Planning Commission Meeting   4/13/2021

I love it.

I love it.

Right.

Let's see here.

Yes.

Just one second.

I'm getting ready to move Mr. Rapp over.

Oh.

OK.

Ms.

Firehock.

OK.

Ms.

Moore?

Here.

Mr. Carrazana?

Well, thank you.

Well, then I will say welcome to the Planning Commission April 13th, 2020 electronic meeting.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance number 20-A-16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

Opportunities for the public to access and participate in the electronic meeting will be posted on.

Albemarle.org, community county, county stash calendar when available.

We've established our quorum and I'm going to call us in order.

Thank you.

And this evening, we don't have any items on our consent agenda.

So with that, we'll move directly into our work section, which is CPA 2021-02 Comprehensive Plan Update.

What just happened?

All right evening, everyone.

I'm Rachel Falkenstein.

I'm planning manager and I work in long range and comprehensive planning.

I'm here this evening to discuss an approach for our comprehensive plan update with you all.

So the purpose of this evening's meeting is to receive initial feedback from the Planning Commission on an update, a proposed approach to update the comprehensive plan through a phased process.

And we'll also share with the Commission for Information a project approach that we presented to the board and share some of the feedback that we received that has led us to update and develop the current approach that we're going to share this evening.

And we have two discussion questions for you all to consider.

The first is, do you support the phased approach to the comp plan update?

And then secondly, is there anything missing from this approach or anything we should highlight or focus on with the proposed project phases?

So our agenda for this evening will be a little bit of project background.

I'll share, like I said, that initial approach that we developed, some board feedback, and then a revised project approach.

And then most of the time will be for you all to discuss and we'll be here for questions.

I think I should have about 10 minutes of presentation.

So a little bit of project background and history.

State code requires that every county, city, and town adopt a comprehensive plan.

And the purpose of it is to plan for the physical development of the locality or the territory.

And the state code requires contents within the plan, such as long-range recommendations, transportation plan and maps,

Provisions for affordable housing.

And then also has some recommendations on other topics to include such as a plan for land use and community facilities and services.

A state code requires that localities review their comprehensive plans every five years doesn't necessarily have to be updated, but take a look at it every five years.

And as you all know, we do this kind of on a rolling basis on the county because our master plans are actually part of our comprehensive plan.

So every master plan update is a comp plan update.

We also do topic updates periodically.

Our most recent one was the biodiversity action plan update and housing Albemarle is working its way through the process right now.

And so we have a long history of comprehensive planning in the county dating back to 1971.

And this timeline just shows some of the major planning milestones that we've had in the county since that time.

And our most recent comprehensive plan update was completed and adopted in 2015.

So a little bit of why we're looking at an update now.

We have surpassed that five year timeline, even though we aren't technically required since we've done recent updates that I shared.

It is about time we probably want to think about looking at the comp plan and seeing if it makes sense to update some portions of it.

There's been quite a bit of change in the county since 2015.

There have been some significant policy developments.

A few of which are listed here on the slide that align with some of the board's strategic initiatives that have made significant progress or just a change in direction since 2015

Climate Action Planning, we've adopted the first phase of that project.

Project Enable, which is our economic development policy that's been adopted since 2015.

We've also developed a new office of the Office of Equity and Inclusion and a new community core value that focuses on the topics of equity, inclusion, and diversity.

And then lastly, Housing Albemarle, which is making its way through the update process right now.

Additional reasons to look at an update at this time is the growth that we've seen since 2015.

As you all know, we experience as we get development review applications before us, there's definitely quite a bit of growth happening and an increasing demand for urban services related to that growth.

There are portions of our urban ring that are getting more urban and our service needs are changing because of that.

We also have housing affordability issues that persist in our region that take

That might require another look at the comp plan.

Another reason is to apply some more plan focus and prioritization.

We've been using the 2015 comprehensive plan document for some time now.

We have some experience with it.

and have learned a few things.

It's a very comprehensive document.

It has quite a bit in it, but what we're finding some challenges with are prioritization with so many strategies trying to really understand where we should focus our efforts.

And so doing a prioritization exercise we think would be an important focus if we do an update at this time.

Lastly, to set the stage for future work and implementation.

It's related to that prioritization piece, but the comp plan is really implemented through quite a bit of the work we do in community development and countywide.

Future work such as capital investment planning and regulatory updates really should look to and rely on our comprehensive plan.

One of the main implementation tools we have in community development is the zoning ordinance.

Ideally, our zoning ordinance would match the comprehensive plan, and we think this update could give us an opportunity to realign the zoning ordinance with our comprehensive plan.

Our zoning ordinance currently is about 40 years old since we've done a really significant update, and we think this update could be that time where we're due to look at updating our zoning ordinance to be more consistent with the comp plan.

