Planning Commission Work Session Meeting   11/19/2024

All right, awesome.

Good evening, everyone.

I will call to order the November 19th, 2024 Planning Commission for Albemarle County and ask for us to establish the form.

Yes.

Firehawk here.

Thank you.

And Mr. Clayborne has notified us that he'll be a few minutes late.

Yep.

Great.

With that, we have a quorum.

Let's start with the work session and ask for staff to address CPA 2021-2 AC44RA Land Use Policies.

And if I might,

Before I turn it over to you, you may have these slides.

I just haven't seen your slide presentation, but I wanted to just encourage what will eventually be the five of us to be forward thinking as we work to address your comments.

And I know we've done, we've accomplished a lot over the past two years now, I think.

I'd like to if I could.

This was a good reminder to me, maybe good for others listening as well.

So I'm really reading from the memo that was sent by staff, and it looks back at what we've already discussed.

And I'll just read it.

Multiple PC and board work sessions.

The commission and board have noted the need for rural area land use plan that has multiple land use categories for the rural area.

given that there is a variety of existing and encouraged land uses and land conservation efforts.

On August 8th and March 23 and March 12, 24, during PC work sessions, there was consensus from the commission that there should be further study of individual rural communities called Crossroads Communities in the 2015 comp plan prior to any land use designations or zoning district changes

and that the special use permit process is important for identifying and mitigating potential impacts of non-residential land uses in the rural area.

The Commission had concerns about several land uses mentioned through community input and possible impacts to groundwater, waterways and transportation.

So just pausing there, we did get a fair amount of public input that I think still shows concern about those certain attributes and aspects.

And I just wanted everyone to be reminded that we've talked through this and there's continued discussion.

On September 6, 23, and March 20, 24, board work sessions, the board agreed with the commission that individual communities should be studied and that the special use permit process should continue to be used.

The board supported allowing small scale doctors and professional offices by special use permit in rural communities.

The board was concerned about the feasibility of businesses in the rural area, especially in less traveled locations.

and then Rural Interstate Interchanges as a reminder.

On August 8, 23, during a PC work session, there was consensus from the Commission to have an action for future small area plans for the Shadwell, Exit 124 in the NC Mills, Exit 107 Rural I-64 Interstate Interchanges prioritizing Shadwell.

The commission did not want to specify which land uses should be recommended as land uses should be identified during the small area plan process and could include no change from current uses or potentially uses that support agriculture.

September 6, 2023 Board Work Session.

The board agreed with the commission that there should be a small area plans for Shadwell and the NT Mills prioritizing Shadwell.

The board noted there are a variety of other small area plans that also need to be completed.

So I hope that was helpful.

I didn't want to just listen to myself talk, but it was a good reminder for me.

Thank you.

I'm Tanya Swartzen-Juber, Planning Manager with Community Development Department.

Yes, December 10th.

So tonight we'll look at we'll focus a little bit on community input themes and then give you a little bit of rural area context.

We'll go over the updates from 2015 comp plan to this comp plan and then review preferred uses and non residential uses and go over the upcoming schedule.

And again, this is just a reminder that we'll be focusing on the land use approach, rural communities and rural interstate interchanges tonight.

And these are the direction topics.

I believe these were given to you in the memo that you all received earlier this week.

And this slide will also be repeated at the end of the presentation for during your discussion.

and just as a reminder, as we did with the last chapter, the rural area chapter, we really put this chapter together with a lot of community input, a lot of discussion and direction from the planning commission and board, some collaboration between staff and our partner agencies reviewing of the current COMP plan best practices.

And of course, we developed those guiding principles in phase two, or I'm sorry, phase one.

So looking at the community input themes that we did here for the rural area specifically really fell under three, three categories of protect and restore the natural environment.

and then focusing on those rural communities that already exist.

And we heard through community engagement that there should be a planning process, a future planning process to look at those land uses in those areas and consider allowing services that support the surrounding community members, including resilience hubs.

And then the last one, Protecting the Historic and Cultural Scenic Resources, really looking at a program to allow adaptive reuse and programs like Historic Markers and the UVA Finding Free Towns program.

So starting off with a little bit of context in the rural area, just noting how important the rural area is to Albemarle County, 46% of the land is within our supply watershed.

and over 65% of the rural area has important soil for agriculture.

13% of the rural area has already been converted to other uses.

to residential and other non-rural uses and just wanted to point out that we do have a fairly robust agriculture activity in the rural area with $43 million worth of agricultural products sold were produced in Albemarle County in 2022.

Also just wanted to just point out with this map how much of the county is already in land conservation easements held by several conservation organizations, including the county.

These easements are an important tool to protect the rural area.

While there's been progress, there are still areas that need protecting that aren't yet.

As a summary for the policy changes from the 2015 plan, we've generally focused on changes that are needed versus continuing to do what we already do.

So, for example, we've made a recommendation for a rural area land use plan, and this would be a future effort.

Potentially as part of that effort, we've also recommended that we look at rural communities more closely.

These were previously called crossroads communities and also looked at a recommendation for area planning for the rural interstate changes and we'll get into these specifics in a moment for each of these.

Also, just wanted to note that several, there are going to be several topics that we know will come up that are probably or likely addressed in another chapter.

So we may not get into the details tonight, but for example, looking at community resilience hubs will be covered in the resilient community chapter.

as well as protecting our waterways and water quality will be covered in our environmental stewardship chapter.

I believe it's December 17th.

It's middle of December.

Yeah, it's, it's actually the next one we're going to do is environmental stewardship.

Yeah, the 10th, we're actually going to do the second half of this chapter.

Okay.

and on the 17th, we'll start a new chapter.

And again, we're not going to try and split.

We've been working where we've been trying to do these land use ones.

There's a lot of policy just to wrap our heads around.

So we've divorced the goal statement and the objectives and actions from the policy for just development area and rural area land use.

The remaining chapters will do policy and goals and actions at the same meeting.

So the environmental stewardship will be our first one.

We'll do the entire chapter.

No, it's important to ask this question.

Just to offer a quick pause, Commissioner Clayborne has joined us.

Now we can get some real work done.

So again, we'll be covering some transportation issues like improved transit service to rural destinations in the transportation chapter.

