City Council Meeting   4/8/2025

8-20-25, City Council meeting to order.

Mayor Reed.

Present.

City Manager Banks.

Here.

City Attorney Brown.

Here.

Council Member Robinson via virtual.

Here.

Here.

Madam Mayor,

Before we move on, I think we have a couple of procedural niceties we need to take care of since Councilmember Robinson is appearing virtually, which is permitted.

And council did adopt a policy which permits a council member to appear in a meeting virtually.

The council member has to notify the clerk beforehand and disclose the reason why the council member is appearing virtually and their location.

I believe Councilmember Robinson is under the weather.

Thank you.

Alright if you would please stand for the invocation if you wish it would be a moment of silence or silent prayer whatever you wish and then remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Alright, we do not have any special recognitions tonight, this evening, so we'll go straight to our consent agenda.

Roll call, please, per pair.

Council Member Alsadun.

Aye.

Council Member Dent.

Aye.

Aye.

We will now go into our public hearings.

Hello.

Hello.

You have to excuse my voice a little bit.

Good evening, mayor, council members, and staff.

My name is Kristin McComb.

I'm the community development block grant program manager for the city.

Should I just click on this, Pam?

Oh, I got to share it.

Hang on one second.

I'm here tonight to bring the CDBG, our community development block grant, 2025 action plan to you all tonight.

The Community Development Block Grant, or CDBG, is federally funded through the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.

The CDBG program is a flexible program that provides communities with resources to address a wide range of unique community development needs.

Having begun in 1974, the CDBG program is one of the longest continuously run programs at HUD.

The CDBG program provides annual grants on a formula basis to about 1200 general units of local government and states.

CDBG funds must be used for activities that benefit low and moderate income persons.

In addition, each activity must meet a national objective for the program.

The city of Harrisonburg receives an annual allocation that is then distributed to eligible projects within the city.

Applications for the use of the 2025 CDBG funding in Harrisonburg were due in February.

Since then, the CDBG selection committee has read and scored each of this year's applications for the community development block grant.

And tonight I'll be presenting our recommendations to you.

The following slides summarize the amounts that were requested as well as the funding recommendations that our committee is making.

The allocation amount for our 2025 grant has not yet been announced through HUD.

Therefore, we are moving forward with the estimated allocation amount of $490,000.

Once we have the final number from HUD, we will make small adjustments to the grant recommendations that I will detail on the following slides.

We're also adding $108,600 from unspent funding in prior years, which brings our estimated total to allocate in this cycle to $598,600.

Under the category of housing and property improvements, there was one applicant this year.

The selection committee is recommending that $140,000 go towards the Habitat for Humanity's critical home repair program in an effort to promote affordable housing.

by keeping low and moderate income individuals in their homes in a safe and accessible environment.

Three city department projects were chosen to receive funding this year.

Each of these projects represent the city staff efforts to connect LMI residents with valuable services.

The three projects chosen for funding this year are a playground replacement at Hillendale Park, an ADA sidewalk at Westover Park,

and the Basketball Goal Replacements at Ralph Sampson Park.

The city may use up to 20% of the CDBG allocation for planning and administration activities.

Harrisonburg has historically allocated the full amount to general administration and then later moved this funding to other projects in the city as needs arise with the leftover funds.

Only two organizations applied for funding in the public services category this year.

The selection committee is recommending full funding for each of these two projects, the ARC and Meals on Wheels.

And then a note about what those recommendations are.

Because we haven't yet received funding, our funding amount from HUD, we need to outline what changes will be made to the action plan once our allocation is announced.

The following changes will be made to the funding recommendations set forth in this plan once final allocations are announced from HUD.

The administration funding will be increased or reduced to be funded at the 20% cap.

And the Westover Sidewalk Project funding will be increased up to $200,000, which is what they'd asked for, or reduced as much as required to meet funding requirements.

And then if any further reductions are necessary, they'll come from the Hillendale Playground Replacement Project.

So no action is needed at this time and the 30-day public comment period is scheduled to begin tonight with your approval.

All comments must be received by 9 a.m.

on May 6th.

So we'll open this item up for public hearing.

Hi, I'm Joyce Nussbaum with Valley Program for Aging Services.

I'm the program director there.

Thank you for being here, for hearing me.

I just want to thank you all and Kristin for supporting Meals on Wheels.

We're asking for this money to support meals for 43 unique individuals for 5,000 meals.

And these meals are prepared locally, edible of good.

We use locally sourced resources.

and a lot of volunteers, so your money is well spent.

We appreciate it.

People, I could tell you story after story, but I know you don't want to be here that long, so I'm just going to leave it at that.

We're grateful and we appreciate your help.

Thank you, and thank you for what you do for the community.

Thank you.

You're welcome, thank you.

Anyone else?

Okay, seeing none in person.

Thank you.

This item is now closed.

The item I have before you here is a zoning ordinance amendment proposed by Cat's Cradle, which is a local nonprofit cat rescue which is located here in our downtown at 122 South Main Street.

And they're requesting to amend three different sections of the zoning ordinance, which if approved would allow for them to provide pet adoption specifically for cats in the B-1 business district.

So currently, and actually this goes back several years at this point, the Cats Crow has actually had adopted cats out of their location in the downtown area for quite some time.

and it wasn't until probably close to about 10 years ago that it was brought to our attention that the activity was actually occurring and that there was concern about whether or not that use was actually even permitted.

It gets kind of complicated to explain and I'll try to be as brief as possible, but the situation is that pet shops are what we define in the zoning ordinance.

We do not define pet adoptions and we categorize pet shops and pet adoptions basically in that same category as similar to a retail use.

Pet Shops are specifically allowed in the B-2 zoning district, so our general commercial areas outside of our downtown, and Pet Shops is not listed in the B-1 district.

So we worked with Cats Cradle several years ago to

basically have a solution that allowed them to continue operating out of their downtown business location but when they actually did their transactions to adopt the cats to go off-site.

And I believe they've been doing many of them at activity spaces and then within the PetSmart locations and other local spaces to actually do the transaction of the pet adoption itself.

What has really come to their attention is that this is creating some opportunities for some struggles at times

because they rely very much on volunteers to transport cats to the adoption locations and at times they can miss opportunities for adoptions.

So they wanted to go ahead and propose a zoning words amendment that would specifically allow pet adoptions, and as you read in your staff report, but limited only to cats.

And so they want to be able to maintain their existing space, they want to be able to continue operating there, but then also do that transaction.

And this would not just help them, but the Cat Cafe, which is over on Liberty Street, would also be able to take advantage of this opportunity well if you approve the zoning ordinance amendment.

As I noted, they now have to transport cats to an off-site location.

They're relying on these volunteer hours.

As I identified, the B-1 Central Business District is a retail use.

You can have pet supplies and sell pet supplies, but the pet shop, so the actual exchange of animals, is only permitted in the B-2 district.

The three sections that they're proposing to amend this evening

are 10-3-24, that's the definition section, and then the buy-write categories, 10-3-84 and 10-3-90 of the B-1 and B-2 business districts.

So the two definitions that we want to add are those that are shown on the screen.

So pet adoption and then pet shop, because while pet shop is listed as a use, it's not currently defined, so we just generally place it into the retail category.

So we're separating the two as independent uses by creating these definitions.

So the two definitions would be as shown on the screen.

And then we would add them to each of the categories.

So pet adoptions, however, limited only to cats in the B1.

I'll explain that in a moment.

And then in the B2 district, we would be amending an existing subsection nine by separating out pet adoption and pet shop.

Because as you can see on the screen, pet shop would already be in there.

And we're just clarifying the distinction there between the two uses.

Now, why only cats in the downtown?

It's really quite simple.

Staff really did debate internally about whether or not we should open up to many other adoptions, and we really focused on the fact that

If you were to do dog kenneling, it would necessitate much more space and can be a little bit louder.

It requires spaces for them to be outside.

So we just wanted to just narrowly tailor it only to cats.

So we offered our favorable recommendation to Planning Commission, who then unanimously, five to zero, recommended to adopt the ordinance as was proposed.

I'm talking about my dog.

I've heard your dog.

This is not about my dog.

I do have a question, not because I'm

I am a dog lover, I like cats too.

I'm Sherry, I'm the executive director for Cats Cradle.

We do about 600 to 650 adoptions per year.

All of these, the cats that we get are from local rescues, so the SPCA in Harrisonburg, Rockingham, Shenandoah Valley Animal Services, and Page County.

So we pull our cats from the, you know, the places that they could rescue than Asia.

We do a little bit of public intake, but that's if maybe there were bottle baby kittens or something like that that we really don't want to go into the shelter because they're not going to survive there.

We have about 700 intakes a year, so we usually have about 100 to 125 cats in inventory.

So don't get scared, it's not there at the downtown center, we're foster based.

So all of the cats are at foster homes except for in the front two windows at our cat cafe, which is kind of a pseudo cat cafe.

We have a Keurig, people can get coffee, serve themselves.

And we have about 1100 visits per year.

Really?

Yeah, that people pay.

to come in and spend 30 minutes with the cats.

And then that fee comes off of their adoption if they do want to adopt the cat, which at that point we then package up the cat, have to find a volunteer to drive to PetSmart to do the handover.

Now of those 600 they don't occur there at

You know our location.

We get a lot of online hits that people want to meet us.

They adopt in the foster homes and then each Saturday from 10 to 2 in Waynesboro and Harrisonburg we're at the PetSmarts app on location.

Our operating budget is around $800,000 a year.

We have eight employees with three or full-time and we save thousands and thousands of animals a year.

Right, because we have employees that are there manning the location, but it's also a call center which would get 10,000 calls a year.

So not only are people walking in, but people are calling, you know, I need help with spay and neuter, I'd like to adopt, those kind of things.

So we just really need the relief that we could actually hand the person their carrier and they could walk on out with one of the cats that's in the front room.

No, it's not going to be a huge volume, but it just would make it so much simpler for us.

So what is the difference between you and SPCA?

Right.

So the SPCA is a public intake shelter and there are municipal shelters.

So your tax dollars go towards supporting the Rockingham Harrisonburg SPCA.

We are a private shelter, even though we're considered a shelter by the Virginia Department of Agriculture.

All our funding is done through fundraising, not through anything from the public, other than community members giving to cats cradle.

Thank you.

Well, as I said, it doesn't look like this will actually change much at your facility, right?

I mean, the same cats are there, whether the adoption happens at that location, or whether the extra work of

Okay, this item is now open for public hearing.

Seeing none in person.

Pam, do we have any callers?

Mayor Reed, there are no callers.

Close public hearing on this item.

Madam Mayor, I move that we approve the request from Cat's Cradle of the Shenandoah Valley to amend the zoning ordinance to allow pet adoptions in B1 as presented by staff.

And B2, is that right?

And B2, oh right, it's not listed here, but okay.

Will call please Pam.

Council Member Alsadun.

Aye.

Council Member Dent.

Aye.

Madam Mayor if you'll forgive us our Director of Community Development left his notes for the next agenda item upstairs in his office so he is currently running up there to get them.

If folks will just bear with us for a minute we'll be

So while I have you, let's talk about the dog situation.

I'm more of a cat person, but I'm not about to adopt right now because we like our chipmunks Okay, I do have a question about the cat cafe Sherry Tell me again about the cat cafe.

I guess I need to go there Well, you can come in and you can visit cats for 30 minutes For $20 and then afterwards we have a Keurig you can make your own coffee Oh

And that's Aristocrat, and they actually will benefit from this also because

They also had to go off site to do any adoptions.

And the cats that they receive are actually from the Shenandoah County Humane Society.

So that's their pool of cats that they adopt out.

And we at Cats Cradle just want everybody to make sure they can adopt out cats to good homes.

Thank you.

Are you ready now?

Alright, thank you.

My apologies.

There's been quite a bit of activity, quite a bit of activity today regarding this request, and my plan this evening is to do my presentation that I was prepared to give you that was post Planning Commission.

and then give you changes that have been made since that time because I want you to be able to at least see what was presented at Planning Commission.

The applicants are with us this evening.

It's been very professional and cordial with them.

We very much appreciate their opportunities to work with us so they can answer any questions you might have and I know they might even have some thoughts that have come up today so I appreciate their opportunity to be here this evening.

So the request is to rezone a little over 10 acres from R1 to R8C.

Of course, the C indicating the proffers have been submitted, and I will go over those.

The property is located along Smithland Road.

It's outlined here in red, and as you can see in this image, it's very close to the city-county boundary, so everything in the white is in Rockingham County, and then everything there that's colored is in the city.

