Planning Commission Work Session and Regular Meeting   12/10/2024

I'll read this.

Access paid in the hybrid meeting through information posted on the Albemarle County website, specifically on the Planning Commission homepage in the Albemarle County calendar.

During the meeting, there will be opportunities for public comment and specific agenda items where input is invited.

Yes.

Ms.

Firehock.

Here.

Correct.

Thank you for the last minute changes to that.

Thank you and good afternoon, commissioners.

My name is Tori Kenelopoulos, a principal planner on the long-range planning team, and I'm also joined today by my colleagues on the long-range planning team and by Scott Clark, our rural area expert, to also help answer questions today.

So looking at today's agenda, we'll start with a brief recap of the most recent Board of Supervisors work session, which was on the development areas to share what the board talked about at that meeting with you all, and then move on to a recap of the Planning Commission work session on the rural area part one that was on November 19.

Walk through the objectives briefly for this chapter and then talk about the actions that are the focus of today's discussion topics.

Those were included in the memo to the Planning Commission and include tools to reduce parcel fragmentation and conserve land, additional guidance for rural communities, and then if anything else is missing from the chapter, and then we'll wrap up with the upcoming schedule.

So at the board of supervisors work session on November 20th, the board talked about development areas, land use actions.

So to summarize some of that feedback, the board talked about reducing parking requirements, especially for commercial uses in the county and then all uses in activity centers, but pairing that reduction in parking with multimodal transportation options.

The board talked about achieving higher density and activity centers and to look at potential public-private partnerships for structured parking and improving the permit review times for developments in those centers.

The board also talked about tree coverage, including considering which tree species will be able to thrive here due to climate change, requiring appropriate trees for their location so they do not damage infrastructure or become a maintenance problem.

Corey, can I, sorry, can I ask a quick question?

So we may reduce parking requirements without having multimodal options in place.

and then for the planning commission work session on rural area land use policies.

The commission talked about residential development and considering where housing may be appropriate within the rural area, but also discouraging subdivisions and considering impacts to natural resources and connected habitats.

Supporting industrial uses specifically that support agriculture and forestry, but also considering the potential impacts to surrounding areas.

And then for the rural area plan with Action 1.1, looking at data and layers to include such as prime soil for agriculture, existing forests, parks and trails, layers from the biodiversity action plan, and then environmental features.

Then the Commission also talked about tourism in the rural area and addressing potential impacts such as noise and traffic.

And then for rural communities, which is one of the topics we would like to hear more from the Commission about today, potentially listing out more specific uses and then including criteria or guardrails for uses in those communities.

So today we'll be focused on the goal objectives and actions, but those are also strongly tied to the policies in the other section of the chapter.

So happy to hear feedback on other sections as well.

So again, similar to the memo that the commission received, focused on protecting rural area land for agriculture, forestry, and conservation, and then reducing conversion to residential development and limiting parcel fragmentation.

So two ways that we can do that are having a maximum lot size for development right lots in the rural area to reduce the amount of land that ends up being used for residential lots, and then also conservation easements.

and then clarifying the area planning for rural communities and if there are other criteria or consideration that should be added to the actions such as additional specific recommended land uses, impacts to consider and then if there are any specific communities that should be listed or prioritized and then overall in the chapter if anything is missing.

So this is a summary of the goal for this chapter.

It reflects community input, herd to date, and is very similar to the priorities from the 2015 COMP plan.

So focused on agriculture and forestry, land conservation, rural communities, especially adaptive reuse, and then protecting natural historic scenic and cultural resources.

These are the seven objectives from the chapter, also very focused on supporting agriculture and forestry and land conservation.

And again, for rural communities focused on adaptive reuse and then managing non-residential land uses and existing development in the rural area, including the rural interstate interchanges.

So this is a summary of changes from the 2015 COMP plan from a policy standpoint.

There's of course the new recommendation for a rural area land use plan, some updates to guidance for the rural area zoning district, which are included on page three of the chapter.

and then rural communities recommendations are also very similar to the current COMP plan.

There's the addition of community resilience hubs and then building on the 2015 COMP plan and the community input we've heard from AC44.

So the current COMP plan recommends the potential land uses for crossroads communities for country stores, offices, daycare, doctor and dentist offices, community centers, and then public institutional uses such as post offices.

And then similar for rural interstate interchanges, those also build off of the current COMP plan recommendations, which recommends studying the Shadwell interchange, especially for uses that support agriculture and forestry.

and then for the AC44 COMP plan update, it also recommends in the future, studying the Yancy Mills interchange and considering what other potential land uses could be considered, but still prioritizing agriculture forestry processing and distribution.

So again, updating the land use recommendations for rural communities and for interstate interchanges, but keeping them pretty close to the 2015 COMP plan.

And then not including actions that have already been completed, not including ones that are already requirements.

And then also noting that there are a lot of relevant actions that will be found in other plan chapters, including environmental stewardship, transportation and resilient community.

So after accounting for land that has already been developed in the rural area and land that is protected, over half of the rural area is still undeveloped, but also not protected.

Throughout the country and Virginia, agricultural land is being converted to non-farm uses, especially low density residential development.

So as an example, according to a study by the Virginia Office of Farmland Preservation,

from 2001 to 2016, about 273,000 acres of farmland in Virginia was converted to low-density residential development.

Let me put your mic down.

Quick question.

For non-rural uses, does that, is a house a rural use?

Because it could be anywhere.

Like a farm is obviously a rural use.

Okay, so non-rural.

Yeah.

Because it's not rural dependent.

Yeah.

So a couple of the tools that we can use for large and unfragmented parcels are Action 2.1 to have a maximum lot size for lots that have development rights.

Right now, when there's subdivisions for these lots, the average is about 6.2 acres with a minimum lot size of two acres.

So this land is large for residential lot, but also would be small for agriculture or forestry.

So updating these requirements would leave more land left over for the preferred rural area land uses.

And this is an example of what that could look like from the current comprehensive plan.

So on the left is the typical by right development with development rights.

And then on the right is an example if there was as, you know, a particular example for acres as a maximum lot size and how that would leave more land leftover for uses other than residential.

So conservation easements are another tool.

Then those are voluntary and permanent agreements to protect land and natural and cultural resources.

About a quarter of the rural area is protected in those permanent conservation easements.

They limit subdivision and development and some focus on specific resources like stream buffers, agriculture, land, historic sites or habitats.

So another topic that we've heard some questions on that we wanted to point out related to agriculture and forestry is supporting industrial uses.

And those include the actions 4.2 and 7.3.

And the purpose of those actions is to identify industrial uses that support agriculture and forestry, especially at interstate interchanges.

So we thought it may be helpful to take the language that's already in action 7.6 to prioritize land use and zoning opportunities to support agriculture, silviculture and related supporting industries and include that language for the other actions.

To be clear, it's not all industrial uses.

It's industrial uses specific to agriculture and forestry and only at specific locations.

So for rural communities, those are called crossroads communities in the current comp plan.

They're intended to provide access to essential public services and basic service needs for rural residents and can include community resilience hubs.

And the focus is on equitable service provision for rural area residents without encouraging additional residential development.

So the updated comprehensive plan, fairly similar to the current comprehensive plan, recommends having future engagement and area planning efforts in these communities to identify if there's any land use changes that are desired specific to individual communities.

and development should be primarily through adaptive reuse of existing structures or if structures need to be replaced having a similar building footprint and the majority of non-residential uses would still be through the special use permit review process, which can include conditions to mitigate impacts.

So there are several actions relevant to rural communities.

They include allowing small scale professional offices and existing structures, prioritizing adaptive reuse of historic structures, identifying options for allowing adaptive reuse for other uses like country stores.

and then providing spaces in existing structures and public facilities for small scale uses like community resilience hubs and then having that area planning process to study communities at an individual level.

So this is a snapshot of the near term upcoming schedule.

So there was the first planning commission work session on the rural area last month and then today's work session.

And then the board will look at the entire chapter on January 8th.

We also have an upcoming lunch and learn on December 12th, which will be virtual focused on the rural area.

And just a quick note about community engagement.

on our website, engage.albemarle.org slash AC44.

We do post all of the planning commission and board meetings and other opportunities for input, including the lunch and learns, which we'll be having for every chapter.

And then we anticipate quarterly in-person meetings as well.

We also have a newsletter that folks can sign up for, and that will be sent out regularly with updates on when there are meetings and engagement opportunities as well.

and the chapters are also being posted to the phase three page of the AC44 website.

So development areas, land use is there and rural area land use and environmental stewardship will be posted next.

And there are opportunities to comment on the chapter and the actions on that phase three page as well.

I would just add, for your all's agenda, I'll just cover this right now, in January for our meetings, we're going to meet on the 28th to take up Parks, Rec and Open Space.

So at one point I talked about having three meetings in January, we will not be doing that.

And then this is the final slide, just a brief reminder of the topics that we're looking for direction on today, but also happy to take questions and have additional input on other topics as well.

Great, thanks.

That was a great report.

It's a lot of material.

And also, thank you for the recap on how the community can engage in this process.

I know we've received quite a few emails and questions, I guess, about how the public can engage and how they can track changes as things go by.

And so there are substantial opportunities for that.

And thanks for that update.

So why don't we do this?

Let's do.

before we get into the meat of the discussion and before we hit the discussion points that are in the memo, the four points, are there any just high level questions of staff on any of the material that we reviewed?

I was just wondering if you could explain a little bit more slowly for me how the maximum lot size will help preserve these larger parcels.

I think the map actually finally helped me a little bit, but I'm wondering how frequently this has come up in real life as far as fragmentation in the last decade or two.

Good afternoon.

I'm Scott Clark.

I'm the Conservation Program Manager.

Get the mask off, get the hearing aid going.

Mr. Moore, I'm sorry.

I only heard about half-year questions.

Sure.

Just more information about how the, I mean, I see this example now, how it might lead to larger parcels that remain after by-right divisions happen, development-right divisions happen.

And if I could, just before you answer, just for everyone who's in here tonight who doesn't see this, it's under objective to reduce and mitigate the impacts to natural systems and cultural resources from development when it occurs.

And it's action 2.1.

Right.

And just before I get into the history on this, the four acres here is just an example.

We didn't, we weren't set on a particular number.

But so how often does this happen?

It happens pretty much constantly.

I mean, since the 1980 zoning ordinance divisions using these rights have occurred many, many times every year, we've had a range of 100 to 250 plus

New single-family dwellings in the rural area each year over that time.

So in any given year, it's maybe not that many, but it adds up over time.

The one on the left is sort of what we see.

We've got some pretty big lots and some really small ones.

