Planning Commission Work Session Meeting   6/28/2022

We are ready.

Good afternoon.

I'd like to call this planning commission work session of the Albemarle County Planning Commission into order.

The opportunities for the public to access and participate in the hybrid meeting are posted on the Albemarle County website, on the Planning Commission homepage, and on the Albemarle County calendar.

Participation will include the opportunity to comment on those matters for which comments from the public will be received.

If we're having a work session, we don't generally take comments during the work session unless there's a great demand for such.

My part's gonna be really short.

Thank you for having me.

I'm Bill Fritz, Community Development Department.

As you know, we've hired the Berkeley Group.

Apparently I'm not loud enough.

I've never been told that.

As you know, we've hired the Berkeley group to assist us with our updating and modernization of the zoning ordinance.

We had a work session with you a while ago on setbacks.

This project's rather large, so we decided to break it into component parts.

And so the first part is the setbacks and the land uses.

And what we're bringing to you tonight is the land use component.

It's a rather large document.

We know you probably won't be able to get through all of it, so we welcome you to send us comments after this individually and so that we can try to put that in there.

There were some parts of it that we simply didn't get to, and we won't be going over those, but the vast majority we did get to, and we welcome your comments.

And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Rebecca, who is going to walk you through the presentation.

Good afternoon, good to be back with you.

Bill pretty much did the first little bit of my presentation, so I can dive right in now.

We're gonna just quickly talk about our progress so far, and then I'll do just a little short presentation.

We'll have some discussion time and get into next steps.

So phase one, progress.

We are complete with investigation and diagnostic.

We came before you last time giving you that diagnostic report and talking a bit about the district standards.

And this time we're gonna talk about the use matrix and then we'll get back into incorporating all of your comments and then move into an adoption phase.

So the land use terms and definitions, just to kind of remind you about that diagnostic report.

In terms of terminology, we said broaden your terms so that you can allow for more flexibility, consolidate terms so that you can streamline and increase readability, and then modernizing terms to address new technology,

and today's economy and all of those types of things and so you know a little bit in terms of the terminology is you want to be competitive with your neighbors and with all of Virginia for that matter and you want to use terms that are

Similar or the same as other communities so that when developers, when somebody says I'm moving to Virginia and I'm going to take my business with me, can I do it in Albemarle County?

They can go to your ordinance, find their use very easily, or know where they fit in in your use terms.

And that applies as well in the definitions.

So currently your ordinance doesn't define every use.

So someone might say, I think I fit within this use.

And they go look at the definitions, but there's no definition there.

So that leaves them with questions.

So we would say define every use and then reduce ambiguity.

They might have questions.

Well, I think I fit within this, but maybe not.

And especially when we are broadening terms and consolidating uses, we need to make sure we have strong definitions that are very clear about everything that's included within that use term.

So one thing to note is that staff is currently using a use matrix that has about 270, give or take, probably a little more than 270 uses in it.

And so that's just huge.

It's really difficult for someone who wants to come here to look through that and find their particular use.

Same thing for staff.

It's difficult for them to manage and to use.

And so what we've done through this process is pared that down to 150.

So still quite large, but hopefully good news, much easier to digest.

And we can talk about how we went about that process a little bit.

So we wanted to make sure it's based on Virginia code requirements.

There are some things in code that says you have to allow this use.

That doesn't mean that it has to be in your ordinance, but we feel like it's a good practice to have it in your ordinance because the public doesn't necessarily know, oh, code says that this is allowed.

So that allows the public any new staff just to make sure things aren't overlooked.

Then we went to organization and best practices.

So consolidating uses and making sure they're in like categories.

So even though it's 150 uses, we group those things into here's residential, here's commercial.

So anyone can come in and say, oh, I've got a business.

I'm going to go to this commercial area and look through here and see if I fit.

Then we talked with staff.

Staff knows your community better than we do.

So they gave us that insight to say, hey, these are particular uses that we have fine-tuned, honed in the past, and we don't want to lose this work that we don't want you to lose it either.

And so they gave us that insight and we incorporated that.

A few examples of how we did those things.

So Code of Virginia says that temporary family health care structures are required.

So we've added that to your use list.

And I'll just ask

Are you all in agreement with having those items in there?

You know, like I said, it's not something that you have to have, but we feel like it's a good practice.

So I guess instead of saying, are you good with that?

