Planning Commission Regular Meeting   11/18/2025

And I will just read this quickly.

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.

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

So with that, I'll establish a quorum.

Mr. Bivins?

Here.

Ms.

Firehock is absent today.

Great.

Thank you.

We have more than a quorum.

Next, we'll move on to item two, public comment on matters pending before the commission, but not listed on this agenda.

Would anybody here this evening like to speak to any matters not on the agenda?

All right.

We will move on to the consent agenda.

Second.

Any discussion?

OK.

Mr. Murray?

Aye.

Thank you.

And with that, I think we're on to the public hearings and we'll begin with SP 2025-4 Northridge Preschool.

Good evening.

My name is Sid Shoaf.

I'm a senior planner with the planning division for the county's community development department.

Tonight I'll be giving staff's presentation for, oh, is it sharing on the screen?

Sorry.

I will be officially giving staff's presentation for special use permit SP-2025-4 Northridge Preschool.

This is a special use permit request to amend an existing special use permit to increase the total enrollment and hours of operation for a preschool.

The subject property is approximately 9.92 acres and located at 5100 Dickerson Road, which is approximately one and a half miles south of the county line with Greene County and is just north of the Places 29 development area.

It is zoned rural areas and the comprehensive plan designates it as rural areas.

The surrounding properties are all zoned rural areas and include other religious assembly uses and single family residences beyond the adjacent properties.

The subject property is home to the Northridge Community Church of Nazarene, which was first approved by a special use permit for the church in 2000 and the preschool was first established in 2003.

There is an active special use permit that was approved in 2006 that allows in a maximum enrollment of 80 students.

The applicants requesting to increase the student enrollment from 80 students to 100 students and to increase the hours of operation from 7 30 a.m.

to 1 o'clock p.m.

to 6 o'clock a.m.

to 6 o'clock p.m.

The special use permit application was reviewed under the factors for consideration as outlined in the zoning ordinance.

Staff believes that the proposed special use permit will not be detrimental to adjacent parcels, will not change the character of the nearby area, will continue to be in harmony with the rural area zoning district, and is consistent with the comprehensive plan.

There are three recommended conditions for this application.

The first two are related to the applicant's proposal, and the third is carryover from the previously approved special use permit.

The intent is to preserve the existing woodland on the property.

In sum, there are three positive aspects.

The first is the proposals consistent with the review criteria for special use permits contained in the zoning ordinance.

The second is the proposal provides a preschool slash daycare option for community members who live and work in the area.

And third, there are no detrimental impacts to adjoining properties are anticipated.

Staff found no concerns.

Staff recommends approval with the conditions as recommended in the staff report.

Pretty straightforward.

Any questions for staff?

No?

All right.

Great.

Thank you.

With that, I will open the public hearing and ask if there is an applicant who would like to speak to this matter.

Thanks.

Good evening everyone.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

My name is Debbie Swanson and I'm the director of the Northridge Preschool.

I'm here to provide a brief overview of our preschool and the purpose of our request.

and how our program serves the families in a broader community of our county.

Our preschool is a religious exempt child day center serving ages three to six years of age.

We focus on providing a safe and nurturing developmentally appropriate environment that supports children's social, emotional, cognitive, physical, and eventually kindergarten readiness needs.

We are requesting approval for an addendum to our current special use permit by increasing our student enrollment from 80 to 100 students and extending our hours from 730 to 130 currently.

to 6 a.m.

to 6 p.m.

This step is essential for us to accommodate the additional demands from our local families to ensure compliance with the county planning and safety standards and operate long-term in a way that aligns with the county's developmental goals.

And in a recent report just this week, I saw where Jason Grant for Albemarle County Public Schools

They've just added some classrooms there as well.

And I've worked in the county schools and I know the need well.

So I was pleased to see that.

There's significant growth and demand for a high quality early education in our area.

Parents frequently report challenges, finding accessible quality care and wait lists that are very long for local programs.

And so we need to have that increase.

Our preschool helps address these families and gives them a great opportunity to work in with us.

School readiness with strong early literacy and pre-math foundations is very important.

and in that same article that I read just this week, Meredith Luchesio, actually, Vice President of School Readiness, talked about how 90% of the brain development of children happened before age five.

So it's so important.

for their life foundationally, you know, as they move forward not only in their education but in their life.

We want to partner with you in making sure as many children as possible can have access to a quality program.

Community stability is very important and we want to offer that in reliable care.

We have carefully designed our operations to minimize the impact

surrounding the neighborhood.

We've tried to strategically stagger our drop-off times and pickup times so that there's a lower impact to the roads, noise.

I can't think of a better noise than children playing, but also we want to make sure not to disturb our neighbors.

And so we're specifically coming out at times when we know they're probably at work or also out busy in their day as well.

Safety, we want to provide strict safety protocols, fenced outdoor playgrounds, and we provide supervised access control.

Approving our request will bring several community benefits, increased access to early education for more children, support for local employers and the workforce, positive economic impact by employing our staff and welcoming new members there.

enhancing the county's overall family-friendly infrastructure.

It's very important as well.

Great, thank you very much.

You're very welcome.

Are there any questions for the applicant?

Good to see you.

Thank you for being here this evening.

So I've just got a couple of housekeeping pieces that I was trying to figure out as I was looking at your website and also at your location.

So number one, I don't know who you would disturb given that there's only three churches there and your church and your church across the street, the Presbyterians are the only ones who are doing something like that.

Well, you know, maybe those wild turkeys that I saw that signs that they would be concerned about what you do up there.

But you know, one never knows.

OK, so that what you're doing tonight is trying to bring this in alignment to what you're doing.

That is correct.

And I had an hour and two hours at the back end.

Yes, sir.

OK, that makes more sense to me because I'm like, I don't understand what we're doing here.

It's like classroom 107A and classroom 107B.

Correct.

OK.

So I get the other ones, 103, 101, 102, 104, all the way up to 108.

Yeah.

Then I didn't really understand if, I mean, I'm also going to assume, going back to 107A and 107B,

And then another part of the week is two-day students.

That's correct.

But the census never exceeds 10 students.

That's correct.

So there was a my rub.

I don't know what you're doing here talking to us because I don't see what the problem is.

Ah, okay.

That would be helpful when you go to the next stage.

Tell them that.

Because my concern is like, why is this even in front of us?

Because you can only have, according to the layout that's here, there's only 80 students.

So I think it would be helpful for you to tell that when you go to the next one.

Now, the next piece I'm going to say is probably a bit more Julian trying not to be persnickety.

Well, my colleagues know that's a really hard thing for me.

So when I go to your website, I couldn't get some of your links to work, particularly the one with photos, because I was trying to get a sense if this was a preschool of diverse children.

because you have a couple of your things where you have diverse images, but then when I went down, I couldn't see.

So that goes to the point, are we really helping the community?

Now, some people would say, yeah, we're really helping the community because the community is that.

I get that.