It varies a lot depending on the original parcel because it's a relatively straightforward math exercise to figure out how many lots can I get and do I get more big lots if I make smaller small lots and you know it's it's not rocket science you can figure out so people will sometimes push those small lots bigger because you know 221 acre lots and 228 acre lots may not

sell for that different price, but they can fit in one more small lot.

That's quite a jump in income from the sale.

So everyone's different.

So I might be able to characterize some of that.

I mean, so what would you have in the rural area in many places?

And I know that affordable housing is a concern to you.

There's a lot of legacy, affordable housing in the rural area that are on small lots.

A lot of it, I suspect, came before the county's down-zoning for a lot of this development pattern and before the big demand for Albemarle County property.

But now what you have in larger areas of the county is you have these farm estates.

and so you have these large 21-acre lots and actually one of the board of supervisors at the time, they came with the 21 acres because they said, well no one's going to ever have a 21-acre lawn.

Well guess what?

We have neighborhoods with 21-acre lawns.

and I don't want to call out specifically some of those neighborhoods, but it doesn't take much time on the county of GS to find them.

So the problem with those is that they don't do a good job of conserving natural resources, but plus if these larger lots are way less likely to be affordable.

I'm not saying that the four acre lot will be affordable,

But if it's the 11.25 acre, it's not going to be affordable.

But I would say that I don't know that they necessarily need to be clustered in the way that that is, depending on what resources are on the site.

I would also say, with those 21 acre lots, I know that the way that those come is once you've used up the development rights,

You can make as many 21 acre lots as you want.

But the issue with the 21 acre lots is that they have to be 21 acres.

That's right.

The only way to use those 21-acre division rights in terms of confusing, as a small R-Lotus through an RPDA plus or subdivision.

So I mean, I see there's 21 acre lots as just as much of a problem, if not more in some ways than these other four acre lots.

I would say for the, and the picture that's shown, the second 21 acre lot, we see over here that it's 32 acre, you know, I would, instead of that additional 21 acre lot, wouldn't it be nice if we just had another four acre right there?

That's what I would say is that I think, and we don't even allow that now really, unless it's specifically a rural preservation development.

Go ahead.

So just to clarify, what we're talking about is, you know, this is hypothetical, right?

This is one example where you've got four acres.

You've chosen that as five, four acres.

The image on the left is not hypothetical.

Yeah, the right side is just one example of many possibilities, except that there is a lower limit somewhere, and it's currently two acres.

The reason being that because these lots are in the rural areas and don't have water or sewer service, you have to have enough room to accommodate wells, septic fields, and backup septic fields.

Okay.

Sorry.

So another, a different perspective, I guess, on looking at smaller lots is that it's true.

They're more affordable.

Right.

So get that.

I agree with that.

You get it.

But they also then are more likely to develop.

So for example, we have an estate down by where I live, where they divided it up into the bunch of these 21 acre lots.

It was a large estate.

The original house is still there.

The outbuilder is still there.

Only one lot is sold of those in the last 20 years because of the price.

There would be, if they made a bunch of little small ones, they probably would have all sold.

So if the goal is to have less development in the rural area,

And we make the lots much more affordable.

You help affordable housing in more far-flung areas, but you see more, you're going to drive development in the rural area.

So when I look at risk of development, I look at the lot size.

And the smaller the lot size, the greater the development risk.

The other thing to your point, as like people who have large lots, it's also not the corollary, like you just said, that it's somehow like more nature preserving because of these amazing riding mowers that people can actually mow their 20 acre yard or whatever.

But I really want to caution us that if you, I mean, I think I would be more comfortable with something like, for example, we don't have the rural area plan.

We're saying after the comp plan, then we'll have this rural area plan.

I would rather be more specific in where those smaller lot sizes might be appropriate.

whether they're able to access fire and rescue or other things like be more intentional instead of just saying the whole rural area of Albemarle County, we're going to let smaller lots and you're going to see a whole peppering of sales occurring because you've made it affordable.

So I just really, there's a reason why the county has set it up this way way back.

It wasn't because they didn't get that smaller lots were affordable.

And the other thing is, somebody probably twist my words and say, I argued for unaffordable housing.

But I mean, I live on a two acre lot in the rural area in a small community where people walk to each other's houses and everyone's friends and all that good stuff.

Right, but we wouldn't, I don't know that I would want to have two acre lots all over the place.

So I know that the other criticism of these sort of 21 acre lots that I heard from one of my colleagues in the audience from their organization was it's too large to mow and too small to farm.

Now, there are a lot of truck farms, those sort of 10, you can get a really amazing garden on a 10 acre plot and still go to the farmers market and sell stuff.

So it's not really, it depends on what your crop is.

Well, I think you raised some valid points.

And I think this is just one potential.

I think when the National Heritage Committee talked about this one of the things that we all agreed upon.

was that the large lot subdivisions were an issue in the rural area.

And these are big houses.

These are multi-million dollar houses.

So these are most definitely not affordable.

So now whether this is the right solution or not to address those large slots of divisions, I don't know, but I think that's worth the discussion.

I think there's some other things that we've called out in the Natural Heritage Committee, what we call bar coding, where you have these

To maximize development rights, people will make these long, skinny, narrow lots, particularly where you have steep slopes or a lot of streams or other areas so they can get every single lot that they possibly can of it.

You end up with these really awkward, skinny lots.

You look at what's happening over in the valley right now with the fire that's going on.

Well, when you have these long, scary, skinny lots, you can't do control burns.

You can't do any kind of management of that forest anymore because you've made it such an awkward shape.

So we're talking about, you know, climate and climate, and activity that we can't really manage those lots.

So the other thing we have talked about in past meetings too, and I'm going to channel Julian now.

If he was here, he would be starting on his stick about farming and whether they're real farms, right?

The idea that you can have a large estate and you can, you know, let lease your land to someone to put some cows on there and call it a farm.

I'll make fun of one of my neighbors without naming them.

I asked them, how's your petting zoo going?

They have cattle, but they don't really sell the milk from them.

That was too much work it turned out.

It looks very rustic with the cattle there, but there are the idea of like, I'm going to cut hay on my property and sell it to you.

Maybe you could cut hay on your property and sell it to me.

They can stick the bales in the corner.

We've both made a sale.

We both had a crop.

Are we indeed farmers?

So it does make it affordable for someone because we give use value taxations.

You're getting a lower tax rate for a firm.

But are all these estates?

really farms or are some of them just, you know, taking advantage of a program that we put in place, I think the heart of it was to support farming.

I think that was the intent.

I don't know what else to call them.

These farmer states are perfectly examples that you can drive some of these places with like these big mansions and the someone comes by and like, I think that someone that services the whole neighborhood and comes in like, Hayes,

you know you know once a year or something when the assessor is coming by but I think the the other issue with the current development pattern is is there's many areas where you can maximize out all your development rights and you still keep your land use because of that 21 acres at least at least if you put the cap at five acres if you maximize your development rights those would drop out of land use so I think coming up with a cap so that if you

So, right.

I was actually just going to kind of echo you a little bit and maybe channel Julian's will.

So I think, you know, when we talk about

I know some successful farmers in Albemarle County, right?

There are several who I'm a couple on pals with.

But if we're talking about the farm economy of Albemarle County, all the stuff we've done since the 70s is failing.

Our farm economy has an average of an income of negative $16,000 a year per farm.

If that's the farm economy, what is that adding?

I'm not saying we shouldn't maybe have a good vibrant farm economy, but these trimming around the edges things aren't doing it.

If that's something we're really serious about, I don't know if

these four acres or five acres or three, whatever we want to say for the smaller subdivision rights.

I don't know if that's going to really move the needle much one way or another.

I mean, I think if we really cared about this kind of thing, we'd talk about new efforts for producer co-ops and training programs and high value crops and products and onsite processing, again, for high value ad kind of stuff and subsidized financing for young producers to get in the game, all these kinds of things that I haven't seen on the table anywhere.

Can I see if I can?

This is all really helpful.

Hopefully staff is jiving with this.

That's the word.

But I want to make sure we also answer your questions.

And I have one question related to a lot of what we're talking about, because for me, there's like two channels, one's development, one's preservation, right, to state the audience.

Those are the two things that we're balancing.

The other thing is, if you think about a developer who's going to come into the rural area, let's say it's

I don't know why we can't, I would say, let's just say pick up Bondoren, for example, or something that comes in and there's a large tract of land.

And is there, this question I guess for us to think about, is there, by creating the scenario on the right, are we limiting the ability to accommodate or address natural features on the land

that might be accommodated by a smaller lot somewhere, a larger lot somewhere else, like the scheme on the left.

In other words, 11.2 acres might actually have a development site that's only two acres in size.

Yeah, so would you not, by looking at the right side, and maybe this is the goal, but

You're limiting, you're making something that's a lot more homogenous, right?

That you're limiting their ability to look at the land itself and design lot sizes based on the topography and the layout that make it both affordable and developable.

So I think I'm just wondering is this would be a counter, not an argument, but a counter thought.

Are there, is there flexibility that

Well, I mean, I think that the fact that this was chosen for pretty small cumulative acres here, like if we were looking at a property that was 500 acres,

If we were talking about, for example, the properties that Bundorn derived from, then you would have that flexibility with those smaller lots.

But you wouldn't have the ability to have diversity, right?

It would only be would be a maximum lot size.

So if the maximum lap size is four acres, you'd only have giant parcels and then four acre lots.

I think one of the problems is that, as I said, first of all, when you have these long, skinny lots, that 11.25-acre lot may be a good example.

It's not even the most extreme example that I've seen.

You can't manage those.

It's hard to even know when you're on your own property unless you've just put flagging everywhere.

You actually measure those out and look.

And so doing something like a controlled control burn or selective cutting timber or doing any of that stuff becomes impossible.

So if you had a bunch of two-acre lots, that's the same problem.

Well, correct.

For the two-acre lots, that's true, but you have a larger area that is manageable.

Again, just to... Where I'm coming down with this is that it...

with just saying that this applies to the rural area.

I have a real heartburn with that.

Without having a rural area plan, I would rather be more intentional.

I'd rather pause this idea and say, where would this be appropriate in the rural area?

Which parts of the rural area would this make sense for?

For example, there's in Northwestern Albemarle, there's some really steep land where you really need a lot of water to be able to find that one spot you can put the house on.

So it wouldn't do any good to make a bunch of two acre lots going up the slope there.

I guess I just, I think, I'm just very uncomfortable with it.

I just put it that way.

I just don't, I see it driving more development in the rural area with the smaller lots without any notion of where those would be appropriate.

So I would rather pause that.

to a future date when we have a rural area plan and we're being more intentional about what parts of the county, where would this make sense?

Where do these, where do people, if you're gonna drive more development, all right, we're still to 45 minute response time where I live for fire and rescue, two hours from the injury to the hospital.