Is there anyone who objects to, because I feel like most of you were, you know, I saw some nods.

So is there anyone who objects to having those uses in there?

Okay, hearing none.

So then, looking at consolidation, a couple of examples here are uses that are very simple, you know, my children could probably have paired these together.

When you look at assisted living facility and skilled nursing facility, different terms, slightly different definitions,

but same type of impact, same type of use.

And then when you look further into, okay, how is this allowed in the districts?

It's identical.

So that's easy.

This should be consolidated as one use.

We can bring those into one use.

Same thing with the boat landings and canoe livery, slightly different use, slightly different definitions there, but same types of travel, times of day,

Numbers of vehicles, all of those impact things that you would consider and then supplied the same way in the districts.

So easy peasy, lump those together.

What are your thoughts?

And so if I heard you correctly, there's terms in the Code of Virginia that may not show up in our zoning ordinance.

And I guess the question is, do we need to take action to put them in there?

No, sorry, let me clarify.

So currently they're not in your code, not in your local ordinance, but they are required to be allowed by the state code.

So state code says you have to allow this temporary family healthcare structure.

So we're putting it in just so it's here as well.

So if a public comes, you know, looking at your ordinance, they're not necessarily going to state code.

I also have a process question, which is, you know, you're asking sort of general questions like do we agree with consolidating terms and do we like definitions being clear I mean I probably everyone say yes.

No one would say like we would like more unclear code.

You know, I did go through this thing, the matrix, which took a very, very long time because I'm slow, I guess, but took me hours.

So what I did was I put comments throughout like, what about this?

Or this is unclear, why is this?

Or add this?

I don't think it would be a good way to run the meeting for me to necessarily sit here and say, on page 14, you know, unless it's something really bizarre.

So we will get into some sort of broader brush strokes to get some direction about permitting the uses.

That's what we're looking for in this round of discussion.

And we're going to get to that in just a little bit.

No, I don't want us to kind of get down into the weeds of line by line, item by item.

OK, sorry.

But let me follow up.

But there are some issues here that are going to be, shall I say, that are passion issues or passionate terms in this community, the first one being accessory apartments.

And so while our sister jurisdiction is having this full out, I don't know what to call it,

I would like us to not have to have that same kind of whatever that is over there happen here.

So I think I would not want us to sort of gently brush over that, but would want to have a couple of discussions.

There's one here that I will ask about, and everybody knows where I stand on this.

Why is Monticello in our zoning ordinances?

I don't get it.

I just don't get why it is and Highland isn't.

I don't get why it is.

And the lawn, which at the University of Virginia is in Albemarle County and is as historic as Monticello.

So I don't understand why we take a non-governmental entity and put it in a governmental code.

I think there's a few things in here that maybe warrant discussion.

And I haven't really gone through this.

I've written comments on the entire thing, but I haven't gone through and said, this one we should discuss.

This one's just something for Bill to check on.

I don't have it to that level.

Anyway, so.

Even looking at your example, it's not necessarily as clear cut as it seems.

The question comes down to what's the distinction that would cause us to treat it differently in a zoning consideration?

You know, like in other words, that's why she gave the example of boatload delivery.

Well, for example, one is something that would be appropriate for the center of Crozet where we have, you know, a nursing home in Crozet.

And the other one is in a rural area, which because it's where people, the residents work on a farm and it's a more agricultural venture.

But in that consideration, would one be a, let's see,

might one be a group home.

I thought I saw something here about that.

And then sort of looking at the definition.

So let's not look at the name, but then also be concerned about what the definition is.

And is the definition broad enough to sort of encompass a multitude of functions on a piece, on a track of land?

I think that's also what we're trying to do.

So the whole idea that

In many ways it's just an example of how complex something that may seem simple right surface of it

really may not be that simple.

And there's others like Mission Home that fall in that same example.

Absolutely.

And that's why we're just a little wary of like, hey, do you guys agree?

So go ahead.

So also in terms of staff direction, we heard from staff that there are water concerns that you all have spent quite a bit of time, you know, making sure that uses talk about what type of water they're using, how much their usage is, and that there's

standards and limits based around that.

And so they suggested that we continue to separate out uses that you all have already said with water, without water.

I mean, I want to like sort of step back from it.

The real the real reason that this is an issue is because the supervisors at one point said there'll be a certain level of services that are going to be expected in the rural part of the county.

versus the urban or underdeveloped part.

