Planning Commission Work Session and Regular Meeting   12/9/2025

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I would like to open the Planning Commission work session and regular meeting for December 9th, 2025, and begin by establishing a quorum.

Yes.

Ms. Firehock?

Present.

And I have Mr. Murray in remotely via Zoom.

Great.

So we've established a quorum.

Commissioner Murray, are you there?

Great.

Thank you.

Great.

I'll second.

Thank you.

All right.

Motion passes.

Moving on to the work session.

I think that's our next item, right?

We're good to go.

The 2025 land use build out analysis.

Great.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, members of the commission.

My name is JT Newberry, and I'm a senior planner in the Department of Community Development.

I'm joined here this afternoon by several of my colleagues to help assist with the presentation and the Q&A portion.

We have quite a bit of information to get through in the next 90 minutes or so.

Much of it was provided in the materials ahead of today's meeting, so hopefully we can move efficiently through it and reserve as much time as possible for questions and feedback from the commission.

So for today's agenda, we'll begin, it's kind of split into two parts.

We'll begin by looking at the 25 build out analysis, and then we'll move into a new tool we have under development.

It's a draft that we're calling the AC44 Analysis Tool.

We'll take all of your questions and feedback and help that inform staff's preparation for a board meeting on January 21st with the Board of Supervisors on these topics.

So why is the capacity analysis important?

It's fundamental to us taking the next steps after the adoption of AC44 and implementing the comprehensive plan, especially administering the growth management policy.

It also supports other areas of the county, like the board's strategic plan goals, specifically those related to quality of life, infrastructure, and placemaking.

and monitoring this information will be critical to advancing meaningfully our efforts on goals related to housing and economic development but it will also serve to help a variety of other lines of effort as well and the AC44 analysis tool we're hoping is especially helpful for future development proposals trying to evaluate those.

So just to give some recent history, the first part of our work session today is somewhat backward looking.

It's looking at the information that was provided during the development and adoption of AC44.

You'll notice that attachment one to the materials today was provided during phase one of AC44, the 2022 land use build out analysis.

and today we'll be talking about the 25 analysis which was reviewed in phase four.

The Board of Supervisors received essentially the same information on September 3rd prior to adoption on October 15th.

Part of the 25 analysis really replicates the exact same methodology and approach and assumptions of the 22 analysis that was done during phase one.

And that was done purposefully because we were trying to, for the first time, have the opportunity to take this information and have an apples to apples comparison, be able to draw some trends and try to have a longer term look at it.

This effort has been done over the years in several different ways.

The 2015 comp plan had a staff-led analysis of this type included in the appendices to the 2015 comp plan.

In 2019, there was a growth management report that focused exclusively on residential information and was completed by staff.

And then in 22, we hired Kimley Horn to help us with a little bit more of a sophisticated approach.

And we replicated that in 25 with the help of another consultant, Line and Grape.

Some of the information is displayed, particularly in the 2025 memo that kind of summarizes the 2025 analysis, is displayed by neighborhood.

And we recognize that neighborhoods are not something that we often talk a lot about.

And so we wanted to make sure for any members of the public that may be unfamiliar, neighborhoods one and two are included in the Places 29 master plan.

The Pantops master plan is neighborhood three.

The southern and western neighborhoods are neighborhoods four through seven.

And then Crozet and the village of Rivanna are their own standalone master plans.

But some of the information you may have noticed was broken out by neighborhood.

Two important definitions that I want to cover as we get into the analysis itself.

First is the definition of developable or redevelopable.

So again, this is going back to the 22 analysis.

That is looking specifically at parcels that are a minimum of two acres and have a land value that's greater than their improvement value.

Or it's vacant.

That together is comprised of the parcels that were considered developable for calculating capacity.

The next definition that I think is really important to try to understand these results are the theoretical maximum build-out.

And that's the term that's applied to the maximum development capacity of an individual parcel that was identified as developable.

So if we use, for example, one acre of land that had a designation of urban density residential that has a maximum capacity of 34 dwelling units an acre, this analysis would have said that one acre could support 34 dwelling units.

So the overall research approach really attempts to combine a few of these different figures.

The development pipeline refers to projects that are either approved and not yet built, or those that are under review.

Those two numbers together are the development pipeline and then the theoretical maximum build out is what we just described.

That one acre of urban density residential that could yield up to 30 could yield 34 dwelling units per acre.

You combine those to get a total.

One example of a project that I imagine you've seen in your travels around town is Old Ivy Residences.

It's under construction, but no one is yet occupying it, so it's included in the development pipeline.

Just to dig a little bit further into how that build-out estimate works,

we would have identified, the analysis identifies those developable parcels and then it makes some assumptions about a few different factors.

Factors for the environment, so this might be flood plain or steep slopes, infrastructure, things like roads, and then open space.

And it removes that area from the theoretical developable acreage.

and it applies a set of build out assumptions based on the land use designation.

So that's a little bit of a step through of how the analysis gets to these findings.

So for both residential and non-residential, we'll quickly look at 22 and then we'll look at 25.

So in 22, our total theoretical maximum build out was just over 24,000 units.

And this slide shows you how the development pipeline figures into that overall figure.

In 25, we see that that had decreased to 21,644 overall units.

And this slide kind of gives you a comparison between both of those.

Go back for a second.

If we look at the overall decrease in the total between 25 and 22, it's just over 2,500 units.

Interestingly, if we add up the number of units that were produced, that were actually delivered over that time frame, it's just about 2,900 units.

So there was a large portion of that overall decline that can be explained by what these units were actually taking through the pipeline and constructed and produced.

And there is a little bit more, and I think that has to do with the changes in value over time, identifying parcels in 25 that were developable that may not have been developable in 22 and vice versa.

Moving on to non-residential findings,

we can see that overall there is a continuation of this trend of a decrease in the overall square footage of available capacity within our development areas for different land use types.

Included in this slide is part of what was included in the 22 analysis, which was an estimate of demand.

There was a range of demand for different land use types and you can see that the 25 figures all exceed the expected 20 year demand on the high end, at least in 2022.

So there were some overall findings that were interesting to observe and discuss.

Notably, the overall developable acreage has decreased from 6.9% down to 6.1%.

And when we think about the remaining developable acreage, we see it's almost split between those that have improvements and those that are vacant.

And so, you know, something we hear a lot in community development is that, you know, all the easy ones are taken, you know, all the easy land is has been developed and

This is an interesting observation that we'll talk more about later, just informing what are the strategies that we need to be pursuing, what are the efforts that we need to be focused on in order to spur redevelopment of parcels that currently have improvements.

A big topic of interest from the Board of Supervisors was how are we doing in terms of approving projects, the density that we're approving them at relative to the maximum under the comp plan.

So in the 2022 analysis, which looked at from 2016 to 2021,

There was an overall observation that about 58% of the maximum recommended by the comp plan was ultimately approved by the Board of Supervisors.

Under the 2025 analysis, that number was largely the same.

It was 56%.

However, when we look at the data, there is a bit of an outlier.

And if we exclude that, it was the largest amount of housing units that were approved by any project under the study period, which was up at North Fork.

That was 1,400 units.

If we remove that from the overall analysis, we get to 70%.

And so we see that there is some increase in the overall density of projects that's being approved.

So I'll just talk a little bit more about that for just a second.

The analysis works largely the same when we look at the projects that have been approved versus the analysis that was done for the build-out analysis.

We start with the overall acreage for a project.

We remove the assumptions for infrastructure and environment and open space.

We multiply that by the max recommended by the comp plan and then compare that to the number of units that were ultimately approved.

So if we look at North Fork as an example, that was rezoning just a portion of that overall site from PDIP to neighborhood model district.

That was 172 acres.

Under the rubric of this analysis, that 172 acres drops down to about 120.

The closest land use designation there with residential included would call for 34 units an acre.

That's under urban mixed use.

And so that would theoretically have yielded just over 4,000 units, which is quite a lot.

And so compared to the 1,400 that were approved,

we would say that this developed at 34% of the overall max recommended by the comp plan.

But here's all the projects from that time period.

And you can see kind of the distribution of dwelling units within these different groupings of approved density versus theoretical max.

And so the vast majority are somewhere between that 50 and 79% figure.

As probably what's going through your head, there are a number of constraining factors to developing at maximum theoretical build-out.

This is meant to be a very high-level, broad-brush look at the information as we administer the growth management policy and try to figure out, do our development areas have enough available capacity for our future plans?

So I touched on this a little bit earlier, but one thing that has, as we've been undertaking this effort, we've really begun to identify the questions that we need to be asking ourselves as we attempt to implement the comp plan.

And so I mentioned redevelopment strategies.

We're certainly focused on some of those big moves and areas within the activity centers.

But then also other parts of the comp plan, the economic development strategic plan, how can we attract more private investment?

Are there opportunities where we could proactively align the zoning map with the land use map?

And before we get into the AC44 analysis tool, I just want to mention

In moving from the 22 analysis to the 25, we've gone from paper to digital.

So line and grade effectively took the approach of the 22 analysis and put it all into Excel.

So moving forward, we will have the opportunity to do more, I think, intricate analysis, more real-time analysis.

This is no longer a 80-page PDF that we're

Working from every few years, we're trying to move it to something more digital.

So, you know, we talk about it as moving from report to tool.

And so it will not only help us with administering the growth management policy, but we're also excited about the opportunity to provide even better data to other partners that we work with.

So I think that's a good point to pause if we want to talk about questions related to the land use analysis.

That's great.

Oh, OK.

So why don't we take a pause and start asking questions about this while we've got it pressing our mind.

Yeah, I have a couple of comments, and you don't necessarily have to have an answer for the comment slash question.

I'll make this premise.

Considering that we have amazing GIS

in our county, a very good system.

The tool could be a bit more nimble if we could also link spatially those parcels that are analyzed with the school district capacity

and then also the roads capacity, because those are two of the major factors where the density could be this, but it fronts on a road that's really overloaded and we don't have any good public transportation system.

Just to give us a more nuanced picture, you know, because it could be that that teases out that there's places in the county where growth potential is severely hampered by roads.

I mean, we kind of anecdotally already know where those places are, right?

But I just feel like just looking at from the parcels without the context of where they're located,

I just think that we could tease out some more of those constraining factors and not then use those constraining factors as an, oh, well, so too bad for those areas.