So more to come.

Agriculture, forestry, and conservation play an important part.

and long-standing role in the environment, heritage and economy of the county.

And these are the preferred land uses in the rural area.

These are the same land use priorities as in the 2015 comp plan and are the same land use as we encourage with this comp plan.

Along with agriculture, forestry and land conservation, other land uses may be appropriate in certain locations in the rural area.

43% of our population lives in the rural area, and while we don't necessarily want to encourage new non-residential uses, we do want to support our residents that already live there.

The supportive land uses carry forward recommendations in the 2015 comp plan for crossroads communities, which we are calling rural communities and AC44.

Any of these new non-residential land uses should be furthering either a rural area goal or a broader county priority.

like supporting agriculture and forestry, supporting surrounding communities without generating additional development like our country store small offices, post offices, or should develop within, with adaptive reuse.

These uses could also be low impact outdoor recreation or potentially utility scale solar, which we'll discuss further in our resilient community chapter.

We heard that recommendations for rural communities should be included in AC44, including encouraging adaptive reuse and historic preservation and land uses that support small-scale businesses and services for surrounding community members.

We also heard that any land use or zoning changes should be tailored to an individual rural community and involve community engagement.

As is the case today, the majority of non-residential uses in the rural area would still be by special use permit, which requires review by the PC Board and can include conditions to mitigate impacts.

In the county, we currently have four interchanges with I-64 in the rural area.

And through this process, we heard that two need further study, those being Shadwell and Yancy Mills.

These two have underlying existing buy-right commercial or industrial zoning and existing development.

Here there's a potential for food processing or distribution uses that support agricultural uses already occurring in the rural area or other target industries.

The intent is to use the land efficiently where there's already existing development and infrastructure.

Nothing will change with this comp plan, but we are acknowledging that these areas have existing development and zoning in place and should be studied further.

This map really highlights the variety of land cover that we have in rural area and helps us to understand how nuanced the land uses for the rural area.

Currently we show this as all one color on the flume.

But there's much more detail that could go into it.

This really is furthering the recommendation that we need a rural area land use plan.

So with that, I'll go over the calendar.

So we just discussed development area land use with you all last week.

We'll be talking to the board tomorrow about the same topic.

And here we are tonight talking about rural area land use, just the tools and policy, come back on the 10th to discuss actions.

And then we will be going to the board for the entire chapter

after the first of the year.

And I just say it's part of that thing.

And one of the things we heard from you all is the need to have a separation between your all discussion and enough time to get some of the board.

So with that, this is the slide with the direction topics.

These are the elements that we'd like your feedback on and let us know what your thoughts are.

Great.

Thanks.

Great report.

It's a lot to chew on.

I think I have my general ones.

You don't have any overall questions?

Okay.

That's easy.

Great.

I'll take that.

So why don't we start with the first topic?

Does the chapter provide sufficient recommendations and context for updating the county's zoning ordinance related to the rural area land uses?

That's a pretty big, broad question.

So why don't we go back and who would like to start the discussion?

No, I can start if you like.

Sure.

Can some put up my handy map?

Give me just a minute.

OK.

So in many ways, I feel like we're going full circle here.

In 1971, it's worth noting that we had specific areas designated for agriculture.

We had specific areas designated for conservation.

And so I think this is, as we look at this, I think this is a very handy thing to look at.

In many ways, we're talking about going back to a really good idea that we had in the past.

Somehow, in revisions, this has gotten lost.

I think one of the big things that I hear from the public as a matter of concern is that when you talk about country stores, I think we're all good with that.

When we talk about other kinds of offices, there's a lot of ambiguous language about some of the other uses and I think that makes people very uncomfortable.

And so I think there needs to be a lot of clarity around that and guardrails.

And I can't remember exactly how you said it a moment ago, but you talked about guidance that they would be specifically uses that support the rural area, that support the goals of the rural area like sustainability, support of historic resources and cultural resources.

And I think if we could enumerate those things,

and put those there as guardrails.

So we're not just talking about any kind of office space, any kind of, you know, small shop.

They were talking about things specifically that meet a set of predefined criteria.

I think that would make the public a lot.

You give the public a lot more sense of security.

Since we're in just a conversation.

Does that fall to us?

Well, maybe not.

I just answered my own question.

But zoning?

Yeah.

So, so I think the first step is I think we need a future land use map, which we talked about, right?

So I think that I'm in agreement that that's where we need to go.

We need to go back to something like this.

I think we, you know, what I hope we get to very soon is we also had that

that list of categories, the future land use categories that we had for the growth area.

And I would like to see the exact same thing for the rural area.

I'm talking about what we expect in the conservation district and the agricultural district.

And so we can talk about what we think is reasonable in those spaces or not.

You mean something similar to what we have in the development area where we have all the different colors on the map?

I think that at a certain point, yeah, we are talking about doing something to the level of detail.

I'm not prepared to go into that.

I think there's a recognition that it's all white now, right?

So, I mean, the basic thought is it should have different colors representing different attributes and probably something more than just

Parks, and then everything else white.

Oh, no, I expect W process, right?

And I'm fine with the process.

I will say that if we look to other localities, neighboring localities, I understand I think it's Green County already has C1 conservation districts and A1 agricultural zoning.

Yeah, and that is a useful tool because it then says like in a conservation zone.

This is a more sensitive area and it's already enumerated why that is and therefore you're going to be a little more restrictive in how you would zone that.

to add on Commissioner Murray's point, we hear a lot, you know, there's 95% of the county is agriculture.

And it's just green map.

And so I do think, and I'm in complete support of this and what you're just showing is a representation that when you start taking in critical slopes, parks, watershed areas, prime agricultural lands, they're not all equal.

And when you start looking at that, that 95% starts to shrink pretty quickly.

So I think it's misrepresentative to just say there's 95% in green.

Because people take that to think, well, we have all this land that we're not using.

Well, a lot of that land you really can't use for development.

You certainly wouldn't in good conscience.

I guess maybe along those lines.

I'm sorry for not going in order.

But when I was looking at, I was going to bring this up later, but in looking at the map, and I brought this up before to the county, when you look at the map where you just showed agricultural soils, I suggest that you don't show that map without the forest on top, because it looks like there's all this land available for agriculture.