So it's not necessarily that we're concerned about the function, but it's where does this function take place given that there were decisions which were made about how we're going to provide or extend services to parts that have been declared as rural.

And so if that were to change,

which I don't expect it to.

But if it were to change, then I think you might see a softening about some of that.

But I don't think that's gonna be changing anytime soon.

Sure, and so I would say,

And the screen that you're showing there, I would also say that it's not just with and without public water, but the quantity of water use.

There's some of the items that were consolidated that, for example, a golf course and a tennis court, they use very different amounts of water.

And so that's something that you would get into with the application when someone comes forward and they have that without public water, that would be the discussion and the standards that you would apply at that time.

Right, but like you gave the golf course example, there are golf courses that get all their water from ponds and recycle their water and have integrated IPM, integrated pest management, and all that blah, blah, blah.

So they use very little water and they're not using any public water, so.

You know, that's why.

But at least they would know like, I'm applying for a golf course.

This is the bucket that I fit in.

And this is sort of the door through which I go to apply.

No, and we're not like making things that are going through by right.

We're just saying what the definitions are.

What is the thing?

What is the thing?

What is it?

We're giving it.

So staff direction, the items that you see on your screen now, those are items that we got zoning comments received Friday.

And so I would like to say if you have questions about these particular uses, hold them.

Just because staff provided comments and we need a little more time to digest those comments, we're probably going to meet with them next week to discuss those things.

If you do have concerns about these items, I would say definitely email that to staff so that it can be part of our conversation next week with them.

But I'm just not prepared this evening to discuss those items.

So diving in, I think this is where you've been dying to get to.

Our next step in this is to start thinking about how these uses are permitted.

Our next step will be to go from this column that's in gray, the proposed uses, and say, okay, how is this particular proposed use going to be supplied

in the districts.

And so there is a lot to consider and digest when you're doing that.

And so this is where we would like to get some kind of general direction from you.

Of course, there's going to be some some oddities and things that need to shift one way or another, but we can address that.

Staff can take a stab at what they think and then you all can fine tune it, hone it later on.

But

to kind of look at one thing first would be public garage.

You'll see there the little teal oval along the SUP.

Public garage is a use that is an SUP in the RA district is not permitted in any other districts.

And staff has said, when we see those uses, those are special.

and have those be standalone uses.

And we've done that for most of them.

This is an example of one that we have not.

So the question becomes, do you agree with staff that those come out, those special only in RA ones, they are standalone uses because otherwise the decision becomes, does vehicle repair service

become an SUP in the RA district, which would expand that use a bit because we're expanding the definition.

It includes body shop, automobile truck repair shop.

And so that question becomes, do we want this kind of broader defined use to be an SUP in the RA district?

What are the thoughts about those special RA, those uses that aren't allowed in any other district, just the RA?

In general, I'm not in favor of that.

I'm particularly not in favor of expanding uses to the rural area that would be more intensive of water usage or could have potential pollution consequences.

I don't know if I don't agree with that.

You know, we need to have car repair in the rural area and we cannot be people like who drive to drive 45 minutes to get an oil change each direction, adding more traffic and pollution on the way there.

There are gas stations, we've had a few that didn't continue on or not gas station, excuse me, car repair.

They didn't need a tremendous amount of public water.

There was one in particular that we didn't get to that, I don't know why it never came forward, but it was using an existing VDOT public yard that had already been highly disturbed.

Yeah.

I don't know why it didn't go on.

I'm sure you said it really clearly, but I didn't understand what you said.

So there are options here.

So when we go back and we do our drafting to create your sort of final use matrix, we're going to have this vehicle repair service, and it's going to say in each district how it is allowed.

And so our decision would be, okay, we see

One item that's being consolidated here in the RA is an SUP.

So does that mean we're going to allow vehicle repair service as an SUP in the RA district?

Does it mean vehicle repair service is not allowed in the

RA District that we're going to kind of hone that down.

If I understand your exercise, let me just exercise you're asking us.

Here too.

There's two things.

I know we focused on it.

It feels like it got a little bit between like rural and development area.

But the reality is we have a number of different districts represented on this sheet.

Some of them have authorized uses as we consolidate.

Some of them are not mentioned, as you pointed out, with automobile, truck repair versus public garage and that.

