Planning Commission Meeting   11/8/2022

Thank you very much.

Hello.

I'd like to start the Planning Commission meeting for November 8, 2022.

Right.

We had a couple, three meetings since we last met.

On the 19th, the BZA met in one year and the year was related to a variance to reduce the setback from 17 feet to 10 feet to accommodate a new

Parks and Rec the next day.

Topics were the tree canopy on the downtown mall and the CIP pledging request.

There are over 100 trees on the downtown mall, and many if not most of those trees are pointed to 50 years old, and many of these trees that are that old

between February and March.

We are also putting out an RFP to help us develop a downtown tree canopy study.

And the objective of that is to help us systematically rotate trees in and out in a way that will allow us to do that, but not significantly reducing.

If you take big trees out and you put little trees in, naturally the canopy is

for four new items.

One is for $100,000 to proactively manage the life cycle of trees on them all.

The other is for $75,000 to help us control invasive plants.

Note, we do not use Roundup, so controlling those plants is a little more difficult than you might think if you were going to use Roundup to do that.

with sprayed ground resurfacing.

And we're asking for $175,000 to fix up the facilities at Meadow Creek.

Note.

We recently had he consulted in to help us think how we can make Meadow Creek even better than it is.

And this is a golf pro that played golf on just about every major course in the world.

And he noted that

Kudos to Parks and Rec.

The LUPEC group met.

And there were three presentations, one by Albemarle, one by us, and one by the Water and Sewage Authority.

And it was all focused on environmental vulnerability, risk assessment, and sustainability.

sent you copies of this a little earlier today.

If I didn't, I will very soon.

But the one thing that I did, so I won't go into a lot of detail.

We're going to talk a little bit more about this later on tonight.

The one thing I'll note is that I believe, I believe that the county does not allow development in floodplains.

The person who was doing the presentation, at the end of the presentation, stopped and thought aloud.

You know, the floodplains in Elmar are increasing.

They're rising.

They're consuming more area.

And that's because of all the rain that we're getting and expect to get.

And he thought aloud, maybe we should begin thinking about not allowing development in future floodplains as well.

Thank you.

Mr. D'Oronzio.

No meetings, sir.

No meetings either.

The three commission is meeting right now.

I hope not.

I have some notes from them on the climate action plan.

I think they're also having a presentation on that today that I can share at that time.

from the TJPDC.

These meetings happen on the first Thursday of every month at 7.

And so a couple of updates.

In housing, the Regional Housing Partnership is working on a strategic plan

The December 28th, which is our quarterly meeting, will include Delicate Sally Hudson in an effort to engage elected officials on local, regional, and state housing initiatives.

There is a planned summit in the spring, March 24th.

It will be at the Omni, and the TJP is planning for that.

Also, in transportation,

So the BAR met last month and the larger projects on our agenda.

We did approve, or no, well, the apartment building on Whartland Street around the Wharton Baker House infill project is about four stories.

we did not give it final approval but we very much it looks like it's going to be approved the next time it comes before us so it just needs some final details we also discussed 218 West Market which is the I did this last time the little shopping center at the end of the mall that's going to be demolished that

Yes, thank you, Artful Lodger.

They want to reduce the step backs, the depth of the step backs, and to make the building more functional as an apartment building, otherwise the footprint doesn't work out for typical apartment layouts.

And the BAR was in favor of that.

We just that wasn't a motion.

It was just a recommendation so that they can then proceed to bring it to the Planning Commission.

So at some point in the future, we'll see that unless something goes wrong with their development plans.

One thing I brought up, I believe the code building had an issue with its street wall height and a very strict interpretation of that height.

So I suggest that they they want to look into that to make sure they're not going to have the same problem.

I believe that had to go to the BZA at the time.

For the Bike Pit Advisory Committee, we did finally approve a memo to get our crosswalk signals to ask for them to meet recommended standards.

They currently are quite a few of them are very insufficient in their length of time.

And we had requests for leading pedestrian intervals and no turn on red signs, things like that.

I threw in the caveat.

This is not part of the memo, but it was something to pay attention to is that

We sometimes the city when they get a standard they will stick to it very strongly and we need to make sure that we're not going to lose functionality trying to make things perfect for example Streets That Work was meant to be about

compromised on our small streets, and every time it's been implemented, it's been more a way to say, no, you can't fit all those elements onto the street.

So just making sure that we don't lose some of the, currently we have some automatic walk signals that you don't have to push the button for, and they're convenient for if you don't make it in time to the intersection, and we have the potential to lose those if we meet the standards that we need to meet.

Yes, yeah, did I mention that?

I'm sorry, that was, yes, that was part of the memo.

I think in conjunction with leading pedestrian intervals, but yeah, getting rid of no turn on, no right turn on red, especially around school zones.

Excellent, thank you.

Thanks.

Rare.

Hopefully that's a good thing in your world.

Yeah.

I should have one next time.

I had no formal meetings, though I was able to present to the Virginia American Institute of Architects about Charlottesville plans together.

They were very nice.

They liked the pretty pictures I showed, although they were astonished that planning work takes so long and is so expensive.

And yes, that's true.

They're not wrong about that.

You want me to start?

Okay, I'll go ahead and start.

So we have a work session November 22nd.

It will focus on the Capital Improvement Program.

And also, in addition to that, we have staff from Community Solutions coming and talking about current status for housing programs.

Thought this would be a good time to share that information around CIP time, plus it's always really good to understand what's going on in the housing world from those who are in it day to day.

So we'll have that set up for the 22nd.

we have a very full meeting at the December 13th at this point we will have a hearing on the CIP that is something that happens every December every year so that's a normal thing and then we will be moving forward with comprehensive plan amendments

as part of our agenda in December.

And we have a presentation scheduled on entrance corridor design review, just an overview of that process, kind of a 101 to give us all some set context.

it's possible something else may come forward but that that's a pretty full plate so we'll see how that goes I wanted to give you all some updates on some projects where we've had a lot of community feedback and a community interest the zero east high street project at this point the comments letter went out to the applicant at the end of October

and so the applicant will have 90 days to respond to that letter.

We also sent that out to interested parties.

We have a pretty extensive list of people who are interested in the status of that and so we've sent that out.

As a result of that, we've gotten a few acknowledgements.

Some of the concerns that people had noted about that project were technical issues that were put in the memo that

the applicant will need to react to.

So it'll probably be a little while before we get another submission, but once we get another submission, we will share that submission with the interested parties and we'll provide updates to you all as we go.

Another project that we've had some public feedback on, it's, let's see, 1120 Avon is the address on it.

It's on a corner lot on Avon and Alta Vista.

It's for a multi-family development, so they've had a community input meeting.

and there were a lot of interested parties involved with that.

And at this point, some feedback has gone to the applicant from city staff.

And so we anticipate at some point we'll get some sort of reaction to that and perhaps some updated materials

we do not anticipate that this would be on agenda any earlier than January and depending on what the applicant chooses to do it may not even be January but we are sharing that with interested parties so they can keep on the radar of the timing and we've also

communicated out to interested parties how we advertise these so that they will be aware of what to look out for as we move forward.

So those are two.

If there are other projects that you all are hearing interest in, we definitely want to be able to share that as well.

And James probably will talk a little bit about our zoning project and maybe something else as we go along.

Zero East High at the moment is ministerial and that's another thing you asked Mr. Friess to talk about and he will in a minute.

The other project is a special use request and so that would come forward through this process.

Thank you.

Any other questions on those items?

So good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the Commission.

So to cut right to that question that was raised around essentially the definition of a ministerial review, the easiest way is to describe it as the opposite of the discretionary reviews that you guys typically conduct for a special permit or a rezoning.

So in a ministerial review, you're simply reviewing for consistency with the established set of standards.

It's not really one where there's the discretion to

The discretion isn't as wide.

The latitude isn't as wide to deny a project as you might experience with a special permit application.

With a special permit application, the standards against which you're reviewing it are more discretionary and a little more subjective as opposed to the standards in which we review a site plan when it's a ministerial review because those are kind of clearly defined.

You meet them or you do not.

Which one?

Well at this point what has come forward has been something that would be ministerial.

It is potential that some of the technical comments in order to meet those there may be changes to what's presented.

We won't know that until we see what the applicant decides to do with

Thanks.

Yeah.

I mean, if you review the comments that have been released, there's a number of places where they have to make decisions where, again, not to repeat exactly what was just said, but they need to make some decisions about how they want you to move forward, and amongst their choices would be to change the project in a way that might trigger a special permit or a rezoning.

All right.

I wanted to make an announcement, very pleased to announce that our new transportation planning manager position has started.

And so he's getting on board, and I look forward to an opportunity to introduce him to you all soon in one of your upcoming meetings.

And then on the zoning ordinance, so we have been meeting with our consultant team and proceeding forward.

One thing we hope to be bringing, I believe, at the December meeting, Missy, is a finalized schedule of where the touch points will be for both the Planning Commission, the Steering Committee, and public engagement on the draft ordinance as it comes out.

As I think I've talked about at previous meetings, we're now looking very clearly at the zoning ordinance coming in three distinct chunks.

those chunks being the first one being the very much the biggest one, districts, land uses, land use tables associated with those districts and the standards associated with those districts in terms of

development parameters, height, setbacks, et cetera, massing in bulk, those things, so on and so forth.

And you will see with that one also very clearly the new format of the zoning ordinance.

So that will be the first chunk of draft ordinance that you receive.

Again, the biggest.

We're anticipating that arriving, and I hate to say anything specific dates, but we're looking at end of January being a February timeframe.

And then the following chunk will be focused on the development standards.

Those are things like signs, lighting, landscaping, all those other things that go into what define a development project.

And then the final chunk of work will be the administration section.

We are planning to have the Planning Commission meetings set for the fourth Tuesdays, our regular work sessions, so you all already have those pinned in.

Right.

So make note on your calendars for your second meetings in January, February, and March, and I believe April for all four of those.

We're identifying a set of topics for the work session conversations that dig deep into different aspects of the proposed zoning ordinance.

Questions on that?

I think that works.

Thank you very much.

Great.

Let's see, 550.

I turn to the public.

I'd like to consider matters to be presented by the public not on the formal agenda.

So this is basically anything you want to talk about except for the application for 211 Albemarle Street and the application for 901 Seminole Trail and 1801 Hydraulic Road.

Those have public hearings.

But anything else you want to talk about, please.

All right, so how we will do this is we will follow our current pattern.

What we do is we call up someone from our physical audience for their three minutes of discussion or of speaking and then we'll alternate and go to our virtual audience and we'll alternate back and forth as long as we have individuals who are interested in speaking.

