Central Virginia
Louisa County
Planning Commission Worksession 5/14/2026
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Planning Commission Worksession
5/14/2026
Attachments
05 14 2026 - Work Session Agenda.pdf
PC 05 14 2026 WS Packet.pdf
CALL TO ORDER
I. NEW BUSINESS
1. ORD2026 – Amendments to Chapter 86. Land Development Regulations, Add Section 86-44. Conditional Use Permits for Electric Transmission Facilities
PC Work Session Memo - 05052026.pdf
2026-xx Electric Transmission Facilities.pdf
2. CPA2026-01; Proposed Amendments to the 2040 Louisa County Comprehensive Plan
PC Comp Plan Electric Transmission 05052026.pdf
LC Comp.plan Electric Transmission.pdf
Land Use Application 04132026 (2).pdf
3. Campground Definition
PC Memo 04152026.pdf
2026-xx Camping & Campgrounds 04132026 (Draft).pdf
II. OLD BUSINESS
1. Zoning methods to help reduce growth impacts
III. OTHER
ANNOUNCEMENTS AND ADJOURNMENT
SPEAKER_05
00:00:03
Mm.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:01:54
All right, I'd like to call this May work session of Louisa County Planning Commission to order.
00:02:00
We'll begin with new business, ordinance changes for electric transmission facilities and proposed amendment to the county comprehensive plan.
00:02:12
Mr. Kuhn.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:02:14
I was gonna say you've got it in your agenda packet and standard answer any questions.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:02:21
We looked at this last time, a brief presentation.
00:02:24
Does anyone have any questions or want to discuss anything on either of these since they go together with these two separate actions?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:02:38
It has been reviewed by our internal council as well as outside council that we've retained to assist with at least one project.
00:02:48
So it has been vetted and it's ready to move forward.
00:02:53
We have an opinion that it was ready to move forward unless you all have some amendments you'd like to make.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:02:58
Legally it's ready to move forward.
00:03:18
Well we do have both of these as public hearing tonight so we'll move on with them there and if you think of something between now and then we can pick it up then but I had not come up with anything myself and I think we've kind of talked through this last time so we can move on from there then.
00:03:41
Next up on new business would be campground definition.
00:03:45
Mr. Coon, is that you or is that Ms. Buckler?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:03:49
Ms. Buckler will come up too.
00:03:52
Just for clarification, this is something that we have taken to the Board of Supervisors.
00:03:57
We've gotten more interest throughout the community in opening campgrounds.
00:04:03
Ultimately the intent for campground is to use it as a, you know, campground for transient visitors to come in, enjoy the lake or rural areas.
00:04:14
But what we're starting to see is more individuals are wanting to use it as temporary housing, allow people to come stay on the campers as temporary housing on different properties.
00:04:25
That's something that is coming up and we wanted to brought it up to the board and board wanted to send it to you all to have the discussion.
00:04:31
And Ms. Buckler has worked on some updates to the definitions to coincide with more of the intent that we felt that was originally adopted several years ago when we had the campground.
SPEAKER_06
00:04:44
So the record came from the board at the April 6th board meeting just for the planning commission to look at the definition of a campground and what we have here in your packet is based on discussions that we had internally with county administration, legal and the community development department.
00:05:05
These are not
00:05:06
specific directives from the board.
00:05:09
These are just staff proposals.
00:05:11
We were asked to look at some surrounding localities.
00:05:16
We reached out to Albemarle, Culpeper, Plevana, Goochland, Green, Orange, and Spotsylvania.
00:05:22
And so we looked at what they had as far as their regulations, what came out of our internal discussions with staff, and so that is what we've drafted here.
00:05:34
Again, by no means are that is this a directive of this language from the board, but it's a starting place for the Planning Commission to look at these items and see if they want to make changes or have questions about what we've drafted so far.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:05:56
Mr. Quarles.
SPEAKER_03
00:06:00
Thank you Mr.
00:06:01
Chair.
00:06:03
Maybe, Mr. Coon, we're attempting to look at what this means and then it comes up as far as temporary housing.
00:06:15
What is temporary housing?
00:06:18
What's the definition there?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:06:20
So instead of someone coming and staying for a week or two weeks, they're doing it for six months, eight months, something like that.
00:06:28
Do we have a cap on that?
00:06:30
So that's part of the conversation that we wanted to have before you.
SPEAKER_03
00:06:36
Yeah, that's temporary housings.
00:06:41
kind of vague because you got to figure out what that means.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:06:45
And but that's part of the conversation is because if originally when campground was approved and considered it was something that was supposed to be for transient visitors coming up using the campground for a week maybe two during summertime springtime something like that but now it is shifting to
00:07:01
people that are coming here working in the area and staying for months at a time and that's that's not really the intent of what the campground definition was so that's where you know we wanted to have the conversation and see just like you said do we want to set a limit is it you know x days per month x days per year you know something like that just to better address the intent or is it something that we feel is okay
SPEAKER_03
00:07:28
I'd be concerned about that number and then also how we enforce that.
00:07:38
How is that enforced?
00:07:43
So those are my concerns.
SPEAKER_06
00:07:44
Thank you.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:07:51
I'm going to follow up on a little bit on this question I had.
00:07:56
One of the proposals is to limit states to no more than 60 days in a 12 month period.
00:08:01
Was that intended to be, just so I understand what the proposal is, was that intended to be a rolling 12 month period or is that an annual, like January to December?
00:08:13
Had there been much thought given as to which that was or just trying to just say 60 days
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:08:20
I mean honestly that would probably be fine just the intent there is if you had somebody that one week every month or every you know they come up a couple days Friday Saturday Sunday every week from the end of May till the end of September or something like that we want to give people that are
00:08:40
using it for the intended purpose their option to continue to do that.
00:08:43
But I mean, like you said, if you wanted to do July to June 30, follow the fiscal year any 12 month period, or, you know, do calendar year, I don't think any of those would be
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:08:55
So if you just kept the phrase in a 12-month period, it could be looked at from an enforcement standpoint.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:09:03
It would probably be more of a rolling 12-month period, where if you wanted it to be a calendar year, you would amend it to 60 days in the calendar year.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:09:14
Honestly, I think either one would serve the same purpose in what you're trying to accomplish there.
00:09:19
But OK, to a point.
SPEAKER_07
00:09:27
I would like to elaborate on this.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:09:28
Yeah, yes.
00:09:30
Mr. Painter.
SPEAKER_07
00:09:32
Mr. Coon, Mr. Butler, I just look at this, and I guess my view of it might be totally askewed here.
00:09:39
And I see it as campground.
00:09:41
And when I see the word campground, and I use them quite often, very regularly, and that implies a recreational use in my mind.
00:09:51
I'm going here for a purpose of R&R.
00:09:57
And I think in our community what we've done, we've brought a huge workforce into our community that we all live with on a daily basis.
00:10:06
At this point, there's lots of places in our community where there are trailers and RVs and campers.
00:10:14
I guess campers and RVs would be the better, where my mind's at.
00:10:21
We brought this to our neighborhood.
00:10:23
These people come here every day where they travel from Fredericksburg, Richmond, Charlottesville.
00:10:28
They're coming through our community every day.
00:10:30
And I feel like when I hear this as campground,
00:10:35
This is not what this workforce needs.
00:10:38
And I made just some notes while these gentlemen were talking.
00:10:41
In my mind, it's more of a workforce housing issue that we have, not so much a campground, a leisure activity.
00:10:52
And when I see this as I see it, this doesn't work for that.
00:10:57
Because we know that some of these are like 10-year-plus build-outs that we've brought into our community.
00:11:04
I think we need to really look and understand how we put this together.
00:11:09
And I say this because these people are going to come here every day.
00:11:14
They're just going to drive through our community.
00:11:18
I really think a lot of this, as it's written and as I see it, is recreation.
00:11:24
And I don't know how to get out of it.
00:11:26
I'm hoping somebody can help me understand a little bit better.
00:11:29
The temporary accommodations, if you say in two months,
00:11:34
And I talked to a gentleman that's doing the fiber.
00:11:39
He's like on a five-year contract pushing fiber all through the county.
00:11:41
We pass him all day every day.
00:11:43
He's been staying at the Best Western designs for two years.
00:11:47
He's now going to buy a house because he's looking at the economics of it.
00:11:57
I guess I just see this differently.
00:12:00
Maybe there needs to be two things.
00:12:03
Maybe there needs to be a campground thing, and there needs to be a workforce.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:12:08
I would agree with that.
SPEAKER_05
00:12:09
I think if that is the Avocado Planning Commission, that if we want to
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:12:14
address campground, just like you said, for the R&R, the recreational type uses, we can tighten those definitions.
00:12:21
But I do think on the back of that, it would be advantageous for us to have some kind of workforce housing temporary in nature, something that would be potentially a little bit.
00:12:33
It's different than a campground.
00:12:36
But right now, just today with what we have in our zoning code,
00:12:39
The closest thing is a campground.
00:12:42
So if we want to have those two different options, I don't think that's a bad idea.
00:12:46
I just think if that's the direction and I don't know what definition we want to call it, if it is workforce housing, temporary housing, you know, something along those lines that if we want to do something like that, that I think it'd be good to coincide the campgrounds as well as that just so that when applicants come to apply, if they want
00:13:07
the fiber individuals or the build outs those people come in and stay in for a significant period they know I'm going to be applying for X and if I want RVs to come and stay for we get a time for the lake that's going to be the campground so we have a clear separation of which one is which so however you guys want to do that I would
00:13:26
We'd be happy to work on bringing that definition.
SPEAKER_07
00:13:29
And it brings to mind from my own personal experiences in my youth was work in North Anna and Surrey and several other places in
00:13:40
You know, those outages in were four to six months.
00:13:43
They were much longer than they are now.
00:13:45
So when you went somewhere, that's what you did.