All properties, including the subject site, are all zoned R1 in this area.

Land use guide is similar.

The land use guide has this designated as low density mixed residential and specifically with regard to types of housing and density.

The low density mixed residential anticipates around seven units an acre, anticipates single family detached dwellings on larger and smaller lots, and in special circumstances duplexes can also be considered.

and then the aerial photograph of the site.

It is basically an undeveloped site.

It's surrounded by some undeveloped properties to its south and then different borders there have some existing single family homes and of course then you can see the farmland across Smithland Road out into Rockingham County.

Is that the gray stretch that's right between the two white text boxes?

Is that the parking lot in such a Smithland Elementary?

Yes, good eye.

That is exactly where that is.

That's the section in front of the elementary school.

Okay.

Okay, so first I want to summarize the proffers.

Again, I'm going to go over the proffers that were presented to Planning Commission and I'll tell you about the changes that have been made since that time here in just a couple slides.

So originally, the density was proffered to be no more than 70 units.

They had proffered single-family detached dwellings and duplex dwellings, but the duplexes would have been limited to 25%, no more than 25% of the number of units that would have eventually been constructed.

There would be one public street connection out to Smithland Road, and then no driveways would have been located on that street.

where they wanted to provide on-street parking within the development curb extensions would have been provided at intersections.

Oftentimes you might hear them described as like ball bouts at the intersections because it gives a defined space as to where parking spaces are indicated along the public street.

A minimum of one additional public street stub to the identified tax map

and that's to provide some connectivity to the undeveloped property to the south, so starting to create that network and create more opportunities to connect to the surrounding area.

It would be dedicating Public Chute right away along Smithland Road.

This would have included

Up to 20 feet in width to allow for a 200 foot right turn lane and 200 foot right taper lane.

So that would have been if you're coming away from the roundabout headed, I guess technically it would be southeast in that direction.

So it would have been a right turn lane there.

And then of course providing space for the five foot sidewalk and two foot grass strip along that frontage.

There's a small section on the western side of the property that they would dedicate land to the city.

I'll show you where that is.

It's a small portion of property that they would dedicate to the city if the city needs that space for public streets in the future.

And then there would be a sidewalk and a shared use path along that main street that connects out to Smithland Road.

This was significant as well because it provides the opportunity

to have that shared use path.

And I'll pause here a minute because if you recall with Tuscan Village, which is on the opposite side of all of this undeveloped acreage, all the way over on Country Club Road and Kiesel Town Road, we have a similar situation there.

We also have a shared use path in the sidewalk.

So this is beginning to create that expectation to have not only sidewalks but shared use paths in much of this undeveloped area.

So we were very appreciative of them hearing our suggestions for that.

This is getting into specifics about, depending upon where those public street stubs would be located that would connect into the undeveloped area, there may be a need for a shared use path.

They would provide a shared use path into the stub, essentially in the direction of the middle school, elementary school complex, but that if a street were to be connected in that area, then the shared use path would go away.

In either case, it is sufficient because it gives that opportunity for multimodal connections, whether it's along a street or the shared use path.

They also proffered no less than 500 square feet of recreational play area, and depending upon exactly where that recreational play area is, they would also be providing fencing and some landscaping to help separate that from the Smithland Road area.

And then they would be providing some privacy fencing along the identified tax maps there, and I'll show you in the image as to where those areas would be.

So one of the layouts is shown here that was presented to Planning Commission and let me pause here because this application was originally discussed at Planning Commission in February where an entirely separate layout was shown.

Planning Commission thoroughly discussed the application at that time but at the end of the meeting decided to table the application to give a bit more time to work on some of the details with the layout and then brought it back to Planning Commission in March.

It was in March that it was supposed to be heard.

That was when we had the delay.

I think we had the snow there in early March and it got bumped into the second meeting of March.

I think it was March 18th is when this was held.

When these layouts, there's going to be two layouts I'll show you that were discussed at the second meeting at Planning Commission.

In all of the layouts that we looked at, staff was appreciative of the applicant listening to our concerns and suggestions with the layouts, but we just couldn't get to the final step there.

Being able to really align their vision with our vision as many of the layouts, if not all of the layouts that we had seen, would have required deviations to design standards from the subdivision ordinance and the design and construction standards manual.

That is not unheard of when we talk to applicants and developers during this process, during the rezoning process.

Oftentimes we're able to get to a point where we are comfortable with the designs that's shown and we might find that the deviations are reasonable to accept.

In this particular case, we just couldn't get there.

Some of the design criteria that we anticipated that they would need deviations from, we just weren't ready to accept them at that point in time, not knowing enough information.

Understandably, they hadn't done enough engineering, even on their own behalf, to understand what those deviations might entail.

So this layout was one example that they were thinking of building, but we knew in reality could not be built because it necessitated deviations from the design standards.

Nonetheless, they were presenting this as an opportunity for providing single-family homes that they wanted to provide.

Details there on the screen are just a reminder of the different proffers that were submitted.

And the indication here with number 11 for the privacy fences would be along the red lines here on the northwestern side and then across property here on the opposite side.

Then if you look page left, this tiny little triangular shaped area is that area of land that they would be dedicating to the city.

What I'm not highlighting here is the land dedication along Smithland Road that would provide for that shared, excuse me, the turn lane, but you can see the taper lane and turn lane beginning here as it begins to turn into the development.

So pay attention to the screen here for layout one.

I'm gonna show you layout two and then just see another concept that was developed and discussed at Planning Commission.

This is layout two.

The number of units is similar.

The design still would not have met our design criteria, and it was at this time we continued to believe that we were not yet comfortable with understanding exactly what those deviations might entail to be able to offer our favorable recommendation to accept this.

We ended up recommending denial three to two, or excuse me, recommending denial and planning commission ended up recommending denial three to two as well.

I'm confused about the timing.

There was the time that I wasn't there.

Layout one and two were discussed at the second meeting at the time that you were not present.

Right, that makes sense.

You had not seen either layout one or two.

Similar to layout one.

Similar to layout one.

So we had offered a recommendation of denial, and Planning Commission, although originally had a motion to approve, that motion failed, and then they turned around and did a motion for denial, and it was a split vote, three to two.

Now what I'd like to talk about is, Who was the three two?

I have it right here in front of me.

Three two was, so Vice Chair,

Vice Chair Finnegan was Porter Ball

and Nardi.

So the two that were in favor of the project, essentially, were Finnegan and Washington.

So the folks that voted in denial were Porter, Ball and Nardi.

And Ms.

Dent was not there and Commissioner Alcindy was not present.

So since this time, the applicants have been working along with staff.

They submitted

A revised concept plan.

I believe it was the Friday before, so it was Friday of, not last week, but the week before.

Unfortunately, we had some staff on vacation, including myself, was out all last week, so I did not see the new layout until yesterday.

And then we distributed among staff to get some quick feedback to provide some information to you all.

So there were changes to the proffers, and there was another concept that was presented, and I'll show that to you.

So changes to the proffers were quite simple.

The substantial changes here are shown on the screen.

So this is just a screenshot of the actual text where they just eliminated the last sentence of the opening paragraph, which discussed that the concept plan was really just for illustrative purposes and it wasn't part of the proffers.

The impactful changes here is that they've reduced the density maximum from 70 to 55, and they've reduced the percentage of duplexes that could be built from 25% to 20%.

The new layout, or new conceptual layout, which I understand they feel like this might be the most reasonable for them, and I'll let them speak to that when they have the opportunity,

is what's shown on the screen.

What you don't see on the screen are any duplexes, but they would have the opportunity to provide duplexes at 20% of the maximum number of units that are provided.

The maximum density as I noted was 55, but what you see on the screen is 46 units.

Now some of the things that we put a quick eye to to look at some of the design

Potential concerns here include the grade with public road A, so it is possible that they'll be able to make our design criteria.

This is about a 14% grade change.

10% is our maximum slope.

It is very likely they could make it work, but considerable grading would necessitate to make that street possible.

There is potentially a long cul-de-sac that they would need a deviation to.

So our design standards say that you should not have a cul-de-sac essentially larger than 800 feet in length.

And you measure that from the point of intersection.

So on the screen here at the point of intersection from here down this lane and then up public road B to the center of the cul-de-sac is close to 800 feet.

So it's without knowing exact dimensions.

It could be right there.

and meeting the criteria may be just over.

Some of the other thoughts we had included the stormwater detention seemed a little small.

Our city engineer often looks at a rough estimate about 3% of the developed area for reserving that space for stormwater management.

This is about 2%.

There is possibility that they could pick up some stormwater management in some of the undeveloped areas maybe here.

Other thoughts that we were just observing, although contours aren't shown here, the contours, really the backyards of many of these lots over here actually slope away from the property so they have to give consideration about how they're going to grade that space because the stormwater would be flowing in the opposite direction rather than back onto their property.

There seemed to have been some miscommunication about street widths that they were thinking we wanted a little wider streets in certain sections.

Nonetheless, they're showing a quite wide boulevard here for Public Road C, and I understand that they would be probably narrowing that, so we were just a bit confused as to why that street width was so wide.

And some other drainage factors is that at a point over here, there's a point over here where about 10 acres is draining into this site, so they'll have to take that into consideration as well.

So there's still some things that we're looking at as to whether or not this could be possible.

Another big factor here as we were trying today, just today trying to work with them about any suggestions for proffers about is this conceptual street network even possible.

In the real world, yes, you could physically make this work, but only Planning Commission has the authority to grant permanent cul-de-sacs, so they couldn't actually make a proffer to provide the cul-de-sacs as shown because Planning Commission has not seen this conceptual layout and therefore has not given any consent to the cul-de-sac.

Usually that's done at the plating stage, but they couldn't proffer it.

So it was sort of like the cart before the horse here where they could have potentially proffered it, which is where we were headed in the direction for them to say, you know, if this is something you're comfortable with, you can do that.

But then it was recognized that really they can't proffer it because only Planning Commission has the authority to grant the termination of the public streets.

They could stub some of these especially Public Road A they could stub in each direction And then maybe only have one cul-de-sac and then there was also some concern about really how to make this T intersection work over here with Public Road D and Public Road A Whether you know whether the street should really kind of continue all the way through whether this should be cul-de-sac So there's still some up-in-the-air questions Nonetheless with with really a short turnaround staff is going to maintain our recommendation for denial

Okay, thank you.

It would, it would.

And we've granted those a couple of times.

I can think at least two out of three in my career that we've granted them.

I'm confused about I've heard you say I don't know how many times the layout is not profit and that's generally accepted that something like this depending on what shakes out in the engineering and so to me it makes sense that what we're doing is the rezoning and

Trusting that the process will work and they'll find a way to engineer it with the grades and the cul-de-sacs and going back to Planning Commission with the final plat, right?

So we don't we don't have to vote on the cul-de-sacs tonight.

I can't guarantee that this layout would work but shown on the screen without variances approved by this body to the subdivision ordinance and design construction standards manual.

It could very well be that we, once we know a little bit more about what is needed, that we might be able to support that.

It's just we haven't had enough time to be able to do that.

And if I might, Council Member Dent,

If I was interpreting your comment correctly, sort of this question of why isn't staff sort of comfortable with this?

With recent rezonings, Tuscan Village, the quarry over on Waterman Drive, the quarry heights, Weston Park, we were able to at least come to a point of agreement with those folks that we had a good understanding about the street network, what it was going to look like, what was reasonable deviations, because there were deviations that were needed for I think almost all of those developments as well.

In this particular case, we want to make sure we get this one right.

This is setting the precedent for the remainder of the entirety of this section of many of these undeveloped properties.

This layout has gone through many different iterations.

In fact, some of the early iterations, and I think you're aware, started with all townhomes, and it was some townhomes, maybe some duplexes, and then it came in as single-family homes, which we're very appreciative of.

In fact, it hurts a bit by staff to even recommend denial of a project for types of homes that we know we want.

The density has not been much of a concern from staff.

The seven units an acre is what the comp plan calls for.

So they're actually reducing that down to 55, which is five and a half units an acre.

And in fact, what's shown on the screen is 4.6 units an acre.

Four units an acre is basically what R1 is.

In reality, and I want to make this clear, in reality, R1 hardly ever develops exactly at four units per acre because you have to take into consideration the streets, the infrastructure that's needed, the stormwater management that's needed.

So what is it that you, I keep hearing you said we didn't have enough time.

So it gets a bit complicated because more time may not be able to even get us there.

