City Council Meeting   7/8/2025

City Manager Banks, here.

City Attorney Brown, here.

Vice Mayor Fleming, here.

Council Member Alsadun, here.

Council Member Dent, here.

Council Member Robinson, here Pam.

Interim Chief Pollard, here.

If you like and are able to join me in standing for a moment of silence and then please remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Okay, our first order today is we have the graduates from our Community Fire Academy here today with us.

So Chief Tobia, if you would please come up and while you're coming up, just so folks know, we have one of the most high-performing fire departments in this country.

Hopefully working towards class 1 of which there are literally only about 200 in the United States that are ISO class 1 departments and it is my sincere hope that with Council's already significant commitment that we will be able to achieve an ISO class 1 with the addition of station 5 and the improvements to the municipal water system that the Public Utilities Department is undertaking So these Fire Academy graduates got trained in the best of the best

We'd like to say that without a question.

So I tell people all of the time, Vice Mayor, that I have the greatest job in the world.

And I absolutely feel that way because I have the greatest team in the world.

So I'd like to take advantage of the opportunity to introduce to you three of our brightest stars in our fire department, our community risk reduction education supervisor, Aaron Staley, and Tori Tucker, and Riley Cross.

Thank you.

So you two will come on up.

There are many fire departments in this country that literally do not larger fire departments than us that do not even have one life safety educator.

We have three full-time life safety educators whose mission is to do everything possible to prevent

harm in our communities.

And that includes our child seat program, our child car seat program, which is incredibly robust.

And our education specialists are in every school three times a year through multiple grades throughout the entire time.

And then they are also engaging with our college students to ensure their safety and wellness and our elderly population as well.

Literally from birth all the way through senior citizenship our community risk reduction folks are literally on the front lines doing everything possible to prevent injuries and tragedy from striking us.

Tomorrow night we of course will have our annual 23rd annual

Pizza Night event so give a plug for that so tomorrow night anyone who lives in the city of Harrisonburg can call CC's Pizza and get a free pizza delivered by firefighters as long as they let us check their smoke alarms in their homes and if they don't have one we'll install one for free.

This is one of the most successful endeavors to help save lives.

It's the best pizza deal in the city.

I'll be joining you guys.

we'll just put a plug in for that from 4 to 8 p.m.

you can call CC's Pizza we have translators as well so se habla espanol

We have people who can translate in the most commonly spoken languages in the city and we can send folks out who can also translate as well.

So it's a really amazing event.

So ironically the fire department is bringing heat.

Correct, that's exactly right.

Good evening everyone.

Nice to see everybody.

The Community Fire Academy is an incredible opportunity for us as a fire department to connect with our community members in a non-emergent way.

When people call 911 it's usually the worst day of their life as we all can imagine.

If you've ever had to utilize it, hopefully not, but if you were, we're there for you.

But this allows us to really engage with the public.

We're always doing things with children.

whether that's in the elementary schools or a college so this is really a good opportunity for us to really connect with those that group that we don't always get to.

Ironically enough too we talked about the interpreters for tomorrow some of them have actually volunteered tomorrow as well because they're just dedicated to that and so we're really excited to really provide

More accessibility to everyone because that's important.

We don't want to just go into people's homes, but we want to answer those questions, really connect with them.

So the Community Fire Academy, though small, they're mighty.

They've been one of the most fun, entertaining classes that we've had.

They've had countless questions.

I've learned things even after being in the department for 14 years.

I know my team has, even though they're new.

But they've done fire extinguisher training.

They went through our fire safety house, which I think it was actually kind of scary for some of them.

But again, it was a real life experience.

I know some of the kids have done that.

We've also done lots of things, although I missed the last day due to an unforeseen circumstance.

They had a fun, awesome day at our training grounds where they actually did things like the firefighters do.

So they got their gear on, they did activities, physical activities, did search and rescue.

We learned a lot or they learned a lot as far as why we do what we do.

Some of them have completed Ride Along.

So all in all, the six weeks is a fast six weeks.

However, it is involved in lots of different ways.

I've really enjoyed this group, and I'm really excited that most of them are here tonight to be honored.

So with that, because I know you guys have lots of nights ahead of you, we'll read off those names unless you have something you'd like to add.

Okay, awesome.

So the first certificate of completion is to Jeff Kurtz Lender.

I learned so much and most importantly I learned about how I can prevent having fires at my house.

I've seen it happen locally and that was traumatizing, but now I feel like I know what to do to avoid that and more importantly

If something does happen, I know that this incredible crew is going to be there so fast, incredibly fast, and they're going to take care of it.

Thank you.

I guess if you guys want to come around here, sometimes it's easier.

You can go in the front.

Everybody on me.

One, two, three.

Thank you.

Okay, we have another special recognition tonight.

We have the graduates, I'm sorry, a proclamation recognizing July as Park and Recreation Month.

And Matt, I think you're here.

Actually, I'll read the proclamation first and then you can come up and say who you brought along with you.

All right.

So a proclamation declaring July 2025 as parking recreation month.

Whereas parks and recreation programs are an integral part of communities throughout this country, including the city of Harrisonburg.

and whereas our parks and recreation are vitally important to establishing and maintaining the quality of life in our communities, ensuring the health of all citizens, contributing to the economic and environmental well-being of the community and region and whereas parks and recreation programs build healthy, active communities that aid in the prevention of chronic disease, provide therapeutic recreation services for those who are mentally or physically disabled and also improve the mental and emotional health of all citizens

and whereas parks and recreation programs increase the community's economic prosperity through increased property values, expansion of the local tax base, increased tourism, the attraction and retention of businesses, and crime reduction and whereas parks and recreation areas are fundamental to the environmental well-being of our community and whereas parks and natural recreation areas improve water quality

protect groundwater, prevent flooding, improve the quality of the air we breathe, provide vegetative buffers to development, produce habitat for wildlife and whereas our parks and natural recreation areas ensure the ecological beauty of our community and provide a place for children and adults to connect with nature and recreate outdoors and whereas the U.S.

House of Representatives has designated July as Parks and Recreation Month

whereas the City of Harrisonburg recognizes the benefits derived from Parks and Recreation resources.

Now therefore the City Council of the City of Harrisonburg do hereby proclaim July as Park and Recreation Month on this 8th day of July 2025.

Sounds great.

Matt Little, Recreation and Special Events Manager for Harrisonburg Parks and Rec.

And thank you all for recognizing July as Parks and Rec Month.

So I'm honored to be here and kind of showcase two small pieces of our larger pie of the Parks and Rec offerings.

Two very important pieces though.

So we have some of our program participants from our 50 and Wiser program led by Lynn Hoy, who is our Senior Services Coordinator.

And then program participants from our summer camp, our SOAR summer camp led by Amber Craig, our youth services supervisor, and Mariah Kane, one of our summer counselors.

So yeah, just small parts of our larger offerings, but very important parts of our Parks and Rec program.

So we're excited that they were able to join us tonight.

It's nice that past Parks and Rec participants can come back and be counselors for our younger kids.

Or if you don't mind me jumping in Vice Mayor or become City Manager.

I was in your seats 40 years ago as a camp participant at our Parks and Rec.

I almost lost my life several times at SIM, so I had to get that last ring of the ladder at Ralph Sampson Park before we got safer equipment.

So yeah, we've all benefited from the resources that you have available.

But it's also one of the most important places where we cross all sorts of divides in our city in one place and it's such an important part of

of what we do in our city is within our parks and recs and many of the divides that are created to keep us apart fall apart in our parks and rec department.

If you don't like to mention some of the folks you have here maybe we can come up and get a picture back here.

It's a big crowd to get up here but I think we can do it.

Awesome, thank you.

If I get everyone to take three steps this way.

Good job following.

All right, can everyone see me back there?

All right.

On me, one, two, three.

All right, thank you everybody.

Awesome.

Come on up here.

You know the routine here, man.

There you go.

All right.

Yep.

All right.

Thank you guys.

Thank you for coming up.

We'll give a moment for folks as they grab their gear.

We have a trampoline head off to enjoy the night.

Okay.

Any item placed on the consent agenda shall be removed and taken up as a separate matter, if so requested by any member of council.

Otherwise, all items will be voted on with one motion.

So moved.

Roll call please, Brian.

Councilmember Alsadun?

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, these consent agenda is approved.

We'll now move on to our public hearings.

And I believe our guest of honor, Adam.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Fleming, Adam Fletcher, Director of Community Development.

Special use permit location we'll be discussing this evening is at 201 South Avenue.

The parcel is identified, outlined here in red at the corner of South High Street and South Avenue on the southwestern corner.

It's a relatively small parcel, a little over 5,700 square feet in size.

It's currently zoned M1.

and the application is to allow a restaurant use special use permit in the M1 zoning district.

So we're at this intersection, you see multiple different zoning classifications, so kind of what I casually refer to as some old industrial area that was at one point in time was sort of one of the fringes of the city, of course as now is then completely encapsulated into the city.

So we do have certain sections of South High Street that remain zoned in one, but in this image you can actually see some hatched areas where rezonings have occurred over the years as we have this area planned for commercial and limited commercial, which can be seen in the next image.

The light pink here is limited commercial.

On the opposite side of the street is commercial.

Limited commercial is this land use category that we often have associated with

along major corridors, but it's oftentimes adjacent to residential districts and what we try to promote in these areas is recognizing that there's ingress and egress matters that need to be taken care of.

It's oftentimes on a three, four, or five lane facility, which is the case here.

We have two lanes in each direction and a center turn lane and we are often

Looking for things to help soften the transition of uses here, so things like landscaping, buffering, setback signage, building massing, all of these things to be a bit more accommodating to the residential transitional space in this area.

And then the aerial photograph of the site which is predominantly still in many ways undeveloped but it does have a food truck located on it which is what brought this to our attention as back in March of this year staff became aware of the mobile food truck operating at the site.

We went through typical protocols, gave a notice of violation, and we immediately began to work with the applicant to bring the site into compliance.

But rather than rezoning the site, they chose to do a special use permit to allow it in the M1 district, which is what they're submitting here this evening.

Upon our investigation, we learned that they had also constructed a platform without proper building permits.

They'd also incorrectly applied for an electrical permit associated with a different address.

And with all of these matters, we've already begun to work with them to get it into compliance.

In fact, they've already applied for their building permit, which is still under staff review, which can't be approved until, of course, all of this can be approved if you so wish to do so.

And HEC had requested that they correctly obtain an electrical permit for the associated address because the electrical panel box should be on the parcel to which

The site has two entrances, I'm not sure what's going on here

The site has currently two entrances on the property, so there's one both on South Avenue and one on South High Street.

