Planning Commission Worksession   2/12/2026

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Good evening.

I'd like to call the February work session of Louisa County Planning Commission to order.

We're going to begin with new business, which is a forestry presentation from Mr. David Stone.

Always in awe when technology makes our life better.

I'm Dave Stone.

Thank you for taking care of that.

I'm Dave Stone.

I'm the Vice Chair of the Agriculture and Forestry and Rural Preservation Committee, as well as a retired forester with the Virginia Department of Forestry.

I've worked in this county for over 20 years, so I'm very knowledgeable about the forest here and how things

have been shaping up.

I've given a variation of this same talk to the Board of Supervisors, as well as the agricultural and forest committee for your information.

And in your packets, you have kind of a condensed version of what I gave to the Board of Supervisors.

Just kind of keep along just a little bit anyway.

So the purpose of my talk is to really share with you briefly to share with you some forestry issues in Louisa County.

Which button do I push?

Thank you.

So briefly, I just want to review forest in Louisa, how it impacts on us.

So probably the primary driver for us here is the quality of life, the visuals, what we see when we drive through the county.

And obviously recreation and wildlife, of course.

Another thing is economics, which I'll show you in a moment, forest economics that happens in Louisa.

But another thing is water.

Forests basically help recharge groundwater.

It slows down from the rainfall, the snow melt, this helps slow down the water getting into the ground.

So this is from 1999, whoops.

1999.

I tried to get an updated one from the Department of Forestry specifically for Louisa County, but I could not.

They really dug in deep for all the counties in Virginia back in 99.

But what I can share with you is two things.

I always considered this economic impact in Louisa County as kind of like the silent economy in Louisa.

I was just coming in today.

Log truck went the opposite direction with a tractor-trail load of loblolly pine, for example.

Back in 99, it was considered $101 million of total economic impact in Louisa County.

In the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2021, for the whole Commonwealth, the total impact was $21 billion.

In 24, it was $24 billion.

It's really up there high with the other economic activities in Virginia.

I was a little bit surprised, well, surprised but not that surprised when I dug this up to share with you.

When I came to work here first time in 1993, Louisa was approximately 72% forested.

Towards the end of my working here, which is the end of 2020, I had noticed a lot more development going on.

A number of tracks that I had worked on were being converted to housing lots or especially along the roads and stuff like that.

And it wasn't that when I met Maggie where I wanted to update her about what's been going on in Louisa.

that I actually created the maps that you see in your portfolio, which I'll show you, talk about in a moment, where I actually went to the east end of the county just to introduce her to some forestry.

Things were going on with forestry.

And that was almost like ground truthing those maps.

I wasn't meaning to, but I was.

Because I was seeing tracts of land that I helped reforested, then now there's houses in front of them.

It's just quite a change in this county.

So briefly, I want to talk about how does forest fragmentation, how does that impact on forestry?

And so basically, as you know, in Louisa County, you have many parcels of land.

This is a ambiguous forest patch.

This is not in Louisa County, but it's an example of Louisa County.

So like 7,500 acres of continuous forest, how wildlife would see it, how you would see it walking through.

But if you peel that away and put where people's footprint is on it, this is how it looks.

So again, this is not Louisa, but this is a really good example of Louisa.

If you look at any of the tax maps on the GI system, you'll see what I'm talking about.

So if you have smaller and smaller and smaller parcels of land, it's harder and harder to do sustainable forestry, as you can imagine.

So if you have a 200-acre tract, not that hard.

It's pretty good money for landowners to manage for forestry.

If it gets down to 15 or 20, not as much.

and often not because someone may have a house on their 15 or 20 acres and they don't want to lose their forest, their view.

So now I'm going to get to what I consider the nut of really why I'm here.

So in the maps that you have and what you're going to see on here, you're going to see three different colors.

Green is 0 to 50 people per square mile.

Orange is 51 to 199 people per square mile.

And red is 200 people or more per square mile.

Commonwealth in 1990, Commonwealth in 2020.

You can see where the red areas are expanding out, of course.

This is Louisa County in 1990 and 2020.

Not so much large reds, but a fair amount of orange color, if you will, where the population densities are, a little bit higher.

So I got this next couple of slides, the more recent information from the Department of Forestry last year, the end of last year.

And this is what we have now.

I know it's one thing intellectually to think about.

We know the county's growing fast.

We know that.

But to see it graphically is pretty shocking.

Really shocking.

And the main information for you and how this relates to forestry is that we know in forestry, if you have more than 150 people per square mile, it's highly unlikely that you're gonna have any kind of sustainable forestry in that particular area.

So someone may cut the track, but are they going to reforest it?

Maybe not.

There's too much population there.

It's probably fragmented down or however you wish to put it.

So that's what I wanted to share with you, the situation.

If you look to the west, of course, that green splotch is the Green Springs area, which fortunately, way back when, a lot of conservation easements got put in, so that land is going to stay that way for a long time.

So what I wanted to, this is Louisa, the white areas is agricultural land in this particular slide for what it's worth.

The green is forest land, of course you can see the streams and stuff like that.

I think there's only one road that shows up which is 15 on the west going north to south to give you perspective.

