Planning Commission Meeting   8/10/2021

All right, I think we are ready to begin our deliberations for the evening.

Let's see, so why don't we begin with reports from the dais?

And Ms.

de Balder, of course, you'd be the first.

There's always stuff happening.

I'll be quick though.

I don't have a whole lot to report other than just the just reminder that the fall semester starts on August 24th and we'll be in pretty full swing around grounds probably starting next week because first years are coming back for orientation and all that.

Another thing to note with that is that the bus schedule for UTS has changed versus last year.

They're adding a little bit more coverage and frequency, and so if you are interested in seeing those routes, you can go to the UTS website and find them pretty easily.

As far as I know, there's a number of them on schedule, including a Friday night game in late September that

So that'd be cool.

I do not know that.

Well, thank you very much, Ms.

I just wanted to quickly update that last month, council approved the design for the Fontaine Avenue streetscape, which is a smart scale project.

And what that means now is that final design will continue while property is acquired for right of way and is projected to construction to begin sometime in 2023.

Thanks.

Ms.

Yep, so I had two meetings this month.

The first, the MPO Technical Committee met, and we reviewed potential SmartScale submissions projects for the next round of SmartScale.

So there are five projects under consideration right now, including District Avenue Roundabout up by Stonefield, improvements on Fish Street, improvements on Avon, and the Rivanna Quarter Bridge.

I'm either missing a fifth or there were four.

There was one other project in consideration that was proposed by a member of CTAC, the Citizens Technical Advisory or Transportation Advisory Commission, which was like a flyover leaving 29 and 250 into kind of the middle of 29 up to hydraulic.

But that was seemed to be too expensive.

It's not an air-constrained or any long range part of the long range transportation plan.

And so the decision was made to put that off, at least until we do another long range planning process.

We also had a meeting of TJPDC, which is starting its process of reviewing applications for a new executive director and also approved the regional affordable housing plan.

So that goes a long way towards generalizing the affordable housing plan of the city and the county and adding all of our outlying areas with recommendations for what they can do.

Lastly, as I'm sure many of you have seen, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released the first part of its sixth assessment report.

So most of the stuff in there is bad news.

Some of it is tentatively possibly good news if we act on it.

And I would encourage all of you to read it.

Long story short, we are currently at about one degree Celsius of warming over the baseline.

We are essentially guaranteed to go past one and a half degrees Celsius at this point.

And we're most likely looking at three degrees or more unless we see a very significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

The good news is if we can reach net zero by the middle of the century, we will hit one and a half degrees Celsius and then fall back and start to decline.

And the problems won't keep getting worse.

However, that would be a significant departure from current trends and requires significant change in how we live our lives and how we make governmental policy.

And is Ms.

Dowell?

I don't think she is.

The housing advisory committee met on July 21st, met with some new city staff.

One, Ashley Marshall, is a new deputy city manager.

Sam Sanders, also a new deputy city manager, talking mostly about how do we actually implement this nice housing plan that we've got?

And the answer so far is staffing.

We're going to hire people to do the work, which is very exciting and what I wanted to hear.

Mr. Sanders broke some news that a new hire at NDS has been made.

And I see that that is in the daily progress.

I believe it's Mr. Frass, a new director of neighborhood development services.

And his current priority is hiring a new housing coordinator to help us answer these complicated quantitative housing questions that keep coming up, which I'm very excited about personally.

That is my report.

And you actually are typically involved in the hiring of the new India's director.

So thank you for your efforts there as well.

Thank you, Chair.

So over since our last meeting, I attended a board of architectural review meeting on July 20.

We had, it was a very quick meeting, we had one certificate of appropriateness that was passed.

And then we had a long discussion with the designers for the new courthouse building.

This was a preliminary discussion where we had the opportunity to review and comment upon some of the very conceptual designs, blocking designs really, for

the new courthouse.

So that was very interesting.

The tree commission met the same night as our planning commission last month, so I wasn't able to attend.

And I have not gotten any minutes from that meeting, so I can't really report on it.

And August is going to be quiet, too, because there is no tree commission meeting in August.

So stay tuned for September.

In other things that I attended, I was asked to attend a meeting with residents, three residents of the Meadowbrook and Rugby Road communities.

And this was to listen to their concerns regarding the comprehensive plan recommendations that have been put forward to this point.

And in particular,

Well, as a result of my listening to them, I did recommend that they put this in a written form that was sent to us last, well, sent to me last week.

I reviewed it and then have asked that it be sent on to the other commissioners, the council, and to our consultants, very importantly.

And there,

In summary, they are challenging the three main justifications for making changes, significant changes to the land use zoning.

The first justification, how the population growth is being

anticipated what is driving or how that population is being looked at in the future.

Also, secondly, that Charlottesville, they're challenging the idea that Charlottesville is landlocked and therefore needs to be upzoned.

And then thirdly, they are challenging the method used for calculating cost burden households.

So I found that their presentation and discussion with me was very thoughtful and clearly

was based upon a great deal of work.

Thank you.

And for my report, unfortunately, I had personal issues.

I did not make any of the meetings this month.

But there are two things, two statements I will make.

is we have an annual meeting happening in September.

At that meeting, we need to elect a new chair and a new vice chair.

And we've asked our senior commissioners, to me, I mean, Ms.

That's senior, senior as in a number of years we've served, not how old we are, right?

The other point I want to make is, I think, Jennifer and to the consultants, it would be very helpful in our meeting when we get together, not this meeting, but I think we have a meeting later on in the month, that we do understand the data behind some of the assumptions you've made, because there is some debate as relates to how the data, what methods were used to get data.

So a little feedback on that would be a great value.

With that, I'm going to toss the ball to Ms.

All right.

Well, we've got quite a few things coming up.

Lyle announced that we have a new director, James Frase, who will be joining us September 13th, I believe.

