Planning Commission Meeting   4/11/2023

Okay.

That might be easier.

24 by 30.

I think we're ready to do some pre-discussion.

I hope you're ready.

I hope you have some pre-discussion energy.

I don't.

I have nothing.

I would like to look at the agenda.

Maybe we'll get home early.

It could happen.

Now we're due.

So consent agenda, I've got not much on there, plus minutes.

Ms.

Russell, would you be willing to make a motion on that?

Thank you.

Only one public hearing, CDBG and home.

Historically, this is very boring, but I think we lost our CDBG manager this year.

Is that true?

Mr. Warren.

And we love him.

Very good.

Well, you know.

Yeah, that's true.

Okay.

She's willing to concede affection at this point.

She had a fine job.

Oh, I see.

They're not NDS?

No.

Okay.

Questions or concerns on CDBG?

I guess we're going to get a presentation.

We will get a presentation.

Okay.

I was having a little bit of trouble following that.

Probably.

Historically, that would be accurate.

That's that, so any questions on that one?

There's a couple of those in there, actually.

Ouch.

Questions on that?

We'll be having questions on that.

No action needed, I don't think.

Anything else on JPA?

I think it's straightforward.

Okay.

Transportation updates.

So I have a question for you on this.

How late do you want to go on this?

Because I think you can actually go online on transportation updates.

Is that what you want?

So I feel like we can talk at length about transportation updates, but not necessarily those three transportation updates.

Okay, we're going to focus.

I don't really have a lot on those.

Okay.

I mean one suggestion after Mr. Solla-Yates and I talked about this and Ben and I did as well is that it's a good opportunity for him to be able to introduce himself as well as kind of where the program is right now the program topics that he has as part of his memo

Does this make sense?

It does.

Mr. Schwartz, I'm looking at you.

Yes.

Very good.

Okay, so it sounds like we won't go all night on that.

Is there a possibility we can invite

Okay, cool.

We're working across departments to make sure we have our arms wrapped around all of that.

Yep.

Cool.

We get a lot of questions about that.

I'm sure you do.

We do.

Anything more about transportation?

I thought we were going to band scooters like parents.

Just around the room, I believe.

Yeah.

Ready to roll.

You have to use your own scooters.

I think I understand the shape.

Zoning, another big topic.

So we have been a little bit busy.

Of course, when we get to the main meeting, we're also going to repeat and continue to invite people to the open houses that are occurring later this week.

So we've been preparing for those activities as well as trying to work through things with the consultants.

So we don't have any new material on that for this evening.

I think 1709 will raise some questions we can talk about in respect to the new zoning, which it might not go to, but I think it does, which we could talk about during 1709 or during.

Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, see?

Table of authority.

Where did you see that?

Someone told me it.

You'll hear more about it later.

Table of authority.

Tell your friends.

Everybody's talking about it.

At the risk of spoiling it, do you want me to say what the table of authority is?

Beyond a phrase that sounds very cool?

It is a bucket.

It is a table that would sit at the beginning of Module 3 of that portion of the zoning ordinance, and it's basically a quick reference table that tells you if I'm trying to do this, who do I go to?

So if I'm trying to do a special use permit, I know that goes to Planning Commission and City Council.

Right?

If I'm trying to get a variance, I know that goes to the zoning administrator and the BZA.

Yeah.

I hope that didn't take the magic out of it, but that's all it is.

It's still magic.

That is, that is cool.

I thought it was.

Yeah.

Well, right.

I was going to say that the zoning ordinance will have a definition of each of those entities within it.

So you can go and say, well, I don't know what this is, the BZA, and you can find that, what it is.

But, yeah, to contact them, you still have to.

Maybe we want to check back on process for housing this evening.

Alex, I know that we received two presentations, so

Okay, so it's just one presentation and Patrick, you've got it straight with Patrick?

Perfect.

I think that's all I have on my list.

Any other issues you'd like to raise at this time?

I received an email from Mr. Habab about a possible joint work session with the Albemarle County Planning Commission that I'd like to follow up with staff about.

I think the comp plan says we have to do it yearly and they've been snubbing us for a while.

Yes, that's true.

A good reminder.

And my sense is that Chair Claiborne understands that this is a priority and it will benefit the region.

I have a piece of paper in my hand called resolution approval of the 2023-2028 five-year consolidated plan for the Thomas Jefferson Area Home Consortium and the fiscal year 23-24 annual action plan for the city of Charlottesville with two paragraphs of text that you might hear later.

Any additional questions for staff on the agenda for tonight?

Not on the agenda, but are we moving back into City Hall next month?

So we, I don't know about moving.

I know that on the agenda for Council next week, they are removing measures that have been in place concerning COVID.

which will change some of our logistics.

People won't have to sign up in order to come to our meetings and go through those processes.

At this point in time, I'm not aware of a move.

So as soon as we see what those materials look like,

Is that what we're calling that time period?

Well, Ante before.

Andy Pandemonium as opposed to Andy Dalvin.

Maybe.

Historians will figure it out.

Any additional questions on the agenda?

I would also consider a short break.

Please.

So as I'm walking down West Main Street today, there are a lot of trees that have a heap around them.

You know, staff know what's, are we about to lose a bunch of trees?

I can speak a little bit to that.

We've lost a couple of trees.

If you walk by the fountain, you'll notice that there are a number of trees that have been taken down over there.

I'm talking about the mall.

I'm talking about West Main.

I did talk to Steve about a month ago that he mentioned some tree work on West Main.

I don't think they're taking down any on West Main.

The ones we took down were on the Mall.

Are you now on tree condition?

I don't know anything about it.

Wise.

Additional questions about the agenda or related issues?

I'd also entertain an idea for a short break.

Resuming at 5.30 p.m.

I see 5.30 p.m.

Welcome all to the, oh boy, May 11th, 2023.

Is it April?

I'm pretty sure we're still April.

April, very good.

We're up to a great start.

April 11th, meeting of the Charlottesville Planning Commission.

I would like to start with Commissioner Reports.

Yes, let me gather my notes.

May.

The first was with Parks and Rec.

They are as busy as always, but there were a couple of things that I thought I would bring to your attention.

There was a presentation by Y Street, and that's a youth engagement group that is based at CHS, and I think they may have other affiliates throughout the state of Virginia.

and they did a wonderful little presentation called Share the Air.

The objective is to be 100% tobacco and vape free in all outdoor spaces, all parks, all public spaces.

And I sent you guys the presentation that talks about that.

There are a number of localities that have joined their campaign

It will be voluntary wherever they do this by any location that does this because the Dillon rule does not allow us to say you got to mandate that all public parks be tobacco and vape free, but you got to have the presentation on that.

We talked about the budget submission.

I've sent you guys the presentation on the budget submission as well.

Mr. and Bob, we were unsuccessful in getting the invasive species, our line item added.

It's not going to make it this year.

So we shall fight again next year for that.

Just a note about staffing.

We are at least 12 FT's down, full-time vacancies, that are vacant.

And we're working to fill those.

It's been quite the effort.

We are getting ready to open the pools in the very near future, and we're a little short, well, we're a lot short on lifeguards, but we have a mitigation plan.

It looks like we are going to outsource or contract out the support for the honesty pool, and we will then directly staff Washington Park and Smith pool with our own people.

Lots of other things going on, but I sent you guys a minute, and I sent you guys all the PowerPoints that were done there.

The Lupec group met recently as well.

There were four different conversations that were there.

The first was managed by UVA, and it was talking about transportation around Fontaine.

The traffic will continue to grow as we continue to build out that area.

It will be intensified by the onboarding of the biotech building that is on the way.

UVA has undertaken an analysis that assesses what a full build-out would look like by 2025.

It's going to be pretty busy out there.

They walked us through a pretty in-depth analysis of their data, and there's a little back and forth between UVA's data and

and VDOTS data, but we're working through that.

But again, you guys have the PowerPoint presentation on that.

I'd ask you to take a look at that because it's pretty detailed, pretty in-depth, and pretty enlightening.

Another conversation was managed by the county, and this was walking us through what their comp plan update looks like.

The tagline for their effort is called AC44.

The goals and themes and objectives and public feedback will be very familiar to you guys when you look at the PowerPoint presentation.

So that's what you guys look at and you'll see.

We've been there, we've done that, and we're going through that as well.

Another presentation was about what they're doing with their ordinance.

They also are redoing, they're modernizing their zoning ordinance.

They're redoing their zoning ordinance.

And they're doing that in conjunction with

and they're attempting to, the last time they updated it was 1980 and there have been 200 amendments to the ordinance since 1980.

The modernization process is really a full-scale rewrite right the way I read it.

And again, the things that they're doing will remind you of the things that James is attempting to do without rewriting, to make it more readable, to make it more user friendly, and to make it more streamlined.

So again, I sent you a PowerPoint presentation on that.

Again, it will look very familiar to you.

The last thing that happened in that meeting was James.

did a helpful job of just updating the members, and again, the members are the county, UVA, Rivanna, Water and Sewage, City, and this one other group that I'm forgetting, the foundation.

Thank you.

Mr. D'Reilly.

Thank you.

First, a question for Commissioner Mitchell.

Did you actually in verb hub?

Used hub as a verb to hub?

Okay.

Yeah, I'm appalled.

Anyway, yes, a few meetings crowded together at the end of March.

First, the CAF committee has been

went through several sessions, a total of four, I believe.

Late March, polishing off the HOPS housing operations funding suggestions, which subsequently went to Council with some adjustments to be made there.

We have just

wrapped up the decisioning on the CAF itself.

We had $1.8 million in requests for $835,000.

and I just got the minutes and memo on that at about 4.30 today for final polish.

And then CDBG, as you know, met and I was moving slow that day and they pointed to chair and we worked through the numbers and allotments last week there.

And I think those are the main things I have.

Congratulations.

Can you speak to that?

Yeah, so the HACC made a series.

So the HACC had its inaugural meeting.

I guess that happened right after our last meeting.

and in that meeting Joy Johnson was elected chair, so the new boss is the same as the old boss.

She was my predecessor.

And she tasked a subcommittee to review module one very briskly in advance of the work session to be held on the 29th, which they did.

We have not adopted new bylaws in the HACC so that the subcommittees officially don't have the power to say this is the product of the HACC.

So until the hack says this is our final product, it's not the final product, but it is, it has been circulated and provided to staff at least.

Can you give us a brief overview?

So wasn't, was not in that, I'm not a member of that subcommittee, but I did read it and essentially it is privilege

affordable housing, much more, you get a very high multiple of density for making things predominantly affordable, three times, four times bonus, and essentially move height another 50% in privilege in most zones and privilege with the privilege of affordable housing.

