Central Virginia
Albemarle County
Planning Commission Work Session and Regular Meeting 7/8/2025
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Planning Commission Work Session and Regular Meeting
7/8/2025
Attachments
Agenda.pdf
Minutes.pdf
Action Memo.pdf
ZMA202400008 Brookhill Amendment Staff Report.pdf
Attach 1- ZMA202400008 Brookhill Amendment - Narrative.pdf
Attach 2 - ZMA202400008 Brookhill Amendment - Proposed Code of Development.pdf
Attach 3- ZMA202400008 Brookhill Amendment - Proposed Proffers.pdf
CPA2021-02 AC44 Comp Plan Staff Memo.pdf
Attach 1 – CPA2021-02 AC44 Comp Plan – AC44 Outline.pdf
Attach 2 – CPA2021-02 AC44 Comp Plan – Implementation.pdf
Attach 3 – CPA2021-02 AC44 Comp Plan – Part I – Policy.pdf
Attach 4 – CPA2021-02 AC44 Comp Plan – Part 2 – Growth Management.pdf
Attach 5 – CPA2021-02 AC44 Comp Plan – Appendix – Community Story.pdf
Attach 6 – CPA2021-02 AC44 Comp Plan – Appendix – Engagement Process.pdf
Draft PC Minutes 06_10_2025.pdf
1. Call to order and establish quorum.
▶︎
0:11
2. Public Comment on matters pending before the Commission, but not listed for a Public Hearing on this agenda.
▶︎
0:52
3. Consent Agenda (on the next sheet).
▶︎
7:36
4. Public Hearing.
▶︎
8:32
a. ZMA2024-08 Brookhill Amendment
▶︎
8:32
ZMA2024-08 Brookhill Amendment.pdf
a. CPA2021-02 AC44 Comp Plan - Implementation
▶︎
1:14:55
CPA2021-02 AC44 Comp Plan - Implementation.pdf
5. Committee Reports.
▶︎
2:52:27
6. Review of Board of Supervisors Meeting: June 18, 2025
▶︎
3:00:18
7. New Business.
▶︎
3:01:20
8. Old Business.
▶︎
3:08:06
9. Items for follow-up.
▶︎
3:08:06
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:00:01
And good evening, everybody.
00:00:02
Welcome to the July 8, 2025 work session.
00:00:06
Well, actually, work session and regular meeting of the Planning Commission.
00:00:11
Let's begin by calling and establishing a quorum.
00:00:15
Could you call the roll, please?
SPEAKER_08
00:00:16
Yes.
00:00:17
Ms.
00:00:17
Firehock?
00:00:18
Here.
00:00:18
Mr. Moore?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:00:19
Yeah.
SPEAKER_08
00:00:20
Mr. Missel?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:00:21
Here.
SPEAKER_08
00:00:21
Mr. Clayborne?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:00:22
Here.
SPEAKER_08
00:00:23
Mr. Murray?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:00:23
Here.
SPEAKER_08
00:00:24
Mr. Bivins?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:00:25
Present.
SPEAKER_08
00:00:26
Thank you.
00:00:26
And Mr. Carrazana is absent.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:00:29
Awesome.
00:00:30
Great.
00:00:30
Thank you.
00:00:32
I will begin by just let's read this.
00:00:35
The public can access and participate in the meeting through information posted on the Albemarle County website, specifically on the Planning Commission homepage and the Albemarle County calendar.
00:00:47
During the meeting, there will be opportunities for public comment and specific agenda items where input is invited.
00:00:52
And with that, I will be inviting input on public comment on matters pending before the commission, but not listed for public hearings on this agenda.
00:01:02
I have two folks signed up.
00:01:04
As a reminder, you'll have three minutes to speak.
00:01:06
When the light turns yellow, you'll have one minute left.
00:01:10
And I will begin with Hugh Mager?
00:01:14
Mar.
00:01:14
Marger?
00:01:17
Mar.
SPEAKER_17
00:01:23
In any case, thank you for allowing me to speak.
00:01:26
Could you state your name correctly for me?
00:01:28
My first name is Hugh, middle name is Alexander, last name is Mar, spelled M-E-A-G-H-E-R.
00:01:35
Thank you.
00:01:35
I'm a resident of the Whitehall District.
00:01:38
I'm here today to request that the Planning Commission schedule public hearings on the Economic Development Strategic Plan as part of the AC44 process.
00:01:49
The Economic Development Strategic Plan proposes significant changes to the county zoning, to its land use and growth management policy, and to its regulatory structure without the benefit of public hearings.
00:02:04
The EDSP is moving quietly towards adoption
00:02:08
by the Board of Supervisors on August 13th.
00:02:12
That date needs to be moved back for broad dissemination of the draft and for public hearings.
00:02:19
We're told that the AC44 is the overarching long-term plan under which the EDSP will fall in line.
00:02:28
Yet the AC44 makes clear that the EDSP sets the county's economic development priorities.
00:02:38
This sleight of hand creates an alarming lack of transparency.
00:02:42
The AC44, on which citizens have been focused, contains no mention of defense, biotech, agribusiness as the county's economic future, nor does it mention changes to the county zoning ordinances to prepare for the energy hogging data centers.
00:03:04
Public servants should not make such radical changes to Albemarle County without public consent.
00:03:11
Significant changes of priority and focus are buried within the circular loop of overlapping plans, the most disturbing of which the EDSP has been shaped by consultants, business interests, and large institutions, not citizens.
00:03:28
Insulating priority setting,
00:03:33
and decision making from public comment and scrutiny is not the leadership that we deserve.
00:03:38
Where are the assurances that the focus on defense, biotech, agribusiness and data centers will not set back the critical environmental goals put in place by the county and state?
00:03:49
What guardrails have you devised to ensure the county's economic development decisions are realistic?
00:03:56
Thank you for allowing me to speak tonight.
00:03:59
I like living here.
00:04:01
My family likes living here.
00:04:03
We need to take the time to get it right.
00:04:07
So let's not rush into our future that we don't want.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:04:12
Thank you.
00:04:13
Thank you, Mr. Marr.
00:04:14
I'm sorry for mispronouncing your name.
00:04:19
Second is Holmes Brown.
SPEAKER_18
00:04:21
Yes, thank you.
00:04:32
Thanks.
00:04:33
I'm Holmes Brown.
00:04:34
I live on Stillhouse Creek Road near Batesville.
00:04:40
And excuse me, I'll speak on the same topic.
00:04:45
Albemarle County's economic development strategic plan is one of the most consequential documents that will affect all of Albemarle County's residents over the next few decades.
00:05:00
But there are two problems with this document.
00:05:04
Few know of its existence and fewer still know of the recommended contents.
00:05:10
Let me address each of these issues.
00:05:13
First, public awareness.
00:05:15
I was able to locate two online questionnaires seeking public comment for the county.
00:05:22
The first regarding past economic development and future opportunities, 53 people responded.
00:05:31
The second invited comments on the draft strategy, 165 people responded.
00:05:38
There may have been other efforts to elicit public comment, but the final total appears to be in the hundreds.
00:05:46
With a county population of 117,000, public comment and involvement on this issue has been next to nonexistent.
00:05:58
A second serious and equally important failing of the proposed EDSP are its recommendations.
00:06:05
They're summarized in a document available online as the Stakeholder Engagement Summary.
00:06:12
The stakeholders who formulated these conclusions are listed at the top of the document.
00:06:19
They include elected officials and leaders in organizations promoting economic development, workforce, education, and entrepreneurial support.
00:06:30
No one is identified as a member of the public.
00:06:36
These recommendations were developed through a series of 45 to 75 minute meetings with 100 stakeholders.
00:06:45
Contrast this with the 206 members of the public responding electronically.
00:06:52
The summary hardly reflects a broad range of public sentiment or knowledge of the strategic plan.
00:07:00
For these reasons, I would ask the Planning Commission to delay the current accelerated schedule for the plan's approval.
00:07:10
instead institute a comprehensive program of public education and comment prior to further consideration.
00:07:19
Thank you.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:07:21
Thank you.
00:07:22
Thank you both.
00:07:25
That is it on my signup sheet.
00:07:27
Are there any other folks here who would like to speak to items that are not on the agenda?
00:07:36
All right, seeing none, we will move on to item number three, which is the consent agenda.
00:07:42
Then I'll ask if any commissioners would like to pull.
SPEAKER_08
00:07:44
There was no one online either.
00:07:46
Pardon me?
00:07:47
There was no one online either.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:07:48
Thank you.
00:07:49
Thank you.
00:07:49
I knew that.
00:07:50
I know it's surprising.
00:07:52
Thank you for the reminder.
00:07:54
So we're a consent agenda is the approval of the draft minutes for June 10th, 2025.
00:08:00
Would anybody like to either pull that or can I have a motion?
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:08:07
I move approval of the consent agenda.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:08:09
Second.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:08:09
Great.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:08:10
Any discussion?
00:08:12
We have the roll, please.
00:08:13
Yes.
SPEAKER_08
00:08:15
Ms.
00:08:15
Firehock?
00:08:16
Aye.
00:08:17
Mr. Moore?
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:08:18
Aye.
SPEAKER_08
00:08:18
Mr. Missel?
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:08:20
Aye.
SPEAKER_08
00:08:21
Mr. Clayborne?
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:08:23
I'll abstain since I was absent at that meeting.
SPEAKER_08
00:08:25
Mr.
00:08:27
Murray, Mr. Bivins.
00:08:29
Thank you.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:08:30
Great.
00:08:30
Thank you.
00:08:31
All right.
00:08:32
We will now move into the public hearings and we will begin with ZMA 2024-8 Brookhill amendment and I'll ask for the staff report.
Rebecca Ragsdale
Planning Manager
00:08:44
Good evening.
00:08:46
I'm Rebecca Ragstill, Planning Manager, and I'll be doing the staff presentation for this rezoning.
00:08:52
And it is a focused amendment to the existing Brookhill neighborhood model development.
00:08:58
And I'll go over some details about the location and the proposed changes.
00:09:07
The changes are limited to
00:09:11
Primarily a request to increase the maximum number of units within the development from 1,550 by 300 units to 1,850 and then there are some proffer amendments.
00:09:29
orienting those folks who may have forgotten where Brookhill was just in case.
00:09:34
It is on the east side of 29.
00:09:38
It's between Polo Grounds Road, north of Polo Grounds Road and south of Ashwood Boulevard that goes into Forest Lakes.
00:09:47
And it is in the Places 29 master plan area just north of the South Fork of the Rivanna River.
00:10:01
and the computer is being a little slow.
00:10:09
There we go.
00:10:10
This is an aerial of the site.
00:10:11
It's underdeveloped, as I meant, excuse me, it's under development.
00:10:15
Portions of it are already constructed.
00:10:18
It has been approved since about 2015.
00:10:23
So development is underway in many of the blocks within the development.
00:10:28
The location proposed for rezoning is generally where we have the Brookhill label on the slide there.
00:10:36
To the north, as I mentioned, is Forest Lakes.
00:10:40
To the west is the rural area and then to the east is the Montgomery Ridge subdivision along Polo Grounds Road.
00:10:52
It is zoned neighborhood model development as I mentioned.
00:10:56
The white is the rural areas, includes property south of Polo Grounds Road that is not in the development area between the two portions of Places 29 and then all of the other
00:11:09
Turquoise colors are planned unit development or either R1 residential in the light green.
00:11:18
We are reorienting ourselves.
00:11:20
This is the Places 29 land use map.
00:11:24
This is the Brookhill development here with the NS, which stands for the Neighborhood Service Center.
00:11:31
which was approved with that rezoning and 29 is at the upper part of that map inset there.
00:11:40
The place's 29 master plan designates it neighborhood density, urban density, and then with the green
00:11:48
open space and environmental features.
00:11:52
The Places 29 master plan is one of our older master plans which has not been updated yet but is still applicable.
00:12:03
Brookhill was rezoned consistent with that, mimicking the neighborhood service center, urban density designations, and then the neighborhood density designations
00:12:13
and providing for all of the green space, not only shown in the Places 29 master plan, but recognizing the streams and natural features on the site with the pattern there of the green throughout along the streams.
00:12:32
As I mentioned, it is the request to increase the residential.
00:12:35
There is no proposed change to the non-residential uses in the Code of Development.
00:12:43
and the amendment is fairly simple in that regard.
00:12:49
It's an update to their table, their regulating table for their neighborhood model code of development.
00:12:56
As you all may be familiar, the neighborhood model district is the most detailed in terms of regulations and those are broken down by block with a large development like Brookhill.
00:13:06
There is
00:13:07
a lot of detail in there.
00:13:09
But that proposal doesn't change, as I mentioned, their minimum requirement for non-residential, which is 50,000, or increase their maximum, which is 130,000.
00:13:21
In this case, the change, as I mentioned, is focused on those blocks, which are designated neighborhood center or urban density.
00:13:31
I also mentioned the proffer amendment.
00:13:34
There was a development of this size, of course an extensive proffer package that was approved with the initial rezoning to protect those resources, provide for adequate parks and greenways, cash proffers, schools, and of course transportation.
00:13:53
There is only one minor adjustment to the school's proffers and that is to make sure that it's clear in the proffer that the
00:14:00
proffer for the seven-acre elementary school site that in the interim that it can be used for additional amenities within the community.
00:14:09
That was something that was discussed at the community meeting.
00:14:14
In regards to the transportation proffers, there's one adjustment to the timing of the Ashwood Boulevard connection.
00:14:23
And we talked a lot about the affordable housing provisions.
00:14:26
As I mentioned, Places 29 has not updated in the comp plan, but we have an updated housing policy.
00:14:35
Housing Albemarle.
00:14:37
And in this case, this rezoning was approved under the acceptable proffers at the time, providing 15% of the total number of units as affordable.
00:14:47
And then the terms and conditions related to for rent and for sale units had the 80% median income
00:14:58
Thresholds and there was a term specified for the affordability period for rental units, but not for sale.
00:15:08
proposed revision, they are proposing to partially comply or partial consistency with the updated housing policy in that 20% of the new units, 20% of the 300 units, the new ones that they're requesting would be affordable.
00:15:28
But in this case, since it was a prior rezoning, and the applicant will elaborate further, they are not proposing to change any of the other
00:15:39
Terms and conditions, if you will, that were offered in those previous proffers.
00:15:45
and we noted in the staff report in terms of the provisions that would make the proposal entirely consistent with housing Albemarle and that's related to 60% area meeting AMI for rent units and then addressing the newer policy recommendations for the term for affordability.
00:16:14
and we have recommended approval of this rezoning.
00:16:19
It is remaining consistent with the density and the land use recommendations of the Places 29 master plan.
00:16:31
It had the typical extensive review by other agencies in terms of impacts in particular transportation.
00:16:39
They provided an updated transportation impact analysis and it was found that the existing proffer, existing proffers for transportation impacts were adequate to address.
00:16:52
any trips from the additional 300 units.
00:16:55
And we've already noted the concern about partial consistency with the affordable housing policy.
00:17:05
So I will pause for any questions now.
00:17:08
I'm happy to go back to any of those slides.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:17:12
Great.
00:17:12
Thank you.
00:17:14
Any questions for staff, Commissioner Firehock?
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:17:18
No, just for the applicant.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:17:19
Okay.
00:17:19
Commissioner Moore?
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:17:21
I just want to confirm there's no changes to the commercial square footage, just the residential number of units.
Rebecca Ragsdale
Planning Manager
00:17:27
Correct.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:17:29
Then I had questions about the affordable housing property tax discount kind of policy.
00:17:35
It's not called discount.
00:17:36
What do we call it?
00:17:36
A bait incentive.
00:17:38
Thank you.
00:17:40
But
00:17:42
With part of that affordable housing plan, if you do the 20% affordability at 60% AMI for 30 years, you get a property tax incentive for the whole property.
00:17:53
But I'm just kind of curious how that could even or would even work if it were to be applied just for this portion of an existing model development.
Rebecca Ragsdale
Planning Manager
00:18:05
So your question is about if they were to pursue that option with
00:18:12
consistent with their housing policy and how that would work with the language that it's to apply to the whole property versus a portion of it.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:18:22
Yeah, I realize that that's not in the proposal as they brought it to us, but as we think about kind of other ways it could have come up, is it even something that is an option to be penciled at since it's part of an existing other proposal that's already been approved under the old model?
Rebecca Ragsdale
Planning Manager
00:18:42
So I think that there's the policy and then there's the programs that help us implement the policy.
00:18:47
So we've analyzed it based on the policy aspect of it, but we didn't discuss with them implementation of one of those tools specifically.
00:18:56
Sure.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:18:57
Okay.
00:18:58
Good question though, for the broader, broader idea.
00:19:02
Yeah.
00:19:04
Mr. Clayburn?
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:19:06
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:19:07
I have just a more of a clarifying question for me just in terms of policy and implementation.
00:19:13
Is housing at Albemarle optional?
00:19:15
You can pick and choose that you want to do it or not?
00:19:18
Or is this more a function of it was passed before that was adopted and so you have the flexibility to say I want to do this or that within the policy?
Rebecca Ragsdale
Planning Manager
00:19:27
Well, I think that many rezonings come before you that may not check every box in terms of a policy as far as what applicants are proposing.
00:19:40
It's not an ordinance if that's what you're asking.
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:19:42
Yes, so you do have an option to pick and choose then what you want to do.
Rebecca Ragsdale
Planning Manager
00:19:46
Well, we're starting to see
00:19:50
scenarios like this where it was approved under the prior proffers and this is what they've offered with proffers under the new policy.
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:20:00
Yes, so is it more of a function that this was originally approved before housing at Albemarle?
00:20:07
So essentially if you started from scratch today, do you have the option to pick and choose or do you need to do the things that are in the policy?
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
00:20:14
Well, I think the answer to that question is for a new development.
00:20:18
Yes.
00:20:19
The policy is that they, you know, our policies, you should meet the housing policy.
00:20:23
It's much trickier on these older developments, especially one like this, which has been, you know, large parts of it are already been built out.
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:20:31
Yeah.
00:20:32
So I think you're answering my question then.
00:20:33
So I just want to make sure I'm clear, like for the future.
00:20:35
So if something comes up for us, let's say with today's date on it,
00:20:39
Greenfield site, you would have to do all the things that are in the policy.
00:20:44
You wouldn't be able to say, I'll give you 20%, but it's not going to be a 60% AMI if the policy says that, right?
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
00:20:50
I would just say generally, yes.
00:20:54
Although as a policy, obviously it doesn't have the force of ordinance where thou shalt do X, Y, and Z.
00:21:06
I'm just trying to be honest with you in that we may find that there is times that there's some latitude one way or the other, extenuating circumstances on the site, other things that are going on because this is happening through a proffer mechanism.
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:21:19
Yeah, and the reason I'm asking that question is because it goes to the root cause of how will you ever move the needle if you don't have anything that you can enforce.
00:21:26
So when I hear the term policy, I understand now there's a difference in policy and ordinance.
00:21:30
I get that now.
00:21:31
But absent any kind of enforceability, what's the point?
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
00:21:36
Well, I think just keep in mind that as we're reviewing these rezoning requests,
00:21:46
They may not be something that the Board of Supervisors wants to support and wants to vote for.
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:21:54
All right.
00:21:57
I'm good.
00:21:57
Thank you.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:22:00
Thank you, Commissioner Murray.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:22:03
No questions at this time.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:22:04
Commissioner Bivins.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:22:06
Evening, Chair.
00:22:07
So that was actually, we've had two of my colleagues have sort of walked down partially the lane that I was walking down with regards to
00:22:17
the affordable units.
00:22:19
And I actually have been wrestling with this really simple, I like elegant solutions.
00:22:23
So my elegant solution is why don't we encourage developers to donate the apartments to the county and put them in a housing trust fund.
