Planning Commission Work Session Meeting   7/26/2022

All right, good evening and like to our afternoon so far I'd like to call this meeting of the Albemarle County Planning Commission to order.

The opportunities for the public to access and participate in this 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.

And also, I'd like to note that our council, Andy Herrick, is actually participating online today.

It's not actually required for him to be physically seated with us.

legally.

So he has a family issue.

So he is online.

You're present.

OK.

We have you got a wonderful.

All right.

So this first item is actually a work session.

So we will not be taking public comments during this session.

And then we will have a recess at five o'clock and then begin again at six.

So our first item on the agenda for our work session, or the only item actually, the CPA 2021-00002 Comprehensive Plan Growth Management Options and Themes.

So may we have the staff information, please?

Sure, thank you.

Good afternoon, commissioners.

My name is Tori Kennelopoulos.

I'm a senior planner in the Albemarle County Planning Division, and I'm joined today by Vlad Gavrilovic, principal at EPR, and we will both be presenting on growth management options and themes for this comprehensive plan update work session.

Today, we will be covering a briefing on the AC44 comp plan update process, summarizing potential options for growth management, and discussing potential common themes to build a new vision for growth and resilience, which we anticipate bringing to the planning commission at a September work session.

We'll start off with an overview of the AC44 process and provide additional detail on where we are in phase one.

We will share an update on the next steps for the land use build out analysis and provide an overview of some potential growth management options and public input to date on those options and share what we've heard and potential common themes based on this public input.

We'll wrap up with an overview of next steps in phase one and then have time for the Planning Commission discussion and questions on potential common themes.

We're currently in phase one, plan for growth, where we are reviewing and evaluating the current growth management policy using lenses of equity, climate action, and capacity projections.

At the end of phase one, we intend to have a draft vision for growth and resilience, which will be used to inform the next phase where we will develop a policy framework based on that vision.

This is a more detailed overview of phase one, and the three blue circles indicate the three steps of public engagement.

In step one, we shared a local history of planning for growth, an overview of the current growth management policy, and initial findings from the land use build-out analysis.

We asked for community input on the current policy, what people's lived experiences have been, and what we should prioritize when reviewing the policy.

We held pop-ups and had an online survey to gather this feedback.

In step two, we developed seven growth management options to consider while reviewing the current policy, which were shared with the community to consider and provide input on.

We held open houses and had an online survey with information for each option on what the current comp plan says, why we might consider the option, and what potential action steps could follow if we pursued the option.

Based on the feedback received to date, we have drafted potential common themes.

In step three, we will continue to refine and develop these common themes and use them to draft a vision for growth and resilience.

We are planning to have in-person and virtual roundtables and online opportunities in step three.

Then we would come back to you all in September after the public engagement to discuss the draft vision, which would then go to the board in October.

We will revisit the growth management options and use the vision to inform a policy framework for the plan.

Yes, I have a question.

Sure.

At what point in this process will we have the opportunity to discuss the rural area in depth?

Sure.

So in phase two, we'll start to get into what we're calling the main topics for the comp plan, which would we would identify as we scope that phase.

So that could include transportation, economic development, land use and rural area planning.

Thank you.

Anybody else?

Public involvement, the survey responses, the pop ups, all of those.

It's a good question.

I think for the online survey, the second one, that maybe is the highest number of responses we've ever gotten for a survey.

I think for the in-person ones, it's been pretty good participation, but it has varied a lot.

Great.

Thanks.

So I'd like to follow up on that, not as a

not as a finger wagging, but as an opportunity to sort of ensure that we have the kind, that we at the end of this process have the body of responses that shows that this has been a full or an attempt to be an engagement with the community.

Because if I looked at it, according to that second bit where we had like 400, we're like in the 450, 450, 60 area as far as responses, while that's,

Well, compared to what we've done before, well, that's good.

Given that we're a place of 112,000 people, I would hope that we would come at least close to, I would like 10%, but I don't think that's going to happen.

So I've been trying to sit comfortably with around 5%.

Because I think otherwise, it will feel like the survey results are being

lifted up by people who always have the time to engage in these kinds of activities.

And I will just say, if people haven't seen it, the county, it's not the welfare thing, it's the county atmosphere survey.

Is that what it's called?

Somebody help me out here.

It's the atmosphere.

What I will say is when I went and I did a deep dive on the last one that came out.

And when I looked at the demographic, the demographics really trend white, upper class, or middle upper class, and extremely well educated.

You don't need to.

OK, thank you.

And so the opinions which were offered are opinions which make sense, given that profile of individual who's responding.

But what I'm nervous about is that those responses then become

the drivers for lots of decisions that I think probably it would be good if we had some more balance.

I will just note that, for the record, I do believe we can probably come up with some more creative ideas to get different types of people to respond.

And maybe that I think it does warrant a longer conversation than right now as we're in just in a short work session, but

The staff did actually request from the board for a very robust community engagement campaign, and they were rejected.

Right.

That's why your finger was like, nah.

