Planning Commission Work Session & Regular Meeting   10/10/2023

Today is the 10th, 2023, and this is the work session and regular meeting of the Albemarle Planning Commission.

Sorry, I can't speak.

Always say where we are and what day it is so you can make sure you're in the right place.

And if you're not, it's totally fine if you slip out, but wanted to make sure you knew you were in the right spot tonight.

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, which comments from the public will be received.

So with that, I'd like to call this meeting to order and establish a quorum.

Yes.

I see Ms.

Firehock is not there and Mr. Moore is joining via Zoom.

Mr. Moore, if you can unmute and we can get started.

I'm here, thank you.

Yes.

Sorry.

I was if you could share your general reason for not being here in person, just in general.

Sure.

Illness, COVID, that diagnosis.

All right, sorry to hear that.

And if we could also clarify his general location as well for the record.

All right, thank you.

So moved.

All right, any further discussion?

Yes.

OK.

I just want to make sure.

Mr. Murray?

All right.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

All right.

All right.

On to the next item on the agenda is other matters not listed on the agenda from the public.

And just as a gentle reminder during the work session, we won't take public comment during that period.

So if you want to speak on the item in our work session, this would be the time to do so.

I do have a list here of several citizens here to like to speak and I'll start with the first two.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

My name is Rob McGinnis.

I'm here representing the Piedmont Environmental Council.

I want to first recognize the important contributions made during the Planning Commission's previous work session on the four AC44 toolkits.

PEC greatly appreciates the very constructive discussions which led to recommendations for improving those toolkits.

However, PEC had strong concerns regarding any type of map

that depicts areas of future expansion of the development areas.

Such a map will be problematic, particularly regarding the acceleration of land speculation and the likely impacts associated with land speculation.

There is a real danger that the mapping could spur premature expansion by drawing attention away from directing growth into the development areas.

During the AC44 presentation by county staff during the most recent County Natural Heritage Committee, staff reported that the AC44 team will be exploring the possibility of including a rural area chapter and a development areas chapter.

This is welcome news given the past two comprehensive plans included prioritized rural area chapters and the residents of the county by a significant majority consistently

place a very high value on the rural areas as documented in nearly three decades of community surveys, survey results, as well as recent feedback from the public on the AC44 comprehensive plan process.

The county should follow through with reinstating the rural area and development chapters in the AC44 comprehensive plan.

Thank you for the opportunity to share my comments.

Hi, my name is Carol Carter and I live at 852 Redlands Farm.

I'd like to urge the planners to honor and emphasize protection of the rural character of the county by putting the rural plan chapter back in the comprehensive plan.

For years, survey after survey have demonstrated the value and importance to residents of rural protections.

Agriculture, forestry, and agritourism are thriving in the county.

And while our scenic beauty is appreciated by residents and visitors alike,

The protections of healthy ecosystems, biodiversity, and sustainable land management are critical to the future of our water quality, our human health, and climate mitigation.

Preservation and conservation of our natural and working landscapes should be prioritized for our well-being and because they are what makes life in and visitation to the county desirable.

The Climate Action Plan, Stream Health Initiative, Biodiversity Action Plan and Water Supply Plan are essential to the protection of the rural area.

Please prioritize integration of parks and open space within private development and redevelopment in the development area.

Please expand incentives for conservation easements in the county.

Please consider the many cyclists who commute and bike for recreation in the county

in your transportation planning as well as wildlife corridors to reduce collisions.

Please protect our forests, farm and grazing lands.

It takes over 100 years to build a mere inch of topsoil and sacrificing prime Virginia soils to large solar development is short-sighted, particularly when they are in scenic viewsheds.

Please protect our threatened dark skies with a strong and enforceable light ordinance.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Tom Olivier from the Samuel Miller District.

I've come to comment on the update of the comprehensive plan.

Natural resources sustain us physically.

We require air to breathe and water to drink.

Agriculture which feeds us in turn depends on pollinating insects.

Ecosystems sequester carbon dioxide, and many of us feel a mix of peace and joy in beholding the ecosystems that grace our open space landscapes.

However, since the beginning of the industrial age, human numbers and per capita consumption of natural resources have risen.

Today the planet's natural systems have been reduced and damaged by expanding human activities.

Are today's reduced natural system sufficient to sustainably provide the services and products humanity now requires?

Ecological footprint methodology is an established means of measuring human demands for biological productions of the planet's ecological, agricultural, and forestal systems.

Material products and waste absorption capacities are considered in the footprint.

In a recent paper, developments of the ecological footprint methodology report that humanity's current demands on the Earth's biological systems now exceed their productive capacities by 70%, that's 7-0% per year.

Combining our excessive demand for the planet's biological productivity,

With the human caused biodiversity extinction crisis, human caused climate change, and other human caused environmental crises, it's plain that our current condition is not ecologically sustainable.

Our path back to environmental sustainability, if it exists, no doubt will be complex and challenging.

One element is clear.

We must protect and restore the planet's ecosystems.

So it's vital that our next comprehensive plan strongly support protection of county natural resources.

On other topics, historic resources are important to our identity and understanding of ourselves.

The county should help protect them.

and Parks are important to the quality of life, especially in our urban areas.

Finally, I understand that the AC44 team now considers addition of a rural areas chapter in the new plan.

I commend staff's willingness to consider this addition.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Chair Clayborne and commissioners.

It's good to be with you this evening.

My name is Genevieve Keller.

I'm president of Preservation Piedmont and I'm representing them this evening.

Our organization, our advocacy committee, has carefully reviewed your draft goals and objectives for the historic, scenic, and cultural resources.

We are a regional nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of the built environment and building an appreciation for historic resources throughout our region.

We've been working closely with the city for too many years now as they've worked on a comp plan and their zoning ordinance and we have

have taken up your issues with a great deal of interest because we believe in regional cooperation and coordination.

We have been considering several issues that we would like to bring to you tonight for your consideration.

One of those is your supplemental goal two with a focus on protection of resources.

with adding language that promotes the preservation of the county's significant cultural landscapes.

We hope that you will consider an additional objective to pursue proactive measures, programs, and regulations to protect Albemarle's historic, scenic, and cultural resources, including cultural landscapes, districts, archaeological sites, buildings, structures, buildings, and objects.

and we hope that you will coordinate with and incorporate historic, scenic and cultural resource values within a rural area plan and small area plans for those rural villages and communities.

Some future actions or strategies that we envision might include updating or preparing a new historic preservation plan,

creating a historic preservation ordinance, which is about three decades too late, including enabling a locally designated historic district or two, permanently funding a qualified historic preservation planner, permanently funding a rural area planner,

And we also hope that you will prepare a rural area plan that addresses natural and working landscapes, cultural landscapes, and preserves and promotes the very aspects of the landscape that provide residents with a sense of place and well-being and that address climate change and support the local economy through tourism and economic development.

We hope that this rural area plan could be comprehensive and be informed by significant public engagement.

We also hope that there will be community driven small area plans for the rural villages and communities and that you will protect rural area values and character through inclusion of a rural areas chapter in the updated comprehensive plan.

We know that previous comp plans have included a rural area chapter and it's something we would very much like to see you continue.

Thank you for taking the time tonight to review our comments, which I will hand out to you.

And we look forward to working with you in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Before we officially move into the work session, I'll ask, is there anyone else who would like to speak?

OK.

Seeing none, I will move actually to the consent agenda.

I apologize.

Moving to the consent agenda, which is on everyone's next sheet.

There's two items there.

Meeting minutes from September the 12th and September the 26th of this year.

Thank you.

Any further discussion?

All right, thank you.

Thank you so much, Madam Clerk.

And with that, we will now move into the work session.

So CPA 2021, quadruple zero to AC44 goals and objectives for natural and historic resources and parks and recreation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Planning Commission members.

I'm Ben Holt.

I'm with the Long Range Planning Team, and I'll be presenting on AC44 phase two for draft goals and objectives.

As an overview of what we're discussing tonight, we're going to present a snapshot of where we are in phase two of AC44 and also discuss the process for drafting the goals and objectives.

The three topics for the comprehensive plan that we'll be covering tonight are environmental stewardship, parks and recreation, historic, scenic, and cultural resources.

Staff will give a brief presentation on the draft goals and objectives for each of these topics, and then we'll pause for discussion of approximately 20 to 25 minutes for each one.

And at the end of the presentation, we'll present next steps in the AC44 process.

So, the purpose of the work session is to receive information on each of the planned topics and consider whether the goals align with the framework and what's missing from the draft goals and objectives.

The goals and objectives have been drafted with input from the community, county committees, the planning commission, board of supervisors, and the content also includes input from county staff, partner agencies, a review of the existing 2015 plan, incorporating best practices from other jurisdictions throughout the country,

and direction from the framework for an equitable and resilient community which sets a vision for what the county aspires to be in 2044, a green and resilient, welcoming and equitable, connected and accessible, thriving and prosperous community.

The goals and objectives are directed by the county vision and the mission and the AC44 framework.

These goals and objectives provide direction for each topic.

A goal is defined as a high level and long-term direction, whereas an objective is a specific outcome or target to accomplish a goal.

Last of all, an action step is a policy, infrastructure improvement, planning effort, or activity used to achieve and implement the plan objectives.

The framework and big ideas incorporate the community input from phase one, the board priorities of equity as directed by the resolution for an equitable and inclusive community in 2019 and the county's mission statement.

It also incorporates climate action plan of 2020 and PC and board input, as well as the goals from the 2015 comprehensive plans and American Planning Association best practices.

The purpose of the framework was to find a common ground and build a foundation of community support for policy guidance that incorporates the priorities of equity and climate action and also improves the plan usability by consolidating the content and highlighting interconnections among plan topics.

Regarding the plan links, consolidating and reducing the plan is a strategy for a more accessible and user-friendly plan.

The current 2015 comprehensive plan is 125,853 words and as a frame of reference that is longer than The Hobbit.

Prominent plans that have been published over the last several years are trending significantly shorter.

Those include Charlottesville, Greensboro, North Carolina and Richmond and those range from 24,000 to 72,000 words or roughly 40 to 80 percent shorter than our existing plan.

This current step three of phase two focuses on goals and objectives.

This is the first of three work session on the goals and objectives for the planned topics.

The following two work sessions for the rest of the topic groups will be held in November and December, and I'll provide further details on those towards the end of the presentation.

To quickly recap community engagement, step one focused on the priorities for the planned topics.

It included a questionnaire on the challenges, opportunities, and priorities, and it had a high number of respondents for the questionnaire.

We also had six pop-ups, one in each magisterial district, a working group meeting, and community chat kits for participants to discuss challenges and opportunities.

In step two, we focused on planning toolkits.

This involved five open houses, and four of those were in person and one online.

We also had questionnaires on each of the four topics for the toolkits, and a working group meeting and another round of community chat kits.

Although the response rate was lower for that questionnaire, we had a high number of visitors to the AC44 website during that time period.

Let's skip one.

In this current step three of phase two for the draft goals and objectives, we have a questionnaire open on each topic of environmental stewardship, historic resources, and parks and rec.

We will keep these surveys open throughout the rest of step three.

The surveys for the remaining topics will be published in advance of each work session.

Staff has also held Chat with a Planner opportunities in September and October, and these coincided with two board meetings and the Rivanna River Basin Conference.

Staff also presented recently at the Natural Heritage Commission on October 5th, and we also held two pop-ups where we shared information at the Loop Deville event and the Community Day at Simpson Park.

That brings us to our first topic of environmental stewardship.

I'd like to note that the topic name has changed from natural resources to environmental stewardship, placing a focus on protecting and restoring the natural environment and also recognizing the benefits beyond just a set of resources that may be used.

Environmental stewardship includes climate action, resilience, clean waterways and water sources, stormwater management, biodiversity and ecosystem protection, habitat restoration, native plant protection, waste management and recycling.

It's connected to other planned topics, including land use, transportation and parks.

Some of the community input themes we've heard are protecting and restoring water quality, ensuring drinking water supply, disaster preparedness, including response to floods, heat, drought, and storms, also protecting and replacing trees, protecting habitats by prioritizing the biodiversity action plan efforts, dark skies protection, improving the resilience through community hubs for emergency response,

and supporting community gardens and local food systems, as well as reducing waste and expanding recycling.

For the draft goals and objectives, I'll highlight each goal and give a very brief overview of the objective content, and we can return to these slides if you desire during this discussion portion.

Goal one seeks to undertake climate action by implementing the climate action plan of 2020 and meeting board of supervisors targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% in 2030 and to achieve zero emissions by 2050.