So the applicants may not want to provide the additional engineering work that it might take to give us some of the answers we're looking for.

So the additional time may not actually give us what we need to have a better understanding about what those deviations might be to the design.

And how much it costs to engineer design.

I have a question, Adam.

So it seems like this is a variation of various it's not really a very that's a slight variation but they're all very similar so with a developer that need to go back to the drawing board and come up with a whole new plan that meets the expectations of the city and kind of could you

They've gone through several different iterations and I hope they can correct me if I speak incorrectly.

I think they're getting closer and closer to being able to meet most of our required design criteria with regard to curves and tangent sections and cross sections of the public street grades.

So even what I looked at, without consideration to the fact that the Planning Commission has to give consent to the permanent cul-de-sacs, they're getting closer.

I mean, when I saw it immediately yesterday, my first thought was, are they going to meet those slopes in the areas where I know it's rather steep slopes?

And then our city engineer put his eyes on it and immediately noticed the cul-de-sacs.

So, you know, there are things that we'll point out,

It could be that we point these things out to the applicants and they're able to say, oh, yeah, we can probably accommodate that.

Or we can accommodate that entirely, but we can make these accommodations that might get us to a point that we find it acceptable.

And you all could just rely on the buy right ability and just grant the rezoning, if you wish, and allow them to come back at the preliminary plotting stage.

That's entirely up to you all.

We just like a bit more certainty knowing that when these streets go in, they're going to be there for

So I think as I've understood and you mentioned this earlier that this is really an important gateway so it's not just so much the ten acres that you're looking at here but it is the larger plot and this would be the entrance at least from this side

to that larger plot that's there.

So that's kind of the importance of having confidence in this street layout.

There are a lot of proffers that have been put in and I gather one of the concerns is what would prevent some of the previous layouts from being implemented if that's the case.

Do the current proffers kind of restrict those previous layouts?

Not necessarily, no sir.

This layout itself does have less road work, which from a developer point of view is probably desirable.

As I recall, one of the key concerns of staff was the distance from Smithland Road of the intersection, right?

Yeah, one of the original had the entrance.

My apologies, the mouse here isn't working.

So if you see where it says public road C, one of the entrances there was about where the P is in the public road, approximately.

Right about here.

So you can't have an intersection.

I think I want to say 250 feet.

And the way that they were sort of getting around that problem was to make it like right in, right out.

So you're going to have a center island to separate that.

OK.

So I'm going to go ahead and open this up for public comment or public hearing.

If anyone wishes to speak, please state your name and address.

Anyone wishes to speak, please state your name and address.

Hello.

Hello.

How are you?

Good.

I'm David Gast.

My company is the Riverbend Companies.

We're the developer, the applicant here.

Just a quick background, our company is a small boutique real estate company that focuses on housing and workforce housing.

So we operate a portfolio of about 500 apartment units, predominantly in Virginia.

And they're geared towards people on the financial ladder who are not yet able to afford their own home.

We work with a lot of assistance programs to help them with their financial needs And then our development pipeline.

We've got about 250 acres in the entitlement process right now and Those are developments that are really geared towards people on the next rung on the ladder So first-time home builders people who are maybe renters who are now able to afford their their first home so that's sort of the kind of common thread through everything that we do and

The team is not just me.

I'm joined tonight by Jack Scanlon with Land Design, who's our engineer, with Connor O'Donnell, with Gentry Locke, who's our Zoning Council and Land Planning Consultants.

And most importantly, Kevin Meyer is here with D.R.

Horton.

D.R.

Horton is my partner in this project.

As you may know, D.R.

Horton is the largest home builder in the country.

So we have a contract in place with D.R.

Horton where they will come in once the property is rezoned.

They'll be responsible for all the engineering.

They'll make that substantial investment.

To answer your question, sir,

It's probably about $150,000 to $200,000 to fully engineer this site as you go through the site plan approval process.

So from a pure investment standpoint, it's not feasible for us to make that kind of an investment in a site where we don't yet have the zoning and know if we have the right to actually build it.

So we do our best to design conceptually in two dimensions.

knowing that it's going to get adjusted and evolve once we get into the engineering and the site plan approval process.

So if zoned, Dear Horton is going to make that investment and they'll carry that through and they'll actually be constructing the homes.

I think

You know, I'll ask in a minute Jack and Connor to speak a little bit specifically on the site and the proffers, but I guess I would I would ask that the council consider the real question here, which is Does the city want this to be R1 or would it benefit the city if this is developed as R8?

The basic difference being the

the number of homes that you would ultimately have and the price of those homes.

So if we were to develop this by right, the road network, believe it or not, would be pretty much as shown on our current concept plan.

To back up a second, the site is pretty challenging.

As Adam mentioned, there's some topography on the site.

It's only 10 acres.

It's got these really goofy shape and property lines.

There's power lines that go through the middle of it.

So there are a lot of things that really sort of box you in and dictate where your roads are going to go.

So the difference between R1 and R8 would be that if it was an R1 development, picture the roads substantially the same, but we would only have about 20 to 25 lots because of the larger lot requirements under R1.

And when you kind of crunch all the numbers, the larger lots, the size of the homes that you would have to build, I mean, we're talking homes that would sell in the $850,000, $900,000 range.

Whereas R8, as you can see, we get almost twice as many lots and homes

that we can specifically deliver at a price point that we think is more beneficial to the city and its housing needs.

These homes would, pricing would start probably in the high 300s.

I'll say plus or minus $400,000.

We could all debate whether that's affordable or not affordable, but I think it's what I would refer to as a moderately priced home and something that most first time home buyers, it's attainable.

The homes that D.R.

Horton would build is something that's part of their express series.

And this is a series of homes, again, specifically geared to first-time home buyers.

They've built these homes all up and down the East Coast.

It's been very, very successful.

The houses themselves are about 1,600 square feet.

They're three bedrooms, two and a half baths, two car garages.

and again can be delivered at a price point that we think works for this market and benefits the city and their housing objectives.

So the concept plan is important.

I think what's more important are the proffers because that really helps give the city a comfort level in terms of what you're going to get for the future, it future proofs the site.

So it can be this gateway into this 100 acre undeveloped section of the city.

And ultimately, I think the decision is, do we want this to be 20 to 25 homes at $900,000?

Or are we better off with 45, 46 homes at plus or minus $400,000?

Thank you.

Can I ask Jack and Connor to?

Good evening Council.

Thank you for taking the time to hear our presentation this evening.

I'm Jack Scanlon with Land Design.

I'm the civil engineer of record for the project.

I recently joined the project team so I was responsible for the last two concept layouts.

Layout two was a bit of a learning curve and really understanding the needs of the city was providing in terms of commentary on the plan and so the latest layout we feel is a better effort to

address all of the variances that they were referencing that may be required for the development.

The latest concept layout was primarily laid out to accomplish the proffers, so providing the thoroughfare connection north-south through the property, providing a secondary point of interparcel connection to the south, providing our shared use path, providing the fencing,

meeting the intersection spacing and access requirements of the VDOT roadway manual.

The layout was prepared in accordance with city codes, so we did a thorough review of city codes and manuals, the zoning ordinance, subdivision ordinance, design and construction standards manual, and again the VDOT roadway design manual to ensure that the layout would get us much closer to not requiring many variances if a lot at all.

The latest layout provides 46 units and we were able to achieve 25% open space with the layout.

So we feel this provides a better amenity for the community and also opens up some more green space that the previous layouts were not attaining.

I think those are the key elements of the plan.

I think I'd be happy to answer any questions you all have on the layout.

That's really it.

I think there's some detailed engineering that certainly needs to be done on the property for us to further understand stormwater implications, grades, and slope requirements and relationships.

But really, that's what the preliminary plat process is for.

That's the way it's been outlined throughout all of the counties and cities throughout Virginia that we work in.

So we'll need to go through a preliminary plat process and really get through an engineering review of contours,

Thank you for saying that.

I'm the last one for us.

My name is Connor.

I'm a land use planner with Gentry Lock Attorneys.

I'm going to maybe touch on more of the things closer to what Adam was speaking about.

I really appreciate it.

We've been going on with staff for, I think, nine months now.

July was the first meeting, and Adam's been very gracious throughout this, as well as other staff.

So we've come closer together throughout that time period.

We're not quite there, but it's been pretty collaborative.

We started.

with townhomes in about 130 units and we slowly came down to the seven units and now the 55 units where we are today.

And we've gone through many iterations of concept plans and that feels kind of strange when they're not proffered.

Why are you going through iterations?

It's really because we are relying heavily on them to inform the proffers.

From early on, some of the asks from staff, which were the most important, were number one inter-parcel connection, the roads that you've heard about this whole time.

And so these different iterations of concept plans have really informed the proffers.

And then Jack, who just spoke, said he came in late.

And with the later concept plan that he just developed, he developed that around the proffers that exist.

So it's hard to see a picture and your eyes focus on that and for us the proffers have led to, the pictures have been demonstrative for helping us develop what are the important things that we will commit to during the site plan approval process.

As David said you know it's and Adams focuses on this too is future proofing the site and sharing connectivity through this undeveloped portion of this area whether it's 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the line.

And you know the focus up to now again has been on the concept plan but for us we too want to kind of pivot the conversation to the comp plan and what is

What we see when we see the comp plan and the zoning, and you see an area that is designated as seven units per acre.

That's where our original 70 came from.

We've moved down to 55 units an acre to accommodate the realities of the site, the site constraints.

Also neighbor concerns, neighbors do have some concerns about the density.

When it comes down to it, we feel confident that the proffers do encapsulate and address staff's concerns.

I hear from Adam, they want a little bit more and that's that natural friction between planning and development.

Where do we come to an agreement on?

I think Adam was correct in saying, you know, if given another two weeks or more time to work together, I don't know that we get to the same place because getting to the same place requires that significant engineering cost.

And so that leads us to, you know, focusing the conversation of what is the idea for the density of the site, the future development, R8 versus R1.

in a way what we're selling here and we're also selling trusting the buy right site plan process as restricted by the proffers that we've moved forward.

It would be a denser development, more homes at cheaper prices.

I don't want to oversimplify the conversation because the concept plan is important.

And I don't want to iterate all of the proffers that we've worked together now, but we really have worked Nine months developing these proffers, you know proffers we initiate first and then we receive staff comments and staff suggestions Every single staff suggestion over the last nine months for proffers we've accepted

there's not been a single item that we've rejected or said we can't do that so you know that is why we've put the focus there we really feel that going back and forth with them if we move to the buy right site plan process the site will be developed with those important considerations the interparcel connection the shared use paths to two interconnecting roads dedicating land to the city for the right turn lane

And so, you know for us, you know at this point, what are we asking for?

I don't know that a deferral will get us there together.

We are asking that you all vote on the rezoning tonight with the knowledge that the proffers that we've worked to develop over the last nine months do take into staff's major concerns and

and will be the restraining factor when we go through the site plan approval process.

We will have to go to Planning Commission.

We will have to get approval on the cul-de-sacs.

We'll have to go back to DPW.

We'll have to meet the city design standards, VDOT standards.

If there are variances, it's at the discretion of staff to approve them.

Good evening everybody.

I'm Dan Rubley.

I'm at 1251 Smithland Road.

I am one of the adjacent property owners.

Been in that location for coming up on 39 years now.

I want to kind of just clarify that I'm sort of become the spokesperson for the neighborhood being that I have experience in these kinds of things and understand process, understand land development.

I have coordinated with a lot of the neighbors.

I think a lot of the people have

written in.

Several people spoke at the planning commission meetings.

I don't know who else might plan to speak tonight, but I don't think that their absence is a recognition of overwhelming support for this.

Obviously, there was a petition that was put together by the neighborhood signed by 29 residents and property owners out there.

There are only about 30 homes on the entire two mile stretch of Smithland Road and we're talking about adding up

to 55 homes that's basically tripling the amount of homes that are currently on a two mile stretch of road representing, I don't know, 100 acres or so of property.

So this is a substantial change to the character of the neighborhood, impacts to the street system.

Smithland Road itself is narrow, it's two lanes, it has no curb, it has no sidewalk, it doesn't even have shoulders in the process of

Walking around to discuss with the neighborhoods.

I was escorted by one of my neighbors and her Elementary school son and it was it was frightening to walk along that road As cars were driving by because there's there's no escape So so here we have a project that is you know gonna make a substantial difference there without really any consideration being given to you know, what's what's serving that that property what how do you get there and

Anyway, so that the petition laid out a lot of concerns.