It wasn't finger wagging.

All right.

Because I think staff definitely supports what you just said.

You know, had hoped to have the resources because it's kind of like the, the, the less likely people are to come at the harder and more expensive it is to get to them.

So it isn't like a one to one kind of thing.

Like, let's get another.

50 people or something and that's exactly the same cost as the first 50.

I was just going to say, I think another factor that will increase participation as we move through this process over the next couple of years is, as Commissioner Murray pointed out, people are excited to get into specific topics.

into the details of this plan.

At this point, we're still at such a high level trying to figure out which those avenues we're going to go down, which ideas we want to explore, and what are those topics that we want to dive into.

Once those topics start to resonate, people are going to want to get involved.

I think if they, you know, if they have a particular interest in transportation or, you know, environmental protection, they'll come out for those.

And we wanted to provide a brief update on the land use build out analysis which we are working with the consultant Kim Lee Horn to finalize.

We have been gathering additional data and analysis based on what we heard at the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors work sessions and continuing to compile and analyze the non-residential pipeline, analyze recent residential build-out and approval trends, and coordinate with the Economic Development Office on site readiness and site selection factors for non-residential uses.

So we have a few key takeaways so far, which include in mixed use developments, the residential component tends to build out first and the non-residential component may not build out until years later.

When factoring in site readiness and site selection criteria, there appears to be sufficient capacity for commercial and retail uses, but much less currently available for office and industrial uses.

Projects with the land use designation of urban density residential are not being approved at the higher end of recommended density ranges, with recent rezoning approvals averaging 17 and a half units per acre for net density.

And many buy right projects are developing at 30 to 50% of the density recommended in the comp plan.

Thanks, Tori.

Afternoon members of the commission.

Vlad Gavrilovic, principal with EPRPC in Charlottesville.

Honored to be selected as the part of the consultant team with a group of specialists and interdisciplinary team here to help the county.

And as Tori said, I want to walk you through some of the growth management options.

And first of all, to say that these were developed by the staff and the consultants after the first round of public input.

They're not intended as picking one as the winner or the loser.

They're intended to initiate discussion.

You'll see later in the presentation that we've taken the input on these and general input to develop some common themes.

So first of all, starting with what you all know very well, I'm sure the current growth management policy.

This is from the 2015 Conference of Plan.

Of course, it focuses on these two elements, the rural area where the primarily agricultural, forestry resources, etc.

are to be located in the development areas, which are areas where we look for facilities and services, utilities, future growth, density, and high quality design.

So where and how, I guess next slide, why and how we are reviewing the current policies.

As you know, the board initiated a resolution in support of equitable and inclusive community in 2019 as a resolution.

They also identified climate action as a top priority, adopted the climate action plan.

So it's these two lenses, along with this directive to review the current growth management policy in relation to the projections for growth.

Really these three initiatives, equity climate action and accommodating growth, is how we're reviewing the

Growth Management Policy.

And then we're doing this, of course, through a broad public input process.

Always could do better, but we are doing a variety of public input activities in each phase.

There's working groups, there's a total of six working groups that will be working through each phase of this.

The land use build out analysis, of course, to get at growth projections and really reviewing all these policy options and then coming up with common themes to ultimately build, as Tory said, a vision for growth and resilience kind of as the capstone to this phase of the project.

Next slide.

Of course, we're going to continue to work with the community and take public input and feedback.

And some of the feedback, as you'll see, has been on which of these options are better for supporting climate action, equity and accommodating growth.

And we want to build on the language in the current comprehensive plan, as well as best practices and current planning.

So these options, which I'm sure you've had an opportunity to study, but again, just to highlight that these are a range of policy options.

We don't anticipate saying that one of these is the future direction for growth management, but they have been useful to look at kind of a range of directions for the county that

We could take elements from to build this new vision, particularly in the light of public comment on these.

So I'll go through these fairly quickly, but also focus on what the public survey said about these options.

So next slide.

First one, of course, is looking at applying more density and more infill development within the existing development areas.

and retaining and enhancing green infrastructure.

And you can see the survey responses here.

So the green and the yellow are yes or somewhat through these three lenses.

Out of over 400 responses, this particular policy option supported climate action equity and projected growth in the public's opinion fairly well.

Over 300 or so supported somewhat or yes.

So that's more density infill in the development areas.

Next option was looking in the development areas to adjust the densities and reduce the maximum densities to more closely align with what people have actually been building at, as Tori said.

They're closer to building out at 17 or so units of the acre rather than the 34 max in some of these development areas.

When we ask people which of these support these different initiatives, you can see that there was a fairly even balance between people who felt that they supported climate action equity and projected growth versus people who felt that they didn't support them.

A little more no support on the climate action than of course on the projected growth.

The third option is looking at new criteria to identify when, where, and how development areas should be expanded.

So this is looking at an expansion of the development areas.

And as you might expect, this had a fairly strong response that it would support projected growth.

A lot of yeses or somewhats.

Fairly balanced on supporting equity, a little more to the yes than the no.

and a little more to the no that it would support climate action.