00:22:32
And then that way we can be done with whether or not they make the level or don't make the level.
00:22:37
And then also the developer gets to take the fair market price as a deduction off of it.
00:22:43
assuming they make money, but I'm assuming they do.
00:22:46
But assuming they make money, they would be able to take the fair market price value of the property as they donated it.
00:22:52
And then we could get away from what we seem to wrestle with all the time is, is anybody actually using these, is anyone actually using them?
00:22:59
Are there's anybody going into them?
00:23:01
The simplest way would say, the deal is you want to give us 20% of the apartments.
00:23:06
We're going to put them in a housing trust and they're going to be affordable from now until the end of time.
00:23:12
Because I also have to recognize, and I think this is where Mr. Barnes was going, Corey, is that everything that we see, everything that this body sees is an exception.
00:23:25
If it was an exception, we would not see it.
00:23:28
Well, because it's an inception in some way, it comes to us.
00:23:32
And then it goes eventually to our bosses who say whether or not they like what we say or don't like what we say.
00:23:37
And so I can understand where if I were a developer, I'd want to try to come in as flexible as possible.
00:23:44
So be part of the sort of maintain the
00:23:50
reach and establish and accept the policy as it's written but also recognize at the end of the day I've got a pro forma budget that I've got to deal with that this may not work for me if I were to do that.
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:24:04
I'd say that goes to the bigger issue.
00:24:06
If you want to solve this, we got to take control.
00:24:08
You can't have your hand out begging.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:24:10
That's why I've been told that the real deal is just having donated to a housing fund, to a housing trust.
00:24:15
And then we build an inventory of, you know, we back, we would back into being a housing authority, which I know makes so many people uncomfortable, but it's, as you said, it's how you got, you got to increase the inventory.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:24:30
I agree.
00:24:31
All right.
00:24:32
Any other questions for staff?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:24:36
No?
00:24:37
Okay, thank you.
00:24:38
With that, I'll open the public hearing and ask for the applicant.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:24:56
I can't see on this screen to click.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:25:01
Here she comes.
00:25:02
Here comes our superwoman.
00:25:04
Here comes superwoman.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:25:06
She needs a cape.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:25:09
She can wear a cape.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:25:12
Amazing.
SPEAKER_03
00:25:13
I know.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:25:16
Good evening, everyone.
00:25:17
It's so nice to see you.
00:25:18
Hope you had a great holiday weekend.
00:25:21
My name is Ashley Davies.
00:25:22
I'm with Riverbend Development.
00:25:24
I'm here tonight with Alan Taylor, also at Riverbend, and Scott Collins, Collins Engineering.
00:25:31
Thank you so much for considering our request tonight to add 300 additional units to the Brookhill neighborhood.
00:25:39
As Rebecca indicated, this was previously zoned neighborhood model district right around nine years ago, actually.
00:25:48
and it's within the county's designated growth area.
00:25:51
We think that this proposal aligns with the Albemarle County Comprehensive Plan in three key areas.
00:25:59
First of all, it allows us to continue to preserve the rural areas and that's by providing a significant amount of additional housing at a variety of price points within the strategic growth area.
00:26:15
and then Brookhill also does a really exceptional job of protecting habitat areas and really the critical environmental spaces on the site.
00:26:31
Don't know why the clickers don't wanna work for me.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
00:26:35
Let's see.
00:26:35
I think it's moving slow.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:26:37
Okay, yeah, it's just a little unhappy.
00:26:38
Okay, so this entire property is 277 acres.
00:26:44
Tonight, we're looking at about a 10th of that in this rezoning.
00:26:49
And just to familiarize you a little bit with the initial rezoning, we did provide approximately $30 million in kind and
00:27:00
Donations and transportation improvements to the county, as well as the 50 acre high school site, the seven acre elementary school site.
00:27:09
This includes transit stops for future transit routes and a $500,000 donation to the county once that's established.
00:27:18
And we also have a third of the site in open space with four miles of trails.
00:27:23
I hope each of you got to see the little video that I sent out in case you haven't.
00:27:27
visited the site recently.
00:27:29
A key component also of that initial rezoning was preserving the salamander habitat and providing tunnels under the road so they can access the vernal pools for mating.
00:27:43
And we are about a third of the way into the site construction.
00:27:47
You can see on this slide all of those areas shown in the light yellow, that was the neighborhood density, so the lower density.
00:27:56
development.
00:27:57
And when we were looking at this a decade ago, density wasn't as welcomed in Albemarle County.
00:28:04
So what we're looking at tonight is getting closer to what the comprehensive plan wanted in terms of density for the site.
00:28:11
We kind of shot low at that point.
00:28:13
So that meant that we would have had our original plan showed over 500 single family homes with kind of larger lots back in that area.
00:28:23
and what's happened in the meantime is there's a greater demand for housing, construction costs have gone up, so we're really trying to meet that demand of providing both more housing but also housing at a range of price points and lower price points so more people can actually come to the neighborhood.
00:28:46
This is a great slide because it shows you the entire community at total build out and I love the diagram because you really see the green fingers of the stream corridors that run through the entire site and
00:29:03
that is over 75 acres of preserved areas on the site.
00:29:09
And they are really quite lovely.
00:29:11
So you get that nice kind of more urban density in the neighborhoods.
00:29:16
You've got these wonderful trails, green spaces, amenities throughout, but also later this year, the town center will go under construction.
00:29:27
So you'll get that heart of the community coming to life as well.
00:29:38
This slide just shows you a little more closely all of the amenity spaces throughout the neighborhood.
00:29:45
So you can see within the green fingers that that red dotted line is the entire trail network.
00:29:53
that's accessible from a lot of the different neighborhood pods as well as the existing amenity spaces that we've already constructed within the neighborhoods as well as the future ones with two really large ones happening in the town center area as well as the school site which was a big topic in the community meeting
00:30:17
Residents have a lot of children and they want more spaces where they can go kick the soccer ball or have a pavilion where they could have a birthday party, that sort of thing.
00:30:29
And so one thing we recognized was, well, we're already, we have this site available that may or may not be a school at some point, it may take a long time.
00:30:38
So let's go ahead and add some amenities that the public can be using in the meantime.
00:30:44
By the way, all of our trails are open to the general public as well.
00:30:50
And then this gives you a sense of the build out of the site thus far.
00:30:54
If you haven't been over there recently, the areas outlined in pink and the lighter color are already complete and developed.
00:31:04
The area in the upper right and the yellow is currently under construction.
00:31:08
And then like I said, the town center, we plan to start on that.
00:31:13
part of the site later this year.
00:31:16
And then there's some areas that are also under design right now.
00:31:21
To give you a sense of what we've done so far, the senior living is in place.
00:31:25
We've actually already constructed 762 of the total residential units.
00:31:31
And there's a breakdown on the screen up there of what that means.
00:31:35
And then we also currently have over 300 units that qualify as affordable units in the first phase of apartments for Brookhill.
00:31:47
I think the big deal about this site is, so you can see that a lot of it's actually already constructed.
00:31:54
We spent a lot of time a decade ago developing our code of development for the site, which is very comprehensive.
00:32:01
The proffer package was
00:32:03
extensive and since that time we've been working closely with staff on the affordable units and when you have a site this big with this many units, the tracking of the units, the compliance, the auditing, it's the management of it, it really is a full-time job and it's pretty complex when you get to a site this large.
00:32:26
So that's one of the challenges that we face but we're really proud of what we are providing and obviously with this new little section we want to up the amount that we can provide for the county as well.
00:32:43
And then, yes, this just highlights in on that 27-acre area of the site that is actually the subject of this rezoning.
00:32:53
And that's where the additional units, the additional 300 units would go.
00:32:57
So they will not be impacting the green spaces in any way.
00:33:04
We're actually, like I said, adding more amenities to the site and all the commercial areas are maintained.
00:33:13
I think it'll just add more liveliness actually to the town center area.
00:33:18
And then here you can see our senior living that's already out there.
00:33:23
Our first round of apartments with some of the amenities there.
00:33:31
We've got new neighborhoods complete under construction and under review.
00:33:34
So there's some of those with the play spaces and community spaces.
00:33:42
And these are some renderings of what the town center is slated to look like.
00:33:47
And you can see there's areas of apartments above the commercial space there.
00:33:54
So, and this just shows kind of the four key reasons that we think that this is a really great proposal to work together on.
00:34:04
It is a great location.
00:34:06
It's close to all the things that people that living there would want to access.
00:34:12
It's already zoned land where we've already put in so much money and investment into the infrastructure.
00:34:20
We have up the affordable housing commitment to 20% while also maintaining the rest of the existing proffers.
00:34:28
And I think you saw in the slides just how much of this land is preserved and available to the public and is really, you know, a thoughtfully designed neighborhood.
00:34:39
And we think it makes sense to get much closer to what the comprehensive plan actually envisioned for this site.
00:34:46
So look forward to answering your questions.
00:34:49
Thank you.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:34:51
Great.
00:34:52
Thank you, Ms.
00:34:52
Davies.
00:34:53
Any questions for the applicant?
00:34:55
Start down at the Julian Bivins end.
00:34:59
Good evening.
SPEAKER_02
00:34:59
Good to see you.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:35:03
Thank you.
00:35:04
Now you can also hear me when I say good to see you.
00:35:07
It might have been better the other way.
00:35:10
So I've just got a couple of sort of clarifying questions.
00:35:12
So I'll let my colleagues sort of come back about the commercial, because I thought I saw something in here that said that there was going to be a change in the commercial.
00:35:21
Maybe that was somewhere else.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:35:22
I think it's just that the commercial square footage minimum and maximum stays the same, but staff included that in the.
00:35:28
OK.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:35:29
Thank you for that answer and my question on that one.
00:35:31
So I know that your company owns both parcels that are supposed to dump out
00:35:37
I don't really mean dump out.
00:35:39
They're supposed to have access to Asswood Boulevard.
00:35:41
And I thought I read in yours that the triggering number changed.
00:35:50
And so my question was going to be, and I know you can tell me, sir, we don't know that yet.
00:35:56
But is there a sort of a combined triggering number between the two projects since they're owned by the same applicant?
00:36:05
So that in fact we're moving traffic on to Ashwood Boulevard in a coordinated manner.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:36:14
That's a great question.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:36:15
Two questions.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:36:16
Yep.
00:36:17
So the Ashwood Boulevard connection is entirely tied to the Brookhill rezoning that we did 10 years ago.
00:36:26
And it is triggered to be complete by the 500th CEO of Brookhill currently.
00:36:36
and we have been diligently moving forward with you know the completion of the Ashwood Archer connection and as we've gotten into it there have just been a few more complexities than we thought we would find on the front end so obviously some of the land included in that connection is county-owned land so we've been
00:37:03
working very closely with the county to make sure we have all the proper approvals on that side of it.
00:37:09
But there's also VDOT involvement and there are extensive wetlands in that area.
00:37:16
So right now we're threading the needle to make sure that we are impacting as few of the wetlands as possible, working with the county to have the proper alignment and making sure that all of the VDOT components are correct.
00:37:32
And so because of that, it's just been, like I said, a little bit more complex and it's taking slightly longer.
00:37:39
So that's the reason for that slight adjustment on that proffer.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:37:42
And then on the other side of the boulevard in your other project, which is dirt smoothing, so something's going on over there.
00:37:49
Yes.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:37:49
Yes, so that one is moving forward and it's not reliant on the connection but it is specifically planned so as Archer goes north it will be in perfect alignment with that project as well as Holly Hills I believe to the north of that.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:38:15
Two other things then, or actually three things.
00:38:17
So I understand everybody in the documents that always talks about an elementary school in your property.
00:38:24
Realizing, I'm not talking about the stuff that's on the other side, that's the 50 acres, but the stuff that's on your property.
00:38:29
Has that only been designated for an elementary school?
00:38:31
Is it just school, generic school, so it could be a middle school or it could be an elementary school?
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:38:36
So my understanding, I can check the exact language, but I believe the way both of the, so we had the high school site and the elementary school site, and both of those proppers were specifically worded to be flexible enough that the county can claim those for whatever use they desire.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:38:56
That's good because you know we also have, most of us know that we have Northpawing, at Northpawing there's also a site for a school and so it's like uh and we also have Baker Butler which is already an elementary school and so I was just wanting to ensure that we have flexibility and what kind of school goes a little bit okay.
00:39:15
You heard my comment about the apartments being not held but being sent to a housing trust I'll let you go back home and say
00:39:22
and have a conversation about that and you do whatever you want to do.
00:39:25
I know you've got one of your lead principals here, so y'all can have a conversation about that.
00:39:30
The other thing that I was wondering was, and this is about the sensitivity, as you mentioned before, the sort of appreciation for density has changed, but also the appreciation for cultural and historical elements has changed.
00:39:44
And so you've got the plantation house there, and you've got the graveyard that's attached to the plantation house.
00:39:50
And I'm just wondering if you have an idea of how you're thinking, how the company's thinking about what we're going to do with those two pieces of property, since the sensitivities have changed about what those mean to this community.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:40:06
I'd be happy to address that.
00:40:08
So of all the land within the Brookhill development, there's actually a three and a half acre parcel around the original home that does include the graveyard.
00:40:21
And that is actually was retained by the family that owned the entire property.
00:40:27
So we don't have any ownership or interest in that property or control.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:40:33
And hopefully if they sell it, you have an option to do something so that it doesn't just sort of give.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:40:37
I would hope so.
00:40:39
I think we'd probably be the first people to think about it.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:40:42
I'll just bring that in.
00:40:43
I'll just bring that out.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:40:43
And then we will come talk to you.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:40:44
OK, thank you.
00:40:45
Fine.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
00:40:46
That's next.
00:40:49
You don't mind, just real quick, like I wanted to interject here, the elementary school site proffer states that the option of the county in lieu of construction of school, a public park may be established by the county on the elementary school site.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:41:02
So I just need to say it, I hope we never put another public park up ever, ever.
00:41:07
We have over 500, close to 500 or 600 acres of public parks of which your children could get there, but the children in my district could never get there.
00:41:19
You know my rant on that.
00:41:21
I've been ranting for years about the free land that the county gets that nobody can get to except for the people who live in the free land area.
00:41:30
I appreciate that, but no more public parks without being able to give people to them.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:41:36
Commissioner Murray?
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:41:38
Yeah, so two things.
00:41:41
First, I know that one of the problems we've had with units that are profitable is often we can't find people to live in those spaces before the time period expires.
00:41:53
And so I know when you're talking with your colleagues about
00:41:59
about how to come to some sort of middle arrangement there.
00:42:04
I'm curious as to your thought process of increasing the percentage of affordable units versus increasing the time that those units are affordable.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:42:16
So yeah, one thing I'll say is that the existing apartments, I mean, we do not have any trouble finding people that, you know, want to live in the affordable units at Brookhill.
00:42:31
They are, you know, very well leased up and they stay leased up.
00:42:35
So we know that there's still a high demand for that and, you know, unlike
00:42:43
the existing proffers for the for sale units, it doesn't instantly go to market rate.
00:42:50
So you are getting the benefit of that affordability.
00:42:55
And I think as a company, you hear from us all the time, we are very interested in how do we crack the nut of affordability.
00:43:04
So given the different sites that we work on, we have a variety of solutions that we are offering
00:43:13
For the Brookhill site, to be honest, we're looking at primarily rental as the solution here, but
00:43:21
You know, you may have seen recently at Victorian Heights, we are really forging ahead with the Piedmont Community Land Trust model and developing that and getting those into permanent home ownership, permanent affordability there, and we want to use that model also at
00:43:45
the Archer North site and all over.
00:43:48
So each site is kind of a unique assessment.
00:43:54
And I think if you look at up in this area, we've got the three different sites and I think you'll have all different solutions to affordability if you look at that patchwork.
00:44:07
I don't know if that helps at all, but that's how we're thinking about it at least.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:44:12
Can I riff on that for just one second because I have the same question.
00:44:15
So I thought your question, I may have misunderstood it, was did you consider extending the affordability period beyond the 10 years that's required in addition to extending the percentage of units?
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:44:27
We have not yet, but that could be a conversation point.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:44:31
OK, thanks.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:44:32
And then my second question slash suggestion.
00:44:37
The county's policy in terms of landscaping really only applies to the trees.
00:44:43
But you've invested a lot of money in having these nice greenways here.
00:44:49
And so I was just wondering, have you made any efforts to make sure that there are no invasive species being planted within your landscaping?
00:44:57
There's a lot of, you know, around Crozet, we see people still planting burning bush, for example, which is a menace, or planting nandino, which kills birds.
00:45:06
So have you given any thought, certainly we can't require anything, but is that something that you've given any thought to?
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:45:14
That is certainly of interest to me.
00:45:17
I know that Scott may want to speak to it.
00:45:21
You're very familiar with Chuck Rapp that used to be at the county.
00:45:25
So he's now part of Scott's team.
00:45:27
And I think he's very aware of those types of issues.
00:45:30
So I hope you don't see those types of plantings in our neighborhoods.
00:45:35
And if you do,
00:45:37
You should definitely let us know.
00:45:38
And your question also reminded me that something else that we are working on, not just having the trail system available, but we're gonna be putting in some stations along the trails that really fit in nicely with the woods.
00:45:56
So you can have like little workout stations as you do a circuit through the four mile trail system.
00:46:02
So I forgot to mention that earlier.
00:46:04
Thanks.
00:46:05
Thank you.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:46:09
I appreciate some of the discussion my colleagues had about affordability, different options, how to correct that.
00:46:15
And I know it's something that we all care about a lot.
00:46:18
I actually just had sort of basic questions in a way.
00:46:22
One is, how are you going to, like, in sort of a fairly small geographic area, how are you going to squeeze 300 more homes in there?
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:46:29
That was my question, too.
00:46:31
I wanted to see a visual.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:46:32
Yeah, is it either going higher, or are you smaller apartments?
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:46:37
So the homes will be, if you... So I can go back to that visual of the town center, but if you look at the town center, you see kind of those large brown structures lining the street.
00:46:58
It's really just utilizing the space of residential above commercial.
00:47:02
Before they would have been commercial and there was a stronger
00:47:14
I mean, we had more interest in potential office space up there and the office market is just totally soft.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:47:22
So we're- We're going to come in at that minimum for commercial probably.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:47:25
We're going to do what we wanted in Stonefield.
00:47:29
Exactly.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:47:30
Well, the economy's kept us, the zero eight intervened in Stonefield.
00:47:35
Yeah.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:47:36
I didn't understand that.
00:47:37
I saw that.
00:47:37
I just thought that was part of the kind of thing.
00:47:40
That was the new, okay.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:47:43
All right.
00:47:43
Got it.
00:47:44
Okay.
00:47:45
And then parking needs kind of match that through some reconfiguration of?
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:47:49
Yes.
00:47:49
Yeah.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:47:50
Okay.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:47:51
Thank you.
00:47:53
That was my question.
00:47:55
So I don't have anything else except is that car driving on permeable pavers?
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:48:00
Oh, look at that.
SPEAKER_08
00:48:03
Look what you put in there.
00:48:04
Ellen's in trouble.
00:48:08
Well, your loss just went up for the town center.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:48:10
Less less.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:48:11
It's only this piece.
00:48:12
It's only it's only like, yeah, just that slice right there.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:48:15
OK, that's it.
00:48:17
No permeable parking spaces for them?
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:48:20
There's no parking.
00:48:21
You don't need parking.
00:48:22
Because you'll be able to do everything there.
00:48:25
OK, they'll never leave.
00:48:26
You'll never leave.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:48:27
Except for the salamanders who have to breed.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:48:30
This is why you two sit at either end of the dime.
00:48:32
But why?