Thank you.

My name is Peter Krebs.

I work for the Piedmont Environmental Council, live in the city of Charlottesville, but tonight I'm actually speaking on behalf of the Move to Health Equity Coalition.

Better walking and biking and transit are keys to so many things we're trying to do here in Charlottesville, including the Climate Action Plan, which you'll hear about later tonight.

But how do we make that happen?

That's the big question.

Tomorrow night I'll be presenting findings from the new move to health equity report on mobility that's focused on neighborhood connectivity.

That's the results of our 2001 Community Mobility Needs Survey.

This survey sheds light on questions like how do people get around Charlottesville, why don't people walk, bike, or use transit more often, what types of destinations are most or least accessible, as well as what areas need work, and where are improvements most needed.

that's happening tomorrow night, Wednesday, 6 p.m.

on Zoom.

You can find out more by visiting pecva.org slash events.

And unfortunately, we set up the meeting such that it doesn't have a registration, but if you'd like to put it right on your calendar, tomorrow, 6 p.m.,

and then the join URL for that is going to be tinyurl.com slash mobility report or you could just go to PEC's website under events.

We'd also like to make this presentation to City Council at one of their 4 p.m.

sessions and even to you guys if you're up for it.

That would be cool.

I must say I'm a little less excited about what I've seen of the multimodal prioritization tool that you'll be looking at tonight.

It seems like an interesting desktop exercise, but it doesn't ask what the community wants.

It sort of reshuffles priorities that the community did talk about about 10 years ago.

And it doesn't include a bunch of the themes that my own report talks about, like getting to food, parks, and healthcare, which are some of the most difficult places for people to get to, it turns out.

Hopefully it can be just, you know, more knowledge in a process and part of a comprehensive look at mobility in the

Charlottesville, and the move to health equity report also will be a part of the picture, so I hope to see you all tomorrow and at a future meeting.

All right, our next speaker will be a virtual speaker, and we have our first speaker, James Groves.

Yes, I can.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, early evening.

My name is James Groves.

I'm a city resident and I wish to provide a few inputs in advance of tonight's climate action plan presentation.

Last month I read the new climate action plan with great interest and was pleased to see the many ways our city can reduce its carbon emissions.

I particularly like the table on pages 90 and 91, which highlights connections between the ongoing city zoning code update and climate action.

As the Planning Commission guides both rezoning and climate action, please study those pages.

After reading the plan, I reflected on what might be missing and soon recognized an important gap.

The Climate Action Plan does not comment on the potential incompatibility of accelerated new housing construction sparked by rezoning and achievement of City Council's 2019 climate targets.

45% carbon emission reductions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050.

Specifically, if rezoning generates an uptick in housing construction, adding 400, 500, or more new units per year at any price point, as suggested by this summer's inclusionary zoning analysis, and there's no restriction on new hookups to the city's municipal gas utility, Charlottesville will not achieve its 2050 climate goal.

Already today, Charlottesville's gas system accounts for one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions in the city.

As we pipe natural gas through our community and burn it for heating and cooking, we release methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Both are potent greenhouse gases.

During the past year, our gas utility experienced 56 leaks and expanded its customer base with 185 new gas lines.

The leaks and expansion have occurred at a time when thousands of the world's leading scientists urges to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, not expand them.

Rezoning without a restriction on new gas hookups will accelerate gas line installations beyond 200 per year.

Then, once new gas lines are installed, residents will expect to be able to use that infrastructure for decades.

a timeline incompatible with City Council's climate goals.

The responsible alternative is electrification that begins with the zoning code update.

Thank you for considering this important matter.

All right, well, oh, sorry about that.

We will head back to our in-person audience.

We have no other in-person audience individuals.

And now we'll go back to our virtual audience.

Sorry.

We'll go back to our virtual audience.

Do we have any interested speakers in our virtual audience?

If you do, would like to please raise your hand.

All right, thank you very much.

I would like to turn to the consent agenda.

Crystal clear, thank you.

Do I hear a second?

Second.

Can I get ayes if we want to approve?

Aye.

Aye.

I hear unanimous consent.

I see two minutes.

How are we feeling?

Oh, we can't do anything here.

Indeed.

Want to talk about anything for two minutes?

Feeling good?

Weird night.

Anybody see the blood moon?

It was cool.

I'm not saying I did the right thing, but I saw something spooky.

How dark did it get?

It got very dark.

Yeah, I missed that.

Frustrating because, you know, the pictures never turn out.

I see two counselors, welcome.

And then I would articulate and convince everyone of the correct vote.

Mr. Mayor, is Council in order?

I would like to open the joint meeting of the Charlottesville Planning Commission and the City Council.

Planning Commission, City Council, Matt Offley, City Planner, Neighborhood Development Services.

Commission, tonight you will be holding a public hearing and making a recommendation to City Council as it relates to a special use permit for a daycare.

Pilgrim Baptist Church located at 211 Albemarle Street and having a tax map parcel of 310025

is requesting a special use permit for a daycare facility per city code 3479634420 and 34158.

The church is looking to use the existing building to run a Montessori-style early childhood development program for up to 15 students.

The use would not have an adverse impact on the surrounding community outside of traffic concerns, which staff feels can be adequately mitigated by the conditions outlined in the staff report.

By contrast, staff believes the use of a daycare facility at this location would have a positive impact on the surrounding community and offer a sorely needed amenity that many in the neighborhood cannot access or need to travel great distances to utilize.

Staff recommends approval with the three conditions outlined in the report.

The most important being the adherence to a parking and drop-off pickup plan within the application materials dated October 4th, 2004.

This plan should be kept on file with the city and may be updated or altered from time to time with the authority of the city traffic engineer.

This concludes staff's presentation.

The applicant, Pastor Chris Cooper, is in attendance tonight.

Not much.

This is pretty simple and straightforward.

That, it wasn't indicated really in the application materials.

It just said staff just went with daily.

Buffer.

But we don't think it would really fall in outside of weekdays.

Mr. Buck?

No questions.

Ms.

Mr. Schwartz?

No.

Mr. Stolzenberg?

No.

Mr. Palmer, anything on this?

No, thanks.

I have nothing very clear.

Thank you.

Questions from Council.

Correct.

It's to utilize the existing facilities.

There's kind of a weird thing to go into.

So this is a multi-zone lot.

There's an R1S portion.

And then there's the mixed-use portion.

And it kind of splits the building.

So that was one of the issues why they had to pursue an SUP, too, for the daycare.

I guess my question is, is there a land use reason why a 5 p.m.

There's not, I would say, just it falls in line with just typical traffic patterns.

And we were trying to get that buffer from what the applicant was asking.

I mean, what occurs to me is the...

The school's main use may be until 3.30.

An awful lot of schools have an after-school program.

I don't know whether they would intend to.

If so, the after-school program is likely going to be running until 5.30 or 6 rather than 5 o'clock.

If there's not a land use reason why 5 o'clock matters as opposed to 6 o'clock, it would seem to me that it would be wise for the land use

side of it being the Planning Commission City Council to set a 6 o'clock deadline, perhaps, so that if they decide at some point, again, it shouldn't matter from a land use perspective whether they run to 3.30 or 4.30 or 5.30.

Thank you.

Yeah, that was going to be kind of my comments.

I'm doing a ton of these for the county for special use permits that they may change later maybe to expand and instead of coming back or maybe dealing with some complaints if things go a little bit later that six, you know, that's what we typically set it for just

out of abundance of caution unless it was a lot of concern from the community.

I'm really excited about this program.

I know that it's needed in the community.

Do we have questions for the applicant?

Just indicate in some way to me.

Hi, how are you, sir?

Pretty good, how are you?

Good, good.

I just wanted to say thank you for doing this.

Appreciate it.

Yes.

And we did a trial run with toddlers in the community for free.

And the hopes was to already be operational.

but when we started we found out that the R1S runs directly through the addition on the church so we had to stop and get the special use permit so you know we're looking forward to

getting started with toddlers and building this as far as we can from an educational standpoint.

So there's a lot of need in the community?

There's definitely a lot of need in the community for this type of program, schooling.

Do you feel like it might grow beyond 15 students at some point?

I've got a question for staff on that front.

Is there any reason to restrict it to 15 at this point and make them come back if they want to grow more?

No, I think staff would be comfortable.

I mean, there's a lot that once you get into certain numbers that are controlled by the state.

I know eight is one number, and I can't remember off the top of my head, but there's not.

I think 20 staff would be comfortable with.

I think we get anywhere above that.

We would want to reevaluate.

We're advertised this evening for up to 15.

So yes, so I believe they are anxious to move forward.

We also are working through a zoning program at this point in time and we highly anticipate that the split zoning situation that they have there currently will be resolved.

Thanks.

Additional questions on this item?

What about the mayor's recommendation that we go from five to six?

How much flexibility do we have?

I mean, I don't really see a reason to impose a restriction altogether.

If they end up running until 7 at some point, that doesn't seem like much of a concern of ours.

If anything, it would help with traffic.

Well, I mean, I can see that.

I don't, like Ms.

Creasy said, I don't think we have some wiggle room.

And also the use, I think because of the add, you know, the special use permit is for the use of daycare.

The mitigating conditions like the time, I do think we have flexibility, or commission has flexibility in their recommendations to city council.

Mr. Schwartz, please.

Just a point of clarification for the 15 students.

Is that 15 students all day?

Is it 15 students at one time?

Ah, well, this is a question we get quite often on these reports.

So it would be 15 on-site at a time.

So if they choose to have shifts or something to that effect, they would address that in their drop-off pick-up plan.

Well, you know what?

It is not likely that unless something crazy is going on that we're going to be over there taking a look at that situation.

So that seems very nuanced, but I think that

Sounds good.

All right, we do not have anybody in our physical audience.

I'm going to move to our virtual audience, and if anyone is interested in speaking during this public hearing, please raise your hand.

All right, thank you very much.

At this time, I would be interested in thoughts.

I'm going to recommend approval of this application for a special use permit in the CC and R1S zone at 3100-25000 211 Albemarle Street to permit a daycare facility with the following conditions.

Conditions 1 and 3 listed in the staff report.

I hear a second?

Did you have the hours in that?

Dropped the hours.

I think staff wanted to keep the, you know, seven days a week for clarity.

I was going to recommend 7 a.m.

to 7 a.m.

to 7.30 p.m.

7.30 a.m.

to 7.30 p.m.

Yeah, I mean, again, I guess I just don't see, you know, any public interest in limiting, in any limitation, right?

You know, not that they seem to be planning this right now, but, you know, many people work overnight shifts and need childcare kind of, you know, it's harder to find than people who work day shifts, right?