The two entrances are not in compliance with the DCSM with regard to site location, so the South Avenue

is too narrow but then the South High Street entrance is too close to the intersection.

So really not a great situation in either case.

Staff prefers the South Avenue entrance solely because it is eliminating it from the busier street.

In fact, the design and construction standards manual identifies that when there are properties that have direct access along arterials or collectors, but if they have access on a minor street that we go to the lower class roadway and that's this situation.

So if you have an opportunity to have an entrance on a lower grade street, it's much easier and much safer to have that entrance in that location.

That in this case would be South Avenue.

The South Avenue entrance, however, is too narrow.

It measures just about 14 to 15 feet, and the DCSM requires a 30-foot entrance for a commercial entrance, and that allows for more fluid traffic.

So when you're out there today, if you visited the site, and if you turn on South Avenue, you want to take a left-hand turn.

There's only enough space for one vehicle, which is problematic because when you're trying to turn left and there's somebody sitting on the property trying to turn out, you can't make that turn and therefore you're backing up traffic and it begins to queue into the intersection.

So if you approve the special use permit, one of the conditions is that we want this entrance to be widened to the DCSM standards of 30 feet.

And in fact, if you approve this, we're also recommending for the South High Street entrance to be completely closed, rebuilt,

The applicant had already graveled the site or portions of the site for parking and although we do not require parking associated with food trucks,

Any parking that is provided still has to meet the landscaping requirements.

They're aware of that and we will work with them if you so approve this that we will get them into compliance with the landscaping regulations as well.

Staff offered a favorable recommendation to Planning Commission who in turn offered unanimously to approve it with the conditions that I'll describe here.

The first is that the special use permit would be limited only to one food truck.

The second begins a series of conditions associated with getting the site into a much safer situation.

So within 60 days of approval of the special use permit, they are to permanently close the South High Street and rebuild the curb and gutter.

Within 60 days of the special use permit, I could get some assistance, thank you, that would be great right there, thank you Brian.

Within 60 days of approval of the special use permit, the entrance along South Avenue has to be widened to the 30 foot requirement.

and then to assist with HEC's suggestions that within 60 days of approval the special use permit to complete the appropriate permitting for the electrical service and meter and then the fifth condition was actually amended during the planning commission meeting so the white text that's on the screen is what staff recommended for the conditions if the conditions are not met within 60 days that the operation should cease so they have continued to be able to operate but if they do not comply with these conditions within 60 days they need to cease operations

and then get the improvements completed.

However, Planning Commission wanted to offer some flexibility and noted that if upon request that the applicant is already making some due diligence toward these items that the zoning administrator has the ability to grant one 60-day extension to allow them to complete these special use permits without having to shut the operation down.

which gives them a total of 120 days from the approval date.

So if you approve this this evening, they'll have 60 days.

If they're making diligent pursuit, they'll have an additional 60 days if the zoning administrator sees that they're working toward that.

I will try to answer any questions and I believe the applicant is with us this evening.

I have one.

Yes, ma'am.

So the current entrance today has a standard apron entrance, concrete apron entrance, and it has the grade change into the site.

It'll disappear.

And just to add the yellow text we added after some discussion about

Whether doing all this within 60 days might be onerous for someone who just wanted to put up a food truck.

Kind of a due diligence clause a bit.

And we also had some discussion about do they really have to close and build the curb and gutter or could they just put a chain there?

We just decided that was not an adequate temporary

adjustment so just go ahead and close it and build it, right?

The way we implement it, yes sir.

We can't turn it into a food truck park?

No ma'am.

If you approve it the way that we've offered suggested conditions now if you don't like condition number one you can eliminate that but the way we suggest it is that this special use permit would only permit one food truck.

It's a relatively small site.

Any other questions for Adam?

Bike does not need full parking, right?

No, we do not require off-street parking for food trucks.

So they can eat on-site, right?

So I will answer that in two different ways.

So yes, you can eat on-site.

However,

This is where it gets complicated for folks.

So the building code does typically not apply when you're operating a food truck because it's on wheels.

The building code only is an association with a true building.

This is not considered a building.

However, we have had situations and continue to work with people and when it occurs in the city that when they provide sheltered eating space, oftentimes we might see even as simple as a carport.

It's considered a structure, the building code begins to apply and then you start hitting these thresholds that you have to have running water, you have to have a restaurant facility and all those things.

My other question is, with the South Avenue entrance, even though it's going to be made wider,

If the applicants are here and we want to come forward and talk to the application, they're welcome to do that.

I don't believe the applicants are not here.

If the applicant wishes to speak.

So if the applicant would like to speak to the request, you're welcome to come forward.

If you'd like to come up.

My name is Billy Martinez, one of the property owners there.

It's the first time doing something like this.

Where we went with the special use permit, I don't know if that's something that matters, but we went with the special use permit just because of, I don't know, we wanted a quicker solution to help people who are actually depending on the business that's there.

Um, yeah.

If you guys approve, I mean, I really, yeah, what type of food you are providing?

Um, it's, so they have a really cool mix, it's um, uh, it's like central and Mexican.

They do pupusas, uh, tacos, penasas, pretty good.

Good luck.

This is going to be, I'm sorry Nasser.

It's fine.

This is going to be permanently their site for now.

So, you don't own the food truck?

No ma'am.

You own the site?

Yes ma'am.

Okay, so if that food truck were to move, then would you engage another food truck to be there?

Potentially, yeah.

Yeah, it would be a platform for someone.

Okay.

It just looks bad too.

It looks scary.

If you just drive by there and you just look at it, it just looks scary.

Okay.

I think it's a good idea that we're closing the South, excuse me, the High Street entrance because for those of us who've lived here forever,

If that were to stay, you don't even think when you see a change, you just say, oh, there's the entrance that's been there forever, so let me just turn.

Yeah, that weird little paved area, it's like we didn't have a reason to do anything with it.

I'm thanking you for supporting small businesses.

I used to run a food truck, so I know what it's like.

And so when that situation happened, I was like, I'll do whatever you guys need to make it right.

Well, thank you for your diligence in making it.

Thank you.

Yeah, we already have, like,

We just, depending on this, it's just the logistics of starting the work.

But we want to start off with that first side, like the widening the entrance first.

Just because it would, you would require it anyway.

And then go down to the lower part and just like tear that area out.

There used to be a small like rental property or house there.

Is that still there?

Yeah, yeah.

So we came into this situation with that too, which eventually we would like to completely rezone all of that.

And we didn't really want to touch too much of it.

So you're on the adjacent property, correct?

There's another property that's right there.

It's two different lots.

I've had conversations.

They may be interested into eventually allowing us another entrance up top if they can let us purchase to access the future play, whatever.

That's a whole different conversation.

I can go on.

Anyone else interested in speaking to item 6A?

Brian, any calls?

Thank you, Brian.

Great job.

Okay.

I'll close the public hearing portion of item 6a.

I say Madam Mayor, Vice Mayor.

I move that we approve the request for a special use permit to allow restaurants at 201 South Avenue

with the staff and planning commission's recommendations number one through five.

I'll just say I appreciate staff working with the owner and the owner of the food truck there, taking a situation where it needed to be corrected and

at the end of the day potentially having a new small business in the city.

So I appreciate the work that you guys do to make that happen.

Councilmember Alsadun.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Fleming.

Okay, that passes five zip.

So congratulations.

Item 6B, consider request to rezone 310 Westview Street.

Yes sir, so 310 Westview Street, this is a rezoning of a parcel that's about 30,000 square feet in size.

It's zoned R1 and the applicant is requesting to rezone to the R8 small lot residential district with one submitted proffer.

The parcel is outlined here in red.

It's near, if you're familiar with Old Town, you kind of go up the hill of West View, you hit the top of Watt Street, and then you actually begin to go down the other side of the hill.

And this is on that down side of the property there.

The applicant is interested in utilizing the R8's reduced setback requirements.

They've been interested in doing an addition to their home, and although the site is rather large, the space that they want to utilize is actually closer on the west side of the property line near an existing relatively developed alley.

But the R1 setback regulations wouldn't make it accommodating for them, so working with staff again,

The property is surrounded on all sides by the R1 zoning district and then it's not until you get down on the lower hillside on the west side of Westview you start to pick up the urban residential zoning district which is the blue and the image.

Land use guide is really to maintain what we have out there.

So single family, there are even some non-conforming duplexes in some of those areas, but to maintain existing densities and types of housing that are located in this area.

So again, low density residential for the land use guide.

And then the aerial photograph will show that the site is, you know, nice large parcel that is

has a pool in the back and just a nice space here in the Old Town section of the city.

So the applicant has one submitted proffer, which I will just continue on as technology does not want to work with me this evening.

But the one submitted proffer is that the site would have, the use of the subject property would be limited to those uses permitted by right in the RA district.

However, no more than one dwelling unit shall be permitted on the property.

And this is a similar proffer that you will see along many of our RA properties that have rezoned to the RA category to utilize some of the reduced setback because what they're doing is they're mimicking similar surrounding uses.

So this basically puts it in the same situation as an R1 property.

where they can have just one single family dwelling and the occupancy will remain the same.

R1 occupancy is the exact same as R8 and they just get to take the benefit of the reduced setback.

So Mr. Vandenberg, if you can go to the previous slide.

So here's an image and you can see on the left hand side the driveway for the applicant's property where the vehicle is parked and then the

somewhat developed alley there to the left side of the image to the property line is in that green grassed area and they wanted to build off of the house along where the carport is and then the right side of the image just showing the lower side of the property where they could build an addition but it doesn't utilize the space as the site is laid out with their home so they're really hoping to have the site rezoned.

Staff had a favorable recommendation to Planning Commission who also unanimously recommended

Okay, any questions to Adam?

So the idea of rezoning just to utilize the setback, right?

That's the only thing.

So the way that you can have reduced setbacks is to apply for a variance through the Board of Zoning Appeals.

However, the Board of Zoning Appeals has a very narrow window of opportunity for the specific criteria that's outlined by the state to be able to grant a variance for reduced setbacks.

The most casual way to describe it is, can you build on the property?

Yes, I can.

Do you have space to build on your addition?

Yes, you do.

Then typically you don't get the variance because it has to meet a certain criteria.

We amended the zoning ordinance to create R8.

Gosh, it's probably been 2018, 2019 by this point.

that has been online.

And we've had several rezonings for townhomes in the RA district, but we've also had a handful that utilize the reduced setback.

So we've seen benefit for that.