Thank you.

The brevity is appreciated.

I had two meetings.

The first, the SeaTac, Citizen Transportation Advisory Committee, met March 15th.

We looked at the Long Range Transportation Plan 2050.

I think we just got a review of it.

We reviewed the website for that as well.

The Climate Action and Equity

are now, instead of being kind of standalone chapters of that, are interwoven into all the other sections.

That's the big update on the long-range transportation, the Rivanna River pedestrian bridge.

We also received an update.

Now it's because of the design that was chosen, it's entirely in the county now instead of being county and city.

and TJPDC applied for a raise grant to complete the engineering for the bridge, which we hope will reduce the contingency and make it more feasible for the next round of smart scale applications.

Safe Streets, we got an update from Safe Streets for All.

We were awarded about $850,000.

I think we'll probably hear a little bit about that later in the evening.

And that will go to complete the comprehensive safety action plan.

for this region, the goal of which is to prevent roadway deaths and serious injury.

The second meeting I had was the Tree Commission, met April 4th.

Looking at the downtown mall trees that were cut down, I believe two benches have been created and are being tested from the lumber from those trees.

The other thing is we still need to figure out what to do with the tree stumps.

We also received a presentation by Mr. James Fries on Module 2.

The Codes and Practices Subcommittee of the Tree Commission is going to be reviewing that and submitting its comments.

We discussed best practices to measure existing trees for that tree removal permit.

I think there might be other ways that would be better to do that that people were suggesting.

And possibly we discussed that fines from the tree removal permit or people violating that could go into a tree fund.

and we learned that module three is going to have some flexibility in the setbacks, for example, and language like that to be able to save some trees that would apply to module one.

And the last thing I have from the tree commission is that the city did its first controlled burn, which is a good thing.

I don't think we've had one or it's been forever since we have.

Thank you.

Ms.

I unfortunately missed the April 6 TJPDC meeting.

I'm looking through the agenda packet and it looks like there was a report on the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO, sort of like it's called the Unified Planning Work Program presentation and it's both a summary of some of the big projects

that have been ongoing, like SmartScale and BikePed and regional transit planning, and then potentially a look ahead at the next fiscal year.

Thank you.

So I attended the BAR meeting last month.

The only thing of interest was a proposed hotel at 843 West Main Street, which is one of the empty parking lots next to the standard.

And I guess what's just interesting about it is that it's

It has a 15 to 20 foot setback to try and create a nice upper plaza in front, which it'll be interesting to see how that works with our future zoning code.

As well as there's going to be a lot of discussion about how the back works.

It's currently following the regulations for bulk plane, but it is sitting really high above West Haven.

So there's some community feedback about how can it be less on the wall.

So that will be interesting to follow.

That was just a preliminary discussion, so nothing set in stone yet.

At the BPAC meeting, a lot of it was a presentation from our transportation planner, Ben Chambers, so I'm sure we're going to probably do similar stuff tonight.

And then I just wanted to disclose that I did meet with two representatives of Livable Seville, just to close some of their concerns.

Yeah, so let's see.

I had a meeting of the city manager's downtown mall committee last Thursday.

We received a very interesting presentation from Beth Meyer from the architecture school at UVA about sort of the history of the mall, Lawrence Hoppern's vision for the mall, and the 2008 plan to redo the mall, and how some pretty radical changes were proposed,

kind of fought back, and we kept their brick size, there were some changes to the tree grates that are problematic, and a variety of other issues about cafe space being privatized, predates that, and lack of seating, and other changes from the original vision in the mall we see today, and we'll be discussing

more about that and how to remedy those problems over the coming months.

I was supposed to be at an MPO tech meeting that I also missed, so I also can't tell you about the Unified Planning Work Program.

I need to catch up on that.

But we also, or they also discussed the moving towards 2050 long-run transportation plan and are starting to talk about SmartScale round six, which will be coming up in, gosh, I guess next year will be applications.

We scored pretty poorly on our Fifth Street application for a low benefit score.

So there's discussion of whether we can rework that project to do better.

the benefit of the project according to the scoring criteria was not high enough.

So smart scale you get all these points for the various benefits and then you divide by the cost.

So in the end I guess you could say the cost was too high or the benefit was too low but

We either need to up those benefits or we can put in local money and reduce that cost to get the overall score higher and get higher ranked in the future.

Things are good over at UV.

I don't know if you've heard of our rebranding.

So that's my big news of the day.

I don't have a whole lot to report, but I did notice that we have several construction projects going on around UVA, which you might have seen.

It was just interesting.

I saw that the Alderman Library seems to be moving along really well.

That's one we don't talk about too much because it doesn't really, like, impact traffic and whatnot.

But that will be done.

It should be towards the end of 2023, as well as the Contemplative Commons should be, you know, hot on its heels to be done.

That's the one on Emmett Street, which includes the pedestrian bridge across the street there, which would be a nice...

addition to the campus, to Grounds.

And then finally, the data science is really moving along.

They're putting a lot of brick on the building, and that's gonna be a new school for UVA.

I mean, it exists already, but that'll be a new home for that school, data science.

And that should also be done towards the end of 2023, early 2024.

So a few projects that are finally starting to come to the

The final stretch, I'll say.

As for me, I think she was chair at that time, Planning Commissioner Karen Firehawk at Albemarle County.

We put together a talk about climate action planning in the region as part of a larger University of Virginia event.

I didn't send you invitations because it was a very small venue, but it was recorded and I will share out the recording when it comes out.

I think it was productive.

I think it's good for us to be talking about regional climate action planning.

Hopefully it will lead to good things in the future.

At this time, I turn to NDS.

Ms.

I remember reading in the paper this morning concerning funding for that invasive species and so I did clarify with the budget office that council did put that back in the budget so because I was like I saw that this morning I'm like wait a second so while we were in the meeting we clarified that

So we have a lot of things going on right now everyone we have two open houses coming up we have an open house tomorrow evening at Carver from 4 to 7 p.m.

if you're able to attend that'd be wonderful we also have an open house on Saturday in this room

from 10 to 1230.

There's a lot of activity on Saturday going on downtown, and so we're hopeful that some of those events will also encourage folks to come visit us on their way or

after they finish those other events so we've got those opportunities there are some other opportunities that are occurring with our consultants in town during the couple of days that they're here so we'll be focused on module two for the most part during that event but I anticipate we'll get comments and

feedback on lots of aspects of it so definitely anyone in the viewing audience please check those out we'd love to have you come to those events one or the other or both totally your choice

their drop-in with stations for different explanations of what is involved with Module 2.

Again, Module 2 is out for review.

It's available on our website.

Correct.

There's a link that takes you to the CBO plans, and we've had a couple of press releases.

We'll have some reminders going out as the week continues as well.

No worries, no worries at all.

We have a work session scheduled for April 25th.

That is our fourth Tuesday.

We are planning to do a review of Module 2, so kind of a presentation like we did before, and then opportunity for discussion on that as well.

No, you covered just about everything.

Again, encouraging commissioners to come to one or more of the open houses if you're available, and we'd certainly love to have you all there.

And then the other thing is just as we have fallen a little behind schedule on this, we're going to be reassessing our overall schedule and try and provide to you all and to the public and council and everybody our assessment of where we think this thing is going to land at this point.

given where we are now and what additional work needs to happen.

Thank you.

No.

We will not be getting Module 3 this week.

That is one of those things that has fallen behind.

Cool.

Well, I mean, that's safe, but broad.

Thanks.

which basically anything except for CDBG and home you are welcome all right so we're going to handle this the way that we handle this typically we are going to open up to our in-person audience first to provide comments everyone has the opportunity to give three-minute comment

then we will move to our virtual audience where if anyone is interested in our virtual audience and participating please raise your hand or hit star nine and we will call on folks in order there and we will alternate between in-person and our virtual audience until everyone has had an opportunity to speak

We do have a public hearing that's scheduled to start at 6, but we are still waiting on quorum.

And so we'll see how many speakers we have and kind of work through that.

But we'll start with our in-person audience.

prepared comments and prepared just shortly ago so haven't even had a chance to read through them in time now I know how to walk my dog and I know how to plant trees so speaking about module 2 division 4.11 outdoor lighting is way outside of my lane

There are good model lighting ordinances available that we can adapt for our locality.

Lighting codes known to work well for decades.

There are detailed lighting recommendations from the Illuminating Engineering Society to provide a further guide.

There's local expertise and interest from architects,

from lighting designers, environmentalists, and others to write a new ordinance that serves our community well.

Artificial light at night is an issue, especially for its longer-term impact on our environment, on our health, and it can be ameliorated by good lighting.

The draft lighting ordinance and its gaps in simplicity turns back the clock to the 1970s.

It's a step backwards from the existing lighting code.

It is professionally and legislatively naive.

It has no basis in the national standards that VDOT follows.

The basic principle is simple.

Use the right amount of light only where needed, only when needed.

Lighting affects health.

Lighting creates serious environmental issues.

LED technology has made light cheap to produce and spectrally disastrous.

There are good lighting ordinances available that we can use as a guide.

This section needs a thoughtful, professional redo.

All right, we will move to our virtual audience.

Our first person with their hands raised is Genevieve Keller.

Ms.

Yes, I can hear you.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

I'm Genevieve Keller, a city resident.

Hello, everyone.

I'm a former member of this body and I appreciate and respect the time and talent that you each bring to your deliberations.

And I hope that you will take my comment in the spirit in which it is given tonight.

That is to be helpful and to share my thoughts about the recent dialogue around the table.

at your last joint work session I was distracted disgusted and concerned that a commissioner made a comment about a hypothetical arm situation regarding the distance of a setback the comment included a reference to a Maserati driven by a lingerie model there was another comment that referred to a male body part as a descriptive term

This semester I'm working with some extraordinary young women in their 20s who I believe must be reawakening some of my dormant 1970s brand of feminism as they critique writings by men from earlier eras.

And I'm heartened by their concern about the way that women's attitudes, work and roles have been underrepresented, ignored or dismissed in environmental and planning literature.

and at a meeting I attended recently two other colleagues both formerly associated with the city found the commissioner comments offensive also as a person who spent the first half of my career as a community planning consultant I was accustomed generally to being the only woman in the room so I've certainly experienced much worse both verbally and physically than what happened in city space two weeks ago

However, this was never acceptable and it certainly is not acceptable among public officials in 21st century Charlottesville.

The comment made me even more aware that at that meeting there were nine men and one woman around the table.

As the most important land use decision in a century is being made here over the next few months, the major advisory opinion will come from six men and one woman and ultimately will be decided by four men and one woman.

