Planning Commission Work Session and Regular Meeting   2/27/2024

Alright, good afternoon everyone.

It is officially four o'clock and I would like to call to order the Planning Commission for February 27th and I'll start by establishing a quorum.

Mr. Moore.

Great, thank you.

I'll go on next to other matters not listed on the agenda from the public.

If there are any matters from the public

not listed.

This is awkwardly awarded.

I always get chipped up by this.

If there is any public comment on items not listed on the agenda, we would love to hear them now.

You may come forward.

Thank you.

Oh, we do have a sign-up list.

Great.

So I have seven people on the list.

I'll do my best with names.

Mr. McGinnis knows he's number one.

Welcome to the podium.

And next will be Tom Olivier.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

My name is Rob McGinnis.

I'm here to provide comments on the draft goals and objectives for the rural area land use and transportation.

PEC supports many of the goals and objectives.

However, I have been following comments regarding our strongest concerns.

PEC is extremely concerned about goal four that calls for planning for unique locations in the rural areas with established land use patterns, zoning, and existing development that are inconsistent with rural area goals.

As indicated during the previous planning commission work session on the development areas, this is at a minimum allowing the camel's nose into the tent.

This goal is engendering more sprawl by compounding the mistakes of prior zoning decisions.

This goal should be eliminated or rewritten better to align with goals one through three.

Objective 4.2 calls for the evaluation of potential opportunities for non-residential land uses at Shadwell and Yancey, no rural interstate and interchanges.

These evaluations should be done or completed through small area plans.

That's been talked about in the past, and it certainly is a recommendation for small area plans for development or expansions.

and agricultural and civil culture industries should be prioritized.

Under no circumstance should sprawl be promoted for US 250 east and west of Yancey.

and East of the Shadwell interchange.

And then lastly, PZ strongly supports the objective calling for the development of a rural area land use plan.

However, we believe that the objective should be revised slightly to indicate that the plan must be fully funded and should commence within one year of adoption of the AC44 comprehensive plan.

Thank you for the opportunity to share my comments.

Good afternoon, I'm Tom Olivier from the Samuel Miller District here to speak about rural areas and the comprehensive plan.

I've lived in a farm in Southern Albemarle County for over 40 years.

My wife, Ren and I raised thousands of lambs on our farm.

Decades ago, I studied baboon genetics in Kenya, mainly on pastoral tribal lands and European-style ranches.

And I lived for a couple of years in Western Australia, where I studied evolution and introduced rabbit populations, mainly on large sheep ranches.

These experiences have left me with a strong appreciation of both the values and complexities of open spaces or rural areas, as we call them here in Albemarle County.

Our community has a reputation for a high quality of life, and our rural areas make that quality of life possible.

Surveys from the 1990s onward show county residents, as we should, place high values on open spaces, and we expect the county to protect them.

Our rural areas aren't, though, just pretty places.

They're home to ecosystems that provide materials and services vital to our existence.

Clean air, clean water, and carbon sequestration.

But ecosystems are under threat from many sources, invasive species, climate change, and of course human population growth and economic development.

County open spaces also are home to ever-changing businesses.

Commodity production agriculture once dominant has declined, but new value-edited agricultural productions have appeared, think wineries and weddings.

Looking ahead as climate change worsens, persisting agricultural commodity production capacities in Albemarle County may become far more valuable.

Our rural areas are vital.

We cannot judge their value by comparing revenues generated by rural areas now to revenues of more developed uses.

It's dangerous to think of rural areas as suburbs waiting to happen.

We need a planning framework that integrates thinking about rural areas elements and their interactions with rural areas protection.

For this reason, I support a rural areas chapter in the new plan, and I believe a standalone rural areas plan as proposed would meet our planning needs even better.

Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon.

My name is John Scheinman.

I live in the Samuel Miller District.

I'd like to comment just briefly on the rural area land use transportation, EC44, and very much in support of what Rob spoke a little bit earlier about the work that PEC has done and continues to do.

I also have concern about goal four and its potential to

allow for unintended consequences and expansion of growth and development in rural areas.

It's a concern to me.

We live pretty close to a couple of existing commercial entities out in rural areas.

and I would hate to see that those get used to leverage to then add on or create more commercial development in a very rural area.

And so I'd very much like to ask that attention be paid to go for and not allow it to become, as Rob used, the camel's nose under the tent and it leads to more and more and more.

So I understand the need to grandfather some existing

Development that has probably occurred, but I would encourage you to be grandfathered and then corralled as opposed to grandfathered and then expanded.

Thank you.

Mr. Loach, and then looks like Nehru Celaini?

I may not have even been close.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Good evening.

My name is Tom Loach.

Sorry, can you move the mic down?

Thank you.

My name is Tom Loach.

I'm a resident of Crozet.

I see the county has found a new word to add to their planning lexicon, that being equity.

However, there's a problem with this concept, mainly because the current land use system in Albemarle County is based wholly on a concept of inequality.

I see now the county is talking about concepts such as designated villages,

and Crossroad communities in the rural areas.

If these concepts of equity are implemented, it will not only cause a tremendous development pressure in the rural areas, but it will also eliminate the current reality of there being a difference between growth areas and rural areas and with it the attached benefits to rural landowners.

In 1975, Albemarle County made a decision to

landed the two distinct categories, growth area and rural areas.

At the same time, the county requested permission from the state to enroll in the land use valuation tax program and finalize the membership when it rode in ordinance into the incorporated into law.

In 1991, Robert Tucker, then county executive, published a paper on the issue of land use value taxation.

In this report Mr. Tucker defines two important points.

The first being the reason for the implementation of the land use tax program and the second who pays for the program.

Regarding the land use tax program, Mr. Tucker stated the following.

The current land use program for preserving rural land has been an objective for the county for almost two decades, and the benefits derived from the county are significant for the community at large.

Although only eligible land use properties derive a monetary benefit,

from Land Use.

It can be argued that all county residents receive intangible benefits via the proximity to rural land, open space, and woodlands.

Regarding who pays for the program, Mr. Tucker wrote, the cost of land use is not a hidden fact, since it is implicit in the concept of land use that the tax burden is shifted to other taxpayers.

property that is ineligible for land use value taxation does bear a greater share of taxes because of having a land use.

Land use will cost the taxpayers mainly growth area residents $14 million this year.

It means the average homeowner will be paying about $680 for land use.

One must wonder how long those who pay for this land use will tolerate paying so much money for a program that no longer serves its original purpose of rural preservation.

So if equity between rural and growth areas is what you want, be careful or you just may get what you wish for.

Thank you.

Nora?

Thank you to my colleague for helping me understand that.

Hi, I'm Nora Seilheimer.

It is a tough name.

Sorry.

My chicken scratch probably didn't help.

I'm Nora Seilheimer.

I live in Southern Albemarle County, and I just wanted to thank you for your work on the draft goals and objectives for the rural area of land use and transportation.

As a resident of Albemarle County and someone who cares deeply about protecting our natural resources and our rural communities, I ask that as you move forward on the next phase of your work, that the goals and objectives that you advance do not open the door to development in our rural areas.

Protection of Water Resources and Retaining Existing Forest Cover should be paramount.

And I echo the concerns that Rob McGinnis mentioned earlier, that the county should pause the process of identifying crossroads communities until the preparation of a rural area plan with sufficient community engagement.

I also ask that goals associated with expansion of legacy zoning should be eliminated.

and that you consider small area plans be created for Shadwell and Yancey Mills Rural Interstate Interchanges to evaluate land uses at these interchanges and to protect rural area from spraw along 250 at both of these interchanges.

Thank you.

Peggy.

Yes, that's exactly what I was going to say.

Thank you.

Hi.

I'm Peggy Gilgose.

I live in the Jack Jewett District, but I also own a really sweet little piece of property in Whitehall on the Mormons River.

In reviewing the information prepared for today's meeting, I see contradictions that you all will need to address.

If we're striving for resiliency for our community, then we need to double down on protecting our watersheds, agricultural lands and forests, and biodiversity.

Stating the obvious, but what's often taken for granted is that human beings depend on functioning ecosystems.

Rural assets important for providing water, food, buffering against flood, drought, and extreme heat, and taking up carbon must be mapped and protected from disruption by development, impermeable surfaces, sources of pollution, and other forms of impairment.

To accomplish this, it's important that an immediate goal of AC44 should be the creation and adoption of a detailed rural area land use plan.

Until we've mapped the important natural resources we're fortunate to have in the rural areas, we should not be encouraging or forecasting any parts of it for future development.

Plotting crossroads,

Communities, rural interstate interchanges, and unique locations in AC44 is really putting the cart before the horse.

While I understand the thinking behind the creation of resiliency hubs, the most environmentally sound choice we could make is to use what we already have.

I think that in cases of dire emergency, existing community centers, schools, and churches could serve rural residents as resiliency hubs providing emergencies, shelter, and communications.

A significant reason a new emphasis on resiliency is needed in AC44 is because we've already done serious damage to the sustainability of our ecosystems that we depend on.

We need to plan to do more to protect them now so they can continue to support us.

And let's emphasize this in AC44.

I appreciate your attention to my comments.

Thank you.

Beasley My name is Paula Beasley and my husband and I have lived in Esmont and Southern Albemarle over 30 years.

We have been active in every comprehensive plan revision since 1996.

We fully support the Piedmont Environmental Council's recommendations for the rural areas draft.

However, we would emphasize several points.

The primary goal has always been and should be for the rural areas to preserve and protect its agricultural, I apologize.

Forestall, Horticultural Economy and its ecosystems, natural resources, biodiversity, historic cultural and architectural assets.

I refer you to the PEC research of the vibrant benefits of the rural areas, the economic green and environmental ones.

We oppose provisions in the draft such as rural crossroads, rural communities, rural communities, rural interchanges, permitting more commercial activities in legacy-zoned places.

and particularly services for a resiliency hubs every five miles that would completely fragment the rural areas resulting in a loss of all the foregoing you are obliged to protect.

We support resiliency hubs and existing facilities where places people currently congregate, shopping centers, libraries, community centers, and hence would not affect agricultural, civil cultural, horticultural, or natural ecosystems.

The county must focus on affordable housing within its development areas to stem the tide of persons moving to the rural areas for economic reasons.

We support rooftop solar, which, if effectively adopted, could supply 40 to 50 percent of our energy needs and save our rural areas.

The possible negative environmental effects are considerably less.

Develop that before you permit the rural area to be gobbled up by out-of-state solar marketing companies who do not care or have to live with consequence.

Quinces.

Please update our historic preservation plan and ordinance.

These are important county aspects.

What we have asked for in need in the rural area is broadband or preferably fiber optic because of our many storms, more frequent and inexpensive transportation to connect us to existing commercial areas.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

So that was a little bit, it was interesting, that was very helpful.

The request was for comments on items not listed on the agenda, but I think this is, and we would all probably acknowledge this as a critically important aspect of our work, not only tonight, but into the coming months as we look at rural areas.

And I do want to mention also sort of stating the obvious that we're discussing 95% of the land area in Albemarle County and we have now less than, well, 80 minutes to do so, 70 minutes to do so.

We have talked to staff about the potential for continuing this conversation beyond this evening, and we'll see how that plays out.

Also, just want to thank the community for all their really thoughtful comments, not only tonight, but we've gotten, I mean, I've gotten, I'm sure we all have gotten dozens of other letters, and I think there's an overwhelming

message that we're hearing, and that is preserve our natural beauty, our historic resources, and generally the rural character we all relish in Albemarle County.

And so I don't want to ramble on much longer, but believe me at least, and I think I'm speaking for everyone here, that we hear you.

This is a really important aspect of our county and one that we are grateful to be able to help steward.

So with that, I'll stop rambling and I'll turn it over to our capable staff.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission.