I'm not sure why that link doesn't currently work.

Yes, sir.

You don't have to get... I couldn't validate when someone makes statements like you made that this is a place that's going to reach out into community.

I couldn't validate that.

Sure.

So the next thing that I do when I'm getting spasticity is ask you these questions like,

Really, just how welcoming is this school that's trying to help the entire community?

Yes, sir.

All right, thank you.

Commissioner Murray, any questions?

Thank you for the presentation.

I'm always a big fan of these proposals as a father with two young kids and two working parents and being open from six to six is life-saving for a mother and a father who's both working.

I'm curious if you guys talk a little bit about what drives the 100 student cap.

Is it the building code or the program?

It's just for the growth demand that I could see happening, 20 students, does it sound like a lot?

The facility itself currently, it would have to have some pretty extensive renovation and to add to many more students than that.

The actual space itself, adding 10 children per classroom for the additional classrooms we'd like to use, it would add 20.

Thank you.

Great.

That was my question too.

Any other questions?

No?

Notwithstanding, the one in the back doesn't do anything like that.

And that's not that far.

I mean, you could easily think about how you do that.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Is there anyone here this evening who would like to speak to this matter?

All right.

The proposal is fine by me.

That's not a problem at all.

I think this is pretty straightforward.

I do think, though, and this is something that I'd like to telegraph to the Board of Supervisors for future consideration, is the degree to which we have privatized what needs to be a public good.

and that is you know pre-k preschool early learning needs to be a public good.

Not to say that the preschools like yours aren't fine and wonderful institutions, just that you know we have public schools that start at age five.

But as our presenter and as lots and lots of research shows like really the need for support and brain development and pre-k readiness and social readiness and learning

needs to be there much earlier.

And we have not invested our tax resources into that.

We have bright stars, but that's very limited and very sort of both income limited and age limited and difficult.

There's waiting lists everywhere.

Thank you.

I would just add, it's not just, I don't want to call it a progressive thing.

I want to say that there's also an economic benefit to it.

So I don't want to call us progressive, so let's not left and right it.

Let's just, let's do the thing that I do well, which is let's talk about the economic benefit of being able to offer to people who are coming to the community, to employers who are coming to this community, that we can offer your families, we can offer your people, your employees, a full suite of opportunities for their children and their families.

and that's not a left and a right thing.

Any other comments?

Would anybody like to make a motion?

Second.

Great.

We have a motion and a second.

Any discussion?

Aye.

All right.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you all for coming.

Appreciate it.

All right, we will move on to item number five, which I assume is not a public hearing item, right?

It is a presentation, but it's also not a work session.

Okay.

The presentation update.

Great.

Here we go, thank you and good evening members of the Commission.

My name is Leah Brumfield.

I'm a Senior Planner II in the Zoning Division of Community Development and today I will present to you an update on our zoning modernization project.

AC44 was recently adopted so now we are working diligently to incorporate it into the ordinance and so today's presentation will be an information sharing update on how that is coming about.

Briefly, we're going to start with a reminder of project goals, which have been simplified into four objectives.

Following that, we'll talk about the work we have completed to date, what AC44 and best planning practices will mean for the zoning ordinance, and the phased approach we're taking to accomplish our project goals.

Finally, we'll wrap up with next steps.

I know we're going to have a lot of questions probably, but I would request we hold our questions to the end because a lot of questions are probably going to be answered on the slides following whatever slide instigates the questions.

So, distilling the many paragraphs of beautiful, descriptive, evocative goals we've written for this project throughout ROIs, early evaluations and presentations, we have distilled this into four bullet points.

We want to rewrite the ordinance for clarity and ease of use.

We want to streamline administrative processes for both efficiency and appropriate use of staff and legislative body time.

We want to align the ordinance with AC44 comprehensive plan.

We want to update the ordinance overall for modern best practices that meet the needs of the county today.

So the first phase, which we're calling the foundation phase, is complete.

In this phase, which we worked with the aid of local governmental consulting agency, the Berkeley Group on, we consulted staff and the development community stakeholder through interviews.

We had two on twos with the planning commission members, which will remember, and the Berkeley Group provided a general review of the zoning ordinance against best practices and our project goals from our resolutions of intent.

ending up with a zoning ordinance evaluation document, which is very lengthy.

At the end of that evaluation stage, we drafted new articles of the ordinance throughout that establishing a consistent language pattern, a tone of language, and a format structure that will be used throughout the new ordinance.

We also condensed and simplified some of the administrative processes where we could extensively involving each community development team involved in that application.

And then at the end of that drafting process, the four new articles were presented to our legislative bodies and the Board of Supervisors gave their approval on the project direction and the articles presented so far.

The four articles are available on our Engage website.

As a recap, the four articles we drafted in this phase were Article 1, General Provisions, containing the same establishment of authority as is in our current ordinances, Article 1, and probably every municipality's Article 1.

Article 2, which establishes the authority of each individual body involved in administering the ordinance.

That includes the Planning Commission, the Zoning Administrator, the Architectural Review Board, all of those.

Article 3 outlines all the applications, the permits that someone could apply for and describes the processes for each of those applications.

And Article 10, which describes nonconformities, which is fairly boilerplate, did not contain any substantive content change.

And again, is probably similar to the language in every ordinance across the Commonwealth.

But all of these sections with the changes that we made and the reorganization that we made, all of them follow the same basic structure.

This provides a really great logical consistency and it starts with the intent or purpose of the section, ends up with modifications or waivers or very specific nitpicky things for each individual topic.

As needed, different sections may have additional regulations added, subsets of sections, but the overall regulatory architecture does remain consistent.

Kind of as an early bird special, we have applied this ordinance architecture to the proposed revisions for the Rio 2019 form-based code.

I believe that'll be presented to the commission in January.

Our zoning modernization team had a very strong overlap with the Rio 2019 form-based code.

I was on that team.

So the ordinance we've been writing follows the same tone, language style, and the ordinance structure that we outlined previously.

Here I have condensed sections from the draft article from phase one and the draft form-based code to highlight the similarities.

The numbering scheme is different but the form-based code is following our existing numbering format and then we change into the new overall format the numbers will just be changed without any really big changes to the form-based code itself.

So phase one is complete.

Phase two seems like the obvious next step.

Phase two is the phase where we're focusing on format modernization.

We're calling this phase format modernization because it focuses on the format and less so the content, although it is language, format, and a little bit of content.

So looking back at our project goals, this phase completes the work we started in phase one, working to rewrite the ordinance for clarity and ease of use.

At the end of this phase, phase two, we're anticipating adoption of a fully rewritten ordinance that will include overall clearer language, a more logical and navigable format, and simpler administrative processes.

However, this phase does not include the majority of the substantive regulatory changes.

Those changes will be rolled into phase three and we'll explain why a little bit later in this presentation.

This phase does include rewriting and reorganizing the ordinance for clarity and ease of use.

