Planning Commission Meeting   8/13/2024

All righty, good evening.

I think we're ready to begin our deliberations for the evening.

And to that end, I think we'll begin with reports from the dias.

Thank you, Chairman Mitchell.

I do have a few items from the University to share tonight.

First off, so we have an upcoming Board of Visitors meeting in September, and it's a relatively light agenda in regards to the Buildings and Ground Committee, but there will be an update to our historic preservation report.

And then following on top of that, I do have a couple sort of construction related updates.

So the Fontaine parking garage is making great progress, and it's

You know through the difficult parts I think I mentioned at our last meeting with some of the excavation that was associated with the foundation work and some blasting and so that is all was completed ahead of schedule and it is on track to be done a little over a year so in fall of 2025 that parking garage will be operational and then similarly

Over at Fontaine, the energy plant construction is progressing, and so a number of the geothermal wells have been drilled, and footers are being poured.

The Northgrounds parking garage is another sort of key element to address the parking issues.

The initial bridging documents are complete.

It's a design-bill delivery project, so it's currently going through the short-listing process to identify the ultimate team that's going to complete the project.

affordable housing update from the UVA Foundation.

So I talked previously about both the Piedmont site and the Wirtland Street projects, and so there has been a strategic decision to sort of move forward to prioritize the Wirtland Street project with the Piedmont project following right after, and this was done in order to

not have the two projects compete for the same associated housing tax credits.

UVA Health System is going to be taking the lead on a comprehensive planning study for both the Grove Street and the Oakland properties.

So those will be done, looked at holistically as opposed to two sort of individual planning efforts, and I will be happy to report more on those as that effort takes shape.

Yes, hello.

So just last week, I was at a tree commission meeting.

I did miss the previous one being out of town.

Anyway, Parks and Rec has an RFI out for an urban forest management plan.

So there was a lot of talk about what the consultant would be able to provide and what kind of

cool things people could do like apps that they could go out and identify, you know, some more citizen participation with that.

There was talk about, brought back to the notable trees or heritage trees and how to promote, get that program back into the sort of moving faster, maybe hasn't been getting as many nominations.

I think we're going to hear more about that tonight.

I think that's pretty much, those are the highlights.

And I think we're going to be hearing more about the ordinances.

I've been following progress on the Virginia Housing Commission looking at potential legislation for next round about accessory dwelling units and faith in housing.

Right now, both are not looking terribly promising as far as meaningful changes, but more about recommendations, considerations.

Thou shalt think about this.

A couple of items.

TJ DBC did not meet for their usual August.

We punted that just because it's the dull terms of summer.

However, we had to hold a special meeting at the end of July to hold a public hearing in order to complete an application process for a USDA matching grant for

minor home repairs, et cetera, that has no bearing on the city because there's not one address in the city that is qualified for it, but Councillor and now Vice-Chair of that operation, Payne and I were attending there to fill out a quorum.

We already discussed in the pre-meeting adjustments to the virtual meeting rules and how that may or may not come trickling down to this commission at some point.

The hack held its organizational meeting sort of to chew over its work plan for the next year and how to prioritize what's going to happen and what order.

Most of that had

I mean, I can go into appalling detail on that right now, but it's not quite crystallized except that how we go about things procedurally is sort of floated to the top.

And I will have more on that in the next meeting as we get actual work product for that and what we want to do and in what order.

We had the kickoff meeting for the CAF hops committee.

Last week, that's the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund and Housing Operations Fund.

We had the kickoff organizational meeting for that.

We are having another one on the 28th.

A couple of items there that may be of more general interest.

Number one is we are working on the scoring and evaluation tool because it is one of those things that

has been amended, stacked upon, fiddled with four different people who have authored it, and it needs to, over the years, and it just needs to be fixed.

A couple of those are classic examples when you read them of the sort of scoring criterion questions.

It's like somebody rewrote that four times to try to get their point across, and it is now a word salad.

So I don't know how to answer that question.

We are also looking at sort of revamping and clarifying some of the documentation that accompanies the applications including a couple things of how and some of that is also turned to trying to make it less

Obstacle Ridden for smaller, less established applicants for these funds.

And we have a bit of, unlike CDBG, we have a bit of flexibility there because

Hey, required documents for the CAF funding is whatever the CAF committee says is required documents for CAF funding.

So things like audited financials are burdensome to small operations, for example.

So we're looking at that.

Land Bank should be moving forward, but it has gone a little bit fallow.

We're sort of regathering ourselves, and I'm meeting with Sam Sanders on Thursday to get an update for exactly where we are and how we're moving this forward.

Did I have anything else?

Yeah, yeah, disappointing that the land bank is slowing down.

Yeah, I guess we've spent two months, but I've only had two meetings over at MPOTech.

Now that the moving towards 2050 plan is adopted, we're back in a bi-monthly meeting schedule.

In June, we had a presentation from VDOT on the Barracks Road smart scale concept.

We had a

Lainty discussion about the long area between the overpass and Georgetown Road without a crosswalk and strongly recommended they find a way to put a crosswalk in and they will explore that.

Then we also had our June Lupec meeting was cancelled.

In July we had updates from the transportation people from each entity.

From the city, I think you've probably heard everything that was talked about except that

There's now a map of bike parking everywhere in the city and UVA that our bike pad coordinator has put together so you can find that on the city website Over the county they gave an update on each of their smart scale projects that they're applying for I think the one closest and most relevant to us probably is the one at Hillsdale and Rio

where they're proposing a dog bone roundabout with sort of two roundabouts next to each other, merged to one.

And then the UVA gave an update from their parking transportation, first on their North Carolina garage that they are very excited about.

And also they say that they're never going to purchase another diesel or fossil fuel powered bus ever again.

I had an easy month.

The BAR did not meet in July.

In our June meeting, the only project of significance was we looked at the preliminary discussion for the UVA affordable housing project at

I feel like I've already talked about this before.

Have I?

OK.

It's been so long ago.

It's just a six-story text doughnut.

They capped it at six stories instead of going up to 11 because of the construction type was more affordable and also, I believe, for parking.

So they didn't present much more than just basic massing.

So the discussion was just basically the BAR saying

You know, provide some permeability from the street and respect the streetscape.

Very good.

Excellent.

Alright, let's see.

Got a few updates.

The annual meeting will be next month.

and Mr. D'Oronzio and Mr. Solle-Yates are, I've agreed to be the nominee committee.

So they will be presenting a state of candidates that will need to vote on for VP and vice chair and the chair next month.

just met with Ms.

Creasy and Mr. Freeze to talk about an idea that they've got about us helping develop the legislative agenda for the city.

And Mr. Freeze is going to go into greater detail about what he'd like to see in that time when he presents.

But I'll need

The news that you need to know is that you need to be ready to present your idea to the client commission by the 27, which means Ms.

So we talked about at the meeting the Friday before that would give some time for review of whatever we're starting with.

Again, this is our first go round of this experience and so we'll be learning as we go.

But in order for folks to have some time to look at things, it would be great to have it on the 23rd, and then we could post it that afternoon.

