glad you're here safely.

So as people are waiting, I have a couple of questions.

So can we help me with the distinction that the swimming would not begin before 12, but the daily camping and those activities could begin at 830?

It's like, why aren't we just beginning them both at 8.30?

I honestly don't know that the applicant wants to make that change to the schedule, but we need to ask him.

All of those, really the hours and things like that are leftovers of schedules of when the previous SPs from 2010 even.

But I'm going to ask another thing.

I think you're going to give me the same answer.

So if by chance this is extended to November, are we also extending the number of nights that people could use it as an overnight?

So does that two times a week continue into November?

The way the conditions are currently written, yes.

Okay, I wanted to know that, thank you.

I also wanted to thank you for putting the trees back in because that was one of the notes, because I remember two of my colleagues here, Commissioner Keller and Commissioner Firehock, had real deep passions

about the types of trees that would be replaced when that came down.

And so they still may have those passions this evening, but I'm glad to see that in the second one, because that was one of the notes that said, what happened to the trees that Commissioner Carr and Commissioner Keller asked about the last time, did they just go away?

Right.

We put a lot of time into tree placement and tree species with the previous amendments because we were addressing impact, visual impacts on the historic pool from changes that were much closer to it.

This was a little different in that what we were trying to do was get evergreens in place to screen the new structures from the, not from the historic pool, but from the dwellings along the southern property line.

One last thing before somebody might want to come on.

I know we cut, one of the things we did the last time this particular property came before us, we cut, we sort of segregated some land out for housing, for our housing site or the site for our own.

because I think that's what we did with one of the things.

Yeah, this, you look on the maps now and the swim club property is shown as two parcels.

Right.

When you all saw it, it was still one and the two acre piece has since been carved off.

It's not built on yet, but it has been carved off.

It has been carved off, but both parcels actually have to be under the SP approval because even though the residential parcel doesn't actually have any activities on it, it does contain the entranceway.

Oh, so the new parcel, the two acres gives the easement to the deeper parcel.

Right, right.

That's where I was trying to go with that.

Where's the easement to get onto the piece of property?

Who holds the easement?

Okay.

Does anyone else have anything for scout people?

We invite the applicants to speak.

Thank you.

I am primarily here to answer questions for you.

Thank you, Scott, for your work on this project.

I have been fortunate to have the county support for the operation of the camp, of our outdoors camp, and for the continued operation of the historic swim club property.

I've really enjoyed getting to know the pool's members, the neighbors, and having had the opportunity to shepherd this unique space over the last 10 years.

It was particularly gratifying to be there last summer when the place got so much use from people who were neighbors to the property.

My goal with this amendment is just to build some very much needed

storage facility and pavilion for the property and to give us the opportunity to operate environmental educational programming in the spring and the fall seasons.

I'll answer the questions you've asked so far.

As far as trash goes, we generate one, I think it's called a 40 gallon

container, and we put it out there by the street.

They don't come down the driveway.

So we just cart it up there and back.

So it's a pretty small amount of trash.

The pool's hours are, we can open anytime between noon and eight daily.

This summer we're opening noon to six on the weekends and four evenings a week from five to seven.

It would be great to be able to start earlier to have that flexibility.

I've often thought it might be better to start at 11, but when I bought the place years ago, they told me that noon was probably the best time to start and to be open eight hours a day.

I think they did that in the past or something, but that explains the hours.

But we've been able to work within those.

There's a question about trees.

I would just say, Scott, if you want to put that picture back up of the tree coverage on the property, that was interesting to see.

It's really pretty hard to grow trees there because there are so many trees that

They're shaded pretty.

It's difficult to grow trees in this space.

There's just almost no open space.

When I first bought the place, I was kind of thinking about putting some hedge trees along the edge of the property, but you just can't grow them because there's so much shade there already.

So we're doing our best, but it is a pretty well covered property.

On this

I know this is a relatively recent picture because I can see my bus sitting there and the pavilions actually in the middle of those trees and we were able to keep pretty much all of the trees around the pavilion that we built already and that will be my goal with this place.

I'm very interested in keeping the trees as much as I can do.

I'm interested in teaching the kids about shepherding the outdoors in a very responsible way and I want to model that.

And the other thing that's great about it is shade is wonderful in summer camp and we have a wonderful shady place.

We like to keep that pool as cool as we can.

They can be dangerous, however, and so we have to take out any that look like they might represent a

a falling threat.

And that's really the reason we want to build the pavilion is that afternoon thunderstorms like we had this afternoon are really quite common in the summer.

And as it is, our pavilion is way far away from the parking lot.

It's down in the valley on the other side of the property.

It's a good, I don't know, it's a

It's a three or four minute run through the trees from the safe spot to where the cars are in the afternoon.

Sometimes pickup will happen in the afternoon and we really just need a safe space that's closer to the parking lot.

I put a number of things that I thought we might want over

the next, I don't know, six or eight years, like kitchen and a bathroom up there at the top parking lot.

Just because these things have historically taken a long time and I wanted to put things in there that we thought we might want to do.

I don't, I'm not going to do this in the next year.

Hopefully I might get started on some of these projects in the year after that.

And someone asked about the house.

We cut off that property thinking that we would move out there.

and quite honestly, my family was growing and we got to a point in our personal lives that we needed to move from the little house that we rent to a little larger one from my family.

And my kids got very much ensconced in our local school system here in the city.

We go to Jackson Viya, they like it there.

And we just found that it was gonna be really difficult to move them out of that situation.

So what started as a plan to,

be out there and be on the property more regularly just as a homeowner.

It hasn't worked that way yet, although we'd still like to get out there eventually.

And on this map, there's a little tiny red line going out to the left.

Well, that goes all the way up to Owensville Road.

That driveway is probably a quarter mile long or something like that.

That is technically owned by the lot there now, but there's a driveway agreement that we drafted for both properties.

Of course, I own them both at this point, but even if one got sold off, there's an easement there and an agreement to maintain that driveway.

So I think those are the questions you had.

Questions for the

applicants, Karen and then Karen and Corey.

Thank you very much and sorry to be a few minutes late.

I had that power outage and I had to drive 12 miles to get power.

So I do appreciate the storms and the need for shelter.

I just, Mr. Barnett, I just wanted to ask a question about

Well, I'll make a quick comment for ask my question.

The quick comment is that there are shade tolerant species that can also do a good job at screening and I don't want to recite a list of species on the Planning Commission, so I'll leave that to you to look up, but I don't.

I do understand what you're saying, but you could come up with species that are shade tolerant.

The second thing, though, is I wanted to understand a little bit more about the reason

for April 1 to November 15.

You did state in your application that it's for environmental education camp, et cetera.

But I'm just trying to understand why you have to have such a wide window.

Obviously you might wanna incorporate some of the time that kids are in school, but as the leaves come off the trees and such, there's kind of less to survey and learn about.

Well, that's certainly to make part of the camp's vision of educating this generation of kids and to use that space in order to do that.

I also think it's a lot healthier for that place when we're out there year round.

But the idea is to develop programs and provide these programs to local schools where we can do environmental ed out there.

And it's a great spot to do it.

and I did try to plan it for out of the winter and in times when the leaves would be on the trees and it wouldn't be an affront to any neighbors who didn't want to see us over there.

The pool property is, at one point it was, I don't know, a thousand acres or something like that and various owners over the years sold off pieces of it and

I think during those times of the year, the leaf cover is going to be still pretty significant.

And the camp itself has a pretty big boundary on each of its sides to protect neighbors from seeing whatever it is that we might do.

So that's the idea and I guess I feel like there's nothing better that you can do to teach kids, young people, about shepherding the resources in the outdoors and being good environmental stewards than to have them out there.

I have a follow-up comment though which is, you know, I've done environmental education and run camps myself so I do understand what's involved but I'm thinking also about the noise attenuation that the leafed out trees provide and they will not be leafed out by the

April 1st, and so I'm trying, you know, the later you go into the spring season, the more likely you'll have that noise attenuation from trees being leafed out.

And so that's what I'm trying to balance your desire to have a long season with some of the neighbors' comments about their desire for a quiet enjoyment of their residents.

So that's a concern I have.

You don't need to comment on that, but that might weigh into my,

Corey.

Yeah, I'm here.

Mr. Barnett, could you share a little bit about the kitchen?

Will it be a commercial kitchen?

It will need to be a commercial kitchen.

So we provide food for the camp, lunch meals, and we do them offsite at this point and bring them there and serve them.

Sometimes they're bagged lunches and sometimes they're out of trays.

But we're required to do those in a commercial kitchen.

I'm trying to remember.

I had someone come out and talk to me about the grease trap issue.

We talked about it, and I think that is something that we have to do, but it was not thought to be something that would be all that complicated to do.

Yeah, thank you.

I wasn't trying to trip you up with this more, just a courtesy to kind of give that some thought on where that's placed on the site as you guys move forward.

The note on the plan says that the pavilion overall would be 1,200 square feet.

OK, that was for the pavilion, but you said the storage building, right?

Yes, sir, the storage building.

And I might have missed it on the plan.

I apologize.

No, you're fine.

It's on the note.

What's planned to be stored?

Is it more inert things or chemicals?

Well, no.

It's a tractor that we have and maybe the bus.