This is first day.

So he will be joining the team at that point.

So we will welcome him.

That is the week of your meeting.

So I'm sure I can compel him to come to our meeting that week.

So you all have the opportunity to meet him in person or virtually.

We're still going to be virtual.

So that's one thing.

Chair Mitchell noted the annual meeting.

And so we'll have some activities that occur

based on that.

So do keep that in mind.

Another thing I figured somebody would would touch on this, but just a reminder, tomorrow evening at six o'clock, there's a meeting on the Belmont Bridge.

And it's a meeting to provide background on the construction project to come.

There's been quite a bit of activity

over there right now.

And there'll be more to come.

And so that meeting is going to touch on that.

So I will put in the chat the link for anyone who's listening or for commissioners as well.

If you go to, I believe it is, let me

Let me just confirm where you would go to register.

Belmontbridge.org is where you would go to register for that meeting.

And it looks to be very informative, especially for people who spend any amount of time in downtown Charlottesville.

It'd be good to have an idea of what's going on.

with that project because it's gonna affect us all in some way.

But we're looking forward to the results down the road, definitely.

So you all have two more touch points as a group this month.

On 24th, which is the third Tuesday, we will be, no, that's the fourth Tuesday.

We have five Tuesdays this month.

Just keep that in mind.

We'll have our regular work session date and we will have preliminary discussions on both Park Street and MACA sites.

They're preparing some rezoning applications and this is an opportunity for you all to weigh in on

Their proposal at this point, they have outlined a number of questions in their report, which will be helpful for a robust conversation with them.

And they'll take that feedback and we'll move to the next step of the process there.

They are also currently having a community meeting right now on that project.

And so we'll have some feedback from that.

And of course, this will be a public opportunity as we move forward through that process.

But those are two pretty big developments that will be coming our way.

And then on the 31st, which is our fifth Tuesday in August, is our meeting with the consultants where we'll review changes that have been proposed to the

comprehensive plan and future land use map based on the comments that we've received in the last comment periods.

And so we expect that meeting will probably take a little bit of time.

We'll have, as usual, we'll have materials to you all for both of those and we can advance

I know the consultants are working very, very hard to get things moving along and we're probably going to be right up to the line getting those materials together.

But we'll have some opportunity for you all to review in advance.

They'll be open for public as well.

And then be time for discussion at that August 31 meeting.

And we'll see where things stand at that point.

So

And I think we are then ready for matters to be presented by the public that are not on the formal agenda.

This will be the only opportunity that we'll get to have tonight to hear from the public.

There are no other public hearings after this.

So this is a public chance to give us any feedback as it relates to any of the work we do.

So Mr. Rice, would you

Thank you, Chair Mitchell.

And yeah, at this time, if you'd like to address the Planning Commission on matters not on the formal agenda, please click your raise hand icon.

Or if you're joining us by phone, press star nine.

We'll call on you on the order of hands raised and you'll have three minutes for comment.

And we do have a hand raised and it's Mr. James Groves.

Okay.

Can everybody hear me okay?

Okay, good evening.

My name is James Groves.

I'm a city resident and I teach about climate change and sustainability at UVA.

As Commissioner Stolzenberg noted a few minutes ago, the United Nations issued a new comprehensive science report on climate change yesterday.

The first such report since 2013.

Without surprise, the report states that our lifestyles are dangerously eroding the natural world around us, setting the stage for increasingly difficult living conditions for everyone and everything.

Having scanned the new climate report, I find myself once again reflecting upon what our community should be doing to contribute to climate solutions.

Among other things, that reflection has me thinking about the city's draft comprehensive plan and concluding that the current draft lacks important, specific recommendations that should almost certainly be included in the city's approach to addressing climate change.

For instance,

The current draft does not recommend the use of commercial property assessed clean energy financing to upgrade the energy efficiency, renewable energy and water management systems of commercial and multifamily buildings of five or more units.

Additionally, it does not recommend creation of a city green bank that could finance similar climate friendly upgrades to smaller residential structures.

Furthermore, the draft plan does not consider the critical role that city financed micro-mobility could play in simultaneously addressing climate change and delivering social justice and equity.

Investments in sustainability solutions like CPACE financing, a green bank, and micro-mobility solutions could put critical dollars in the pockets of our most needy neighbors year after year while stabilizing the climate for all of us.

Instead, the current comprehensive plan draft proposes to invest millions in one-time tax relief, temporary operating subsidies for housing, and large expensive transit buses.

By and large, such proposed investments won't contribute to lasting wealth accumulation and housing availability in our low-income community, and they won't address climate change.

While the current draft plan rightfully envisions the investment of millions towards equity and housing affordability, it fails to propose investments that could simultaneously address equity, housing affordability, and climate change.

Having verbalized these few thoughts, I'll send you a follow-up email with some additional details on this critical issue.

And in closing, let me just say that let's not miss the opportunity to address housing affordability, equity, and climate change, three important issues deserving our timely attention.

And thank you, James.

And that email would be of great value.

If you could send that to Ms.

Creasy, she will then circulate it to the rest of us.

That would be very helpful.

And if anybody else would like to address the commission at this time, please click your raise hand icon.

In that case, we can move on to the minutes.

Is there a motion to approve the minutes or are there any, Rory, did you

OK.

So move with those corrections.

All right.

We have a motion and a second.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All right.

There is no public hearing, no joint meeting with counsel.

And it is, what time is it?

It is, we don't need to wait until six Ms.

Hi, can you hear me now?

Yes, we can.

Caught myself on that one.

Hey, everyone.

Nice to see you.

I appreciate the comments from Mr. Groves.

I look forward to reviewing the email.

I'm glad that report was brought up this evening.

It's something important that we'll need to consider here in this process and with the ongoing climate action plan process.

But in any case, that's not what I'm here to talk about right now.