But interesting in all these how there isn't like a strong support on one side or the other.

I think people realize that these are complex policy issues.

There's a lot of nuance to them.

The next option was opportunities for non-residential development around the interchanges of I-64 to support job growth and economic development.

You can see on this one a few more no's on supporting climate action than equity and a fairly strong yes or somewhat that accommodates projected growth.

Option five was the possibility of rural villages where you would promote small-scale commercial and service uses to nearby rural area residents.

This option had fairly strong yes and somewhat on all three areas, climate action, equity, and projected growth, a little higher actually on equity than the other two.

But that's an interesting policy option that seems to have

be filling the support or the goal for all three areas.

Number six was looking at current service provisions and seeing if adjustments are needed to ensure equitable distribution

of services, particularly health and safety services in both the rural areas and development areas.

So looking at schools, fire, safety, health, can they be more well distributed so people have to travel less to get to these services?

And you can see here that for equity, this one was seen as a pretty strong yes or somewhat, probably 340 or so supporting equity.

For climate action, again, fairly good support for yes or somewhat and for accommodating projected growth.

So this one, six and five, the one before, were fairly good at supporting all three objectives from the public standpoint.

And then finally, exploring opportunities to promote forest retention and regenerative land uses in the rural area to support climate action goals.

As you might expect, really strong yes that this supports climate action, a little weaker yes so that it supports equity and not so much feeling that it supports the accommodation of projected growth.

So these were, again, we thought a very useful way to get the public to discuss and weigh how, given the board's initiatives, how different ways of approaching growth management could support these different initiatives.

Thank you, Vlad.

As we showed earlier in the presentation, these are the steps for phase one.

And in the following slides will share an overview of the feedback we heard during steps one and two, which we used to draft the potential common themes.

And the feedback on step one was focused on the current policy and the feedback on step two was focused on generating ideas for meeting those goals.

In step one, we heard that the current growth management policy has been successful at protecting natural resources and agricultural and forestry uses.

We also heard that challenges under the current policy include housing affordability, the need for more transportation options besides driving, and the need for infrastructure concurrent with growth.

The top three priorities for updating the policy were protection of natural resources, infrastructure and utilities planning, and housing type variety and affordability.

Based on the growth management survey results in step two, we heard that the three options that best support climate action were regenerative land uses in the rural area, rural villages, and distribution of service provision.

The three options that best support equity were service provision, rural villages, and providing more density and infill in the development areas with green infrastructure.

And for accommodating growth, the three options were rural villages, non-residential development at interchanges, and service provision.

And you may note that options five and six were the only ones that made it onto all three lists from the survey.

We also asked the community which options we should continue to explore and included an opportunity to provide other options for us to consider.

Regenerative land uses in the rural area, rural villages, and opportunities for density and infill in the development areas received the most support.

And we wanted to note that the spread between the top and bottom options is not wide and all options had some support for continuing exploration.

Based on the text responses in the survey, some respondents were interested in exploring certain options, but noted that it was dependent on how those options were implemented.

And these are some of the other options to continue to explore that we heard which we've attempted to summarize here and include alternative modes of transportation, more recreational opportunities, keeping the current growth management policy the same and keeping the status quo.

Strategies for affordable housing, more replacement and enhancement of the tree canopy, more mixed use development, job training opportunities, and encouraging career ladder jobs.

And then we also wanted to note that we received a significant number of emails and several survey responses expressing support for the Three Notch Trail.

Along with this feedback on which options to explore and which seem to best meet our goals, we have also received significant open ended comments in both steps one and two and at our working group meetings.

This slide summarizes the support and concern for some of the options.

We are hearing that the growth management policy has increased the cost of housing by restricting land area available for development, that we are not getting enough density within the development areas to support local housing needs, and that we should expand the development areas to allow more housing.

We are also hearing that there has been too much growth in density within the development areas, that density should be reduced, and that infrastructure has not kept up with growth.

We are hearing both that density should be concentrated to reduce sprawl and support climate action and also that new development removes tree canopy.

For the rural villages, we are hearing concern that the rural villages could have the unintended effect of encouraging additional growth, but also that they could reduce distances residents need to drive for some goods and services.

For non-residential development at I-64 interchanges, we are hearing that development at interchanges could make use of existing infrastructure and support new business opportunities, but also that it could negatively impact the surrounding area with additional noise and traffic.

Thanks, Tori.

Almost done and look forward to hearing your discussion.

So the challenge, as you might well imagine, is what to do with this very robust public input.

Reading through the comments, there really was a lot of intelligent comment.

A lot of people took this very seriously.

And you have this polarity of

of input to some extent, what Tori went through of wanting both one thing and its opposite.

And remembering that our process chart shows that the end result of this phase is not picking one of those options, but it's coming up with this

New Vision for Growth and Resilience.

So in light of that, we took the common themes from what we heard, both on the seven options and on the input that was open ended, that people just wrote in, and the input on the first phase, and looking at what are things that are common elements, what are people generally showing agreement on.