I'm Ben Holt.

I'm with the Long Range Planning Team, and I'll be presenting on tonight's topic, draft goals and objectives for the rural area with a focus on land use and transportation.

Staff would also like to note that we obviously will cover as much ground as we can within this allocated hour and a half, but we will readdress this topic with the goals, actions, and including the action steps in upcoming phase three.

So just like everybody to keep that in mind, including the audience.

So we'll provide an overview of where we are in this process with rural area land use and transportation.

Staff is largely going to skip a repeat of the AC44 project, which we included with our last work session, and we'll move right into the goals and objectives and the rural topic.

And then at the very end of the presentation, we'll discuss the next steps in AC44.

So the purpose of this work session is to receive commission feedback on the content for these draft goals and objectives of land use and transportation within the county's rural area, which as noted is approximately 95% of the land area.

We're using the overarching questions of goal alignment with the existing framework.

and also perhaps what's missing within each section to guide discussion.

Staff has also included several specific questions where commission feedback and direction is especially needed.

And after this work session, staff will summarize the commission's feedback and share it later with the board at their March 20 work session on these same topics.

The finalized goals and objectives will be used to draft the action steps, as I mentioned, to be shared in phase three, as these all work together.

Moving on to the topic of the rural area, the input themes that we've collected from the public includes an emphasis on protecting the natural environment,

Protection of Historic Resources, which include African American settlements and free towns.

Also, Transportation Connection to Services and Expanded Rural Area Transit.

Protection of Rural Road Character, Exploring Adaptive Reuse of Existing Buildings, and Establishing Resilience Hubs within the Rural Area, including Crossroads Communities.

Staff also held a couple of public meetings in the rural area, both at Batesville and Yancy Community Center.

At Batesville, feedback from this discussion yielded similar themes to what I just mentioned, including support for small area plans before determining any land use

decisions within crossroads communities, utilizing resilience hubs, environmental and historic resource protection, addressing areas with existing septic issues, improved transportation safety, and exploring transit expansion for rural areas.

The feedback from the ESMOT community at Yancy Community Center was also similar to that of Batesville.

Themes included community support networks and communication, bike and pedestrian safety, protection of farmland, forest and natural habitat.

Additionally, healthcare access and services was a major theme as well as aging in place for this community in similar areas.

is one input included services and healthcare access, broadband provision, maintaining rural growth management priorities, as well as limited housing and jobs.

As with the previous session, we've organized the chapter goals into the topics of land use and transportation.

Rural land use includes conservation and siding of solar facilities discussion.

supporting agricultural and civil culture, crossroads communities and resilience strategies, as well as non-residential land uses for legacy zoning areas.

Transportation goals include the unique transportation networks of the rural area and considerations for safety and maintaining quality of life.

So as with the previous work session, we have all of the goals and objectives on

several slides so staff is happy to return to those slides during the discussion as needed.

Back up a second.

So notable goals and objectives include a recommendation for a rural area plan that addresses the varying localized needs, and that's an objective 1.3.

We also have a recommendation for small area plans at the rural interstate interchanges, that's objective 4.2, and that would be fleshed out with the action steps.

And also recommendations for investigating walking, biking, and transit opportunities within the rural area.

with a special emphasis on crossroads communities and equitable access, and that's goal three.

So crossroads communities, these communities are already identified within the 2015 plan, however little guidance is included for these areas.

I'd like to note that the AC44 draft definition of crossroads communities

entails that the purpose of this designation is to determine essential services and needs to rural populations, this exploration of resilience hubs, and we would like to clarify that these crossroads communities are not development areas designated for economic development or expanded residential development.

During the commission's December 19th work session, feedback included support for the community resilience hubs concepts and a more equitable service provision for the rural area while being clear about the scale and types of appropriate uses that may be provided.

The commission also supported engaging individual communities prior to any land use or zoning changes within Crossroads community.

and providing clarity about potential benefits that could be paired with this designation.

Input from the commission and board and the public from the recent rural area meetings, and we'll also include this work session, an upcoming board session, and those will be incorporated into the recommendations to be shared in phase three.

So moving on to the topic of resilience hubs, these resilience hubs and communities could be adapted to different scales for each individual community.

These hubs also could be publicly owned buildings and facilities or potentially privately owned in certain areas.

And they're also the potential for grant funding to make resilience upgrades.

Important aspects of these hubs may include disaster response, provision of services such as medical and community resources such as gathering spaces, events and programming, local food access, and community gardens.

Regarding our draft growth management policy,

The definition entails continued emphasis on the distinction between the development areas and the rural areas.

Growth will be concentrated within the development areas with well-defined boundaries to protect the rural character and natural environment while maintaining low density, limited residential development.

Small-scale businesses and limited infrastructure would serve existing communities.

So at this point we will now break to discuss the topic, starting with the alignment of goals and objectives with the framework and what may be missing from the draft goals and objectives.

Additionally, staff has documented email feedback from commissioners Murray and Firehawk and we have also received several emails including community members who spoke just before this session began.

For the questions we'd like specific guidance for, staff would like to know if the AC44 team should focus on resilience hubs, more so than the crossroads community's designation.

If the PC would like to change direction in the crossroads community's discussion, now is the time to do so.

and these areas, regardless of designation, could still have area planning and community engagement in the future and also a remaining focus on adaptive reuse and recommendations within the historic resources chapter.

For transportation,

We would like to know what more efficient, effective and equitable transit service would look like for the rural area.

We would also like to know what sort of bike and pedestrian infrastructure would serve the unique needs of the rural area and how the plan recommendations should prioritize or implement these bike and pedestrian opportunities.

And with that, I'll move back to the

Questions, and we can start on the discussions.

And again, let me know if you'd like me to zoom in on any particular goals or objectives during the discussion.

Great.

Thank you, Mr. Holt.

And I am going to go a little bit off script, but since it's a work session here, I missed one of the community members, and I'd like to just invite her up if you would like to come speak.

I apologize for not doing that.

Thank you so much.

I'm sorry to be late, but thank you for hearing me.

So my name is Christine Putnam, and I live in Southern Almaw County.

And I'm also a member of the Almaw County Natural Heritage Committee.

I'm here to speak about this rural area chapter.

And I appreciate the time and energy that goes into getting it right.

There's a lot of language about protecting agricultural and forestry industries.

and as there should be because they are important.

But I do want to just remind the commissioners that these land uses can and often do have negative impacts on biodiversity and water quality.

And I'm actually surrounded by these industrial pine plantations where I live.

They were once native hardwood forest and I've witnessed the impacts from the industrial use of this land from aerial, the application of aerial herbicides, heavy equipment, compacting and tearing the soils apart, trash that's left behind.

And what you end up with is a monoculture of yellow pine forest, which is no way supports the biodiversity found in a native hardwood forest.

And perhaps the same could be said of some agricultural crops as well.

And in addition, I happen to live near the largest vineyard in Albemarle County right now and I just drove by on my way here and there's a lot of barren exposed land there.

and so what you see the creek that runs off of it is just a boiling cauldron of red mud.

So just a reminder that when we're talking about these important considerations like supporting forestal and agriculture uses that we need to make sure that we have language in this plan that's gonna support set an expectation for the use of best management practices and seeing that language in there

and also just would love to see more language about the Biodiversity Action Plan, not just in one of the objectives related to utility scale solar and also language referring to the stream health initiatives so that we can make sure that we're protecting our water quality and our soils and all these other things because we know that

Ecosystem Services provided by the natural landscapes are essential to providing clean air, water, and commanding climate change.

So I'll just leave it at that.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Is there anyone else that I missed?

Great, thank you.

Okay, we'll turn it back to the commission for the work session.

Appreciate that.

And before we go to staff questions, why don't we just do a quick round and see if there are any specific questions we have of staff based on the presentation or what we've read.

I had just some questions reading through some of the language rather than the presentation.

Thank you for the presentation.

Nice broad picture overview.

One was in Objective 1.1, it starts with this language, reduce the rate of conversion of rural area land to residential uses.

I'll come alongside you.

I mean, for me, that says that we do away with the by-right ability for people to do family divisions.

We do that.

So we eliminate family divisions.

That'll go immediately to the whole issue of what can, of minimizing certain divisions that we're speaking here.

So, I mean, that's what I said.

When I read that, that was the note that I put down.

Oh, so we're going to get rid of family divisions.

Yeah, I think that's a good question.

Love to hear from staff.

I'm Scott Clark.

I'm the Conservation Program Manager in Community Development.

Tell me if I'm off track on the wrong question, but as far as conversion of lots in the rural areas to residential use,

It's a little difficult to answer, but it basically up until the recession of the mid-2000s.

I don't really have an acre number, but as far as numbers of new lots approved, it was averaging around 275, 300, and the recession hit, and it's been roughly 150 a year ever since, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's, you know, by the time you add that up, or a few decades, it chips away a lot.

Right, and at some point, presumably, the effects of that recession will fade, and we'll go back to the 300 we were seeing before the speculation.

Before you leave, are those one-acres or two-acre?

Hots.

At a minimum.

At a minimum, what can we build in the rural?

I'm sorry, even with the hurricane.

That's a really hard time hearing what you're saying.

So you mentioned 150 houses were built.

So residential lots, they weren't necessarily houses.

So they were divisions.

Okay.

And so just an average, just trying to figure out, you know, we've got something like 400, we've got a lot of acres in the rural area.

Two acres is a minimum.

Two acres is the minimum for the worst-case district.

As a suggestion, I just could say as a suggestion, one of the things I came upon recently is part of the Chesapeake Bay program.

They did have a landscape analysis that was done specifically looking at land conversion.

And so there is some really interesting GIS data out there about the conversion of land uses from one kind to another.

So I would hope that at some point we can look at that data as a county and consider what those conversion rates are.

It looks much deeper than just how much land was converted to residential use, but it also looks

like how much forestry forests were converted to pasture or like how much pasture was converted to houses and so forth.

Yeah, we did see that conversion analysis.

And the main issue with those was it was done kind of at the scale of the watershed.

So it was very coarse.

I think we're going to be getting new land cover data for the county sometime in the next year or so.

So we're hoping to rerun that kind of analysis at a much finer resolution because it was hard to tell when you're looking at 30 meter by 30 meter blocks.

In fact, I think they were doing much larger blocks than that.

It was very, very coarse.

It was hard to get the detail that we can get.

We've got land cover going back to 2009.

If we can get it this year, then we can do that same analysis at a much finer level.

Commissioner Moore, any other questions?

Two questions.

Another kind of definitional one, where we talk and go one about protected scenic areas and scenic landscapes.

I was wondering, what's a scenic area?

How do we define that?

We have designated scenic roads and entrance corridors, of course.

What is valued and considered scenic is, you know, to an extent defined by the public, what we keep hearing in our feedback are hillsides, mountain views, dark skies, farmlands, forests, those sort of landscapes.

historic resources probably in there too.

Yeah, historic resources and historic districts is a significant portion of the county is within some sort of historic district.

Okay, thank you for that.

And then the last one, looking over at

Goal 4, looking at the intersections of I-64 at the Shadwell and Yancy Mills Interchanges.

Part of the interchange with Route 29 is sort of rural zone as well, even though it's right on the edge.

I was wondering if there's a reason to exclude that from the other two considerations.

Are you asking about interchange just within the development area?

Yeah, Mr. Moore, I think one of the things, that particular one, most of that is in the development area, except for maybe the old Hickory Hill gas station.

I think what we're trying to do is deal with some of the land uses that are legacy land uses, legacy zoning, and trying to deal with those in a way that we can, with them, develop in a way that we don't end up with some of the things that maybe in 250 West, where it's kind of like

in Crozet, where that development happened and some of those uses that came in there were forced into a condition where we weren't really going through a site plan to try and get the best possible for control of the access to the road and so we don't have sewer and stuff like that.