Some folks look at it and say, wow, sort of a large hoop to jump through.

Often with the Board of Zoning Appeals, someone will come before the board.

make what they think might be a reasonable request.

The Board of Zoning Appeals, though, has a very tight window of how they make decisions, or it's very narrow how they can make those decisions.

And often, having chaired the Board of Zoning Appeals for about a decade, many things you say, wow, that seems like a good project to approve.

But we really can't, because the law really doesn't allow us to do that.

We're not set up to allow us to do that.

What's happened is, you know, R8 has allowed folks to kind of bypass that process generally and kind of say this, you know, is a reasonable project and often on the Board of Zoning Appeals you might say, wow, I wish we could approve that.

But then, you know, if you go by the law or how it's set up, you can't do it.

Yeah, we see that a lot in Planning Commission that the rezoning is an easy way to get added space for them to build or to enclose a porch that then becomes a building.

So the setbacks are really the difference.

By special use permit, yes ma'am.

So had they not made the proffer that they provided, if you would have just presented straight to the RA district with no proffers, the site is large enough that you could build more than just one single family dwelling.

In fact, with dimensional requirements in the lot area,

I don't want to venture guests right off the top of my head, but they could definitely build more than one single family home.

Duplex is also by right.

So what's different from R1 and R8 is that in the R8 district, you can build a single family home and a duplex.

You can't build an up and down duplex.

It has to be a side by side because the regulations require that each unit sits on its own fee simple property.

So that's a little different from our R2 regulations.

But R8 has been quite flexible for people.

And it's a deep lot.

Any other questions for Adam?

Okay.

I will open up the public hearing section for 6B.

Do we have the applicant here?

I don't know that the applicant is here.

Brian, I think it's possible that Mr. Rose is calling in so I'll give that a second in case the applicant wants to say something on his behalf.

No, but Mr. Parks is supposed to be calling him.

Okay.

All right.

You're now live with City Council.

Well, just because we couldn't be present this evening, I wanted to be available by phone if there's any questions.

My name is Stacey Rose.

I'm the applicant for the

Okay, any questions for the applicant from staff?

Okay.

Well, Ms.

Rose, I don't believe there are any questions for you, so I appreciate the call.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

Anyone else to speak to item 6B?

Okay.

I will close this portion of the public hearing.

Okay.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Okay.

We have a first and a second.

Motion and a second.

Brian, roll call, please.

Well, any discussion from anybody?

Councilmember Alsadun?

Aye.

Vice Mayor Fleming?

Aye.

The motion passes five zip.

Four.

Four.

There we go.

My counting is not good today.

Unanimously, the present council.

Okay.

Item 6C.

Consider a request to rezone 810 Port Republic Road.

Vista at Forest Hills.

Yes sir, thank you.

Relatively involved, I'll try to keep it as simple as possible here.

I'll go through each one of these and just remind you of the site.

The parcel outlined here in red is 810 Porter Public Road.

This is a rezoning and two separate special use permits.

The rezoning, in fact, is actually a proffer amendment.

So the site is zone B2C, it would remain zone B2C if you approve the rezoning.

And the two special use permits are from section 10391, and that's subsection 9, which is to allow the reduction in required side and rear yard setbacks, and subsection 17, which is to allow multiple family dwellings and or mixed use buildings.

So the applicant is coming before you as is explained in the staff report that they're requesting the change allows them to meet accessibility building code requirements by adding an additional story to the building at the rear of the building.

So that would be to the sort of the northeast or north due north of the building.

which would provide the additional square footage that they need.

So they are needing to meet accessibility requirements and they can keep units larger by then adding an additional floor by still meeting the unit counts.

So there is no square footage change in the non-residential component and there would be no additional units that you haven't already approved.

So 119 units and they would remain 119 units.

The reason they're before you is because

The rezoning and the special use permit that you had previously approved in 2023 is very specific.

Anytime you apply for a special use permit to have residential units in the B2 district requires a plan of development and that plan of development is now changing there now before you to update that plan of development.

The second special use permit that they're requesting is to allow for the reduction in side yard setbacks.

That was not available to them back in 2023, and they're hoping to be able to utilize that now that that zoning ordinance amendment has passed, which occurred in 2024, and they would like to take advantage of that.

The site is the hillside as you travel south eastbound on Port Republic Road up the hill.

So this site has sort of commonly been known as Campus Corner, has had different iterations of commercial uses in the convenience store building.

So it's been a convenience store and a gas station for a number of years.

and have had different uses in that building but if they move forward with this plan they will demolish that building and create a much larger complex for non-residential space on the first floor and then 119 units that would be geared towards student housing above that and a large complex with tiered structured parking.

The long term plans for this area of the city include for this site to be designated as mixed use as we're promoting both residential and non-residential uses.

Mr. Vandenberg, if you could advance the slide for me, please.

Thank you, hold there.

And it has a lot of higher density residential around it.

So the dark brown here is high density residential.

We know that there is a large component of student housing in this area off of Hunter's Road, Bradley Drive, Devon Lane,

along Port Republic Road.

So this is in uniform with the comprehensive plan as they're providing a mixed-use building and a mixed-use operation on site.

Of course you're picking up commercial establishments that are near the Interstate 81 exit ramp and then we pick up all of the residential spaces that is known generally as Forest Hill.

So you have the village lanes that is due north of the site that's designated for medium density and then you have the R1 and planned low density residential of the Forest Hill neighborhood that is behind this property.

And advance for me again, sir.

Thank you.

And the aerial photograph, as we know it today and have known it for quite some time, there's a lot of earthwork to take place to make this work.

They'll be removing quite a bit of vegetation in this space, but definitely engineering and buildable wonder, of course, would have to take place and assure that the folks can take that project on.

Just a quick history, 2008 was the first modern rezoning when they rezoned the site from R4 to B2 conditional to make way for some plans that actually never came to fruition

In 2023 then they rezoned the site for the project of what we know it today as the Vista at Forest Hills.

So the rezoning that took place was a proffer amendment again in 2023 that laid out the plans for the larger complex that is now in the engineer comprehensive site plan phase of the development.

They've gone through several iterations and they're sort of nearing the end of that process and they're hoping to bring this to fruition with completion of the project and with the many proffers that they offer to the city with some improvements along Port Republic Road.

During 2023, they applied for that special use permit, which required the plan of development of the building that we had seen two years ago, and then they moved forward to the engineer comprehensive site plan phase.

Now, as I earlier explained, they want to amend the proffer statement.

Again, they want to reapply for the special use permit since the plan of development is slightly changing.

Building is getting just slightly taller with the additional floor to the rear.

and then they want to take advantage of a special use permit that they had not previously been allowed to take advantage of.

So there's really one major change to the proffers and that is what's shown on the screen before you.

So this is the second bullet within your proffer statement and what's shown on the screen is the language that would be stricken from the existing proffer and then the underlined blue text would be what would be inserted into the new proffer statement.

And basically what it is telling you is they would have

Up to five stories of residential dwellings atop a three story parking structure on the north side, the rear part of the building.

And then four stories atop of three story parking garage on the south east side of the building that fronts Port Republic Road.

And so it's just bringing it in line with the plan of development.

What's before you is a cross section view that the applicants provided to give representation of the building, the proposed building on the left hand side of the screen in relation to the approximate height of 865 East at the top of the hill.

So if we focus in here, we're looking at almost, almost 20 feet of separation of distance and height.

So 865 is reaching an elevation of 1470 and the proposed building would reach the height that's shown on the screen of a 1450

and some change there.

So we measure height from the front of the building and as you can see in this image, although this is condensed in this graph image here, it would be a relatively large height that is exposed on the rear of the property, which happens in many buildings across the city when you have a slope change on the property.

Of course, these oftentimes were like much smaller scale building is like a walkout basement for a single-family home.

You have this exposed on Sunchase that the student housing complex over off of Neff Avenue, where you have these exposed hillsides.

But this would be dramatically different being that you will have a significant terrain change and a much larger elevational change to the rear of the property.

Two images here are showing a cross section of what the building had been planned for in 2023 at the top of the image.

So what you're looking at is the cross section of page right would be the frontage on Port Republic Road.

And then there's this courtyard space in the middle.

You have the retail on Port Republic Road and then the structured parking to the rear with the four stories of the complex.

Comparing that to the bottom image, what you're seeing is the additional floor or story to the rear on the left hand side of the image.

And just a slight, very slight height change of a foot 0.73 feet there.

along Porter Public Road.

So for the majority of the building itself would remain very similar.

The special use permit that they're applying for for the plan of development has been submitted in the next image.

Mr. Vandenberg, if you would please pause one second, sorry.

For the plan of development that they're submitting for the special use permit, staff is recommending the condition here that is the exact same as the previous 2023 condition, which is that the number of dwelling units shall be limited to 119 and there would be no more than 440 bedrooms.

The plan of development on the screen before you really is not significantly different from what you looked at in 2023, providing full access really all the way around the building.

They will be building the extension of Bradley Road across from the existing, or excuse me, Bradley Drive.

What some of you might remember is Port Republic Road is planned for improvements, is slated for improvements that add an additional lane.

There'll be a traffic signal added at the Bradley Drive intersection.

There'll be bicycle improvements, pedestrian improvements all along this frontage.

that will not only accommodate existing traffic situations, but also take into consideration needs for the planned development.

The second special use permit that they're applying for is for the reduction in the required rear and side yard setbacks.

So back in 2023, they were relying on a plan that they were going to have to acquire additional property from the adjacent property owners to be able to meet their setback requirement.

This is because when you have a B2 zone property that is adjacent to a residential district,

you have an additional 30 foot setback.

So it's typically only 10 foot on the side or rear, but if your B2 commercially zoned property abuts a residential district, it jumps to 30.

Then on top of that, for a building that is at least 35 feet, for every foot above 35 feet, you add an additional foot of setback.

Because of that requirement, they had to rely on obtaining and buying additional property from the adjacent property owners to make that setback work.

Fast forward, after the 2023 approval, this body actually was initiated by the 865 property, had proposed a zoning ordinance amendment to allow for the reduction in side and rear yard setbacks in these situations.

And that's exactly what 865 did, and now this is what this applicant is requesting to do.

So instead of having to buy adjacent property, they would like to apply for the special use permit that allows them for the reduction in the side and rear yard setback.

The current request is to reduce the side and rear yard setback from what would have been a required 52 foot setback to 44 feet.

The recommended condition to this special use permit for the reduction here is that the permit is only applicable to the planned building in this location.

It shall be no closer than 44 feet.

And basically it's the request that you're looking at.

So this condition basically limits them to what's shown on the development plan.