The roads just aren't good enough.

Then we have to start saying, well, there's why the county, if it wants to meet its growth goal, not growth goals, but our capacity to keep within our urban ring, therefore we have to spend money on transportation in this sector or we just can't develop this out.

I think that we could come up with something that would be a little more involved, but I do think that it's doable.

Can I just expand on that a little bit, just from real life experience?

Go ahead.

You too.

I was going to expand on that too, but go ahead.

Sorry, just because you used the example of North Fork, right?

I started to think about what is it that limits developers to being able to develop.

And it's obviously environmental conditions on sites.

So you know, there's critical slopes, things like that, but it is also

the exposure to limited traffic, right, or limited transportation opportunities.

So as you look at it, you know, as a developer, you're like, well,

we can contribute via proffers to it.

It's going to cost us this much.

You put that into your capital and your pro forma and you determine really how far you can go.

But if the traffic's there, if the transportation opportunities are there, it doesn't burden the developer, right?

So it's just kind of, so I love the idea of tying this somehow to transportation, schools, other infrastructure, water and sewer, and thinking about master plans that are in place for RWSA and others and how does that connect here

Sorry.

Yeah, no, that's exactly where I was going with it.

And, you know, right now our process, something grabbing me by the back here.

Right now we get projects, right?

And we do get this information, but it's project by project.

There's an application and okay, well, there's so much burden on the schools.

There's so much burden on the roads.

And we get that from one project to the next.

What we don't have is whether it's some kind of heat map or is a way to raise awareness of here are the areas in the county that are prime

for development, high density development, because they have the road infrastructures, because we have the school capacities.

And just having that awareness I think will help as we plan.

It will feed into our community development and how we plan our community better.

And perhaps having the conversation with our development community and say, hey folks,

Here's where we have the capacity and it's ready to go and also identify the areas that with some improvements could get us there to that higher density.

So it would be a great tool, I think, if we actually had that just in terms of raising awareness throughout because there may be folks that know this already, right?

Mr. McDermott was involved in transportation and a bunch of other things.

So he probably said, well, yeah, I know where you can build, but many other people don't.

I guess you all were in my head.

That was the exact question I had.

I even took it a step further and was curious about, you know,

The number you gave was 58% in terms of what we've activated on respective parcels.

On average, I would say 58% of density.

If you look at the current infrastructure, and I just jived down roads and schools, nothing else.

Does that, is that able to even accommodate the 58%?

What would happen if we were able to get to the 80%?

Would we just crumble, right?

Like some insights on that piece, right?

But exactly, y'all were in my head.

Yeah, I've got some comments.

I was looking at the numbers from 2022 and 2025, and I'm glad that it came up on page five, although almost like a footnote about the 58%, 56% figure being kind of what we're actually building.

I find it then kind of odd to focus so much on the max buildable units.

I don't know if that's going to be useful then as a tool for when is the development area full?

That's kind of like the question we're really asking, right?

It's like, when is the development area full?

And if we look at this number and say, oh, there's 21,000 buildable units, no problem.

We've only got demand for 12 or 13,000.

Like, yeah, those are numbers, but is it really 21,000?

And I think you already alluded to this in the presentation more than in the written portion.

But no, it's not going to be 21,000 for a few reasons.

One is that the max build out of parcels to be developed, there's no way we can do 100% build out on every single one of these parcels for a whole slew of reasons.

Also, will all these private landowners want to do development in the next 20 years?

I mean, 44% of these are land with improvements.

That probably means somebody's living there.

They want to redevelop and move.

Later in this meeting, we have a parcel that, as far as I know, would qualify because the land is more valuable than the improvement.

They want to put it in a conservation easement.

So I think that speaks to how this number is not going to be the number.

And then I think also,

are these population estimates assuming things that are actually changing?

And by that, I mean we've got economic development happening quite successfully in terms of AstraZeneca's announcement.

And I think the goals continue to grow more.

If we make room, will that population increase more?

It certainly could.

And so I think we could be seeing a higher population growth and a lower number of actually buildable units.

And I think we're going to find ourselves full before this 20 years runs out.

And so to me, I start thinking, I'm like, well, we're a planning commission.

Let's start planning for like, where do we go next?

That's a long conversation, but we should start it now.

I think that just to expound, I think that's in large part, the reasoning for tying this to the, to the comp plan, right?

Because that is how we plan for the long term and thinking about that piece.

Mr. Bivins.

Thank you, Chair.

So I need to just sort of clarify one thing.

It feels like we're still talking about net area to be developed, which I had thought we had gone to gross.

And so there's that piece there that I need to just put a big Julian note on.

That if we're going to do that, then I think hopefully we can also become more deliberate in what kinds of things get built.

So if the county's going to say we're going to use net, I think the county should put itself in a position to say we'd like these types of development, because you're impacting the market one way or another.

When you say that you have this much land that you can develop on, I think the county can also say that we would probably give you a bonus if you develop these kinds of communities.

I'm just putting that out there.

Now, my other piece coming forward on here is that, and this is coming to some of my colleagues,

I believe that going forward you would be greatly informed and this whole process be greatly informed if we did a couple things.

If we were able to put down and include in a very special way what is county-owned land that could be developed and what is schools that could be developed.

As we're seeing in a number of communities around this country, we're seeing those people who have issues with workforce housing, that the municipalities are stepping into that space to create and to partner with developers to create spaces

that are for those kinds of workers.

We talk about how we have a good amount of our private people and probably some of the public people who are living outside the jurisdiction.

They will do that because they want to, but there's the whole idea of how when you attract new employees here, they don't know that there's an option necessarily.

I think of my colleague at the end who tells me about she hires people, but they have to live in Richmond.

Richmond's

has its own benefits, but they live in Richmond because there are different types of housing opportunities there that they are not able to get in Charlottesville, Albemarle area.

So when we think about things like that, think about who owns the asset and who has the ability to move the asset in a direction that provides the type of housing that is actually needed in this community.

Then the other thing that I'd like to also sort of see in here

I think there is a real, we have in our community at the Derry building, COSTAR has an office here.

COSTAR is one of the leading lights when it comes to the analysis of property in this country.

And we have one sitting in the Derry building.

I think sometimes we could be, it would be helpful to have our assumptions challenged by actual data.

Sometimes it feels as we have our assumptions challenged by our guts about what we see in our parochial world.

And I say that intentionally about myself.

But I think we would benefit if we could see some of the industry, water towns that are trying to deal with the kinds of issues that we're dealing with.

How are they going?

What is the housing market?

What's the commercial market?

I use them a lot in making some of my own personal decisions.

I found that having access to that data would probably help you all, but it would help these individuals and help us, and it would help the supervisors.

Here's my other piece on this.

I also think that it would be helpful to have a more frequent analysis by the Weldon Coopers.

I mean, creating a model with them that is actually updated on an annual basis.

and I've had an opportunity to sit in a presentation by a gentleman by the name of Hamilton Lombard I think was a demographer and to hear in very interesting ways what our community looks like as far as demographics and what our community looks like 10 years from now for our demographics and then I had an opportunity to look at our our census one year out from three years out from 20 and the majority of the young people in our community are right now 16 and 17 and 18.

That's where the bubble is.

So when we start talking about new school systems, I think it would be helpful instead of having.

Instead of having individuals who have vested interests in what schools get built in which locations, particularly I'm always concerned about that since their children wouldn't go there, since it will take at least 20 years, 15 years to get a school built.

But they're saying now they want the school built in this particular location.

To be able to make those decisions and give the Planning Commission the ability to push back when we have emotional presentations, that the data doesn't say this.

and in our community around schools, not only does it really say that, but the number of private schools that exist in the Albemarle County, Charlottesville County, is beyond anything in my professional life, and some of you know what I did for a living, that I've seen anywhere in the world.

The per head private institutions and the emerging home schools

of very bright people who can't get employees here so they decide to stay home and teach their children is unlike anything that I've ever seen.

And I don't believe it's going to change.

And so I want us to make decisions, particularly CIP decisions, around data that actually is supported either by observation

or supported by decent models that are by robust models.

And that's the thing that I think when we look at this, so going back to are we net or are we gross?

If we're going to be net, then I think that's a fair opportunity for the county to step in and say, we're going to encourage you to build these kinds of things, much like we did with Home Depot, much like we're doing up 29 North.

I think we have a role as a county to say, we'd like you to build these types of houses and we're going to make this happen for you and not leave it up to the market, because the market

will rarely find a return on investment that will support the other types of investments.

And I'm not saying anything against the private market.

I'm just saying, if we look only for market-driven solutions, then we will most likely see communities that are built that cost significantly more than the average worker, the typical worker in our community.

And I see how this is descriptive.

And I appreciate this analysis, because it is descriptive.

But now I'm going to step into things, what are we saying as a community?

And I don't think this will get us to what the community is demanding and the fact that 60 some odd percent of the county's revenue comes from individual housing, comes from personal real estate.

Personal real estate is not going to build roads.

Personal real estate is not going to be building a new, hopefully not a new northern high school.

There's not enough capacity there to do that.

And if you look at our bond rating, our bond rating, well, you'll figure that out.

Our bond rating can't stretch to that kind of debt surface.

So it's thinking about, what do you need to step into?

There's a different level of analysis of what I'm really pushing at that allows those kinds of decisions to be made.

and we have the data.

Yes.

For me, the definition of developable in the 2022 report is insufficient, and last time I looked it excludes areas like Rio Hill.

As land supply becomes constrained, the land price relative to the improvements will change, making more parcels developable.

We also should consider how incentives might change the formula for what is redevelopable.

Thus, by itself, this is not really a good tool to tell when the development area is full per se, because that's a dynamic changing thing over time.

And we only have to look at our neighbor Charlottesville to see that.

There's areas in Charlottesville that we've seen be redeveloped that if the same kind of parcel was in Albemarle County, we'd say, well, redevelopment is not possible there.

It seems like all the metrics really seem geared towards greenfield development.

If we want to encourage redevelopment as per the comprehensive plan, we really need some metrics specific to redevelopment as well.

Starting with a map of parcels that have more parking and a previous service than is really needed.

None in which areas have the physical space for redevelopment could help us identify the hurdles and incentives that may be necessary.