And it gets the interstate down the southern part of the border.

So one of the things I wanted to impart with you is, like, land conservation to me is like planting trees.

Like, the best time to plant a tree is, like, 20 years ago.

The next best time was, like, right now.

Plant that tree.

And it was 20 years ago.

We wish we could have worked on land conservation back then.

Could we be so much farther ahead than we are now?

But now we are where we are.

If we don't really work on this, we're going to lose it.

We're going to go past the tipping point.

And I'm talking primarily about forestry, not agriculture.

But we're going to lose that, where it's going to be hard for landowners to sustainably manage their land where they'll manage it for forestry, which gives us the views and the vistas that we have, that we enjoy.

I know that with your job as in the planning commission, I'm sure you're familiar with the ag-forest districts, of course, and land use taxation.

These are ways of trying to tamp it down a little bit.

Conservation easements, and of course, purchase of development rights, lands that the county decides that this is really important to hang on to, and they should buy the development rights of that to conserve that.

But I wanted to just, I've heard that maybe some talk was consideration of maybe having larger lot sizes,

And I just want to let you know, in regards to forestry, that's really not good.

You're basically chewing up more land, taking it out of forestry.

That's basically what you're doing.

We in forestry have known that for a long time because a number of counties have attempted to have done this, actually, and the northern counties have done that.

So basically, when you have larger lots, it just

Basically has spread out developmental sprawl.

But it's like 10 acres, 10 acres, 10 acres.

And it just chews up the land where you're really not going to be having forestry on it.

So that's what I have for you.

I thank you for your time to listen to me.

I appreciate what you're doing.

I know you're trying to work through a very difficult situation trying to find a solution to the pressures that we have here in Louisa.

Does anyone have any questions for Mrs. Stone?

All right, next item on the agenda is to review the growth management tools draft ordinance amendments for growth management.

Oh, well, all right.

Very good.

Then we'll

Um, so Linda and I both can answer questions for this, but just wanted to initially let you know why this is before y'all tonight and what we like to discuss.

Um, I guess about a month ago we had the Board of Supervisors want the Planning Commission to discuss

and review options to slow residential growth in the A1 and A2 districts outside of growth areas.

What Linda and I have done is what's before you today.

It's not a comprehensive list of everything that could be done to slow residential growth, but what we tried to do is it's a broad range.

So some things like not using a private lane anymore or not allowing that, that would be a smaller incremental change.

where creating minimum lot sizes would be much more intensive and impact more people.

So if you really go through it and look at it that way, I think we gave a pretty good range of options.

And then as we go through today to, you know, discuss opportunities or options or things that you guys like or would like to see more of, we can always bring that up.

There's things that are absolutely missing from this that if you guys would like more information or to bring up some options, we can do that.

But really, we just wanted to have

Some meat and potatoes for us to discuss opposed to just having a conversation about what you guys thought would slow residential growth.

All right.

Yeah, thanks, Mike.

Just primarily for the Planning Commission's benefit, what is presented here we didn't see until last Thursday, just like y'all did.

As a matter of fact, some of us didn't even see it then.

So this is, you know, staff has worked on this as a starting point, I think, for you all to look at.

What the board sent to you, so it's real clear, is not a directive of any specific thing to do.

It's just simply the directive is to try and come up with ways to slow down the growth and it will be up to you all to move forward with that as you see fit, but what I want to make real clear is what's in here we hadn't seen, so it's definitely not a directive to do anything that's in here.

Sure.

Real quick about the memo, which is in the work session as well as the regular packet.

that's just part of the reasoning why we want to have the discussions of course more households means additional services the additional services means additional tax dollars that have to go towards it capital investment everything else so that's just putting some context in why it's important to try and maintain the rural nature of the county and specifically the A1 and A2 districts outside of the growth areas

So we'll hand this off back and forth under the growth management draft ordinance.

One of the things we discussed was limiting private lanes.

That is something that now in the ordinance, a private lane can service up to four parcels.

You can, so for the private lanes in the amendments that were done early in 2025, it was approved to allow up to two private lanes within a subdivision, but each private lane can only serve two lots.

So if they had a lot of road frontage and some back land, they wanted to get road frontage lots, but they also wanted to access those back that back acreage

So the frontage requirements are met on the cul-de-sac.

So the private lane, your frontage is 200 feet on the state road or 150 feet along the private lane or 25 feet on the cul-de-sac.

I'll just add to that.

One of the reasons why we brought this up as a potential item for the Planning Commission to look at is because of the increase in the number of private lane inspections.

We don't have a real tracking mechanism other than the inspections that our staff does when they're completed or for plant approval or for bond release.

And in 2025,

The number of private lane inspections was more than we had had in the last 10 years.

So in one year we did more inspections than we had done in the previous 10 years.

And we don't inspect all of the private lanes that are utilized.

That's just the ones that we did inspect were more than the previous 10 years, so.

Correct.

And also question Miss Butler.

I find it interesting that more people did it this past year than in the 10 years prior.

So it just makes me think, I mean, did somebody figure something out?

I'm not sure the answer to that.

I didn't know a better way to say it than that.