And then one more here.

Just in summary, the staff and planning commission, although with a 6-1 vote, Commissioner Finnegan was the lone dissenting vote, recommended to you all along with staff to approve all three requests.

So the rezoning, both special use permits, Mr. Vandenberg, one more slide if you would.

I have the summary of the two conditions, one each for the two special use permits for your ease if you so wish to approve them.

They're on the screen.

So we'll have a rezoning vote and we'll have two special use permits and we'll vote on those separately so we'll have three items we'll be voting on.

Any questions for Mr. Fletcher?

We'll ask and maybe I can also ask the developers here but

The increase in height is really just over a foot.

Only in the front.

Yeah, only in the front there.

But there's an extra floor.

There's an additional story in the back.

Additional story in the back.

It had to do with accessibility requirements for the apartment units themselves.

I believe it would have shrunk the unit sizes.

They didn't want to do that.

And so, to accommodate that space, they added an additional floor to keep a larger unit size.

Do you mind if you tell us about why 6 out of 2 won?

Mr. Fagan back in 2023 voted against it as well in the minutes page 13 to be exact it's quoted here and I'll just I'll quote him directly that vice-chair Finnegan said when this came up in 2023

My recollection is I voted against approval purely because of the number of parking spaces that were being built.

It was not an, quote, unquote, anti-housing vote.

And

How many cars?

How many parking for that unit?

1.35 parking spaces.

Yeah, I was gonna say 1.85, but it is 1.45.

That's what it is.

Yeah, so 119, was it 1.35 per unit?

Yes.

So that's per dwelling unit.

Yeah, my apologies.

Any other questions for Mr. Fletcher?

Thank you, Brian.

If not, I will open up the public hearing for item 6C, which is 810 Port Republic Road.

Thank you for this opportunity.

I'm Ed Blackwell with AES Engineering.

I'm representing the owner

and a developer in this.

We, for this body, a couple years ago, and you'll approve this project, and we got the site plan done almost right at the finish, right at the approval of that, and the architects started doing their design, working with city building officials and plan reviewers and going through, and I'm an engineer, not the architect, but my understanding is, due to some accessibility, we had to make the units a little bigger,

So it was either keep the, we had a number of stories we had from before we proffered and we had a pretty tight master plan, rezoning plan.

And so we either had to lose units or to keep the same number of units, we had to slightly increase the rear floor elevation.

Well, I had a floor is what we did.

So that was what the owner wanted to do.

that necessitated a rezoning to allow the same number of units, same number of bedrooms.

The units are just a little bigger for ADA and things like that.

So we are having three stories of parking underneath just like we did before.

That hasn't changed.

In essence, the footprint's the same.

The setback with the neighbor, the neighbors are willing to sell the property if they have to.

They said, do we have to?

And we said, we had the city pass a new zoning

Ordinance Amendment about allowing the setback in a special use case approval.

So we are prying for that.

The distance between us and the neighbor hasn't changed from this plan and the previous plan at all.

It's the same distance.

It's just where the property line is now is 44 feet.

And we don't have to buy about eight feet from the neighbor.

He said if we don't have to, he'd prefer us not to.

But if he said he'd sell it, if we have to.

But he initially the offer was just to buy a section that it just a little sliver off the neighbor because it still it doesn't.

They're willing to sell that, but at this point they we would like to have this special use permit.

The owners of the Vista would prefer this special use permit.

It just makes it cleaner than sliding property lines.

It could hinder their development in the future because it takes acreage.

We look at density requirements of properties.

If we take density from their property and add it to ours, it could negatively affect them in 20 years if they ever redevelop.

is a special use zoning ordinance that you all came up with a couple years ago that 865 East used.

I think that's on a case by case where our residence is against their residential property.

It's not a business directly against their residential.

Poetry Public is one of the busiest streets in the city.

No, this came up in rezoning a couple years ago.

This is one of the closest housing projects to campus.

There's a couple others that are close also.

And we're participating with the city to build the bike trail across our frontage and help improve some of the new non-car type options in that area.

We think if people are going to ride bikes or walk to campus, they'll walk from our development before they do want some of the others because we're just closer, this site.

And so we have approval for the site.

and I think this came up before.

We had pictures of radiuses of campus, you know, from the mileage from our site to all the buildings on campus versus others.

We just think this site, where the kids drive, some will drive.

Some will walk because we're close enough for them to walk or ride a bike.

I know there's plans about taking Forest Hills Drive

over to the Convo Center.

University.

Yes.

But if they see enough parking for their cars, I think they will use their cars instead of, but if they are forced,

Not to use them like by not having enough parking for them.

I think they will

Reducing our parking?

We are putting our parking underground, so whether it's two stories or three stories, we have, it's a tiered, our parking deck kind of follows the hillside going down.

And so we have three tiers of parking under the building, which is a, you know, it's an expensive, but it's also an effective way to minimize your

We are providing parking for the commercial area that requires a certain amount.

We want that to be as viable as it can be.

that corridor.

Also, we want parking for the students.

I mean, I know there's arguments on both sides, but the reality is if you don't have parking for the students, they go rent somewhere else.

And you've got to have a certain amount for the kids.

I'll just go rent at another location.

So we found from a business model to be effective, you have to have a certain amount of parking on your off-campus housing to be a viable rental place.

This is a good location because it's close to campus.

We feel as some of the improvements for alternative transportation will

allow our students to get to campus quickly and they'll utilize those alternative transportation options because they can walk or ride a bike and get to campus quickly compared to something that's out Reservoir Street or some other places.

But we went over that and we did do a look into the traffic, I mean for the parking numbers and reducing that and we just

Some of the studies we've done found the model just doesn't work.

It's either just don't build at all.

It will be gated parking

for the students that live in the deck.

And we'll have the commercial area that's for daylight commercial, but maybe after hours on weekends it could be guest parking or something.

We're also looking to develop the lower part of the hill as another parking deck for a hotel where there will be some joint use, but that's another reason.

We'll come in to y'all next year.

So you wouldn't have just non-students coming in there and parking.

They have to live there and they'll have a numbered spot.

And we'll have so many EV parking.

We're planning to, I think it's eight or 12 right out of the gate, but we also are trying to wire the building, we gotta get with AGC on that, to allow additional EV parking as EV takes, you know, becomes more of an option for the

So I think, I don't know what the total question was, but we're gonna, it's gonna be very selective where they park.

I guess as I was reading it, your access will be, each level will have its own separate access and you won't be going from level one to two, two, three.

of course you have to have your student ID, your access card to even get into the certain floors of that.

Of course that's all part of the building code for fire rescue, how all that works.

There may be some one or two switchbacks that go up through there.

I think the adding of ramps in a garage adds to the cost and takes more space I imagine.

There are developments in progress.

Part of the reason we have these parking decks is it's such a steep, it's a 40 foot grade train from the building to the bottom and all that is the parking deck.

It's to structurally build it into that slope kind of.

I'm not the architect but we've been in enough meetings to kind of, we've had to put a lot of concrete and columns in there anyways.

Do you have to blast into the hill to get the parking lot?

No, there is some cut.

what could be there.

So using the parking deck to actually support the apartments above I think was a smart move.

And I think that although we do want more green space, I think this is one step closer to what Ms.

Dent was, Councilwoman Dent was referring to where you pay one amount if you have a parking space, one amount if you don't.

and I don't believe that the parking spaces will be wasted.

or they will bike or scoot or whatever they do on all these different machines that are moving all over town to get to class.

So I really like this project.

I think it's going to make that section of the hill look much better.

I think it's going to improve the look all together and I think it's going to make other people really think who want to develop to be more creative in the way they use the space because we want to have less, you know, zones.

You're not just saying creativity, I guess is what I'm saying.

Yeah, innovation and creativity into using that to make this spot usable and also that it works with the setbacks with the neighboring property.

So, any other questions?

No.

Mr. Blackwell, if not, thank you.

You can hang around if there are any other questions.

And just to note, this public hearing is for items 6C, 6D, and 6E.

So it is all part of the same larger application.

We'll vote on each item separately, but we'll use this public hearing to address any one of those three items.

So if there's anyone else who'd like to speak, take either of those, any of those.

Anyone calling in for this?

One moment please.

There are no callers?

With that, I will close the public hearing on items 6c, d, and e. We'll need to vote on each of those separately, but I think, you know, for matter of discussion we can kind of discuss here kind of freely.

Yeah, I'm with you, Councilmember Rovensinovak The great project that we have here, of course we need more for our kids But still, it's very close to JMU, very very close Like if you can work

So it's in our hands like we can teach our kids like they can use other options other than use cars which definitely will have like a bad effect to our environment so there we have like free transportation there are like

and another company renting, for example, electric bikes to use in that building.

So adding that number, huge number, I don't think that will be applicable, especially in that place.

And it's not that far like other areas, like they need to use the cars, but in that spot, it's very close and I don't think that it will be applicable.

Anyone else?

Comments or thoughts?

Planning Commission, Adam discussed at some more length about the plans for a shared use path along Port Republic Road and possibly even going behind those gas stations.

That's still to be determined as part of the University Road extension, I guess.

Still we have, we are adding more than

The students are coming, the cars are coming.

I don't believe that parking necessarily is a developer issue.

I think it's a mindset issue.

We as a society have to decide if we want to move more toward

less automobile type planning, automobile inspired driven lives and move toward more walking and using bicycles or scooters until we decide, people decide that they're going to change their mode of transportation we still have to build like the mindset and I know that sounds crazy but I think in this case I agree with the levels of parking

because the way that the building itself is going to be structured.

But I don't think that we can expect developers to alleviate the stress on the city with the number of cars if society's mindset is still at the point where, I mean, we're just car-centric society.

That's just what we do.

So until that mindset changes, there still is going to be a need for cars that are going to come.

I hate to say that because I'm with you, but I also realize that we may be there, but there are many people who are not there.

So the ones that are not there have to park somewhere.

I think the other thing to remember is that

Students aren't only using cars to get to campus, right?

So many students are working.

Many students, you know, we have students who work in our schools, who do internships, work in the hospital, health clinics in the area.

So, you know, for many students, your vehicle is how you get to work.

And we do have a transportation system, but it may not always get you where you need to get or get there in time.

There are needs other than just for school for students to have cars on campus there.

I think this area, this particular location is close to campus.

Port Road is an extremely busy road.

We know this is one of the areas where we've put kind of as much attention as possible and kind of earned a lot of attention from the city, from the regional planning or from the metropolitan planning organization on looking at traffic during traffic counts.