We anticipate using these themes for the next round of public input.

So rather than going back to the development options or the growth management options, using these common themes that seem to have some traction on people's agreement.

However, we don't want to lose the seven options.

We anticipate coming back to those in phase two and looking at, in light of this vision, how do they each perform and what elements can we take from them.

So just briefly to take away some things that we heard that people seem to be in agreement on was a focus on action.

The broad policy directions from the Board of Climate Action and Equity need to be translated into concrete actions.

Is equity more about affordable housing?

Is climate action more about regenerative uses?

Those types of things.

General support for affordable housing, address the county's high cost of living, high cost of housing, the importance of how we grow, so the design quality of how we grow, and really a focus on conservation based design.

in guidelines and standards.

And then a multimodal transportation focus.

Alternatives to the 80% or so of the county that use single occupancy vehicles to get around.

So not only active transportation like bike and ped,

but also transit options seems to get a lot of support.

And then the idea that infrastructure needs to keep pace with growth, particularly on schools.

We had heard a lot of comments, so growing sustainably.

Very interesting idea of strategic density.

So looking at not one size fits all, but looking in the development areas at where

It makes sense to increase the development density where you might have available infrastructure services, good access and less kind of issues with adjacent low density development versus areas where it may make sense to reduce the development density.

in accord with what you've been seeing typically is coming in rather than the maximum density in the comprehensive plan.

And then finally, greening the development areas as we grow, make sure that we're adding green infrastructure and parks to them.

So these are the seven ones.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

There's we're going to pause for questions that there's really only two or three more slides.

Well, I think we should have some conversation before we go to the next steps.

Sounds good.

That's all right.

How would you like to go about this?

Do you want to go through these common threads, or do you want to go back to the different options and discuss them?

I've only got 30 minutes.

Or we could just pick the things that we think are most important to communicate to our consultants at this time.

I definitely have some thoughts, and I know you do too.

If you want to go to the slide that is like questions for you, this would be most helpful.

I mean, this is two things.

Basically, we want to use this in the next round of engagement.

Are they getting us in the right direction?

Okay, well, we'd like to start.

But I don't think anyone would disagree on the importance of climate action equity and that we all probably agree they need to be translated into common actions, concrete actions.

And a lot of these things are linked together.

For example, greening development areas is obviously related to climate action and also equity since people should be able to walk to a park or a trail or a healthy environment near to where they live and not have to get in the car.

and drive a really long way to find something green.

And providing access to services in the rural areas is also important for climate action because if everyone has to drive all the way to Charlottesville for every single need, then we're just driving all over the county.

The affordable housing is also a tricky one because

We are trying hard to provide affordable housing in the growth area, but the reality is that most of the affordable housing in our county is in the rural area.

But if you live way out in the rural area, as I do, and some of you, you then don't have access to the services, you know, and so

that's where we get into that equity of service provision because we can't just say to people we're providing all of the resources in the development area and that's so efficient and yet we don't have the affordability for all of you to just choose to live in the development area.

So that's where it becomes sort of unfair.

And I've seen steps in the county trying to, has actually started to shift a bit more towards understanding that

The best example that comes to my mind is the recycling center.

I'm like a recycling center in my house.

I collect all this stuff for a month, and then I look like a trash truck driving up 29 to get all the way to town, or a 50-minute drive each way.

So I mean that's too, and I'm, and I'm ruining the climate while I'm driving my recycling, you know, so the fact that we've now provided something in Southern Albemarle and we're going to look for other places in the county to do that is to me a softening.

of that notion that services only go in the developed area.

So that's sort of my broad brush kind of look at this.

I think some of the green infrastructure stuff and parks and green systems, one of our challenges, and this is the last thing I'll say, I just thought I'd kind of throw some things out here to start off.

If we talk about stormwater management green infrastructure for a moment, the sort of constructed green infrastructure, we're seeing a lot less of that.

We've talked about permeable pavements and bioswales, but developers are buying offsite credits.

Why?

Because they can.

It's the cheapest option.

So we could look at incentives and give density bonuses and other things for incorporating those structures.

That has worked in other places.

We did an ordinance for that in Charlottesville.

That is something we can't just say, yeah, more low impact development, green infrastructure stuff.

We're going to have to do something to change the market for that.

The park systems, green trails, tree canopy, all of that.

Similarly, there's things that are related to codes, as Charles knows, we don't have

We just don't.

That's easily fixed in my mind.

But something like parks and access, if we wait for the density to get to the point where it's like, wow, there's really a demand here.

There is no land left to put that trail.

Or if we didn't have a master plan for how we want all these greenways to connect, then the developers don't know where they should be putting that trail spur.

You know, Charlottesville has been very successful because when they did the, of course, they had the voluntary sort of urban ring of the trail, the Rivanna Trail going around the city.

But one thing the city did is say, we'd like you to connect here and here and here and here.

And so a number of connections were proffered or offered because developers like, great, that's where you want the connection.