But it's really not colonial days, so we're very unlikely to go out and clear a forest and get rid of the stumps so that we can start laying out farm fields.

So, that's another discussion.

But, you know, I think, you know, what I suggest, you know, I've given the county in the past in their GIS maps showing this is the, this is high value forest cover.

This is the ag soils and this is high value forest cover.

So you can see what's left, what's already open space that's high value ag soils.

It gives you a more clear picture of what's actually available.

If I wanted to go out tomorrow and start

Curious, though, thank you for the presentation.

I'm curious if you could share a little bit about staff's discussions around tourism and the rural area and, you know, we're winning awards and I don't think that's going to slow down.

Yeah.

Oh, no.

So.

Oh, good.

Hey, good evening, Ben Holt, Long Range Planning.

As Michael noted, it's kind of a team effort tonight, but we have had conversations about different uses in the rural area.

Obviously, agritourism falls under the umbrella of agricultural uses, so that is supported in

Courage within the rural area.

We're also having ongoing conversations with their zoning ordinance update.

So there will probably be some more changes forthcoming with the zoning ordinance update, but none specifically that I can speak to.

Um, thinking of like transportation, for example, how does that start to play with how we're thinking about transportation and then networks out there in the rural areas for, and I mean, that's just one example, right?

Sure.

And honestly, I don't feel qualified to speak to that, to the degree that our transportation team could, which they will address when we talk about the transportation chapter.

And again, this transportation chapter will be divided between the rural area and the development area.

So you will get more specific information about the rural area at that time.

I do think you bring up a good point, though.

And I think there's several points in here where

Michael Barnes,

is a map of rural area greenways.

And that falls into transportation in many ways.

But I think it's handy for here.

So I think understanding where recreation is already occurring on Albemarle County roads is handy to know when we're looking at the rural area map about where those recreational opportunities exist.

Can I just back us up one quick second?

What's available?

Also the benefit of identifying natural resources and infrastructure that might help with potential development in those areas.

Okay, just wanted to put a bow on that.

Getting back to the question to whether the chapter provides sufficient recommendation and context for updating the county's zoning ordinance related to the rural area land uses.

I think that at least from what I can tell primarily relates to page five.

No, sorry, three.

Yeah, three of the rural area land use document we received under rural areas land use approach.

and on the right hand side of that page it talks about future updates to the zoning ordinance, the rural area zoning district, potential new use permitted uses in the rural area zoning district should be evaluated based on the following considerations.

Did anybody have any specific questions on that or on the right hand side of this slide as well?

Because I think that gets to your question, right?

Mr. Chairman, I do have one question.

I'd love for us to talk a little bit about the bullet that talks about discords residential growth and development and the related demand for increased public services.

It feels very black and white and I wonder where does the intersectionality of affordable housing might play in that conversation where some people have to live out there because that's where they can afford to live.

So how do you balance not driving a ton of growth there, but not just striking it off the docket in terms of the ability to live there, right?

So actually I think there's a really good, we're not into action items here yet, but there's an item in there that I think speaks to this really well.

And not to find exactly how it's phrased, but it talks about limiting this to the parcel size.

Right now in the rural area, the default are these 21 acre lots.

And if we're talking about affordability,

Well, first of all, I'm gonna say too, the other thing that I feel is lacking in this is acknowledging the diversity of the rural area.

There's no mention of, I know we'll get historic resources later, another footnote, see also, but the historic Black communities, I think, in our county are a very important part of our county.

My neighborhood in Sugar Hollow is way more diverse economically and racially than Old Trail.

And I think that's something that's worth preserving and keeping in mind.

Oh yeah, actually, so the point is that if you have 21 acre lots, they're never going to be affordable.

So if you, without changing the number of divisions that are possible, if you put a cap on how big those lots can be so that now those lots are going to be, you're going to have more five acre, two acre lots, then those lots are more likely to be affordable for someone.

And plus you're going to end up with a residual lot with this leftover that's more likely to be viable for agriculture.

So you kind of, you know, accomplish two goals at once.

Well, if the state would change their enabling legislation so we could require clustering development, then, yeah, I mean, that's kind of the concept.

So, but the difference is between a cluster, as a cluster is you're literally taking everything and putting it in one corner.

And in some ways, this can be better in sensitive areas.

You may actually... You can put them in different sections.

You don't have to put them all in the corner.

I guess I have this kind of like I hope it's not a non sequitur, but one of the things that in this there is something in the goals and objectives that gets to this and I know we're not talking about that tonight, but I have a concern about the ability of someone to apply to say like take their barn and make it an event space.

There was almost an application that came from my district just west of Batesville for a barn that had been for horses to, yeah, to be a wedding venue.

And this is, you know, I know marriage is important, but weddings had nothing to do with agriculture.

It doesn't have to do with the rural area.

It wasn't a winery, right?

So it had nothing to do with agricultural production.

It's kind of like a loophole in our code that anyone can kind of apply to have an event venue on their property, even if it's not a winery or brewery or whatever.

And so the action that the staff had put in is this one is saying like only for a historic building,

to change that.

It's a strategy to say it can't just be for any building.

And that the thinking there I think is probably that it would help protect historic buildings by giving them a new use.

But I would hate to think that every old barn in Albemarle County can now be a wedding venue.

And so my question is whether we need to, is there some language or way we can say in our rural area chapter that we're

Yeah, I think that brings a couple of questions to mind.

So there is the encouragement of adaptive reuse, which is what you're bringing up, particularly if they're historic properties or just older buildings that we want to encourage to be reused and maintained.

However, does that open the door for a variety of different uses that are not perhaps in line with the rural areas?

So I guess that's where maybe some thought of how the

the language of the zoning language of having the services to be in line or the uses to be in line with the rural area versus encouragement of adaptive reuse.

Every time you reuse something, then it must be appropriate right now.

So I think maybe to your point, and I want to get back, if I could, to get back to the residential piece too, but to your point about that, there's, in that bullet list, there's one that says, support low impact uses to encourage the economic fatality of rural properties to help keep those rural properties intact, preserve and enhance rural landscapes, supporting historic resources, supporting.

