City Council Special Meeting - Public Hearing for Draft Zoning Ordinance   12/5/2023

Oh, that's true Yeah, we'll wait another minute

Are you ready to go?

Okay folks let's call this four o'clock meeting of City Council to order.

This is a special meeting as a public hearing on the draft zoning ordinance and this is pursuant to a letter that was sent out to folks notice given November 13th and calling for comments providing affected persons an opportunity to appear and present their views with a two minute time limit.

with respect to the proposed development code and zoning ordinance and proposed zoning map updates.

We know that we have a lot of interest in the topic.

We've got a lot of people here in the room and I understand there are more continuing to come.

So we're going to try to stick

as close as we can to the assigned times.

Note that there is a timer there, two minutes, and they give me this gavel.

I don't think I've actually had to use it, but just be aware that it's there.

Ms.

Thomas is going to be in charge of calling the numbers.

If you want to speak, you need to have signed up outside in the hallway, gotten a number, and then you'll be taken in order from there.

Like I say, Ms.

Thomas is going to be in charge of that, and she's got the spreadsheet, and she knows who's coming up.

Okay.

Mr. Freeze or Ms.

Sanders, anything either of you all need to say at this point?

No, I think we're ready to go.

All right.

So thank you all for coming.

Ms.

Hey, everyone.

Thanks for having me.

I don't know if I should wait for the timer or just launch.

It'll start when you start.

Can everybody hear me?

Okay, the mic is a little low.

I thought your introduction, Mayor Snook, was apt as a person who's going to be affected by the new zoning and who considers himself to be kind of in

An intermediate position on a lot of this stuff.

I'm a supporter of what I would classify as strong town style, flat, modest upzoning.

I do think we have a responsibility to increase the density of this town within some boundary of historical considerations and neighborhood considerations.

There are components of the new plan that I think will do that, RA and RB specifically.

My major concern is that I do not think RC will do that.

I think what RC will do is take people like me who don't need the extra handout, the extra cash that this will give me by making my property more valuable than my neighbors.

and it will hand me that value for no reason.

And I'm asking you guys to not make that decision because I don't need that help and I don't think that picking winners in that way that will be able to sell out their property to develop commercial light style buildings will facilitate equity in housing and I think it will further commodify housing.

If I could make a second point with my last 40 seconds here, I think part of what gives a lot of people pause here is that there is currently a set of regulations and laws that aren't being enforced by the city.

I look at Belmont that's transected by multiple arterial roads where you can talk to the city traffic engineer and they'll tell you

these speed limits that we observe are 15 miles per hour over what they should be, and yet we can't enforce divided speed bumps or simple traffic calming measures for the rules that exist now.

I think that gives folks a lot of pause about instituting a lot of new regulations that then we're sort of left wondering how do those get enforced when that's not happening currently.

MR. Thank you.

I should add, by the way, not just to you, but to everybody, that Council receives many, many, many, many emails, and we read them all.

And if you want to reach us all with further thoughts that you didn't have time in two minutes to say, council at charlottesville.gov will get to all of us.

And I can tell you, we may not respond, because literally we get an awful lot of them, but we will read them.

Thank you, Dr. Miller.

Hello, my name is Tyler Miller.

I live at 1500 Green Street.

I'm a member of the Tree Commission.

I'm not here speaking on behalf of it.

I'm here speaking for myself.

I agree with a lot of what Dr. Dan said.

I think the corridorization of upzoning is just going to pick winners and losers.

I live with my partner who's a nurse at the hospital and we could use that handout.

I'd love to have RC but I'm not going to get it under this plan so maybe next time.

I'd also say that specifically

5.4.d.8 is just taken straight from the state code and without the additional language of the state code it really doesn't make sense to put in the zoning code.

So if that could be removed that would be great.

And then if we're talking about equity, this meeting should be at 1 o'clock on a Saturday.

I work in tech.

I'm going to go home and work some more after I leave here.

I was lucky enough to be able to take the time off to be here, but a lot of people can't.

And so I'm just wondering why such an important meeting is happening during business hours during the week.

I understand you guys work also.

but it really ought to happen when more people can be here.

So thanks.

Please listen very closely to what the Chair of the Tree Commission says.

I know he's going to speak later and I fully endorse everything he's going to say.

Thank you.

I am Martha Donnelly

and live at 1446 Rugby Avenue.

I am a landscape architect, graduate of UVA and specialize in native plant design.

I am a mother and a grandmother.

Regarding the future of the city, we need more housing for humans and habitat for wildlife.

Both are essential for our survival.

We have the statistics for humans, but not for nature.

We have lost one-third of all birds in the last 50 years.

Almost one-half of all honeybees.

Locally, we've lost 12% of our tree cover in the last 20 years.

Do you know that one mature oak tree hosts 557 insects and birds?

So if we lose one, we've lost over 500 residents?

More immediately, do you know that the berries of this Nandina kills birds?

And they're everywhere.

Our land use policies, as reflected in zoning ordinances, are causing a biodiversity loss that will destroy our entire city within this generation if we don't enlarge our understanding of the task before us.

For this reason, I encourage you to pause

to learn so that we can craft a code that benefits our citizenry, human and non-human.

There are some great information resources that can help.

The website homegrownnationalpark.org has applicable action items.

Ms.

Donald, your time is up.

Thank you.

Sharon Kelly, Palatine Avenue.

Local professionals with direct experience in development and construction looked at the DZO in detail, finding that such high-density up-zoning will cause our already problematic infrastructure to fail.

High-cost infrastructure improvements and repairs

require imposing a significant new tax burden on all residents, including renters, causing financial distress and possibly displacement.

As Benjamin Franklin warned, if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.

Unfortunately, that failure is evident in our failing school system, in our dangerous to deadly traffic and costly failures of our aging sewer systems and in the high cost of something as basic as new sidewalks.

We now know that the city failed to do the state's legally mandated traffic analysis study and while the city has tried to sweep that fact under the rug the city did in fact fail to conduct a new traffic impact analysis report for the population increase entailed in this high density up zoning plan.

This is not the only study or cost projection that the city has failed to do.

The current plan markedly increases the city's population density but all without having improved or done a cost projection for improving the already failing infrastructure.

The RA to RC chart shows why high density upzoning will overload our current infrastructure of roads, schools, and water systems.

There is a huge difference when one house flushes and when many residents in many houses on the same plot of land also flush.

Tolkien wrote, it does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations, especially if you live near one.

Ms.

Kelly, your time is up.

Actually, we allowed, but then that person did not speak again.

That's the difference.

We have two minutes.

We've got a room full of people here.

Thank you.

I think not.

No.

I will add that this was read to us last night as well.

Right here.

Okay.

To address that dragon of risk, the city should have already completed a professional due diligence

Course Study, an existing condition survey including needs for the storm, waste, and portable water, as well as natural gas systems.

These studies take into account all the new buildings, cars, and people using the water, sewage, and electrical grid.

Without these studies, your plan seems to not be not the plan, thinking it will somehow magically work out.

However, that is not a responsible financial plan.

In fact, it is financially irresponsible.

As per the sanitary sewage system referenced above, the list of 12 points should have already been done before your plan was put together or finalized any zoning map because they entail costly financial implications for the taxpayers.

You have this list to read on your copy.

There has been no clear presentation or shall we say representation regarding this new tax implication to the public.

In Jefferson's hometown we all know that there should be no taxation without representation.

If you have not provided all the new projected course nor have you presented any viable plan on how to fund a new infrastructure course, multiple city assessments confirm that market values and dust assessments and taxes will be hiked due to this plan.

Developers may max out values for profits resulting in the hike assessments and taxes have increased market value shown here in the city's own drawing chart below the copy that you have.

Thank you.

The profits only go to developers while we are left paying the infrastructure costs or being forced from our homes.

The goal here is not only to build more to tax more but also to increase the market value of your lot as for what can be built there.

This will result in higher assessments and higher taxes for all of us.

The logic is faulty because the more you build, the more infrastructure you need, so the more it will cost to build and maintain.

In transport costs alone, there are $29 million in added costs, but the city has not fully explained those new costs to residents who must pay them.

Since you have not provided residents with any viable cost balancing plan, a local professional contractor living in Belmont provided projected possible costs of high density upzoning and its resulting tax burden to residents in the coming years.

Using a residential Belmont Street with added density in the next five to ten years

This one street could cost as much as $1.5 million to upsize its sewerage service, meaning as much as $59 million to upsize all of Belmont.

Where is this money going to come from?

Again, all residents and all renters will have to pay.

In Belmont, the sewerage system has already repeatedly failed due to increased development causing black sludge to back up into homes, forcing homeowners to pay $15,000 to $20,000

for repairs out of their own pockets.

Such a cost is inexcusable as it is directly related to the city, allowing too much development to overload and break our terracotta pipe system.

Carrying these costs forward into other established areas throughout the city, such cost to city residents will be catastrophic, both in hard costs and in the destruction of established communities.

Density and infrastructure issues directly relate to pushing by right businesses into established neighborhoods.

The serious issues of added noise, traffic, parking pressures, violence, and policing have already displaced families over the past 15 years in Belmont.

Thank you, Ms.

Thank you.

The cost projections above neither include upgrading or replacing the city's potable water and natural gas systems nor upgrading and fixing the existing sewer systems.

With increased population, there are several needs for new sewer treatment plant as it just happened in Austin at a cost of $379 million.

Besides the question of where do we put such a sewer treatment plant, where is the city going to get the hundreds of millions of dollars to finance that?

Well, for more taxes on residents, of course.

The issue of sewage and stormwater runoff could be a critical EPA issue for the Rivanna River.

Increasing the sewage into a treatment plant also increases the water coming out.

That water eventually enters the Rivanna, which could be an EPA concern.

In summary,

Before voting, the city must provide us with detailed impact studies and cost data for this new plan by providing due diligent cost studies validating the city's need for upzoning and increasing its density far beyond the normal expected population increase, providing sound engineering studies proving that our inadequate infrastructure will support the development and population increases, a population that could double or triple under this plan.

demonstrating its financial viability give us an economic plan that clearly states what our new tax burden will be.

Not having this information is a grave concern to every citizen in this room.

As civil servants, your duty is to mitigate these risks, complete the studies, and give us a cost balancing plan before taking on any vote on high density rezoning.

I think that the presentation from yesterday about our water supply just shows you how big of an impact infrastructure is for this community.

Hello, my name is Kimberly Hawkey and I live in the Belmont neighborhood.

I've lived there for the past 20 years.

I'm talking to you tonight, I've already, I'm talking on behalf of the Belmont Carlton Neighborhood Association tonight and we already sent you a document outlining how the current DZO violates the proffers that run with that land.

it violates, well, the proffers that run of the land state that the only uses can be for residential, 15 units, I believe, and for education or daycare.

Currently, when you look at the CX3 Sony, that allows for multiple different commercial uses besides education and daycare, including serving alcohol,

and having private clubs.

As we already know from a lot of the problems in Belmont Center, such activities are exactly what residents do not want as it has displaced families from the noise and the parking issues and the people urinating in your yard or having sex in cars and all kinds of fun stuff.

that for some reason the city never gets around to enforcing the proffers that are in place down there.

And so that's a problem.

This is why the residents filed a complaint regarding the commercial zoning in the first place.

We were never against the affordable housing that was part of it.

So currently the DZO violates the density, the height and the use.

So we have asked that you change the map so that the proffers are respected and we look forward to you doing that.

Thank you, Ms.

Good evening.

Thank you for hearing me.

My name is James Kelly.

I live in Belmont.

Last evening you were handed a document which is pretty comprehensive.

It outlines a great many of the issues that a lot of the community homeowners, residents have with the new zoning ordinance.

No need to go over that again, but it makes for good reading.

It should be something to pay attention to.

You'll see it again.

This is not a one-time issue.

We, I'd like to put this maybe, if I may, with all due respect, on a personal level, because what's happening to the community is personal to us residents, to people who have been in the community for 30 years, as my family has been.

With all due respect, we in this community elected you through your offices

for good reason.

We did not put you in position or the City Council in position to double our taxes.

We did not put you in the position to with due respect as I said to not pay attention to our roadways, our infrastructure, sidewalks, streets and let them get into the deteriorated condition that they now are.