I'm here to give you sort of a brief update as far as what we're thinking for the next steps in the schedule.

So Mr. Rice, if you wouldn't mind bringing up the two slides I sent to you.

Thank you.

Let's see, this one we can skip right past.

The next slide has a brief table with some milestones that you heard about from Missy, at least the first couple.

What we've heard from you all is that you'd like to see us have a comprehensive plan to council this year.

And so we've we worked backward from that.

And that's the schedule you see here allows for a little bit of flexibility as needed.

So

Right now, just to step back to a date that's not on here, we've been finalizing the summary of what we heard during the engagement period and starting on revisions to the land use map and the chapter, specifically the land use urban form and historic and cultural preservation chapter.

Those will be the two topics of our conversation on August 31st.

We will be sharing with you prior to that meeting and with everyone will be sharing that engagement summary, which will provide a bit more detail than we did when we met with you last time, but largely has the same findings of what we heard overall.

So we'll show that with you in advance of our meeting on August 31st.

And then on August 31st, we'll come to you with what we're proposing as some adjustments to the future land use map and the land use urban form and historic cultural preservation chapter to respond to what we heard.

We'll get feedback from you and from the community on that.

And we plan to

Make it known that we're meeting with you.

We'll be sharing information about these next steps following our meeting tonight, just in case there were any adjustments.

We haven't widely sent it out yet, but it is on the website.

So if you're listening and you want to attend that meeting, you can certainly register for it now.

Following that meeting, the next time we'll meet with you is just a couple weeks after that.

We'll share with you for that meeting.

The rest of the chapters, provisions to the chapters, those will be sort of redlined for your review, but maybe perhaps more

Not more importantly, but one thing you will not have seen before that point is the implementation chapter, which is a key piece of what will make the plan happen.

So we'll be sharing that with you at that point as well.

So obviously we know September 14th, that's not the only item on your agenda for that meeting.

We're not planning to undo a line by line through that during that meeting, but we will share those chapters with you in advance and we'll look forward to getting your comments on that.

We will also be in mid-September meeting with the Steering Committee.

I'll be following up with them tomorrow, timing for that meeting, likely in one of the days following our meeting with you on the 14th.

And following those sets of meeting, we'll be working toward, firstly, a joint hearing with the Planning Commission and Council on October 12th, and then the first council hearing on November 15th, following up on, I believe it's the sixth, Missy, is that right?

With the second reading.

Correct, December 6th.

Yes.

So this is what we've laid out as a schedule.

Got to have a question for you and Missy.

It's pretty tight.

So that's our plan.

So I guess keep an eye out for emails from us or from Missy with the packets in advance of those meetings, of course.

I have one.

I see where the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission has adopted a regional affordable housing plan.

Jenny, has the consultants, are they aware of this?

We have

I believe we've begun to review it, but we've not sat down and had a discussion about how it may need to impact the plan.

Yeah, the city's portion of the regional plan is based on the housing study that was just recently completed.

So that is very clearly linked into that.

So would there be any benefits for the planning commission to get a presentation by the district commission on their housing affordability plan and their regional plan to see how we fit in?

I mean,

We're part of the region, right?

I'm unaware of it.

So I admit my ignorance.

I was surprised to read the article in the paper about it.

So Rory is on that board.

Yeah, so what I would say is the regional plan is sort of a superset of each of the two, the Albemarle County and Charlottesville's individual plans.

plus extra recommendations for outlying counties.

So it makes locality by locality recommendations, but in Charlottesville's case, those all come straight from the affordable housing plan that we passed.

So I do actually think it would be useful to hear from them.

Probably can't press Nick into that tonight.

We do have him here, but at some point to hear kind of what the recommendations are for other counties

But I wouldn't say it's like a blocking item.

We're really super relevant for this comp plan process.

Albemarle has its unique housing plan as well.

And I think that's worth a review.

It's pretty close to being passed.

just passed except for the incentives piece, something like that.

And so that's like a really fleshed out thing.

And then the really new piece of this regional plan is for Nelson, Flubana, Green, and Louisa.

So I mean, obviously, we're all part of the same metro area and the same overall housing market.

And I think it's important for us to keep apprised of what's going on out there.

I was just hoping that there was something addressing mass transit routes and how they're connected between counties and regionally so that they can be taken advantage of for locating affordable housing.

There's a bit about transportation in that plan and in particular like transportation costs from commutes.

but I think the big thing that will happen with regional transportation is we actually didn't mention this in my report but TJPDC just awarded a contract to a firm or actually a consortium of firms AECOM, EPR and Garrett Walker and Associates for a transit vision plan and the goal of that process is to create a real overarching vision of what we want to see out of our transit system from frequency to coverage you know fixed route and

You know, other forms like paratransit, like John, and how it should cover our area.

So that will be starting in earnest, I think next quarter.

Excellent.

Yeah, I don't see the affordable housing and mass transit routes to be independent of each other.

I think they're closely tied together.

Thank you, Rory.

You too.

And I want to note, Jody, it reminded me when you spoke in terms of, you mentioned the discussion you had with the Rugby Meadowbrook representatives from that neighborhood, and certainly understand there may be some questions out there.

And so we have been, along with this summary of what we heard, we've been compiling responses to what we're calling FAQs, frequently asked questions, and those types of questions certainly are within there.

I'm glad to hear that.

So my question for Jenny is about this, the August 31st work session and what our goal is coming out of that and what our materials will be going in.

Are you planning on giving us an updated draft going into that?

And then are we planning on coming out of that work session with

I think ideally that that will be what we hope for given the accelerated or the schedule that we're working under.

I would probably suggest, I mean,

made up right now, I just saw the schedule, but to have it kind of tentatively on the calendar in case there are additional discussion items ahead of going to our joint hearing in October.

I think the overall timeline to me, you know, makes lots of sense.