Right, right.

From my business that we see,

The ordinances that we have have pretty much, we went from trying to get off-road development done.

Now the ordinances, because of the cost of state-spacked roads and that type of thing, the big driver is, one of them, is now the state is not taking these roads off.

And so

When the state won't take it over and you've got to go to, you simply can't build a state's back road to serve two lots.

It's just not feasible.

So people have been utilizing the private lane, which the private lane is restricted to two lots.

Only two can use it.

per private lane.

And so basically you have a driveway.

It's restricted to two parcels.

It has disclosure notes on the plat that it shall not have any school bus service, any postal service, anything.

It's a private driveway.

And that also goes in the deeds.

So there's notification

So there are a lot of

restrictions to the private lane and also it covers the county and pretty much that is the only means you have to get something back off the road.

So I mean if it's um

You're certainly not going to see it in, you're not going to see large scale development or anything like that because, like I say, it can't serve but two.

So, to me it's a useful tool.

I do think that

You know, there is more pressure for people to find places to build.

And if you don't have the private lane, then the only thing left is road front, strip front development.

So because of its

restrictions and the disclosure that it has on it.

It, like I say, can't serve but two.

But it is, it does get used.

You know, to those, any, you have some, I would say it probably gets used by builders more than anybody else.

Most developers I know are not going to fool with something this small.

Now, if you have a local builder that is looking for someplace to build, then he'll put it in a private lane and try to get two lots off of it.

So it affords that.

Short of that,

I think there are some things in here, which I give them credit, if you take that away and up the light sizes to 10 acres, I think you're going really slow growth to a point of a standstill.

The private lane to me is a useful tool that is restricted by it only lets you use two lots.

Beyond that, you'll have to do a state road anyway.

It's just that I think if you don't have that ability, then you sure in the world can't put in a state road for two lots.

You know, it's a useful tool to serve two lots.

If you eliminate that and make it strictly state roads, then you're going to slow growth.

I think what we're looking at, from my perspective anyway, and I think the majority is to find ways

to slow things down but yet be reasonable about it, you know, somewhat.

I do know that I would say since 2009

The subdivisions that you have in Louisa County are Zion's Crossroads, the lake.

And by the lake, I've been coming out to cut along in those places.

But in the middle parts of the county, there have been very few subdivisions.

There are two subdivisions that are on my road that have come in in that time.

Well, they were when you could get the 18 lots.

Well, that got cut back to seven, which tremendously dropped it because your state roads then got shortened up to little cul-de-sac roads that you get two lots off and three in the back.

But basically, that just brings through

the development right back to the road you might as well be strip front development again so it's not really feasible to have a loop road in that you could get those lots so that's been reduced but even that now because the state they call it several years ago they called it devolution

Now, the network was brought up again here recently when talking to Scott Thornton, but the VDOT is, even roads that were built to state standards, now they're at the point of being taken in.

They're requiring, and I've done several of them, as-built surveys to make sure that they were built exactly to those plans.

And if they weren't, we're not there.

And some of those plans were actually approved by VDOT members at the time, you know, variations of the plan, and they were all approved.

Those people are gone, the new people came in, and now if it doesn't match his plans, they just simply do not want the roads.

So the question becomes, are you going to allow any development other than a states-backed road, and you can't do that for two lots?

Not in my area anyway.

Mr.

Good evening.

I'm trying to sum up where we're going so far and what I am hearing is that other than Grandfather, there will be no private lanes allowed in the county.

All roads will be built to state spec and they will serve no more than two lots

And the only question I have about summing up to this point is we've been saying built to state specs, but then there's a gap in there before they're even considered for acceptance into the state system.

Just to put a clarification on that, the proposal that is there for private lanes would essentially prevent the use of private lanes in A1 and A2.

Just like Supervisor Barlow had mentioned, that's going to end up slowing the growth on the lots that are off the roadway.

We wouldn't be requiring it for all roads.

Like I said, this in this conversation, we're talking about just a one and a two out of a growth area.

That's what all this, these conversations should be about is trying to maintain the rule nature of the county.

So with the private lane prohibition, that's what we would be talking about is a one a two no longer be able to use private lanes if someone wanted to develop off the roadway.

All but one, if you could address the maintenance part of it.

Because if they come out and they take a look at it and they say, well this is not state spec.

It could have been built to state spec, but it was not maintained to state spec.

Okay, so back in the amendments that were adopted last year, we implemented several processes

We had been using an interim road maintenance agreement since about 2014 until roads are accepted into the state system and required that those interim road maintenance agreement be recorded with subdivision plats.

We added that to the subdivision ordinance.

In addition, we added language that is required on subdivision plats just like the private road language that was used for private lanes.

It states that the roads are private until accepted into the state secondary road system by VDOT.

Very good.

I guess while you were talking, I thought of one other thing, and that was signage.

Because there are different, I think mostly with public safety, but it may also be public access like school buses.

Should signage indicate that these roads are private so that the people that are on there cannot come forward and expect services like a school bus?

and put that pressure on us.

It's totally off of the agenda for tonight but it just came up in my thoughts that there's a difference if you're on a private road than if you're on a public road.