We did not

put you in position to commercialize our communities by allowing developers to come in to randomly tear down houses and build commercial structures.

We did not put you in a position to create a population explosion, which you're now thinking about doing.

With all due respect, again, if this is a legacy that you want to leave when you leave office,

It's a surprise to me.

I would not want that legacy looking over my shoulder.

So give that some thought.

This will follow you.

This will follow the residents of the community.

And this will be the way you're remembered if this proceeds without due planning and without process of engineering as required.

Thank you.

If anyone wants to find a seat that's still standing, there are some seats scattered around.

There's also overflow at city space.

You would just need to listen for your number and be in council chamber by the time the number's called.

I'm John Faltz.

I live at Rugby Road.

I've given you all

what I was going to say.

And everybody else has talked about much the same thing, so I'll spare you my brilliant analysis.

I'm just going to read the last paragraph.

That's the last paragraph that I was given.

This is clearly a controversial proposal.

The issue should not be decided by just five individuals.

That's your sentence.

It should be resolved by a citywide referendum.

That's the democratic way to decide major issues.

Let the city itself decide.

Thank you.

Number 11, Jeff Levine.

Hi, Jeff Levine, West Main Street.

I'm going to totally switch gears.

I'm going to talk about process because we talk about referendums, every other which way to put this together, affordable housing, the amount of affordable housing, economic equity.

None of it matters if

The zoning in and of itself is not an invitation for developers to build and understand the clear, concise, and dependable rules to do so.

And that's why I'm here to implore you to not have any text

in the ordinance where the BAR, council or anyone for that matter can put conditions on approval or have another look at projects and as a result decrease height or density prescribed by the ordinance.

When I hear a read about BAR having the right to require conditions of approval and council retaining an SUP process for buildings above five stories, frankly I cringe.

This has to work.

This has to be able for developers to rely on what the ordinance says.

No developer wants to start down a development road where the rules on height and density are laid out in the ordinance, but we have to go through the lengthy and costly process of seeing whether BAR, Planning and or Council further approve it.

That's the same complex SUP type process we have today.

it's in complete contradiction to what your goals are and per the website it's to identify you've identified flaws and barriers to development and you can't be half in on that promise you can't say you want a form-based code only to make it all subject to further review process so put the density and height in the ordinance let it stand have confidence in your text and remove any further bites at the apple again I have no position on whether you come out with

approving the zoning, not approving the zoning, 200% affordable, whatever you decide, but what you decide if you take the liberty of deciding it, just make the rules.

We don't want to be back in front of other governing parties trying to figure out if we got it right.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Historic downtown is a key asset in the life and economy of Charlottesville.

It's where we gather as a community.

It's where tourists flock and where revenue is generated to help fund city operations.

The economic survival of downtown is precarious.

The shops, the restaurants and the businesses require heavy foot traffic seven days a week to generate steady demand and steady sales with revenues sufficient to pay salaries, benefits, rents, taxes, insurance and cost of goods sold.

Weekend, holiday and special event crowds alone are not sufficient to sustain economic capacity.

Downtown needs more people walking downtown sidewalks every single day.

regardless of the season or the weather or the red letter calendar events.

People walking outside even when it's cold and dark and dreary because they need to get to work, buy groceries, buy meals, products and services because it's where they live.

Downtown desperately needs more people living there who walk the streets every day and this is possible only if we increase downtown residential capacity.

We urge you to implement a zoning ordinance that encourages the construction of residential units downtown by minimizing obstacles that prevent delivery of apartments and condos at every single price point.

We need a clear and simple form-based code that consolidates the layers of review, that facilitates builder compliance, that increases builder certainty, that allows greater height and density for projects that are respectful of neighborhood aesthetics.

because we need to maximize the number of stories allowed within the height you set and to maximize the number of units per acre because greater density will enable the delivery of a higher number of new apartments and condos at every price point and within walking distance of all the services they'll need.

Cities across America are implementing creative strategies to increase downtown residency for walkable lifestyle for daily foot traffic and to support businesses and to maintain it as a rewarding destination.

Thank you.

Please commit to a zoning code of this sort.

Thank you, sir.

I live at the corner of Blue Ridge Road and Barracks Road.

My house will be zoned general residential.

The houses across the street from me and both Blue Ridge and Barracks are to be zoned RB, higher density residential commercial.

These properties can be subdivided into 15 lots, each of which can have at least 6 units.

That's 90 new units across from our home.

I must emphasize that these are extremely expensive properties and so it is inconceivable that anything other than the highest end luxury units would be built.

Unfortunately, we are not talking about equity and affordability.

We are talking about crowding.

There is a more general problem than my property.

The upzoning of Barracks Road would permit 94 new lots and 500 new housing units to be built between Emmet Street and Rugby Road.

In the nearly 40 years that I have lived next to Barracks Road and attended meetings about the road, no one has ever suggested that the road needed to become more crowded.

A plan is now in place to narrow all lanes on Barracks to 11 feet, the minimum allowed by law, in order to widen a sidewalk and to add two lanes at this intersection of Barracks and Emmet

to help alleviate the traffic congestion that has long plagued this road.

There's no parking on barracks, not even a shoulder.

There are high embankments.

It is very difficult to exit onto barracks from Hilltop, Buckingham, Hessian, Blue Ridge, or the driveways on the road.

What if there were several hundred more people trying to exit onto barracks road?

The upzoning of Barracks Road is so contrary to common sense that I must assume that the firm who suggested this was simply looking at a map and did not know what the road was actually like.

I do know, but I have only two minutes.

I would like to meet with you in person to discuss the problems that would be created by upzoning Barracks Road.

Good evening, councilors.

Bill Emery, 1604 East Market Street, Charlottesville.

You know, I'm concerned about the durability of existing proffers and development plans that developers have locked in with the city.

These development plans and proffers define

the approved PUD zoned areas presently scattered across our city.

Page 344 of the draft zoning code states that past proffered conditions continue if the subsequent amendment to the PUD is part of a comprehensive implementation of a new or substantially revised zoning code.

The DZO goes on to say that, upon adoption, the existence of proffered conditions must be noted by an appropriate symbol on the city's zoning district map.

I'd like to request that staff add these appropriate symbols to the draft zoning map before council votes for the map's approval.

Currently, I'm unable to find such symbols on any of the three maps that have been made available to the public.

Finally, I encourage you to consider turning back the dials on the proposed zoning ordinance.

Dial back the GFA of house house.

Districts that are currently R1 and R2 make them all RNA.

The intent of the RNA district is to encourage the construction and continued existence of moderately priced housing.

to encourage the creation and preservation of affordable housing, to respect the cultural heritage of neighborhoods, and to support the overall promotion of a convenient and harmonious community.

The R&A district would work well across the city while simultaneously allowing a pronounced increase of housing density.

Thank you.

Number 15.

Hello.

This paper right here is very well written and very logical.

I don't think that what has come across your desk

is as logical as this is at all.

I think that the Planning Commission hasn't done their job properly.

That said, infrastructure.

It's not good.

We do not have the proper infrastructure to deal with what is being proposed.

That goes for the plumbing.

That goes for the electricity.

And it also, we're dealing with traffic problems.

At the end of the day, coming home from work, what a nightmare.

I live in town.

The people outside of town are getting on to Route 29 is a nightmare.

It's like slow moving traffic to get out of town.

When you get out of town, then it's like a raceway to Greene County.

I don't think that people are going to want to move into town in a chicken coop idea.

The RC is a nightmare.

The RB is not much better.

RA, that makes some sense.

But why are we diving into this?

We need to move slower.

Hello, I'm Jean Hyatt, Meadowbrook Heights Road.

Thankfully, Charlottesville has a climate action plan and one of its basic tenets is the importance of preserving our existing buildings to avoid the significant carbon emissions associated with demolition and building new structures.

The greenest and most affordable buildings are the ones that have already been built.

Our zoning rewrite should further incentivize renovation, rehabilitation, additions to existing buildings, preservation of tree canopy, and discourage demolitions.

My second point, we have a neighborhood near the university that is an architectural design control district.

That's University Circle, Preston Place, parts of Rugby Road, Grady, Gordon Avenue, 14th and 15th Street.

This large area is already very dense and is handling a large population.

Contrary to some comments by the planning commissioners, there are still many families and homeowners there who coexist remarkably well with the students.

This ADC district contains many important and unique historic buildings and is hoped that we can preserve them.

Additions can always be constructed on the back of these houses.

The Planning Commission at the very end of their work upzoned this area from RX3 to RX5.

That's five stories by right and up to seven stories with a bonus.

This designation would be a strong incentive for developers to demolish existing homes.

It kind of reminds me of what Mr. Irvine

Levine said you need to get the same regulations for the same area.

I ask that you move back to a designation of RX3 for this ADC district.

Lastly, I want to point out that we lost the two commissioners with expertise on historic preservation, Ms.

Russell and Mr. Alejandro.

The planning commission is now down one member and has no women members.

We have two very assertive commissioners that appear to have outsized influence on the zoning rewrite.

We need to listen to the planning commission, of course.

But keep in mind that this is not a balanced commission.

They should not always be who you rely on as you deliberate this ordinance.

Thank you, Ms.

Good evening.

David Brown, 1719 Meadowbrook Heights Road.

I agree that housing supply is a big problem and I agree with much in the proposed plan.

But as with many things, the devil is in the details.

The consultants developed this plan from afar using documents such as streets that work.

They do not know the city or where the problems may arise.

You do.

to continue to take the time to consider specific comments and concerns.

Two areas that I hope you will reconsider.

Downtown, the new ordinance will significantly increase heights allowed.

Dramatically increasing building heights on the downtown mall is a bad idea for a host of reasons, not the least of which is sunlight.

and imagine the vacant Dewbury Hotel 80 feet taller.

Please keep to the current zoning 70 feet or 101 feet with SUP rather than the proposed 142 feet or 184 with a bonus.

Parking.

Even with the goal of better transit and improved walk and bike ability, most households will want to have at least one car.

Taking kids to soccer practice, grocery shopping, medical appointments, working the night shift.

There is no short term path to a better bus system.

Some neighborhoods can handle more on-street parking, but some cannot.

Please require one parking space per unit, but allow it to be waived if the parking study indicates adequate street parking in that area.

Finally, be thoughtful about upzoning.

You cannot come back later and change your mind.

taking away what the new zoning will give property owners.

Get it right the first time.

You can always come back and upzone later, but upzoning mistakes made now will be final.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

I'm Barry Sisson.

Surprised some of you that I find myself broadly in favor of the plan.

And I'd be remiss if I did not recognize the comprehensive and detailed work, and especially the stewardship of James Freese, talent and intelligence on display.

I was pleased at the early tactic of characterizing our neighborhoods, areas important to our civic foundation, as bastions of racist evil, justifying them as a target, a tactic that seemed to fade with time.

I do hope that such tactics stay buried where they belong.

I think that we can learn from our past that such tactics lead to long-term divisiveness and pain.

In my opinion, the goals of expanding the housing options are very worthy.

I also think that they can be achieved without the dramatic effect that is being levied on our neighborhoods.

Many thousands of units are being mandated and made possible in more dense areas of our city.

But I know that this experiment is happening, so let me raise an obvious problem that I beg you to revisit, that of parking issue in our districts.

What is contemplated will result in conflict and certainly goes against your stated goal, oft-stated goal of harmony.

Even in your own planning meetings, the need for parking requirements in residential districts has been discussed and acknowledged, and yet the decision was to allow the train wreck to occur, leaving steps to fix things for later.

Is this because there's still enmity towards our neighborhoods?

The proper course is obvious.

In residential areas, require Ornn site parking for one car per unit, coupled with two Ornn street parking permits per lot.

in the code now, not in some promised future revision or supplement.

There's no need to wait until your citizens are hurt before taking action.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Nancy Damon.

I live at 2407 Jefferson Park Avenue.

I was on the Planning Commission in the 1990s and early 2000s.

I survived two comprehensive plans.

We did zoning changes trying to help all neighborhoods at what we thought was best at the time and of course there were always people who were always mad.

But sometimes through cooperation came some really great results.

Now we're trying to make much bigger changes.

My understanding of the purpose of this is to facilitate more housing that's affordable to the people who live here, not to make developers richer.

Let's keep our eyes on the prize and as we move forward, let's try not to be divisive but to try to cooperate to make this a better community for all our citizens.