So now I wanna share the initial approach that we brought to the board.

We had two work sessions, one in February and one of March of this year with the board where we brought just a pretty high level project approach to them because we wanted their feedback and kind of where they saw this project going, especially as it relates to resource needs because they really set our work program and the resources to support that work program.

So we initially brought a three-year planning process to the board.

It conceptualized this project as a complete review from visioning to adoption that would allow us to step through a series of five phases.

Each phase was designed to kind of build upon the next phase with an increasing level of detail and specificity.

The way we initially approached it was we would kind of take a look at all topics at once, but start really high level with the visioning work and then get more detailed as we go along.

We shared the estimate for timeline and budget for each of these phases.

And we really developed this approach based on researching some precedents and best practices.

We tried to look at plans, especially that focused on equity and inclusion through their processes and through their content updates.

We also brought to the board an engagement approach.

Again, it was high level, it was not a detailed engagement plan, but we wanted to get

their thoughts on how we do engagement because there would be resource needs associated with this.

And so while we haven't fully designed the approach yet, we did bring some components to them that we wanted their feedback on.

And it was really focused on incorporating our new organizational core value of community, really focusing on bringing diversity, equity, and inclusion to the way we live our mission and in this case, the way we do engagement.

So one component we brought to them that I'll share.

Again, there were a couple other components, but one that I thought we had quite a bit of discussion on and you all might be interested in is the idea of a project advisory group.

So the idea would be we would develop a new group of residents to help advise the comp plan update.

to advise on aspects of the project scope and the content.

And we would select members, invite members to apply and volunteer for the group, and then have some selection criteria based on county demographics, looking at topics of race, place, age, gender, and other topics such as that.

And really trying to get a good diverse group of people that represents the county and the county's demographics.

And so we would ask this group to participate through the update process and give feedback and also help their networks get involved and understand and provide feedback on the process.

And so the board feedback on both the approach and the engagement approach that I shared was mixed.

They had quite a bit of support for the engagement approach I shared.

with you all, especially the project advisory group.

They liked that idea, thought it could be a good pilot for us doing engagement moving forward.

But they did have some concerns about the length of this time associated with the project.

Most notably, thinking about the implementation work that would come after the comp plan update and that specifically being the zoning ordinance update.

They kind of expressed some urgency with doing the zoning ordinance update work.

and didn't want to see that work wait until we completed a three-year comp plan update process.

So while they were supportive of doing a comp plan update to some extent, they wanted us to do it in a way that allowed for work through the zoning ordinance to happen concurrently and to begin relatively quickly.

So based on that feedback, we've gone back to the drawing board and thought of a new approach that hopefully

addresses those concerns that they shared about the timeline and the zoning ordinance update.

So we've developed an approach that would allow for kind of distinct and parallel updates of the comp plan and zoning ordinance.

And we would break each of the projects into phases.

And after each phase, there would be an update of the documents.

So for the comp plan,

We would, after phase one, update the comp plan after that phase is completed before we moved on to the next, rather than, as I shared before, it would just be one update at the end of the three-year process.

And then the comp plan phases would be sequenced so that related zoning work could happen parallel to the comp plan update.

Still, we would apply lenses of equity and climate action planning to each phase.

You'll see in a second how those aren't

So an updated approach for you all to consider is that we have four phases of work and

It's thinking about the work through topics rather than one big kind of everything at once approach.

So the first kind of bucket of topics is still relatively high level, but it's important foundation for the subsequent work.

I'm calling that capacity and growth.

And this work we will probably look at

And I'll back up and say that we have currently several chapters in the comp plan.

And we would look at a couple of chapters with each of these.

And we might end up with a different grouping of chapters or different organization of the plan.

But I'll talk about kind of what chapters we would look at with each of these phases.

So the first one, we would look at our introduction chapter, our vision chapter, and our growth management plan.

We would do our capacity analysis.

Our current comp plan tells us we should look at our capacity for growth for a 20-year horizon.

to make sure development areas as they are now can accommodate the projected growth.

So we would do that analysis work with the first phase, and then we would check in on our vision and goals.

The second phase I'm titling resource planning, and we would look at our current chapters that cover topics of natural resources, historic resources, parks and trails, and pull in these topics.

Again, climate action planning, I think, will be really important in this phase, but something we'll look at throughout.

and look at detailed topics about stormwater management, flooding, air quality, tree preservation, all of those topics in this resource planning bucket.

The third phase, I'm

titled Transportation and Economic Development, where we would do our multimodal systems plan.

You may have heard a little bit about this planning effort.

It's something that VDOT wants localities to adopt if they want to develop urban street standards.

Those urban streets would be those with narrower lane widths, on-street parking, wider sidewalks, things that you see in an urban environment.