Great.

Thank you.

I just have a couple of thoughts.

And as I'm looking at my questions, I think you'll probably answer them in the second part of the presentation.

But I just wanted to jump back.

And I assume you'll talk about how environmental conditions are measured, how you, when you look at the formula for theoretical versus the pipeline, and you discount the developable area based on

the environment for example or other infrastructure.

So page 11 of the 2022 analysis has a large table that assigned different assumptions

to these different categories based on, my understanding is largely the kind of the predominant geography of an area.

So if there were certain sections of the development area that had more floodplains, steep slopes, other things, they were assigned a higher percentage to come out for environmental factors.

So there's a table that sort of outlines that and it,

It also differentiates between different land use types.

So thank you for that.

I think my point is that I think it's worth looking at that list again and seeing where we stand with each of those elements as things change, as our comprehensive plan comes forward.

Are we changing the value of each of those or the limitations or opportunities within each of those categories?

Just another check.

I may walk away with now they're fine.

The other is, do two numbers of trend make?

That was not done for this analysis.

It's a really interesting suggestion.

The approach was apples to peaches to oranges to- A lot of fruit.

Yeah, I mean, it was close, but not the same.

Yeah and I think if we're looking at things like what are the trends right and if we're looking at okay when will we run out of development area and so there's a there's a curve involved here it doesn't have a lot of data on the curve yet or maybe it does and we just need to kind of zero in a little bit more on that and then as you think about incentives to commissioners Murray Murray's comments had that that thought as well or think about other opportunities for infill and or redevelopment

Can I just ask a question on that point?

So how, in these studies, how are you considering the redevelopment opportunities?

The land is more valuable than the improvement, right?

The 44%?

And the point to eventually running out of space in the development area, there'll always be opportunities for redevelopment.

Let's play with that a little bit.

So a couple of things happened.

There was a decision on whether or not we should go to the Rivanna and dredge it out for more water.

We didn't do that.

There was a discussion on whether or not fill, how we deal with fill.

So I knocked down a building, I can only have this kind of fill to take it over here.

That then sends a real clear message.

So A, we're not proactively trying to increase our water supply.

I mean, we are, but everybody knows what I'm talking about.

And then we throw an obstacle up for someone who wants to do a brownfield development on how far they have to carry

the Detress after it's finished.

And what is the network?

And I'm not trying to blow over the environment.

So please, no one interpret this is what I'm saying.

He's trying to blow the environment out.

Yeah.

Oh, could I?

You know what?

I want some swimming holes.

I missed my swimming hole from when I was a kid.

So the whole idea about what's the network

of policies and things that we have that when I stand back as a developer perhaps coming in, I said, damn, this place is really difficult to do any work in.

And either I've got to bring a bunch of money to it, like Graystar,

who brings a bunch of money to the projects that are here.

Or if I'm a small developer, like Karen and I just say, we're going to develop something.

We say, we're not doing this.

Here we'll go someplace else because it's too complicated.

I'll go to Nelson County where I know they want some housing.

And so it's the whole idea of what are the signals that we're saying?

Yeah, can I just add real quick?

I was thinking about this in terms of what we consider redevelopable, and I understand your math for the land is more valuable than the improvement, but if I was a developer and I saw, you know, six, five acre tracts with ranch houses on them, and I'd think about combining them and then going up, I'd have a very valuable

in field development.

And this is happening all over the place, certainly in Charlottesville.

And I even driving out Avon Street extended as you're right.

Think about that road.

There's a bunch of really dense development tucked in there.

And then there's like ranch houses.

and I'm not saying we are going to take their houses, but I'm just saying that it could be old Mrs. Smith, the made up person wants to retire.

I'm sure those people get approached all the time.

I don't know how those tracks would come up if you did an analysis, would they come up as

I just think there's a lot of redevelopment potential with a lot of very low density tracks that are still within the urban ring that a developer would find attractive.

But it also goes back to the point Julian was talking about, about how hard is it to develop in this community?

And that's why I keep getting on the bandwagon of why don't we just rezone it to what we want?

Because it's the going through the development process

that people don't bother trying to get the higher density.

You've heard that time and again, like, well, I was going to try to, I'll just do the density it's already approved for.

It's too hard.

Then all the angry citizens are going to come out and say they don't want this next door.

And the board of supervisors will cave and whatever people think.

say otherwise, but it seems to me that the first thing out of the gate, if they're looking at a development opportunity, is not to say, this is gonna take us three years to do, so we're not gonna do it.

I think it is part of the equation.

I think the major part of it is what can we afford to do on this piece of property?

What does the pro forma look like and how can- Right, and the cost of going through that three-year process gets factored into deciding that it isn't worth it.

Excuse me, Chair Missel, Jody Filardo, Community Development Director.

It's 4.47.

We've got 10 minutes more of stuff we want to share with you all.

And your work session is ending quickly.

Thank you for keeping us on track.

So we have until, am I right, until 5.30?

Correct.

OK.

Yes.

OK. We'll talk for a half hour after the presentation.

Lonnie, you have your hand up.

It's just a real quick thing.

I mean, adding on to what you said, if you take some of these areas we consider undevelopable right now, if we proactively rezone those areas for redevelopment at higher density, or if we proactively offer tax and criminal financing, it'd be nice to know how does that change whether it's redevelopable or not.

Thank you.

Hey, well, thank you so much for that awesome feedback.

I think if I was to channel my inner consultant, who's not with us tonight, he stood up at the board meeting to say, I think along the similar vein to a lot of your feedback,

One of the benefits of moving to this kind of digital tool is those assumptions can be run and tested as we find consensus and agreement around these different factors.

There's an opportunity there to make those changes.

So I will highlight the value of his work for him since he's not here to do that.

So turning the page then from the 2015 comp plan and into AC44, the last attachment, attachment five, to the commission's materials for tonight was a draft tool.

This is a first attempt at tracking how current development proposals are aligning or not to the maximum theoretical capacity as called for in the comp plan.

Notably under AC44, to some of the earlier discussion we had just a minute ago,

AC44 is explicit that future development proposals will be evaluated under gross density.

And so that's just a shift that we can keep in mind as we go forward.

At random, I selected this rezoning as a straw man for discussion today.

Fairly small rezoning down Avon Street.

This is a little over three and a half acres.

The comp plan under the 2015 comp plan and AC44 calls for neighborhood density residential, which is three to six units per acre.

And so if we were to look at attachment five and the first table that you have there, it's attempting to look at

What are the existing conditions on the property in the first row where there are currently two housing units that are occupying a very small amount of that acreage?

If we were to compare it to the future land use under the comp plan, it would be about 9%.

The second row looks at the theoretical maximum using gross density, which would call for 22 units.

And in this case, the applicant proposed 21 units.

And so we see that it would be about 96% of the comp plan's theoretical max is the applicant's proposal to build up to 21 units.

I'm going a little bit out of order and I'm skipping down to table C just to keep this within total, the flow of the presentation to be totally on market rate information.

This information would be those big totals that you saw from the 2025 land use build out analysis.

Is that something that would be valuable to see on an ongoing basis in the context of current development proposals going forward?

and so here you've got the pipeline, how many units are theoretical and then the total and then some of those non-residential land uses for just for consideration.

And then table B on attachment five looks at housing and it's attempting, I think this could be useful in a scenario where we're trying to understand

how much more or less affordable housing would be provided based on the intensity of the development that's before you.

So if our current policy would call for 20% of the constructed units to be provided as affordable and the applicant is proposing a max of only

80% of what the comp plan is looking for, then we can begin to see the delta between what we would hope to achieve through the comp plan and versus what's actually constructed.

And so this would not replace the affordable housing analysis that's currently shared by the housing office.

This would just augment and try to show, okay, the comp plan would call for 3.3 affordable units

based on this designation, which would round up to four, the applicant, through their proposal, is still eclipsing three, and so there's really no difference even though they're not maybe hitting the max, they're still achieving the same number of affordable units.

So the intent here would be, this information would be included along with narrative in the staff report that would just try to talk about the growth management policy on a more regular basis going forward.

And it would include this potential for both market rate and affordable housing and help us with our overall tracking of the development areas.

And then to conclude and wrap up, over time, both of these tools would help us administer the growth management policy and implement the comp plan and, again, identify those questions that we should be asking.

Is it specialized redevelopment?

Is it more infrastructure-focused analysis?

What are the questions that we need to be answering

Put the Planning Commission and Board in the best position to make the best decisions possible.

Awesome.

Can I ask just one question about that?

So when you're looking a couple slides back, when you're looking at, for example, affordable housing here, and even the prior slide, as this comes out for that one, this will come out as part of the staff report for each one.

Is there a way to compile this in an ongoing basis, a tally, so that January 1,

is gonna look different maybe than, or there's maybe some data that says over the last three months, this is what we've seen.

So maybe that 4% net across all the projects that have come before is really increasing to, I don't know, zero or decreasing to a minus 10%, right?

Okay, I just wanted to clarify something and Commissioner Bivins brought this up in terms of the net and gross and it's something that when I was going through the materials it wasn't clear to me and so Mr. McDermott and I had a conversation yesterday about it but I think it might help the point that Commissioner Bivins was raising.

Under the analysis of the land use build-out analysis, it's looking at effectively a net calculation because it is removing area for open space and infrastructure and that kind of thing.

However, AC44 marks a significant shift in that and is explicit to say we're going to use gross density moving forward.

And so, you know, I can let others, senior leadership speak to this.

There may be value in both.

If we want to have a continuation and kind of a long term look in apples to apples, maybe maintaining the current approach of the land use build out analysis from 22 would make sense.

Yeah, I think it would be helpful to, so I get the benefit of having that continuity, right, that the net provides you.

However, with the Groes, it would then suggest that you can have more development, so whether the theoretical max, right, so I think that's the one that is important.

What is that going to be tied to?

the theoretical max of saying that's the most you can possibly do.

Want to jump in?

If that's based on the gross, I think that's really what's going to tell us that, well, yeah, you can obviously, and maybe there's height restrictions and all the things that we need to talk about, but that theoretical max, I would propose should be based on the gross.

It's not that we eliminate the net, because I think there is value in that, in having that more of an apples to apples to previous.

I mean, I thought we have to amend our code of development to allow for using gross, right?