You know, December final vote is actually after the six month delay that was requested by the Slow the Vote folks back in May.

So I think that seems reasonable.

My concern is just the

Not the calendar schedule or timeline, but the number of meetings and amount of work to be done timeline.

And I think back in 2018, we were meeting every week and sometimes twice a week to get the stuff done.

Obviously, we've offloaded a lot of the actual work onto you, but I wouldn't speak for my fellow commissioners, but I would imagine that we would be willing to put in an extra second meeting in a month

Yeah I'm just looking at the calendar and the schedule and the advertising and all those things that have to happen and there's a lot of balls that would have to be tossed in the air and we have some guidance from council and

We're going to need to do the best we can at this point in time to move that forward.

Remember when we met Friday mornings at 8 o'clock?

The only comment I'll make is that slippage is not an option.

We did not want to have to educate a new council as it relates to this project.

Slippage is not an option.

Well, that was certainly a goal in putting out this schedule.

So I guess it will be additional time for you all to review things as we're moving along here.

And so we'll look forward to meeting with you several times to get your input.

I guess any other questions for me?

We're good.

All right, Ms.

Sure.

I think we're going to be handing the time over.

Nick?

Good evening, Mr. Rice.

I don't know if you're able to pull up that presentation.

But if you are, then we're perfect.

So all right, well, it's great to see everybody again, this time talking about the Urban Rivanna River Corridor Plan.

I will note just based on the comments about the Regional Housing Affordable Plan, we're happy to meet and figure out a time that we can come and present the work that was done on that.

So Christine Jacobs, our interim executive director is on the call tonight and we can, like I said, certainly touch base offline to schedule what that process might look like moving forward.

Back to the Rivanna River plan.

Next slide please.

So just kind of a high level background for those that may have not been

as involved in this process in the past.

This is a joint effort between both Albemarle County and the city of Charlottesville, kind of rooting back to discussions in 2015, talking about sort of priority areas that both the city and the county could work together on.

So the goal of this phase of this planning project was to develop a vision and an action plan for that urban section of the corridor.

It is a phased approach.

The first phase was an existing conditions kind of inventory that was completed in 2018.

This current phase, the visioning phase that we're calling it is occurring right now.

And then should there be a third phase, that would be kind of getting into more of the in-depth implementation and the development of a master plan.

Next slide, please.

So looking, you know, we're talking about this urban section of the river.

We're looking at from Penn Park as the northern terminus down to I-64 as that southern terminus.

So this was defined by the technical committee, which was made up of staff from the city and county.

This is a more concentrated effort than was done in that first phase.

That first phase was just a very simple kind of generic study area, which was a half mile buffer from the storyline of the river up to the South Fork Reservoir, and then went down to the Milton Road Bridge near Shadwell to the south.

So again, a much more concentrated effort in this phase.

Next slide, please.

So timeline-wise, this project kicked off in earnest of summer of 2019, where we brought the technical committee back.

We reviewed the existing maps from that phase one and started working on refining that need, defining the study area.

And then in September of 2019, we did our first public engagement push, which was a tabling at the Flow River Fest.

Throughout the winter of 2020, we started kind of developing a business outreach strategy and kind of targeted outreach efforts.

Obviously, COVID kind of threw a wrench in all of those discussions at first, so we had to regroup and kind of think through that, a different approach.

So working through that, we came up with kind of these

virtual webinars which occurred in the fall of 2020 and then concurrently doing some of that plan drafting and then this year working on the final documentation and drafting of the final plan.

Next slide, please.

So I'm going to turn it over to Charisse.

Hi, everyone.

So the Steering Committee held public meetings via Zoom due to COVID in September and April.

Signs were also placed along the River Corridor to direct users to the Urban River Corridor website to offer feedback.

And October 2022 webinars were held on Zoom.

and notifications for those webinars were sent via mailings and email notifications to property owners within the project area and to stakeholder groups.

A webinar was also held on the Rivanna River bridge pedestrian crossing feasibility study in November of 2020.

Next slide please.

So there were 70 unique comments gathered on the website, most centered on protecting and preserving the environment and recreational equipment.

Next slide, please.

So

Within the public webinars, 44 people attended and 88% agreed with the vision statement.

We did a poll, sorry, back up a little bit.

We did a participant poll within the webinars and 88% of those participants agreed with the vision statement.

Some of the feedback included, as you can see on the slide, is that need to communicate more active stewardship role, protecting the natural environment,

and phrases relating to encouraging additional recreational use like paddling and snorkeling and all of those things.

A different array of those were part of the comments.

You can also see on the chart that most participants were overwhelmingly okay with the guiding principles.

Both public safety measures and historic places and cultural features, protecting those and enhancing and talking and thinking about public safety measures, all of the people who participated in that question.

You know, they were very favorable, but also environmental protection of the riparian system also scored highly, but nothing really scored low among the people who participated in the polls.

Next slide, please.

We also had stakeholder discussions with, targeted discussions with technical committee members and subject matter experts and the following fields that you see up here, environmental protection, recreational activities, public health, safety and welfare, development and redevelopment, historic places and cultural features and multi-purpose trails and bridges.

Next slide, please.

And we also did a benchmarking.

The technical committee helped identify benchmarking communities, although we could not locate a nearly identical community, we did find four with similar themes and they're the ones that you see on your screen right now.

And the common themes were

You know, they had trails and networks and access, local history, rich local history, and they really wanted to foster connections to the water.

And some other considerations are the four you have here, accessibility, wayfinding, navigation, environmental consideration, and zoning.

So next slide, please.

Yes, thanks, Charise.

So through all of those various touch points that Charise went over, this vision statement was crafted that the Rivanna River flowing through Charlottesville and Albemarle County is one of the community's greatest assets.