One of the examples of this is reorganizing all of our lists of uses across districts into tables that span multiple districts and are easier to peruse.

Staff have been working on these tables for the past two, three months or so.

And I do want to mention that the example on the screen is for format review only.

It is not completed at all.

But what this new format illustrates is an easier to read view of what is on the page.

It has an increased clarity of whether a use is by right through administrative review, special use permit requiring board approval, or whether the use is only permitted as accessory use to another use, or whether it's just not permitted at all in that district.

It also includes cleaner, consistent naming of uses across the districts.

Additionally, at the same time, we have been reorganizing rewriting language that exists in the current ordinance, again, for clarity and ease of use.

Here are examples of supplemental regulations, which is being reorganized into performance use standards and grouped to make it simpler to access.

Performance use standards for residential uses, for example, will be under Division 7.3, whereas all of the recreational use standards will be grouped under Division 7.4.

While we're reorganizing the sections, we are rewriting the language for clarity and brevity where possible without substantially changing the regulations themselves.

So here's kind of an example.

A paragraph of text under the current language example becomes a list of steps which is much clearer and easier to follow.

These kinds of updates will be applied to the entire ordinance, and that is intended to be adopted at the culmination of phase two of this project, providing a fresh slate for the ordinance before we adopt any substantive changes.

Additionally, phase two will likely include some smaller regulatory changes.

This slide highlights a few of the types that we're considering rolling into this phase.

Types of changes that are just codifications of regular practice.

A very, very straightforward adoption of industry standard regulations, which in and of themselves are actually generally codification of regular practice.

But as cute as the dog may be, these kinds of changes are not finalized in our plan.

They will be discussed more in detail in a later work session.

So finally, we move to phase three of the zoning modernization project, which is the big stuff.

We're calling this the regulatory modernization phase.

This phase pulls in the other two goals that we listed at the beginning, aligning the zoning ordinance with AC44 and updating regulations for modern best practices.

So the newly adopted AC44 comprehensive plan is a weighty and important document.

Staff did engage the public extensively throughout this process.

And the culmination of that work included numerous actions and goals for the community as a whole, spanning every department across the county government.

However, one of the direct ways to implement comp plan is of course through zoning ordinance.

The zoning modernization team is working closely with the AC44 team as we determine how these goals and actions will be implemented and which priorities will take priority in the zoning modernization project.

One of the big moves listed in the implementation chapter of the comp plan is to align regulations with AC44.

which might be described as the larger umbrella of this whole project.

So that's not listed on this slide.

But a few examples of specific changes that might be prioritized in this project are increasing permissions for missing middle housing across different residential densities, allowing mixed use districts in previously commercial only districts, allowing additional rural area conducive businesses to operate with administrative approval and performance standards instead of requiring board approval across the board.

bigger, larger kind of changes like that.

So as we mentioned, zoning staff is working closely with AC44 staff to winnow down the dozens, I think 50 some odd AC44 zoning ordinance recommended actions into a priority list that they're working with short, medium and long-term actions.

That prioritization list will be presented for approval by the Board of Supervisors, at which point zoning modernization will implement those changes in phase three.

At the same time, I do know that the AC44 team is working on other initiatives to address all the other comprehensive plan goals and actions that are not within the zoning modernization project.

And we are working very closely with those staff, spending far too much time together, making sure our initiatives mesh well, and that we are working concurrently and not at cross purposes.

We currently have a target date of early spring 2026.

to receive approval on those implementation plans and start moving forward with the regulatory changes.

So finally, phase three will also incorporate a number of initiatives that staff, developers, and commission members have all been talking about for years, including updating parking regulations for best practices, simplifying or sign regulations, codifying minimum sizes and standards for tree wells and landscaping, among many other types of planning best practices.

These types of changes will largely be informed by the best planning practices across Virginia and the planning field in general.

So how is this going to all happen and when?

As the Commission may notice, there are handouts provided, also available on the sideboard for the public and which will be available as part of this presentation on our Engage site.

The project has two phases that are currently already running and are running concurrently.

The project format phase, where we're working on just rewriting without substantive changes, will run through adoption, aiming for fall of 2026 for that adoption.

as an example, looking back at that uses table we had on the screen a while ago, we're reviewing the uses lists and reformatting them into our preferred table layout and rewriting the language associated with that use into clear language.

But as we are drafting the newly formatted entire ordinance, we intend those use tables to be adopted in fall 2026.

And then while we are looking at that,

We are noting which changes need regulatory changes.

So that's how we're kind of working at the same time on the two different phases.

We are going to be moving forward with beginning staff level review of those phases.

And then once we receive direction on prioritization, then the staff level review will guide the work with topic-based focus groups, which will lead to our newly drafted substantive changes to the ordinance.

Our current goal for regulatory changes will be incorporated into the clean formatted ordinance is around early 2028.

This approach of the staggered milestones provides a faster delivery of the new ordinance, providing overall clarity and user-friendliness at a more convenient speed for people who want to start doing projects quickly while allowing us necessary time for research and engagement on topics that do require more in-depth discussions and more engagement.

So every zoning text amendment that I have worked on, and there have been a few, have involved an iterative process.

So by building that iteration into our project timeline, we're allowing a continuous progress, and we're also allowing for project learning throughout that iteration.

But because we're expecting that, that creates efficiency in our use of staff time and hopefully our legislative body time as well.

So we will be working on a broad public information sharing engagement strategy with general information in Albemarle County News, social media, and both the general county website and our engaged site, which I've mentioned a couple of times here, and the link of which I will share on the last slide.

So throughout this process, we will keep the general public informed on progress.

But we are emphasizing understanding the hows and whys of rewriting the zoning ordinance and how that is applied.

One of the things we're looking for is a Lunch and Learn series.

The name is still up in the air.

Maybe Zoning University, maybe Ordinance Oracles, TBD.

Any suggestions, we will take those.

But following the robust general public engagement of the comp plan, which provided us with county level broad goals, the zoning modernization project is focusing on targeted engagement, working with topic experts to write the ordinance to inform staff as we write the ordinance as outlined in the broad goals of the comp plan.

So we are working closely with our communications and public engagement team as well to work on building those topic focus groups.

And of course they are helping us throughout this process with our engagement efforts across the board.

We will of course also have numerous legislative work sessions to tackle questions and receive feedback throughout.

So at a 60-foot high bird's eye view, since that's currently the permitted maximum building height in most of our districts, our project next steps are as follows.

Staff will be continuing to work on permitted uses tables, general formatting and language rewrites, and the overall reorganization of the ordinance.

Our project engagement and education will be ongoing throughout.

and we'll be working to determine which of the AC44 regulatory changes and best planning practices will be encompassed in this project with a target timeline of figuring that out around February or March of 2026.

We will be working on topic-based discussions and legislative topic review throughout the project, starting probably spring or summer of 2026.

And just to get it on everybody's books, we are looking at an update similar to this one in about a year in November 2026.