We need to do that planning work before we can get the street types in our locality.

So that would be the Multimodal Systems Plan, and this is also where we would bring in our economic development policy, which is called Project Enable.

We have not pulled that into the comp plan since it's been adopted, so we would do that work in the third phase.

And then lastly, calling this the places phase, we would look at our development areas and rural areas chapter, see if any updates are needed based on the previous work,

and the topic of land use, which relate to both development areas in rural areas.

We also have chapters on housing and community facilities that we would look at within this chapter, I'm sorry, within this phase.

So that concludes kind of the approach that we wanted to share with you.

Again, we don't have a ton of detail.

We're just still kind of working through this, but we wanted to hear initial feedback before we get too detailed.

to make sure we're heading in the right direction.

So here to hear from you all this evening, I'll share that we're going to the Board of Supervisors for a discussion on the Community Development Work Program on May 5th, and they'll give us a further direction on where they see this work going.

And then we'll come back as we begin to get more detail for additional opportunities for content scoping with you all.

So that concludes my presentation.

I'll put those questions back up for you all just as a refresher.

Again, initial feedback, but I want to know if you support the updated approach to the comp plan and if you see anything in this high level approach that's missing or anything we should kind of highlight or focus on when we think about our phasing.

And I'm going to go ahead and stop sharing my screen.

Thank you, Rachel.

Thank you so very much.

Folks, who would like to, or do you have immediate questions?

I know we're going to have this small amount of time that we open up for, not small amount, but we have some time that we open up for public comment before we get there.

I know you had mentioned on that one slide that the Board of Supervisors had expressed a concern about the duration, which I think has showed that they go out until 2024.

We haven't gotten that detailed in our timeline yet, but I would imagine that would still be the case.

I think the difference here is it would allow for the zoning ordinance update, hopefully, to happen sooner than that.

Thank you.

And Mr. Chair, will we have a chance to continue this discussion with Rachel after the public hearing?

Absolutely.

Okay, so I'll hold off then.

Okay, absolutely.

Rachel, one thing that I think would be helpful

to share, maybe not tonight, but when you come back to us, is a little bit about the past history on the update that the commission was involved with in years 2012, 2013, going into

Yeah, ending in 2013.

And then the board, as I recall, spent over a year, if not 18 months, somewhere in that area.

I'm being just general here.

I don't have a specific sense of time.

But when you put all of that time together, it really is not

very different from the three years that you have presented here this evening as part of the original game plan for this.

I think given all the other demands for time of staff, which is very different than back in 2012 when this process last got started, Elaine basically had the luxury of dedicating the bulk of her time

working on the comprehensive plan update.

And I do believe you have some other responsibilities.

I recall that there's something going on on Route 29 and oh yeah, a little project also in terms of updating a master plan in Crozet.

So the staffing challenges now I'm feeling are even more acute.

for county staff to be tackling this than was the case before.

I will also add that in 2012 to 2015, the county was able to leverage because of a grant that both the city and the county both together received, they were able to hire two planners

Mindy Burbage was one of them who came in to work for the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission on coordinating the comprehensive plan updating process for the county and the city simultaneously.

So we did a lot of community

Planning Commission, city and county workshops together.

And the boards also did workshops together with city council, I believe.

I definitely know the two planning commissions work together on this.

And therefore there were additional personnel who were dedicated to this that is not going to be the case this time.

So I think

It's really important for there to be a reminder to everybody in terms of expectations of the really acute limitations that our staff is going to be facing in terms of this update.

Thank you, Rick.

Thank you.

That's extraordinarily important to be able to send that, if we're able to send that signal

to our supervisors.

Because what you've just described was basically three FTEs that have yet to be identified for this process, through additional dedicated FTEs that have not been dedicated, that have not been identified.

Anyone else before we open up?

Okay, so we're going,

OK.

All right.

Up first is Neil Williamson.

Neil, please state your name and the organization you represent.

Thank you all.

Neil Williamson with the Free Enterprise Forum.

I'm very appreciative of Mr. Randolph's comments regarding the $1 million that the federal government brought into this region regarding planning for the last comprehensive plan.

I only ask that we take a good hard look at an issue that is not yet fully vetted in Ms.

Bockelstein's presentation regarding the public input

It would be easy to fall back on your long serving and very important citizen advisory committees.

Those committees are not reflective of the entire community.

I strongly believe and the organization I represent strongly believes an outreach effort is necessary.

Recognizing such an outreach effort will take time and money.

I'm hopeful that as we move forward with the pandemic, we have the ability to get together in person again because of the incredible challenges with broadband across Albemarle County.

But I just hope that we don't forget that the comprehensive plan is a community vetted plan.