In and near Freebridge, Woolen Mills, and the Pantox area, the River Corridor is and will be a dynamic place where people can experience a natural environment, healthy outdoor activities and venues, peaceful and serene opportunities, and important historic and cultural points of interest.

So based on feedback that we got from that steering committee meeting in April of this year,

There were a couple of tweaks, which is what you see here.

And again, that was vetted through both the steering committee made up of planning commissioners, elected officials, and then citizen appointed folks on there.

And then through the technical committee as well.

Next slide, please.

So to kind of help achieve that overall vision statement, these guiding principles were again developed.

So looking at environmental protection and stewardship, recreational activities, public health, safety and wellness measures, new development and redevelopment, historic places and cultural features, and then multipurpose trails and bridges.

And you can see kind of what's

written there to the side, but those also tie back into kind of the higher level recommendation categories that we'll jump into.

Next slide, please.

So when we get into the recommendations, this is that implementation matrix that is separate from the current draft plan.

We still have to incorporate that into the templated draft, but this is just kind of a high-level overview of what the implementation matrix would look like to help assist with those recommendations.

In terms of timeframe, you'll see there's just these kind of information buckets next to the recommendation itself just to provide some more context to each recommendation.

So the timeframe there with obviously ongoing projects, anything that was identified as short term was less than five years.

thing that was long term was more than five years.

And then there is the fiscal impact category in terms of what that cost would be.

So zero being no fiscal impact beyond just staff time and then small moderate and large fiscal impacts just based on those expectations.

Next slide please.

So I'm not going to bore everybody by reading all of these recommendations.

I just included all of the recommendations that way if we want to go back and forth.

If there's any comments or discussion specifically on any of them, they're here.

But in terms of environmental protection, you know, kind of high level

looking for approaches to protect any sort of sensitive biological or ecological areas, any sort of improved coordination, ongoing coordination between the city and the county, particularly in water quality and conservation, stormwater management principles like that.

Next slide, please.

In terms of recreational activities, looking at improving connectivity, especially with the trails, not only between or among the corridor, but also to the corridor.

Also looking at improving, expanding the park system within that corridor.

And again, looking at access to the river.

That's one thing that we heard over and over again is that importance of access to the water and to the corridor itself.

Next slide, please.

And then touching on that, multipurpose trails and bridges, again, continuing to support bicycle and pedestrian connections, promoting the use of trails, not only for recreation, but also for commuting traffic.

And then just looking at ways to kind of incorporate that trail section into the larger network of greenways and blueways and continued support for the regional three-notch trail.

Next slide, please.

Thanks, Nick.

So with this recommendation, what the common theme seems to be with this one is educating river users on the appropriate response to potential emergency situations while promoting safe and healthy behavior

was an overriding theme.

Next slide, please.

Here, enhancing and preserving the natural beauty and ecological functions of the corridor was an overwhelming theme, but also the theme of business to scale.

Small scale oriented businesses that offer recreational enjoyment of the area was one of the major factors while still

promoting nature and preserving nature.

Next slide, please.

And with this one, educating the public about historic and cultural activities that shape the river corridor, preserving those sensitive areas and engaging with local parties with significant ties to the area, such as the Monacan tribe or participating with the Monticello Local History and Cultural Department was a prominent theme here.

Next slide.

Yeah, if you guys don't mind, I would just like to offer a couple of really, really high level comments.

Just to emphasize a couple things.

First of all, one of the things I want to emphasize is that as we were talking about the guiding principles, one of the major themes of this planning effort was that

There is not necessarily one predominant goal for the development of the corridor area.

So it wasn't, you know, you look at other communities and there's an economic development plan or a preservation plan or a recreational plan.

And it was very important to the stakeholders that we discussed this with that, that it was a confluence was one of the words that came out of all of these plans playing together and finding the right balance.

And the other thing that I want to emphasize is that we really relied on the existing land use that was already in place to guide that process.

So Albemarle County and the city of Charlottesville had made it clear that they felt really confident with the land use that had been identified in the river corridor.

And so this was really an effort to support the other

activities and development efforts and really refine that without going back and reviewing the land use.

So I just wanted to address two potential questions that might come up beforehand.

So sorry for interrupting.

When we met back in April, April or May, I forget when we met, but there was a wonderful graphic and it looks like things may have evolved, but there was a wonderful graphic that you guys used.

that showed environmental protection encircling all the guidelines.

And I liked that a lot because for me, that's the most important thing that we have to have to worry about.

We can do all this other nice development stuff.

We have to do the protection of that river first and foremost.

Sounds to me like it got, there was an equalization process where environmental protection was

made equal to all the other things like development and recreational.

So the question I want to ask is, is environmental protection still the prime directive?

Yeah, yes, it is.

We changed the graphic so there's not that circle, but we still indicated the graphic still indicates that if because the discussion that we had was that if environmental protection was going to be

A goal, it had to be the first, most prominent, important goal that we considered because all other efforts had to relate back to what are going to be the environmental impacts.

So that is still referenced in the plan.

Okay, Ms.

Russell just texted me and said there's something on page 19 I'll look at, but as long as environment protection is the prime directive, I'm comfortable with what you guys got.

So would you like feedback from us?

So why don't we go from right to left this time.

Oh, so let me start with you've got about 100 action items.

Where do you go from here?

I'm worried about creating yet another report that is just so overwhelming with so many action items that are so disconnected that it goes back on the shelf.

What's the implementation for this?

What's the prioritization of the action items within each category?

Are there action items that can be logically bundled to create a less expense and also a bigger significance?

All right, yeah, we talked about this with the technical committee.

So one of the things that we're really going to be refining before we present a final, final draft for you all for consideration is identifying a few really short-term goals, which will be our priority items.

And those are what we're going to focus on.

And Missy can jump in if she has any additional insights to offer here based on the city priorities.

But my thought was that we focus on sort of the foundational action items that are going to be needed to build off of any of these other ones.