Thank you, Ms.

Hi, my name is Dave Brzezanski.

I live in Belmont.

I would like to speak in favor of the proposed zoning changes and to thank all of the people involved for the tremendous effort that has gone into bringing about this much needed evolution in our community.

But I do see these changes as merely a first step in a larger journey

of making Charlottesville a more joyous, walkable, affordable, and sustainable community.

In that vein, we should not merely allow the expansion of housing units.

The city should encourage the process by investing in the infrastructure necessary to make this expansion of housing feasible, not only to developers and investors, but also to working class, moderate, and low-income homeowners in the city.

In that vein, the city should make a number of investments to make it easy and affordable for homeowners to build backyard cottages,

with the goal that as many are built as possible.

Here are my suggestions.

Number one, the city should build the sewage infrastructure necessary so that individual cottages can connect to city water and sewage systems affordably with the goal of having gravity-fed systems wherever possible and so that each project is not a bespoke endeavor.

For example, running sewage and water lines through the alleyways in Belmont would be an example of this idea.

Number two, the city should collaborate with local financial institutions to create affordable loans for these backyard cottages so that homeowners do not have to refinance their whole property.

And number three, the city should collaborate with local architects, designers, and builders so that they are pre-approved cottage designs with accompanying cost estimates in order to streamline and simplify the permitting and building process.

These are just a few of the many ways in which resident-led creation of affordable housing can be systematically encouraged by the city, an effort that will not only improve the quality of life in our neighborhoods, but will be a sound economic investment for the city.

I envision a world in which homeowners on the real estate tax bills will see a checkbox that asks, would you like to participate in the backyard cottage program and that there will be city staff who will guide willing participants through the process, expanding our housing stock, optimizing our available backyard space,

and fulfilling the potential of our community so that our children can afford to live in the community they are growing up in.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council and a Charlottesville resident.

The best way that we can protect the quality of life for all, address climate change and equity, and be responsible to future generations is to make sure that as much of the development in the area happens in the core of the area, and that's here in Charlottesville.

This is the intent of the new zoning code, and we support it.

Charlottesville's population has basically remained flat for the past 50 years, but people still come to the area.

They just live in Albemarle County and in the surrounding counties.

We're very concerned about this sprawling pattern and I have to be honest with you, reversing that or slowing it down is the most important climate action that we can take.

If we are to meet our climate action goals, it's essential that we give people places to live right here.

In addition to reducing greenhouse gas and other pollutants, it'll also reduce transportation costs for the families and for the localities as whole.

Less travel time, less stress, shorter commutes, better health, easier access to everyday activities, critical mass for transit, biking, and walkability, fewer impervious surfaces, infrastructure that's less burdensome for future generations by sprawling less,

and protection of the natural landscapes that surround us and that we depend upon.

Livability is key for sure as well as infrastructure, tree canopy and everything else we want.

These are not mutually exclusive with increased density.

The new zoning code is not perfect, has many good provisions and it's just a start.

but it will make the community better, more affordable, more equitable, and more sustainable for future generations.

Hello, councilors.

I'm a housing advocate and I work with folks in the community both in the city of Charlottesville and in Albemarle who are facing eviction.

A lot of people that I speak with have been forced, they have been historic members of the Charlottesville community.

They've been forced further and further out into Albemarle due to a lack of affordable homes and even out in the county they continue to struggle with affordability.

and I believe that this zoning rewrite is a crucial step in increasing access to affordable homes in our community.

Further, more and more people aren't just being driven out of the city, there are more and more people that are commuting into the city and we know that and

Many commenters have reiterated that here tonight.

But the solution to this is clear.

We need more dense housing.

We need to allow for our city to grow and to have the opportunities for affordable housing and to maintain the communities that have been here historically.

Density and height are how we can get more affordability.

They're a crucial aspect of making developments affordable.

and we have to have them.

I also want to reiterate the importance of the core neighborhoods.

We know that displacement, gentrification,

and targeting some of our lower income neighborhoods for development has been a key problem historically and I really want to see us make sure that we develop across the city, particularly near the University of Virginia.

The two developments that came before you last night are exactly the kind of developments that we need.

If the code needs to be rewritten to

accommodate architectural beauty or, you know, various things for the entrance corridors, but they're coming into a strong, thriving university and that requires dense housing.

Thank you, Ms.

Hello.

Hello, counselors.

My name is Perry Melden and I live at 210 Mead Avenue.

I am a renter and if I can afford it, I'd love to raise a family here someday in Charlottesville.

I wish to raise that family in a vibrant socioeconomically and racially diverse community.

Now to make that possible, we need to ensure that people who work in the city can also live in the city.

For that reason, I support the draft rezoning initiative, especially the core neighborhood zoning district to help preserve existing homes and allow more if all new homes are affordable.

Increased affordable housing opportunities will have outsized benefits for the city

perhaps most importantly as an anti-displacement measure for black and working class residents.

Make Seville livable for all and commit to denser, affordable, resident-led, and climate resilient housing.

This zoning change is one crucial step towards it.

Evening, counselors.

My name is Jim Chang.

I live at 1612 Rikki Road.

I've been a resident there in the Meadows neighborhood since about 1994.

Was president from 2004 to 2019 or 2020.

Just letting you know that I'm not speaking on behalf of the association, but on my own behalf and my individual capacity.

Just want to let you know that because I do have a lot of concerns about our neighborhood, do care about the welfare of everybody in our neighborhood.

and I'm here to request today I understand you all have a lot of questions about the Meadows neighborhood and whether or not it would be prudent to designate it as a sensitive area I understand you have a lot of questions of the community you have a lot of questions about what our neighborhood is like and so I'm requesting and I think it would be prudent to have more discussions before you vote on whether or not to include the Meadows neighborhood as a sensitive area my

Part of the reason why there hasn't been discussion is because we thought that the issue of designating as a sensitive area was off the table.

We had been told that the Neighborhood Development Office, who's done a great job by the way, that they were going to recommend that it not be designated as such.

And my understanding is, I didn't say it myself, but my understanding is that the Planning Commission had taken off

had not decided not to designate us that way.

So really I'm just asking for further dialogue at this time.

I think it would be constructive.

I think there would be a lot of people that we could have come to the meetings.

Again, the reason why we didn't have a lot of people engaged in the discussion is because we thought early on that it wasn't an issue any longer.

So I would like to

I would like to talk to you guys if you have the time.

I know there's not much time before January 1st but I'd love to have you.

I'd like to be able to talk to you, walk you through the neighborhood or whatever you want to do and I'd like to bring together people from our neighborhood to discuss everything with you.

Thank you.

Hello and good day distinguished members of the council.

My name is Ibrahim Khalil and I am here as a representative of the University of Virginia Student Council Legislative Affairs Agency.

Our body stands at the core of student advocacy with housing affordability and access as a critical component.

The vast majority of UBA students are tenants and have common interests with other renters in Charlottesville.

We are here today to strongly urge you all to consider our recommendations and the ones outlined in the housing coalition letter that has been signed by nearly 30 organizations.

Our purpose in attending this meeting today is to garner your support for the core neighborhood and core corridor designations.

We also would urge you all to allow for more housing outside of core areas which will strengthen racial equity and housing affordability in Charlottesville.

In addition, we ask you to further vote on adding affordable height bonuses and to increase building footprint maximums in RA, RB, and RC.

and to keep planning commission recommendations for more intense areas.

These suggestions follow suit of what our previous Student Council Executive Board endorsed in its October of 2021 comprehensive plan statement, which stated, and I quote, allow up to eight story height for the JPA student corridor.

This will encourage concentration of student housing in this area and will prevent undergraduate student housing from pushing in to other neighborhoods surrounding the university, especially sensitive ones, end quote.

Housing in Jefferson Park Avenue

14th Street, Rugby Road, Wirtland Street are where students prefer to live.

As students UVA we have great respect for the city of Charlottesville and to become better neighbors ourselves we advocate for policies like these that will strengthen the core values we represent of inclusivity and equity to create a better community for all people.

We appreciate your continued commitment and diligence to this great city.

Thank you for your time.

Good evening.

I am Jeffrey Ayton, Chair of the Tree Commission, and I reside at 2503 Hillwood Place in Charlottesville.

As you know, the Tree Commission is very concerned about the drastic loss of tree canopy in the city.

We have advocated for stronger requirements for tree protection and better definition of what makes for good tree planting in the new development code.

We appreciate the many tree protection measures the new code contains.

However, there are additional requirements we believe will help to preserve existing trees and to ensure new trees are planted properly.

Relative to tree preservation, existing bonuses intended to preserve trees during development have been largely ineffective.

Possible incentives for developers and future property owners could include allowance for higher density, increased maximum height or modified setback requirements, expedited permitting or waiver of fees, tax reductions or stormwater credits.

The code requires reasonable effort to preserve and protect certain landscape features.

This requirement is largely ignored.

To ensure reasonable effort is in fact made, we suggest the City's environmental checklist be completed for all projects involving land disturbance.

The language for tree protection must be more robust with the added requirements that it be in place during demolition and must meet the standards contained in the BMP manual.

There must be more meaningful consequences for damage to existing trees during construction.

The City should require compensation for any trees it owns.

Tree value should be assessed using the standards set by the Council of Tree and Landscape Appraisers, the CTLA.

We also suggest adding a provision authorizing the Administrator, the Director of Parks and Recreation, or the Urban Forester to issue a stop work order if unpermitted or unauthorized tree removal is occurring during construction.

Relative to tree planting, the word properly should be inserted before installed so that when a performance bond is released there is some guarantee that the plantings have a chance of living into maturity.

There will be situations where tree preservation or planting cannot be met on site.

In these instances language should be added so requirements may be met through the use of offsite tree banking or through a prorated payment into a tree preservation and planting fund.

Wherever it appears, the term master tree list should be changed to comprehensive tree list.

Thank you, Ms.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

I'm Stuart Brown.

My property is at 210 West Market Street.

I'm all for residential development in

in the city.

I know we need affordable housing, especially in the DX area.

I'm for it.

I see two factors that can limit the potential in the DX area.

One is the limitation of number of floors.

We have a good height of 184 feet, but you limit it to 13 floors.

In a residential development, you don't need the

the great floor-to-floor ceiling height or foot floor-to-floor as you do in a commercial development.

So in a residential development you may only have to use about 140 feet.

You're losing that 40 foot of potential development

So I recommend dropping the 13 story limitation, keeping the 184 feet and then maximizing the number of units, bringing the cost of the units down, making housing more affordable.

I also think that the

30-foot setback after three floors is not as beneficial as a more pleasant experience at the ground level.

And I'll bring this to you.

Look at, say, the flats on one side and the standard on the other in West Main.

At the standard, you're right up against a brick wall.

At the flats, you've got some feet, some trees, some grassy area.

It's a much more pleasant experience.

So I would trade the setback for a more pleasant ground level experience.

Hi, my name is Tim Long and I live at 1700 Rugby Avenue and I object to the RC designation of my neighborhood.

We moved here because of the ambiance, the trees, the setbacks and sidewalks.

I believe that RC will ruin the nature and flavor of Rugby Avenue.

One, the house setbacks.

Decreasing the house setbacks to the plan is going to ruin that ambiance that we have.

in my neighborhood.

Two, trees, as mentioned before, will be endangered.

I have several trees that would be directly affected if the lot next door to me was built to RC standards just because they're right on the property line and we just lose all that.

I do like looking out my kitchen window when there's the sunset.

That would be gone if the next lot were designated RC or built to RC standards.

Three, parking.

I know people brought this up before, but I'm going to reinforce that.

The plan may not want people to have cars, but they're going to have cars.

You're not going to be able to limit people to having no cars.

If there's no off-street parking, residents will still have cars and they're going to park them wherever they can find a spot.

I just came back from a vacation trip up in New York City and I like the Upper West Side.

It's very vibrant, a lot of commercial.

It's very densely packed.

But if I wanted to live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I would have moved there.

I moved to Charlottesville because I like what I see here right now.

Then with dedicated bike lanes, bike lanes on one lane on one side of the street.

I bike a lot and you know what happens when you got bikes going both directions?

I don't understand the limit on just bike lanes on one side of the street.