I mean, really, there's no storage.

So we would like to have some basic storage facility.

We may do.

It's a huge need.

There is a bathhouse there, but the bathhouse is

about 125 yards away from the nearest road.

And there's some storage capacity there, but it's like low and wet and things, they rust when you leave them in there.

It's not a good storage spot at all.

This sounds great.

And last and final question.

Will you eventually have some images available to share with your neighbors?

Just trying to address the concern about the visualization and screening.

Well, the back of the storage shelter is just going to be, I just said it would be covered and we would do it in wood.

and then the pavilion is going to be pretty well hidden from the neighbors by the trees that we will put up and you know it's going to be right in the middle of a pretty dense set of trees as it is and I'm imagining it we have not drawn anything conceptualized anything yet but I'm imagining it will look a lot like the one that is already there.

Are there any other questions?

So I do have one question before we move, and that's, you mentioned that if you could go to 11, that would be helpful.

I don't want to do anything to complicate this.

Okay, then I'll bring it back to us.

And commissioners, thank you, sir.

We'll deliberate on one of yourselves.

They did not.

A quick question for Scott.

On the original condition,

Do I remember some relationship between the lot that was going to have the new house built on that hasn't been built on?

Something about there would be someone on the property at all hours to deal with issues.

Yeah, we definitely discussed that, and that was part of the justification for

The recommendation of approval is that there was a safety factor to be added by having somebody living on the site and keeping out trespassers or random visitors driving by when the facility was closed.

Good, thank you.

That's all I was wondering.

We would need to clear that up if it was there.

I guess one thing I just wanted to add to the discussion, I didn't ask the applicant this, but it seems to me that the type of

The types of things that are being asked for when you're thinking about expanding the amount of months where there could be a camp wouldn't be the types of things that would occur in those extra months and weeks that are being asked for.

to me don't seem quite as intense as what would happen in the months that there's a full on camp.

When you're talking about bringing out schools and, you know, having that type of interaction that you're talking about just doesn't seem as intense.

So, you know, I guess I'm not really

I support the idea of expanding the amount of time that you can have those things happen and I didn't ask that because I don't think we want to get into having restrictions on how many people can be there in April and that type of thing but to me it sounds like the kind of thing where during those times I know Karen was talking about the noise and stuff like that but it just doesn't strike me as something that would be as intense as

what is already happening there, you know, during the summer months.

And so that isn't really a change.

It's just adding those extra the extra time in on the front of the summer and then into the fall a little bit.

So I just wanted to put that out there.

And I also think I think there's probably something really valid that Mr. Barnett's saying about having the property in use more months out of the year, because that's I imagine that's a lot to maintain and

having people out there I think helps with that because it is a historic resource and it is, I think it's very fortunate that we have a use like this that can keep it valuable and make it worth to someone to have the money generated by the camp and other things to keep a property like that in the condition it's in.

So Karen and then is there anyone else who wishes

Yeah, so Commissioner Moore reminded me about another thing I wanted to ask about.

She was commenting on the fact that it's helpful to generate revenue to be able to keep the site going, especially as a historic resource.

So what I was wondering is trying to understand

what the revenue generation is of having field trips from the local schools.

Is there, are you charging them?

Is this like a, you know, they would pay to come out and use the facility for this environmental education activity.

And I know a number of the neighbors and their comments, public comments had one person in particular had talked about, you know, there's lots of other parks around the area and I'm not trying to be difficult.

I'm just trying to understand the relationship

between the claim of revenue and school field trips.

Are there some kind of revenue generated?

Yes, I am, if that is all right with my fellow commissioners.

We could limit his response to one minute.

So you know, it's not the timing, it's just the whole piece that we try to hold these conversations among ourselves without having to go back to the applicant.

But I think we can, if Mr. Burnett feels as if he can respond to this, then that's fine.

I don't know, Karen.

I think that it mostly, I was really thinking about getting kids from the city to come out and to have opportunities that they wouldn't have otherwise.

And I was more thinking about trying to get grants to fund that sort of thing.

If I did have groups that paid, I imagine them being small.

a group that came out from a given school and might need a day with the student council to do something that's leadership oriented, that we give them some drive about the school year.

Really, the main thing that I do that creates revenue out there is the camp, which creates about 98% of the revenue to cover the place.

and otherwise, I just, I really would like to use the place in the offseason to do good work, and to.

It just seems like a really good space to do that sort of thing, and I, I've worked so hard to have a good relationship with the neighbors out there, tried to keep.

To keep our numbers down, there were concerns initially about people wandering into neighboring properties, and it's so far from a real legitimate concern about- I'm going to ask you to- I know.

The idea is to make the place available to people in a generous and community-oriented way.

Thanks.

My only comment is following up with Karen's point to say I would feel a little bit more confident given the fact that six of the eight people who wrote comments and expressing concerns about the plan cited noise as a major reason for their concern.

I'd feel a little bit more comfortable instead of April 15.

when leaves on trees oftentimes are not fully developed, our red oak just basically leafed out this past weekend while we were away.

So I would feel more comfortable May 1st to November 1st because leaves, depending on which deciduous trees you're talking about, some of them are already dropping by the third week in October.

And therefore, there would be a little bit more margin of protection on noise for area residents.

So that's not a deal killer for me.

Well, if I may, Mr. Chair, I don't worry, I'm not going to ask the applicant another question.

I was just going to comment that Commissioner Randolph took the words right out of my mouth.

That's where I was going with my comments about the fact that trees attenuate a great deal of noise.

And so limiting that window

to when it's both more pleasant to be outside and could be quieter for the neighbors would be acceptable to me at least.

I don't know how their commissioners feel about that.

It's not a big change, but it's enough of a change that I'm gonna get more of that screaming and quietude that the neighbors are seeking.

So I will just say that I think I understand the pieces about leaping out.

What I will mention is that I think we probably all saw today that NOAA has decided to redo the average weather charts and that they're saying a couple things that are going to happen.

A, it's going to get warmer faster, so we're going to have warmer springs, which may in fact bring leaves out on our trees a little bit sooner than we've been experiencing them.

and we're going to have more storms and particularly on the East Coast than we previously had, particularly in the summertime.

So I'm not quite sure whether or not you might see in the near future the leaves leaf out perhaps much earlier than we're seeing today.

So I don't know about that.

Also, I'm concerned that if someone should sell their home tomorrow that we're burdening a piece of property based on an opinion that was

on that was made today when the person may not be there always the next amount of times I'm concerned about.

I'm a little bit concerned about that and that where the programming that I think is being suggested is not one where children would run wild in the woods if there's programming and so there will be voices like me here and many other places.

I will just share those of you who may know I live

My property is contiguous to the Ivy Creek Nature Area and I hear, not only do I hear people, but we have people wandering into our backyards lost because they're not used to being in the woods and so they see a house and so you know it's

like Hansel and Gretel, unfortunately, you're all good.

We're good here.

We're not going to eat anybody.

We're not going to bake anybody.

So we don't have that problem here.

But so I think that's part of that thing that we've talked about.

How do we take activities that are really good activities and hopefully have a blend into the neighbors that are contiguous around them?

And hopefully, you know, the applicant knows that if he does something that's out of line, there will be complaints.

There will be complaints.

and he'll have to deal with the complaints.

And I'm hoping that we can give the applicant the benefit of the doubt, give the community the benefit of the doubt and say, you know, folks, work it out.

You gotta live, you know, if you're gonna have a live together.

I'm also suggesting that since we can do this, that we modify the pool to 11 o'clock instead of noon.

And that would be something I'd ask that they consider in a modification of the swim club

Well, we need a motion for something.

I feel called, but I just was trying to figure out where in the staff conditions the 11 o'clock fit in.

So it's on page six.

Right.

And let me bring that up on screen.

So just by way of order, I'd encourage the commissioners to make separate motions for each of the two applications.

The time of the pool opening is a condition of the swim club, which is SPV.

It is the first SP.

It's the third condition of the first SP has to do with the hours of operation.

And then to the extent that there's any interest in modifying the condition about the dates of operation of the camp, that's exclusive to the camp SP, which is the second SP.

So again, just by way of order, if the motions could be made separately, I think that would help.

Karen?

Scott, could you put the motion up on the screen?

I can also scroll with my laptop if for some reason you can't do that.

Sure, sorry.

Can you see it?

Yes.

No, I made a note which conditions they applied to.

Okay.

So the first SP, this is not making motions, this is just clarifying.

And that was condition number two?

All right.

So back to the motion.

All right.

Is there a second for that?

Okay.

Mr. Bailey?

Mr. Bailey?

Aye.

Ms.

Firehock?

Yes.

Ms.

Moore.

Aye.

So, for this next one, that's the SP-2019-15.

Yep, we're ready.

Unless anyone else wants to, it's my district, so I'll go.

I move to recommend approval of SP-2019-00015 Blue Ridge Film Club and Field Camp Amendments

with the conditions outlined in staff report.

Is there a second?

I can't see.

I'm going up and down.

Second.

Okay, second.

The one thing I'd like to just raise as a point of discussion is that this extended period is to target school camps or school build trips and different things.

The May, that's a very compressed timeline when school is usually wrapping up the 1st of June of like three weeks to make available.