It's not a appointed committee plan.

It is not an advisory committee plan.

It is a committee vetted plan.

And we need to work hard to get those voices that are not often in Lane Auditorium engaged in the conversation.

Mr. Williamson?

Because that's correct.

Community vetted plan.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I will pause for a second because sometimes we have a hand that sort of pops up before we move.

And since you have not told me that there's a hand, closing the public hearing and bringing it back to us.

So now, Rachel, Charles, how do you want to engage in this conversation?

How do you want to lead us through this?

It might be.

OK.

Yes, we can see them.

Yes.

So basically, you'd like feedback on, do you support the phased approach to the comp plan update?

And is there anything missing from this approach?

Anything we should highlight, focus on with the proposed project phase?

Am I correct?

That's correct.

OK.

Commissioners?

Tim.

So I see Tim's hand and do I see anyone else's?

And I see Rick.

So Tim, Rick and Corey at this particular point.

And then Karen.

Well, I'll start off and I'm very positively inclined towards the process that's been outlined, Rachel.

I think that it's obviously you've been thinking about this as you've been involved with the

area plans over the last several years and you have a good sense of where there are areas that warrant more concern and areas that maybe are relatively strong where they are with some tweaking.

I certainly support the advisory group in concept.

Obviously, we need to know more about it.

but I'd just like to speak to a couple of things.

The prioritization process that you've discussed I think is really important and I imagine if Charles were to weigh in, he would say that that was part of the challenge in the annual report that we were all taken with, that there were so many components to that, that to go and try to answer each of those every year is daunting.

So I would encourage you all as you, I think that there's a process part

that going back to that time period that Rick was speaking to when I came on the commission and the chair that preceded me, we really hoped to see annual information.

And it seems to me that with the climate action plan, the growth management,

with the capacity analysis.

There are just so many pieces that asking each of those to be updated every year is too much, but I'm assuming that each of these is gonna be a component within the comprehensive plan.

And I would hope that we could lay out a calendar and whether it's a five-year calendar or whatever seems to be best.

that would be earmarked over the next, let's say, decade for when this finishes for in year 2025.

If this is going to conclude in 2024, what is going to be the primary focus of the annual report in 2025, the annual focus of the 2026 and on forward so that you don't have to do all of these things every year, which I'm sure would be

a full-time staff person just to manage that data and put it out.

But I think that it's really important, certainly in terms of the issues of growth and when to put the pedal down for growth and when to ease the pedal up for growth, for instance, in certain areas.

So that is really my major suggestion that as you're thinking about the process for this,

you think about the project, the process for how you're going to report back regularly the information as it changes, the data as it changes.

And you know, I mean, multimodal systems, so many of the things that you have spoken to the same way.

That's my major suggestion at this point.

It's the only thing that I think is

I think that you began to get at that when you talked about prioritization process.

And so let's just go the next step and know when we're going to and when the community, when the citizens of Albemarle are going to get regular updates.

Sorry, I guess I've already led into this point by my earlier remarks, but I would say for any county to undertake a comprehensive plan update that is a county that is a high growth community is taking on a major challenge.

but in asking staff to take on a comprehensive plan update at the same time in parallel doing a zoning update is basically asking an experienced mountaineer to ascend Everest wearing bathroom slippers.

I mean, I just think this is really a difficult exercise

in just the comprehensive plan for the reasons I've spelled out when the zoning text update, zoning ordinance text update was not included in 2012 to 2015.

It's something I know the planning commission and the board have been asking about for years.

And now here comes Rachel with the comprehensive plan update and

the switch locomotive comes out of the yard and quickly takes 17 cars and all that added weight and attaches it to the comprehensive plan train that is trying to go down the tracks.

And now you're being asked to haul that as well and do that simultaneously with a comprehensive plan update.

And I really think Charles

and staff need to push back a little bit with the board and give them a much more realistic understanding of the time commitment that's going to be involved here, given the fact that you all have other responsibilities.

This is not the only thing that you're going to be doing that I spoke to earlier.

The second thing that I would say is different now than six years ago.

And here's where our concern is.

In taking this approach, there's a bias to kind of look at what was done before, update it based on the new, but continue to operate at the same linear level.

i.e.

down around

the ground level.

And I think the comprehensive plan update is not a time to be operating at ground level but automatically to be up at 30,000 feet and looking down.

And what's changed now in my perspective over the course from time since the last update is we see much more of the influence of regional forces on this county.

that we really are much more operating from a regional standpoint in terms of commuters coming in and going out, traffic coming in, going out, jobs, et cetera.

There's much more of a regional component.

It was always there before, I'm not denying that, but not to factor that into part of the discussion now, I think is omitting something that's really critical.

And the other thing is what Neil brought up.