I'm hoping everybody got to read it about impacts on traffic, traffic safety, changing the character of the neighborhood, and also environmental concerns about changing the character of the ground.

So those were the things that were put forth in the petition.

At that time, they were talking about 70 lots in the proffer, up to 70 lots.

It's been dropped to 55.

I think that's been explained mostly just a response to the layout and how you can make these street systems work and how many lots can you really get.

So even though they're showing 45, 46, they're still looking for 55 and I suspect squeezing some duplexes in there may help with that.

So I do want to say that a lot of this parcel was

Originally part of an even larger farm and back I think in the 70s it was subdivided as a large lot subdivision.

So this actually was created as a single lot in a large lot subdivision.

Many of those lots that exist around that same subdivision still exist in their original five plus acre form.

One of the concerns I think that

that really comes into play with the neighborhood is everybody talks about zoning.

Oh, R8 is what the comp plan calls for, seven lots per acre.

Well, the comp plan has a lot more in it than just density and everybody seems to be coming back density, density, density.

And when you look at the comp plan, there are initiatives all through that for preservation of natural areas, respect for tree preservation, respect for character of neighborhoods,

keeping sensitive areas protected, things like that.

So, you know, when you when you look at density, yeah, sure, if you can make those aspects of what's in the comp plan and also in the low density mixed residential definition, and all that's been explained in correspondence that's come to you all through these processes.

This plan really

doesn't provide those types of amenities.

There was a discussion about open space.

Well, that's really just open space that's left, you know, because you can't squeeze everything in and make the street systems work.

They're not really preserving anything.

That entire 10 plus acres will have to be completely reworked and regraded or rebuilt in the complete character of the ground.

The mature forest will come out.

All the hydrology will change.

The impacts on stormwater will be significant.

So that's kind of the concern that the neighborhood has.

I mean we're not opposed to development there, but we do see that R1 as it exists today offers probably more opportunity because of the larger lot sizes and things like that to maybe preserve some of those natural areas and have more respect for how those natural areas incorporate into the greater neighborhood.

And then I guess the last thing is that

You know, when we talk about R1 and we talk about rezonings, if you were able to read some of the information, the comp plan has essentially eliminated R1 from consideration for future development in the city.

And if you look at what's designated for what's now comp plan considers low density residential, which is pretty much R1, I think 90 some percent of the property that's

designated in the comp plan for low density residential is already developed neighborhoods.

There are only a handful of small parcels scattered throughout the city that are in the comp plan as low density residential that have yet to be developed.

So here we are with the first of many potential changes out here.

And I guess the question to the city is,

you know is this the model that we want to use going forth for all these properties out there that are zoned R1 now have been developed that way for years and I think the expectations of the people that live out there is that that trend would continue so so anyway I guess you know coming back to the comp plan and some of those sort of softer guidelines that are in there other than just the hard density numbers

Anyway, that's fine.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Okay, I see another person.

I want to fill in a couple of things from Planning Commission again I was there in February but not when you readdressed it in March right yeah that's the timing and just to sort of volunteer that the duplexes were totally my idea and that I originally brought that up

with the idea of loosening up some space in the layout that was at that point really dense and with the very circumscribed streets.

I thought that might help add some clustering.

So again, that's my idea.

That didn't come from the developers and they incorporated that in the proffers.

It's not necessary.

It doesn't look like they're planning for it.

I mean, I like the

This is a trend we've seen recently towards mixed density developments that bring in some degree of mixed income at a slightly lower price point.

So while that's in the proffers now, it didn't seem to be originally part of the proposal that they worked out with staff.

And again, I'm just still confused at the, I remember turning to Adam in that February meeting saying, why are you recommending denial?

And he said, I don't like the layout.

I thought, huh?

The layout is not proffered ever, and I get now more what you mean that the central street as a future gateway to the potential much larger internal development is really a crucial factor, and they've been working with you on that, including the distance to the intersection.

I mean, when I first saw this new one, I thought, I'm not in love with the cul-de-sacs, because staff says all the time they don't want cul-de-sacs, but in this particular

In this case, it really does abut the neighboring yards and there aren't places to put the stubs out to where the cul-de-sacs are.

So I can see why they came up with that.

It's kind of a chicken or egg thing when you can't do a cul-de-sac until planning commission approves it but we need to vote on it for the rezoning and then planning commission gets to see the plat later so that shouldn't, to my mind, be a holdup.

Now, overall, I'm just kind of frustrated with the back and forth and the holdup on it.

And I, to the basic question of do we want R1 or R8, I'm resoundingly for the R8 because I think of R1 as a kind of anachronism of suburban sprawl that we're trying to get away from.

And one feature we didn't talk about much that I really like on this is the stub for a future

shared use path to the elementary school.

Now, that depends on negotiations with the neighbors and the new development whenever that happens.

I just really like that as a potential, especially given the traffic congestion on Smithland Road would give students, families in the neighborhood a safe route to school.

That's been a big thrust of ours.

So, there's a lot to like about it.

There are a few things to be worked out, but aren't there always?

This project is really fulfilled the need for the city and for the growth of the city.

I understand like the concerns from the staff, but I mean from what we see is that the developer is responding positively from lay one, lay two, and now three and I also understand that they have like some concerns about the engineering part.

but as you know that it costs a lot like if they know that it is guaranteed that will be accepted they will pay definitely and after the approval of the council they will definitely do the engineering part of course and the city can say no oh yes until they fulfill their concerns so we are still at the beginning and I think they are able actually to work with the city

I mean, I see that they are working hard, like from layout one and two.

So, I mean, I'm in the favor of approving it or giving time for the city.

I mean, yes, we can give them time, I mean, for the next two weeks, so they can look at it and give their concerns as well and communicate with the developer

and for the community concerns like I hear you and I understand how it is hard but the thing is that the growth is the reason behind changing from R1 to R8 and yeah I mean it's hard but that's the life that it's going pretty fast and people are in need of actually these houses.

Well I think you know looking at this current layout again which isn't proffered but I think it meets a lot of the targets we have for our housing.

I'm not convinced that keeping it at R1 would be a good strategy for us or that's a market that we can meet at this point.

The density here actually you know 55 or potentially smaller is I think a good density there.

The

In hearing staff I think they've indicated that this has gotten closer than how they started to what they think could be a good layout here.

The concern though I guess is that this is a particularly important 10 acre lot here moving into the larger development out there.

So I do take those concerns very seriously.

from staff and understand the value of making sure that what is built here in no way jeopardizes the access or what can happen to those next acres now.

A lot of that is proffered in here with the different streets that are there.

I've heard both from Adam and from the developer that they weren't sure the additional two weeks

necessarily would add much to that.

You know, I would like the idea of staff spending more time on this and getting closer to a comfort level here.

And I know if we do delay this for two weeks, I don't think actually, Mr. Brown, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but may not potentially cause any delay

in the project as well.

We can have a first and second reading in a delay, is that correct?

Good, yes.

Right.

So, you know, we are moving towards a second reading anyway.

So we could be at a point where if we did that, staff and the developer could continue discussions, could have further discussions.

It's no guarantee, I'll move them further along.

You know, they're kind of indicating that they're not sure if it will or not.

But it really wouldn't change the spot where we are.

We could still be two weeks further along, make a vote at that point, see if there's some additional conversation that happens with the developer and the city staff.

And if nothing changes, we're still at the same point two weeks later, which would have been a second reading anyway.

But in the interim, they've had a chance to have some further discussions.

That seems to me,

to offer an opportunity to see if staff can get to a comfort level.

If they can't, we still have a decision to make one way or another.

It seems like we haven't really caused a delay.

We've only opened up some additional conversations between staff and the developer here.

Maybe get an idea of a look at the grading here.

And of course, you can't pay for the engineering.

I get that.

especially in two weeks there so I understand the restriction of that.

But to me we actually wouldn't lose any time and only have the potential to gain more information especially from staff or comfort from staff if we do that.

So I'm not sure if there's necessarily a downside from doing a delay for two weeks.

I know there have been a lot of conversations over the last two days

I agree with Councilman Fleming.

Okay, I agree with Dany.

It seems like we're getting closer to this and I would hate to move forward with the by right when staff and developers have been working together and I think it's important remembering what Adam said about this being, this is setting a precedent where we don't have a lot of these undeveloped pieces of property

I'll let you go after I say what I'm saying.

For me, I take what the Planning Commission, advisement of our Planning Commission and our staff, we all know we need housing.

However, we have approved so much housing and some of those developments have not even the shovels hit the ground.

So I think it takes, you know, for us to make decisions that we need to, it doesn't need to be a desperation, or it doesn't need to be like, we gotta do this, we gotta do this, we can get to a good place between the developers and staff, and I think y'all are doing that.

And so for me, I have no problem with

pushing it back another two weeks and seeing if y'all can come closer to a compromise.

This is an important development and I hope that if it gets approved that you actually do it.

But I would, for me, I would kind of take the advice of our staff

and Planning Commission and see if you can go back and kind of get closer to what we need.

So I agree with Councilman Fleming and Councilwoman Robinson.

And I think you probably can get there.

Yeah, sort of to your point, I talked with Chair Baugh, Richard Baugh,

about the vote in planning commission where he was one of the three that voted against it.

And I said, was this the famous Richard soft no?

And he said yes, exactly.

And I interpret the whole vote in planning commission as a soft no because just about everybody said they were close to the line no matter which side of it they landed on.

And that to me says we're close but not quite.

Even though I would be ready to approve it, I could certainly go along with delaying it for a couple of weeks as long as that doesn't jeopardize the project itself.

I've had planning commission conversations about this, so I agree that that decision, eventually people have to vote yes or no.

but in between the conversations you find that folks say I wasn't quite sure which way to go.

I could have gone yes, but I went no, or I could have gone no, but I went yes.

I think that was the case here.

There are a lot of things that folks liked about this.

They wanted to see some continued development on this, on the process of this.

I would suggest to one, we aren't getting a lot of housing for sale

housing projects coming forward, right?

So this is a four cell housing project.

We're at 40% of ownership in Harrisonburg and this is one of the most significant needs we have.

I think in this price range as well is pretty significant.

We hear that from a number of our employers in the area that this is exactly what they're looking for.

So I take that very seriously and need to be responsive to our employers in the area.

And also thank this particular project knowing the partner that they have

is actually much more likely to move forward.

There's a significant partner on this, Horton is the largest housing developer in the country, so I would imagine that this isn't a project that sits still for very long and is likely to have shovels in the ground and get moving, so not all projects are that way.

We often see projects and we're not really clear

Are you going to be able to put this together?

That wouldn't be my thought on this one.

My thought on this one would be that this is likely to move forward.

Which, you know, these are the types of houses we need, so.

But again, I think the delay won't cause a long-term delay in this, I think.

So go ahead.

The next item is a rezoning at 1680 Country Club Road.

The request is from M1 to B2 conditional, so proffers were offered by the applicant.

The property is about 7.3 acres outlined here in red.

The zoning map in front of you showing a majority of the property here on the northeastern side of Country Club Road, zoned M1, that's the brown color.

And then you pick up some commercial properties to the south across Country Club Road that is owned B2.

The majority of the space is really in the B2M1 space and you start to pick up some R1 properties.

Those R1 properties are the school property and part of the larger acreage actually that we were just referring to in the previous application.

So the majority of this area is still zoned M1.

For future plans, what we hope to be able to see developed in this space.

So a majority of this property is designated for mixed use.

So creating opportunities for both residential and non-residential uses.

And that light green color being the low density mixed residential.

So similar to the last application, same designation for that.

type of seven units per acre approximately single-family detached homes and duplexes in special circumstances.

And then we pick up the major commercial section of the East Market Street corridor on the south side of Country Club Road.

And then the aerial image here, if I remember correctly, because this was an old warehouse and factory from even this morning at ELT, Brian Shell was telling us what this building used to be.

This property has been used as a religious operation since 2009.

Back almost 16 years ago, April 14, 2009, City Council approved a special use permit to allow for religious use in the M1.

They got a special use permit to allow for the church there in M1.

At that time, it was Valley Church.

There were specific conditions that were attached to it.

but it has been operating as a religious operation.

Divine Unity purchased the property some time ago and has been operating there for a number of years.

So the request here is to rezone to B2 and what this plan is is that B2 allows for religious operations by right and they have proffered out some of the uses that we suggested they give consideration to eliminating as it would not really be in line with our mixed use designation along Country Club Road and we are very happy to present that they submitted those proffers.

And I'm going to get into the details here.