The objectives include increasing multimodal transportation, utilizing clean energy and reducing energy use as well as restoring forests to support sustainable agriculture and waste reduction.

And goal two, it seeks resilience to natural hazards and the impacts of climate change, protecting residents, property and ecosystems from damage.

The objectives include implementing the climate adaptation and resilience plan and hazard mitigation, addressing flood impacts and heat impacts, water supply, wildfires, invasive pests and disease vectors.

Goal three is on protecting water sources and water bodies throughout the county.

Objectives include restoration and enhancement of wetlands and stream buffers, addressing stormwater management, and protecting groundwater.

Goal four is on implementing the Biodiversity Action Plan to achieve biological diversity, ecological integrity and ecosystem resilience.

The objectives include protecting habitats such as forest blocks, protecting wildlife corridors, stream habitats and wetlands, utilizing land conservation, supporting native plant species and updating the Biodiversity Action Plan.

Goal five is about creating a sustainable system through products, materials, and resources that are reused, refurbished, and recycled to reduce waste.

The objectives include utilizing sustainable and reusable materials, reducing materials consumption, reducing landfill waste, reducing food waste and yard waste, as well as improving waste management practices.

Regarding the existing comprehensive plan, the topic has been expanded from one goal to five goals.

This is to organize the sub-themes for the goals and objectives.

The key themes from the 2015 plan that have been continued include emphasis on waterways, drinking water, biodiversity, habitat protection, and hazard mitigation.

The recommendations now include a stronger focus on climate resilience and mitigation.

Associated county plans and policies will be incorporated, including the stream health initiative and climate resilience plan.

The online questionnaire for the draft goals and objectives currently has 10 respondents.

The multiple choice questions ask how well each goal supports the framework for an equitable and resilient community.

The answer options are strongly supports, somewhat supports, or does not support the framework.

For this particular topic, the responses for each goal either strongly support or somewhat supports the framework as a majority.

You can see that does not support was either 11% or 0% for those options.

The open-ended comment question of what's missing included topics of dark skies protection, tree protection, accounting for land use practices on land owned by the county, private owners, and other entities,

Also incorporating more measurables for goals and objectives and addressing the rate of development and impervious surfaces.

So at this point, we will pause for discussion for the draft goals and objectives of this topic and we're seeking high levels feedback.

First, we will address whether the draft goals are aligned with the framework.

And second, we will address what is missing from the draft goals and objectives.

And again, we've allocated approximately 20 to 25 minutes for this discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Holt.

Great job.

I think we're probably closer to that 25-minute mark is my guess as we start to discuss these.

I might tweak this just ever so slightly, just maybe make the best use of our time together.

And I'll pitch this to the commission.

You tell me if it sounds reasonable.

But maybe we do.

What I would call a lightning round where everybody goes around and maybe there's three prompts that we want to think about.

First is, you know, is it tracking?

Is it tracking in the right direction?

The second one is pretty close to item one that you see on your screen here.

Do we feel that it's appropriately being vetted through that lens of climate action and equity?

And maybe the third prompt, which is kind of aligning with number two that you see here is what's missing or what needs to be further explored more.

So is it tracking?

Is it properly vetted through climate action and equity lens?

what's missing or what needs further exploration.

Maybe from that, we'll see some topics that, you know, if we all had the same topic, maybe that's where we spend our time.

And then if staff just gives me a five minute warning, we can go back around and you can read off any comments that you've done on your own time that maybe didn't get to, that way it could be recorded.

Does that sound like a reasonable approach for 25 minutes?

Okay, all right, so with that, we'll do the lightning round.

Yes.

So first off, I think staff has done a great job with this.

I would say that if I would say, I mean, it's definitely headed in the right direction.

So to answer the question, I would like to see a lot more references to, there's a lot of topics that transcend different sections, and it'd be nice to see little pointers to see also in this section.

All right.

Sure, thanks.

I absolutely think it's tracking.

Gosh, I have so many comments.

I'm trying to think of how best to organize them in a lightning round here.

Sorry.

No, it's all good.

I would say that the one area that I would call attention to are appropriate measures

Reassessments and Adjustments and how that's built into this plan.

Commissioner Carrazano.

Yeah, thank you for staff.

And I think it's very well organized presentation and appreciate that.

And so a lightning round, I guess I'll focus on some areas that I believe are missing or I didn't see them there.

It's been mentioned, emails that we've received, but also some of the comments we heard.

Dark skies is a more and more increasing issue for our county.

You know, we had, you know, at UVA, which is my other time where it's been most of my day, we've been evaluating that and the use of LEDs.

And I think it's an important area that we need to dive a little bit deeper into that I didn't see mentioned really at all.

Thank you, Chair.

So I would sort of back up the the dark skies, but I would also suggest that that's a that's a tri-jurisdiction issue that Albemarle County cannot just sort of say cannot tackle that or solve it and that that's a city UVA and county and perhaps that's an area where we can all work together to make that happen.

What I would like to see in the environmental stewardship piece is

sort of the conversation about what is happening in boundaries that were established many years ago.

For instance, I have a feeling, I have a sense that we made some decisions about what's a development area and what's a rural area based on the use of water, based on the impact of water.

And I would like us to sort of have a conversation in environmental stewardship to see whether or not there are different ways in which water impacts can be mitigated

For instance, there are some, I would imagine, houses or structures or developments that are in the rural area, but they're on the rural area by a hundred meters.

And the hundred meters is no longer relevant.

to the various ways in which things can be mitigated today.

Plus, it may be that a slight modification, not a wholesale modification, but a slight modification may allow some houses or some structures or some developments which are in the rural area to easily link up with the sewage, with the public works and public sewage, which will also go to trying to mitigate some of the older sewage issues which are propping up, that in fact, if we could put them into the system,

would keep the water clean and would also give people an opportunity not to push so far to sort of manage, to mitigate through management some of the issues that we're starting to see with that kind of runoff.

The other thing that I would also like to sort of have some sense of

when particularly we talked of environmental stewardship, we talked a little bit about this.

And we talked about about this the last time is that one ordinance is not will not solve everything.

And so there are some things I think Commissioner Murray had and I had a light bulb idea that there may in fact be some branches which which contribute heavier

to the risk or to the issues that we may see with our drinking water.

And those are the areas we should have a different type of ordinance on them, as opposed to trying to say, let's create an ordinance that just sort of blankets everyone.

And then the third thing that I would sort of mention in the lightning rod, if I might, is that we have a lot of conversations about steep slopes.

We also fall down on the fact that, oh, it's really not a steep slope.

It was really done when Joe and Josette Smith went out there and did that farm, and that's how we got that stream.

Or when VDOT went and cut that mountain range, cut the mountain up to go to create the Blue Ridge Mountain path.

So that's how we got it.

So I would actually sort of suggest, as we're looking at opportunities here, to perhaps do something with our steep slopes to try and ascertain what may be a natural steep slope that's critical,

and what may be a human or a human steep slope, which is nice, but it's not necessarily part of our, part of the, what I will say, the incumbent natural resources that we are so apt to protecting.

And I think there's new technology around that could facilitate a reexamination of what is a critical and natural steep slope versus which was one that came through the years of agriculture and building that I should say century now.

of Albemarle County.

Is that really the same thing?

And then for me, I would say yes, certainly tracking in the right direction.

I actually had done a comment about the tracking piece, so plus one on that.

I was expecting to see building reuse, right, as we talk about climate and carbon and our goals there.

Everyone knows that it's more climate friendly to use an existing building, and we're seeing more and more of that now if you look at the data.

And then lastly, I was curious, I'm not sure if this fits in here, but as you talk about resilience, what are the impacts on business continuity, right?

So if there's a flood and we're talking about resilience and continuity in the built environment, does it have an impact on business continuity?

And does that belong in here?

I think I'm just tossing that out there for discussion.

But as I was taking notes and then lightning round, I feel like there's two buckets that kind of bubbled up.

One is like a

Oh, I'm so sorry.

Mr. Moore.

I am still with you.

Hey, I'm glad to still be a part of the conversation too.

No, I think it's tracking like you all.

I do think it's in line with the lens and I didn't see a whole lot missing per se.

I honestly

have kind of a slightly different take on this where it feels like when there's so many things on kind of a long, long list, I'm concerned a little bit about what goes missing once this actually starts being implemented.

And so for me, I would put a special emphasis on the parts in goal two, the ones about resiliency and impacts on people.

and how we handle that and prepare for that because I do feel like we're headed towards a whole lot more macro level crises and emergencies headed our way.

All right, thank you, Commissioner.

Chair, if I could come alongside you for your comment about

about reuse of buildings.

I think there's an opportunity here, and this may be helpful all around, if there was a list or an inventory of county and school-owned buildings and land, that if nothing else, those could be models for others on how to reuse things or how to repurpose things.

So I would suggest in that area there, and it may actually also work under the

when we look at natural historic scenic and natural and cultural resources that we also look at sort of what's the inventory of land that people who sit in these chairs for much longer periods of time than we get to sit in them.

Yeah, I misunderstood the exercise, but are we going to do each three separately?

That's correct.

But this conversation is naturally leading into, I would say, the topic of equity.

And I would say that one of the big things that I've noticed

Back when I was serving as an elected official on the Southern Water Conservation District, we had people come before us who were applying for septic repairs, who not only didn't have a functional septic system, but didn't have running water in Albemarle County.

And so we realized we were coming from the Conservation District, we're coming out from this from the perspective of cleaning up streams and solving an environmental problem.

But as we got into things like septic repairs, and we realized that there's also an environmental justice aspect to a lot of this work.

that I think there, you know, when you have people in Albemarle County that have no functional septic system, that have no running water, and we can help fix that and solve an environmental problem at the same time, keep those people living in their house.

So we're solving affordable housing too, because making sure people aren't displaced.

that I think that's a really big issue in terms of equity.

Because there's not specific numbers on this, I can't say for sure, but I do know for sure that when I was a kid growing up next to a historic African-American community in Ivy, that there were people there that had no running water and septic.

And I strongly suspect that a lot of these areas with poorly functioning septic and running water are also in some of these historic African American communities that have been long neglected.

It's a great comment.

So as I look at these buckets are kind of forming, I kind of see one as operational in a sense, which would be the direction setting how we take measures.

There's a geography piece to it and you can might be a better word for that but that's where I would put the dark skies and water impacts and steep slopes and then I like that the term, the environmental justice or the equity piece where I think resiliency kind of fits in their utilities and things like that.

Maybe we started the operational piece, which was a jot down direction setting, cross-referencing, measures, reassessments, and adjustments.

It's like tracking process and progress.

I'll throw out a couple of comments if I could.

One I think that needs to go with that and not that this is a fourth category or not, but education, thinking about how we can not just say these things, but how we can promote and educate the community to be able to

make positive steps towards doing these things and understanding what resources are available to them to be able to do that.

So I think as we measure, as we assess, as we adjust, there are ways to learn, right, and to teach and to educate.

And so making sure that that's, I think woven into the process of doing those things is important.

I think partnerships is another part of that where it's an ongoing and continual learning process.

We're collaborating with new people.

We're reaching out to the city, to the university, to others and learning from each other in terms of those areas.

And then one other piece of it that I think is important is funding.

and thinking about a capital plan to go along with all of these great goals.

And how do you actually implement these things?

Is this something that the development community is looking to participate in?

Is it something that the county is looking to promote and help with?

Are there grants, other funding opportunities out there that could potentially help bring some focus to these?

And then I think related to this, maybe stretch a little bit here.

Sorry for rambling, but the other one is economic development.

And I think as we think through everything that has to do with most of what we're talking about tonight, what are impacts on economic development?

What are our strategies there?

So, Chair, if I could, I would say in the framework for an equitable and resilient community, the sort of last bit on page four, the top of page four, was in fact to sort of come alongside of what Commissioner Missel had just shared, just sort of brought up with us.

But that whole piece there is how I sort of looked at all the various parts.

So everything that you just said there about what are we creating on both a place to live and a place to work for today and for tomorrow.

and so that the two paragraphs at the top of the page are thriving and prosperous community not only has an economic benefit to it but also has sort of a lifestyle, a well-lived lifestyle in it and how do we do that that integrates both as some of the individuals in the open period talked about the protection of rural, I would all stretch them to say it is not just about the rural part, it's not just about the development part of Albemarle County but this is about Albemarle County.

And we are both rural and suburban.

And I'm not going to use the word exurban because we're not really exurban because the city is not an urban center.

But we're both a place that has this sort of emerging or reemerging attempt to sort of be a place where there are all these multiple centers.

How do you do that?

How do you do that in a place that a comp plan is sort of pointing the way to that?