So I guess as you think about, if we go to the, we think about venues,

Are there, and if I understand this is what staff's goal is, is there enough language in there to be able to guide that future discussion?

Yeah, I don't know if there is.

I don't get it from that.

I don't have the answer.

But if there's some way we can couch it in terms of

We have the language that it has to be agricultural use or in support of agriculture activity, right?

Yeah, I mean, I think we have the goals of the COMP plan, right?

And when you say that we're encouraging conservation, we're encouraging protection of historic resources, protection of natural resources in agriculture.

And so the question is, is when you have these applications, it's almost like you can translate into that to a checklist, right?

Is this in support of agriculture?

Is it in support of conservation?

Is it in support?

So would, so would, for example, the board looked differently than on someone's application to take their mansion and turn it into a five bedroom hotel with another barn using, you know, the five additional units to get up to 10 rooms.

There's no agriculture going on there.

Maybe it helps them not have to sell their farm.

but it's not agriculture.

Unless it's some farmers learn to milk the cow or something like that, one of those dude farms.

You guys are talking about an interesting issue, which is how this is preserving agricultural forestal uses and how much of it's preserving large.

on blocks, large blocks of land that can't be sub-divided and residential.

I'll speak for what I think we're trying to get to.

There was something pretty specific brought up, wedding venues, and we're trying to bring it back to the comp plan language.

That's right.

And I'm sorry if I wasn't clear on my question.

I'm just saying, OK, you have those types of uses, whether they are event spaces, wedding spaces, you know,

Hayes on a farm for maybe doing horse training or something like that.

Like if it's helping someone keep their farm going and it's related to agriculture, like

you know, horse riding or something.

But if it's just having weddings, for example, that's not necessarily supporting agriculture there.

It's just

and some of the people who brought these forward were not actually involved in farming.

So I just wanted to make money having weddings.

But I'm just asking for a proven question here because the flip-flop, well, that's definitely one criteria to maintain a farm in its working state.

Yeah, as opposed to needing to parcel out that a state

You know, the new generation comes in.

It's not quite the same thing for them.

They want to parcel out the estate and sell it on.

But if you could give them some sort of economic use on that property, they might be able to keep it from being parceled out.

So I'm just kind of curious to hear what your all thoughts are on this.

I tell you what, it's a lot easier to say, hey, this is something we need to solve than to like sort of parse through all the different aspects of it.

Yeah, I'm a little bit less on the, you know, because subdivision is always an option.

I mean, anyone can always claim, as long as they have division rights, they can always say, oh, well, you have to allow this because otherwise I wouldn't divide it whether they really would or not.

And so that's not a claim you can really use effectively, in my opinion.

There's got to be something more than that, I think.

Something that legitimately supports sustainability, agriculture.

The items that we've already identified as the goals, the comp land.

Now, I did, I mean, for me, one of the things just narrowly speaking, like, you know, I've always been shocked by the fact we have all these historic taverns in Albemarle County.

It just seems to me it's like a no-brainer that if you have a historic tavern, it should be allowed to be a tavern.

So I think there's some things like that that we should just fix, because if you have a tavern, why shouldn't we allow it to be a tavern again?

Well, I don't know if we're going to answer this.

Maybe we put a pin in this one for now.

And still, I think, for me, anyway, the support low impact uses low impact, right?

We're very broad.

Yeah, or maintain an enhanced land for working farms and commercial forestry effort.

What's a working farm?

Is it a vineyard?

Is it a working farm that actually wants to then have a wedding venue?

Or how does that all play out?

And are you directing us to try and bring that into the comp plan now?

I think I'm hearing you say that.

You were asking these questions, and I think if I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying that what you are looking at now, does it

What would you look at that now?

Does it meet the goals that you're talking about?

This I think would be, well, I think it's probably vague, but I don't know if the comp plan is the right place to make it more specific.

I see.

Well, I mean, I think the challenge though, I can say, I mean, I think the challenge is that if we got a special use permit, and we had to deal with this draft as it was.

And I think that's probably where you can dive a little bit more into the nuance of it.

So I think the tension here is

You're creating language that talks about agricultural use or supporting agricultural use.

But then there's other uses, as Commissioner Firehock wrote, well, what if there's a bed and breakfast that you want to create?

Is that an agricultural use?

And so, or do you want to limit that from happening?

So I think there's potentially a tension that we need to work through, whether it's here or whether it's in another form.

But I think there are some uses that you may not want to exclude, right?

but then can you call them agriculture or in support of agriculture?

I think this is connected back to the question that you asked before about affordable housing because you have to be careful.

One of the reasons that we have housing that's affordable in the rural areas because there's not a lot of other uses allowed.

and so the more other uses you allow would be additional residential uses or commercial uses, you're increasing the value of that property.

The moment that property has more uses, more things you can do with it, the more valuable it becomes.

That's why rural land is less expensive than growth area land.

I think it's good that you bounced back to that because I was going to bring us back to the question of residential in the rural area.

I think that's one that maybe we should discuss a little bit.

There's a statement in here, number three on the next slide or one of those slides you had, discourage new residential development.

pretty much specifically says that, you discourage.

And I think I'm not sure if that's intended to mean holistically, like it's just, or if there's a side benefit to by discouraging it in the rural area, you're encouraging it more in the urban, the development areas.

And so I'm not quite sure what our goal is in that statement.

And if I can just add to that, and how does that manifest?

How do you discourage?

Yeah, and there's a lot of divisions.

I would assume the answer is not only number of lots, but housing types too.

I mean, the basic premise I think in that is single family is on 21 acre lots or whatever the development rights they have out there.

That's what's allowed, but to not necessarily encourage more than that.

It just is a guidepost.

Maybe the language is too strong, but

I think the intent was, I mean, we talk about, I mean, you know, it's a use that is, I guess, for those people who are farming or foresting out there, that's something that we acknowledge as something, but as far as new residential subdivisions, we're not working to- That's really like subdivisions.

It's so broad when we say residential because maybe we may actually want to encourage certain types of residential development in the rural area.

Sure.

Ben Holt was planning.

You were asking asking about what sort of aspects or

requirements limit residential development in the rural area.