But then in other places, which like if you go to C1 and look at the top one of commercial indoor,

where some of them are permitted and some are special use permits and they're of different levels of use.

And so the exercise that you're asking us is if we do this consolidation, what are some rules of thumb that you might be able to apply to do that consolidation where we have conflicts between the allowable current

Let's not leave the garage for a second.

So I think that buy an SUP in the rural area is appropriate.

I see some other nods.

I have a question.

It means they cannot do it by right.

They have to still come through.

Yeah, and the point she's pointing out here, though, is because automobile, truck repair shops, and body shops at this point are not allowable at all.

They're not addressed, so they're not even considered.

We're saying by broadening the definition of the SCP, we now are saying that those other things would be considered, and it could be brought forth.

I would say yes.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that.

Yeah, no, I know.

The rule of thumb is if it isn't addressed and they consolidate this, should they, if it's not addressed, should they apply whatever the, like, SUP is, you know, there across all of them?

And maybe I would say that that's hard to do, but I would say you would do it and then flag where that happens, where it was once not

I just have one thing to add to that train of thought which is really helpful because I think for me what I'm missing, unless that's obvious and I am missing it, is sort of that current state of affairs, right?

So we're taking three groups here as an example and we're consolidating it into one.

So body shop currently in an RA is not permitted.

What you're seeing on the chart is what it is right now.

And the only thing that's changed on this chart is what's in gray with the proposed use.

So it's just showing what's being consolidated so that you can see that there is some stuff that isn't lining up.

And so I do like Commissioner Bailey's suggestion of maybe when we have these things that are kind of an outlier where majority of them are different than one and we're changing them all because of one or two, maybe those are the things we need to flag to come back to say, you know,

Well, there was a few things in the definition chart, for example, that I said, I think this thing is too different.

I think it was like Laundromat or something, where lots of people come and go with their laundry all day versus something else, dry cleaner.

I can't remember what it was anyway.

But there's a few things like that where I think maybe we've over-lumped.

You know, and for this, for the parking, for the public garage, or let's say for the automobile truck, because I assume that would also be an SUV, the truck repair shops.

So I think we're fooling ourselves if we don't believe that those actions are, that those businesses are already taking place in the rural area.

You know, there is a reality that every single thing there, which is not being listed, is taking place in the rural part of our county right now.

and it's sort of being done without any oversight from zoning.

Because the only way we get that information now is if somebody complains.

and so the way our community tends to work is that they tend to complain if they can go to the ordinance and see something and then say, Julian Bivins' property is out of compliance, but they won't do it if they can't see it.

That's what, if you follow the zoning, that's how we work.

We work by complaints.

So I was looking up the definitions here on the crosswalk of automobile truck repair shops, body shop, and public garage.

And there was no existing definition for automobile truck repair shops, just the other two.

I think you asked the original question, like, one, you're not asking that we're not given the carte blanche.

Yes, I mean, as Commissioner Firehock has already stated, but there are a lot of ones that make sense, right?

Like indoor

commercial, recreational, like some of those things make sense to me to try to consolidate so there's not 75 different, well, you know, how does a pickleball court differ from a tennis court?

You don't have to address pickleball.

You know, those type of things.

That makes sense.

I think the reality, like you said, is I don't know which way to go because this document that you're asking us to look at now is linked to the previous one in definitions to know where it's brought or not.

And I don't know if it's Phil's chicken and eggish in some ways.

way to say, but you know, the other thing that you put is like, and then you have the added dimension of rural versus our urban rings or, or development areas.

Um, and what makes sense there.

And I think you're, you're pointing to like the commercial indoor recreation amusement you flag where there's like, none of the others address, but I think we have the same issue that you're trying to drive.

And as you go one column to the left of that, it's like some are permitted and others are special use permit.

you know do we open it up and say everybody's permitted or do we take the permission permitted and restrict it back to special use permit which has implications on the development time and what people can do and all that and I would say that's exactly where we're looking for you know some guidance of when we're making these consolidations as our next steps you know what is your temperature in terms of

expansion.

You know, in thinking about the commercial districts, the industrial districts, even the PUDs, you know, is the temperature that you want more economic development, you want to allow more uses, and so where there's SUP, sure, expand that SUP.

Where there's a permitted use and then others are SUP, we want to open that up and make that permitted uses, you know,

I mean, one thing that strikes out to me, and this is, I know, asking for more here, but being a data guy, there's an algorithm called consensus modeling, right?