Also, a lot of bike lanes already are blocked by leaves, garbage, parked cars, and all that.

A better idea would be for this whole thing would be to allow duplexes similar to what's on the 1600 block of Oxford.

Brick houses with setbacks and that fits with the neighborhood.

Thank you.

Hello, Council.

My name is Mark Anderson, and I'm a renter in the Belmont neighborhood on Elliott Avenue.

This is my first time speaking here in person and I'm just saying that to illustrate how important this is to me.

We desperately need more housing and denser housing within this city.

The new zoning map is a massive improvement to the current highly exclusionary zoning that we have had in this city and is a result of years of research and public input which has led to the plan that we have today.

And it is reflective of the needs and wants of the majority of the city as evidenced by the most recent city council elections and the success of pro-housing candidates.

I first moved to Charlottesville as a UVA student in 2014 and throughout my four years in school I never once had a bedroom to myself because I couldn't afford it it wasn't until 2021 my eighth year living in the city that I could finally afford to live in a home with as many bedrooms as there were occupants housing prices have been bad and they're getting worse I'm also in favor of waiving parking minimums allow the market to decide if the lack of dedicated parking space is a deal breaker for potential tenants do not make that decision for them

Dense housing advances both the city's climate goals and its equity goals.

Dense housing permits more opportunities to live close to your work and to the many amenities that make the city of Charlottesville an amazing place to live.

Shorter commute distances means less time driving a polluting vehicle and enables a greener form of transportation like walking, biking or taking the bus to be viable, which will all ease a significant amount of the traffic and infrastructure concerns raised.

Additionally, more housing supply to meet the huge demand will improve price and affordability, preventing the displacement of lower income residents who have called Charlottesville home for years, who are disproportionately people of color.

This zoning code will help mitigate this displacement.

Thank you, Council, for your time.

Good evening.

I'm Martha Smyth, 1528 Rutledge Avenue.

And I want to thank you for having this hearing.

It's an important opportunity for all of us to share our thoughts.

And many of them are quite diverse.

I've written a little poem to reflect some of my concerns about this.

And it's entitled, Build, build, build.

Build anything you want.

Build it almost anywhere.

Block in a whole neighborhood.

They won't really care.

Build it to ten stories and cut off sun and view.

That doesn't really matter if it's what you want to do.

Build it to the sidewalk if one exists at all.

Who cares if our city looks like a parking lot or mall?

No need to offer parking for any home you've built, for driving cars will burden folks with horrid shame and guilt.

Forget about the sewers to serve your monolith.

Dump the costs on taxpayers.

Their finances?

A myth.

You can decimate a stand of lovely healthy trees.

That won't really matter as long as you pay the fees.

Pop a scrawny sapling.

Really just sprigs at best.

And continue with impunity.

The city won't contest.

Just build, build, build.

The more concrete the better.

No provision for more parks.

Your heat islands to fetter.

seems only wise ones oppose these radical careless change because some in town think only cars are causing climate change.

So carry on most recklessly and do it with great speed for we've all learned that build, build, build will be the only creed.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Do we have a count on how many more people we've got?

Okay.

Well, we're getting at it.

Grimshaw.

Now for something completely different.

My name is Andrew Grimshaw.

I moved to Charlottesville in the fall of 1988.

And I'm going to be commenting primarily on process because based on comments last night, the decision is already in on this.

I came to Charlottesville because I wanted to live in a small university town in a rural area.

Much like the town I grew up in, Bloomington, Indiana.

I explicitly wanted a small university town with a small town feeling rather than an urban campus such as Berkeley, Seattle, Columbia, or Austin.

I've been to all those places.

I moved into my current neighborhood, Lewis Mountain, almost a decade ago because of its quiet streets, big lots, tree cover, and pleasant walks.

I love it there.

A bit more than two years ago, the comprehensive plan rezoning process began.

At the time, it was sold as an open process being done with an open mind that would take community input into consideration.

Quote, Charlottesville plans together, close quote, it turns out is an Orwellian slogan that makes one think that the city and contractor doing the work were actually interested in what neighborhoods thought about increased development.

This is not the case.

From the beginning, there was a clear mission to significantly increase density in the city regardless of what neighborhood stakeholders thought.

To the best of my knowledge, the city has never taken the basis steps of asking the citizens via formal survey or ballot measure what they actually wanted.

It's now clear to me from the beginning the answer was a foregone conclusion.

Higher and higher buildings packing more and more housing into the existing space.

To quote Mr. Pinkston from last night, Charlottesville residents need to get used to tall buildings.

Perhaps Mr. Pinkston comes from New York or San Francisco and longs for the comfort of massive buildings and crowds.

I do not.

As a final comment, I've read multiple drafts of the Comprehensive Plan documents and have sat through at least three, well, exactly three PUD sessions for different projects.

In all three of these cases, the request was for buildings of unusual size, 10 plus floors, that are completely out of scale for a town like Charlottesville.

I lost my place.

It rapidly became clear that each of the three building proposals that Council had no problem with dropping giant buildings into local neighborhoods.

Furthermore, Council had no reservations about wrecking neighborhoods replacing single family houses with complexes of up to 24 units.

No, the only sticking point is how much cash they can extract from the developers to add to the Council housing budget.

Number 32, Jessica Otey Jessica Otey, 211 Alderman Road.

I'm a member of an organization called Strong Towns.

In his book of that name, the group's founder, Charles Marin, discusses the danger of misunderstanding how cities survive.

He says, when humans imagine cities as complicated machines and not complex human habitat, they fail to grasp what is really happening.

They misdiagnose problems and opportunities as being a byproduct of one or two related variables.

instead of one manifestation of an interrelated complex system, end quote.

Strongtown's SMI is in favor of increased density, but only in the context of preserving adaptive feedback.

Enticing profiteering developers to jump several levels of density will only end up repeating

the distortion effects of our current overly restrictive zoning.

The claim that if we just build more housing magically costs will come down or that by increasing density in place X we will protect place Y. These are precisely the traps that result from mistaking the complex for the complicated.

Cities aren't machines.

The way to honor complexity is to encourage incremental growth.

Marone writes, cities must allow by right the next increment of intensity throughout all neighborhoods and they must limit by right development to only the next increment.

No neighborhood can be exempt from change but no neighborhood should experience radical change all at once.

The temptation to work only in bold ways to embrace instant and comprehensive transformation as a strategy guarantees eventual atrophy and decline.

I've lived here 15 years now, and I remember when I first learned about the bold, instant, and comprehensive transformation of the Vinegar Hill neighborhood in the mid-1960s.

I have zero doubt that today it would be a dense, prosperous residential neighborhood had it been left to evolve on its own.

Maybe it feels more just this time around to target historically white neighborhoods for dramatic change, but the outcome is going to be the same, permanent disfiguring, greed-driven development that destroys the character of this city.

I have no prepared remark.

It seemed obvious that what should be done here is that this issue should be decided by referendum, not by you all, however clever you might be.

When I first learned about the

proposed changes in zoning.

It was about two years ago, and I was referred to a young man in the Planning Commission.

And he referred me and turned to Charlottesville Plans Tomorrow.

I called him, and I got in touch with him.

And it was clear that this was an organization that was in favor of substantial change in

Zoning rules.

I recently heard an advertisement, a radio ad that was paid for by that same organization, saying how wonderful everything would be once the rezoning had been passed.

I'm opposed to it.

and I believe that we should allow everyone to hear a debate and to understand what is at stake.

All right.

My name is Bell Wilson.

I live at 2305 Angus Road in the Meadows, and I support upzoning across the city.

I'm here because I do not want the RNA core district to be applied to the Meadows because my neighborhood is not like the areas of Tenth and Page, Fifeville, and Rose Hill currently being considered for that overlay.

This is one of the takeaways from the RKG analysis as well.

We have not seen the development pressure, the volume of sales, and the levels of appreciation that have happened in those other parts of the city.

The Meadows is not centrally located, and it does not have the walkable amenities that are contributing to houses being purchased and flipped and to the encroachment of high-end student housing elsewhere.

Meadows is isolated from the hospital, from the university, and from the major commercial centers in the city by distance, by major highways, or both.

Limiting a property to one unit by right when all other neighborhoods allow three units by right for sure reduces their value and does so permanently.

What exactly is the problem that taking this approach in the Meadows would solve?

Is it a lack of housing supply?

If so, how does restricting buy-right development relative to the rest of the city help to produce more housing units?

That also undercuts the possibility of transit-oriented development along the hydraulic road corridor.

Is it displacement?

If you are worried about renters and homeowners being priced out of the meadows specifically, zoning and land use controls are an incredibly blunt instrument, and the city should instead invest in programs and subsidies that target individual households who need help.

like property tax abatement or rent stabilization policies or more money for vouchers.

It is not at all clear to me how a zoning update influences what a landlord charges for rent each month.

The R&A designation does not make sense for the Meadows, which is why it was not part of the Planning Commission's recommendation.

My name is Josh Crone.

I live in North Avenue in the Locust Grove neighborhood.

I'd like to begin by thanking the many people involved in the Seville Plans Together process for their hard work, the long hours, and their expertise.

And I'd like to single out the Planning Commission especially for doing this work under intense scrutiny and with very little compensation.

Next I'd like to broadly support the Development Code as it was advertised for this meeting.

Zoning reform is a necessary first step to correcting the mistakes of exclusionary zoning that have made Charlottesville an inequitable and unsustainable place to live.

The future of healthy cities is dense and walkable, not sprawling and car dependent, and Charlottesville has a lot of catching up to do.

Specifically, I'd like to highlight one aspect of the zoning ordinance that I feel is critical to include.

and that's neighborhood scale commercial uses in all residential districts.

Being able to walk to a corner store or cafe in less than 15 minutes is a key that unlocks car free and car light living.

This won't happen overnight.

It'll take years for neighborhoods like mine to become dense enough to support more than one or two retail shops.

But we have to start allowing things to grow organically by trial and error as the needs of residents change.

We can allow a better city to flourish.

And the first step is saying, yes, it's OK.

Thank you all.

Good evening.

Thanks very much for letting me be here.

I'm David Toscano of 628 Evergreen Avenue.

And I've been here 40 years.

And like several of you in this room, I've gone through a whole bunch of comprehensive plans, zoning changes, et cetera.

And if I learned one thing, it's important to have a balance in what you do.

I've been a big proponent of density, of commercial corridors, mixed use for a long time, but it's always balanced.

We're making sure we protect our historic neighborhoods and making sure we have sustainable development.

So that's what you're trying to strike here.

It's not easy.

My compliments to you for doing this work, but you're not done yet.

There are a lot of good ideas in this plan.

But take your time.

We're talking about 50 years for the city of Charlottesville.

This is a big deal and as several people have said, once the genie's out of the bottle it's going to be hard to put it back in.

I know Lloyd and other people know about down zoning and we know how comprehensive down zoning has to occur in order for it to be sustainable in court.

So don't create too much upzoning because you won't be able to go back without drawing a lot of lawsuits.

In fact, I think there are legal potholes all along the way in this development plan.

You should find the most articulate critic who is a lawyer of this plan and let them go through this plan and rip it apart so you can put it back together so it will sustain

a challenge in court because it's a big deal.

The other thing is the lack of unintended consequences.

People have talked about that here in terms of the sustainability of the plan, the infrastructure.

It's a huge problem.

You start building really, really, really big buildings and you start putting more and more sewage into the system and we've got huge problems in terms of our infrastructure here.

And you don't fix it with the zoning ordinance.

It's a building code likely that fixes a lot of that stuff.

Finally, the parking requirements, be careful about that too.

And I leave you with one thought.

There are a lot of good ideas, a lot of good aspirational ideas where people are traveling, flying at 30,000 feet.

But the good policy is made at the ground level in the weeds.

So get in the weeds, take your time, there's no rush, and do a good job.

Hi.

Good evening.

Ben Heller, Blue Ridge Road.

I just want to make two specific suggestions, one of which I think you're already leaning towards and one which you're leaning against.

First, please do not expand commercial uses in our A, B, and C zones.

Our zones are years, if not decades, away from the requisite density and infrastructure to make pedestrian-serving businesses viable.

Moreover, the massive expansion of mixed-use zones means the average R lot will now be much closer to areas with commercial buy-right uses than presently.

It sounded like you're already leaning this way, but I just wanted to say that.