I don't know if there

Is there any consideration?

kind of bringing back to what Julian said about the increasing temperature of maybe splitting, you know, think about splitting a difference and increasing to like the mid of April.

I'm not a, I don't have the background in trees and leafing out that my colleagues do, but I'm just thinking about from like school age and logistics and planning and trying to make it available and make this resource available.

If there isn't a kind of midpoint compromise there on the, maybe not April 1st, but

Thanks.

Yeah, I guess I hear what you're saying, but I would just push back a little bit at this time because number one, again, I'm trying to attenuate the noise.

Number two, I actually also, it sounds like I've had 500 jobs, but I've also written curriculum for grades one through 12 and done a lot of field trips in this area with schools where I've led the field trip out into the woods and

I have had disastrous field trips on April 15th where it snowed on us here.

And so I guess what I would say is a lot of those sort of outdoor type field trips do tend to be at the end of the semester, even though it sounds like they're scrambling to meet standards of learning and all that.

It's not as common to take field trips outside at that time of year to study nature.

So I'd rather the applicant came back

and made a compelling case for us for expanding the season again.

And I know S&Ps cost money and take time on everyone's part, but I'm also trying to be respectful of the neighbors' comments.

And so the other part of it is that the request to have these field trips is kind of an idea.

It hasn't been fully fleshed out.

There's no program developed yet.

No grants have been raised.

So it's not at this time really a fleshed out program.

We're just trying to make

Okay.

So are there any, is there any other discussion?

I'm not suggesting that we do this obviously, but I guess I don't recall the applicant ever having an opportunity to maybe explain why those particular dates were picked.

So I would just add that to the conversation with the idea of having to come back because that is costly.

So yeah, that's all I have to say.

And I guess I don't feel

Other discussion, other comments, and I'm scrolling up and down so that you're going to have to put your hand up for a second if you need to.

Because we're using the smaller one.

So if you have a question, we can come off from you, please.

That'd be helpful.

Otherwise,

I can't see Rick.

I just want to note for the record that 30 days has September, April, June, and November.

So the resolution has to be May 1 through November 30.

I thought I heard us say November 31.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Even better.

Okay.

Excellent.

So right now the motion before us is to go from May 1st to October 31st.

In the discussion, it seemed that there were a number of us who weren't inclined towards the shorter timeframe.

So at this point, if there's not a friendly amendment, that means that we would need to vote against this to see if that was the case.

But then it would seem like by voting against it, we were against

this item that we're not against.

I think if right now we have a motion before us, if the motion fails, we'd have to go to the motion failed by some chance, then we would go to another

The motion as crafted, we would go to another, have an opportunity.

Well, Mr. Chair, just as a matter of procedure, if any member wanted to make a motion to amend the motion that's currently pending to revert condition two to the dates originally proposed, there could be a motion, a second, and a vote on the motion to amend the main motion.

Okay, thank you.

um are you saying we would make that now or we need to let this motion make it now you would need to be made now before yeah where the main motion were voted on yeah i would because i don't want to if it's i know we would vote on the motion that we have but i worry you know if it passes and i'm a no i guess in the minutes it would explain why i was a no to tim's point that i'm not saying no to the idea it was no to the change so i guess um to

Okay, so that was so it's the there's a there's an amendment, there's a motion to amend the motion before us to go to put back in place from April

Correct.

Okay.

It's been made by Jenny.

Yes.

Is there any discussion on the amendment, the motion to amend the present motion?

Could you call the vote, please?

No, just to clarify, what the motion is right now is whether the motion should be amended to revert to the initial dates.

So yay would necessarily be approval of the camp.

Okay, okay.

Ms.

Moore?

Aye.

Firehock?

Mr. Keller?

Okay.

Aye.

And Mr. Bailey?

Aye.

Okay, thank you.

Right, so the motion that is now on the floor is to recommend approval of the SP with the conditions recommended by staff and among them the recommended condition that the season be between April 1st and November 15th inclusive.

Open for further discussion.

So would anyone care to, does anyone have, I can't see you all, so I'm going to do something else.

Does anyone care to make a comment at this point on what's before us?

Thank you, Scott, on what's before us.

Yes.

Mr. Clayborne?

Aye Ms.

Moore Aye Mr. Bivins Aye Mr. Randolph Nay Ms.

The motion is passed with both Commissioner Firehock and Commissioner Randolph not supporting a motion.

So there's a couple of things here.

Where's the applicant?

So Mr. Barnett, so you've heard the discussion this evening, and you'll be moving forward to the supervisors for their review

and ultimate disposition of your request.

I think one of the things that you may have heard from a number of the commissioners is hoping that you will be engaged with your neighbors on how the structures, particularly the one that's the shed, how that's going to look from their properties.

And also that you'll be able to speak about how your summers and how your school sessions will be conducted.

to be able to be sensitive to and be able to respond to and speak to the issues around, the concerns around, around sound.

Okay.

Thank you.

On that note, thank you very much.

And we will move on to our next item before us.

Which is CPA 2021 housing policy.

May we have that?

Good evening.

So good evening.

I'm Stacey Pepia, Housing Policy Manager for Albemarle County.

And this is the public hearing for CPA 2020-001, Housing Albemarle, otherwise known as the updated Housing Policy.

The presentation tonight will cover an overview of the process followed for drafting the proposed policy.

and other proposed housing policy itself, a summary of the feedback received during the February public comment period, key changes to the policy document since the December work session with the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors.

And then once the presentation is finished, staff will be available to answer any questions.

So for the overview, you

Probably remember seeing this during the work sessions that were held last year, but this is just a timeline of where we are.

So the original policy, the one that is in play now, was adopted in 2004.

And that's been, it was readopted into the comprehensive plan in 2015.

The Planning Commission has been working on affordable housing policy and different types of

in affordable housing.

There were work sessions held with the Planning Commission in October of 2020.

There was a joint board of supervisor and Planning Commission work session in December of last year.

The draft policy was made available to the public for comments during February, which led to another work session with the board in March of this year.

And that brings us to today's public hearing.

The policy itself, the recommendations to update that came out of the 2019 Housing Needs Assessment that was released by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

And after reviewing that report, there were really four high level rationales between updating the report

And those were, one, the population of the county is expected to continue growing in between now and 2040, really increasing by about 27%.

There is about 10,000 households in the county that are paying more than the recommended 30% for their housing costs.

Along with the population growing, the population is also expected to age.

So over the next 20 years, the senior population is projected to increase by about 26%.

So there's really a need to begin looking at how we can accommodate changing needs as people get older.

And there's also looking at the needs of the homeless population and households who are just differently abled.

There's a community input period held between October and November or December of 2019.

And the policy objectives and strategies that you see in the document were really developed during that time period and approximately 400 community members engaged with that process.

And then between October 2019 and February 2020, staff worked with the seven member stakeholder committee to review that community input and draft the policy document.

So on to the policy document itself.

It was written to support the vision of the county and the current housing goal.

and it contains 12 policy objectives and 39 strategies and action steps that address really seven broad policy themes.

We've discussed these before and these really include increasing the overall housing stock to make sure that all future populations can live here if they want to, increasing the supply of affordable and workforce housing, preserving existing housing and communities,

Increasing opportunities for a community engagement and housing policy work in the county.

Looking at fair housing and community equity issues.

Key strategies the staff would like to revise tonight, and these include increasing, and these are really different from the current housing policy and expanding on the work that has been done since 2004.

And these strategies include increasing the amount of affordable housing required in special use permits and the zoning applications from 15% to 20%, expanding the definition of affordable housing to include a workforce housing category,

Looking at implementing rental inspection districts to help address housing quality issues and preservation of rental housing.

Looking at the possibility of identifying housing rehabilitation zones, which would allow the county to provide a number of regulatory adjustments to support affordable housing development.

implementing and adopting affordable dwelling unit ordinance, and then really looking at tracking data related to housing that we don't track now, including neighborhood indicators, really looking at equity measures throughout our communities, and also affordable housing impact statements.

And these are some of the key differences between the policy that we have now and what is being proposed.

In terms of implementation, the proposed policy identifies six strategies for priority action.

These include exploring options with county-owned land to develop a permanent affordable housing community, looking at providing incentives to developers to increase the production of affordable rental and for sale housing, implementing an affordable dwelling unit program,

developing and implementing a housing trust fund, establishing a standing housing advisory committee to provide opportunities for community engagement with housing, and then working in partnership with nonprofit partners and private developers to create additional permanent supportive housing opportunities for homeless individuals.

Should the housing policy be adopted, staff would begin working on all six of these.

immediately, but the six-year timeframe really provides that works in time for staff research, work sessions that will be required with the Board of Planning Commission, and also time needed to constructing housing units, particularly for the last strategy for current supportive housing.

The proposed policy also provides a number of metrics that will be measured.

and to really help track progress towards meeting our affordable housing goals.

These are really broad based metrics that you see here as new policies and programs that are recommended in the policy are implemented.

There will be additional metrics for each of those programs and policies to evaluate their effectiveness.

We will review the public comments that were received, a really broad overview.

In total, 72 community members visited the website and completed the survey, submitting 172 comments.

And that public comment period was held through a public input platform that the county has used.

There are also opportunities to look at the policy on that county's website.