And so, you know, one exercise there, we have four out of the five are SUPs.

Does it make sense to make the other one SUP too because it is versus like if all of them and you know or are if it's more split and I know this is a five class consolidation if three out of the five are SUPs and two are permitted it's probably something you need to talk about because it also flags to me like do those five things actually belong together are they really two or three of them should be in a class and the other two that were permitted should be in their own class

There are some ways to analysis that could be done here to say, okay, now that we're looking at this chart, did we get our definitions and consolidate them right?

Because there's consensus and they're permitting status across these different districts.

There are some other things in here that don't make sense to me.

Like when I look in here, I see greenhouse commercial is not allowed in the rural area.

It doesn't even have a special use permit for it.

But then we have landscaping, which does have special use.

I would see those things as inherently related.

Currently, most of our nurseries and garden centers are in the rural area, their existing uses.

Part of what you're seeing here is, for example, in the commercial, stick with the one on the screen here, the commercial indoor recreation.

You have amusement centers.

That was the 1970s video game and wanting to go into Fashion Square Mall.

And then you have bowling alleys.

We still have bowling alleys.

You have dance halls.

which we don't really have any longer and are regulated through the state code in a very strange way and you have pool halls which you don't have anymore so we have some of these uses where it was a very particular archaic thing that came in it may not exist anymore and then there was an acceptance of it when indoor athletic facility came in and it was made by Wright because that was adopted at a much later date

So we have these things.

And Commissioner Murray, you were speaking to the difference between the commercial greenhouse and the landscaping business.

We also have a case, we have multiple cases where the ordinance, one person came forward to the board of supervisors for a particular use on a particular property and the board considered it and said, yeah, I think that's something we should add to the ordinance.

But at the time they were doing it, they really were,

thinking one thing at a time.

And time has gone by, and now we have these uses.

And that's why we're trying to consolidate them.

So some of these are going to be archaic terms, and some of these are going to be very specific uses.

So we'll have to take that into consideration.

I think Commissioner Bailey, you were talking about using the ranking, and we'll have to take that into consideration also.

We have 20 minutes left, and I'm

I don't know if I'm going to help your point that you just made.

So one of the things that I'm, as I look at this, and to me, it's almost like a missing component, but maybe it argues for the special use permit is the scale, right?

So when, you know, let's take the indoor athletic facility and that's the one that's permitted in C1.

And maybe this goes to Commissioner Bailey's point.

It may be fine depending on the scale and that particular parcel.

It may be that an indoor, that is widely range, right, in terms of the amount of traffic that's going into that particular area.

If it's by right, then it's by right, regardless of the scale.

But it may not be appropriate because of what the amount of traffic that it would impose on a particular neighborhood.

That's the piece that, to me, it's almost missing is what is the scale of these?

The same thing in the rural areas, right?

I mean, a lot of these, to Commissioner Bivens' point, it's already happening in the rural areas.

So how do we acknowledge that?

and not ignore them by saying, well, none of these, they're nonconformant.

Pretty much everything is nonconformant.

Right.

Yeah.

An example I was thinking of along those lines was like an athletic facility, like a gym, but there are also people teaching yoga classes to 10 people in a room that's not that big and a very, very low impact.

And so that shouldn't be, that should almost be its own thing.

but it seemed like, you know, so I wrote a lot about that.

Like, what about this type of use?

Where does that go?

I didn't really know where landscaping, you know, if you just have a small landscaping business, how did that fit in?

To me, a lot of it has to do with the scale issue because you can permit, and you can even say maybe by right is even fine, but how do you define that scale?

One way to deal with that, which I've dealt with in other localities and I'm sure our consultants have as well,

rather than always go to a special use permit, which if you look at this, we certainly have a lot of special use permits.

I will say, when y'all know, we've been doing it for years, we have a lot of special use permits.

So what you actually can apply are performance standards so that you have different requirements.

Square footage triggers this, or these type of uses, number of users or vehicles, things like that, that they can then trigger your design so that it can be a buy right use and you have some protection.

That as you were saying, Commissioner Murray, there's a difference in where it is in the scale of the use.

And so you put some performance standards in there that the proposed use has to meet if they're in a certain area or if they're of a certain intensity.