So what we just asked you guys to do is just have us sit down and over a lunch or a coffee with those trees and, you know, brainstorm some things.

that you'd want to bring to the board.

This will, of course, iterate as well, because we may have you guys talk to the council as well as we move along.

The BZA, after that meeting for six months, we've had two almost back-to-back meetings.

The first meeting was attended by Ms.

Creasy, and that was just an orientation.

I think we've got two, maybe three new members on the BZA, and we just wanted to get them oriented to what the work we do.

But we also wanted to orient the BZA to the new development code.

And frankly, I think there's only one major, major modification that we need to worry about on the BZA.

in Section 5.2.11.

And that speaks to administrative modifications.

And that allows the applicant to make appeals during the hardships if they are caused by coverage requirements or setback requirements.

So nothing significant there.

We also had a hearing, a first hearing we've had all year, and this was relating to home stays.

And the attempt was to appeal a denial by the zoning administrator.

The zoning administrator denied the application because the intent of the ordinance, the home stay ordinance, is that you live in the

185 days while you're doing the homestay, dilly, but

So the zoning administrator denied it, but we actually overrolled him and voted in favor of it.

Not because we didn't agree with the intent, because we totally agree with the intent, and we totally agree with the reason he denied it based on the intent, but there was a letter of the law, a G that was not properly crossed, and I thought it was not properly dotted.

The ordinance reads that you must be in the home state 185 days

during the permitted

We need to go back and take a look at that and tweak that because there's some gaming that's going to happen with that.

And so we overruled it.

Not because the intent was not what it needed to be, but because the letter of the law wasn't what it needed to be.

So Mr. Freese, Ms.

Creasy, are aware of that.

Mr. Freese is aware, and they're working on that as well.

I think that's it for me.

Ms.

Creasy, anything?

Yes.

You volunteered, Mr. Solla-Yates and myself.

Wait, wait, wait.

Let's wait until Mr. Freese does his finish.

Sure, so I'll go ahead and start by just noting upcoming work sessions and other such things and then turn it over to James to talk a little bit about that.

So we are planning to have a work session on the 4th, Tuesday of August.

Again, at the pre-meeting we noted, we have the 4th, Tuesday penciled in.

And if we haven't had work sessions in a little while, because during the zoning ordinance, we had them every week, maybe two a week, we had many of them.

So there was a little bit of a rest period, but now we'll probably be getting a little, having those a bit more often.

So to re-pencil in,

Fourth Tuesdays, so we'll be prepping for a work session on the 27th, and that will be what James talks about in a second.

And we're also working on the work session for September 24th, which we have planned at the moment to be a joint session with Albemarle County Planning Commission about the climate resilience project that's being done between our

Localities, and these will be updates from both city and county staff and an opportunity to meet with the County Planning Commission.

We haven't done that in quite a while.

We had COVID, then we were working on different projects at different times, and then there were different staff changes, and now this is just a good opportunity to regroup.

We're also talking about other topic areas where there would be interest to have future joint meetings to continue that dialogue, so we'll see how that goes as well.

So a lot of things moving forward on that front.

We're set for CIP discussions coming in November and December.

I know it pops up right away.

So the budget office has set schedule with us and I already have those timeframe set.

Our regular things come up as well as our new and exciting items.

We can hear you.

So as Chairman Mitchell mentioned, the idea here is to put together a letter essentially to council around their legislative priorities for the upcoming legislative session.

So this is actually in response to comments or requests that have been made by commissioners over the last couple of years of how do we get engaged in this process?

Every year council

puts together their set of priorities and forwards those on to the delegation.

How can we have some input into this?

So this is how we do it.

We submit a letter.

So the idea is that with a couple of commissioners we'll meet and talk about what those priorities might be, put those together into a draft letter that then will come to the Planning Commission for consideration and ultimately a vote of the commission to forward that letter on to Council at your August meeting.

Pretty simple and straightforward.

Great.

All right, so Ms.

Is that on again?

Yes.

Alrighty, we are now ready for the one and only public area we're going to have tonight.

So if there's something that you all would like to talk to us about relating to the work that we do, now would be the time to do that.

So this is an opportunity for matters from the public and we do not have any individual public hearings this evening so any item that you would want to speak on this would be the opportunity to do so.

Each speaker will have three minutes time to address the planning commission We'll alternate between in-person and then online And then we'll alternate back and forth as long as we have speakers We'll check in with the chair about timeframes depending on how many interested speakers we have and

Moving forward, but typically we have an opportunity for everyone who wants that opportunity to be able to take that opportunity.

We'll go ahead and get started.

And we'll have our first person who is interested in speaking, who is in person.

If you're interested in speaking, just raise your hand.

We don't have an advanced sign up, so we can have this gentleman come up first if you would like.

Sure.

and you'll have three minutes.

My name is Bob Troy.

I'm with the 108 Chandler Court in Charlottesville.

I am the president of the Willoughby Property and Association and a resident in that subdivision.

And I'm here to share our concerns about the proposed Willoughby Place development by littered properties, which for interesting reference lands entirely within the footprint of Willoughby.

and odd parcels that are not part of the neighborhood itself.

We have real concerns about zoning for the property.

The arithmetic of their preliminary site plans aligns with the zoning but certainly does not align with the nature of the neighborhood or the way the rest of the area around it has been developed.

and we think that should certainly be a part of that.

There are 84 units proposed and there are concerns about access to the proposed development itself and the added pressure to the intersection out at Fifth Street extended and Harris Road.

That's already a problematic

Intersection and there's been a lot of development recently that's already added well beyond the capacity that Intersection experienced when it was designed and built.

And so we're concerned about those two things, both the entrance on Harris Road inside the footprint of Willoughby and at the outer intersection.

So there's multiple safety pieces there.

There are ongoing questions about the access easement and its use.

And there's concerns among the association members and neighbors about that point as well.

I'm also very concerned about the environmental impact on Morris Creek.

The increase in impervious surfaces and the rather significant critical slope drop leading into Morris Creek will certainly add to erosion pressures on the creek.

We've seen erosion pressures on the creek cost the area quite a bit of money.

Brevando Water and Sewer Authority had to install a pretty large granite block wall to protect a sewer main that runs right along Morris Creek.

and so on.

High storm rates, which of course are happening a one-year event.

Happened several times a year now, we recognize.

And that will probably lead to erosion that will also possibly undercut the roadway of Fifth Street Station Parkway that's across the stream from this proposed development.

You'll hear much more from us as this moves forward, but we certainly wanted to get this on your radar.

All right.

We'll check in with our online audience at this point.

We have no attendees virtually at this moment.

I'll keep monitoring that as we go forward, though.

Do we have our next in person?

Please come forward.

Hello, my name is Joan Albiston.

And before I start, I'd like to just turn and say, how many people here are here because of the Willoughby Place project?

These are all of our neighbors and residents of the Willoughby Neighborhood Association.

And so that gives you a feel for our concern.

So my name is Joan Albiston.

I'm a resident of Willoughby.

and the landscape architect, I live at 921 Royer Drive.

I understand that preliminary plans for an 84-unit multifamily project developed by Morris Creek LLC has been submitted to the city and has been reviewed by city staff.