90 percent of the participants in the survey indicated the proposed policy either very accurately or somewhat accurately reflects the vision for housing in the county.

And that high support for the policy continued throughout the rest.

As you can see, overall, the survey participants demonstrated a good deal of support, with 59% or more respondents indicating proposed objectives and strategies to address the county's housing and community needs.

Based on feedback from the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors during the work sessions last year and the

There have been some changes made to the policy from the last time you saw it.

There is a full list of those changes included in your agenda packet, but I will just highlight some of the big ones.

There has been a summary of the policy and objectives, policy objectives and strategies added to the beginning, that's with a quick reference guide.

Staff added definitions for minimum affordability periods, which you will find on page 10 of the documents.

Updated the number of units in the residential construction pipeline to give a better picture of what would be needed to meet the projected need down to 2040.

Staff added strategy 4C to explore options supporting homeowner efforts to connect to the public water and sewer systems.

You will find that on page 25 of the document.

Thank you so very much.

And so I'm looking at you've done a yeoman's job or your woman's job.

Sorry.

And so I'm looking for hands.

I see Rick, Karen and Luis.

Casey, on our last meeting on August 11th, I have my notes and I urge you to be less bureaucratically safe.

You chuckled at the time, I recall.

And I really think you've done that here.

I think there's some boldness now.

And

There certainly is a strong social and economic equity emphasis in this document that I think was missing in August.

You were a little tentative in August and now you're much clearer and much more defined about that.

And I want to compliment you about that.

I think you have changed the Albemarle County affordable housing paradigm in what you're presenting here.

and you have definitely looked at that crucial sector of people looking for housing at 60% and below AMI, which really had not factored into the official equation of either the board, the Planning Commission in past years.

So I'm really happy to see that in here.

I do think also that you're more intentional

Here with public transit, it's mentioned in objective 12A.

There's still not as much of a public transit interface with this document as I think there needs to be, because if people are having difficulty paying for housing at 60% AMI, they certainly can't afford the upkeep of an automobile, especially if there are two people working and they both need automobiles to get to work.

Yes, it wouldn't be wonderful if everybody can bicycle and e-bike, but we're not there yet, mainly because our road infrastructure isn't there to allow safe use of those roads to inspire confidence.

You definitely with 10C, you're much more integrated in fusing homeless strategies into the affordable housing objectives.

Kudos for that.

and I also think your language now is more directed.

There's much less promoting and you're much more supporting, requiring and emphasizing what it is the county's responsibility is here, rather than sitting back and waiting others to carry the water from the well.

to parch the thirst of people looking for housing.

So I think all of that is good.

Karen.

Yes.

All right.

I also wanted to echo Commissioner Randall's comments about transportation.

I also made a big point about that the last time because it's also very expensive to try to provide all our affordable housing in the urban ring.

So by providing transportation to more affordable housing, we can also address a lot of those needs.

So just maybe there could be more emphasis placed on that, or you could say sea transportation chapter, but some way we need to address that one more strongly.

A quick question, you don't have to answer it now, because it's probably has to do with data availability, but in attachment three, where you have a table, which shows the different

sectors of work.

It says retail and this and that.

I just wondered if it was possible to split out somehow workforce labor, fire and rescue, police, teachers, that is a specific group of public servants that can't necessarily afford to live in our county and I just think they need

special attention and there are a lot of communities that have put together special down payment assistance programs for police, for teachers in fire and rescue.

And then the main comment I wanted to make, like the other thing I meant to echo also from Mr. Randolph was I think this is so great.

This has come such a long way.

I was really enjoying reading it.

I'm kind of an affordable housing nerd and so you did a great job.

One thing I think we could emphasize a little bit more and maybe the place to do it is on page 16, is to talk a little bit more about assisted living.

Because there's a lot of attention given to aging in place, retrofitting housing so that people can stay in their home.

But I know there's also a lot of folks who, it's not just a matter of putting in more bars in the shower and more wheelchair accessible

ramps to their building.

I mean, some people really need to go into an assisted situation.

And I recently was helping a neighbor of mine and I had to price assisted living in Virginia.

And I went all over the region getting pricing.

And I think the cheapest thing I found was in maybe it was Roanoke and it was, I found something for 2,600 or something.

Anyway, that's not really the point.

The point is that there was nowhere

in this region that this person could afford as a retired librarian of alcohol gas.

So I think that we need to look at that because yes, there's assisted living in Scottsville where I'm talking to you from tonight.

There is assisted living that's affordable.

There's assisted living in Crozet, but there are wait lists of hundreds and hundreds of people at those facilities.

whether the county gets involved in subsidizing more assisted living units for people or whether the county tries to encourage other providers to come here who are not just providing high-end assisted living like the Colonnades and other places.

I mean, even personally, if I ever needed assisted living prices, some of them are more than I make currently.

in my full-time salary.

So I just think that that might even be a whole page of attention.

And I saw that Commissioner Moore's just put her hand up and this is sort of her field of expertise.

Thank you, Stacy.

When I went through it, it covered a lot of the areas and I learned a lot from it on things that we're doing.

So certainly kudos for that work.

Also encourage on the public private partnership section.

I mean, I'm hoping that we see more of that and multiple publics and multiple privates getting involved.

So my question is really probably more for my edification, but you're talking about a measure that limits the loss of inventory to 1% per year, I believe.

So can you define what is it that you're measuring?

So what are you looking at the loss?

That would be, this is really working in tandem with the recommendation to conduct a survey of affordable rental properties or rental properties in general.

And so it would be looking at the total affordable housing stock today.

and tracking that over time and making sure that we do not lose any of those units.

Right now, the way that proper units are run, particularly with the rental property units, they need to remain affordable for 10 years and after that, they can go market rate.

So after 10 years, we will lose a certain percentage of the affordable rental units that are in the county.

So it's really finding ways

to preserve those over time beyond that 10-year period so that our, we just don't lose the housing stock rest.

We'll constantly be trying to catch up.

The loss can come in a lot of different forms.

It can come in just the form of marketing, getting a price out of the market, out of the affordable market.

It could come in the form of taking an existing

The hope is that once we get a good handle on the number of affordable housing units that exist today, that we will be able to make sure that as they exit the affordable housing arena, for whatever reason, that there are units in production to replace those.

So really looking for at least at minimum one for one replacement every time those units leave the stock.

Hopefully we will do more than that, you know, two for one, three for one replacement, but making sure that we don't lose the same number that we have today.

We don't necessarily have to do the same units, but we want to make sure that we don't, our stock does not decrease.

So, so just with that, I just want to maybe expand on something that I didn't really see.

There is a, Karen brought up the

living in place and aging in place and how there is renovations that can happen.

But I'm wondering if we're promoting also renovating some of these older homes that a lot of them actually are in communities that are closer to the city and are by routes that are accessible to transit, but that are getting to the point that they're probably at the end of their useful life or

need renovations and are we promoting any kind of program where we incentivize developers instead of building a home that's at 60% of AMI, which still is, we're talking about a home that's over $200,000.

So I guess it depends on your definition of affordable.

We're in a high AMI area.

That is something that we will definitely look at moving forward, absolutely.

There's all different ways to preserve affordable units, and that's definitely one of those.

I know Richmond has worked on that.

They had a lot of older abandoned and vacant properties, which they have a program that they were providing

funding to developers some sort of subsidy to help them renovate those units and sell them on as affordable housing.

Thank you.

I guess first I just wanted to add on to what Karen was saying about the assisted living and I think

She makes a great point and there is a grant that if people qualify can help with the cost of assisted living and I won't get into all that the details which I would love to talk about forever but

Unfortunately, what's happened in our area is the facilities have to accept that grant and most places don't.

And the place in Crozet, which was one of the biggest places, biggest facilities where you could find a placement, no longer accepts those grants.

So I think that's a conversation that the Department of Social Services is having with facilities and providers.

But I do think it's part of the conversation that should be

You know what the county is having overall.

And like with a lot of things that's really for people who qualify who have very low income, so what you see a lot when you're trying to work with someone and see if they qualify for that grant a lot of people don't because they have something, but they certainly can't afford the prices that like what Karen was mentioning so.

Even with that out there and available, you know, the constraint right now is you can't find a facility that will accept it, but it also doesn't help so many people who have saved some money and, you know, could afford something but not the prices that we see.

So I do think that this conversation, that that's very relevant to in addition to social services trying to

create conversations and more spaces for those type of placements.

So that was my comment about that.

And then I had one question for in the

implementation part for the financial tools.

2B was to identify a package for for the developers developer incentives other than the bonus density.

And that's something I think you put as action items and one or more of the objectives.

But I saw that it says four to six years for the target for that.

So I wondered if you could talk about that.

Because I know we can't have everything be, you know, right away.

But I just wondered, that one seems really important to me.

Yes, so a lot of that will be done in tandem with the zoning ordinance.

updates to make sure that they work together.

So that's why there's that longer timeframe.

There have been discussions already.

I've had discussions with planners and others in CPP development about potential types of developer incentives that can be provided.

But again, the four to six year timeframe is really

Just to give it, that's a cautious timeframe.

Tim, is that your hand up?

Well, it's just so good to be here.

Thank you for the work that you've done to get us here and

I think Rick articulated a lot of the specifics that are much clearer that we were all thinking about.