Thanks.

Great, thank you.

Commissioner Bivins?

Thank you, Chair.

So for me, some of the time is when you're asking me questions on how to look at whether or not we should do investments in either the rural area, then the question I want to know is, like, how much money will we have?

So how do I balance that?

Give me a framework to balance that question with what you just asked us last week is, what are we going to do in the development area around transportation and multimodal?

So if I had some sort of criteria in which to sort of help

all for back a reflection, that would be helpful.

Because I know we couldn't do them both.

We don't have the means to do them both.

And if we go to VDOT to help, then they're going to get scored.

And my assumption would be that the part in the development part of our community will get scored higher because of the intensity of use and things like that.

So more trying to have an appreciation of

of how to intellectually break apart the questions that you're asking us there.

And then the other piece that I would ask is, and it's in the back here of what you sent us, if it would be much appreciated by me, and I think it might help update or refresh people's information, is to

Update the how much land we have that's being used in various ways and how much cover we have because it's difficult for me to understand why the red button is being pushed on this when the image that's there shows that we're basically covered in green.

and so I'm trying to reconcile some of the unfortunate language that's falling into my Albemarle email with the images that I see when I go to staff report and so it would be helpful to have something that wasn't from 2016 updated to as close as you can get it so that I have a sense of if this is a true reality or if this is just a fire drill and just have the same thing about farms because

as I mentioned to Mr. Barnes, when I looked at the new census data for farms, we are no longer a farming community unless negative income is the thing that makes you a farming community.

And so being able to have as data that allows me to answer your questions is something that I would say is a question that I would like to put before staff.

But I can't, when you asked me what about transportation, then my sort of, my non-informed answer is nothing.

Because we're hearing all of this language from people that say, keep it the way it is.

Don't change anything.

And then we're saying, how do we do what incremental changes with what budget?

How, you know, it's that kind of, that kind of, trying to figure that out.

So give me the parameters by what you want me to make decisions.

Got it.

Thank you.

Yes.

So my first question is, so you have, you've had my feedback and Karen's feedback for a while and you've gotten a lot of comments from the public and this draft has been here for a little while.

So

Are there already pieces in here that you know that you probably want to revise?

Yeah, just to answer that, how we're approaching it with the process, we're taking the commission feedback.

We are flagging these draft versions if you were to actually look at the Word document.

So we're noting what feedback was received from the commission.

Much of the draft goals and objectives have already incorporated the feedback we've received from the community.

And again, much of this will spill over into the action steps.

I was just looking over yours and Ms.

Firehock's email comments.

And so my second question, we've heard the comment that we really need a rural area plan that really looks comprehensively at the

the land uses and designations of the rural area.

And some of the most contentious parts of this right now are the crossroads communities and also these interstate interchanges.

No, I mean, specifically, there's been discussion of, you know, right now in our comprehensive plan, if you look at the rural area, it's all one color, it's all one designation.

We treat it all the same, one color.

I think there's clear language in this draft that suggests that maybe we should reevaluate, maybe we should look at not treating the rural area all the same.

It seems to me that these questions that we've had, these concerns about crossroads communities and interstate interchanges, that that ties into that larger discussion.

And I think that's part of what I was hearing from some of the comments that we had received.

Has staff considered waiting till after that was done,

Can I help with that a little bit, maybe?

I don't know if it's helping, but, because I had the same thought, and we talked a little bit about this yesterday.

I think, you know, that when you think about the

How many pages there are here?

24, 25 pages.

There's so much packed into this, right?

And it's really, you know, talking about rural area lands, obviously, including transportation, historic scenic, and cultural resources.

And a separate section is Crossroads Communities and Community Resilience Hubs.

And there's another section that is Rural Interstate Interchanges and Transportation Projects.

Right?

And I think all of those are being seen through the lens of sort of, I guess, resilience and equity, which is a little different than what we've done in the past.

It feels like to me, one way to help understand this, maybe, and to help

Clarify a bit is to begin with what I think maybe you're suggesting, which is let's look at the rural area piece and get that sort of some bones around that and then think about how with guidance in that section we can inform things like crossroads, communities, community resilience hubs, rural interstate, interchanges and so on.

So it's sort of a take one step first and then as opposed to this, which feels a little bit like trying to eat an elephant, right?

That's part of it.

I mean, I would say that, you know, if you look at the growth area, one of the things that we have defined in the growth area is we have greenways and green spaces, conservation areas defined in the growth area.

One of the interesting things is looking at a past comprehensive plan, looking at IV

Ivy was a past growth area that's not been removed from the growth area.

But when it was removed, one of the things that was removed was also its green spaces and its greenways.

So as we talk about sort of legacy uses in the rural area, that's something to consider.

So it seems that we don't have a map in this proposed comprehensive plan.

of our proposed greenways and green spaces.

That seems to be something that needs to happen.

If we're talking about conservation, your high-priority conservation areas, and that Karen's mentioned this too, we should include a map of high-priority conservation areas.

If we're talking about agricultural lands and prime agricultural areas, I think we need to have a map of where those are.

Could I?

I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt.

I apologize.

But we're really kind of focusing on questions now.

What you're sharing is really helpful.

I think we'll get to that point, and others will probably have things to share like that.

But I wanted to come back to your question, which was more about the structure of this, I think, like the big sort of structure.

And I wondered if staff could maybe comment on that.

Yeah, I'll offer a little bit of clarification.

I'll allow other staff members to jump in if they have anything else to add.

To answer your question, yes.

We would potentially have additional guidance on these areas with the actual study for a small area plan.

So as you recall, we first broached the topics of rural interstate interchanges and crossroads communities in the discussion about the planning toolkits.

and at that time, both what was mentioned by staff and the direction we received from you all was in support of utilizing an area plan for two of those four interchanges that we discussed, Yancey and then Shadwell and then the crossroads communities doing individual community plans and localized feedback prior to any land use and or zoning changes.

And I'd also like to add that the Crossroads communities, and I think I touched on this in the presentation, but we already have Crossroads communities.

We already have, I believe, seven or eight of them designated within the existing comprehensive plan.

So what we're discussing is a lot of legacy land use.

We're not promoting additional buildings or growth.

Most of this discussion is about adaptive reuse, which is already occurring to a degree.

and the subsequent topic of resilience hubs that doesn't have to, the VIN diagram doesn't have to be completely contained within Crossroads communities, regardless of designation.

That's something that we can explore.

And again, that's a use that we are, that's intended for existing buildings and primarily any existing public facilities in those communities.

So, and then

I think I'd add one last point and that is

It's been a great process.

We've heard a lot from the community and your comments written and hearing them now.

I think as we move into this next step of phase three, we come back with the action steps.

It'll sort of help define some of that.

And maybe at that point, it would be the opportune time to sort of be like, nope, this isn't the time to do this.

Or maybe, and I think we're going to try and massage some of this stuff to try and be a little bit more clear on some of the response to some things that I think we're hearing.

I think my response to Mr. Murray is that it's certainly something we could do.

We could, you know, push it off into a plan that would be done afterwards.

I mean, one of the things that occurred to me as I was hearing of the residents of Batesville is that

this topic of greenways, for example.

That is very connected to the crossroad community of Batesville.

They care about where their greenways are.

So having one conversation absent, that other conversation seems kind of piecemeal.

Got it.

Thank you.

That was very helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Just one question at the moment for staff, which is, could you talk a little bit about what the rural area, rural area roads, rustic roads, rural rustic roads program, sorry.

I had jotted down and lost one on my sheet.

Rural rustic roads program.

So I'll allow our transportation planners to come up if she needs to add any additional details, but it's a VDOT program to evaluate roads in the rural area and determine whether they're appropriate for being paved or not.

And my understanding is that you maintain the existing right of way.

You don't expand the width of the roadway.

These could be areas that are high traffic or there's issues with erosion and sediment and, you know, paving could stabilize the area.

And these are also, I believe, subject to community impact from people from landowners abutting these roadways.

I don't have very much to add, Ben.

That was a really good explanation.

The only thing I do want to emphasize was Ben's last point that the county already has an existing policy for the rural rustic roads program that provides a lot of opportunity for the residents or the property owners on that roadways to voice their opinion about whether or not they want the paving to occur.

And we also have the opportunity to add roadways to a no pave list if that's something that we want to do.

Thank you.

So I don't need another answer, but I think it'll be helpful for you.

So one of the questions that I have when I read this, and a lot of this I think also goes to a lot of the comments that we've received, both in writing and verbal this evening.

And I want to get to the next action steps, so I think it all ties it together.

So my question when I was reading this in the crossword community, in particular, and resilience, was why is the designation needed to create a commuter resiliency hub?

and I think you answered that.

If I understood your answer earlier.

So I do agree with my colleagues that we need more definition around the rural area plan.

Before we can take this jump about crossroad communities, I appreciate that there is some already identified in our 2015 plan.

However, we're redoing that 2015 plan, which means it opens up the question of

the identification that we currently have of the rural, of the crossroad communities.

Are they still crossroad communities?

Do we need to expand that?

Do we not need to expand that?

And I think that should come out of that conversation with the rural area plan development.

The point about moving on to the action steps and carrying some of these goals, and this is some of the comments that you've already heard from me, Michael,

We need to have some of these goals clearly defined, or at minimum put some examples of what we're talking about, because some of them, and interestingly enough, and we heard quite a bit about it today, goal four was the one that I brought up in our conversation.

The wording of that is, to me, unclear.

And it opens it up to a lot of interpretations.

So I can see where some of our community members were concerned about that.

I am too.

However, I don't think it's the intent.

I just think it's the wording.

So we need to clarify the wording in several of these goals.

I recommend we do that before taking the next step.

I would not want to approve these goals to move on to the next step without some clarifications on them.

Great.

Thank you.

I'll just add a couple of things just from question format and many have been answered as well.

Let's start with what Commissioner Carrazana just said and that is about these, I guess, boundaries or definitions of crossroads communities and

Rural Interstate Interchanges, etc.

Have you all given any thought to actual physical boundaries for each of those areas, either that exists and therefore being retained or that might have areas that they could expand, which is I think, you know, a concern of

Sure.

Yeah.

To address your question, I'm going to start with the rural interstate interchanges.

When we looked at those with the planning toolkits discussion,

We've had multiple meetings where we sat down and we discussed the area that those would be applied to.

And at the Yancey interchange, it was a smaller area just east of the highway because it was noted by the public and I think some of the commission members that there were some historic communities.

surrounding that area.

So we didn't finalize a map.

I think that would occur with the small area plan for each of those, and then real quickly to mention the Shadwell.

Most of that was the area that is

abutted by the roadways.

So I think off the top of my head, it's north of 250 and then south of 64 in the Shadwell area.

Staff certainly didn't notice the concerns for sprawl in those two locations.

So confining those areas would be a priority.

But I mean, that just gives you kind of a rough picture of the geographic scale of those locations.

And then within the crossroads communities,

I think we don't currently have maps defining the area and the size of these crossroads communities.

I think it would depend on each individual one.

Probably be confined to the area near the historic crossroads like where the actual intersection is and some of these legacy uses like country stores, post offices.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Then I have just two more questions.

This is an easy one.

I think the Rural Area and Environmental Stewardship Comprehensive Plan was referenced.

What is that?

Is that again Rural Area and Environmental Comprehensive Plan?

Stewardship Comprehensive Plan.

I think that was referenced in here.

Oh, which

Oh, sure.

So could you rephrase the question about... Yeah, I just was curious.

Yeah, Objective 1.2, thanks.

Yeah, that's just referencing that we have two different chapters with connected influence and that's the environmental stewardship chapter.