Left out here was any discussion about broadband.

And we need to be looking at new and emerging technologies.

There was nothing in the previous comprehensive plan about new and emerging technologies and their impact on the way the comprehensive plan works without even thinking about how it would operate on

zoning ordinances.

The deep thinkers, that's out of my pay scale to be trying to deal with that.

Yes, so I guess to answer the two questions on this slide, I certainly support the phased approach.

And it seems like it just makes a ton of sense, particularly with what my colleagues are saying with the bandwidth and just the amount of workload as you look now into the future.

It seems to make a ton of sense.

I would recommend if we could just develop a list of all of the stakeholders that we'd probably need to touch throughout the process.

That might be helpful.

I just want to make sure we don't forget anyone.

Thinking along, what are some of the local governments?

I mean, obviously Charlottesville would be someone that at some point you're meeting with.

Are there other counties, school system?

Just a whole laundry list.

I think that could be helpful.

I think the one nice thing about the phases is that it gives you a chance to have some very focused advisors, if you will.

And so for your program advisory boards, maybe one thing to consider is having one for each phase.

That way your volunteers, there's a finite amount of time that they're volunteering.

And with that, you can get the best and the brightest.

from the community, as well as folks who maybe not be that experienced in that field, if you will.

So like for that transportation piece, I think was item number three, I was trying to take notes, but maybe that's a time where the focus is getting folks who specialize in transportation on the advisory committee.

So some focus efforts there.

We can come back to you.

So we can come back to you.

If you pause in there, we'll go.

I think I'm good for now.

Thanks.

Can you hear me?

OK.

I never know which wires to plug in.

OK.

So I have several comments, and I'll try not to be too long-winded, but I have to speak a little slow because of bad internet.

So I support the phased approach, but as I look at the topics and the way they were laid out, obviously,

most if not all of them interrelate to one another.

And so we need a phased approach, but it also needs to be iterative.

In other words, we can't really talk about growth and development and then move on from that and talk about environment or other things that affect growth and development, reflecting on the kind of place that we want to grow into.

So that's one thing.

I think we need more of like an adaptive management type of diagram rather than so linear.

And I'm happy to say more about that later.

And then I am someone who has

put together many different committees, advisory committees in my in my career and I'm a little concerned that we make sure that any kind of you know multi-stakeholder advisory group understands what their role is because I

have seen problems of role confusion between committees in other jurisdictions and probably sometimes our own.

And so I wanna make sure that we are clear because we are the planning commission and we advise the board and we would have another committee advising us, advising the board and committees can take on a life of their own.

So we need to use this as an opportunity to bring the best talent and new voices while also finding a way that they don't run away with themselves.

Okay.

The other thing I think might be important to spend a little more time on is this issue of creative outreach or bringing in previously unheard voices.

Even the best stakeholder committee will not not reach everybody that we need to reach.

And so I understand very well that the county staff put a lot of effort into being creative and coming up with a really involved outreach process.

And the board shot it down, said they didn't want to spend that much time and resources.

So I just want to acknowledge that.

But given that, I think we need to put our heads together and think of a lot of different creative ways to reach what we call like the unusual people, like the people who don't come to meetings.

They're not on this Zoom.

They're not going to respond to computer surveys.

They might not belong to an organized group, but there are a lot of voices in the county that

we do not hear from.

And an example of that could be some of the folks in some of the rural areas where they're not on a CAC and they don't have a regular process for them to be heard.

So I think we need to think about that.

I could say a whole lot more, but I will not in the interest of time.

and then two more points and then I'll stop.

I think it would be worthwhile to generate a list of what I'll call hot topics or topics that were either completely not addressed

in the last comp plan or are emerging and will become really important topics in the next 10 to 20 years.

So there's a lot of things that are coming up.

We didn't plan for utility scale solar when we did the last comprehensive plan.

Broadband has already been brought up.

We're building a city around a city in the urban ring and we lack a lot of the traditional city planning tools that we need.

And so the last thing, so if we could come up with that list of topics.

ahead of time rather than just waiting for that chunk of the comp plan to come forward.

I think we might be able to get some of the research done that we need done.

And the last thing is if you read the comp plan, I'm sure everyone's read it, but you notice when you read the strategies that some are very general and vague

And some are extremely specific and detailed and have very specific actions and even time frames sometimes.

And it's weird to have a strategic document with such a variability in detail.

And that, I believe, is due in part to the fact that this comp plan, the last one, was written in a sort of committee process.

And so some committees

really got into the details and others didn't.

So some strategies, it's almost impossible to, you talked about reporting on progress.

Some of our strategies, you just can't report on whether they've been done because they weren't articulated in a way that you could tell if you did it or not.