If they were to do that, you know, I don't find that there would be adverse impacts on the community as a result.

Okay.

I'd like to hear some discussion on this.

Do we have a second?

We did get a second.

Yeah, we did get a second.

I'm in agreement with Rory on this.

I think we can be silent on the hours.

and I don't see a negative impact to that.

not specifically in the code hours of operation have just been a common item that moves forward with schools and daycares and other applications similar to this so we we mirrored that process in the past we've had

concerns from individuals concerning hours and the amount of traffic opportunities.

So that is why that has always been placed as a condition and usually, well, in most cases,

The applicant is part of the decision making in that time frame.

We work with the time frame that they need.

Yeah, I was originally going to go with Rory.

But I do worry about, after Ms.

Creasy's walkthrough of this, I worry about the slippery slope we might get on if we begin making

changes, so I think some parameter is a value, and I think the parameter, the very liberal parameter that Ms.

I mean, again, I don't see really a compelling reason to limit nighttime uses, but

If we were, I think, you know, being, you know, even more generous in the time frame, something like 6 a.m.

to 9 p.m.

Are you amending your motion to include that language?

Can I also jump in a little bit?

Ms.

Rubel I mean, understanding that we're in the middle of the zoning rewrite, is there information available into like how a, right, this is on future mixed use, is that right?

Neighborhood mixed use corridor, is that correct?

Am I correct that that's the future land use map?

Maybe map.

Or that's the old comp plan?

No, that is, so it is under the future land use map.

This is urban mixed use corridor.

Oh, purple, there it is, yeah.

We haven't gotten to even, like, you know, use is allowed in that.

And we have had I remember at least one daycare special use permit where it was specifically for around the clock opportunity and very much noting what had been brought forward as part of the conversation.

So I feel like you all do have flexibility as to how how you decide to move forward with the recommendation concerning that.

Mr. Bud.

Thanks.

Yeah, my intent was sort of to be consistent in recognizing that, you know, staff may have to think about operating hours and days of the week and just trying to, like, have it clear as opposed to vague.

I really support Rory's first motion.

It seems arbitrary to me to limit this in any way, especially since, you know, if they ever did have a program that could help people who have overnight shifts, I think that would be fantastic, and I wouldn't want to limit that in any possible way.

So, I mean, if we're going to have a time frame on here, I'd say 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Yeah, I mean, I'd probably point out that we're having this whole discussion and they have no apparent intention of doing overnight work, but I'd like to pressure them into it and please do.

And yeah, I, I, uh,

would not propose an amendment.

I was going to say you can also drop condition one.

It's part of the application anyways, right?

Yeah, we always do that for some reason.

Can you restate?

Ms.

Sure.

Mr. D'Oronzio?

Aye.

Mr. Stolensberg?

Aye.

Mr. Mitchell?

Yes.

Ms.

Russell?

Yes.

And Mr. Solla-Yates?

I would like to turn our attention to SP22-0006, 901 Seminole Trail, 1801 Hydraulic Road.

So good evening, everyone.

I'm Dan O'Connell, City Planner with NDS.

Tonight, I will be presenting to you an application for a special use permit for 901 Seminole Trail.

This is from River Bend Developments, representing 901 Seminole Trail, LLC.

Request to construct a restaurant with a drive-through window

on that property.

The applicant also wishes to modify setback requirements for 901 Seminole Trail and 1801 hydraulic road as part of this request and therefore both parcels are being considered as the subject property together.

The proposed drive-through will have a main building fronting on Seminole Trail and hydraulic road with parking, a dumpster, and ingress and egress as part of the Hillsdale Place shopping center Subject property is currently being redeveloped under a final site plan which includes a drive-through restaurant, a financial use, and two standalone commercial building pads in addition to modifications to the existing large shopping center building

The subject property is zoned highway corridor within an entrance corridor overlay.

The highway zoning district is traditionally auto-focused, catering to commercial and retail development with limited residential uses.

Examples of uses in the highway zoning district include grocery stores, restaurants with drive-through windows, hotels, shopping centers, and car washes.

The future land use map shows the subject property as part of an urban mixed use node.

The land use section of the comprehensive plan describes this district as intended for higher intensity mixed use development arranged along corridors between employment, commercial, and civic hubs of the city.

Staff finds the proposed development would conform to highway corridor zoning as well as the comprehensive plan and future land use map.

A one-story drive-through restaurant is consistent with the intent of the highway corridor zoning district and the urban mixed-use node future land use.

The proposed restaurant does also conform to the vision articulated in the hydraulic small area plan.

While the proposed development does not contain all features discussed within the plan, such as multi-story mixed-use structures or additional roadways, it does incrementally advance the objectives of the small area plan by identifying the existing commercial area, increasing urban road frontage along hydraulic road and Seminole Trail, and enhancing landscaping and pedestrian features.

As part of their Special Use Permit request, the applicants have asked for a modification of maximum setback requirements for the Build 2 Zone required in the Highway Corridor Zoning District.

The Code defines a Build 2 Zone as the area between the minimum and maximum allowable setbacks along the street frontage.

The minimum setback for this property is 5 feet.

The maximum is 30 feet off the Seminole Trail and 20 feet along all other roads.

and per the interpretation of the zoning administrator building must have at least one side located entirely within this build 2 zone in order to be considered compliant the proposed site plan indicates that all the new buildings will be located outside of this zone as well as the existing shopping center which is being modified and reduced in size which would make it non-compliant with the existing setback off of Hillsdale Drive and therefore the applicant

is therefore asking for maximum setbacks on the subject property to be modified to permit the proposed site layout.

but overall staff does find the application meets the general standards for a special use permit and recommends approval with the following conditions that the drive-through restaurant use is permitted only within the current boundaries of the 901 Seminole Trail parcel that the maximum setback for both 901 Seminole Trail and 1801 Hydraulic Road off Seminole Trail, Hydraulic Road and Indeed Road all be set to 75 feet

and the maximum setback for the property off of Hillsdale Drive also be set to 50 feet.

I'll have you take any questions.

Thank you.

The county line, where does that begin relative to this?

Is it just west of 29?

I'm certain that the county is aware of this.

As you know, they're working on their big hydraulic 29 intersection improvement plan.

So how will this impact the work that they're going to do?

Because they're going to be a lot of...

pedestrian safety enhancements that they're working on and they're going to be some restrictions on left turns and right turns in that area as well.

As I believe the applicants are aware, I think the work would only affect the southeastern corner of, I think it was Hydraulic Road.

Mr. Abub?

Ms.

Mr. Schwartz.

So questions for the applicant as well, right, or just staff?

Questions for staff.

Staff, no.

um yeah one question uh what is the pedestrian route to get to the building for the drive-through to the drive-through building yeah is that the whoops uh dash lion on this partial site plan screenshot here yes i believe that is um the ada accessible route that they're showing on their site plan okay so that's i gotta walk a mile or so from hillsdale

Yeah.

Okay.

I had a similar question to Commissioner Mitchell, just knowing of all the traffic improvements that, you know, the vision, I don't know that any have been approved or anything, but that this wouldn't preclude, you know,

implementing that vision.

I don't know the answer.

Thank you.

Do you want to speak to that?

I think that's just about it.

So I booted on this small airplane a few years ago.

It's a little bit hazy in my memory, but I remember it being very, very urban in character, tall buildings, mixed use.

And this wasn't what I was picturing.

Yeah, this site is actually called out in that small area plan as being very important.

And this does not, of course, this is not, you know, mixed use development, but it does not preclude further development along that line in the near future.

Thank you.

I would like to hear from Council.

Excuse me.

Yeah, this may have been what you were referring to a minute ago, but I understand the smart scale project in the hydraulic area.

There's a number of different interventions they're making.

At Hillsdale, I guess they've got a roundabout they're putting in there, and they're doing some work at

The Kroger corner?

Yeah.

From the wine shop or whatever is near there?

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

I've been sort of staring at this plat and I'm trying to make sure that I understand.

The setback requirement that concerns me most is the one for the building that's sort of at the corner.

Because, again, I've seen enough different plans that I can't keep them all straight to remember exactly which one we're working on in the next few years.

but I've been impressed as I've looked at these at the plans that the the MPO ends up with at how they end up putting odd seeming lanes to get around intersections in places where I'm sitting and thinking why are they doing that and the answer is because it's the only thing we can do and I I'm sort of

I'm curious about why the planning folks would not sit there and say, hey, of all the places we don't want to allow more incursion, the intersection of hydraulic and 29 is probably it.

Wouldn't that seem to be, I mean, it's one of the busiest intersections we've got.

A restaurant drive-through, according to our code, requires this process.

I'm less concerned about the process than I am about why do we know why it is that it's important to them to be an additional 10 feet closer to the intersection?

Just because that's the geometry that they happen to choose?

or is there some other reason that you know of?

No, that was the applicant's request.

They may be able to speak better on that than I can.

Okay.

That's all.

Mr. Wade.

And thank you very much.

Good evening, planning commissioners and chair and staff.

I do have some PDF slides, if you could pull them up.

Nice to see all of you.

And thank you for considering our request this evening.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I don't know if you have the ability to zoom in at all on this, but the site plan is looking very small on the screen there, but yes, so this is the overall site plan for the Hillsdale Place development that we're considering this evening, and I'm sure most of you are very familiar with the site and know that it's been sitting

vacant for some time now.

I know personally that our team has been working on this development for at least six years now and prior to that we were also responsible for the development of the Whole Foods

that is just east of the site.

And as part of that, we put in a lot of the Hillsdale Drive improvements that are called out in the small area plan, so starting to develop that road network.

and yes, we did in the past go through a full site plan process and a lot of the issues that we encountered with this site are related to the road improvements and access issues.

You used to be able, if you look on the far right there, you used to be able to make a full movement into the site from Hillsdale and that has since been blocked off so that

really damaged a lot of retail options for this commercial site.

And we've since been regrouping and coming together with a solution here.

And you may also be aware that the majority of the site, except for the corner that we're considering for the drive-through, is under a long-term lease.

that also means kind of different stance into how you approach the site but we're happy to be here tonight we have been in very close contact with VDOT throughout the years there have been over that course of time many different considerations for

the improvements both to 29 and hydraulic and so if you could just kind of slide down actually to kind of the far I guess it would be southeast corner

If you're able to just kind of pan down there, you'll see there's an area that's kind of hatched that's starting to appear.

So, yeah, when we were looking at this previously, there was the application for the potential grade separated interchange.

And so that was a very different strategy to the transportation solutions in the area.

what VDOT is proposing is a roundabout in that far right corner.