Well, in one basic question, I guess I have, and I'm leaning towards where you're coming from.

maybe others are too.

Who determines the minimum loss size?

Or sorry, maximum loss size.

The minimums and maximums are set in those under ordinance already.

Did you say that last part again, Scott?

The 31-acre maximum for the five development rights that were assigned to a lot that existed back in 1980, that 31-acre

Limit was established, I believe, in the 90s and has applied ever since then.

Yeah, gotcha.

So that's in the zoning ordinance.

And what we're talking about here, and I have to point out is we're talking about a maximum without changing the minimum.

So you're saying that you can go up to four, for example, on the right, you could go to four, but you can't go less than six or less.

Right, exactly.

Or you could go up to whatever that maximum lot size is for those smaller development rate lots.

Right now, if somebody uses all five at once, then it's pretty obvious that you can only use 31.

If somebody uses them one at a time, you got to track how big every lot was that was created over the years, and it's all tracked in the subdivision plots.

So the number of rights remaining and the number of acres used in previous divisions is always tracked.

So you're not saying that in a subdivision, let's say it's 100 acres, that you have the ability to go as small as two acres on five lots, but you can't go any bigger than six, or you can't go any bigger than eight.

Excuse me.

It averages out to a little over six, but just as we showed it here, as long as the total is 31, you could do four twos and a

at 18 or something, and you're still under 31.

It's confusing.

Yeah, me too.

I'm confused.

Yeah, I mean, I do.

The 31 acres.

Yes.

Okay, so then when you say implement a maximum lot size, that's for the five lots?

And understand that doesn't change the overall density in the malaria.

No, I get that.

It's an adjustment.

It's not a major change to the permitted pattern.

It's not any change to the density overall.

So on the right side, you might have said to, maybe this is completely wrong, but you might have said to the landowner, we're going to limit you or to, maybe this is part of the rural area plan, we're going to limit it to four acres.

Right.

So who sets that four?

Yeah, that would be a new zoning ordinance.

Okay, and so the county establishes that maximum number.

And you're getting to where I'm headed.

So isn't that something that would be better suited during a rural area plan?

And I think the point we were at with this particular action in the draft chapter is not for as the answer.

This is an issue we need to address.

So what you're saying is, what we would be giving you feedback on is, in concept, are we conceptually in agreement that setting a maximum lot size?

And it's blanket, right?

It would be across the entire area.

It wouldn't be specific to certain closets.

That's what I'm saying.

Okay.

I have a really broad question in this number.

A really broad question.

This number may not be available, but do we know if we were to tally up all the development split off rates still existing that haven't been split off yet since 1980?

I mean, how many are there?

At some point, we're going to, they'll be either used up or not, right?

A long time ago, the Thomas Jefferson Plain District Commission did a map of like all the lots and said, here's what it would look like if they're all developed.

and everyone freaked out and then somebody poo-pooed the map and said, now it'll never really happen like that.

So because they don't have enough water or they don't have road access or whatever, whatever.

But yeah, that has been done.

It's available.

The county knows all the lots.

So we're about halfway through the work session, just to keep an eye on time.

So I guess I'll pose this question.

Yeah, I'd not like an answer to your question.

I agree with you.

and to answer your question, Fred, all I can come out with is maybe because it all depends on what we get developed.

If you just said it right now tonight, like, yeah, we're good with it, just going in the comp plan, blah, blah, blah.

And I'd be like, okay, we're accepting that we want more growth in the rural area.

That's what we want.

That's what the county wants.

Or is that not what the county wants?

Because I guess like, here's just like devil's advocate, because I work on a lot of land management stuff in my job.

And it, you know, you could say, well, if someone had 20 acres, you know, that's one or 20 acres, but if it was 31 acres, man, it would be really a conservation parcel.

You can't make that argument.

We don't know what they're doing with their land.

Maybe they're clearing the whole thing and it's a solar panel farm.

I don't know.

The statement, the way it's written here is implement a maximum lot size for development rights, right lots in the rural Arizona district.

Why?

To significantly reduce the acreage used for residential lots compared to the 31 acre maximum for five lots.

I guess it's making an assumption, like I said, that if you have more land

it's gonna be in crops or it's gonna be in forest conservation or something like that.

And you might just clear the whole thing.

You brought up Honduran.

You know, it would be better in my opinion if the, yes, if there had been smaller lots, a lot of people put their house up on the hill.

And I saw Honduran before it was developed, I toured it multiple times.

So what if we said something to the effect, or if maybe we're not like wordsmithing here, but to get the point across, action 2.1, consider implementation of a maximum lot size for development rights in concert with, or in, what's the word I'm looking for?

Future Rural Area Plan Process.

And the other thing is to add into what you were saying a maximum lot size or other ways to manage that.

I could live with that because it would be in context.

of an actual look at the rural area.

Cool.

Yes, but I would add, for me, I would add some criteria to that.

I think that there's not enough acknowledgement.

Several places in the plan, it says acres protected as if the areas under conservation easement are all protected the same way.

And as I pointed out before, you have open space easements that you can

You could take that, you could clear every tree on that property, and you could put it in the high-intensive agriculture you could do it if you want.

That's not the same kind of your goal as tree protection or habitat protection.

Yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean landscape conservation.

So I think the kind of conservation easements we need is we need specifically to bring back the ACE program, but with more protection for natural resources.

Yeah.

Yeah, it talks about ACE and I made a note in the email I sent around.

The ACE committee, before it was disbanded, had actually developed a criterion for using the Biodiversity Action Plan maps to give extra points for purchase of conservation rights to the AIDS program.

Correct.

And I think too, I mean, I think they already made this change, but I think too, and we accept an easement, we should require they have stream buffers.

You know, we should require minimum conservation standards on those properties we're getting easement on.

I kind of want to bring up at least a question is to like, what is our long term vision for how much land we want in conservation easements?

We already have a much ballyhoot statistic that a quarter of the land is.

And how far are we taking that?

So it's interesting.

Well, first of all, every time a property goes under conservation easement, its actual value drops to the land use value.

The benefit of that is, is that we, from day one, we stop paying a penalty to the state of Charlottesville.

So we're saving money every year for every property that's under conservation easement.

That's more money for schools, for roads, and, you know, another infrastructure.

So that's, that's an important feature.

As I said too, that statistic about the lands under conservation, well, what kinds of conservation?

I think it's 1.1 the fourth fifth bullet.

Correct.

I think if you made that goal more general, if we were to say, come up, I'm okay with coming up for conservation goals.

Like, let's set a goal for how much of Albemarle County would like to remain forested.

Let's set a goal for, you know, how, you know, our increased stream buffers by this much, or preserve this much agriculture.

But just making the assumption that a conservation easement equals the conservation that we're trying to achieve, I would ask, what kind of conservation is that?

I mean, that's a fair question.

I think I also kind of approached this, you know, from a different, more again, kind of in the urban area here.

where I live at least, but yeah, I think about these things countywide and how much do we really want to preserve in amber and rather than allow for the kind of organic dynamic changes that just happened in a community that happened in a place.

Yeah, I mean, there was a time in Albemarle County when we built housing on small acreage in the rural area for people that were near their pories or near where they worked or down in Esmont or whatever, porters.

We don't allow that at all anymore.

We have lots of neighborhoods out there that would be not allowed, period.

Well, I think no matter what happens, I think there's still going to be some of that.

I mean, I think there's now, I mean, I don't think that that's, even when you get an easement, typically you leave behind some development, lots.

It's not, you don't erase all the development rights off the property.

The thing I'd say too is that as part of that rural area plan that we need, I think part of that process would be identifying the resources that we want to protect, right?

Saying, well, this is how much of something that we want to protect of this resource.

I guess if I could, just the idea of the percentage target, it's not how you would really intelligently go about getting more conservation easements by saying, OK, so first of all, for some context, our county has the most conservation easements just about.

And part of that is because we have great land conservation groups who are reported here and they work really hard and we have a very aware citizenry.

So we have a lot of them.

We're not saying we're like all done.

However, instead of saying like, oh, it's 22%, I just made that up.

So it should be 27.

That's not how you would go about it.

You would say things like, let's try to get conservation easements for sensitive drinking water watersheds.

Let's try to get conservation easements for major habitat cores that are identified in the biodiversity action plan.

And then you seek those landowners out and try to work with them and then try to make their easement more conservation minded.

Right, so it's not just like a bunch of lawn saying this is a historic view, and that's it.

So yeah, I think I just wouldn't put it as percent target.

Sure.

And I think I appreciate that distinction very much.

I mean, when it comes to protecting our water, for example, that's key.

Yeah, I was just going to say, and there's also even, there's, I know landowners who have come back and said, Hey, listen, when I got my easement, it wasn't very protective.

It was just an open space easement.

And they've come back and they've worked with nonprofits or with the county to rewrite the language of the easement to be more protective.

So it's not even just getting more lands under conservation easement.

It's also, you know, working with people to even fix some of the easements that are out there.

Yeah, go ahead.

I was just going to say, just focusing on the bullet here, if the commission supports other tools to reduce parcel fragmentation, such as utilize, I think that's a blanket.

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then I guess the follow on question is, if so, are there other tools that we might suggest to help reduce parcel fragmentation?

Is that, was that like, were you trying to lead us to that?

No, that was helpful.

I think we were, you know, looking for clarification, which we, I think we've got on the two tools that we included under that today.

Got it.

And you're looking at that when you say the tools that have been identified, you're looking at that action number 1.1.

Okay.

And that's all part of the rural area land use plan, right?

Okay.

Okay, so were there any others?

Well, well, yes, I mean, I mentioned one of them, which is I think we do need to deal with large, with, with lots, lots that are narrow and that you can't or awkward and that aren't manageable.

I think there's some, you know, lot configurations where we probably need to establish a minimum frontage that would deal with this kidding problem.

Another one.

Yeah, it's a good one.

Right, like our county currently discourages pipe stem laps, for example, we have a ridiculously long ribbon driveway in this weird blob at the end.

Okay.

I mean, it's probably enough in there.

I mean, I would just, you know, there's other things we could talk about to encourage the rural economy, like for example, some communities have

Rural Business Incupators.

Let's say you're growing a bunch of fruit, but you don't have a commercial kitchen, so they have kitchens.

These are USDA programs, small building like an old school or something.

You can come in and you can use the pressure cooker to get all your jam jars, jarred or whatever and have it for the farmers market.

You can come in one day and do all your vinegar bottling,

you know and and you don't and those are things that are supported through grants and whatnot and it's not a big footprint but it allows all those people maybe on those smaller farms to be economically viable so there are plenty of other programs we could look at and then the county could like I don't know it's the third rail but they could actually look at their use value assessment program and what qualifies as a farm

I think the issue of, you know, it's not, you know, we've looked at this so far in terms of like what's allowed.