That not right.

Okay, but that's the comp plan's goal.

Don't we have to change code?

No, there's no code that aligns to that.

The code really references what is said in the comprehensive plan.

And I'll just say,

After our discussion, Luis, we talked about this a lot and it really gets to what Commissioner Moore was bringing out, was pointing out too, is that we can use gross.

But we also think there's value in recognizing net because if we're trying to track this over time and figure out how much land is really still available in our development area, we do have to recognize that it's not always going to be developed at that gross recommended density.

So it is good to have

Comments, questions?

I do have a question and this is around the AMI and so looking at that and understanding what we're doing there and just sort of wondering what would be the process for us to recommend

a change to that.

So that in fact, you know, if we look at the median household income in our community, it's like $103,000.

Even if we take, as it's listed here, we still exclude a bunch of people from housing or from these kinds of houses.

And so I'm trying to figure out how do we make a dent in that?

And is the only way to make a dent in that

A, to get the county involved more instead of being prescriptive as opposed to being hopeful about housing.

Well, I think we appreciate the question.

I'll just say that what we're looking at right now are the tools that we're trying to look at to evaluate these issues.

I think a lot of what you're talking about are things that this is work that we want to do in the future.

related to how we implement AC44, how we implement Housing Albemarle.

These are bigger questions that we've been discussing for the past three years as we updated AC44.

I think that we're gonna keep trying to bring these things out as we move forward.

Yes, I agree with Mr. McDermott, Bart Svoboda, Deputy Director of Community Development.

When we see Zoning Mod come forward and those alignments with AC44 and those sorts of things, that's when we'll look at how we're going to implement the information we learned from this tool.

This inventory of kind of what we have is different than, you know, what we're going to do with this.

So this is the, you know, we're taking inventory, this is our pile of lumber.

What are you going to build out of that?

We're not going to use the material sheet to do the design.

We're going to analyze that stuff that we have, and then we'll figure out based on our areas, whether or not we're going to break down the developable area different, things like that.

So this is going to change a little bit as we start to use it and as things start to align moving forward.

Chair, could I just ask one more?

So one of the things that we wrestle with particularly west of town is that park land, which was public park land and other park land all had the same color.

which I can't tell you the number of conversations we had to have here with people saying, you can't do anything on that, that's parkland.

No, that's a private parkland and as opposed to a public parkland.

I would say possibly.

So I want to be careful with the variety of colors that we use.

So if I pick on ARB for a minute, the color wheel of 274 different shades, whatever.

We just want to be clear that the folks that we want to get the message to, that we communicate at an understandable level.

Okay.

So 52 colors on the map.

And if I speak for myself, I like the eight crayons.

I don't like the 72 crayon pack.

There's too much going on there.

Right.

And so whatever message we want to send or however we're communicating on a particular project or a map, GIS, whatever that is, we want to, we want to understand how our folks here

Not necessarily how much we talk, you know, how we communicate, what we say, it's how we say it and how they're listening to us when we do that.

So that's going to be important.

I think that Kevin can probably speak to the maps a little bit better and what changes we anticipate.

And I will add that in the latest, in AC44, our land use map did break those colors out more.

I think we'll probably, as we move forward with small area plans, we'll probably look to do that even better.

But we did separate these, you know, environmental features green from parkland green in the latest AC44.

Great.

Yeah, it's just, you know, when you look through the numbers, not to beat this to death, but I think that we do need some numbers here about redevelopment.

So I think when a project comes before us, it'd be nice to know what percentage of this development is Greenfield versus which, how much of it is redevelopment.

I think both rolling that up at the county level to knowing how much redevelopment we're doing versus how much greenfield development.

And then in terms of redevelopment, I think we also need to think about the types of redevelopment, particularly targeting areas like excessive parking lots.

I think that's something we've all identified as something that should be a priority.

We should also target areas that are brownfields.

I know that there are areas in Crozet that

We really hope to have redeveloped that are brownfields.

And I think when we do that, we should have a county metric that we're meeting something when we develop those.

So those are the comments that I would have.

We're all in discussion, but just one thought that came to mind.

If we zoom out on this and we just take the basic, what's the purpose of even doing this exercise?

Why do we care?

Initially, we care because we want to maximize density in the development areas to maximize the use of infrastructure, blah, blah, blah, limit the exposure of rural areas to expansion.

If you then take that to the next level and you say, we now have this tool,

And the tool is there because it's actually trying to maximize or it's actually a tool that provides us with some insights into how well we're doing and how efficiently we're using the density that's inherently built into the development areas.

So now you take it to the developer and the developer is going, all right, so I'm going to develop this piece of property and I could build 5,000 units of residential, but I'm really only going to build 1,500 because there's cost in proffers, there's cost in time, there's cost in all these other things that weigh into that.

And so we're going to be faced as a county with inefficient use or underutilization of development areas.

So what?

So now what do we do?

Well, there's gotta be something that gives back to the development community that says, we're gonna help you increase that density, right?

So those are the incentives we're talking about.

And so as you think about incentives, my question after that long winded discussion is, have you looked at incentives that help to maximize development and are there any

Is there anything that we as a county can use as a carrot to help to develop and maximize the ability to identify the development areas?

we're gonna say, and I'm just throwing this out there, you know, like economic development, right?

Right now for economic development, sometimes we'll actually, I don't wanna use the word accelerate, but we'll actually find ways to move things more quickly through the pipeline.

And we've talked about that for affordable housing.

You're coming with 100% affordable housing, you're gonna get special treatment, you're gonna get moved through.

Are there things like that that can be brought to the table?

And then the other piece of it, and I'll shut up,

This idea of value.

So we're talking about affordable housing having a higher value than retail or commercial or normal, you know, regular market rate housing.

We're assigning values to these things.

So as we look at the development of these areas across the county, does that come into play?

Like, for example, you're

you're bringing 30% affordable housing to this, so we're actually gonna give you the special route to go through.

Or there's so much housing in Albemarle County right now, we have too much, we need to pull our, and I know that's not true right now, but we need to pull our foot off the gas, and we need to refocus and incentivize other areas of use.

So just thinking through, I don't know how that plays into the development area analysis, but it feels like it should, because all those different uses kind of

It's the piece about being proactive.

It's great that we will now, at real time, as we are approving applications, see the impact on the development area.

We're under building, we're hitting it about there, so we'll be able to see that.

I think that's an important tool.

So let's say we do this for six months and then we get a number where it's like, oh, we increased by 10% or we decreased by 10%.

Then what?

What we want to do is figure out a path for more development.

So here you're measuring it, but how do we, as Commissioner Mishel said, incentivize or what are the levers that we can begin to pull

to move that needle.

So let's not just track it.

Let's think about how we move the needle.

So when we're having the conversations with developers and they are coming in at 50%, say, well, what is it going to take to get you to 70% or 80%?

Exactly.

So I think that's important as part of this process.

I really enjoy the conversation about incentives and this has me thinking when you look at

How do you measure the vitality of any community?

There's really three factors, right?

There's education, health, and the economy.

And so within that context, I think we've touched on all three of those tonight in some capacity, whether it's demographics in the data that Commissioner Bivins has shared.

How does that start to be overlaid with health or the economy and economic development?

Or we talked about schools, but health, education, the economy, those are the three.

Vitals, right, of any community.

So perhaps there is something there where I don't know if I have the answer tonight, but as you start to reflect on how do we start to evaluate proposals, like if it's contributing to the vitals of the community, that could just be a different way of looking at it.

I think we've historically kind of one kind of laying piece to it, right?

Like if it's

a bunch of affordable housing then yes that's it but I think there might be more to it for a more comprehensive story and then just around like housing in general I think of course we need more affordable housing but I think we need the full spectrum of housing also so how does that interplay in the conversation?

I was talking with our chief economist at the AIA not long ago and he was sharing that

with a survey of tons of Americans, put it that way, I forget the exact number, but right now with the interest rates at about six and a quarter, if the interest rates can fall to five, the amount of people that are looking for housing or willing to start being in the market to buy, it goes from 25% to 65%, with just a one basis point kind of move.

So if that could start to open up,

housing, like current housing, you got to have people to kind of move out of their existing house and buy to open up more units for other people, right?

So this kind of thing with that full spectrum of housing and how does that start to play in this while trying to push on affordable housing, but could there be incentives that's affordable housing plus other housing as well, market rate housing, whatever it is in that conversation.

There's just two thoughts that as I've listened to this conversation that might be worth thinking about a little bit more.

I just wanted to bring in the notion in this conversation, we can explore this more later, but the idea of not just density, density, but also quality development.

And I'm thinking along the lines of the form-based code I know that we did for the Rio area was pretty complicated.

But I think we could perhaps come up with some performance standards that we'd like to see in exchange for maybe giving additional density above what

is required because I don't want to just have a we've packed everyone in or they they had a lot of affordable housing so we didn't really pay a lot of attention to the fact that the sidewalks are too narrow and there's no street trees and it's actually because there are a few places and I'm not going to name them but I don't really like them.

OK, they're so dense that they feel claustrophobic to me.

And I grew up in DC.

I'm used to cities.

That's a low density city.

But nevertheless, it's denser than here, I'll tell you that.

So I just would like us to have that conversation at some point.

In Charlottesville, we created many years ago an infill density bonus where we got

Low impact development, bioswales, green rooftops, things like that in exchange for extra density.

We were trying to get more stormwater management on already developed sites.

Developers were willing to do it if they could get a little bit of profit by having some extra units.

We found that sweet spot.

So there are opportunities like that.

And I just also want to note that as we go through this exercise of density, density, the county's going to probably have to have more skin in the game.

We've talked about this in the past as a body that we can't get all the park space and the amenities that give you that healthy community if we just rely on the development community to give us those little tot lots and little

You know, barbecue pits and pocket parks that are not going to be able to meet the demand for putting all these people in there.

So if we want a quality urban ring that doesn't send people scouring off to the countryside to get

get some quality.

I think we need to really as a county spend money on parks, spend money on connector roads.

We hear about the one in Crozet that everyone's complaining we can't get built.

The county says we can't raise the money because the smart scale is we're not winning.

but at some point we're going to have to start paying ourselves even if we can't get the VDOT money.