Second, please impose gross floor area caps in our zones, as Mayor Snook has suggested.

This will honor the comp plan's promise of house-sized and compatible development.

The rest of you seem to be leaning against it, perhaps responding to Mr. Fries's captious objections that GFA is hard to calculate and enforce.

It leads to gaming that generates ugly architectural forms.

That's total nonsense.

A GFA cap is at the center of Austin's highly successful anti-McMansion law.

The GFA definition is barely two pages long, any layman can understand it, and their staff has enforced it easily.

Austin has not become a menagerie of architectural deformities.

In fact, new housing there compares very favorably to the stuff that our developer community produces.

A 9,000 square foot building consisting of 3,000 square foot condos in R.A.

doesn't serve the plan's articulated purposes.

Each condo would be larger and surely more expensive than most houses in Charlottesville.

Three 1,500 square foot units would surely be more in line with what's affordable to local workers.

GFA caps are a rare provision that will serve both affordability and neighborhood compatibility.

And a final thought.

The biggest beneficiaries, if you go ahead with this, the county gets to keep its growth area restriction.

The UVA gets to increase its enrollment.

How have you not asked them to pay?

How are you letting them roll you the way that developers always roll you?

Hi, good evening.

My name is Gareth Gaston.

My wife and I live in a lovely old house on Rugby Road, a short walk from Grounds, and I believe we must be the only family in our neighborhood in support of these proposed changes.

Yellow signs warning a coming, zoning disaster everywhere in our neighborhood, and we are now in our fifth pro-housing sign because they keep getting stolen.

The house we live in now belonged to my late parents, Paul and Mary Gaston.

My dad was a professor at UVA.

My mother taught at Venable.

Both could walk to work.

But this neighborhood, which is very near our city's main employer,

and possibly expensive for most people.

Mayor Snook, as you know, your parents and mine worked hand in hand on the civil rights movement.

And both of our surnames are inscribed on the Main Street Bridge in honor of that work.

But carving names into stone makes the problems tackled seem of another age, which is really not the case here.

Racism is far from vanished.

Economic inequality is so much worse now than it was in our parents' time.

and adds to that the threat of the impending climate disaster.

Combating these three items together is, I believe, the great challenge of our time.

This plan will not solve all our problems, but it's a great start, and I hope you will be bold in implementing it.

The detailed recommendations of that letter from Livable Seville co-signed by over 30 local groups is good.

I particularly support the ones about allowing more housing outside of the core neighborhoods in neighborhoods specifically, such as mine on Rugby Road.

My name is Sarah VanVrancken.

I live at 625 Ridge Street.

As a history teacher, I've recently been reflecting on the history of zoning in Charlottesville.

The premise that some developments were white and some were black was built into Charlottesville's landscape.

A 1959 ad in the Daily Progress touts Greenbrier as a desirable new neighborhood whose residents are doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professional people.

What the ad doesn't know, because frankly it didn't need to, was that this new neighborhood was available to white homeowners.

While white residents could move into Greenbrier, black residents were being pushed out of Vinegar Hill.

In 2023, we're not starting from scratch.

We're starting with this legacy of discrimination and exclusion.

In places like Greenbrier, zoning has protected open spaces, inflated housing prices, and controlled density.

I understand that it's a lovely neighborhood to live in.

It was designed to be.

But we must recognize that behind that peace and quiet is exclusion, zoning laws that keep people of diverse economic backgrounds out of that neighborhood.

I ask you council and fellow residents to remember this history.

Every time you water down the zoning code, lowering height maximums, reducing medium density, you dilute its power to move our built landscape towards more equity.

Cries of we need to go slower and what's the rush and dial it back have accompanied every civil rights push in American history.

Of course those who benefit from the past don't want things to change.

When people ask to go slowly, they're asking people who can't afford housing, who can't find housing, who think they'll never be able to own housing, to wait and suffer a little longer.

The reality is Charlottesville has gone slow and maintained the status quo for far too long.

Council, please pass a full-throated zoning code to move Charlottesville into a more equitable future.

James Van Venken, also 625 Ridge Street.

I'm going to keep this brief because I know we all want to go home and you've doubtless heard all of these arguments before.

I support this zoning code.

I support more density, more height, more medium intensity areas, more commercial uses in residential.

I find it ironic that we've been lectured here about the cost of infrastructure when residents of higher density parts of our city, such as downtown Rose Hill, Tenth and Page,

are effectively subsidising the infrastructure costs of lower density areas such as rugby barracks in Greenbrier.

We need more density for infrastructure for quality of life for so many reasons.

I'm so excited by the promise that this zoning code holds.

I'm excited to have fewer commuters and more neighbours.

I'm excited that those who don't want to own a car might not have to in the near future.

I want to thank you all, the Councilors, Planning Commission, James Fries and the lawyers for the work you've done on this.

I'm so tired of it.

I can't imagine how you feel.

We appreciate it.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Deborah Murray and I live on Lexington Avenue.

I oppose the proposed designation of Lexington as RB, given the contrasting designation of Evergreen Avenue as RA.

This disparity in treatment makes no sense.

Physically, Lexington and Evergreen are one continuous street.

The only difference is the change in the street name that appears at the bottom of a curve in the road.

Past the Maplewood Cemetery on Lexington, both streets are narrow and both consist mostly of older homes.

I urge council to treat both streets the same.

The more intense development proposed for Lexington would irrevocably alter the character of the neighborhood and the increased traffic would pose increased risk to pedestrians and bicyclists.

In contrast, designating Lexington as RA, same as Evergreen, would still achieve the stated goal of accommodating additional housing options.

In conclusion,

There is no rhyme or reason for treating these streets differently.

Murray.

Good evening, councilors.

My name is Matthew Gillican.

I'm a resident of Fifeville and co-chair of Livable Seaville.

First, I want to express appreciation to each of you, the planning commission and city staff for the years of hard work you've put into the Seaville plans process.

Charlottesville is on the verge of history and your leadership has helped to take us there.

I'm here to share about the housing coalition of over 30 local organizations who have co-signed a letter in support of a new zoning code that embodies the city's commitments to racial and economic equity, environmental justice, and a more accessible Charlottesville.

We have sent you a copy of the letter which lays out shared values and zoning code recommendations we ask you to implement.

Co-signers include low-income housing advocates and service providers like the Charlottesville Low Income Housing Coalition, Fightville Neighborhood Association, Piedmont Housing Alliance, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville, The Haven, Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless and AHIP.

Co-signers include environmental justice organizations like Community Climate Collaborative, Cultivate Charlottesville, and Divest UVA.

Co-signers include UVA groups like the UVA Equity Center, the UVA Student Council Executive Board, UVA Graduate Student Council, the United Campus Workers of Virginia UVA Chapter, and University Democrats at UVA.

It includes advocacy organizations like the Legal Aid Justice Center, the International Rescue Committee Charlottesville, the Human Rights Commission of Charlottesville, the Charlottesville Education Association, and the Charlottesville Democratic Socialists of America.

and also includes faith groups like the officers of the Charlottesville Clergy Collective and Charlottesville Friends Meeting.

All these groups say yes to a new zoning code.

We need your courage to prioritize the people most impacted by the area's affordable housing crisis so Charlottesville can be a vibrant city with all kinds of housing for all kinds of people in all kinds of places.

And tonight we ask you to say yes to a new zoning code.

Speaker 43, Deedee Smith.

Yes, good evening.

My name is Deedee Smith.

I live in Frye Spring, a segment of the quadrant of the city you haven't heard a lot from and which has sadly no representation on this council.

Tim and I bought our first home on Monta Vista in 1980 for $45,000.

It was and still is a very modest house as many if not most houses south of the railroad tracks are.

Our immediate neighbors were on the one side an elderly white couple who had raised their family there.

On the other side a black couple who were the first family to integrate Fry Springs in the 1960s.

Next to them was another black family because you see it was one of the only blocks that would sell to black families in the 1960s.

So when I looked at your map and I saw that their side of just this one block was targeted by y'all for more intensive up zoning, I was gobsmacked.

You're going to really, black homeowners being forced out again?

It doesn't even make sense.

I mean, if you look at it, and I encourage you to look at it, first block of Monta Vista, it just doesn't make any sense that it should be up zoned.

Sadly, this arbitrary pattern

is repeated throughout the southwest side of the tracks.

A huge chunk of the city that hasn't been given any voice by any of you, by any sensitive areas.

Let's face it, it's the low and moderate income housing that is going to be the most vulnerable.

It is those families least likely to be building cottages in their backyard, the most likely to be displaced and to be economically

just driven out by the economic pressure of the development.

So I just ask you if one solution, please just zone all residential housing the same.

Just make it whatever you think is fair, make it like your own.

Thank you, Ms.

Hi, my name is Pete Marshall.

I'm retired and I own and have lived in my house on Gentry Lane since 1999.

This proposed zoning plan is stressing me out no end.

Allowing denser housing across the board with no requirement for off-street parking will force residents with cars to park on the street, causing parking chaos.

No traffic studies associated with the rezoning appear to have been done, which is a clear dereliction of duty.

Public transportation is woefully inadequate in Charlottesville to pick up the slack.

And there are many good reasons why most buses run practically empty most of the time.

And good luck finding public transportation to Charlottesville's airport.

This means that the anticipated increase in the population

Our streets will become even more crowded than they already are, and good luck to those like me living on a critically sloped lot with no off-street parking who already have to park on the street.

On top of this, increasing the development potential of every housing lot will inevitably result in an increase in property valuations, driving up taxes even further than they already are, and forcing homeowners to sell to developers who are just licking their lips in anticipation of the coming wind force.

If you pass this plan, you will be funneling money their way.

I would further urge the City Council to push really hard the General Assembly to rescind the Dillon Rule so that you can institute rent control in Charlottesville.

That will do something about affordable housing in Charlottesville.

Good evening members of council.

I am Flo Taylor and I live at 710 10th Street Northwest.

I'm the president of the Rose Hill Neighborhood Association.

We support both the RNA zoning and the core neighborhood overlay district which is CX3 zoning along Preston Avenue.

Please include both of these items in the zoning ordinance.

We do request some changes to the current proposal for our neighborhood.

which I'll review here briefly.

First, we request that all of the single family parcels east of 4th Street and North Henry Avenue zone as RB in the draft proposal.

be rezoned as RNA.

These homes have the same consistent single family pattern as the rest of Rose Hill currently proposed to be RNA.

We support staff's ability to come up with near term solution for the handful of lots in this area already zoned for commercial use.

The rest of these parcels are still requested to be immediately

changed from the proposal RB to RNA.

Please do not push this decision back.

Second, we request that the parcels at the end of Booker Street, specifically 604, 611, 613 and on north side of the street

and 612 on the south be zoned RNA.

These are single family sized lots on a quiet dead end street that is well below grade and not accessible from Preston Avenue.

Finally, since the core neighborhood overlay district uses CX3 as the base zoning, we see it as only fair that no areas within our neighborhood

be zoned for taller than three stories by right.

We request that the two blocks contained with Rose Hill Drive, Charlton Avenue, Albemarle Street, and Dale Avenue be changed from the proposal NX-5 to NX-3.

Hi, everybody.

I happen to be not too good today, but I couldn't not.

I'm Salith Diakar, a lifetime resident here in Charlottesville.

I wanted to say I personally spoke to over 300 people going door to door, and all of them signed the petition that CLICC had created.

and it was more so to stop displacement within the core neighborhoods.

These housing opportunities that Seville Place has put together is really going to help a lot of people that is in need.

We have many people that don't have homes

that need more.

And with us building, we'll give them that opportunity.

If it wasn't for affordable housing, I could not be here today to speak about the blessing that I had.

So I only want to see someone else with the exact blessing or even better than what I obtained today.

I have an 18-year-old that's looking to have housing and because of the causes right now,

It is not possible for her to get an affordable housing unit.

There are many other children that's coming out of high school, that's coming out of college, that are looking to start their families, and they're unable to do so.

That is unfair.

So I just wanted to say that I approve the CLIC recommendations.

My name is Priscilla Anderson and I'm from 830 E Hardigrad and I'll agree with CLIC for deep forward housing.

My name is Jay Hooker.

I'm from 2071 Ridge Street.

I'm also, I agree with Click 2.