And I think the point that you brought up, Nathan, about like

that if we really want to promote agriculture and rural preservation, you need to provide, you know, I think the use of land over time goes to whatever the most profitable use that land is over time.

So if we want to preserve land, we need to provide uses of land that are sustainable.

that people can make a profit on.

If we want to see more agriculture in Albemarle County, we need to be supportive of agriculture, of real agriculture.

So I think that that's a piece of it too, is encouraging the things that we want to see, not just making rules to prohibit the things that we don't.

And I think that'll be part of the rural area plan as well, that process.

So then the bullet number, what are we on?

Three, I think?

for the area planning process for rural communities, but additional considerations or criteria, if any, should be added, such as specific recommended land uses, along with those already listed, which could refer to the new uses criteria on page three and or listing specific locations

Yeah, this is the uses.

And I'll just throw out something that one of the absent commissioners and I talked about yesterday that was raised as something to think through.

The same comment studio.

Yeah, there you go.

Exactly.

And what about this is one that I think needs more definition, but restaurants and wineries.

Well, I mean, I think there's, there's sorts of things can go too far for sure.

Yeah, I mean, I think an SUP where you could decide whether or not that was appropriate.

I mean, right now we, you can bring your picnic.

Yeah.

To the winery.

I think where you can say that the food being provided is local food, that for me changes it.

I don't know how you can actually code that, like make that a regulation.

I mean, I don't think you can.

I think one of the things I would say though is that we have a lot of historic locations in Albemarle County that used to be taverns.

And from my perspective, if it used to be a historic tavern,

I don't know if I'd go that far to say everything that was a tavern, but it could be a consideration for someone who comes in for an SUP and asks for that.

I mean, yeah, I think it would be nice if you would have some of those type of things.

I had another question, I guess.

I think it's related to this same thing.

It's not one of the locations that you mentioned in here.

So it's not appropriate or applicable, let me know.

But objective 4.5.

Revised the regulations for special events so they are only possible on registered historic properties or landmark properties with property ingress and egress onto public roads under VDOT supervision.

I think that actually, I don't know if staff already had that idea from before, but I did make the comment at a prior meeting that right now you could just take any outbuilding on your property and say like, this is a special event center.

Yeah, so I think that was what I was trying to get at by saying it had to be an actual historic property.

So trying to think of how to ask my question.

It just is a very specific regulation.

Well, the county already made it so that if you had a historic house with five rooms, you could turn into a little BT hotel with special permission.

Like, and it had to be an historic building because they wanted to encourage people to be able to, you know, adaptively reuse a building or be able to afford to hold on to that property.

So that I think that's where that

came out with, I mean, personally, me, if it was up to me, I would get rid of the whole thing that you could just apply to have special events just because you have buildings on a rural property.

It seems bizarre to me.

That's existing now in our code.

It doesn't mean you get permission, but it seems like non-zoning, like, oh, wow, any land with an old shed, I'm going to call that my, I'm going to get married in my shed.

I mean, I've been to some, you know, concerts on farms where there are 150 people.

Boat Landing, they have the batos all land there and they all camp out.

It's just once a year and it's fine.

That's how special events defined that, right?

Yeah, this is saying so they can only do on a historic property or landmine property.

And that's, so let's maybe we stop for a second and open it up to staff.

So the event use story has changed a lot over the years.

The special events category came up originally during the early 2000s rural area comp plan.

And originally it was proposed as, hey, let's allow one more commercial use in the rural areas, which is events at historic sites, because historic sites are really expensive to maintain.

So they need income.

to pay for maintenance.

And everyone would have thought it was a great idea.

In fact, it seemed like such a great idea that now, as Karen pointed out, it's a use that's permitted by special use permit up to 200 people, I believe, and up to 10 times a year or possibly more on any rural area property for any reason.

But at that time, that's all there was.

That and the temporary rural area events like horse shows, which is just a different thing.

Since that time, the state-enabling legislation has changed dramatically for other kinds of events.

So brewery, distillery, and winery events are an aspect of agriculture under the state law.

And so our local zoning ordinance permits those kinds of event uses up to certain sizes by right and then by special use permit.

and then we also added agricultural events.

So any farm operation, whether they're growing apples or pumpkins or...

Kettle, I don't know if you have a Kettle event, but maybe.

And they can have events, again, up to a certain size by right.

Oh, OK.

Yeah, I got you.

So since the early 2000s, we've gotten very specific regulations about the kinds of uses that actively support a rural use, whether it's

Groening grapes and distilling them into wine or growing cattle or pumpkins or whatever it is.

We still have this leftover of the special events, which is very vague.

and it's just a special use permit for events.

Right, so that's the problem.

Yeah, like is a wedding tied to agriculture if they're not eating the product of the farm or drinking the product of the farm, right?

It's just an event use.

And we've had, I don't know, 10 or so applications, some have been approved, some have not.

But for most of them, there was no particular tie to any rural activity or conservation value.

Yeah.

There's been others that have not come forward because of the neighbor's objections.

Angry emails about how does the county letting this happen?

The county's not letting it happen.

This is somebody, a landowner, who's decided they would like to take their horse stables and make it a wedding venue.

Yeah, it sounds like they're not applying for special event permits.

That's what, no, they haven't done it.

They're just the act of saying, I'm thinking I'd like to do this.

I'll have a community meeting.

I'll meet with staff.

We'll put it on the, and over that year and a half, two, three year period.

You got a lot of angry people getting themselves all twisted up until the person either does decide to go forward or not.

So he's talking about things that have come all the way.

I see.

I'm telling you, there are more things that are bubbling around and

We've become one of the top wedding destinations.

Like there was, when we were talking about the regulations earlier, some folks who do weddings came and said, you know, we're out competing, going to England for your dream wedding and whatever.

So I'm off for weddings.

But to be clear, just not, the whole event thing is really too loosey-goosey in our county right now.

So I guess, Scott, if I'm understanding what you're saying, let's just say that I'm a landowner and I have a venue and it's not historic or a landmark property.

Can I?

Well, at the moment, because that's what the zoning ordinance says.

If this stays in the plan and we act on it, then the wording of the zoning ordinance would change.

And registered historic properties.

I hate to keep picking on 4.5, but registered historic properties.

Is that registered with the EHR?

What do you mean by register?

I believe we meant national register.

And so that is a landowner's prerogative.

We can look into that more detail to follow up on those questions.

Thank you.

All right.

Any other items on the bullet number three?

Well, I guess since I'm in the third rail mood tonight.

Also, I was thinking about people's needs in the rural area who are engaged in agriculture.

And so one use I thought of, which would still have to be SUP, it would still have to be appropriate in the spot, but small engine repair.

But I have to get my tractor fixed or my generators out.

It's really hard to find a place to have that done.

The other thing was looking at crossroads communities that we have now, for example, crossroads.

Well, I mean, I think, I mean, I would say that, you know, of course, you know, the

The Crossroads, you know, there we have Dr. Hoes and all that.

I mean, I think that obviously that was sort of a legacy zoning there.

Right.

And I'm not sure that I would necessarily want, you know, you actually have to, that place had to have a considerable amount of parking.

You have to have, you know, it's a pretty intensive use actually, but I wouldn't say get rid of that.

It's a great feature.

Probably would need more bounding on, you know, it's maybe design criteria or scale or some more additional standards that you could use to evaluate.

I think I think you definitely need to take and scale into account.

I think I think the word restaurant would be problematic.

I think, you know, you have situations like you have the the baseball store, for example, does have food.

Yeah, they have seating there, but they don't have a lot of seating.

So you probably could write a code that's like, you know, you can't have a 40 table restaurant, you know, with a sea of parking, but you could have a small boutique eatery with, you know, no more than eight tables or something like that.

And yeah, yeah, we're in, I mean, thinking we're still flying at 30,000 feet, right?

Compliant related things that in an appropriate location at an appropriate scale that would be figured

And I think, I think it's also, you know, just important to keep in mind with everything that I think it, it all has to, I think should all go back to the rural area plan, not every use is appropriate in all areas.

And it's, it's mentioned there, you know, so we need to think about that.

I would say in action four two, it, you know, we're, and that was brought up by staff for the update regulations to allow rural light industrial and commercial uses that support local processing and retail sales on properties with agriculture and silvicultural uses.

That language is concerning to me the way it's phrased.

As I pointed out, I think we need something more than just saying, okay, well, here's an area, and I understood what was intended there.

I agree with the intent of saying let's identify things that we're now calling light industrial, but that are really agricultural.

and find ways to permit those in the right places.

I agree with that.

Small scale support facilities for something, something.

Like you could fit, you could fit in just this space of this dais floor space, a commercial kitchen that could be servicing people who would, you know, sign up to use it.

And like I said, jam, jam their jams or jar their jams, whatever.

And I think you know in addition to one of these considerations too, I mean I think a big

I think, sir, you're part of your litmus test, your performance criteria for those sorts of things.

Water usage, obviously, has to be a big consideration.

Septic, this is going to require a huge amount of septic.

And then what's the parking?

If this is going to require a large parking lot, it's not appropriate for the rally, right?

Access, vetoed approval, all those, which all come later.

Yeah.

Okay, so that I don't want to cut you off.

Oh, yeah, I do have I did have one other one down below to this week.

We're sorry to interrupt, but I think we're in sort of anything missing from the actions, right?

You can sort of segue it into the last question.

I have a question.

I don't know the answer.

So

I mentioned this scenario before where we have old churches in the rural area where they were built so long ago, like when you would ride your horse or your donkey to church, you know, so there's, they lack parking

they are you can't make parking so they can't be reopened as a church and they're sitting empty and you know and we talked about resilience hubs and all that using you know like in Batesville there was a church building available but I'm thinking of specifically places where we just can't reopen it as a church but is there some way for some of these buildings that are historic

to allow like some I don't know if this could be possible somehow in our zoning ordinance but you know the neighborhood wanted to use it they could rehab it as a little community center but they're all going to walk to it.

I can think of some specific buildings right now so but right now we're just they're just rotting because we can't do anything with them because we have no parking but we could probably get them really well used with riding your bike to it or walking to it and so

You know, could that be a little mini yoga studio, but it's only pedestrian?

We're not going to put a bus stop there, okay?

You know, we talked about waving.

But these are from places that are not like a resilience hub of Albemarle County.

I'm talking, you know, but they are, there are church buildings or other, it could be an old schoolhouse that, you know, kids used to walk to school or ride their donkey or whatever.

You know, now there's no parking there, but we can.

So the building just rots.

Corey talks in the growth area about reducing parking requirements.

And I think maybe just talking about reducing parking requirements altogether.

I mean, I think the same concept applies in the rural area.