Now that I'm not the supervisors that's easy for me to say but I think that the county itself may need to put more skin in the game in terms of parks, sidewalks, those the community centers, those amenities

that then make the developers say, wow, this would be a really great place to put my development because they have provided a quality community into which I can fit what I have to offer.

Our proffer system is overly relied on the development community to proffer what we want.

And all we get is we're like my Labrador retriever under the table as a kid getting all the scraps.

My comments are actually fairly similar to Commissioner Firehock's and I'll echo those and also Commissioner Bivins's and I think I would be really interested in the conversation about what performance standards will look like, you know, for that sort of seventh big move that I brought up, the sort of social and cultural connectivity and like what are we actually doing for those things.

As a tool, you know, this guy is neat.

I mean, to have that alongside

you know, the narrative and what are the entrance quarter implications and all these other little things that we get.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It seems like a reasonable tool.

And whether it's gross or net, as far as the number of units, both seem like possibly valuable numbers to at least have at our hands.

And then we see something that comes in and it's like, why is that only 35% the max?

And then we can have that conversation and say, Hey, you know,

As far as incentives for getting higher within that, you know, max hypothetical build out, I mean, I kind of leaned over and said, isn't the incentive more profit when you build more homes?

But maybe there's some other thing as well.

I don't know.

I mean, yeah, there's a cost to when you build more, it costs more, but yeah.

No, I get it.

There's a complex thing.

I've never been a large scale developer.

That said,

I know every time we talk to them that one of the big factors they talk about is that all these redevelopment processes or coming to get permissions to do any kind of rezoning or planned neighborhood development is that it's a long, slow, expensive, and uncertain process.

You might sink a lot of resources into it and then have the board say no.

And so, you know, having that sort of simpler, quicker, you know, just what Commissioner Firehock was saying too.

I mean, there are some things we want to make sure get done, but let's bake those into policy rather than having them always have to come into this like really complex three year process.

I think there was some talk earlier about redevelopment and there probably are some parcels that could be redeveloped that don't show up in here.

I'm even thinking about like my own neighborhood because it's what I know best, right?

It's the homes and a third of an acre, half an acre and it's just single-family homes on them.

Hypothetically, we could build more homes on there but it would just have to be rezoned and redone and to do it though, I mean like how expensive will homes and land have to get

And do we want to actually let our home values get that high before that becomes something that's tenable and that people want to do?

And I think that's a question.

I would rather move on this a little bit more quickly before we get to the point that like, you know, I mean, Charlottesville kind of did the big up zoning in the city, sort of looking ahead and saying, let's just allow this.

We've not really taken that tack here yet, although we're going into a rezoning modernization conversation in the next year and a half.

So we'll see how it goes.

And then I want to talk about crayons because I still miss burnt sienna and I'm gonna go on the record saying that.

It was a deep loss when I was a child.

But the reason I bring up the crayons thing is that we don't have to include every color on every map, but I do want us to think about

This is a tool that we've been talking about for basically market solutions to this issue.

And there's a variety of things we can do to be sort of like YIMBYs on this in a way, right?

Like we're trying to build more density in my backyard and everybody's backyard and just the development area.

I don't think market solutions are going to cut it.

and that's alone.

I mean they have to be part of it, of course, and you know for two years I've used the metaphor like we got to use every arrow in the quiver here and we're only really talking about like one main arrow and then occasionally we talk about some others.

I do want to see what land the county owns that could have potential for this.

I'd like to see what land the county could own.

with some investment.

I'd like to see what land would be ripe for social housing or public spaces and public green spaces.

Those are the kinds of conversations that I think, to put more skin in the game, but also really to think about what would a social housing market alongside a market rate market look like.

Great comments.

I'm going to do a little bubble busting.

Yeah, you know, so I've spent a lot of time with the census.

It's like since that's my old life there.

And, you know, we're not out of sync with Virginia and with the country.

According to the census, we have 66% owner occupied.

I don't know, you know, my other life as an economist, I don't know how you break that curve.

I'm just going to be honest.

I don't know how you break that.

I don't know how you break that curve.

So I'm going to back off a bit and say, I don't think it's broken.

I think what it is, things have changed to an extent, and we don't like as a community where they're changing.

You know, I don't think we like the fact that the typical house here costs close to $500,000 and we don't have the kind, or $600,000, and we don't have the kinds of jobs that most people can afford that kind of house.

I'm going to sort of, I have to jump in on the interest rate bit because I think that is a red herring.

You look at the percentage of income that's going towards your income towards the house.

Whether or not it's $59,000 or not, it's still how much is coming out of your pocket to be able to afford that house.

I wasn't making anywhere in the 80s what I ended up making in my life or when we're closed, but I still bought a house.

And I think there's a situation that we have here that is, what are we, and I'm gonna, I have to deal with Charlottesville Albemarle a bit because I think we have an artificial economy here.

We have an artificial economy that's built on a bunch of wealth, a wealth matrixes, wealth items that is not like the rest of the world.

I need to see, I look at, if you look at how much, if you look at our demographic, you look at our salaries, you look at the set of the typical household incomes, it is not, we are way above Virginia and we're way above the nation and a lot of that stuff.

So I think what we really are fighting with there, and this goes to, I think what we're talking about, can we get the county to be more proactive and becoming part of the solution of creating housing here?

I think what we're really looking at is that Albemarle County is an anomaly.

There's a lot of things in which we have, we follow Virginia trends and national trends.

One of the things that we don't follow though are income and investment and those number of people who live off of investments here.

That we can't change.

We can't change that.

I can't change your portfolio.

I'd like to look at you.

I can't change your portfolio.

I know I can't.

I know you'd like me to see yours.

You'd like me to contribute to yours.

That's how it works.

So can I just clarify what you're saying?

So we're talking about a diminishing resource.

Yes.

Right.

It's just a development area.

OK, yeah.

Because if the county says it's not going to become an active agent in that, it's going to do what it's going to do.

Yeah.

I mean, I would just advise you to do what I'm sure people in your staff do.

Go to Zillow or go to Realtor and say, show me an apartment for $1,200.

Well, there's a whole bunch of people who can't even pay $1,200.

Look at the salaries in your organization.

I'm trying to be, you know, I'm trying to have a bit of optimism here, Madam Commissioner.

I'm not trying to be completely a downer on this.

And so my point on this is even if we even if we add more housing units, I don't believe we're going to get something close to the average person who who has a typical sort of job that's not a white or a white collar or a professional job.

They're going to be fine.

I think we I think we've got we're locked in a in a cycle that we got to figure out that is not going to be about

Can I ask a question of staff?

So if you think about like what's your hope in terms of next steps?

Thank you, though.

I think the immediate next steps are preparing for the board discussion on January 21st.

Commissioner Bivins will be happy to know that the information will be put through a market-based lens using CoStar data.

And I think the other next step is figuring out what does the next staff report look like for future development proposals.

How can we

integrate this feedback and great conversation into meaningful information to use for future decision making.

That's great.

Thank you.

Yes, I just wanted to double down on some things that Karen had said.

I realize that right now we're just trying to get a few metrics, sort of move the conversation forward.

And it is a move in the right direction.

As I said, definitely I think we need some things that really capture redevelopment.

But in terms of what Karen was saying in terms of livability, it would be nice to have some metrics about livability, eventually be at the distance to a public park.

The percent of green space within a tree cover within an area.

Even some environmental factors like impervious surface.

So it would be nice to get to those sorts of factors eventually.

Right.

We're running out of time here, but just I guess somewhat in closing, I want to throw out a couple of subjects that we talked about just as a kind of a summary.

So first, I thought the idea of a heat map was really helpful.

You know, looking at where the areas are that are prime for development and how that plays out and how that's based on other resources.

Incentives, we talked a lot about incentives and thinking through that as a next step.

Other opportunities for county involvement and what do those look like?

Market influences and then data and additional data data input and then looking at trends that maybe is a little bit longer reaching than than 2022.

Are there others that I think other I don't mean to say that's it but sort of a high level stuff again.

All right well with that any other last comments?

Thank you, staff.

Great work.

This is really an important step.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

We will go into recess until 6 p.m.

Yes, sir.

Awesome.

Thank you.

We are back in session, obviously.

Welcome back, everybody.

And we have a quorum.

I figured you probably would.

There is no sign up sheet, but why don't we, why don't we do this?

If it's okay, I'll ask in the back, I'll ask Ms. McKeel to come up.

Supervisor McKeel, would you like to

That would be great, thank you.

And I'm here tonight because I needed practice being on this side of the podium.

You're doing great.

Thank you very much.

I'm a creature of habit, I'm waiting for the, you're not going anywhere, just talk.

Okay, sounds good.

Because we're nearing the end of meetings in 2025, and because I'm retiring from public office, I come before you tonight to thank Julian for his service on the Albemarle County Planning Commission.

Julian, during your eight years of service to the residents of the Jack Jewett District and the entire Albemarle County community,

You modeled professionalism and integrity while speaking truth to power.

Thank you for the site visits you made in anticipation of the development proposals or rezonings.

I know you always visited every one of those sites and you often walked the entire property.

Thank you for all the time we spent together

meeting with members of the community regarding proposals that were destined to come before both the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors.

I always learn from your insightful questions.

Your comments and suggested changes during a comp plan review were thoughtful and well-reasoned and often quoted by the Board of Supervisors members.

We share a vision to create a more education-centric space for the students on the Lambs Lane campus.

And I appreciate the time and effort you spent during the master plan process.

You have been a friend, a mentor, and an advisor.

The Jack Jewett and the county have benefited from your leadership.

Thank you for your distinguished service and lasting contributions.

And I made it through without sniveling too much.

Thank you for giving me the time on this side of the podium.

Thank you.

Bye bye.

Take care.

Your time is up, ma'am.

Thank you.

And Julian, thank you for raising the bar so high for other planning commissioners and for the legacy that you lead.

With that, moving on to our folks.

It's up to you whenever you would like to go.

You'll have three minutes for comments.

Williamson and I'm here to speak on the Stillhouse Mountain property.

I don't have any prepared remarks, but I am an adjacent neighbor and I represent the Coldhurst homeowners, which are, you know, just west of this property.

My house happens to be the lowest house in elevation to this property, so I get all the runoff

for the neighborhood and I have a nice pond in my backyard which is actually a stormwater detention pond from the early days.