And my first two weeks on the Planning Commission, Liz Palmer asked me to critique the strategies in the comp plan and made me write a long memo, which made me unpopular with some folks.

But I think we should decide what level of detail are we going for in this comp plan?

Do we want to have really specific strategies or do we want more grand statements of aspiration?

Because this comp plan we have now is both, and it needs to determine what personality it's going to have.

And also if we want staff to report on progress in meeting the comp plan,

then the strategy should be detailed in such a way that one could say if you actually did it or not.

And I'm happy to later show you some examples of what I mean by that.

But I don't think you want me to go on a soapbox for the next hour.

So thank you.

And I know that the Zoom format is not really good for discussion as much as it is when we're on the dais.

but I look forward to everyone's participation in this and I will also say that I think the planning commission should make a strong statement to the board that we need a dedicated staff person for this work and Rachel is a great person for this but she also has many other tasks so we need to figure out

who can put in the time or how it's going to work because I know that staff feel burned out at times, if not all the time.

I do like the phased approach.

And I had a question for you, Rachel.

I wondered about the

I have a theory about why they're in the order they're in, and I think the first one's pretty obvious, but I wondered if you could talk about having land use be the last one.

I think a lot of the other topics, it would help to tackle the other topics first because I think they inform land use.

Whereas if we did land use first and then we came back and talked about transportation planning, we might have to go back and revisit land use.

So that's why that was at the end.

Okay, thanks.

That makes sense.

I guess really my only reaction to that, and I kind of missed the full timeline that you were showing, or I guess you didn't really show a timeline for the phased approach.

And I know you're not making your timeline around my term on the Planning Commission, but I'd like to be there to talk about land use.

And given the current timeline, it seems like I possibly wouldn't be.

but so that's a very personal reaction that I have to that and probably isn't the kind of feedback you're asking for us so but I do it does occur to me when I look at it that I wish that that I would be around for the land use part and I think that my other thought was and I think this happens you know when these things even if it was like Rick was saying the time it took when it was done last which was right before my time when it finished

and you have planning commissioners terms ending and board members and there's that turnover and I guess that's just something that we all learn to deal with.

But I think that having the phase might help that so people can get into that part and participate and sort of see that through instead of having, spend two years on it and then not get to see it

Thanks.

Thank you, Jenny.

Does anyone else feel like they want to come back in and add or shade a piece?

If I may ask for nods or some sort of appreciation, I think one of the things we'd like to come out of our discussion to go with Jody and Charles is that there is a strong sense, an overwhelmingly strong sense,

that the Board of Supervisors recognize that there's going to be a need to have dedicated resources aligned with Rachel whether or not they, and it is not to me to say how Jody and Charles and Rachel align their resources, but that we recognize and that we lift up to them that we believe that this is critical and that this is a critical enough and a powerful enough set of responsibilities that are going to be had over the next few years that

People who have this as their primary thinking should be given the time to do this.

Now, I also think it is a piece that I think you need to align with.

But one of the pieces with the zoning ordinance is that Bart would come alongside of that from his standpoint with the zoning piece.

So I don't believe that there's a full expectation that Rachel would be responded with.

would be responsible for the zoning piece, but that that would be a partnership between them.

But even with that, I believe I've seen from the commissioners that that's something that we believe having a set of resources that can deep dive, that can distinguish between the incremental pieces and really look at what are the new emerging issues that this county should be thinking about and engaging with as far as

It's complicated.

It's planning for the next 10 to 15 years is concerned.

Is that accurate?

I'm seeing some heads shaking, not all heads shaking.

I see one thumb up.

I see another thumb up.

I see another thumb up.

And I see a hand up.

OK.

So Rachel and Charles and Jody, if you could take at least that piece from us.

that we believe that this is important enough fair that we need to have, you need to have dedicated resources to be able to move at a pace and to do the kind of deep dive that's necessary for this given that we are a different kind of, we live in a different time

and also there's this piece of how do we engage with what will be the economic development piece of our county that is probably going to have a different kind of conversation around it than it did in 2012.

So well where we are as far as the

wants to come.

And I am intentionally not being, I'm not being snarky now, but I want to say Charlottesville is not a city.

It may be a city vis-a-vis the Commonwealth of Virginia, but as far as having the components of a city, it is, does not have those kinds of drivers there.

It's more of, it's got a couple of, it's got one, one, one big employer, one huge employer and a bunch of entrepreneurs.

Okay, that's not a city.

That by no one's definition is a city.

And so I'm sure our friends in the city are now just blown up.

But everyone needs to hear me say, it's a jurisdictional issue.

It is not an economic platform.

The city of Charlottesville is not an economic driver.

The University of Virginia is, and some other sort of very smart people are, but that's not what's happening.

That driver is probably gonna happen in our county.