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:48:33
I explained to Nathan that he could move, but J. Julian and I were not allowed to.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:48:37
So I do have a couple of questions.
00:48:39
If I could, one of them and a lot of them have been answered.
00:48:42
I had the same question about the affordability period which was interesting and your response was we can consider that so that's great.
00:48:50
The future development piece too, it was interesting your question about how you fit that density in.
00:48:56
We've seen this on some other applications where there was an intentional percentage of
00:49:03
retail, commercial, and residential.
00:49:07
And the residential market is hot, and so the amount of residential is being increased, the amount of commercial is being retained, but the space for that commercial is diminishing because you're adding residential.
00:49:21
So, right?
00:49:22
So the reality is we'll probably hit a lower number, to your point, the minimum in the
00:49:29
So, the
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:49:42
The commercial percentage will be the exact same as what we had originally intended.
00:49:48
It's really just the office space is getting replaced.
00:49:54
So all the ground floor commercial, that still adds up to exactly what we anticipated with the original zoning.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:50:04
So the non-residential, you're breaking the non-residential uses into two categories, commercial.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:50:09
Exactly.
00:50:10
Yeah.
00:50:10
So the office space likely comes to fruition.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:50:13
Okay.
00:50:14
But in this they're combined.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:50:15
Can I ask a quick question?
00:50:18
Sure.
00:50:19
Is that the height that you now have with the first floor commercial and the three floors of residential?
00:50:24
Is that your maximum, is that the maximum height allowed?
00:50:28
I believe so.
00:50:29
Okay.
00:50:31
If you were to put something like, I'm not asking to proffer anything or do anything illegal, but I have to say that.
00:50:38
Have you thought of doing things or are you allowed to do things like put, I was just in Mexico City and the rooftop of almost every residential building has got like some decking and people hang out.
00:50:50
I mean, there's got to be great views.
00:50:53
Great views up there.
00:50:54
Our area is so weird because we don't use any of our rooftops.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:50:59
Can you imagine being able to see the river?
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:51:01
You would be able to see such beautiful things.
00:51:04
We're going to do it, Karen.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:51:05
OK.
00:51:06
Wouldn't they have to get permission from Bonatella to be able to do that, though?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:51:10
Pardon?
00:51:10
All right, so let me keep going.
00:51:13
I do have additional questions.
00:51:16
The 301 units of affordable housing that you said you'd build here, I'm just curious.
00:51:20
Do you know what AMI they are?
00:51:21
Those are at 80%.
00:51:26
Good question about the historic resources.
00:51:28
I wondered about that as well.
00:51:30
I thought I read somewhere in here that you're utilizing the historic resources.
00:51:33
You're not.
00:51:34
It's completely separate.
00:51:36
Okay.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:51:39
You may have seen, there are some archeological sites kind of through that protected areas.
00:51:45
That's probably not doing anything with those.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:51:48
The Ashwood Boulevard was good.
00:51:50
So just to clarify there, basically it's not that you're realizing less need for that connector, it's that the logistics of getting it done are taking longer than you thought.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:51:59
Yes, we are in active pursuit.
00:52:02
And honestly, we thought we would be further along.
00:52:05
But as you dig in, there are just a few more layers that we're ironing out at the moment.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:52:10
That all makes perfect sense.
00:52:11
Been there, done that.
00:52:12
I guess my question is, if you were kicking that out another 150 units or so, I mean, theoretically, the first 500 unit number was based on the impacts of those units on the roads.
00:52:27
And so if you're increasing it another 150, you may see some residual impacts that previously you had anticipated mitigating with the connector.
00:52:37
Have you tested that?
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:52:41
Yeah, what I would say is it wasn't, the proffers weren't planned with that level of precision.
00:52:49
We did have our traffic engineer look at that just to make sure, but at the time it was really just picking a number to ensure, you know, you have to have the timing related to the proffer, otherwise you don't know when it's gonna ever get completed or it may be the very last unit.
00:53:06
So we pulled out that number and
00:53:10
So we just wanted to adjust it slightly to give a little bit more runway.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:53:14
So it's not like some entrance somewhere, some intersections can all of a sudden fail drastically because you got that?
00:53:20
No.
00:53:20
Okay.
00:53:21
No.
00:53:22
I'm curious on the seven acres, the proposed, the elementary school site or the school site, the county can call up.
00:53:32
It says it's available as a community open space and amenities.
00:53:34
I'm just curious, do you all maintain that or is that you do?
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:53:37
We would, yes.
00:53:38
So that's one big benefit of it because we could, you know, build it out as a community park space and we would be responsible for maintaining it until such time as the county ever wanted it.
00:53:52
But it takes it off of the responsibility of the county until that time.
00:53:57
But it's a public amenity that's available to anyone.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:54:00
Got it.
00:54:01
Okay, great.
00:54:02
Thank you.
00:54:02
That's all the questions I had.
00:54:04
Any other questions for the applicant?
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
00:54:06
Just one more about the office space.
00:54:09
Have you considered, you know, markets change, you know, and at some point, you know, maybe there may be a new demand for office space.
00:54:17
Have you thought about making some of those spaces flexible so they could be, if the need changed, that they could be converted back into office space from residential?
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:54:26
Yes.
00:54:26
So that's the great part about the code of development and not physically removing those uses.
00:54:34
They could still, you know, any of those, I guess, retail spaces could convert to office in the future if they so desired.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:54:42
Thanks.
00:54:45
Great.
00:54:45
Thank you.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
00:54:46
Thank you.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:54:47
I'll now open it up for public comment.
00:54:49
Is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak to this specific application?
00:54:55
Yes, ma'am.
00:54:56
Please state your name and your general location of residence.
SPEAKER_12
00:55:03
Hi my name is Lindsay Hill and I currently live in the Brookhill community.
00:55:07
I live in the apartments and I've lived there for about four years going on to five next year.
00:55:11
I'd like to say I came into Charlottesville in 2021 as a graduate student and a contributor to the community as a biologist.
00:55:19
I was working full-time where I'm working on my master's part-time.
00:55:22
I completed my master's at UVA in public health in 2023 and I did my
00:55:27
project on housing affordability in relation to communicable disease in compared to Charlottesville or Albemarle County and other counties in Virginia.
00:55:35
But I moved out to the Brookhill community in 2021.
00:55:38
It was affordable at the time.
00:55:40
It's my second job out of college, but my first job moving out of my parents' house.
00:55:44
So it was affordable to me when I first moved out here.
00:55:47
I was making under AMI at the time.
00:55:51
And the first three years of renewal were cool.
00:55:54
I was, I think, paying around the third time of my renewal, I was paying $1,500 a month.
00:55:59
And for a 12 month lease renewal, my rent would have jumped up from $1,500 a month to $2,100 a month for a one bedroom apartment, just me and my little dog.
00:56:09
Fortunately, they gave me other lease options for longer terms that only have jumped up my rent $100.
00:56:14
My rent has gone up between $100 and $150 every lease renewal.
00:56:18
So I am a little curious to what the AMI household number is based off of because there was a point to where I was calling mom and dad and I was like, I might have to move back in.
00:56:26
So I'm from Richmond, Virginia.
00:56:27
So home isn't close.
00:56:28
I work north of the airport out here.
00:56:31
Fortunately for me, I was able to get a higher paying job now, thank goodness.
00:56:37
But I know I have a lot of friends who moved out of the apartment complex who didn't make as much money.
00:56:43
They were pushed out of the community.
00:56:45
So I am very grateful for you all to mention affordable housing.
00:56:49
I was probably
00:56:50
The youngest and probably only minority at the last community meeting.
00:56:55
I probably have the least skin in the game in the Brookhill community since I don't own, I rent, but I would like to be an owner at some point.
00:57:01
So housing affordability has always been something important to me.
00:57:04
My mom worked for Virginia Housing.
00:57:06
So it's just, I would like to be able to stay in Charlottesville, but there are times where I go, if I cannot buy or continue to rent here, I can't live in this community.
00:57:14
So thank you all for your time.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
00:57:16
Thank you.
00:57:18
Is there anyone else here who would like to speak to this matter?
00:57:21
Okay, seeing none, I'll open it.
00:57:26
Well, anybody online?
00:57:27
Sorry.
00:57:28
Thank you.
SPEAKER_08
00:57:31
All right, please.
00:57:34
So, you'll have three minutes to speak when you start.
00:57:38
State your name and general location, and you can start at any time.
SPEAKER_01
00:57:44
Thank you.
00:57:45
My name is Carolyn Cartwright.
00:57:48
and Carolyn Cartwright.
00:57:52
I live in Brookhill Villas and I have lived here for about two years now and I am employed at UVA.
00:58:02
I wanted to say that thank you all for taking the time to
00:58:07
give us an opportunity to speak up and share our thoughts on it as well.
00:58:13
I was very excited about the community and everything that it had to offer and I was excited about the retail space and so I'm excited to see that that's going to be coming up.
00:58:23
I understand the need for affordable housing, yet I have concerns of being in the neighborhood and seeing
00:58:31
Both since the plots have been filled and the houses have been sold, there has increasingly become a problem with parking in the area and am concerned with the number of increased units coming to the area is how will all of these cars find spots to park?
00:58:49
I want to think about that.
00:58:51
I want to think about the amenities that are available and or
00:58:55
the current amenities that already seem to be degrading.
00:58:59
When I think about the concrete that's starting to chip away in the sidewalks, the fire pit itself has started to degrade and the area around the fire pit.
00:59:10
And just thinking about what some of the suggestions I would add is that things for youth to do in the neighborhood I think is going to become increasingly important and maybe some additional lighting in the area.
00:59:23
I know that there are some
00:59:25
Lighting concerns as far as light pollution, but making sure that it's safe for individuals to be traversing through the neighborhood, I think will become increasingly important as well.
00:59:38
So these are some things that I just want to put out there as we increase the number of individuals living in the area.
00:59:44
We want to think about safety.
00:59:45
We want to think about, yes, affordability.
00:59:49
But it sounds like there's only about 60 units that are going to be available that are affordable.
00:59:53
So a little confused on that.
00:59:54
Considering the price that we paid for the house, I am concerned that it's going to affect the price of our house and what we've invested.
01:00:06
And so these are just some of the concerns that I have at this point.
01:00:10
And I think that should be thought about as we continue to explore this.
01:00:17
Thank you.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:00:18
Thank you.
01:00:20
Any other online or in-person comments?
01:00:25
All right.
01:00:25
Great.
01:00:26
Thank you.
01:00:26
With that, I'll open it back up to the applicant if you'd like to respond to any of the comments that were just provided.
01:00:35
No?
01:00:36
Okay.
01:00:37
All right.
01:00:37
With that, I'll close the public hearing and open it up for discussion.
01:00:42
Anybody like to kick us off?
01:00:44
Do we want to go sequential?
01:00:45
Do we want to jump around?
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:00:48
Is the applicant going to respond to any of the things they heard?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:00:50
No, they had the opportunity to and they decided not to.
01:00:53
Ms.
01:00:56
Firehock, would you like to start us off?
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:00:58
No, I'm going to think here for a minute.
01:01:00
Okay.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:01:01
Anybody else like to kick us off?
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:01:05
I mean, I'll just say that I've long respected the way that this community was designed.
01:01:11
I think it's a good model that I'd like to see more of, you know, the intermix of green space, the idea with commercial on the bottom and residential on the top.
01:01:23
Something as mentioned, this is something that we tried to achieve years ago at Albemarle Place that became Stonefield.
01:01:32
And so, you know, I think this is a overall very positive thing.
01:01:38
I'm glad to see more density in this area.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:01:43
Hi, just real quick.
01:01:44
I agree.
01:01:44
I just was curious though about the parking, because we got showed where the additional units are going.
01:01:50
Do we know where the extra parking is being provided or is it thought that we have plenty of parking already within the development?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:01:58
I'm going to ask the applicant to come back up.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:02:00
If they were doing it, they would be doing surface parking because stacked parking is very expensive.
01:02:07
So I really would like to hear an answer to that.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:02:11
Would you like to address that?
Ashley Davies
Vice President
01:02:12
Thanks.
01:02:14
Yes.
01:02:14
We have 1100 parking spaces in the future town center area to be developed.
01:02:20
So it is more than enough to handle the uses that we have planned.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:02:24
The new units plus people coming from outside to visit the commercial establishments.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
01:02:31
Yes.
01:02:32
So to handle the 300 units plus the commercial, we have 1100.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:02:37
That doesn't mean anything to me because I don't have the calculations of all the businesses and what they are and how many people visit them, but I trust you.
01:02:46
I guess, do you want to respond to the person online who's talking about parking concerns or is there no parking concerns going on now?
01:02:56
They raised that, so I'd like you to respond to it.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
01:02:59
Sure.
01:03:00
So the area that we're talking about for the new units, I don't know if it can pull back up,
01:03:08
So I believe the resident that spoke is up in the northern section of the site that it's some distance.
01:03:19
I mean, it's walkable to the town center, but it's not right next door.
01:03:24
So the units that we're putting in
01:03:26
are within the pink area and you can see the large parking fields directly adjacent to those units.
01:03:33
So there will be ample parking available, not only to those units, but there's no reason why they would drive up and park in the neighborhood.
01:03:42
So I don't expect there to be any impact from what we're looking at in the town center to their section of the neighborhood.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:03:51
OK, and then this might be outside of your area of responsibility, but could you also comment on the person who testified in person here tonight about rents going up?
01:04:04
Perhaps they thought they were going up too steeply, and they thought they were in an affordable unit, so they were concerned about the unit quickly becoming unaffordable.
Ashley Davies
Vice President
01:04:16
So I think that rents have increased across the board in Albemarle County over the past few years and area median income, that number is increasing.
01:04:26
So there have been, you know, rents have gone up slightly, but they are still lower than that 80% area median income.
01:04:36
I would love to actually connect with her after the meeting.
01:04:40
She may qualify for one of the units that's going to the Piedmont Land Trust in the next month or two, so if you want to become a homeowner that could be a really great option and still be in the immediate area.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:04:57
If somebody's living in an affordable unit, and then in general, the region's apartments are becoming more expensive, do you raise the rate the same percent on somebody who's in an affordable unit?
01:05:11
In other words, do they get the going rate of increase that all of the other people are in apartments who are paying market rate?
Ashley Davies
Vice President
01:05:20
No, the market rate units are moving at a totally different pace than the affordable units.
01:05:26
But to qualify as an affordable unit, it has to stay below the 80% area median income.
01:05:33
So that is constantly being monitored and audited with the county.
01:05:38
So it's staying at that rate.
01:05:40
But I mean, I think that doesn't mean it's not difficult.
01:05:44
It's still unaffordable.
01:05:46
Thank you.
01:05:46
Thank you.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:05:49
All right, back into discussion.
01:05:51
Great.
01:05:51
Good follow-ups.
01:05:52
OK.
01:05:54
Yes, Mr. Murray.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:05:56
I mentioned this before, but this is where I think part of the challenge is.
01:05:59
We really have these two economies.
01:06:00
We have the people that make their money from investments, and we have the people that make their money from wages.
01:06:06
And the 80% AMI of wage employees is very different than the 80% AMI of investment employees, investment residents.
01:06:16
So I don't know if that, in the future, that's something that we could ever consider and think more because
01:06:23
Those are really two different populations.
01:06:25
And the people that we really want in our community, we want more wage employees.
01:06:32
So that's the only thing I'll add.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:06:36
Great.
01:06:36
Thanks, Commissioner Bivins.
01:06:38
I need your mic.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:06:43
I don't want to miss a word.
01:06:45
Yes, you do.
01:06:45
Actually, you do, because it was actually going to be very short.
01:06:48
In the expectation of moving on, all of my questions have been answered.
01:06:53
And I am supportive of this project and would hopefully, and hopefully, and hope that we can expedite our decision.
01:07:03
Great.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:07:03
Thanks, Commissioner Claver.
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:07:08
Tough act to follow there.
01:07:10
I really like the project, always have, and I'm really appreciative of the applicant trying to reach for the higher ranges of the allowable density.
01:07:18
I think we had that conversation all throughout the AC44 process, where you're land strapped and you don't want to expand, so we have to do what we can do with what we have.
01:07:28
My frustration is around just our inability to effectively move the needle in housing with the existing tools we have.
01:07:35
I was always thinking about housing Albemarle, the policy, which I know you like to use that word because I think in policy, I think it means you have to do something.
01:07:42
But it's really just encouragement, right?
01:07:44
That the encouragement there, it's
01:07:47
feels like it's not really doing anything.
01:07:49
I don't see, and maybe it's just too early to tell, but it doesn't seem like it's incentivizing anyone.
01:07:54
So maybe that's something we have to go back and look at.
01:07:57
My colleagues during the discussion asked some interesting questions, right?
01:08:00
Thinking of the encouragement as different levers that we can maybe pull on, right?
01:08:04
So maybe you extend the length of affordability versus increasing the number.
01:08:10
In the same vein, what AMIs could tune their eyes,
01:08:14
Can we push a little bit on, I want 60%, but I'll take less units, right?
01:08:18
Like pulling on these levers, because 60% seems like today's new 80% and the reality of it, right?
01:08:25
But all that to say, I'm certainly supportive of this.
01:08:28
I've always loved the project, but that's where my growing frustration comes from.
01:08:32
I just feel like we can't move the needle with any tool that we have, so.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:08:36
You know, it just dawned on me that I think you missed Dr. Pethias's update.
01:08:41
That would be a good, I can send you the notes too.
01:08:43
That would be a good one to have.
01:08:45
Cause that's a lot of what you're talking about was covered in there.
01:08:47
And we talked a little bit about status, you know, where how's or how are we doing?
01:08:51
Where are we going?
01:08:52
How do we measure this?
01:08:54
You know, those types of things, metrics.
01:08:56
Please do send it out.
01:08:56
Thanks.
01:08:57
Yeah.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:08:59
I think on the big things that kind of come before is the sort of policy and
01:09:11
Sort of legislative considerations that we bring or that we kind of think about.
01:09:15
Yeah, this is a good project.
01:09:16
It's adding homes above the commercial sort of first floor.
01:09:21
You know, the staff is satisfied that parking is met.
01:09:25
It looks like it'll be a lovely, you know, preserve trails and things like that.
01:09:30
I think sort of echoing what some of my colleagues have said too that it's still kind of cold comfort to have 80 percent AMI when for a family of four that's a hundred grand a year you know to qualify for that because the AMI in this community for a family of four is about 125 for 124 I don't know the exact thing it's in that ballpark
01:09:50
and so that you know just back of the neck in math that means that I mean like sort of subsidized before not subsidized but like affordable home then is $2,500 a month still which is an awfully steep rent even you know and so that's a
01:10:08
I think that's the frustration that kind of comes to this is that even as we sort of have these liberal-ish policy regimes that try to solve this problem, it's kind of not.
01:10:18
We don't have, to borrow a term from the Obamacare conversations years ago, we don't have a public option.
01:10:26
And I think that is something that, you know, as a community, as a board of supervisors coming down the pike, we ought to think about.
01:10:32
That doesn't sway me in terms of this particular project, but I think it's something we need to really talk about as a body and as our supervisor body.
SPEAKER_16
01:10:39
Great.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:10:42
Thanks.
01:10:42
I just had a couple of comments as well.
01:10:44
One is
01:10:47
It seems, and I don't know if this is a trend or not, it's maybe just two that I'm thinking about, but the idea of adapting to a market that's changing by revising your code of development, and I would just encourage
01:11:04
the development community that when they do that they still focus on what is good design, what is appropriate, what are appropriate mixes and that staff monitors that as well because I think as we said sort of in the initial
01:11:17
design vision was probably done with intent based on what would work well.
01:11:22
And so if that's starting to shift, and we'd seen that in a couple of other developments as well, are we starting to lose what is an appropriate mix of uses in lieu of adapting to changing markets?