And I would add to that, that in addition to those youth standards, you know, if you're wanting to be more open to businesses, to make it easier for people to locate here, to have their business, to expand a business that they have to new things, then consider reducing your number of

Special Use Permits, opening things up in your commercial districts to a permitted use, have those use standards, but also you're working on your comprehensive plan.

Put things in your comprehensive plan that talk about those areas, those districts, and explain, here's kind of our limits.

Here's what we're looking for here.

Yeah, I mean, we did that with drive-through windows already.

They used to have to come forward and ask if McDonald's could have a drive-through window.

That's stupid.

She read my mind.

We've already had some conversations about how to put things into the comprehensive plan, so if you allow use by special use permit,

Let's talk about the vehicle repair.

You put it in the comprehensive plan and you put into the comprehensive plan what you envision for a vehicle repair that might be in the rural area.

So that when you get that special use permit that comes in, you have some guidance to help make that special use permit decision.

And I think for the rural area in particular, that could work for a lot of these uses where you limit a size, say it's appropriate if it's X square footage or however that's defined.

But I'll give an example.

I think your statement about like, are we going to make it easier to have business?

I mean, that's more like a Board of Supervisors kind of distinction, I'll just say.

But like camping is an example.

Like camping, what is camping?

We've had applications for camping that are like with tennis courts and pools and event halls that make me wonder if they're really a wedding venue that's going to have a few campers at it.

There's camping and there's camping.

And we can't just, you know, so that's where I feel like we need to know the scale and how many structures and

But you know, sort of as a compliment to that.

So I think what you're speaking about is this new industry called glamping.

So that's really what we're seeing.

We're seeing something that was a more rugged activity taking on us.

Some tents and a one-out house.

And dance halls and sage.

Thank you, COVID.

So the other thing is that we're also seeing that, and we're in this bit of a pickle, because wineries, which used to be a place that was a place that created extraordinary wines, is now because of the business model, or because I don't know why, but it's now sort of morphed into these other things, these other parts of the business.

but the essence of a winery, lo these many years ago, was a place that people sort of dealt with, you know, the earth and the sun and grapes and that magic combination.

And so part of it, I think, and I'm thankful for Bill on this, because I think a number of the exceptions that we see are because of handshakes that took place in the 70s and the 80s.

And we're trying to apply a disenpassing logic to it today, that they weren't established that way, where we were much more of an intimate business relationships took place.

Not that far ago, not that long ago.

To your point though, you mentioned the idea of being friendly to business.

And one area of opportunity that I've seen is in the rural area, you often have agricultural uses that are supportive.

Things like canning, things that may in some ways fall into light industrial or more, they wouldn't necessarily be appropriate for the growth area, but they're supporting agriculture.

And so we've one at a time permitted many of those uses into the rural area.

I would like to see us be more explicit about acknowledging those uses that are supporting agriculture and use our comprehensive plan as a guiding document.

We have this whole philosophy about what the rural area is and what the growth area is.

And that should be the lens by which we look at some of these uses and whether they're appropriate in each.

So, and you mentioned that, you know, the board has to decide, are we going to be more economic friendly and that sort of thing.

But this use matrix has to pass through you all first and we need the direction of how do we begin to strike through and allow these uses so.

I guess what I need from you in the next 10-ish minutes is to know, you know, do you want myself and staff to work together and sort of look at these uses and when it makes sense

to broaden it in commercial and industrial uses because overall you feel like the board would want to open that up and you feel comfortable that if it's opened up we could have used performance standards to tighten any concerns or impacts.

Then give us that go ahead to make that type of move is what I'm looking for.

Like you said, we only have 10 minutes.

In that 10 minutes, we can probably just give you some parameters to look at.

One that we've already talked about would be the amount of visitors coming for that use and the frequency and volume.

Another thing I'll just throw out that struck me was when you were talking about community facilities, there was a written description that sounded more like something that was internal to a subdivision, but the title of it sounded like it was open to the public.

I think we need to be careful with what's an interior facility that is not really a community facility.

Related to that particular use, you do have sort of a hodgepodge of a lot of different things.

Some that are public, it's in a community, but it's not necessarily private.

The larger community can attend.

I think, I mean, not that you're, so

You brought up a couple of things here and one that we've just determined is like it'd be great to have somebody have a draft of the performance standards that we just, cursory kind of said about environmental scale size that we could look at apply.