We will have other meetings in the interim, but just mark your calendars.

So it's a new and challenging and intimidating road ahead of us.

But as we move forward, I am very excited to bring forward what I believe will be an amazing new ordinance and a great step for the county.

Great.

Great presentation.

Thank you.

Really helpful to have the expanded upon outline through this presentation.

I learned a lot.

So that was really, really good.

Thank you.

Who wants to kick us off, or we just do this informally?

Oh, sure.

Okay.

So the first thing is, I brought this before, is it calls out streamlined administrative processes.

And I'm wondering how are we going to work to, because sometimes

Sometimes in streamlining things, we can actually miss things that are important to the community, regulations that might actually be important to people.

Particularly, I'm thinking about environmental regulations.

In the interest of streamlining, we may actually inadvertently create loopholes that actually create environmental situations.

As we're looking at streamlining, how are we achieving that balance, first of all?

Sure, great question.

So the streamlining that we're talking about has mostly already been incorporated into the ordinance drafts, and it's really very administrative.

It is

calling different types of applications the same application type as opposed to having 15 different application forms for that and that our civic access and EP&L project that we are still

working out right now, but which is implemented and is available to the public now and is part of our regular process.

That was definitely a big part of that streamlining.

If you review our draft Article 3, I think the really big streamline that we had that our development community was very, very excited about was to condense all of our site plan

processes so that there is a generalized site plan that is skipping over the initial for simpler processes.

Where there's going to be intensive grading or where there's an architectural review board, the initial is still required.

But in every other circumstance where it's a more straightforward thing,

The same reviews happen under the final or the singular site plan review, but it doesn't require two applications and two review processes.

So that's really just cutting that in half for a lot of our applications.

And I know that our development community was excited about that and staff said that would save them a lot of time without missing anything.

Great, that's great.

Thank you for that clarification.

Then there were some tantalizing hints as you went through there on page 10, for example.

It looked to me like there's some suggestion that we might actually differentiate rural and urban uses as we go through this.

I mean, so currently what we have is just lists of uses, and there are, in a lot of cases, the same uses listed in the rural area and the residential districts, because they are treated the same across everything.

For example, single-family homes.

They're treated the same in all the different districts.

I mean I mean I would encourage if there are opportunities for example of breaking out and I think if we go back to

Oh, yeah.

So you have agricultural processing plants, for example.

It is.

It's called fruit and produce packing plants, I think.

OK.

Yeah.

I think anytime we can break things out, I mean, one of the things I've always called out is we have areas that are zoned industrial in our rural area that probably should be classified as something else.

I don't know the timing of it.

I do know that one of the priorities for the long range planning team is working on a rural area plan, and I think that would be encompassed under that.

That's great.

That's another question that I had.

That's all I have for now.

Awesome.

I had a question around community engagement.

And if you could share a little bit about your goals, like the quantity of folks you're trying to reach.

As I remember, as we worked through AC44, staff did a monumental effort trying to get out there and touch people and solicit input.

But I think when you look at the numbers,

They probably fell short of what we probably hoped to, is my guess, in terms of how many people we were able to bring to the table, like unique people.

So I think one of the big differences is in the application of the target of this project because AC44 really was a very broad target and that you really wanted to get every voice in the community because it is the comprehensive plan.

It is comprehensive across the board.

The topics that we're working with on this project are really focused, so I don't think that we necessarily need to do a 2,000 person survey on what size tree wells are best for

plants in our streetscapes.

I don't think that'll be an effective use of our time.

So that's kind of really what we're looking for with our engagement here is expert level topic focused groups.

We will be sharing information.

And I think that we can definitely look for numbers of reaching on information sharing.

Good evening.

So a couple of questions.

So on the document that you

Thank you for writing the date like that.

I understand that a lot easier.

On item 6, you have the Route 29 form-based code integration.

One of my question is, will we ever have, do you anticipate having other form-based codes, or that we might develop other form-based codes?

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, let him answer that for us.

I don't know if I would use favorite in front of that, but it's certainly something we're very interested in.

I guess we're working on the form-based code.

We're trying to make it something that can be replicable.

Now, will it be replicable?

And also encouraging is not, I mean, there's no use going through the exercise if at the end it's not sending or not sort of encouraging people to use the code.

You know, that's the piece that I wrestled with when we did the 29 code.

It's like, oh, that's really cool, but it ain't gonna happen.

And, you know, just living and walking in a space as you're reaching out and doing that, I think just to encourage you to sort of not go through the exercise, not that I'd want you to, to go through the exercise, just to go through the exercise, but actually to go through the exercise with the hope of creating a new, with an impact or an encouragement on what you'd expect to happen there.

because this is a form of overlay.

And so one of our supervisors always talked about an arts overlay in the Jewett district.

And so how would we accomplish that?

So we can do the language, but what are the incentives there to get someone to say, yeah, I think that's something to do, particularly since the city has decided it's reinvigorating its arts in place thing.

I don't want to be outdone by them in the future.

But I appreciate it.

I'm glad you're going to do it.

But I would just say, let's be thoughtful down the road about what we're trying to encourage in that location as opposed to the exercise, the form-based exercise, which was a wonderful exercise.

But it's probably a decade or two before it's fulfilled.

Or at least somebody's going to die and sell that piece of property before it's fulfilled.

And so that's really what I'm talking about.

How do we move farther down?

The other piece I have.

I think you answered it when you were talking to my colleague here about experts.

So the topic experts will be both insiders and outsiders.

So that is something that we are going to be working with the communications team on.

To provide feedback and to provide insight.

Yeah, I mean, however you do that, but you have a list of individuals who are subject matter experts.

That's really where I'm coming from.

Communication at work.

And then my last, which is always the thing that you can count on if I see it on the screen.

There was one of your issues there.

I thought it said the Monticello historic district.

which we do not have one.

As you know, we have a southern rural historic district

and we have this thing that Monticello likes to say that they've got a viewshed protection which they even admit in their online that it is not a county designated anything.

So this is just Julian, you only have to put up with this for a little bit more.

Julian would just like us to be disciplined when we talk about that place on the hill.

The place on the hill that has $300 million worth of non-profit income every year.

And because it's a tax-free environment, it pays no taxes to the county of Albemarle except for tourist tax on bad food and maybe if you buy some trinkets.

Remember what I said, don't give away our power.

Our power is we get to create the development and the environment that we want our people to live in, not a guy who's been dead for a number of years and whose streets of property has a colorful history.

I just put it that way.

So I would just ask you before you go to the supervisor, before I have to whisper into somebody's supervisor here, just say that it's the Southern Albemarle Historic District and exercise.

except if you want to say the pretend Monticello viewshed protection.

Thank you, madam, for allowing me yet again.

And I know, you know, there's going to be comments about that.

Not from you all, but you know.

Thank you, Lee.

I appreciated the presentation and a lot of the detail that you provided.

So I guess a little bit just going up

Okay.