I also understand that the project is considered a by-right project, barring issues with the easement, but I have major concerns about two particular details of the project.

The narrowing and tightening

of Curves of the Travel Lanes of Harris Road at the Willoughby Neighborhood Association entrance and potential grading within the extensive critical slopes of the slope site.

Narrowing travel lanes for a section of Harris Road at our entrance to 11-foot widths about the width of a standard driveway with mountable curbs in the middle of the road and painted area where vehicles are encouraged not to stray

While tightening the curvature of the road for the benefit of Willoughby Place site triangles will make travel for the existing 238 households of Willoughby even more hazardous than the adjacent Fifth Street-Harris intersection currently makes it, as you heard earlier.

As first proposed in 2011, I expect that any proposed development design for the adjacent county parcel will be similar in scope.

with the additional vehicular traffic most likely directed onto Harris Road at the Willoughby Place entrance as well.

The nearby intersection at Fifth Street and Harris Road is already overburdened with accidents occurring frequently.

Willoughby residents have repeatedly requested that that intersection be made safer as it is the only intersection by which we are able to leave and enter our neighborhood.

If the Willoughby Place project moves forward, the Fifth Street-Harris intersection must

will also be improved to support the increased traffic through it.

Of equal concern for me is the substantial negative impact, environmental impact of the proposed project on the rocky, steep critical slopes where stormwater flows directly into Moors Creek and its riparian buffer.

I understand that the majority of critical slope waivers are approved by the city.

At what point are critical slopes actually worth protecting?

What acreage or grade of critical slopes is too much?

When slopes exist in undisturbed woodland, when the stormwater flow feeds directly into Moors Creek and already overburdened stream, when on-site water quality and quantity treatment will likely be inadequate for a substantial amount of groundwater recharge.

When Charlottesville is working towards establishing a climate action plan, when Charlottesville has been awarded a community flood preparedness funding grant for the city section of Moors Creek,

All of those factors exist now.

Now is the time to decide at what point critical slopes are truly critical.

If and when a will-be-place critical slopes waiver application comes before you, I respectfully request that you hold the line and deny any waiver for this project.

All right, next in person speaker.

Good evening.

My name is Joelle Meinchal.

I live at 621 Harris Road in the Willoughby subdivision.

If you're not familiar with Willoughby, it is a single-access subdivision created in 1978 with 238 homes.

located off the city's entrance corridor and adjacent to Fifth Street Station.

My purpose tonight simply is to deliver written notice and be on public record of the Willoughby Homeowner's opposition to the proposed Willoughby Place apartments.

Again, a 94 unit, multi-story, multi-building apartment complex,

with the phase two of an additional 150 or so units on the Albemarle County side accessed only at the Willoughby entrance and in the view shed of our entrance corridor.

The letter handed to your staff with supporting exhibits has been signed by over half of the homeowners so far.

showing their support of this opposition.

This letter has four reasons as to why we oppose the proposed Willoughby Place development.

There are additional reasons, valid reasons, for opposing this development, such as critical slopes and doubling the traffic volume in and out of Willoughby.

They're single access.

However, the homeowners have prioritized this list

for more immediate attention in the preliminary planning process.

Members, you may contact me via email.

If you need further information and clarification, I'll make sure Missy Creasy has it.

Thank you for your time.

All right, next speaker.

I just wanted to clarify that the documents we presented to you, we're going to give you an electronic copy we didn't realize we should have brought enough paper copies for you.

So we'll provide that to Missy tomorrow and electronically everything is available to make it easier for your absorption.

Thank you.

Alright, next speaker.

I'll just take a moment.

I'm John Owen.

My wife is with me here.

919 Warrior Drive in Willby.

Excuse me for the scratchy voice.

But probably my main concern as both as a school teacher and principal is the safety of children.

Our demographics have shifted quite a bit recently in a good way.

We have lots more young children in the neighborhood.

And I really fear for their safety.

Alright, do we have any additional speakers?

Hey, good evening, everybody.

My name is Logan.

I also live in the Willoughby neighborhood.

I am all the way in the very back.

When we met Ben out there the other day, we had a great point about if there's ever any type of evacuation in the neighborhood on the last one out.

But the main things I wanted to talk about were the Harris Road and Fifth Street intersection.

The traffic right there backs up from the turn into Wegmans.

You've got accidents there regularly.

on our neighborhood Facebook page.

There are constantly people posting

There was an accident at the intersection.

Maybe avoid it for two hours.

It happens quite a bit.

There's at least a cross or two out there.

And we've gone over that corridor there in terms of its speed limit before.

The yield at that intersection is just incredibly confusing.

Even when Ben Kobe and us were standing there, we watched multiple cars misuse the turn.

You avoid not using blinkers.

A cyclist actually crossed diagonally at rush hour, which I thought was a death wish.

That was the five minutes that we just stood there, and it frequently backs up from Lawa into that intersection.

As we stood there, we watched multiple cars come

in up the curve and do U turns on the blind curve to go back out.

And we only see that getting worse as once Wawa opens up right there.

We just see that corridor just becoming even more congested and confusing.

And then even as you exit the intersection, exit the neighborhood, that curve is just backs up.

It's uphill.

It's confusing.

So many times I've sat there and watched the other car directly across and I'm going I don't trust them They know they're not gonna do what they did and

You know, 50% of the time they just make a different turn and it's just unpredictable The Harris Road, you know, where that development is coming into the neighborhood or where that development is coming onto Harris Road You know, I have a six-month-old daughter that I hope to put on a bicycle here soon and I'll never go up there I don't like going up there as it is.

I don't push a stroller up past Joelle, lives like a couple hundred feet from there and we usually stop and turn around at her house because it's just people fly up that hill

It's a blind uphill curve which is right where they want to put these mountable curves.

The sight lines are already terrible.

Every time it snows, there's at least one car stuck there for a day or two.

As you drive in, now you have to rapidly accelerate to get up that snowy icy hill.

And you're like, oh, great.

No, they're obstacle to dodge.

Not to mention the other cars coming back down the hill.

So yeah, those blind uphill curves are super fun.

And then just to wrap it up, I know the city likes to talk about its urban tree canopy and tree canopy coverage for the city.

And here you have just this

Wonderful, nice piece of forest with these fully mature white oaks and it would really just be a shame to see all that just removed from the city's stormwater protections and rain collection and things like that.

Thank you all very much.

Hi, everybody.

Alexandra Rebhorn, 815 Harris Road.

I'm also further in.

I'm merely here to just lend my voice and solidarity to the rest of the folks here from Willoughby.

There are a multitude of reasons, opinions, and thoughts on why or why not we should support this project.

And I can say pretty unequivocally, even if only half the folks had a chance to sign the letter thus far, that just about every resident of the neighborhood, if they had an opportunity, would say that they are

against this project.

It's not about infill.

It's not about housing because we know that there are pressures in the city that you are trying to respond to.

It is really about egress, its access to that property.

And I've lived in that neighborhood now for 20 years.

I walk my dog, I'd say 320 days a year on the trail that goes around Moores Creek.

Trees fall.

because of the erosion, trees fall in a way in the last decade since Wegmans came in at a rate that is 100 fold from what it was the previous decade.