Thank you for telling me.

But if we wait for

You know, we keep seeing like this trail here.

Here's an eight foot wide path to nowhere in front of this development.

Here's another one.

We had a development come for us recently in the past month where the developer was saying, gee, it would be great if the adjoining development donated land for us to continue this trail.

And I saw I saw maybe what a five percent chance that the adjacent development was going to donate land to make that trail work.

So

The county itself is going to have to do a lot more of the intensive planning and then actually spending the taxpayers dollars to get these things in place because

Our model, I think we can say this, I'll just make a broad statement, our model of hoping that through proffers and putting things in the comp plan of what we wish we had is not getting us the parks, the trails, the amenities, the bike transportation, the things that we need to the degree that we need it.

Yes, I mean, I think one of the important things we talked about, you know, equity with the rural area as a rural area resident myself as well.

I think it's important to have a concept of do no harm in the rural area and not lose the services that we have.

To make one example of that,

We don't get sidewalks proffered in the rural area because we don't have rezonings in the rural area.

We don't get bike trails because, once again, we don't have rezonings.

The only safe places to run or bike tend to be gravel roads.

We know which gravel roads tend to be the most frequently used by runners and cyclists, but we keep paving them.

So we have this tendency to have a degradation of the services that rural people use.

and yet we can't get new services that are corollary with what we have in the growth area.

So that seems to be a big problem.

A great example, Route 76.

We have a national bike route that goes through our county.

It's an embarrassment, honestly.

I mean, anyone on that bike route is risking their life.

My daughter asks me, you know,

Hey, you know, can we run to, we're at, you know, 12 miles now, can we can we run for our house to Groeschel?

And you know, that's a bike route, we should be able to do that, right?

I tell her, no, we would die.

So that's a big problem that I see with this.

I think, you know, also, you're absolutely right about the challenges with greening the development areas and parks.

We have currently a sort of developed to protect model right now where we have a big green area next to the Rivanna River or some other area we want to conserve and to get some green space profit along that river we have to clear all the trees or at least we have to clear 75% of the trees to get you know 25% of a little strip you know along the river

That seems counterintuitive.

Some other localities have implemented urban concepts of transferable rights so that you can actually protect that whole area as opposed to having to develop part of it to just to protect the sliver of this lab.

So I think we need some more creativity in how we look at a lot of these issues.

We have programs that could be applied for also like we have an ACAP program currently, but you can't use ACAP for properties that are under development.

So it'd be great if we had, as you said, incentive programs where we could actually say, hey, can we give you a little bit of extra funding to put a green roof on that building?

That would be fantastic.

I'd like to go next.

Do you want to do rock, paper, scissors?

As far as the common themes, the potential common themes are concerned, I'm actually supportive of them.

What I do see, and I think you will hear, not only in a small group, but in the survey and then some of the comments that you'll hear from my colleagues up here, is this idea of how do you balance and how do you strike sort of an equitable way forward?

with all of these issues.

And so I'm gonna push something out here that's not here, but there's a piece that's going to happen 10 years from now when we redistrict, go through another redistricting, okay?

And if we do not increase the development area, Samuel Miller will end up at a point in the near future of being the largest landmass district in Albemarle County.

And so from an equity standpoint, one has to say, is that where we want to go as a county?

That we have this one very large landmass that's called Samuel Miller.

What will the people from Whitehall feel?

Because they're one of the boundaries.

What will the people from Jack Shuart, the district that I represented this in a titular way, what will they feel?

But more importantly,

What does that mean for the county when we adhere to a no reshaping of our development boundaries?

And yet this is one of the situations, and we have no control over that.

Because the decision about equally balanced districts does not sit here.

It sits down Route 64.

And so it will happen one way or the other.

Will it happen because we are thoughtful enough on the front end of that?

Or we are not, and then we have to react on the back end of that.

And so that's a piece that's an unintended consequence of our land use.

And so while there are the obvious pieces here, what I would ask as we move forward is that we actually look at some of the secondary and tertiary issues that are not apparent.

I live next to a development area.

I actually happen to live in the rural area, which may not be apparent if anyone looks at my address.

And in order to get to, and we have two parks in the development area.

We have one in Corey's area, and we have one in mine.

and the one in mine is never going to be a recreational park.

I would challenge anyone to come to the Charlotte Humphreys Park and tell me that we do not have a density of trees that rivals anything in the rural area, rivals anything in the rural area.

But I can't get a number of kids there to walk there.

I can't get the other place that's close to us as Ivy

Ivy Creek Nature Area, which is contiguous to our property.

I can't get a young person there.

And while you talk about it, they have gravel roads.

I can't get a person there on a gravel road or a non gravel road.

I just can't get a person there.

And so as we talk about, and we have plenty of parks, I'm sure I'll be lambasted for this.

There are plenty of formal green spaces in the rural part of our county.

There's plenty of.

I'm not saying there's too many, I'm just saying there's plenty of them.

And yet, when we talk about the greening of our county, we really talk about the greening of our county with the people who have the least amount of access to those resources.