Right.

Like if there's little communities like Batesville, like Carronsville, where there's a lot of people who walk, that they could have that ability.

Right, and that's totally cool, but right now you wouldn't be allowed to do it in these buildings I'm thinking of because there's no parking because our parking thing kicks in.

If we have a place that we know people can walk to, the walk radius is one mile, there's X number of people, they've said they want to use it.

We have eight minutes left.

We have two minutes each to go through.

Everything I thought was missing, I found in the stewardship chapter.

I will say action 7.5.

I think it would be nice if that was a little bit more specific.

And maybe, and you're right, I should check the stewardship chapter to make sure it's not in there.

But we should specifically, we shouldn't allow for areas from mining in Albemarle County.

It's one of the few cases we have a different color.

We do have the natural resource extraction layer.

and I would say that something should not be included the natural resource extraction layer if it has.

What about existing housing on top?

We ran into this with the area on the very southwestern part of Albemarle County that the Butts Schuyler, and we wrestled with this in the last round of the comp plan where they were going to put a resource extraction overlay there.

But people, what they had done is say, grandpa had sold the mineral rights under the house.

So you could quarry or dig under their homes, but the current resident didn't realize that they didn't own the mineral rights under their houses anymore.

And so this is a potential to have a major conflict with people who did not want extraction going on underground underneath their structures.

And they didn't realize that their grandpa or whoever had sold those mineral rights away, say in 1920 or something.

So we have situations like that in the county.

People don't even realize.

So I think, you know, why make it more of a problem by saying it's a resource extraction area?

Yeah, I mean, unless, you know, it's free and clear, no one's houses on it.

I mean, I think there are areas where, you know, once again, it's everything sends you to the place.

I don't need to go into that as a semi-piece.

I will say go back to the

where we have the discussions about the interchanges.

I think the same things that we were talking about recently about the light industrial and industrial uses in those places or legacy commercial areas.

I think the question is not for me.

How can we permit just things in those areas?

It's more about how can we be more specific about what's already permitted?

How can we, you know, you know, where we have areas that we're calling industrial that are actually something more narrow.

Right.

Like it's a quarry or it's a, it's a sawmill, but that's, but we don't really want all the other things in that category to be able to go up.

Is that what you're saying?

No, not missing.

I think I just, I kind of alluded to it with some of my questions before.

I do, I do think we should look at the cost and benefits of things like revising and restoring the ACE ordinance.

The ACE ordinance, the, yeah, conservation easement ordinance.

Before we just say willy-nilly, yeah, we're going to get back into that.

I mean, I don't know the cost and benefits yet.

I mean, I've seen some things written.

I've heard rough estimates of how much it costs us and then maybe some shadowed ways to save certain things.

But I think, you know, that would be worth actually having a more thorough conversation about like, you know, is that worth it?

All right.

I just have a couple and then I'll just, before I say mine, because I want to make sure staff has time.

I think you all covered it very well.

Okay.

I just had a couple of thoughts.

One, I know there's been some, and I don't fully understand a lot of some of this stuff.

Well, as I've indicated previously, biosolids is largely precluded or preempted by state law.

Great.

Thank you.

I did have a meeting with some citizens recently about this issue who provided much more detail about it and also what some of the localities are doing in this regard.

And I do think there could be value in a monitoring program.

I think the appropriate chapter for that would be the environmental stewardship chapter.

That's good.

On 1.2, it says develop location standards for renewable energy projects in rural area that make those projects possible while protecting forests and other important landscapes.

Again, I don't know how much detail we want to have in there, but I know people have talked about historic considerations, view sheds, things like that as well.

Well, can I just tag on real quick?

Among those lines, we do have the biodiversity action plan.

So that would be a place to say, you know, those are the landscapes we've already prioritized as important and sensitive ecologically.

Yep.

Objective 3.5.

I guess our action 3.5.

Support partner organizations who are operating conservation easement programs in the county.

I guess I just, when I see that, I wonder how do we get some action on that?

How are we supporting them?

So the way we mostly support them at the moment is through information sharing.

What's sharing?

Information sharing.

The advantage we have as an organization that includes both conservation programs and development permitting is that we know whenever a building permit or a subdivision application or an event center permit comes in

on a property that's protected in an Ag 4 district or under a conservation easement.

It's a lot harder for the outside nonprofits and state agencies to keep on top of those, that constant flow of applications.

So we share information with them, just as we have an automated system to say, wait a minute, hey, Scott and James, look, there's this permit you need to look at.

We share that with the other holders.

so that they can get on top of a potential enforcement situation and have a talk with the landowner to work things out before it gets anywhere near being a physical violation of the usement.

Touched on special events.

4.3 increased opportunities for by-right farm worker housing.

Again, I wrote down scale, definition, things like that.

This is another one of those matters where things have changed over the years.

20-some years ago, we adopted a regulation in the county to permit farm worker housing in a form that's clearly not a dwelling.

So it's not a full dwelling.

So you've got structures that are bunk houses and maybe a separate kitchen house so that it functions for farm worker housing, which is often seasonal, but it can't easily slide into being

And part of what's happened is state regulations and design standards have moved along quite a bit.

And so we're still requiring a special use permit for something that's directly supportive of agriculture, which is something we're trying to slide away from and get to more making more act supporting uses by right.

And at the same time, the state has design standards that differ from ours.

and

local farm operations trying to meet the state standards at the same time.

Well, I guess, can I just briefly on that topic though?

You would still want to do something like a zoning clearance, like what you do for B&Bs from Airbnb type stays, home stays, because they could have that dormitory on their farm, but where they place it might make a huge difference as to whether they're annoying the neighbors or whether it's tucked away.

And so everyone's out barbecuing and it's not bothering everybody.

I just, yeah, I wouldn't want to just be like, by right anywhere on the farm property.

And my last comment is action 7.3 and action 7.6, which maybe gets a little bit what you were saying, which I mean, this is, I'm sure it's, it's fine.

Just 7.3 seems like it's part of 7.6.

And maybe it's not, maybe they're independent and they're supposed to be for a good reason, but I'm just thinking from the standpoint of efficiency, if we, if that's could be combined or if it's helpful.

All right, we are out of time for the work session.

Thank you, staff.

Great job, everybody who's been part of that.

And I will put us into recess until public hearing at six p.m.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

Welcome back to the Planning Commission for December 10th, 2024.

I will call us back into order and establish a quorum.

Yes.

Ms.

Firehawk.

Here.

Thank you.

And I'll read one more time.

The public can access and participate in the hybrid meeting through information posted on the Albemarle County website, specifically on the planning commission homepage and the Albemarle County calendar.

During the meeting, there will be opportunities for public comment on specific agenda items where input is invited.

With that, I'll move on to public comment on matters pending before the commission, but not listed for a public hearing on this agenda.

I have one person on the sign up list.

Neil Williamson with the Free Enterprise Forum.

In what has become somewhat of a holiday tradition, the Free Enterprise Forum annually presents an adapted holiday poem or carol to the Albemarle County Planning Commission as a gift.

Previous iterations have included Rudolph the form-based code, Ryo the small plan, a coronavirus carol, and the original an Albemarle planning Christmas.

with apologies to Christina Rosetti.

Tonight we present, In the Bleak Midcompt Plan.

In the Bleak Midcompt Plan, 10 chapters made me moan.

Existing density stood hard as iron, frozen like a stone.

Public comment had fallen, row on row, row on row.

in the bleak mid comp plan not so long ago.

Housing needs, the map does not answer nor affordability sustain.

Middle class families shall flee away when the map comes to rain.

In the bleak mid comp plan, bold action was required.

Politically challenging, action must be inspired.

Enough of the nimby reactions, worship night and day.

A few new colors on the map could give folks homes to stay.

Enough for teachers, firefighters, and police who make our community thrive.

The waiters and the clerks to live among us rather than drive.

Houses and townhouses may have gathered there.

Two over ones in ADUs the neighborhood could share, but only the comp plan map in its binary rural development divide prevented such density with a simple PowerPoint slide.

Development area expansion may not solve all woes.

Creating multi-layered lasagna

Let's see how that goes.

How can we fix it halfway through this flap?

If I were a cartographer, I would bring a new map.

If I were a wise man, I would do a new density chart.

Yet how can we fix it?

Show a little heart.

Happy holidays.

Thank you, sir.

You may have missed your calling.

Is there any other comment from the audience on items not on the agenda?

Okay.

Great.

Thank you.

All right.

With that, I'll move on to the consent agenda and ask if there is a motion to approve the consent agenda or anybody would like to pull that.

So moved.

for motion to approve the consent agenda.

Any discussion?

All right.

Yes.

Ms.

Firehock.

Hi.

Thank you.

And with that, we'll move into the public hearings, item six.

And this is the first public hearing ZMA 2023-17 and SP 2023-20 Chestnut Grove Manufactured Home Park Community.

Good evening.

Thank you, Chair Missel and members of the Planning Commission.

My name is Kevin McDermott.

I'm the Deputy Director of Planning for Albemarle County.

Tonight, I'll be giving staff's presentation for the Chestnut Grove Manufactured Home Park Rezoning and Special Use Permit with the special exceptions.

First, I will identify this property is located in Southern Albemarle County.

You can see that on the map here, way down in the far south end, about 15 minute drive from Scott's, 10 to 15 minute drive from Scottsville.

And it's on the south side of Chestnut Grove Road, approximately one mile west of the Chestnut Grove Road, James River Road intersection.

You can see right here.

The existing conditions of the site, the property is just over 50 acres.

It's heavily forested.

And there is a WPO buffer that you can see right here and areas of critical slopes throughout the property.

This is an aerial view of the site.

It's turned around.

So we're sort of looking at it from looking from the north to the south.

The property is generally right through here.

And this is Chestnut Grove Road.

You can see the surrounding areas of a rural character with a variety of rural uses, including low density, single family residential, forest, open space, and agricultural uses.

The zoning is rural area, which permits single family homes at

half-acre unit and agriculture and farm wineries, country stores, and by special use permit would allow community centers, private schools, and daycare facilities.

The rural area is the comprehensive plan designation.

You can see that the purpose of that designation is to preserve and protect agricultural, forestal, open space, and natural historic scenic resources

Flow Density Residential.

The applicant's proposal is to rezone the property from rural area to R4 and request a special use permit to allow a manufactured home park.

R4 is the lowest density residential zoning that allows manufactured home parks with a special use permit.

The plan on the screen is the proposed concept plan.

This line up here is Chestnut Grove Road.

You can see it would be served by the 50 proposed mobile home or manufactured home units would be served by two entrances on Chestnut Grove Road.

You can see they have identified some potential well locations, potential drain fields.

There is a primitive trail system that circles around the property.