You can expect certain things.

You can get on private roads and they're so badly maintained that a school bus might get stuck in there.

I can think of one.

So

If I'm not mistaken, the private road, I know the private lane language, but any private road has the disclosure statements on there disclosing that there will be no postal service, school bus service.

It's about 10 different things, but then it also says that the roads will not be taken over until such time as they are brought up to state standards and then it will be for the state.

Even on privately built, if it's a state spec road, but they're keeping it private, it still has the disclosure statements on the plat and in the deeds.

Anyway, so that was specifically put in so that the county didn't incur the liability of upgrading, maintaining these roads.

OK, thanks everybody.

Okay, so one of the things that some localities have also done is instead of allowing divisions, which makes it a little bit easier to create a new parcel from an existing parcel, they require the majority of those divisions to be treated as subdivisions.

And there's some additional standards that may go into the subdivision ordinance.

So for example, when VDH used to require PERT testing, that would be an example of if someone wanted to do a

Division, if we treat it as a subdivision, now they've got to go through some additional steps.

Before we addressed sending everything to V dot, they would have had to send stuff to V dot.

And of course, different localities have a lot of different things, there may be traffic impact analysis, or different things depending on what the parameters of the parcel are.

So for the sake of this conversation, what we were looking at is if you remove the opportunity for a division and require most

land divisions to be treated as a subdivision and to include any parameters that we see fit as we move forward.

So that's just something that as it stands today, it really wouldn't change too much.

So really, if we were going to change the definition of division to be a subdivision, we would probably need to couple that with some changes to the subdivision ordinance.

which that like I said this is when we're talking about it's not a full comprehensive list this isn't necessarily recommendations it's just these are options that certain localities and other people have done make it a little bit harder to divide the parcels provide get a little bit more information when they do choose to divide the parcels so that you know as we move forward and you all are making decisions about rezonings or CUPs or whatnot we just have more information as we go through those

legislative processes.

We can answer whatever questions you have about that.

But like I said, this is an option that it's not standalone by itself, I think a good recommendation, it would have to be coupled with some other things in the subdivision ordinance.

But

Yeah, it's just this would be one of those decisions.

If it's a path you guys would like to go through and look at some other options, we can bring other stuff.

It doesn't sound like you know, supervisor Barlow probably explain the pros and cons of using divisions versus subdivisions.

If it's not a viable option, that's fine.

We can put it off and not discuss it.

I would have some just to help me understand if you would Mr. Kuhn.

So you're saying your typical division rights that we do right now today would be set aside.

Yeah, so it wouldn't necessarily like if you got one of the A2 parcels that has seven division rates, it wouldn't affect those.

Right.

So a division right now is two lots.

And you can have a residue with a division.

So it's a maximum of three, but your third parcel has to meet the definition of a residue.

Your subdivision is anything over the two lots.

without that residue parcel.

So if you do your full seven division rights, and kind of the thought process was that it may require people to think about the process.

If it went through a subdivision review, it used to include VDOT.

It no longer includes VDOT, but it includes the Virginia Department of Health.

And they have a set review time where division plats are administratively reviewed.

They can be done if they're complete within a couple of days, a week, whereas a subdivision process is a more lengthy process.

It's a different fee schedule.

So the thought process behind that was really more just

Give the person a little more thinking to do.

Do I really want to divide this?

It's not a simple process.

It has to go through other agencies, not just the county.

But VDH no longer does perp tests, they require AOS e soil work for like building on a lot.

So it really, overall, as we thought about it more may not have the actual

So it's, it was put out there was a thought, but it's like I mentioned it standalone, it probably wouldn't do too much, we'd have to do other things to the subdivision ordinance that

depending on what those items were.

So at this point, if we're to adopt this and change it to the way it is now, as you put it, would be premature because you could

OK, thanks, sir.

And I mean, in staff's view, if this change in the divisions to subdivisions is a path you all were interested in, I think that we would need to go and really go down a whole different path and really have a conversation about those updates as well.

This wouldn't be something we would just add a couple things to and move forward.

It'd have to be a

Long process to evaluate everything before we did any of those.

But it's like we said, this is options that we want to bring to you all.

And if it was interested in that's a path we want to go down, we'll absolutely go down it.

But just stand alone.

Just a little bit of history.

We had meetings years ago, Linda was there.

VDOT definition of a subdivision is any division, period.

At the time, Louisa had a minor subdivision and a major subdivision, which most every county around, that's where we had it.

And you could do, I think at that time it was four lots, I believe was a minor subdivision.

Well, the major subdivision has about a two-, three-page checklist of criteria you've got to go down through.

And so the division survey sort of replaced, well, if we're getting rid of, if we're going to just have subdivisions, then we'll have a division that sort of took the place of the minor subdivision.

One of the things with the major subdivision, which we no longer have, but a subdivision, if we did away with the division surveys, you got to tie to the Timmons, we found it, the county control.

Which is, you know, for a couple of lots, unless you happen to be next to a couple of control points, that can get expensive.

With the advent of the GPS, that's a little less, but if I go, my GPS equipment, you're gonna spend $30,000 to buy that.