So I would come alongside that.

The other thing that I might ask is that in the staff's report on page four,

Staff mentioned that if we look at this sort of the coverage of the forest in Albemarle County, and that that forest or the woods there sequesters in approximately 945,732 hundred tons of carbon dioxide.

My question, so what do we want?

Yeah.

So, okay, it's there.

What do we want?

Do we want, you know, a million and a half?

Or can we improve the balance?

If I look at the Nature Conservancy, the Nature Conservancy says that it should be about 16 tons versus two tons.

We're doing 16 times versus two tons per person.

And so what would it take?

when we're talking about what are the things that we want to do, the measurements, what would it take for us to actually live into that kind of, that space and what would that look like across our entire community?

Yeah, so just to respond to some of those things, I mean, I think,

And one of the things I struggle with in this, too, is that a lot of these, well, first of all, the rural area and the growth area are very different, with very different challenges.

The conservation challenges of the rural area are unique in the sense that a lot of that, from a policy perspective, for example, a lot of the policies that apply in the growth area in terms of stormwater and riparian buffers, they do not apply in the rural area because of agriculture.

That creates some unique challenges.

But plus, we have large habitat blocks.

Now we have the industrial solar on the horizon for some parts of the rural area.

And it's not just, I would say too, people always talk about old growth forests and large forests, but also old growth grasslands are a thing too.

So how do we manage grasslands in a way that helps sequester carbon as well?

So I do support, as some people said, I do support a rural area chapter.

I think that is something we need.

And I think that I support a growth area chapter because I think that the challenges of those two areas in terms of land use are going to be very different when we get to that land use section.

And I'll just add a couple of comments before we move on to the second bucket.

Welcome, Commissioner Firehock and Madam Clerk.

It was about 6 45 p.m.

Going back to the measurements piece, I would also add, like we talk about greenhouse gas carbon reduction, which is really prevalent in the built environment right now and

Just making a note around the objectives under the first goal.

They're very quantitative, which I think is really a very strong thing.

If we know that buildings are roughly 40% of the cause of greenhouse gases, then I would expect to see something around buildings and that proactiveness, right, in trying to reduce carbon reductions, greenhouse gas emissions.

I think those are only comments that have not already been said, so.

The second bucket we had was geography, which included the dark skies and steep slopes and water impacts.

So I just wanted to add to a comment that Commissioner Bivins said in terms of it is not just the county, right?

When we talk about a lot of these things, I think for water, I would say it's a similar

similar issue, how we deal with our water resources and other things that UVA are doing or the county's doing, they all feed into one another.

So it does take that collaboration that Commissioner Missel mentioned.

So I think that's a piece that we're not great at.

or the county or UVA or the city.

We're not great at communicating all the time, particularly with these longer.

So we may have a goal that we all share, but then as you step down into the, what would you call it?

The actionable next steps or the actionable steps.

I think that's where the communications breaks down at times.

So I would encourage that we look at

Not only having shared goals, which I think we can all agree on a lot of these are shared goals between these entities.

But how we take those next steps, how we actually act upon them is where I would argue that our communication begins to break down.

So I would encourage you to think about that and how we actually begin to implement some of these goals.

Yeah, so talking about dark skies again, I did notice that dark skies is in there, but it's under the historic section.

It's another example of where you might need pointers from one section to another.

But I mean, I would argue that it more rightly belongs in the environmental section.

So one of the things that happens with LEDs in particular is their effect on wildlife and night flying insects.

We have some iconic species in Albemarle County like the Luna moth, Cecropia moths and other things.

And you might say, well, why do we care about moths?

Well, 90% of baby birds diet are caterpillars.

So you lose your moths, you lose your butterflies, you lose your birds.

And so you have a chain reaction through ecosystem that's really impacting biodiversity.

So yeah, and I think in terms of tree protection, I think we've long needed a tree protection ordinance in Almonte County.

I think we need standards for tree planting, as Karen has brought forward before.

And I think, too, in terms of

In terms of water, I think there's a lot of opportunities that we can really explore in terms of low impact development.

We've talked several times about trying to incentivize low impact development.

There may be some opportunities to require low impact development, but that's a matter of research.

So those are some things I'd look at, but I'll leave it for there.

Well, in the effort to kind of move us along, maybe just go around the horn one more time.

If there's any comments that you want to make sure gets on the record that we didn't talk about, let's do that now and then we'll move on to the second one.

Sorry that we're running a little short on time.

I'm so sorry, Commissioner Moore.

Not really, I wanted to plus one Commissioner Murray's comments about environmental justice and if we can find right in ways to pursue projects that directly benefit people and the sort of lived environment around them at the same time.

And also plus one Commissioner Missel's comment about

if it's appropriate and whether we can somehow write in funding sources into this because there is a lot of ambitious development work in this particular set of goals.

Thank you.

If there's any way to keep that photo up, that'll remind me that he's here.

That'd be great.

Right now, I see a logo, usually.

So, Commissioner Bivins, I'll start with you.

I would like to sort of come alongside of Commissioner Murray and Commissioner Missel, back to my comment about that I believe that if we could go back and look at how some of our development in rural lines, development area lines were drawn,

Some of it was drawn in some sort of sense that it was a protection of water quality.

And I would like to see at some point a reevaluation, going back to what Fred said, a reevaluation.

Is this not or are there not other ways in which to mitigate impacts on water that may in fact be drawing some of these areas into the system?

to do some of the things that, Commissioner Mary, which I think you're talking more on some of the sort of significant rural areas, but even if we look at sort of, if we look at Crozet and some of the sort of historic areas in Crozet that may have had people with more limited means living in them, along some of the railroad tracks that go up through Crozet, some of that is probably, some of those houses are probably not on the system.

and they may have failing systems.

Good comments.

Sure, just a couple of things.

One is, I know we've talked about measurements, which I may be wrongly, but mostly think of how do we measure progress that we're making.

I want to echo something that I think Commissioner Bivins said, which is it's also about inventory.

So what do we have now?

How much natural hardwood forest do we have?

Not sure we know.

Where are they located?

Is it in farmland?

Is that then therefore, because of our ordinance, they can cut it down without asking, right?

Where and how do we value each of those resources?

I love the fact that the title was changed to environmental stewardship.

That's, that's an awesome move.

I think that's exactly right.

Because

Again, Commissioner Bivins, I think you touched on this is about preservation, stewardship, and quality of life.

And so it's a bigger picture thing that we're not that this isn't big enough, but it's also something that's important.

And then the unifying, yeah, I like that.

And then the last thing I'll mention is, as we've seen with our affordable housing aspiration,

It has taken two years for us to sort of get to a point where we might be talking about incentives that might be potentially active and we almost had a joint work session that we weren't quite ready for.

I just want to highlight again the need for and Commissioner Murray mentioned incentives.

I just wanted to add that we do have these great incentives that a lot of people aren't aware of.

For example, we have Albemarle Conservation Assistance Program.

There's still plenty of money out there for people to apply for.

The AHIP program, that's a program, speaking of environmental justice, I'd really love to see more funding for AHIP and more attention to that program because that can help keep people in the houses and solve environmental issues.

A few things that I wanted to mention that I didn't yet.

As I said, I think a lot of these, when I looked at this, a lot of the challenges I faced were

A lot of these environmental issues stretch into other areas, stretch into transportation and to land use.

When we talk about climate change, I think we need to identify high risk, high fire risk areas in the county.

There's a lot of housing is encroaching upon the Shenandoah National Forest.

And we've seen what happens in California when housing gets too close to national forests and wild areas.

It becomes difficult for the park service to do controlled burns, but then also when fires get started,

They put homes at risk.

And I hope we can get to the point where we, just as we have, we have flood hazard overlays, we should have fire hazard overlays and discourage new homes in those areas.

But once again, that gives the land use section.

I think one of the ways if you look in the staff notes it talks about the large forest blocks and fragmentation.

One of the ways that fragmentation happens is by paving of gravel roads in our rural area.

And so I think that'll probably be in the transportation section but I think it has environmental consequences that should probably be footnoted here somewhere.

and then I think invasive species and management of invasive species.

I think that that's a huge thing that needs to be referenced in here.

It's kind of lumped together with native plants.

But I think it transcends a lot of different spaces.

It could go in parks, it could go in environment.

But there are new ordinances that are enabled by the state that we could be adopting, managing things like bamboo that we're not doing.

Thank you.

Apologies for being late at a work emergency.

So I'll just make a quick general statement and then I'll run through just a quick list and just note that I understand that some of my ideas may be what you would call actions, but I just am a specific brain.

So

All right, so my general statement, I actually really liked most of what I read.

I would say that in my work, objectives are usually specific and measurable.

And there's quite a few of our objectives that say increase or do more of, to your earlier point that you made on the dais about how much.

We actually could calculate, for example, how much more carbon we could capture by planting x more acres of canopy.

understanding that we'll still lose some canopy as we continue to grow.

But if we want to be aspirational and put numbers as aspirations, there's a lot of really simple models that we could apply.

And so I would like to see more specificity because some of the objectives sound just like a goal.

They're just like restating the goal.

It just says increase or do more of this.

So a couple of quick points and again apologies if they're too specific.

We referenced the biodiversity action plan quite a bit which is a really good plan and I'm proud to say that my firm helped contribute some of the mapping work for that.

but I was based on a one meter land cover analysis for Albemarle County that is many years old now.

So I think that map needs to be updated.

The good news is that we can compare how many of those large habitat blocks we have lost in certain areas and how we're doing.

So I think we can't just rely on that plan because it's getting pretty out of date.

I also wanted to see an emphasis on

More landowner education.

And again, maybe that's more specific, but we talk about buffers, but I just don't find many landowners even know anything about buffers.

And that also includes fencing cattle out of creeks and all the other measures that landowners can engage in.

I'd like to see an emphasis on low impact development incentives.

constructed green infrastructure.

I know we've talked about it, but we need a more infiltrative landscape.

We've been paving like mad and the question is how can we create more opportunities for infiltration?

And there are incentives we could get to in the specific action section when we get to that later in the process.

Two more points real quick.

Storm prep and recovery.

We don't talk about what happens in a storm.

We have a tornado, a directo, whatever they call that thing, hurricane, floods.

We don't talk about how we recover from that.

Ice storms.

I mean, there's a whole host of recovery of the landscape that we need to be better prepared for.

And frankly, if we do that work, we will be more likely to get reimbursed by FEMA.

So we need to really beef up that work and know it is not adequately covered in our emergency plan for the county.

So that's for the environment.

There's a whole host of additional actions we could take, which I could elaborate on more later.

Lastly, we do talk about protection of groundwater.

That's really important for our county, but I want to be clear that we do not have a groundwater study.

Our groundwater is quite complex and I don't have the time, nor does anyone want to hear me go into that tonight.

But some mention that there's a lot that's not known and whether or not we want to aspire to doing any groundwater studies.

to look at our aquifers and where they are and how plentiful they are.

That would be a large cost, but do we want to do that?

Do we want to do that in some of the areas that people talked about for where growth might happen?

Anyway, I just want to point that out that our knowledge on that is low.

And that's not a criticism of our county because most counties don't have a groundwater study.

Nelson actually did invest in one years ago that was fairly good.

And last, a quick comment to your point about fire maps.

I did show the Board of Supervisors years ago an ignition map that the Virginia Department of Forestry created that shows which areas of the county are high fire risk.

So that is something we can just grab.

But we could also talk about when you get to the action stage, encouraging firewise development.

Construction.

We've had in the six years I've been on this dais, one developer actually talked about being firewise.

In fact, I think it was the people doing the glamping project.

And I was elated to hear that, but I don't think it's well known that there are techniques we can use.

And it's just easy.

It's not that hard.

Okay.

That was it.

All good.

Well, Commissioner Moore, I'm not going to forget you this time.

Did you put all your comments up?

I'm all good for this one.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

I'll just make one general comment that's not

that's very specific to environmental stewardship is in general.

If equity is one of our canons, then I think we had to be sensitive to some of the images we're using, right?

When you flip through the images, I didn't see much diversity or equity in those images, right?

And so being sensitive to that piece of this truly one of our canons.

All right, thank you.

If we could get the presentation back on the screen.

Parks and recreation play a critical role in the quality of life for a healthy and thriving community.

They provide opportunities for community members to play, enjoy nature, and participate in athletics.

Greenways and trails provide bike and pedestrian connections to parks, neighborhoods, and other key destinations.

Parks and Greenways as a topic also overlaps with environmental stewardship, protection, and restoration of the natural environment.