So focusing on things like

inventorying existing infrastructure or conditions or systems or things like that.

Looking at where there's already a lot of support, public support and low cost and focusing on what those things are that we can do relatively simply for

within existing resources and trying to really prioritize getting the things that can be easily implemented, implemented.

I mean, that's my understanding.

I will add that several of those recommendations were identified through the other planning efforts that the county and the city had undertaken.

So there was some cross-referencing that county staff and city staff wanted to be done within this plan, just to reiterate some of those priorities, some examples from the Pantops Master Area Plan.

So those are already underway and maybe, you know, attaching some sort of

requests for clarity for potential for grant opportunities.

And so the goal was to try and be as comprehensive as possible to allow for potential grant opportunities to support the plan.

But like Sandy said, we've got to find the

Yeah I work here if you're trying to be comprehensive you end up just everyone throwing up their hands saying my god we'll never get this done.

So there needs to be a really clear road map and how if it's more than one locality working together you know

How do they work together or, you know, call that out and call out how you're prioritizing these things.

I focused especially on the cultural and historic sections and and frankly I find it pretty weak.

I don't see that the historic organizations and the county and the city were involved with this.

I don't see where the staff people from both places were involved, and hopefully I'm wrong.

I don't see where the Department of Historic Resources was involved.

I think that would have helped with some of the assumptions.

For instance, you just assume that everybody wants to be able to visit all these cultural sites.

I expect there's some prehistoric sites along this river that we don't want to have people going with metal detectors ravaging and destroying.

That may not be the case.

And it takes more than just surveying, listing all the known cultural sites.

It takes an analysis of how they're connected together and a history of the whole area through time.

So I really find them to be piecemeal and disconnected and with no overall clear vision.

And I also couldn't find the acronym for NPR.

I presume it's not National Public Radio, but it's not listed.

Anyway, that's my comment.

Those are my comments.

Like Mr. LeHinter, I found it useful to read with the focus on topics I have some competence in.

I was focusing on racial and economic equity, as well as affordable housing.

Do you search for the word affordable in this plan?

You get zero hits.

That's disappointing.

Affordable housing crisis, big in this region, getting worse.

Would love to see that acknowledged in the text of this plan.

Goals listed, measurements listed.

Would love specific spark growth strategies, talking about ways to prioritize affordable housing, give it advantages.

in terms of private land use, ways to increase height and decrease disturbance, sort of smart growth principles.

I would like to see that listed specifically.

There's discussion early on about sort of an idea of incorporating equity into the text.

And I do see it discussed a little bit in that offering transportation is kind of an equity thing, sort of.

And that's admirable.

But I'd like more clarity on what you mean by that.

Are we talking about racial equity?

Are we talking about economic equity?

And how are we following through, not just in the provision of services, but in the way that we're providing it, programming, ways to make people feel comfortable, included, welcomed.

And I urge you to work with city staff.

So a little more from you, Lyle.

Mr. Solla-Yates, you were talking, thinking about the work that we're doing on River Road, and you were talking a little bit about protecting my river with the riparian buffers, but also moving development back a little bit.

I was thinking about sort of a green fingers idea, establishing priority areas and riparian areas and not just along the river, but also a waterway that is feeding into the river that are prioritized for conservation value.

And you're thinking is that there, again, forgive me for telling you what you're thinking is, but I think you were suggesting that, again, moving things back

from the river is important.

That's just a period buffer, but also a green buffer.

And then you're thinking about increasing the density, but moving that development away from the river so the river would not be impacted by that increased densities.

Okay, cool.

We're going that way, that way.

Is Ms.

Dowell?

No, she's not.

So we then go to Mr. Stolzenberg.

No, Mr. Bob.

Mr. Bob.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm looking at this and I know I think most of the committers may have

seen this before and it's been an ongoing process for a while.

Try to keep my questions to minimum.

I appreciate that the core of this process has been the kind of protection and then the restoration and enhancement of the river.

I think that's very important.

I had a question on the development and redevelopment portion.

It said there's an ongoing promote high quality design and positive visual impact in all new development and redevelopment projects.

that are visible from within the river corridor.

That's not visible from within the river pathway parks themselves, right?

Let's see, I'm just- It's number two under development and redevelopment.

Permit hexade design.

Well, the corridor refers to the entire buffer, which is basically the river and then the immediately adjacent property.

So when we say corridor, that's what we're referring to.

OK, I guess I just want to make sure I understood that right, that we want to kind of keep that natural aspect of those trails and not

Yeah.

Okay.

That's all I had.

I want to echo Commissioner Stolle-Yates's point on equitable spaces and create making sure we have that somewhere written down that's more concrete.

Stolzenberg?

Me?

I think, I don't think I'm up.

I'm sorry.

Actually, just quickly to follow up on what Commissioner Habob said, are we saying that we don't want any development visible at all or that we want anything that is visible to adhere to aesthetic standards and kind of fit in?

Yeah, okay.

So I kind of have two categories of comments.

So I'll start first with the transportation.

To me, there seemed to be a tension in this plan

behind the primacy of environmental protection and a very significant focus on adding parking directly next to the river.

I think there's a couple points that kind of loosely say, you know, let's get shared parking if we can, otherwise we'll do new parking.

I think the only thing that actually talks about transit is about signage from transit stops, which I think is good.

But I think it would make sense to have stuff about, you know, connections to the river area, both transit and pedestrian and bicyclist.

And one suggestion I might say is like, if we're going to add any parking, like that should be environmentally friendly to the extent the parking could be and like be pervious pavers, you know, all that fun stuff if we're adding, you know, not just adding tons of impervious asphalt right next to the river.

Hey Rory, why don't we, because they may want to respond, you want to give them a chance to, they may have some thoughts that may be helpful, you want to give them a chance to react.