So with a division survey, you don't have to have it tied to the county control.

You don't have to do the GPS.

You don't have to have a two or three page checklist of stuff that you go through.

In other words, there's differentiation between what used to be a minor subdivision and a major subdivision.

and what is now the division survey.

That's sort of how the divisions came about.

But we reduced the minor subdivision from I'm pretty sure it was IV.

to just two.

So that's how it came about.

And it's really just like the road criteria for states-backed roads.

If you have to jump through all of the hoops for a full-blown subdivision, it's quite a lot different than just doing the division survey.

The division survey does not require, just like the family division, doesn't require the

Thank you.

I've been doing division surveys.

I've not had one that didn't first check to make sure it would park.

So I don't think that's... Family division is the same way.

You don't have to do it with a family division.

But...

You're really taking the chance, and ultimately you're going to do it anyway when you apply for your billing permit.

So we tell people when they walk in the office, first thing you need to do is get it perked before you sign a contract with us to survey, because if it doesn't perk, then forget it.

I mean you can use an alternative system, but then you got to realize you may spend $50,000.

So the

From my personal business, there's virtually nothing that we see that doesn't have the perk site done up front.

So that part of it is not really an issue.

I don't think anybody's going, especially if you're going to buy the lot.

They're going to make sure it perks.

Family division, if your parents are going to give you a piece of land, then maybe you chance it.

But you've still got to get it perked before you're going to get a billing permit.

So that's not really a big issue there.

But there's a huge differentiation.

It's just like Mr. Coon said.

If you're going the route of doing away with the division survey,

Thank you.

Just a general comment.

This follows behind VDOT refusing to do any more traffic surveys.

Now we've got the Department of Health refusing to do any work tests.

And as we, I guess this is really for everybody to understand, but for Chris and Linda to dig in a little deeper, as we're going through, I'll say various applications and changes,

We have got to be prepared for the state pulling up stakes and leaving in any area that we depend on the state.

And it may be a fee charged or whatever.

It may be a traffic survey.

If we want it bad enough, the county is going to have to pay for it.

Or the county is going to require a certified engineer to do it.

But somebody is going to have to pay for it if the state is not going to give us

services that we are leaning on.

We leaned on traffic surveys and work tests for a long time and now look where we are.

So maybe look around and see if we're leaning on any other areas that it does seem to be a beginning of a pattern.

Thank you.

Any other questions on division subdivision alignment?

So the one thing I'll actually ask for this, if you guys want to go to the next page where I've got the item, the current code and the proposed, it'll help me explain kind of why we propose what we did.

And we have an update that I think is more reasonable.

So with family subdivisions, there's a couple sections of state code that kind of dictate family divisions.

So you've got 15.2, 2244.

And there's sections A and C specifically C is for high growth areas, which is what we are now.

And then we also have 15.2, 2244.1.

which you'll see in the proposed one we added the 2244.1.

The reason why that's important is that specifically talks about for localities can require for family subdivisions that there be an ownership

requirement that you have to own the property for a set period before you could do a family division.

And then once the family division occurs, there's a hold or retention period for a set period.

In the 2244.1, the own and the retention period are both 15 years, we don't have the option if that's the state code section that we were to utilize 15 years would have to be

In evaluation with the County Attorney's Office, it's deemed that the 2244 actual section A, it allows the locality to establish reasonable

requirements.

And one of the things we were looking at is actually amending that to where we would include an ownership requirement to five years.

So someone would have to buy it and hold it for five years before they could do a family subdivision.

And then the whole period would go back to what it was a couple months ago, which was 10 years before they'd be able to sell it to someone that wasn't in the family.

So then instead of it being a 30 year own and hold period, it would end up shorten that to 15 years.

where right now today it's five but for a long period before that it was ten years until it was changed not that long ago.

So that's the update that we have.

I know what's before you is 15 and 15 but that's when we were thinking the only option that we had was the state code section that required it be 15 and 15.

It is not.

So what we would see in the chart update now where it says ownership before subdivision, you would take where it says 15 years, that would now say five.

And then the retention after recordation, we would strike the 15 and that would then be 10.

The 15 and 15, and I wonder where the 15 came from, because we were 10, dropped it to five, and then back to 15.

That state code is, if we do the way the state code is, it allows localities to do an ownership and a hold period.

But it's specific 15 years, they don't give you the opportunity to change anything.

It's the other section that allows you to have reasonable regulations.

Like you said, the fact that we've had 10 years, we've had 15 years, we've gone back and forth before, you know, individuals have been purchasing property.

And I mean, within two or three months, file and family divisions here recently, you know,

We can identify there's been some people trying to circumvent the process.

So that's why the ownership period is for five years.

Thank you.

Mr. Coon, if you could entertain me, help me absorb this.

Yes sir, maybe I wasn't clear there.

So I pose my question because I'm doing it.

So that's how I pose this question.

So my mind's a little concluded with some of this information.

So I bought a piece of property a year ago, just under a year ago.

And I'm dividing out a chunk of it for this young man.

And actually, as Mr. Barlow said, you always perk it first.

We're past the dirt work and waiting on a gentleman to come hang some ribbons for us.