These are decisions that will affect women in many ways and what is most certain is that they will affect the most vulnerable women of all profiles.

young single parents usually women single women living alone often for the first time and aging or aged women on fixed incomes and most often again women who are living alone.

For many women who own their own residence, it is their only or major financial asset as well as their home.

And especially if they are older, they probably were underemployed and underpaid and spent at least some time out of the workforce or working only part time because they were or are caring for children or other family members.

women even today still spend more time in their homes and their neighborhoods because by and large they are our nest makers and our caregivers and they are still exploited, stereotyped and demeaned.

Please be empathetic and aware that words do matter and that words reflect attitudes that ultimately affect policy and ordinance.

All right I will check with our in-person audience do we have anyone else in our in-person audience who would like to speak this evening All right and I'll turn to our virtual audience do we have anyone in our virtual audience please raise your hand or hit star nine six if you're interested in speaking

Thank you.

Sounds like there's no discussion.

I hear a motion.

Do I hear a second?

Second.

All in favor, can I get some thumbs?

I see thumbs.

I believe that passes.

And 6.01, we are almost on time.

At this time, I would like to open a joint public hearing with the Planning Commission and the Charlottesville City Council.

We are indeed.

We win.

This is perfect.

Welcome all.

And I believe Mr. Kofuna, starting us off.

Good evening, commissioners, mayor, and members of the city council.

Tonight, you used to deal with one of our former staff, Erin Attac.

Some of you may know her.

She accepted a job with the federal government last fall.

and today we have somebody in our position, our new grant analyst who will be presenting to you tonight.

Her name is Anthony Juan, so be nice to him.

This is his first, the first time he's appearing before the Planning Commission.

Thank you.

Good evening, Commissioners.

Mr. Mayor.

I would like to bring your attention to a resolution in favor of the current one-year annual action plan for the city CDBG and home plans.

We'll go through a little bit of the background before that.

I apologize for the

multiple versions that you saw there are currently two plans under development one is the five-year consolidated plan that is a much larger document tonight we're going to be discussing the the first year action plan for that which guides the programs that are currently being evaluated and are the subject of the funding recommendations we're going to put eventually before council for approval

I was hoping to get away without this.

So we have the two plans and we have worked together with the staff of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission in developing the larger five-year consolidated plan of which the annual action plan is a part of it.

We are evaluating applications for funding for the two federal programs administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In the memo, there are the two estimated allocations.

We've received initial notification from HUD that we'll be receiving approximately $410,468 for the Community Development Block Grant Program.

and a large allocation of $785,286 for the home program of which the city will receive a share of approximately $98,161 for programs of our choosing.

That touches on the larger home consortium of which TJPDC is the program coordinator so we can talk about that if you have any questions.

The work of the CDBG and home task force is guided by the several documents the city has set out for its comprehensive planning and the specific priorities set forth by city council last September.

We can talk about those.

Next slide, please.

Well, okay, so let me, if we could just go back for just one second, I'm sorry.

So, there are two set-asides in the city guidance for 89,896-51, one for economic development,

which we have included in the funding recommendations that you're gonna be taking a look at a little bit later.

And then another set aside for the public facilities improvements, we did not, the task force did not believe that we received applications that were directly relevant to that so we have held that as a set aside for programs that are currently being researched right now and at which point

the task force will reconvene discuss how we want to use that money to best maximize the impact for the residents of Charlottesville and then we'll be coming before you guys once again and then eventually to council for a recommendation on that okay the next slide please

So the task force meets annually and is composed of members from a variety of different stakeholder groups and their work is to evaluate the application for funding from community-based nonprofit organizations that are related to the key goals of the programs.

Each application is reviewed by staff, which would be me and Mr. Kifuna, for completeness, thoroughness, and appropriateness to the established goals that we have.

And then the task force members then read each of the applications thoroughly and score them on a scale of one to four on each of the 13 evaluation criteria.

You can get a more comprehensive copy of that for you if you'd like to see that.

Next slide, please.

So in terms of the request for funding you have before you, they were broken down into four major categories, CDBG Community Services, CDBG Economic Development, and CDBG Housing Related, and then the fourth category was directly related to our share of the home allocation.

We received seven applications.

The majority of them were for CDBG funding and there was one applicant for the home funding which made that deliberation process very relatively easy.

Two things emerged quickly in our discussions.

One, all of the, it was

agreed upon by all members of the task force that all of the applications received speak to very important community goals, and if we had the capacity and the power to do so, we would fund them all at 100%.

The asks in each category exceeded the amount of money available to us,

made me very glad that I was not on the scoring side and the funding decision side.

We met on several occasions.

We had a very in-depth discussion about each of the applications and how we could best maximize the impact of these very limited dollars.

You can see the different, this slide, and I can get this in bigger detail if you'd like, just kinda outlines what the applications were asking for in each of the different areas.

If you go to the next slide, please.

and again I can get this for you in bigger detail but it was basically decided by the task force and all members were in agreement to fund several of these programs.

We have utilized all the money available to us.

The Charlottesville Critical Rehab Program from AHIP

members could speak to the important work that they were doing.

The Charlottesville Public Housing Association of Residents, the work that they do with their members.

The community investment collaborative, we were very interested to talk through their program and it was decided to fund them as well.

Literacy volunteers of Charlottesville Albemarle, they were funded, the recommendations before you.

and a lot of discussion was made towards the coordinated entry into homelessness systems of care, the Haven and at first the Market Street.

One of the things that was important about the work that they were doing is that they have

various coordinators who intake coordinators to bring people into their programs and they have a hotline but the hotline is not currently funded to be available 100% of the time and so this funding would help them expand the hours to which that's available and the number of people that they can help bring into the coordinated system of care for people with unstable housing currently and then

under the home funding program Piedmont Housing Alliance has a program for permanent and long-term affordable home ownership opportunities and they received the full share Charlottesville's full share as a recommendation but in almost all cases they were less than what the ask was for

We have members of the TJPDC here tonight if we wanted to speak about the larger home program that involves the city of Charlottesville and five surrounding counties, Albemarle, Flavanna, Greene, Louisa, Nelson.

That is a very big thing for me that I was able to say that in order, in alphabetical order, on purpose.

With that, I bring your attention back again to the resolution.

The nature of why we're here today is because we are currently

developing the five-year plan and the one-year action plan.

As many of you know, the commission will take a look at it tonight and recommend changes or revisions and moving this on to a final recommendation by city council, at which point if it is accepted and approved, then it gets submitted to HUD.

The deadline for submission of the five-year and the one-year plans to HUD is May 15th.

With that, I open it to any questions you might have.

Thank you very much.

Questions from the panel.

No questions.

I have served on that task force a couple of times.

I think I chaired it once.

I appreciate the very detailed work that you do, all the stuff you have to comb through, and I do appreciate how you netted it out.

Thanks.

So the way HUD funding, and again, I'm very new to this, so I will allow Mr. Kifuna to correct me on any issue.

The way HUD funding occurs is that they give an initial estimate of funding for the two programs, and then that funding can change at any point

based on HUD's decision, either with warning or without warning, both before and after the official funding agreement is completed.

And so my understanding is that there's always, sometimes there are several conditions, but there's always a condition that if HUD does come in at some point, like with the final official allocation, and they revise the number down, all of the funding recommendations would be adjusted pro rata.

Thanks, perfect.

Ms.

Welcome, first of all.

Thank you.

I guess my one question, so, you know, I noted that Havasat wasn't funded because they would probably be applying to other programs like HOPs.

or BCS?

Okay.

Yeah.

And so just to add on to that, that was probably the longest discussion that the task force members had.

And again, that go back to the initial kind of agreement, point of agreement, that if we had the capacity, we would fund everything.

Thanks.

Thank you.

It appears clear to be.

Thank you very much.

Ms.

Perrier?

Mayor Snook?

No questions, thank you.

I think we're moving into a deliberation.

Public hearing.

Public hearing.

I would like to hear from the public at this time.

All right.

Same procedure that we did for matters from the public.

We will ask our in-person audience if there are any speakers and we'll start there and then we'll move to our virtual audience and we will alternate.

until everyone has had an opportunity to speak.

Everyone will have three minutes to speak.

If you're in our virtual audience and you're interested in speaking, you can raise your hand in the app and or you can hit star 96 and that will raise your hand in the app.

I'm going to ask our in-person audience, do we have any speakers at this time?

Okay, no in-person audience speakers at the moment.

We do have a virtual speaker, Ms.

Conte Moravec.

Sorry.

Go ahead and speak.

I just joined recently, so I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to talk about the

proposal for an eight-story building at 1709 Jefferson Park Avenue, which is on your agenda.

Apologies.

This is the CDBG and home grant section.

Okay.

So, no, I can't speak then.

All right, I'll check with our in-person audience.

No speakers in person.

Do we have any additional virtual speakers?

Thank you all very much.

I'd like to close public comment at this time.

I was so excited about deliberations.

And this is very good work.

Again, I appreciate how you netted out so much information.

I certainly am willing to recommend the council that we endorse the task force's recommendations.

Do I hear a second?

I have to, oh no.

Or somebody has to.

I'll do it.

Resolution.

Approval of the 2023-2028 five-year consolidated plan for the Thomas Jefferson Area Home Consortium and the fiscal year 23-24 annual action plan for the city of Charlottesville.

I make a motion to recommend approval of the FY2324 Annual Action Plan for the City of Charlottesville as recommended by the current CDBG Home Task Force and as outlined in the Planning Commission packet for April 11, 2023 with the following conditions. 1.

I hear a second.

Ms.

So I'm not inclined to second-guess the deliberation to the task force.

Certainly not going to question the administrative overhead in case Mr. Sanders is here.

But I do have some gentle critiques on the process.

So just

for like future years.

I guess one would be that it would just be helpful to have the applications themselves like posted on the internet somewhere if they're not or linked to them.

Maybe not even necessarily that we need to like

We're supposed to read them unless we want to, but just for posterity and be able to reference in the future.

Another is just that the rubric feels a lot like it's judging the wording of the grant, or of the application, the grant writing, rather than

you know the the end thing right like provides a clear description and clearly explains how it will address one or more council priorities and then goes to like adequately explains whereas I feel like it should be like clearly addresses or strongly addresses council priorities or adequately addresses council priorities rather than how well it explained it I think this is the same rubric we've been using for years but probably never said anything before and I

I think that was all I had.

Oh, and then in the minutes, I wasn't sure who some of the abbreviation, the initials were.

Thank you very much.

Additional deliberations on this item?

Ms.

Sure.

Mr. D'Oronzio?

Aye Mr. Stolzenberg?

Aye Mr. Hrabab?