01:11:35
So just thinking about how that plays out, I think this is an appropriate change.
01:11:40
The density is called for in this area.
01:11:45
Let's see, affordable housing.
01:11:48
So, you know, I appreciate that the applicant has spoken about the diversity of approaches that they are taking and I would encourage that for other larger developers in the area.
01:11:59
I think that's
01:12:00
you know certain locations are really I think suited to different types of affordable goals and objectives so I think thinking through that creatively is great and then you know the retention of affordability was spoken to in the public hearing but also we've spoken a lot about that as well and the applicant
01:12:22
offered to consider that the duration of that.
01:12:25
So I just would like that note to go forward to the Board of Supervisors as when you all go to the board that maybe you've given some thought to the duration of affordability based on what we've talked about tonight.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:12:38
So with that, is anybody willing to... I just want to make a really quick comment just for the audience that may be listening online or the minutes that this site, just real quick, I was on the commission when it first came to us.
01:12:52
And it was a greenfield site.
01:12:56
It was a habitat core.
01:12:58
In other words, it was large enough to be considered a priority site in the state and in our county.
01:13:04
And I agreed to vote for it the last time because two reasons.
01:13:10
One, of their sensitive treatment of the environment, they didn't pipe streams, they tried to maintain
01:13:17
Those passageways, it didn't break up the site too much.
01:13:23
And also, of course, the salamander tunnels, we know about those.
01:13:27
But also, we want to preserve the rural area.
01:13:31
And so if we want to do that, we make some sacrifices.
01:13:35
Closer in.
01:13:35
And so this was one of those sacrifices.
01:13:38
But I'd like to see, as we have to make sacrifices in the future at sites, that other developers would understand, like these do, that you can develop and still have green connectivity, protect streams, respect the land.
01:13:58
So this site does better than most.
01:14:01
And so I just wanted to put that on the record.
01:14:04
and I'm glad that the density is going up instead of out.
01:14:09
So that's why I can really support this again.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:14:12
Great, thank you.
01:14:14
Anybody be willing to make a motion?
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:14:17
Mr. Chair, I'm happy to do it out of the Rivanna District.
01:14:20
I move to recommend approval of ZMA 2024-00008, Brooke Hill for the reason stated in the staff report.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:14:27
Is there a second?
01:14:30
Second.
01:14:31
Any discussion?
01:14:34
All right, with that, may we have the roll, please?
SPEAKER_08
01:14:36
Yes.
01:14:36
Mr. Bivins?
01:14:37
Aye.
01:14:38
Mr. Murray?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:14:39
Aye.
SPEAKER_08
01:14:40
Mr. Clayborne?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:14:41
Aye.
SPEAKER_08
01:14:42
Mr. Missel?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:14:42
Aye.
SPEAKER_08
01:14:43
Mr. Moore?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:14:44
Aye.
SPEAKER_08
01:14:44
Ms.
01:14:44
Butterhock?
01:14:46
Aye.
01:14:46
Thank you.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:14:47
Thank you all.
01:14:47
Thanks.
01:14:50
All right, with that, we will move into our work session and out of the public hearing.
01:14:55
And we will address CPA 2021-02 AC44 comp plan implementation
SPEAKER_03
01:15:37
How do you say that?
01:15:38
Shattering
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:16:11
All right, sorry for the delay.
01:16:13
I'm Tanya Swartzendruber, Planning Manager for Community Development Department and here to talk about implementation of the comp plan.
01:16:25
So the most exciting part of this presentation is to announce that you have an entire rough draft of the plan at your disposal and this looks a whole lot better than the 900 pages in the binder on the shelf in my office.
01:16:46
You also recently received a complete part one, a complete part two, the implementation chapter and a few appendices.
01:16:56
We're going to just be focusing on the implementation chapter tonight.
01:17:00
I'll go through the remaining review opportunities later when we talk about the schedule.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:17:06
I'm sorry, just to clarify when you say the implement that later, later tonight or later?
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:17:13
So I was just going to talk about the opportunities for input on the other chapters when we talk about the schedule.
01:17:22
So on the screen is our agenda for tonight.
01:17:24
We just talked about document status.
01:17:27
We'll go over the overview, upcoming schedule, potential comprehensive plan amendments, as well as the discussion topics.
01:17:39
These are those topics.
01:17:41
We just have the two for tonight.
01:17:45
And I will bring that slide back up at the end of the presentation.
01:17:51
So what do we mean by implementation?
01:17:53
First, it's making progress on the recommended actions listed in AC44 that cut across several county departments.
01:18:02
It's also about internal education on how this document should be utilized.
01:18:09
as well as keeping track of the progress and reporting out about not only our accomplishments, but the effect of those accomplishments.
01:18:19
So why do we do implementation?
01:18:22
No community needs another plan that sits on the shelf.
01:18:25
And implementation is about turning the vision of AC44 into action, providing accountability and building momentum.
01:18:35
Currently, we have over 250 actions across nine topics and multiple departments and external entities.
01:18:45
So it'll be important for us to prioritize those actionable first steps of implementation.
01:18:54
So why do we want to prioritize?
01:18:56
Well, first, it's best practice for most modern comprehensive plans.
01:19:01
And given the number of the actions that I just mentioned, over a 20-year planning horizon, prioritizing these recommendations is important for providing focused implementation over the next five years.
01:19:19
Prioritizing recommendations also allows the county to effectively allocate limited funding and staff capacity, better informing the strategic plan, capital improvement program, and the county budget.
01:19:34
So what we've done as staff in conjunction with our leadership is we have developed these six, what we're calling big moves.
01:19:45
These were drafted keeping in mind the themes that we heard throughout public engagement, as well as the feedback that we heard from y'all and the board.
01:19:54
We'll go through each one briefly.
01:19:57
There are more detailed descriptions in the text of the chapter.
01:20:02
Starting with the first one, align regulations to support AC44.
01:20:08
I'll mention on all the slides you'll see to the right the chapters that most likely align or most obviously align with each big move.
01:20:19
There's probably an argument to connect all of the chapters to all of these big moves, but we did try and focus on the most important.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:20:28
I'm sorry, I can ask a really quick question so I don't
01:20:31
Stay Lost.
01:20:34
By big moves, do you mean big actions, the big priorities?
01:20:40
Is that what you mean?
01:20:41
Or do you mean literally like moving things around in the plan?
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:20:44
Priorities.
01:20:46
I'm sorry.
01:20:47
I probably should have defined a big move.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:20:50
So I was like, what's moving where?
01:20:53
OK, go ahead.
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:20:54
What we've defined as a big move is a grouping of actions that most will move the needle the most.
01:21:04
And they probably cut across departments or entities and chapters as well.
01:21:10
Okay, I'm back on track.
01:21:12
Okay, thank you.
01:21:13
Appreciate it.
01:21:15
So looking at aligning these regulations, the regulations we're talking about are the development related policies, including the zoning ordinance, subdivision regulations, and so on.
01:21:29
The goal behind this big move would be to improve the clarity, simplify ease of use, and then also updating requirements to implement AC44 actions.
01:21:46
For example, one of the actions in the development area land use chapter is to update the zoning ordinance to allow residential uses in commercial zoning districts by right in some locations.
01:21:59
So just an example of one of the actions.
01:22:04
Second is increasing affordable housing access and we can do this by updating the zoning and land use regulations to allow for a broader range of housing types including the missing middle like duplexes, small-scale multi-family and accessory dwelling units.
01:22:24
especially in the activity centers.
01:22:27
Secondly, we can identify and protect at-risk homes and support rehabilitation and potential subsidies.
01:22:36
For this one, working with both the county and state housing offices will be crucial.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:22:42
Do you want us to ask questions throughout this or what do you prefer?
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:22:46
Yeah, feel free to interrupt me with questions.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:22:49
Okay, I just had one on the previous slide if I might.
01:22:51
So, where does
01:22:54
Maybe you answered it when you said partnering with the housing office, but where does funding come in here, adding funding to support and increase affordable housing access and options?
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
01:23:06
Okay, so some of this is your 20-year plan, and you have a five-year strategic plan.
01:23:12
I think in some respects, again, you're
01:23:22
Your comp plan is that 20-year vision.
01:23:25
Hopefully, as we sync things up at the county a little bit more, the strategic plan, the five-year window will be heavily influenced by these big moves.
01:23:35
That's really where the dollars start getting attached to projects.
01:23:39
We were very cognizant of the fact that the comp plan is not a budgeting vehicle per se.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:23:46
Right.
01:23:46
A budgeting vehicle.
01:23:48
But a prioritizing vehicle.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
01:23:51
That's what we're trying to do.
01:23:53
We're trying to say look these these big six things yeah if we as a county can focus on these things and try and move them forward we will make it will be transformational and one of the vision that's in the plan can be channeled to these six
01:24:09
Big moves as opposed to not having them.
01:24:11
I think one of our experiences from the previous plans very thick lots of actions and and not sort of a prioritization necessarily so this part of this implementation chapter is to try and give us a little bit more direction and also something we can look back in five ten years and say did we meet these things as well right okay okay I think I understand thanks
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:24:34
Before we leave this screen, just one suggestion.
01:24:36
We have identified protect at risk homes.
01:24:39
I agree.
01:24:40
But could we add and communities to that?
01:24:44
Because not just protecting at risk homes, but also entire communities that are that are at risk.
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:24:50
Enough.
01:24:50
Thank you.
01:24:53
Looking at the third one, this is about investing resources in compact and connected development areas, especially in the activity centers.
01:25:03
This is really about encouraging growth and focused in new public and private investment in urban places.
01:25:11
Projections show that we'll need to accommodate 31,000 people over the next 20 years.
01:25:17
That equates to roughly 13,000 households.
01:25:22
The GMP or the growth management policy tells us that this should happen in the development areas and AC44 recommends that the majority of it happens in the activity centers.
01:25:34
This takes advantage of existing infrastructure and allows for more efficient provision of new and or upgraded infrastructure services.
01:25:46
Investment in infrastructure services and amenities makes it a place where people want to live, work, and visit.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:25:56
So this one does speak to new and public.
01:25:59
It's focusing new and public and private investments.
01:26:02
This one does speak to the financial aspect of it.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
01:26:05
From the standpoint of, broadly speaking, there's a recommendation in the plan that to build these centers,
01:26:13
There needs to be investment.
01:26:15
It doesn't necessarily say whether it's a parking deck at, you know, Royal Road or something like that.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:26:21
I'm just saying that the previous number two said the goal is to increase the affordable housing availability through new public and private investments.
01:26:32
Couldn't it say that?
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
01:26:35
And I think what I would say on this particular one, well, the ones that the previous ones talking about, like trying to target housing specifically, the activity centers will be a compendium of multiple initiatives.
01:26:48
I mean, it'll be adding parks, be making investment in transit, those types of things.
01:26:55
It's slightly broader, but the idea behind this particular one is
01:26:59
We have these activity centers where we're really trying to make the focal point.
01:27:02
Those are probably gonna take a concerted effort of both private and public funding to make them happen.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:27:09
I would, if you're asking me, which I think you are, I would just add something that has to do with financial investment on number two.
01:27:17
Okay.
01:27:18
I'm sorry if I missed that nuance.
01:27:20
Oh, sorry.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
01:27:21
Okay.
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:27:27
Okay.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:27:28
Moving on to the- Tim, stand on this one for just a second.
01:27:32
So am I to understand that what's in the document that that narrative will have a larger presence?
01:27:39
So for instance, when you say on page 11, the item number three, that the narrative blob there will be the narrative blob that becomes public.
01:27:50
OK, so I'm going to send you a couple of things on that.
01:27:51
But on this one, I was unlike the, what line is that?
01:27:54
Page 11.
01:27:56
One, two, three, four, five, six.
01:27:57
The sixth line where it says,
01:28:00
all the commercial areas that are typically over parked.
01:28:04
I know that's a term of art that we use, but that's just, if you can come up with a different terminology for that, I think that's better because it sounds like it's crowded, but it's not crowded.
01:28:14
I think it's because it has more, it has excess capacity.
01:28:17
And I think that's really what you want to say, but if this is for the public, which I think we're trying to put a document in public, that feels as if we're saying, you know, there's more people that are not, and I know that's not what we're saying, it's something there that I would do.
01:28:29
And then,
01:28:34
There's the piece, maybe I'll wait because I think I'm coming also back to what the chair said that there is a piece and I think there is something later on that you go to that's talking about what's the connection to the CIP.
01:28:50
And while it's not necessarily, there is no number connected to this, is there a way to describe how the things here get lifted up for the strategic plan so they do get included?
01:29:06
Because the whole idea of how are we creating a nexus between
01:29:10
between the comp plan, the zoning, and the strategic plan, and the various other plans that we have that come out of here.
01:29:17
So that there's a universe that has some, there's a universe of plans that also are connected in some ways.
01:29:23
So being able to say this helps to inform that as a footnote or something like that, I think that's not here, but I was trying to sort of think that through as I was reading it.
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:29:36
I can appreciate that might need a little bit more thought in the narrative and in the presentation we do get into that a little bit.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:29:45
And I'm not trying to rewrite it, just maybe a sentence that you say, you know, and all of this will at some point be connected to this, this, and this.
01:29:50
Right.
01:29:51
And it's in there, you know.
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:29:52
Appreciate that too.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:29:53
I had a little on this one and it's, granted what's happened in the city with not filing their paperwork and time and all that is a whole different story, but I trust that our county staff would file every document on time as needed.
01:30:03
And I'm wondering why we didn't just sort of approach this with sort of a broad scale up-zoning goal rather than this kind of, oh yeah, we're going to kind of encourage things slowly, gently in centers and get there one day.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
01:30:23
Let me seek clarification on that.
01:30:27
So I think when you're saying upzoning, I mean, we've been talking with both you and the board about ways to add extra density capacity in the development areas.
01:30:42
I think that there's
01:30:48
We've gained some understanding of like, you know, we've articulated a strategy of the activity centers, in part, thought that that was really the direction we've been given.
01:31:00
And we've discussed that it's a great place to add a lot of density.
01:31:04
There are definitely some opportunities to do that on some of our
01:31:11
Lower end, lower scale, or density residential zoning districts, but that there was, it seemed that there was some hesitancy and, you know,
01:31:24
allowing much, certainly is what the city has done about allowing as much density to increase in those areas.
01:31:31
So I think that was, this plan should, is an attempt to reflect that guidance.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:31:37
The answer very well could be, Nathan, you're an outlier.
01:31:40
I mean, that's an understandable answer.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:31:43
Can I respond to you?
01:31:44
Yeah.
01:31:46
So I've been on this body for something like eight years and I, every year I say something along the lines of,
01:31:54
Why don't we just go ahead and zone the county to how we want it according to the comp plan?
01:32:00
I'm not suggesting we do what Charlottesville just did, but I was on the planning commission in Charlottesville as well many years ago, and we did do a major rezoning of the city to get the density and uses in the places we wanted them.
01:32:16
The reason the county doesn't pursue that approach, my understanding, is that the county believes, and I say the county, like who is the county?
01:32:25
The board of supervisors, some portion of the staff, whatever, that the county will get more by having people come in for rezoning some proffer things.
01:32:37
And over the years, our ability to get proffers has declined.
01:32:43
We used to have a requirement for a certain cash proffer that came in.
01:32:47
They went into the county's coffers that was used for transportation and all of the parks or whatever the impacts of growth are.
01:32:58
It never was enough money, but it was some.
01:33:01
Now we don't really have that.
01:33:03
And so we kind of are here.
01:33:05
We're waiting for our scraps.
01:33:07
Can we have a park, sir?
01:33:09
Can we have a bike trail?
01:33:14
All of that.
01:33:15
And we're asking for it.
01:33:16
And we've even, as they noted in the last presentation, we've sat here and said, let's go up.
01:33:22
Let's go higher.
01:33:23
Let's go even higher.
01:33:24
We've been pushing for that.
01:33:27
But I also hear, and I'm sure Fred experiences it from his day job, like you hear the amount of money it costs to come through this process and the years and the amount of staff time to go through all this.
01:33:41
So this is just my annual statement that I agree that we should go ahead and just zone it to what we want it to make it easier to do.
01:33:51
Put parks where we want them instead of trying to get these scrap parks because I think Commissioner Bivins' point earlier was that, yes, somebody says there's a park, there's a nature trail, but it's not really public.
01:34:04
And this one was, the one tonight, but there's the access.
01:34:09
And then there's other developments where they're like, yes, we made a park, but please don't come in here.
01:34:14
And we've heard from people who say, don't let the people in that development come over to my development.
01:34:19
I don't want those people next door in my park.
01:34:22
So anyway, I agree with you.
01:34:25
I've stood on this soapbox and you can stand up there with me, but I don't see this happening in the near term.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:34:34
I'll also just add to this that Crozet went first with Missing Middle.
01:34:40
And there's a lot of frustration that no one has really followed.
01:34:46
Crozet went first.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:34:47
I heard that, but there's a frustration.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:34:48
There's a frustration that no other development areas followed.
01:34:52
And so a lot of people, there's a lot of
01:34:56
that they've sort of been this, they're asked to make the sacrifice of having them missing middle of this additional Disney, but no one else has done the same.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:35:07
What about Avon Street extended and all of that?
01:35:09
There's a lot of density coming there and also 29 North.
01:35:13
So I think some Crozatians should come in, I made that up, should come visit.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:35:20
That is the right terminology.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:35:21
There's other areas I think they'll find it much more dense.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:35:25
So if I can come alongside of that, I think part of what we always wrestle with is what is density.
01:35:30
And I would like to throw the single family housing thing out, which is what drives some of the conversation in Crozet and have people appreciate the density comes in different types of units.
01:35:40
I know you've lost control.
01:35:41
Just deal with it for a second.
01:35:43
and so what we're saying and what we've had to live with and I would challenge anyone from Crozet to come and look at our minutes over the years because we've been on it about the same year.
01:35:57
Where we have seen the majority of the programs, projects that are coming for us has not been in Crozet.
01:36:02
That's where we've gotten a lot of lip from and I'm sure somebody will say that in the Crozet Gazette but where we have seen the largest growth
01:36:11
and units has been outside.
01:36:13
It's been in pantops, it's been up 29, it's even been in my small little district where we don't have a lot of grand speed.
01:36:19
And so if we look at what density looks like, density is drifting away from single family occupancy.
01:36:26
And it's moving, I'm not going to say it should, and it's moving into townhouses and it's moving into different kinds of plans community.
01:36:33
And so that's what I think some of our future, some of our conversations have been about.
01:36:38
How are we going to, as a community,
01:36:42
comfortably march away from the sort of the the sort of GI Bill dream of single-family occupancy and move back to a sort of the dream of where there were different types of connectivity connected houses and different and sort of intentionally different size housing communities that that sort of push back at
01:37:03
at sort of single-family housing or sort of what I would say is sort of the evolving new suburbia and so that's I think what we're trying, what some of us are, one of you two, what we're trying to figure out how do we do this in a place that we don't have a lot of green land, not greenfield land.
01:37:19
we don't have a lot of green fill-in.
01:37:20
So most of what we're doing is sort of what we're seeing tonight or what we're seeing we're seeing these fill-in on property on projects that gosh you know you're going to get 12 units okay that's fine we're going to get 12 units but that's not going to tip the scale as if we want to tip the scale.
01:37:34
And if I could just add we need to keep in mind that at some point developers will say I'm not going to put any I don't want any density I don't want any more density if what I have to do is come through this process.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:37:47
That's the problem, that's what I hear.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:37:49
I'm going to build what I can build on this piece of property and I'm not going to look for any additional density because I don't want to deal with all this foolishness.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:37:56
Well that's kind of what I was getting at with my not super well phrased question there is like if we actually just enable a new zoning map where the density is very much allowed by right then we don't have to be so in the grips of discretionary review for everything.