Oh, I see.

Yeah, and the rural areas chapter because both of those chapters will help define and direct areas of protection.

Correct.

It's just referring to the plan chapters.

Yeah.

And then one last question.

I know we've all talked about the fact that we've heard a lot of concern from the community that we're not any longer focusing on preservation and protection of the rural areas, that we've moved away from that.

Yeah, I would say that absolutely we have not.

This draft AC44 project, we are reinforcing the existing growth management policy with a commitment to protecting the rural character of the rural areas, maintaining the existing boundaries for the development areas and concentrating our growth, continuing to concentrate our growth within the development areas.

Great.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

Yes, sir.

Where will the biodiversity action plan sort of land in the comp plan?

Will it be its own?

Is it one of those?

I was going to ask one of my questions.

Is it going to be its own chapter?

Or is it going to be brought into something?

Reintroduce myself.

I'm Scott Clark.

I'm the Conservation Program Manager in CDD.

The Biodiversity Action Plan was completed, I want to say roughly in 2017.

The entire document was

accepted by the board but not adopted as a chapter of a plan.

However, in 2019, the 2015 chapter on natural resources, it was called then, was updated.

sort of piecemeal separately to incorporate the main goals of the biodiversity action plan.

So not the entire thing, not all 70 or whatever recommendations that are in the plan, but the bones of it, the structure of the landscape prioritization that went into that plan.

So as for what would happen in the future, I don't know.

Having gone through those questions, we've probably addressed a couple of these, but let's go through the two questions that are on the screen right now.

Are the draft goals aligned with the AC44 framework for an equitable and resilient community?

Let's start with that one.

I'll start with Commissioner Carrazana.

Well, it was in our packet.

It's very broad, and I think for me,

In broad terms, yes, I think it's consistent.

However, because of the language on some of these goals is where my hesitation comes in.

I do think we need to go.

I think the intent is there.

There has to be more clarity in the language.

It's similar to my colleague who just spoke.

I think in general, yes, I'll go ahead and lump in both these questions.

I killed two birds with one stone.

Regarding resilience, I guess I was a little surprised not to see a little bit more detail around utilities.

Maybe it's a broad term, but.

are rural areas more subject to power outages.

If the answer is yes, is there anything we can do to start playing with that stronger internet with people working from home?

If the answer is yes, what are we doing about that?

Wildfires and the Commissioner Murray has mentioned that several times in our deliberations for a climate perspective.

And it still remains silent on those issues, but those are things I think about when I think of resiliency.

I think, let me see.

I'm trying to organize my thoughts a little better here.

I'm curious about tourism and its impacts, and maybe that starts to speak to the equitable piece.

I'm not sure yet, but you have wineries, you have all these great features and attributes that draw attention, commerce, trade, and people to these areas.

Where are those impacts?

Are we saying we just let them go back to the development area to sleep or

Is there a controlled approach to be able to do all that stuff in the rural area?

Or do they just go to Nelson County and do it, right?

But just thanking a little bit more thoughtfully through that piece, and not saying that you haven't had those discussions.

It's just not reflected in the documents that you see here.

So we know tourism is really big.

We've won some major awards.

Now what, right?

We're looking 20 years into the future.

So I'll stop there.

I might add some more later, but I'll secede the floor.

Great.

Yeah, I would echo me in the comments there.

I thought it was very well phrased that the intent is there, but the language needs some work.

I think there are some specific, there are some individual items that I would, that I'll focus on later where I think equity is still an issue in this plan.

I'm glad that you called out my previous suggestion about a fire risk layer because I think that's an important piece here.

And when I see the word resilient community, I also think sustainable community.

Great.

Thank you, Commissioner Bivins.

I can give my colleague a bit of information.

So the one part of the agribusiness that we've actually increased in is the agritourism.

So we've gone, according to the data that I can put my hands on quickly, we've gone from about 1.1 million in 2017 to about 2.2 million in 2022, whereas the regular more traditional farming has decreased over that time.

and in fact the net losses to traditional farms has gone from 8,000 a year to around 6,000, 16,000 a year and has also been a decrease in the number of traditional farms that are in our community that are in the county now.

So you see this migration to what you spoke to, to a moving away from perhaps more traditional crop or cattle and moving towards more agribusiness that that's sort of that combination there.

And so having a sense, Chair, about what does it mean to have a vibrant agriculture business, what does that look like going forward?

When the data doesn't look like it's sustainable, if you look at the time series on our data around farming, it has been decreasing.

So the number of farms that discrease, the amount of income has become more negative or greater in their losses.

And so that's a piece that I think we need is what we can talk about.

Our supervisors can decide what we really are, what we're evolving to.

I would say, you know, when we give consideration

to this, that we were, in fact, I think this is in broad terms asking us to say what do we believe the rural part of our community should be engaged in as far as the resources and the activities that take place there.

Yes, we can drill down and say, let's look specifically at these types of uses there, which I think would be helpful, because I think there would be some re-calibration, or there would be some calibration, since I shouldn't assume that other people have done it before.

There'd be some calibration of people's expectation on what that actually does.

Is it really just the states?

Are there really absentee owners under the LLC, under LLCs?

Or are these really generational farming that's taking place?

I think that would be actually helpful for this group to be able to inform itself, which is really what is taking place in the rural part of our community.

As we know, we heard from an individual who talked about the white pine farm that was

that left a really bad footprint.

A couple of, I don't know if it was six months ago or maybe a year by now, we looked at that project in Scottsville and many of us went out to that land to look at it, and it in fact was horrible.

It looked like you were in Mars from just the runoff in the gullies and the things that had happened out in Scottsville.

So how do we, in fact, have agriculture that both sits with and enhances the land that's here?

So I would go with that.

What I would say is missing is what I said before, what I asked my question before,

as you're asking us or will ask us to sort of give you advice since this is the AC44 is about future casting and so when I start future casting I want to know give me my tools

So give me the tools that allow me to answer questions for you.

And so I still think, and some of my colleagues have said over time, that you still have us at this macro level.

And that's okay.

I mean, we can do macro analysis, but you have to give us the framework in which those macro analysis is going to be.

So if you give me a priority of things, just to use something that Commissioner Murray said, I actually can appreciate why we would have greenways.

I don't appreciate why I would have multimodal.

I don't understand why we would have multimodal on rural roads.

I do appreciate why we would have greenways.

Just simply from him telling us that people come here for tourism and they want to hike and they want to do certain kinds of things which is sort of more rural in nature.

And so we should be thinking about how we're allocating our funds to enhance the activities that sit naturally in the rural area and that don't distract from what's going on in the development area.

I want to ask what our chair said.

Where are people going, chair?

When they go to the western part of the county, they'll go have some wine.

They go to Waynesboro to sleep.

Go to that next exit over there, and you'll see all those hotels, motels, and sleep sixes, and you'll see where people are spending their nights.

And if we could get somebody from the CBC here, from the Albemarle, from the Charlottesville Albemarle Tourist Bureau, they might tell you the same thing.

And so I think you're asking the right questions, and I agree that perhaps

focusing or narrowing down on what might be the appropriate crossroads communities to look at if nothing else is an exercise so that the community becomes comfortable with the fact that we are not going to blow in a bunch of houses in these places.

And so they get to form some trust in that dialogue I think would be helpful and would also stop some of the emails, the ugly emails that are showing up in my email box.

so that there is a level of community trust that happens, I think, with the process and what they're seeing that we're not, this is not the rape of the virgins that's taking place out in the rural part of the county.

What I would also sort of say, and I've said this before, I think it would be helpful for everyone to have the best data in these tables as possible.

It's just, it's not helpful when we're hearing people get upset because they're seeing data that's just six and seven and eight years old.

I would say, note it, say you're updating it, say you're doing something with it, but having old data is not easy from which to help you make decisions.

So if I say what's missing from those draft goals, I would also suggest that there are appropriate uses of footnotes.

because you've thought about a bunch of stuff and I think it's possible for you to drop a footnote places saying in this particular case this is what we might expect to do next because I think some of what the angst is they see some of this terminology and they don't know what that means.

And so that pushes the anxiety up to a level that people then say, and I'll say it for the third time, send those really unfortunate emails calling us out that you didn't send them, so it wasn't you, because you're here.

But there are other people who have sent really, really ugly emails that have pushed all the buttons about me not being nice.

which I'm being nice right now.

And so giving people additional information in these documents about some of your thinking, even if it's an appendix, here are the things we've heard, here's the things that we're reflecting on, I think would help the process.

Can I just add a footnote to that?

So I think this part of the comments that we made in the phone call is that just adding the such as, or this is an example, because the reason I believe people don't quite understand it is because the language leaves a lot to interpretation.

And that's why we've got to tighten up that language and then provide some of those footnotes or examples of such as.

Just as one.

Comment back to you, we do have multimodal traffic in the rural areas.

I'm fully appreciative of the scenic bicycle route.

I think it's 76 that goes through there.

I appreciate that.

But I also have to sort of, if you're asking me to sort of, how do we allocate dollars, then I'm going to do the things that everybody's telling us to do.

All the messages that come invest in the development area.

Leave the rural area as it is.

Do not, you know, why would we enhance services, enhance?

Why would we enhance services when we have limited dollars available to us that we're trying to apply to the development area?

So I get that, I get that, but I also got, and this is the thing that I've taken away from your comments, I think there really are outdoor activities that we're leaving off the table.

And if we're talking expense, you know, I would argue it's a lot cheaper to protect a mile of existing greenway in the rural area that's been used.

That's what I'm talking about.

Or to put a motor mobile.

To go through the exercise of getting the easements off of people who, if one person says no, it's over.

I don't believe the county will do eminent domain.

All right, thank you.

Commissioner Moore?

Sure.

Thanks.

So yeah, again, are these draft goals aligned with the overall framework?

Again, I think

like everyone and like all the sections we've seen so far.

The answer is yes and.

And I think there's a few comments I've got on this.

One is in particular looking at goal two about having a strong agricultural and civil cultural economy.

I think I looked at similar numbers as Christopher Bivins in terms of what is the state of our agricultural economy right now.

And it's declining in Albemarle County and in Virginia overall.

The only size farms that are growing are the biggest, like more than 2,000 acres.

And those are not the ones that we've got here.

And so what would it actually take to have a

a strong agriculture and civil cultural economy.

When I want to frame this and be really clear that agriculture and civil culture is fundamentally an economic activity.

It is not fundamentally a preservation activity or it's pretty activity.

It's economic.

And so, in a way, it's an economic development thing.

To make that economic development work in the rural area, we need reliable broadband so that the farm stands and agritores can swipe cards.

We need reliable electricity.

We need access to three-phase electricity out there in places where they're trying to put in a dairy on site.

or a food processing place on site because you can't do it with two-phase in a lot of cases if you grow past a certain point.

We need cell coverage as well.

Again, that's becoming a utility.

We'll talk about that later.

today.

And what other kinds of supports actually might make a strong agricultural economy work?

Access to co-op funding sources, access to training resources so that young people can get into farming and have it actually be a way that they can make a living.

Because it's awfully hard for anybody actually trying to do that these days.

And I don't know

and so on.

and

When I see the Crossroads community's comments in here in the staff engagement, we've got four pages of comments about things people would like, like clinics and small stores for healthy food and community gathering centers and places for childcare and public goods, things that people need to live their lives.

And then there's a lot of self-selected comments that we've received that

that say they don't want a clinic or a community gathering space in effect, that we need to not have these things.

And I don't fully understand that.

But when I see really the community resilience hubs and the crossroads communities, there's two things about it that really appeal to me.

One is that

You know, when it comes to environmentalism, I'm much more of a crisis green than a let's go really slow green.

You know, the world is going to have macro effects on us, whether we want it or not.