As indicated, 2009, they got the special use permit.

What Divine Unity wants to do now is they do want to expand their operations and then create opportunities to allow for additional storage.

They want to open up the opportunity for expanding the children's ministry, increasing capacity for community events, providing additional resources and support for local families, as well as developing a gym and athletic space.

The applicant might be here this evening.

Thank you.

That might be able to provide some more details about their plans for the building.

This was an image submitted by the applicant, so if you look here in the space, predominantly the church here that's being used, they have the blue outline area is the children's space and the green area is an unfinished space, which I believe they utilize for storage, so they're looking to expand into those spaces.

The B2, of course, does not have any limitations on them with regard to how much space then can be used as a religious operation because the special use permit conditions had some very specific parameters to the special use permit.

So on the screen here is just summarized proffers.

In fact, what they did was they prohibited specific uses.

So proffer number one speaks to eliminating uses like vehicle sales, vehicle repair, radio and television stations, warehousing.

They eliminated funeral homes, gas stations, drive-through facilities.

The second proffer here is associated with traffic generating uses.

This application did not necessitate a traffic impact analysis because they proffered that they would not have uses on the site that would have a combined contribution of 100 vehicles in the peak hour.

So how we handle that is that when they go through the building permitting process, when they go through the change of use permits, we're able to identify what those uses are and they're able to work with public works to determine whether or not the uses they plan to have in this space would trigger that.

And if they do, they either can't do it or they have to do a traffic impact analysis just to find out what those impacts would be.

And then the third proffer is the dedication of right-of-way.

So interestingly enough,

Back during the 2009 special use permit, one of the ideas at that time was that they would be dedicating 10 feet of right-of-way for future improvements to Country Club Road and the property actually sold and that did not happen in the previous owner.

So we're taking the opportunity here to give suggestions to really what we're looking at for the additional needs for right-of-way and the applicant has put up that they would be dedicating 15 feet of public street right-of-way along Country Club Road for the Country Club Road improvements which you might recall includes widening the road to three lanes with sidewalk on one side of the street and a shared use path on the other side of the street.

So very appreciative of that proffer as well.

We did not have any concerns with this.

Mixed use incorporates, of course, any types of houses of worship in this particular space.

In fact, eliminating M1 is a good thing for this area because it brings us a bit closer to the comprehensive plans, land use guide recommendation for this area.

We offered a favorable recommendation and planning commission as well, unanimously.

Okay, thank you.

Any questions?

Thank you.

If anyone wishes to speak, please state your name and address.

Hey, good.

How are you guys?

I don't have a lot to add, but my name's Gabe.

So we don't have any set plans at this moment.

The one thing that we are working towards is leasing a portion of the warehouse space to a wrestling program, Shenandoah Valley Wrestling Club, which is about 50 kids that they practice several evenings a week, but for them to use that space.

Many of those kids go to Skyline or in the city and that current organization I believe is in Dayton right now.

Any other questions?

Well, I have a question that might be really more for city attorney.

If they sublease any part of it for profit, then that portion becomes taxable.

So if they have a large warehouse facility and they lease half of it to a business and they get income from that,

Well of course the commission of the revenue office goes out and actually assesses each property each year and they would discover something like that probably.

But you have youth programs right?

Yeah.

No ma'am.

Any other questions?

Thank you.

Anyone else?

One moment, please.

Thank you.

All right.

I will make a recommendation to rezone 1680 Country Club Road owned by Divine Unity Community Church as presented.

of undeveloped property located here at Hawkins Street near the intersection with Reservoir Street, so here on the western side of Hawkins Street near its intersection there.

The request is to rezone it from R3 to R5C and with approval they hope to be able to build four townhouse-style two-level multi-family dwelling units with two to three bedrooms each.

And I wanted to go into the minutes here where I would like to quote Mr. Herr when he noted that if the project were to move forward, this property would be sold to Bridge of Hope who provides housing for typically single women and single mothers, and they might be able to speak to that a bit more when I've finished here this evening.

But that is the plan.

I'll show you the layout here in just a moment.

So the property is currently zoned R3, as is many of the other properties around this area, as well as R2 in the light green color.

Long term plans for this area of the city includes for medium density residential that typically is in from different housing types, single family home, duplexes, townhomes at times, and special circumstances, multifamily dwellings, and we're typically looking around the 15 dwelling units per acre mark.

And then the aerial photograph of the site.

Really, this is kind of a site you just kind of drive past.

You don't even realize that it's its own parcel.

It's undeveloped.

Once you make that turn into Hawkins Street, you're kind of past it before you even realize it.

So it was a really neat project that came to us, and we were able to evaluate what they're looking for here through the proffers as well.

So the proffers being that the dwelling units would be occupied by a single family or no more than three unrelated persons.

Because they're limiting occupancy that immediately gave them the flexibility to only have to provide one parking space per unit rather than the per bedroom calculation which can be quite high at times.

Depending upon whether or not you build a two or three bedroom unit it can be two and a half spaces to three and a half spaces.

So they could have only provided one parking space per unit but they wanted to increase that a bit here provide one and a half parking spaces per unit.

to be able to provide some flexibility for the individuals that might be able to accommodate some housing here on site.

So these are the only two proffers for the R5 rezoning.

And this is the conceptual, although maybe very close to what possibly is built on site, with the four town home style units that would be serviced off of a undeveloped public alley.

So they're hoping to utilize the public alley in this space.

providing the parking in the rear, a layout that we very much appreciate.

We're always talking about massing buildings closer to the street, providing sidewalk accommodations to be able to get to the units, get to the parking areas.

So really we did not have significant concern with the proposed layout and we appreciate the applicant probably just even heating and having past experience being on planning commission that the engineer was able to take some of those design considerations into play.

So we very much appreciated that.

As noted, we did not have any concerns with this.

It sort of meets in line with the other types of housing that are already in there.

So the four proposed townhome style units, we believe, is in line with the comp plan.

We offered a favorable recommendation to Planning Commission, and Planning Commission did the same, and it's really five to zero to you all.

No.

Thank you.

I will open this item up for public hearing.

If anyone wishes to speak, please state your name and address.

Hey Gil Coleman Good evening council members, Gil Coleman with Coleman Engineering

Yeah, it's more than my experience with the Planning Commission.

It's also, you know, the heart of this and I was part of the comp plan also the last time we did.

Hopefully we can do it again soon.

Some of the changes.

But it is the intent to try to utilize this type of properties that can be, you know, used in a fruitful way as we're doing here.

It's a tight area and we have to be creative and I think we came up with something that will work, especially for the use that we're looking at.

But even beyond that, really it's a great use of that property for that.

What is interesting about it is that the zoning allows already for higher density but it was limiting because given the size of the property we only could have two units so by rezoning it we can put four units there and certainly

The use of the alley is an opportunity for us to be able to put parking in the back because otherwise all we could do is have parking in the front and that's what I'm saying it's more than the experience also being part of Planning Commission and pushing for those at least to just move parking to the back this is an opportunity right here that we want to take advantage of and we work with staff on that and you know there were concerns in terms of you know the

Axis and even with the fire department also what can we do to be able to serve this development properly and I feel like we did as much as we could with the leader that we have and that's what it is.

Thank you for taking the time to hear this this evening.

I've been a builder in Harrisonburg for

Yeah, so I hear that it's, is it rent for rent or for homeownership?

Yeah, let me, before you speak to that, for, right now the way we design the development is for, it has to be one unit, one building, it's four units, but it's one building and one property, it's for one property.

which is the only way we could make it work to have four units there.

One possibility to make it so you could have those units be for sale is to do it in a condo, you know as condos because the space does not allow for these lot size even for an R5, setbacks and other things doesn't allow for that and frontage and there are several things that would impede that.

My name is Heidi Hoover.

We're a small nonprofit here in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County that supports single parent families who are struggling with homelessness.

So single moms, single dads, single guardians, and their minor children.

So we have been working in the Harrisonburg Rockingham community for about 15 years.

We started in 2010.

And we work with single families for about 12 to 18 months, a period of about 12 to 18 months that they're involved in our program.

They're assigned a case manager and a neighboring volunteer group that walks alongside them to accomplish their goals, whether they be getting out of debt.

So financial goals, savings, having an emergency fund, health goals that they might have, educational, transportation, childcare, really wraparound services for those individuals and their families.

Our families that graduate have a 96% success rate.

of maintaining stable and secure housing after they graduate from our program.

But the majority of our families, to answer your question, Councilman, is that they are in rental units.

So we're getting our families into rental units as kind of a gateway and as something that's accessible for them as they have recently either experienced homelessness or on the verge of homelessness when they enter our program.

So our intention is to rent these units to the families that we're working with so that they can start to build credit and start to build a reasonable relationship with a rental.

We're going to engage with a property management group to work with these families as well.

So to really help them build the skills and the responsibility as they're participating in the rental market.

Having a clear rental history free from evictions

from debts, is going to set them up well for future home ownership if that's something that they choose.

But our main priority when they're in our program is to create safe, stable housing and we find that the rental market is the most accessible.

The rental market is also an area where there is a lack of affordability within Harrisonburg and so we're hoping that by providing these four units that that's going to provide

and additional four units of affordable housing for families here in our community.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

I think this is a great use of a small lot right to make some productive use of it and this is hitting a really important need for us kind of transition housing folks that's a really important part of our housing continuum especially moving folks who run housed or not stable housing

and these programs work.

Sometimes just a little bit of support they get allows them to become permanently housed elsewhere.

So this is just a critical need.

Bridge of Hope, great operation, great organization, great new executive director there.

I will move to approve the rezoning of 532 Hawkins Street as proposed.

Council Member Alsadun.

Aye.

Council Member Dent.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Fleming.

Aye.

Aye.

You're welcome.

Yes, thank you.

Last item I have for you this evening is a special use permit for an unaddressed tax map.

It's tax map 108B2 and it's known as Boulder Ridge.

It's really a city residential component of a much larger acreage that's under development.

In fact, almost 133 acres of land located in Rockingham County in total.

The request is to allow more than 12 units in a building.

Some of you might recall

seeing this a few years back when they came in to change the land use guide and also to do a rezoning and I'll get into some of the specifics here.

So the zoning in this area shown here on the screen is R5 conditional as the property was rezoned back in 2021 with some proffers associated with that.

It also wasn't just a residential rezoning at the time.

The B2C that you see in that was also part of that rezoning as they provided some additional

proffers to the B2 portion that's within the city of Harrisonburg.

This is on the south end of the city.

Many of the properties down here are zoned either B2 or M1 and in this section of the south end of the city, really South Main Street is the separation between where we have commercial properties planned and where we have industrial properties planned, except for this small component here, this little over five and a half acres of property that's zoned and planned residentially.

And the aerial photograph, this area, if you travel this area, this aerial photograph is definitely out of date.

There's quite a bit of development ongoing in this area.

Most of that property that's under development right now is within Rockingham County.

And you can see that when you travel in that area as it kind of goes up the hillside there, you'll see a lot of that development taking place.

So townhomes, multifamily units, all in that space in Rockingham County.

It's not green.

Not most of it today.

Oh, my apologies.

There's a little glitch here in the screen.

But anyway, back in February 2021, there was an amendment to the comp plan's land use guide amendment from commercial to medium density residential that was represented on the screen.

And they also rezoned the site, which was a little over five and a half acres from B2 to the R5 conditional.

And they limited the density there to 72 units.

Now at that time in the screen below,

they had intended to build six units of 12 units each for a total of 72 units and to give you your balance here so that blue line is the city-county boundary so everything below the blue line is within the city you have South Main Street here and then a public lane that would then go into the development and really the only section we're talking about here

is the section here that's bounded here in red.

So there's 72 units that were planned.

So at that time, they were planning for six buildings, 12 units each.

What they want to do now is what's shown on the screen, which is really to mimic what they would be building in Rockingham County, which is to have 24 unit buildings.

So instead of six 12s, they want to do three 24s.

Same number of units, but because the R5 district requires a special use permit to have more than 12 units in a building, that's why they're here.

and it's to mimic what they're doing there in Rockingham County.

So again, that blue line representing county to the page up and to city page down.

And what's on the screen is everything I just described.

The buildings in Rockingham County, multifamily construction already underway in Rockingham County are forthcoming.

Any questions?

Is that serviced by the county?

Will those properties be serviced?

No, they'll be provided water and sewer within the city.

The students will go to the city schools.

In fact, a lot of the storm water comes down into the city section.

Of course, that's all coming down downhill there.