I think one thing that's challenging with this is

We get thrown in these big documents like this, which have a lot of things, and we don't have a necessarily common framework by which to discuss how we're assessing them until this meeting.

And so we need a common framework.

And it sounds like, you know, Mr. Fritz had some with like, what's legacy?

And this is dancehall and like, have an L beside like, have some type of ontology and framework by which we can break this down.

and decide and I think when the part you put up I think this is a great use case a bit great to see this prior to to try to talk to it and have some suggested rules or considerations because like you know I look at this but I even look at manufacturing heavy in here

And that's really hard because if you look at that, like half of them are special use permits.

Half of them are permitted and heavy industrial and light industrial.

All of them are special use.

Some are not mentioned.

Like that has environmental impacts.

And those are those are the edge cases where I think if we have those called out and because we have a decision framework, then we can probably move forward and like not spend forever worksmithing some of the

more straightforward ones, I guess, but like these ones have real impact, like manufacturing heavy has real impact environmentally and on the development of our county.

And those are the ones that, you know, it's hard to take this big without the decision.

So I guess it's kind of throwing it back to you all, like, can we start to have a way to create a decision framework that can be socialized with us and we understand so that we can be more productive in the feedback?

I would echo that.

I think the best feedback that we can give you is we need to create a way that we can quantify what is an acceptable level of impact to a particular site, a particular, you know, so if it's a C1 or like I said, so yeah, the heavy manufacturing, I mean, that's something that's so varied depending on what you're doing and the level of impact that can happen in an area.

So if we can have the parameters,

up to this point is permitted.

It's a C, and then anything beyond that certain level, it's where the special use permit comes in.

But to me, that's the easiest way of getting rid of all those SUPs that you have in that board is by creating that framework of this is what it means to build a, I mean, I don't understand why a dance hall, I forget, if you go back to the other one, I mean, I think a dance hall was SUP,

but the indoor athletic facility.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

I assume, and I hope, and I have another comment like that, that we would have another session where we could have these parameters and then go back to it.

An example of that would be laundromat is in the same bucket as you're saying as florist.

To me, you go to the florist, you get your flowers that you ordered and you leave.

A laundromat, I go sit there for hours and hours with all my other friends who are unfortunate enough not to have their own laundry at home and sit there and do your laundry.

So there's a different kind of use.

I don't know.

So one's more intense than the other.

And so I would, you know, if you'll give us the go ahead to kind of make those I think we've heard a bit about, you know, yes, we want to be a little more open and there are some easy sorts of decisions to make and that you want to highlight the more difficult ones.

And so

There are still quite a few of difficult ones, and I'm afraid that we don't have enough time to work through each difficult one, even if we have example use standards, even if we have all the parameters and those types of things.

I have marked up the definition document.

I just sent it to Bill.

I don't know if you got it.

But for example, mobile food vendors, the definition that's in here is that they're moving every 30 minutes or so.

That's maybe downtown D.C.

Here they're going and they're parking at the winery for hours and hours.

They're there all day.

Sorry, this is so loud.

Commissioner Firehock.

I wanted to feed on what all of you have been saying and what Rebecca has been saying also and try to summarize what I've heard and what I think your guidance to us is.

There's a general agreement to combine, and there are plenty of them, so if I can go through them all first.

General agreement to combine and define.

Agree that sometimes they can't be combined because the intensity is just too different.

They're going to have to be separate.

Agree that old things need to be updated.

agree that standards are needed where newly defined uses are allowed in a wide variety of districts and agree that guidance is needed when newly defined use is allowed by SP to guide the review of the SP and agree that each commissioner will send their comments to staff so that we can work on them.

That's what we've heard, that basically what we're doing is we're heading in the right direction.

We wanted to make sure we were going down the right path before you said nope, turn around, go back the other way.

As an organizational principle, I'd also like to see the rural uses are sort of scattered throughout this document.

Can I ask you, so I'm going to do this now in this environment.

So I get where you're coming from, but from a county, we are the collection of all those uses.

And so

I hope I'm just sort of jumping to the gun and being really sensitive to this.

I would ask us not to separate out the rural uses as a specific entity, but for us to look at this as how does this work across all of the various land types that we have in Albemarle County?

And I get where you still let me finish because the last thing I want to start to do here is to have conversations that are parochial about where we live.

because all of us live in blended communities.

We live in both developed areas and rural areas.