00:13:47
You found a place such as that, and a lot of my peers at the time used, not RVs, but a camper.
SPEAKER_05
00:13:57
A camper that you would typically see at a campground.
SPEAKER_07
00:14:02
So that's why it kind of comes to mind for me.
00:14:04
And again, North Anna's not going anywhere.
00:14:06
And when the build-out's done, that'll be done.
00:14:08
And I'm not saying that somebody that's going to come into town and say build a Wendy's in three or four months would be able to utilize that.
00:14:16
It might not be something they would use.
00:14:18
But I think with the workforce we have in our community, it would benefit us to have a means to support them.
00:14:26
really more than anything support them that puts us in the proper guidelines for the VDH side of it.
00:14:34
It's the health side of it that really catches more than anything where are we putting these at that we can have some idea and control
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:14:44
No, that's an excellent point.
00:14:45
And that's also part of the campground is that, you know, VDH only requires the standards once you have three or more.
00:14:51
So if some of these people are wanting to use two campers or campgrounds, and then they don't have proper well septic facilities, whatever, but just like you said, if it's a requirement that they can go through, get a CUP for whichever they want,
00:15:05
VDH may have different standards.
00:15:07
We've got, you know, there's electrical standards for bringing electric boxes that they can hook up to and water, wastewater, all that, that, you know, we want to make sure they account for, do it right and it's safe.
00:15:18
But I don't think that'd be a bad idea if we handle the campgrounds and also have some type of workforce housing.
00:15:27
So we can at least work on definitions and standards of what that may look like.
00:15:31
It may be a little bit, uh,
00:15:36
A little bit higher requirements levels than a campground just because if people are going to be staying there for a lot longer than a week or two, if it's going to be several months or things, you may want to add some additional standards, but we'll look at options.
SPEAKER_01
00:15:56
He's exactly right.
00:15:58
My question before he laid it out was how does this impact the people doing outages and stuff like that at North Animal?
00:16:11
And that's been going on ever since North Animal was built on a pretty regular basis.
00:16:18
What I remember from the board we just Talked about campgrounds and sent that to the Planning Commission, but was it did it have to do with Workforce housing for outages or was it strictly talking about campgrounds?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:16:38
Right now that's what it is is there just there's a lot of interest in people opening campgrounds that
00:16:45
When they articulate what they want to use it for and why it doesn't meet the intent of a campground, it's something more like a workforce housing.
00:16:54
So that's why we wanted to make sure we differentiated and make sure if campground is going to be something that we wanted to utilize and allow long term residency.
00:17:04
Let's make sure we amend the definitions and everything to account for that.
00:17:07
But honestly, having a second definition that clearly splits it, it would probably be a better solution than
SPEAKER_01
00:17:15
We sent it to the Planning Commission.
00:17:19
Like I say, there was an interest, so we just sent it to you all to hear it out.
00:17:29
I mean, for 50 years we've been doing workforce housing and stuff like that and been dealing with it.
00:17:36
So now, and we certainly, I think we need to have something that works to accommodate that.
00:17:44
In other words, these people got to stay somewhere.
00:17:48
And they've been renting places on people's private farms.
00:17:52
everything else to stay at.
00:17:54
So don't, I don't think we want to restrict that, but by the same token, I wasn't clear what direction you were going in with this campground thing.
00:18:05
Is it, I'm like, if you're talking about camping spaces, you know, the normal thought for a campground, that's one thing.
00:18:15
But if you're looking at a place for people to stay to work out, it isn't something that may be something completely different.
00:18:22
And I didn't have a clarification on that myself.
SPEAKER_03
00:18:40
Mr.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:18:40
Chair.
00:18:40
Mr. Quarles.
SPEAKER_03
00:18:47
My concern, one of my concerns is that we
00:18:53
In trying to rein this in, like Mr. Bartlett said, you could potentially affect a situation that we've been dealing with for a long time and the positives of it.
00:19:09
The negatives of it, some of it, could be that we're seeing an increasing amount of trailers or campers that show up in people's yards
00:19:23
that are detached from their house that run electric cords over and make other accommodations for other people.
00:19:34
And I think that's not the intent.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:19:36
Yeah and that's where I think if we better define what the campground is and then like Mr. Painting was talking about better define what workforce housing was and we can set standards so that if someone starts doing that that'd be a violation but they would have a clear avenue if they come to get a CUP they would just state the intent of who they would like to stay on the property and what the tentative time frame that they expect it to be was and then we would be able to tell them okay you
00:20:04
Mr. Quarles.
00:20:08
And then it becomes an issue as to how many bites of the apple do we get?
SPEAKER_03
00:20:34
because obviously if I apply for Mr. Kersey to be there and then I apply for, you know, the next one to be there.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:20:45
Well, you wouldn't apply per RV or camper.
00:20:49
It would be for the property to have that use on site.
00:20:52
So then they'd be able to do that up to five RVs or something like that whatever they wanted and then the Planning Commission and board would review it and approve it and then they'd have to go through those standards but it wouldn't have to be
SPEAKER_03
00:21:04
How do we stop the single unit going out there?
00:21:18
of campers to qualify?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:21:21
Yeah, same way a CUP that comes in and says, we're going to have no more than x units.
00:21:27
I mean, we do that even with planned unit developments.
00:21:30
If they say we want to have 114 residential units, if they submit a site plan, it's got 118, we tell them this is in violation of your CUP, you only get 114.
00:21:39
So I mean, we deal with that every day.
SPEAKER_03
00:21:41
So let me understand you correctly.
00:21:43
So if I apply for four, but only have one,
00:21:49
I mean, that's fine.
00:21:52
Well, that kind of defeats that purpose, doesn't it?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:21:55
No, because you could get three tomorrow that want to come and rent it and you'd be able to rent it to them.
00:22:00
You'd still have to do all the standards and whatever well or septic improvements, electrical improvements that would be required for that CUP.
00:22:07
So the property would be approved
00:22:11
So they'd have separate drain fields, is that the idea?
SPEAKER_03
00:22:35
I'm not asking you that right now, but the idea is that they wouldn't be tapping into
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:22:41
The existing house drain field?
00:23:00
the home.
00:23:19
Let's say 10 is the cap.
00:23:20
If they had two people renting or nine people renting, that's not a violation because they still have additional capacity there.
00:23:27
It would just be somebody that has no CUP, no infrastructure, and a trailer pulls up and they run drop cores and hoses.
00:23:33
That's not something that would be allowed.
SPEAKER_03
00:23:35
So understand my issue was not so much the idea of under, but I'm just worried about the situation where somebody decides that they just want to rent their trailer out.
00:23:47
and they apply for a campground and then the next thing you know it's just for the intent of
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:23:55
you know the grandson who wants to you know throw the use my RV out there in the back and well I mean if they that's gonna be what Planning Commission the board have to determine through the CUP process that if we require a certain level of infrastructure being installed for these uses I'm not sure that someone's gonna want to spend that kind of money for the infrastructure they'd be necessary for one person to live.
SPEAKER_03
00:24:19
I understand, thank you.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:24:22
So I had a question in looking through it and this is just to understand as you all were putting this together what you were thinking on these different things and that had to do with the the zonings that you were saying we could do this with a CUP and the zonings where
SPEAKER_07
00:24:44
We're not going to allow this.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:24:46
So how did you all select the zonings, the commercial C1, C2 with growth overlay and resort development, but set all the rest of them aside?
00:24:59
What was the thinking in that?
SPEAKER_06
00:25:01
That was based on discussions, like you said, that we had internally between community development, administration, and legal and that seemed to be the consensus of that group of about six or seven people that they wanted to see campgrounds in the commercial areas and that sort of thing and not throughout the county in agricultural or residential areas.
00:25:28
No, that's fine, that's fine.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:25:37
I'm just trying to get a sense of all these things.
SPEAKER_07
00:25:45
Then do we need to
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:25:50
If we were to do separate campground and workforce housing, then I guess there would be two separate ordinances and you all would draft us some language for workforce housing.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:26:08
That's what I've got here as a note.
00:26:10
We'll need to add a definition for workforce housing and add standards.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:26:14
So for workforce housing, and I'm just going to look up and down the row here, how do we feel about this?
00:26:21
Would workforce housing be a more regular stick-built kind of home or manufactured home or would it be
00:26:31
Still allow a travel trailer, camper, RV, that kind of thing.
00:26:36
I mean, what's the thought?
SPEAKER_05
00:26:39
I think you hit it well.
00:26:40
We have so much of that in our county.
00:26:43
And affordable housing is not as predominant as it used to be many years ago.
00:26:48
So for these workers to find some type of valuable residence that they can depend on for short term, I do believe it is in the county's best interest to look out for them and our workforce in that way.
00:27:01
Whether that's in one form of a campground or another, as long as we're doing proper checks and balances, maybe also with the building department, electrical code changed so much last year, you know, making sure the building departments incorporated in this so they can verify these connections.
00:27:21
But it's a really good topic.
00:27:23
I mean, it's a it's a large amount of staff in this county that participates in this workforce.
00:27:29
And
00:27:30
You know, this opened up my eyes a little bit to it of how vast that number is today, especially with the projects this county has in progress coming, whatnot.
00:27:40
That's a lot of work.
00:27:46
And I think my biggest concerns were the BDH requirements and making sure that our building department is tied into this somehow.
00:27:52
So, you know, we're ensuring safety of the workforce and the homes on the properties that this would exist.
00:28:01
I would certainly agree.
SPEAKER_07
00:28:11
And I really think that I'm a licensed contractor installer for Drainfield.
00:28:16
So what the VDH comes out with, and
00:28:20
Some of the things they kind of put out there, you know, when you have it on paper, because it all starts with an engineer that tells you what kind of soil you have, so what you end up from that point, you know, some are more expensive than others just because of the design of it.