So that did give us another kind of curveball on our development strategy so you can see kind of that large swath

of area that will be dedicated to VDOT to accommodate the roundabout.

So that handles, you know, we've taken into full account their plans for this whole area, and that would be the land that needs to go to the improvements that they've proposed.

I think once you get to that intersection with hydraulic and 29, they're actually trying to

reduce those movements so there isn't any additional right-of-way take in that area that I am aware of.

But basically, you know, we have uses along these really, really the busiest streets in our whole

communities, so what you see is a lot of the commercial activity is a little bit more internal to the site.

We do have really generous sidewalks, and this is not the landscape plan, but we have landscaping buffers along all those edges.

and then for you know the drive-through use itself a lot of the issues that are typically discussed with that are more about any cues that might go out into the right-of-way or block access to other areas so because of the size and the layout of this site we don't have any of those

types of issues, but what we've tried to do at least with the setback request is ask for setbacks that will meet that zoning interpretation of allowing buildings that you get the full frontage within that maximum setback as the zoning administrator has determined.

but also just allow for you know whatever will need to happen along those very important right-of-way frontages so there are a lot of utilities running within those areas we want room for ample landscaping and for the drive-through itself you know you do have that actual vehicle lane so we're trying to

give a setback that allows for those uses while also giving the ability for, you know, in the future that could fill in a lot more.

So it's, you know, basically balancing out those two requests, understanding that, yes, like what's

there right now may not exactly match our 2050 vision of the area, but it does allow for that future development as well.

We have a couple of images if you want to forward through just to share.

Can I ask a question on the slide?

Yeah, so in this right-hand corner, see that whole area that's like hatched?

And that's the hydraulic?

And Hillsdale and hydraulic?

Exactly.

And then what is proposed at 29, as far as you know, what's proposed at 29 hydraulic?

As far as I know, they're like minimizing the turns there and there could be potentially, I know there's a traffic circle here, but there may be like a future traffic circle on the other side as well.

So they're trying to get the turn movements off of 29.

So we have to kind of do that.

That's why you don't feel as...

Yeah, I mean, it is pulled back further than what the city code would currently even allow at this point, but we feel like it's far enough back that it accommodates any of the things that we've discussed with VDOT along the way.

Thank you.

And to Counselor, such a question, what you're asking for is an increase in the maximum setback, right?

Yes.

That puzzled me.

I've got a question for you on this slide.

So in that...

Kind of bottom left corner by the drive-through.

Well, we just talked about the accessible path or any path really.

A condition we've added to drive-throughs in the past, certainly the Starbucks one up on 29 and the Chick-fil-A in Barracks Road is that you have a pedestrian entrance from the street.

or is it just not there because it's an early iteration of this plan or I'd have to we do have Scott Collins I think available virtually but you can see on there that there is a grade separation from the site and if you drive by it today like it is dropped down certainly from 29 like even you know as you get to that northwest corner it's the grade change is

considerable.

So if you look on the site plan, you'll see that there are retaining walls.

You can see those dark lines in the corners.

So as far as an accessible path directly from hydraulic, that might be a challenge.

It might make sense to create internal pathways to the site.

I don't know if Scott wants to address that, but that's just my initial take on it.

We do have great challenges where everything's dropped down and more internalized to the site.

So I think we want to certainly be tuned in to pedestrian needs and certainly that whole Hillsdale corridor I think is

really coming along and feels much more pedestrian friendly than you might feel maybe walking along Route 29.

And you can see where the site plan will have like this really nice outdoor space for that retailer along Route 29.

along Hillsdale.

So yeah, I can really imagine more pedestrians kind of entering the site from that site and filtering through.

So if we want to think about that a little bit more seriously, I could see that being maybe more logical than somebody just being on Route 29 with all the traffic and trying to make their way down the grade change.

I just had the renderings of the drive-through if you wanted to kind of pan through those to give an idea of what the look is.

So yeah, so this is kind of if you were down in the site from that 29 side looking at the building and the drive-through.

You can go to next slide.

That's the drive-through itself.

So yeah, it's dropped down a little bit.

You'll have some landscaping buffering.

So it is kind of going to feel more internalized to make it feel more comfortable that you're not like on the speedway there.

Next slide.

Yeah, so that is kind of up from the corner and you can see there is a little hill going down to that area.

Next slide.

and yeah, so this is kind of the feel of like being inside the site and you can see they'll have like a nice outdoor seating area that's more protected from the roadways.

That might be the last slide.

Oh, there's two more, okay.

Yeah, so there's the entrance and then one more, I think.

Yeah, so that just kind of gives you an idea of the feel for that part of the site.

Great.

Mr. Mitchell?

So I don't think I did a good job of asking my question about health farmers.

I think the northwestern side of 29.

The roundabout that's, you go 29, you go hydraulic across 29, and you go to the roundabout that's proposed at Douglas, which is where you're coming up from, the theater.

But are you aware of the work that they're doing at that intersection?

Because they're doing a lot of shape, the upgrades, again, on the other side, not on the other city except the other side.

Okay, so you're here.

Yes.

No, not that I know of.

Yeah, we definitely have.

You know, this is, for us, has been a multi-year thing, and the ideas around those roadways has really evolved over that timeframe as well.

I guess I'll ask a quick question on the, I mean, I think it's like looking at the satellite image and looking at your plan, that sidewalk is definitely pulled back a little bit from the street, which is nice.

It's not a fun place to walk.

What is the potential for pulling it back enough to have trees planted between the sidewalk and the street?

Is that an option that we, is that something we can do?

between hydraulic and the sidewalk?

Yes.

Awesome.

That's my main question.

Ms.

I have a question about that sidewalk as well.

Maybe beating Rory to this, I don't know.

I had the same question about the, it's a 10 foot wide sidewalk and I think in your site plan you've labeled it a sidewalk.

Is there any reason it can't be a multi-use trail?

as far as you guys are concerned.

Mr. Stolzenberg.

No comment.

God, I stole my shared use path question.

So, I guess I think we covered the path.

Mr. Palmer.

Mr. Pinkston, questions for the applicant?

Sorry, I was not clear.

Apologies, I was not clear.

Good to see you again.

You as well.

I forwarded it all to you, sir, the smart scale

images that we've got.

I can send them to you as well if you like.

But it does show some work in terms of sidewalks at that intersection that seem to fit with what we've got there.

And going north on 29th Avenue, there's going to be a pedestrian bridge across 29th.

So that'll be cool.

Yeah, so, and I'm sorry, I didn't look closely at this before, Katie, what is there now?

It's vacant.

So it used to be, I think, the import auto store, and it was actually vandalized in a fire and had to be taken down for, you know, the building health, life, and safety.

So it's just a vacant parcel.

Okay, and when you're going west on hydraulic, that weird lane where you kind of go out and then back in, you know what I'm talking about, but there's a strange way, this is the entrance into Kmart, the old Kmart, there's like a bump out almost into hydraulic and then you have to go around it and then

back towards the north before you turn north on.

It looks like from your site map that you are cleaning that up.

Yes.

Okay.

And then this application is solely for that one corner of the property.

So we do have a site plan under review with the city for the entire site.

Because of the way the city code currently reads, as Ms.

Creasy indicated, like if you were

going to do a bank with a drive-through or if you're going to do a pharmacy with a drive-through, neither of those require a special use permit.

But for some reason, a restaurant with a drive-through in the city does require a special use permit.

Got it.

And people would access this through some other way?

Yes, so no direct access off of those main roads, which is, like I said, that's usually the primary concern.

We also did the Starbucks that's right there on 29 and Angus, and that had its own set of concerns, because it's a tiny site.

The one thing that I am just sort of building a little bit on something that Councilor Pinkston mentioned is I know that that is an area that is subject to a lot of planning, replanning, redrawing I can tell you at least three or four different sets of plans that I've seen recently

and I just think the farther away you can stay from any of that, the better off everybody is going to be.

I'll just leave it at that.

Mr. Wade.

Just really kind of almost bring back memories from when I was doing planning for the county is that this whole area from

Hydraulic 250, the Hydraulic Hillsdale to the 29, this whole area, you know, how VDOT would deal with the traffic, the fact that part of it is the city, part of it is in the county.

There's just a lot of traffic that VDOT and the city is trying to deal with.

And, I mean, right now, you know, that peak out starts at like 3.30 and it's back there.

It's really...

For sure.

All right.

We do not have anybody in our physical audience, so we will turn to our virtual audience.

And those in our virtual audience, if you're interested in speaking on this issue, please raise your hand.

Thank you.

I would like to discuss this item.

How are we feeling?

I would also entertain a motion.

Well, so I guess on the general thought of drive-thrus,

not super pro drive-through i know we've previously you know had councils who are kind of on the verge of denying almost every drive-through just because it was drive-through i think i'd echo what i said about the car wash which is that like i don't feel that it's good zoning practice to prohibit something that we allow in the zoning ordinance by special use permit if it's in an appropriate location and i can't think of a location i mean this is a

This is a pretty auto-oriented location, and I think the adverse impacts are largely mitigated and could be mitigated more of conditions.

And so I think I would reluctantly approve the drive-through for that reason.

That said, council, of course, denied the car wash yesterday, so we're going to do whatever.

But...

I would like to propose two conditions.

One, about pedestrian access, and we've kind of done this for the last two drive-throughs.

For Starbucks, we said the handicap access lane, again, it's in the site plan, which I don't know, the extended so that it connected with the sidewalk on Angus, basically, so you could get to it.

And then for the Chick-fil-A, we had a slightly vaguer

Routes, Michael Kochis, Michael Kochis, Michael Kochis, Michael Kochis, Michael Kochis, Michael Kochis, Michael Kochis, Michael Kochis,

One of them, the actual hydraulic 29 intersection one, is going to be adding an at-grade crossing, like a crosswalk, across 29 actually, in addition to that bridge that's going up.

So I would very much like there to be some kind of pedestrian access to this from that corner.

I recognize that it might not be feasible to make it accessible, which is unfortunate.

but you know even if it were stairs I think that's better than nothing so I would say basically that condition with from Chick-fil-a from that corner a pedestrian route from the corner as accessible as possible I do also wonder if we want to consider whether you know looking at that big site plan also is there any way we can get that back up

you know right now you have to go basically along where the Gold's Gym was along the Kmart and then duck down to get it there and then it seems like there could be at least one more pedestrian path.

I don't know if we want to codify that in a condition.