And so, while I will be terse in my statement saying I don't care about another park in the rural part of the country,

I just want you to have it there.

Fred.

So thanks for the information and for the presentation.

This was really helpful.

I know that you all are looking to sort of narrow the neck of the funnel, right?

We're still pretty broad up at the top and eventually we're going to get there.

And so keeping that in mind, you know, to answer your question, specifically the common themes, I think this does strike most of the common themes.

And, you know, I have to think sort of sub theme to make sure that that's actually the case to your point.

One thing that I think is sort of getting back to my original question about public participation.

You know, I would wonder how much the development community, how much economic development was involved in this in this conversation and my first go to and looking at these is to try to prioritize them.

And that's just where my brain goes.

And I think that really depends on where you come from.

Do you come from the development side?

Do you come from the sustainability side and so on.

So I think thinking through that and making sure that our foundation for this very broad

area of focus, these themes, is stable enough and representative enough, if there's a way to do that, of all of the somewhat diverse input that you're going to get and doesn't throw a bias in a certain area that's unintended maybe just because people weren't involved.

I know that's probably challenging to do, but it's worth a try.

The other thing is, and I know I'm preaching to the choir on this one, as you think about the strategic density and you think about how important that is, my thought goes to what is the goal?

We need to be sort of driven by a goal, and what is that goal?

Is our goal to fill in the blank, add more density to the development areas, expand the development area?

Is it to bring economic development from other parts of the state

The nation, what is it that's actually driving our desire to look at strategic density and sustainability and so on.

I think everything that we're talking about maybe back to this point about open space and sustainability needs to somehow be linked to a master plan.

Right, eventually.

And I know, again, we'll get there.

But how does, for example, the capital plan for infrastructure, how does that inform development, and how are they linked together?

And not to throw RWSA in the mix, but it's just one that comes to mind.

What is their capital plan, and how does that support strategic density?

How does it support sustainability, et cetera, et cetera?

I think all of those need to be woven together.

And then one other thing that I'll throw out there, and this sort of gets back to the very, probably third or fourth slide, I think that you shared, and that was this issue of site readiness.

Yeah, exactly.

So I think, you know, how do we defining site readiness in this county?

I think there are a lot of different ways to do that.

One is you actually have a ready site and you present it for economic development.

And another is that, oh, well, there's a lot of room here to build that based on our master plan, but is it really ready?

So I think just thinking through how that process then also builds on the strategic density approach.

I'd like to go next.

Well, I'm going to start by apologizing for being late.

Fortunately, I got tied up in my day job.

We're glad you're here.

And I'm glad I was here to hear some of the commentary that I've heard so far.

And I would agree with what's been said in particular about the approach.

I like your comment.

It's a funnel.

I mean, we're trying to work down.

I guess my reaction to it is, and you've heard me say some of this before, particularly around affordable housing, is can we build in measurable

you know, opportunities.

So like, how do we know that some of these things are meeting our intended purpose, right?

What are things that we can measure?

So as we building these themes, let's build in some ways of measuring success.

I think you can apply that to every single one of them, but I'll harp on the affordable housing one again.

How do we know that

we're achieving the goal that was set with this team.

And can we think about some ways to measure that success?

I wholeheartedly agree.

I think this is certainly heading on the right track.

There's two things that kind of jumped out at me.

One was for action focus, where it highlights the common action and equity.

I almost feel that should just be woven through each one of those common themes, opposed to like a standalone one.

It's just woven through.

I mean, it's almost like a strategic plan in a sense.

And then the second piece that we hadn't really talked much about was the strategic density.

I thought it was really interesting that when the key takeaways, I just pulled it up, that the urban density residential, which goes up to 34 units per acre, it said that most of those at the higher end don't get approved, but I think the number was 17.6.

It's kind of like the average, but I feel like the density is such a key portion in solving some of these other challenges.

Figuring out what that disconnect is in the community, because I think you also had a sheet in here that said, you know, we're hearing both, right?

Don't like density, and we do like density.

So that's something we have to kind of wrestle to the ground.

And I'm sure it's part of the final deliverable here as much as, is there an education sense in this process with the community as we step through this?

Does that mean it's graphics or visuals?

I'm not sure what that answer is yet.

But addressing it, because I think if we can get our arms and

and embrace the strategic density portion, I think you can start talking about design importance, or that could be a major key to affordable housing, right?

Mixed use development, I can live and work in that same area.

Yep.

Daniel, did you want to comment and then we can- Yeah, just to- I mean, I agree with you that it's just like, as we, you know, there's a big momentum around ESG,

Environmental social governance and corporate reporting and financial disclosures and everything in the world I live in.

That's not a standalone thing.

It should be woven throughout everything we do.

And I agree with you very much that the climate action and equity should be cross-cutting across these things.

One note on affordable housing, I think it comes up and we've had some discussion.

I go back to, you know, I can't remember

When Dr. Pethier came two years ago or whatever, I was like affordable, also accessible.