There's quite a few constituents that are listening to what is going on, but trauma keeps them from being seen and using their God-given voices.

I help people because I love to do

It.

Nobody asked me to, but I do.

And I know it is the right thing to do.

African American families here in Charlottesville seen city council members make decisions that didn't benefit those of color.

Why should they believe that a change had truly happened?

Now, especially with the high housing offered to my constituents,

Without deep affordable housing, I would not be able to stand here and voice about housing period.

Many families are on the streets because of lack of knowledge to keep it.

This community has been through tremendous trauma since 1967.

You're putting the community into more trauma.

This highly damaged community is forever crippled because of the general

generational trauma that are forever enduring in this city.

Fate has been determined and you all lack the responsibility and take up for us as we have been brutally bullied for decades.

You are asking our community to revisit the worst times of their lives and to also believe that you all will make a sound decision that is going to benefit the low and moderate income people.

That's funny, but this is the reality that the low and moderate income community faces every day of their lives.

You keep kicking somebody down and

keep you keep kicking someone down that has never been able to stand up.

How do you really feel about yourself?

Thank you.

My name is Susan Freeman.

I'm here to voice my strong support for the new zoning ordinance.

As a professor with a home in Greenbrier, I myself am well sheltered and economically secure.

I'm very aware, however, that Charlottesville boasts not only a renowned university, a lot of fancy restaurants, but also a poverty rate of over 20%.

It was some decades ago as an activist with the UVA Living Wage Campaign that I first became aware of how many full-time university staff were eligible for food stamps, how many couldn't afford to live in town.

Since then, I've written about housing insecurity and volunteered with the Haven, experiences proving to me the essentially economic logic of homelessness.

The math isn't complicated.

Low wages plus high rents mean that far too many struggle to keep up, putting them just one family emergency away from eviction.

There recently has been some progress on the wage front.

Now that the university and its contractors are paying a minimum wage of $15 an hour, it's time to tackle the high cost of housing.

As someone living in a neighborhood currently designated as R1,

I decry its historical shaping by racial covenants and zoning laws designed to promote segregation by race and by class.

I would welcome rezoning to permit a wider range of housing options in Greenbrier and to incentivize affordable units.

The yes signs posted by my neighbors indicate I'm not alone.

We've finally torn down our Confederate statues and renamed many of our schools.

The new code is a chance to rename our neighborhoods by zoning them more inclusively.

Please vote to make this possible.

Thank you, Ms.

Thank you.

My name is Anthony Artuso and I live at 313 Kent Road in the Lewis Mountain neighborhood.

The DZO, as currently drafted, is highly unlikely to deliver the hope for benefits that everyone has been praising here and that we all want to see.

I've looked very, very carefully at the empirical academic research on upzoning,

It's very clear it will deliver very modest benefits at best in terms of reducing housing prices.

It can't be argued with.

It's been admitted through this process and yet it keeps getting forgotten.

The inclusionary zoning elements in the DZO are also seriously flawed.

Just one example, the 60 percent AMI affordability threshold is actually above current market rent.

It's in the documents itself.

That's due to statistical aberrations between rental income and overall homeowner income in the city.

So you can have an inclusion zoning requirement that will deliver no affordable housing.

If we want to build and develop affordable housing, which we all should and must, we will have to pay for it.

We have to devote tax revenues to pay for it.

The City Council should follow the recommendation of the affordable housing plan and devote $10 million a year in dedicated tax revenues for affordable housing.

If you did that, we would be able and you would be able to undertake a review of the DZO that is substantially less emotionally charged.

No longer

Would there be this pressure to increase density at all costs, regardless of whatever else comes from it?

You'd be able to take a balanced review.

How much more density should we have in each area?

And we should have it.

And so I ask you, make that commitment to affordable housing and then undertake a review that allows a balanced plan for increasing density and pursuing the other objectives of the comprehensive plan.

Thank you.

I'm Tom Beasley.

I'm a property owner of 1311 of Mountview Street.

I purchased a property in 1973

It was divided from 1311 to 1309, which the city led to be divided to a light commercial.

In 1978, the commercial piece of property was sold.

I maintained the property of 1311 Mountain View Street.

by the blessings of the city and all.

For the last three and a half years, I have a tenant in there with a young family with three children, would love to be on an affordable home, and I have tried to sell this property, but the city says I cannot sell it.

I was able to purchase it in 73.

I don't see why I can't sell it in 2023.

and that's the rest of my story.

I hope someone sees what I'm saying.

Everybody talks about affordable houses.

I have affordable home there.

The homeowner would like to purchase it and we've been fighting this thing for

four years there with their pouch.

And since I have a few more minutes, I just recently spent a little better than $200,000 on it to renovate it, to bring everything up to date in it and all like that.

And once again, I don't understand if I was able to get it, why can't I sell it?

It should be a grandfather clause in there.

The property lines are the same now as they were in 1973.

Speaker 52 is Molly Bowerman.

I am a UVA student and I live off grounds and have done so for the past two or three years because UVA housing is very expensive for students like me who work and pay our own rent.

This year I declined to live on the lawn because

staying at my apartment off grounds would save me over $2,000.

More housing options helps provide students with affordable options while the university consistently fails to provide us with adequate and affordable options.

Additionally, I am studying urban planning at the University of Virginia in the School of Architecture and am president of the Student Planners Association.

I chose my major in part due to the frustrations that I had and share with my peers being forced to select from overpriced low quality options in

University housing areas and off grounds and on a short timeline feeling rushed by different Charlottesville leasing associations and encroaching on historically black neighborhoods like Tenth and Page.

I chose this major in urban planning because I wanted to seek solutions and in these classes it has become undeniable to me that the way to address the problems that Charlottesville and many other cities sees like housing shortages, rising unhoused populations,

Injustices and climate change is through increasing density, eliminating parking minimums, protecting neighborhoods and creating walkable communities as outlined in this code.

As such, I support the zoning code update and the letter from the Housing Coalition, which the Student Planners Association signed in support.

And I commend the strong steps this code takes as incredibly necessary to combat the dire crises facing the city.

And I hope the city continues to take further steps to protect and promote affordable housing, housing justice, transit-oriented development, reducing sprawl.

Well, they say that money talks and wealth whispers, but wealth has been hollering tonight, huh?

I think if the NIMBYs actually put their effort into something productive, they'd get a lot done.

I've spoken to you guys about a vocal minority and the dangers of it, a lot of other issues around town, and I'm here to say that people like me are in the majority.

I'm a renter and I think the proposed new zoning code is a step in the right direction.

I'm 31 years old.

I work at a nonprofit.

I make okay money but I can't afford to live alone.

What we have right now is a simple supply and demand issue.

High demand, low supply equals higher prices.

People like me are being priced out of living in the city limits.

The proposed height and density changes means more housing for people

not just like me, but from all walks of life.

Allowing for more housing outside of the core neighborhoods addresses racial equity and improves school integration.

These housing increases can be a positive change that counters past city actions that have hurt marginalized community members.

I just want to say I co-sign everything in the letter sent to you all by Livable Seville.

And I also want to say that

If you look at the past issues with the houselessness in this city, this is like a dire pressing issue.

People are out there in the cold alone because they don't have access to homes.

And increasing density, building more homes is what prevents people from honestly dying.

Hi, good evening.

I'm Andrea Massey and I'm on Elliott Avenue.

I support the recommendations of CLIC, the Charlottesville Low Income Housing Coalition.

I know you have seen and heard what those are so I won't go into detail on that.

I guess hearing people worried about the character of their neighborhood with no acknowledgement of how that character came to be and the ongoing consequences of that is unreal to me.

It's something I will never understand.

So I guess as you all are having to decide, we all have to prioritize things in our life and things in the city.

So I am asking you to prioritize affordable housing and ways to get there.

I know this isn't perfect, but it is a way, it's a great start and I'm hoping you will look that and prioritize that in people's lives and how they live over what their lawn looks like and the character of their neighborhood.

I encourage counselors to say yes to the new zoning code as we work towards racial, economic, and social justice and affordable housing is one part of this.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Katie Ebinger.

I live at 716 Park Street and I work at the Community Climate Collaborative.

I want to speak today in favor of the zoning code and say that I'm really excited about the proposed changes.

We need more affordable housing in the city in order to reverse the history of exclusionary zoning and displacement that's plagued our community and so many others.

This zoning code is a great start, especially with the core overlay district to give us tools to increase housing and density in our neighborhoods.

I want to talk about the environmental and climate reasons why increased density is a really important future for us.

When we have more density in Charlottesville, I know we talk a lot about tree canopy and trees, but when we have urban sprawl, we're deforesting Albemarle County

at an incredibly quick rate because of all the subdivisions we're putting in because there's no housing in Charlottesville.

So we need to increase density in Charlottesville to actually save trees.

We also know that increased density leads to lower energy costs per household, another benefit for climate, and finally that it decreases the need for cars.

I know a lot of us speak negatively about traffic.

I don't like traffic either, but if we can reduce how many people have to drive in to Charlottesville because more people can afford to live here, we can reduce traffic and improve air quality.

Lastly, I just want to talk about my personal experiences living in Charlottesville.

I've moved here somewhat recently within two years and I was really lucky to find a lower A affordable housing unit in a primarily single-family zoned area.

Having a multi-family unit in that space has allowed me and my housemates to live in a city that's so often unaffordable.

and I just want to say that it does work when you open up housing to multiple families.

We are able to afford living here and it makes for a really vibrant, wonderful community.

So please vote yes on the proposed zoning ordinance.

Thank you, Ms.

Everett.

Number 59, Vezina Howard.

You're going to pass?

Okay.

Good evening.

I'm here representing the 10th and Page Neighborhood Association.

We have just one revision that we would like to see and it is a part of the special exemption permit under the Core Neighborhood Corridor Overlay District on page 2-93.

I mean specifically we're talking about section 296C 2BI.

The language currently reads quote 20% of the total number of dwelling units must be affordable at 60% AMI end quote.

This is currently optional for developers.

We are asking City Council to make this a requirement and to also edit the language so that it reads at least 20% of the total number of dwelling units must be affordable at or below 50% AMI.

We believe that it's important to ensure that our neighbors who are eligible for housing choice vouchers also have a place to live.

We know that some developers have already quietly expressed their unwillingness to put in the effort to meet this requirement.

and we believe that these are the wrong developers.

We need to attract the right developer along Preston Avenue.

The right developer will be sensitive to the economic and cultural displacement occurring in Tempton Page and Rose Hill and will enthusiastically commit to an inclusive design process and the right developer believes in trauma informed design that leads to better health outcomes and better educational outcomes and helps to address the lingering inherited very recent trauma of raising Vinegar Hill.

We are inspired by what's happening in Fifeville

and in Kendall Wood and we ask that you strengthen the special exemption permit criteria to ensure that we also have that opportunity.

Number 61, Kim Kaptjar.

Hi there.

My name is Tyler Barnes.

I live on Midland Street.

Technically, this would be considered Belmont.

It's maybe a little different from what you might think of when you think of Belmont.

We have, yes, single-family homes.

We also have high-end townhomes.

We have low-income townhomes.

We have apartments.

We even have a trailer park at the end of our street and it is wonderful.

I love living in a place like this.

I love having a diversity of people and houses available, which is why that it's why I am in support of the new zoning plan.

I'm a grad student at UVA and I'm close with students, faculty, staff.

I talk to everyone.

I'm a part of several of the graduate student organizations that signed on to the Louisville Seville letter and I can tell you that

Housing in Charlottesville is a problem and it's a problem now.

Many graduate students are unable to live in Charlottesville proper.

More and more of them are moving away from Charlottesville and having to commute in.

I also talk to staff quite a bit at UVA.

These are people working in the offices.

These are people cleaning our bathrooms, serving our food, and they do not live in Charlottesville.

They drive 30 minutes, an hour, an hour and a half just to get to UVA every day.

And so this is a problem now.

Yes, this new zoning plan will change Charlottesville.

I recognize that.

But change is really the only guarantee that we get in this life.

And I, for one, am happy that Seville is changing.

I'm happy it has changed.

I'm happy it will continue to change.

There's a lot that's worth changing.

Yes, the view from your kitchen window might change, but I believe the right to housing is much more important than window views.

Thank you.

Hi, good evening.