The other big thing I would say in relation to drive-throughs generally is that I think you know recently in the city we've seen some kind of

drive-throughs have kind of run amok and are like causing problems where they have even some of them have existed where they've been for a decade or more and are all of a sudden post-pandemic causing all these problems right and you know it seems to me Keynes of course would be obviously the

the example it seems to me that this probably because of the pandemic to an extent and then because of staffing issues the problem becomes when it's a drive-through only restaurant because they've closed the inside because of

you know lack of staff or they don't want people inside whatever whereas historically and you know it's kind of discussed sort of almost implied in the code you expect a drive-thru restaurant to be a restaurant that also has a drive-thru option and so I'd like to propose a condition that you know whenever the drive-thru is open

that there be a way to serve customers who have walked up.

And whether that's a drive-through window or keeping the inside open, I don't think that it can be either.

Cars lined up in a drive-through end up spilling out and can spill out for an incredible distance, as we've seen.

Even though there's a lot of interior circulation in the slot, it could very conceivably have effects on the roads outside.

Whereas if you can just park, use that 400 parking spaces provided on the site plan, people can line up like people and take a lot less space.

And so I'd like to propose a condition

So just some commentary to throw out to think about.

It seems like across the street the county works pretty hard on Stonefield to try and make a corner and make an architectural

Semi-urban wall there.

I understand the reasons for the increased setbacks, but it does seem like both of these buildings that are along 29 are going to be drive-through buildings with either a drive-through or parking between the building and 29.

I'm wavering on whether that's important or not, but it seems like something we should at least consider and think about.

If the county put all this effort into trying to create a more urban form there, we're destroying that by allowing this.

To speak to the specifics of this site, I mean, even with the renderings, and I spent a little bit of time at this corner years ago, it's really below grade.

So, I mean, what they're talking about building there, the visibility from 2009 is going to be

I guess their hope is that you're going to see the logo and the sign at more or less sidewalk level.

Maybe I'm arguing with the example a little bit, but I think in this case, what you're going to have is essentially

And is that okay?

I mean, I recognize that.

Yeah.

Well, I guess the counter question is, is that anything that you build there, unless you're going to start filling these, you know, I mean,

I'm kind of at a loss.

The Planning Commission would really like the building to be boldly visible in every direction.

I'm trying to think about what the alternative is.

I might be arguing, your point is well taken, but in this case,

I mean, I think it's, to Carl's point, it's certainly true that this is not, you know, in compliance, in conformance with the spirit of the Hydraulic 29 plan, which contemplated this becoming, you know, an urban center.

That said, you know, VDOT wants and needs this to be right next to a highway that moves as much interstate traffic as possible The rest of the shopping center is sadly being developed by Wright into the same thing it always was Even though, again, highway allows infinite density by Wright at the moment But that was apparently not enough to...

get them out of their lease situation.

But yeah, I mean, it doesn't conform with our lofty ideals for the site.

Or I'm wondering if maybe a condition that there shouldn't be parking between a building and its property line.

For example, the bank on the north side.

But again, it's a drive-through.

You have to drive around the whole bank to make it work.

So it would be a big pain for them.

But I am wondering about the one that's on the corner with India Road and 29.

Does that need to be closer to India Road?

Kind of just, again, throwing that out there for discussion.

I'm not concerned about time.

I would like us to make the right decision.

Thoughts on this issue?

But that, again, I... Should we specifically say, like, that India Road property line?

Yeah.

And for staff, is this in scope?

Because even though it's a drive-through SUP, that we're also talking about the setbacks.

Can you have conditions related to that or do you just deny that?

Mr. O'Connell is approaching, please.

On the question of which properties are subject to this, that was the first question when this came in.

The request is for the drive through on 901 Seminole Trail which is the small pentagonal parcel in the bottom left corner of the viewing but the request included setback modifications for initially for the bank building and the drive through and then it was later expanded to all the properties but it applies to both parcels and our code does not specify that an SUV request has to be limited to one parcel so the determination was made that because they are part of a single common plan in development

they are both applied for this.

And then we address that by limiting the drive-through condition just to that one area of that one parcel.

As for the applicability of the setbacks, this was another very long and interesting conversation I had with the zoning administrator.

Interpretations of what a yard is aside, basically just one side of a building

its frontage has to be within this Build 2 area, and that is its front, regardless of what it's facing, which doesn't matter according to our code.

But in highway corridor zoning, there are no rear or side setbacks.

So as long as one side of that building, which we are calling the front, is in that area, the setbacks do not matter.

So for the bank building, its frontage is on 29 Seminole.

It's within that 75-foot area.

Therefore, its setback off of India Road doesn't really matter.

And initially, that was not included in the request.

And one thing also to keep in mind is the small area plan is likely to move forward in an incremental fashion.

There are some very ambitious goals as part of that, and what's being brought forth at this point doesn't prohibit any sort of change that would occur down the road.

So if Carl really wanted the bank to have a sort of urban frontage on India, as in be closer to it, we could remove the maximum setback off India and the maximum setback off Seminole Trail, and that wouldn't affect the drive-through, which is already meeting our hydraulic condition.

The change to the maximum setback.

That's my understanding of what Carl's talking about.

Should we maybe ask the applicant what she thinks about it?

Making that a more urban bank?

I would be open to hearing from the applicant on this topic briefly.

You do have entrance corridor.

So I think of all the buildings on the site, the bank building is the one that's most buried from 29.

So that is really like, I mean, that's maybe like 20 feet down from the right-of-way.

So it's least likely to create any sort of

frontage along 29.

The way we have it set up right now doesn't prohibit it from potentially pulling a little bit closer to that India Road frontage, but I think what we appreciate in this moment is the allowance for some flexibility, just because there are so many moving parts

in this area we have really tried to get this project off the ground for the past six years you know if we had nailed it two years ago the city would be getting three million dollars a year from this property and it didn't happen and now we're kind of back at the starting gates again and we really want to do something here it's an eyesore it's been vacant

and it's a problem for the community.

Thank you.

So it seems to me that a lot of the work that we're doing now is more... Microphone, please.

Microphone.

Oh, sorry.

So it seems to me that a lot of the work that we're doing now would be better suited for the ECRB.

So I'd like to make a motion.

and my motion will be in support of the application with the recommendations by staff.

Do I hear a second?

Yes.

I heard a second from Mr. D'Oronzio.

I'd like to include the med meds, Rory, I guess I'll let you suggest them, the shared use sidewalk and potentially a connection to the sidewalk at the corner by the

So the shared use path, I think, was probably not going to be a condition.

They can figure that out with the traffic engineer or whatever.

I mean, I don't think they care if it's asphalt or concrete.

The two suggestions I have, one is a pedestrian connection to that crosswalk at hydraulic.

I mean yes it's a auto oriented part of town but we're trying to make it possible at all to walk around there and I've walked up to actually that Starbucks up at Angus and while I sort of felt like I was gonna get run over in the drive-through by angry Starbucks people in their SUVs like having that way to get from the sidewalk to the front door

like made it a lot more comfortable to walk in.

It seems like it's a pretty simple thing to add.

We've done it to both of our previous drive-thru SEPs just to like have a way to walk in rather than forcing you to drive.

The other is the condition that service be available via

via the dining room or a walk-up window whenever the drive-through is in operation.

And that's to prevent the drive-through-only restaurants that we've seen pop up in the pandemic kind of de facto that cause these huge backups that we see on canes spilling out of the driveway all the way up 29 to the trolley.

it's just been a mess and you know at the same time it's it's the traffic impact and it's this idea of like we want it to be slowly transitioning from this totally auto-centric thing to you know a pedestrian and human-centered place and the fact that you have to you know jump in your car to go through the drive-through to get your Shake Shack Shake rather than having any way to walk up at all

I mean, it's the same thing kind of down here at this McDonald's now, right?

They closed their dining room at 8 o'clock.

I've literally had to get in my car, which is parked across the street from the McDonald's, and drive through the drive-through.

I have written some language down, if you'd like to hear it.

Sure, yeah, hit me.

Yep, and accessible as possible is the language we had from Chick-fil-A that I'd like to add into there.

Accessible as possible.

I'm not super hopeful of a great change, but see what we can do.

Second is service will be available via dining room or walk-up window whenever the drive-thru window is open.

Perfect.

I frankly don't see a great amount of value in either of those two editions, but...

So amended second.

Any additional discussion on this item?

Counsel, you are also welcome to ask questions or share concerns at this time.

Sure.

I think we can leave, is that right?

You are permitted to leave, but you are welcome to stay.

We're going to have a wonderful time.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

Pulling us back, pulling us back.

I don't know if it depends how many wells, it could be up to 100, 800 foot.

Short three commissioners.

Calling all commissioners, please come back.

I see us all mostly back together.

I would like to hear about a multimodal transportation thing.

Patrick, did you get the slides up there?

Hello, Planning Commission.

I guess the councilors are gone, but hello, Planning Commission.

I'm Jack Dawson, I'm the city engineer and I'll be talking tonight about the multi-modal transportation prioritization process which I'll be referring to as the system for this presentation this presentation I'm going to discuss a little bit about the history of the transportation planning process here in Charlottesville

and sort of CIP development or the lack thereof transportation planning process.

And so this is this is not a perfect system here.

It is certainly going to be a tool that helps while we develop a more perfect process with hopefully this tool being part of that.

So next slide.

and then James is here.

We're presenting together.

I'll be doing the presentation, which means he'll be answering your questions.

So this is the history.

In the old NDS, which was, let's say, 2020.

Now, when did we get split up?

I don't know.

But prior to 2020,

We were part of NDS, we being Public Works Engineering.

And when we would conceptualize CIP projects to advance or from the CIP projects, how to go and get grants for those or what pipeline, the timelines of getting grant funding and matching that with your project, the folks that give us grants was primarily the state.

Sometimes they move those timelines around, sometimes a little advance them, sometimes delay them.

and balancing all that is complex as well as taking the other project the other problem that I saw was taking all our aspirational lists of priorities and turning that into something that's not a list of 400 priorities but here's a good place to start and so in December of 2020

again this was at that point in time none of my superiors and the entire chain of command are no longer here at the city so lots has changed and so I sit in my office saying we got to do something here and somebody pointed out I think was the first year that the Office of Intermittal Planning something which is not part of VDOT but is a state

agency put this GAP grant out, which is the growth and accessibility planning grants.

And investment.

And investment.

There you go.

There it is right there.

And so I applied for that.

That was my first grant application.

It read a lot more like an engineer describing a pipe dream than a grant application.

and so we applied for that under item three which was the development accessibility planning process you can see a little bit of the statement of need there it got more technical than that as I wrote it so we did not receive funding on that one next slide please Patrick and then so we Jeanette who is our most senior project manager and has made many many grant applications helped me with that and we tweaked it and we were awarded that grant in early 2022 next slide please

So the statement that we put together and we actually worked with OIPI and their

they sort of shepherded us between them and their team of consultants.