You know, like we have aging population.

Can they age in place?

And so there's a question there that it's affordable.

And then what is the definition of affordability?

Is it affordable that it's just in a monetary or can it house certain

You know, we talk about that, but it comes up over and over.

It's like, oh, so developers offering affordable housing, but who can live there?

It's a shoebox, you know, like, but what does that mean?

And we get that.

And I think that's a great thing for, um, to help define, understand the KPIs, what you talked about with the key performance indicators that were going to help us track this and know if we're on track and then maybe augment a bit with accessibility would be, if you asked what I think is missing there, you know, making sure that we're,

And then I think one of the things that strikes me and you kind of mentioned it with it is

We've always struggled with having that data and feedback of how well we're doing.

We're making decisions on what the land use, land class, and the thing, I live in Belvedere, right?

It has a concept, I've been there for nearly 10 years, has a concept of having a little center community that's been vacant for 10 years.

right and they like and and we've done a lot of approving of these like novel neighborhood model density developments and other things where they should have this little like retail or office building I would really love to know how many of them are actually developed that have been approved in the last two years because it's something we keep promoting and pushing but is it actually what

is wanted, you know, or do we end up with unkept, unmaintained areas within a development that grow up big weeds and are never actually developed because it's not what's what is the land use needed.

So those are the things that I would say that, you know, it's not here, but it's hard.

We can do these type of things, but we've always struggled for the data to understand the decision and go forward.

And so I'd love to, you know, see if there's a way to get at least in this to

start to set the standard for how we're going to track, collect, create data that we can reason over, not just here, but in the future.

So those are some of the things that strike me.

I think they are in the right direction.

You asked specific questions.

I do think they point us in the right direction.

I think we're going to struggle with reasoning over them because of the lack of data and feedback that we have.

you know, if we can start to find ways to augment that or supplement that, it will help us make better decisions moving forward.

I've already talked about missing with the accessibility and affordability piece, talked about the, you know, ways that we can review the, I guess it's, I don't know if it's design importance.

There's a lot to unpack there, but I'll just say, and we don't have time on these little mini work sessions, but I'll just say that it struck me that it would be almost useful to make a list of some of these planning approaches, like centers, you know, we see the C on the map and I go, we got to stick a center in there.

And multiple developers come to say, yeah, but like three blocks away, there is a center, the grocery store and offices and a veterinarian.

And why would we like make another

I think we need to examine some of these sort of things that we've been promoting in the neighborhood model.

We've had some developments south of town that are like, well, we don't really have a model, so we'll just adopt that one that was for places 29 north.

try to smush that in there.

So there's a number of those kind of things in that bucket that we could, affordable housing, you know, is it maybe it would be affordable housing if you had affordable transportation to get you from your affordable house to the services that you need.

And I don't want to, I don't want to like take it off of the focus of the conversation, but coming back to the original

point of like I saw all these statistics and everybody knows I'm a data person so I see all these surveys and everything and I couldn't really figure out like it kind of comes back you said is like how representative is the population like it doesn't matter if we have 400 if we believe that 400 that sample is representative of the population we're trying to measure but so giving a sense of like how close and what is the gaps in the sample

that we have, we don't need five, we don't necessarily need 5%.

Well, this is a qualitative sample, not a quantitative sample.

It's not a representative sample.

Right.

So one of the things I think we're not just us, but I think our supervisors in the community are going to have to deal with here.

So a number of the things that we, through options one through seven,

are really we're sort of waiting for the market to get there.

and the comp plan is that sort of gentle hand on the market, hoping and guiding it to some places.

And so some of this though may be, and I'm not there yet, but at some point we may be asking for the supervisors and the community to come together and say, in these particular areas, we want it to be less of a less safe share.

I know all of those people are gonna jump up and say,

but as a community good, there are some things that a community dialogue has to take place and then the appropriate investment or the appropriate sort of ordinances get put in place in order to do this.

For instance, you know, do you have a conversation and he's not here tonight, but do you have a conversation with Vida because Vida makes a decision on our rights.

We make no decisions on rights.

They're the ones who say these roads, we think VDOT, that they should have this road.

But is there an opportunity to say that there are some places, and I don't know, are there some situations or are there some hoped for things in our future when in fact we're going to be a little bit less gentle than letting the market determine that?

Some of this feels like this isn't, there's no sort of

I think we'd have a hard cost benefit on some of these in this community to get to a yes on a number of these things.

Yeah, I agree.

And I think some things are going to actually have to be cash spent by our county too.

Yeah, so one of the things that occurs to me too, particularly about five and six, is that there's a relationship there, is that I think we need to start changing the way we look at density.

Density has become a bad word in our community.

And when people come up and they speak about a housing development that's being built next to them, they say, oh, there's too much density.

People are associating a density of people with a loss of service.

And so I think we need to change the way we think about density and think about a density of service, not just a density of people.

And so if we can think of our neighborhoods, if you could say, well, there's going to be more people here, but there's going to be more stormwater treatment.