Maybe I misunderstood your question.

Yeah, trash pickup.

So because it's a multi-family establishment, they'll have private trash pickup.

So the city wouldn't go in there for that anyway.

And the city would service the city portion of the road for maintenance, snowplow, exactly.

Any other questions?

Thank you.

I'll open this item up for public hearing.

If anyone wishes to speak, please state your name and address.

Good evening, Seth Roderick with Monteverdi Engineering and Design Studio representing the applicant.

As Adam stated, this is really part of a larger project, the bulk majority of it being in the county.

There are 12 24 unit buildings in the county, three in the city.

The zoning went forward in 21.

Since that time, the concept of going with the 12 unit buildings versus the 24 has changed just to kind of

create some better construction efficiencies and for you know I don't want to over explain but I know we do have a couple of newer members of council and if you haven't seen one of these special use permit requests come up for this type of request it's really due to some what I'll bluntly say is antiquated language within the zoning ordinance I don't think we hear too much complaint about that language but

Way back when, you know, there was there was a limit on units just to make sure that we didn't have overly large apartment buildings.

The number was set at 12 because that was the flavor of the day.

That's why if you look around you have all these

12 unit apartment garden style, three story, four per floor, breezeway in the center, walk ups, right?

And that's really what we have.

The style here is really just mashing two of those together.

So it gets rid of that separation, gets rid of outside walls, creates interior walls.

Now there's two breezeways, creates some efficiencies in construction, just making it a little more affordable.

It also creates an ancillary benefit and just allowing for more open space to be created by pushing those units together.

The property tax?

So four units in the city, they will pay taxes, correct?

Seventy-two apartment units, three buildings, twenty-four units, those are all being city tax-based.

The total number stays the same?

Correct.

So the assessment for each individual unit is for the most part the same?

Any other questions?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Are we there?

Close this item.

Madam Mayor, I move that we approve the request from Bluestone of Harrisonburg LLC for a special use permit to allow multiple family dwellings of more than 12 units per building and tax my parcel 108B2 Boulder Ridge as presented.

Second.

Any other discussion?

How are you?

Good, thank you for doing very well.

How about you?

Good.

Good evening and it's a pleasure to be with you.

I'm Jeremy Crute, the director of planning of the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission and I'm joined today virtually by Mel Jones with the Virginia Center of Housing Research and Jonathan Knopf with Housing Forward Virginia and tonight I am, or we are, excited to share with you the findings of our recently published regional housing study which we hope will be a useful resource for Harrisonburg's ongoing efforts to address and improve housing which as we've heard tonight you're already doing an excellent job of doing.

So I'm gonna attempt to really quickly fly through a summary of the study and then to try to provide you enough time as much time as you need to Ask us any questions or particularly to make use of Mel and Jonathan's expertise on these issues So several years ago we began several years ago began hearing from more and more of localities that housing was becoming one of our

are all of Ocala's most pressing issues.

And so in response to those mounting concerns, we partnered with Virginia Housing, with Virginia Tech and Housing Ford Virginia to develop our region's first housing study with the goal of trying to help better quantify our region's housing issues, as well as informing policy decisions to address those challenges.

And so the process of doing that was divided into two main phases.

The first phase

created data profiles of each sub-region by analyzing housing data, engaging with housing stakeholders throughout the region just to better understand the housing issues that our localities are facing.

And the second phase then attempted to use all that information to develop actionable housing strategies that we could take proactively in order both as a region and as individual communities to address those challenges as developed.

The findings and recommendations of both phases were then published in two separate interrelated reports, a consumer report which summarizes the study's key findings as recommended strategies and then a technical report which provides a lot more detailed analysis and action steps and both of those reports are now available

on our CSPDC Connect website, and I believe we're included in your packet.

You can go to the next slide.

Oh, sorry, you can go to the next one after that.

So I'd love to do a really deep dive into all of the phase one housing data, but unfortunately that'd keep us here all night.

So this slide attempts to summarize a couple hundred pages of reports and spreadsheets into a single slide.

So our housing challenges in five bullet points, which many of these I believe will sound pretty familiar to you all.

First, we have a very tight housing market, which means that we have a need for more home ownership opportunities.

As you can see in that graph, the median days on the market for homes in Harrisonburg was six days, which put us in among the tighter housing markets in the country.

Second, we have a need for more rental opportunities, but this tight home ownership market often puts pressure on the renter market, and our rental vacancy rate subsequently was also very low.

which in addition to driving up costs can disincentivize landlords from maintaining and improving their properties because they always have a waiting list of folks ready to rent regardless of condition.

That then contributes to the third need which was our need for improved housing conditions as many of our homes are aging or in need of critical repair.

Fourth, we need a wider variety of housing sizes and types.

This is less of an issue in Harrisonburg because you all had significantly more of multifamily units than the rest of our region did.

but there's still a greater need for a wider variety of housing type sizes and price points.

And then finally, more specific to the Harrisonburg-Rockingham area, there was a need to add more income restricted affordable housing units just to stabilize low wage workers and seniors with low or fixed incomes.

All of those challenges then contribute to increasing housing costs, which put pressure on our homeowners.

In fact, 5,600 households in the Harrisonburg area, which is close to one third of all households, are cost burdened by housing, meaning that they pay over 30% of their income on housing.

And almost half of those were severely cost burdened, meaning they paid almost 50% of their income on housing, meaning that they have to make difficult choices between housing costs and other necessities.

Alright, so what do we do about all this?

The second half of the study then uses all of that data to try to develop a meaningful path forward.

And because this is a regional and a local effort, it included both regional and local solutions.

And you can go to the next one.

For the sake of time, I won't go in through each of the regional solutions in detail, but I wanted to at least provide them in a slide so you're aware of

The direction that we as a PDC in collaboration with a lot of our regional partners intend to pursue moving forward, including creating that decentralized home of home improvement resources, building on the great work that's already being done, including the presentation we heard tonight about expanding permanent supportive housing options, participating in a community land trust model of home ownership, expanding housing counseling services, and then considering the pursuit of a regional land bank.

You can go to the next one.

So now, zooming in a little bit more closely on Harrisonburg.

For the city, the study identified two priority solutions and two secondary solutions.

And the first one of those tries to complement the work that the city is already doing to update the zoning code by evaluating the feasibility of pursuing density bonuses and then tailoring those bonuses to support the city's affordable housing goals.

and if that is a direction the city chooses to decide to go move toward, the study provides some preliminary guidance on what this could look like, what the state code allows and how it could be tailored in a way that supports the types of housing that the city would like to support.

The second solution then recommends the exploration of potential financing tools to support affordable housing development and specifically recommends pursuing a Virginia housing grant just to support a housing policy analysis that could help evaluate

potential financing tools for affordable housing that would work within Virginia's fiscal context.

The first secondary solution, like the first primary solution, provides some guidance on the city's ongoing zoning update, this time related to accessory dwelling units and short-term rentals.

Pulling best practices from other localities, the solution provides ideas and recommendations that the city can consider to develop accessory dwelling unit and short-term rental regulations that complement each other

to promote housing availability, neighborhood preservation, as well as balanced economic opportunities.

And then finally, the last strategy shifts the focus from trying to create new affordable housing to ensuring that we're also preserving the existing affordable housing stock that we have, and particularly

ensuring that any expiring subsidies or market pressures and redevelopment pressures don't slowly erase the existing affordable housing stock that we do have in place and so to do that the city could start by inventory and monitoring those potentially at-risk properties and from that baseline then considering either a housing preservation fund, zoning changes and or partnering with some local non-profits to attempt to preserve that affordable housing stock.

So that is a very very very brief and high-level overview of the study.

I hope that's helpful in framing how we think about housing as our region as a whole as well as within the city and we hope that that the study will continue to be a resource for the city moving forward.

I do encourage you if you haven't already to take a closer look at both the consumer and the technical reports.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Councilwoman Robinson.

I just had one question.

Where can I find more information?

What studies should I look to for the bullet point on needing to maintain quality housing conditions?

Because that's one area that I think we don't do as much work in.

Absolutely.

So I know that wasn't one of the solutions directed specifically for the city of Harrisonburg, but I'm trying to, I have to recall, and Jonathan Craig, if you remember, let me know.

There are several of the localities for which that was a specific recommendation directed at an individual locality.

The specific discussion of at-risk properties is primarily in the discussion of the rental market in the Harrisonburg, Rockingham portion of their report.

also in the Harrisonburg Rockingham portion of the technical version there's a very unique part of the study that was done just for you guys about naturally occurring affordable housing so particularly when you're thinking about

Maintaining housing quality and sort of the nexus between that and Naturally occurring affordable housing you can look at that section and then specific recommendations Around conditions were primarily directed to the Rockbridge region But you can look at the the Rockbridge Buena Vista

Lexington chapters to see those strategies.

There's a bucket of strategies and resources and techniques that localities can tap into to try to solve those things.

And I think Harrisonburg is already probably doing a number of those.

The other category

to take advantage of the limited acquisition powers that localities do have, but to keep the properties kind of held in escrow almost until they can be then deployed other resources brought in to be redeveloped or repositioned into a

On what you said for one second and make a plug that Waynesboro had excellent housing conditions data for us to work with and that's one of the reasons that we were able to do so much in their chapter with the assessment of the quality of housing in Waynesboro.

They just collect excellent data and so that's really can be leveraged and I encourage every community at work with to you know

From where I sit on the CSPDC I really appreciate all the work you do especially given that this is a regional study with a wide variety of localities and different needs and approaches and I like the way you've brought in some examples that we can look to like Rock Bridge or Waynesboro for various different things.

One of the topics I'm most interested in is accessory dwelling units, especially as we're doing our zoning update.

And I like the way you blend that with the short-term rental regulations, because they're interrelated.

And again, regionally, those are very different.

Short-term rental and bath, if you've got an extra farmhouse, you're fine.

Whereas in Harrisonburg, we want to be sure we don't impinge on the long-term housing market that's so stressed already.

However, Mel, remind me of this.

I think I remember you saying something like, short-term rentals don't suddenly mushroom overnight, or accessory dwelling units, which I don't remember what you were talking about, but even just relaxing the zoning to allow for backyard cottages for grandma or whatever, doesn't mean everybody suddenly goes out and builds them.

Yeah and actually I think that you're referring to another report that we did which I will make sure that Jeremy has access to and Jonathan and I actually collaborated on it but we did an accessory dwelling unit report for the state and surely that was the conclusion.

It takes a lot of investment and work on behalf of the community to get that to take off and be a meaningful addition to

the housing stock.

So I'll just make sure that Jeremy has that report to send to you guys.

And then the short-term rental piece we did address in this report, but I will say that the communities where short-term rentals really had the biggest impact on the market were indeed those smaller communities where there is so little housing stock and the

number of short-term rentals makes up something like two percent, two and a half percent of their market, but if they only had two and a half percent more housing units, they wouldn't have a housing problem anymore.

So that's really where, you know, those short-term rentals are having a huge impact, huge is the wrong word, an impact on their market.

In the rest of the communities across the central Shenandoah footprint,

So they're just not a big enough piece of the pie.

Well, on the other hand, that's partly in our case in Harrisonburg, because we regulate it so tightly, we have some trepidation about

loosening the short-term rental allowances too broadly.

For instance, we had a whole debate about if you own a duplex property, can you rent out one dwelling unit?

And we haven't, I don't think we've wrestled with the, where's Adam?

He's gone.

There was a proposal to change it from property to dwelling unit to address exactly that kind of situation.

And I don't think we really quite nailed that down.

I think we left it as is.

And you had mentioned just examples of other communities that were doing this type of work.

I believe this study goes into detail about the City of Richmond and their effort to do that effort of pairing those short-term rentals with the Accessory Dilling Units.

Yeah, so yeah, I mean I appreciate the report is laid out in, you know, again on the ADU and short-term rentals.

I think there was some really great data in there.

I think it positions Harrisonburg really well.

You know, I like the idea that you talked about this is kind of a

a complementary process that can go forward.

I did notice that Richmond was one of the places that you suggested has done this really well.

And so there's a couple working models through all the different strategies you laid out that we can pull upon.

So I think that's very helpful for us.

And I think this lays out a good document for staff to take a look at because a lot of this is going to require capacity

analysis within our city of what we can do looking forward.

And I know there's some recommended to look at funding through Virginia Housing to do some studies.

And there's still a ways off before we can step into a lot of this as we get more of the data.

I think one of the things I noticed that's important for us to make note of is a lot of subsidized housing will be rolling off fairly soon, right?