Certainly just east of there we did a large area study that looked at the traffic there to reduce accidents there and have a plan to address that.

I would say there's probably a pretty good chance there's going to be further development.

We've seen the proposals, we've seen the ideas just east of, just over the hill beyond that so we know there's going to be more traffic coming there.

I think students are coming.

They have to find a place to live.

JMU is not housing all the students.

JMU has a master plan that's coming out

I guess in a few months, September 25 is when they're supposed to release their new master plan I believe.

So the 2017 master plan reworking and city staff have been involved with them discussing parts of that.

Another way to look at this is that Port Road, the concentration of folks in traffic there is where we can put our attention and where we can develop plans to address

the issues there.

Could we disperse this all over the city?

Possibly.

I don't know if that's going to be any less problem for us to deal with the students if it's dispersed.

We know on our transportation plan, we're looking at bi-directional busing.

and we're gonna have to step into that and we have to find the funds to do that, but I think that'll be one of the ways it increases student use of the busing system, so increasing the frequency of busing there.

There's a pretty good proffer from this project on developing both the traffic light, I guess, right there, so there'll be thanks for a traffic light on a new entrance there.

The shared use path, it goes down to

What will be the new University Boulevard that cuts across?

From there you'll be able to get to the east campus quickly, so much more quickly than you do now, and probably more safely get to the west side of campus.

As Mr. Banks mentioned to me, through Duke Alley, Duke Dog Alley there underneath 81, it's a quick route there.

So I think Councilman Alsaadun, your concerns about the traffic are certainly legitimate

I think this project allows us to think about solutions targeted for this area to potentially mitigate against that.

Students are closer.

Working with JMU, I think this will be important for us moving forward.

As JMU brings forth this master plan, part of what their draft says is working closely with the city on housing and traffic.

This is that opportunity to do that, right?

Where we can say,

It makes sense to have students as close as possible to campus.

Many of them will have cars.

We want to make sure that they can get safely to and from campus.

We want to make sure our residents can go through this.

We don't have a whole lot of east-west gateways in the city, right?

81 means that we can only have so many ways to go east-west.

Port Recumbent is a big road for that, but you know we have a number of projects directed towards

mitigating traffic here helping to move you know more people more safely through here in this area so I think you know kind of given the opposite in JMU and their master plan is you know is showing their building to add more students on campus so the village is coming down they'll be adding more students that's a 10-year project at this point so that's quite quite a ways off but they are looking to increase their percentage of students on campus there

I think if we can direct JMU and developers to build student housing closer to campus and provide other ways for them to get to campus other than cars and we're gonna have to coordinate that with JMU that this would be the best the best of the options we don't have a lot of good options I think for students off campus so that's my thought on that.

Any other

Discussion?

If not, we can entertain a motion.

All right.

All right.

We have a motion and a second.

Unless there's any other discussion?

Councilmember Alsadun.

No.

Vice Mayor Fleming.

Okay.

Vice Mayor, I move that we approve the request for a special use permit to allow multi-family dwellings

Second.

We have a motion and a second.

Any other discussion?

Councilmember Alsadun.

No.

Aye.

Second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second.

Any other discussion?

Councilmember Alsadun?

No.

Aye.

Okay, 6E passes.

All right, next public hearing item is 6F and Brian are you or Chris?

I think I'll do the introduction.

A simple, easy, quick way to explain 6F, and I'll talk about 6F and 7A because they're very closely related.

But there's really not an easy way to explain it.

I could tell you that 6F and 6A combined will hopefully result in the development and operation of a small facility on Ramblewood.

that will contain batteries that will store electricity for future use.

That's kind of the summary, but I think that probably is a disservice to members of council and to the public just to leave it at that.

So basically, there are two things council is going to be addressing tonight.

One is under 6F is the lease of a small parcel of city-owned property.

and that has to be done by ordinance and since the lease will be more than five years it falls under what we call a franchise in Virginia and so again it has to have a public hearing.

And then the second thing will be 7A which would be to approve HEC entering into a couple of contracts that run longer than ten years and under the Harrisonburg City Code

If HEC wants to sign a contract longer than 10 years, it has to get council approval.

So that's why seven day is on.

With us tonight is Brian Odell and Jordan Bowman.

I know most of you know Brian Odell.

He is the general manager of HEC.

Mr. Bowman is an attorney with Lytton Site Pier in Harrisonburg and he is the legal counsel for HEC.

Brian and Jordan have lived with this transaction, this deal, and all these documents for many, many months.

They were heavily involved in the negotiations and the drafting of the documents, so they're frankly much more familiar with the overall business transaction, if you will, than I am.

So I'll say a few words, and then hopefully we'll give Brian a chance to come up, and he can,

correct or amplify or add to anything that I've said and I mean that very seriously I'm sure that I'll make some missteps and I'm going to rely on Brian and Jordan to correct me.

With all that said, a little bit of background and I'm going to start off kind of in a simplistic way maybe and tell you some things you already know but again I know there are people in the audience and watching from home that this is an important

and very exciting project and we want to make sure people understand what's going on.

HEC, the Richmond Electric Commission, of course, is part of the city and HEC provides electric utility services to the city.

HEC is a member of an organization called the Virginia Municipal Electric Association Number One, commonly called FEMA.

And that's an association made up of seven

towns and cities in Virginia which provide the electricity for their residents.

VIMA is a Virginia non-stock corporation and was created by the members as permitted by Virginia law.

It really assists the members in negotiating contracts with large energy providers.

It helps them buy bulk electric power supplies from Dominion and other big suppliers.

FEMA will negotiate for the members and enter the contracts with the suppliers and then individual members really buy the power from FEMA.

And of course when you have more than one member, we have seven members, it gives more negotiating power, more purchasing power and they can get hopefully a better deal for the residents of the city of Harrisonburg and the other members.

One other point, HEC and the other members of FEMA don't actually generate their own power.

They distribute power that is purchased from a larger provider.

In this situation, what we're talking about tonight, Vema is working, has been working with HEC and the other members of Vema and has negotiated with a company called RWE Clean Energy Assets Holding to build and operate a couple of battery energy storage systems.

It's an industry they're called BES, battery energy storage system.

They'll be one of Manassas and

and then one here in Harrisonburg on Ramblewood, a small parcel of about 11,000 square feet which is located basically besides some other distribution facilities that HEC has out on Ramblewood.

These batteries don't actually generate power.

The batteries store power that's already been generated for future use.

During off hours when demand is not as high, HEC will produce more electricity than is needed by the residents and the businesses of the city.

And that energy will go into these batteries for storage.

And then during peak hours, HEC, when it's tougher to meet the demands, HEC will be able to pull down, withdraw some of that energy from the batteries.

and that's going to save HEC money because you pay more at the peak hour to draw down energy and of course that will hopefully pass through to the residents of the city of Harrisonburg by storing the energy that's generated when things are not as busy and then using that at the peak hours should be a savings for everyone.

VEMA will manage the contract and the operation with RWE

Let me just emphasize that again, Vema is a member owned and operated entity.

Harrisonburg is probably the biggest member of Vema by a lot.

And so Brian works with Vema very closely.

It's almost they are us, we are them sort of thing, very closely related parties.

So Brian works very closely with them day in and day out.

So tonight again, step one will be the lease of the allow 11,

100 square foot parcel located at 2230 Ramblewood Road.

And that lease will actually be between the city and FEMA, again, the association.

And that will be for approximately 15 years, there will be a one year or somewhere about probably a year development term where the facility will actually be constructed and

Once it's in operation, that's a 15 year term.

And then there will be up to six month decommissioning term.

The lease rate will be $1 per year.

So they're really not paying the city anything.

But again, hopefully, the savings recognized by HEC and the residents will make that $1 per year a good deal for the city.

We already know that FEMA is going to sublease that parcel to RWE.

The company is going to develop, build and operate the battery storage system.

And in the lease there are cross default provisions with some of the other documents we're going to talk about.

So the net effect is that parcel has to be used for battery storage.

and if there's a default in any of the other agreements between RWE and VEMA and the members, then the lease will also terminate and they leave the property.

Again, since it's longer than five years, it's a franchise, so a public hearing is required.

The notice that was published in accordance with Virginia law, if it's a franchise, there has to be

an opportunity for other parties to submit a bid for that lease and I can report to council that not surprisingly there were no other bids received.

So the only bid was from FEMA in this transaction.

That's a legal technicality but I didn't want to get that in the record.

So then after that you'll move to agenda item number two and I'll just briefly summarize that because I think it's relevant.

The Harrisonburg City Code HEC is limited to 10 year contract terms unless the city council approves it.

So, item 7A is a resolution approving HEC entering into two agreements.

That will be in excess of 10 years, it'll be more than 15 years.

One is what we call the member agreement.

I think it's technically called a battery energy storage system output purchase agreement.

It's a mouthful but it's a member agreement because it's between VEMA and the other members of VEMA and basically that regulates the relationship between the members and this project as far as how costs are shared, how energy is shared and that sort of thing.

And then the second is an interconnection agreement between HEC and RWE

And that, in a nutshell, kind of regulates the relationship between HEC and RWE as far as RWE will need to connect to HEC's distribution network so it can accept power to store in the batteries and then put power back into the distribution network at the peak hours when it's needed.

And again, the interconnection agreement is very detailed, very technical about how all that will work.

Well so I think just real quick that the project itself and Brian come on up the project itself is fairly straightforward we're going to

store electricity in batteries.

And we're going to distribute it to residents for a cheaper cost, and they would otherwise have to buy electricity at peak hours.

The complex part is all the different moving parts that are pieces that are part of this.

VMEA, which we're a part of, HEC, the third party vendor in the city.

So that's the complexity that you as lawyers have to get through.

Good evening everyone.

Thank you.

I'm Brian Odell the general manager at the Harrisonburg Electric Commission I do appreciate the opportunity to speak to our battery project tonight, and I'm gonna say Mr. Brown has been doing his homework, and he's been listening to our lessons Because you you pretty well nailed it You know I had I had a few notes I was going to address and you pretty well covered the majority of them and

But I will say that as Mr. Brown indicated, we buy our power through VMEA.

And we are currently in a contract with Dominion that expires in May of 2031.

The other members of VMEA, so that I don't leave anyone out.

that the seven municipalities include Harrisonburg, Elkton, Manassas, Culpeper, Franklin, Blackstone, and Wakefield.

And as Vice Mayor Fleming indicated, Harrisonburg is about twice as large as the next member of the group as it stands right now.

And currently I am the president of the VMEA board.

So I have dual capacity when it comes to this VMEA project.