There's going to be more access to grocery stores.

There's going to be more places to walk.

There's going to be more services.

I think people would want to live in those places.

I think we would be more acceptable, this place being next door.

But we've associated that word density with just a strictly a density of people.

I would also say that I've also heard in our community that density has a person type.

So I want to be real careful that we don't just sweep that under the rug.

There's been a great deal, I will refer to a project that we saw last year, that a group of individuals came forward and said, we don't want that project there because it's going to bring these kinds of people to that project.

That is the narrative that we hear around a lot of density.

I think we're going to hear some of that narrative tonight, in fact.

At least some of the letters that came to us over the last week had that undertone to it.

We don't want those people here.

And this project that I'm harkening back to, when I asked the developer how much an apartment was going to cost them, they were $2,000 a month.

I hate to say something, but somebody who can afford to pay $2,000 a month in a park in a one or two bedroom or one in a den or one and it was like, you know, it was like one in a den or something like that.

That person is not one of those persons who I would be afraid to live next to.

So I want to just sort of give to you, Lonnie, a little bit of some of the stuff we've heard has not been about a fear of, has been couched in what you just so eloquently said.

But then if you sort of scratch on it a little bit and ask them, so what is it that you think you're losing?

The irony of what I've seen in Crozet though, is from my time growing up there, Crozet has become way more dense.

But it's become way less diverse.

And so we've got density, but we lost diversity.

We lost that great diversity that I grew up with.

Could I offer a couple thoughts?

I know we're almost out of time, so I'll speak quickly.

One is, I think, you know, just thinking about your comments about the services matching with the density, etc.

and I think it'll be interesting as this all sort of broadens and we understand a little bit more, you know, what is the perception versus what is the reality, right?

So I think a lot and it, you know, very much depends on the location, it depends on the person, a lot of things and what they're seeing as a service that they want that they don't have because things got denser.

That's right.

And I think that just underscores the need to continue to think about master planning, right?

And how do you engage the community in a master plan that they can, as many as possible, have buy-in to that includes services as well as density.

And so they can see that as things are coming online, density is being added.

Oh, well, there is accommodation for services in the master plan.

The second thing is just thinking about the market and your comments.

I think those were great comments.

I would just, and you guys will do this, but just encourage, you know, a focus on a flexibility because obviously the market is all over the place.

Right now, light industrial is like, you know, we need more light industrial capacity.

10 years from now, it might be something different, but I just think as we're thinking through, you know, to 40, 40 to 2044, not 40, 40, it's a little further out, but

You know, thinking about that timeframe, there are going to be so many ups and downs in the market, trying to be as flexible as possible is important.

And then the last thing is a question in terms of process.

The next public engagement is a community roundtable, I think, coming up.

How will those be structured?

That's a good question.

We are still working on planning for that, but we anticipate having both in-person and virtual options.

I guess my question is, will they be themed or not?

It's something we've been discussing both ways.

I haven't made an actual decision yet.

I see positives of both sides of that.

A certain theme brings a particular interest group, but then you don't get the diversity of viewpoints to kind of play off each other as much.

So there's pros and cons of both.

Well, I think we need to just go to next steps.

I just want to go back to the, to the, to, so I think it was, it was Barry's comment of five and six being, being so connected.

I would like to, to challenge you to, to actually

Think beyond the status quo, which is what I read here.

Infrastructure needs to keep up with growth.

And open up the opportunity to strategic density.

Not keep up, because we never keep up.

We're always going to be the same thing.

Our schools are always going to be overcrowded.

our traffic is going to be an issue because as soon as you can build, you can densify, you densify and then everything follows.

Yeah, that was kind of long lines of the last comment I wanted to make and then we should whatever the next steps are real quick but I think we need to, as you go through this whole process keep questioning what are the things in here that we think the market could provide if we enable it versus the things that we have to do.

Oh, because too often in this county, I feel like I see there was talk about moving the courthouses and all this big development plans, if you recall, several years ago and what that was going to generate and how it was going to be public-private partnerships and blah, blah, blah.

Everything will be paid for by magic private partnerships.

And that didn't happen.

We're looking for a rail road to redevelop with the form-based code.

We've got a lot of vision for that, but we're not really

Let's check back on that in 10 years and see how that did.

I just think that there are a lot of things that they that require us to actually invest in them to get what we want to your point.

And I'd like you to also throughout all these things think about connectivity, whether it's people moving, bikes moving, birds moving, whatever.

I think that because we keep putting things in little spots that people can't access.

So next steps real quick is our

Yes, sure.

So the next step would be to go out to public engagement with these common themes, then come back to you in September for a work session on this draft vision for growth and resilience.

Yes, that's something we're going to bring up tonight under other business is the idea of making these sessions longer.

I believe they need to be at least two hours.

I've had some suggestions that maybe they could be in 90 minutes.

I don't know.

So we'll talk about that tonight under other business about schedules.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right.

So with that, I'm going to end this work session of the Amarillo County Planning Commission, and we'll reconvene promptly at 6.