Yes, people say yes.

Yeah, well I would say I think that's a very fair comment and I think we felt that tension as we were developing the plan.

The discussions we had is that we hope that the new

If we are able to move forward with a new crossing across the river, that would actually reduce the demand on parking.

But there's also some experience that might indicate that that might become an attraction.

I think our goal was really to focus less on

assume that we need parking and more like let's just continue to assess whether or not we actually need parking and so we're not necessarily planning it but we're going to basically be aware of what those opportunities are so that if we need it we know where we can find it.

I think that was sort of how we were trying to resolve the tension.

The other thing I just want to mention is I think some of the points about the trail connections and I agree with that as well.

I think some of those is actually addressed in the recreational activity section as well.

So that was a little confusing.

There was a little bit of overlap on there, but I'm definitely writing down your comments.

Yeah.

And yeah, I mean, I definitely noticed, you know, the assess before doing it and that kind of hedging.

And I appreciated that.

I do think it could be a little bit stronger of kind of avoid it if we can.

My other big group of comments is about the public health safety and wellness measures group of recommendations.

First off, I found it a little bit jarring that the first recommendation or group of recommendations, and I guess that implies most important,

is about kind of clearing out a group of people experiencing homelessness to take shelter under the bridge on the Albemarle side.

This was actually softened significantly from the original language based on our conversations with the chief of police and other public safety officials.

So I think what we really wanted to emphasize is that it wasn't really about driving

People who are unhomed out of their sheltering locations, but it was more about, let's find them safer alternatives.

I think that's really what we were trying to communicate here.

Yeah.

I mean, again, I don't find the individual recommendations to be, you know, too harsh.

or anything, I guess.

I mean, they're pretty measured and reasonable.

1.3 maybe could use some specificity about what those public health impacts are that we're mitigating.

I think maybe it would just help to move it down the list unless it really is the most important thing, which kind of brings me to the public health and safety thing that I always think of when I go to the river.

Like I'm thinking about the dog who went into the river and died two years ago.

Like every time I go like floating down the river, two days later, we get a report in the Daily Progress that bacterial levels are elevated and like no one should go in.

And, you know, literally every time I go, this at least comes up in conversation, even when I'm going with, you know, normal people who don't talk about land use and this stuff all the time, right?

So I was surprised that there wasn't

I actually thought that was on the list, so I'm just looking.

Yeah, and Rory, as you're talking about that, I'm looking at the recommendations regarding

recreational activities.

And there's a recommendation that we consider installing RAPIDS.

I don't know.

That was an initiative that I believe Albemarle, charts and rec had been considering.

Okay.

I'm sorry, Rory.

That's a good point.

I didn't really think about that.

I didn't know you could like install rapids.

But anyway, yeah, the last point I'd say is, I was a little surprised to not see anything.

I know you said you were kind of de-emphasizing land use here, but to not see anything about the river road industrial corridor, and the effect of that on the river and what kind of we think might be good for it moving forward.

I mean, there's a lot of

industrial development and impervious surface in the floodplain there.

And it's arguably a really good place for opportunity for development, though also arguably a really important one of the few remaining places where you can actually have industrial, light industrial in the city.

And I was surprised not to see it mentioned.

I don't know what to do about it, really.

I think it would have been helpful if we had thought about that and

adopted this plan and that could have guided our comp plan discussion of that.

But, you know, that's still pretty up in the air to me.

Oh, and then the last thing is the history of the free bridge.

I found that paragraph really confusing.

And it like waffles between whether it's free or old, like a few times.

And I think I just use a quick rewrite.

Yeah, thanks for saying that, Rory.

I also felt that the historic section still felt a little disjointed.

I do appreciate that you all incorporated, I think, a lot of the things that I had added in terms of

I think we could do a little better job.

It seems like, you know, it's sort of like, here's the history.

Okay.

And then it goes into other elements of the plan, even though the Richmond, you know, the Richmond case study, really, I think,

says very beautifully that helping visitors develop a fuller understanding of different aspects of people's lives throughout the history of the region will help them establish stronger connections and understanding.

I really think we're not quite making that point in why are we talking about the history and what could that mean in someone experiencing any of these opportunities within the corridor.

But I had one question, two questions.

Let me say a comment.

One comment, it looks like in since the previous edit, you sort of synthesized the recommendations to not have the sort of sub sub bullets and consolidated those.

I did feel that the recommendation around partnering with the Monacan tribe to engage them seemed a little

I don't know, like presumptuous.

And there was text under that that said, continue to foster a stronger relationship with tribe elders to support their initiatives.

And I feel like that's a little, you know, support their initiatives, not expect a partnership, per se.

You know, maybe I'm being a little too sensitive there.

And I'm really like so eager to jump into the hows of everything because that's just where my mind goes.

I want to go from, okay, we're saying this, but how, but I'll try to be patient.

My question is, is could you all tell me a little more about phase three?

What, you know, what would that look like?

Phase three would really be more of a design plan.

So if you look at, for example, the Richmond plan, they ended up with a master plan where they put things on paper and they identified this is where we're going to do this preservation effort.

And these are the historical sites we're going to renovate and make it to the public.

So it's really putting those on paper, putting cost estimates down and really creating an implementation plan for this is when we're going to fund what

As far as the cost to develop that, I really have no ballpark to provide for that.

So in response to that, I guess I want to know more like, it seems like a lot of the hows

At least let's look at design review, you know, we talk about sort of encourage high quality design.

It seems to allude to, this was another thing I wanted to say, but I would really like to see more innovative and like going above and beyond state required.

stormwater management to like daylight streams or not you know divert things underground but we don't have any teeth to do that so it seems like really the thing that would to Chairman Mitchell's question of like or no I'm sorry Jody LeHindra's question was

Wouldn't we need to have some sort of overlay come from this plan in order to implement these things?