00:28:35
I think that would be more than anything the largest controlling factor of anything that a person would decide to do because of the expense of that.
00:28:45
and the rest of it.
00:28:47
All these RVs and travel trailers are UL listed.
00:28:51
They're designed for a purpose and I think on the code side, it would fall under the proper wiring, the proper depth, the proper conduit, the proper pedestal that you hook to, a 50 amp, a 30 amp, a 110 type thing.
00:29:06
So that part I don't find so concerning and I think that
00:29:13
Even possibly as someone that wants to do this would get into it more.
00:29:17
In my mind, it can be quite expensive to start from scratch.
00:29:28
And I traveled and I've done it and I actually have a family member that still does it.
00:29:34
nuclear.
00:29:35
He's nuclear his entire career and that's what he does.
00:29:38
He travels with a travel trailer from one place to another.
00:29:41
Of course, they're shorter terms now than they once were, but with the workforce we have in our community now, it would make sense to look at doing something to benefit them and us.
00:29:52
I mean, they're on our roads, they're traveling.
00:29:54
They're coming to these data centers in North Carolina regardless of where they live at.
00:30:00
They're coming there every day.
00:30:02
So it would make sense to make it more accommodating all the way around.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:30:12
So I've got just a couple more questions to follow up and I'm going to
00:30:21
I want to go back to the camping side for just a moment because one of the things that struck me about a campground being only in commercial is if I, let's say I've
00:30:39
suddenly became rich, I don't know.
00:30:41
But I wanted to buy 700-800 acres of land in Louisa County if I could even find it anymore, but I was able to do that.
00:30:50
And I wanted to have camping
00:30:55
or there's a nice stream running through or something.
00:31:00
I wanted to be able to provide for hiking and fishing and that sort of thing.
00:31:04
And I wanted to have a campground so people could come.
00:31:09
And of course, the leisure activity is hiking trails, maybe horseback riding trails, maybe fishing, that kind of thing.
00:31:17
But I'm out.
00:31:18
I mean, this is big land.
00:31:19
I'm out in agriculture district, you know,
00:31:23
And now, it seems like there ought to be a way to work into that.
00:31:32
Because I don't know what you would do if you had that vision.
00:31:36
If we completely X everything out, you kind of walk in and say, I don't really know what to do here, how to provide for that sort of thing.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:31:46
I mean, in that scenario, they would just have to rezone it.
00:31:50
If what is presented before you, they would just need to rezone it to one of the commercial properties.
00:31:56
And then that would be one that I think would be pretty quick deliberation for everybody.
00:32:02
That's just how it would need to occur.
00:32:04
So unfortunately, it's, you know, it would help smooth out some of the process, just with the number of A1 and A2 properties there are out there that
00:32:16
I think you're going to see a lot of people interested in doing this.
00:32:20
There are a lot of people interested in doing this.
00:32:23
So that's part of where the conversation is.
00:32:24
And I think we do need to make sure we account for it when we look at the workforce housing aspect, that workforce housing may be in different zoning districts than what the campgrounds are.
00:32:37
But we definitely can have more conversations about that.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:32:41
So following, I got three questions here and I kind of build on each other just to kind of get to a full understanding.
00:32:48
So the next thing would be, do we have sufficient C1 and C2 in the county right now to do this sort of thing?
00:32:58
Or are we setting up for some large scale rezoning?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:33:04
I mean, it depends.
00:33:07
The people that are interested in doing it right now are in A1 and A2.
00:33:11
But if this was ratcheted down to C1, C2, there may be some individuals sitting on that property that would be willing to do that.
00:33:21
But just right now, as of today, if I could answer it, most of the properties that are coming to us asking for campground or asking information around workforce housing or something, they're not C1 and C2.
00:33:32
It's the A1 and A2 right now.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:33:35
So we'd be either restricting the amount of housing we could do or we'd be setting up for large-scale rezoning potentially.
00:33:49
So the final question, I think it's good to have a separate discussion about campgrounds and workforce housing, but in the end when you're
00:34:01
When you look at the requirements for each one of them, it looks to me like awfully much the same thing, except maybe in a campground, you can have a tent.
00:34:10
You know, but I mean, the rest of it sounds like pretty much the same kind of thing when you're setting it up.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:34:19
Some of the infrastructure may be to a higher standard, just because of more long term use.
00:34:25
Instead of a week at a time, it may be longer.
00:34:28
So there may be some additional infrastructure we would want to consider.
00:34:35
You know, that's, yeah, I mean, because when you really think about it, if it's commercial entrances, or gravel entrances, versus, you know, the electrical, the well and septic and how they're delivering that any additional
00:34:50
You know, is there going to be buffers, vegetative buffers surrounding each campsite or the whole campsite or so, you know, when you start going down the list of what you would want to change, I think we could come up with some delineation.
00:35:05
I don't think it'd be substantially different, but I do think if the intent is to live in travel trailers and campers for 3, 6, 9, 2 years, or stay there for a week,
00:35:19
you might have some different requirements there.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:35:22
Would you envision and maybe I think it's again this was all prepared for campground only and we're talking about breaking this apart so I mean would you envision someone being able to have a campground where
00:35:41
folks could, because it's popular to do when people buy travel trailers, they'll, they'll park it somewhere, and they'll go visit on the weekends or things like that.
00:35:51
Would that still be a campground kind of thing?
00:35:54
Because then you start to blur the lines?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:35:58
How do you do enforcement on somebody who's really living there full time, but that that would have to come up during the CUP process that if they wanted to have
00:36:09
10% of the spaces allowed for long term storage for usage just like that.
00:36:14
They come up on the weekends during the summer and all that, that we would want to make sure that it was addressed during that process.
00:36:22
I think as long as that's done in advance, I don't think it should be an issue where, you know, if they just decided to do it on on their own, without it being expressly
00:36:35
All right.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:36:36
Well, and I didn't follow up on one thing, and that was my dream 500 acres that I've got this little campground that people can come in and do hunting and fishing or hiking and fishing or whatever.
00:36:54
If I were to do a rezoning on that to get into campground here,
00:37:03
Would I be able to rezone only that portion that's used as a campground?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:37:11
I'd have to check.
00:37:14
It would probably be cleaner to subdivide and rezone, but you may still be able to rezone
00:37:20
I'd have to check with the new laws on being able to do that.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:37:26
Just kind of curious.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:37:27
Yeah, I mean, I know like you can get a CUP on part of the property, not the whole thing, but when it comes to rezoning, yeah, I don't know how that would.
00:37:34
I'd have to check on that.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:37:36
How we could do split zoning now.
00:37:38
We've got split zoning.
00:37:39
Yeah, but that was like we want to continue on.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:37:41
Yeah, and that was how it was done in the past and it's been in effect, but I don't know if we can double check that.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:37:50
All right, that takes care of me.
SPEAKER_07
00:38:00
To go off of what Chairman Disosway said, the kind of opposite, so a gentleman comes here and works for the week, and then say he lives 90, 100 miles from here, so it would make sense for him to come here, stay here during the work week, and then leave his
00:38:18
I see this looking totally different than a campground.
00:38:35
I picture a campground, walking trails, go off what the chairman said, walking trails, scenic wood lines, the playgrounds for children,
00:38:48
I had a pool, fire pits.
00:38:50
I wouldn't see that at a workforce campground, for lack of better words.
00:38:59
I see this as two totally different things that really at the end kind of marry up to be really close to the same thing.
00:39:05
And I think the biggest part is that there is a control on the waste aspect of the campground.
00:39:12
That's the biggest part for me is that we have some semblance of control, the waste of it, and it's not just in a pole in somebody's field or pasture.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:39:27
Well, I guess what we'll do, you all can continue to review the campground.
00:39:32
If there's any edits or changes you think that we should make, we would definitely address them.
00:39:36
And we will plan to come back next month with some workforce housing or other definitions that may be
00:39:44
appropriate and we'll add a definition standards and matrix and our intent is we'll probably expect to use travel trailers as kind of what would be utilizing this temporary housing at least for right now and but I mean we can look at other localities and see what else they offer they may offer some you know modular units on permanent foundations or something like that as well that we'll look up and see there's alternatives that meet the intent
SPEAKER_05
00:40:15
When we check into that, can we check and see if any of the other localities require buffers on these when they do that?
SPEAKER_07
00:40:32
I would almost say that would be an absolute non-starter for me on the CUP.
00:40:35
It would have to be secluded that nobody else could see it, in my mind.
00:40:40
So that would be a very strong buffer.
00:40:43
And I don't mean to clear it, plant it, and then we plant a row of pines.
00:40:50
I would want a buffer that no neighbor would have to see.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:40:55
Instead of, why don't we just go and look at successful buffers instead of if other localities do it we'll just say the expectation is going to be there's going to be buffers included and we'll try and look at what would be best for this.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:41:13
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Dickerson.
SPEAKER_00
00:41:15
Originally, Commissioner Quarles brought up the enforcement aspect.
00:41:18
I'm not sure we covered that thoroughly.
00:41:20
Would this be like a short-term rentals where it's by complaint driven or people actually going out from the county looking for issues to enforce?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:41:28
I'm not going to be able to answer that question until we get this fully vetted out, unfortunately.
00:41:33
I mean, if it's a CUP process, it probably wouldn't be a buy right with restrictions like we did with
00:41:41
short-term rentals it'd probably be an actual CUP so normally they're a little bit easier because we just pull up the CUP in hand or code enforcement would have the CUP in hand with the conditions that are required and if it's not to that standard but until we have everything vetted out I'm not gonna be able to answer how we would enforce it
SPEAKER_03
00:42:05
Mr. Quarles.
00:42:08
Follow up on Chairman Dickerson's question.
00:42:14
I hear what you're saying as far as that goes, but what initiates?
00:42:18
Whether it's complaint based or whether or not the county is going to actively go out and look at these CUPs that you have.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:42:29
What's in the ordinance?