01:38:11
and we still build it safely, but you know.
01:38:14
Anyway, sir.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
01:38:16
I think that may I, at least at this point, the third one, I think, regardless of whether or not we
01:38:27
I think one of the things we try to do with this conference and plan is, and I've forgotten the numbers, but we had something like 50 centers before, and we've significantly reduced that.
01:38:38
And moreover, we've put them in a hierarchy where you have, you know, the higher tier, regional, which is only five of those, and then more of the community.
01:38:46
And I think regardless of how you might
01:38:49
Color in a new map.
01:38:50
I think the idea of trying to have some centers that are some places you can really make walkable and then start building walkability out from there potentially.
01:39:01
To realize what the community's vision is, it's always been to have something very urbane and walkable and have something there there.
01:39:08
What this thing is about is creating that there.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:39:12
Are we doing comments at the end for the content or are we doing them section by section?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:39:19
I think, well, if it's up to, okay, I guess it's up to, why don't we just wait till the end and let's just do kind of individual comments on each one of these and then we'll come back.
01:39:28
Is that alright?
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:39:29
I'm happy to answer any questions as we go along.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:39:32
But maybe the bigger, bigger comments towards the end.
01:39:35
Is that alright?
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:39:37
I mean, I would just sort of come alongside.
01:39:38
So, you know, this focus on activity centers, let's sort of keep in mind two things.
01:39:43
The fastest growing demography here is over 55.
01:39:51
15-minute walkables is not relevant to that population.
01:39:57
That is, those are people who are not going to at some point walk 15 minutes for a whole host of reasons.
01:40:04
And so when I keep hearing about these walkable cities, I say, you need to think about what the population looks like here.
01:40:11
Now I also know that we also have some drivers that
01:40:14
sort of scary when they drive, but that's a whole different conversation that we can have at some point.
01:40:18
But this whole idea that we're going to pivot to sort of these sort of, you know, the great urban centers that had 15-minute walkable, the new urban, the new, what is it?
01:40:29
the new urbanism that everything needs to be within 15 minutes.
01:40:35
We can't do that here.
01:40:37
We don't have a population that will walk 15 minutes.
01:40:39
And I live in a very dense area.
01:40:41
And I don't see people who look like we're older than me age-wise who are walking anywhere.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:40:46
And so- I'm down to my neighborhood.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:40:47
I know.
01:40:47
Well, yeah, yeah.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:40:48
Some of these old people walking down the road, no sidewalks.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:40:51
I know.
01:40:52
Well, yeah, that happens on my road because we don't have sidewalks either.
01:40:56
Any more questions or comments on this?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:40:58
I just have one comment on this one, which was that the emphasis here is on activity centers.
01:41:01
You did mention elsewhere the importance of addressing the areas that were called over parks.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:41:20
but I think that that should be more explicitly in here because the activity centers don't necessarily line up with those areas of excessive parking with the development area particularly on 29 and I think we do I think those are should be a very high priority in terms of you know in terms of redevelopment and providing incentives to get those places transformed into different spaces
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:41:44
Thank you.
01:41:44
We've been talking about that as we talk about our future area planning process as well.
01:41:49
And that's for another conversation.
01:41:57
Moving on to four, these next two are really economic development related.
01:42:02
This fourth one is about supporting agricultural and forestry uses in the rural area.
01:42:10
This is really directly from the economic development strategic plan that you heard about about a month ago, I think.
01:42:19
you know the focus is to maintain agricultural and forest business and while also protecting environmentally sensitive areas.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:42:30
So an issue that I have with this is a lot of the other ones are very much more specific with measurable goals and you know and very clear pathways to get from A to B and this one doesn't seem to have that.
01:42:44
And so I feel like that instead of number four, I've long felt that what we need is a rural area plan.
01:42:51
And that's really what this should say, because I think- They say we're getting one.
01:42:59
So this should be about the rural area plan, really, and the development of that and thinking comprehensively.
01:43:08
And I think, you know, there are objective goals that we could have when we talk later about metrics.
01:43:13
But you know, like, you know, how good are you know, how many of our local products from agriculture are making their way to market?
01:43:23
You know, how are we doing in terms of our farmers markets basis, you know, like our, you know, do we have adequate access to local food within, you know, our activity centers?
01:43:33
I mean, I think that's a good there's a lot you could do with this.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:43:37
And I would also say are we also increasing if we know one of the one of the things that we use the USDA
01:43:41
I think one of the great senses that we've looked at, if we've seen a dramatic decrease in family farms, are farms below a certain size?
01:43:48
So if one of the things we're trying to do, if we're trying to support, and this is not my decision, but this is the decision that I would like to have somebody reflect on, is this someplace where we're going to look at enhancing or paying attention to the small farmer?
01:44:03
Because that's the area that I think
01:44:07
If we look at a common good, that feels like a common good as opposed to a corporate farmer, instead of the large corporate farmers, which I don't necessarily know how I would feel about county dollars going to that.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:44:21
For a while, full disclosure, I work for the health system.
01:44:27
One of the nice things the UVA health system was doing for a while, and I think they still are, is their cafeteria was intentionally purchasing products from local farmers.
01:44:36
and offering them in the cafeteria.
01:44:39
And that's the kind of program I think that really matters.
01:44:44
It's not the big hay fields.
01:44:50
It's whether someone's growing a fresh vegetable that makes it on someone's plate in Albemarle County or that makes it into a product that's actually sold.
01:44:59
and so I think I just think that we need more measurable objective goals and in this you know and even when we're talking about
01:45:09
and also in terms of protect environmentally sensitive areas, we can, when we have a working GIS again, do things like measure stream buffers.
01:45:21
Like how many stream, do we have metrics on how many streams are lacking buffers?
01:45:26
Has that increased or has that declined?
01:45:30
How has our forest cover changed from the last time we did a land cover analysis to the current time we did a land cover analysis?
01:45:39
for, you know, we have a list of rare species in Albemarle County and rare habitats.
01:45:44
How many of those have been lost?
01:45:46
You know, so I think there's, I just feel like there's more work that could really be done on this to make this more objective and measurable.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:45:55
As we're talking through this kind of thing, I think one of the questions, we can kind of address the questions too as we're going.
01:46:00
The one is, are we capturing all of the big moves, right?
01:46:04
Are they the appropriate ones?
01:46:06
Are we capturing them?
01:46:07
What we've been talking about a little bit is how can we enhance these big moves a little bit with some narratives and some tweets and some bigger, bigger vision.
01:46:15
So I'd keep in the back of our minds, are there other big moves, if that's fair, that are missing and is one of them,
01:46:23
Sounds like everything we're talking about sort of fits under these, but if there's some that poke out, then we should talk about it.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:46:30
Yeah, I don't have, maybe at the end we'll address any of the ones that are just totally not there.
01:46:35
I think with number four, I think hearing some of what my colleagues are saying, and when I read this one, and this is really just within the number four that exists, to your point, it did read kind of like, just kind of keep doing more of the same, which is,
01:46:53
Perfectly valid thing to put into a plan.
01:46:55
I just don't know if that's sort of the bold step we want.
01:46:59
I do think I probably would have a different framing on that than Commissioner Murray.
01:47:02
While I do think there are things we can do to actually support an agricultural economy, we don't have a vibrant agricultural economy.
01:47:12
We have some successful farms, but our average farm in this county loses $16,000 a year.
01:47:18
So that we have like support agriculture support actually shot through every part of our plans since I've been on this board it's like is that really the thing that we want to be is that actually a what we're doing and be what we need to be doing and I don't know the answer is yes so if we actually want to support agriculture we should look at ways to get younger producers in there to get on the land to make the land actually vibrant and viable for these things that that's I would just say that part of the what Tanya mentioned and
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
01:47:49
Underline again is that, you know, the economic development plan that is sort of undergirding a lot of this particular one.
01:48:02
One of the three big moves they're really trying to do there, I don't know how to use that word, but one was this biotechnology, the other one is related to some of the defense industry, especially the stuff of our manifestation.
01:48:16
and then the third was talking about agricultural and I guess as that analysis has gone through on that thing that there is a lot of potential value in our state, in our county to
01:48:27
to leverage agriculture.
01:48:30
And that can be some of the most traditional stuff as well as some of the stuff that you might think of with wineries and other related industries like that.
01:48:37
I don't want to make a distinction between the two, but you know, I think sometimes people think of it all as farming is growing vegetables.
01:48:44
And so I think that that's one of the big pushes that's coming out and that's part of what we're talking about here.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:48:50
I guess it's tricky because we're not working on the economic plan, this body.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
01:48:58
that it's being done above our grade grade.
01:49:02
We brought it to you all to talk about it.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:49:07
That is the point I think the public's confused about.
01:49:09
The economic development
01:49:14
The very high level that was being developed was not given to us as, here is a plan, what do you think?
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:49:29
We're starting this journey.
01:49:32
Here's some broad thing.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:49:34
And so I want to be really clear that that's not what the Planning Commission is not involved with.
01:49:41
The driver of the economic development plan, which I think we've received some emails about that.
01:49:49
And we've also had tonight some public comment about that.
01:49:53
If we are, that's news to me, because I don't feel that I've got the body of information to be able to do that effectively.
01:50:01
I do have the body of information to observe and to comment on it, but I'm not going to drive a plan the way we've been driving this.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
01:50:07
Well, I would push.
01:50:11
We've got the conference planning effort we're under right now started more than three years ago.
01:50:18
We're working to bring that to a close.
01:50:21
The conference of review of the economic strategy sort of
01:50:28
It happened in the latter portion of this effort of the conference plan.
01:50:34
And they're still working on it now.
01:50:37
We recognize that.
01:50:39
We recognize that as part of our, that chapter on thriving economy that a lot of it's going to be based on results of this.
01:50:48
But I would say, you know, in a couple of years from now, let me just pull out something that the fire department's going to be working on some new standards or something else they'll be doing on a plan.
01:50:58
and hopefully parts of that will get wrapped back into the conference and plan.
01:51:01
We referenced those things now.
01:51:03
I mean, there's, you know, in a county government where you've got all these different things that you're doing as an organization to stop, wait for things to catch up, you'll never get anything done.
01:51:14
So we're trying to wrap up this.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:51:17
And Mr. Barnes, that's not what I'm suggesting.
01:51:19
I'm not suggesting we should stop.
01:51:20
I'm basically trying to sort of put some fencing around what we're doing.
01:51:26
So that the public understands that the fencing, that we're not, that the economic development plan is not going to leech into what the planning commission is doing.
01:51:34
That's, as my colleague said, that's at a different pay grade.
01:51:38
We've commented on it, we've seen it, but it is not our responsibility.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:51:44
Well, I think when you get to the next move, we'll talk a little bit about this as well, right?
01:51:49
Because the next move is about economic development.
01:51:52
And it says right in there, providing the best environment for diverse economic activity requires the implementation of a long-term and short-term strategies.
01:52:00
So essentially, to your point, what I think we're working on here is helping to create a framework for economic development.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:52:08
I agree with you.
01:52:09
And part of that is, how do we put, how does the development
01:52:14
Yeah.
01:52:15
Yeah.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:52:15
Right.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:52:30
That's about money, one way or another.
01:52:33
We view it through the lens of housing, we view it through the lens of factories, but it's really about money.
01:52:39
Land developed, developed land generates some sort of income.
01:52:43
And so part of what we're also asking about when we look at this comp plan is to put in place those signals so that outsiders can read the plan and make a decision on whether or not they want to invest here or have some sense of how long it's going to take them to get from an idea to a certificate of occupancy.
01:53:02
That to me is what we're trying to do here.
01:53:04
I know people want to say, no, it's my house.
01:53:06
It's your house, but it's really how much you're going to sell your house for at the end of the day.
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:53:14
Is that it?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:53:14
Yeah, number five.
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:53:15
Ready to move on to number five, which is to expand economic opportunity.
01:53:21
This is also in support of the EDSP through the lens of the future land use and development effects that we can have as a department, as a county.
01:53:37
So really trying to provide that foundation of land use policy
01:53:42
and Thoughtful Land Use Management.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:53:46
And so you'll include, so you have two different, two different chapters here that's not included in your related chapter at the bottom of this page.
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:53:53
We'll update those.
01:53:58
Last one is about mitigating and preparing for the impacts of climate change to protect public health, safety and quality of life.
01:54:10
We can reduce local greenhouse emissions, our natural systems can offer high impact climate protection, and we can proactively invest in infrastructure upgrades.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:54:23
But here we don't talk about climate migrants.
01:54:28
We've never dealt with the fact that if you go towards Virginia Beach, at some point, when there's an issue, all of the off-ramps get closed.
01:54:36
You're not getting off and you're not getting on.
01:54:38
You have to go here, basically.
01:54:40
Go to Richmond or come here.
01:54:42
And so there is this piece that what's going to happen if there's a climate, I'm not going to talk about political, but if there's a climate issue, are we willing, are we in a position to deal with those kinds of things?
01:54:53
Because those folks will just land on our doors.
01:54:58
And that's, you know, what's this community going to do about that kind of stuff?
01:55:04
Or think about, I'm not saying that we have to have a piece of paper, but is there thinking along those people who deal with emergencies, how we handle climate migration, which could happen
01:55:16
which could happen.
01:55:17
It is happening.
01:55:19
Thank you for saying that.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:55:23
I think the other thing too is since my time on the Planning Commission we had a campground come before us that had campsites right along the water and we acknowledged among us that that was a risky thing to do to have those campsites.
01:55:41
We ended up approving additional more campsites there
01:55:46
Twice now, they've had to have some really serious rescue operations for people that were about to be washed down the river.
01:55:57
And so as we look at what happened in Texas, and we think about what are appropriate places for various activities,
01:56:09
We may want to start taking a step back and thinking more sensitively about what kind of uses we allow or even want to encourage to move away from the banks of rivers.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:56:23
Or fires.
01:56:25
While we have had those two flood incidents, what we've really been threatened by, and I think that the threat is even higher,
01:56:32
projects perhaps not today is the fact that we live in a place that you have forest fires and it's hard to get to some of those places that have forest that they're subject to burning today.
01:56:42
This is hard to get there.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:56:43
Yeah, there's a forest in Ivy that that forest is burned twice now.
01:56:48
And I've seen, you know, but I, as I've said before, I hope that we give serious thought to a fire risk overlay that we can map out the places that we know.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:56:58
There is a fire ignition density map that I sent to the Board of Supervisors about five years ago.
01:57:04
It exists.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:57:05
Yeah, it does exist.
01:57:06
But that's just sort of thinking about it's not that there are
01:57:11
There are both lifestyle changes that we are also thinking about as we're also trying how to mitigate these changes, those lifestyle changes that I think many of us have been concerned about.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:57:22
One thing I just made me think of this, and you were talking about related chapters, related guiding principle, how that's listed down below here.
01:57:31
I wonder if there's something where you could talk to related partnerships of some kind.
01:57:35
You know, like who else is doing this in the area?
01:57:37
How could that, so climate action, I mean, climate action plan is one of the related, but you know, are there partnerships with the city and the county, the resilience, resilient together, I think it's called, right?
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:57:51
It is, yeah.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
01:57:52
So that kind of thing, for example, where are there opportunities for partnerships under each of these categories might be helpful.
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
01:57:58
It's a great, great idea.
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:58:01
Mr. Chairman, I had a couple of comments to this one.
01:58:04
I'm glad you mentioned resiliency.
01:58:05
So there might be something worth weaving into.
01:58:07
I think that's a key word here.
01:58:09
And also just taking a more, an additional holistic view of this, right?
01:58:14
So it's more than just greenhouse emissions.
01:58:16
What we're seeing now is a more holistic approach.
01:58:18
We're looking at carbon, we're looking at
01:58:20
the materials people are specifying and understanding the planning commission can't dictate that but how do we start to shape a culture where that's just who we are right with circular economy right so um taking a look at that as well as agile down regenerative regenerative design which is like just looking at your project more holistically it's doing the community better right better than what you found it right so just that kind of mindset
01:58:47
trying to push for a better site design, better building design within our limits as a PC.
01:58:52
But how do these policies and documents start to guide that conversation?
01:58:56
So that was the one thing I jotted down for this.
SPEAKER_03
01:58:58
Thank you.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:59:02
My only comment on this is just that while I do appreciate greenhouse gas emissions and natural systems as forms of resilience and sort of making ourselves more ready for it, I think that
01:59:13
that infrastructure upgrade, that investment in actually like explicitly prep activities.
01:59:23
I would put that, not that these bullet points are in order, but that one's the highest in my mind.
01:59:26
You know, I think like I've said before, it's like we could have zero emissions on all of our vehicles and buildings and still not be ready.
01:59:34
So I want to make sure we're focused on being ready.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
01:59:37
But I think the big thing is that there are these corollaries.
01:59:43
People always think about climate change as the big, well, we can't change the global temperature with anything we're doing in Albemarle County.
01:59:50
But a lot of the same things that we need to address, the increase in temperature, also have an effect on things like the heat island effect that affects our local communities.
02:00:01
The things that we can't,
02:00:04
We can't stop massive storms that are increasing, but we certainly can keep people from building floodplains.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:00:11
Yes, we can.
02:00:13
And our county is pretty progressive in that respect.
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
02:00:16
All right.
02:00:22
Alright, so moving on from the actual big moves to tracking and reporting.
02:00:31
We've been discussing internally with our leadership exactly what we will track and how we will track it.
02:00:37
This gets into the metrics.
02:00:40
We've settled on tracking progress on the big moves that we just talked about.
02:00:45
And we have started to articulate specific metrics that will paint a complete picture of the progress that we're making.
02:00:56
Our definition of a metric is really showing trends and patterns, not necessarily establishing a target or goal.
02:01:07
Those will be established as part of the strategic plan effort.
02:01:12
Using the Big Move 3, which is addressing anticipated growth in the development areas and activity centers, the specific metrics that we may use are and include increasing the percentage of housing units in the development areas that are within a 15-minute walk.
02:01:32
of a park, decrease the number of fatal and severe crashes for cyclists and pedestrians, increase the miles of shared use paths and or dedicated bike lanes.
02:01:46
Those are just examples.
02:01:47
As I mentioned, internally, we're looking at the metrics that we have data for that's easily accessible and analyzed.
02:01:56
And these metrics will be reported as part of the PC's annual planning report along with activities that we are accomplishing as part of the implementation.
02:02:11
We do have a development areas report that is detailed in the growth management policy or part two.
02:02:18
I'm just going to do a quick overview of that one just so you can see what that report might look like.
02:02:25
We've called for it to be done every five years.
02:02:28
At a minimum, Board of Supervisors can always request it more frequently.
02:02:33
But just for a taste, this is an evaluation of specifically transportation, the level of service, our existing safety issues, and taking stock of the plan projects.
02:02:48
For example, for environmental stewardship,
02:02:52
An assessment of our critical resources, water and sewer, the feasibility of service.
02:02:59
So these are all things that we would evaluate every five years.
02:03:03
There's a whole list of these factors in that part too that you can take a look at.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:03:09
Before you go on, can I just, maybe you're going to get to this, but if you go back one more slide.
02:03:14
One more?
02:03:15
Yeah, please.
02:03:16
So we've got the tracking, right?
02:03:18
We've got the metrics piece.
02:03:19
We've got the reporting.
02:03:20
This is how we did.
02:03:22
Do we have the action plan for the outcome of the reporting?
02:03:26
Like, for example, then reassess or then implement change or
02:03:32
What's the next step?
02:03:33
How do you close the loop?
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:03:34
Are we doing an adaptive management approach?
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
02:03:47
Yeah, to the extent that in five years from now when we're getting ready to start a conference plan again and we're re-evaluating it, I think that's when we're like, hey, here are our trend lines.