And when would be the time to do that?

If you have one, that'd be great.

Yeah, I think I thought it was not necessarily an overlay to schedule out when exactly all of these initiatives could occur.

I think one of the things we're going to be putting together is a next steps section at the end of this based on your feedback.

So that might be where we can reflect some of these if we want to move this towards being prepared to go into a master planning opportunity, we can kind of

talk about what needs to be in place to do that.

And maybe it's through the master plan work that, you know, a recommendation comes up out of that, that would lead to ordinance overlay or, you know, revised design standards or something.

Sure.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Mr. Palmer.

Any feedback?

He sent us an email saying his internet got out and he did not have any comments.

The only thing I've got is, again, I'll reiterate my interest in protecting the river as opposed to the environment.

And my other thought is that these cities we use to benchmark, I've been to all those riverfronts, and none of them are like Charlottesville.

These riverfronts are very developed.

Probably more developed than we're envisioning.

So just keep in mind, when you're thinking about what we want the Rivanna corridor to look like, none of the five sites that we visited are what we want to be.

Good for, you know, thinking about where we could go, but we don't want to be that developed, I don't think, based on

Yeah, if I could jump on that a little bit.

I kind of said,

In the plan, there's two things that we're saying for environmental protection, not so much in the recommendations, but in the text of the plan, where one of them is the physical and measurable environmental quality, and the other is this more vague sense of being out in secluded wilderness.

There was one public comment that was something like, it would be great to have more people use the park,

And I think it is important.

I think the prime importance is to protect the actual water quality and environmental quality of the river and the riparian area.

But I also think it's important to make it a more accessible place.

And the idea of kind of reorienting nearby development toward the river rather than the whole city kind of turning its back on it

to the point that it's kind of like this industrial backwater, which actually ends up being really bad for the environment is

is I think a really good idea.

And I think if you had apartments or restaurants that kind of fronted the river and had access to it, that would kind of create a positive feedback loop where we would care more about the quality of the river and more people will be able to use the river.

And that might detract somewhat from this current sense of kind of being out in the wilderness, but you can get that on the James, right?

So I agree to some degree, but I agree more with what Lyle was proposing that, yeah, we do have development on the river, but we have development with the riparian buffer and then we have a little green space and then things away.

I'd like that to see development right against the river like we see in Greensville or in Lynchburg or in Richmond.

A nice little repair and buffer, then green space, and then restaurants and stuff.

A nice little green space that people can use to do whatever they do.

Yeah, no, I mean, I would agree with that.

I'm not saying we should, like you say in Richmond, like a wall, and then there's stuff, and then there's the river.

Just having development nearby, and there's one recommendation I think that talks about this kind of front on the river

Riverine area and, you know, open up to it and provide access to it.

Anything else, Jody?

Green?

Liz?

Oh, wow.

It may be useful to talk about parking strategies of doing sort of parking under

and prioritizing storage for more sustainable methods like bicycles.

I'd just like your thoughts on affordable housing and racial and economic equity.

I didn't get that feedback.

Well, I don't necessarily, I think we're trying to be mindful of the other efforts that are happening.

So there were some other housing planning efforts that were happening.

There's the land use.

And so I think we were, it wasn't really in the scope of what we were discussing at that point.

We'll need to probably discuss with staff after this point from both Albemarle and Charlottesville to see what those opportunities might be to pull some references into the plan.

And then as far as racial equity and Nick or Charisse, feel free to jump in or what we mean by equity.

I don't know that we really had defined specifically what we were trying to do when we were looking at equity other than looking at what are

the opportunities and the neighbors where there's under or lack of service or underservice that that maybe is overlooked because those aren't the people who are participating as regularly of the process.

So I think that's an I think that's sort of an indicator of equity to me.

Yeah, I'll say I'll touch on some of the work that

The MPO is doing specifically an equity and transportation study and there's obviously overlap.

We know these things don't happen in the vacuum, right?

So

That's one component looking at access, which is not analogous to equity, but there's some ongoing work to be able to build kind of an assessment tool of how certain trip generators or attractors, so that could be defined as that river corridor, it could be parks along that corridor, and looking at transit access service, walkshed analysis of what's within a 10, 15-minute walk, and then how those then fit within

Demographic data that we have at the block level.

Any other questions, comments?

Ms.

Creasy, what would you like to do next?

I believe so.

We've got a number of comments and we'll work with the group to work on how best to integrate.

I think one thing I'll note is a lot of the comment areas that you all noted were things that the steering committee spent a lot of time discussing and trying to sort through as well as we're working to try and make sure we're representing both the city and the county and some of the things that you all came up with were things that

that one or the other may have been more focused on and we're trying to balance those things out and make sure this is valuable for

both partners as part of this.

I think you all had some really good thoughts to add in there.

I think there would be value for us, my colleagues, if you

If you have a catalog, if you don't, it's okay.

If you have a catalog of things that may be beyond scope, we know that so that we don't keep pushing those issues.

Yeah, we'll work through that.

I understand.

I think they're still trying to determine their process for how they're going to walk it through their process.

They have not.

Yeah, let us know so that we can kind of watch it.

It would be good for us to know how they're thinking as well.

Any other thoughts from my colleagues?

Ms.

I believe so.

Just reminders, we've got the work sessions on the 24th and the one on the 31st.

I also polled the commissioners concerning the one date they don't have on their calendar and then we have our standing fourth Tuesday work session so I'll work with the consultants on both of those dates as potential for

another touch point with the commission as we're moving forward with all of these things that we have moving forward with.

I will note for September that we have two public hearings currently in the works as well as working through some comprehensive plan items.

Okay, cool.

Do we have a motion to adjourn?

Second.

You guys want to be on that or you want to second it?

Second.

Okay.

Motion adjourned.

Second.

We are adjourned.

See you guys soon.