Aye Mr. Mitchell?

Yes Ms.

Russell?

Aye I believe that is passed.

I would like to close this public hearing.

Thank you all.

Everyone on council, you are most welcome to stay, but you are not required to.

You may live your own life.

open public comment period.

I'd hate to exclude members of the public for, you know, process reasons or reading the agenda wrong because it is confusing the whole matter.

Other thoughts on this?

I think that's a good idea.

Ms.

We have 19 participants.

Well, first of all, I'll continue with our current process.

Just want to, do we have anyone in our in-person audience that would like to speak?

This is on matters from the public.

Okay, not at this time.

And Ms.

Conte Morva, you are noted here for speaking this time.

Wonderful.

Okay, I'm Ellen Cantini Morava from 225 Montebello Circle in the Jefferson Park Avenue neighborhood.

I'd like to say something about the proposal to build an eight-story building at 1709 Jefferson Park Avenue that you're going to hear a pitch for this evening.

This is another example of how developers are scrambling to use the current special use permit process to add height and density to their projects that go beyond what current zoning would allow by right without having to include any affordable units, which they would have to do if the proposals for inclusionary zoning are implemented.

just like the five to seven story high rise at 2005 Jefferson Park Avenue that you all approved last year.

SUPs for extra height, extra density, reduced onsite parking, reduced setbacks and no affordable units.

City planners have been promoting the idea that more density will bring more affordable housing.

The inclusionary zoning analysis posted by the Seville Plans Together team last summer

mentions extra height, density, and reduced on-site parking as bonuses that are meant to encourage developers to include some affordable housing.

But filling the neighborhood up with high-rises comes at a cost.

Adding to the current traffic and parking congestion, loss of tree canopy, and more broadly, loss of a sense of community for residents in our neighborhood.

Why award bonuses to developers without the gain of affordable units that are supposed to be the justification for them?

And thank you.

I'll check our in-person audience one more time.

All right.

And in our virtual audience,

In our virtual audience, Ms.

Thank you.

So my name is Jennifer King.

I live at 221 Montebello Circle, and I'd just like to echo Ellen's comments.

I think she very eloquently presented the point, and there's no need for me to represent, but I just wanted to make sure that it was on the record.

There was another resident in the JPA neighborhood

All right.

We'll check in-person audience.

And I will now turn to our virtual audience.

Is there anyone interested in speaking?

All right, thank you very much, and thanks to all who commented.

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

Tonight, you're having a very preliminary discussion and receiving a presentation from Mitchell Matthews, representing the owners of Neighborhood Investment LLC, is in the early stages of pursuing a redevelopment of 1709 Jefferson Park Avenue.

The site is currently occupied by a four-story apartment building that has eight units with approximately 15 surface parking spots.

and was constructed in 1972.

The applicant is proposing to replace the existing building with an eight story, approximately 70 feet under our current zoning, a residential building that would have 27 units and 23 parking spaces.

to accommodate the development as presented the applicant will need to pursue a special use permit and a critical slope waiver prior to moving forward with an application the developers requested to present the Planning Commission to hear your initial thoughts and to get any feedback within your packet tonight on the last page there are several four different

topics that Planning Commission might want to consider after the presentation.

But again, this is a very, very preliminary.

We have not received an application, so there's nothing been reviewed by staff, not even an application received.

So this is, again, very, very early in the application process.

Before I hand it over to the applicant for their presentation, I'm happy to answer any just general questions.

Questions from the commission on this item?

For staff?

When do they think they're going to want to bring this before the body?

The reason I ask the question is I wonder what zoning would be in place.

You get a good job of outlining what's going to happen.

I have a question.

Normally your staff reports sort of analyze, I think, and maybe I missed this, the proposal to the future land use map.

Yeah, because this is very, we don't have an application to review.

Mr. Stolzenberg?

So what is currently, I'm sorry, currently it's... Currently this is R3.

Another question I had, this might be too early in the process, it might be for the applicant, was the kind of

Additional questions for staff?

So in their presentation, they can speak that to a little bit more.

They're talking about in their very preliminary trying to hit some of that inclusionary zoning, but I think they would still have to use the one FAR.

Okay.

Thank you, Matt.

Good evening, commissioners, members of the council.

My name's Kevin Riddle.

I'm with Mitchell Matthews Architects.

John Matthews is here, too.

We're speaking on behalf of the owner.

And I'll quickly go through the materials that we submitted to you and just discuss a few things, make a brief presentation.

If y'all don't mind, I'm going to dork out and use a laser pointer as well.

Same here.

Patrick, do you have that presentation?

Okay, if we go to the next page.

Thanks.

So this just summarizes the request for the special use permit.

By right, it's an R3 zone, as Matt mentioned, and it's less than a third of an acre.

So by right, we can have seven dwellings on the property.

That's it.

Division 7 of the zoning ordinance, though, allows for up to an 87 DUA, which is what we're seeking with 27 apartments.

Accompanying this, you can request additional height of up to 101 feet.

What we're requesting is about 70 feet, give or take, above the average grade.

The yard dimensions required by Wright, you'll see a little bit more about this later, would significantly limit a new building footprint to less than 40% of the total land area.

And as it happens, the existing building is already, it's kind of nonconforming.

You couldn't build it now by Wright.

So we request yard reductions to support more housing and more apartments on the parcel.

Because of the size and grades on the parcel, capacity to park cars here is pretty limited.

So we're requesting a reduction of about 40% over what the current zoning requires.

We think this is possibly appropriate, though, because this street is not so unlike West Main Street in the corner.

There are a lot of services nearby, markets, University of Virginia.

There's already a lot of people walking here.

And incidence of car use is relatively lower here than it is in many other city neighborhoods.

So now, Patrick, if you could just skip ahead to page 5.

There's more details about our request in those pages, but I thought we could just return to it if somebody has a question about them.

This shows some census data.

You already know a lot of what's here.

Most of the people who live in the neighborhood are very young.

They're grad and undergrad students.

They're renters.

And they're walking and biking a lot.

And the next page, please.

So here we are looking at the site outlined in white dashes here along Jefferson Park Avenue.

Looks like we're losing a little bit of the image, but that's okay.

it's on the west side it's about 300 yards south of the grounds of UVA there's a bus stop that's just a couple of doors down and then within 500 feet of the property are several multi-family buildings that are greater than 40 feet in height you have 106 Stadium Road

you have the South Range apartments associated with the Oakhurst Inn we have this one's called the Jefferson Commons apartment building that's almost across the street at 1620 JPA and then kind of further down this aerial we have a recent project at 1725 JPA go to the next slide please

So here we see a map that's color-coded with the current zoning.

This property is R3.

It's intended for potential multi-family use.

The existing building on site sits rather far away.

Right now it's over 50 feet from Jefferson Park Avenue.

Like many of its neighbors to the south, the deep yard here is surrendered to surface parking with very little regard to streetscape or pedestrian comfort and safety.

Plantings and paths are sparse, asphalt and severe exposure are common.

Several recent buildings on the corridor, though, suggest a potentially better alternative, one with smaller yards, yes, but with walkways, entries connected directly to the public way, and planting beds in place of parked cars.

Among these are the apartment buildings at 1620 JPA.

That has a front yard of about 25 feet.

1725, again it's sort of down here, that has about a 20-foot front yard.

And then directly north of the property is 1707 JPA, built about 15 years ago.

It also has about a 20-foot front yard.

The front facades of the apartments at 1600 JPA up here, the Oakhurst Inn site, those are right on the property boundary in places, practically on it.

So the front yard in this property is somewhat negligible, probably ranging somewhere from, you know, two to eight feet in size.

At 1707 and 1725 JPA, side yards also are less than what is required by Wright.

They are under 10 feet wide.

what you would also notice too if you kind of look at this map slightly expanded is that the property north the one built about 15 years ago as well as the one built just several years ago at 1725 we think they provide a somewhat useful kind of bookend to this property in this neighborhood if you imagine their front yards kind of extending a long

on the other parcels.

We think that makes a slightly better sense, an improved trend here to create a better street wall and to use more of this land to provide more housing.

Now, if we look up at the circle, there are currently two three-and-a-half-story buildings on Montebello Circle.

So it has a few buildings with some height to them.

There's one at 210, which I believe is this property, and then a little out of view down here is one more at 300 Montebello Circle.

Go to the next slide, please.

So here's a map color-coded with the city's proposed new zoning classifications.

CX5 is what currently is intended for this property and its immediate neighbors.

Note that the new zoning is currently drafted would allow an owner to build on more of her property.

It would impose no limit to density and potentially no minimums to on-site parking spaces.

One correction I should note on this slide, in case you all noticed it, before the Module 2 of the zoning rewrite, the draft was published, we had just had a placeholder that included current zoning requirements for parking, the one space for one and two bedrooms, the two spaces for three and more, but we understand that potentially that could be significantly reduced if not eliminated.

And the next slide, please.

This site just emphasizes some areas of denser construction or housing in the city.

The ones in the deep orange are ones that were built by 2011.

The ones in the darker purple were built since then.

And while we have had one recent project at JPA come along at 1725,

and another at 2005 has recently earned approvals there's so much along this current stretch that is a little bit tired a little long in the tooth and it's a place that has potential promise for significantly denser housing which we think our proposal would align with that vision and the next slide please

Here is a Streets That Work slide.

I think the current zoning draft agrees with a lot of this, even though this is an older document.

And we just see here that JPA is a mixed-use B, intended to be.

And that's true, too, of West Main and the corner.

so that the same access to commercial services, to UVA, a lot of walking going on.

It's a very wide, bustling avenue.

We think it's a place where parking reductions would make sense, in short.

And the next slide.

So now we've zoomed in on the site.

This is a survey.

We have Montebello Circle at the top and down below is Jefferson Park Avenue.

We have colored in in this sort of light pink.

This matches what's on the city's GIS map indicating critical slopes on the property.

and the site indeed is unusually steep as you go from Montebello only about 150 feet down to Jefferson Park Avenue you drop 54 feet

There are a few locations that are not coded as critical, but I think those are not naturally occurring flat areas.

Those were just produced when this earlier apartment building was constructed.

This is true of a lot of properties along the stretch of JPA.

There's at least eight or nine south of this one that, if you look at the GIS map, you'll notice they're laced with critical slopes too, and they would really be significantly hindered if some waiver was not allowed.

So we are seeking a waiver in this case.

And the next slide.

Here are some drawings that help you to see what would be allowed under different standards.

So we contrast first what's on the left here.

We have a plan above that survey shrunk down.

And then below we have a cross section cut through the site and looking north toward UVA.

And so the sections below go with the plans above.

and on the left you see by right use.