An additional topic overlaps include land use, transportation, and community facilities for Parks and Rec as a whole.

Community input themes that we've heard include expanding the park system through playgrounds, nature areas, green spaces, and pocket parks.

There's also a desire to expand the greenway trail networks and access to waterways, also known as blue way trails.

There's support for expanding sports facilities to meet growing demands, proactively planning for parks and green spaces prior to development, improving amenities such as restrooms, picnic tables, and benches, improving wayfinding and signage, improving user accessibility, and accommodating a wider range of facilities users, also different age groups,

providing trails, civic spaces, and other amenities within activity centers and also within rural crossroads communities.

Goal 1 calls for the planning and providing of a countywide park system and greenway network that offers opportunities for recreation, contact with nature, and supports public health, quality of life, as well as tourism and economic vitality.

The objectives include planning for needs of current and future community members, accelerating the implementation and expansion of facilities, integrating more multimodal planning, aligning with regional and statewide plans, improving access to public schools facilities, and improving information and signage.

Goal two provides direction to fund, develop, and deliver parks and greenways in accordance with the needs of a growing population and accommodating development patterns.

Objectives include prioritizing and implementing parks and greenways projects already identified in the comprehensive plan and master plans, as well as accelerating the development of parks and greenways in the development areas, expanding greenways and blue ways facilities along the Rivanna River,

and providing more opportunities for nature-focused experiences and increasing the amount of county-owned land that is designated for parks and greenways.

Goal 3 is to enhance and update existing parks, greenways, blueways, and community centers, as well as other recreation amenities to provide opportunities for both active and passive recreation.

The objectives include enhancing and improving amenities in existing parks, expanding greenways and trails networks, as well as increasing facilities that incorporate universal access standards.

GOFOR is to increase the accessibility, connectivity, and usability for all community members to parks and recreation facilities.

The objectives include expanding multimodal transportation options, increasing universal access to parks and greenways and community centers, and supporting access improvements at Sugar Hollow, which will be in partnership with Shenandoah National Park.

Goal five is on utilizing sustainable land management and facility maintenance.

The objectives include using environmentally sustainable land management practices for parks and greenways.

The objectives include land management that protects biological diversity and ecological integrity while conserving and restoring biodiversity, stream and forest health.

Goal six calls for a county collaboration with external stakeholders and partners and to provide volunteer projects and programs to enhance parks and recreation facilities.

The objectives include sustaining existing partnerships, identifying community needs through parks and recreation needs assessment, establishing new partnerships and volunteer programs to improve public facilities.

Goal 7 is to provide recreation opportunities that are welcoming and inclusive and meet the needs of an expanding population.

The objectives include providing a variety of recreation programs and classes, ensuring opportunities for both indoor and outdoor recreation, and expanding the provision of multi-purpose athletic fields.

As compared to the 2015 Comprehensive Plan, this topic has expanded from one to seven goals.

Key themes carried forward include developing parks and greenway systems, protecting natural areas, expanding access to greenways and blueways, providing multimodal access to parks and other destinations, and regional coordination.

There is now a stronger emphasis on planning a countywide parks and greenways system, accelerating the development of facilities, enhancing visitor experience, utilizing sustainable practices, and responding to the changing community needs.

This particular topic questionnaire currently has 11 respondents at the time this was published.

All responses indicate that each goal either strongly supports or somewhat supports the framework as a majority.

The open-ended comments suggest protecting the natural environment within parks, providing more ADA accessible trails, more off-street bike and pedestrian facilities, organizing volunteer cleanups, removing litter, addressing homelessness within the parks, increased access to school recreation facilities, providing more natural areas, and concern about the impacts from an expanding population.

So at this point, we will break again for discussion.

We'll give another shot, though, we did it with the lightning round.

And I'll start with Commissioner Moore.

Make sure I'm not going to forget this gentleman here.

Commissioner Moore, lightning round.

Is it tracking in the right way?

Do you feel like it's appropriately vetted through the lens of climate inequity?

I do like this one.

There's, again, a broad collection of aspirations here.

This one though, this bucket feels vaguer to me than the last bucket, and maybe that's because it's something I think about more.

I was kind of surprised.

Yes, there's some good ideas in here.

I think goal two is very important to me, developing new parks, especially to serve the urban ring, which is, you know, more than 50,000 people that don't have sort of urban parks.

You know, where there are parks that are kind of like that are in Scottsville and Esmont.

We got Doria Park and

the other, shoot, I'm forgetting the name now, Simpson Park down in Esmont.

You know, the kind that kids go to, they're more like a community center that are a third place, if you're familiar with that.

And the place that's not home and that's not work, it's a place where communities actually gather and it stitches that social fabric.

There's a lot in here about adding more trails, adding more bike paths, connecting those things, doing it well.

doing it so that people with different abilities can get there, and that's all wonderful.

I think that's fine and good, but I'm kind of thinking of the old classic book, Bowling Alone.

This is more like walking a path alone, whereas I think more emphasis on building these third places that nourish social connections would actually serve us much better.

places with basketball courts and spray parks and playgrounds and just you know free public places maybe throw in some stages for performances too you know what I mean and so that's the kind of the kind of thing that I'm thinking about

just more that third place social gathering space model of park construction, not just such as there's been a long emphasis on sort of like large rural donated tracts of land in Albemarle County that we just, you know, bushwhack some trails and make some nice picnic tables.

All right, thank you for those comments.

Okay.

In terms of the lens of equity,

I agree too.

I think that focusing on making sure that we provide opportunities for green spaces and the urban areas is something.

Once again, this sort of also transcends a lot of other topics.

How we decide where green space goes.

Right now, we have sort of a developed to protect methodology.

We have large areas along the Rivanna where they used to be forested.

And so we said, OK, well, you can

developed the vast majority of this forested area along the Rivanna so you can then proffer back this tiny sliver.

That seems wrong to me.

We should come up with another way of doing that.

So once again, it kind of crosses a bunch of different lines there.

In the rural area, we don't, while there are many parks, large parks located in the rural area,

For a lot of rural area residents, they depend upon what I would call sort of natural greenways or natural parks.

When I go out my door, I'm going to go running in my backyard down the road.

If that road becomes unsafe for me to use, then I no longer have a place to walk or run.

because it's not always convenient for me to hop in the car and drive 30 minutes somewhere else.

So I think a very important thing here that we can do is to document the places that people are running, cycling, and walking throughout the county

And there are great tools for doing this.

There's Strava and there's lots of cell phone data that can identify where people are walking, running and cycling.

And I think we need to start documenting these de facto greenways of places that people already are.

So we don't destroy those places.

And that so when planning decisions come before us that we take that into account.

For example, if we're going to propose to pave a gravel road, for example, we get the traffic count of cars on that road.

We should get the traffic count of bikes and runners and walkers on that road.

There's going to be new winery or some new special use on a road.

We should know how this can impact cyclists, walkers, and runners.

I see that as an equity issue in many ways.

And then, and it's interesting to note too, you had areas like Ivy that kind of got left in a peculiar situation because they used to be part of the growth area.

And so in the comprehensive plan designation, it used to be when you look at old comprehensive plans, there was comprehensive plan designations for green space and Ivy.

Well, when it got dropped out of the growth area, yeah, there are in the maps.

Oh, there's none there now.

But when it got removed out of the growth areas, those comprehensive plan designations for open space and green spaces got removed as well.

I think that it would make sense.

A lot of counties have C1 and A1 zoning.

I think it would make sense for Albemarle County to at least have comprehensive plan designations for where we'd like to see green spaces and conservation areas in the rural area.

We don't have that now.

And that would sort of address the Ivy situation.

I don't know what you do about places like Ivy.

Thank you, Commissioner Murray.

Thanks.

I was very glad our remote commissioner went first because I agreed with everything that he said.

And that was really helpful because I don't always like to be the contrarian.

I did feel like, yes, the parks chapter was the most vague.

It read to me more like a

like a mission statement like the staff would develop on a retreat where you talked about serve our customers better, you know, increase facilitation, accelerate planning, increase access, sustain partnerships.

This is more like fodder you would see on a leadership poster.

It's not specific.

I just expect them to be doing all those things anyway all the time.

It doesn't rise to the level of something that needs to go on the comprehensive plan.

Objective 4.3 was the only specific objective I found in that chapter.

So I would like to see more specifics.

I think the parks chapter needs to go back to or the of the comp plan needs to go back to the drawing board.

And then I would like to see more specific things such as exploring options to connect existing developments in the urban area to parks.

evaluate the equity of park access for Albemarle communities.

So we're not going to do something like a 15-minute walk in the rural area, obviously, but we could look at the equitable distribution of parks.

So it does say that we want a county-wide park system, but they're definitely underserved areas of our county.

where, and it's true that I think there's sometimes, I'm not saying Albemarle does it, but some rural counties will say, well, you know, like they have the rural area, but like there's lots and lots of residents in the rural area.

They live on a half acre, one acre, a quarter acre.

They don't have a farm that they can run around on.

They literally don't have anywhere to go for a walk except that rural road.

So where I live, there are certain rural roads that they're like our little greenway.

And then I'd also like to see the park server role as demonstration sites.

So we talk like plant native plants, everyone, and do all these things.

We used to even have in Charlottesville at our shared recycling center, we used to have a xeriscape garden demonstration, how to garden with low water drought tolerant plants.

And then, I don't know, it just disappeared.

Maybe people got tired of taking care of it.

But it would be nice to go to a park and see, like, these are the native plants of Albemarle.

This is what you can plant.

Just some of those educational opportunities, because we have a lot of people moving here from other places.

So I don't want to rattle on all the things I think should be in the parks chapter.

I'd just like it to go back to the drawing board.

But I want to bring up a little bit of a hot topic.

We've had a couple of sessions about cell towers in parks and this notion that it's a park, you might get injured on the trail, we need a cell tower there.

I would like the county to think through are we saying we would like all parks to have cell towers so that we can make an emergency call from any park in the county because this has been suggested and I don't know if that's really our policy or not.

What is our policy on emergency response in parks?

Because if every park should have a cell tower, I just want to know that before we have more of those applications because it's county-owned land and so it's a natural for cell providers to come to us and say, hey, how about a cell tower on that park site?

So I'll leave that, but I really would like us to use our parks for connectivity.

I'm thinking of,

Frederick Law Olmsted and the Emerald Necklace.

And I know our park staff, one of whom happens to be an accomplished landscape architect, knows all about Frederick.

But I would like us to think about a connected park system.

And it takes a while to build.

Charles felt the same struggle when they first started trying to connect the dots.

But over time, piece by piece, things have actually gotten more connected even in that environment.

So I feel like if we had a, even if it's going to be a separate project, like making a master plan to connect these natural areas in the urban ring, it's never too late to start, but at some point it's going to be too late.

Right.

Thank you.

So that was fine.

And then we were having a little sidebar here.

and the term that I would use.

To me, it was, although I appreciate the work and there was a lot of good thought, I do think it was a bit uninspired.

And that last piece that Commissioner Firehock is my big, my fire round is, it's not a system.

It's not really thinking we are as a system.

And there's some great examples out there.

And even things like, like you said, so it's a little pearl and just how do we connect these pearls and a complicated place like Atlanta

Georgia has been doing an amazing job of their connecting parks with their beltway trail system.

And it's phenomenal.

And if you haven't, my son went to school there, so we would go every so often and every time there was another section built and something else was connected.

So,

You know, whether you're going back to the drawing board or not, but I do think getting the perspective of a system and not just having the vision, because the vision is great, but that's what the Beltway project did is not just the vision, but how you begin to implement it in a realistic manner is key.

So that's my big lightning round.

Sure.

Thank you.

That was actually helpful.

Thank you.

So a couple things.

One, I might have a slightly different viewpoint on this than some of others might.

I think that's gone, Commissioner Missel.

Okay, all right.

Sorry.

In that case... Now what have you done?

No, but I would say that, for me, it was less about, I mean, vague to me, using the word vague, and I understand where you're coming from, is sort of a negative connotation.

When I first read this, what I saw was that, first of all, we're all very passionate about this, and I think partly because we're grateful to live in a community that has an amazing parks and recreation

Resource.

So the question that was remaining for me was this question of three letters.

How?

These are great goals.

They're, in some cases, big.

But I was wondering, OK, what's next?

We will enhance and update existing parks.

How?

And dial down just a little bit.

So this is a great first cut.

and it captures many of the different areas.

I'm just sort of craving that extra level of detail that may still come and what I would expect would come.

So, you know, we talked about quality of life.

Obviously, this is key to the quality of life of Albemarle and continuing to do this is critically important.

I would say inventory and priorities.