They do this with a lot of localities and there's a whole army of consultants out there supporting this process.

And we work together to come up with sort of the statement of needs and that supports the CIP program and grant eligible transportation project selection, access and operationalized performance measures and associated thresholds, create a process for the city that could be utilized on an ongoing basis, which is an important one, and create a guiding document specifying the step-by-step process for evaluating non-motorized projects.

So if you're familiar, the county is doing one of these right now as well.

Theirs is very similar.

There's sort of a format that these folks like to generate, which is essentially sort of build a bike and pedmaster plan, if you would.

We already have one.

So what I attempted to do was to, in the grant, say we have a bike and pedmaster plan.

we have a streets that work plan we have all these plans if we could combine them into one system so that me as an engineer could say hey if I wanted to do this intersection I draw a circle around it and it said we'd assume we'd fix all of the things that are called for in this in this corridor

Let's compare it to this intersection and see if you take the bike scores.

That was the idea.

I'm not totally sure what we're going to get, but that is not exactly what we're going to get.

So next slide.

That being said, I think it will certainly help where we're trying to go.

May I ask a question on this side?

Yes, sir.

How does Safe Routes to School fit in here?

It fits in there through multiple ways because that is captured in some of the

it's complicated so what they actually did was they took our rubric for Streets That Work and bike and pet and sort of reran it to a certain degree we haven't actually seen the final product we're getting that soon and so when we get the final product we're going to do sort of shake down and see how adjusting some of the parameters affects that scoring and those rubrics

it's pretty complicated and I'll get to some of that a little bit later so we've been trying to incorporate everything and if the idea is if we haven't there's no reason why we can't add it in at some point a lot and it gets very complicated because the safe routes of school a lot of that stuff overlaps with our other priorities and when you start combining these things that's where you get into these some of these issues where am I double scoring this

Other issues are, you know, the way that the transportation planners want to attack us is evaluate slope of a road and invalidate, like, the steeper it is, the less eligible it is for a sidewalk.

But by the very nature of how people build things, you kind of avoid putting sidewalks on steep roads anyway.

So it's very likely you have a complete network here and there and you have a steep, you know, and we need to connect that.

So we need to make sure that we're looking at these things both practically and to actually achieve the goals that we want to achieve.

Next slide.

so this is some of this process for measuring and weighting we're gonna some of these blue headers are mixed there but you can see like a level of traffic stress that comes from streets of work classification and traffic congestion comes from VTrans that's VDOT's planning module that informs a lot of the scoring of grants so we use that a lot when we're preparing grants and then VDOT obviously has a pretty big library of that that's available

some crash data that comes out of there.

Again, area corridor suitability is the walk-bike score from V-Trans and activity centers.

All that's incorporated and overlayed into what we already have.

And equity is built in to some degree.

We'd like to make sure that there's appropriate buy-in on that.

Again, White Buck under connectivity, you've got the network connectivity ranking, access to public bike racks, all these things that are built in, access to UVA campus.

So next slide, please.

So this is what the general system would look like.

So one thing that goes in at the very beginning is readiness.

That's the repaving schedule.

That would also include things like are we building a major water line down West Main or is Rivanna doing this and how that affects the

readiness or sequencing of the projects.

Suitability, again, that's walk, bike scores, schools and transit slopes.

Connectivity is a segment length, and I believe that slope under there, but that's some of the physical parameters.

Safety, again, that's crash density.

Demand is street light and loads.

I'm not sure if any of you are familiar with that, but those are pretty snazzy programs for capturing data about where people are going from one place to another.

and then the community needs so we had equity at the end I know when we went over this with our consultants and OIPI OIPI thought that equity should be built at the beginning I'm an engineer so someone needs to like draw a map of equity scores you know and then we can do that there is some census tract data but that's too too coarse for us to use in Charlottesville we need fine-grained data and so there's going to need to be some working progress on the best way we address that

what again what there's always way this is just a tool that's part of the system so ways to adapt this and improve it as we learn how to use it next slide please

so again this is some measures how they're broken down you can see the updates that's one interesting column here some of those that would be rarely are like school proximity so that would be you know we build a new school it would affect that score other than that the scores stay the same whereas some of the what says quarterly is the walk bike score again that's

a lot of technical data but that's some of the things coming from loads or the V-Trans actually transit proximity segment slope again you can see never there because a segment from one place to another remains the same things like that next slide please

Okay, here's some more measures.

Again, network connectivity.

You can see there's how much does the proposed segment improve the quality of the walking or biking network in Charlottesville.

And so again, you could use your imagination to see how a lot of these data points are gonna overlap and complicate the rankings.

Yeah, so you can see they put in for equity emphasis in neighborhoods.

Consider balancing infrastructure investments between 19 neighborhoods.

So that's essentially instead of using the census tract.

Next slide, please.

So this is an example of some of the data that went in.

So this is the walk-bike score from VTRANS.

You can see on the left that little map is the draft walk prioritizations.

And so they got that out of the VTRANS walk score.

And some of that goes slope, schools, accessibility, et cetera.

So again, you gotta consider some of that data, like slope is going into the walk-bike score.

We might use it again when we're evaluating the challenge of this sidewalk, et cetera.

but you can see on the left some of those are it's really hard to see with that color but some of those are the various priorities for the walk score and on the right is the bike score these are all inputs and we did give the consultants thankfully we have a pretty good rigorous GIS system here for that was I think prepared with the bike and pen master plan that has center lines for all of our existing sidewalks and all these things that made it pretty easy to pass this off to them and have them compile that next slide please

so this is where we're at this is from last month so we will be getting a deliverable soon and we'll be testing that I think we have a meeting two weeks with the consultants so we should be getting sort of a spread of we ran different models here's how we adjust the scores what do you think next slide please

So, yeah, next steps will be verifying the scores and ranks.

They'll be working with the consultant to see how changing the rubric of the weighting and stuff changes the rankings.

And we'll be as transparent with how we come about that and options for developing in the future.

Developing the GIS online web map that shows some of these outputs.

And then November meeting materials, which is what we're doing right here.

So I've recycled some slides, obviously.

Next slide, please.

So this is one example for all of you here in the room if you see a sidewalk on there or road and you say why is that in 10% this is just a draft example but you can and again the colors here aren't great and I apologize for that but you can see on the left is the bike priorities from the 2015 bike pedmaster plan and on the right is sort of the draft after this was submerged with all the other data and so you can see sort of in the just north of

East High, there's a chunk of red on the left map that's the priorities one through 20.

You can see all that stuff is purple which is the top five percent on the right but there's some other red ones that sort of drop out like the western edge of I guess that's Harris that was red and goes all the way down to yellow and things like that so there is a change from our existing priorities.

I guess one thing I wanted to emphasize is that when I conceived this project initially or the grant application not knowing what it's going to turn into one thing I wanted to be able to say is that we tried to incorporate as much public input as possible the way that we did that was by incorporating the streets at work and bike and pen master plan since they've had so much public input we don't want to reinvent that again we're obviously here to serve the community and interested in all opinions on that but we want to start with something that's already been somewhat community vetted

Next slide, please.

Yeah, so they flipped it a little bit.

Yeah, red's 1 through 20 priorities on the left, and red is 0 to

I was like, see what this is telling us the opposite stuff now.

Yes, I apologize for that.

Again, I wouldn't focus too much on this.

So do I.

No, so how are we gonna use this in the future?

So we're developing a transportation prior resolution process.

NDS, as James said recently, onboarded transportation planner and we hope to continue to augment staff accordingly.

I believe we're bringing back the bike and ped coordinator to sort of do some of those duties and free up the transportation planner to be an actual transportation planner to serve our ends here.

Next slide, please.

and then so this is something of a pipe dream we hope to incorporate our we hope to have a five-year transportation prioritization or CIP list and we hope to incorporate that in a pending more robust CIP development process which we've been hearing some things about and hopefully we'll be engaging in soon

So the first step in this very, very general future process, and James and I, and utilities, and we've all been talking about the best way to do this, would be the first step is to have NDS and Public Works Engineering and City Manager's Office collaborate on developing an initial five-year transportation CIP outlook.

just here's where we're starting from and then once that's established the transportation planner would coordinate with the MPO and the TGPDC in Albemarle County and monitor continually monitor the impacts to development proximate to the city and how that impacts all these things project managers and the transportation planner would coordinate the VDOT and they look that's both the local assistance program who gives us the funds to make sure we're doing a good job and planning who's doing things like 29

hydraulic and make sure we're inputting all that information to our system.

And then the transportation planner would work with, and it says transportation planner.

If Ben is watching, please don't quit.

We'll figure this out.

But transportation planner works with planners and traffic engineers to monitor private development impacts.

Again, another basic monitoring thing.

According to the project managers, public services, utilities, and update project status and paving list, that's the readiness, whereas what are the other things in the city happening?

And then the transportation plan would update the safety demand readiness, et cetera, into the system.

That's all that data, the loads, the things that gets updated and spit out annually.

So then, I don't know, can you scroll down a little bit, Patrick?

and so all those things will be happening continuously and then that would update the transportation CIP team as we run that system to see how those those rankings would have changed so now you've rerun it based on what we've done and what new data we have and then we use that information to update the one-year and five-year proposed CIP and so we're constantly adding a year on editing years one through four

that would enable us to look out and say, hey, smart skills in two years, we can spend $30,000 now to do a concept plan of X, weigh that against this, and one of these two would work with the timeline of the funding and our priorities.

Yes, so that's an excellent point.

Part of it is as developments go, we update that information.

Yeah, I think that fits in with that annual cycle.

Well, annual cycle is going to be looking at development activity, but that's part of the duty of our transportation planner and overall our planning team in

Other questions on this?

Do you have any more material?

I'd like to go around the room then.

No questions, but it's good to see if there's a process evolving.

Mr. Hibab.

One question, but it's good to see that there's a process.

You picked up that basically a lot of the information we presented is about the different data sets that are coming into that prioritization process.

So I think part of the answer is going back to those data sets and seeing are there ones that specifically are picking up things like park access.

Connectivity access were kind of big picture themes in each of those.

But I don't remember which things we were focused on in the data set.

A lot of this stuff is proximity based.

Right.

And actually, you know what, one place where it does pop up is one of the major data sets that we have access to is walk score and bike score data, right?

So if you go back and look at, go right on the web and see what goes into walk score, for example, it is a lot about those types of destinations.

So places that score a higher walk score, it's based on those destinations.