I want to take it up a little higher.

It's very consistent with my comment right now.

So you heard us talking about density over and over again in AC44, the importance of not leaving density on the table as we have the last 10 years.

So my question is, how are we thinking about that in this process?

Because this is the opportunity to put some teeth into that.

to actually think about how do we avoid not leaving a lot of density on the table?

So how do we encourage density, adaptive reuse, infill?

And yeah, thank you.

So some of these key words are in here, right?

I see density under housing.

I don't see it anywhere else.

I think there's infill somewhere in here.

I saw it.

And those are great that it's those terms are getting in there.

But how are we thinking about actually putting some teeth behind that so that we don't lose those opportunities?

Because if we don't densify, I think you somewhere you say, you know, up not out.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's really the focus of what we are going to be working on in phase three.

That's really the big question, is how do we make those goals actual reality?

And I think that we're going to have to start talking about that in concrete steps as opposed to in visionary steps and in goals and how do we reach those goals.

So that's really what we're going to be looking at.

And I do anticipate that that is going to be one of the primary goals that comes out of our work in the spring is density.

I think that we've all been hearing that word over and over and over again.

And it makes absolute sense.

And it is actually best planning practice as well.

So that is definitely going to be something that we are going to be figuring out at that stage.

kind of looking at that timeline.

Let me go back to there.

So this is really where we're going to be focusing that on between the like early 2026 to late 2026 when we have those conversations.

Yeah, just a few things to consider there.

So I think the teeth can come and you've heard us talking about these gates of how you open density, how you open.

So there's got to be incentives.

I also think that we need to incorporate and think about partners.

So how does the county partner with developers?

How do

other entities, private, we're now in an opportunity where Albemarle County in particular is now going to be home to some major companies.

All those companies can partner with us to open up some of these gates for higher development.

Higher density infill projects and so forth, adaptive reuse.

So thinking about these partners, and we have more partners at the table now, and we will be in the next few years.

So by the time we should be looking at, you know, when this is adopted, we're going to have a major neighbor.

to the north of the county or in the north part of the county.

So I would encourage us to really think strategically on these partnerships and how they can help us develop the infrastructure that we need and of course, achieve the density that we want to achieve in the next, throughout the AC44 span.

I would just say, Luis, to add on to that, part of a zoning ordinance is going to get to that.

You can create incentives for density.

You can keep regulations that allow that.

But I think you're talking about regulations.

I mean, you're talking about incentives that are partnerships or

Maybe even things that help incentivize some of the things that allow you to get the density, right?

The things that always come up, which are what?

Schools, transportation, so road improvements.

Public infrastructure.

Public infrastructure.

So those are the things that ultimately are limiting our development in certain areas, right?

I mean, they always come up over and over and over again.

How do we bring partners to the table so that we can get ahead of the development, have the infrastructure, so all of a sudden, hey, we can build a 12-story building somewhere.

And then that's possible.

Otherwise, we wind up with the same issues.

How do we get people from point A to point B?

And so that's where I think the partnerships could begin to come in.

And if we incentivize, well, we could build more density in a particular site.

Yeah, I agree with everything you said.

And, you know, zoning ordinances themselves on that narrow thing, you can create the regulations that allow for that.

But I think your point is,

You can do that all day long, but how do you actually do another, several other actions in the community that buttress that so that you actually achieve it?

So, I mean, it's kind of part of the sorting ordinance.

In the sorting ordinance, we can begin to provide the incentives, say, well, we can achieve more density in a particular area.

Correct.

Yep.

And that's where, yes, I understand that that is outside of the zoning ordinance, but that is where our economic development and our partnerships all come into play, right?

They shouldn't be siloed into individuals.

They should actually all be working towards the same goal.

Did I just echo that as well?

I think, you know, one of the things I noticed when I first came on this commission was,

how frequently we're kind of just reactive to the proposal coming our way and the chance to actually be proactive and prepare for like, oh, here's where we would like to grow things.

Here's where we would like to really make things happen that we know we all need.

Let's select where those things might be.

But I wanted to actually back up to a couple of just kind of fun things first.

Yeah, that's the general newsletter straight from Cape.

I was hoping there was some new news outlet that I hadn't heard of yet.

As far as the name of the lunch series, I might suggest Zone Out or Comfort Zone.

But those are just corny puns.

Take them for what you will.

I liked very much, I just wanted to compliment the format work, the sort of sample you showed instead of this block paragraph of text.

It's like, oh,

this is an outline that my human brain can understand.

And so I just keep up the good work on that front.

But then talking about the sort of regulatory phase and phase three, I was curious about sort of, I'd like to hear more information about when this commission kind of gets to see some of what's happening and see some of the priorities.

Just one of the things that I noticed was that

and the housing section's like more missing middle.

But at the same time, I remember in the Conference of Plan discussions, there really was no color coding all around the vast swaths of land around 29 North that was that color.

And so I'm kind of curious, that kind of thing makes me want to sort of have some input somewhere along the way relatively soon.

Yeah, absolutely.

As just a point of information, because I am obviously a planning and zoning nerd, the missing middle would be incorporated into multiple districts.

So that's really, it would be pulled into a lot of our residential and our mixed use districts that we're looking at.

and it's more of an identification of a type that we have not encouraged through our ordinance as opposed to a distinct kind of district.

But that's just a side note.

As far as when the Planning Commission would be involved, we were just today talking about doing a kind of information work session on both

bringing in the information from prioritization and then also talking about the additional plans.

So both Michael's team and then also our team coming back to the planning commission again around that like March date of next year.

And then I really think it's just going to be rolling on as we approach the topics, we're going to be bringing individual things back.

The work sessions are definitely gonna be more focused on broader conversations, whereas I know previously when we have brought zoning text amendments to the commission, some of them have been very focused on individual words on the page.

Very good, very good.

This is a little left field question, but I'm curious, especially in some of the urban ring districts right by the city of Charlottesville,

A great question.

Yeah, I guess the whole thing is along that frontier where we may have an activity center, say in Pan Tops, lower Pan Tops, and the city is working on River Road,

and Little High Street, out of those relate to each other.

Hydraulics, another interesting area, even Gasoline Alley and some of the things that the city's talked about in the Greenbrier neighborhood.

There's several places around the frontier for the two jurisdictions to meet.

Well, I think there's also... And so...

and I love you guys for always pushing me to get the right answer right next.

And I beg a little bit of time.

Staff really spent all this time writing, AC44, staff spent a lot of time managing two sets of presentations.

We're doing the planning commission, the board, doing lunch and learns, everything, doing all the graphic layout.

And so I'm just kudos to that team.

Time for that team to sort of sit there and say, okay, so now how does that actually, those great ideas, how do we implement that AC44?

How do we get into that question of all those activity centers around that we've identified that are those areas I think we just hit?

What does it mean to activity center plan?

What's our outcome?

What are the desired things?