But I think I can also, besides speaking for our current commissioners who can speak for themselves, past commissioners, Pam Riley, Daphne Spain, Bruce Dodson, these are all things that were begun with them as commissioners and their particular interest in affordable housing and

We were excited when you moved over from the city.

And I think that you've shown us your worth many times over on this.

So thank you very much on that.

You know that I always want to hold your feet to the fire on the rural affordable housing issues.

And I just like to build, there are many things that others are covering, I think, but just to get this in the record, to build on what Luis was saying, I think that there are measures for that 1% housing stock loss

in the rural areas by using our real estate assessment and querying, because I'm interested in home ownership of affordable housing.

And I think we have, I may be incorrect, but I tend to think we're going to see more of that in the rural areas.

That line between affordable housing and yet some degree of sub-

substandard and I hate to use that word because I think it's really laden with a lot of past problems and injustices.

But I do think that we could annually look at home-owned, let me try this again, owner-occupied houses below the AMI at different levels in the rural areas.

I think it would be a relatively easy query.

and we could then compare a current year's number to a previous year's number to see whether we're starting to see losses.

I think some of those, as Luis alluded to, are older folks are moving out and no one's moving in.

that's one kind and we're losing those buildings completely.

And in some cases, I think we almost have to but in other cases they're being upgraded.

And we have actually had some letters that have come in.

I think you've been copied on in the last year of where we're starting to see significant upgrades because these are small parcels of say one half, pre-zoning one half acre to say five acre

pieces of property with houses that are being torn down and then reworked as well above the AMI housing.

So they're coming out of that category.

So I just want to again, I think that the set of measures that your way of measuring

was an excellent one for that set of especially the rentals.

And that's the way to get at it.

But I do think there are these other categories and in some ways they might be as we're talking about the folks who haven't been privileged to be able to pass ownership of property from generation to generation.

This is a case of where we did have that.

And I think we need to be looking at that and seeing whether we can improve that continuity of ownership.

Others?

I believe it's an objective eight.

I was trying to find it, but it talks about removing regulatory barriers, I believe.

Oh, y'all trying to find it real quick.

Is there anything in the state code that's a barrier that may need to be removed?

Off the top of my head, I've

Rick.

Stacy, I want to just go through a couple of things where

I either have a question or I feel there's an omission.

In strategy 1A, you talk about allowing, encouraging, incentivizing a variety of housing types.

Omitted there is any mention of apartment buildings.

And the reason I bring that up is the editorial on March 22nd this year in the Daily Progress by a representative of CARB talked about

the need for the county to expand the growth area.

And one of the reasons why there is this concept of the growth area needing to be expanded is engaging in what I call the thinking of the Houston mindset that we can just continue to expand in a linear outward way and not thinking of the opportunities to expand vertically.

and moving up.

So, and I'm bringing this up also because I know this is the third rail out there in Crozet.

But it's something that we need to be talking about throughout the county, the role of growing upward, rather than continuing to expand outward in a linear direction.

And apartment buildings do have opportunities for

allowing, encouraging, and incentivizing a variety of housing levels of buyers and owners and renters within them.

I would submit much more so than bungalow courts and even triplexes and fourplexes do.

So I would just ask to consider in strategy 1A, including apartment buildings.

Under strategy 2B,

Over the weekend, we were down at Virginia Beach and I had an opportunity down there to take a look at 3D construction.

Tim, I think you've brought this up in the past, 3D construction.

And I would ask as an action step under 2B to consider the county putting in there, Stacey, that we would encourage

and be open to new housing construction technologies such as 3D construction that can reduce overall construction and housing costs.

And we could also perhaps put in there and other new emerging technologies as the rest of the advanced industrial world is now moving rather rapidly

experimenting with new ways of developing housing.

And this country is basically five years, if not an entire decade behind on that.

But I think we should put that in as a strategy, I would submit, to indicate that we're open to change and we want to embrace that going forward.

Then down on strategy 8B where

Corey had been asking about on action steps under 8B.

I would like for us in there to maybe be so bold as to say we would assess the appropriateness and viability of apartment complexes in residentially dense neighborhoods based on traffic, height, size, and character of the community.

but that we would be open to apartment complexes as a way of trying to provide a greater range of affordable units for a variety of people within communities.

So just some things that could be added as well.

But again, I think you've really spelled out very well here.

I'm much more

a clear roadmap for how to move forward on affordable housing.

Is there anyone else?

So one of the things that sort of struck me through this is that there's going to be a need for your department to become more than a department of one.

and wondering sort of what's the path to get there.

Because a couple of things that sort of is interesting to me, a lot of this sort of requires data crunching, which I know you do that in your sleep, but also just how do you sort of engage with the community?

For instance, on the rental piece, there's this whole piece of what do you do for rental condition, whether or not you're gonna have a rental violation or rental, I forget what you turned it, I don't see it in my notes right now.

And who would do that?

and would that be proactive or would it be a violation piece?

So how would we get to a place that we would actually be engaged, actively engaged in monitoring the condition of our affordable housing, as opposed to waiting, sitting back and waiting for a violation to come towards us, sort of be brought to us.

I've talked to a number of us who may have talked to some of the trades people that work with us.

I've been told that in some of the houses which could use repair,

that people are nervous about saying something because they don't want to be displaced by their landlords or they don't want to go out and sort of engage with the, I'm putting this in quotes, authorities because they don't want that kind of attention.

So how do we sort of move people, how do we create an environment that people can A, feel

feel comfortable expressing that I'm living in a condition that is threatening to me, to my health and to my well-being, without feeling as if all these unintended consequences are going to occur to them.

And who's going to do that?

Because if we're only engaging with them when violations occur, then we kind of move to a point where it's a radical change.

So that's something I was going to ask you.

How are we going to sort of staff this so that it's

so that it's more than just a hoped for set of results, but there are actually results that you and a team of people throughout community development can be actively engaged in helping us to achieve.

And then, as some of our colleagues are always right to say, and then put a set of deliverables that we can actually say, are we doing these things?

so that the community sees that and so that the people who will be servicing that.

So that's one piece.

So there's some really good examples of these types of programs across the country.

Off the top of my head, I cannot remember the city that I spoke with, but they are very proactive in their dealings.

They have two, I believe it's two inspectors that are dedicated to this process.

They have done community outreach and they are to the point where I don't want to say 100%

Comfortableness among the residents of the buildings, but they have started to see a change in that process.

So there are some really good groups that we can reach out to.

That's also why the recommendation is worded as in researching the feasibility behind this, because it will take some additional staff.

So what do we expect with the Board of Supervisors, not us obviously, but with the Board of Supervisors expect to see at some point, here are a list of individuals or here are a list of resources that we need to put in place in order for this to enliven this effort.

Otherwise it becomes, okay.

So the other thing that sort of, that was sort of, I will say made me uncomfortable.

This isn't about you, but this is about where we live now.

So on what page was this on?

Page 20, when you look at the average salary, and I think you have the average salary is like $94,000 there.

But the five categories of roles that you have, there is a $47,000 average salary, which just sort of prompted the thing that I've always felt here, that there are a number of us in Albemarle County who derive their income not from employment.

So the gap that we're trying to close there, if you have an average of 99 and you have this, if you have an average, if you look at the entire sort of sector, I assume you chose those roles because those roles are heavily populated in our community.

And so the heavily populated roles in our community have an average salary of 47.

There's a gap there that housing is not going to close.

is not gonna close.

As much as I think this is a good, this is an excellent chapter in our, will be an excellent chapter in our comp plan, 47, 97, not gonna close by having more affordable housing.

Not gonna happen.

The other piece that sort of unnerved me is when I read that 60% of the housing is more than $300,000, where 40% being over $500,000.

that again is not going to be closed by affordable housing.

Those are salary.

Those are assets.

Those are people coming here with the ability to plump down a down payment.

Even I said a down payment of 20%.

That means I got to come up with a mortgage of $240,000.

That is not about affordability.

That's about economics.

And how do we have this conversation in our community we've done about how do we increase or how do we attract or what do we do

to bring roles here that people can think about climbing up, having ladders that they can ascend for better salaries, for better compensation.

And then the other thing that was sort of disturbing, and so I'm thankful that you put all these charts here because I was able to look at the chart and then look at the policy.

Look at the chart, look at the policy.

And I hope when the new census comes out, new census data, you'll have an opportunity to update this.

But 52% of the people here live in single-detached homes, single-family detached homes.

And while I'm with Rick, I don't know what the psychology is that you get a person out of a single family detached home into an apartment.

or into even a 2,000 square foot apartment.

You are 13 square foot apartment.

I don't know how we do that because we've sold, the American dream is your own plot of land with some, you know, some daisies in the backyard and whatever, and some barbecue and a barbecue back there too.

So this whole idea of how do we go from this kind of lifestyle, which is 52% of our households are rentals, are single family detached housing.

How do we sort of start to shift

That idea.

that it's okay for you to be in a different kind of house.

And it's not when Karen's librarian friend decides that it's a she, I assume.

I think I remembered you saying a she.

I think I heard you say a she.

But when she decides to sort of age into a different place that she doesn't have to struggle with, well, this is the first time I've had to consider this.

And so that's a piece that I'm really concerned.