00:42:30
So if we required an annual check,
00:42:33
every year for Coden's enforcement to go out there and check the property to verify everything's up to standard, then it's not going to be complaint based.
00:42:41
If we don't have those types of things in the ordinance, then it more than likely would be complaint based.
00:42:46
So it's just depending on how we want to do it.
00:42:49
It could change how it was enforced.
SPEAKER_07
00:42:52
I'd like to add on to what Mr. Quarles has suggested.
00:42:57
I would, at the minimum, an annual visit by code enforcement.
00:43:01
And I say that because of damaged equipment and, you know, backed into pedestals, electric out of whack.
00:43:08
That safety aspect of it I think would certainly have to, and I would, that'd be a minimum requirement to me.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:43:23
Very good.
00:43:23
Any other comments?
SPEAKER_02
00:43:27
All right.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:43:27
Well, thank you all for the initial proposal and for taking this further as we refine it and produce something a little bit better with it.
SPEAKER_03
00:43:39
Let me add one thing.
00:43:40
Mr. Quarles, please.
00:43:42
You know, with this issue, obviously, there's going to be some sensitivity with it.
00:43:50
Do you think as it goes along, and I know it's in the infant stages, but when it goes along, do you think we should form like a committee that maybe of not only just staff drawing this together, but not only the Planning Commission, but maybe some input from local citizens or whatever?
00:44:10
Do you think that would be an idea of how to form and shape this thing?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:44:15
What questions are you trying to get asked and answered?
SPEAKER_03
00:44:18
No, when you're talking about putting this whole thing together.
00:44:22
So tonight we've come up with dividing the recreational aspect of it from to the workforce set up.
00:44:34
Before we come in with a hard and fast thing, do you think we could put together a committee of
00:44:41
I have different inputs to kind of mold and shape this.
00:44:45
I mean, how does that look?
00:44:52
I mean, obviously, it's too early right now because we're just now putting this together, but putting ideas together.
SPEAKER_02
00:45:10
Mr. Chairman, just in listening, I've dealt with people's mail over the years and these workforce folks, they've been residing in the campgrounds in the county for years.
00:45:26
So you may want to talk to people that are running these campgrounds.
00:45:31
They're already doing both.
00:45:33
They're recreating and they're working out of these campgrounds.
00:45:37
So it's not necessary that we reinvent the wheel.
00:45:42
It may be worthwhile to have some engaging conversation with them to find out what they have been doing, what works, what hasn't.
00:45:51
Before we venture too far, I think Mr. Quarles has a very good idea here because
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:45:57
The information certainly is out there.
00:46:27
Mr. Quarles, would you like to work with staff in pulling all that together?
SPEAKER_03
00:46:37
Sure, let me know.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:46:43
Would anyone else like to work with Mr. Quarles and staff on that?
SPEAKER_07
00:46:47
I hope that was cool.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:46:48
Very good.
00:46:49
So Mr. Painting would like to help as well.
00:46:51
And between you all and contacts with local campgrounds, sounds like we can get some good information together.
SPEAKER_03
00:47:01
We'll do our best.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
00:47:02
Very good.
00:47:03
Thank you.
00:47:05
All right.
00:47:07
I guess we can move on to the next item, which is the zoning methods for reducing growth.
SPEAKER_05
00:47:20
Can I take off on that one for a few minutes?
00:47:25
I'd like to explain for those watching and others that may not understand why we're introducing this or what led us to this point.
00:47:37
This is part of a complementary plan that the board and that the county has done an amazing job of the past decade or more.
00:47:47
in bringing this ties together what the data centers bring to the county.
00:47:53
This is preserving our rural character.
00:47:55
This ties together the county surveys that our citizens have taken.
00:48:00
You know, it's a it's a direct reflection on our growth, which affects our schools 75% plus of our budget.
00:48:07
It's firing EMS.
00:48:08
It's
00:48:10
It's all of our county needs from being the fastest growing third fastest growing county in the state for years.
00:48:19
So, you know, this is not not the most attractive part of the county's plan.
00:48:24
But these zoning changes have to happen in order for us to be a good complement to what the board has done as a whole, and the direction of our county.
00:48:34
So
00:48:37
At the last board meeting before, when we lowered our taxes 15%, they were clear.
00:48:43
That's step one in the direction that we're going.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:48:48
This is step one, too, in zoning.
SPEAKER_05
00:48:50
We have many steps coming behind this, such as PDR, TDR programs, growth areas, and stuff to talk about.
00:48:56
But what we have to put on the table first is these topics.
00:49:02
And it's focusing on A1, A2.
00:49:05
In our rural areas, what we're able to do with our agriculture with all these AFDs forming, what we're at 35, 36,000-ish acres in the county, now with recent applications and more tonight, our citizens are doing an amazing job of saying, we want to preserve the rural character.
00:49:29
We're voluntarily doing all these things.
00:49:33
It's not something we have in effect now, but as we look towards our future and incentivizing these programs are something we're going to look forward to to come.
00:49:43
We've got to also complement them with zonings and slow down the A1s and A2s in our rural area.
00:49:50
So what we're here to talk about is not growth areas tonight.
00:49:55
It's not TDRs, PDRs yet.
00:49:58
That will follow suit next.
00:50:01
This is step one, and it's just A1, 2s, and how our county has chewed up in so many different ways now.
00:50:10
We have steps that we put in here, zoning changes, that we put in there for the reasons of looking at it from multiple points of view.
00:50:20
You know, minimum acreage is going to be something that's talked about big.
00:50:23
We put it in there the way we put it in there that Chris is going to explain, but we're able to look at what a 15-acre parcel can do from a forestry standpoint.
00:50:32
We're able to look at what a 10-acre parcel can do from an ag standpoint.
00:50:36
It is to begin the right conversations to the topics that do what our comp plan says we are supposed to do, slow, preserve role character.
00:50:48
So it can be a lot to take in, because this is a substantial change to the county.
00:50:55
But it is to complement the direction that we're going.
00:50:58
Now, we did use Lancaster as a roadmap, because Lancaster has done an amazing job in Pennsylvania.
00:51:06
everything there is to do about their county, the way they've focused growth, the way they preserved, or Louisa, we're a little bit different because our footprint was already established.
00:51:17
We're, we're behind the eight ball and them in a sense.
00:51:20
So.
00:51:21
So how do we preserve what we have?
00:51:25
And slow that strictly in a ones and a twos, a ones and a twos are our topic.
00:51:31
For this format, we've
00:51:34
We've done our work groups together.
00:51:36
We've had lots of discussions.
00:51:38
We've received counsel, which I'd also like to suggest we receive legal counsel with what we're going through tonight and some of these topics to make sure that we meet new state code.
00:51:52
Please help behind us.
00:51:56
But during this, I don't want the citizens to feel like we're just taking from them.
00:52:01
We're giving tax benefits.
00:52:03
The board has had just an amazing plan to complement its citizens with this growth.
00:52:09
And if it seems as if we're taking away, we're coming around the corner with a way to give that back.
00:52:15
I just ask for people to be patient, hear this thing out in its entirety.
00:52:19
and see it as its big picture.
00:52:23
So with that being said, Chris, I'm going to let Mr. Kuhn roll on with this.
00:52:29
And as we go through, we can.
00:52:32
Talk about how we came up with some of these topics, what they affect, what they do, and so forth.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
00:52:38
Absolutely.
00:52:39
So what you all have in front of you today, Sloan residential growth layered approach to Louisa County.
00:52:44
That's what we're ultimately going to talk about.
00:52:47
But if you'll indulge me for just a little bit, what I wanted to do is make sure we went back and where this started and where the board had recommended.
00:52:54
We send Sloan residential growth to Planning Commission kind of while we got here.
00:52:59
So of course, one of the things we've got is we've been one of the fastest growing counties in the Commonwealth.
00:53:06
If you look at what the census estimate is, as of 2024, we were at 42,000 people.
00:53:13
And based on the anticipated growth there, we could be at 47,600 by 2030.
00:53:21
And I know we already have surpassed, I think it's 43,000 in estimates now.
00:53:26
So we're halfway through 26 and we already have another 1,000 people on here.
00:53:33
So what we looked at, and I know Supervisor Barlow has got some issues with this, but what we looked at is the total parcels without a dwelling in Louisa County.
00:53:42
And right now it's 9,347.
00:53:44
Some of those are landlocked, some of those are not going to be developed.
00:53:49
However, what we did not account for is we did not account for divisions that could occur and happen by right.
00:53:56
So what our hope is, if you take the lots that are landlocked can't be developed, you take the lots that can be divided and have the road frontage,
00:54:03
You're going to end up with something relatively close to this.
00:54:06
Even if we plus or minus 10%, we're still at 8,000, 9,000 parcels that could be developed in Louisa County.
00:54:16
So when we look at that, where is it located?
00:54:18
Inside the growth areas, there's about 2,500, almost 2,600 parcels that don't have a dwelling right now, so it's only 27%, where the 73%, three quarters of them are located outside of the growth area.
00:54:33
With that, that's where we've got A1, A2.
00:54:35
987 parcels are inside the growth area, where almost 5,800 are outside the growth area.
00:54:43
And then R1, R2, you can see it's almost an even split.
00:54:46
Inside the growth area, it's 1,500.
00:54:48
Outside, it's only 1,000.
00:54:51
So one of the big reasons why we started this whole concept is where we're at right now.
00:54:56
On average, the average home in Louisa County costs about $4,800 in service costs when you add sheriff's office, fire EMS, schools, general administration, landfill, and parks and recreation.
00:55:12
And that's not everything.
00:55:13
That's just
00:55:14
what those services cost.
00:55:16
The average annual tax revenue for those homes is about 3900.
00:55:20
So that deficit is $856.
00:55:22
Right now, Louisa County, we average about 33 new homes a month.