And I can say that VMEA has been working for

diligently for a year and a half to two years and back several years ago trying to get battery storage as an option here in Harrisonburg.

And as indicated, the premise is pretty simple.

The object is to reduce our peak demands which affects our monthly wholesale power costs and it also affects our transmission costs.

The financial incentive is to reduce wholesale power costs.

We charge them up off peak, we discharge them to reduce our peak and that's reflected in our monthly bills.

The way the arrangement is set up today, we have

The lease arrangement, as indicated, we would be leasing the property at Ramblewood to VMEA, VMEA to RWE.

And that is the same arrangement that we used up on Acorn Drive for the Acorn Solar Project.

That property is also leased to VMEA and then subleased to Dominion for that project.

The financial piece of this, for the first five years while we're still in the contract with Dominion,

It would equate to about a $1.5 million savings to HEC rate payers per year for the first five years.

And for VMEA, it equates to about $3.1 million savings in wholesale power costs for the first five years.

After that, right now as the Dominion contract is scheduled to expire, the savings would be reduced but still beneficial to operate the batteries.

Harrisonburg, well there's two sites.

There's a site in Manassas, and there's a site in Harrisonburg.

Each of those is a seven megawatt installation that would operate for two hours.

So each site would be a 14 megawatt hour site.

RWE installs, owns, maintains, and decommissions, and VMBA simply dispatches for peak demand and shaving.

So in addition to the leases that were alluded to, there is a tolling agreement, which in essence is a contract with RWE.

We do have the member agreement and the interconnection agreement as well.

And all of those are 15 year terms.

So, hence the city code dictates that we cannot enter into those without city council approval.

As long as it's being beneficial, generally, financially, or I guess there could be other things that we could have in the performance contract.

But generally, as long as they're performing, the contract will continue.

And we don't have, I guess,

my question to you is what's the liability that we take for getting into the contract but it sounds like as long as there is a positive cash flow in essence we continue with this if it doesn't

Generate savings for us at some point.

So our cost to RWE is fixed based on the output of the units So if the output were to degrade over time Or if they were to have some sort of an asset failure and the output was significantly less We would not pay for any output that we weren't benefiting from

There's a lot of provisions in the contracts for performance guarantees.

There's annual performance testing.

And a lot of time was spent making sure that the VMEA members did not find themselves in a position where they were paying for something that they weren't receiving.

So it is a 15-year contract, but if after seven years some catastrophic failure were to occur, then there's no further obligation on VMEA or its members.

And if the output were to falter in any way, there are provisions in the contract such that there are some liquidated damages to start with, as well as some means to either get the output at the contracted rate, which is the 14 megawatts, or to reduce it at what it's capable of providing, or if it's in some situation that it's just not acceptable to either party.

then we would have provisions to terminate.

So if it generates three megawatts, we would pay for three.

So the liability seems either minimal or doesn't exist so much for AGC in particular, but it's also with VMEA.

But with AGC, there's not necessarily financial liability.

Specifically, it's a safe way to potentially get, as you said, maybe a million dollars.

Is that a high number?

It's conservative.

I mean, it could be maybe 10% higher, but it was a conservative estimate.

And I know it's been a long night.

There are 12 months of the year that have its individual peak, and the idea is to catch the peak during each month.

And the analysis was done missing one of those.

Was it missing July or October?

Well, you know, there's a lot of variables when it comes to predicting the peaks.

So it's somewhat a conservative estimate.

So, I'm sorry, how does it benefit me as a resident?

It's gonna, as wholesale, as we can manage wholesale power costs, then we can manage our retail rates.

So as a resident of Harrisonburg, it would help us to keep our rates down.

Okay, so there will be, right, there will be down, right?

I'm not saying we're gonna lower the rates, but it will help, you know, as we have a certain revenue requirement, which

80% of that is our wholesale power costs.

And to the extent that we can reduce wholesale power costs, that's reflected in what we have to charge.

Not just the residences, but all the customers here in town.

And is there a cost for a resident?

No, no, this is, it's a dollar.

Yeah, the dollar.

The way the contract is structured, and I know

You know, the town of Elkton took this up last night.

So each of the seven members of EMEA are doing what we're doing here tonight.

They're going to their boards and commissions and city councils asking for approval to enter into the agreement.

And one of the questions that came out of Elkton was, you know, where are we going to see the cost?

Because I mean, on paper, there's a cost.

But we don't

We don't get billed from RWE until it's operational, which I did fail to mention is in the third quarter of 2026.

So when the batteries are operational,

It means that they discharged during the monthly peak.

So we owe RWE for that month, but our bill on the wholesale power side is also reduced by that and then some.

So there's no cost, it's just right out of the bat savings.

So there's no upfront cost, no assets to purchase like RWE has to do.

So in other words, even if there is an actual cost, it's more than offset by the savings from what we would buy otherwise from Dominion directly.

Yeah, now we had a discussion about peak costs

Yeah, and that's why a two-hour battery is really sufficient to get you through that hour of peak time, hour or two.

So it shaves at that point.

One thing caught my ear somehow,

Right, that's right.

Yeah, so we'll build, we have a little bit of modification to the infrastructure and we'll bring our, I mean, we have a power line on the property.

We have a little bit of work to do to bring in some underground to their switch gear and tie it in.

A couple of things that are somewhat speculative or dreaming at this point.

When you said that the timing of the peak seems to have migrated later and I was

The behind the meter solar starts rolling off later in the afternoon.

The grid sees that as increased load because it's no longer being supplied at the meters having to come from the grid itself.

And then the batteries will help even that out.

That's excellent.

I love this project and another my longer term dream as you know I've discussed with you is I would love to someday see like post 2031 when we have a new contract and we could own or HEC could own and generate power I'd love to see a solar farm on the retired and now settling down landfill that we own in the city limits over by Ramblewood

This is a great step in the right direction and a great thing in itself to have battery storage to help mitigate the costs and be greener.

A couple of other municipalities in Virginia that have projects that are currently up and running.

Tell me if I'm getting this right then.

Okay, so we belong to VMEA and so there's seven municipalities all asking city council commissions for the same thing.

Okay, so then I just want to make sure I got this right because I know we'll have some questions.

So RWE is a third-party vendor They will be storing power In the batteries during off-peak hours to use during peak hours, which will of course reduce the wholesale power costs and Makes us spend less money with by buying from My question is what happens if one of the seven municipalities

doesn't get permission to move forward.

It would affect the allocation of the benefits.

If one of the municipalities decided they didn't want a part of this, then the member agreement as it stands today has percentages outlined that add up to 100%.

If some Culpeper didn't want their

After the agreement is signed and we're operating down the road,

We are unique in those seven members as well.

HEC is unique compared to the other municipalities and how they operate.

I believe they come in

1.7 megawatt stacks so there'll be I think five and they actually they over build so they're actually gonna install nine megawatts because they'll degrade over time and they guarantee the output at seven for each site so they're gonna be over building each site at nine megawatts and I believe they come in one and a half or 1.7 megawatt containers

Any residentials around that area?

Any residential-like houses?

Yeah, I think on the backside of the property.

Right.

I don't know the name.

Is it Whispering Springs?

Right.

So we have moved

The plan is to keep the installation to the extent that the property will allow as far away from any residential.

So it's safe to the area, right?

Yes.

Is Chief Tobia still in here?

Yeah, we have talked with the fire department and made sure that they were comfortable with the situation.

There's a ball field there.

Yeah, the ball fields are located down the hill quite a distance.

Just adjacent to the property as far as the landfill site is concerned is just the closed portion that's grassed and vented.

There's one other question I have and it's just about a definition that I'm not quite getting.

What is decommissioning?

Pick it up and take it with you.

At the end of the contract they don't just walk away and we've got a big dead battery.

The units will be using fans for cooling at certain times during the day and when they're charging and discharging.

If the noise becomes something that

would interfere with the neighbors and there would be provisions for additional vegetative screening in the back.

Is there some specific guidance on that around decibels necessarily?

I don't have any DB guidance.

The city has some decibel requirements.

And we'll say, if you call AGC, you get a person on the phone.

Not a lot of utilities when that happens.

Well, yeah, so right now we're actually hearing part of this.

So we'll have a second vote.

So Mr. Adel, thank you.

For that, if there are any other questions, you know, hang around.

But we'll open up, we're still in a public hearing, again for item 6F.

So if there's anyone else who'd like to speak to that here, and Brian, if you'll take a look at the lines there to see if we have any calls coming in.

One moment.

There are no callers?

No other callers, okay.

And you can have your seat and stay there.

Alright, so I will close the public hearing.

And so we will have a vote on 6F and then we'll have a separate regular items on 7A.

So we can follow up to two motions.

We had it.

Vice mayor, I move that we adopt the ordinance granting a lease of certain real property of the city of Harrisonburg, located at 2230 Ramblewood Road as presented by city attorney.

Okay, motion and a second.

The idea of having a dollar lease and potentially

saving 1.5 million dollars per year.

Good bang for a buck.

Money that can be used towards securing our electric infrastructure moving forward.

So imagine that money will be invested well.

Council Member Alsadun.

Aye.

Vice Mayor Fleming.

That's four.

That makes it

Okay.

We have a motion to adopt the resolution.

Okay, Vice Mayor, I move that we approve, excuse me, adopt the resolution authorizing Harrisonburg Electric Commission to enter into a battery energy

Okay, we have a first and a second.

And just, you know, within VMEA, what's interesting is Harrisonburg, Harrison Electric Commission, is the only independently or separately operated

Council Member Robinson Aye Council Member Alsadun Aye Council Member Dent Aye Vice Mayor Fleming Aye

All right.

Let's see where we are.

Oh, there we go.

Tom, you're waiting.

7B.

All right.

Yes, good evening.

Vice Mayor, city council members, staff, Tom Hartman, Public Works.

Here tonight with our new revamped neighborhood traffic calming program.

We talked about this in March.

If you remember, we shared what we wanted to, how we wanted to change our program, how we wanted to change our program.

From that discussion we went out and we did a public meeting and we did an online survey where we got comments back from the public.

It wasn't overwhelming.

It wasn't a huge number of responses.

We had nine people show up to our public meeting and ten people completed or ten citizens completed our survey.

They were all positive in support of making these changes to the program.

So this evening I'll go walk through our new program briefly and then at the end if you agree and you want us to adopt it you can adopt it and then we'll put it into action immediately.

So what is traffic calming?

Traffic calming is a way that we can make sure that our neighborhood streets are multimodal, encourages vehicle safety, save vehicle speeds, and reduce the risk of crashes within our neighborhoods.