And so how as people living in this place, can we be the most ready?

And to me, that means that we have places where we can be safe and get emergency services and have things that we need to live.

And so the community resilience hubs are

and the others.

We have another crisis in the country of loneliness, right?

Even the Surgeon General has said that a huge percentage of people have no friends.

They say they have no friends or they have very few and they're spending less and less time with friends.

When we build community centers or community gathering spaces that are programmed and that actually have a chance for people to get together, we might actually be able to address that crisis as well and be ready for that one.

and so those are the two things that kind of strike me from goal three.

And then the last one, I think this is missing and I don't want to peddle on too terribly long, but one thing that's missing here is any discussion of the use value tax deferral program, which I think one of the commenters mentioned a little bit earlier, is that we do have this

Policy, the state policy, but somehow in Albemarle County gets used to where we have gigantic estates where they mow hay once a year, and that becomes a farm.

And they get 90% or more off of their property taxes.

And I think, you know, Bush Hogan is not farming, right?

Cut and Hay once a year is not farming.

That's not fun.

But somehow we have this enormous subsidy going to the wealthiest landowners.

And I'm really curious what we can't afford because of that.

What county revenues are we leaving out there on the table because we are giving welfare to the landed gentry?

And so I'd like to see something like that in here.

I'd like to see what an analysis of that.

An analysis and whatever we can do to take action around it.

Well, I think there are definitely some things that we can do that I asked to be done last year that wasn't done.

One of the things I think would be very valuable, and the language evaluation is something I've looked at for many years,

I think we need to treat it as an expense, so it's budget time, right?

And I think it is a program that costs us, you know, 14 some million dollars a year.

It should be in the budget as a line item for that amount of what that projected cost is, because it is costing us money.

And particularly as we look at programs like, you know, conservation easements, and we, which that budget was zeroed out,

Great, thank you.

Just watching the time, we have about five minutes left and I just want to rebound to those who may not have answered question number two.

What is missing from the draft goals and objectives?

I think Commissioner Murray and Commissioner Clayborne hit several.

Are you good?

I've said this before, and I will say it again, is that we seem to be stuck at a period of time about stream health conditions.

I'm sorry, say again?

We seem to be stuck at this place on stream health initiatives.

That's from another period.

And I've asked this again, you know, that could we look and see whether or not what we're doing, what those initiatives are?

Are initiatives that can be enhanced?

Or do they have impact on land so that, for instance, we've got some land that sits on the border of rural and development where septic systems are failing and when they fail, they flow straight down into the water system?

and if we could get those areas on septic system, we could keep the water clean.

And in some cases, I mentioned before, we could also keep something affordable.

So to sort of take a look at some of these, what I will say, golden principles that we've had since the 70s and the early 80s to make sure that they're still relevant, they're still being applied or technology hasn't moved in a way that we can do something different with them.

because I think some of this is

You know, it's very easy to say protect, you know, sort of like it's like the SPCA protect the puppies.

Well, what we really want to do is not have puppies.

We want to get them spaded.

And so on this one, protect the water.

Can we talk about is what we're doing now the right thing, right ways to protect our watershed?

Or should we be looking at different ways now to protect our watershed?

And what is the impact on our districts if we do it?

Or if it's possible and if we do it?

Thank you, Commissioner Clipp.

Well, I'm going to piggyback on Commissioner Murray's point that I've heard you state here numerous times in the last couple of years.

And you said it again today, and I think this goes to the rural area land uses.

It's all green, right?

It's green by the means of color.

Right?

So I do agree with you 100% that we need to be more specific about the different types of land uses that we have, the different types of soils that we have.

And so we've said it multiple times, but I've never really seen any kind of reaction to that.

How are we incorporating it?

We're not incorporating this document because it's not there.

So it's not in the rural land use.

So how are we identifying our prime agricultural lands?

We have mountains.

There's a lot of diversity within the rural area.

But I've never actually seen anything that's beginning to take those comments, which is actually not just Commissioner Murray, because I think Commissioner Firehock has also been on this for a number of years.

We really need to get more data around the rural areas.

That goes through the whole issue on page 11 where it says the land cover data is a source of 2013.

This is my point about, you know, I don't really care what it is.

Give me something that's relevant so that then I can go away and have a conversation about it.

I'm not going to play on 2013 data.

That would be irresponsible.

And I think a lot of, I think a lot of emotion comes when people see this, they take it that this is all you have.

And so of course,

where it's changed over this time.

It has to have changed since 2013.

Okay, if I could, we have one minute left.

I'm going to try to summarize where I think we are here.

And I know we have not gotten through many of the slides and probably some of the questions.

But let me see if I can summarize this.

Y'all can tell me I'm crazy, and this doesn't make sense.

I'm fine with that.

But when I think about this, I'm thinking about sort of three semi-circles or ovals.

One is organization structure with data feeding net.

Right, and that's what we've talked a lot about today, the structure, the content, the definition, needing new data, although we don't honestly know what data is available, and maybe we have the most recent, right, but learning more about that, so there's that piece.

Then there's moving on to the, using that information, right, and moving on to the goals, the definitions, and then having some kind of a hierarchy.

or Prioritization of those goals.

And that's where I think we were talking about, you know, the rural areas, the large sort of catch-all

Subject, we're talking about within that, you know, I listed nine off the top of my head, environmental, watershed, farming, diversity, physical development, transportation, solar, public services, private services, resilience hubs, crossroads, rural interstate interchanges, there's so much in this document.

Did I say solar?

and there's so much to talk through in this and I commend you all for even getting this far which is a huge amount of work and so thank you on behalf of the Commission and the county for that work.

It's phenomenal.

I would suggest we haven't gotten to a point where we're ready to take these goals and move on to action items.

I think we need to spend a little more time together as a group in work session

discussing sort of based on the input we've provided with you or to you, discussing a little bit more and learning a little bit more from you as to what resources, what data is available, what, you know, all of the things we just discussed.

I apologize that we didn't get through everything you wanted to get through, but I do think, again, 95% of our land is in the rural area and we really owe it to the community to get this right.

It is such a valuable resource.

So I would suggest we work with staff for a continuation of this work session.

I'm in support of that.

I would just say that, as you know, I'm very eager to comment on the transportation slide that was shown earlier.

Understood.

It will be in the future work session.

We will make sure of that.

So thank you, staff.

I appreciate that.

Mr. Missel, real quick, I'm just going to provide a couple comments about next steps.

Thank you.

And then allow you to adjourn.

Sorry, thank you.

Yes, please do.

I'd just like to point out that we have an upcoming board session, March 20, 20th, where we're going to take these same goals and objectives.

It's going to include the development areas, the rural areas,

and community facilities for the Board's work session and we'll

acquire their feedback as well.

And we'll add that to the commission's feedback.

Moving into spring, we're going to begin with phase three.

And again, that's the focus on action steps for each plan chapter.

And we're also going to establish big moves or plan priorities for implementation within the first five years of plan adoption.

So that touches on that issue of hierarchy that you just noted.

And I'd also like to add that our action steps, we're going to incorporate metrics where applicable so that we can track implementation progress in the plan.

Great.

No, thank you.

Appreciate it.

So I would assume in the March 20th board work session, you'll mention that we didn't quite make it through our work session.

That's great.

In the case that this ever comes back for another work session,

I do want to mention specifically where it talks about rural rustic roads.

I think that there's some problems with that.

People need to understand that the pave-in-place nature of rural rustic roads actually makes things worse for pedestrians because there are no margins.

When you explicitly as part of that, it's paving a place and there's no margins whatsoever with those roads.

So as someone who just, you know, in the past two weeks, I've run on two different roads that are on the paving list, White Mountain Road and Fox Mountain Road.

And these are areas some of them go through very large forest blocks.

They're called out in the Albemarle County Biodiversity Action Plan that would be impacted and subject to development if these roads were paved.

So it's interesting to compare our current transportation proposed transportation plan with what we had

previously.

And it's interesting to see Objective 7, it says, and the existing comprehensive plans continue to provide safe and effective transportation options while preserving the character of the rural area.

And it says explicitly, and the rural areas continue to focus on safety improvements rather than on paving and widening rural roads.

There's another one.

Except for agricultural and forest operations continues to limit construction of new roads in the rural area.

And this gets to some of the comments that I made back that I think that we should go more in the direction of Loudoun County, which is explicitly trying to have programs to protect our rural gravel roads and acknowledge their historic use.

We got one email comment already from someone who called out.

a number of rows that are currently being used by the running and cycling community that should be protected.

So just in case we don't have another work session, I want that out there.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

Okay.

I couldn't hear.

Can you?

Present.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

I would also now like to ask if there are any matters not on the agenda that the public would like to speak to.

Seeing none, I'll move on to the consent agenda and ask if the commissioners would like to pull this item from the consent agenda for further review or make a motion to approve.

So moved for approval.

Second.

Thank you.

Any discussion?

Okay.

Great.

Good evening, commissioners.

My name is Andy Wiertelbach and I'm a senior planner here with the Albemarle County Planning Division.

Tonight we're here for a public hearing regarding ZMA 2023-6 Woodbrook Apartments.

So this is a rezoning request for four parcels of land located between Berkmar Drive and Woodburn Road, kind of at the terminus of Woodbrook Drive.

I have highlighted the four parcels that are the subject of this rezoning request on the image in front of you.

You can see the Rivanna Reservoir in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.

Woodburn Road is identified going north to south on the left side of these parcels.

Agnehert Elementary School is directly to the south of the subject property.

The SPCA property is to the northeast of the subject property.

And then just for additional context, I've identified lows over in the lower right hand corner of the aerial view.

Looking at the zoning, all four of these parcels are currently zoned R6 residential, which permits six units per acre.

By right, based on the size of this property at 7.202 acres, the property owner could develop 43 residential units by right, not including any sort of bonus factors that may be possible.

The only overlay zoning district for this property is AIA, Airport Impact Area.

Some of the surrounding zoning districts, you can see there is one parcel zone R15 directly to the south.

There are commercial property zones C1 to the east and northeast and then directly across Woodburn Road to the west are property-zoned rural areas and Woodburn Road is the designated boundary between the development areas to the east and the rural areas to the west Continuing on with the comprehensive plan as I mentioned

The rural areas is to the west of Woodburn Road to the east.

This is the Places 29 Master Plan.

All four parcels are designated for urban density residential in that plan.

Urban Density Residential recommends residential uses between six and 34 units per acre, along with small-scale secondary uses that support the neighborhood.

Residential building height is recommended at a maximum of four stories or 45 feet.

Some of the other surrounding comprehensive plan land use designations include institutional to the south, that is Agnerherd Elementary School, office R&D Flex Light Industrial to the northeast, and urban mixed use around centers to the east.

And the designated center is farther east on the other side of Berkmar Drive.

So looking at the specific proposal for this property, as I mentioned, it's for parcels that are currently zoned R6 at 7.2 acres.

The existing uses include several single-family detached houses along with accessory structures.

And the applicant is looking to rezone the property to PRD, planned residential development with proffers.

The applicant is looking for a maximum of

244 multifamily units, which comes out to a density of 33.9 units per acre, which is at the top of the range recommended for urban density residential.

The maximum range or the maximum recommendation in UDR is 34 units per acre.

This slide just shows a screenshot of the applicant's proposed application plan.

You can see two buildings on the west side of the property, fronting on Woodburn Road.

There's the third property directly to the east.

And then there are two further residential buildings, more interior to the side on the east side.

Most of the buildings are proposed to be a maximum of three to four stories.

However, the building farthest to the east, closest to the Woodbrook Drive entrance, is proposed to be a maximum of five stories.

As I mentioned, there are 244 units across five multifamily buildings.

Buildings one and two are fronting on Woodburn Road.