Well, I think the policy, I think we will tweak and you'll hopefully get the right resources to do this.

At the end of the day, this is about our economy.

And what are the drivers in our economy?

So not only are we closing the gap, but we're also giving people the opportunity to climb up the ladder so that they might be able to, if they so desire, to be able to afford a $300,000 plus house if they want to.

The other thing that's sort of interesting, and I appreciate that this is two things and two other things, and then I'll sort of stop here.

I'm glad you went to 20%.

That feels much better to me.

But I will tell you, I was struck in reading some things, you know, my colleague, Tim, is always talking about Holland.

And I have some friends over there that sent me something knowing what I'm doing.

What they're doing in Amsterdam right now, and I am not supposing that we would do this.

I'm about to say something, realizing that the press is going to say that the chair said such and such, but I'm just hanging this out here.

Will new developments happen in Amsterdam now?

20% affordable, 20% workforce, excuse me, 40%, 40% and 20% market rate.

Now that is a bold statement about what you're doing in Amsterdam.

And I'm not supposing that we would do that here.

What I'm saying is that sometimes, and this is where I think what Rick was complimenting on, we have to do big things if we want to get big results.

And so the whole idea of

of Land Trust and figuring out whether or not we can use land that's owned by the county to create kinds of communities there.

These kinds of things have been happening all around the world, I think is something that you're suggesting, hopefully something that we'll be able to do.

And then the one thing that I would ask you is why are rentals and housing different years?

Why aren't they the same years?

Why aren't they both 40 or why aren't they both 30?

It's been done recently with other projects.

So the 30 years for affordability is in line with the low income housing tax credit combined.

Okay.

So that's really cool.

That's really confusing.

The narrative that we're saying to the community is, if you're this kind of home resident, you get this kind of protection.

If you're this kind, you get this kind of protection.

I would hope that as we move this through, that we say, we believe in affordability and that looks like this in this particular community.

It's this many of years and it's

Now I'll be quiet.

And so does Daniel.

So Tim then Daniel.

Well, just quickly, because of you talking about the bigger economic structure,

It seems to me, I don't know whether everyone has had a chance to see it or read it, but I just encourage all commissioners to look at the, now I have to find it, the just out critique of the proposed city land use plan by click.

that's entitled Why Building More Market Rate Housing Will Not Solve Charlottesville's Housing Crisis.

I think that this is something that many of us have been saying.

I mean, there are lots of parts of it, but that particular part of build, build, build is going to create enough housing that it's going to solve the affordable housing crisis.

And speaking for myself, I know that it's much more complicated than that.

This is a very good piece in discussing that.

So I would encourage everyone to look at that.

And then I was, you referenced Southwood.

I was going to do that when that came back to us, because I don't know if some of them are going to be on the line tonight.

OK.

And so I wanted to see if they were going to be online.

OK, thank you.

I appreciate all the work you've put into this.

I echo the fellow commissioners.

Huge step forward.

I appreciate the greater treatment to accessibility and universal design standards that was placed in 11.

I was wondering, and this is kind of, you know, I'm a kind of a data nerd, that really jumped out to me and kind of woke me up a little bit about this is that on page 24, you list what I am understanding to be nearly half of

these assisted multifamily properties affordability period are going to be coming in the next eight years are going to be expiring on affordability.

The question I had that I don't know that I caught is what how is that offset with what's in the pipeline and where is the gap?

Are we already at risk of like not meeting that one percent loss per year that you mentioned?

Are we are we kind of behind on the eight ball?

based on what's coming online versus what's aging off in eight years.

And I say that to say that I kind of agree and throw an echo.

What Commissioner Randolph said is that a lot of these portabilities are in these higher rise multifamily and being able to make allowances and

provide more land for that is a way to, you know, more mass to allow for more affordable units.

So I'll just pause there and get your comments on, so I can understand where, maybe where we are, you know, how far are we behind?

And that kind of comes in concert with some of the timelines about what we need to be thinking about, you know, how long it's going to take zoning.

And if it takes, you know, if we're talking about four to six year process to do this, we got half of the stock going away in eight years.

The properties listed in that table are the ones that have received some sort of federal assistance

whether that's low income housing tax credits or funding through the Federal Home Investment Partnership Program.

And those tend to be owned by nonprofits.

And I fully expect many of those will be, they will apply for additional funding to substantially rehab the unit.

So I don't actually expect them to go away but there is always that risk.

So I thought it was necessary to highlight that.

It's difficult to say how far in the hole that will be because we don't really have a good handle on affordable units that are not on that list.

So there's units that are affordable simply because they have to be smaller or older units.

And that's why it's really, I feel it's really important to do a survey of, it's easier to do surveys of rental units.

So to get a really good handle on what is

So I appreciate that follow up question.

You know, it's been said a few times, we don't have a sense of what's affordable.

Is that especially in the poor cell or I guess I'm struggling with that is with the tax.

I mean,

We have tax records.

We know if you sell a house, you have a purchase price listed to it.

I mean, I think you can even buy the data from Zillow if you wanted to, that would have the prices.

So what is the kind of, is it staffing?

Is it time?

We just haven't had time to do it yet.

It's a good project for an intern or a student, right?

So it's really once everything, once we have a housing policy and we know what we can do to move forward, that would really be working with the university to see if we get a student who would be willing to work on that as their project for the year.

hiring interns, it's just very time consuming to be able to sit through and make sure that the date is clean, you're not double counting through the tax record, that kind of thing.

Or a staff.

I appreciate your comments, thank you.

Comments.

So there's a conversation.

Commissioners, do we need just a small break before we go to the public?

Small break.

I'm like five minutes, like a five minute break.

805, see you back here at 805.

Charles, Rick.

Cool.

And can you start that off for us, Madam?

Yes, I will.

Would anybody interested in speaking on this matter, please raise your hand now to get in the queue.

The first one we have is Matt Lawless.

Good evening commissioners, county staff and neighbors.

My name is Matt Lawless and I represent the town of Scottsville as town administrator.

Our town council appreciates the service of this commission in partnership with our local work.

Mr. Randolph and Ms.

Firehock are very familiar with the town and have advised me many times.

I also enjoy working with county staff.

We are now distributing the Monacan history books with your equity office and jointly supporting startup businesses with your economic development office.

If you're not familiar with progress in town from the new restaurants to the fully booked farmers market, come on down and I'll be happy to give a tour.

I commend you for the good planning and strong action obvious in your housing policy.

As a very junior partner in this work, Scottsville is with you.

My comment is that the proposed housing policy and comprehensive plan amendment do not adequately represent the town of Scottsville as an active partner.

I respectfully submit two very minor edits to describe our current partnership and better position us for growth together.

Town Council adopted an updated comprehensive plan in 2018, then followed up with two planning grants and a West downtown small area plan in 2020.

I expect to see about 10% population growth over the past decade when census results come out and our comp plan calls for roughly doubling the town's population by 2040.

To meet this goal, our action items are zoning text amendments and map amendments.

Town Council has a public hearing on a first batch of these in June.

We propose to legalize quadruplexes in most of town and incentivize cluster development.

Upstairs apartments are legal in the historic district.

I live above the coffee shop and pay $9.50 a month.

To maintain housing supply, we are taking a housing first economic development strategy and talking to good quality builders now.

We are building parks and walkable infrastructure.

Recent grants from VDOT for sidewalks and Virginia Outdoors Foundation for conservation easements have serious match commitments in our local budget.

Considering such energetic work, town council is disappointed that Scottsville does not appear very often in Albemarle housing policy documents, and this includes the housing policy.

We want to be part of the regional solution.

I therefore request the edit of adding the town of Scottsville to the partner list in strategy 3E.

On document page 21 of the housing policy, the partner list is strategy 3F, same edit.

One small factual detail would help to show the town's context and connect our plans to yours.

Your objective for and narrative on older housing stock is very true for Scottsville.

I would offer this detail for your policy document page 22.

In Scottsville, 85 percent of housing stock is of pre-1970 vintage.

That would help to prove your point.

Stepping back, Scottsville suffers somewhat in county planning being neither fish nor fowl, neither rural area nor development area.

Town Council believes that development area designation fits us better, and they said as much in a joint meeting with the Board of Supervisors in 2019.

When you consider what a development area is and means, mixed use and density, a library, sidewalks, utilities, vibrant growth, that's what Scottsville is and wants to be.

I know the housing policy is not the place to make this policy change, but please hear me that this is our goal.

We hope your future work on the County Comprehensive Plan will help us to achieve this stronger partnership together.

Thank you.

Next I have Carrie, please take your name and address.

Thank you.

My name is Carrie Klosko.

I'm an attorney at the Legal Aid Justice Center.

I'm here for CLIC, which is the Charlottesville Low Income Housing Coalition.

First of all, we wanted to thank Ms.

Pethia and the county for their work on this plan.

We think it's a really good start.

We do have some recommendations to make it more robust.

detailed those recommendations in a letter that we sent to the commission back in February.

But we wanted to sort of say out loud the cliff's note version of those recommendations, which is what I'm going to do now.

First, and perhaps most importantly, we want to comment on the definition of affordable housing in this document.

Affordable housing

in this plan is defined to be affordable to people earning 60% of the area median income, which, again, is a good start.