Correct.

Okay.

Yeah.

So right now, the only thing that would happen is once you transfer that, he would have to hold it for five years right now.

And even even if we snapped our fingers and said, Hey, it's going to be effective today.

If there's people who have started the process and own the property before, it wouldn't be I mean, that

It depends on how the effective date is done.

And we would have to clearly delineate if someone has owned a piece of property prior to when does the whole or the ownership requirement before they could file a family division come into play.

And I certainly agree with what Mr. Barlow is saying that it certainly gets it back to what it was intended purpose.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Just a comment.

It seems to me, some time ago, somebody described Louisa as the flip county.

You come in, you buy something, you land, and you flip, and you're gone.

And this is not the typical merchandising bogo, buy one, get one free.

The way we've got it set up now is you can almost buy one, get three free.

So I think it's starting down the right path to make sure that people are sincere and that we're not attacking folks that have lived here, have owned the land.

They still have their family subdivision rights.

But somebody who is coming here with an idea of doing nothing but flipping land for money, no interest in the county whatsoever, it's making it a little bit more difficult for them to get that money in their pocket.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Mr. Coon.

In the event, God forbid, if somebody were to pass away, either the transferee or the other

There are provisions written into the ordinance regarding the involuntary transfer of property whether it's death, divorce, judicial sale or some other means beyond their control.

There is a mechanism that they can be released from that retention period.

They would submit the appropriate documentation.

Yes, it's stated in here already.

Thank you.

Any other questions on family subdivision?

Very well.

So here, just like we talked about, this is something that A1 and A2 out of growth areas right now, it's 200 feet.

And then once you get past that, it goes to 300 feet.

But we just added 250 feet of road frontage for that.

So it would be 450 to 550.

Like I said, there's a lot of other road frontage we can talk, you know, the cul-de-sac road frontage that Miss Buckler brought up earlier.

There's a lot of other things that we could talk about.

You know, just the more road frontage is required, that would end up when you're driving down the road, you got mailbox, mailbox, mailbox, more road frontage, you know, hopefully spread that out a little bit.

It's not guaranteed.

But, you know, that's just something that we could do to help

Any questions on road frontage?

I was getting confused on the way I read those two sentences.

So if it was inside the growth area, A1 or A2, that would stay the same.

We want the growth to occur within the growth area.

That's what was established in the Conference of Plan.

That's what future land use intends.

So that's why that one would stay the same that it is today.

It would be outside of the growth area.

And like I said, the

footage, the frontage, that's something that we put out there, we can absolutely talk about it, change it, amend it, increase, decrease.

But that's just, you know, one of the things we're talking about is if we want growth inside the growth area, we keep that the same and increase some of the requirements in the same breath.

I know we've different people have had different conversations, it could also go with setbacks from public right away.

if you similar concept that if you increase the road frontage, there'd be more space on the road.

If you increase setbacks from the public right of way, you could push them further off the road, which, you know, talking about helping maintain the real nature of the county wouldn't have those houses right up on the roadway.

Just to comment, Goochland has a similar type thing where they allow two acres, three acres on the road, three acre requirement on the road, and then two acres off the road.

And that's sort of, I think their idea is to incentivize getting back off the road.

So yeah, homestead, this is something that we were looking at.

You know, with the conversation of helping preserve the rural nature of the county, helping to encourage agricultural and working lands and things like that, this was something that we were looking at that if we created a definition of a homestead that essentially would be a home on 10 acres or more, that if there's any type of agricultural or horticultural activity that they want to do, even if it's not included in the zoning code,

They would be able to do it for the purposes of servicing the home like the residents.

So, I mean, it's, you know, you go down the laundry list of people are doing all kinds of stuff now that if they wanted to do it and support the homestead, just something, you know, I think that there's other rural localities that have different things like this may be called something different.

But we were looking at adding it.

This isn't necessarily to slow residential growth.

I think it's to better define what type of use we'd like to see, you know, some of these homes that have gardens or livestock, you know, chicken and stuff like that, that helps service the home.

But, like I said, this is just something that

better defining what some of these residential uses are in A1 and A2 to try and prioritize the the rural nature of what we'd like to see out there would be beneficial.

So it might not be this definition, but if we wanted to do something different along the same lines.

Just so I understand, because I read this and I'm thinking about the agricultural and horticultural uses that are to service the homestead.

I mean, that tends to become commercial easily.

If you have chickens,

We had chickens.

We had eggs coming out of our ears.

So, I mean, it doesn't take many chickens.

I'm selling eggs at work, you know.

People have bees, and if you do bees well, you've got plenty of honey.

So, it's, I mean... And that's, so a roadside stand is allowed in A1 and A2, so that's something that I think

Think past that.

If it was something commercial past just a normal farm stand up at the road front, it would be something like more legitimate commercial activity than selling some extra eggs or produce or honey or something like that.

That would be within the realm of we already allowed the farm stands.

So yeah, I think

Mr.

I would assume that if somebody wanted to take on some sort of a home-based commercial activity that is beyond the selling eggs farm stand type of business, that we would require some sort of a CUP.