The first is the number of development rights, which goes back to what was allocated onto specific properties in 1980 by the zoning ordinance.

So when somebody subdivides the property, they have to determine how many development rights there are to split up that property.

also we obviously have the two acre lot minimum out in the rural area and some of that is for practical purposes because most of these properties will need septic fields so well, so water and septic and it requires a certain amount of land specifically with the drain fields and a drain field reserve

So that's part of why we have that two acre minimum.

Yes, because that's another requirement is you carve out a parcel for residential use.

You also have to have driveway access too.

Yeah, I mean, I agree with all everything that you just said.

And I'm still, it's interesting that number of development rights onto parcels back in from 1980.

This is, I probably should know the answer to this question.

Has that ever been discussed?

Or increasing development.

I don't know.

So I would not be in favor of increasing or necessarily even decreasing, but I do think the system is extremely arcane.

The fact that some residents have to send a letter into the county to have a research study done to determine how many development rights to have, how many divisions they can do is a little arcane.

So I think, you know, we could look at redoing the system and maybe it comes out as an average with some winners and some losers.

But I think figuring out like the, you know, certainly we can do some math and look at the number of letters that we've gotten in the past, you know, 10 years and say, what is the average number or acre of development rights that parcels should have and then correlate them with, you know,

the new districts that we're forming and say, well, this is in the new districts.

This is how many development rights these districts are going to have.

Um, and it'll still be, we'll still be left with roughly the same number of division rights remaining in the rural areas we had before.

That would be the goal.

Um, but we would, we wouldn't have that arcane system anymore.

Um, and obviously we'd have to honor anyone that already submitted, you know, a letter, had a letter in hand that said, this is how many division rights you have.

But I mean, I think,

I would love to see it some way to get away from that arcane system.

I do think, you know, still going back to the affordable housing thing.

I, you know, we, there's two different applications are kind of like working their way through the system for trailer parks in the rural area.

And the thing that troubles me about both of them is that neither one of them have the development rights to do what they're claiming they want to do.

But I could see a situation where if someone came forward with an application, they said,

If we had an equivalency that said like, you know, one division, right, you know, for a single family home equals two trailers or something like that, or we could say the footprint of this trailer park would be less than the overall footprint if we made the same equivalent number of single family houses.

That's something that maybe we could consider, right?

I mean, that might be, you're still preserving the rural area in the same amount.

You're providing for affordable housing in a way that's kind of difficult to provide it now.

Well, in a cluster, you can modify your lot sizes.

Hmm.

I don't know.

That's a good question.

Okay.

Right.

I was thinking maybe a private, I don't know.

That's what isn't that what we're we're trying to get away from lot, you know, multi lot developments is what we're trying to get away from.

Yeah.

That's reasonable.

Yeah.

And I think, I mean, there's a lot of stuff mixed in here to what we're talking about, right?

Because one of the things we're talking about too is appropriate use of land for residential, smaller lots for affordability, figuring out a way to do that while still honoring the issue of needing to have water and septic.

and enough space for, you know, a secondary septic field or backup field or whatever they're called.

I mean, there's a lot of restraints on that.

So I think it's just, to net it out, it's like we're just saying let's focus the lens a little bit because broad statements don't necessarily apply.

And we said that when it comes to maps, it said that when it comes to areas of residential development, where I think we're saying that when it comes to even and we're sort of, you know, not to transition into crossroads and things like that, but just that additional focus.

And thus I'm wrong here.

At the comprehensive plan level, we're still just trying to make sure that this language gives us enough so that when we do focus on those details, we have enough to back us up in the comp plan.

I don't know if I'd say discourage subdivisions or that there'd be even a broader for the comp plan that there'd be a broader saying that

I mean, the county has worked really hard to

and so on.

and then started doing a lot to encourage development in the urban ring that the trend line went right up to the urban ring and started going flat for the rural areas.

So the policy worked.

And so, you know, I think that it's a success story.

And I want to be very careful here that we recognize that that we're very intentionally saying we don't want to have people living all over the place.

And then we have to have even more school buses and more schools in the rural area.

and then everyone needs a grocery store and so on and so forth and pretty soon you just have sprawl or you have us looking like one of our neighboring counties which I shall not name so you can just make up your mind what they are but you know I want to be very careful here that we recognize that our strong sort of anti-sprawl policies have been fairly effective

Yeah, and I think that, you know, it's also not just about what we're trying to just, but I agree.

I think those metrics, like when, you know, the metrics of like the bulk of single family, the bulk of new residential units, we want to encourage those to be in the development area.

And maybe that's the way we say it.

We're not just, we're not simply encouraging them somewhere else.

But I think we can also be, you know, we're also, you know, encouraging things like conservation easements and other things that do have the effect of, you know, removing development rights.

And this, you know, basically taking away that residential potential.

And I do support that.

So I think

So I think somewhere there's some language.

Yeah, I think and I guess I mean, I was I'm glad that you mentioned that about the trends and the reversal of trends, which is summarized at bottom page two on the left.

Just reading that, though, makes me feel and maybe discourage new residential development is enough.

is OK.

I don't know.

I'm kind of going back and forth because I do agree that we can't reverse that trend.

So then the question is, is there anything we would change in that current policy?

We want affordable housing.

You brought that up already.

So for example, one of the things that was a positive that happened several years ago, and I brought to the attention that there was in part of our, in part of our, why can't I speak tonight?

In my district, there was some homes that had become more dilapidated.

And the question was, could we put together an approach with AHEP to come and rehab those homes so people continue to live in them?

and they would be energy efficient and whatnot.

So that takes people who have low income and fix those homes up.

There are other dilapidated homes and even vacant homes in the rural area.

So if the county does more of that work to actually go and rehab those homes that don't exist in the rural area.

So it's not new residential development, but it's taking a resource before it completely decays beyond repair.

So that's an example of a strategy where we can make it affordable

You know, you can make it such that the program, you know, requires that if it's for sale that it can only go to a low income person, etc.

So I don't need to go into all the detail now.

And that's obviously going to be in a different chapter.

That's another thing that I think we almost might want to even reference here, because that policy I think is a very important one for the rural area in terms of equity.

It's not just the housing, but also helping make sure that when people's septic systems fail, that can be a disaster.