Buildings three through five are interior to the site.

And I mentioned the height ranges three to four for four buildings.

And then the fifth building farthest to the east is proposed to be five stories.

There are two access points, one from Woodburn Road and one

that utilizes an easement that the property owner has the right to access the cul-de-sac of Woodbrook Drive.

Because this is a PRD, there is a minimum of 25% open space required throughout the site and on the application plan.

The applicant has identified that that is possible to meet that minimum requirement.

There is a cemetery in the northeast corner of the property.

About half of the cemetery is on the subject property and about half of the cemetery is on the adjacent SPCA property.

and the applicant has proposed to provide fencing around that cemetery and include access in a couple designated parking spots to allow any descendants of that cemetery to visit the cemetery.

The applicant is proposing a pedestrian path, a continuous pedestrian path that would connect the Woodbrook Drive entrance to the Woodburn Road entrance.

The applicant is proposing 15% affordable housing at 80% AMI, which is consistent with the current county policy.

There are two special exceptions being requested.

I wanted to mention those tonight even though the planning commission is not required to vote on those.

The first is to waive the step back requirement for all buildings in the development.

A step back is required for any building above three stories or 40 feet.

And since most of these buildings are proposed to be four or five stories, the applicant is looking to waive that step back requirement.

And then the applicant has also requested a special exception to reduce the minimum rear setback on the property from 20 feet to 10 feet.

There are two proffers proposed by the applicant.

The first is a contribution of $10,000 to the county's capital improvement program for the construction of a crosswalk and pedestrian signal section of Berkmore Drive and Woodbrook Road, Woodbrook Drive.

which is slightly off site of this property to the east a little ways.

And then the applicant is also proposing to provide pavement marking on Woodburn Road from Agnerhurt Elementary School up going north on Woodburn Road to the subject property's northern boundary since there's currently not any pavement marking on that portion of Woodburn Road.

This slide just shows an illustrative exhibit of the development showing a possible way for the development to be constructed based on the application plan that is being provided, showing the various residential buildings, some of the amenity and recreational areas.

The applicant is looking at providing a pool and a clubhouse and fitness center as some of the recreational facilities for this development, as well as demonstrating the parking that will be provided.

Looking at the school impacts of this development, based on the school numbers that ACPS provides in the yield ratios, it is expected that this development would generate approximately 43 students total across all three school levels.

It would be about 20 students at Agnerhert Elementary School, eight students at Burley Middle School, and 15 units at Albemarle High School.

Currently, Agnerhert and Burley are under capacity

However, Albemarle High School is over capacity, but staff also recognizes that the High School Center too was recently approved by the Board of Supervisors.

The rezoning for that was recently approved and that project is moving forward with the site plan at this time.

Looking at staff's overall review of this application, the positive aspects of this rezoning request include these four

this following list of four.

The request is consistent with the uses and density recommended by the Places 29 master plan.

The request is consistent with the 12 applicable neighborhood model principles.

The request provides affordable units at 15% of the total number of units constructed consistent with current county policy.

And the request has proffered improvements to Woodburn Road and a cash contribution to the capital improvement program.

The concerns of this development are that, one, the proposed development would result in additional student enrollment at the area schools, and especially at Albemarle High School, which is already over capacity.

And the other concern is that one of the buildings, building number five, the one most interior to the site, is proposed to be five stories, which is one story higher than the maximum recommended by the Places 29 master plan.

However, staff does recognize that, as I mentioned, it is located

to the rear of the property interior to the site and closest to existing commercial uses.

Overall, staff does recommend approval of ZMA 2023-6 Woodbrook Apartments, and I am available for questions either now or after the public comment period.

Great, thank you.

Do we have any questions for staff?

A question for our council.

So the proffer for the Woodbrook Drive and the signal is for 10 grand.

And so 10 grand today on 2024 is not 10 grand in 2026.

Commissioner Bivins, as you probably know, the proffers are voluntary submissions made by developers.

So the county is limited to considering the proffer that the developer has offered rather than what anyone might consider to be the ideal proffer.

If the commission thinks that the developer hasn't adequately addressed the

impacts of its development.

It has the ability simply to recommend denial of the project overall.

Then could I ask the question, do we have any idea how much this is going to cost when it's done?

Thank you, Kevin McDermott, Deputy Director of Planning.

We did not cost out, we did not do an estimate on what it would cost to upgrade that intersection and provide the pedestrian crossings.

Currently I know that the landings are not, don't meet the current ADA, you'd have to put in ped heads.

I don't have an exact cost estimate, but what I can tell you is 10,000 will not cover the full cost of upgrading for pedestrian crossings out there.

And if I could keep you there just for a second.

So at the Woodburn Road side, there seems there's an indicator that there's going to be

from building envelope one over to the school, a path to get, I assume, if there are any young people to get people over to the school or over on that sidewalk.

I maybe rely on Andy Ridleback, but my understanding is they're constructing that portion of the path.

I think it was going to connect to something on the campus.

Anything else, Commissioner Bivent?

Not at the moment, sir.

All right, Chris Murray.

Not this time.

Sure, I have one question regarding the cemetery.

Are there any kinds of standards available that provide guidance around protecting cemeteries that are in close proximity to construction?

Like, I read five foot.

It feels really close, but it might not even matter, but five feet is like you reach out and touch something.

and construction.

Is there any standards in place?

Not that I'm aware of.

There may be standards from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

That's something I would need to look into, though.

Mr. Carrazana?

That was my question as well.

I'm not aware that any archaeological studies have been done in that location.

Chair, I did have one question.

Yes, sir.

This is for staff.

So often we've done an AIA, and it's just that.

That's all that's come before us.

In fact, we did it for the property that's just below that, and then we did it for a property off of Profford Road.

Thanks.

Just one question.

You mentioned a 25% open space requirement, and you said, I think that the applicant is convinced they can make that happen.

Do you check that?

The open space can be a variety of different types, so landscape buffers, amenity areas, the totlots, recreational facilities, that sort of thing.

And on the application plan, the applicant did provide a list of the

proposed open space types and the percentage and acreage that they are at the property within the property.

And that on the application plan meets the requirements.

And then that is also something that we would double check during site planning stage is that they are in fact providing that minimum of 25%.

I see it now.

25.3% plus or minus.

Great.

Thank you.

Any other questions for staff?

Okay, I will open the public hearing and ask for the applicant's report.

You know the drill well, state your name, and also you have 10 minutes.

When the light turns yellow, I think you have one minute left.

I'm Valerie Long with the law firm of Williams-Mullen, representing the applicant.

Joining me tonight is my colleague, Megan Ndostup, also several representatives of GW real estate partners, the applicant.

They're a local company.

So Rob and Will Gordon, among others from GW, are here tonight, as well as Scott Collins with Collins Engineering, the civil engineer for the site.

So we're happy to answer any questions.

I'll run through these.

A lot of them are

Issues that Andy has already covered.

So I'm happy to go a little faster or maybe go a little faster and then if you want me to come back to any of them at the end, I'm happy to do that.

I imagine you all know this location fairly well.

One thing that wasn't mentioned is that this was land that was formerly part of the Western bypass right of way.

So we think it's a great use to repurpose it for residential use.

Obviously, it's multiple parcels, right adjacent to an existing apartment complex near the school, the SPCA, and many other shopping and destination locations.

This is just from the intersection at Berkmar, looking up towards the site.

And this is Woodbrook Drive.

The entrance to the property would be approximately right there.

And this is the existing apartment complex.

It's a little bit further away from the intersection at Berkmar.

Sorry, I'm going the wrong direction.

Pardon me.

This is from where the main entrance would be.

There's a shared access easement here.

And this is the view from Woodbourne Road, just north of Agnerhurt.

So you can get a feel for what the conditions are like there.

This is literally right on the edge, or is the edge of the development area.

The left side of Woodburn Road there, the west side, is the rural area.

And this is the same, just looking in the opposite direction, looking south towards where the school is.

And again, just showing some of the conditions that are there.

There's a wooded buffer there on the west side of the road that does help establish a nice boundary with the rural areas.

And again, looking at the same buffer from the opposite direction.

This is the illustrative plan, which you saw already, with the amenity areas identified and the five buildings.

Again, one building is five stories, and we're proposing improvements along Woodbourne Road, as well as a second entrance there, a future access easement for an interpersonal connection.

Should that ever come to fruition?

Many project benefits that we just want to call out.

It obviously meets the comprehensive plan goals for efficient use of the land right at the height of the residential density.

I never thought I'd be proud to say that.

But given how things have changed, we're really happy it's right at the 34 units per acre, does provide and commit to affordable housing, satisfies the neighborhood model principles, improves and provides multimodal transportation, including this path through the entire site,

and it's very close to so many locations, great for rental housing.

Teachers at Agnerhurt Elementary School would be right there and satisfies many of the county's goals for climate action.

This is the application plan as compared to

The illustrative plan, this would be the binding plan showing the building envelopes, the travel ways and parking envelopes, and the green areas are the amenity spaces and open space.

I will point out this orange sidewalk here.

There are sidewalks throughout the project, but this sidewalk in particular we want to call your attention to.

That would go from one end of the site to the other and would be accessible by the public.

That is a trail or a path that is shown on the police's 29 master plan.

as a goal to connect Woodbourne and Woodbrook.

So we're happy to further that goal, and there's a little bit of a close-up to it.

And then there are sidewalks on this cul-de-sac that it would connect to.

Just a few enlargements of various segments of the application plan, so it's a little easier to see.

This is the potential future interpersonal connection.

The main entrance here, full ingress and egress in both directions.

There's a lot going on here.

These are all the notes we have to put on to commit to certain things.

This is, again, one of the recreational amenity spaces where we're proposing a tot lot.

This is where we're showing a connection for pedestrians and bikes to the school site.

As Andy mentioned, we'll work with the county school facilities team to identify the best location for that.

But we wanted to at least demonstrate a commitment to make a pedestrian connection to the school property.

Highlight the amenity areas.

We have the dog park up in the top in the pool and clubhouse there in the middle.

And again, the tot lot near the school parcel.

Just a close-up showing the dog park amenity area.

We thought the great location right next to where the SPCA will be located.

At least compatible.

A little close-up of a conceptual rendering of the tot lot.

And excuse me, the clubhouse pool and fitness center with other, there's the other amenity areas in there as well.

You know, things like a fire pit, gathering spaces, outdoor amenity space.

and then this is the pedestrian access that connects Woodbourne to Woodbrook.

And there, as I noted, pedestrian paths and sidewalks throughout the project.

Everywhere we could put a sidewalk, we put one.

There's also bus stops within walking distance.

So we think this is a particularly ideal location for someone who doesn't want to have a car, maybe has one, but doesn't want to use it to get places, easy to get where you need to go on foot, on the bike, transit.

It's, I believe, also within the microcat, or maybe it's not because it's so close to existing bus stops.

But it's also very close, of course, to shopping destinations in the Rio Hill Shopping Center, other things along Berkmar.

We're proposing improvements along Woodbourne, as shown here, a six-foot street tree buffer, a sidewalk.

We need to leave some space for utilities and then additional planting strip before the building.

So hoping to improve the look of that site and again create a firm edge with the rural area.

It's just an overhead

example of what that, let me go to the next slide, which shows a portion of that in more detail to show exactly the level and quality of the plantings that are proposed for that side of the property.

I won't go through all this, but there's a number of elements in the county's climate action plan and that this project would further, including, you know, improving bike-ped infrastructure and increasing sidewalks,

and those sort of things, maximizing density in the development areas among others.

Other things here, these are fairly standard provisions in this applicant's projects, including others that it is building in the county now.