02:03:58
I think that's when our opportunity is to check and see how the comprehensive plan is meeting those and then the actions we've taken over the previous five years, how they work, what do we need to be doing more importantly?
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:04:11
I think that's- You can have some interim benchmarks, though.
02:04:14
I mean, our county won,
02:04:16
Planning Award for the metrics that were developed to track the last comp plan.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:04:22
I just, yeah, I think maybe there's an opportunity if you're tracking into reporting, then there's an opportunity to reassess potentially.
02:04:28
I don't know what level that would be.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:04:30
Wait five years, but there could be some interim benchmarks.
02:04:32
Exactly.
02:04:32
Like, hey, this trend is going in the wrong direction.
02:04:35
You don't have to wait five years to be like, whoops.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:04:38
Yeah, and I think maybe, I don't know, I mean, there may be some ongoing reassessment that might help inform work that's ongoing.
02:04:46
in the works.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:04:48
Budget will drive a lot of this.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:04:49
Yeah, that's true.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:04:51
I hate to bring it down to such a crass number.
02:04:54
Budget's going to drive this.
02:04:56
For instance, if you go one slide ahead,
02:05:00
So under the transportation, given that we're about to embark in this, I think it's called a regional transit society.
SPEAKER_16
02:05:07
Authority.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:05:07
Yeah, authority.
02:05:08
Thank you, thank you.
02:05:09
That one would hope that anything that that does, this is the whole idea we're using the leverages.
02:05:15
So we have these agencies and the partner agencies that the chair was talking about, how are the work of those partner agencies flowing into the realization of our comp plan?
02:05:25
So one would hope that with the regional transportation agency,
SPEAKER_09
02:05:30
Authority.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:05:31
Authority, thank you.
02:05:32
It'll take five times before it sort of sits in there, thank you.
02:05:36
Authority, that the things that come out of that should hopefully help us determine what are we applying our dollars to and so it's there and it's the
02:05:47
There's a whole host of things.
02:05:48
There's a regional housing thing that I think we're also part of.
02:05:53
I think there's that.
02:05:54
And then there are a couple of places.
02:05:56
It'll depend on how some of the administration falls out.
02:05:59
But there are a number of things which we're partners in that would inform a lot of this work.
02:06:04
Or that would be part of how we would manage and be able to declare what this work is.
02:06:10
That's what I want to say.
02:06:11
Thank you.
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
02:06:16
All right, so looking at how AC44 relates to the strategic plan, we've been working very closely with Gabe and Christy in our Office of Performance and Strategic Planning to coordinate and determine how AC44 and the strategic plan relate to one another.
02:06:35
First, the big moves that we establish can inform the goals and objectives of the next strategic plan that we know will be updated in the coming years and the next five years of the capital improvement plan and county budget.
02:06:55
Second, we worked with Gabe to update the names of topics and definitions so we are using the same nomenclature in both documents and the connections across the documents are clear.
02:07:08
Third, as mentioned in the tracking and reporting discussion, AC44 will measure the trends and patterns with metrics and specific targets for performance indicators will continue to be established as part of the strategic plan effort.
02:07:27
So right now, staff is working on incorporating all the good feedback and comments that we've received from both this body, the Board of Supervisors, and our public to complete the drafts of each chapter.
02:07:42
So we are working towards an August release of that
02:07:48
Draft document, the entire document.
02:07:51
So what that means is roughly two, two and a half weeks after we will schedule a community check-in so our public can come and bring feedback, ask questions.
02:08:05
and then roughly a week after that we will come back to PC to gather your comments on any part of the document including the parts one and two that maybe you haven't had the ability to comment on directly.
02:08:25
One question we wanted to ask the PC on this one was would you like to take public comment?
02:08:34
during that work session on the 26th of August.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
02:08:38
As you know, as we've been going through the process, we've tried to keep this time for work with you all.
02:08:44
That will be the only item on the agenda that night.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:08:51
We can talk about it, think about it.
02:08:53
I think it's a logistical thing.
02:08:59
It's not that we, I mean, I've always welcomed public comment and transparency.
02:09:02
I guess I'm just thinking about logistically.
02:09:04
Would we do it at the beginning, like we did tonight where folks can comment on items, not on the agenda, you know, non-related public that are not related to public hearings.
02:09:17
And maybe that's an opportunity to do that, but we'll, we'll talk through it.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:09:19
I know sometimes the board is limited the amount of time because like, I would hate to be here and it's like 10 o'clock at night and now we get to start discussion.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:09:29
Yeah, I think the challenge, and there's a couple things, I'm sorry.
02:09:33
I think, I mean, this is me.
02:09:36
I think we hear a lot about the need for transparency and I find that I think
02:09:41
myself included, it's easy to often forget the work that's already been done under the heading of community engagement.
02:09:49
And just because you managed to miss a few doesn't mean you weren't asked to attend.
02:09:54
So I think whatever we do and however we do this with the community, it's important to begin with some sort of a summary, just a reminder, my opinion of what
02:10:05
the county has done in terms of engagement and transparency.
02:10:10
So that it, you know, I think, yeah, I'll just stop.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:10:14
Can I come along the chair on that?
02:10:15
And so we have these CACs.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:10:18
Yeah.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:10:19
You know, the CACs actually can be a place that you can invite numbers to.
02:10:26
I know you may, but that's a place because we, you know, we haven't, if we haven't had
02:10:34
I should rephrase this.
02:10:36
We often hear from the same voices in this room.
02:10:41
And those voices always claim that they haven't had an opportunity to say anything.
02:10:47
Be that true or not true, I'm not going to dispute that.
02:10:51
but if it was possible to use the smaller gathering of a CAC which is local and which has a closer tangency to the communities that people may not be able to come here but they can go to one of those, I think that being able to lift that up to say that we actually, part of our community check-in was that we went to the CACs which is what they were built for.
02:11:16
they're built to be able to be that communication network back to the supervisors about a whole host of things.
02:11:24
And so I think that's a way of not having to burden you with a bunch of other public stuff and to use the structures that we have in place.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:11:36
Just to mention- They only cover the development areas.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:11:39
I understand.
02:11:40
And that's why I think you could do something about the rural things.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
02:11:44
We can follow up later on.
02:11:48
The idea was we want to make sure that there's been significant public outreach, this effort.
02:11:58
In many respects, I think it hopefully reflects much of what we've heard in the community.
02:12:04
It's just making sure that you all have these deliberative bodies, you know, making sure we're checking in with you on them.
02:12:13
This is our game plan that we're proposing and just making sure that you're okay with that.
02:12:17
So that's what we're trying to do.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:12:19
Yeah.
02:12:19
It's also interesting to think about, I mean, it's the full document work session, right?
02:12:24
Correct.
02:12:25
So you're going to get comments on certain sections of the document that people had already maybe made comments on that just for whatever good reasons made it or didn't make it into the final document.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
02:12:36
So it's, I don't know, we'll think through how to... And there will be the formal public hearing.
02:12:44
I'm sorry.
02:12:45
I'm so sorry.
02:12:46
I talked over you.
02:12:47
There will be the formal public hearing before we adopt.
02:12:51
Yeah.
02:12:51
So there's another opportunity.
02:12:53
Right.
02:12:53
Right.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:12:54
Cool.
02:12:54
Sorry, Karen.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:12:55
I was just saying we were waiting till the end.
02:12:57
We have comments.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:12:57
Yeah.
02:12:58
I don't know if we're at the end yet, though, are we?
02:13:00
No.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:13:01
Pretty darn close.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:13:03
You're close to the end right now.
02:13:05
Get those comments ready.
Tonya Swartzendruber
Planning Manager
02:13:10
So you'll get the opportunity on August 26th.
02:13:14
We're still zeroing in and finalizing the date for the board.
02:13:18
This will happen early September.
02:13:20
And then we move into the full document public hearing.
02:13:25
We'll make our final round of edits and bring the revised document to PC September 23rd, hopefully earning that recommendation for adoption from the commission and then moving on to the board for adoption on October 15th.
02:13:41
So the end is soon.
02:13:46
The end is nigh, thank you.
02:13:50
We often have this slide up as a reminder for public and our audience that we have performed a lot of engagement as part of this process and all of those resources are available on our website.
02:14:06
We will be creating a phase four section soon and this is also a place where you can sign up for emails and newsletters as we are able to draft them.
02:14:20
This is the last slide.
02:14:21
This is really just bringing up those two questions that we'd like for you to discuss and give us feedback on.
02:14:30
Before I turn it over to the Commission for discussion, I'm going to ask Mr. Barnes to talk a little bit more about the comprehensive plan amendments process.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
02:14:40
Yeah, I don't want to make more out of this than need be.
02:14:44
2018, the county made a decision that amendments to the conference plan or amendments, more importantly, the future land use map, were something that would previously have been allowed for private sector.
02:14:59
entities to recommend to do a conference and plan future land use map amendment.
02:15:06
I think as we've gone through this process we see at the staff level that there is validity and maybe reinstating that capacity to make sure that we you know when developers have something they want to do we may not have the plan perfectly right be able to make those changes to
02:15:24
at least assess what they were going to do.
02:15:27
And our intent would be to bring back a process and what have you with this.
02:15:31
But just wanted to bring that up to your attention to make sure that you all were heard this and we want to weigh in.
02:15:39
Excuse me.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:15:39
I didn't understand that we got rid of it.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
02:15:42
Currently what it is is the only way that it happens is either it's something that's sort of brought to staff brings it to the commission of the board for their review or it's a board member sort of initiates the request.
02:15:57
So if you're a property owner that's really your best route is to go to the board member and
02:16:02
and have them then put it on the docket for reviews, so.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:16:06
And it can only happen, can't it only happen twice a year or is that?
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
02:16:09
Previously, it was and it could only happen twice a year when it was a citizen initiated one.
02:16:14
Again, we'll come back with a process, things have changed since then.
02:16:17
We may well do it more frequently than that, but it's really, again, I don't wanna make a huge deal about this, but we're just bringing that back to your attention.
02:16:26
It's something we're at the staff level been thinking about.
02:16:31
Do you want feedback now on that?
02:16:32
Or if anybody's like, that's a bad idea, then we should probably hear about that now.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:16:39
Well, I mean, I would say just I remember some of the things that came before the Board of Supervisors years ago, particularly like significant expansions to the development area that were proposed by certain developers.
02:16:53
I think it's probably a good thing that we don't get those anymore because I think that sort of undermines all this work we've been doing here if you have these ad hoc, you spend a lot of time on sort of ad hoc changes to the development areas
02:17:08
I think it's one thing if you have a minor change, a little tweak here or there.
02:17:16
But I think significant changes that would impact the comprehensive plan, I would not feel would be appropriate.
02:17:24
Just for reference, we had a stream health initiative started in 2017.
02:17:31
We knew our water protection ordinance was broke since 2014, and we still haven't got that passed.
02:17:37
So the reason I bring this up is because you know we talked about something significant like expanding the development area that I would expect something of that significance to take far longer than passing a new ordinance.
02:17:55
Yeah, so I think we need to in terms of like how we treat the weight of things, you know, making a significant expansion of the development area, I think should carry a lot of weight, you know, more weight than we would about, you know, changing ordinance.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:18:10
Yeah, I mean, for speaking for myself, I wouldn't be I wouldn't be closed to having an amendment process.
02:18:17
But I personally would think that it should be somewhat
02:18:24
I mean I don't think there's any perfect plan.
02:18:26
So if you have this comprehensive plan and we're done and we say that's perfection for 20 years, I think we're fooling ourselves.
02:18:33
So I feel like there's got to be some method of amending that as times change, as things change, as climate changes, as all those things change.
02:18:42
I mean, there's change that's always going on.
02:18:44
So my sense is it should be a very careful and intentional amendment process, which I'm sure everybody would agree with if you support that.
02:18:51
But not just sort of like, ah, let's just
02:18:55
You know, let's, let's make, yeah, this is like, it's a site plan process.
02:18:58
We can do this administratively.
02:18:59
I mean, it needs to not be burdensome, but it needs to be really thoughtful and carefully considered, I think.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:19:06
I think about it and, oh, I'm sorry, Corey.
02:19:08
I was thinking about sort of the, the, the different approaches our states in this country have where California allows referenda on any old thing.
02:19:18
and possibly to its detriment, but at the same time here I think we're talking about an amendment process that would still come to the Planning Commission and ultimately the Board of Supervisors.
02:19:26
Even if somebody came and said we're going to double the development area size, you know, then it would still come here and we would say, well,
02:19:35
It wouldn't just be like, Ted wants it, let's do it.
02:19:39
You know, I think so that the idea that like citizens can still put together a thoughtful proposal works for me.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:19:50
Consider, I don't know.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:19:51
I think procedurally, we would just say we need some study on this in a lot of cases.
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:19:55
Well, just also understand we have a backstop, right?
02:19:58
So like every five years by law, we have to come back and revisit it.
02:20:01
So even though it's a 20-year document,
02:20:04
Every five years, we're coming back to revisit, which means you're really starting that conversation probably in three and a half years, right?
02:20:10
And so this feels like the gravitas of whatever that issue is has to be super high.
02:20:15
That's what I think.
02:20:16
Yeah.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:20:17
Good point.
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:20:17
That's a great point.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:20:18
Not just, yeah, just not just like, I don't like this boundary of rural area.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:20:22
Right, right.
02:20:22
I could see if there's like a cataclysmic event, maybe some things would need to change.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:20:26
There's something that's, there's an important defensible reason that something has changed significantly.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
02:20:31
Is that helpful?
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:20:33
that we don't wait.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
02:20:35
Well, actually, go ahead.
02:20:35
No, I was going to say, yes, it was very helpful.
02:20:39
I think having that guide, obviously, we've been thinking about some of that and wrestling with some of those.
02:20:43
But thank you for the guides.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:20:46
Great.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
02:20:47
Thank you.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:20:49
Any other, or I'm sure Ms.
02:20:51
Firehock, we'll start at your end.
02:20:53
Are you ready for closing arguments?
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:20:56
Yes, please.
02:20:58
All right.
02:20:58
Counselors, I just like you to humor me, and I just have three comments, and some are minor.
02:21:07
All right, so I'll just go quick.
02:21:08
All right, when I was reading this, when I got this document to read for this meeting,
02:21:19
It was the implementation chapter.
02:21:23
When I looked at it, I was expecting to see these steps of implementation.
02:21:27
So it's not that.
02:21:29
Well, I would suggest that this is not the implementation chapter.
02:21:33
It's the strategic priorities chapter.
02:21:36
You know, if it was labeled that, then I would have been like, oh, these are the top level things and a bit more explanation on how they fit across with other important things.
02:21:47
And then I would have got it.
02:21:49
But because I was reading it like it was an implementation document, I got really lost in it.
02:21:55
So if you just change the title, then I think I would be happy, but I would also say that other people would be less confused.
02:22:02
So that's my recommendation.
02:22:05
Then this is in the weeds, but we were trying to hold our comments to the end.
02:22:09
This is minor.
02:22:11
Under number three, which I'm trying to figure out.
02:22:15
Oh, it's where we were talking about.
02:22:18
Sorry, I need to change back to my computer glasses, just a second.
02:22:25
We were talking about we wanted invest resources in compact and connected developments.
02:22:30
This is so minor.
02:22:31
You guys are going to not be surprised by my comment.
02:22:35
We want to have focused new public and private investments to create urban spaces that are compact, walkable, and inviting.
02:22:43
And I believe under inviting, you mean all the things that we think are inviting, like green, beautiful, great design.
02:22:48
But I still want you to put green and inviting.
02:22:54
because my fear is, again, that's why we're talking about good design tonight with our first proposal.
02:23:00
We're like, we've got to just get these people in the urban area to save the rural area so we create this concrete jungle with no trees that's really hot.
02:23:09
And then you can go to a park in the rural area for relief.
02:23:13
So I just want us to keep emphasizing that we've got to keep putting the green back.
02:23:18
All right, and then zipping all the way to metrics.
02:23:23
I do want to suggest, and we can work more with you on these later.
02:23:31
I want to point out a couple of things here.
02:23:34
You have vehicle miles traveled, the second to the last one.
02:23:38
You have population growth.
02:23:40
If you had more population growth, even if you did better development that encouraged walkability, you could still have more vehicle miles traveled because there was more people here overall.
02:23:51
So I guess I just want to see more words there.
02:23:55
Are we against population growth?
02:23:57
I know some people who are.
02:23:58
I mean, I'm just saying, what about population growth?
02:24:02
Or is it population growth continuing our emphasis on making sure it happens in the development area?
02:24:08
So I just think that I'm sure you are going to have more words here, but just saying population growth.
02:24:14
Good or bad, where, you know, what is it about that?
02:24:17
And vehicle miles traveled, I assume you want to reduce them and, you know, all that stuff.
02:24:22
Per capita vehicle miles traveled might be more... Yeah, something like that.
02:24:25
Yeah, so let's get, I guess we need to see some of the nuances.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
02:24:30
In lieu of brevity, you'd like a few more to strip their work.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:24:33
This is my day's writing metrics.
02:24:35
So I'm a nerd, and that's what I get excited by.
02:24:38
But yes, I understand brevity.
02:24:40
And then really quick, I would like to propose some other metrics.
02:24:45
And I don't have them written out.
02:24:46
They're brief.
02:24:48
but we have a map of our forest important forest blocks in the county we already we didn't just say the rural area blah we have actually modeled the most important habitats so maybe one of the metrics is percentage of protected habitat cores or forest blocks whatever you want to call them
02:25:06
and then going to the urban side.
02:25:08
And this would require us to do a little mapping, but it's not that hard to do.
02:25:13
Percentage of tree canopy in the development areas.
02:25:15
That's another example.
02:25:17
Like again, if we're talking about we don't want to be hot and we want to deal with climate resiliency, it's not just reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
02:25:25
We can plant these big things that are leafy and sequester carbon and make our lives more pleasant.
02:25:30
So percentage of tree, because I don't want to see the development area become just
02:25:35
No green, right?
02:25:37
And then I don't want Julian to get overexcited, but I know.
02:25:42
Acres of parkland per capita.
02:25:45
There are great metrics by the Trust for Public Lands.
02:25:48
They already have studied this to death.
02:25:51
And there's a lot more dog parks and tot lots.
02:25:53
I think we need more of them.
02:26:00
I'm sure somebody will quote me on that.
02:26:02
Everyone, you have to listen to all the past planning questions.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:26:04
And I'll join you.
02:26:05
Commissioner Firehock and Commissioner Bivins, they want more top line.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:26:13
Yes, in developments that are intended, like, tot lots for young singles in development.
02:26:20
Everyone's so lazy, I don't know, about the amenities.
02:26:24
Anyway, I think we can come up with some more that are, I would say, green-focused benchmarks, considering all that we've said.
02:26:31
So happy to work with you on that.
02:26:33
But anyway, that's it.
02:26:35
The end.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:26:35
Awesome.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:26:36
Commissioner Moore?
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:26:37
I do.
02:26:38
I do.
02:26:38
And I want to start off, first of all, just, you know, I know I get up here and ask weird questions and poke sometimes, but I do appreciate the synthesis here that we've got in front of us and the thought that's gone into it.
02:26:51
There are six good ones here.
02:26:52
I think as far as big moves go, they're all good moves as far as big moves.
02:27:00
they address you know I think about kind of like like what are our core human needs right what do people need to sort of lead these free and flourishing driving lives and and the six we've got here address I think two of the four areas very well physical safety and that's kind of the future of physical safety as well and also economic security you know we're talking about housing shelter jobs that kind of thing
02:27:23
The other two really core human needs though, which we often think of just in the private sphere, are actually very much supported by public infrastructure.