It can be the difference between living there or not.

I think that that's an important rural policy.

What about this?

I was trying to stay away from this because it's pretty wordy, but there's other wordy things on this.

So it's in good company.

But on page three, we were just talking about discouraged new residential development.

What if we stole something from page two, which says,

continually monitor the rate of development in the rural areas, the rate of residential development in the rural area compared to the development areas and leverage land use and conservation tools in support of the growth management policy.

Basically, status quo in a sense, right?

And it's monitoring, which actually the next one talks about too.

Uses should also be evaluated or monitored.

That sounds like a good solution.

Everything else was wordy in that list.

Oh, sir.

It's a different topic, though.

Is that OK?

Go for it.

Yeah.

I'm curious what we feel like, do we have enough guidance around evaluating like solar proposals, right?

We start talking about scale and I see the bullet here about, you know, reversible uses that allow land to return to agriculture, forestry or conservation use.

Is that true for solar?

I feel like I've heard two different stories before.

So just curious is like, do we have enough guidance there?

I love to hear my colleagues think about that, particularly around solar.

Well, I will tell you we will be bringing you something in the resilient.

Community's chapter, the last one we get to, we'll be talking, there will be a section there, solar.

We will also be getting the solar ordinance, I think we set a date for that to come to the Planning Commission, if we can make it, of January 14th.

But to your point, I think it's a good one that seems like there are topics that cross into rural area discussion, right?

And that's one of them.

Another one might be transportation, another one might be large lots.

I mean, there's a lot of things that we're going to be visiting in other chapters that come back to this chapter.

I think one of the things we're talking about doing is sort of having a parking lot of issues and sort of sit on to the side that we may have to deal with at the end, come back and talk about this.

No, this is not this is not a perfect way to, you know,

This world's complex and nuanced, right?

And so a lot of issues bleed across each other.

We've tried to create some point of an artificial distinction by putting some of these things in their chapter so that you can sort of focus on that aspect.

I think you still have to hold some of those ideas that are going to be a separate chapter.

Yeah, I strongly support hyperlinks.

You know, I mean, I think, you know, gone are the days when I think people are going to print this out and carry it around.

I think, you know, we should have hyperlinks between the different sections.

I think that that parking space for solar is at 1.2 that you have.

when you say develop local standards, we don't have the standards, right?

That's why I'm calling it partner.

And I think we need that rural future land use map as well, because I think that's going to be a piece of, you know, where is solar appropriate?

And I think that that map is going to help guide the places where solar is or is not appropriate.

Just what, if I can, while we were in 1.2, if I can go to 1.3, it's really, it's a question too.

So there's someone that talks about area B. And for those that are not familiar with area B, there's a

Tripartite Planning Map, Area A, B, and C, the county, the city, and the university that talks about developments within Area A, B, and C. They all have different conditions of approval and so forth.

And so this one states, coordinate with the University of Virginia, a recommended land use for Area B in the rural area.

So when I read that, I was kind of looking at our map at UVA, that work at UVA.

There's only a handful of properties within the university landholdings that are within area B in the road.

It's like the Davis Farm, the Milton Air Force, Airfield, Fan Mount.

I mean, there's a handful of small areas.

So I'm wondering exactly where

where the county is going with this and are you thinking about foundation properties, which would be there's a lot more of foundation land in Area B or there's a lot more of foundation land in the rural area, but Area B wouldn't apply to foundation.

I'm wondering if the county's getting the foundation and the university

Intermix there.

for the Evening Planning Commission, Jodi Falardo, Community Development Director, Commissioner Carrazana.

I know that both the county, the city, and UVA at various meetings have expressed interest in having some conversations about areas A, B, and C.

And so perhaps broadening this particular action item, which I know we're going to talk about next time, might be advisable to where we're going to consider having additional conversations between the three entities.

I know that there have been land holdings swap between those held by the foundation having the move to the university.

Right, so there was any kind of sale.

If the foundation would sell some of those properties to the university, they would then conform to Area B. Okay, I can see that.

So let's bounce back to the first bullet here and see how we're doing.

Yeah, three.

Three.

Keeps looking like a five.

The only other one that I wondered about, and I think I've talked myself out of this, but

The last bullet in courage, use of distributed power sources to increase the reliability of power felt a little bit out of place, or maybe a little specific.

And I didn't know if that meant like, oh, you know, current substations can be expanded.

So this is a way to kind of, you know, we just saw that.

Yeah, I'm just curious.

The last bullet, encourage uses of distributed power sources to increase the reliability of power.

Why is that on the list?

Yeah, maybe.

I'm kind of looking at my colleague because I asked about this bullet at one point too, thinking that maybe it was a bit that.

And I think we

We are definitely wrestling at staff level with the solar.

I mean, it's a major issue in our community right now.

I think we've got a good order to be bringing to you.

Is that solar distributed power source?

Once again, Jody, Florida, community development director still.

Thank you.

Distributed power, we can take many forms.

Solar is one.

Small nuclear power is another.

I think part of what has been informed or what is informing some of that particular bullet had to do with January 3rd, a couple of years ago, where we had no power.

for a week, and particularly the rural areas were hard hit.

So some of what we're looking at is resilience centers for the rural areas so that people have a place to go to, to charge their phones and things like that.

But we'd also need to create a power source to power those resilience centers that may be independent of other power available through traditional grids.

So I think that was more the intent.

To have reliable power in the rural area.

In case of emergencies and things like that.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

I was kind of aware of that.

No, not for growing substations everywhere in the rural area.

that is the intent because the resilience hub, we're hoping to have places for people in the rural area to congregate, much like the ANSI Community Center served the community when we had no power

where people could come congregate, find heat, cooling, a way to charge their cell phone.

So that's more what the intent was there.

It might need to be reworded.

Yeah, confusing.

Yeah, I mean, I would encourage that because that's kind of when I saw the word reliability of power.

That was where my mind went.

So I would think and I don't see resilience mentioned in this.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

All right.

I don't know if we already covered some of this, right?

Yeah.

appropriate, you know, whether we can have a venue or... I guess the only one I thought of is like where it's just low impact outdoor recreation.

I was thinking maybe like trying to be

Well, it says outdoor.