My name's Mike Reed.

I've been in Charlottesville for 28 years now on Calhoun Street.

I came in here tonight, did not have any prepared remarks, but I've kind of been jotting a few things down.

Generally, there's a plan to build in our neighborhood, and I kind of got involved with that.

just wanted to learn more about it, what's going to happen over there on St.

Clair Street or St.

Clair Avenue, excuse me.

And we read in there that like 10% of the units would be affordable housing.

I would support a plan for more units than that to be affordable housing.

I also read about the fact that

in that plan 10 years was the limit for the developer to have to offer affordable housing.

I would like that to be in perpetuity.

I don't think that they should be limited to only having affordable housing units for 10 years.

Generally, we support this plan.

My wife and I support the plan.

We support dense housing.

We support affordable housing.

We support diversity in housing.

Let me see.

We request, you know, there's an empty lot behind my house because the gentleman who owns the next lot is 100 years old and just recently moved out.

And there's an empty lot.

He has a huge backyard.

My wife and I sit in our back deck and we think, wow, wouldn't it be cool if they put a three-story, six-unit thing right there and we would have a lot more neighbors, a lot more people to talk to and, you know, it could be affordable for people who because it's a crisis and we recognize that.

We've benefited from that and we want other people to be able to benefit and prosper in Charlottesville.

I also would like to echo the comments by the gentleman earlier about Preston Avenue and my time is up.

Thanks for reading.

Good evening.

My name is I live on 905 Everett Road and I work as a planner here in Charlottesville.

Not for the city, just to be clear.

When I moved to Charlottesville after graduating college in June 2022, I knew that I wanted to live in the city so that I could experience all the amazing things the city has to offer.

With a monthly maximum budget of a thousand bucks a month it was very difficult to find a place to live and I was not trying to live alone.

I live with a roommate like everyone else my age and I don't expect to ever be able to live on my own in Charlottesville.

To continue my personal growth and reach milestones we celebrate as a society such as buying a house I will have to leave and move somewhere more affordable such as major U.S.

cities like Philadelphia and Minneapolis.

Please vote to change the code so that more housing can be built, making Charlottesville more affordable.

Young people want to move here, but we have nowhere to live in Aguero.

I'm strongly in favor of the proposed zoning ordinance, and I echo everything else that was said about climate and bikeability and racial equity.

Thank you.

Good evening, everybody.

I'm Vera Mason and I live on Lexington Avenue.

I'm saddened to see how the landscape of Charlottesville is changing with the increase in multi-storey buildings.

It seems to me as though Charlottesville is looking more and more like Washington, D.C.

Besides being unsightly, these buildings block out the sky, planets, sunrises, sunsets and other views.

Also should another virus come our way, it would spread like wildfire in highly populated buildings.

Besides these points, increased traffic in already busy streets is another reason not to build them.

Finally, I would like to see the city spend more resources on promoting businesses and job workshops.

I don't like the high-rise buildings.

Thank you, Ms.

Next, I believe is 65 then.

Good evening.

My name is Mike Parisi.

I am the Rose Hill Neighborhood Association Vice President.

Last Wednesday night, Mr. Snook said, I don't think that our housing shortage is so acute that council shouldn't reduce the 2117 Ivy Road project by 200 units and the Bird project by 500 units so that they, quote, have the freedom to look better.

This is very alarming.

From the 2000 census until now, Charlottesville grew by roughly 11,000 people.

What happened to the black population during that time?

It decreased by 1,500 people.

That's 15% of the total.

We are losing our black neighbors in the face of an enormous influx of white wealth.

You all have seen the data about our exploding income levels and exploding housing costs and that this is the most expensive place to live in the whole state when you consider income.

Last night, Mr. Pinkston urged the developer on Ivy Road to consult with the UVA architect so the project fits in with UVA's plans.

This is the exact opposite

of what I'd hope our council would be doing.

You should be advocating for the residents of Charlottesville, not enabling elite aesthetics.

This is a crisis.

We don't need you to be architecture critics.

We need you to spend 2024 amplifying the zoning ordinance with financial tools, tax abatements to ensure ADUs are built, tax increment financing, deeper property tax assistance, more funding for AHIP, bringing UVA to the table for pilot funding, and on and on.

do not make concessions to UVA, do not make concessions to affluent neighborhoods.

None of these areas can be said to be, quote, bearing the brunt of development as a means to excuse decreasing density there.

They have not dealt with enslavement, black codes, Jim Crow, massive resistance, neighborhood demolition, redlining, lack of access to mortgage lending.

These areas can handle a little inconvenience.

Please act with urgency, imagination, and rigor.

Hello.

My name is Leonora Crane, and I wanted to start off with explaining some of my personal experiences with housing within Charlottesville.

Last month, one of my friends went to look for a house to rent.

She could not find a location that costs less than $975 a month, and that was with five of her roommates.

When I first moved to Charlottesville five years ago, half of my income was dedicated to rent.

The recommended amount is 30%.

When I went on Zillow last night to look at housing options within the city, there were only 25 units available that were less than $400,000.

In addition to that, there were only 50 units available, less than 1,600.

The problem is housing in Charlottesville is not a problem.

It is a crisis.

And let's face it, this is a crisis from multiple different fronts.

We also have to look at the Department of Transportation, which has proven time and time again that it cannot handle the urban sprawl that we are currently experiencing.

At some point Charlottesville will functionally reach Rutgersville and go further north than that.

The City Council needs to act in order to address the problem now before we have to build an interstate system that reaches all the way far north as Culpeper in order to accommodate the number of cars that will be on our road systems.

The National Association of Realtors says that 78% of young adults want to live within walkable urban cities.

The demand exists.

The question is whether or not the political willpower exists for this committee to pass through all the changes that are being proposed in order to allow for density,

for denser zoning to exist within the city.

In order to accommodate or to alleviate the problems of housing that Charlottesville is experiencing, I recommend that Charlottesville passes mixed zoning with a focus on housing with or near commercial centers, especially within Market Street, start harming our local populations by passing programs in order to allow them to afford stay at home and to mediate and to eliminate the potential for gentrification

occurring within this community as well as remove parking minimums and instead change the language to include parking recommendations instead.

Next is Will Frost.

I think I signed up as 68 but I got 67.

That's where we are, 67.

Yeah, you're good.

Good evening, Council Members.

My name is Will Frost.

I'm a renter at 140 Goodman Street in the Belmont neighborhood.

I moved to Charlottesville a little over two years ago for a job.

It was an opportunity for me to cut ties from a life a bit further up north to move for an interesting opportunity in Charlottesville is what offered that.

I was lucky enough to find a place to rent in

the Belmont neighborhood and proud to say I'm good friends with all of my neighbors and this is the first place since I graduated high school that I hope to be able to put some roots down and to really build a community and contribute to that community.

In my involvement in this city up to date and the connections I've made and the people that I've met housing has repeatedly come across as the biggest concern as I think has been shared by a lot of people in this room who

seem to be a strong representation of the community that you all represent.

And it's obvious in my efforts to look for a future where I might be able to settle and buy a house.

I am very happy with the salary I make, but I'm still a good ways off from having the potential to put down a mortgage on a home, which is a large portion of my ability to put roots down in this city.

So I'm privileged in a lot of ways, and that is still a

is not a barrier to entry for a prosperous life in this city.

I think a lot of the arguments you see against a zoning ordinance change like this is a desire to maintain value for future generations.

for individuals with no guarantee of interest or involvement in the city in the future when you have a useful resource here now looking for opportunities to provide their own investments in making this a better community for themselves and others.

Good evening, counselors.

My name is Emily Smith, and I'm a housing attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center.

I represent Charlottesville residents in eviction cases, and we see firsthand every day the result of the lack of affordable housing in the city.

Low-income residents cannot afford to live in the city, and those that do often can't afford the rent and end up facing eviction.

After facing an eviction, a family has a much harder time finding stable housing in the future.

These issues disproportionately affect families of color.

Zoning is not the only solution, but it can help.

LAJC supports the Charlottesville Low Income Coalition's recommendations to include supporting the core neighborhoods to minimize displacement from historically black neighborhoods and low income neighborhoods and the core neighborhood overlay corridor to

make the development in that area fit and serve the community, allow more density and exclusionary neighborhoods to address race equity and have greater integration.

We need to increase density in what has historically been exclusionary neighborhoods and we want to expand affordability including tax abatements for affordable units, keep the voucher provisions in the draft to address the highest need which is under 50% AMI

and to preserve for sale units affordability by allowing the city or nonprofit right of first refusal when those units come up for sale.

Thank you.

Hello.

I'm Oliver Platts Mills.

I live in the Fifeville neighborhood.

My wife and I have owned a house there for 20 years next year.

We purchased a house and moved that to Charlottesville, really, because we understood that the opportunity that we had to own a house is going to create

Wealth for our families, stability for our family going forward.

And in fact, we now have two small children, seven and five, who go to the Johnson Elementary School System.

And I see a lot of our neighborhood through their eyes now.

And I've never once gone with them to the neighborhood

Parks, to the playground, to the school, and had them say, wow, I wish there were less kids here.

Everything about them is oriented towards the community on our street, the people on our street, the people in their elementary school, the teachers that know them by name at Johnson Elementary School.

And it's upsetting to me that more and more the people that we get to know through the school system cannot afford to live in our

in our town.

They would like to live in our town but in fact they're commuting large distances often from Augusta County.

I also have some

experience having renovated a number of houses taking multi-family houses and upgraded them to include more units and acting as a property manager renting small units in Charlottesville the demand is incredible the number of people trying to not live with five roommates is very high the number of people moving to work at the hospital who need housing is very high so everything in this zoning code in front of you

benefits those communities.

It's going to help us generate more housing.

It doesn't have to be 10 stories high.

You've increased the density.

You've decreased some of the parking requirements.

And I urge you to take this opportunity to be real game changers, to look back at the end of life and say, I did something important.

And up zone the city of Charlottesville.

Hello, counselors.

My name is Allison Rabel, and I live in an apartment on the downtown mall.

I've had the privilege of being able to walk to work and ride my e-bike to doctor's appointments and the grocery store.

I've biked 38% of all city streets so far, and I think more people should be able to do those things.

I'm asking you to preserve the housing possibilities and the proposed zoning ordinance.

As many of you know, I moved here after graduating journalism school to report on local news in our community, which I did for nearly seven years.

I was paid about 55% of area median income.

As I've lived here over the last almost eight and a half years, I've watched as countless acquaintances, friends and former colleagues leave this area due to the lack of housing that's affordable to them.

During the process of the comprehensive plan update and now into the zoning rewrite, I've attended several outreach events and said that we need to allow more housing to be built.

I've been told I should just move to Greene County to avoid building more apartments in the city and that I sound rather entitled for saying that I and others I've worked with should be able to live, afford to live in the community we cover.

You even heard last night about how someone would rather have an ice rink on Ivy Road instead of homes.

Many of those same residents have spoken to you citing concerns regarding traffic, sewer, and water.

As you heard last night during the Raggin Mountain Dam item, we have more than enough water.

Water and sewer projects are paid for by utilities, including hookup fees for new units, not property taxes.

Traffic will continue to worsen if you continue to push people out to the surrounding localities.

Even if you approve a new zoning ordinance tonight, a new development will not pop up overnight.

And as you all know, just because a property is zoned something does not mean it will become that instantly.

Please plan for the city we want to be, not the city that we are.

And finally, as a wise former coworker once told me when I was upset, the only constant in life is change.

You all get to decide whether that change is the current path we're headed down, where our city is only affordable to those who are wealthy or bought their house before I was born,

or if that change is allowing more homes and housing types and more people to live in our world-class city.

Thank you, Ms.

Number 71, Peter Gray.

72.

A search of news articles from around the country shows that housing affordability is a problem everywhere.

The acceleration of housing costs in many small and medium-sized cities is driven by high inflation and by migration of people away from large cities.

Inflation has made materials, land and labour more expensive and without enough increases in wages, housing becomes less affordable as we have seen across America.

But at no time in history,

has making it easier for developers to build ever resulted in lower housing costs.

And that's because the long-run cost of housing is only determined by inflation and by net migration.

A new zoning code lets developers build more for-profit units on a lot, but the cost of land is only a small fraction of what drives housing costs

and only in the short run.