So I just know from experience that that erosion problem and the Morris Creek problem is real.

Just about every month, at least once a month, I send Bob a text saying there's another tree down.

We can't get around it.

We got to send somebody in.

So those effects are real and felt.

As someone who sent my kids on a school bus for 20 years, it is crazy trying to get out of there and now they're driving.

And just to Logan's point, we have had to teach them when you get to our intersection, even if you have a green light, you can't turn.

You have to wait because the person across from you is a liar.

So the imagining, adding,

84 households cars, which might be 160 to 200 cars to that pressure is just insane.

And unless there was a way to punch out another road, which I'm also not recommending PS, it's just unrealistic and unsafe.

And it will not be a win for the people that live there.

How are you going to get fire trucks in and out, ambulances in and out, let alone the school buses?

So I just think that

Just about anybody else who would come up to this podium is going to be repetitive, but everyone has a chance to voice their opinion.

And we just think this is a terrible idea, and it's not been thought through.

So we respectfully request that you deny it.

All right.

Hi, good evening.

Can you hear me?

I don't want to take my mask off.

Can you hear me?

OK.

My name's Beth Owen, and I've been in Willoughby for 30 plus years.

This is new to me coming to City Council, so thank you for the opportunity.

I'm wondering, am I allowed to ask you all a question?

No.

OK.

Then that pretty much answers.

What I would like to say then is it would be really nice to know or to invite you to come to our neighborhood.

I don't know if any of you have actually

turned into Willoughby.

And if you haven't, I would encourage you to come because I think that would give you a little bit of an idea of the concerns that we have in our neighborhood.

I think it's already been mentioned.

We're talking about 84 units.

That's at least two cars, maybe more per unit.

That's a huge number of cars coming in there.

And I just can't imagine how that's going to be handled.

It's already been said, I think if you come and stand in our corner, the number of people that run the red light, they come up from UVA going 40 to 60 miles an hour, they get to the top there, and they gun it through.

We've had several, I think, two deaths, yes, in our neighborhood, not in our neighborhood, excuse me, there, but and also several people that have been hit

We can tell you more about that.

But again, it's a huge safety concern.

And I hope you take us seriously.

I appreciate you listening to us tonight.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Do we have any additional speakers?

Hello.

Larry Garrison, I live at 818 Harris Road in Willoughby.

You guys are getting an earful from us tonight.

I just wanted to note about safety and about infill.

I think we all understand it.

We understand the development pressures in the city support the idea of infill because it takes pressure off of the lovely rural lands that we all enjoy.

But infill in I was just realizing recently along the Fifth Street corridor is grown

substantially in the 20 years I've lived at Willoughby and it comes with a body count.

I've just mentioned five deaths along that road when I and my family, my kids drive up and down Fifth Street between Willoughby and

Downtown.

There was a time last year when there were five memorial wreaths set up along that road that we passed multiple times every day.

What we're talking about with this development is bringing that kind of dangerous pressure into a much smaller roadway, an uphill, steep, curving access that is the only access for the hundreds of homes in our development.

And I'd like to ask you to look very long and hard at thinking about enabling that to happen.

I have been checking on our virtual audience as we have continued forward and somebody pops in and out and they haven't raised their hand so I haven't seen any interest necessarily from speaking there but we'll continue to monitor that.

Do we have any additional in-person speakers?

All right.

I'll check our online one more time.

And we don't have any additional speakers here.

Right.

I will.

Then Gabbels out of the public feedback session and move us on to the consent agenda.

Any abstentions?

Any opposition?

Ms.

Creasy, the consent agenda is approved.

All right, I think we're ready for Maya and Ms.

Rainey.

Ms.

Rainey, are you kicking the salt or is Maya or Mr. Freeze?

We have a wonderful intern that did a lot of really good work for us over the summer end.

Mr. Chair, I think you stole most of my thunder there.

So yeah, this summer we have had Maya Klaget as our intern working on us.

She's a graduate student over at UVA.

She's done a fantastic job.

working with us and working with many of our colleagues in a number of different departments.

We tasked her with two projects effectively, one looking at kind of a full body of work that we do around protecting and preserving trees, particularly those in the public right of way, and identifying what best practices might exist within the state of Virginia that we could apply or bring to bear here in the city.

And then the other item was looking at public art.

We have had a number of

The issue of public art has been coming up a lot lately.

We've had a number of requests from various organizations or members of the public about installing public art.

We have had a general interest in this topic.

And we believe it's a worthy topic.

I believe it's even cited within the comprehensive plan to encourage public art.

But we don't have any mechanisms around selecting public art or even managing that once it's in place.

And so we asked, I had to take a look at what best practices there were

within the state of Virginia for that type of program.

Thank you for the introduction.

My name is Maya Claggett.

So I'm going to go ahead and just jump right in and start talking about some of my findings around public art.

For a bit of background, the research that I conducted largely draws from models from Falls Church, Alexandria, Williamsburg, and Richmond.

They each offered something slightly different as far as practices and models.

However, Falls Church was particularly informative

So I wanted to give them a shout out as far as possible bumps in the road and also best practices that come from implementing public art programs in smaller municipalities.

So that was very helpful.

Just kind of to give you an idea of what I see for this document, I hope that it kind of consolidates some of my research into a usable format.

And it shows that a committee could be formed that kind of helps to advance public art initiatives more immediately while also looking at a longer term public art plan and trying to form that.

And then so I'm going to jump in to an overview of the procedures and guidelines document, which is one of the outcomes of my research around public art and was included in the packet for this meeting.

It begins with language that could be used to form a public art and memorials commission and maybe what the makeup of that commission could look like.

As it's presented in this document, the commission would serve as an advisory role to city council on many things related to public art, including the long-term planning, review of public art proposals, and public art commissioning when applicable.

and then the following procedures and guidelines in the document cover elements that are typically found in public art plans and it lays out responsibilities for key actors, notably the Public Art and Memorials Commission and they would be tasked with creating a master plan, funding, creating a memorials plan or policy and kind of addressing any changes to these procedures that might better reflect the community.

In addition to this, there's like a review of art proposals and kind of assessing projects.

So guidelines and criteria, possible criteria for those are included in this document as well.

And also for procedures around commissioning art and what those processes could look like.

So while this committee would guide projects, the project management, as it's written in this document, would most likely be done by city staff, specifically as it's written in this document by the liaison to the Public Art Memorials Committee.

These would be like legal agreements, proper documentation.

That sort of thing.

And for my research, I just wanted to point out that this new role would be kind of crucial to the success of the committee as it's written again in this document.

And those responsibilities for this liaison are written out a little bit more in depth in the project management section.

And then there's language around deaccessioning pieces in the public art world.

And then the Public Art and Memorials Commission could also potentially serve as a resource for private development if they wanted to include public art to any extent.

So that's the last part of that document.

And then, as I mentioned previously, the language, as it's written right now in the document, kind of clarifies that all of the recommendations from this Public Art and Memorials Commission would indeed have to go through City Council and seek their approval.