They came up here just making sure, you know, I keep saying the word inventory, but what do we currently have?

What are our priorities?

And it's mentioned in here as well.

Leveraging partnerships and regional, can't read my handwriting, coordination.

So thinking that, you know, what are those opportunities to take the trails that are currently in place and make them better, right?

How can we expand those?

Maintenance standards I think are really key, really important.

And what is our standard of care?

What are our expectations around maintenance?

Are we meeting those expectations?

Are we falling short?

If we're falling short, and I don't know that to be a fact, but if we are, should we be really focusing on expanding before we're ready to be happy with the standard of care we currently have?

And where is that balance?

And then funding was managed in here.

So funding that supports that standard of care.

and how that can be measured and utilized.

Thank you and thank you everyone.

This has been very helpful.

So I'm going to drill down in particularly in a I think a very different sense and most of you have heard me sort of rattle on about I don't care anymore about

Whether or not we put another park in the rural area, I don't care.

What I do care about is that there's been a couple of missed opportunities from the county.

We built the wonderful library in Crozet, we put a library on Rile Road, and there is not a third space like Commissioner Moore said.

I can go to the library, but if I wanted to take a time and take a book outside and have a conversation, Crozet is a little bit better because it has access to the park that's connected to the church on Tabert Street, but you'd be hard pressed to do that at the library on Ryle Road.

And so there are these natural places that the county owns, that the county creates, that those would be wonderful places to have a green pocket park.

so that a family could go to the library and do something else there as opposed to the asphalt.

So would it not be possible

for the county to purchase the green spot that remains and Stonefield and say, you know what?

There's a lot of people there.

We're going to put a pocket park here.

Perhaps you know where that is.

It's sort of right next to something called Burger Bock, I believe.

It's an odd thing that you have that kind of, now that it was Berger Bock, I might understand that, but Burger Bock, it doesn't even make any sense to me.

It's one of those things that just makes my head go, I don't understand about that.

So if we could have the county purchase that land,

and say, we're going to put a park there.

When they redo the piece that we just saw about Fashion Square, wouldn't it be interesting, and I'm not going to get in trouble, counselor, but wouldn't it be interesting if Home Depot and the gentleman at the other end, Mr. Huard, said, you know what, Kenny?

We'll give you the space here.

You develop that into a park.

So not only do we have a shopping center,

But we also have a green space there.

And these are the natural areas that people come.

And let's give them something else to do besides, or let's give them something to do while they do something else.

And so for me, when I look at some of the important places that are the places that I kind of, that I sort of groove on that are not just urban places because you can't, we are not an urban place.

When I look at places like us, I see these green spaces that are sort of seasoned through the population places.

and we don't have that.

And I think that's what we need to have if we start talking about some of the things about equity, if we start talking about what's a resilient community that we start thinking about where does it make sense for us to have park space that enhances what people do in the normal course of their business.

I would like to get a kid.

I would also try and say, can we stop calling Biscuit Park Run a future park?

It is clearly not a future park.

It is clearly part of it is being used right now.

And so it's just in the inventory.

It's in our inventory.

It's not a future park.

Arrowhead thing down 29 South is a future park.

But that's not.

So the whole idea, what I would have liked to have seen, is an admission that we've got all of this green space.

But you know, for the next few years, we're going to talk about those places which are underserved.

and those places which make a difference on how we perceive ourselves as a unified community.

And that to me is what's missing here.

Plus, I mean, we also recognize this is just a bit of a parenthesis or bracket chair.

Most of the big land spaces we have were donated to the county.

The county did not go out and inquire these places.

They were gifts.

And I don't have a problem with that.

I think that's really brilliant that people want to do that.

But so the planning that we're concerned with didn't happen because it was a gift.

You know, why do I have too many ties at Christmas?

Because everybody thought I needed to have a tie.

I would have preferred to have something else but not a tie.

And so we also don't have what I would say is a public works department.

And so I have no idea whether or not the staff that's in Parks and Rescue could actually do some of this.

What can they do with the FTEs and the budget that they have today?

To come back to what you say, what's possible?

Because I don't know or what I've seen, they're all very clever people, but I don't know if they can do all this stuff.

and I don't know if the county has the ability to transfer funds to them to get some of this stuff done, but I do think they get transferred with some funds to have some parks in the developed area or part of the county.

Yeah, can I just build off just a couple things that you mentioned which really resonated.

One is

that idea of scale.

And maybe in my mind, when we talk about Parks and Rec, my mind goes to larger scale, like how can we interconnections of mile-long trails, et cetera, et cetera.

But I think you nailed a really important aspect, which is thinking about all scales of these, which I know our staff is doing.

The other thing is just to mention, because I think one of our questions was, is it aligned with the equitable and resilient community?

I think

a thriving and prosperous community, that piece of it, which is tied to again, economic development, thinking about development models that incorporate into it, green space, like, you know, a neighborhood model district, which has a 20% requirement, those kinds of things, but also other areas that might be more commercial, and how that might be included.

I can come alongside both these gentlemen.

And perhaps

First of all, Atlanta probably is a belt line, someplace else.

So the points that we've been making, and if we really want to talk about equality of use of these kind of spaces, this is probably one of the simplest things that we can tackle as a community to provide some equality of use.

I think we can all see that we don't have that equality throughout the county of access.

If you're not mobile, if you don't have a car, you're not going to get to some places.

And so tying those resources, and they could be very small, and I agree, we can't just think about these as the big parks, but what are the little parks?

And this was the beautiful thing about that belt line.

or the really inspiring thing and transformational thing about the Beltline project is that it connects all of these things that we just talked about.

Economic development, transportation, park systems, and equity.

So it takes all of that into account into a system.

Some of them are small parks.

Some of them are business districts that are being connected.

Some of them are rails to trails that were converted.

It all creates a system and now what you're seeing is that within that system economic development is happening because there are a lot of people that are moving.

So hey, let's put a coffee shop, let's put a restaurant, let's put a store, let's put a bike shop.

and all of these things are popping up along the way in the fabric that's being created.

So again, thinking about it more as a fabric, multidimensional, not just parks and recs.

Think about transportation because you can create, people can move through these systems.

And that's the piece that I didn't mean to say.

To me, it was a bit uninspiring because I think it can be more and we can be thinking beyond and even benchmark.

Look at some great examples that are out there that the communities have done.

And we could do it here.

I mean, we already have a lot of great infrastructure from the sense of parks.

I mean, we don't think of it as infrastructure, but it is true.

I just wanted to bounce off that last comment or next to last comment made as well.

Hold one second.

I'm going to Commissioner Firehock.

She's been waiting.

Oh, I'm sorry.

It wasn't on the screen.

I couldn't tell.

I'll try to be quick.

Yeah, I just wanted to plus one what Julian was saying, because you can do you can have a lot of wonderful experience even in a small intimate park.

And just also I just thinking about the fact that it's actually true that exposure of 20 minutes to green space per day actually raises your IQ.

improves your heart rate, all kinds of things.

So that access is so important.

But I also want to encourage us to think about all the creative financing ideas that are out there to fund parks and rec.

So this notion that we're going to get

a better park system by developers donating.

I think it was referred to as slivers or the unusable part of their development.

One of the challenges is when people give us green space or taught on their development.

The other thing we hear is, well, I hope no one comes in there from the neighborhood next door.

And I hope they're not going to that subdivision next door doesn't think that's their part because that's our part.

You know, and so it doesn't create a park network doing that.

And there I'll just throw out a couple of examples.

So there's

The Land and Water Conservation Fund that has funded some parks in this area in the past.

There's more money in that fund now than there ever was before.

There's also bonding.

We put bonds forward for schools.

Why not a public bond to acquire park land?

What are we going to do with all this AAA rating if not take advantage of our ability to borrow at low interest rates relatively?

And then some localities also take a portion of their tourism tax from restaurants and whatever and put it into green space because the greed of the community is a very important reason why people want to come here.

So I just want us to maybe either say something about using more creative financing for the county to invest itself, because you're exactly right.

There's so many studies, even just daylighting an urban creek makes people want to live in the business and rent the business next door.

And then some other business opens up and then somebody puts a cafe there and so on and so forth.

Yes, thank you.

And then really, I was just echoing what both Commissioner Firehock and Commissioner Verzano just kind of referred to how these systems of park space or simple daylighting of streams even can spur more economic activity.

And just to highlight that in the counties

engagement responses that, you know, things like having more local retail and more, you know, food stores nearby was right up there after Moore Park and Open Space.

And this is more of a just at one point, Mr. Kluge, Mr. John Kluge bought up a lot of rails, rail paths in southern Albemarle.

and I just wonder what's happened with him.

And I don't think you're gonna answer that now, but that was one of the things that he did during his life here is that he purchased some of the rails to turn them into rail trails.

That would just be brilliant.

Yeah, I mean, this borders on action, not an objective.

But I also wanted to mention, I think there's a missed opportunity with transfer of development rights.

And it's been discussed in the past.

It's been used in other places like Arlington, for example, to create and improve parks.

They got $6.6 million for a park in Arlington in 2011 by using transfer of development rights.

So I think when we talk about the challenges, particularly in our urban area of trying to get green spaces, that's a tool that we could be using that has been used successfully in Virginia.

another thing that some of the things that haven't been mentioned yet I think there's been a lot of talking the Natural Heritage Committee that really we need an invasive species management plan for parks and I think that that's something that needs to be in here somewhere to understand could be nestled under one of those objective items

Another thing, we do have many rare species and habitats in the county that don't occur anywhere else.

So it's very positive in one sense that these occurrences do occur in our county parks.

But it's also a responsibility in the sense that if we have these occurrences, we need to make sure that we have a plan to protect them from impacts.

It's been a rich conversation.

I hope you've taken quite a bit away.

I'm not going to repeat what others have said, but I do want to make sure there's a nod to safety and security somewhere in there.

And I didn't see those words anywhere as I was reading through safe or secure.

It kind of goes back to what Commissioner Firehock had brought up about self-service, for example, right?

Are you safe or secure if you don't have

a signal, right, in a park, and you're by yourself.

But starting to think about those kinds of things is the only thing I might add.

So the things that bubbled up to the top in this conversation that I've jotted down are specificity, right, like quantifying metrics or just getting more specific, urban parks and tying together social threads, documentation, what's out there, where we can see park deserts.

And I think the term you used, Commissioner Murray, was de facto greenways.

Creative financing and a host of other things, but those are some of the things that bubble to the top.

So with that, I think we can see if we can knock out this last one that will take a break and move into the public hearings.

Thank you, Mr. Clayborne.

So moving on to historic, scenic, and cultural resources.

Protecting historic, scenic, and cultural resources plays a vital role in maintaining and preserving the local character that's valued by both residents and visitors of Albemarle County.

Protection effort requires identification of individual resources and educating the public about those resources.

Incentives and protection measures are required for resource preservation.

These resources also offer an opportunity for a more inclusive history by sharing narratives that represent a more broad and diverse range of community members.

There is also an opportunity to protect environmental aspects of scenic resources such as forests, hillsides, and streams.

Additionally, preservation and adaptive reuse conserves building materials along the subject of climate action.

The subject also overlaps other planned topics such as economic development, environmental stewardship, and land use.

Community input on this topic

includes identifying historic and cultural resources, recognizing African American and historic Freetown communities, collaborating with indigenous groups, utilizing educational opportunities for historic resources, leveraging tourism, expanding the historic marker program, continued adaptive reuse of historic buildings, especially within the rural area and crossroads communities,

Increasing preservation incentives, adopting regulations for protection, and preserving scenic resources and improving the county lighting ordinance to protect dark skies, which has obviously been discussed earlier this evening.

So moving on to the goals.

Goal one is to recognize, celebrate, and increase the awareness of the range of contributing historic, cultural, and scenic resources.

Objectives include identifying and documenting significant resources, sharing stories, and uplifting undertold narratives, which includes the local historic marker program, and also identifying and protecting the threats to these resources.

Goal 2 regards the protection of historic, scenic, and natural resources while considering the future trajectory of development within the county.

Objectives include improved preservation and protection of resources by landowners and businesses, the preservation and adaptive reuse of historic and cultural resources, and cultivating partnerships in support of preserving and protecting these resources.

Goal 3 targets opportunities for all community members to access and enjoy these historic scenic and cultural resources.

Objectives include access to these resources and increased awareness, protection of view sheds and landscapes, and protection of dark skies.

Goal 4 seeks attractive and scenic entrance corridors as well as prominent roadways that support the environment and the county's unique sense of place.

Objectives include protecting the design quality of entrance corridors, utilizing sustainable building materials, and increasing the number of designated scenic roads.