And there you can see it mostly generally tends to avoid the WPO buffer, although it does WPO buffer does come into the area of lot development right here, which we've acknowledged.

and there is proposal for onsite well and septic system.

That would need to get an approval from the board and the gross density overall is one dwelling unit per acre.

There is a draft proffer sheet and the applicant has volunteered proffers that restrict the uses and density of the property and to provide affordability.

The proffers also address staff concerns with the special use permit

and no additional conditions are recommended as part of that special use permit.

The volunteer proffers include restricting the permitted uses, removing some of those in the typically allowed by right and R4 that wouldn't be appropriate in this area, such as higher density residential.

and then the ones allowed by special use that removes the assisted living facilities, hospitals and standalone parking.

You can see the other uses that are available in the attachment of the draft proffer statement.

It also restricts the density.

If they construct the manufactured homes, it allows a maximum of 50 manufactured homes.

And if those manufactured homes are not built

even under the R4 proposal, it's a maximum of six units, which is what was allowed by right on these 50 acres.

The affordability proffers include that 33% of the affordable land lease units will be at 50% of the area median income.

The remainder of the land uses will be land lease units at 100% area medium income.

The units not land leased will be affordable rental units.

It's 60% AMI.

The applicant has requested some special exceptions to modify or waive the regulations related to manufactured home parts.

We as staff have not fully evaluated all those special exceptions because

We are recommending denial of the rezoning and special use permit.

If the planning commission does decide to vote to approve the rezoning, any comments that you have on the special exception requests will be included in the staff analysis and presented to the board.

The list of special exceptions can be found on pages 12 and 13 of the staff report.

The staff concerns on the rezoning and special use permit include that the proposal is inconsistent with the rural area goals and objectives and strategies found in the comprehensive plan.

Proposals inconsistent with the county's growth management plan because it proposes residential densities above that recommended in the rural area.

Staff believes there are inadequate services and facilities and infrastructure to support the development in this proposed location.

That's primarily because of how far away it is from any services that the residents might need, including fire and rescue services, schools, and other daily needs.

I will point out that there was a typo related to this number three on page 11 of the staff report under the assessment of the special use permit.

It should be noted that we believe that fire and rescue and police services for the existing community members are also impacted by the additional residential density because this new development would further strain those existing resources that was cut off in the staff report.

Additionally, there's inadequate information to determine whether the proposal can be supported by the Central Water and Sewer Service Facility.

The Virginia Department of Health has not received enough information to review the proposed wells, soils and drainfield locations.

And also the stream buffer has not been field surveyed.

And so there is potential conflicts existing with some of the home sites.

The county code provides that.

The buffer shall be incorporated into the design of the development by keeping stream buffers in open or natural spaces and out of residential lots or areas of active use to the fullest extent possible.

The positives that staff identified relate to the affordability that we discussed that does provide an option for affordability that is not typically available in Albemarle County and helps to address our affordability concerns.

As I said, staff is recommending that the denial of the rezoning, ZMA 2023-17, and also recommending denial of the special use permit for chestnut grove.

Great.

Thanks, Mr. McDermott.

No, I was, I'm good.

Yeah.

No, Christopher Moore.

Okay.

Thank you.

No questions from us.

All right, with that, I'll open the public hearing and ask for the applicant.

and just as a reminder, you'll have 10 minutes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening.

I'm Justin Schimpf, Schimpf Engineering, engineer of this project.

Polina from my office joined me and then also Jason Moss, this thing behind me.

He would be the primary owner and operator and construct, build the mobile home park.

I am an investor in this also.

Location we've talked about is a lot to cover, so I'm going to go through these kind of quickly and get to the meat of it.

The site is interesting in that there's not much around it.

There's a lot of forest around it.

It's a very typical rural kind of location.

And critically for this sort of development, the land is rolling.

It's fairly level.

And there's adequate soils for drain fields.

These are all things necessary to make one of these work.

That was part of our site selection criteria.

What is this really, though?

It's a community, it's 50 units, it's 120 residents who have the ability to live in a place for a long time, they have the ability to have their own yard to accommodate things they like, sheds, boats, et cetera.

And it's a place where folks save a lot of money versus renting and also living in kind of a more rural lifestyle they want.

You don't have like affordable rentals up in the rural area of the county.

They don't get built, they can't get built.

We're going through this process to try to do it, although this is better than a rental because the cost is less, which I'll get into.

Of it, we have 50.6 acres, 72% of the property is open space, not to be developed with this application.

Our density is about one unit per acre, which is about twice what the sort of rural area density typically is.

But it's important to note that these are about, these are small units, maybe a third of the size of the average house to be built today in the rural area.

and all the units are, as you heard, income restricted, where we lease 33% one-third to folks making 50% or less area median income.

The balance are split between the park may own some units themselves, which they'd rent at the 60% AMI rent levels established the county.

And the remaining would be land lease.

So you land yourself and have your own home on it to folks making less than 100% of area median income.

and all this is done without any sort of government subsidy because we're able to use land well suited for this kind of development without having to have an additional subsidy to meet the affordability we're seeking.

Zoning in Albemarle and everywhere has been around a long time and I think it's largely well-intentioned.

I think that I've been here with my friend Vito Cheta many times, talked about how good the Albemarle County Comprehensive Plan is and I think it has been very good.

If you look at the communities created over the past 40 years here,

It's really, it's nice.

These are high quality communities, well designed, and that's been implemented by, with the help of the county.

The county has almost doubled in size since 1970.

The 5% growth area was established.

And we are seeing a squeeze now where I'm in the business of this.

You can't find a place to build a single-family house, Harlan Albemarle.

And if you do, it's going to be $900,000 for a new house.

And that's just the reality of the scarce land.

It's expensive to build on.

The good land was already built on already.

What's left in the 5% is difficult.

And so that's why we're looking for alternatives to satisfy the need for some space for folks.

like they have a yard like a single family house, but they can afford.

That's what this project does.

So the concept plan, I think I'm gonna skip through this a little bit to the next more detailed page since you've seen this.

There's just the open space overlaid giving ideas to all that area.

Some trees are clear for drain fields, but that remains essentially green space thereafter.

You zoom in a little bit, you'll see we have street trees like a neighborhood, and then we have also, you'll see these wooded buffers between us and Chestnut Grove Road.

It's not showing up right here, but there's another sheet that shows the 50th buffer correctly.

This is where the little conflict is.

This is really a site plan issue we need to address with the house being too close to stream buffer.

But these lots are essentially the size of a Belmont lot in Charlottesville.

50 by 120 ish.

You've got a little side yard, you have a backyard.

You could have a little fenced in area for a dog.

You could actually have a dog in your home.

It's not a rental.

You own your home.

You have flexibility to have an extra tool shed or if you work in the landscape business, maybe you have a landscape trailer.

Those are things that if you live in a apartment, that doesn't work for you.

So that's what this kind of option for housing is very important.

Traffic has been brought up as sort of a concern about this and we talk about development as always the impacts and their impacts of traffic.

and then through your sort of services basically.

This area is interesting.

There hasn't been a whole lot of action out here in quite a long time.

Here's the current traffic conditions around.

You'll see that, for example, the main road there is Route 6, it's Irish Road, which comes from Scottsville.

There's a 1380T on that road right now.

For comparison, some other rural area roads like Union Mills or Buck Mountain are 5,000, 6,000 trips per day.

Not that we want to get that kind of traffic anywhere else, but it's an illustration of people who are coming through Albemarle County on those roads through rural areas to get into Charlottesville.

So here that hasn't happened, or it has happened out in the north of the county, the Earliestville area, or Lake Monticello.

The next page, this is 2001 traffic counts.

And as you'll see, and these are a little confused lower, so what this means is that in 2001, the traffic on

Irish Road was 5.8% lower.

So we've grown traffic 5.8% in 21 years from 21.2.

So this is an area where unlike parts of the county where there has been development or through traffic, there really hasn't been a lot of traffic change.

So this small amount of development in this area doesn't really push the traffic significantly.

Now, would this area support 10 of these?

No, but one amounts to a very minimal change.

in traffic conditions.

This is a graph you all have probably seen, but also drives it why this is important.

This is from 2022, the American survey, we use this census data, and it shows that the renters in Albemarle County, which there's a bunch, 44% are cost burden, and they pay more than 30% of their income in rent.

And that's a problem that's been getting worse, not getting better.

Part of that is a lack of housing options for folks.

Recently, and this is probably a low number, if you look on the Avon, kind of south of Charlottesville neighborhood Avon Road, you can rent a two-bedroom apartment for about $19.30 a month.

That costs you $23,000 a year, which to afford that 30% threshold is a $77,000 income and up.

That's to be affordable to you.

Pryor Housing Studies of the County has identified that up to 10,000 people households are severely, severely cost burdens, matching those studies, those numbers we showed.

Mobile home, the reason this is a good solution is if you lease the land and you buy your home, it significantly protects you from further cost of increased housing increases.

So here, for example, we have, if you rent the land $500 a month for a lot, $100,000 units of mortgage of $600, some repairs, taxes, you end up being $17,000 a year versus renting of $23,000 a year.

which is, you know, $6,000.

You might think, yes, if I live a little closer to town, that might offset some of that.

But the cost of your home remains fixed over time, whereas your historically rents here a three or 4% increase per year.

And so the end of 30 years, if you take a table, I can go to this if you all want to look into it later.

The amount someone pays in the mobile home park behind their home over 30 years versus renting for 30 years is $620,000 difference.

And you take that over 50 units, and that's $31 million.

So to get these folks in the cost of living to live in Chestnut Grove in this mobile home park to a two bedroom apartment, they may not even want is a million dollars a year for this community.

That's why this is an important housing type and something we need to try to find a way to make work.

I'm going to touch on a few of these because we're running a little tight on time, but one of the things I want to bring up, there's analysis the staff has of the rural area priorities and there's certainly a historical precedent that any development in the rural area is simply a no-go, any sort of rezoning or whatnot.

But this is interesting because one of the items is the middle there is be reversible.

This project requires essentially no grading.

No major construction.

If in 50 years from now, the housing needs of the community have changed, then they can revert back to forest.

It's not so much infrastructure investment cannot revert.

It's an important consideration, I think.

Staff concerns.

I would just point out a few of these items.

Again, the growth management policy has established this, but I would ask you like, if we can't build a kind of community where people can afford to live,

and Havillard, because of the growth management policy, is that a good thing?

Should we consider changing that?

Should we consider that?

And then the issues with the site, the water and sewer and the stream buffer, those are kind of site plan issues.

But I will say that the water and sewer in this case is a non-consumptive use.

So folks are worried about use of water.

Well, it's domestic.

So you pull water out of the ground in a well, you put it into a drain fuel and it goes back in.