And then just listing off again the project benefits, consistency with the comprehensive plan, enhancing multimodal

Transportation, the excellent location, sustainability elements, and the list at the bottom is all of the things that are commitments under this plan.

the $10,000 for the pedestrian crossing at Bookmar to address your question, Mr. Bivins.

We are aware that's not the full amount of the sidewalk, but in conversations with staff and our traffic engineer, given the existing number of residences in the areas you all probably have seen, if you've

We've gone down Berkmar lately, it has changed a lot.

Just in the last few years, there have been a number of by-right projects built there, which of course don't have to go through the proffer process, many of which are already open and occupied, and there are more that have been approved, but not yet built.

So we work to identify what a proportionate amount would be towards that future improvement.

And again, other commitments there of the project.

I think that's our last slide.

How about that?

No, I have one more minute left.

Regarding questions about the cemetery, I'm not aware of any other cemetery standards myself.

There may be.

The boundaries of the cemetery are very clearly delineated on a recorded plot.

So we're able to know exactly where that is and we can mark it in the field and then

think what the staff usually requires is tree protection fencing around any areas like that so they could put the tree protection fencing five feet away from the boundaries.

That's what we've done on other projects before and has been shown.

I think if it was a more random area like, oh, somewhere over there is the old family cemetery, it would be appropriate to perhaps do further and perhaps do archeological studies, but given that it's an old

Cemetery.

And we actually had received contact from a descendant of one of, of someone may have been the only person buried there.

So we chatted with him about how we're going to maintain access to that.

Great.

Thank you.

Any questions for the applicant from the commission?

Thank you for the presentation.

I do have a couple of questions.

All of them.

The step back requirement applies for any buildings

after three stories.

And so all the buildings, this building number four is a, proposes a three, four split.

So it may technically not be needed there.

The one, two and three are four story and five is a five story.

So we're asking for all of them.

The ordinance unfortunately does not specify that the step back requirement is only, was only intended to apply along roads.

And so two and one and two are are intended to be foresores.

Correct.

Do you have a section of that of those buildings or an elevator?

I don't know if I don't have an elevation of it.

I have this trying to show an appropriately large but not too large span between the pavement

I do not have any drawings other than I can use my cursor and obviously this is the fourth floor.

The step back would require a 15 foot.

So looking at this is, you know, this distance from here to here is 15.

So it's almost entirely what you see in the page.

This would go away without if the step back were required.

which of course has a substantial impact on the layout of the apartment units and the number of units that can be provided in all of the buildings.

No, the setback request applies to this area over here, where it abuts, this is commercial property here, so this is the side or rear, I can't remember which it is, that currently is a 20-foot setback

That purple line that is a 50-foot buffer.

Sure.

I'm glad you asked.

I forgot to mention it.

When the SPCA property was

I think it was a rezone, I think it was a special use permit, maybe sometime in the last five or ten years approximately.

Because this property was zoned R6, the board, when it approved the special use permit for the SPCA, they required this 50 foot buffer to be in place so that dog walking and other, any kennels or anything like that

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Ms.

Long.

I'm glad you stayed on this slide here and just kind of to continue with the line of questioning that Commissioner Carrazana raised here.

I'm grappling with visualizing the massing and scale

as it compares to the adjacent buildings.

And I know you have some topography here.

I think building five is kind of on the lower end, is it Riza?

I couldn't remember as I thought the topography was, but building five was five stories.

How does that relate to anything around that?

It's surrounded by commercial property or similar property.

So this is building five that would be five stories.

It was proposed for five.

These are existing residential apartments that were approved for that location.

This is a commercial building, commercial condo.

This is all commercial.

This is all commercial.

Are they similar heights, though?

No, they're definitely not similar heights.

probably at most two story buildings.

I think the apartments may be three based on, let me go back to our... The apartments there called Perch are four stories.

Okay, thank you.

I had some images at them.

There, thank you, Mr. Moore.

Yeah, so similar and also the adjacent commercial buildings were obviously built 20 plus years ago.

I personally don't think it will.

Jason, let me go back.

Sorry, I keep going back and forth here.

There we go.

There is quite a distance between the buildings

and here there's obviously parking in between.

There'll be a ton foot on-site landscaping buffer.

You can see there the proposed landscape plan.

Obviously it's illustrative, but it's intended to demonstrate.

Obviously the applicants want to ensure that

The building, it does not stare right at the back of a commercial building either or parking lots and things like that.

There's obviously, you know, double row of parking here.

They also have a fairly large step set back.

This is probably the 20 foot here, and then likewise, and then surrounded by

by at least for 50 feet, this wooded buffer.

So we thought that that was an appropriate location for a five-story building.

We really were trying to achieve as many units on site as practically possible, with also having sufficient parking and amenities and landscape areas and buffers.

and so to do that we really needed a five-story building and we thought that was the best location.

Originally we actually had a concept plan that had all five-story buildings would have been more higher than the comprehensive plans designation which we were going to ask for your thoughts on but ultimately the challenges of even having more density with having to provide enough parking spaces enough amenities to support this was the balance that worked

and so really needed a five story building to get the additional units and make it work.

So we thought that was the right location as compared to it over here right on the edge of the development area.

And to be clear, I don't have a problem with density at all.

It's just I'll offer some constructive criticism and all due respect.

If you're asking for special exceptions around height and massing, like visuals would be very helpful to show how it relates to things around, especially if it's not by right, right?

If you're asking for something, that'd be very, very helpful because right now I'm just looking at rectangles and it's really difficult.

As you probably saw in the staff report, I think using the school's student calculator, it's estimated that a total of 43 students could live here.

That, of course, also counts the number of students who could live there if the property were developed by right because it is our sixth zoning.

But are you saying it's the same outcome?

Correct.

It is, sorry, 43 units could be built by right.

So the 43, coincidentally the same number, 43 units could be built by right under the existing R6 zoning at the maximum R6 units per acre.

Coincidentally,

This project at 244 is estimated to yield approximately 43 students.

But that's not over and above what would be yielded with a by-right development.

It's total.

So I did not go back and analyze how many you'd get by-right.

What's the incremental increase in students?

We understand, obviously, that about the capacity challenges at Albemarle High School, and I know the County School Board and Board of Supervisors have taken steps to work to address that.

We still feel like the location of this, you know, right there next to the elementary school, which does have capacity, that it will be particularly attractive location for families with young children, young teachers, young professionals,

and be a good location for them, perhaps less so for families with teenagers, certainly possible though.

I think one last question if I could, Mr. Chairman.

If you could talk a little bit just from my knowledge around

to design philosophy here.

And where I'm going with this, if it's going to be roughly 43 children of school age, it could be more under school age.

So you have a lot of children within the project.

And when I look at the images before me, I see buildings kind of placed in the sea of asphalt.

And so my concern starts to be around the circulation, pedestrian and vehicular.

And I look at the top lots and the green spaces, which kind of

Sure, I'm not sure if I can talk as much about how they got here, but I can, you know, note, obviously it's very similar challenge with every multi-family project is accommodating the necessary amounts of on-site parking, surface parking, and including sidewalks so that people can walk back and forth and scattering the amenity areas as much as you can.

throughout the property so it's a relatively convenient location for each of the residents.

Obviously it's not going to be a public road that will have to be built to VDOT standards with wide travel aisles and so forth.

It'll be a parking lot travel way so cars will be

have to be going slower.

I can talk to the applicant team about how they manage those challenges in some of their existing communities, but I'm sure they have developed many, many multifamily projects and I'm sure can share about how they manage ensuring that residents drive safely and are cognizant of pedestrians and certainly children.

We really try primarily with sidewalks everywhere.

Let me go back to the slide that shows

We have sidewalks everywhere that we could put them.

I'll just flag them here.

So all of these areas, although there is surface parking around all of them, because one parking obviously is required, but we also need it to make it marketable.

But all of these areas are pedestrian paths that will help facilitate pedestrians walking throughout, including this one that we felt was very important to maintain a consistent pedestrian path.

throughout the entire project and then even including down to the cemetery.

So our hope is that wherever children are living, they want to get to the tot lot, they can do so safely by coming this way.

If they want to go over to the pool, they can do that here.

It's fine.

Because I also understand this is a concept and it could change and look 50 times different.

So it's just something I wanted to flag.

Just paying attention to that.

Great.

Yes, you know, going back to that service parking, I know in Charlottesville that a lot of apartment complexes has become fairly standard now for a lot of parking to be underneath the building, underground parking.

And I know you talked about, you had considered asking for even more height.

but you couldn't accommodate the density with the number of parking spaces that you had.

Is there a height at which, if it were permitted, where underground parking would be something commercially viable for you?

And that's question one.

And then question two is, this is pretty close to the reservoir.

And I know through the site plan process, you will be addressing the state mandates in terms of your stormwater.

I assume you'll be buying nutrient credits somewhere because it doesn't look from this design like you'd be able to accommodate the stormwater on site.

Have you considered ways to do more on site?

I know a lot of these apartment buildings are perfect for things like green roofs.

The applicants, we really haven't gotten to that point yet at the rezoning stage.

We do have to, as part of the rezoning application, show conceptual stormwater management to be able to demonstrate that we can accommodate or comply with the stormwater management regulations.

We actually do show on sheet four of

6 or 8, sorry I really need better glasses, a potential location for an underground facility in this area.

So, and it may well be that nutrient credit purchases or other measures are going to be necessary in addition to that, but we do show that as one potential location.

In terms of doing more, certainly those are things that they can think about

at the site plan stage.

And we have, as you I'm sure know, as part of the review process, among others, the service authority and the Rivanna authority weigh in with comments and so forth.

And as you know, underground storage only addresses quantity.

Right.

Obviously, green roofs would be an excellent way to address quality and quantity.

Well, they're hearing your comments, so I think that's very helpful.

Yes.

I'll let them tell me if I'm off base, but in this location, to have any type of structured parking, particularly underground, it is so cost prohibitive.

Digging down for

Parking below grade is particularly expensive.

I don't know how tall the building would have to be, but I suspect substantially taller.

Rents would need to be higher to support those additional construction costs.

I know that from another project we worked on that was taller and then they had to scale it back because they couldn't

They could no longer afford the structural parking.

Even though our rents are quite high here and our area AMI is high, the rents are not high enough to support the additional cost of structure parking.

Hopefully that'll change.

Maybe in 10 years, things are different.

And they could come along and add a new building in one of those areas that is currently shown for parking.

We'd have to amend the zoning.

But they could add another building with perhaps parking underneath, even if it's just surface parking with a six-story building instead of four, something like that, like right under the building, as opposed to below grade.

I guess an at-grade parking space, kind of like you see at a beach house.

But that's a challenge.

Thank you.

I wish it were better.

This site could probably, putting aside the comprehensive plan limits for a moment,

Which is purely as a comment, since you mentioned the comprehensive plan, I do hope we can get to the point where we can have subsidies for structured parking that would help make some of those more valid.

Yes, sir, Commissioner Bivins.

So I have a question for staff on this.

So is it possible to get into comfort for an exception for parking?

Is that something we do that we're allowed to do?

Not we, but the applicant.

There is not a specific allowance for special exception to reduce parking.

Thank you.

So that was going to be my piece, but I'm going to pause that for a second because I'd like to know what the product mix is here.

Will I see efficiencies?

Will I see our studios, efficiency slash studios?

I believe it is one, two, and three, but studios as well.

Let me... I guess that's an efficiency.

I'd encourage sort of efficiencies or studios if that's possible because what I was going to ask is if we had to have only one five-story, did it have to be when everybody sort of

In my view, the view in the back of the property as the rear, which it is, it is, but from Berkmar, it's the front.

And so the mass of the buildings from Berkmar is that's going to be a really big building.

So if I could have my way, I'd ask, could we put the five-story, like, where building four is?