And then on that note, I'd like to present some options for discussion, which is also in the memo about how the Planning Commission might want to be involved if a more formal art program like research around that should continue.

So the first option I'd like to present would be that the Planning Commission would become involved when public art requires a site plan or some kind of structural element like think statues.

So I wouldn't include more 2D public art like murals and utility box wraps.

And then the kind of second option that came out of my research was the Planning Commission would supply one member who would be a part of the Public Art and Memorials Commission and then report back to the Planning Commission and communicate their interests in public art meetings and kind of be involved when they see fit.

They have jurisdiction over state-owned land.

I would tend to think so, too, because their agenda would be massive if they had to look at every municipality.

It was just something that popped my head, because I do have to go to them for my job.

And so I was curious at this extent, at any of the city-owned property.

Very good work.

I think it's thoughtful research and helpful to have proposals, because that's the hard part, is to actually get the language there for people to react to.

And I especially thought the thinking about donations, gifts, given we recently had the seventh anniversary of the August 11th and 12th.

You know, thinking, I think having a clearer way to move forward with both adding and moving

Monuments and Artwork.

I think the Planning Commission makes sense when it's a physical, you know, something that has to do with the space around it in terms of looking at it or, you know, having, I think you had one Planning Commissioner on the proposed committee at the top makes a lot of sense.

And maybe there's a different, like, 2D process for murals or, you know,

I did wonder in the very top and this is of course a detail for later but thinking a little bit about making sure the composition of the commission is pretty diverse and that maybe you know there's someone that maybe doesn't have any

particular back.

You know, I think it's so specific, all of these different characters, and that makes a lot of sense.

And then sometimes there could be just a kind of open resident position that might bring a different point of view than sometimes professional people that are in a specific profession might bring.

But yeah, I think it's great work and good progress.

Historically, when we have considered adding new capacity and new services, we have done so without adding funding or staffing, which is predictable results.

What I've seen in a lot of places who kind of didn't have this built-in staff capacity, including for a couple years Falls Church, is that the

Committee focuses on kind of maybe larger scale problems and or not problems necessarily, but more of the long term planning and kind of values and community input, which is very important.

But I think that the importance of a staff person is largely on kind of

The approvals process and moving things along and also definitely from like a legal perspective having somebody that manages those documents.

and I don't know if you wanted to say something else, but I would also like to note that at least Falls Church, the person that they have assigned to this role who's doing I think a great job from what I've heard so far is this is kind of half of her role.

She serves as a full-time capacity for their parks and rec department and so this is like she also attends to other

I was going to add to Commissioner Solla-Yates' comment.

It just popped up in my mind.

But there's the 1% for ARD precedent that happens in some cities and that any sort of city-funded project sort of designates 1% to go into a public ARD fund.

And I was just thinking of a way to sort of build in funding.

Again, it just sort of moves the money around, so to speak.

So I'll just let me respond to actually want to respond to both of those comments.

So one of the things Maya highlighted is in her initial presentation and in her response is kind of an important aspect of this and speaks to what Commissioner Roettger.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

It's hard.

Noted as well.

We kind of have immediate needs for this body to be

at work kind of right now.

But we also recognize that to really do its job effectively, it should be working against a larger master plan or plan for public art within the city.

What are we trying to accomplish relative to public art?

Those types of questions should be answered within a document.

So we kind of have to do both at once.

Mine's done a really good job of kind of setting us up for that potentially.

But we recognize that to be successful in this space, we're going to have to staff it.

We're going to have to make sure that we actually give it the tools it needs to actually do this job that we wanted to do.

So I've started that conversation in the city manager's office.

There's no guarantees.

We're going into the budget process.

But I think we're going into this with the recognition that we can't do this halfway.

If we're going to go down this road and address this issue, respond to this desire within the community, we're going to have to do with some staffing.

Interestingly, on 1% for the arts, the city actually adopted a 1% for the arts program back in the 90s.

But it seems to have gone defunct in the intervening time period.

I think not the least of which because an art commission that was established at that time also went defunct.

And so it's kind of fallen by the wayside.

We have to kind of read

Look at that and start thinking about that within the budget.

We have a lot of different projects that theoretically could have a 1% for the arts tacked onto them.

But that's a substantial cost too.

So we kind of part of what we're going to have to do here going forward is look at that again and make some decisions about going forward.

I'd prefer to have a 1% for the arts come out of a planning process.

But it also is interesting that we already did that.

Charles was always at the cutting edge, and apparently we were so back in the 90s as well.

So, a couple of three questions.

One, sort of on the role of the Planning Commission, and I'm spitballing here, not necessarily stating aggressive conclusions, but it seemed to me that

Some of these processes may not necessarily be aided by putting more and more cooks in the kitchen, that at some point much of art is intrinsically solitary before it becomes a community matter, but that in sort of evaluating how we put these guidelines up, make the planning commission's role

Explicitly crystal clear, which is, how does this physical object function in the environment, period, with no aesthetic input or judgment from the Planning Commission?

That just confuses the matter.

It's one more body that you have to sort of placate, please, impress or confuse.

And I think it's just best if, does the Planning Commission agree that this widget, no matter what it is, can fit on this block in this place?

and Hosea Mitchell

criteria, you are not wrong.

So that's one, two, to follow up on some of Betsy's comment about how we compose the board.

I'm curious as to, I saw that our one at large member is from this overlay corridor area.

What was the process in sort of space, sort of constructing

who might be on this board and how did you get to where you were going there?

One of the things I see about this having, we're also sort of struggling with a couple of boards I serve is that some of the buckets we have can actually be served by multiple people.

You can have an art educator who is also a leader

of an art organization, for example, they can go into either a box, which can be really convenient when you're trying to staff up the actual members of the board and you're sitting in a closed meeting trying to appoint people, but can also sort of just lead to inadvertent homogenization.

So where did we come up with this

And then I guess the other piece I would ask about is that somewhere in here either with this commission or in city council In direct opposition what I just said about the planning commission not being allowed to make an aesthetic decision Is some sort of public informalized public input process so that if you have

You know, whether it's very warmly received or whether it's not and it's, you know, viciously opposed where people say, that looks great as long as you put a vomitorium next to it, I'm all for it.

Just to get an idea, would there be a public input process and where would that go?

And does it make sense to put that at the end with the city council where they get to learn?

I mean, it seems to me that's the bad place for the city council to start hearing about that on the night they're approving it.

So that's a little jumbled, but there are two basic questions.

Yeah, thank you so much.

So to address the first question,

The makeup of this commission is based on a couple of different things.

It's largely based on models that already exist and from municipalities that have kind of gone a little bit further in this process.

However, a lot of the recommendation that I received was to make the committee quite smaller than what places other places have kind of based on their experience.

This, it was hard to kind of fill a lot of the, like, or put out a lot of the buckets that other places did just because I wanted to kind of consolidate.

And so, yeah, I agree.

It is definitely something to consider, and I would love feedback on.

A little bit more specifically, the member from the neighborhood corridor overlay, that was partially inspired by the Charlottesville Tree Commission, which has, I think, at least one member from a low-income neighborhood, or currently a resident in a low-income neighborhood.

And so this kind of idea was taken a little bit from there.