If you're in the agriculture business, you water your crops, you water your cattle.

That's water that comes out and doesn't come back.

If you have a winery, that's water that comes out and doesn't go back.

So those are things that are

Moore, Damaging, I think, to the water.

That is the end of this.

I leave you with this chart because it's a reminder of what the project really is.

And that we are trying to accommodate households who cannot afford a single family house in Albemarle County where they want to live and they like rural living.

And this is a way to do it.

It doesn't require the government to pitch in.

We think it's a good project and we hope you'll support it.

Thank you.

Thanks for moving through that so quickly.

Appreciate all those comments.

Murray?

Sure.

So how did you come up with the number 50?

I see that you have six.

If you without this proposal, you could build six homes on the site.

That's a couple things.

One is the one unit per acre is a very comfortable margin source.

Make sure you have your septic and well and not overtax the land, basically.

There's also a number you need to get to a number or something like that, the justified development versus simply putting six single family lots on there and moving on.

And this is a question for staff.

So is rezoning the only way to accomplish this sort of thing, or could this have also been done by special use permit?

Murray to R4.

Thanks.

Any other questions?

I was curious, since you mentioned it, if in some future case this were built and then

County or landowner did want to revert it back to a more rural area use.

Sure, but what's what's in the ground basically is water lines, sewer lines, and electric, right?

And so those can be a band that is connected and left in place.

You grade in a very basic road, but it's not like a mass grading required.

It's the same thing you do if you're building a farm, essentially living a little wider, where people drive on.

And so, you've seen this in places, like, mobile home parks have gone away.

And generally, it's because of, you know, owner who didn't take care of something and had to, you know, close it down, basically, not for lack of demand.

But let's say, for example, 50 years from now, we're somehow we're living on Mars, it's very far out.

But, and there's simply no need for this sort of housing type because we've come up with a better solution that society is happy with.

Then simply put, people would just move out, like, hey, I don't need to live out here anymore, I'm going to go live

wherever, and it's better for me.

And as the park windows down, once you to a few people left, the owner will say, well, that was a good run.

Now I'm going to plant some pine trees here because that's now the highest and best use of my lane.

And you would simply remove the homes.

It's just dirt underneath them.

All right.

Yes, I have a few.

So that I can't remember the figure you had for the land lease per each unit per month.

Okay.

So then they buy the house.

Are you constructing these trailers and then they're purchasing them?

Are they bringing

A mobile home and having it constructed.

Sure.

The general setup is that if this were approved, we would go to the Clayton Homes of the world.

And people come to them all the time saying, hey, I want to buy this house.

Do you have a place for me to put it?

And there are a few parks that have expanded or have capacity in them.

And so you go and pick your home you want, basically.

And they'll usually the home seller will connect you with.

Location.

And then they'll say, oh yeah, call Mr. Moss up and you can sign a contract with him for $500 a month.

And then the home is delivered and set up by the, usually by the provider, like Clayton Home, for example.

You could also, the one interesting advantage of this is that you can buy a used home for $30,000 sometimes.

It's very reasonable condition.

So if you had $30,000 in capital, you can buy the home, move it there, and then you're paying 500 bucks a month.

And so that's also for a lot of folks who don't have credit or things like that, that's another option, is to buy a second hand one and can move it.

So you could do either.

It could be a private market or through a kind of a new home dealer.

And usually those folks will set it up.

Mr. Moss is familiar with setting up homes.

And what is the cost of a new home generally?

They range.

For the used to be $70,000.

For retail price now, they're getting up above $100,000.

You can buy, if you go, if I go to a place and say, hey, I want to buy like $5,000 to my park, I can get them for like $60,000 or $70,000, so they are available for under $100,000.

Generally speaking, by the time you pay for the setup costs and things like that, you're going to keep over 100 these days.

Okay, and then just quickly, in reading up about some of, I am a fan of mobile home parks as a general affordability option, but in reading up on sort of how we say that word mobile home parks, but they're, in a sense, they're really not that mobile, because once they're set on their foundation, you live in the, you know, after you're in there for 20 years, the house is not really that easily transportable.

to just be stable.

And I guess I'm just curious about that.

I mean, do you see someone living there for 20 years and then picking up their house and moving it to a different location?

They would sell their home to someone who would come in, basically, right?

Probably so they would sell it, they wouldn't try to move their house.

Certainly speaking, it's just easier, right?

It depends where you're trying to move to, you can.

I will say, we worked in the Crozet Mobile Home Park, and we ran across folks in there that have lived there for over 40 years, multi-generational in mobile home, manufactured homes from the 50s and 60s who were not great quality then.

The new homes you build, you buy, are a pretty high stand.

They have two by six walls.

I suspect those would survive 20 or 30 years and be able to move easily.

Older ones would not.

But basically you buy your home and let's say you paid off the mortgage for 30 years and it still has life in it.

You can sell it for $20,000 somebody and they'll pay you $20,000.

One other question, different topic.

You talked about people being able to say like they had a lawn care business and they're able to store their equipment or whatever, but maybe I didn't understand what I read in the application.

You're not providing additional storage areas.

You're talking about if somebody had a lot and they're mobile home and they constructed a shed on their property.

Is that right?

That's correct.

No, we're not.

But you would have the right to basically put a trailer, landscape trailer, something like that on your lot.

Yeah, go for it.

Sorry, I should have asked when I had the floor before, but with the water piece, I know the county staff didn't do an analysis, particularly deep analysis of water, but tell me more about the water table there, which you know about the water availability.

So I don't think I brought the numbers with me.

Before we even bought the property, the FOIA request of the health department got all the well records from the immediate area, because there are some areas that aren't great around there.

But they're quite good actually.

There was a number of 20, 30 gallon, seven gallon a minute wells in that vicinity.

And so that gives enough confidence to perceive that the purchase of the property.

How you perceive with this is you hire a geologist to do a

A steady where they lay out electrical wires in the ground and then you can sort of spot the prime water locations and you go and drill your wells.

And you're required to have a half gallon per minute per unit.

So during the site plan phase, we would have to drill the wells and get them permitted as part of the site plan process.

So the health department, we basically spend the money, drill the wells, but then if for some reason we were short of water, we might have to be short of units or we might not be able to build it.

But nothing in the data we've seen challenges us on that.

And like I say, the use is by definition, if you look at USGS definitions, it is non-consumptive.

We are not taking water from the ground and dispersing it somewhere else.

Great.

I have a few questions, and I'm going to take advantage of your actual professional as well, because I know a lot of this is engineering speak, but I had the same question about the watershed.

So just to follow up on that, I guess there's also concern, I think, that let's just say there is capacity there.

The amount of dwelling units, the 50 dwelling units, how many gallons per day are you thinking they're going to be pulling on average from

The Source.

You mentioned the 75 or 78%, somewhere there about 74%, 72% is going to remain as open space.

And you also mentioned that that doesn't include the areas that are your septic fields, your wells, your utilities, things like that, that they would require clearing.

Can you give us a sense of what percentage of the parcel, if you take into consideration

I think our number, if I had it, it's like 14 acres.

Let me go back to the picture here.

Yeah.

So everything in the green represents less the 14 point sum acres, right?

So we have some drain fields and the ponds.

You probably have another four or five acres of clearing that is

Still open space, but is impacted by this, if that makes sense.

So maybe it's 20 acres in total is disturbed in some fashion, but five acres of that is converted back to a pond.

And basically the drain field is simply a grass lawn where something can run over and toss a frisbee on or something like that.

So looking at this is helpful.

So I'm not going to second guess your numbers.

It just looked like more to me than that.

But I know you're dealing with slopes.

I see critical slopes.

I guess those are the shaded areas.

And then I see it looks like your drain field, the code of the, I guess the key for the drain field is that darker green.

and you have a drain field that's on some pretty significant slopes where it says force main.

Did you put those drain fields on there based on what you would expect?

They are those.

Got it.

Shifting over to traffic, vehicle trips per day generated by these.

It was 300 and

56 trips, 356 daily trips.

That ends up being something like seven, about seven trips.

About 10 trips per day.

Correct.

No, it's small.

These are much smaller households.

And you'll see often, you know, older folks who are living on like a fixed income.

This is a preferred housing type for them.

They are not out traveling about.

And you'll have some families here because it's affordable.

But these are also generally all like two bedroom units.

You'll have some.

Did you, maybe it's premature for you to have looked at, and I'm sorry if this is in the staff report, I missed it, but VDOT comments?

OK, thank you.

And you weren't planning on any offsite improvements to traffic to roads.

No.

Visibility from the road, I guess it's if you go back to that plan.

So it's got a buffer 50 foot setback.

Correct.

Sorry.

Yeah, there it shows it right.

See the 50 foot landscape buffer?

So both sides of the entrance row is a 50 foot landscape buffer here and here.

And so those are existing trees we can leave in place.

Okay.

Okay.

I think that's those are all the questions I had.

Thank you.

So we'll open it up for comment and then you'll have a chance to come back and respond to any of the comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, we'll move into the comment phase and open it up to people who wish to speak on this matter and I'll just say at the beginning if you could, if you agree with the speaker who has come up, raise your hand and you don't necessarily have to repeat what's already been said unless you feel like you do want to, which is fine too.

But I'm going to go down the list.

I have nine people on this list and then we'll go to online and then we'll come back to the applicant for response.

So we'll start and forgive me if I'm butchering any names here.

Or maybe Barbara G. Lowe.

Thank you to the to the commission.

Much love.

Yeah, that's great.

Thank you.

My name.

I live on the corner of James River Road and Chestnut Grove Road.

I've owned that property since 1995.

I am very aware of the changes in the community and the community.

I've been an integral part of the Chestnut Grove community.

Thank you to the staff for coming to the meetings.

More than 100 people came to the two community meetings that were there and everyone spoke in opposition.

Just start there.

Important is, I sat through your meeting at four o'clock because I was interested in where you're thinking about the community input themes, rural area land use on AC44.

and not very much about this plan is consistent with what's in there or what we talked about at that meeting.

In fact, at the meeting I heard someone say, first, let me start with that meeting says, recommended land usage should be tailored to each community.

There should be engagement with individual rural communities and there was engagement and this community has very specific facts and very specific concerns and thank you that in their recommendation they noted some of the things.

One of the things that was mentioned and a very important thing is the traffic.

and when the engineer was talking, he talked about Route 6.

This route, this isn't accessed by Route 6.

The way you get there is you go down James River Road, you go down 20 from Charlottesville, then you turn on Langhorne across 6 down James River Road onto Chestnut Grove Road.

James River Road is a very important integral artery between Buckingham, Nelson, and it's the only way to get to 20.

And so there is a very large amount of traffic on there.

I said at both meetings, please do a study.