Often, affordable housing in these kinds of discussions means 80%.

But in our area, 60% of the median income for a family of four is a little bit over $56,000 a year.

And that may not sound like a lot,

to people here, but for perspective, somebody earning that level of income would not qualify for my services at Legal Aid.

Such a person would be earning too much money for me to represent them.

So what that means is defining affordable housing this high allows us to overlook a lot of our neighbors who are most vulnerable and need the most help.

So for that reason,

we at CLIC are recommending that affordable housing be defined in this plan to mean people earning at or below 50% of the area median income and that priority be given to families at or below 30% AMI because these are the people who are most affected.

Our other recommendations, first of all, recommendation about land use

We recommend that the county evaluate areas where infill development can occur in order to undo a history of racial segregation and exclusion.

We recommend that resource rich neighborhoods be identified preferably near public transportation to invest county funds and other supports to begin making amends.

We have recommendations related to zoning.

I'm sorry, but your time is up.

Thank you.

Next we have

Neal Williamson?

Neal, please state your name and the affiliation.

Thank you.

My name is Neal Williamson.

I'm the president of the Free Enterprise Forum, a privately funded public policy organization focused on Central Virginia's local governments.

I want to thank staff for being so engaged over these last 18, 24 months.

And we've been a part of these conversations.

The Free Enterprise Forum supports housing affordability.

We support more housing everywhere for everyone.

We continue to have significant concerns with many of the strategies put forth in housing Albemarle.

Many years ago, Albemarle's affordable housing policy included a 15% inclusionary zoning mandate for affordable units.

This policy created less than 50 units in 15 years, a failure.

Now the plan is to expand that percentage to 20%.

We compared that to the watermelon salesman who lost money on every melon and decided he needed a bigger truck.

The answer to exclusionary zoning is not inclusionary zoning.

It is the relaxation of overly restrictive zoning regulations that exist as a legacy of our nation's segregationist past.

The reality is,

Inclusionary housing policies that require construction of 20% of new units to be subsidized units increases the price on 80% of the product produced, if it gets produced at all.

Considering Albemarle's recent propensity, often on a 3-3 vote,

to deny or defer development with increased density, it is much more likely a 20% inclusionary zoning policy will economically force development into larger lot by right development with no affordable units.

In the Planning Commission work session on this proposal previously, I remember several members suggesting this policy wasn't bold enough.

We have three specific concepts we ask to be considered.

One, cost sharing.

The new home buyers should not be solely responsible for paying this community's affordable housing goals.

If the entire community wants affordable housing, Albemarle should dedicate significant broad-based revenue to support that goal.

These funds could be used to pay down TAP fees for affordable units, purchase land and community land trust, provide down payment assistance, and much more.

Two, increase buy right density.

Rather than upping the percentage of misguided inclusionary zoning, Albemarle should examine proactively up-zoning the development area, including Mr. Randolph's growing up concept and perhaps Mr. Longlass's comments about bringing the town of Scottsville into the development area to achieve the density goals suggested in this document.

Number three, increase land inventory.

Expand the less than 5% of Albemarle's land mass dedicated to development to increase the land supply.

Perhaps that's Scottsville as well.

Absent the political will to allocate community funds to implement real affordable housing solutions, this document, like the one before it, is destined to fail.

Thank you.

Next I have Lori Schweller.

Lori, please state your name and who you're affiliated with.

And your time starts as soon as you start speaking.

Good evening.

It's Lori Schweller at Williams Mullen.

Good evening to Chairman and Planning Commissioners.

And thank you for the presentation from Stacy.

We rely on private developers to provide most of our housing.

If we want more affordable housing, we need incentives for more economical development.

Generally, of course, when we want more of something we take steps to make it less costly to produce.

We must avoid inadvertently preventing affordable housing development by making it more expensive to produce.

We've seen how exorbitant cash proffers can make approved projects too expensive to build.

We need to develop legal mechanisms to enable private developers to provide desired affordable housing.

The proposed plan would require a much greater commitment from developers, from 15% of units to 20% of units, from 10 years rental affordability to 30 years, from 80% AMI to 60% AMI,

We don't want these expectations to deter developers from attempting to obtain land use approvals and all the good that proffers and SUP conditions can provide to the county.

Not having offsets or incentives in place for years after the policy is adopted will steer developers toward buy right developments, which means more low density, unaffordable housing.

Therefore, it's critical that we have developer incentives in place as soon as a new policy is put into action.

A reminder of a few of the incentives that may help to steer developers toward the housing we need.

Meaningful bonus density, perhaps coupled with height exceptions that can work out not only in traditional zoning districts, but also in planned residential and neighborhood model districts.

Real estate tax abatements during the term of affordability.

Tap fee reductions and waivers through agreements with the service authority.

County contributions to infrastructure costs.

fast-track project review for projects meeting affordability goals.

Another idea proposed by one of our local developers, consider various combinations of the AMI unit percentage and term of affordability variables.

Allow developers to gauge the market and determine what combination of factors will provide the most needed housing for each project, whether it's 30% of units at 80% AMI for one project or 20% of units at 60% AMI for another.

The development community wants to provide the housing the county needs, but we can't put all of the burden on them or they simply won't be able to do it.

We need to make sure that the housing policies, zoning ordinance and comprehensive plan include mechanisms that enable private developers to produce the affordable housing that we ask of them.

Thank you very much.

Next, I have Valerie Long.

Thank you, Carolyn, and good evening, members of the commission, Mr. Chairman.

This is Valerie Long, also with the law firm of Williams-Mullen.

I want to just echo the comments from my colleague, Lori, and others that have been made.

They're similar.

The development community that we work with every day very much wants to support this policy and very much wants to be part of the solution in providing affordable housing in the community.

In the last 15 or 16 years since the policy was updated to require 15% units with rezonings,

The developers have proffered those units and they've done their part in making, you know, complying with the proffer requirements.

Unfortunately, the system has not worked.

And I think everyone agrees with that.

And so I share the comments that it's absolutely critical that the

regulatory burdens that are in place and that the draft plan recognizes and even lists in one section that are all barriers to affordable housing that those the action items that are recommended to address those barriers be implemented

prior to or at the same time that the new regulatory burdens are put in place.

If it happens the opposite, if the requirement for 20% of units with new projects at lower affordability levels and longer periods of term, if that burden goes into effect before any of these regulatory barriers are removed,

then I don't think that you will get affordable housing from the development community.

I think that will tip the scales in favor of having projects be developed by right in density levels that are

completely inconsistent with the designations in the comprehensive plan.

And that not only will not provide the very needed affordable housing units in the community, but those units, because there's fewer of them, they'll have to be larger, they'll be more expensive.

The problem just becomes exacerbated.

So we hope that you will work with us to help ensure that those regulatory barriers are reduced.

Again, the plan identifies them very well.

So I think it's something that could be done fairly easily as part of a rezoning amendment.

I think you will close the public part of our hearing and bring it back to us.

So Stacey, you get to play the role of the applicant and respond to those things.

But in addition to that,

Could you speak to, I know you saw the Charlottesville affordable housing coalition.

One of the things you make a big piece of this in the policy about looking at the affordable dwelling units ordinance and that seems like the Commonwealth has given us, in fact they call us out specifically in that preamble of being Albemarle, being one of the places that can do this.

Would you speak to what you see there and speak to what you think that might mean for us, how we might go about sort of putting something like that in place before you speak to some of the other things that

Well, there are not many vocalities in Virginia that have the same enabling legislation.

Loudoun County is one of those.

They have a fairly robust ordinance for their Affordable Dwelling Unit program.

So I have not read the ordinance in a while.

I have to go back and look at it.

But I think that will provide

is a good starting point for us.

We have fairly wide latitude as to how we can design the program.

So it's really working with the planning department, obviously with the county attorney's office, and getting feedback from the development community on how to create this program

make it easier for them to comply.

It will be the next steps.

But I think because Loudoun County has such a fairly robust ordinance themselves that we don't have to start from scratch.

And so we look at the letter from just sort of going through that if you have that before you looking at the letter from the Charlottesville Albemarle Affordable Housing Coalition.

Are there any particular items there that you feel that would be helpful for us to to reflect upon?

I have not seen the letter.

One of the things I might suggest is before we move on to the next supervisors that you have, spend some time wrestling with them.

Because there's a couple of things here that I think the balancing piece between what they're saying, getting rid of loopholes, and how do you sort of incentivize the greater affordability, which is similar to one of the issues we heard about, sort of lowering it from 60 further down the 50 to 30, to being able to speak to that.

And then the whole idea of what does home ownership look like?

One of the various ways and you've spoken to that a number of times that there isn't simply one path ownership and being able to speak to that I think would be helpful.

Not only might it be helpful for us tonight, but also to remind us of that and then also to sort of be prepared to speak to that when when this goes before the supervisors and then there is

They talk about the whole idea of how do we keep the inventory and I know that's something that a number of us have shared with you.

How do we?

So Luis talked about the 1% but there's the whole thing.

How do we keep an inventory that's not only static but also grows?

and that grows in a way that future residents of Albemarle County will have access to and that not doing this sort of, not necessarily always looking towards the solution being in a new development but using existing units that we have on ground that have already been built.