Basically where you see a white rectangle, that's the area in which somebody could build without seeking any special uses or exceptions.

Over on the right is a different vision for the property.

This aligns with what we have in module one of the zoning rewrite.

So you can see that side yards potentially can be built to and that the built to range at front yards.

This is a double frontage site.

So Montebello is a front yard as well as JPA.

You can see that that range is rather narrow.

With bonuses, you can build 100 feet tall with the zoning rewrite.

But we have this here mainly just to sort of indicate the vision going forward for the city.

It's not that we would be depending on what's currently in the comp plan and the zoning drafts to have a viable project here.

What's allowed with a special use permit process can also be achieved.

And we show that in the middle here.

So we're proposing a 70 foot tall building from the average grade.

and we're proposing five-foot minimums along the side, but you'll see in some subsequent plans that most of the building would actually not get that close to the side yards.

At JPA, we're proposing 18 feet and up at Montebello, we're proposing a 25-foot front yard.

And the next slide, please.

So here are just a couple of floor plans for reference sake to give you some impression of how the building's kind of working with each of its streets so on the left is the entry level off of Jefferson Park Avenue and you can see where most of the parking will be it's under the building it'll be largely concealed from view

We have as well up here what you see in the lighter brown as opposed to the dark black.

Those are just where we're considering having planting beds so that we could have better street trees where there are none now.

In addition to the entry into the parking area, which we'd like to keep as narrow as possible, we have an entry court here and a lobby for the tenants.

Over on the left, we're hoping that we can find space to largely conceal trash bins.

The grades here might assist us so that we could actually kind of submerge those and have them behind site walls or retaining walls.

On the right is the floor plan about four levels up that you could enter the building here from Montebello, up at the top of the site.

We have reduced the surface parking by half of what's there now, but we are still keeping four spaces up here.

However, to improve the streetscape, we are proposing some planting so that we have a couple of medium-sized trees and understory planting on the right side.

We have a covered entry and a walk that leads from a sidewalk that we would also be introducing along with a small seating wall over here.

you can see on the side yards what I was talking about a moment ago most of the building will be 12 feet from the property boundary but it's just up here close to JPA where we are proposing a kind of entry volume that comes up two stories and that gets closer to the street as well as to the north boundary and we believe this is going to have beneficial effects on the massing of the building

so that we can step back the front facade and the corner facades as we go up to the full height of the building on the avenue.

And the next slide, please.

And if you could scroll this one up just a little bit.

This is a section that cuts through the site.

A little map at the top I think explains it.

We're cutting about halfway through the site and the building and we're looking toward UVA and we've extended the section out to show you buildings that are on the other side of the street to give you some impression of what kind of room there is beyond the property.

So with JPA we have an unusually wide right of way.

It's over 80 feet.

And so what would end up the outcome here would be with our proposed front yard we are still over 120 feet from the facade of the 1620 JPA apartment building across the street.

There's also a smaller stone house that's south of Valley Road here.

That's also about 120 feet away or would be about 120 feet away from the facade of the proposed building.

As we go to Montebello, we have a narrower street, but it's also, the street, while it is narrow, you have very different conditions on either side of it.

On the east, on the project side, many buildings are within 25 feet of the right of way, sidewalks are missing, and entry points are often below the street grade.

but on the west side which you get a glimpse of here it's pretty different the buildings sit much higher above the circle usually at least 12 feet above the elevation of Montebello they're also typically about 50 feet away from their property boundary and you notice something in the section here you'll see a little more of later there's a very nice stone wall that runs consistently with a consistent sidewalk there that helps to further define the edge there and kind of perch these properties and retain grades

There's also a lot of plantings on that side.

So there's really kind of a lot of buffers in place on that side of the street currently.

And if we go to the next slide, please.

So the following slides will give you some photographs looking at the site from different angles.

Here you begin to appreciate the grades and existing conditions.

You can see quite a tall retaining wall here on the neighboring property that extends to the southeast corner of the

of our property and wraps around and then you're left with this unyielding apron of aging concrete that's very steep too by the way with no walks I mean you can eventually reach a little stair that's tucked around over here but there's there's no you know legible or inviting connection from the street up to the building as it currently is trash cans are off and out and there are a full two curb cuts even though it's only a 90 foot wide frontage

Go to the next slide.

Here's another view.

This is kind of turning and we're over near where Valley Road intersects JPA.

In fact, this is Valley right here.

Behind us is the 1620 apartment building, 1620 JPA.

You see to the right is the apartment building at 1707 JPA.

and in this slide as well as the last one you can see the building while it is four stories it's also because of its location on the site well up from JPA in fact it's it's well over 20 feet before you get to the terrace on which this building is constructed and the next slide

And now here's a glimpse of a residential project possible with the requested special use permit.

This creates street frontage that is aligned more closely with 1707 JPA and further to itself 1725 JPA.

It allows room for at least two large trees as well as understory plantings, new walks, seat walls, and a concealed trash enclosure.

All of this would replace the deteriorating and daunting slab of parking that currently is occupying the entire front yard.

And the next slide.

Here's the same proposal with some alternative exterior materials.

And the next slide.

Here's another option for exterior cladding.

We're showing these alternatives not so much to have a discussion about them specifically here tonight or look for preferences for many of you.

It's more just to demonstrate that we've been trying to consider multiple options and really kind of work through this design, see what the possibilities are.

We think it's important to test a variety of materials.

and at this point we want to keep a range of colors and textures in play as availability and cost of materials are bound to vary and we just haven't even had the chance yet to narrow down our choices with material samples but we know if the project were to move forward that during the entrance review process we would start zeroing in on these and the next slide this is the site almost directly across the street

We have a building currently there with eight apartments and the next slide.

This is a masonry building to replace it with 27 apartments.

and over to the right you get a glimpse through the tree of the entry lobby which we imagine right now would have storefront would be very visible to the street and from the street into the lobby and up above it's pretty obscure but we have located a study lounge there so this would also be a heavily glazed space with common use and a lot of visibility to the street and the next slide

Again, here's the cooler customer with ribbed and corrugated metal siding and a white gray masonry base.

The next slide.

The aluminum cladding that's mimicking wood.

What we're showing here in the balconies as it might come up, what we're hopeful of doing if the project were to go ahead is to have operable kind of mesh curtains that could be hung there to create screening and privacy and also to be opened or closed depending on the time of day and the tenant's preferences.

And we think this could be a nice way that the facade would be enlivened and would vary depending on time of day and season and the tenant's preferences.

And the next slide.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Actually, can you go back, Patrick?

One more thing.

Sorry, I know I'm going on a little long.

Up here is a canopy where at the top level we step back.

And this is actually a semi-open canopy.

I know you can't quite see through to the sky, but right now we're imagining it having a sort of fine framing and closely spaced kind of metal pipes up there that would allow sunlight to occasionally rake through.

And the change of materials too, we envision no matter what the larger cladding is below, we think will help that upper story along with the step back to recede somewhat and not be as prominent.

And now we'll go on.

We'll go to the other side of the property in the next slide.

We've swung around.

We're up to Montebello Circle.

We see the existing conditions at the other front yard.

So it's pretty tough over here and not tough in a good way.

A lot of parking almost completely in the front yard there.

A little bridge, a meager bridge that comes over.

There used to be a deck out here, but even that's gone now.

No sidewalks, there really are no sidewalks on the east side of Montebello Circle right now And the next slide

Here it is from another vantage.

You see conditions that are typical here.

On the west side, though, you start to see a little bit of what's going on.

You have this continuous sidewalk.

You have a site wall.

You have the yards that begin to slope up where the houses are about 50 feet away and are perched up high.

Also, you have parallel parking on this side, which you don't on the other.

And the next slide.

So here's our vision for this side.

We go to the next slide.

Here's the wood version and the gray and silver version.

And then the last slide.

And here's the last look in brick and metal.

Although we retain half of the existing surface parking, as you can see indicated here, we think this combination of pavers, planting beds, and concrete scored and textured would significantly improve the streetscape.

We propose a sidewalk and a seat wall along about half of the yard.

An entry walk leads to a covered entry point.

and the planting beds would be sufficient to support at least three medium-sized trees as well as a lot of understory planting.

The fourth story you can see steps back rather significantly, about 14 feet from the facades below it.

There's a change in material as well.

Thank you very much.

The three units, the three affordable units, what is your thinking about that and how are you planning to build those in?

That is a good question, and it's one that we're just beginning to think about.

One of the challenges can be with a project like this, since it's probably going to be geared so much to student housing, we kind of continue to wonder.

I don't know if any of you have had discussions or have any insights about

the potential there might be to have kind of an affordable provision that would be geared toward, you know, young people that might be attending UVA that are coming from modest or low-income families.

If there's a potential to have an affordability provision for a project like this one, that's a level to have this kind of demographic.

maybe in need of some additional subsidies, but we care even more about providing affordable housing for the permanent residents of Charlottesville.

So it's something we're going to have to work through.

The tree canopy.

I don't think we're going to, well, actually, I think we might lose, I think there's just one tree, isn't there, of any size that's on the north of the property, close to the boundary with 1707.

So in your survey of two four-inch grape myrtles on the south side, and then there's a 12-inch unknown tree, but it's over the property line.

And then there's that 30-inch deciduous guy.

It's a little further away, but up a little bit.

I guess I'm seeing the 20-inch mulberry.

Oh, you're looking below.

Oh, yeah.

I don't think that one's close enough that it would be affected.

But the one that is up top at what is the northwest corner, the 20-inch mulberry, that one...

Well, that one actually should be fine.

Actually, let me restate that because, yeah, we're going to be potentially having to use retaining walls and grading significantly.

We'll be closer to JPA and about halfway up the site.

As we get up closer to Montebello, we're really not proposing to change the grades very much there, all right?

So where you're talking, you know, right up there?

Yeah, actually, all those trees should be fine.

The 12-inch there.

Yeah.

Yeah, that one probably is far enough down the site that I would suspect its root system would be damaged.

So that one would be lost.

But I think we have the potential here for two new, maybe three new large street trees on JPA and three medium-sized trees up at Montebello.

Just to make your life a little easier, it would be really helpful if you would present a proposal that allows us to break even or at least maybe net up a little bit in the canopy.

Yeah, yeah.

Sideway into the critical slopes.

Again, pay attention to that as you're walking through that and what that's going to do to the greenery and make certain that you can walk us through what you're going to do to mitigate any loss in greenery in the critical slopes.

Well, there is a waterway that's actually rather close by on the other side of JPA.

It's within 200 feet.

So that might be effective.

Yeah, yeah.