But changed so that maybe the geographic areas were a little bit clearer and also aligned with the new development code.

So that's kind of how I got there.

And to answer your second question, public input processes do vary a lot.

It's a great question.

And hopefully that the formation of this commission would, in their public art plan, that is based on more community outreach than I've been able to do, they will form a process and clarify those roles and when those public inputs, where those fit into the process of approving or making recommendations,

But yeah, definitely something to consider and an important part of a public art program.

Does that answer your question?

I guess first to kind of follow up on your request for feedback on committee composition.

I think on other committees we've sometimes found that when we're overly restrictive for certain slots, we find that we don't ever get any applicants for those slots.

And I don't wonder if we could incorporate some sort of out for that.

where if there are no eligible applicants meeting their criteria, an out-large member can be appointed or an interim out-large member can be appointed until a qualifying person is found.

I am a little ambivalent about the idea that we would reserve a slot specifically for people who live in a single family-zoned area, but I see the intent.

It's just a little weird.

What do I put it that way, maybe?

So, the first question I had was Mr. Frey's mention that we need this as soon as possible.

I know our transportation planner and bike pad coordinator are eager to start painting streets.

Could we incorporate some sort of like interim de facto commission before the commission and liaison are fully stood up so that

Wow, I was going to say a planning question.

I was planning a board of art for review, let's say.

Kind of prove some art, like according to these criteria, as soon as possible once this is passed.

Great comment.

And then I think the thing that worries me anytime we talk about public art or especially monuments is like, you know, there's maybe a line between art commissioned by the government that is sort of government speech under the First Amendment versus creating a public forum where we might have people suggesting art that might be

undesired by the community, certainly, is something that the city commissions to put in a public space.

Like, does this put us squarely on the side of the protected from someone filing a lawsuit saying, well, you put up their art, you better put up my art?

Yes, that's part of the intention here.

Yes, to protect us from that type of I guess the question then is like, is it just creating this plan and criteria and like discretionary review of this committee that offers that protection?

Like, is there a risk that the plan that they make is so general that we lose it?

Have we created a public forum?

I don't know the answer to that at this point, but I know that as we move forward with this idea, as we engage in this, that consultation with our city attorney's office is going to be an essential part of that, because addressing that issue is, in fact, key to why we're pursuing this, because otherwise we would just have at it.

Yeah.

OK.

Yeah.

Got it.

The city's attorney's office.

So my questions have to do with the board of architecture review and what role they might have to play.

So I think it is important to recognize, I mean, what Phil said about too many cooks in the kitchen is very important to remember.

So I'm not, I guess my question is,

Or my suggestion would be that the BAR would at least be able to review something, make a recommendation based on, is art appropriate for a location?

Kind of in terms of something is going to have to happen to that location.

The existing area will have to be modified.

Is that area historic in any way?

And can the BAR make a recommendation on whether it's appropriate to change that location?

or that site.

So that would include both public property and public right-of-way.

I think would just be important for Again, it's a recommendation.

It would not be like our BAR certificate of appropriateness.

I think it's just more of BAR give your feedback on this this location.

Is it appropriate for art and keeping the BAR out of aesthetics?

More again, just the

whether it's appropriate for that spot and whether something historic might be damaged in the process.

And then the other question is, does this clearly distinguish between public and private art?

For example, I'm thinking of some years back we had an application for a mural on 4th Street, a very large mural that was supposed to memorialize the counter protesters for the United Right rally.

It was pretty tall building on 4th Street.

I forget what the name of that building is.

I think some of the public was a little upset because there was no public comment.

The BAR was the only people who got to look at it.

They ended up not doing the mural because it was a famous muralist.

He did the Obama Hope portrait.

When there was some static to what he wanted to do, he just pulled out.

But anyways, that was private art on private property.

Is there a role that this committee would have for something like that?

I'm not sure.

Yeah, thank you.

There is section seven of the document is kind of some of the research I've gotten around the private side and developer-like initiated projects more specifically.

And I think that this committee could be a really great resource for those kind of conversations.

Again, it kind of depends on the capacity of this commission when it's formed.

and the public art plan that's reflective of the community and the processes that they want to move forward with hypothetically.

But yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, but definitely something that is being considered.

Can I ask just a quick question?

Yes, final rap.

And it has a music theme on it.

I'm just wondering, how did that work?

Did that go to the BAR?

No.

I just wondered, because it's something like that, you know, it's a private... So the line, and I think it is laid out very well in the materials, the line between private and public, there would be no formal role for this committee on private art.

I think she's written in here the notion that they could certainly serve as an advisory role on a voluntary nature.

So that project or the project you referenced could come forward and say, hey, we'd like to do a venue for a public conversation.

And could you host?

Or we'd like your advice on this.

And that could be done in a public setting.

And that could be done very well.

The other interesting place where we might tap into the expertise of this is on the zoning side when a mural comes in.

Sometimes we have to draw the line between a sign and art.

It strikes me that whole thing can get fraught pretty fast.

Which whole thing could get from it?

The advisory role on private property for use of private art, you know, what advice are you giving?

Are you chilling expression?

Are you not chilling expression?

Are you inserting the personal biases of staff or appointees up here into the process of doing it?

Do we find, you know, I'm sort of addressing some of Rory's concerns on the same point on finding the

Could that in fact be fraught in and of itself because now you're opening the door for those sorts of problems with the private public, with the private art, private property?

We certainly see plenty of that with billboards on road sides and, you know, in free speech and, well, it's awful speech, take it down.

Yeah, there's no, as it's been written, as we're talking about, there's no formal role, it's completely voluntary.

I'm not sure that that

I'm not sure I have an answer to my concern is fuzzy.

I do think it would be beneficial to have some mechanism for

Um, say somebody did want to do a mural and they wanted to get some public feedback, um, like, you know, like we think of, um, Dairy Market probably could have really used some public feedback before they proposed the mural they did, um, that got their project basically killed.

Maybe, I wonder if, and then we, I mean,

This is getting in the weeds here.

Maybe on the benefit of coming to the commission for advice wouldn't necessarily be their advice, but whatever public comment, however they usually reach out to the public, they would know the neighborhood, they would know whatever process they use.

Maybe that's the incentive that you get to go through that process.

And maybe you show three examples and get feedback.

I guess we'd have to have a pretty clear sort of policy that... If it was a vote, how do you... Well, or also if the PAM functions as sort of the public forum for the discussion,

Then you've got the concern that it also becomes the forum for which people who don't like the art come in to complain.

And there really isn't any sort of enforcement that's not the role of this body at all.

But I can see that getting...

My thoughts on this are fuzzy, so my sort of solutions aren't concrete at all either.

It does seem like the sign versus mural boundary is sort of the place here where this committee would almost have enforcement power and that

Maybe I'm still mad about the camera shop on High Street getting ruled a sign.

That's a very nice mural that's gone now.

Which was cool, I never seen that before.

No, because the sign has a limit.

The decision would still need to be made by the zoning administrator.

I see.

So, Mr. Schwarz, do you have anything else?

No, that was, I'm sorry.