I'm trying to like, sometimes I use the words nature-based.

So by that, I mean, maybe that's not an artful term, but like, versus like, say a putt-putt course that's outside, you know, like it's low-impacted, it's small, but it's nothing to do with that location because it can be in a shopping mall.

Yeah, and I think about there's background in Southwest Virginia, there's areas along the New River Trail where you could rent bicycles.

at least when I was there.

And so, I mean, I think I would have no issue with someone having like a little bike rental next to an area where, you know, or like a kayak rental next to a major river or, you know, something like something that's dependent on that natural resource, whether it's a mountain biking trail or it's a river, you know, right, that kind of thing.

I think about Panorama Farm that has a lot of outdoor recreation events, there's space, there's other people, other sites where people have had a lot of trail races and other things, and there's property that's used by cats very frequently, so Charlottesville area trail runners.

Yes, so maybe slow impact land based out to recreation.

I know I'm getting a little wordy or nature based, but something that distinguishes that from just recreation happening outside.

Well, this kind of blends a little bit with, and I'm not going to page five where it talks about

Community Resilience Hubs, right?

Because there's a good list on page five that I have trouble assuming it is appropriately cited.

I have trouble arguing with, right?

It's essential public safety services and daily needs that can utilize existing buildings such as healthcare, including small scale doctors, dentist offices and mobile clinics, fire rescue and police services, job training programs, community gathering spaces.

Countrystores, small-scale markets, daycare, post offices, emergency shelters, and access to affordable and healthy food.

And I happen to live right near Crossroads Store and spend way too much money at Dr. Hoes.

But I will say that that little hub right there, that little, I don't have to call it a Crossroads, but it's been great for somebody who lives 12 miles outside of the city.

I've saved a lot of miles on my car.

because of that and it's got doctor's offices and it's got place to eat and it's got a fire station and when there was the power outage we got bottled water brought to the fire station we could go get that and take that back to the house so it was really helpful I guess I'm wondering how that blends with

Non-residential land use is appropriate for the rural area.

I think that's a list, right?

And what we're saying is that it depends on where those go.

You wouldn't put the crossroads store just anywhere.

Exactly.

Although I will say, and maybe I'm wrong on this.

Yeah, I mean, it was a historic area, but the building's long gone.

Yeah, it's kind of a facade, but it's not.

I don't think.

So not an additional use per se.

I think a lot of the concerns that people have that I heard, particularly even as people talk about interchange and other things, we have existing industrial uses in the rural area.

But it's kind of a problem because we're taking the growth area, you know, category for industrial, and we're applying it in the rural area.

Technically, I mean, I think, and maybe someone can correct me on this, they have an existing industrial use.

Could they turn around and make that a different industrial use and sort of be by right and doing that?

You mean for property in the rural area that has zoning for industrial uses?

Yes.

So that's kind of a problem because I think, you know, if you, Albemarle is not a cement factory,

Rural area industrial, is that what you mean?

You know, whatever you want to call it, but I think that that's one of the things that goes in our grit, you know?

Yeah, I saw it for a sales sign outside of Laird.

Oh, that's a house for sale.

Oh, that's good.

But I would hate to see that happen, right?

So I think the way to do that is to make sure that we have categories that support those uses continuing forward.

and look at them through the filter of what's appropriate in the rural area.

So, I mean, we've got, I keep referring to where I live, but we have lumber, two lumber companies right near Laird.

And I live, I don't know, a mile away from them.

I can hear the background lumber mill going through most of the day.

So just thinking about how that impacts

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, having Lombermill is great, but you know, what happens if like this, you know, we're not going to do the Lombermill anymore, like Dal Pharmaceutical has said they would like to have a plan here.

Whoa, that, you know, that maybe we should not be in a position for that to happen.

I would say one other thing that we had gotten comments from the community about concerns about the, well, Shadwell, and what's the other one, Yankee Mills.

And those are going to be covered by small area plants, right?

So there'll be discussion about uses in those areas that are currently

But we should have some guardrails.

Yeah, I think we don't want to go into a completely open ended.

There should be the guardrails that are already being set forth.

in this overlay.

I do have one concern, though.

I mean, and maybe I should have brought some at the beginning, but my concern is just that are we going to get to a rural area plan?

I mean, we have a backlog of small area plans for the development area.

I understand why we went that route because we can't, the county feels it can't stop and whoa, you're right, we should do more detailed work for the rural area.

We can't fit it into this existing comp planning process now, so we're going to have a rural area plan.

But I'd really like, we're not the deciders, so I get, you know, we're the recommenders.

So I'd really like to see a more cogent strategy for how are we going to get that rural area plan.

when is it proposed to occur?

You know, is this gonna be a decade from now?

That, okay, we're finally, you know, we got this list and we're gonna finally do the rural air plan.

Whoops, it's time to do the comp plan again.

This is a perfect segue to the third bullet.

because third bullet directly addresses the rural area land use plan.

Is there I mean, I don't know if this is realistic or even would make a difference.

Like to actually speak to that, where yes, we're going to do it as a county.

Yeah, we're going to put resources towards it for

I would also just say one thing that's missing and it's, I know it's going to be in the Parks and Greenways section, but I think we need a

The thing that's missing, we have these maps.

We're talking about rural area land use.

I'll just remind what I'd said before about IV is IV used to have areas designated for green space.

And when it was removed, it lost those designations.

I think we need to put back those designations for parks and greenways in the rural area.

just looking through action 1.1 the bullets recognize multiple geographic areas check right we talked about that that's the one size doesn't fit all second bullet provide recommendations protecting rural area to maintain and enhance

Land for Working Farms, Commercial Forestry Operations.

I don't see anything in there.

And I don't, I mean, maybe there shouldn't be anything in there, but is there, we talked about industrial, existing industrial uses, things like that.

Yeah, no, I can't.

Well, I'm just thinking we talked about if we're talking about the rural area land use plan, right, that encompasses some more specificity.

And we're talking here about recommendations for protecting the rural area to maintain an enhanced land.

And then it goes on to talk about

Commercial Forestry Operations, Native Ecosystems, Wildlife Habitat, Healthy Water Supplies.