In fact, I think that's the thing along with the excess of 25% that triggers the critical slope classification.

And things like nutrient credits, while they're intriguing, they don't help us locally.

That is certainly what Mr. Freeze is trying to point us to, but I still like to be comfortable that there's a good, strong mitigation plan to protect the waterways and to at least net zero on the tree canopy.

Right.

I guess I'll start.

These are kind of questions and comments.

I'm having a hard time separating them.

Similar to Commissioner Mitchell, I like the trees on the street.

I think it's better than what's there now.

More if we can fit them all around the site to break even at least if we can.

The current site is kind of unfriendly with a lot of pavement, so I think this is a good approach that nestles that great change from JPA to Montebello and definitely does a better job for presenting itself onto Montebello than the current.

structure.

And I appreciate the eyes on the street approach.

My concerns are, other than the earlier stated, the other one being the rent, also taking account the existing units.

They're kind of in this old, not very nice looking building.

versus the you're probably going to I'm just guessing it's going to be a higher end potentially rent and just trying to preserve some of that if we can affordability whether for students or if it finds its way into our larger Charlottesville affordable housing funding.

Right.

Right.

Yeah, I believe you're talking about with 1707 to the north.

I think you both probably have windows facing each other.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think that building is 10 feet or so off of its side yard.

So it is a somewhat narrow space, but we realize, too, just for code purposes, as you're aware, that when we're, you know, so close to the property boundary, there are going to be limitations on openings, and they might have to be protected if we go above that.

And actually along that same location, I don't know if it's even possible, but more plantings and or a way for the public to navigate between the upper gathering space and the lower gathering space.

Right, right.

Just to kind of encourage public circulation through.

And materiality-wise, I know we're not really talking about that much now, but definitely...

Brick on JPA's side would be my preference.

Right, right.

And then I had questions on the material at the balcony.

You mentioned it a little bit.

Where do we have that kind of exterior drapery there?

That would be a kind of a metal mesh curtain so it would be durable but also potentially operable.

Thank you.

I was hoping you could help me understand how I'm reading the height and the floors and the stories and then looking at the, you know, proposed future zoning.

So you are proposing an eight-story building.

at 70 feet.

In this future rezoning, that's proposed to be a CX-5, which is max five floors, height 72 feet.

What am I missing in that?

Right.

I don't think you're getting anything wrong.

That is true of the CX-5.

But we're seeking a special use permit based on the current zoning.

so with the current zoning there is not a limitation on stories there's a limitation on height at 101 feet we you know potentially you can consider up to 101 feet in height from the average grade so we're proposing about 70 feet from the average grade and also the reading of the stories of the building I think can be a little bit tricky in that again it is a property that has two front yards

Okay, okay.

Average grade meaning middle.

Yeah, I think on that section, Commissioner Russell, I think I have that dashed in.

It's kind of rough at this point.

It's normally something we would later on have to calculate pretty specifically along with a team of civil engineers to make sure we've got it just right.

And there's a step back at Monticello on that fourth.

Yes, there is.

Yeah, and you can see in the section there.

So at JPA, we have a couple of step backs.

They're modest, but they're not insignificant.

There's the entry volume I mentioned at the base of the building at JPA.

We step back about seven feet to the floors above.

And then the top story, we step back about another five feet, as well as change materials.

on the Montebello side we go up three stories and then step back about 14 feet as well as change material.

So our impression is that on the Montebello side it's creating an impression not unlike a three and a half story building if this had a pitched roof.

You know what I mean?

And there are already a couple of buildings that height on Montebello on this side.

I guess maybe I'm just trying to understand if I guess we don't know potentially if you're asking for more than is in the

bonus scenario in a CX-5 world because we don't quite know where that height sort of thing is going to come in.

But it would be more than seven stories, so maybe I've answered my own question.

It's more.

I don't have any more questions.

Right, right.

Yeah, and we didn't mean to, we don't mean to suggest that we weren't planning on there being that obligation.

It's just not something we've had a chance yet to really kind of consider and include in the presentation.

and that's not to say it's an afterthought.

Yeah, and my concern is

You know, pertinent to our public comment.

Ellen, I think, was her first name.

You know, it's sort of the thing we talked about, density for density's sake is what we want to avoid and impact on our community that it be linked to this thing that we all want, which is affordability.

You know, when we have those concessions for something that's a special use permit.

Thank you.

I don't have any questions.

I do just have a couple comments.

I think I'm going to be paying a lot of attention to how you deal with the streetscape.

What you currently propose has me a little bit worried because it's...

two-thirds parking garage and trash cans and one-third lobby, which I know you're on a really constrained site, so there's not a whole lot you can do.

So I guess just obviously whatever you can do when you do develop this for an SUP would be appreciated.

And just my general comment is, you know, as far as the massing and the height and whatnot, I mean, I realize you're not quite meeting what we're trying to get with the new code, but again, I guess we're not really sure what we're, we're not totally sure yet on that new code, but it's,

it's JPA it's you know this does show what happens when we've got a steep slope and one of the reasons that personally I feel like height is appropriate on JPA at least on this side because you know the impact uphill to the neighborhood there is far less than downhill which so you're

The impact is on the students, basically.

That's where the height's going to be.

It's where more of the students are, and I don't necessarily think that's a problem.

I'm sorry?

Do you want to do anything with that?

You don't have to.

No, I don't think I will, except to say thanks.

Thanks.

Sorry, I may have missed stuff, but where did we land on affordable units?

I thought I remembered in the presentation or in the packet somewhere that it said you guys were going to do the existing 3412, you know, 5% of floor area over one.

F.A.R.

In the early parts of the presentation and the narrative there, maybe there was some language there that we had put into the booklet, but we've been reevaluating that in light of what we see as the vision based on the comp plan and the zoning drafts.

Okay, yeah.

Actually, I guess I'm now realizing it was in Mr. Alfley's staff report, so maybe it wasn't, maybe you guys just didn't talk about it at all.

I think I agree with everybody that...

Yeah, complying with the new thing generally.

And I think we've had vague discussions about a student affordability program, and it seems like we've mostly landed on the idea of enforcing that would be an absolute nightmare.

I mean, to me, something like this seems like why you have an in-lieu payment, because otherwise you're sticking in a bunch of people with a bunch of kids and a bunch of...

units designed for a bunch of roommates, which I think would be fine here, assuming we keep that in the draft.

I think it's just the owner's feeling that it still feels maybe a little uncertain and he'd like to move at a clip at some pace to get this underway and I guess

you know I don't know I mean maybe you guys can can tell us more but we were thinking that between really hammering it out and then potentially there might be some legal challenges you know would the zoning really be in place say is it a year from now is it two years from now

So we're not meaning to kind of jump the gun.

I kind of understand why you're asking that.

We've had the same discussion, like, are these requests going to be effectively obsolete soon?

But we figured we would go forward now just because there are provisions with a special use permit that can allow this building.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think with the specialties permit you can do basically the same as the new zoning probably.

I think, yeah, I think

Mr. Schwarz made some comments on Module 1 about how, like, this, with the ridge around JPA here, it makes sense to spread CX-8 more.

And I, well, I guess we'll talk about Module 1 more later.

And I think this is a site that makes that clear.

So I do want to talk about the couple ways that it seems that you're not super compliant with the existing zoning or the new zoning.

One is the front setback where we are going to institute this build to line of up to 10 feet, right?

Well, there are a couple of things that work there.

I guess we were thinking first for the sake of planning the street trees.

We're not aware that the city has enough ground at the sidewalk with the parallel parking that's common there to plant trees of any significance.

and we thought it would just make for a better entry experience to have a little plaza out there, a place to kind of take a load off where you're not necessarily inside the building.

Maybe meet up with friends who are coming down JPA on their way to classes.

it just felt like a more comfortable distance considering the building you know while not super tall I mean it does have some height to it you know and it is coming closer to JPA than the existing building and it also seems to make a certain amount of sense for it to be somewhat close in its yard depth to what is on the neighboring property at 1707 that feels like a somewhat comfortable yard for a building that's you know more than three stories tall

Yep.

I mean, that's pretty logical.

Gives me some stuff to think about when we think about the new zoning.

You probably have a kind of an outdoor space requirement, too, that would presumably have to get carved out.

It could maybe happen at Montebello, but

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't want to lose all the street trees, and you're right, the right-of-way is kind of constrained there.

I don't know.

I'd have to think about it.

And then I think I also agree with Commissioner Schwarz's comment about kind of the front and how it's kind of this gaping maw of a parking garage that looks like it's going to eat you.

Right.

Yeah, it ends up taking a lot of spaces away.

We're already kind of at a small number here.

I don't think the owner's going to have in his program a building with no parking whatsoever.

And so this seemed like it was a decent compromise.

You know, we could have planting on either side of the drive.

We could look to a material that's better than just asphalt to get there.

Maybe some nice paving, especially maybe aligned with the sidewalk, could go a certain ways.

Another thing to think about, too, is maybe, Patrick, if you're able to go to

Yeah, although it's funny, if you walk by it and check it out, it doesn't sort of grab you as you walk by it.

And they don't have a garage door there, I don't believe.

So you just see right into the parking level.

But I do hear you.

It would be nice if there was a way to make that drive less prominent there without losing 20% of the spaces that are down there, too.

Because then at that point, there's so much excavating that the owner's doing and relatively small amount of parking, it might start to get a little perverse.

Yeah, I don't know.

But I think you're on the right track with, like, how to make the driveway just more pleasant to pedestrians.

I wonder if you could do something like, you know, in some places you see a level sidewalk rather than a curb cut.

I don't know if our SDM even allows this, but, like...

That way you don't have this cross slope that pedestrians have to walk across Right, so it's almost like you're going, like raised walks you would find maybe in the Netherlands So that you're not sort of having to bump down and up, and it slows cars down too Yeah, I mean I think that would be great I have no idea if you allow that Probably not No special use permit for that I think that's all I got

You're putting me on the spot.

If I had to say, and I'm going to defend it because I figure most people don't care for it.

I kind of like the cool customer.

I like that silver fox.

Mr. Palmer, I've been trawling Charlottesville GIS, and I see something called the University of Virginia on Montebello across the street.

Yeah, I mean, we're a neighbor.

Yeah, Montebello House, where the dean of the School of Engineering lives, additionally.

What a historic structure.

A couple things come to mind.

It seems like we've gone from questions to comments, but a lot of what I had thought about has been covered.

Commissioner Mitchell comments on the critical slope, I thought, make a lot of sense in terms of stormwater.

I mean, obviously the site is probably not holding back any stormwater at this point.

but it's good as we have these discussions to really have a strategy and understanding how you're gonna improve that.