00:55:29
So we average about 430 homes a year.
00:55:32
With the recent board reduction in the personal property tax rate, which I know the residents appreciate, but that delta has now risen to about $1,000.
00:55:41
It's about $20,978,980.
00:55:46
So what you're looking at is at 430 homes a year, that means there's a budget deficit of about $430,000 is going to happen year over year.
00:55:54
as well as when you account for inflation.
00:55:57
As you can see here, if all existing capacity is built out, the total operating cost is going to increase by forty four and a half million dollars and total revenue generated would only be thirty six point five million.
00:56:09
Now it would actually be less than that.
00:56:11
So that structural deficit would end up being about eight million dollars a year.
00:56:16
But one thing this does not also account for is the new schools, the new fire stations, the new capital investments that are necessary.
00:56:23
So when you start adding
00:56:25
you know $50 million schools as well as those operating costs, a new fire station that may be $15, $20 million with apparatus, all those things start adding to where the service cost per home is going to continue to escalate.
00:56:38
And if the county as well as the board I know want to maintain our low tax rate, that deficit is going to continue to grow.
00:56:45
So what can we do to make sure that our growth is in line with this?
00:56:51
Um,
00:56:53
This is where we're going to talk about it today.
00:56:55
So what you have before you, we've got why this approach is needed, which essentially just articulates what I said, and then what this strategy does.
00:57:05
So effectively, our goal in this is to minimize land consumption, keep farmlands viable and usable, and discourage speculative or short-term subdivision activities.
00:57:18
And when we look at everything we're about to talk about,
00:57:23
I just kind of broke down the steps.
00:57:25
So what you have before you is step one we're fixing the way land is divided in A1 and A2 out of a growth area.
00:57:32
Step two we're aligning everything and letting the changes start to take effect.
00:57:37
Step three we're offering the preservation tools.
00:57:41
Step four is to refine the growth areas if needed.
00:57:45
And then step five, we want to track and make incremental improvements as we move on.
00:57:51
And then the major themes that I want you all to just take into consideration as we go through these is ultimately we want to slow residential growth in a responsible way.
00:58:01
We want to preserve the rural nature of Louisa County.
00:58:04
We want to ensure growth does not outpace infrastructure or services.
00:58:09
We want to provide more options for working lands and then we want to support housing availability and affordability over time.
00:58:19
So what I'm going to do is I will have to
00:58:28
I'll make it work.
00:58:30
So what I want to show here in this image, this is in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
00:58:34
So if you see on the bottom row, you can see the homes that are down there.
00:58:38
Right now, all these lots below are about half acre lots.
00:58:42
There's 15 of them.
00:58:43
I do think there's two lots on the right side that it looks like different homes purchased two lots.
00:58:49
So they've got an acre, not the last home on the right, but the two in the center.
00:58:59
All right, I'm going to walk around.
00:59:06
I've got a big error message on the screen.
00:59:10
What we're looking at is, as Mr. Hicks mentioned, we're looking at increasing the minimum road frontage to 450 feet.
00:59:20
So what that would do in this image is I've measured out what 450 feet would look like.
00:59:26
So instead of having 15 housing lots like they had, it would end up being five housing lots.
00:59:33
And
00:59:35
Of course, what that does is that helps maintain a real nature.
00:59:37
You don't have a mailbox every couple feet.
00:59:39
I know that's a complaint we get on a regular basis when homes start popping up.
00:59:44
This is something that right now the average, if you look at an A1, the average feet between mailboxes, it's about 230 because you have 200 feet the first two homes and then 300 feet
00:59:57
for the last one.
01:00:00
And then for A2, you've got 200 for the first two and 300 for the subsequent.
01:00:05
So that average is about 270.
01:00:07
So ultimately, what we're doing is it would just be 450 feet of road frontage required for any property A1 or A2 outside of the growth area.
01:00:16
We'd standardize it, it would just be one option.
01:00:19
But that's ultimately what it would look like on the street level.
01:00:24
So then if you go to the setback section, we've got two different options there.
01:00:29
Todd can speak to some of it.
01:00:32
So what Lancaster has done and what we're talking about is similar.
01:00:37
So what Lancaster does is they have a setback minimum, but they also have a setback maximum.
01:00:44
So what it has is homes are set essentially in a band.
01:00:48
So they can't build any farther back and the reason being is because if they cap how far back the property can be, even if they own the acreage in the back, it's still farmable because they can't build a home all over the place.
01:01:02
So what we had discussed was
01:01:06
Either we have setbacks that would be a minimum of 250 feet, so homes would have to be behind that 250 feet line, or we could do it where setbacks would be no less than 200 feet, no more than 300, and there'd be a 300 foot band where homes could be.
01:01:27
So what that would ultimately look like is what we've done is we've shown the road frontages there and then the depth is what would be required for a 15-acre lot.
01:01:38
The reason why we got there, as Mr. Hicks mentioned, what we want to do is make sure that if we're going to encourage agricultural use, we want to make sure new lots being created, the new parcels as well as remnants, are large enough to be able to get land use taxation.
01:01:54
That's something that it's workable lands.
01:01:56
Virginia Tech is the one that operates that land use taxation.
01:02:00
And if we want something like that, we think that's a pretty easy threshold to make sure we have it.
01:02:05
21 acres is what's necessary for timber, and we felt that was a little bit too high for what we were trying to accomplish.
01:02:12
But coming down to 15 acres, it's land that's workable, and it gives more options available as we move forward.
01:02:19
But we also had 10 acres and 6 acres.
01:02:22
6 acres is the minimum acreage allowed for land use if you're cutting hay or something like that.
01:02:28
So we just wanted to include that in here.
01:02:32
to finalize kind of what we're talking about with the setbacks if we move forward with the recommendations with the bands.
01:02:38
Essentially, this is what it would look like.
01:02:40
And we superimposed it on this farmland to just kind of show that farmer on the top of the screen hits the one that sold those homes along the road.
01:02:50
So he divided it and sold it out.
01:02:51
This is a perfect example of if that were to happen, then
01:02:56
The homes would be located somewhere in that band, the 200 to 300 foot if we move forward with that, and then all that.
01:03:03
Land would still be usable.
01:03:05
And of course, he could always, if multiple people wanted to buy it, just say, will you let me lease that back acreage?
01:03:11
And if they say yes, okay, that's the one he sells it to.
01:03:14
If no, maybe I go to the next person, but at least gives him that option.
01:03:18
And that's something that we talked about.
01:03:20
The only issue that we do have is that if we change the setback requirements, that's not only gonna affect new divisions, that would also affect people that may own land today.
01:03:30
They want to build.
01:03:32
And this is where Commissioner Hicks and Commissioner Goodwin had some comments on it.
SPEAKER_05
01:03:38
Looking at these two different options to discuss both ways, you know, when you're looking at that band where you see those houses that in that center strip, one of the topics that came up with us was that front strip by the road and behind the house that also being able to be usable space for well and septic, you know, maybe if there's certain topo reasons or
01:04:00
Whatnot that restrict that, that's one way to help get the houses in that area.
01:04:05
And then you think, well, what if that doesn't work?
01:04:07
Well, that's the point.
01:04:09
There's no one growth doesn't work.
01:04:12
Another point behind that is, you know, Mr. Goodwin brought up a good point in our work group.
01:04:20
Our county is surrounded by a lot of wealth.
01:04:23
We have three major cities around us and just a lot of wealth coming in here.
01:04:27
So we do have people that can buy 10-acre parcels all day long, about 15-acre parcels all day long, and are happy to do that.
01:04:36
And if someone wants to come to Louisa County and they say, I don't want to be in that band.
01:04:41
I can afford a half a mile driveway, a quarter mile driveway, because I want that privacy and I want to feel like I'm in a rural area.
01:04:51
It's hard to say no to somebody that wants to come in and compliment your county and build a nice place and enjoy the privacy that we provide.
01:05:01
But on the argument of hand from that is we are taking away from forestry.
01:05:06
We are taking away from agricultural in that process.
01:05:09
So that's a big reason why we put these two options up here is to discuss the pros and cons of both ways.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:05:17
Which way we're directing?
SPEAKER_05
01:05:18
Are we talking about this farmer?
01:05:20
Are we talking about forestal?
01:05:24
They're both good options, and they are both tools that slow the growth.
01:05:28
And it's it's whichever direction we want to unify together and and decide on but either way,
01:05:35
The front setbacks on both of these options that Mr. Kuhn has is absolutely preserving the role of character when you ride down the roadside.
01:05:45
So that's one major win of both options.
01:05:48
And I think we have good discussion points on the other ways.
01:05:51
Maybe we need to hear a forestal opinion, an ag opinion, and so forth so that we can put that out for public knowledge.
01:06:01
Thank you, Chris.
01:06:01
That was really good.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:06:04
So before we move away from this, just a question.
01:06:08
Assuming you would have a front setback and a rear setback and the land behind the rear setback is open, now this is for building a house.
01:06:17
Suppose someone wanted to build an outbuilding.
01:06:20
Would you be able to build an outbuilding in the land behind that's beyond the rear setback?
01:06:26
Or is that those setbacks for all structures on the property regardless?
SPEAKER_05
01:06:31
It could be either or, and I think it depends on which direction we're going.
01:06:34
If we're going for a forest road approach, or we're going for an agricultural approach in agricultural, I would say no, don't go past it because then you're taken away from that farmer.
01:06:45
But in a forest will stand point if you're talking to outbuilding in the woods past that band, I don't see it.
01:06:51
affecting that nature.
01:06:53
It's hard to find that complement in between.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:06:55
Well, we and just point of clarification, we also discussed that once you get to a certain acreage, there may not be these requirements because if you're on 80 acres working the land, it may be different than if you're on what may be the minimum lot size and a one and a two moving forward.