And coming back and explaining that, talking about how we support that with transportation.

and then that whole host of other things that Luis was sort of, that's why I kind of called that out.

I've been thinking a lot about how does that work with all of the other either departments or other places where the county has the capacity to push levers one way or another to help promote that thing, stuff beyond transportation.

And so, yeah, it's something that, if that's the organizing principle that we,

moved forward through my, you know, senior staff and comes to the board.

I think that's the idea.

It's like, we had to figure out where are we going to make these walkable centers?

And how are we going to incentivize them to actually make them happen?

What investments are we going to make?

What catalyst projects can we find to make those things happen?

And we may find that

We do it everywhere, all the centers at once.

I appreciate the and answer.

I just had one other little thing, and then that means pass it on to the rest of everybody.

I was just looking at and thinking about this in terms that

that I understand better and density I understand is more homes and fewer acres.

You know, the economic developments or flexibility for multiple economic development types.

I want us to think though about and to kind of bear this lens in mind is that the way we do this zoning that serves people because it's not just density.

What I want is affordability.

And it's not just sort of like flexible economics.

I want jobs with dignity.

And of course, also Arts and Parks.

Wanted to add one comment.

When you said beyond infrastructure, I think that sparked another thought that I didn't articulate, which I think goes straight to this question of zoning modification.

So the limiting factor that we always hear in terms of density, right?

Well, we can't go up another few floors or whatever, because you're changing construction methodologies.

You may be going away from wood.

So there's some code implications, right, as you go up more elevators.

I mean, there's a number of things that architecturally

you need, right?

Your structure changes and so forth.

Podium, parking, right?

And so there's all of these, what we hear, what we've heard is that we can't do that because of the cost implications, right?

The same thing with infill projects.

In some cases, infill projects could cost you more money depending on what you're doing and how you're approaching them, adaptive reuse and so forth.

And this is where, again, this partnerships.

So let's not limit ourselves in thinking of how we can partner with industry that we have and more that is coming, university and others, to think about workforce housing, which they're going to need, as well as low income housing.

So how can they help fund some of these gaps on projects?

When you have an international pharmaceutical that's going to build their largest manufacturing plant in the world here in Albemarle County, there should be a conversation of where are all these people going to live.

And they're going to use schools and they're going to use our roads.

And so there should be a conversation there, right?

and UVA as well.

I think there's opportunities for UVA to partner even beyond what they're doing right now with some workforce housing and affordable housing that they obviously have been looking at and implementing some of that.

But there's more that we can talk about and

implement for the zoning?

And this is where these gates come in, right?

Well, we could do more.

You could go higher.

How can we incentivize this?

And from an economic development piece, if there's pots of money from partners for workforce housing, for affordable housing,

I think this is how we can potentially get there, but we got to, you know, people's got to be singing from the same sheet of music and getting our resources and all these levers, as you said, that we can pull aligned.

So I'll just, you know, leave it there.

I just wanted to put that example out there.

It's not just schools.

Obviously, they can partner in schools and roads, but in actual buildings.

How do we get more density?

How do we not leave the density on the table?

Well, what if we got a pot of money that can incentivize, subsidize to say, okay, well, what if the county can do this?

Can you get to that out of the density?

And maybe along with that is there's additional affordable housing component.

So anyway.

Got to think beyond the box here because we're really not moving the needle with either.

We're not moving the deal with affordability.

We're not moving the needle with affordable housing.

As much as we like to talk about it, it's not moving the needle.

It's going the opposite direction.

I do want to confirm that, uh, staff will be looking at overlay districts through this exercise.

Yeah, so the overlay districts that we have are currently outlined in the ordinance.

That would be something that we would also

We have talked about making overlay districts as part of our activity center initiative.

I don't know whether that would fall under this project just because of the timeline of the phasing on that and the immense staff time that would be needed on that.

And I think that that would be something that would really be a project we would look at

on its own because it is such a big thing.

I know that it's going to be really important for overall bringing the complaint to life.

It might be one of those things that, you know, execs within the county staff and our elected officials maybe want to think about and whether that, how that gets prioritized.

I'm just thinking, you know,

Is there technology overlay centers for data centers?

Or what happened to solar?

Is that something where you want to try to control a little bit of where these things start to happen, right?

Wildfires, we had talked about that a few times, right?

What does that start to mean with resiliency and natural disasters?

It's not going to slow down.

So it might be something that's worth just thinking about, right?

Does that shift priorities?

as you go through

How does that start to play together?

So, and I'm trying not to speak out of turn because the comp plan is not my purview, but the comp plan we just adopted is AC44 because the larger comp plan should be leading us for the next 20 years up till 2044.

I do think that we're going to be doing the smaller changes.

I think like the rural area plan, the small area plans that we've talked about,

and definitely the activity centers.

I think that is probably going to come into a bunch of different plans.

That's really the five-year kind of turnover is the review of the comp plan and then making changes where necessary.

But I think that all of the teams are working really closely together.

Yeah, sure.

So there's a couple of things here that I'm hearing that I think would be helpful for this group and the electeds to get together.

The whole idea about how will the county align both opportunities and necessities.

I am not of the opinion, two things.

I am less than enthusiastic about aligning with the city.

No, you know, I'm saying that on my way.

One, because I don't think that our, I don't think the two jurisdictions have common goals about things.

And until that work is done, I think it would be, it would not yield the kinds of benefits that I believe people would hope.

I do think, though, that the centers can in fact be the launchpad for the form-based codes.

And so if there was a nexus between things, I would think that would be something that that would be helpful for the planning commission, helpful for the community and helpful for staff.

The other piece I think in this, you know, the fad right now are ice baths.

So I'm going to sort of use that as an analogy.

I think we read recently that the Commonwealth is probably going to be very slow in putting any kind of transportation dollars into our community.

So basically what I think Luis is speaking about here is how do you engage in a public-private partnership around those kinds of dollars.

Those tend to be really big dollars.

And some of the people who are coming here are really big dollar kind of people who can do that.

So I think really what we're talking about is when we're looking at those locations that we're attracting people

What do the web of opportunities look like from those locations?

29 North is the place that's probably got the most ability right now unless we start moving down 29 South because I don't see where

You know, I struggle with what are you going to do with the bridge across the Rivanna going to Pantops.

That's a really significant rewiring of that of that transportation node to make that more effective.

And it can be done, but it's got to be done with a price tag that I think is beyond what the county is willing to push towards those types of projects.

Because one of the other things I think was as you're thinking this through and why I would encourage the Planning Commission to have some, it's a shame that

And I know this is offensive to what I'm about to say.

It's a shame that there aren't opportunities for the planning commission and the supervisors to just have conversations among themselves.

But everything has to have a sunlight on it.

which will then prevent people from having what I would say honest conversations about what are our possibilities.

It's like if you could do like the Board of Visitors does say, we're going into sort of a private session for this particular period now and we'll report afterwards because I think some of the issues that you're talking about, some of the issues that you're trying to sort of wrestle with are issues that are going to be hard to have discussions with in a public session.