And so that's why all of us can bring a sensitivity to how anything we do here has an impact on the varied places that we live.

And I will also go one step farther and say,

and I'm sure I'll get sort of knocked about here.

I appreciate that 95% of the land mass in Albemarle County is rural, but only 4% of that is agricultural.

The rest of it is in other activities but are not in agribusinesses.

So before we take a lot of time, and I'm sure people will give me the number if that's not the accurate number, but I'm sure that the number would.

But the majority of our rural land is not engaged in agricultural businesses at this point.

It was at one point.

That's what we purely were.

So I'm going to ask us to be more

Yeah I mean I would like to see services available in the rural area but I you know I

and also for smaller businesses to exist.

We sat in this room, this is before some of your tenures, and we had an hour and a half hearing about a woman who just wanted to paint in her outbuilding.

That was a historic outbuilding that was part of the original house that had divided the entire subdivision that now surrounded her and people testified, why did three times a year two people come to look at her paintings?

and the traffic and oh my the world is ending and I'm thinking you have people cross the street have teenagers with four cars in the driveway and you don't want this woman to quietly and they were concerned if she would paint outside sometimes painting what could be quieter than painting so you know she had to go through a lot of effort to get her business license so she could have this use and I thought that was ridiculous

So I would say your introduction that you gave us when you first came up, if I could have had that in a YouTube, that would have helped to frame how I approached the work.

because as the chair said, spending, I didn't spend as much time on the one through 19, but I spent a lot of time on the one through 40, like I'm sure most of them.

And so all of a sudden I'm feeling like, oh, maybe I spent the wrong amount of time on the wrong thing because you're showing me the one through 19 page.

So it would be helpful to have a separate set of context.

This is what I really want you all to do.

Okay, then we can go do our homework.

And then we can come here having been well addressed.

Your opening comment was very helpful to me.

And we still want your comments on definitions and the combining of uses.

If you feel like there are uses that really don't fit together, let us know that.

Or if there's a definition that you feel like doesn't make sense, or, you know, whatever the case may be.

I will say just one thing.

One of the big defining differences between the rural area and the development area is we only have one zoning classification really pretty much for the rural area and one comp plan designation.

Whereas if you look at the growth area, there are a myriad of zoning designations.

That means that

What we allow in the rural area, there's less planning that goes on about where it goes and what happens to it.

And that's one of the reasons I think it's very relevant to consider it differently.

I will suggest to come back to that.

I will say that at one point, there's an intentionality about why there is less development in the rural area.

that predates all of us.

76.

If you look at some of just the legislative history around there, there was an intentional decision to be looser in the rural part of our community.

that have less boundaries, that have fewer boundaries, that have fewer constrictions.

So I agree with you.

I think perhaps this is an appropriate time to look at having some additional areas, have some additional zoning in the rural area.

I would actually look forward to that.

Sounds good.

Just a comment regarding the analysis.

As you look at existing uses, you may find it helpful to have like a gentle coordination with the building code, for example, with fire safety.

And so like there's some uses that simply require a fire sprinkler system and

You don't necessarily want to preclude that from the rural area, but just know that it's going to be different hurdles, right?

If there's not public water out there, um, as you do your analysis.

So it's something that's kind of thought of us looking at these uses like a public garage.

I'm not sure I haven't looked in the building code, but I've seen sprinkler garages, right?

Um, and so that could be problematic in a sense, if you weren't aware of that in a rural area.

Just for fun, I'll add the very last comment.

No, I don't mean even the rural area.

I mean, it's like you can fabricate things.

There's no planning as a- Office general.

Yeah, well, I want planning in there.

I want planning as an activity.

All right, so next steps, we'll all send you whatever we've marked up, if that's easy enough to do.

You guys will look at those comments.

Send it to me.

Yeah, I sent it to you, okay.

But you want us to send it to you.

We'll have very, I think the next meeting will be much more detailed, much more focused.

Commissioner Bivins said before, it'd be nice to have this ahead of time.

For this, we just didn't have that opportunity.

Yeah, I think we need a lot of time.

But anyway, yeah, so there's some things you guys could definitely fix between now and next time.

And I can send my comments I wrote to the rest of you and you can just look at them.

We just don't wanna have a public meeting offline.

Okay, so thank you very much.

And we will we'll figure it out.

Thank you very much.

All right.