And how do we do that in a way?

How do we look?

And a number of us have spoken about big plans.

How do we look at big ways to be able to accommodate that and still stay true to who we are as both a rural and an intellectually and economically evolving community?

I think I hear from all of us.

We would be so bold as to suggest two four-year term staff positions, one in zoning and one in planning to accomplish this and whether it would be helpful.

And again, I think staff needs to advise us of whether we're getting out of our realm here or not, but whether something that was official like that maybe at a later date recommended different specifics.

I'm just using this as a starting point that could be helpful.

in this process because I feel like we're all coming back to this point that both sides, beginning with Rick's eloquent beginning to this, that we need to think about how to address this.

This is really important.

We haven't talked about infrastructure.

We haven't talked about impact fees and the potential of that in the future and allowing for that so that we're up and going if we're able to get

the Commonwealth to allow us to do those kinds of things.

Many of what we all envision for the future, many of these mechanisms have been discussed.

And it would be helpful, I think, to really think about how we could implement right from the beginning if we had that opportunity.

I don't know that I had anything to add to what Mr. Keller said.

I think Mr. Keller's opening reference was to a piece of the rules of procedure.

Obviously, the input of the Planning Commission is very important.

I don't know whether Ms.

Velardo has any suggestions about how specific or how general the

feedback of the planning commission should be.

We're certainly hearing a consensus tonight, a strong consensus that there needs to be dedicated resources to this effort.

I'm thinking I would like to let Ms.

OK, thanks.

Well, and it may be related, I just wanted to emphasize once again that we need to dedicate resources if we expect to have meaningful community engagement.

I can recall many years ago when there was a water shortage here and the county sent out a survey to residents concerning the shortage.

And they had also included a question on the survey as to what is your level of educational attainment.

And it was really useful because they learned that while they got a lot of responses, you basically got responses from people who had master's degrees who were very excited to talk about water supply.

and not a lot of other voices were heard from, even though it was, I think, a paid return on postcard.

So, you know, if you were to go on to a lot of sort of just the general, I'll call it man or woman on the street and say, the comp plan is coming, the comp plan is coming.

It would say, what in the world are you talking about?

I mean, I'm not too much of a planning nerd to think that everyone thinks about that.

Hardly anyone thinks about that.

And I don't want to insult excited people who will listen to this meeting and really can't wait to start the comp plan.

But we need to do some very creative outreach.

I was working on the master plan for McIntyre Park a zillion years ago.

We held booths at the Dogwood Festival.

We gave out chocolate for comments.

I've had festivals, I've had barbecues.

I'm not saying we're going to have a bunch of parties.

But we need to think about going to places where the people are.

And that takes a lot of money.

It takes time and money and creativity.

I still think that if we just do our usual, here's a web page, or you can sit on a committee, we're not going to get very far.

And we're not going to meet those diversity, equity, and inclusion aspirations that we have established for the county.

Yes, thank you, Chair Bivins.

First and foremost, I want to thank all of the commissioners.

Your thoughtfulness and your perspective has been really valuable this evening.

I also want to share some good news.

Number one is in the budget that is going to the board for approval on May 5th, there is a set aside of funding

to support resourcing for both the comp plan work and the zoning reviews.

So you all are onto something and fortunately the budget is prepped up, ready to go to support that too.

So we do have good news relative to that.

And I guess on the outreach discussion or as per the outreach discussion,

We also are very mindful of wanting to make sure we enlarge the feedback to reach everyone we possibly can in the county.

And we even now have an Albemarle County van that's got a really cool wrap around it that has little conversation bubbles on it that the OI team and the CAPE team

take out around to various places to gather input from people.

So Commissioner Firehock, we are on it.

We really love some of your ideas and maybe we need to go invest in some local chocolate and we have some good local chocolate that might be useful.

but I just wanted to share we we really align with what you're saying and are so excited about this plan coming forward and we are going to be sharing some resource constraints and issues Commissioner Randolph when we go to the board on May 5th as well because we are severely resource constrained but fortunately we have some support from the board thus far in the budget and we fully anticipate and hope

but that will make it through the other end on the May 5th budget conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

You know, so it's good to see you this evening.

And we, as, as the chair, we invite you back anytime.

We, we, we invite you to come and join Charles and Rachel and us anytime so that you can, we can hear from you.

You're more than welcome.

I want to share what, just to pick up a little bit about what Karen said.

So I did a little bit of a scratch on the Albemarle County survey to just sort of see what the demographics of that were.

And if any of you have some time, it was interesting because one, I sort of figured out a couple of things.

A, most of the people who responded to that, as Karen might've suggested, 39% of the people who responded to that have masters,

And so you had that another 23 and a half percent.

So we're now close to 60% either had BAs or master's degree or master's and plus.