And you know, you're early on and you're not really, you don't have it all figured out but I think that's important and we talked about that with 2005 JPA too I think when we discussed that one.

Let's see, I did have Commissioner Russell saying misunderstanding of the height, you know, from JPA, it's really kind of a 95-foot building.

From the sidewalk, yeah, yeah, right.

And that was, you know,

just because of the zoning code and how it's applied.

I was a little confused there because when you were talking about it being a 50-foot drop from top to bottom, I was thinking 70 feet.

Why is it 40 feet off of Montebello Circle?

It all makes sense now.

Appreciate that.

Explanation?

I think Commissioner Haba what you said about like kind of the art and Commissioner Schwartz about the streetscape and stuff on JPA makes a lot of sense I mean for me from you know thinking about students obviously the safety coming out of that side of the building is like really important

that the car is coming out of that garage, that there's good, that wherever it ends up, that it be visible and easy for a pedestrian to kind of get warning that a car is coming.

I also want to make sure that, yeah, there's room, it seems like you're giving room to the street trees, so that's great,

you know future things the city might want to do to conform with to make it bring it up to more of the type B proposed street that's works streetscape is really would be a good you know thing to look at just make sure your landscape plan is kind of

matching that.

And on the Montebello side, I mean, that's really a neighborhood.

You're right, it's a weird, you know, how often do you have two primary frontages, but here's one.

And I think, you know, setting it back makes sense there, especially for the neighbors, as we heard from some of them.

It seems like that would be appreciated and providing a good, you know, formal entry and streetscape there as well.

Beyond that, I guess one thing that came to mind, talking about affordability, I know we all kind of snicker a little bit when we think about affordability for students or think that it's misplaced in some ways.

I get it.

Having lived on JPA in the past as a student, I think a lot of the people that, or in the past anyway, the choice to live there had a lot to do with price, and here we have eight units that will not

be any longer affordable to a student.

I'm assuming these would probably be a little bit more expensive.

So just, you know, however we end up dealing with the affordability, I think it's good to recognize just conceptually that there are affordable student units that will be going away with this and not coming back necessarily.

But beyond that,

I mean, it's well located for students, I'll give you that.

And I look forward to continuing to see the evolution of the project.

As for me, I'm very excited about this site.

I've had my eye on it for many years.

We could do better.

I think we can do better than current conditions.

So I'm excited to see that.

Some permeability, some trees, I think would be a good thing and welcome.

Got sort of a mishmash of concerns.

Because there are two front doors to this property, that creates an opportunity, which maybe is not exciting, but we could, or you could do vehicular circulation on one side and not the other.

So have one curb cut on one side and the other side, have a really high-quality pedestrian frontage.

Personally, I would prefer to see that on JPA, to really do it right.

I understand there are major costs and amenity trade-offs to there, but there are benefits too.

Something to think about.

In terms of...

design, verticality, I mean, I love verticality and design, always, it's beautiful.

But we have heard and we will hear concerns from the public about height.

And that's verticality.

So please consider that in the design.

Personally, I'm happy to see modern materials.

I'm happy to see ideas of shifting and adjusting to the needs of the occupants.

That seems reasonable to me.

Right.

Affordability, I agree, a concern.

I think those are my main things.

Others already asked, but do you have any specifics on what you're thinking in terms of affordability?

No, we don't right now.

27?

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, just general comments.

I mean, I think to make such heavy reference to the future land use map and comprehensive plan and zoning and to not match the draft inclusionary zoning program is

not appropriate or acceptable for this or any projects.

And would agree with the comments Commissioner Mitchell said earlier, as well as it's just an interesting calculus to think through eight affordable units being permanently destroyed for 27 new units at a luxury price point.

Changes if there's affordability requirement, but interesting.

They're running for $8.50 a bed.

Fair enough.

That's my round, but we've still got some sort of formal questions that we were asked to consider, those being concerns related to proposed density, concerns about height and massing, reasonable conditions to consider.

and SEP and critical slope wipers.

I know we've already addressed quite a bit of that in our comments.

So on critical slopes, I feel like this is an interesting case where we often think of critical slopes as like, you know,

like sort of heavily wooded slopes that are like you know undisturbed kind of things and what we really want out of it is you know protection of waterways and protection of natural features and there are no natural features really on this site except for the two tiny crepe myrtles and the neighboring tree that might get taken out but

you know there's a waterway nearby but you know it strikes me that you could you could pave over some flat sites near this and you know by nutrient credits never get a waiver which isn't really accomplishing that goal of waterway protection that we want and of course because it's a slope you have to worry about erosion stuff but it sounds like that is what the state requirements cover so I guess all that's to say I

I have a question that's more about our inclusionary zoning, and if we say it's going to be hard to track student affordability, it sounds like though we're requiring the inclusionary zoning no matter what, so we're going to have to figure that out, presumably.

Sorry, that's a question I'm looking right at, James.

I don't know.

Please.

Random thing that may impact the neighbors.

That's a question.

Right, right, yeah.

and we put a bunch of rules on blasting a few years ago, right?

Is that discretionary, that permit now?

My council has to allow it.

I mean, I don't know if you'd be, I don't know when you blast.

Yeah, I got it, yeah.

I have a question.

What is this building made out of?

That's what we're assuming at the moment, yeah.

Yeah.

It might be getting tall enough, though, that we would go to a metal framing.

But that's something else we'll be working out.

Yeah.

Can you do six stories of wood?

Actually, I've got some questions about construction, too.

There's a medium post I like very much called In Praise of Dumb Boxes.

I'm convinced.

I believe in dumb boxes.

The concern is basically that if you chop up a building too many times, you lose building.

You increase cost and you lose habitable space, which I think the math checks out on that.

I see a lot of modulation and a lot of step backs in this proposal.

Well, you know, the

That is a good point.

I mean, actually, a building that I'm very fond of is right over here, the old Norcross Station building that's parallel to the tracks.

And I always say that building's kind of interesting because it doesn't do really any of those things we often talk about, like a modulated facade, you know, stepping in and out and, you know, breaking up monotony.

And yet it's a pretty terrific building.

Now, it's not as tall as this one.

You know, it's more of a long, horizontal building of several stories.

but it just relies on a simple brick facade and some nice old steel windows and it's pretty great like that without a lot of fussing.

In this case though, as we were just designing the building, yes we did initially, we had a building that came up about as tall as it is with a bit of a step back at the top but not at the base.

and then when we started to look at introducing the the entry volume that we have at the first two stories that encloses the entry to the parking and the lobby it just it kind of felt at home on the project it you know it gave it this sort of you know kind of four building that that introduces the the architecture to JPA so to speak and

and it just looked proportionally better to us.

I guess it would be my answer.

Right.

Well, actually, I love the example, too, of the Carter-Gilmer House over here, like three-story federal house.

You hardly even notice it's got a pitched roof because it's up there three stories.

Last question, I promise.

Correct me if I'm wrong, R3 is limited to 87 DUA, which is the 27 units.

Certainly that's something that we might consider.

As we have it designed now, without going up another story or several stories, it would be difficult for us to

to have more apartments than we're currently showing.

I mean, we looked at this a lot of ways with independent buildings, bridging between them, and sort of courtyard space, but we ended up coming back to what we have here, you know, really kind of a dumb box with some variations, because it does provide more housing.

It's a site that is confined enough that you can array all of the tenants with views out.

It's almost like it doesn't really want a courtyard building unless it was just a much smaller scale project and so we arrived at this as seeming to work well with the owner's program and to provide something pretty dense here at we think an appropriate height considering the corridor Additional questions or comments on this item?

How are we feeling?

Okay, let's go.

I'd like to talk about transportation.

I think we're getting set up with the PowerPoint here.

I'm here to give you a transportation planning update this evening.

I know that's probably a novel concept.

We could probably also go all night on that concept.

I'm going to try to keep us focused to about four topics.

If you have questions outside of those four topics, I'm happy to come back at a later date or answer those questions offline.

But we'll try to stick to these four topics and not to

The first topic, which you can go to the next slide, is just an introduction.

My name is Ben Chambers.

I'm the transportation planning manager for the city.

I rejoined the city in November last year.

It says November 2023.

That's a boo-boo.

It was last year.

I'm not from the future.

It says I've rejoined the city because I previously worked for the city.

I was with the school bus department until 2012.

I worked in the front office there.

And while I was there I got the spark to become a planner with working with NDS.

We were working on a sidewalk prioritization back in 2010.

and I realized I should not be in bus operations anymore.

I should go be a planner.

So grad school and several years in the private sector.

Since then, I have ended up back here just as I always hoped.

So what did I find when I came back?

What state was our transportation planning in?

Next slide.

Yeah.

you're all wincing because you know but I wanted to look at it from sort of the academic sense in academic world of planning they talk about the three C's of planning to make sure you know it's good planning you do all three C's it's got to be comprehensive it's got to be continuous and it's got to be collaborative so in terms of comprehensive

We've had some issues.

A lot of our planning activities are happening in silos across the city.

Some of it's happening in NDS.

Some of it's happening in Public Works.

Some of it's happening at CAT.

Some of it's happening at TJPDC.

Our comprehensive plan identifies a transportation master plan, but it's actually several different plans.

It's our bike pad master plan, it's the streets that work plan, it's a bunch of small area plans.

So they're kind of spread all over the place.

That leads us to an issue with the continuity of it.

A lot of those plans are older.

We have our 2015 Bikeped Master Plan.

We have our 2016 Streets That Work Plan.

We have a bunch of small area plans that were completed prior to the pandemic.

So we're working with old plans.

We're also working with old data from those plans.

So we have a bunch of data that we're relying on that's pre-pandemic that's informing our projects right now that, you know, probably isn't as relevant as it was five years ago.

We also have a continuity issue between the plans and that they don't always agree with each other.

Even plans that were done in the same year don't agree with each other.

So we have to figure out how to put all of those back on the same page and make sure that we're headed in the same direction.

And lastly, collaboration's been an issue, partly because of the silos, partly because of the different plans being planned separately, partly because we have had challenges with effective engagement, both prior to the pandemic and because of the pandemic.

It's become even more challenging.

So now we're trying to get our feet back under us and remember, what was it that we did before the pandemic that was working right?

So how are we tackling these three big issues that we are facing?

Next slide.

We're doing a lot of different things.

We're doing a lot of work with CAT.

We're doing a lot of work with the region.

We're doing work with the schools.

We're being comprehensive in our scope.

We're being collaborative across departments.

And we're trying to make everything continuous at the same time.

It's a bit of a challenge.

We could talk through all of these and it would take us probably several days.

But, next slide.

We're going to stick to these three.