Since the only thing we're going to compete there is with dogs walking on the property next to it, which I think would give you a sense.

But that's just a comment if you're only going to have one, because I really would like you to have them all at five.

And then ask for an exception on parking.

Oh, here comes the engineer.

Here comes the engineer.

I saw that from your topo.

But that's not my point.

Is that if you stand in front of the commercial building, if you go behind the building, it's still going to be long.

If you're in that Woodbrook Court part, which is a semi-circle, it comes out on the Burke Mar, it's still going to be tall.

And so my suggestion is if it's only going to have one,

and I really would like you to have all five of them, all five of them that be five story because I think and then ask for an exception on parking because I think this is an area that given your project, given the project

that we had to do the AIA on down the road someplace across from the lumberyard people, given the other one that may be coming on down there.

But this is a place that it can actually handle some density and the red coats wouldn't come out and get you.

I will say here, staff, this is the area that makes no sense to me why they didn't redraw the rural area next to the reservoir.

We've got this piece of really isolated road that they have, development area on the right, and they have rural on the left.

And if when you drive down there, I know my colleague here is probably shaking.

But when we drive down, there's ways that we can protect that.

When we drive down there, it's going to be this sort of bizarre, why don't we just have a similar kind of density on the left side of the road?

So if we think about that, it would be nice to have some conversation about having some density on the left side of the road.

OK.

So I've just done my five-minute, why can't we have density on the other side of the road?

If I understand, Ms.

Long, you said that on the Bourke-Morse roadside, that's going, you're asking for an exception for the setback, for the step, no, yeah, for the setback there.

But you're not asking for anything on the north side of the property.

Any other side?

Okay.

I'm just trying to get it.

What I'm pushing you and your applicant is that

try and get as much as you can on this piece of property to be able to add to the inventory.

Since, as we know, most things that come before us never get built out to full density.

So break the curve and build it out to full density or beyond density.

If you can, I know that the architects next to me are going to probably get me after all of this.

I would agree and I know I believe that is what they've done in terms of balancing costs and practical realities again for needing to have a certain amount of landscaping, have to accommodate underground utilities, having a modest buffer around and all the amenity areas and enough parking.

We will be asking for a parking reduction as part of the site plan review even with a reduction.

It still ends up being

that they

exactly compliant with the current regulations.

If we could do that, that would get to Mr. Clayborne's conversation about, is there a way to create more space?

You heard us talk a little bit earlier because you were here, this whole idea, how do you create community in spaces?

That's something that I can say, it's been sitting on my heart recently because of the tension that we've been seeing in communities.

So I'm really going to be asking people, how do you create community in a space so that people have a location that they can go to and be together?

And it's not a parking lot.

And God forbid, it's not, everybody knows how I don't have an appreciation for top lots.

That's just my, I just, I don't have any appreciation for top lots.

That's me.

Because why should we delineate between a younger person

a not-so-younger person and an older person.

It should be just a community lot.

And so my piece is that is there a way to create intentional space so that people have a place that they can gather?

And I know you'll say that's what the clubhouse is for, but we all know what clubhouses are, what they become.

And so that's what I will challenge you and your applicants for.

Sure, thank you.

I think just sort of echoing some of what Commissioner Bivins was saying.

This is a parcel or set of parcels that's ripe for redevelopment and ripe for density.

It's right there near a grocery store, right near transit lines, right near school.

Somehow has very, very few overlays that restricted.

never had one without at least one little bit of managed slopes.

I think Scott Collins said the same.

It was, we had to look double hard.

No buffers, no steep slopes.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's sort of like just to echo what he said in a way that, no, I mean, it is, if we're going to have an urban style density,

This would be a good spot for it.

And so certainly what's here is good.

I think if it gets built out to what's here, if it could be proposed for something even greater would be open to that.

I have two small questions really.

And these are just ones that I wanted to echo that came up at the RIO 29 Community Advisory Committee.

One was just kind of talking about that.

that little red arrow at the very bottom left crossing into Agner-Hert, which is great.

I love that it's like literally next to a school.

Yeah, unfortunately it wasn't designed to accommodate pedestrians going forward.

They didn't put that pedestrian infrastructure in at the beginning.

Probably because it abuts the rural area and there wouldn't be enough students to walk there.

Nevertheless, we think it makes sense for the same reasons.

So we know we would need to

built it subject to, you know, not only input, but oversight of the county schools folks and make sure it would be done in a way that's safe.

You know, maybe it's just a dirt path, work with them and they'll put it a dirt path on that same side.

There's a sidewalk on the opposite side.

I know I've got an image somewhere that shows it.

Go back to the very beginning.

Oh no, it's down here.

So there's a sidewalk here, and then it starts about here.

And this is obviously grass.

So, you know, it may be that we could work with the school and they would at least let children walk on the grass, a little footpath there.

It's probably the safest way, not have them cross the street, the bus lane at all, right?

Have them stay on that side.

I know there's small children who live in this community having been back there.

So it may turn into something that would be really wonderful for all of them.

Sure.

Yeah, the playground is a park, right?

So they'll come over.

There's a really nice taut lot there.

Great.

Obviously soccer fields and other things there.

Yeah.

The other one, and this is relatively minor, but it's one of those things that can sort of slip through.

It's one of those that the Community Advisory Committee, where I heard somebody on staff at SBCA who noted that those woods behind the building are where they do walk dogs a lot, often with behavioral issues.

I'm glad you remembered that.

That was a surprising comment for me.

I understand it now that it was made.

I do agree that could be a potential.

I think that's one is that there's a pretty significant difference in grade right there.

So actually there will need to be, I'm nearly, I get this to work right, point to the right area.

there will be

Hopefully the dogs can all get along.

But the fact that they would be, you know, at least the dogs who live here would be inside the fence.

And I know all of the SPCA dog walkers, they train their volunteers and so anyway.

But it was a good, an interesting comment of response I was not expecting.

Thank you.

Great.

Thanks, everyone.

Excellent.

Great.

Appreciate that.

So I will now ask for comments from the public attending in person.

Is there anyone here who would like to make comments on this application?

OK.

Seeing none, any online?

No.

All right.

Well, with that, I will close the public hearing.

and open it up to the commission for discussion.

Who would like to start?

You are the last person to talk.

Would you like to start?

You're the last person.

The last person.

Yeah.

Yes.

I agree with my colleagues here that this would be an ideal location for density.

I don't know what we can do or not do in the site plan about parking.

I would certainly encourage that.

I'm not sure that we have a way to address that here, except for maybe some comments that we can make that others will then read and take into consideration.

But certainly, it's an opportunity to look at more density and reducing the minimum required parking.

podium parking is expensive, which is, you know, which is the ag grade parking.

But it's something that we're going to need to start looking at in the county.

We're already talking about in the AC 44.

I think we're going to have more conversations about that.

So, you know, I'm not sure that this will be the one to start it with.

Certainly would have to go up a lot more than five stories to accommodate that.

I would also encourage during site plan to look at combining some of these open areas best we can.

So can we make some adjustments to create a little bit larger areas?

I know we have the school across the street, but they're really not green spaces for people.

It's more like landscape.

It's about all you're going to get out of them, most of them, with a few exceptions.

So those are the things that I would

I would point to, I think that they've already been talked to.

I would certainly second that comment.

And I would also want to echo Mr. Clayborne's point.

This is something that we've raised here over and over again.

I guess it's more for staff than anything else.

But when we have submissions looking at exceptions on setbacks,

Stepbacks, or Setbacks.

And they're not giving us the information.

It really makes it hard to make those determinations.

So we've asked, in particular, this is a large development.

It's a lot of money in this development.

So we should be able to get minimums, a section cut, an elevation, something with context so that we can evaluate what we are being asked to

to move away from, in this case, not have the 15-foot step back in a building.

We're really not getting much of anything to evaluate that.

And that has come up numerous times.

I'd like to think that we could make that something we would provide to you in the future.

I would appreciate that.

Great.

Not much to add, just doubling down on that last comment.

I think without that kind of information, it's hard for us to serve you at our best as well in terms of, you know, talking to the staff and providing counsel.

So that's it.

Awesome.

I don't have anything to add.

Commissioner Evans?

So, Chair, I have a question.

I wasn't planning on voting on the exceptions.

because I didn't know that that was something that we had a hand in doing unless you felt that that should fall into our hands.

But we don't have an obligation to speak on that.

Correct.

So while I appreciate my learned colleagues' desire to have that, I think if it has to be any place, it has to be for the floor above us when they're looking at it.

I would suggest that they have some sort of

something to show.

Commissioner Evans, that's correct.

Certainly the Planning Commission is free to give feedback on the special exceptions if it wishes to.

We certainly can comment on our recommendation of whether we feel it's appropriate to do that in this site or not.

True.

I don't have much to add.

Great, thank you.

The only thing I'll add is just to not at all counterpoint the idea of adding density.

I think density is a really important thing, especially in areas that are like this, that are sort of made for it in a sense, but I also think quality of life is in the balance at times too, and you can put so much density into a site where you start to create a place that is not nice to live.

So I know that we all agree with that, but just balancing that as we move forward with development objectives in the future You know, I do feel like the recreation spaces are leftovers The triangle just happened to be there because of the way the parking was configured and you can't park in a triangular zone so you know that said

I mean, there was commitment to sidewalks, connectivity, adjacency to the school, et cetera.

I think transportation, everything we've talked about is a good thing and was intentionally done here.

I'd be glad to when the text pops up.

Second.

Anyone?

Second.

Awesome.

Any discussion?

All right.

OK.

Mr. Bivins?

Aye.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

All right.

With that, we will move on to our next public hearing item ZTA 2023-2 personal wireless service facilities.

And before we get started, well,

Mr. Fritz is getting settled.

I just wanted to mention a couple of things about this.

It's obviously another challenging issue that we're facing tonight.

And thanks to the members of the community, some have probably shown up tonight as well, but we've gotten numerous emails voicing opinions on both sides, I have to say.

I also have asked, thank you, I've asked staff to speak on the issue of community health.

and our authority related to that.

So I look forward to hearing that and hopefully that will provide some clarification to some of the community members who spoke specifically to that issue.

Sir, much of the discussion will balance aesthetics, which are subjective, in many cases, and public safety.

And just as everyone is well aware, the counties spend a lot of time, ARB, staff, commission, supervisors, focusing on aesthetics and the quality of the visual environment that we live in and enjoy.

And, you know, with that, understanding how to balance technology.

So with that,

Bill Fritz, are you ready?

If you can give me one second as I load this up.

Sure thing.

Yes.

Thank you.

Bill Fritz with the Community Development Department.

This is the Zoning Text Amendment for the Personal Wireless Facility.

for the Personal Wireless Service Facility.

I wanted to speak to the section you were talking about with regards to environmental factors.

It comes straight from federal code, and I'm just going to read the federal code provision so it's word for word.

No state or local government or instrumentality thereof may regulate the placement, construction, and modification of personal wireless service facilities on the basis of the environmental effects of radio frequency emissions.

to the extent that such facilities comply with the Commission's regulations concerning such emissions.

That's the actual text that's in the federal code.

So I think that gets to your question.

Yes, thank you.

Great.

As you know, we have a lot of information in your packet.

There was a great deal of interest in this topic.

There was a survey

You have that information.

You have both the summary and the raw data.

So if you really wanted to geek out and look at the actual answers, you could actually see the raw data.

But we have all that.

We have online one of our consultants.

Unfortunately, she wasn't able to be here.

We have two consultants here.

And I'm going to turn it over to Chris Musso, who's going to do a presentation for you.

Great.

Thank you.

One second while I get this pulled up here.

Thank you.

Yeah, good evening Albemarle Planning Commission.

Chris Musum with Berkeley Group.

I'm joined with my...