I don't know, I'm just thinking, is there anything in here that should address things like you mentioned existing industrial facilities and the future use

I think the short answer is we should address those.

And I think it should be, once again, addressed through the lens that we've already talked about supporting existing agriculture, sustainability.

I mean, we don't have... We used to have a chemical plant off, but it blew up.

So we don't really have a lot of industrial uses in the rural area.

They're not related to rural production.

I agree.

Maybe it's another objective, too, right?

I think your point is well taken.

There's been a fair amount of discussion about some of the commercial uses.

If you're doing a land use plan, you probably want to identify those properties that have that quality.

So I think it's points well taken.

Probably a bullet we need to add to this.

You said it better than I did.

I mean, elsewhere it talks about places for, you know, canneries, food production and store, you know, like, I mean, food processing and storage.

I mean, those are all uses that I would support.

Just to stay in there and pull it through here and what's missing.

Thank you, Commissioner Carrazana.

I just wanted to bring to your attention something that we've been wrestling with as staff and that has has been presented to the various board members as well.

And that is

Reuse of existing or dilapidated structures for a business that is not necessarily tightly coupled to agriculture or forestry, but that would result in the rehabilitation of an existing building and would bring crafts, a kind of crafty

not sly and crafty, but arts and crafty use to the rural area.

So for your consideration, I would just offer there may be opportunities to be more expansive than limiting just to agriculture or forestry, but perhaps arts and crafts and that sort of thing might also be advantageous in the rural area.

and in particular this one use that we've been approached about and right now can't support given everything that is existing in our code, we would like to support because we think it will bring advantageous

Traffic to the rural area will bring adaptive reuse to an old building that's falling down and will actually support another adjacent building with more traffic that's a little store out in the rural area that I think could benefit from more traffic.

Well, I think that we specifically talk about historic resources, but that chapter is actually like, it's actually not just historic resources, it's historic cultural

Yeah, you know, scenic resources.

And I think, you know, arts falls into cultural resources, right?

This may be a good hyperlink use too.

I just have a question while you're there.

And so we tried to kind of

We tried to strong arm it and make it fit, and we just could not make it work the way our zoning ordinance is written now.

And of course, we'll have another opportunity when we come back to y'all on the zoning ordinance, but just understanding that

having just agricultural and forestry uses in the rural area may be too narrow if you want to accommodate some of these cultural uses and typically we've tied cultural uses and historic together in the rural area

and you may not want you may want to do that or you may not want you may want to talk about doing that because this particular use it seemed as though each board member was supportive of the particular use but it did not tie historically to the place these people were trying to go so you may want to provide for some

Well, I mean, you know, and as you can attest, you know,

having lived in Batesville, you know, a big part of Batesville is its art and music scene.

There's a lot of really well-known musicians, a lot of really well-known artists.

That is part of the rural area culture as well.

Okay.

Thanks for bringing that up.

Yeah, I mean, items like that and, you know, obviously community input.

Yeah, and there's like, that made me think of a situation we have in Howardsville where there's a Methodist church.

It's a registered historic property.

It's completely empty.

It has no parking.

So the churchgoers stopped going there about 25 years ago because

There's nowhere to park and it's on a steep little hill.

So older people can't park next to it and get into the church.

So it just sits empty.

It's been offered to the community for a dollar.

We can't afford it because it needs a lot of renovation, but we don't know what we could use it for under the zoning code.

Nobody's interested in starting up a church, but they might do a cultural thing or a yoga studio or something that could adaptively reuse that building.

Maybe.

But it's kind of daunting.

It's got really high church ceilings and an altar.

Yeah, I just wanted to add something in the spirit of bullet three here, what's missing and bringing us back to early in the evening.

that mapping of the raw area.

So I do think that's still missing here instead of having

And there is a map that, you know, it does need to be updated.

And I think that's part of the future plans.

But we already went through a process of categorizing the high value wildlife habitats.

And it's on a map.

It's in the biodiversity plan.

I do think there's a misconception out there.

And we have prioritized it.

And perhaps the way to get that is to, I mean, I think there's, if you would,

All those different lenses that you put across it that give you a different focus.

And hopefully by looking at where we are trying to protect stuff in the rural area from an environmental standpoint, where I hear what you're talking about of soils or other things that we ultimately could come out with a map that would be, hey, these are good places for that need to be conserved and

We have all that.

Sort of related to that, but there's a point.

I did want to pull a point of concern.

the Action Items, but I think it's still there's several comments about it that we got.

There's a dot, did you say sorry?

Oh, some there's some one of the Action Items, there's some comments that we got got on the emailing meter.

Yeah.

And one of them was about setting conservation, you know, a target for conservation.

Yeah.

And that was particularly vague to me.

It wasn't clear whether you're tying by like an upper limit to the amount of land that was conserved or is this a goal for how much we wouldn't conserve from where we are now.

So I found that vague.

Also, that conservation easement map is really misleading.

because, as I pointed out before, there are different kinds of conservation easements and they don't all conserve the same things.

So some conservation easements protect historic resources.

Some just simply preserve open space and some preserve natural resources, specific natural resources.

Yeah, the easement map.

We have a lot of easements in Albemarle County, but it doesn't mean that all the easements are on the most high priority places.

We've got a lot that are not.

And when that's when you overlay the priority map for the biodiversity action plan with your easement map, you can see where those gaps are.

But easements are not, you know, that's like, you know, that's not the only tool.

And a lot of people don't like easements, you know, are not going to put their land under easement.

Yeah, but it could be like an open space easement.

If the natural resource we want to protect is for us, and it's open space easement, it doesn't stop them from clear cutting the whole thing and putting in, hey, which may not be protecting the resource that we actually want to protect.

I mean, the very, the front of the land that is the Trump Hotel in the rural area in Fred's district, that's a conservation easement.

But it's a rolling manicured landscape with a hotel on it.

All right.

My understanding, we would get into the goals and strategies at another time at the next meeting.

We're all holding our tongues.

All right, staff, any questions for us?

Any concerns?

Anything we missed?

I don't think so.

Land use specific actions tomorrow.

Okay.

All right.

All right, I will adjourn the meeting until November, Tuesday, November 26.

So I think it's next Tuesday at 4pm to begin with the work session.