01:07:13
So that's part of the conversation is that
01:07:15
There may need to be some different requirements or allowances if they get past a certain acreage.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:07:22
So, just to follow up, if I want to buy a 15-acre lot, what I want to do in the back is because what your example will set aside a forest.
01:07:36
Your agricultural example is all tillage here.
01:07:40
So, what if I want to put a barn back there and have some animals?
SPEAKER_05
01:07:45
And that was Commissioner Goodwin's good point was people who do want to use that back parcel for many great reasons.
01:07:54
It's extremely hard to tell that person because that's a great reason.
01:08:00
So we thought it was a good discussion point to go between this or just doing a standard 250 setback off the road and what we're what we're trying to achieve out of it.
01:08:12
So
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:08:13
And this is one where, just to remind Planning Commission, what we were tasked with doing was trying to strike a balance between slow and residential growth while maintaining housing opportunities, preserving rural character while supporting working lands, and then also recognizing that long-term tax stability for residents requires some growth to occur, but we want to make sure it's done in a more manageable and planned way.
01:08:40
So with this,
01:08:42
I think we're doing our best effort to say, in the band, if we set it back 200 feet from the road, I think you're going to maintain that rural view shed.
01:08:50
It's not going to be homes right up on the road as you're driving down.
01:08:52
You're going to feel like you have a little bit more room to breathe as you're driving down the road.
01:08:57
If you let homes come to where one is behind the 15-acre lot at the blue, one is between the back black line and the bottom of the 15-acre, well, now you start getting to the point once the homes are there.
01:09:13
That plots no longer usable because now you got homes everywhere.
01:09:16
It's just not going to be workable when the homes are all over the place.
01:09:20
So if we want to make sure that we try and encourage the agricultural use, that's something we just need to take into account that if homes are going to be built anywhere on the property, it could have a detrimental effect.
01:09:31
And I know there's people that have said if you just increase minimum life size and don't really do anything else,
01:09:36
I understand about the homes and the question had was not
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:10:05
The residents, the question was outbuildings.
01:10:09
And when you look at, you know, if I want to buy a 15-acre lot, fine, I build my home where I build it there.
01:10:19
But if I want to do, you know, something like animals and I want to put a barn in the back and have some pasture back there.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:10:30
I wouldn't see why that'd be an issue.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:10:32
I mean, ultimately, so the question was, what kind of structures can you put back?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:10:35
Can you put any structures, I would say agricultural structures, more than likely, ag exempt structures in the building code, because if the whole purpose of this is to give that farmer options, you know, we haven't really gotten into the TDR PDR programs as an option.
01:10:52
as an alternative to divisions, but this is one if they get to the point where they do the division, this may be one where they can potentially, it's not saving it, because of course, someone else would still own it, but it would give them the opportunity to try and lease that land back to continue to work it.
01:11:07
Yeah.
01:11:07
So and that's just that's where if the individual wanted to utilize the land, it is their land.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:11:12
But just just trying to give that a clarification on the types of structures you could put outside of the band.
01:11:18
That's all.
01:11:19
Okay.
01:11:20
Mr. Quarles.
SPEAKER_03
01:11:23
Don't you open yourself up to, again, we see barns that people have weddings out of, electricity and all the amenities at home.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:11:40
With the CUP.
01:11:42
So they come through Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors for that.
SPEAKER_03
01:11:47
OK.
01:11:48
Still, how do you differentiate between agricultural and a home?
01:11:54
Because some of these barns are very nice.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:12:01
I mean, the building code has standards for agriculture exempt structures versus single family dwellings.
01:12:07
And those are two completely different things in the building code.
SPEAKER_03
01:12:12
That far apart?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:12:17
building code if they're used for AG purposes.
01:12:20
So there's no inspections or things like that.
01:12:22
So I mean, the home is a lot more stringent than pole barn or something like that.
SPEAKER_03
01:12:31
Understand.
SPEAKER_05
01:12:34
And that question may be referring to like ad use, where that's kind of a mix between here's my SFD, here's my home, my barn, my AG is in the back.
01:12:44
But
01:12:46
You know, I have I have this in the middle that that's Chris, what do you recommend on that?
01:12:53
Sorry, Mr. King.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:12:54
I mean, yeah, I think if there's an intent for resident if if this is the route we wanted to go, I think if there's going to be
01:13:01
A residential use.
SPEAKER_05
01:13:02
Normally, an ADU would be something like a garage with livable apartment upstairs, or 50% square footage of the SFD is the requirement.
01:13:10
And it's got to be attached.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:13:12
No, it doesn't have to be attached, just 50% or less of the main.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:13:17
It would have to be in the band.
01:13:20
Because that's a livable structure.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:13:23
Because I mean, when you think about it, there's electricity, well, septic.
01:13:27
I mean, they're going to have to have all that stuff.
01:13:28
So I don't know.
01:13:33
But yeah, I mean, that's part of the discussion that we had.
01:13:35
Do we want to keep the band building setback to no less than 200?
01:13:39
No more than 300?
01:13:40
Did we just want to set a setback of x right now?
01:13:44
50 feet is the minimum amount of setback you can get somewhere 50 to 60 depending on
01:13:51
where you live and where the property is.
01:13:53
If we just wanted to, you know, put it 100 feet setback, double what it is getting a little bit farther off the road and anything behind that.
01:14:01
But yeah, that's one that we didn't know which way to go.
01:14:05
But we wanted to bring that to you all.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:14:09
Personally, I like the idea of the band.
01:14:12
I think there's benefit in that.
SPEAKER_05
01:14:15
One thing the band does achieve is, you know, in today's market, small farming is very popular.
01:14:20
People love having chickens and selling their eggs.
01:14:23
And, you know, farmers markets have come up as a topic multiple times.
01:14:28
And that does allow the availability of a small farm within that minimum parcel.
01:14:34
Small farm can take away from a large farms always looking at it both ways.
01:14:38
But it's definitely a great discussion topic between the two.
01:14:43
And I don't believe that either one of these topics is incorrect or wrong.
01:14:49
Like we said, we think they're both achieving preserving rural character.
01:14:53
It's farm and agricultural side to consider behind it.
01:14:58
So I liked the bands as well, to compliment.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:15:05
One thing I did skip over, but this will help show it is we do have right now a lot configuration requirement.
01:15:14
We've got on here recommendation 40 to 95% depth to width ratio.
01:15:21
So if you look at the width of 450 feet of road frontage requirement, then you end up
01:15:28
only being able to go back a certain level.
01:15:30
So this would be one where if we didn't want to set an exact minimum lot size per se, but we want to make sure that they were square rectangular lots.
01:15:40
that you would want that ratio somewhere between 40 to 95.
01:15:44
Of course, you know, 100% you got perfect square.
01:15:46
If you get 50, you get a rectangle.
01:15:49
So it would look more like the 10 acre lot at about 50.
01:15:53
Not exactly, but it's about 46%.
01:15:55
The ratio for a 10 acre lot.
01:15:58
And that's just one that if we didn't want to go through the minimum lot size, but we wanted to still account for not having those really weird irregularly shaped lots or
01:16:08
Thank you very much.
01:16:39
We also had access standards.
01:16:41
I know we've talked about it last time, eliminating the private lane subdivisions.
01:16:46
That's something that we've talked about hasn't really gotten too much comment.
01:16:51
But these are lots that more often than not should probably be one lot.
01:16:56
But they're utilizing the private lane end up having a front and back lot.
01:17:00
And then we're getting more lots and you know, more driveways, more mailboxes right on the road where
01:17:05
People are starting to, I'm not going to say come to their senses, but they're starting to realize the benefit of utilizing that and, and we're getting a whole lot more of them.
01:17:13
We had more this year than the past decade, right?
01:17:17
Yeah.
01:17:18
So last two years, we've had more in the past decade.
01:17:21
So this is something that people are really utilizing.
01:17:24
And later on down the road, we end up start having problems when people, you know, dealing with making improvements to that driveway or adding gravel and now you got neighbor disputes and
01:17:33
They want us to step in.
01:17:35
But that's something that we said we wanted to eliminate that private lane.
01:17:39
And then one thing that we've talked about that we do need the attorneys to review, but we've, you know, we had a decent amount of conversation about it is actually division timing controls.
01:17:50
So if we were to look at doing phase divisions, to where if someone did a division, they had to wait two years from recordation before they could do another one.
01:18:00
The thought process behind that is
01:18:03
Individuals want to come here, purchase land, divide it as fast as possible, sell it off and get out of Dodge as fast as they can.
01:18:10
This would honestly help individuals that have lived here longer that are more here for the long term that, yes, it might take a little while to, you know, have to wait a year or two before you make that second or third division.
01:18:26
But we think we would see a reduction in speculative people just coming in
01:18:32
making the divisions, sell them and leaving.
01:18:35
But like we said, that's something that we'd have to evaluate.
01:18:39
I think it's something that based on the fact that we've been one of the fastest growing counties for over a decade now, that there's some provisions that we can utilize because we are starting to outpace our infrastructure and our services.
01:18:52
So it's something that we might be able to utilize for a short short term until
01:18:57
we bring that fastest growing county or one of the fastest growing county monikers down.
01:19:03
And then we might have to address that.
01:19:05
But that's just one we wanted to bring up as point of discussion if you all were interested or not in that.
01:19:11
And then the last item that we did have regarding family division standards, we don't plan on changing anything about the lot sizes or the how the access to family divisions or anything like that.
01:19:22
But there has been conversations about
01:19:26
People are starting to circumvent.
01:19:28
They purchase it, they hold it for five years, and then they sell it with no real intent to have any, you know, members of their family live there, develop it or come forward.
01:19:39
So what we're looking at doing is trying to do something where we required a minimum hold of two to three year period after division.
01:19:46
But we also had a sliding scale where that retention period would essentially be 12 years minus the years of ownership.