And then the really other interesting thing that I thought was fascinating is that if we looked at the income that was in the Albemarle County survey in the 2020 survey, that if we look at from 100,000 and above to 50,000 to 100,000, again, we were talking over

who replied.

And then if you looked at sort of 200,000 and above, that was another 11%.

So those are people with means and those are people with time who had the ability to respond to the Albemarle County survey.

So I only share that to sort of reinforce or sort of come alongside what Karen was saying about who are the people who have the time or who take the time.

to respond to those things.

I could tell you a little bit more about where those people live, but I think you might assume, I think everybody can get there on their own.

If we're talking about those kind of income and we're talking about that kind of education, I think we can also talk about where they may live in our county.

and what they may look like in our county, too.

And so that was fascinating to just sort of see that's who's responding.

And if we want to do something a little bit differently, as I think we all want to do, we're going to need to sort of tackle that in a different way.

Karen, do you still have your hand up?

Yes, just a quick comment, just quick.

I know that we are deliberative.

Yes, we are a deliberative body, but I also want to encourage each commissioner to take some time, maybe the next few weeks, to meet with their board member individually to kind of reinforce what some of your perspectives are on the comp plan process.

We will be sending the notes from this meeting up to the board.

And to sort of lead off on that, I might also suggest that Jody and Charles and Rachel, if there's an opportunity for us to have a shared work session with the supervisors that we should actually, I'm going to look for heads, that we would appreciate that opportunity, would we not, fellow commissioners?

Okay, I see two heads.

I see two thumbs.

I see some nodding.

Okay, fine.

So I see, I see the little German Shepherd at the front of your, the front of your car moving its head back and forth like

Yeah, I know.

I had one too.

So if that's a message that we can also move forward, I think, in Tim's conversation, if we put something together that we would welcome an opportunity to sit with you and to have a work session to talk about how we might move forward, how we would anticipate moving forward on this.

I think that suggests.

Rick?

I think that's a really good suggestion because what I think we propose that we try to avoid is a situation, as happened last time, where the Planning Commission and Karen, you were on it, Tim, you were on it at that point.

The Planning Commission finalized the Comprehensive Plan update, turned it over to the board.

The board substantively changed it because they did deep dives and not casting aspersions as to where the dives went.

Some of them were well called for, especially in terms of natural resources, but

The net effect of it was that we did all of that work as a planning commission and we were not in sync with the board.

Whereas if there had been communication now, there hopefully will not be the change there was in 2013 with an election that brought in a completely different philosophy.

Hopefully the philosophy that we have on the board will be maintained

going forward so that we know what the ground rules are as a planning commission.

Anyone else have a piece?

that they'd like to add at this time.

Remembering, if I'm correct, Rachel, you'll come back to us to be engaged at several points for us to be able to help to shape this process or to reflect on the process as before it sets down.

That's correct.

Are we good, folks?

For this moment, for this moment.

All right.

Rachel, thank you.

Am I going to get a smile?

Yeah, I'm going to get a smile.

Come on.

Thank you, Rachel.

Thank you.

This is going to be cool.

And you know, Jenny, if for some reason you're not on the planning commission, I think there'll always be a spot for you.

So don't worry.

We'll leave a light on for you on the advisory committee if you somehow or another don't make it.

So don't worry about that.

OK.

Folks, we're going to move on unless somebody feels the need to.

Thank you very much.

This was fun.

I anticipate we'll be doing more of this over the next

a few months because after all, we deserve work sessions where we can have this kind of talk because we do lots of business where we have to be a bit more in control of ourselves.

So this is time where we can be big thinkers.

Are there committee reports?

Okay.

Good evening commissioners.

Board met last Wednesday.

We didn't have any public hearings that evening on development matters, but there was a work session on the Crozet master plan and that got some valuable feedback.

That work will continue with the Crozet community and back with this commission as well over the next couple of months.

as was pointed out.

And we've got a couple of public hearings of our own next Tuesday night.

Thank you.

Any questions for Charles?

Okay.

Is there any items for follow up?

You know, so don't get don't get used to this, folks.

You know, these be have be having our meetings over in a little over an hour.

You know, don't get don't get too comfortable with this because I'm sure I'm sure we'll we'll be back into our record setting times again.

So on that note,

We will adjourn at 7 12.

And our next meeting is for next Tuesday, April the 20th at 6 o'clock right here on this Zoom channel.

Get your shots, wear your masks, and be careful because the pollen, oh, because I will say it yet again, the ticks are arising.

So just be aware of ticks.

Right, Tim?

The ticks are arising.

Everyone, until next week, have a good week.

We may miss the cicadas.

We'll get some of them, but we may miss the millions of them.

Peace, everyone.