You know, when you look at your neighbors, your neighbors are saying I'm already paying too much in taxes.

I don't want to pay any more in taxes.

I don't care how good the school system, how good the roads are.

Maybe there'll be a bit of relief if the new administration in Richmond allows us to have that referendum on sales taxes and whether or not that could be a way to fund the rehabilitation of the building of schools.

That would be helpful.

That would be $20 million that could come quickly to be diverted to someplace.

But at the moment now, when 60% of the county's budget is going to education,

There's not a lot of fluff there to do the kinds of big ideas.

So basically you're saying, how do we do the big ideas?

And then how do we generate the income to be able to bring those ideas to fruition?

That's, I think, really at the essence what you're talking about.

And you've heard over the years, I've said, and I appreciate it.

I mean, I've run businesses and things like that.

When a business tells you it's too expensive, that it doesn't work for their balance sheet, this group never gets to determine whether or not that's an accurate statement.

We don't know.

I'm going to take it at your word because you signed that little thing on the blue book saying I won't lie and I won't offer anybody help.

But this group never gets to see whether or not when a person says I can't do this because it runs against my return on investment.

And so being able to sort of craft ways in which

The return on investment or the alleged return on investment doesn't become a governor on the things that we want for our community.

It's something I think is a joint conversation between the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission and staff, obviously.

I'm not trying to leave staff out of there because you really are going to have to figure out ways of breaking the paradigm.

and shaping the opinions that are so resistant to either change or paying more in their property taxes.

People don't want to do that.

I mean that's the big piece with you'll find out next year you're going to get hit with that Fred.

People don't want their taxes to go up right and they don't care how they don't care what's missing they don't want their taxes to go up.

And so figuring out how to change that narrative is something that I think the Planning Commission needs to be part of, if in fact we're going to live into some of these new changes, I think are robust changes, and I also think are necessary for us to try and recapture some of the economic wholeness of our community.

So I'll throw out a few things.

I'm not saying these things to summarize or to conclude our conversation with us throughout some thoughts.

One, first of all, thank you.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this was really helpful, especially the timelines, to understand things.

I'm going to ask for a height variance, I think.

We were at 65, right?

You were at 65.

I think we're going to go a little higher even to that.

I hesitated to bring this up because I didn't want to get too much off track.

I think the zoning modernization is the topic for tonight.

I do want to highlight though, because I've had people ask me this question, right?

Now you've built the car and you're going to throw gas in it.

You're going to drive this thing down the road, right?

and there are seven sections, right?

And the last section is implementation and that second word, which is accountability.

So as we think through this, as I look through each of the seven sections, every one of those seven sections has some aspect that touches zoning modernization.

It's all intertwined, it's interwoven into it.

You mentioned a couple, one of them you mentioned was the rural areas plan.

You mentioned the small area plans, you mentioned the centers, et cetera.

Those things are also coming along.

One of the things that I feel like I've either missed or it was either, I don't mean as critically, but intentionally skipped for all the right reasons, but was this broader view of how do we achieve everything that we've outlined in terms of initiatives in our AC44 plan?

And how do we prioritize that?

And how do we achieve them?

What's the timeline and resource allocation to do so?

And does that exist?

What's the plan?

And again, maybe that is a little bit too far out of the realm of tonight's discussion.

So we don't have to dwell on it for a long time.

But Ms.

Filardo can help me, hopefully.

Thank you, Commissioners.

Jody Filardo, Community Development Director.

Thank you for the question.

Staff and the County Executive's Office are hard at work figuring out how to weave together the chapters full of action steps and to put those into some sort of reasonable buckets, if you will.

Staff is taking a stab at that right now.

and the plan is to then take that to the county exec's office where they will vet that across the entire county to see how all of those particular actions are going to impact each of these different departments in the county.

Once the county execs feel like we've got a solid way forward, they are going to bring that to the board for an adoption of priorities.

But we're probably, well, we're several months away from that coming forward, because it's going to take us a while.

We have

hundreds of action steps in the 44.

And some of them are coming forward as things that have to be short term, because they must precede other things later on.

Some of the things are coming forward because they are zoning mod kinds of things.

So as we're tackling zoning mod, we want to make sure we tackle those as well.

So, staff is actively hard at work knitting all that together to then go to county execs, then come to the board for their blessing of the priorities.

Can I ask a couple questions?

One is, you said that the county exec would vet with the county.

the IP and all of those things.

There's a lot of moving parts connected to all of these actions and we're trying to integrate all those things because as many of you have pointed out when we were going through this process you know those actions weren't smart objectives.

The whole point as we move forward through these is they're going to be translated into

steps that you know.

This is the criteria by which we're evaluating these things.

This is by when they are due.

This is what done looks like.

All of those kinds of things are going to be refined as we move forward and bundle these things into work programs by year that we then fund.

So I would say two things.

One, just encouragement.

One is that's really helpful.

As you go through the process, I know you'll think this, but there's public input.

And I understand the logistics of keeping things in the building and working together to think about how those processes move forward to be implemented, those processes and those objectives and those goals being informed by public input initially.

You may find a time,

This is just me speaking.

You may find a time where you're like, I'm not sure.

It seems like we as a staff are making a call that might otherwise be assisted by the Planning Commission or some other input.

And at those points, I would say, let's take a pause.

Let's come in and let's check ourselves.

I don't know what that looks like exactly, but just that's my thought.

Second thing I'll mention is as sitting on the board, it would seem to be very helpful to have the input of these folks when you have those objectives and those priorities outlined, because so many of them are land use related.

And I would find that to be helpful input.

So if there's a way to weave in

Thank you for the feedback.

Thank you.

A couple other quick things from, could you go back to your time?

Thank you, Jody.

Sure.

The one you just had, that works.

This one works.

No, this is great.

So I'm focusing on the draft regulatory changes section.

And actually, when I looked at this, first thing I saw, because it's like when you look at the price of whatever you're going to buy, you drop to the bottom line first.

I went right to 2028, and I'm like, holy cow, that seems like a long time.

and yet as we've talked, I realized the complexity of this process and as Ms.

Velarde said, some of the predecessors that need to occur to get us to that point, right?

So a lot of things are going to be discussed over those two and a half years or so.

The one section, and I know this is just kind of a graphic for us to look at, the draft regulatory changes

Seems like it, and maybe I'm reading this wrong, it just, it seems like it goes from October, it's October and November of 2026.

It feels short for that piece, but is it broader?

Yeah, this is not to, this timeline is not to scale.

That was just to fit it on the page.

If you look, there is less than a year in the first half of the timeline and then a year and a little bit more change for the second half.

Got it.

Just if this gets shared other places, understanding the importance of those draft regulatory changes.

is critical.

And for someone who might be looking at this going, holy cow, they're only going to spend two months, or maybe someone smarter than me will be able to decipher that and understand it.