Mr. Mitchell, I had a long, long time ago, by probably before anyone in this room was born, I had your top, and I interned under Mr. Uja.

And we, and I can't remember whether it was initiated by what was then in DSM, as you always call it back then, maybe it was neighborhood development or community services, or was then, was commissioned by Parks and Rec.

But we put on the downtown mall, or expected in the middle of the mall near the water fountain in Amatown.

And every now and then, Mr. Hujo and I, we would just take me out and walk me around town, just, you know, making sure that I saw, you know, the people out there, and he'd say, this is my intern, but some are a little off.

And whenever we would stop by that anatomically correct baby, at least one person would come up

What are you thinking when you put this thing out here?

So I think it is important.

I think Mr. D'Oronzio suggested it, and Ms.

Rettger did as well, that public input before we put stuff like that up is very important.

Because the baby's not on the ball anymore, I don't think.

I just had a quick clarification, looking at the definitions of what

You know, basically public art is.

And I was thinking about the new Charlottesville Middle School that's under construction and there's murals being proposed for that.

And that is somewhat publicly accessible at certain times.

Some not.

I was thinking of this building.

I was curious about if there needs to be additional clarification on what's interior versus exterior art and

You know, things particularly in the school systems or other sort of municipal buildings.

If there just needs to be a qualifying statement, I would assume those would fall under this effort of sort of murals in public schools.

But again, just looking at the definitions, it's not entirely clear.

It says as the openly inaccessible invisible to anyone who's interested.

So I know with some of our security policies that are in place now that

Just to piggyback on that, there might be some sense of duration, because you might say as a default, look, kids can paint whatever the hell they want, that they can talk the assistant principal into painting on that wall.

We just have the understanding that there's no guarantee it's going to be there after the summer necessarily, or, you know, this is not necessarily a permanent installation.

So, I mean, because you don't want to be sort of mucking or, you know, oh, let's give the school administrators yet one more headache they got to deal with.

Oh yeah, I'm planning on it.

OK, yeah.

I will go ahead and transition to my research around trees.

Wonderful.

So I'd like to start off this discussion by saying that I didn't identify any significant policy avenues that Charlottesville is not already kind of taking advantage of around

Trees, particularly with the new development code and new tree removal permits that are in place as part of my internship.

And my final report to NDS, I am developing steps for their avenues to pursue, which would include increased staff capacity possibly

so that processes and procedures could be more heavily developed around this tree removal permit and possibly incentive-based solutions.

But in many areas of Virginia, Charlottesville is losing tree canopy.

And this is a really important area of research.

And also, I wanted to just note that Charlottesville is not alone.

A lot of the people that I'm talking to in Virginia and the municipalities

They have been pursuing this area in a very similar way, and there's lots of conversations that are happening throughout the state and at the state level.

With that being said, going to another outcome of my research, which is kind of this markup of Charlottesville's current tree conservation ordinance,

For this document, just to give you guys a little background, I used models particularly from Arlington, Norfolk, and Fairfax.

And under Virginia law, this ordinance basically allows municipalities to establish a procedure around the designation of heritage memorial specimen and street trees.

I'm not quite sure how familiar you all are with this ordinance, but these designations can happen both on public and private property.

and they include a special protection status for the trees that are identified.

The language in this markup, which is a product of my research, I'm hoping will strengthen the ordinance in a few key ways.

However, I would also like to mention that after talking with practitioners, it seems that the stronger and slightly different language of this ordinance doesn't have, it doesn't strongly change the ways that this ordinance is implemented in these municipalities.

So without being said, the first main addition that I've made in this markup is that I'm hoping will strengthen and clarify it.

Or just, it's really just, again, a product of my research that includes kind of language and

like ideas from other municipalities.

This section, it's 18x I believe, is trees on public property and essentially just making it really clear that trees on city property are owned by the city and that

And it includes language around that if there is any injury or removal of these trees, it would be a Class III misdemeanor.

And if you're like me, I didn't really know what that meant, but it's basically just a fine of no more than $500.

And it's commonly used for unintentional damage to property, which is kind of why it's applicable here.

And then in the later part of this markup, that's the first main addition.

The later part also changes some language around encouraging the nomination of trees on a broader range of properties.

And hopefully by expanding the properties that people can nominate trees for, it'll increase the awareness of this program, even though it would still require the consent of the property owner to

nominate and protect these trees.

Hopefully it would encourage more conversations around that and more awareness of the program.

And that is my short summary of this section of my research.

So following up the nomination of the heritage trees is the idea that there would be a call for nominations.

It would be annualized into sort of an effort that could be sort of brought in just to the rhythm where

I don't know, just a call for entries every year that goes out to the public.

There can be a period of response and then they can sort of ratify the nominations and then, you know, sort of make, I almost wonder if there's an opportunity, it can make it into an annual ceremony where, you know, this year's inductees to the Heritage Trees are these ones and it could be tied to the Dogwood Festival or something.

You know, again, it could be something that could be part of the kind of civic pride.

The other idea, I just want to get clarification, so the harm to the city trees.

So James, does this include heaters on the downtown mall associated with cafes, damaging bark on trees with their proximity?

Yeah.

Okay.

That's all I have.

So I've just been reading through this.

I think it's really helpful.

Good work.

The chair of the tree commission is here in the back.

Vice chair.

Sorry.

Vice chair.

Anyway, so the tree commission is going to be hearing from you.

And I think that might help get into some of the specifics.

Because at the last meeting, the heritage tree was being discussed as a topic in how do you nominate and how do we make this more

Well, and also, how does it potentially help someone to nominate a tree in their yard?

Like, would they get a city arborist that could give them some advice?

I don't know.

There's not really as much of that, like, okay, great, what do I get out of this?

So maybe there are some things around that that wouldn't be too costly.

to offer someone if they have this amazing tree and they don't necessarily want it protected but some kind of incentive.

But I think, yeah, I think there's some thoughts from the tree commission on some of those things.

I've been thinking through that.

But really good work.

It's important.

And I think it's interesting to hear that you were more focused on the land, like that the pieces are in place, but maybe they're not being administered or, you know, we don't have the follow through yet, or the processes aren't

If you read my email, and some people do, something I say a lot is, Charlottesville does everything we are legally permitted to do in Virginia about tree protection, which feels nice to say and also bad.

I understand other states are doing more than Virginia.

Am I right?

Yes.

There are a lot of different avenues for tree protection.

And it comes up in a lot of different areas of regulations and incentives.

So that's a big question.

It's a great question.

But something that I think is at least on the state level that Virginia is trying to push through is kind of

Loosening the restrictions on the percent that's required during development.

That's a big area.

That's restricted.

And it's just the percents that you're allowed to require during development are larger in other areas, I think, which is a big thing.

There's lots of incentive-based things that are happening in other states, including part of stormwater.

I'm trying to think of other

to Virginia and possibly help.

Okay.

Let me see.

It's called a Select Review of the Virginia State Code for Trees and Forests.

It's from 2020, and it's a bunch of foresters and practitioners basically got together to kind of look through Virginia code and ask the questions that you're asking, which is like,

Where can we push the state legislature to make changes?

And they answer that question much better than I just did.

We repeat the title of that?