We receive numerous requests throughout the year, throughout the city.

There's no one area that doesn't give us calls about traffic calming and those concerns throughout the city.

Alright, so our existing program was created, well the first neighborhood traffic calling program was created in 2001.

Last updated 13 years ago, 2012.

And you have to be a local street to be qualified for the program.

We do allow some collectors potentially if they're on the cusp type collector roadway.

We do have current neighborhoods that have gone through the older, what I'm going to call the old process.

If you remember Sunset Heights, Portland East, and Old Town have all been through

The new one, we wanted to look at five areas that we needed to update.

One, the process.

We knew that the old program was pretty laborious for a citizen or a neighborhood to go through it.

There's a lot of steps, a lot of gates, a lot of checks, a lot of things they had to do.

So that was one of the concerns we always heard from citizens when we talked to them on the phone about their concerns.

So we wanted to reduce that process for the citizens.

They could submit the street, submit the concern, staff take on the work of doing some of the

previous steps we have required the neighborhood to do.

Then when it's to a prioritization ranking of those streets, then we can go out and push out those measures to help make those streets safe.

Community effort, we knew we wanted to approve this as well.

The previous traffic calming program required neighborhood committees be developed, neighborhood petitions be taken around to every

resident on streets that were identified in the neighborhood for the traffic calming.

And as you would expect, who has time?

And that was always, always a gate that took a year to two years for a neighborhood to have concerns come to us, have council adopt them into the beginning of the program.

Then we wouldn't see him for two years while they're building the committees and doing the petition.

Meanwhile, the streets were still having concerns, have safety concerns at higher speeds, higher volumes.

And we just knew we needed to get away from that.

We need to be a little more transparent.

We've instituted, like I mentioned, prioritization method where we can rank and score streets so citizens can understand, yes, you have a concern in your street, but your neighbor across town has more of a concern, and this is why.

So when we tell someone that we can't come to your street yet, we can give them a sense that we're not ignoring them.

We just have some other priorities we need to work on before we get there.

We've also, speed was always something we talked about in the previous program.

It was always the engineer's favorite word, 85th percentile speed.

We took that out.

So now it's just you get higher the speeds are on the street, the more points you get for the speed category simply.

Equity was always another concern.

We built in some some criteria within our prioritization to look at LMI areas, environmental justice is built into it.

So we're making sure that some of the areas that may be underrepresented but still have safety concerns, we can be out in the streets through this program to help improve their neighborhood.

and then clarity on what warrants traffic calming.

So our staff, James, put together a great FAQ document that was included in your packet of the standard questions that we get when people call in and the answers that we give them.

So instead of someone having a concern, having to reach out, email, get in touch with us at Public Works, then go on our web page, look at our FAQ document, get a lot of answers and get on the path of if traffic calming would be right for their neighborhood.

So we feel like this new program does that.

It does all those things.

Let's see once.

This is a newer breakdown that you didn't see last time when we came back in March.

This is how the scoring prioritization is going to be broken down.

So you can see volume and speed equate to half of the score.

So we still want to put a lot of weight on the volume and the speed of vehicles on the street.

But the other half of the score are tied to roadway features, pedestrian generators.

Are you near school?

Are you near where we're going to have people walking?

The roadway features are, do you have sidewalks?

Do you not have sidewalks?

Do you have one street parking?

No one street parking.

Because all those things play into the context of the roadway.

And we want to make sure that we're looking at all that in a holistic manner when we're thinking about traffic calming.

Housing density is another one.

Are you on a street with two homes per block?

Or are you on a street with 10 homes per block?

Because that's a lot more backing, a lot more points of conflict that we know we need to look at some different measures when we think about traffic calming.

And then the additional considerations are where some other things, that's where the environmental justice LMI comes into play, and you get a few more points to help.

That's more to break some ties.

If we have some streets that are similar and different needs, it'll help prioritize those streets.

Also, last time with the program guide, we had the serpentine flowchart that went back and forth a couple times.

We heard some comments that that was a little bit hard to follow.

So we've broken it into more of a block

So process initiation, that's what we're currently in.

Once we get the program established, we'll ask that any citizen has any concerns to submit those by August 1st.

We're going to delay that this time until October 1st because we know a month or a few weeks till August doesn't give citizens enough time to one, learn the new program, also do the outreach about the new program, get streets in.

So for this first year, we're going to push that out to October 1st.

But then after that, 26.

We'll be back to the August 1st date.

Once we get those streets, we'll screen them in for some eligibility requirements.

If they are meant to be eligible for the program, then they go down to the blue.

We'll score the streets.

We'll prioritize them.

We'll make our selections based on the funding that we have supplied in the budget.

We'll take that prioritized list with our recommended funding to TSAC, which is our Transportation Safety Advisory Committee.

They'll endorse our selections, and then we'll publish those selections.

And then we'll go to the dark blue.

We'll work at the height.

We'll start at the top of the prioritized list.

We'll do a little more deep dive into other streets.

We'll identify the area.

We'll have a community meeting.

We'll do more data collection if needed to fine tune exactly what measures we need to put out on the street, whether it's a raised intersection, a speed table, speed radar signs, bump outs, any other thing based on the needs that we're seeing.

finalize that plan, last little bit of engagement, and then we'll put those improvements out onto the street.

All at the same time, we'll get to the following summer where more streets will come in.

So it's a much faster process, we believe, than the previous one when someone would submit.

Two or three years later, we'd get around to the petition being done.

And then two or three years later, we'd be out putting measures on the street.

We're trying to accelerate the program.

Also, one thing you'll see in the program,

If we have a safety concern where we know we're having high crashes or we just know we have a safety problem, staff isn't going to go, oh, it's traffic calming, submit your street.

We're going to go administratively, try to solve those situations quickly where we can.

We know that those exist.

We did that a few years ago in the Northeast neighborhood.

We had some crashes.

We just couldn't wait for the neighborhood traffic calming program.

We went out and did things on the street.

So we'll still reserve that right.

So next steps, if council adopts the program, as I mentioned, our first intake period will be extended to October 1st for this year, then once that passes in the fall, we'll process and score the streets, then we'll publish the streets in early 2026, and then work to do implementation in 26, so we get ready for the next year.

Okay.

Yeah, so a lot pretty fast, but it's late, for me at least.

Any questions?

Good luck.

Thank you.

So thank you for all the work.

Well, in all the credit, James, Jacob, and Tim in Public Works did all of this.

I'm just the guy that talks about it.

So just kind of thinking through some hypotheticals,

You have three projects.

One, the score is the highest, but two, you have the money to get two done, potentially.

that determines where the project goes forward or there's some ability to make some decisions in there that might not be based entirely on scoring?

Well, it wouldn't be just one project.

It wouldn't just be one street either.

I mean, if the funding is there and we know that some of the measures are, you know, if our staff can implement it, that makes it much cheaper.

If we're just buying some asphalt or buying some curb that our crews put down, that project is much more affordable than if we have to buy equipment, buy a radar sign.

That's a bigger get.

I don't know if we want to say yet we're going to start jumping around the prioritized list.

I think the vision is to use our metrics in a good wholesome way and start at the top and fund the top one.

If there's any other funds, we can go to the next street and the next street.

If not, we wait to the next year.

If we can get some some additional budget funds and we get no additional streets submitted, then we're starting on number four and we're going down.

OK, we're going down the list.

So a street, I guess I failed to mention that once someone submits a street and it's prioritized, it stays on there for three years.

then it has to be resubmitted because the conditions change out on our streets.

We want them to make sure that we don't want to have a project submitted three years ago and we finally get to it we go out there well the problems gone away or some of the things that have happened that have made us not want to do that be on that street anymore.

Or conditions might change to add... Right, or new development opens up or some new connections to the roadway

or something happens on this street, we're starting to see more cut-through traffic over here because of a construction project or a new traffic signal or something that people try to divert around.

Definitely.

You mentioned several times that if there's funding, is there funding in the budget for this year?

It's a modest amount but it's there and we're gonna you know I think we need to see what we can do with it Question you know so you get points you know in proximity to certain things whether schools We don't have home daycares in there and I know those often can be transient or impermanent in some way but is there any way that in a neighborhood that might have

several home daycares, for example, an area that is known to have more home daycare units there to account for that.

Yeah, I don't know how I'm trying to think if our if community development has enough of an inventory for us to know all those addresses, right?

Where they're permitted, you know, I know when you get to a certain size daycare, we have to have specialties, permits and permissions in place for one or two kids or three that still might be impactful, but we might not know about them.

I was trying to think if there's some other type of proxy that we could use to look to look into that.

But that's something that as we can see if that's a concern or if we get

Maybe that's something we can be reactive to in subsequent years.

Yeah, potentially.

We hit on schools, campus, other shared use path facilities where we know we want to encourage, like the conversation we had with the Vista Towers project, we want to encourage that safe walking, safe biking,

to those areas.

Yeah, that does remind me of some things we've heard in Planning Commission and presumably here also in Council of, say, an in-home daycare and some of the neighbors had concerns about both the traffic and the safety for the kids.

So, again, that's a

It's a permit for that particular use.

Again, we always tell people as part of the program, the streets are not meant to play in.

So if you have a daycare and your kids are playing, they need to be in the backyard, in the side yard, or if they're in the front, they need to be monitored and watched to make sure the ball doesn't roll out in the street.

But if they are in the street moving, there's an expectation of safety.

But it's not meant to play in.

That's some of the concerns from neighborhoods we hear

My kids were playing out in the road.

Well, they're not supposed to.

Then we want to teach them how to properly cross the street, which is something that a traffic calming program, as best as it could be, isn't going to be out there teaching kids how to safely cross the street.

Questions?

Thank you Tom.

Second.

Okay, first and second.

Motion and second.

Any other discussion?

Okay.

Brian?

Any other discussion?

Sorry.

Councilmember Alsadun?

Aye.

Aye.

Okay, passes.

Stars to arm.

Go to the website.

Okay, that takes us to other matters.

So this is the open public comment for those in person.

Those who want to make public comment, please state your name and address.

And you have five minutes to speak.

Well, I guess I'll give you the positive first.

Well, I was gonna bring some pictures in, but being that, you know, from about 50 feet back there,

you know I was sitting right back here and I could see couldn't read it but I could see the writing on that computer screen there okay it's approximately 50 feet from that camera approximately 30 feet from that camera now with that being said um I held my pictures up for some reason the camera couldn't focus on thank you camera guys appreciate that um

Now you're part of this too.

So anyway, the pictures was going to be of over Reservoir Street there at Hardee's.

Man, I absolutely love that.