01:19:54
So if we've had members of the family or members of the community have been here for 10 years, 12 years, whatever, they could do a family division and then
01:20:02
Anyone that they could do a family division to would have to hold it for two to three years But then they'd be able to sell it so those people in the community have been here for a long time would be able to get a little bit more benefit than someone that purchases it and Immediately does the family division then that whole period or retention period would need to be 15 years So that's something that we were trying to do a sliding scale to try and benefit people who've been here longer than people that just come here
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:20:32
Let me just ask one question here that I've always been curious about from an implementation standpoint with the family subdivisions.
01:20:40
So I think one of the statements in family subdivision ordinance right now says that family subdivision ordinance can't be used to
01:20:54
To circumvent, that's the word I'm after, to circumvent regular subdivision ordinances.
01:21:03
So if we make these changes,
01:21:06
Just say we did what's depicted up here with the setbacks and the road frontage and that sort of thing.
01:21:15
So this would all be required for each and the private lane deletion.
01:21:22
We just throw it all in the bucket for the moment.
01:21:25
So if we put all those in place, any family subdivision would have to meet each one of those requirements as well.
SPEAKER_07
01:21:33
Is that correct?
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:21:33
No.
SPEAKER_05
01:21:35
We're not changing the requirements of family subdivisions.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:21:40
I understand, but it's the statement in family subdivision that says you can't use a family subdivision to circumvent subdivision ordinances.
01:21:49
Are we changing subdivision ordinances here?
01:21:52
I'm trying to clarify the phrasing of the word in here.
01:21:58
I'm just saying suppose we were to put all of these things in place.
01:22:09
Whatever things we were to put in place, would they also apply to family subdivisions?
01:22:14
So if I come in with a family subdivision, would I have to meet these requirements because they're part of the
01:22:19
subdivision.
01:22:20
So I can if I have if I buy land for sent family subdivision and hold it, I could cut it up any way I want to and you put housing where you want to and you're done no matter what we do with this.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:22:31
Well, the minimum to clarify Yeah, no.
01:22:33
So the minimum lot size for a family division right now is 1.5 acres that that would remain the access to the property.
01:22:41
It's not a private lane essentially can just be a driveway or an easement that would remain the same.
01:22:45
The only one of these discussions that really could affect it would be requiring the single family dwellings in that band, the 200 to 300 feet.
01:22:57
So the setback from the road is probably the only one that would really affect because even the 400 foot road frontage, it's not necessary for a family division.
SPEAKER_06
01:23:15
So unless that were to change that may not affect as well unless it had road frontage.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:23:33
So just just trying to clarify that in my head.
SPEAKER_06
01:23:37
So these changes are actually like zoning?
01:23:40
changes to the zoning part of the land development regulations, not necessarily the subdivision requirements.
SPEAKER_01
01:23:55
Clarification, the family division is exempt from subdivision but not zoning so if you pass this then in A1 zone or A2 with a 450 foot road frontage the family division would also have to have a 450 foot road frontage, correct?
01:24:21
Unless it's in
01:24:24
Well, I'll take that back.
01:24:25
If it's out of the growth area, just in the normal A2 zone.
01:24:29
So, family division, like I say, is exempt from subdivision, but not zoning.
01:24:35
So, if you make the 450 foot road frontage, then that, I would think, applies to family division as well.
SPEAKER_06
01:24:43
So right now the road furniture requirements in zoning don't apply to family subdivisions because our family subdivision regulations are based on the state code requirements which allows family subdivisions to be accessed off of a right-of-way.
01:25:01
So zoning requirements apply as far as minimum lot size setbacks and that sort of thing, except for frontage requirements because the state code specifically says they can be accessed often for right-of-way or easement.
SPEAKER_01
01:25:14
So the frontage requirements do not apply.
SPEAKER_05
01:25:21
That was something we spent a lot of time on because we were really conscientious to make sure that those that were using these family divisions in the right intent
01:25:31
to grow generationally in the county that this did not restrict them.
01:25:36
You know, we really wanted to protect families of Louisa from still being able to use a family division in the correct way.
01:25:45
What we're trying to prevent is you can go on Zillow right now look in our district and you'll see lots listed for sale and the seventh one is listed with family division rights.
01:25:54
So immediately that a two parcel turns into 10 or however many
01:26:00
They can get with the family.
01:26:04
And that's what Mr. Kuhn and staff has this added in there for the retention period, strictly to minimize the investors coming in for short term gains.
01:26:17
If they're going to use these family division rights that we're going to keep in place as is, they have to hold it for a number of years.
01:26:24
And chances are, if they have to hold it for a number of years, they're going to go invest somewhere else.
SPEAKER_01
01:26:31
Well, you remember not too many years ago, we had a ten year hold period.
01:26:37
I remember.
01:26:38
And that got changed to a five year period.
01:26:43
And it completely, you talk about circumvention, then all of a sudden five years is not that long.
01:26:52
So a whole lot of them were bought.
01:26:55
in health for five years and then sold.
01:26:58
Whereas that 10 year period did its job.
01:27:03
And that was, in other words, I mean, we do these regularly.
01:27:10
And when I was doing them at 10 years,
01:27:13
There was virtually no circumvention because when that road changed, I had clients, okay, we've changed it to five years.
01:27:25
What can I do to hold it?
01:27:29
I'm going to give this lot to my son or daughter.
01:27:32
What can I do?
01:27:34
for them to hold it, to make sure they hold it for 10 years.
01:27:38
They didn't want to back up.
01:27:40
Some of which even put a deed of trust on the lane and then found out that didn't work because as soon as the lender's going to lend money on the house, they wouldn't take it with a deed of trust.
01:27:53
But people weren't upset about that length of time except for the ones that were going to circumvent the ordinance anyway.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:28:18
So, you know, this is ultimately step one.
01:28:22
As you all can see, we have a couple other options in there, depending on how we move forward.
01:28:28
You know, there was some conversation about if you increase minimum lot size or road frontage, then you could be effectively taking division rights away.
01:28:38
That's where potentially the TDR program comes into play allowing these individuals that may have three to seven division rights today, but
01:28:47
If we change these standards, they may have less in the future.
01:28:50
What we're looking at doing there, it's in that packet.
01:28:54
But ultimately, they'd be able to send their division rights or development rights, we would use it interchangeably, to the growth areas.
01:29:02
And what the hope is is that in the growth areas, that's where you may see more duplexes, apartments, condos, townhomes, something with a little bit more density where there's
01:29:13
better infrastructure to handle it.
01:29:15
And that should also help address the affordability issue.
01:29:18
Because whenever you have more units with a lower infrastructure costs, you normally have lower options, which would increase the housing opportunities.
01:29:28
So that's where you know, we want to look at utilizing that to make sure that anybody that would lose
01:29:34
those potential division rights, they would have an opportunity to sell them in an open market system.
01:29:40
Then we've also got tentative plans for the PDR program, which would also be an alternative to divisions where we're looking at that, you know, Maggie's kind of gone over that with you all and describe that and
01:29:52
You know, Ag Forrester District and individuals would sign up for a 10 year 15 year payment.
01:29:58
And we're still working out some of the structures and details on that.
01:30:01
But that's another option opportunity that ultimately would lower the tax burden for individuals that had it.
01:30:08
I'm not going to say it would
01:30:10
prevent someone from wanting
01:30:29
and offer programs to help assist with that.
01:30:32
And like I said, that's part of as we go through the zoning process as well as these preservation programs.
01:30:39
And then we want to look at the growth areas to potentially allow for some increased density with the purchase of TDRs.
01:30:47
But that's something we can also look at someone comes with a PUD or CUP for a higher density residential development.
01:30:55
That's something they can help mitigate their impact, where if they purchase TDRs, you're taking development rights and in
01:31:01
New homes away from outside of the growth area and putting them in the growth area where we would expect them to be.
01:31:06
So that's something where, like we said, it's a holistic approach.
01:31:10
We're trying to do our best to balance everything from slowing growth, maintaining the real nature of the county, making sure farmers have or really producers of any kind have options that's not just division if they need it, and then making sure that for the affordability piece, we try and focus the growth where
01:31:30
It should be which is in the growth area where which has the infrastructure.
01:31:35
So that's about all we have.
01:31:37
And I think really, some of your thoughts about which way we want to go regarding the setbacks.
01:31:44
And if there's anything that stands out here as being too much or want to look at alternatives would be helpful.
01:31:50
So we can try and work on that and provide any more information as you all would like.
SPEAKER_05
01:32:08
And just to lightly reiterate, this is step one that's not being discussed.
01:32:14
And we're going to work through it.
01:32:16
And it's not being sent right away to the board.
01:32:19
We're going to implement these steps in, culminate it as a package, and send it to them.
01:32:27
as a total vision, you know, step one, two, three, four, all as one as we culminated together in a grand plan versus one to their docket every month or two.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:32:41
Yeah, instead of trying to build the bike while we're riding it, we get it all together at once.
01:32:46
And then we can take it.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:32:47
Any comments from any commissioners?
SPEAKER_03
01:33:02
I appreciate and applaud the work that's gone into this study.
01:33:07
And I think there's a lot of good information.
01:33:13
But when you think about changing landowner's rights verbally in the middle of the game,
01:33:32
We might want to look at things a little closer to make sure that we're not taking rights because that may end up a jagged sword with things going like they are in our economy.
01:33:51
It puts people on edge, especially against government.
01:33:56
So we look at these things and
01:34:01
and let's weigh it out before we make a hasty decision.
SPEAKER_07
01:34:06
That's my comment.
01:34:16
Would this just be on new properties or would it be on something that I have ownership of?