The key themes carried over from the 2015 comp plan include identifying and recognizing the value of historic resources, sharing resource information, and protecting historic scenic and cultural resources, dark skies, scenic roadways, and entrance corridors.

New updates include greater support for narratives and resources of historically underrepresented groups,

energy efficient upgrades with adaptive reuse and also proactively identifying resources.

Our community input for this particular survey indicated a more mixed response for whether or not these goals did or did not support the framework.

And there was a roughly even split among these choices, whereas with the previous topics, there was a majority of support that indicated either A or B for support strongly or somewhat.

Open-ended input included better dark skies protection, establishing a preservation ordinance, utilizing informative videos, expanding commercial tax base while protecting resources, utilizing transit connections, preventing vandalism, and concern about locations that are already diminished by development such as Crozet.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Holt.

I think as far as an equity lens, this does very well, particularly the parts about finding, taking inventory, collecting the stories of historically marginalized groups in Albemarle County.

I'm reminded of this old Rick Heizer quote that the universe is made of stories, not atoms.

And the stories we tell are the ones that are going to sort of create the future we want and how we remember it.

So that's kind of my opening gambit.

But yeah, I'm buoyed by the idea of taking inventory.

I guess I feel like, again, it was some of the goals feel like, are we sort of, it's not starting from step one.

There's some things that are here.

There's a few specifics.

I think one thing, sorry, are we doing lightning rounders comments?

All right, all right, right.

A couple things I thought might be missing.

One, there's a lot in here about preservation and how to kind of like make sites good for interpretive use and visitors and that sort of thing.

I would like to see more about media presentations to make them more broadly accessible.

That obviously is close to home if you know what I do for a living.

But whether it's video or podcast or otherwise, there's a lot that can be done to tell those stories and reach far more people than just an interpretive site on Saturday afternoons.

The other thing, and I don't know where this might fit in, and it might be completely out of left field, so I apologize for that, but

I don't know where else it might fit except under cultural resources is sort of what do we do with the county's current arts and cultural resources?

You know, the musicians and the performers and the carriers of culture today, you know, with the free concerts and the festivals.

And I don't know if we just cede that to the city, but I don't see anything in there about kind of today's culture bearers.

Thank you.

Great comments.

Yes, although it's kind of mentioned, I think there should be explicit mention of the Freetowns and African American communities in the rural area and making sure that we have some action items about recognizing those communities and protecting them.

Okay.

All right.

You sure?

You can put it all on the table now.

We're going around.

I'll just make some brief comments.

This is more of just maybe a editing thing, but objective 4.1, that seemed like two totally different ideas about entrance quarters and then some other stuff.

So that just needs to be split into two separate objectives.

You guys could look at that later.

I know that having a Historic Preservation Ordinance seems to be controversial for our county and yet I sit on the, I represent as liaison to the Historic Preservation Committee.

You know, we have this report where we just talk about what was demolished or what was documented and we tried to control someone before it was demolished.

There are some success stories.

I want to just be negative Nellie.

where we got someone to actually put the money in and restore it, but we just can't depend on the kindness of strangers.

So I would like us to, if people are feeling namby-pamby, then maybe we can say,

investigate legal tools for historic preservation and leave it at that.

And then whether or not we get to an ordinance as an action item is different.

Or do we want to say pursue adopting a preservation ordinance?

And then we don't have to say what that would look like, but something that actually allows someone to get a permit.

We have permit for demolition, but that just you still get the permit generally.

I mean, you just like if you want to demolish a structure,

You tell the county and they pay a fee and then you demolish it.

And then I also, I don't know if this is adequately expressed, so I'm not sure if it is or not.

I'll just throw it out there and then somebody else can be the judge.

We talked about like stories and types and people that are underrepresented, but I also think there's underrepresented areas of the county.

And I'll even just throw this out as an example, of Howardville where I live.

I think there's a notion that Howardville is washed away by Hurricane Camille and there's nothing left.

And it's true, we lost our hotel.

We don't have a post office, a train station, the lawyer's office, the gas station, we could go on.

But there's a lot of people who still live there and identify as Harrodsville.

Everyone basically is above the 100 year flood plain, above the 100 year flood level.

So if you go, there's a series of boards out in the hallway and it talks about Batesville, talks about communities and Harrodsville is just not there.

It's like,

You know, I think it would be news to everyone living there that they're not there anymore.

So there's a lot of stories.

There's National Register places down there.

There's the first bank of Albemarle County is located there.

There's a whole lot of history there.

And that's just one example of an underrepresented area.

You talked about the Freetowns, but we've kind of lost some of our places.

There's a dot on the map for the comp plan that says, Howardville's there.

But we're not telling that story anymore.

And we do have a mixed community of different races down there.

So including indigenous people, even from Monacan.

So I would just like us to think about whatever those areas are of the county that have not been fully represented in the stories that have been told or or just recognizing that they're still there.

They're still a vibrant community, even if it's not, you know, a town per se.

The same of that community again?

Howardesville.

Thank you.

Sure, thank you.

Appreciate all the comments and staff's work on this.

Just a couple thoughts.

One, well more than two.

One is, you know, we've talked a lot about when we talk about natural resources and we've talked about parks and recreation, I think we are doing a lot, and maybe it's just me, but we're doing a lot of forward thinking.

What do we do now?

How do we move this forward?

And it really strikes me that conversations about

Historic Resources is really about legacy too.

It's also about obviously looking backwards.

I think that's one of the amazingly rich things about our area, among other things.

But I have always been surprised that we don't have a historic preservation ordinance.

One gentleman, Alex Strumminger from Batesville sent a note to all of us and he recommended in there the need for an office of historic preservation.

to that extent.

I would say that shifting to maybe some areas that were or could be maybe as supplemented in here.

One is cataloging and documenting what we currently have.

The second is the acknowledgement that many of our historic resources were built by enslaved labor.

and the connections to the descendants of enslaved communities.

is becoming more and more robust here through the university, through the Gibbons project at the university.

And I think there's a repository of information that can benefit a lot of folks.

And when you think regionally about Albemarle County, many of the enslaved I'm learning worked in many of the different areas and traveled within this area.

So acknowledging that as part of our history and honestly, as part of our legacy, I think is important.

and then I guess lastly the Department of Historic Resources and this is tied a little bit to education but thinking about historic tax credits and as you know people think about I've got this great historic you know home or whatever it is

partnering with the DHR and thinking about ways to leverage those things in a similar way to what we've talked about.

And the last thing I'll say is a wordsmithing thing.

And as we've gone through each of these three, I've been struck by the wording of the goals.

And again, this is just wordsmithing for your consideration.

But when you looked at the goals in natural resources, or sorry, Parks and Rec,

Every one of the goals that Albemarle County will enhance, Albemarle County will utilize, Albemarle County will fund.

And the other two had some interesting wording starting with the natural resources.

Albemarle County will have natural waters.

and then another one Albemarle County will have opportunities for all community members to access and enjoy local historic scenic and cultural resources.

Just it's not worded to me like a goal as much as it is a we'll have these things but it needs to be more of a we will promote these things or we will make yeah make take measures to achieve these things something like that.

Maybe we can't overemphasize this.

So I'm also going to start by talking about the historic ordinance or some kind of policy statement.

Because if we are going to emphasize historic preservation as a goal, then how are we actually going to achieve that?

So there's got to be some policy and

I'm going to, for one, I'm going to advocate for an ordinance and I'm going to give it a different, I don't disagree with your representation of that, that is somewhat, you know, looking in the past, I think is what you said, but I'm going to give it a different lens.

Actually, I think it's also forward-looking and how it's forward-looking is that if you look at most of the, and we talk about adaptive reuse in this chapter here as well,

Most of the adaptive breach, a lot of the adaptive reuse that's happening around the country happens because they can't knock it down.

So it's having those ordinances that enable people to have to think creatively, how am I going to reuse this structure?

And so it doesn't happen without those policies.

So I really encourage the county to

Plus one, Commissioner Bivins.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, colleagues.

This has been quite refreshing and also sort of enjoyable.

Instead of coming along, one thing, if I could come along, my sister Karen on 4.1, I'm just going to say, what does 4.1 mean?

because everybody knows that I have this wrestle with the ARB and one day it was just going to be a wrestle match between them.

Because I'm still trying to figure out what's the sort of the nexus, what's the Venn diagram between them, us, and the BOS.

And at some point, somebody will take me aside, maybe the director will take me aside and tell me why that's so.

And so because when I looked at that, my thing is why wouldn't we want all of Albemarle's built environment to be encouraged in the same way?

Why am I concerned about a road that somebody's on if the traffic's flowing well for 15 to 20 minutes?

I don't care what they think as they're driving through here because there aren't very many ways for people to drive through here.

It's not like I have a lot of options.

I come up 29, I go up 64, maybe I can take 20 or 231 to Gordonville.

But for the most of it, there are very few ways to get people through here someplace else.

Danville and Lynchburg can call us all the bad names for us not having to put a superhighway around us.

But I'm glad we didn't.

They're mad we didn't.

So the thing is, what is our built environment?

Our built environment is not about a road.

You know, our built environment is about what is the culture that we feel is appropriate for when we look at the completeness of who we are, which is why I'm going to come to something else.

So I really here thought that this is a place where the inventory of county and school owned buildings should be looked at to say, how do we do?

I think about Woolen Mills.

Woolen Mills would not have been safe.

But for some people thinking, hey, this could be a good place for some tech guys and some tech gals to come in and do what they're doing here.

So why aren't we asking the county to have an inventory of county buildings and county schools to do the same thing?

We all know what the wrestling match that took place in the school in Esmont.

about what are we going to do with it?

Are we going to knock it down?

Are we going to reuse it?

Are we going to do something else?

I can't stress for a while.

I can't remember the name of the thing.

And they came to a decision to make this a place that was going to integrate back into that community there.

They could have knocked it down if they'd done the other thing.

And so the whole idea is asking our county and our school system to wrestle with their inventory of buildings to see what the next lives of those things can be, I think would be helpful.

I will also just use two other things.

Remember, I brought it to our attention that some of the 600 roads, particularly the one going from Scottsville through Batesville over to 250 over the mountain, that's a historic road.

That is a historic road that is just as important of telling our story about who we were.

And so it's those kinds of bits that I think, while I get we're talking about buildings and everybody all heard my concern and my annoyance about some of the buildings, particularly west of town and in Greensville, that's not good.

whatever the place is over there in B3A.

And so the history that goes along with it, but the history that doesn't get spoken about those buildings out there.

Huh?

Greenwood, thank you.

And Greenwood.

But here are things which we can in fact tell stories about.

This is how our community evolved from the river over to the mountain and back again and what that meant for the economy and what that meant for businesses here.

which also then goes to my last thing and I'll be quiet chair on this I believe is that also it goes to what are we preserving and this goes back to my steep slopes thing let's preserve the things that are real let's not preserve a slope just because I say it's a slope but let's let's preserve the slope because the slope has something to do with the characteristics of our community and they tell a story because we will remember we will remember that when the government put

the road on the top of the blue, what we now call the Blue Ridge Mountains.

They gutted communities.

They gutted people who had been living up in the hills and up in the mountains of the Blue Ridge Mountains for a hundred years.

Yeah, we got a nice road that goes through there.

I'm not saying it's not a nice road.

If you're a motorcycle rider, you want to be careful.

But I want to say to you, that's the kind of story.

and that's the kind of decision that we ought to be making so that we preserve people's resources.

We talk about what are we preserving?

What are we helping to tell?

What's the equity that's being given to the next group of people who come through up here?

That's also by preserving things which we're going to say, we're going to hands off on that.

We're going to help you improve it, but we're not going to come and destroy it.

So what's the real slope?

What's the fake slope?

I was just going to add plus one on historic roads and also just to note that, oh gosh, it must have been like 18 or 19 years ago I worked with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission on a heritage tourism project and we did talk to Professor Emeritus Edward Lay about his work on historic roads and we pulled all that together into a map

which was given to the Planning District Commission.

So I think that works, is still out there.

And I think it's just, some of this is, you know, maybe just bringing it forward, bubbling it up, making it prominent on our website.

But yeah, I just think there could be a whole lot of high-tech things we could do with apps and things for people to follow historic roads and tell stories.

and yes, I know, I like the idea of having an office of historic preservation.

Yeah, I'll just mention in 2019 Loudoun County won an Emmy for their efforts, a documentary they made about their efforts to save gravel roads in their county.

And here, we can't seem to eliminate them fast enough.

So I think that there are opportunities to look at, once again, these things transcend different sections.