You know this house has only been in two families.

In my previous life I was an architect so I'm very aware and

protective of all beautiful structures in our community.

And this house is almost 100 years old.

It's had two families live in it and care for it and preserve and take care of this land.

And it has incredible, I think from an architectural gem of a property, I think it has incredible value.

and also if it were developed, almost a lot of this property is steep slopes and I'm also in the asphalt highway business so I know a little bit about moving dirt and stuff.

It's a rocky piece of property and if you were to develop it, it would be very expensive and not

and most of it is steep slopes with the exception of where the home is and some down in the valley.

We're also surrounded on both sides by schools St. Anne's on one side and the future home of the field school which is coming in eventually hopefully on the other side.

But most importantly the water runoff if we if you know you denuded that whole property to build whatever development was going to happen

It would be an incredible water event for coal thirst in the neighborhood.

And we would not be happy about that.

For this presentation, it's not a staff report.

Hi, I'm Robbie Knoll.

The McClain's introduced me to the project a few months ago to try and determine the feasibility of doing some development in there.

And just to sort of qualify my role, I am the principal owner of the building management company.

We do a fair amount of development here in this area, both in the city and the county.

And we do some enrichment over in the valley, but very much familiar with the entitlement process here in the county.

And I dug in for a little while to see what sort of infrastructure would be required, where we could build.

And I've got to say that I think it was Scott Clark who put together the report.

He's pretty much spot on.

In fact,

I think 25 units or lots in there might be generous to be able to get them in there practically.

But in doing some breakdowns, everything from the grading, the infrastructure costs of putting in the roads, the stormwater controls that would be required, the utilities, and

Storm Utilities.

Yeah, and then the unknown about rock.

We weren't able to do geotech reports, but we would assume that there's a tremendous amount of rock high there, and that would be a burden we'd really have to look into.

Anyway, the best we could tell, we're looking at an overall burden per lot of about half a million dollars.

and that's pretty much a no-go from in our world.

If we were to get in there and to develop that sort of thing, it would just be prohibitively expensive.

Let's touch on that.

Oh, I did want to touch on the view shed.

Just being in Charlottesville for 35 years,

There's certain homes that you can see on certain ridgelines, and I live in the Bel Air neighborhood.

And in the winter, we can see that house along with some other houses.

And frankly, personally, I think it'd be a doggone shame to dilute the beauty of that home from a personal standpoint.

So the rest of us are family.

We appreciate your time here.

My name is Chris McLean.

It's hard for I think all of us to talk about this because it was my parents owned this house for four years.

They were

Anti- bypass people, which may not resonate positively, but they knew that putting a road through this property and the retaining wall that would have to be built, deflecting noise off of the wall would be tragic to the county.

All of us were born and raised here.

I've been here for 56 years and went to Virginia and many of my friends that have come back to this community have said, wow, we love this place.

We'd love to live here.

It's so beautiful and the county has done such a great job maintaining the viewshed, important viewsheds in the county.

And I don't know if you all had a chance to read the letter from Sabina Martin, who's with Real Estate 3, just talking about the negative impact that the viewsheds, surrounding viewsheds would have for property values.

And I actually happened to be coming in today from

a friend's house that was taking over childcare for me and in coming in Garth Road and just the prominent side of that mountain and the neighborhoods that would be impacted but if you go out to Cherry Hill or over to Pantops or up to Albemarle High School or Earliesville Road you'd see that whatever impact that would have for developing this

this property.

So my mother's dying wish was, she passed away in December, was to get the property under easement.

And obviously we can't do that without the county saying it's consistent with the comprehensive plan.

So we're here asking for that.

Staff, Scott Clark's done a nice, really nice job writing it up.

I'm watching your time.

Okay.

But

That's the extent of it.

I mean, there's a whole laundry list of places you can see this property from.

I think we would not have an argument in front of you all, other than an emotional one, if this was a flat piece of property where it's located.

But not just the viewshed, but the water supply going into Ivy Creek in our reservoir.

is obviously with the sediment that's already in our reservoir is obviously a big deal.

Thank you.

So the last time I was in this auditorium, I was walking across that stage

Can you do us a favor?

Just raise the mic so we can hear you better.

Thank you.

Good enough.

That's great.

If you don't mind, I'm going to read mine.

You mind stating your name?

Yeah, I'll get to that.

Well, good evening.

I'm Lee McLean and I was born and raised in Charlottesville.

I have commercial and residential properties in the area, and I pay taxes on, and I'm currently co-trustee of the McLean Family Trust, the current owner of the 2700 Barracks Road.

I'm here tonight to support Scott Clark's recommendation for 2700 Barracks Road to be eligible for a conservation easement.

Our father, Copley McLean, was accustomed to buying and selling real estate to help support his family of seven children and his wife Peggy.

After buying 2700 Barracks Road in 1984, he and Peggy enjoyed the property of their dreams centered around family, including weddings, receptions, class reunions, as well as family reunions.

They spent the rest of their lives on the property with dad leaving us in 2011.

and mom, as Chris said, on December 3rd of last year, eight days shy of her 102nd birthday.

Mom's wish for her property not to be developed was expressed to family and friends on multiple occasions.

The family is very fortunate that our brother Chris and his wife Ashley are buying the property and have the goal and commitment to pursue a conservation easement to fulfill mom's wish as well as their convictions.

In addition to what is in Mr. Clark's recommendation and the support of neighbors, there is essentially a 15 acre piece of undeveloped property close to the north side of the driveway of 2700 that borders on the water tower property on the upper side.

It is my understanding that the owners of this property

have been working on a plan for a residential development, making the importance of protecting the approximately 32 and one half acres under consideration more meaningful.

It is my hope that the wisdom and foresight of the board will support the recommendations of Mr. Clark for the benefit of a unique green space for the current and future generations of the inhabitants of Albemarle County.

Thank you.

Thank you all for your service to the community.

Lane High School class of 74 here.

Last graduating class.

It's good to be back in this space.

But thank you too for letting us share some brief thoughts as they relate to Stillhouse Mountain.

I sent it to you all yesterday.

But as an ecologist, one having a love especially for black bears and osprey before and after studying them as an environmental science major at the university and in grad school at the College of William and Mary in the University of Tennessee, I know the black bears and osprey and all their kin will be celebrating more land and life-giving water and associated resources held in their natural state.

One closer to that would sustain wildlife and Native Americans 400 years ago and before.

Whether it be roads or shops or homes and all that comes with our rampant development, one our diminishing landscape deserves otherwise.

Nothing less than protection, preservation.

Two, given our ultimate challenge of climate change, one is to find the contours of the 21st century more than any other.

We need to do all we can to save land and water resources, especially the trees and other photosynthesizers and all that contributes to the natural cycles which sustains us all life.

Thank you very much for your consideration of those residents of Stillhouse Mountain, human and otherwise.

In May, its conservation, its preservation epitomized treatment of land and water and other natural resources for our beautiful Albemarle County and beyond.

We know neighbors in Colthurst, in Bellfield, in the colonies favor keeping Stillhouse Mountain as is, sheltering its waters, maintaining the mature trees on its steep forested slopes, extending the vast fuchsia.

And at least one other mountain top dweller, Thomas Jefferson, would well regard our consideration of the welfare of others now and many generations since.

Thank you and thanks everybody.

Appreciate your comments very much.

I wish we could just jump right to that subject.

We have a little bit of administrative stuff to do between now and then but should go pretty quickly.

Is there anyone else here who would like to speak to matters not on the agenda?

All right.

Moving on then to the consent agenda.

We have two items of minutes on the consent agenda.

Motion is second.

Any discussion?

Yes.

Aye.

Mr. Moore?

Aye.

Ms. Firehock?

Mr. Murray?

Great.

Thanks very much.

With that, we'll move on to two items requesting deferral.

And the first one is ZMA 2024-5 Belvedere Amendment.

I understand the applicant is requesting deferral to January 13th, 2026.

Is there a motion to defer that application to January 13th, 2026?

So moved.

Second.

Any discussion?

Yes.

Ms. Firehock?

Aye.

Mr. Carrazana?

Aye.

Mr. Moore?

Mr. Bivins?

Great.

We'll move on to item number B, letter B, ZTA 2023-6, STA 2023-3, WPTA 2023-3, and OTA 2024-2, Riparian Buffer Protection Standards.

There's a request to defer those items to January 27th, 2026.

Great, we have a motion and a second.

Any discussion?

Yes, sir.

Mr. Firehock?

Aye.

Great, thank you.

And with that, we will move on to the presentation, CCP 2025-1 Stillhouse Mountain.

Good evening, I'm Scott Clark.

I'm the Conservation Program Manager in the Community Development Department.

And this item is a request for compliance with the comprehensive plan review for a potential conservation easement.

It's located here, TACMEC 60, parcel 66, just west of the Colonnades.

And as you heard earlier, the land owners are hoping to place a conservation easement on the property.

A more detailed aerial view and you can see how it lies on the ridge between the first and colonnades.

The access is at the northeast corner where it meets Barracks Road.

So by law, by Virginia law, conservation easements have to be in compliance with the comp plan for the locality that they're in.

And so localities frequently hear from conservation easement holders or landowners wanted to get confirmation that their potential easement is in line with that localities comp plan and

95, 99% of the time, the answer is yes, because those properties are fully within an area that's either a rural area or if it's in a development area, it's in an area of property that's designated for parks and green space or something like that.

So in nearly every case, staff can easily answer the question, is this proposal in line with the comp plan?

This is the first one I've encountered

working here in Albemarle where it wasn't immediately clear from looking at the map.

So the reason I say that is that if you look at the map, about a third of the property here in green is in the rural area where our plan says that easements are

desired as part of the land use approach for conservation in the rural areas.

And about two-thirds is in the development area.

The reason for that boundary right there, you can see it follows basically the top of the ridge.

West of there goes to South Fork Reservoir.

It is in the public water supply.

And the eastern side does not and is designated as part of the development area.

so if we look within those development area designations to see more detail that green area is the parks and green systems designation from the western neighborhoods comp plan land use map the remaining portions in the development area are blue which is institutional which is an old designation that remains from the old

US 29 Western bypass plans many years ago, which is no longer part of the county's transportation plan.