02:27:32
One of those is the need for belonging, to be heard, to be understood, to be part of a social fabric.
02:27:38
And the other is to experience beauty and transcendence, particularly in the company of others.
02:27:44
And I think there's no big move here that I see really
02:27:48
addressing those kind of social health, social fabric things.
02:27:52
And for me, the shorthand I sometimes use is arts and parks.
02:27:57
Not any old park, because I get really, really tired of donated land where all we're doing with it is trails that are essentially individual activities, but parks where social gatherings are encouraged and have- Community building places.
02:28:08
Building places, yeah.
02:28:09
It's a little bit tiny reference and maybe one or two of the others, but I do feel like that strengthening the social fabric and the cultural life of our community.
02:28:20
would do us very well to make that an actual point of focus.
02:28:24
And I say that with just seeing the fraying of social connections and the depression and loneliness that follows endemically around the country, knowing that we can do better here and make this a place where we're a model.
02:28:43
Within a couple of the others, I think probably I already kind of flat my lips about some of the others.
02:28:50
I think the number two and five both were talking about affordable housing access and options and also economic opportunity.
02:28:58
In both of those cases, so much of this, and I understand why, so much of this is kind of really about sort of making new zoning or land use or regulation changes in order for private developers or economic investors to do their thing.
02:29:11
I do think we really are going to, and we talked about this some earlier in this meeting, that public investment in housing, public investment in economic development is really going to be key.
02:29:26
It will not happen the way we want if it's just by managing land use.
02:29:31
And I think that can take a number of forms, but I think somehow including that considering robust public investment as part of our descriptions feels like the right path to me.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:29:47
Thank you.
02:29:47
Great.
02:29:48
Mr. Clayborne?
Corey Clayborne
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:29:50
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
02:29:52
And to staff, thank you for all the work, just to echo my fellow commissioners here.
02:29:57
Starting with question one, did we get the big moves right?
02:29:59
I think overall, yes, without a doubt.
02:30:03
The one thing that caught my attention was this whole process.
02:30:06
We kind of used two lenses to have all of our discussions.
02:30:09
One was climate, another was equity.
02:30:11
I think climate, you were pretty bold on.
02:30:13
That was Canon number six, if I recall correctly.
02:30:16
Equity, I don't say anything, right?
02:30:18
It's kind of implied, but I think that's a moment to be explicit, unless there's some reason I don't know about to not be.
02:30:26
So I would flag that.
02:30:29
The guiding principles, which was another one, I think if I remember the icon, it was, you know, climate resilient, the climate and equity, and it had the circular radial graphic around it with the four guiding principles.
02:30:41
I jagged those down, green and resilient.
02:30:44
welcoming and equitable, connected and accessible, thriving and prosperous.
02:30:48
I would just recommend that the vocabulary you use in those six big moves, let there be no misunderstanding where they fit within those four guiding principles.
02:30:56
Like I shouldn't have to guess, right?
02:30:58
And so just making sure
02:31:00
It's holistic, right?
02:31:01
And this is the first time I've actually had a chance to look at it holistically.
02:31:03
We've been talking about it in these little silos over the course of a couple of years.
02:31:08
But now that we have a chance to zoom out, let's just make sure that there's this tape, this thread that kind of ties everything together there.
02:31:15
The other thing I jotted down, and maybe it's a rhetorical question for tonight, so I don't feel pressured to answer, but 250 steps or actions over nine disciplines.
02:31:28
Is that too many, right?
02:31:29
That's just a rhetorical question.
02:31:31
Is that an opportunity to go back and look?
02:31:34
Do we need all of those?
02:31:35
Or are there moments to consolidate?
02:31:36
Or knowing that you have to prioritize?
02:31:38
Or are there some that just, they just don't need to make the cut this time around, right?
02:31:42
But I don't know what that magic number is, but 250 was just a flag to me.
02:31:47
And then the last thing I jotted down was just thinking about the amount of community engagement that was done.
02:31:53
And I applaud those efforts.
02:31:56
If you look at the actual number of people touched, I don't know if the juice is worth the squeeze.
02:32:01
And so I wonder, is there a strategy that's like a rolling clock strategy?
02:32:05
So annually, we, I don't know, maybe you send out two questions every five months and get people to answer them.
02:32:12
And at the end of the next five years, you've collected a lot of data from many, many touch points instead of waiting until it's time to jump on a comp plan.
02:32:21
Maybe it's just a rolling kind of thing that happens in these intervals where, like I said, pulse surveys or showing up at, you know, giant
02:32:30
You know, trying to get input there, knowing that would be stored in the bank for the next time around.
02:32:34
I think I've covered everything else.
02:32:37
So that was it.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:32:44
Yeah, so first, just to repeat again, you heard some of the metrics that I spoke about.
02:32:51
I agree with Karen completely.
02:32:52
We need some more metrics to measure our environmental services.
02:32:59
I think things, as I said, things like stream buffers,
02:33:04
I think also just that general, the more I think about that whole section, it's very, you know, focused exclusively on ag and maybe ag does deserve its own big move section.
02:33:19
But I could almost see either making that broader into a rural area economic section or breaking that into more than one big move to encompass both environmental services of the rural area, but also things like tourism.
02:33:40
We've talked about the rural recreation economy.
02:33:42
I don't know if I mentioned this before, but after I ran the Blue Ridge Marathon, they sent out a race report.
02:33:48
Among other things included the economic impact of the race, which they calculated to be 1.7 million.
02:33:54
um why don't we do stuff like that like why don't we send when we have outdoor activities when we're doing things like big events you know why are why am i not getting an economic report that says that we just generated 1.7 million so i think i think we can do better um you know as as far as that goes i think in turn you know in terms of the discussion about parks and um
02:34:19
I think really, I know it's called for in the comprehensive plan to have a new needs assessment.
02:34:25
So I think that the best metric is to measure how well we are matching against that needs assessment.
02:34:31
So if the greatest desire is community gathering places, are we achieving, you know, according to that needs assessment, are we achieving the right amount of community gathering spaces?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:34:48
Great.
02:34:48
Commissioner Bivins?
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:34:51
Thank you, Chair.
02:34:52
I think part of also what I'm hearing here is that there are a number of agencies between the jurisdictions that do reports like this.
02:35:01
But I don't necessarily know that it sort of would be assumed that we would receive that information.
02:35:07
But I could point you to where that information is.
02:35:10
And so the conversation I think comes down as you move forward is,
02:35:17
What does the work of the Planning Commission look like after you do the comp plan?
02:35:23
Because the comp plan has consumed a lot of our effort.
02:35:31
of which, what will that effort look like in a post comp plan time?
02:35:37
And I'm not trying to describe what that looks like, but I'm just saying, I think that you're gonna miss the comp plan next year.
02:35:45
And so what is gonna inform the work of the planning commission?
02:35:49
And I'll let, that's something for you all to do.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:35:51
The rural area plan.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:35:53
That's one, that's one.
02:35:54
In fact, I was going to suggest, you know, I have a couple of inserts and I can send some of my other things to you.
02:36:01
But there's some things like, you know, you're starting off and I think if we call it what Commissioner Fallah had called sort of that sort of
02:36:09
Second paragraph after voluntary measures where we start developers.
02:36:14
Well, I think we really should say things like real estate developers.
02:36:18
Because again, some of the terms that we have in here is inside baseball.
02:36:23
And this is not a document that I believe planning commissioners are going to, you know, you may internalize it, but I don't necessarily know that you're going to need to feed off of it on a daily basis.
02:36:36
And for instance, when we go to page three, when you talk about, I would put planning before the districts, because that's what they are.
02:36:42
You say district, what's a district?
02:36:43
So let's do things like call it a planning district.
02:36:45
But then that puts it, that sort of like then gives us immediate attention to form-based code is not a district.
02:36:53
It's how a district will be regulated.
02:36:56
but a form-based code does not describe, yes, in what we've done on Royal Road, it does describe an area, but it's not a district because you can adopt it or not adopt it.
02:37:06
So it's thinking about sort of, as I was reading through it, it was like, if I'm just, some of the people who come before us confused, what are some things that I would say?
02:37:15
So like on page four, and this comes to some of the stuff we've heard and particularly from some of our commissioners that you might add,
02:37:25
like on line four that we'd without an increase in density when we're talking about the rural area.
02:37:32
So, or without densification because that's within the comp plan we're acknowledging that we're not going to start spreading into the rural area which seems to be something that people are extraordinarily concerned.
02:37:46
But just say it, you know we're gonna do this thing in the world without intensifying the density in the rural area.
02:37:55
and then I still, I will come back to it again because I still think some of the stuff that all of us here in various places and that we wrestle with is that the comp plan should bring bureaucratic predictability.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:38:09
Bureaucratic predictability?
02:38:10
Yeah.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:38:11
So, you know, and remember folks, I've said bureaucracy is not a four letter word from where I come from.
02:38:16
My history, everybody knows my history.
02:38:17
That is not a four letter word.
02:38:20
But what is a four-letter word is the inability to predict that if I enter the system, I should be able to move, clearly see how I'm going to move through the system.
02:38:32
Yes, there are hiccups.
02:38:33
Yes, we go off to the side on various things.
02:38:35
That's to be expected.
02:38:37
Like we heard tonight about pulling the road from Arden over to, that's to be expected.
02:38:41
Yes, there's, you know, we find that there's a condition that has to be navigated.
02:38:45
But when we're asking, the size of the projects that we're bringing in that will come into this community are not going to be mom and pop developers anymore.
02:38:52
That is not going to happen.
02:38:54
I look at Graystone or Grayfield, whatever that thing is off of Old Ivy Road.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:39:02
Gray Star.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:39:02
Gray Star, thank you.
02:39:04
That is being driven by a company that is a national, and in some cases it's a multinational company, and they have the ability to come here and make a decision on whether or not they're going to bring their investors here.
02:39:18
Because most of that money is not coming from them.
02:39:20
Most of that money is coming because they're involved in real estate trusts.
02:39:25
And so if they're looking at investing here and whether or not it's up 29 whenever we finish doing what we're doing up 29, that the bureaucracy that we put in place should be clear so that people can engage with you and ask you questions that make sense, that you can make decisions from.
02:39:42
And it shouldn't be, while it can be elegant, it does not necessarily have to look like it had a PhD in English from the University of Virginia.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:39:54
You remind me of a conversation I had with the developer a long time ago, and I sat down with him, talked about how we could do more to protect water quality.
02:40:02
And he gave me this surprising answer.
02:40:05
He said, actually, I don't really care what you do.
02:40:07
He said, as long as it's consistent, it costs me the same either way.
02:40:16
Just make sure that whatever regulations you have are consistent.
02:40:20
And that really stuck with me.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:40:22
I mean, and the dollars, I mean, you know, I've complained for a while when we got economic opportunity zones and we had them in our district, in our district.
02:40:31
There's one behind.
02:40:33
No one came to see it.
02:40:34
And I got a call from people who I know outside of this community said, can you tell me about that economic, it's where Lytle was or Aldi was, whatever the one that was over there, the Staples, Staples on 29.
02:40:46
That's the one that they were.
02:40:47
And I said, yeah, it's a great location on 29.
02:40:50
And they said, yeah, but we can't figure out how to deal with it.
02:40:52
And so what we got is we got a homegrown person came to us thinking, this is the guy, the young man over there across from Fifth Street Station, Fifth Street County Office Building.
02:41:06
He came to us, and he persuaded us with a wonderful project.
02:41:10
It was going to be biotech, and it's going to be this and that.
02:41:12
It's going to be walk with.
02:41:14
And what do we get?
02:41:15
Everybody knows.
02:41:15
I'm not trying to be.
02:41:16
We got storage.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:41:16
We got storage units and apartments.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:41:19
Yeah.
02:41:20
And so part of that is, what do we want?
02:41:24
Do we want more storage units?
02:41:25
Yeah, please.
02:41:26
No.
02:41:27
No.
02:41:27
No more storage units.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:41:28
Somebody's going to bring one.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:41:29
If that's one of the things that maybe we should do a community, you should do community flea markets.
02:41:33
That's what we really should be doing is doing community flea markets.
02:41:36
That would probably be helpful.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:41:38
Arts, parks, and flea markets.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:41:39
Yeah, I suppose.
02:41:40
And then the coming tonight, I'll be quiet.
02:41:42
I think the real thing that what I'm trying to figure out is, is how do we create a connected Albemarle County?
02:41:51
because I am absolutely at the end of my time here where I'm so sick and tired of the tension between the rural part of the county and the non-rural part of the county.
02:42:00
It is painful to have to listen to that stuff, infinite atom, when we go through things.
02:42:06
But what we really need to do is come to a place where we have a connected Albemarle County.
02:42:11
And wherever you happen to have your piece of property or you park your car, you should still have the same passion about this place.
02:42:19
and it should not be, we're trying to keep people out of this place.
02:42:25
That's offensive on a level that most of us in this room needs to lead because we're not of this place.
02:42:32
And so that's the kind of thing that I hope the comp plan will do that it creates an environment, it creates a narrative that talks about how do we create an Albemarle County as opposed to how do we bifurcated or trifurcated in all the various ways that it seems they want to go in.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:42:45
Great comments.
02:42:46
I know that the hour's late, but there's just sort of one kind of element that I don't know if it's really in here explicitly.
02:42:55
And I know this is our big moves chapter or whatever.
02:42:59
So this is a little different from what I was talking about before, that we have an aging population.
02:43:07
and that yes, we have the colonnades and we have various places, but you can only live there if you're really wealthy.
02:43:15
The monthly rent there is more than I make per month now.
02:43:19
So how would I ever live there in retirement?
02:43:21
I never will.
02:43:22
I never would afford it.
02:43:24
and we talk about there's this converted school down in Scottsville.
02:43:29
There's a many year waiting list.
02:43:30
There's a place in Crozet.
02:43:31
There's a many year waiting list.
02:43:33
So there are, you reminded me of this when we were talking about big developers.
02:43:37
There are people interested in our aging population that tends to be more wealthy and so they're willing to come in and build more of these assisted living type facilities.
02:43:47
But in reality, most people are not going to be able to afford to live in those.
02:43:51
They're too expensive.
02:43:52
I did a survey for an aged friend of mine who needed a place to live.
02:43:57
And the only place I could find was in Roanoke.
02:44:00
She would have to leave all her friends and our family, go down to Roanoke so she could live there on.
02:44:06
you know social security and what you can get so point being that helping people age in place and remain in their homes is not only cost effective but it's better for the people's mental health and all of that community feeling not having to move out of your community
02:44:24
just because you're aged.
02:44:25
So what does that have to do with all this?
02:44:27
Transportation.
02:44:29
All of the stuff that Jaunt provides that picks up people and gets them to UVA Health and allows them to get to the grocery store.
02:44:39
Yes, so I said the grocery store.
02:44:40
You didn't let me finish.
02:44:42
The records will show.
02:44:43
Anyway, but the point is, I think we need to say something about that because I don't want this to only become a place where people can age here if they're wealthy.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:44:56
That's much more elegant than my comment about the 15-minute walk, the new urbanism.
02:45:02
The fastest growing demographic of Albemarle County is not going to walk 15 minutes.
02:45:07
Right.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:45:07
So there's considerations with how we work our built environment and where we put amenities and how they function.
02:45:14
But there's also just that making a transportation network that can support
02:45:20
are elders.
02:45:21
And I'm inching towards those elders myself.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:45:24
But I would add this one thing.
02:45:26
Well, I think if we could redefine what aging in place means, because sometimes aging in place means you need to get out of your 4,000 square foot house, but you can't go to any place in that community that says that's 1,700 because they're not being built anymore.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:45:44
And that's why housing diversity matters.
02:45:46
But I think an affordability in those kind of carriage houses where you sell your bigger house and you go move in a tiny unit or something.
02:45:56
So I'm just asking that you maybe give a nod to the aging population and the fact that it will require
02:46:03
us to provide good transportation infrastructure.
02:46:07
AHIP remodels houses so people can stay in them, but you know remodeling them so age people can stay in them is also part of making things affordable.
02:46:17
So it's part of affordable housing because if you can't afford your housing when you're retired and older, then where do you go?
02:46:23
You have to leave this community.
02:46:24
Yeah, I just
02:46:26
I'm stepping off that soapbox, but I can do something with that.
02:46:30
I don't have the elegant answer, but I feel like that needs to be in here because our aging population is a major issue and it is hard to get around in this community and there aren't affordable options for seniors.
02:46:46
There just aren't.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:46:47
So I think it's all great comments.
02:46:49
I think that, just to be clear, are you saying that this needs to be part of the implementation?
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:46:54
I'm saying that I would like to see some explicit language around that.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:46:58
In this chapter?
02:47:01
Yes.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:47:02
And that we can tie that to transportation.
02:47:04
We can tie that to a number of things.
02:47:07
But you asked for big issues.
02:47:10
That's a big issue in our community.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:47:12
We are no longer a young community.
02:47:14
I mean, just look at the census.
02:47:18
Just look at the census.
02:47:20
We are not a community that's under 45.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:47:23
And we heard tonight from a young woman who's having affordability issues, but I can find you any number of seniors who are also having the same problem.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:47:34
Any last question?
02:47:35
I've got a few comments, but I just want to make sure.
02:47:37
We'll defer to you, Chair.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:47:38
Well, I was going to mention that there are other models of care in the community.
02:47:45
So there's, you know, many of you may be familiar with Innisfree Village.
02:47:50
And that's a very interesting care community.
02:47:52
In that case, it's meeting these people with developmental disabilities.
02:47:56
But it's a way that some people have been able to age in place and, you know, and live out their lives, you know, with volunteers.
02:48:05
And there's several of those communities in Albemarle County.
02:48:08
they've always felt they've always fit really oddly into the you know they've always had to come forward with you know exceptions and to try and sort of work them in somehow to make them work and full disclosure my wife works at NSFree so but I think you know I've often wondered is there a better way to I wouldn't say necessarily encourage communities like that but at least allow them when they occur to so that we don't have to jump through hoops
02:48:38
Just hearing about some of the hoops that some of those communities have had to go through.
02:48:42
And they've talked about things like, you know, maybe even building, you know, having places for retirement on site for even their volunteers to age.
02:48:50
Because at a certain point, the volunteers get to a certain age, there's not much difference between the volunteers and the residents.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:48:59
Cool, so I'll try to do a little bit of two things.
02:49:02
One is share a few of my comments, which are a lot of plus ones to me, so I won't restate what's already been stated, but also try to put a bow, a little bit of bow on this from what I've been taking notes, see if this is how my brain works, scary place.
02:49:19
So you mentioned at the very beginning, and I'm not, we don't have to debate this now, but just to take in consideration,
02:49:26
strategic prioritization plan as opposed to implementation.
02:49:32
I personally feel like implementation is more fitting, but again, we don't have to debate it.
02:49:36
It's just how you get this done, how you implement this, how you're getting the chapter done.
02:49:41
As part of this, there is strategic prioritization, but it's a way to implement it.
02:49:47
So that's just my two cents.
02:49:49
And then a few other thoughts
02:49:53
One, under the heading of moves, I feel like they were captured well under the heading of metrics.
02:49:59
I would, again, just plus one, the green aspect, I think, would be an important thing to factor in.
02:50:05
And then if you'll bear with me just on some simple single words, one, simplify.
02:50:10
And I think to Commissioner Bivins' comments, it needs to be somehow
02:50:16
I acknowledge that, as you said at the beginning, Mr. Barnes, this is a vast simplification of a comprehensive plan that was much more complex.
02:50:24
So celebrating that moment, that simplification, because a lot of what I'm hearing in this community is it takes so darn long to get stuff done.
02:50:32
So this is a way that we're starting to think about a strategy to streamline that process and to simplify.