So I think that

which I think would be helpful for the supervisors.

And if you have a comment just from what I've said to you to be able to share to us before I go to Mr. Randolph, we had his hand up.

So I can comment on a few of those things.

So starting from the last one, that's the easiest one for me to answer, I think.

There's a number of different mechanisms that we can use to preserve housing.

Much of it depends on whether or not the county provides some sort of investment into those programs.

So setting up a homeownership rehab program

would provide grants and loans to low and moderate income homeowners.

We could set an affordability term behind this, which would keep them longer.

So we could set that in many different ways.

City uses the amount of funding provided to the homeowner to set that term.

We could do a blanket term.

We could also into an affordable dwelling unit ordinance provide the county or a designee with the opportunity to purchase a percentage of the affordable units that are built.

And we could keep those for set the affordability term for those those units as long as we wanted to.

That's what Cloughton County does with theirs.

So I think those are those are two of the options that we have.

It's really there's a lot of good

examples across the country of ways to do this.

It's really researching those and finding the most appropriate ones for Albemarle.

Looking at the affordability levels, absolutely 50% AMI and below it struggles the most.

And that's perfectly understood.

It is difficult to provide affordable housing without significant financial support into that construction.

and that would be, I believe, difficult for the county to support in large numbers.

That is why we went for the 60% AMI and below.

In that category, anyone who has a housing choice voucher is able to access those units as well, which brings the affordability down to the lower AMI level.

Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head from the list that I will

I just wanted to speak, if I could, to the issue of a small project.

and Ms.

Samuel Miladil and the Scottsville District.

It's referenced here by Shosh, which is Southwood.

What they're asking for on page three is something the board can't do.

And that is the board, the current board cannot make a commitment for the Board of Supervisors for the future board.

where that future board needs to follow through on actions undertaken by the current board.

And I read that paragraph that they were expecting Stacy and the county to make a long-term commitment here.

And it is in the record of the Board of Supervisors where I was very explicit that whatever was agreed to in phase one in no way preconditioned the board

for phase two would be determined by the Board of Supervisors as to how it wanted to proceed if phase two was presented.

So the hands are not tied of the housing administrator.

and the hands are not tied with a board of supervisors.

So I just, I needed to be very explicit about that.

The other thing is with the town of Scottsville, I think both of the suggestions are fine.

There was no intention.

to omit anything about the town of Scottsville.

Unfortunately, we got this communication 20 minutes before the start of the meeting.

And I received it several days before.

I could have had some discussions with the town administrator about them.

I have some perspective of having worked with the town and some familiarity.

But I think both of those suggestions are fine.

There was no intent

to ignore Scottsville.

We're not treating Scottsville as the redheaded stepchild of Albemarle County, quote unquote, as one town councilor referred to the Board of Supervisors' actions in the past.

So it's fine to be included in there.

I think it actually makes the report more robust by their addition.

Thank you for allowing me to just clarify in both of those.

Are there other comments?

I actually have a question for Rick and Charles and Andy, and that is the point that was made about the possibility of Scottsville being considered a growth area in the county.

And I know that, and I've lived here much of my life and I know the history of the

desire for independence that used to be expressed, especially by long term Mayor Thacker.

But my question is, is there some jurisdictional agreement that could occur that would allow this for some planning services and whatever that might actually allow a lot of things, but I'm certainly thinking in terms of the

as we are seeing the potential for more growth in Scottsdale, thinking about that and those numbers within the total Albemarle County count for lots of things.

There is precedent for MOUs between the county and the town.

as exists right now for the operation maintenance of the pump facility and of maintenance of both the dam as well as the dike system in Scottsville.

So that MOU was very carefully worked out.

Anything between the town and the county has to be at a board level.

and I really do not want to say anything that in any way conditions the board as to what they could do, should do, may want to do.

But I will just say this, all of the growth areas that are designated within the comprehensive plan exist within the county, none of which exist within a town.

A town is a entity

authorized and created under state law by the General Assembly and therefore it has different responsibilities.

I think I would worry about a slippery slope in providing services for a town and which is not actually a growth area as currently defined in the comprehensive plan.

with the possibility that other growth areas could therefore urge the county to provide a similar level of staffing support in their growth area.

Not thinking of any particular growth area, but one or two would come to mind on that basis.

So I would urge us probably not to have this discussion that's really something that

For my part, I don't disagree with Mr. Randolph, but that is a pretty big topic.

Towns in Virginia have primary responsibility for their own planning and zoning.

Thanks.

That's been my inclination as well.

But because it was brought up, I thought we wanted a just brief discussion here.

And in future, as we are collecting the data, it might actually be useful as an appendix, whether it's growth management, affordable housing, whatever, to think about how we would report that data because that

besides being the town of Scottsville, those citizens are also Albemarle County citizens.

Just one correction, not all of the town of Scottsville is within Albemarle County.

What else?

Who else?

I'm happy to go ahead and make a motion that they be incorporated.

But before a motion is made I'd point out that Dr. Pethea had prepared a proposed resolution as attachment six to the agenda and what this would do would be, if there's a concurrence of the commission, would be to recommend approval of this as a comprehensive plan amendment.

So procedurally what we did was just have a public hearing on a proposed comprehensive plan amendment and again Dr. Pethea had

prepared a resolution with lots of good findings in it as attachment six.

Correct, correct.

So if there's a if there's a consensus to approve of the

of the proposed amendment to the comprehensive plan, my suggestion would be that it be in the form of approving the resolution with the date of today's public hearing noted.

Because he's going to say, whereas on May the 4th be with you.

And you know, I just know that's what Rick's going to say.

So let's just prepare us all for that.

You know, just helping you out there, Rick.

Yes, sir.

Mr. Chair, Karen Firehock.

Evidently, it was a plummet prior to making this motion.

Yes, I just wanted to ask if we would also include additional emphasis on assisted living and affordability be placed in the document.

I brought that up earlier.

I'm trying to understand how formal we need to be.

As I know the one thing is about that edit coming from

I think that that could be part of the motion.

I think the motion could be to recommend approval of the amendment of the comprehensive plan, or excuse me, to move approval of the resolution

What I'm going to do, I just want to make sure that everyone is in agreement.

That's it.

So Mr. Randolph, are you moving approval of the resolution or are you sort of stepping outside of the resolution and just moving approval?

Is that good?

Does that meet all the requirements?

I'm doing a run through first.

It's in order as far as I'm concerned.

Turn it back to the chair.

I want you to proceed.

Okay, Mr. Chair, I'm happy to move CPA 2020-00001 Housing Albemarle with consideration of the comments by the commission this evening and the inclusion of the two

Remarks regarding the town of Scottsville.

And Rick, we're talking about the resolution to recommend.

And the resolution to recommend approval of CPA 2020-0001 for housing policy update.

I see Karen.

Seconded by Karen.

Okay.

Sorry, I didn't unmute myself.

Ms.

Moore?

Aye.

Ms.

Firehock?

Aye.

Mr. Keller?

Aye.

Thank you all very much.

And Stacy, thank you.

We've got additional sort of information and comments to chew on before this goes to our supervisors.

And hit Daniel up to make sure he gets you somebody to help him.

Don't let him spend the rest of the night looking off into the distance.

Give him something to do.

He's got the talent, all right?

Yes, Rick and then Tim.

I just want to let the commission know that Breezy Hill application has been submitted.

It's by right now.

And Megan Adostrup sent out yesterday

The comments by the division, various departments and entities within the county that need to weigh in on that application prior to the May 10th community meeting that will be held with the Villager Rivanna CAC.

The update is that the Breezy Hill project is now by right.

Yeah, they're moving it forward as by right, but with a little higher density.

So it looks by right, but it's higher density.

I think it's now 89, 69 units, I think, are proposed at this point.

Just quickly, the Urban Rivanna River Corridor group has met and there is a draft report.

Anyone else?

First, let me just clarify.

So Breezy Hill is actually still a zoning map amendment application to go from a rural designation to R1.

So that is that small.

So it is significantly less than what it was before.

The board did meet on the 24th of April.

Three public hearings, one for the Rappahannock Electric Project, 29 North.

That was approved.

There was an approval of some zoning text amendments to the WPA water protection ordinance regarding stream health.

There was one item that was taken back for further consideration based on some comments about agricultural roads.

So we'll be revisiting that.

Then the fee adjustments to the CED application fees and other items was also approved that came before this commission.

So next week, we will get together to revisit the Crozet Master Plan, focusing on transportation and conservation.

Is that the old business or new business?

Some new business since I know everyone's gotten the vaccine.

They've been vaccinated.

I just know that.

And so you're going to be itching to go on vacation.

You're going to be itching to do all of this stuff you haven't been able to do for a year and a half.

If you're going to be away, please let Charles and I know so that we can schedule that.

And we've already got two people who have given us some of their travel plans for the summer.

So as your travel plans are being formed, let us know, please.

It would be much appreciated.

I want the right item for follow up.

That's it.

So I'm gonna send somebody else has an item for follow up.

Enjoy yourselves outside.

And we'll see you next Tuesday on the 11th at six o'clock right here in Zoom land.

And Karen, I hope you have power so you can be comfy and have, we can see your cat walk across your table and give you a little nudge there.

That's really kind of nice for that app.

See you next week.