I mean, maybe this goes in transportation.

I don't know.

But there's an aspect of historic

qualities to this, to environmental resources, to transportation.

But I think one of the big themes here is that I think historic resources come in all shapes and sizes.

We've gotten stuck in this notion that protecting historic properties is protecting these grand estates.

But sometimes it's not a grand estate.

Sometimes it's a little tiny house that was important to a community.

Sometimes it is that gravel road winding through the countryside.

I mean, that said, I continue to be disappointed in our county that, you know, Monticello is great, but I mean, Teddy Roosevelt's house was also in Albemarle County, and yet most people don't even know it was there.

And I don't know why we're still there.

Well, it's still there, yes.

It's still there, folks.

Still there, sorry for using the past tense.

But it was also the last place that, one of the last documented places that the passenger pigeon was seen in America.

So it's not only a site of historic importance, but also a site of important natural history.

Just I think we're not doing enough to broaden our concept of what is historic Albemarle County.

And I don't know what we can do to push some of these places along if there's funding streams or so forth.

I'll just add a couple of things before we do the last call.

And we still have a lot on our docket to get through tonight.

This notion about documenting and just being aware of what we have.

I think a lot of times we use the word historic.

You think of

circa 1860 or something like that.

But if you go to, you know, the National Register of Historic Places and looking under age and integrity, it's really only 50 years old, right?

So that's like 1972, 1973.

That's not circa 1860, right?

And so I bet if you started to document an inventory that you have, you have more properties than not, you know, within the county that could be historic.

So

So looking forward, the next work session will be on the topics of housing and economic development.

That will be November 14.

And then that will be followed by land use, transportation, and community facilities on December 19.

Obviously there's a lot of interest around land use and particularly the designation of the development areas and the rural areas and how staff is going to address the rural areas.

So we just want to ensure everybody that we will thoroughly address both the development areas and the rural areas.

And as mentioned earlier, we are exploring the possibility

of either giving the rural area its own chapter or having the rural area and development areas as two separate sections within the same land use chapter.

Either way, we're not going to short shift that.

And looking forward, the action steps for these goals and objectives will be drafted and shared next year in phase three.

So some of the discussion tonight kind of centered on, you know, how do we implement, what are the action steps?

So we will be diving into those details next year.

Applicable metrics will be incorporated into the plan and in early 2024 we will hold a board work session on all goals and objectives with a follow-up planning commission work session prior to finalizing the goals and objectives.

So you all will get one more crack at it at that point.

Phase three begins in the spring of next year with action steps to implement the goals and objectives along with prioritizing plan recommendations and incorporating metrics for tracking success.

Thank you.

All right.

I have a quick process question.

So, well, we wanted to take all the feedback that we went with that you've already given feedback on and the community is going to continue giving feedback on, let the board see that.

And then we wanted to make sure that you all had one final opportunity to look at that again before we moved on to the next phase.

Now, obviously, none of this gets finally approved until the end.

So if in that last section,

Well, it would go back to the board when we finalized the plan overall.

Any other questions for staff?

Yes.

Yes.

Quick question for staff.

In terms of

Can you talk a little bit about the community engagement?

And I mean, we, you know, we were looking at these and I understand it's still in process.

At least that's my understanding.

But, you know, we saw 11 participants, 9 respondents, 10 respondents.

So, which is kind of meaningless, right?

At that level.

So, so what are we doing to

Yeah, sure.

I'll speak of some of the ways we're trying to address that.

and engagement activities.

We're relying on our working group to kind of act as community ambassadors and go out to people they know and reach out to different demographics and try to have conversations with those folks.

I will say there has been a trend where our questionnaire responses have been trending downwards for some of these sections.

We had over 500 responses, I believe, in step one earlier this year.

So that's when we were introducing these planned topics.

It was sort of new.

We had a high response rate.

I think some of the community members are becoming kind of familiar with this content and they maybe don't feel quite the same sense of urgency to respond.

But we are exploring new ways of engaging people.

We will continue to do that in phase three next year, and I would expect that there's going to be a higher level of public interest once we get into the action steps.

I'll just add that these low numbers, we just opened these and that's why we're keeping them open for the rest of this, essentially the rest of the calendar year.

And we'll keep going out to the community, promoting these through social media, working with our community and public engagement team.

I know they're both online and hard in paper.

Yeah, we did some paper surveys, the previous ones, and people would scan them and send them in.

Absolutely, it is more efficient and certainly it's more expected these days, although from a recent survey from the MPL Tech and some of the transportation studies that they were doing and plans that they're working on,

they did some surveys and they had demographics on the respondents and it was very interesting because the online respondents were pretty much all white and I was surprised on how high of an economic level they were and so pretty homogeneous and so I would encourage you to think of other ways but not just the online

And perhaps when you go and do some of your pop-ups in different areas, have some kind of paper method that they can respond to, maybe some of these key, because that's probably where you're getting some of the other

population demographics in the population, I would venture to guess that was true for the MPL tech, some of the studies that they were doing.

It's going to be a homecoming game at Western Albemarle.

Let's add one more point to that, because Commissioner Missel and I were kind of laughing at the number of respondents.

We were like, oh, that's single digits.

Is there a way to maybe just have two or three questions at a time, like bite-sized chunks?

I'm not sure how long the survey is, but if you pull somebody aside, can you answer these two questions for me?

Maybe that starts to expand the pool, right?

So election day is in November.

That might be a good spot.

You can't buy the polls, perhaps.

Grab a couple of folks.

I understand it's noted, but I just wanted to flag that.

I'm glad Commissioner Carrazana did.

So with that, let's take a recess for, can we do eight minutes?

This at 8.20-ish.

We'll be back.

No, the clock's not right.

Call us back into order at 8.22.

Y'all should have my paper in front of me.

We will be doing the first of two public hearings tonight.

The first is ZTA 2023-00004 and STA 2023-00002, CDD fee restructuring.

And we have Dave Shifflett and Amelia McCulley with us today.

So I'll turn it over to our staff.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Dave Shifflett, Assistant Director of Administration for Community Development, and Amelia McCauley, Special Projects Manager for Community Development, and also with us are our partners from the Berkeley Group, Chris Musso and Darren Coffey.

So this evening we'll start by providing some background with the goals for this project as well as a summary of progress to date.

We'll also share updates since this was before the commission on July 11th of this year.

Then we'll go over a summary of the changes proposed with these ordinance amendments.

And the proposed zoning text and subdivision text amendments are before the commission this evening for action.

The other code sections proposed for amendment are shared as for information and context.

And then lastly, we'll wrap up with next steps for the project and any questions from the commission.

Apologies.

That better?

Okay, this project serves several key purposes as well as being an important step towards implementation of our new community development system, known as Enterprise Permitting and Licensing or EPL.

This is the permanent application tracking platform that will eventually replace County View, our current system.

The key themes in the fee restructuring project are the simplifying and consolidating fees.

The fees will move from 312 separate fees currently in six separate chapter codes into one.

With staff's recommended fee schedule, we will then have 154 total fees, which is over a 50% reduction in the number of fees we have currently.

The unified fee schedule is found in attachment five for your reference.

As some of you may recall from July 11th commission meeting, we engaged with the Berkeley group on this effort.

And the Berkeley group is a Virginia based consulting firm who works with cities, counties, towns on local government policies and regulations.

They examined the current fee schedule structure and compared it with seven peer localities in the Commonwealth.

The Berkeley group recommended changes to our fee schedule based on that evaluation and best practices.

The scope of the project did not include an analysis of charges for fees.

We went with the intent to maintain level revenues.

This was a fairly rigorous process to maintain and involve substantial modeling, data modeling and projections with single family residential building fees.

A major focus was, of course, benchmarking and comparing the fee structures.

The overall goal, however, was simplifying and streamlining our fee schedule based on these best practices.

Throughout this project, we engaged with major stakeholder groups directly and the community through Engage Albemarle.

For the best practices, Berkeley Group's research resulted in finding these to be to keep fees simple and predictable and bundle fees were practical, round fees up or down and make the fee schedule readily available in one location.

We believe that the proposed new unified fee schedule in attachment five follows these best practices.

And for some updates, we'd like to thank the Commission for questions and suggestions that led staff to revise the report and presentation to provide additional clarity.

For example, one of the Commission's comments was that it is hard to follow the existing versus proposed fees, even in the crosswalk.

So staff agreed and worked on various techniques that should improve the ability to see these changes.

On August 16th, staff presented this project to the board.

As an attachment to the board's report, we shared a summary of the commission's input.

The board found this project in alignment with its identified goals and support of moving it forward toward a public hearing.

Since that meeting, we have worked with the Berkeley group to produce the draft ordinances that are before you.

This included determining which are general fee guidelines, such as refunds, timing, and mode of payment, and which others apply to specific ordinances.

We expanded the document that is the summary of proposed changes, as we will further explain.

We also made some minor fee revisions, such as removing a separate bond inspection fee that is redundant and covered in the new comprehensive bond fee.

With the County Engineer Frank Pohl's help, we were able to make several revisions to the Water Protection Ordinance, WPO, fee formatting and fee titles to reduce redundancy and hopefully increase clarity.

The commission may also recall the single family bundling that is illustrated on this slide.

The bundling fee is applied across all types of the square footages and includes building plan review and the first two inspections per inspection type.

Subsequent inspections beyond these are subject to the separate re-inspection fee.

The proposed bundled single-family fees are more closely aligned with the fee with the staff effort.

Smaller homes are subject to a lesser fee and larger homes with more area to inspect have larger fees.

Also, you may recall a fairly in-depth explanation of the proposed changes at the July 11th meeting.

Since that time, staff added to this document

and the explanation of proposed changes relating to ARB and WPO applications.

The ARB application fees were grouped into the following categories based on staff effort.

Board review minor and board review major and also staff review minor and staff review major.

The WPO application fees were consolidated where there was repetition.

In a few cases, the fee names were restated for clarity.

Additionally, we responded to the request from cadre to allow full payment of the VS&P fee instead of half upon submittal and then half upon issuance of the general permit.

Based on the advice of our deputy county attorney, we have prepared two separate slides, one for action on each of the two ordinance amendments.

Staff recommends that the Planning Commission support recommend approval of the proposed subdivision text amendment to the Board of Supervisors.

This is in attachment six.

Staff recommends that Planning Commission support recommend approval of the proposed zoning text amendment to the Board of Supervisor, also found in attachment six.

The next steps, so we have a hearing with the Board of Supervisors on December 6th of this year, and staff recommends an effective date of July 1, 2024 for the new fee schedule.

This later effective date will allow CDD to make the necessary changes to our systems and to limit the impacts on contracts for development that are currently underway.

With that, thank you all for your time and consideration.

Thank you so much.

The only thing that I would offer as a could you please, is when you get to the section about abbreviations,

I realize there's some emerging new ideas about how you put the abbreviations after you state the name.

but remember we're talking about a broad community and so if you could consider going, returning to the previous way where you'd have the name of the spelled out name and then the abbreviation that you're gonna use further on in parentheses, I believe you will have more people who will be able to follow.

Even though I'm an insider, quasi-insider, I had to go back up and say, well, wait a minute,

particularly around the water protection thing which one because it's there was one a part that was off had a P in it one that had an M in it and I had to go back and say which one are we talking about here are we talking about the one with the P with the M if you would just put that I think you would you will you will save yourself some frustrated readers.

Yeah, thanks.

I just had a couple quick questions.

One you mentioned under factors favorable creates a fee structure that can be amended more easily as needed.

So as far as the reconciliation, we

have an objective to review every two years.

Got it.

Okay, thank you.

And then one just curious on the applications of the entrance corridors.

You define what major and minor is for both staff and board.

belief signage is separate is that yes let me see if I can pull that up if it's easy otherwise the big deal so major and minor staff and board yeah and entrance corridor

Review of any sign is called out separately.

And then resubmittal of the sign, if you keep going through iterations, is another, it's all handled as a separate fee.

Okay, got it.

Any other questions for staff?

I do have a couple of questions.

That is a really good question and I feel that somebody who knows a whole lot more than me is probably better equipped to answer that.

I think that there's the, Kevin's looking at me.

No, I'm sorry.

I didn't.

Could you repeat the question again?

Under agriculture and forest districts, what is the benefit to the county for eliminating the fee to create or to add to a district?

It was recommended to us by Scott Clark, who works with administering the districts.

And I think the concept is that we want to promote the districts, you know, you pay a fee to withdraw from them.

Okay, that's just from my knowledge, thank you.