And then the yellow area is designated as neighborhood density residential, which is two six units per acre.

The portion that is not in color is in the rural area.

And you can see the white hatches on that west facing slope that drains toward the reservoir.

Those white hatches on both sides are the critical slopes.

Last thing I want to point out is the purple blob that encircles most of the property.

That's the area that's in the mountain protection area or mountain protection plan from the comp plan.

And these are areas that are designated for protection, both for water supply protection and erosion control, but also habitat reasons and also scenic reasons.

So a good part of the property is within that mountain protection area.

So the way this breaks down is that about 77% of the property is either in rural areas or in parks and green systems.

The remainder is in neighborhood density and institutional.

And it's about 20 acres or just over half of the property is in that mountain protection area.

Instead of the usual request where we just have one designation that just says rural area and maybe has an overlay like flood hazard or something like that, we've got five different designations of a property requesting information on compliance.

So the question then is, what about the remaining 22% that's designated as not rural area or parks and green systems?

If the property which is currently zoned entirely R1, even the RA portion,

were to be developed.

It's got a theoretical potential of about 36 lots.

That's unlikely to be possible due to the restrictions of slopes and limited access on the property.

Maybe as much as 20 to 25 lots, but it's limited by, again, the slopes.

Portions of the property actually don't have sewer service.

So portions of the property would have to have building sites to accommodate septic fields, which again limits the number of achievable lots.

But some degree of R1 development is possible across the entirety of the property.

In comp plan terms, the problem is that for a third of the property, that's residential development that's not appropriate in the rural area.

On the east side of the property in the development area, that large block of parks and green systems would be broken up into individual residential lots, which is not ideal for conservation of parks and green systems.

On the other hand, the property were to be rezoned more in line with the comp plan designations and rather than using the R1 zoning.

Again, you've got four areas that are designated for neighborhood density residential, two of which are impractically small to use as part of a development that was solely on this property.

And then the two large areas, one at the top of the ridge, one at the southern end that are somewhat larger.

So again, it's theoretically possible to get 25 or so units on this property.

The most buildable areas unfortunately are within the mountain protection plan area or mountain protection area.

and one of the two more buildable areas at the south end is located as far as it can be from the only practical access, which is, you can see where the driveway comes up through the critical slopes here.

So it's mixed in terms of compliance with the comp plan goals.

Some development is possible in line with residential development goals, but it also would impact the mountain protection area.

Finally, and I won't read all these off to you, but there are several,

areas in the comp plan where this proposal is in compliance with policies related to protecting mountain resources, protecting critical slopes, both in the development areas in the green space designations and in the rural areas, protecting and enhancing scenic resources, natural resources, and again, those systems shown for preservation in the master plan land use plans.

So at this point, in summary,

We're recommending, we found two favorable factors, one that the majority of the property is designated as rural area or parks and green systems, and that limiting development within the remainder of the property helps to protect water quality impacts and scenic impacts in line with the Mountain Protection Plan.

And we're recommending that the Commission find that the proposed conservation easement would be in compliance with the comp plan.

I've covered a lot there, so I'm happy to take any questions you have.

After that, I have a couple of motions for you.

This is not a public hearing.

It's just an opportunity for the commission to make a finding, so you all can go through questions.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Great staff report.

That's really helpful.

I do.

But before I do, I just wanted to say too, this is one of those times where I get to learn a little local history while we're at it.

And I appreciated all the wonderful things that are written about your parents, I think is really touching and moving to see how Walter McLean, you know, served as a medical professional and also as a sort of stand up guy civically and also then how Margaret

You know, ran a school for African American kids during massive resistance.

I think that's some of the best stories of good and engaged citizens we can have.

I'm also glad that the family wants to preserve this and wants to

Live on the mountain and keep that home in good shape.

But I do have questions and I'm reminded a couple times over the comments that remind myself like we're not actually looking at a proposal for any sort of development right now.

This is just sort of like a thing to keep it from ever happening.

And so I had some questions in terms of the

hypothetical maximum, which we just talked about in our work session, which I thought we were using gross for that in terms of the acres rather than net.

And so if we're using gross for that, we've got what?

The question is, is a property owner prohibited from building in green systems?

It's like trees on their property.

I'm sorry, prohibited from?

Well, the majority of that area is in critical slope.

Well, it's preserved slopes on that side.

I understand that, but I spent on the green systems.

you know, alone.

No, in general, as long as you're not impacting those environmental resources that we protect, you would be allowed to develop on those areas.

So then I'm just doing a quick back of the napkin tally here.

It looks like about 25 acres then of the neighborhood seven portion, the neighborhood density residential portion, and the institutional that won't be used for a bypass.

And I mean, if we're talking about the sort of the flum map of up to six units per acre times 25 acres, we're talking about 150 homes.

That's a crazy hypothetical, I realize is not what's in line with the family wants to do.

And I'm not saying they should.

I'm just saying that like that feels like the number that would be the gross that we'd be talking about at some point a generation from now if we were going to.

So I just wanted to talk about that.

And then just on conservation easements more broadly, I wanted to ask too,

I just think about what the purpose is of conservation easements today and the degree to which they are functioning the way that purpose should be.

What is the function or the purpose of conservation easements?

Well, under Virginia law, there are conservation easements and there are open space easements.

They're basically the same thing.

One is held by governmental organizations, one is held by non-governmental organizations.

And essentially, they're a tool for implementing the comp plan.

Protecting resources that are identified as important in a complaint, which is why both of those state codes say that you have to be in compliance.

I'm wondering about the average conservation easement in this county.

Conservation easements don't mandate public access, but they don't necessarily obstruct it.

It's kind of a separate question from the overall comp plan compliance, but

It is possible to have public parks that are already under easement.

In fact, we already have one out adjacent to National Park.

The Patricia Byron Forest Park is under a county-held easement and is also now, it was later donated to the county as a park.

I saw an article from the Piedmont Environmental Council where they're really patting themselves on the back about having a quarter of our land in this county under conservation easements, which is a hell of a stat.

So if I want to go walk my dog on those, they're not going to really let me do that.

It wasn't really a question.

It depends on the specific easement.

Easements are not uniform across the board and every easement holding organization has its own particular goals that it's focusing on.

So the terms of an easement

might be more focused on just avoiding subdivision and allowing ag to continue, or they might be more focused on riparian buffers or forest protection.

So it depends on the individual easement.

They often, beyond just saying, okay, you can only have two lots instead of 20 and three houses instead of 50, they often establish wooded areas for protection, riparian buffers.

Some of them protect historic sites.

That's actually cool.

I did not realize the variability in those conservation easements.

I appreciate the info there.

As I understand it, I'm not an expert on the tax end of it.

Easement properties in Albemarle are not in the land use tax program.

They are simply taxed at the full rate on their reduced value.

Most landowners, when they go through the easement process, will have an appraisal.

This is unrelated, but we have an appraisal that shows the before and after easement value.

In a similar process, when the county is doing its assessments, it's going to calculate the value of the property based on its remaining development potential.

Yeah, I wish the county assessor was here.

I'm not sure it's a single number.

I think it, again, depends greatly on the potential property.

No, I understand.

I appreciate you trying.

And I know that getting into the budget questions and the total cost to the county of the 25% of land we've got in conservation easements in terms of reduced property tax is something I think about sometimes when we start worrying about how to build new preschools and how to build new high schools and all that kind of thing.

I appreciate that you've answered my questions.

Notwithstanding the wonderful family that this property belongs to, sort of the primary question for me has always been, this is an owner initiated process.

The owner never has to develop the land.

Owner can decide from now until eternity that this land is never going to be developed.

And so the calculus, and since we're not hearing it now, I don't have a chance to hear from the owner.

And I understand your mom asked that this be done.

I have full appreciation, but the owner does not have to develop the land.

That's where I always started from this.

And so this is a unique piece of property in that it's got some terrain that's difficult, that would be difficult to put any sort of housing.

It's not like that one piece we saw near the Ivy Store, which was they were taking down a lobby.

Yeah, not the hobby lobby, but the lob lobby farm and going to put houses out there.

This is not like that.

This is a very different terrain there.

But I go back to the piece that this is a property that one never has to, you don't have to develop it.

And so this is a decision and we've talked about this before.

And that's not so I want to be very careful that the applicant or the family doesn't think that this is about you.

although it's going to feel like it's all about you.

But it's not.

The whole idea is, is this the only chance?

Because this is, in my years, this is the only time I've ever seen a presentation like this.

Because usually the property is purely in the rural area.

And so it just goes off and does what it needs to do.

But the whole piece is for me, and so you'll get this as business people get this, that this is an individual initiated reduction in taxes.

And the question always is, is that individually initiated reduction in taxes something that the county achieves or receives a like-kind benefit?

So again, this is not about you.

This is about the whole process of individuals being able to set their property in a tax basis, which in your case is different because part of it's in the development area.

So we get to have this discussion, sorry, when you go home, have a good, have a bourbon and branch or something like that, if that's something that you do.

But this is the point here is that we're having an individually initiated tax reduction.

Which is reasonable because it's what the code says.

And should the county not be involved, not in this one because this is a unique situation, but should the county just be involved in that kind of situation?

Because it does have an impact, it has an impact on our taxable land.

and it's something that won't be reviewed, not unlike the agricultural and forestry districts, which there's a review process there.

There's no review process on this.

Once a piece of property is established as a conservation easement, it stays like that forever.

And if you want to take it out, then whoever wants to take it out, they have to go back and capture those that avoided tax.

And that's fine.

They can do something like that.

But that's really what my piece is, that this is another one of those situations that the county will have an impact on its tax base without having a fuller discussion about it.

I'm in favor.

So I should also say, to give you a bit of

I'm in favor of this, but I still am questioning the ability to pull the trigger on that.

I would also ask the applicants that I was concerned when I read it

because your brother and your mother are deceased.

And so I was wondering, who owns this piece of property as the trustee?

But as the trustee of your dad's trust, who owns the piece of property?

So I know when you make the transition, that'll change, and that the property will be put into, I think one of you know,

and to you and your spouse's name.

But that was a piece that concerned me when I saw it, since I knew that both everyone involved had deceased.

But I'm pushing this on this issue about conservation easements are the way for people to move money out of the county's coffers without the county really being involved in it.