Ms.

I don't have any questions.

Mr. Schwartz.

No questions.

Yeah, great to see a process evolving.

This all makes a lot of sense.

I think like getting all these inputs in makes a ton of sense.

And there's going to be a lot of like, kind of subjectivity in the weighting of things.

So I'll be interested to see what that is.

I guess my question is like, what's the deliverable you get from these guys?

Is it like a software tool or like a spreadsheet to

Yeah, so I'm not really sure exactly.

I mean, my understanding is it is, in fact, a spreadsheet.

Right.

And one of the things we've talked about and shared with the consultants is that

Our intention is to be fully transparent in the data sources that are going into this, right?

So when this is out there, someone is interested, well, how did we arrive at this set of prioritization?

The data will all be available, and right there, one will be able to actually see, trace back what's in there and how it arrived at where we are, which is we've had a number of discussions with the consultants.

We haven't dug into all the data, but on a couple of the data points,

We've really asked them to kind of dig in and test their assumptions and make sure we have something that's going to stand up to public scrutiny.

Also part of that is having something that we can use means that we can also change it for the future.

Two things about that.

One is that this is just a tool, so if we're transparent about it, there's no reason we can't say, hey, number four should be number three at any given point, you know.

The other part is step two of this process was them evaluating our internal capacities, what they called it.

So they looked at the GIS staff we have available, the systems.

It's a GIS-based product.

So the understanding is that they're going to make it for us, we're going to shake it down and make sure we're happy with the priorities, but we should be able to operate it and we should be able to change it if need be.

So the idea is that it's flexible.

Yep, awesome.

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of this

The inputs are up on the open data portal already, so any new things that aren't like census or whatever, it would be nice to get those up and to get the actual database, whatever format it is, up on the internet.

It was before your guys' time, I guess, but we had a consultant give us an entire zoning ordinance and an uneditable PDF that Lisa Robertson had to retype by hand to make any edits to.

Mr. Palmer, are you already doing this?

I don't have any questions.

I would say in that first box, you know, you could add UVA as well to your approximate development.

Thank you.

Speaking as a GIS professor, I love this to death.

This seems very reasonable to me.

Parking, I know quite a few of our projects recently have died because of parking concerns.

I firmly suggest that you consider parking management.

in how these projects are considered.

No off-street parking, I would argue, is the most desirable with unpriced being the least desirable because we can see surprises with that.

They can kill projects.

Also, I don't know, has the equity team talked to you about this?

We have not, no.

So again, we want to bring equity probably at the end, or at least incorporate it without, because the consultants said they factor in equity.

And I said, there's no way that I'm coming here and said, don't worry, the consultants have already dealt with equity.

Fantastic.

Yeah, that's correct.

I guess I'd say you mentioned census tract data is too coarse.

I shouldn't have used a specific term like tract.

I don't know the difference between tract and block, to be quite honest with you.

But no, if there's data out there, I was not aware of that, but those are the kind of things that we could, if there's already, again, as an engineer, give me a map with scores, then it can be anything, and we'll turn it into, you know, meaningful information.

So if there's something out there, we'll certainly incorporate that.

So that was in the comp plan?

Okay, I think you mentioned that.

Other questions and comments on this?

Do you have everything you need?

Thank you very much.

Are we feeling good?

Climate Action Plan.

Let's talk about it.

I think we've got people on Zoom.

True?

technical issues.

Thank you for bearing with us.

Hello.

Hello, Planning Commission.

And thank you for accommodating us in a virtual manner since we were with the Tree Commission earlier today.

Are you still with us?

I'm still with us.

You guys can hear me now, too?

Okay, great.

Excellent.

All right, so we can, I guess, just dive on in.

Yes.

Is this any better?

Not really.

Give me one second.

There you go.

I didn't change a thing.

You guys can hear Rita now, right?

Oh, you just moved back.

Move where you were a few seconds ago.

Is this better?

Apologies to the public.

And while Susan's

taking care of some of the audio pieces.

I did want to thank the Planning Commission for making time for us on your agenda now.

We know that a number of you were able to attend the presentation to City Council earlier in October, and so the slide deck that Susan's going to go through real quick is a different set of material.

Susan, are you able to hear us?

Okay, I think you can launch right into the slides and the presentation.

Okay, yeah, I'm actually hearing what you already said.

I think there's a delay.

All right, it's gonna be interesting.

Okay, so

I'm sorry, I'm getting an echo where I'm getting everything like a minute or two delayed coming through.

Am I in real time right now?

Yes.

Okay.

I hope so.

All right.

So apologies for the confusion.

This has not happened before.

I'm not sure what's going on with the technology tonight.

So as Crystal said, we have

We were presented at the city council meeting on October 3rd's work session and many of you were able to attend.

As such tonight, we put together a shortened slide deck that goes over some of the key structural pieces within the climate action plan document.

And then it is aiming to give you kind of that foundation piece and stuff that we have found has not always been

fully understood about how we see the document being structured and its things throughout the time.

And so we are going to go over those pieces and then basically hand it over to you guys for discussion.

So I'll do that.

I may have to pop back out and back in because I am still getting that feedback loop, but I think I can at least get through my presentation piece first.

And then Crystal can field a couple of questions while I dial back in.

So next slide, please.

So with this, I am the Climate Protection Program Manager.

Crystal is our Environmental Sustainability Division Manager.

We're both located within the Department of Public Works.

The city's climate program was actually established back in 2008 as a result of the city committing in 2006 to the U.S.

Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement.

That agreement committed Charlottesville to reducing greenhouse gas emissions community-wide.

There are a number of actions at

followed after that.

And then in 2017, the city recommitted to climate action through the global covenant of mayors for climate and energy commitment.

This commitment also has reiterated the greenhouse gas emission reduction piece.

It added on climate adaptation as well to what our commitments are.

So that connection of reducing emissions to help limit the effects of climate change and then adaptation recognizing we already are seen changes

and that we need to adapt as a community to be able to weather those better.

Next step, please.

So when we talk about where our emissions are coming from, especially if we want to reduce them, about 95% of the emissions are coming from within the community and only 5% are from within our municipal operations.

When we look into what that is within the community, that's about 30% are coming from heating, cooling, empowering our residential buildings.

about 30% is from heating, cooling, our commercial buildings, and about 30% is from transportation.

And that's all transportation, motorized transportation that's on our roads.

In regards to about 5%.

And then, as I said, the other 5% is the municipal section for that.

In 2019, our city produced just over 300,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

which is roughly equivalent to driving 745 million miles in an average combustible engine vehicle.

Within these emissions, I also want to note that this does not include emissions from Albemarle County or the University of Virginia.

They both calculate their own inventories and have their own climate programs.

Next slide, please.

So when we look at how we can reduce our emissions, there's two different goals that the city has adopted.

One of those is a 45% reduction by 2050, or sorry, by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050.

These goals are both community-wide, so they have to apply to both our municipal operations as well as all of our homes and businesses.

These goals are comparable to the goals that are adopted by peer communities around the world, around the country, and also around our state.

They are aligned with federal government reduction targets and are based on guidance from the 2019 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Charlottesville does an annual emissions calculation, and then we report this through the platform that is connected with our global commitment.

The platform is called CDP.

It was formerly known as a carbon disclosure project, and when they turned international, they shortened it up to CDP, similar to the way that IBM is now just referred to as IBM.

Having these clear emission reduction goals and doing our annual reporting on progress is critical for us, both as a government and a community, to make sure we're moving in the right direction.

Next slide, please.

So now we've talked about the goals, we're shifting over to the Climate Action Plan, which is intended to lay out that strategic roadmap for how Charlottesville will achieve those reduction goals for the emissions that it measures within its inventory.

What we have within our plan, because we do have our emission reduction goals that are long and far out there in 2030 and 2050, is it's structured by having strategies that are intended to be enduring.

Those are designed to get us to our 2030 goal and position us well for our 2050 goal.

The key actions, which each strategy has a set of key actions associated with it.

The key actions are dynamic.

They are meant to be completed and crossed off with new action items being added over time.

The actions are also near term objectives for us to deliver upon, and they are intended to be completed within the next one to three years.

Additionally, throughout the planning process, we kept a close eye on guiding principles.

When we speak about guiding principles, these are reflections of values that we heard from our community, as well as ways of how do we make sure that as we're implementing and moving into the implementation stage, our plan can be successful.

The guiding principles that came out of our development process are effectiveness, affordability, equity, and inclusivity.

Next slide, please.

So in terms of what's next,

After the council work session at the beginning of October, they indicated they wanted to see the plan brought through to the adoption process as quickly as possible.

When I say the adoption process, that is to adopt the climate action plan as an amendment to the comprehensive plan.

So in order to do that, we are currently slated for the December 13th meeting.

That would be a public hearing.

And in order to prepare for that, we have asked community members to submit any comments input that they have both on the plan document, but also we'd like to hear from people about how they'd like to see us move this board and how they see that they could have a role and that we could help support them.

We've asked for those comments through tomorrow.

This is intended to be a living document, which means that the climate action plan can be updated over time.

We have put in there at least an every five-year update, noting for a comprehensive update for it to be done within three years so that it is then ahead of the next comprehensive plan update.

But then also annually there will be progress updates and that could be a time where adjustments can be made, any key actions that have been completed can be crossed off.

And if there's ones that are reasonable to add in as next steps, that would be the time that we're anticipating that happening.

So what happens after the adoption process?

We are already starting to have some of the conversations around implementation and moving into implementation.

We will be developing more measurable success indicators, working with interdepartmental coordination, developing work plans, and then pursuing funding and financing to support the actions within the Climate Action Plan.

Additionally, because we've had a climate program ongoing, and this has been a very important topic for both within the government and within our community,

It may not surprise you that there are some studies and other information gathering activities that have already begun.

The gas utility decarbonization study is one, as well as the transit alternative fuel switching study and an uptown downtown corridor study on organics collection are a couple of examples.

The things to the right of that dotted line on the screen, those are other things that our climate program does.

So I wanted to emphasize that within the city's climate program,

It has a bigger scope than just what this climate action plan is.

This climate action plan was directed and scoped to focus on how the city can achieve the greenhouse gas emission reduction goals that it has adopted, which are centered around the emissions that we measure within our greenhouse gas inventory.

Next slide, please.

So in regards to the types of feedback, just to give you a flavor of what we've gotten, we've gotten comments that are very supportive of the plan, that speak to its thoroughness, its comprehensiveness, that it's well-researched, and that it lays out a lot of complex context for how these decisions and choices moving forward are set.

We've gotten the majority of comments are actually focused around ideas for implementation, as well as people starting to think through about challenges in the implementation stage.