This will be the Safe Streets and Roads for All Action Plan, the Non-Motorized Infrastructure Prioritization Process, and the Dockless Permit Regulations Revisit.

I'm going to start with the Dockless Permit Regulations Revisit.

If you can go to the next slide.

So you all probably are familiar with this as the scooters.

So the scooters first came to town in 2019 as part of a pilot program which resulted in us adopting regulations for a dockless mobility permit program.

Veo has had that that's our scooter operator in town the vendor in town they've had that permit since 2020 since it first became available there were two other vendors that previously held the permit along with Veo they no longer do Veo is the only game in town this permit is managed by the bike ped coordinator and some of you may be wondering what by bike ped coordinator

You are correct.

It is not currently managed by the bike ped coordinator because we don't have one.

We have been interviewing one and we have an offer out to a candidate right now.

So hopefully we will have a bike ped coordinator very shortly who will take over this permit program.

So when I was hired, though, in November of 2022, VAO came to the city and said, hey, it's been a while since we had somebody to talk to.

Can we talk about the regulations?

They don't really work for us very well.

And I said, well, we've had some issues from our end, too, that we've heard from the public that they're not quite happy with how y'all have been performing.

So maybe we do need to look at these regulations.

So if you go to the next slide.

This is actually telling you how they've been performing over the past year and why it was important for us to sit down with Veo and hash this out.

These are a lot of rides.

We have about a quarter million rides a year at this point.

A lot of the traffic that we see is between UVA and downtown along West Main Street.

We also see some areas along JPA and up like Preston Grady, Rugby Grady area.

But the majority of our traffic is between UVA and downtown along West Main.

You can see from the graph at the top that it is fairly seasonal.

People like riding scooters when it's warm out.

It's also very dependent on student population.

That's where a lot of our riders are coming from, is students who don't have vehicles.

So you see a lot of students riding those scooters and e-bikes during the fall months and the spring months, but not so much during the middle of the winter and not so much during the middle of the summer.

Next slide, please.

So here are the issues that we both came to the table with.

On Veo's side, their biggest concern was our fees.

That's not surprising.

They're a for-profit company.

They're looking for more profit.

And so I said, you know, that's going to be a hard sell.

We put this in place for a reason.

We have these regulations and these fees for a reason.

And they said, y'all are charging us way more than anybody else does, like three times more than anybody else does.

with getting to the point where we can't really even make much of a profit here and we might just pull out if we can't deal with this.

The other issue that they had was the fleet flexibility.

Currently the way that, well previously the way that the dockless permit regulations were written, they're kind of Byzantine on how many scooters they could put on the streets.

It started with you get 350 scooters max.

That doesn't include e-bikes.

You can do as much as you want with e-bikes.

but if you do e-bikes you get 25 more scooters and if you do this you get 25 more scooters and it just it became this really difficult thing for us to manage on our side to make sure that they were putting the right number of scooters out and that they were complying with the different you know potential elements that they could be adding to the fleet with

And it became annoying on their side because they want to put a certain mix that attracts their customers and if we're saying, no, it's only scooters and it's only e-bikes and this, you know, if we're being, you know, dictating those little nuances, it becomes hard for them to do business.

It becomes annoying for us as well.

On our side, our biggest concern was parking, obviously.

We have misplaced scooters throughout the city.

It's causing safety concerns.

It's causing ADA concerns.

We were having issues with our sidewalks being blocked, with roadways being blocked, bike lanes being blocked.

This has been an ongoing thing that we're hearing from the public.

We're also hearing from the public that there are safety concerns with how people are riding the scooters, not just riding on the sidewalk, but weaving in and out of traffic, not paying attention to stop signs and stoplights.

So we have some outreach that needs to happen to the users as well to make sure that they are operating them correctly.

Equity is a concern.

These trips are not cheap.

There's a fee for unlocking the scooter and then there's a permanent fee for riding the scooter and it adds up pretty quickly.

This may not be the best resource for a low-income resident as it's currently set up.

And lastly, outreach.

We have outreach in our regulations that they are supposed to be doing to low-income residents and to student populations to promote safe usage, to promote better parking,

to educate users on how they're supposed to be operating these vehicles.

And partly because of the way the pandemic has made things difficult with outreach, they have not been able to do it, but they also haven't just been getting out there when they can.

So we're going to dive into each of these issues and how we resolve them.

If you can go to the next slide, please.

All right, so this is just a high-level summary of how we are resolving each of these issues.

The high fees, we said, okay, we will take away the per vehicle fee that we charge at the beginning of the year, because usually we say, you know, pay us for the number of vehicles you're going to put on the street on January 1, and then they have to come back to us later in the year and say, well, we want to put 25 more on.

So instead of having that back and forth, remove the per vehicle fee.

That seemed to be the easiest piece to cut so that they could bring down their

their cost to revenue.

For the fleet flexibility, we wanted to take out the Byzantine rules, just make it a higher max cap, but also include the e-bikes, because a lot of their fleet is switching over to being e-bikes instead of scooters.

For parking, we are looking at piloting parking hubs along West Main Street and in downtown.

We'll also be allowing Veo to have parking fees for misplaced vehicles.

and I'll get into that more.

Safety, we're asking them to implement an education mode for first ride or first couple rides and I can give you more description on that as well.

Equity, they'll be implementing a reduced price access program for low income residents and outreach, they will be conducting two outreach events per quarter, typically aimed at low income residents or student populations.

Next slide.

All right, so these, I'm gonna dive into more detail and I'm gonna go through these fast just so we don't get too sucked into all the details, but for the revert, reduce per ride feed and remove per vehicle fee, we're dropping the fees basically down to four or 5% of their revenues instead of 12%, which is where we were before.

That's more in line with what they're seeing in other markets and in other markets, they don't have a per vehicle fee.

So we're pulling that out.

That'll save us some time so that we don't have to track down how many vehicles they're putting on the road all the time.

And it also, you know, it's obviously a benefit for VAO.

We are changing the higher max cap and not including any bonuses.

This is to get back to the fleet flexibility issue.

The current or the previous regulations

It was just more onerous for us to keep track of.

There were also some things written into it that had some loopholes that let them put as many e-bikes on our streets as they wanted to, which we wanted to stave them off from doing that.

So now they have a cap of 700 vehicles total.

Next slide.

Why have a cap at all?

I think you're probably hearing from the public that isn't riding them mostly.

That's absolutely true.

Well, I will say that the 700 will take us from where we're at now, which is about 450 to 700.

So that's going to be a pretty significant increase.

The other thing that I will mention is this doesn't just apply to VAO.

This applies to anybody who wants to put a scooter on our streets.

So if another company comes in and says, oh, well, you reduced the fees.

Now it's a profitable place for us to do business.

They can come in.

They can apply for a permit and compete with VAO on our streets.

Yeah.

So it's pretty minimal.

These, last year the per vehicle fee I believe came in about $35,000.

At the beginning of the year there were some adjustments made after that but we don't have anything that's dedicated to at the moment so it's not really a big impact on us.

It's more of a deterrent for them than it is a benefit for us at this point.

Have we collected that at this point?

The 35,000 number, that is revenue to the city?

Yes.

The per ride currently is 25 cents a minute per ride.

Annualize what?

Like how much did we get last year?

How much did we get last year?

I think it was about 85.

So it's not chump change, but it's also we don't have a dedicated use for it at the moment.

So for parking, the first thing we're going to do is try to implement parking hubs on West Main and in downtown, usually around areas where there are going to be bike parking.

just so that they're co-located as you know where to find bike parking, you know where to find VAO scooters.

This is basically what UVA Grounds is doing and this will be an extension of that down West Main Street to downtown.

We're also going to be looking, once we have those installed, at the Rugby Grady area and JPA area as our sort of next areas to go to.

This has been fairly successful on UVA grounds.

I know that there are still some complaints about missed park scooters on UVA grounds.

A lot of those are privately owned.

And we get a lot of the same complaints about scooters on the downtown mall.

So I can sympathize with that.

The other thing that they will start doing that UVA doesn't have is they're going to start charging fees for people who park incorrectly.

Right now, when you end a ride on a VAO scooter, it asks you to take a picture of where you parked.

that picture currently goes in the garbage can.

In the future, they will take complaints from residents and from me saying, hey, there's a misplaced scooter.

They will compare that to the picture that they got from the user to make sure it isn't just somebody dragged the scooter to a bad place or tipped it over out of malice.

And then if it turns out that the picture matches what we found when we went to pick up the scooter, that user will get charged a fee.

It will be a fee through their user fees built into the Veo app.

It won't be a, you know,

city enforcement issue.

It won't be the police going down and knocking on someone's door for misplacing a scooter.

But this now

allows VAO to enforce some of the issues that we've had issues with and makes them responsible for it instead of us.

The fees are going to be low.

The first offense will just be a warning.

It'll eventually top out to $75 or a ban from the service.

Who keeps the fee money?

How so?

Well, the next item is discouraging the sloppy parking, and they're in education mode.

So when you get on the scooter now, it gives you some instructions the first time you get on of where you should park, how you should ride, where you shouldn't ride.

And most people get on the scooter and hit next, next, next on those to get through it so they can turn on the scooter, and then they go full blast down the hill as fast as they can.

what this will do is take them through those screens and then put the scooter into an education mode which means you can only go eight miles an hour on it so in a lot of other markets what you see is first-time users make up a vast majority of the crashes a lot of the complaints

In other markets where they've tried this, slowing everyone down to that eight miles an hour for the first or second or third trip has flattened that line where the same amount of crashes they're having with early users as they are with seasoned users because they're just not being as risky and they're being forced not to be as risky.

So they will be implementing that.

There is also a rider safety quiz.

So when they get through that next, next, next of the instructions, they'll get to a quiz and say,

Oh, I should have done the homework on this so that I can actually ride this scooter.

I should actually know where I'm supposed to ride and where I'm supposed to park.

So we're having them implement that with the new permit.

I had a quick... Yeah, sure.

Well, going back to the fines, I guess we still get the 5% from the fine that Vejo makes on the parking, right?

Okay, we just get the rides.

The question I had, maybe it's something you guys will probably figure out, but on the hubs, it says if you don't park at a hub, you can get a fine.

What if the hubs are full when you get to your destination?

Yeah, they're basically going to be like an empty parking space or an empty area that we have marked off.

If it's completely full and you've parked very close to it, they are probably going to do anything about that.

Their GPS isn't quite accurate enough.

So as long as you're within like five to ten feet of a space where you're supposed to be, they aren't going to have...

So UVA has like two kinds of hubs, right?

Like along McCormick, you can't park anywhere but in a hub.

That's right.