Yeah, sure.

It's a select review of the Virginia State Code for Trees and Forest, a summary report for the Virginia Department of Forestry.

I would love it.

I have a second question.

One thing I understand we can do is spend money.

We have basically unlimited authority to spend money.

To my knowledge, yes.

I might put that over to Jim.

I don't know.

I was just going to say, I wonder if there's an opportunity.

The question is, do we have the authority to just and abate taxes in that matter?

Or we perhaps have to ask the state legislature for that.

Would that have to appear in the legislative packet?

Because I've got no idea if we've got the authority to abate taxes in that way.

Historic tree, like a historic building, if there's some.

Yeah.

Anyway.

But yeah, what's the criteria for that?

So, yeah, again, I think yeoman work here might have a couple of sort of comments.

One is the use of single family residents.

And I'm sure that was advisedly used, but I would like to point out that we have this barely dry ink on our current

Yeah, so this language is largely taken from other models.

And I have, yes, we have discussed that the language could be revised on that, for sure.

There's a bunch of comments in my word doc, kind of noting that.

And yeah, I think

I think that it's, again, just a draft, and I will definitely take that comment.

I mean, well, not what you were driving at, but we were.

I don't know.

Yeah, I want to know.

Your answer is great.

I actually just want to clarify the comment that you're not just objecting to the roots of the word family, but you're suggesting maybe

What I'm saying is, it seems to me that we're continuing to give extraordinary privilege to single-family residents as opposed to something zoned RA with two or three units on it.

It would apply to a single family even if it was their own NX-10, right?

Not from my memory.

The specific terms of the state legislation, they're not specific in that area.

That specific language I think was taken from Arlington.

And then the second question would be on 18XA, that we be very, very careful about use of the word pruning, maintaining, removal, and putting that on the administrator, because what that will do

is greatly annoyed the administrator for having to deal with the hundreds of people who maintain prune and occasionally remove trees from the city owned alleys that the city is not maintaining, even though they say they're maintaining the alleys.

particularly those who have bought their own property and you know I will tell you that at least one member of this commission in the last two years has paid a private contractor to clear a section of a city owned alley that have happened to have bought that commissioner's property just because it

more than desperately needed to be done.

So some sort of accommodation for adjoining property owners.

And to add to that, anybody, as I've said before, who makes an assertion about a given alleyway and whether or not that is a city-owned maintained, whether that is there by easement, or whether that block has three different things going on in terms of who owns that land and who's responsible for it, and we're still calling it an alley, quote, right-of-way,

Just comment there.

Well, or just or make some sort of thing about, you know, other city-owned public lands or some somehow to sort of detail.

I mean, it's really getting into the weeds, but that as it were.

But I think we need to be very careful about that because people treat that as their yard.

In some respects, if there's no barrier, for example, my neighbor's yard includes the quote-unquote alley, which I'm grateful to because he's quite compulsive about keeping it.

Yeah, thanks again for working on this.

I guess first question to Lyle's point about doing everything we legally can do.

I understand Arlington is getting a little bit sued over their tree protections.

I will definitely look into that.

Cool, cool.

Got all enough lawsuits.

Second question, this language in 18XB1, specifically calling out utility companies is really interesting because Dominion, of course, is the biggest butcher of trees in the city.

Does another locality put that restriction on their electric utility and has that worked successfully?

Speaking of lawsuits.

Yes, I'm trying to remember exactly where this language was used specifically around that.

But to my knowledge,

I don't know actually how effective that this is.

I don't think it's anything that I talked with practitioners like about in other municipalities.

And so, yeah, I will definitely look into that.

It's interesting some of those easements for utilities are quite specific about the utilities absolute right to do whatever they want to do to anything growing in there to maintain their power lines.

So, for example, Lower Belmont

Well, this was one of those fun sections that we figure at some point an attorney will spend a lot of time with.

Because there's franchise agreements that are involved.

There's lots of different parts of the puzzle.

Yeah, it will be helpful to see if anyone has been effective with this.

My inclination is probably not.

But yeah, that was definitely a section where there would be some oversight to see how possible.

Also, the misdemeanor part is also something that stands out.

Again, we're in the early phases, so this hasn't gone through any legal review.

Thanks.

Well, staying on that section, referring to that section, later on you have the exceptions in section 1811.

It says, routine installation, maintenance, repair of cable and wires used to provide cable, television, electric, gas or television service.

So that's an exception to anything in the ordinance.

I'm wondering how that works with the section that we just mentioned.

So that seemed like a, there seemed to be a conflict between those two.

And I mean, I'd love to see the 18XB1 work.

I'd love to see you guys figure that out.

I just, I noticed that conflict later on in the exceptions.

Well, also more blue text on the definitions.

It says street trees all need to be individually designated.

Is that, do we have a record of every street tree that we're, that we call a street tree?

Or is that what we're going to have to do?

Or can we change that?

Is there a way that we can say, if it's in the public right away, it's a street tree?

And then the next question becomes, if it's on private property, but it's in a, because we have our

are streetscape ordinance now.

How do we make a designation that those are street trees, even though they're on private property?

Are they on an easement at that point?

Yeah.

OK.

So is that going to be a, what did you find?

I was looking for that.

OK, so we actually have a documentation, a GIS documentation of all the trees.

Wow.

We have had in the past, I'm not sure about the update and whether it determines private versus public, if it's in a right-of-way or if it's on private property.

You know, again, that is a very labor-intensive kind of thing.

I'm just wondering how someone knows whether their tree

I'll leave that as a comment.

All the definitions say individually designated, so I guess that implies that we should have a list of all these trees and we want to protect them.

And then how would the public find out if they happen to have a

You know, if their tree is considered a street tree or if they have a specimen memorial or heritage tree on their property Let's see the oh Under 18xb1 it also says where the city is responsible for the maintenance of such easement

And I was under the impression that street trees and the planting strips needed to be maintained by the private property owner, even if it was public, in the public right-of-way.

So is that a, do we need to resubmit that somehow?

Yeah, I think so.

And just it's the fact that it says that where the city is responsible for maintenance of each easement, or of such easement.

It seems like the city shares that maintenance with the private property owner.

Let's see.

Yeah, I think that's my comments.

This is great.

I'd love to see it.

Thank you.

Thank you guys.

Appreciate it.

I also was not joking before.

I am available via email and happy to talk more or answer any questions.

I'd like to note that today marks two anniversaries of the built and constructed environment for the construction for destruction, for destruction.

For example, at night this is the 82nd anniversary of the day the Army Corps of Engineers began construction

on the Facilities for Substitute Materials project.

The Substitute Materials being plutonium and uranium for gunpowder, at the beginning of the Matt Manhattan project, and also today is known as Barb Wire Sunday, which is the first day that the construction of the Berlin Wall began.

in 1961.

So if you don't feel like celebrating either one of those particular advances of the built environment today, even though walls don't work and atomic bombs do, I would point out to you that you could go out and celebrate International Left Handers Day, which is today, and you could do that

with Prosecco and Filet Mignon, because it is Filet Mignon Day, National Filet Mignon Day and National Prosecco Day today.

Is there a second?