And what I'm thinking is that this is going to take us back to the matrix and we're going to have to update that and what's by right and what is going to require a CUP and what's going to not be allowed in certain areas.

I will say with the update of the comprehensive plan and the surveys and everything that Maggie is working on with Ag Forstrell and Historic Preservation Committee and preserving the rural nature of the county, I think we're going to have to do that anyway.

So I think this would be a piece of updating the matrix.

But yes, I do think we're going to have to update the matrix to put a finer point on we want more agricultural type businesses and activities in A1 and A2 out of the growth area.

And we want people to be able to have more options to do those types of activities.

So yes, I do think we may see more definitions.

I think we will see more matrix updates.

But yes, I think that's a very

Right.

Yes, sir, Mr. Coon.

I found a word back here.

Can we go back to page 13 under E, minimum lot size and homestead framework?

Does that tie in with this new definition?

As this is listed on page 7, it says, 1, homestead is new.

Do these tie together?

Well, yes, the tie together would essentially if we're going to require a minimum lot size for A1 and A2 for newly created parcels, we also want to make sure like there's a buy right use for it.

So then

If the minimum lot size is going to be 10 acres, then any newly created parcel would have to be 10 acres or more.

I know we're jumping the gun.

But also if we have the definition of a homestead that that would help, hopefully not just single family homes, but allow people to know that if they're on 10 acres or more, it'd be a homestead.

So they would have additional rights for that ag and horticulture uses.

So if somebody came in and say there's an existing parcel that's five and a half acres, they based on all the provisions today, they'd still be able to come get a building permit and build on it, but they wouldn't be able to have a homestead.

So what would be the benefit of the homestead?

I guess, going back to page seven, why do we need this?

What would be the benefit of of dividing the piece of property to 10 acres in

and tagging it as a homestead.

If you're enabling a to outside the growth area, because don't and help me understand.

I don't understand.

Yes, I mean, you can.

It's just right now today, the if we're going to require them to a lot size be 10 acres.

So

from a set period forward, it's not going to be able to be any smaller than 10 acres, people would still be able to build homes on the smaller acreage and you're right at 10 acres, you can start doing certain things.

This is just like I said, a better way to define what we expect to see in the A1 and A2 outside of a growth area.

Yeah, I mean, for intensive purposes, if you were to tell me what's the difference between a single family dwelling and homestead,

based on the A1 and A2 permitted uses, it's not a lot.

I mean, it's not.

Go ahead.

Mr.

Quick question.

It seems like to me that this is trying to clean up some incongruous usage for land.

And what comes to mind

is the difference in zoning and land use with respect to A1.

I mean, we've got A1 and A2 in subdivisions according to the zoning map.

Is there any interest in going through and trying to clean that up to get them back into some R categories, since it is obviously residential.

It's a subdivision, but we've got

I mean, that's a perfect example.

So another thing that the definitions would allow in the matrix is you could change what's allowed by right, what may require CUP or what's not permitted.

So let's say if we said it required a CUP or it wasn't permitted to have any residential dwellings in A1 or A2,

They would have to go through a rezoning process to try and rezone it R1 or R2 before they could build a house on it.

So that's another method we could use to help slow residential growth in A1 and A2 is require rezonings or CUPs or stuff like that for residential uses.

So in the zoning code, you want to make sure that we have definitions that have a finer point on

the types of uses that we would like to see in these different designated areas.

So it's something that like I said, we can always put a finer point on it, or change it, it doesn't need to be included.

But I do think we need to start thinking the Planning Commission and the board about as we move forward, if we really want the ag and forest you'll things to happen in a one and a two outside of the growth area.

I think we need to really work on our definitions and make sure the types of uses in businesses that we would like to see there are defined in the zoning code and then we include it in the matrix like we're talking about.

I think, thank you Mr. Coons.

I think moving forward that would be a good area to look at.

that if I come in and I buy, oh let's just say 75 acres with a plan to put in a subdivision, my first move is going to be to try to get, well I guess it's going to be a fight between desert perk number one, but number two, will I get it rezoned to residential if it's in an agricultural zone?

It's another step

But it will get it cleaned up going forward so that we end up with subdivisions that are zoned A1.

And then the matrix gets all flummoxed when we try to cover all these different things.

Well, this subdivision is A1.

This subdivision is R2.

It needs to be cleaned up.

We can't go back and fix the ones in the past, but going forward,

Just, I think I'm understanding this.

In your minimum lot size, you're suggesting 10 acres outside of the growth area.

Correct.

And it wouldn't, none of the acreage as of what we presented today, if someone were to want to rezone to R1 or R2, the minimum lot size would be what it is today, acre and a half.

So if they wanted to maintain the A1 or A2 designation, it would need to be 10 acres or larger, but they always have the opportunity to come and get a rezoning and then they could divide to 1.5 acres.

And but like you said, inside the growth areas, it would maintain the 1.5 acres.

Any other questions on that?

Yes, this is kind of just the overview.

So this is on package page 13, where it's

Collectively, what the ordinance revisions is trying to address is growth patterns, not population outcomes.