And there was never a study done.

So I counted one day.

12 hours, 850 cars.

Now that's whatever how many trips I counted trips.

I didn't count individual cars and he wants 365 more.

That road has three one lane bridges.

Two places where it constricts down to two cars and many places where there are very, very tight curves and everyone has discussed that and that was addressed.

Note that and that's important.

In Chestnut Grove is really a one and a half lane road.

It's really not a true one lane road at all.

Second, emergency services.

I know you're going to hear from other people, but if you came to the community meetings, you heard several people talk about this, and we experienced this in our own family.

52 minutes for the ambulance, my mother-in-law had a coaster in her teeth while she was seizing.

Not two months ago, we called the police because we had a break in around 11, 12 o'clock at night, took an hour and a half of them to get there, and they said, we're sorry, we only run one person south of Wegmans.

because that's the way it's termed.

Now, that's just a fact.

We don't mind that, but you can't increase the call on that when you have limited resources.

The affordability is clearly the touted feature here.

It costs for the lowest model $80,000.

Then you have to pay $70,000 for them to bring it, set it up and put it in.

and Connetta HVAC and the trailer.

My husband went acting like he was going to buy one.

He asked, how do you get financing?

There's only two banks in Virginia that'll do it.

You have to put down 15%.

So that's $30,000 to buy one and set it up.

And then you pay personal property tax, you have to pay all these things.

Please, that's not affordable.

Finally, note the environmental impact.

When you talk about the well, we don't even know that they'll be able to get the amount.

What happens to Mr. Williams who's sitting here as well?

What happens to Mr. Gaines as well who's sitting here?

What happens to the other wells of the people in this community?

Great.

Thank you very much.

Also, those online, if you want to go ahead and use the raise-and,

Feature, and we can get you in the queue.

You'll be at the end of everybody here in person.

Thank you.

Next one is Kevin Beichen.

And good point.

Jennifer Gaines is on deck.

So if you're ready, that'd be great.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Thank you.

And Madam Clerk, if you could start the timer, please.

OK.

So to talk about the traffic, like if you choose not to take the James River Road, you're going to take Chestnut Road Road to 6.

And so the idea that there's just 150 trips a day on that road, there's 150 in the morning.

because that's the shortest distance to get to six.

I was going through Chestnut Grove Road.

And even in his comments, he talks about going from Buckingham to Plank Road.

Well, from Plank Road to get from there, from there, you're going to either have to drive through Esmont, which is 25 miles an hour.

or you're going to have to drive through Porter's Road, which is very densely populated, 35 mile an hour traffic to get through there.

So by adding all of this extra traffic through there, it's not feasible really, be honest with you, for the neighborhood.

And secondly, of course, the idea is that we must preserve our rural areas.

And if you look at the conservation easement map,

for Southern Albemarle County.

We're not talking about a thousand acres.

We're talking about thousands of acres that have been set aside by citizens in that area.

It's one of the largest contiguous conservation easements blocks in all of Albemarle County.

So the private citizens are doing their part.

And so the idea that the county, which they would go behind them and enthwart their efforts, is not really a good idea to me.

But like I say, it's thousands of acres that have been set aside.

That's it.

Thank you.

Jennifer Gaines and then David Roadcap I think is on deck.

Hi, my name is Jennifer Gaines and I live at 9237, which is the closest house across the street, down around about a quarter mile away.

So that speaks about our density.

We have lived at our house since 2007.

And I am here to talk about our rescue response.

We all know it's a problem, and it's a problem when we chose our house.

I've been a nurse for almost 30 years.

I worked bedside at Martha Jefferson for 20 years, and I teach at the School of Medicine and School of Nursing at UVA.

I am calm in chaos of a medical emergency.

I had a teenage nephew have a really bad asthma attack last summer.

It took 15 minutes for a volunteer fighter fighter who knew our name and address to show up with some oxygen and then an additional 30 to 45 minutes for the one ambulance to come out to our house.

And he had an aunt who was skilled to calm him and to love him and a firefighter with resources.

What happens to infants to elderly when we have this kind of increase?

There's 120 people suspected for this at 50 houses, two parents, two kids.

That's at least 200.

That's who needs low income or affordable housing in our area.

and if that's the case, that's more people than live on all of our six mile Chestnut Grove Road.

So you're doubling our neighborhood in this one little area.

We understand the rescue time.

I am 100% behind affordable housing, but not stressing our already stressed resources with doubling it and no access for these people.

Thank you.

Hi, as you said, my name is David Roadcap and I own land along Chestnut Grove, in fact, directly opposite of where the development is planned.

I'm across the road from that.

And I want to use my time here to sort of

Statewide, I strongly oppose the development because it completely runs counter to the county's development plan, both the current development plan and the draft version of AC44 that you were talking about earlier today.

You know, some core guiding principles in that development plan are directing growth development areas and maintaining the rural character of the rural areas of the county.

and the plan lays out essential factors that need to be met when running counter to those core goals and I just want to run through a couple of those today.

One factor is that any proposed development should be of a size and scale that complements the character of the area and as we've already heard today, Jen was just saying it would essentially double the residents on Chestnut Grove Road

It's for a density of housing that's seven times greater than what would be allowed under the division by right.

You know, it's essentially 50 homes crowded onto less than 10 acres.

That's just not consistent with the surrounding area.

Another factor is that the development should result in little discernible difference to the traffic pattern.

We've already heard about this a little bit, so I won't go over it too much.

But even by Mr. Shimp's numbers, that triples the amount of traffic on Chestnut Grove Road from about 150 trips to over 500.

That's triple the amount of risk of collisions on a twisting narrow road with little to no shoulders.

That's triple the risk of head-on collisions on nearby one-lane bridges.

And that's just not an acceptable risk to the residents of the region.

Third factor, I wanted to talk about groundwater.

Again, that's been covered a little bit today.

I don't know where Mr. Schimp is getting his data, but I really disagree with it.

You hear stories from well drillers, from residents, from everyone about how hard it is to get adequate flow from wells in this region.

And the 5,000 to 7,000 gallons a day number is terrifying.

I think that would drastically impact the ability of other residents to get adequate water around them in their homes.

and it just, you know, should weigh heavily against this development.

You know, there's a lot of other factors that go into this analysis and I'm not gonna go through all of them here, but the general theme is that the size and scale of this proposed development just make it fundamentally unsuited for the Chestnut Grove Road area.

Thank you.

Alan and then Isabel Zaluka is on deck.

Good evening.

My name is Alan Herndon.

I was able to buy a piece of property on Chestnut Grove between the Gaines and Miss Lowe.

I've been on the property up there around where he bought the property, Mr. Shaffer bought it.

I've been there for 30 years hunting.

I've been on every inch of that place.

All the elevations there, way, Mr. Propositor, for what he's telling you, it's very steep.

The only part he's going to use is out on the road.

And I'm a general contractor as well for 40 years.

And I cannot see how he wouldn't be tearing the trees, all two pieces.

And the trailers will be sitting three block here.

10 block on the other end to get them off of ground if you don't cut the ground down level.

And speaking on the water there, we call that area Dry Creek.

Dry Creek goes down this little roadcap side of the road.

I walked it all my life, you know, for 30 years.

The other side of the road is his place and it dries up every summer.

Travis Hazel just done a house right up the road, right on the other side of Chestnut Grove Church, 380 feet.

Three whales can be fined to drill them.

He drills whales every day in our county.

Could not find any water for that man.

Right on the other side.

In the land for what he's going to use it for.

I was raised in a trailer, so I'm fine with that.

You know, if you want to get a trailer, I don't care, but that's not the place to put it.

I mean, it's totally wrong.

They show the roads coming in there.

The road is on the left-hand side.

That's the flattest spot he's got, and it falls off hard to the right the farther you go in there.

The road is flanking the road.

His 50-foot buffer is actually a power line right now.

It goes all the way in front of the property.

And he's going to have to tear the trees down top of here to get all these trailers in there.

It's just simple as that.

And then the impact of the road, you know, I sit around about for a long time listening and hunting and you hear traffic coming in most times in the morning, I'll grant you and everybody's exactly right.

All your traffic is going back to James River Road for the majority of everybody.

Anybody from Chestnut Grove Church goes to both towards Route 6 and anybody that's on pocket lane, they're doing the same thing.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Good evening.

I'm Adelaide O'Brien.

I live on Hatton Ferry Road.

And tonight I want to address the misnomer that mobile homes are affordable housing.

Mobile and manufactured homes can be affordable housing if the homeowner owns the land beneath the home.

This proposal for Chestnut Grove is not affordable housing, as the homeowner will not own the land that the mobile home sits on.

Unless the mobile or manufactured home owner owns the land, then it is real property.

They typically can only get a personal property loan for the mobile home, such as a car loan.

And typically they'll pay higher rates than for those who own the land and their mobile home.

Mobile Home Parks are known as a predatory industry with minimal financial risk to the mobile park owner and serious financial risk to the mobile home owner.

Owning their home but not the land beneath it leads the mobile home owner very vulnerable to rent spikes for the lot.

Mobile homes depreciate over time versus the typical site-built homes and even manufactured homes.

While these homes are mobile as they're brought onto a site from a place where they're manufactured, once they're in place, the cost to move them can be out of reach for most tenants.

and I want to quote from a New York Times article titled, investors are buying mobile home parks, residents are paying the price from March of 2022.

And I quote, industry leaders are blunt about the business model.

According to materials for a boot camp for aspiring mobile home park investors prepared by mobile home university, which is run by two of the largest mobile home park owners in the country.

The fact that tenants can't afford the $5,000 at cost to move a mobile home keeps revenue stable and makes it easy to raise rents without losing any occupancy.

I request that you please not consider the rezoning of this partial nor provide a special use permit.

As to do so would benefit only the property owners so that they can have a stable revenue stream at the expense of the mobile home buyers and at the expense of the community at large, which will need to pay for the additional infrastructure such as reopening the empty school, additional fire and rescue support,

and they'll experience excessive traffic on our rural roads.

Thank you very much.

My name is Isabel Zaluka.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I got the race to the podium was I got beat.

Thank you.

But I wanted to speak about the lack of the well water in the area.

I recently bought the land 25 acres, which actually was two parcels that I put together in keeping with the rural aspect of the area.

in the process of building.

Obviously, I had to drill a well first for my permit.

The first well exceeded 400 feet and had no adequate water.

I did drill another well 450 feet, and let's just say it's adequate water, but not beyond that.

Most likely I'll be drilling another well if I ever build a residence right now.

I'm just building a barn with an apartment.

So, you know, addressing the issue of water is, I think, a concern for everybody.

and the consumption on the scale that they're talking about is, you know, beyond belief for this very rural area.

And I hope that the committee does address that.