So we have to

to account for that.

There's a lot of lower income housing that may no longer be available depending on what happens on those properties.

I think it's going to be an important thing for us to step into.

Monitoring the existing stock will be important.

I think we've been talking about that among staff about how to do some more monitoring of that.

But again, that's a capacity issue for us to

to step into and think about.

So this provides us a really good pathway to think about what are the next steps, you know, what do we need to put in place among staff or what can we do.

So yeah, I know I appreciate the report.

Lots of, you know, great data and I've, you know, been reading through it and my head is swimming often when I kind of go through the numbers.

But it's very helpful, especially on, I think, you know, as Councilman Dent was saying on the ADU and STR

short term rental numbers.

Those are very helpful for us to take a look at and see what we have.

I think ADUs are blossoming all over the state.

They weren't forced down, but I think that was kind of the intent to make sure that those move forward.

Thank you guys for the report.

I appreciate all the work you guys do.

You guys are a great asset.

Yeah, I think the answer to that question generally depends on the specific issue you're talking about because certain areas do really well in some areas and certain places do really well in other areas.

So the study does attempt to try to provide examples like the city of Richmond with that pairing approach.

I think Jonathan might be able to speak probably better than I would to more broadly of examples within the state that are doing an excellent job.

There have been a couple more than a couple of cities that have completed that process and I think made some very significant structural changes to their zoning ordinance for the better that would be worth looking at as I'm sure you would anyway throughout that process but it is

and in Roanoke over the past few years have redone their zoning ordinances now they're also being battled in court right now as citizens have come forward and said that they didn't get to have their say and we'll wait to see how that all shakes out but in terms of

I would really say there's been a lot of meaning

kind of maintenance and stewardship of existing affordable housing supply.

I think, you know, Mel, there's probably some, you know, some communities in Northern Virginia that come first of mind to me, but just it's an apple and orange situation in terms of scale of resources available at the local level.

I think they're really, in addition to the zoning space, the local government and local quasi-governmental entity financing and housing

Yeah, I'll add that, you know, I think in Virginia the gold standard of housing authority and city collaboration is probably Fairfax County and Fairfax City.

They all kind of work together on that bit because the housing authority serves also the city.

But since you guys have you know the housing authority which is an enormous asset, and you know your housing authority is active You know it's not sort of one of those dead in the water housing authorities that do exist across, Virginia You know it's a great asset, and you definitely should be leveraging that as much as possible in terms of the preservation space I would say Alexandria is probably one of the gold standards of our state and

if you're thinking about that.

And then in the ADU space, Norfolk definitely rises to the top of allowing ADUs by right in every part of the city and then trying to promote that.

And then one note on the preservation piece, too, that I neglected to mention.

I think in the report we did make a reference to the bill that has been proposed I think two years in a row now to give localities the power to establish right of first refusal programs for affordable housing preservation that did pass but was vetoed and so that again I think we'll have to wait until another year so localities will not

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Thank you so much.

Thank you guys.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, we need to take a couple minutes.

I will.

Gotcha.

Thank you.

Sorry.

All right, good evening council members and members of the public.

I am excited to present the draft FY2026 budget for council's consideration this evening.

And before I get started, I'd like to thank our department directors and city staff

for the long process and grueling process sometimes of looking at our existing budgets, evaluating those services that we provide our residents, and then looking toward the future.

More specifically, I would like to thank our deputy city manager, Ms.

Snyder, our assistant to the city manager, Mr. Vandenberg, seated over to our left, and most especially our finance director, Mr. Probst, for all of the heavy lifting that he does year after year.

We like to start these important presentations with a review of Council's vision and I appreciate you all just a few weeks ago spending two full days and taking a look at that and editing it and moving it forward.

I would encourage members of the public to visit the city's website and take a deeper look at Council's vision and in the near future the priorities that come out of that to advance our community toward a common vision

20 years in the future.

For city council and city staff, this is a bit of a reminder for the members of the public.

The budget process actually begins in late November or December when I and our finance director and our team send out budget directions and instructions to our departments to start the process of looking at the next year's budget.

In January, those department budgets are submitted by the end of January.

At the same time, the applications for civic and community organizations are received.

February to March, so almost two full months, we, our staff, our deputy city manager, our assistant to the finance director, myself,

Meet individually with each department team, that's usually their director and their leadership team, and review those proposed budgets, most often line item by line item.

Why is this going up?

Why is this going down?

To better understand the services that we are providing and the priorities that are trying to be moved forward by our city staff.

And then that brings us down to the end of March, beginning of April, where we are now.

and a draft balanced budget for Council's consideration.

Several focal points of the proposed budget.

It maintains existing levels of city services while addressing the increased operational expenses that we've been experiencing.

It proposes no increases to our current tax rates.

It continues to implement the City Council's 2045 priorities.

It accommodates increases to city employee compensation and the employer contribution to health insurance, an important benefit for our city employees.

It invests in water, sewer and stormwater infrastructure through slight increases to our utility rates and the stormwater fee.

And we had an opportunity with some old debt rolling off of the city that we can actually reduce the monthly sanitation fee that our residents pay.

Some of the challenges we faced in going into this FY26 budget was a plateauing of national revenue growth.

So as we started to look at FY26, we realized that we were anticipating less than $5 million in national revenue growth, much of that coming from real estate and personal property taxes that you'll see in later slides.

And I heard from city council members as well as residents

that the tax rates over the previous four years needed to be, well there needed to be no new taxes considering the tax increases over the previous several years.

City departments continue to experience increases in costs of goods and services, particularly in the venue of technology.

and City Schools, other partner agencies, and shared county services requested increased funding because they too are continuing to see the increase in labor, services, and goods.

Some of the highlights, this is certainly not an exhaustive list, but some of the highlights in the FY26 budget proposes $7.2 million in investments in water and sewer infrastructure.

And especially for members of the public, just a reminder that our Public Utilities Department

of which handles our water and sewer infrastructure is an enterprise fund, meaning the fees they generate pay for these costs.

This is not new debt being taken on to address this.

$3.6 million investments in city schools facilities.

That's everything from replacement of boilers to roofs and others.

$2.4 million is a 4% pay increase for city employees.

Again, my focus for several years now has been to ensure that the city of Harrisonburg continues to be an employer of choice in the region.

$2.2 million in important HVAC replacements at our Lucy Sim Center.

$1.6 million is the price tag for those continued increases among our partner agencies and our shared services with Rockingham County.

We continue to set aside funding for the eventual renovation of the municipal building next door.

We have a $1.46 million increase in the transfer from the city to the city schools.

$512,000, and you'll see these in a later slide, specific priorities being pulled out of City Council's vision that will be funded in FY26.

and an opportunity to increase our aquatics programming by building a second dome over the Olympic pool.

Right now we have a dome over the dive pool which allows for the use of that pool during colder months.

We're proposing adding a second dome and thus expanding those offerings to our residents.

So six particular priorities were funding coming out of the City Council's vision in FY26 housing policy technical assistance.

We actually just heard a presentation on needing some additional information and analysis on things such as standing up a housing trust fund and evaluating the effectiveness of density bonuses and other tools in the tool bag of incentivizing affordable housing in our community.

We know from our residents that childcare continues to be a challenge.

So we're proposing money to hire a consultant to help us do an assessment of what that need now looks like and working in conjunction with some of our community partners, most notably the Chamber of Commerce, which has been utilizing some of the private sector and industry in our region to also address childcare needs.

Parks and Rec Master Plan is being proposed to be funded in the FY26 budget.

This is a comprehensive approach to evaluate and receive input from our residents, which has not been done in over probably 20 years.

Harrisonburg entrepreneurship continues to be funded and invested in through our Harrisonburg Economic Development Department.

Our Environmental Action Plan actually calls for a study to be done to see if we can generate electricity

out of the water that is falling from a higher elevation in our dry river out to the west into our city through our infrastructure.

And finally, City Council's interest and staff support of getting back to trying to conduct a community survey whereby we touch the pulse of our residents, making sure that we're providing the services that they are needing and requesting and are providing them at a level of efficiency that we would expect.

The FY26 budget proposes the creation of one new full-time position.

We have added the navigation center and thus the number of facilities coming under our facility division within Public Works has continued to grow and so we're proposing adding a new position to that team.

The systems and the buildings that we maintain are only growing more complex and that team needs some additional assistance.

to make sure that we're continuing to be good stewards of the facilities as public servants.

Civic and community organization grant, City Council has continued to obligate $400,000 annually for organizations in our community.

As you can see, we had 46 organizations applied, requesting just shy of $800,000.

We have used the same evaluation process and grading rubric now for several years.

Mr. Vandenberg stepped in and managed this process this year for us.

And this budget proposes funding 44 of the 46 to the full $400,000.

So in a budget overview with taxes, as I mentioned, this FY26 budget proposes no new taxes.

So you'll see in FY25, so the current year, $1.01 per $100 of assessed value, $3.45, and $2.12, respectively, for personal property, both vehicles and business property.

And that will remain the same in the FY26 budget.

We do propose some slight increases to rates and fees as you heard a couple of weeks ago from Mr. Collins.

A continued investment in our water and sewer infrastructure is essential as we continue to replace older infrastructure and maintaining this for the decades to come.

So our water utility rate is going from $21.05 currently to $22.20 in FY26.

Our sewer utility rate per 5,000 gallons is going from $31.85 to $32.65.

As I mentioned, our sanitation fee is going down slightly for our residents per month from $24 to $21.

and we do have a slight increase in the stormwater utility fee as the next round of mandates coming up in 2028 pictures the city having to consider buying nutrient credits to ensure we meet the total maximum daily load of phosphorus, nitrogen and sediment as mandated by the state.

This slide offers a snapshot of Harrisonburg and a couple important demographics among our sister communities.

You'll see Harrisonburg highlighted there in the middle This shows current population and all this data is coming from the Weldon Cooper Center So current population, a population increase since 2020 The current real estate and the current personal property taxes One of the important I think messages you can read into this is that Harrisonburg continues to be a growing community

We have been for now several decades and we continue to be since 2020.

That means people are moving here and wanting to live in our community, which means increased services, increased costs, increased facilities.

That's a good problem to have.

From the highest level, this slide and the next show all the funds that are encompassed in the city budget.

Of course, as you all know, the largest is the city's general fund, which operates much like the city's general checking account, pays for the majority of the services and departments

our residents interact with.

The second largest is of course the school's budget which you'll see there is almost 30% of the city's budget 123 almost 124 million dollars and the school's budget is actually made up of a couple of those you'll also see underneath that school nutrition school transportation some others.

That brings the total FY26 city budget as proposed to $416.5 million.

Now jumping from all funds to the general fund, the major revenue sources is the pie chart that you see in front of you.

And as you all are aware and members of the public, the vast majority of the revenue coming into the city comes from real estate,

Personal property, sales tax, and restaurant and food taxes.

Those starting at the bottom with the large green green slicing going around to the right to the blue make up almost three-quarters of the total revenue that come into the city.

A comparison of those revenues year over year, so FY 25 is the current year's budget and

to the proposed FY26 budget.

And as I mentioned earlier, you'll see in those top two line items, general property taxes and other local taxes, 3.6 and 1.3 is that $4.9 million of natural revenue growth that we projected going into preparation of this budget.

A couple of other items on this slide I'd like to point out.

Fine and forfeitures is going down.

Of course, as we know, that is the revenue being generated by the speed cameras.

Use of money and property is also going down.

As you may recall, this is principally its interest on the money that we have in the bank.

And over the past couple of years, of course, we had large sums of money in the bank because of the ARPA funding that came to the city as well as the money that we borrowed for the construction of Rocktown High School.

So in addition to those monies being paid out on important projects in the city, the interest rates have also started to go down.

I know there's been much discussion about the federal funding and potential cuts.

At this time of course we're continuing to prepare a balanced budget assuming that those funds will continue and in fact on this slide you'll see we actually have a slight increase.

Fed increase represents approximately $600,000 for a specific Safe Streets for All grant coming to our Public Works Department.

Now jumping to the expenditure side.

In the general fund, of course, on the upper right corner, the largest single expenditures are transfer, so the money that we transfer to the city schools.

Take my word for it.

That large green pie section is the transfer to the city schools.

Sorry for that.

Sometimes some things are lost in translation when we prepare this for the

And all this will be in the budget brief and the budget is now actually live on the city's website too if folks would like to go there and dig into it.

A comparison year over year of the expenditures in the general fund is on the slide in front of you.