Well, I might jump in here then.

It's not just that.

Yes, that is a benefit to the landowner.

But the reason that we have a conservation easement program is because it motivates people to do things that are ultimately usually in the public good.

So what is the public good?

You're framing it as, you know, losing tax base.

But the public good side of the equation, the other side of the equation is protection of steep slopes, protection of water quality, protection of watersheds, protection of wildlife and other values that are clearly espoused in the comprehensive plan.

and then to answer Nathan's question a little bit more fully than the staff.

I'm on the board of an organization and we specifically hold riparian easements for the express purpose of providing public access to rivers.

We build ramps, we provide public camping, and we often buy land that's under threat of development on a river where people want to camp, hunt or fish.

and hold it until the locality scrapes up the money 20 years later or never.

We have hold easements for multiple decades so there's many different types of easement holding organizations.

The Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District has a riparian easement to help landowners

get a break and there are situations where rural landowners, I'm not commenting on this one, where they can't afford to pay the taxes on their land and so in order for us to continue to have farmland we have a way for them to

have an avoided tax and some landowners are very impoverished and they can in Virginia sell that tax credit to someone else who needs to buy that credit.

So it is a system to allow rural agricultural landowners to be able to afford to remain in farming when the land values all around them have escalated, not because they want to get out of farming.

So I just wanted to balance the scales that are a little bit in this conversation.

But I think your points are well taken in terms of like, if we're looking at growth density, yeah, then what is the development potential of this property?

This is a weird one.

And I agree with Scott.

I asked him before we started, why are we hearing this?

I've never ever heard one of these.

And it is because it's

Got all those weird things going on.

So in general, if I made a blanket statement, it would be that I don't think we should have conservation easements in the middle of development areas.

There's one in the middle of Stanton that's inside the city limits.

There's a bunch of some random cows and

Ladies House.

It's like it's really a dumb spot.

And I don't know why that ever happened.

Yeah, that everybody's around them.

She has fun garden parties.

But nevertheless, it's just a dumb place for a conservation easement.

It doesn't have any particular amazing environmental value.

So I would have, if I was there, I would have voted against that one.

But in this case, this particular one has steep, it's just not a good development site.

But I think all your points are definitely worthy in terms of questioning, you know, do we always just say, yay, conservation easement.

And to clarify just a tiny bit I mean obviously I'm

Building a strong straw man here, right?

That was kind of the thing.

And it is not at all about the land.

I think this is a great place to keep on top of that mountain.

I do countywide worry that we've, I feel like we've got an awful lot now, you know, and this notion that we need to keep encouraging more voluntary measures and more conservation easements.

Yeah, and I'm not making case at all.

Dan should be in conservationism or anything.

As one farmer told me specifically, Karen, perpetuity is a damn long time.

And, you know, your second piece on that is the first piece for me.

If, in fact, we have a commitment to agriculture and to small family-based agriculture, not to commercial, that's a sort of big corporation, then I would also like to see the county be actively involved in promoting that.

Because the thing that I've noticed over the years of me being here is that we have small farmers, family farmers, who have put their land into conservation, sold the easements,

But there was nothing that came back behind them to help them be successful farmers.

And eventually they had to leave the land.

They had to leave the land.

Because the first step out was the conservation easement.

The second step that would have been helpful is to help them be better farmers.

Yeah, I mean, we do have the soda water conservation district and we do have a lot of active local farmer programs.

So there are, again, you guys are speaking quite the extremes this evening, but there are a lot of great programs for young farmers

The ACE program though, we can make a plug for that, the county, that program specifically looked at development rights but also the need of the farmer to be able to afford to keep that land and would the ACE program tip the balance for them to be able to continue in agriculture.

People, the average farmer is like approaching 60 years old and they don't have necessarily errors to take it on.

That's one reason we lose farmland.

But the other reason, there's many, but one of the other chief reasons is affordability.

The ability to continue to afford the land.

And our land is very expensive.

This is not Buckingham.

Great comments.

Any other thoughts?

The only thing I can add is simply Well, I have a comment actually.

Yeah, sorry, Lonnie.

Yeah, so I can answer some of the questions that were raised first about whether this reduces tax revenue for the county.

That's actually not true.

But in most cases, properties like this are already under land use valuation.

I believe it's not because it's in R1 zoning and largely in the development area so I don't believe it is and wouldn't qualify.

Use value taxation.

It is.

I didn't, my understanding was that being a development area didn't automatically disqualify you as long as you met the qualifying conditions of having the increase of forester.

Okay, yeah, that was my understanding.

So what happens is most of these properties, because their size, are already in land use valuation.

And so when you put an easement on a property that's in land use, the assessment, the actual assessment goes to the land use value.

So currently the delta between the land use value and the assessment value

we pay money to the city of Charlottesville in revenue sharing on that delta.

So we actually, we lose money.

We're paying revenue sharing to the city of Charlottesville for revenue that we don't collect.

So that's a really important thing.

And it can be a substantial amount of money.

I mean, across the county, it's millions of dollars.

So, but when the easement is placed, then the actual value drops to the land use value.

When that happens, it reduces the amount of money not only that year but forever that we pay to the city of Charlottesville and revenue sharing.

The other thing that it does is that it also

affects the formula by which we get money from the state for schools.

So it, because the way the formula works, it doesn't take into account revenue sharing, but it also, it takes into account our taxable real estate, right?

So if our taxable real estate goes down, then it increases the amount of money that we get for schools and so forth.

Lonnie, I'd have to see some numbers on this, pal.

So I would have liked to be able to pull up the county GIS and actually give you the actual amount of money that we would be saving on this individual property.

But since they made the changes to the GIS system, I can't pull out the numbers like I used to be able to.

This is all great conversation.

I feel like we've gone beyond the task.

Actually, one thing that I, one person I've learned a lot from is, is Rob McGinnis.

He should come to one of the planning commission meetings and give a primer.

Like we get primers on certain things on conservation easements, land use.

Although I think Ms. Firehock is also an expert in that area as is probably Lonnie.

So anyway, without waste, without any more, um,

I guess comments from me, I'll just say plus one to Commissioner Firehock.

I think what you said was spot on.

Any other comments?

All right.

I move that the conservation easement proposed CP 2025-0001, Stillhouse Mountain, is in compliance and substantially in accord with the comprehensive plan for the reasons identified as variable in the staff report and discuss the seat.

Great.

We have a motion and a second.

Any other discussion?

Yes, sir.

Madam Clerk, are you with us?

She's there.

I'm here.

Mr. Bivins?

Yes.

Yes.

Oh, sorry.

Is that your chair?

I'm sorry.

I'll start all over.

Mr. Carrazana?

Thank you, staff.

Great report.

Thanks everybody for coming.

All right, moving on to committee reports.

Does anyone have any committee reports to share?

I do.

So I attended the Three Notch Trail meeting over at Western Albemarle where they showed some of the different routes they're looking at for the Three Notch Trail and some of the conditions that they were weighing about.

Some of the trails would take it through a more urban area, some would take it through less developed areas, and some of the

you know whether we weigh like you know some of the factors like how easily it would be to build the trail versus you know how accessible the trail would be and so forth so it was interesting to see those different factors that are being considered in development of the trail.

Also I attended the MPO tech meeting and we also we recommended moving forward

Five projects for SmartScale, the US 29-250 off-ramp improvements at Barracks Road, US 29-250 off-ramp extension at Ivy Road,

U.S. 29, 250, well, oh, the off-ramp and the on-ramp for both U.S. 250 and 29.

And then U.S. 64 Fifth Street connections and sidewalk connection, U.S. 29 interchange access and park and ride improvements.

There was also a lot of discussion with all these projects about, you know,

Are there ways that we can tweak these projects for more multimodal transportation, particularly a lot of them may not result in, some of them may even disrupt some of the current ways that people bike.

Great, thank you.

Any other reports?

We were due to have a report at the Hydraulic 29 last evening to hear about the hope for changes at Charlotte Humphreys Park, which is part of the county's urban park, urban park bush, but we were all in the rural part of the county, so none of us could come.

And then we're also gonna hear about the park that's down the street from Charlotte Humphreys Park at the,

So there was going to be a celebration of moving forward, but we couldn't come.

I'll report out on one on November 20th.

So it's a while back, feels like about a year ago.

The 5th and Avon Street CAC met and we primarily reviewed two things, two projects, community meeting for two projects.

One was arm circle storage.

There's a,

prospective storage building that's being planned for the area adjacent to Monticello High School across the street up where the market is.

There's a vacant piece of land right next to the bank there across from the Food Lion.

And you'll see this in the staff reports.

The community was a little bit concerned about fencing, lighting, traffic, truck traffic, noise, and visibility.

They were not worried about schools.

And just to be fair, I mean, the developer presented a compelling case in that he was considering visibility.

Taking that in consideration, the ARB would have to review this.

So it falls within

entrance corridors and that use does not burden schools and also is limited traffic and they would limit their hours to reasonable I don't think they were open past I forgot what time it was but not late yeah so the the other community meeting was the William Mills Industrial Park and we'll be hearing that next week actually I believe next Tuesday

which was to fill the floodplain and they made some minor modifications to the size of the floodplain that they're going to be impacting and they've also done a significant amount of new engineering for what that's worth so we'll have a lesson in engineering next week.

at the Planning Commission.

So they shared a lot of that.

And then on the flip side from the community, as you might expect, there was a lot of similar comments to what we heard before.

Any other committee reports or no?

Yeah, thank you, Chair Missel.

The board meeting on December 3 was actually fairly light with any land use items.

That was the school board, Board of Supervisors joint meeting, which I'd encourage everybody to listen to if you have a chance.

There were a lot of

interesting things that came out about, you know, the future of schools and looking at trying to build new schools.

So a lot of interesting things that I think you'd have to really watch the recording if you want to capture it all.

The only land use item that was up there was the ag forestal districts.

We had three district reviews that you all had seen that were all approved by the board as well.

That was Batesville district, the Nortonville local district,

and the Green Mountain District.

So these came to you all a number of months back.

The board agreed with your findings.

Thank you.

Any new business, old business or items for follow up?

If not, I will adjourn us to the next meeting, which is Tuesday, December 16th at 6 p.m. here.

See everybody then.