And my second question was, I was looking at my notes from our last meeting, and we had a conversation about, is there a way to use the fees to incentivize affordable housing or climate responsive design?

I didn't see anything, it's silent on this resubmission, so I'm curious, did you look at it and say, hey, we're not gonna do this for these reasons or bad idea, good idea, just looking for a response?

Sure.

So to answer that question, we obviously do consider that, but that would be entirely out of the scope of this effort.

This is really just getting us to a baseline so we can establish fees, make them clear to understand

and then go through that continuous improvement process and that might be something we can consider.

Gotcha.

This is just setting the foundation then?

Yes, that's right.

Thank you.

That was all of my questions.

I'll open up.

Chair, I might offer as a supporting point for what you just asked is that when we get to the point during the comp plan review where we're looking at specific things, I might suggest that you would put that kind of what are the incentives that we do and look at the fee structures for those kinds of pieces, which might then be moved to this project to sort of say this is something that we're interested in.

Yes, sir.

That'll open up the public hearing.

Did our consultants want to say anything?

All right.

I don't think I have anyone as registered to speak, but I'm gonna open up the floor.

Does anyone here want to say anything?

All right, Madam Clerk, has anyone online?

All right.

With that, we'll close the public hearing.

All right, I'll bring it back into the commission.

Any last words or points of discussion you want to take?

I do have one more.

I just thought of it.

I have one question.

It's kind of detailed, and maybe it's for another day, but I'll go ahead and pose it.

I was looking at the different categories that we had for the fees, right?

So you had like residential, plumbing, mechanical.

I saw one, for example, sprinklers, and it was fire suppression that was sprinklers.

and electrical vehicle charging stations.

I'm not sure if that's too granular, but I was looking under electric.

It had lots of other things, and that's a hot topic that we're seeing in a lot of our submissions coming through.

That's all I had.

Yes.

All right.

Any further discussion?

All right.

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

All right, thank you.

Take your time.

There it is.

OK, I'll keep rolling.

That is probably what I was thinking.

You want me to redo it?

Yes, please.

Sorry, I move, which, oh, this one, I'm sorry, I thought this was the second period.

All right, any further discussion?

Yes.

Ms.

Firehock?

Aye.

All right.

Well, thank you to the staff.

Great job.

Thank you very much.

We'll move on to our second public hearing of the night.

There we go.

Let's say we're close to getting ready here.

Mr. Reidelbach, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you.

Good evening, planning commissioners.

My name is Andy Reidelbach, and I'm a senior planner with the Albemarle County Planning Division.

And tonight we're here for a rezoning request for application number ZMA-2022-12, known as Arbor Oaks Towns.

To provide some context of the location of the property that is subject of this reasoning request I've provided the aerial view as shown on the screen.

The site is highlighted in yellow.

It is directly across Hydraulic Road from the intersection that goes both into the Lambs Lane campus where Albemarle High School is located, as well as the Georgetown Green townhouse development.

And then you can see where Georgetown Road intersects with Hydraulic Road down at the center bottom of the screen.

The proposal for this application, it consists of one parcel that is currently zoned R4 residential at four units per acre.

The property is just less than one acre, .96.

The existing use is a vacant parcel with scattered trees around the site.

The applicant is looking to rezone to R-15 residential, which is 15 units per acre with proffers.

And because the property is just less than one acre in size, the applicant is proffering a maximum of 14 units with a concept plan.

And all of the units would be single family attached units such as townhouses.

The applicant is proposing a cluster division for these 14 units and that would require 25% open space.

The density of the development would come to 14.6 units per acre.

And then the applicant is also proffering 15% affordable housing, which would come out to two of the units out of the 14.

There are also two associated requests with this rezoning.

There is a planting strip waiver or exception request, because and I'll get into this more later in the presentation.

but the private street that is being proposed for this development operates more like a parking lot.

This planting strip exception request does require action to be taken by the Planning Commission tonight.

And then there was another request, a central sewerage system request that does not require action by the PC, it only requires action by the Board of Supervisors.

And that is because a private pump or lift station in Force Main would be required by ACSA for this property.

So to provide more information on the zoning, I've highlighted the subject parcel there in the center of the screen.

It's kind of roughly square shaped.

As I said, it's zoned R4 residential by right because it is just less than one acre in size.

You could only get three residential units on it.

It is surrounded by

Largely other residentially zoned properties of various densities from R-15 to R-10 and other R-4 properties to the east, or to the west, north and south.

And then to the west across Hydraulic Road, you have Georgetown Green, which is zoned R-6, and then the school's campus, which is zoned rural areas.

And in addition, the overlay districts that this property are subject to are the entrance corridor and the airport impact area.

In the comprehensive plan, this property is subject to the Places 29 master plan.

And in that master plan, it is designated as urban density residential, which is the orange on the screen.

And that designation land use designation recommends residential uses at six to 34 units per acre along with supporting uses.

And of course, as I mentioned earlier, this proposal is recommending 14.6 units per acre, which does fall within that range.

And no supporting uses are proposed with this rezoning.

The maximum residential building height for urban density residential is four stories or 45 feet, which the proposal does conform with that recommendation.

and just looking at the map of surrounding properties, it is largely other urban density residential adjacent to it with neighborhood density residential.

Farther to the east, some urban mixed use to the north along hydraulic and then everything to the west across hydraulic, including both Georgetown Green and the school's campus are designated rural areas in the comprehensive plan.

This slide shows a screenshot or just a graphic of the proposed concept plan and the layout.

You can see there's one central private street proposed for this development, and although it is considered a private street because the applicant has indicated they intend to subdivide, it really acts more like a parking lot than it would your traditional street.

And then there are two rows of townhouses on either side, eight townhouses proposed in block two.

On the right, six townhouses.

and Block 1 on the left.

And then there are areas of green space surrounding it with some amenities located in the green space as well.

So the specifics of looking at that concept plan, the applicant has proffered that concept plan.

So when it would come into site plan, we would be looking to ensure that the site plan is in conformance with that concept plan.

As I mentioned, there are two blocks of townhouses for 14 units total.

There's the private street that operates as a parking lot, a shared parking lot for all of those units.

Because the applicant is doing a cluster division, 25% open space is required.

As I mentioned, pump station would be required for sanitary sewer.

And then the applicant is also proposing to dedicate approximately five feet of right of way along hydraulic road.

to provide a planting strip there and move the sidewalk a little bit farther back from the road because currently the sidewalk is right up against the travelway.

As I mentioned, this application does include a proffer statement.

There are three main separate proffers.

One is for the affordable housing at the standard 15% of residential units constructed, which would come out to two units, since it is a conventional rezoning and not a planned district.

There's a concept plan, not an application plan.

So the concept plan has to be proffered if the applicant is interested in having that really be the guiding plan for the development.

So the concept plan is proffered.

And then as I mentioned, the open space is being proffered as well with dedication to an HOA.

And then looking at the additional request that does require action by the Planning Commission, as I mentioned, there is a planting strip exception request for modification to the street standards.

And that is that planting strips not be provided on either side of the private street since it really acts more like a parking lot.

And so because of that staff recommends and has included a condition that parking lot landscaping requirements would be more appropriate than the planting strip requirements that you would usually find along a street.

So looking at the positive aspects of the rezoning request, it is consistent with the recommendations of the Places 29 Master Plan, and it is consistent with the majority of the applicable neighborhood model principles.

The one concern that was identified is that the concept plan does not provide for an interconnection to the parcel to the east, which is one single family home to the east.

and ultimately looking at staff's recommendations.

Staff does recommend approval of the rezoning request Arbor Oaks Town's ZMA 2022-12 and staff also has no concerns with the planting strip exception request and so if the Planning Commission does choose to recommend approval of the rezoning staff would also recommend approval.

Staff would recommend approval of the Planting Strip exception request with the one condition that I mentioned that because the private street will function like a parking lot, landscaping should be provided along it consistent with the landscaping within a parking area section of the zoning ordinance really instead of the Planting Strip portion of the zoning ordinance.

I'm available for any questions that you may have.

All right, thank you for the staff report.

Commissioners, any questions?

Yes, I can imagine a lot of students walking from there across the street to get to school.

Has anyone looked at like where would the crosswalks be that they would be using for there?

The principal crosswalk, that is my neighborhood.

I live right around the corner.

So the principal crosswalk, if you watch all children come along, if they're on that side of the street, they go to Hydraulic and Whitewood and cross there.

There's sort of signs that say, you know, controlled walking and controlled signs.

Any other questions?

Is it in the project to create the planting strip and move the sidewalk from Hydraulic Road?

It is shown on a concept plan.

I've pulled the concept plan up here.

So that would be part of the, so it's not just that they're offering the land to do that, but they're actually going to be doing that as part of the... Correct.

Yes.

Absolutely.

So do you know if there's been any discussion, perhaps I'll just wait for when the applicant comes.

Any final questions for staff before we open a public hearing?

I want that open to public hearing.

I'll call for the applicant if they have a presentation.

Welcome.

Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission, I'm Keturah Rowell, and I'm here on behalf of the applicant to answer any questions in regards to the planting strip in the parking lot.

The biggest reason is because the parking lot comes right up to the sidewalk and then there is a green space directly behind the sidewalk before the townhouse.

So there will be landings along that on both sides of

as well as then the reason we kept that open space to the left is that's where in the visual of the aerial, that's where all the big hardwoods are.

And so we've actually incorporated that into the backyards and the open space as well.

Make sure that all the construction to the right is where there's nothing but scrubs and brush and so forth.

If you drive by there, you'll see.

And the entrance does line up just like you said across the street and

You know, some other kind of access or who knows when the county does your school expansion and what they do with those roads and improvements.

It's hard to say, but we're in alignment with that.

I'm not going to answer any other questions.

So any questions for the applicant?

Thank you.

So my question was if I could ask for the concept plan that we put up again.

That's possible.

Thank you.

So we know that the property sits between sort of it sits on one side.

It has they all have the same names.

So this road that you're putting in is going to be the same name as the road that's right next to it.

Not wide.

No?

At least that's what it looked like on your plan, in any event.

Behind you.

She's kind of bedridden, and they don't want to be disturbed by anything.

Could you use the mic, sir?

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

They're a very old couple, and she's somewhat locked into the house, and he does some construction, but they don't want to sell.

They don't want to be disturbed.

So the best thing we did was just take the end of our parking lot directly to their property line.

There's no separation there.

at some point in time that can be vacated, dedicated to open space and then a connection to the rear of someone when they decide to ever sell it.

Now again, that parcel is not real developable and the topography on it just falls off greatly to a stream on the back.

Okay, thank you.

I just comment.

That I'm, they're gonna be energy efficient townhouses.

You know, I've been a builder around here since 83 and like to do a lot of energy efficient kind of things and natural

That's great.

Great to hear.

Is there any sort of access control plan for that open space picnic area?

Any access control?

Is it high?

It's not.

There'll be a minor retaining wall at the backside of the site, if there is now.

I mean, we have to move that whole retaining wall back into a steeper grade.

And you know, the dentist office and everything next door have like terrace, three terrace retaining wall.

Okay.

Our access to that open space and we'll fence that area as well just to make it secure is at the back if you'd show the concept plan again.

So yeah, you see at the end of the sidewalk near the handicap parking area, turn around space.

There's a walk that goes there and then being a fence area all along that, along that frontage to secure them and designated specifically.

And it'll have a grill and, you know.

Okay.

All right.

There's no other questions.

Thank you, sir.

We'll, we'll close the public hearing.

Thank you.

Let me reopen that joker.

Yes, sir, I do have one person.

Hi there, my name is Barbara Corley and I am a resident of the subdivision across the street from this proposed

subdivision.

I live at Georgetown Green and I am interested in how the property aligns both with our road, I believe it's called Georgetown Green, even though the school and I, my subdivision and the school share that road.

And what I am concerned about with the property

First of all, the developer that developed Georgetown Green in 1968, we're 55 years young.

We are zoned R6, and we have nine acres of public land for our homeowners association.

So I'm really concerned about the way in which this has been designed.

I feel that 14

townhouse units for less than one acre is really tight.

And I think that the system of entrance ingress and egress is going to be very problematic, given that it is as narrow as it is, it does align, they have moved it to align with our

Ingress and egress, but I don't know if you guys have ever driven by there in the morning or in the afternoon when school lets out or is beginning.

It's very difficult.

On top of that, Lambs Lane, that road will at some point begin to be a major artery.

to allow students from the schools in the back, the middle school and the elementary school to flow through between Albemarle High School and Georgetown Green and flow out onto hydraulic there.

I talked with buildings and grounds.

They were talking about the possibility of putting what is known as a modified T there.