02:50:40
The second one is promote.
02:50:42
So I think as you think through this process, whether it's the implementation of the comprehensive plan, et cetera, et cetera, this comp plan has so much goodness in it and so many connections to other very good documents.
02:50:58
that for it just and I know it won't because you said at the beginning we don't want another plan that sits on the shelf but there's this is such a great resource thinking of ways as a county that we can promote it I think would be an important thing and then as you think through the process so number one you know we talked a little bit about this comprehensive plan amendments process
02:51:20
So if you think about the overall process, there's the study phase, which we're doing and mostly done.
02:51:27
There's the prioritized phase.
02:51:29
Then there's the investment phase, which is critically important.
02:51:32
Then there's the promotion of that piece.
02:51:35
Then there's the implementation.
02:51:36
Then there's the measurement.
02:51:39
Then there's a reporting.
02:51:41
So don't forget that we measured it and now we're going to report it.
02:51:44
And here's how we did.
02:51:45
We did great.
02:51:45
We did terribly.
02:51:46
We've got to do that.
02:51:47
And then there's the adjust and reassess.
02:51:51
And then there's the engage.
02:51:53
And so I would just, I think, you know, as we think through the comp plan, it's going to be easy to say, and we should celebrate the completion of this document.
02:52:02
That's a living, breathing document, right?
02:52:04
It's an ongoing thing.
02:52:06
And community engagement should also be a living, breathing part of it.
02:52:10
somehow.
02:52:11
So I would just encourage us to be thinking about what that looks like.
02:52:13
And I'm not sure exactly what that looks like, but those are the key points that I wanted to mention.
02:52:22
All right.
02:52:23
Thank you.
02:52:26
That's great.
02:52:27
Okay.
02:52:27
With that, we will move on to number five to committee reports.
02:52:32
Anybody have any committee reports?
02:52:34
Most of mine were canceled for this month.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:52:39
Is the preservation committee met?
02:52:42
They're working on a, I guess I could call it a speaker series.
02:52:47
Each month they would have a different topic.
02:52:50
And then I think it would be at like either here or probably here.
02:52:55
Anyway, they were trying to get it in this room, but they have different topics lined up.
02:53:00
I can't tell you what they are because I've only been able to get into my county email for the last 15 minutes because I've been locked out for three weeks.
02:53:08
So I have no access to,
02:53:11
that stuff, but I'll send it around.
02:53:13
They'll be free.
02:53:16
And I think it's the idea to sort of bring history alive.
02:53:20
And there's some co-sponsorship by a local business.
02:53:24
So anyway, that'll be a cool thing to happen and give all the historic preservationists some neat stuff to learn about and anyone else.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:53:34
I've been thinking about you a bunch when it comes to the historic markers around the county.
02:53:39
And I don't know why, but I never really noticed them before.
02:53:42
And now I'm like seeing them.
02:53:44
And sitting there, like you're in a car, usually you see it and you pass by.
02:53:50
Sometimes I'm on my bike and I see it and I stop and I can actually read it.
02:53:54
But I'm just wondering if this is off topic and we could talk about it another time, but is there a way to do it more simply?
02:53:59
Like, is there a way to get a quick,
02:54:02
bit of information with a you know faster and then an ability like a QR code or something the ability to dump to jump down into more detail on those signs because they're marking really cool things like I'd
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:54:16
Yeah, the county, just for anyone new listening, the committee will be developing a historic marker nomination process so people can get together and they've sort of drafted a list of topics.
02:54:32
And then also looking at forgotten areas of the county like maybe this area doesn't have as many or this topic is totally underrepresented.
02:54:41
We've got tons on this topic, but nothing on that.
02:54:43
So based on need,
02:54:46
and we're waiting for the comp plan to be finished so that we can initiate this new program.
02:54:52
But anyway, they've been working on it.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:54:55
Any other committee reports?
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:54:57
Yes.
02:54:59
So the CCAC met on June 11th.
02:55:04
They had a community meeting about Wendy Knoll, a proposed development in Crozet.
02:55:10
And there's a lot of valuable feedback from the community that was issued there.
02:55:16
One of the big concerns was with stormwater there.
02:55:19
They already have a lot of issues with stormwater in the neighboring community.
02:55:24
And so how that was going to be addressed was also things like screening.
02:55:31
There's also had the MPO Tech
02:55:35
and so let me make sure I get the right date.
02:55:39
Okay.
02:55:42
So there's a transportation demand management study getting data on how many people would use alternative transportation.
02:55:49
They're looking at using streetlight data and also, you know, considering things like Strava.
02:55:56
So I'm very excited about this, you know, and looking at really getting information about, you know, you know,
02:56:05
How many people are walking and getting actual pedestrian data, which you've heard me talking about for a while.
02:56:11
So I'm very excited about that.
02:56:15
It's very interesting.
02:56:16
We also heard from Kat, they're talking about
02:56:22
I'm talking about their upgrades.
02:56:25
They're trying to upgrade their fleet to accommodate electric buses.
02:56:30
And so that's going to require considerable expansion.
02:56:33
They have a neighboring parcel of three acres and they're trying to purchase another property.
02:56:40
So getting actually the place for the buses to charge and everything actually takes quite a bit more space.
02:56:53
And then also heard from Move Safely Blue Ridge.
02:56:58
One of the goals is to reduce total fatalities by half by 2045.
02:57:03
And they talked about the various principles that they're trying to use to do this, looking at engineering enforcement, spot improvements, and systemic improvements.
02:57:22
And that's it.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:57:23
So there's a good article about Wendy Knoll and the Crozet Gazette, by the way.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:57:27
Oh, great.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:57:28
And your picture's in there, too.
Lonnie Murray
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:57:30
Wow.
02:57:30
That's unfortunate.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
02:57:31
Yeah.
02:57:32
No, not yet that it's unfortunate.
02:57:34
I didn't mean to agree.
02:57:35
I just said it's in there.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:57:40
All right, review the Board of Supervisors.
02:57:43
Oh, sorry, sorry.
02:57:44
It's all right.
02:57:45
I'll try to be really brief.
02:57:46
Rio29 met the CAC, that is.
02:57:50
And one of the things was that we just have a watch list of construction projects and things going on.
02:57:55
For those who drive on Rio and or the Parkway on a regular basis, the Belvedere Green Tea and the K-Tech Roundabout are going to start construction this fall.
02:58:04
At least they're slated to and then end two years later.
02:58:07
It's going to be a bit of a messy section for a little bit, but that's coming down the pike.
02:58:12
We also had a presentation from Matt Wortman from Albemarle County Public Schools about the capital projects, just that coming online, not this September, but a year after, is going to be, as you know, Julian, Center 2 at the Lambs Lane Campus, which is now redubbed ACE Academy.
02:58:30
We had a thing here about that, and we're asking them, like, why don't we go higher so that there's actually room to get more kids out of the trailers?
02:58:38
And the answer was there wasn't a budget for that.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:58:42
There wasn't what?
02:58:43
Budget?
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:58:43
Budget for that, yeah.
02:58:46
And then around the same time, also in just over a year, Mountain View over elementary down
02:58:51
on the south end of our development area is also going to come online.
02:58:55
But this is just a little moment of soap boxes that I found out from the charts that Mr. Warpent presented.
02:59:02
We currently have 60 classrooms in trailers across the county.
02:59:07
At any given time during the day, there's 1200 kids in trailers in our county.
02:59:12
And I'm like, but there's
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:59:13
But they're not the trailers that we were in, or I can't say that we were in because I'm older than everybody here, but they're not the trailers that I was in that didn't have conditioning or didn't have bathrooms.
02:59:26
This is more like Lincoln's.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:59:27
Yeah, no, no, I'm not saying they're miserable conditions here, but they're not as energy efficient.
02:59:33
The security issues are very high and the idea that we, and even as the county staff says, it's not the best learning environment.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:59:41
Well, we can be grateful for our tax increase that is a large percent.
02:59:46
Most of it's going to schools so that we can do school construction.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
02:59:53
What we really need is for the people, for the governor not to veto the ability for localities to have referendum on whether or not they want to have designated funding for schools.
03:00:04
1% sales tax.
03:00:05
Yeah, that's what we really need because that would have pushed something like $20 million a year into the school budgets.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:00:11
Goodness for term limits.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:00:16
All right, no more, any more reports?
03:00:18
I'll hand it back to Mr. Barnes for review of the Board of Supervisors meeting for June 18th.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
03:00:24
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
03:00:25
It was a long meeting that they had that evening.
03:00:28
Unfortunately, I was not at the meeting, but I said, well, I report back in the glorious details.
03:00:38
Two items of interest to you all.
03:00:39
First of all, the field school had the extension of the
03:00:44
you know the deadline that was approved unanimously by the the board with what i understand not a lot of discussion um the other thing is is that the planning commission uh got a raise this year from 76 85 to 79 96 or 79 16 a delta of 231 extra for um the upcoming fiscal year got a raise
03:01:13
You've got to raise.
03:01:16
So those are the two major items on that.
03:01:20
I did under new business, if you wouldn't mind, Mr. Chair.
03:01:24
Carolyn and I have been trying to get out to you guys a little bit of a two-month look.
03:01:28
You'll see we sent you something a week or two back, maybe a week back, that showed you that we didn't have any private sector items either in the meeting at the end of this month or the first meeting in August.
03:01:44
things move around here quick I just understood when I sat down that I might we might have a potential appeal that we might need to hold that first meeting in August we give you the dates talking July 22nd and August 12
03:01:58
and so my intent tonight was to come and ask you guys, would you mind if we had a motion to cancel both those meetings?
03:02:07
I understand now that I may need to keep the August 12th one in case this one matter progresses.
03:02:13
It may well not, but I would like to ask, would you all mind if we don't have any items for July 22nd that we move to,
03:02:29
and I think for the August 12th one, you know, we may need to figure out a little bit later whether or not we can cancel that, but I think we're sort of leaning towards canceling that and I'll try and figure out the legal.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:02:42
So you're going to cancel, you're asking us to cancel the next two meetings?
03:02:49
First one as of now.
03:02:51
Yeah.
SPEAKER_16
03:02:53
For right now, I think the motion would just be to cancel the July 22nd meeting and adjourn to the August 12th and if it's determined we don't need the August 12th meeting, we will circle back around with you and figure out the correct way to have that happen.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
03:03:09
Thank you.
03:03:11
Well, maybe the best thing would be is if they wouldn't mind taking, I'm sorry, guys, this has changed on me, but take action to not hold the August 12th unless we notify them in the next.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:03:24
Because how would we take action?
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
03:03:26
And that would be fine.
03:03:30
OK, so to summarize, please, if you all are predisposed to granting this request, get a motion to cancel the July 22 and to tentatively cancel the August 12 meeting, unless Bivens and Exactl with you in the next short term to hold it.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:03:52
You need two weeks notice for a public hearing, is that right?
03:03:58
We would need to know August 12th definitively by the 29th.
03:04:02
That's correct.
03:04:02
Yes.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:04:08
So it's clear that we're not doing the meeting on the 22nd.
SPEAKER_08
03:04:14
We were going to have a meeting on July on August 12th.
03:04:20
It would have to be published on July 21st.
03:04:24
Oh, 21st?
03:04:24
Three weeks?
03:04:28
For the newspaper.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:04:29
I think for right now.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
03:04:33
I don't.
SPEAKER_16
03:04:36
I'm not sure if staff is aware at this moment if there will be a need for a public hearing for August 12th.
03:04:42
It would be more for an administrative hearing for a potential appeal of an administrative decision.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:04:48
I see.
03:04:50
So that's not a public hearing then.
03:04:51
That's not a public hearing.
03:04:54
OK.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:04:54
Yeah, we probably don't have jurisdiction on it.
03:04:57
Is it one of those things that supervisors?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:05:00
Well, I'll take your advice.
03:05:02
It seems to me that it would be easier to cancel after the fact.
03:05:06
So in other words, I don't know.
03:05:07
Maybe it's just me, but if we cancel the 22nd,
03:05:10
and say the 12th is still a potential meeting, hold that out there.
03:05:14
And then when we get to the point of it either being the 21st or the 29th or whenever, then we cancel it.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:05:22
That would be my recommendation.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:05:23
The question is, do we have to have a motion to cancel it?
03:05:26
Because we won't be convened.
03:05:27
Because we won't be convened.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
03:05:30
That's what I was trying to get to.
03:05:31
Yeah, I think you need to take it action.
03:05:33
Can you have a conditional?
03:05:35
I don't think you can say sensitive things.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:05:37
I think you either cancel it or you don't.
03:05:40
And then he would reach out and say, we do need to meet.
03:05:43
We are calling back the meeting or something.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:05:46
Yeah, I just thought it'd be easier to not cancel it and then cancel it later.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:05:50
But if we're not in session, how can we vote on that?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:05:53
Can we reconvene, though, if we're not in session?
03:05:55
Can we vote to have a meeting after all if we don't have a motion
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:06:02
No, this is a flummox.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:06:03
Yeah, this is the first time.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
03:06:05
Yeah, I'm so sorry.
03:06:06
I was prepared to come in tonight and ask two motions to cancel both of them.
03:06:10
I had done the research to figure out how to do a tentative cancellation of a meeting.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:06:15
You can tentatively vote.
03:06:17
You can't say either is or isn't.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:06:18
There must be some way to call us.
03:06:20
But we do know as one thing, we can put one thing aside, we can move to cancel the 22nd.
03:06:25
Yeah.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:06:26
Yeah, that's also the state planning conference.
03:06:28
So I wouldn't be here.
03:06:29
Other staff are going.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:06:31
So we can cancel the 22nd.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:06:32
Yeah, why don't we start with that.
03:06:34
Is there a motion to?
03:06:36
Some move.
03:06:37
Second.
03:06:38
Discussion?
03:06:40
Call the roll please.
SPEAKER_08
03:06:43
Mr. Bivins.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:06:45
Aye.
SPEAKER_08
03:06:45
Mr. Murray.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:06:46
Aye.
SPEAKER_08
03:06:46
Mr. Clayburn.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:06:47
Aye.
SPEAKER_08
03:06:48
Mr. Missell.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:06:49
Aye.
SPEAKER_08
03:06:49
Mr. Moore.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:06:50
Aye.
SPEAKER_08
03:06:50
Ms.
03:06:51
Firehock.
03:06:51
Aye.
03:06:52
Thank you.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:06:53
And now to the 12th.
03:06:57
To your point, can we call a special meeting if we cancel it?
03:07:00
Can we call a special meeting, call it back?
SPEAKER_16
03:07:06
We certainly could do that if needed, if that is actually needed.
03:07:10
Unfortunately, staff just isn't, we're not clear at this time if we're going to need that meeting or not.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:07:15
So would you prefer that we cancel it and then find a way to call a special meeting or should we keep it and then cancel it, find a way to cancel it?
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:07:23
Show up and adjourn.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:07:25
Oh, you're the one driving from here?
03:07:27
We're not doing it.
Julian Bivins
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:07:28
Oh, we could go into our COVID stance.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:07:30
Here, we'll be at that meeting.
03:07:33
I will be landing at Charlottesville Airport.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:07:35
I'm sorry, hang on.
03:07:36
Let's get back to the question.
03:07:38
Do we want to cancel and then recall a special hearing or a special meeting?
03:07:46
Or do we want to keep it and then figure out a way to cancel it?
03:07:54
That's up to staff, really.
SPEAKER_02
03:07:56
I don't know.
03:07:56
We need counsel's advice on how to do this.
SPEAKER_16
03:07:59
And if y'all would give me just a moment.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:08:01
Yeah, no worries.
03:08:02
How do we do this?
03:08:02
We need to do bylaws right now real quickly.
03:08:05
Or we can also come back to it.
03:08:06
Why don't we go to new business, old business, and items for follow-up, if there is any, while y'all are looking?
03:08:12
I'm good.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:08:13
I've said enough tonight.
03:08:15
OK.
SPEAKER_02
03:08:17
That's not true.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:08:18
Oh, Julian, only you want to listen.
SPEAKER_02
03:08:21
I mean, I could go on if you want me to.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:08:23
Yeah, we could talk about hay fields.
SPEAKER_02
03:08:26
Yeah, oh, please.
03:08:27
Let's talk about hay.
SPEAKER_09
03:08:30
Is there the potential... What about telephone sheds?
03:08:33
You like that too?
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:08:34
Yeah, I like that.
03:08:35
You can't go... If there's the potential to have a meeting on the 12th... Sorry, listen up.
03:08:40
If there's a potential to have a meeting on the 12th... Which month?
03:08:44
Of August.
03:08:44
Okay.
03:08:46
And that could be for a hearing, or no, sorry, an appeal?
03:08:50
Is that what I heard?
03:08:52
Right.
03:08:53
Then could we push that appeal to the 26th?
03:08:55
I think there might be some date things.
SPEAKER_16
03:09:00
We're still looking into the time period in which an appeal, if there is an appeal, would need to actually be heard.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
03:09:07
I see.
03:09:07
Exactly right.
03:09:08
This came to our attention this afternoon at five, so timing is terrible.
SPEAKER_09
03:09:15
But we're not, before you came, we were on the Architectural Review Board.
03:09:20
and we can't, we actually have no legal authority.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:09:29
I don't want you to tell us what the thing is.
03:09:32
This body, we don't really hear appeals.
03:09:36
We're not the architectural review board and we don't do special exceptions.
03:09:40
Only the board does.
03:09:42
So I don't know what, what's in our bucket.
Nathan Moore
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:09:46
If the commission canceled the August 12th meeting and it was deemed that we do need to have a meeting, a special meeting pursuant to the bylaws,
SPEAKER_16
03:10:03
could be held if called by the chair or requested by two or more members of the commission upon a written request made to the secretary and to specify the matters to be considered at that meeting.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:10:15
Okay, so you could- So let's cancel.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:10:17
So we can cancel it.
03:10:19
And then I'll call a special meeting if we need it.
03:10:21
And what date are we talking about?
03:10:22
August of August.
Karen Firehock
Commissioner, Planning Commission
03:10:25
Okay, so there's a local- So cancel it, then he can call it to be a meeting.
SPEAKER_03
03:10:30
He can convene us.
03:10:31
if it needs.
SPEAKER_16
03:10:34
We need to have at least 14 days prior to the special meeting in order to provide.
Michael Barnes
Director of Planning
03:10:39
But this matter will have clarity on hopefully by the end of this week.
03:10:49
Let's do that, please.
03:10:50
If you don't mind, can we go ahead and cancel the August 12th meeting?
03:10:53
And if we need to, we'll let you know by the end of the month that we need to.
03:10:56
Perfect.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:10:57
If not before then that we need to have a motion to cancel the August 12th.
03:11:02
Second.
03:11:03
Any discussion?
03:11:04
We have the roll please.
SPEAKER_08
03:11:07
Mr. Bivins.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:11:08
Aye.
SPEAKER_08
03:11:09
Mr. Murray.
03:11:10
Aye.
03:11:10
Mr. Clayborne.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:11:11
Aye.
SPEAKER_08
03:11:12
Mr. Missel.
03:11:13
Aye.
03:11:13
Mr. Moore.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:11:14
Aye.
SPEAKER_08
03:11:14
Ms.
03:11:15
Firehock.
03:11:15
Aye.
03:11:16
Thank you.
Fred Missel
Commissioner, Planning Commission / Chair, Planning Commission
03:11:17
So it sounds like I'm adjourning the August 22nd.
03:11:20
August 26.
03:11:21
August 26.
03:11:25
OK, with that, we are adjourned.
03:11:27
And we will reconvene on August 26.
03:11:28
Madam Secretary and Chair, I will not be here on August 26.
03:11:33
Thank you.
03:11:34
Thanks, everybody.
SPEAKER_18
03:11:35
Cheers.