Just making that really clear that this is going to take time.

And then also the meet with working groups is marked on here a couple of times, right?

That I think is important in my thought.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here a bit.

You know, we're shaping the physical future of our county with this.

And it's a big lift.

It's a big deal.

And letting people understand, having people understand that might help with populating those working groups and those opportunities for public input.

So as you think about advertising, what does this really mean?

What does this look like?

It's a big deal.

And I think it's really important.

And then I guess the last thing I'll mention, which has already been said, is just the importance of partnerships and opportunities where, as we met years ago now, we were talking about the housing

the Housing Albemarle.

And we were looking at incentives and going through a process with the development community in the room, with the planning commissioners and the board of supervisors.

Those kinds of work sessions I know are a heavy lift to try to organize.

But I think identifying whether it's the development community, whether it's fill in the blank, the state, the EDP, whatever it is, bringing those to bear in this process to help identify opportunities I think is really as critical as I think many of you have said.

Yeah, so one thing I want to bring up is the form-based code was brought up, the idea of expanding that in the future.

And I would hope that as we look at expanding form-based code or just looking at our regulations in general, that we can think about how we can start to adapt that to the spirit and ideas of our comprehensive plan that we have now.

For example, including more sustainability elements, particularly where they don't really cost all that much more to include.

Things that have been frustrating to me for years, for example, is how we do those little parking islands.

We keep stormwater out of them instead of collecting stormwater in them.

It doesn't really cost too much more to make them innies instead of outies.

And I would hope that when we talk about landscaping and we talk about who we're including at the table, just as an example,

There's many different ways to do landscaping.

I mean, some people's idea of, you know, tree planting is, you know, plant a Bradford pear when it gets too big, top it, and oh, and surround it with volcano mulch.

So whose voice are we including in the room?

We're talking about landscaping.

Are we including people that have a mind towards sustainability?

All right, any other questions, comments, questions of us from staff?

All right, thank you.

Great job.

All right, we are on to committee reports.

Anybody have any committee reports to share?

I do.

Just a second.

I'm already scrolling, scrolling.

By the way, you described my front yard when you said volcano bowl.

Okay, let's see.

I'm just trying to get it in.

I'll just do this.

All right.

I can mention a couple of this.

So there was an all CAC meeting.

I don't know who attended that.

Let's see.

I thought it was really interesting.

It was the community well-being profile.

That was interesting, worth a read.

It was the Orange Dot Report, if you all haven't read that, great read.

And then Community Health Assessment, Map to Health, also really excellent information.

So it'd be worth taking a look at that if you haven't had a chance to.

And then there's a CAC meeting coming up, 5th and Avon on Thursday, day after tomorrow.

One of the interesting, remember the filling the floodplain, it's coming back to us.

It's a smaller amount, smaller acreage, a smaller area by like, I don't know, quarter of an acre, something like that maybe.

But it was, it was interesting.

It was helpful for me to sort of re-review the minutes that was from our April 22nd meeting, I think, somewhere in April.

It was good to look back on our conversation there.

And it was amazing.

I mean, it seemed like it was a relatively straightforward application initially.

And then I was scrolling through the minutes and there were pages.

I think we talked about it for almost two hours, maybe even longer.

So a lot of interesting information.

And then the board was split 3-3, which is why they're coming back.

Watch you some time.

I assume, yeah, if you go to the All CAC.

Okay, so the CCAC did meet on November 12th, and we also had a review of the All CAC meeting.

All right, we are moving on to review Board of Supervisors meeting from October 30th.

Thank you, sir.

First, I'd like to, I neglected the beginning of the meeting to introduce Andrea Ruggi, who is subbing in tonight for Jennifer Tevendale, who's off to Portugal.

and we thank you so much.

This is better, Andrew.

Anywho, thank you very much for being here.

I just wanted to touch, you were talking about the Willam Mills still in the floodplain, to tell you that that is on the Planning Commission's agenda for December 16th.

Got it.

Just want to make sure I just picked up on that.

OK, so to review in the board of supervisors meetings, there's actually two we need to cover.

The first was October 30th, which was the All CAC meeting.

And you all basically just touched upon it.

It was a presentation of community health and well-being and an interesting presentation.

The other one, the board did have a meeting on November 5th.

There were no items that came before you all at that meeting.

They did review two special exceptions for Rivanna Futures.

One was for a step back waiver, you know, something we've often waived or you all have talked about waiving.

and maybe something in the zoning ordinance actually may go away.

We write that.

The other one was for building height to allow building height to go from 65 feet to 140 feet.

So those were two items that the board reviewed on the 5th.

There were also two presentations from my staff.

One was our transportation quarterly report.

and the other one was on the MicroCat program and its capacity to provide ride sharing in the Pantops and northern portions of our community.

So those were covered on the 30th.

You don't mind, I'll just go right into new business.

I just wanted to make sure that a couple of things.

Our next meeting, I apologize, we reached out to you all at one point to see if we could do a work session at the next meeting.

We thought we were going to get booked on some stuff, other items moved around.

So there is no need for a 4 p.m.

work session next week.

Yeah, next week we'll start at six.

And the other thing is that right now,

We have Mr. Clayborne, Mr. Missel, and Mr. Murray will not be here next week.

So that leaves us with just four planning commissioners to have quorum.

So I hope you all can attend next week.

I just tried to underline if somebody else can't make it, we'll have to cancel the meeting.

So thank you.

Let me know if you get to that point.

I understand you have other duties.

Mr. Chairman, I have a couple of questions on your new business.

I'm curious, Mr. Barnes, I know, I guess, January 1, we'll probably lose in a few colleagues from the dais here.

Maybe it's three.

I'm not sure how many.

Do you know how those replacements are coming along in the queue?

I don't have specific insights.

I mean, I recognize that Mr. Pruitt needs to fill one of his seats.

Who was nominated by

Mr. Andrews, we still need to work out the details.

OK.

Well, you don't have to show up.

You just have a new future.

And then lastly, I think there's a very special person in the audience who will be retiring at the end of this year.

He's not even listening.

It's this year, right?

January of 2026.

All right, so that's this year.

That's close.

That's pretty close.

So I just wanted to publicly thank her.

I think she's just been a tremendous asset to the county.

And my short tenure of maybe six years sitting up here, I just thank the world of her.

So wish you all the best in your new future.

And I wish you a healthy and prosperous, was it prosperous?

Yeah, yeah.

Full of prosperity in that new chapter.

Well said.

More cake.

All right, any other new business?

I want to just share and thank someone and thank them publicly because I think that's it.

So I assume all of us received this Rivanna River Watershed Stream and Health Report in our mail.

And I have to just say it is so helpful, whether or not I agree with everything that's in there, it is so helpful to get real data as opposed to emotion in my mailbox.

So, you know, it's also worth noting that it's not just data.

One of the things about that is, is that that data is often used as leveraging to get funding that comes into Albemarle County.

All right, thanks everybody.