Historically across America housing costs always go down when there is greater migration out of a city than in and migration into a city is determined by housing availability and by economic opportunities.

If economic opportunities in Charlottesville decline, we'll see a decline in housing costs, but those opportunities have been increasing.

People with high incomes want to move to Charlottesville and can afford to pay the kind of ridiculous rents that new developers can be getting.

$2,000 for a 700 square foot apartment in the dairy market or in 2117 Ivy Road, for instance.

As a result, people who earn well below average median income lose out.

You think that you'll be helping them with this new zoning, but you won't.

Evidence over the last hundred years from literally every other city in North America shows that the only way to help

is to get directly involved in subsidising housing for the people who need it.

So instead of spending millions of dollars on studies to enact ineffective zoning policies that depend on trickle-down economics, which has also never worked, and that make commercial developers rich, could you please give our tax dollars directly to the people who need it and to the non-profits who build and maintain long-term affordable housing?

Economic growth and inflation drive housing costs and your policies will only spur more in migration and make it easier for developers to profit by building more ridiculously expensive houses and apartments that drive out marginalized communities.

Thank you.

Hello Council, Charlie Hanley, 500 Court Square.

Matter of interest, it's a ten-story building that predates Charlottesville's first zoning code.

I can't say it better than many already have.

Housing scarcity is clearly one of our largest problems in the city.

The draft ordinance from the Planning Commission is a bold, necessary step in the right direction.

I hope you'll adopt the ordinance with Planning Commission recommendations, especially permitting some commercial uses in residential zones, eliminating parking mandates, allowing medium intensity residential and tall buildings by right in the appropriate areas.

Will the future bring new problems to solve and changes to make?

Yes.

But I hope you'll trust in your staff, their analysis up to date, their work,

the city's ability and your own ability to adapt and solve new problems.

This process has been long and difficult.

I thank you for undertaking it.

Thank you very much.

I'm Peter Reitmeyer, 2518 Jefferson Park Avenue.

In an August 2023 interview with Jason Armesto, Mayor Snook said, in quotes, what is the problem we are actually trying to solve?

In the next five years, he expects to have 2,500 more people living in the city.

How will the city accommodate that steady growth?

Well, currently, rental developments already approved in the works include 240 Stribbling, three new proposed developments on JPA,

The Dairy Market development, the Cherry Avenue development, RMD's proposed development on Ivy Road, GEMC has filed plans to redevelop the former giant grocery store with 250 apartments, the Seaville Oriental Market will turn into a five-story building with 290 apartment units, nonprofits are turning the red carpet in into a 140-unit affordable housing development and more.

Just outside the city limits, Gray Star's Old Ivy residence is adding 525 units.

RST development is converting a mobile home park into a 254 unit apartment and Albemarle County has a vision for many, many more.

The University of Virginia is expanding housing on its Ivy Gardens property, building more housing on its Fontaine property.

The Darden School will be constructing housing for its business school students.

The university has stated it plans to house all of its second years on their properties, and that decision could come soon as well.

Mayor Snoke concluded the interview by saying in quotes on the one hand you could say we need to create as much affordable housing as possible at every opportunity because we can because we just don't have enough on the other hand that's not much of a plan

So I respectfully try to answer Mayor Snook's question.

The zoning plan does not provide a way for individuals, black, white, brown, to build any homeowner equity.

However, it does a fine job of relegating many to a never ending rental market.

This is not going to be Charlottesville, it's going to be Pottersville.

Thank you.

Are we going, Mr. Mayor, are we going to 630 or?

Well, you've already called them, so just let them do it.

You've already called them, and then he'll be your last one.

Okay.

What number are we up to?

This is 75.

How many more are there?

Let's see.

Right now I see 94.

Do I guess go now?

Go ahead.

Good evening, everyone.

I'll try and end on a high note I'm Josh Karp at 1430 Forest Ridge I think people here that you've heard from in person and elsewhere have a variety of opinions and there's things we'll never agree about but I think one thing everybody in the audience and on the dais agrees about is that you know we love this community we love Charlottesville I think a difference between us is that some of us love Charlottesville and want it to stay the same forever and some of us love it and want it to be a better place to live

and I mean that in at least a few ways.

One thing I mean is that this is a great community.

The schools are great.

The neighborhoods are great.

There's work and things to do culturally.

But it's very expensive.

It's very exclusive.

I was thinking about my neighborhood, which is a great place to live.

But the neighbors, we get a lot of lawyers, engineers, professors, not a lot of city staff, teachers, students.

It's expensive.

And people ask, how can you afford the rent here on social media?

And the answer I see most often is, have you considered Stanton?

You can drive in.

Not a great answer.

It's also, despite being a great place to live, a place that really requires a car per household, a car per adult, to get around safely.

And we can do better.

And actually, as you know, the way we can do better on both the cost of living for housing and for transportation involves building more kinds of housing, more housing, and housing closer to where people work and go to school and go for recreation.

So I think the plan that you've been talking about is pretty good.

I strongly urge you to consider putting back the original height limits in the entrance corridors and really rethink putting back neighborhood commercial.

Again, you know, if you can't go to a coffee shop or grocery store in your neighborhood, you kind of have to have a car to get any place interesting.

Not great.

But overall, good plan.

Thanks.

So what had we said about it?

Thirty minutes.

Okay.

So we had, when we were putting this together, we decided we were going to build in a thirty minute pause at this point.

Folks can get something to eat.

That's certainly, I think, what we're going to be doing because otherwise we will fall apart up here.

Okay, nice.

I know I gotta look at my jacket.

She's probably on her way down the hallway now.

So we have 90 more, 95 more.

Okay.

So you must be.

Uh-huh.

Okay.

Okay, crustal bread.

And let me remind people, if you wish to speak, we have a sign-up system, and Deputy Clerk Max Robinson is out front, and we'll take your signature and give you a number.

We're calling numbers as we go.

We broke off at number 75, so we will start off with number 76.

Thank you.

Hi.

Hi.

Sorry.

My name is Crystal Passmore.

I live at 1430 Forest Ridge Road.

Thank you for having me.

We need more housing.

Charlottesville needs more housing.

As long as there are new people accepting jobs in town, they need homes to shelter them.

As long as the university allows more students, those are humans that need houses.

The county can share in this task, but every person who moves to Albemarle and works in Charlottesville is a new commuter.

And new homes in Albemarle often come at the expense of leveling swaths of forests.

If we want to cut back on commuters and forest loss, we need to allow people to live in the town.

We need to allow people to live in the town.

To do this, we need to build either up or out.

And that's what we have the opportunity to do here today.

to allow housing to be built where people work and where people want to live.

This is the goal of the land use map that was created.

And I've been following this long enough that it's frustrating that at every point, every time we get together, the amount of Seville that's allowed to grow

gets smaller and smaller.

The area we're willing to allow for new neighbors, the area we allow people who already work here, people who want to live here, that area becomes less and less.

If we want to decrease housing costs and decrease traffic, if we want people to continue moving here for work, we need to allow people to build in this town.

I like the zoning ordinance proposal, but I would like to argue for more.

It costs the city nothing.

and could give hundreds of people, thousands of people houses.

Please don't continue to decrease the area we have for people who could potentially live here.

I just want you to think about every job that's created here, every new person who comes to town, every new student who comes to the area, where they're going to live.

And I want you to think about where you think that's going to be.

And the thing that you can control is if you allow them to live here.

Thank you, Ms.

Number 77, George Snyder.

Hello, Mayor Snook, Counselors, and Mr. Sanders.

I'm Donna Shauncey.

I live at 1003 Birdwood Road, and I'm here to say two things, both in favor of the zoning ordinance.

One is, as some of you know, I used to be the, I was at Jaunt for 30 years, and our drivers had to come from Buckingham and Flavanna and Louisa because there was no housing here.

I don't think, I think I know of two over a 30-year period who actually could afford to live in Charlottesville.

Those guys worked hard and they worked long hours and boy they needed to be close to home and it would be so much handier because we could just drag them out when we needed them so please do follow through on this.

The other thing is I too am on the tree commission and I wanted to say I'm sure that you know that not only is the tree canopy falling but it's falling

We go faster and faster all the time, so we have fewer and fewer trees as we go.

So I love some of the provisions in the zoning code.

We asked for a little bit more, and I hope that you, Jeff Aiton, was able to give you some of that information about things we'd also like to see.

I particularly want to say we're really excited about the proposed requirement to get a tree removal permit.

I think that will have a big effect before cutting down a tree that's over eight inches in diameter.

Greenscaping for new projects, new streets I think is going to be great a requirement for that and then requiring trees on all parking lots of over six parking spaces will be make a go a long way to kind of keeping us a higher canopy and a healthier environment.

So I'm particularly thrilled about requiring the best management practices for tree preservation and tree replacement and so thank you and for all the work I know that

James Frias has just done an awesome job on his team.

So thank you so much for seeing this difficult process through.

Thank you, Ms.

Shaughnessy.

So some people think I'm a developer.

I think I do it on the side, and I must not be so smart, because I actually have $1,000 apartments.

Or I'm just so old that I haven't figured it out.

I would like to point out one thing.

There are two properties which I'm involved in.

One is the Lennon Building, 1304 East Market Street.

The other one is on 6th Street, 1501-1505, and Rosa Terrace behind it.

and I own parts of it and friends of mine own part of it and our eye is to actually build something there one of these days and you are now down zoning it.

So what Toscano said, I'm not litigious so I'm not threatening to sue you, we're not going to, but the best customer you have is the one you have and we have a proven track record of actually building places.

I've built two million square feet in Virginia so if you want housing

or affordable stuff, don't down zone the stuff we already own.

And I'm sure you didn't know that.

So please, please allow us to have some height.

And then that takes me to another thing.

I never see anybody talk about affordable by design.

There are certain codes that require certain methods of construction for certain heights, et cetera.

So I am very, very much in favor of the denser zoning code.

It's long overdue, you're doing the right thing.

But you should have the denser where it wants to be.

In the commercial areas, downtown, the linen building, it's the commercial corner, the big junkyard behind it.

My property is the only one that you're zoning down to three stories.

The junkyard stays at eight stories.

The junkyard is never going to do anything because it's three generations of a guy who won't sell it.

So I'm sure you didn't know this.

The cost of construction above a certain height goes out the window, and affordable housing with 10 or 18 stories really doesn't exist, at least not in our economy here.

I guess my time is out.

I just built 106 apartments in Lynchburg.

The average rent is $850.

It includes utilities.

It can be done, but you've got to make it affordable by design.

And I didn't build it affordable.

I didn't use tax credits and I didn't build it for Section 8.

I just built it for people.

Okay.

Good evening, Councilmembers.

My name is Danny Yoder.

I live on 10th Street Northwest and I'm here to speak in favor of the draft zoning ordinance.

I ask you to approve it without significant changes.

Charlottesville is the center of a growing region of over 220,000 people.

We aspire to be a welcoming and inclusive city where people from diverse backgrounds can live, work, learn, build community, and raise families.

However, the high and rising cost of housing in the city is a significant barrier to this aspiration.

For too long, our exclusionary zoning code has contributed to a scarcity of homes.

Would-be renters and homeowners are forced to compete with each other for scarce housing opportunities, which pushes prices higher and displaces families of modest means from our neighborhoods.

Although a new zoning code won't solve all of our housing problems, this draft zoning ordinance is a great start.

The draft code would reduce many barriers to building naturally cheaper housing types like apartments, condos, townhouses, and ADUs.

I believe this draft code will help us become a more welcoming and inclusive city and I hope you approve it without delay.

Some folks are focused on the perceived negatives of allowing more homes in the city.

Some don't want to see buildings that are taller than a few stories.

Others don't want to share the city and its resources with more people.

The future is unknown and change is scary.

But personally, I want Charlottesville to be a dynamic place that adapts to change and makes room for more neighbors.

Housing scarcity is a policy choice.

Let's choose a future with abundant housing.

Let's be bold and enact a zoning code that matches our values and aspirations as a city.

Please vote in favor of the draft zoning code without significantly watering it down.

Good evening, Councilman.

Rosea Parker, 802 Harder Drive.

I am a victim, even though I came to Charlottesville in 2005, I am a victim of Vinegar Hill.

I now live in West Haven and I've been there for 18 years.