So while that content is what comes after the adoption of the climate action plan, when we are then implementing the climate action plan, we're actually very heartened to be getting this sort of feedback now because it verifies for us that the climate plan is written in such a manner that it's achieving the purpose it's intended to.

It is giving that steering direction and pointing people in our community to start thinking about how do we get to implementation, how do we achieve these key actions, and what are those strategies of where that attention needs to be focused on.

A couple of other types of comments we've gotten in speak to strengthening some of the existing language that's in there.

There have been some clarifications needed around items where people have been confused about something or it was actually located in a different section of the document than where they were looking for it.

There are items that we got during our public engagement part that do go beyond what the greenhouse gas inventory is.

And so we acknowledge what these are.

These are activities that are important globally to climate change and climate action, but they do not necessarily fit within this document.

Those are things that the climate program and its other activities could be working with folks on.

They are also things that community members and organizations can pursue on their own.

And then additionally, the last piece is more on we've gotten some requests for more closely targeting or focusing language that we have in the document in some certain places.

These situations tend to be where we've written something with a broader umbrella so that it can support multiple types of activities and focuses.

And the request that we're getting is to call out specific uses.

So as we consider those sort of requests, we need to make sure that we're looking at not tightening up the language so closely that it ends up accidentally then not supporting other things that it otherwise could.

Next slide, please.

So I'm going to do a really quick overview of what is in the plan content review.

You all got a copy of the slide deck where we went into this in more detail earlier in October, as well as links to the plan.

So I won't go into, this won't take too long, but just as a brief overview.

Next slide, please.

So within our climate action plan, it's structured where the first three chapters are really preface and introduction.

These are the background information about

how we got into where we were in terms of creating the plan, what that process and engagement looks like, what that targeted scope is for what the plan is focused on, direction that we received from multiple city council resolutions, as well as what the basis of Charlottesville's emissions are, some high level scenarios for those, and looking at the different types of option that a very sort of generic high level for reducing emissions in the community.

When we get into chapters five through nine, that's where the meat of the strategies and the key actions are.

And got a list there of the different types of focuses that we have for those within the document.

One thing to note is that within each of the sections, we do have equity considerations listed where appropriate.

We also have sub goals for that.

And we've identified where there's connections over to climate adaptation.

The climate adaptation planning process is happening separately from this document.

We have gotten through our climate risk and vulnerability assessment, and then the adaptation planning piece will begin this coming year.

So we do recognize there's a connection there, and particularly in regards to co-benefits and being effective and efficient with how we are prioritizing action, noting where we can achieve emissions reductions and also make our community more resilient for adaptation is an important connection to draw there.

In regards to supporting next steps and guiding future action, because this is a plan that is supposed to inform both government and community action.

We've spoken to this in chapters 2, 4, and 10.

There are project and resource means, alignment, a chart for the zoning alignment, and then providing guiding directions in terms of those values, those guides for action, and speaking to community engagement and really how to do that inclusively.

There's also information about how the plan can be accountable and involved over time.

And lastly, we included resources in here because this can be a very technical topic.

And so we wanted to have references for people that help them understand, number one, if there were terms they didn't understand.

But secondly, we included some fact sheets to help explain some of the considerations that then go into these policy and strategy and action choices that we have in front of us.

Next slide, please.

Specifically in regards to the zoning code update and alignments with that, I figured this is pieces that you guys would be most interested in.

And so the next two slides are really just the table that we have in the plan.

These are the items all there.

You can click forward to the next slide or two.

I put these on the slide deck not so that we can read through them all or I would read through them all for you, but if we wanted to go back and all look at the same thing on screen at the same time, they're easily accessible here in the slide deck.

And then it's two slides for the chart.

And then after that, it's going over to discussion.

Crystal, I need you to take the discussion.

I need to pop out because I am still, if I unmute my speakers, I'm hearing myself speaking two slides ago.

Okay.

All right.

Well, thank you for sticking.

Yeah, so, I mean,

Perfect.

Thank you.

Sure.

So the objective here is to reduce our natural gas consumption.

Back when we were

We had two specific actions.

One was to end the subsidies for new natural gas hookups.

I think Mr. Grove mentioned earlier today that we did 185 natural gas hookups in the last year.

But we also subsidized.

did it for free on a city's dime, 127 natural gas hookups.

So I pushed to end that so that we no longer subsidize natural gas hookups so that either the developer or the end user would have to pay for them.

The other thing that I pushed for was to bring an end to hooking up new residential developments.

The zoning rewrite will incent

and drive higher density and will instead drive more construction.

Under the current practice that we have, that means that it's also going to drive new natural gas hookups, again, inconsistent with our desire to decrease or end our natural gas consumption.

At the urging of staff leadership,

I backed off a while.

Staff leadership wanted to wait for the results of the decarbonization of gas study, gas utility study, with the objective of understanding the viability and efficacy of electrification and alternative sources.

Based on the feedback that I got last night at the council presentation, I believe that

by early summer.

So by early summer.

So I'm willing to cool my jets on pushing for that until then.

But the second that study's out, I think we're going to learn that the end of gas hookups to new residential developments is going to be important to achieving that objective.

And I think an end to subsidizing any new natural gas hookups would be of great value.

So we want to revisit the questions that I asked earlier.

And again, if we don't have an answer yet, just begin thinking about that.

On page 75 of the stamp report, the lengthy written document, it is mentioned that there are legal issues associated with ending new natural gas hookups.

I'd like to be certain that we understand what those legal issues really are and understand if they really exist.

And the other thing is, and Jim, Mr. Vries, you can help me if I misread this, but I didn't understand how CAT was impacted by ending new residential natural gas hookups.

I pass that question on to Susan.

I think I got the two questions.

One had to do with a reference to legal issues related to ending new natural gas hookups, and that is the topic of legality is actually part of the scope in the decarbonization study to really nail down.

If so, what are they and what are some strategies to address those?

I think that staff at the time of the writing of this report didn't feel comfortable

making a conclusive statement about the legality issue.

And then the other question was, how is CAT impacted by changes to residential natural gas hookups?

And often our reference to natural gas hookups have been more broad, not specific to a sector.

If there were changes to natural gas service to the residential sector, then that wouldn't necessarily impact CAT.

However, one thing I can't speculate about tonight is if there were significant changes on the residential service side, what would that do to overall natural gas rates?

So those are all sort of scenarios to be explored through this decarbonization study.

I am willing to wait before I push again, but I think that the, to be redundant, I think that the continuation of hooking new residents up to our natural gas infrastructure is just inconsistent with our objective.

Mr. Buffett.

Thanks.

I just want to underscore Commissioner Hosea's natural gas fill point.

Maybe we can even put extra money on it so people won't do it.

Yeah.

The second thing I wanted to say was I think you just presented the true commission, and they had their set of comments that I have a copy of, and I'll just announce them to the meeting here.

Adding a fact sheet possibly for the natural environment as part of the fact sheets.

in the Climate Action Plan since the natural environment comes up a lot throughout the rest of the document and is an important factor in reducing greenhouse gases.

Possibly establishing a minimum tree canopy or other shade cover for new parking lots or incentivizing conversion of existing parking lots for shading and requiring the use of permeable surfaces where feasible.

updating code standards for trees and property developments and adopting practices to ensure the preservation of tree canopy when making decisions regarding density, utility lines, fire emergency response, et cetera.

And I think on page 80 they had a suggestion on adding protect land-based carbon sinks, trees, plants particularly, and use already degraded land for development.

So we don't have a lot of land left over in the city anyways, but just adding value to trees that are already sequestering carbon.

The last thing I wanted to ask, this is a question on the energy code.

I believe the fans probably know, but 30% of residential and we have 30% commercial use and a lot of that energy use is heating and cooling.

The short answer to that is we are not allowed to require things above and beyond or different than what the state code is.

We have to follow that.

Where we do have some leverage and we try to identify these and really target them with the key actions is if there is an additional benefit or an incentive that the city is putting out.

Zoning benefits are one type of these.

Funding benefits are another.

the city that has leveraged because those are those are not just your bi-right typical building code standards there's additional benefits that are there and so additional conditions can be added when you look through our key actions keeping in mind that they are meant to be completed over the next one to three years so they all do not have to happen at the same time there are places where we identify a key action to develop recommendations and then there's a subsequent key action that says adopt and integrate them into

our zoning code benefits into funding priorities, things like that.

And so that was our way of trying to still put that leverage in place while we cannot move or change what the state building code is.

There are some things that are us as this where the city coordinates and works with other localities and partners across the state that are looking at being part of that conversation that's happening at the state level.

Thank you.

A small follow-up.

I think that's somewhat of a process question that I would defer over to James and Missy on for that.

You know, I think there's the potential there.

I think we have a certain degree of leeway with conditions to do something along those lines.

I feel like I want to look into that some more.

Particularly, we should be drawing a connection.

The conditions that we're imposing should connect back to the purpose of the special permit to begin with, the impacts of the proposed use or whatever.

So it can't be kind of an arbitrary condition.

I think you're on much stronger ground on the on the critical slopes potentially and I I think that's one that we could look into given the fact that you know the critical slopes that that entire ordinance is written around the concept of of environmental benefit of critical slopes and how is a proposed project addressing or improving over those inherent natural environmental benefits so maybe there's an angle there

legislative packet for a number of years, and there are several other communities across the Commonwealth who are interested in that, but there's a much larger community of builders and others who have a lot of influence over whether or not that topic moves forward.

Thanks.

I appreciate the amount of work that's gone into this report.

I'm working on the same sort of thing for my organization.

However, I think that in focusing solely on energy efficiencies related to new construction, this plan misses the mark in recognizing the role that historic and existing buildings play in a more sustainable future for Charlottesville.

The plan mentions land use and planning.

as an important tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

However, absent from the plan is the role that our existing buildings play, the embodied energy that's inherent in a building that doesn't require a ton of new materials, the carbon footprint of new construction, which means resource extraction, shipping and transportation,

That's not always considered, plus landfill, that's not always considered in new construction, however those things exist in our existing buildings.

The greenest building is the one already built.

Additionally, building stock plays an additional role in our affordable housing picture as we know and we've learned that it's virtually impossible to build affordable housing without deep subsidy.

So historic buildings are inherently affordable in a way.

New construction also contributes, as I said, to waste going into landfills.

So really, I'd like to see goals and sub-goals in this document that speak to the value inherent in our existing buildings.

These would include things like disincentives for demolitions, incentivizing retaining existing buildings.

We have these things in our

comp plan, and so there's a lot of crossover between those shared goals.