A couple of

Points to share with council and members of the public the general administration that general government administration that top line You'll see almost a nearly a million dollar increase that is for the contracted services and important hardware and software improvements principally technology improvement our technology expenses in our organization and

We talked about the housing analysis as well as the citizen survey.

That's also included in that line item.

Public works, you'll also see a nearly a million dollar increase there.

That is that safe streets for all $600,000 grant as well as $300,000 coming from speed camera revenue for the purchase of additional barricades for downtown special events.

Parks and Rec increases, the largest piece of that is of course the strategic plan that we have itemized in the FY26 budget.

City schools is a very large part of the city's budget.

You'll see there that the total city school operational budget is increasing by nearly five and a half million dollars.

Of course that includes the 1.46 million dollar increase coming from the city and then state and federal funding makes up that additional five and a half million dollar increase.

This slide shows the increase of the transfer from the city to the city schools over the past decade.

And this is just the operational budget, of course.

We also have a nearly 8% of the city budget is the debt that we have incurred to build those facilities over the past 15 years.

and bringing us down to the end a reminder of the budget calendar from this point forward of course the presentation this evening April 8th and City Council's discussion on the proposed tax rate that we will advertise for a 30-day comment period Tuesday April 22nd is the proposed public hearing on the budget

The first time the budget will come back to you all for your deliberation and consideration and potential approval would be Tuesday, May 13th.

It'll return on the agenda on May 27th, at which point we'll also have the real estate tax rate public hearing.

And just as a reminder that the city charter calls for the adoption of a balanced budget by May 31st.

As I mentioned, the budget is now live on the city's website.

And we, in the coming days, will have a budget in brief that breaks a very complex, nearly $500 million budget down into a little bit more manageable chunks of information for our residents.

Let me go back to the slide before.

So I just want to make clear that

Today is tonight is the first reading of the budget and we have up until actually May 31st to approve the budget so that gives us time this is just the beginning right so that gives us time to if we feel like we need to have any work sessions or additional you know conversations or discussions we have until then I also want to thank you and your staff for

Larry for again proposing a balanced budget.

I know it takes a lot of work, takes a lot of time, and so I appreciate that.

There's actually some things I'm very excited about in your budget highlights.

So I think that, again, we got a big binder to take home.

Nasser, this is your first one.

Thank you.

But I think I've been with everyone long enough that I know Loris is going to come back with all kind of colored tabs all through it.

Dany's going to mark all through it.

He'll read it forward and backward.

But this is an exciting time.

And Vice Mayor and I were in a briefing earlier today.

And one thing that I do know, and Vice Mayor said himself,

you know this is this is a budget has to kind of stay tight because we don't know what may come our way vice mayor brought it up earlier you know we we don't know if we might lose funding we don't know and so we have to stay pretty tight just in case we might have to do something that we not prepared to do and I also want to thank you for

No tax increase.

I think that is very important.

That's what our community asked for.

And that's what we wanted to do.

So just thank you for all the work that you put into this.

Well, I'll just say, you know, I think there's some trends have emerged in this budget that are different than what we've seen in the last number of years.

And you highlighted some of those.

Some of the revenue generation we've gotten from

Good rates of return or having a good stockpile of money there that can get a good rate of return are pretty reduced now.

And I think some of the rates of increase we've seen.

Looks like they're leveling off a little bit more.

Still increasing, but maybe just lower rates than we've seen in the past.

And so I think we have to take a good look at that.

When we're looking at the current expenditures, know that

Some rates may be coming down.

We're going to have to fund in the next couple of years things that we approve now.

So we have to take good heed of that.

And I think there's a lot we don't know about potential cuts in federal funding.

And I think there are a number of significant areas there.

Education and transportation probably two of the biggest.

And where those cuts may come federally through the state.

I also would like to thank the staff for their hard work for their workshop that I actually attended and with their patience of asking several questions and educating me on different aspects of the budget and really it is hard and I saw their working hard not to increase and pushing hard not to increase

and that's what our vision to our residents like increasing is not what people like so they're actually having to increase the last thing so they are not putting anything in mind and the good thing I liked also they

They compared our expenditures to other localities and I saw how it is like we are kind of lucky to have this time like that amount with a tremendous amount of services that the city is providing to our residents.

I would like to just of course thank the staff for all the hard work that's put into this budget but also to point out that it's just refreshing to see where

Whenever there's an opportunity to take a little burden off of the citizen, a couple of dollars here, a couple of dollars there, the lower fee, it's done.

And I think that we all should be very appreciative of that because we could have sourced and somehow be thinking maybe we should be building a nest egg because we don't know what's coming up.

on the national landscape for us and many other cities across the United States.

But I'm proud to say that we are a governing body that thinks about ways in which we can release some burden from the citizens today.

And I'm appreciative of the time it takes to look and find those opportunities and put them in the budget and make the budget work.

Well I'm also really of course grateful to Andy and Larry in particular and Amy and Brian in our budget overview.

And I was raising the concern about what do we do if the federal funding gets cut.

So I mean that's on everybody's mind and got the not exactly reassuring thought that if that happens we're not alone.

Many of the cities in the country will be affected too and that was part of what we were dealing with in the National League of Cities and lobbying to our congressional representatives to maintain the funding levels and maintain the tax exempt municipal bonds, for example, the sort of wonky thing that's how cities are financed.

So I really appreciate the stability and proactiveness of our staff for

proceeding with a best case budget while knowing that if it comes to it, we'll be able to adapt.

And I was recalling when we did exactly that in the pandemic.

We had to pass a budget, even though we didn't know what the economy was doing.

A month or so later, we adapted it according to what the trends were.

Yeah, I agree.

This is a very thoughtful budget.

and you're right, it kind of reminds us of the time of the pandemic.

And again, I'm just going to state it, this is a thoughtful budget where we have to just kind of stay kind of tight because we don't know what's coming our way.

And so for me, it's just no room for any additions.

And so I appreciate the hard work that

that you all put into it.

But you gave us what we asked for.

And the biggest piece of that was no tax increase.

So thank you.

All right.

All right.

Now the work begins.

Don't start tonight, Danny.

Probably already did.

It's 1 o'clock in the morning.

Look at that.

All right.

Good evening Mayor, City Council.

This is just a real quick supplemental appropriation for some grants for Public Works.

A total of almost $4 million.

It's $568,000 from VDOT for Gay Street Refigurations.

$1.2 million from VDOT for various pedestrian crossing improvements throughout the city.

and then $2.2 million from the RAISE grant that we were awarded that will be used for Liberty Street improvements.

Federal dollars, bank it quickly.

Yeah, really, yeah.

I raised that too in the budget meeting

Of the $14 million of the RAISE grant, this is the first $2.2 million for the engineering study.

And my concern was, as I understand it, federal grants are reimbursement.

So we have to put out the expense first and trust, hope, believe that the federal government will be intact and repay us for that.

So this is a good incremental approach as we discussed that the first step of the engineering study could take approximately a year and by then we could have a clearer picture of what the status of the government and the funding could be.

So we have to keep moving forward as you explained that these grants have a time limit so we can't just wait and see.

And of course we will have, after this, a plan.

Right.

So, you know, if the funding's there, you know, we can move forward, but at least we won't have the plan if the funding's not there.

I'll second that.

Thank you.

Any more discussion?

Councilmember Dent?

Aye.

Aye.

Mayor Reed?

Aye.

Mayor, just really quick for some clarification.

I heard a consensus, but I want to make sure that I'm not making an assumption.

Are we free to advertise a dollar and one cent for the tax rate for FY26?

We can now go into other matters the comments from the public limited to five minutes or matters not on the regular agenda Anyone who wishes to speak please state your name and address.

You'll have five minutes.

Seeing none in person, Pam do we have any callers?

at JMU by VA Young Democrats and I was honored to be one of the panelists and we talked about immigrants and how their positive impact actually on the city of Harrisonburg and on different things like housing

and business and yeah different things related to culturally as well and how like the city was able to adopt them the city how worked hard in their giving them accessible services to have a city welcoming city

and on March 1st, I was also one of the panelists for another session by JMU students.

It was about, along with Mayor Reed, it was about the relationship between JMU and the city of Harrisonburg, about the healthy relationship between JMU and Harrisonburg.

and what are things that come on without this trend and the weakness and how students can also be involved because they are considered as residents of Harrisonburg and that definitely will enrich the city of Harrisonburg.

And finally on April 2nd

I talked to her with Andrea Dono in HDR Harrisonburg downtown and this is about the latest of their meeting and the project, the new project that will be in downtown and have kind of impact actually the city for future, near future.

Well, likewise, I was at a panel at the Young Dems, mostly attending but chiming in as well with livable Harrisonburg and Valerie Washington from Planning Commission on Housing and what we're doing here.

And along those lines, yesterday, Vice Mayor Fleming and I attended the live stream for the strongest town contest.

and please vote for Harrisonburg.

We're down to two finalists, us versus Mary in Ohio.

They've had a whole tree that we've risen to the top.

I think we made a good impression and we have a lively and engaged populace.

So please go to strongesttown.com and vote for Harrisonburg.

That's by April 10th at noon.

That's this Thursday.

I only have two things to report on.

I also attended the Young Dems conference and was on the panel with Councilman

and we spoke on immigration issues and I also represented our city at the Equity Summit with Smart Growth America and spoke at length about our project with the Community Connectors Program.

On the 28th of March, I attended the Arts Council of the Valley's 25th anniversary of course we're a theater and it was also Jenny Burden she's been here for 10 years doing this work so it was a nice event the folks who've been involved with this over the last well a few folks 23-24 years over the 25 years so it was a nice event they had there and finding lots of things moving forward

Yesterday I was at a day with leaders symposium at Bridgewater College With the panel and Brian Schull was part of that Casey Armstrong was part of that so it was Bridgewater College Business students graduates there, and so we kind of talked about The perils of becoming civic leaders and Trying to

encourage them to step into that but really just kind of just a chat with students about leadership in general.

This week on Thursday and Friday I'll be part of a Chesapeake Bay watershed tour.

It's put on by the Alliance of the Chesapeake and the local government advisory committee which I believe Mr. Ball is a representative for that and

So I'll be going as the, so I chair the Virginia Municipal League's Infrastructure Technology and Environmental Quality Policy Committee.

Sally Wolf Garrison chairs the same committee for VACO, Virginia Association of Counties, so she actually is representing the county there and I think will be the two folks representing Western Virginia.

There's about 15 folks.

So we'll be meeting folks down in the watershed and then

They'll be talking about all sorts of issues that touch on what we do with water up here.

We actually are a pretty good steward in Harrisburg compared to many places, right?

So we're there two days down there.

I also served on a panel discussion at the Young Virginia Dems conference.

I was on the health equity panel and then I served with Councilman Alsadun at the JMU Civics panel discussion.

talking about the relationship between JMU and Harrisonburg.

I just got back from Richmond with the Virginia Hunt State Policy Fellows, which is a new cohort of council members and county board of supervisors, mayors.

20 of us.

We will be meeting from April to August at different locations with different topics around education.

So this month we met about early childhood education and so we did a lot of talk about child care.

And so that's one of the parts I was excited about your budget that we actually have.

That's it for me.

Just two quick things We have been notified by TEQ that we are in a drought watch Currently that doesn't require any action by anybody but just wanted to share that update with City Council and in our residents As we know over the past year if that progresses we will have to start taking some voluntary actions, but we're not there yet So just just an update for Council

and then secondly this Saturday April 12th beginning at 9 a.m.

You might be right.

And Arbor Day trees planting, is that at the middle school again?

I should have passed.

Thomas Harrison?

I think so.

You should have passed.

I don't.

Go to the city's website.

Harrisonburgva.gov.

So I'll be at the Black's Run, but just on Saturday, just after the Black's Run, I'll be doing the welcoming there.

But I'll be throwing out the first pitch for Harrisonburg Little League.

Thank you, Mayor, because I was like, I am not doing it.

Well, and so I believe this is the 50th anniversary of the field.

I believe it happens in 1975.

and I played in the very first game at that field.

And so it's really very cool to be there 50 years later.

I have my same little glove.

It's a Jim Palmer glove.

Of course, I'm going to take him to that throughout the first pitch.

Erin.

Yeah, so that was my thought in looking at this.

So I'll make a recommendation that we appoint Erin Hewitt to the full vacancy available on Parks and Recreation Commission.

Alright.

Any discussion?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Second.

Any discussion?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All right.

Anything else?

Okay.

Thank you.