So the amendments are intended to reduce land fragmentation, is preserve agriculture and forestry lands, and limit this suburban style development in rural areas, just like Commissioner Goodwin was talking about, and then protect scenic roadways and open landscapes and then, you know, slow the pace of change to better match the infrastructure capacity and community expectations.

So that's, it's really that's the just conclusion summary of kind of what the intent of all these changes are really to make.

So we have the same presentation at 7 o'clock during the regular meeting under discussion.

And I would, unless the Commission wants to do this now, but I would suggest taking some time between now and then thinking about this.

And as we have the discussion, the discussions section at 7 o'clock meeting would be the proper time for Commissioners to say let's focus on these areas or those areas.

If you feel like, I mean I've been marking some things I think would be important to look at further so I think it's a good time to get that settled.

Mr. Quarles.

Well, we can certainly go, yes, that's why I said we're going to have the same presentation at seven o'clock.

But it's not a public meeting or a public hearing.

It's just a discussion item for us.

So it's good to have.

It's good to have the information out to the public, so we'll work through that.

I'm just trying to give us a goal for something to produce for the staff at the 7 o'clock meeting, so they walk away with something good from this meeting.

Is that suitable for you, Mr. Coon?

Fantastic.

Any other questions from the commission on this?

Mr. Chairman, if I could ask staff, based on the current growth numbers, the percentages, how many years out would the existing number of lots take us?

Would it already exist?

Any estimate?

So right now, if there was no more divisions, and we just use the A1 and A2, R1 and R2, it would be about 25 years if we kept the same pace we've had since like 2019.

We average about 30 to 37 homes a month.

But if we average 30 homes a month, it's 360 a year, and we've been closer to 400.

But

If we average 36 360 homes a year, it would be just under 26 years to full build out.

But that's assuming there's no divisions that take place, just the 9376 parcels that are in existence today, assuming all those could be built out.

So we're that's

I don't have any examples offhand.

I know of some that have happened in the Commonwealth that I can pull when certain people have enacted some of these minimum lot sizes or things like that and what their population is compared to some of the surrounding localities to them that I would say for all intended purposes what they intended to do and set the minimum lot size to maintain rural.

They are still rural today while most if not all of their neighbors are not.

So I can pull some of those.

I think that would be beneficial.

I would even suggest that we may want to consider loading the planning commission on a bus and we go and look at those.

I would certainly encourage including the press so no one thinks that we're trying to meet on the road.

I think it would be beneficial for us to go out and look and see the things that we may propose and enact and some of the results that may exist.

I would agree it is very very serious what we're proposing and this is good for us to make recommendations to the staff to investigate these things that we think maybe or maybe not beneficial so we can find out whether or not they'd be beneficial so it's it's important for them to do

More homework and present us with more information before we make those changes.

If you don't mind on that, to piggy bank off of Mr. Kersey, those surrounding areas where that did not work and they're not rural anymore, could you also provide us some examples of where they went wrong?

Where the ruralness was lost and what

Some of it, we will do our best to find examples of things that don't work because I know that's broad.

Yeah, the only thing that I could see to you know, certain things if they make a decision, but then anytime a CUP comes forward, they approve the CUP.

Well, then once you start losing the whole corridor,

So I'll do my best to find that, but that would be a little bit harder than some of the success stories, I think.

Because if localities change zoning very frequently, this is one of those things that's almost like set it and you point to where you want to be.

If you want to be a rural county and you want to grow and rural, you got to really stay steady for a long time because it may take the 10 years.

Mr.

Yeah, one last comment.

I think we need to keep in mind that this is not a one-time fix-all.

I used to be a mine countermine analyst when I was working, intel work.

And every time they would make a change in countermine, then somebody else would change the mine to beat the countermine.

and you're going to find the same thing.

We'll try to punch one of these gopher heads down through the hole and it's going to pop up somewhere else where they find a different way.

It may be private roads or whatever in the future.

So we're always going to have to look at this as a back and forth thing and I think when we're looking at success stories and failures

It really gets difficult when you figure out, OK, where are they in this back and forth process?

And the county saw that, well, they left a loophole.

So now they're filling their loophole.

Thank you, Mr. Goodwin.

Mr. Chairman.

I think if we look at Mr. Stone's maps, we can see the constant rate over 40 years.

And I brought with me tonight a proposal from the Board of Supervisors in 1991 in the Planning Commission.

And in that document was a recommendation of 10 acres.

We didn't have the stomach for it then.

I'm not sure we have it now, but the results of those maps demonstrate what happens when you ignore the process and you leave the throttle open.

And if we continue, I said 35 years ago we would look like Stafford County.

I don't know how many of you can remember when Stafford was very rural, but it was just a few years ago.

So if we don't address this in some fashion, we're going to lose our opportunity.

It will get past us.

Any other comments for the staff at this time?

Very well.

And that's all that we have on the agenda.

Thank you, Mr. Coon.

That's all that we have on the agenda for the work session.

I am going to acknowledge that we have some new members here tonight.

Mr. Todd Hicks has joined us in the Mountain Road District.

replacing Mr. Brooks, and we have Ms. Ashley Michael from the town of Louisa.

Thank you for coming as well.

So new appointees to the commission.

So very good.