The way that they finally, AGC finally put the entrance in.

It's been stoned since I was a kid.

But they finally put an entrance in there at that sub station.

And guess what, sidewalk.

and you know what sits right up this street there?

Good old Harrisonburg Health and Rehab.

So now, these guys can do what?

I mean, old people like what?

At least my grandfather did.

Hardee's.

That Hardee's right there on Cantrell.

Well, more than only 13.

Wait, sorry.

But yeah, I mean, that's absolutely awesome.

You know?

Another thing that I'll give you a compliment on that I found absolutely ingenious.

I've been out of the seat for a while.

You know, actually the last job I was on was to win the bus garage.

So, anyway, what else?

Oh, seen it today.

Down there at Mason Street.

Are y'all working on it at the roundabout?

Seen the most ingenious thing ever.

Cheaper than my idea.

You know, I was thinking for these bus stops in the grass, you know, a landing and a ramp, you know, per 88 regulations.

But I did see something great.

It was a little plastic trim.

What an ingenious idea.

I mean that's cheaper than concrete.

You could at least put that there.

The grass you can kind of deal with, you know, as long as you got a ramp.

I would also, I want my services restored to public transit.

I was kicked off there because the drivers were putting my life at risk, which I have pictures of because they would not properly restrain a wheelchair.

Let me move on.

Now, I was going to sit here quiet for a little bit, you know, until one of y'all spoke, but that wouldn't happen.

So anyway, I have the right to remain silent.

I have heard that.

Thousands of times in my life probably Okay now As convicted felon, shady past.

I tell anybody my past.

I'm not ashamed of it I'm growing from it You know you got to go through it to grow anyway Okay, I also have other rights

First Amendment, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment or religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Now, first amendment, this amendment protects

including freedom of religion, speech, press assembly, and the right to petition the government.

Mr. Sheets, you have 30 seconds.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, I'll just skip to everything here.

We're going to get on Chief Pollard here, which I've got plenty for him.

I'm just going to go ahead and tell him now.

I wish he'd come up here so I could tell him Mr. He's I. Chief Pollard, you have the right to remain silent.

Anything you say can and will.

Well, you should know the rest.

You, sir, as a law enforcement officer, a chief at that habitually continued to violate my constitutional rights.

Sir, a day of reckoning is coming.

And guess what?

I hope you are met with the same respect for your rights as you showed me mine.

That bag will be coming off for you.

I carry me that.

Don't ever give me a comment anyways.

Well, at least I got to see that.

But I got a lot else here, you know.

There's a little code here.

Creed.

Good.

Oh, here we go.

Mr. Sheets, thank you for your comments.

Mr. Sheets, it's now available for anyone else to speak.

Anyone else would like to make a public comment?

Mr. Sheets, thank you for your comments.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Mr. Sheets, please.

Brian.

Brian, is there anyone calling in?

That concludes our public comment section.

Thank you.

Okay, council members.

City Council and staff.

Well, one, I neglected

Welcome back Councilman Alsadun.

I know you had quite a trip.

Thank you.

Okay, well it was a week ago today that I was playing in the spray grounds along with a whole bunch of little kids and we did the inaugural.

That was just great to see the joy and the excitement about that.

Yesterday I rode my bike into town for

meeting with Mr. Odell among various other meetings all day.

And too bad Tom's not here.

What I noticed is that while I don't yet have a map in my head of where the bike racks are, it seems like wherever I expected them to be, they weren't there.

Like you can go to a parking lot, you know where your car is going to be.

I would like to see something like wherever there are cars parked, there's a place to park bikes too, but that's another whole topic we can

look into further.

What else?

We've got several things coming up, including, well, planning commission tomorrow night, as usual.

The Levidamp series continuing for Wednesday night concerts.

Let's see, some meetings with the chamber on the state of education and

The GMU President will have a meeting, a small meeting with them.

And next week is the National League of Cities Summer Board and Leadership meeting where I'm going along with some of my colleagues for my position on the Energy and Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

So I'll have the batteries to brag about.

Thank you, Brian.

As well as I've been doing a whole lot of looking into data centers, went to a webinar today on the energy and environmental impacts and requirements.

One topic they discussed at some length was co-location, as in put a data center where either there already is a power plant or they build one on site, or microgrids that aren't really even micro to share power from the sources.

The data centers are making the electricity demand spike and it isn't a peak time, it's all the time.

It's a big issue that we've been wrestling with in the EENR.

For instance, I told them that we've adopted an ordinance that data centers are only allowed in industrial zones by special use permit, which is a great tool to have because we can put conditions on them.

and what else in the next coming weeks.

Next, well let's see, no, in a couple of weeks, Wednesday the 23rd, I'm going to be presenting along with Keith Thomas and Shana Carter at the Resilient Virginia Conference that's being held right here in Harrisonburg at Hotel Madison.

Okay I was fortunate enough to attend the spray grounds like Laura said with a bunch of these other kiddos and

and have been trying to from my bedroom trying to guesstimate the number of people that are at the spray grounds at any given time by the level of noise sounds of glee that I've been hearing and then of course when it starts to rain I can hear them moaning as well but

It seems like it's been pretty well attended.

I'm very proud to have the spray grounds in my backyard and I think that from what I'm hearing that people are enjoying it.

So that's great.

I drove through the Mason Street reconfiguration today.

I don't know if you guys have had time to ride through some of the changes that were put into place by our public works department.

I'm following our Complete Streets Academy but to me it seems like a really easily navigatable easy street to navigate with the new changes and so I made sure I went both ways up you know north and south to try to see the difference and so I thought that I would at some point revert back to old

This Saturday from 3 to 7

I encourage everyone to come out and join us for the Mason Street blocks party.

We will have all sorts of events from Elizabeth Street on Mason Street all the way over to Gay Street.

We're fortunate to have that side of the lanes now closed.

We're reimagining what we could use or do in that space that's going to kind of promote some community bonding.

and kind of reverse some of the trauma associated with having that infrastructure put into place during the urban renewal period.

And I felt great today just walking through just excuse me driving through just seeing what we've done and I think it's a good plan.

I'm excited to see what people use that space for after the party.

So we will have let me see here wanted to mention that we will have

We're gonna have an outdoor history museum there, food vendors, DJ, free family-friendly entertainment activities, games with Harrisonburg Parks and Rec, touch a truck which makes the kids go wild with the fire department.

Harrisonburg Public Transit will be there, the police department.

You can tour the Ida M. Francis Green Book Home or visit the Sentara Mobile Health Unit in addition to many other great things that we have that are family friendly.

So please come out and enjoy us and pray that there will be no rain.

Okay.

Wow, the fireworks were awesome this year.

Anyway, I thought the fireworks were a great display this year.

So last week the NLC launched their AI in action

and they introduced it to AI tech leaders and AI vendors and so I was the city representative in that presentation which was really interesting and it's really NLC's way of trying to talk to AI industry companies and saying if you want to work in government and if you want to work with cities

there are going to be rules that cities give you on how that works and so this is really about how to have a partnership to make sure that as AI moves into local government it's a trusting, safe way that that happens and so NLC is going to take a lead for that.

Interestingly enough as I was presenting there I rolled out one of our local leaders in AI introduction

and it's not only a group that is a great fire service, but they are a group that has used AI in such interesting unique ways.

So the fire department had their AI project and I think that was fascinating for folks to see how we've done that.

So Chief Tobia is quickly becoming an AI expert.

Reluctantly.

Back there.

And so I've had increasing conversations with folks around the country who are doing AI in their cities, implementing policies around how to do that safely, ways of using it effectively with staff.

And so that's been really fascinating to be a part of.

I had a meeting with my NLC committee, the University Communities Council last week, and so we're getting ready to go.

and joining Councilwoman Dent in Ohio and will be leading that committee there.

We actually had a conversation today with one of the staff around census and the census issues that even though it's another five years away folks are ramping up looking at what happened in the last census for university communities in particular and issues and concerns moving forward so there will be a topic of discussion and

Debussy Manager, Snider, Amy, gave some really valuable information to them.

So I think they'll be following up with you based on what happened here in 2020.

Thank you.

and then the Southern Cities Entrepreneurship Initiative that we're part of that Pierce is leading.

Brian and I met with the person who is running that from the Annie E. Casey Foundation last week and met with the NLC representative this week and every time we meet

The groups that talk about this project, they just say, wow, we need you to present.

Referencing Brian or Pierce on what you're doing.

They'll say, are you doing this?

Are you doing this in your entrepreneurship program?

Are you doing this?

And Brian and Pierce will explain what they're doing and say, oh, not only are you doing that, you need to present that to other cities so they can see what you're doing there.

Which is good news, because part of this project is being connected with some pretty significant foundations.

And what they've said is, you know, you can ask for more money.

If you're awarded, we'll find out in October, which I believe we will be, but we'll find out.

You can ask for more money.

And as Brian and Pierce around economic development are doing such a great job describing what's happening here, I think it will open some doors for some additional funding and work around entrepreneurship and small business development.

And I'll be joining

Councilwoman Dent at the State of Education Thursday that the Chamber of Commerce is putting on.

Anual pizza night tomorrow night, so mention that again.

And I think that's about it for me.

So we have boards and commissions.

Two current openings and apparently we'll have even another opening for the Planning Commission.

So we do have two applicants for that.

This is something given that we have two folks that are stepping off, I guess tomorrow maybe their last meeting.

This is one that has imperative that we get filled so they can not leave those things hanging.

Well, and I was pleased to see that with two openings we have two excellent candidates.

Absolutely.

So, I would say nominate them both, but there are different timings of the terms, and I don't know quite how to figure that out, who gets which term.

What are the terms?

Let's see, Pam put the note in here.

Two unexpired terms to expire on December 31, 2027.

So they're replacing Commissioner Finnegan and Commissioner Nardi, both who are leaving, but they have different expiration dates.

Is it Valerie leaving?

Valerie's moving, Commissioner Washington moving back to Charlottesville.

Does it matter?

I don't even think you move to do that.

How about Kenneth Kepler?

I'd agree with that.

I mean, Randy Seitz is also an architect, so they're both excellent.

They can each roll on to another term.

No, that wouldn't work with it.

Awesome.

Alright, so.

Nominate Kenneth Kedler then for the 2029 term and then Randall.

Can we do a voice vote combining both of them?

Any other discussion?

All in favor of Kenneth Kettler for the January 4th, 2029 seat opening and then Randall Seitz for the December 31st, 2027 opening.

Signified by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay, that passes.

We have two new planning commissioners.

Anything else?

Nothing on the agenda?