01:34:20
Would I fall into these guidelines?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:34:22
So it would be the newly created parcels that would be on new parcels, but if we had 15 acre minimums, for example, if it was for new parcels and remnant pieces,
01:34:33
I feel with the scenario that you depicted here in this picture,
SPEAKER_07
01:35:03
If that farmer's in a position where he's selling, he's dividing his property and selling it, I mean, I just don't feel like if he's at that point that you're going to try to lease it back to till it for row crops, hay or whatever.
01:35:23
What would that look like in a in a forested area?
01:35:28
Would it look the same?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:35:30
I think so it would be and then it would just depend on
01:35:33
The rest of the property, that depending on if it is, it could still be utilized for that.
01:35:40
And that's the whole thing.
01:35:41
Like when we look at it, what we're trying to do is provide as many options as possible.
01:35:45
So what individual farmers do or what individuals want to utilize it as that would be up to them, you may be right, they may not want to lease it back, it may not be something they're interested in.
01:35:54
But if we're going down this path, we want to at least discuss it that this is what we're trying to take into consideration and make sure those options are available.
SPEAKER_07
01:36:03
That 10-acre parcel there in the middle, say that that's the only place that property would perk or the terrain dictates that you can't build a house there, lowland, swampy.
01:36:18
What comes of that 10-acre parcel if it can't build in that setback?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:36:25
The same thing that would happen in a parcel that can't be built on today.
01:36:28
It would just be 10 acres.
SPEAKER_05
01:36:32
World character.
SPEAKER_07
01:36:36
So if that's completely forested, what's the benefit of not allowing that person with the 15 acres to build towards the rear of his lot?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:36:48
I'm sorry, I don't understand.
01:36:51
What now?
SPEAKER_07
01:36:52
Well, I see what you're attempting here with the ag section, that the farmer could potentially still till that soil.
01:37:01
But if it's
01:37:03
If you're in a completely wooded site there, area there, what benefit would you have at that point?
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:37:10
I mean if the owner sold it and reserved the right to make at least one additional cut, then the owner would be able to make that last cut.
01:37:17
So there'd be 30, well not full 30, but you know you'd assume if you calculated that up behind the black line there could be
01:37:27
30, 40 acres of trees still there, that if they reserve the right to at least cut that one more time, they could still get that.
01:37:36
And that's why I said that's where the options come into play.
01:37:39
There's going to be a lot of situations that individuals may not want to utilize that, but we just wanted to make sure that it's part of the conversation and the options are available.
01:37:50
And it may not be what's best.
01:37:51
This may not be what you guys recommend, but this is just
01:37:56
what we're trying to work through.
01:37:57
I mean, that's why we came and literally, it's either we increase the minimum setback to 250 feet from the public right of way, and they can just build anything behind that.
01:38:06
Or we do like a band where it's no less than 200, no more than 300.
01:38:10
And that's why we came up with both of them is just because we don't disagree with either one, we think both are good options.
01:38:17
It's just up to planning commission and the board, what they think is the better decision moving forward.
SPEAKER_05
01:38:40
And I really love what Commissioner Quarles said.
01:38:46
It was something that we said in our work sessions over and over again.
01:38:51
And it was something that's dear to our heart.
01:38:53
It's hard to talk about.
01:38:55
Everybody that this affects is all of our friends, all of our family, all of our constituents throughout the county.
01:39:02
This is, as I stated, the non attractive part of our grand plan.
01:39:06
And this is the part where we are taking something of value from somebody.
01:39:11
And that's, that's heartbreaking.
01:39:13
So we've been, as a county, putting steps in place to make sure that we're giving them something of value back, you know, step one was a small step in the 15% tax reduction.
01:39:25
So they're
01:39:27
And they've been apparent that that's something that's going to continue and continue to grow.
01:39:31
And two other incentives that we are looking at that, to be clear, are not in existence right now, but we are working on is one initiation is incentivizing these AFDs to come.
01:39:45
That could be a tremendous value to the farmers that voluntarily participate in these programs.
01:39:54
And third and most important is the TDR and PDR programs that we're going to work on to come.
01:40:01
So this is taking value in some situations, in many situations.
01:40:08
But we are giving value back in many ways as well.
01:40:12
We're trying very hard to look at it, but this focus looks at the zoning of it.
01:40:18
And that is the aspect of it that does do that.
01:40:25
It's something we put a lot of thought into.
01:40:29
And it's part of preserving rural character and slowing growth.
01:40:34
It comes hand in hand with this plan.
01:40:38
So I hope it's received well.
01:40:42
I hope it's received in kindness and in its intent.
01:40:46
But you are very much right, Mr. Quarles.
01:40:51
It is taking something of value and we're working on the programs behind it to bring that value back to them the best we can.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:40:59
And just to reiterate, that's also why we would plan on bringing it all together as one whole package opposed to doing this, and then slowly working on something else and then coming forward with that and slowly working.
01:41:11
So it's, it's all together.
01:41:12
So it's, this is the whole package we're talking about, instead of one at a time.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:41:21
I think it's very good work to begin with.
01:41:25
I'm sorry, Mr. Barlow.
SPEAKER_01
01:41:27
Just, I think right then I've heard it a couple of times, but that's the best thing I've heard out of all of the discussion is, and that's something that I had talked about earlier.
01:41:40
You know, we have Ms. Beckfield and we have the Ag Forrester Committee that we formed and I think we can really come up with something good if you have a holistic approach.
01:41:56
But what I was afraid of, we were going to do a knee-jerk thing and try to do zoning issues that just stop things dead in their tracks.
01:42:08
and then you don't have the follow up to make these things work together.
01:42:14
And with the, I think we certainly had the right intent when we started and formed a committee.
01:42:21
We hired a person who's, that's our expertise, is to try and bring these farms to bring the, kind of incentivize the rural character of the farming and forest and stuff like that.
01:42:36
But I do think
01:42:38
What I would really like to see is what Mr. Coons just said, a holistic approach to this thing that sort of brings it all and not do it piecemeal because when we've done that in the past, and I'm not talking about the planning commission, I'm talking about the board and my time on the planning commission, you fix one thing and shoot yourself in the foot on the next.
01:43:03
I mean, it's easy to do.
01:43:05
So I think
01:43:09
This is a great start.
01:43:12
There's a lot of things to be looked at.
01:43:16
And just the reason why we wanted to come with these individual steps is just because it is going to be such a large complex
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:43:39
Interconnection of how it all works out it we just wanted to make sure we can come we can talk about this piece and we can come talk about the next piece and then once we've kind of vetted everything out and we're in general consensus with how it's all going to work and how it's all going to interconnect now we just have more opportunity to talk about it more opportunity to show where you know pieces connect or where they don't where we want to address it and then
01:44:03
As we take it to the board as one holistic package, then at least Planning Commission has had a good long while to review it, make recommendations, look at different things as different items come up.
01:44:15
And when we start adding stuff to it, now there may be different ideas or thoughts come out.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:44:23
As I was saying, I think you've done a really good job on step one here.
01:44:28
A lot of the work just from your request for feedback on the setbacks.
01:44:38
Personally, I don't have a preference right now on the setbacks.
01:44:43
I haven't thought through one or the other enough.
01:44:48
I can see merits to both of them.
01:44:51
The phase divisions.
01:44:53
I think that's a really good concept, the timing on that.
01:45:00
I like your time frame consideration, two to five years.
01:45:09
I've wrestled with this a little bit as to which makes more sense in my head and I haven't come to a conclusion yet on the longer, shorter end of it.
01:45:18
I wouldn't go less than two years certainly, so I'm still thinking about that one.
01:45:30
With what I see you're doing with family subdivisions now, or family divisions, I think that's, personally I think that's fine.
01:45:41
Having the minimum hold period on the back end, I mean it's five years now, but I understand if you go to a sliding scale you could reduce that.
01:45:50
Personally, I was never in favor of changing the 10-year hold period.
01:45:55
I thought the 10-year hold period was the proper thing to do and that was, well, let's just say I didn't agree with that and still don't agree with it.
01:46:08
So I do think there needs to be some hold period on the back end, no matter how long the property's been in the family.
SPEAKER_07
01:46:17
There needs to be some hold period on the back end.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:46:20
So, and that generally doesn't punish people who are using the property properly for a family subdivision.
01:46:31
If you're following the intent, that whole period is not an issue.
01:46:34
And there are things built in to the ordinance that allow you to dispose of that property if you absolutely have to.
01:46:42
You know, legal
01:46:45
issues that come up and that was glossed over I think when the change was made from ten years to five years so that should not be an issue and if you're really using this for the intended purpose that you know you've got kids and they want to live on the place you know
01:47:06
I'll make sure that we look at the division timing control and verify the
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:47:33
like I said the requirements I think with us being a high-growth locality there's certain stipulations that we can utilize but yeah I'll look into that and see what our options are with that.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:47:47
I don't know how any of the other commissioners feel but I wanted to give you my input on that as well.
01:48:02
Any other comments?
SPEAKER_01
01:48:07
Just a request.
01:48:09
I was trying to follow along with your PowerPoint, which is great, but I didn't download that anywhere or see it where I could download it.
01:48:18
Can you email that to me?
01:48:20
Yes.
01:48:21
And I don't know if anybody else wants it, but I think it would be helpful.
01:48:26
so that we can follow.
01:48:27
I was trying to follow along with what you were trying to present to us and it's not in this.
Christopher S. Coon
Deputy County Administrator
01:48:36
In having some discussions, there were questions about what it would look like on an actual piece of property.
01:48:41
So that's where I wanted to make sure that we had visual images.
01:48:44
So I'll, I can email the these images, and then I'll just summarize what each one are.
01:48:52
So I can send it to the group.
SPEAKER_01
01:48:53
I think it'd be helpful to me anyway.
George Goodwin
Member, Planning Commission
01:48:58
There's no other commentary from the commissioners.
01:49:02
I do want to observe a few minutes break between the meeting so we'll be fresh and ready for the next one.
01:49:11
So in that case, thank you all so much for this and we are adjourned.