Planning Commission Meeting   2/1/2022

You're muted.

Ordinance 20-A paren 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 are posted on the county's website, which you probably know if you're already here.

So with that, we'll go ahead and call the meeting to order.

Yes, ma'am.

Mr. Bailey?

He's absent.

Okay, Mr. Carrazana Present Ms.

Firehock Here Mr. Missel Here Mr. Bivins Here Ms.

Okay, thank you.

All right, so I'd like to ask if there are other matters not listed on the agenda from the public.

Okay, we'll dispense with that item.

The next item we have is the consent agenda on the back of our agenda, which is the approval of the minutes

from January 11, 2022.

All right.

Do we have to call the vote for that?

Okay.

Yes.

From our prior chair.

Go ahead.

All right.

Ms.

Moore?

Aye.

Ms.

Firehock.

Aye.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

The motion passes unanimously to accept the consent agenda.

Good evening commissioners.

I'm Rachel Falkenstein.

I'm planning manager in the planning division and I am joined by Tori Kinalopoulos, who is a senior planner too, and she'll be sharing the presentation with me this evening.

So thanks for the opportunity to come speak with you.

We want to talk to the Commission as we kick off phase one of the Albemarle County 2044 Comprehensive Plan update and give you kind of a status update of the project, start with an overview of the project as a whole, and then we'll talk a little bit about the specifics of our first phase of the project.

You can go to the next slide, Tori.

So this will be our agenda this evening.

We have an overview of the project and the goals.

We'll talk a little bit about how we'll do engagement with a focus on our working group that we plan to convene.

Tori is going to talk about phase one and specifics and how the, specifically how the commission, we hope to engage with you all during that phase.

And then time for discussion at the end and question and answer.

Next slide please.

So to start with a brief overview, especially for folks listening this evening, what is a comprehensive plan?

The comp plan is often, well, comprehensive plan often shortened to comp plan, so I'll use that throughout the presentation.

It's a guiding document for growth, development, and investment in the county, and it's used to guide decisions on public infrastructure and funding, also policies and programs, and then review of some development applications that come through in the county.

And I typically outline a vision for a 20-year planning horizon and public updates are required by the Virginia State Code, state code guides that we review and update if needed every five years.

Next slide, please.

So just a quick overview of why now.

What's the rationale for doing an update at this time?

A couple of reasons.

Since the last comprehensive plan was looked at as a whole in 2015, the county has continued to grow and change.

An example of that is we've had 4,000 new dwelling units since that 2015 plan was completed.

And the community's median household income and home values have continued to rise since that time.

And with data from the county, Albemarle County Equity Profile that was recently completed, we see the growth hasn't been experienced evenly across the county with quality of life outcomes have been differing depending on where you live in the county.

So in response to the county's changing context and in support of the county's mission, a variety of new policies and plans have been adopted by the county since 2015.

And that would include new plans for affordable housing, economic development, climate action planning, and the creation of a new Office of Equity and Inclusion.

And these priorities haven't yet been included into the county-wide comprehensive plan.

So we hope to do that with this update.

It's an opportunity to incorporate our community's recent work and better understand the diverse and lived experiences of community members.

On November 3rd of 2021, the board adopted a resolution of intent for staff to begin updating the comprehensive plan.

So next slide.

I'll go over the goals for this project.

This should be a refresher for the commission.

I believe we talked to you about this back in November, but I know we also have some new commissioners.

There are three overarching project goals that we want to focus on with this update, and we can add to these goals as we go along as well.

But overall, we'd like to update planned content to reflect those recent countywide strategic initiatives that I mentioned, such as climate action planning,

Economic Development and Multimodal Transportation Planning.

We also want to ensure that equity is integrated into the engagement process of the update, but also into the final plan content that is adopted.

And then lastly, we want to improve the plan usability.

We have a pretty lengthy plan document right now, but we'd like that to be a more streamlined document that has clear prioritization incorporated with some measurable goals and metrics incorporated as well.

Next slide, Tori.

So we also shared this in your November work session.

We plan to break the work down of the comprehensive plan into four phases.

And phase one will cover the countywide growth management policy.

Tori's going to talk about that phase in more detail since that's where we're starting.

In phase two, we'll look at overarching policies.

In our current comp plan, these are our goal statements.

We'll review those and see if they need to be updated.

And then as we get into phase three, we'll get more into the details and look at our strategies and action steps and update or revise those as needed.

And then the phase four will be kind of pulling it all together and looking at prioritization among the various topics and final plan adoption, which will go through our public hearing process with the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors.

Next slide, please.

So I want to talk a little bit about our engagement process before we get into the details of our first phase.

As you all know, a key part of long range planning is having a robust engagement process and a plan to allow community input for members to share their local experiences and their expertise and help guide and inform the plan as it goes through the process.

Next slide, please.

So we've also drafted some engagement goals to help inform our work and help inform how we plan for engagement and activities to reach different community members.

As previously discussed, we want to conduct outreach and collaborate with community members whose perspectives haven't historically been well represented in our processes.

We want to think about that equity profile and members of our community who have different lived experiences and maybe the quality of life outcomes

have not been as well as others in the community, so we want to think about different demographics.

A couple of those are listed here, such as age, race, race, income, and other factors.

Second, we want to develop and implement a transparent community engagement and decision-making process.

We want it to be really clear to everyone who participates or engages how we're taking input, how we're using input, and then how the final decision is being made.

And then third, we want to provide consistent but also varied opportunities for community input throughout the update process.

We want to make sure that people have different ways to engage so that they can participate in the way that's most convenient or comfortable to them.

Next slide, please.

So this is kind of our overarching engagement approach.

There's graphic on the left side of the screen shows kind of four main streams of engagement we'll be focusing on.

With this update, they are county staff, which would be not just staff from the planning division, but across the department because this plan touches so many areas of work.

So we'd be engaging with staff across the organization.

Second is a working group which will convene and that will consist of community members and I'll talk about that in a little bit more detail shortly here.

Third is broad public engagement that would be just our typical meetings, workshops, online virtual events or online questionnaires that would be open to anyone who would want to participate.

And then the fourth is legislative review.

And that would include our planning commission and our board of supervisors.

Our planning commission, their role would be to work through content and make the recommendation to the board of supervisors.

And then the board of supervisors would have the final decision and adoption.

Next slide, Tori.

So I want to talk a little bit about our working group, because this is something new that we haven't done before.

And we're also just starting yesterday, we put out an open call for members of the community who are interested in applying to be on our working group.

So I want to share that with you all.

So you can share with your constituents and your networks.

So the role of our working group, as I said, this will consist of community members and we will ask them to provide input to staff on draft materials that are related to the comp plan update.

And this would include a variety of materials.

It would be outreach materials that we want to use to do broad engagement on.

It would also be proposed engagement formats and then draft materials for plan recommendations when those are prepared by staff.

We would also ask them to help support the plan engagement and outreach by helping spread word to their networks.

We're hoping that we can get a diversity of different demographics on this on this group so that they can reach a broad variety of community members in different places throughout the county and different demographic groups.

And then just a couple of bullets here about kind of what they would ask to do on a on a regular basis that we would anticipate will have monthly meetings with the group.

and ask them to do some homework in advance for the materials.

And we also anticipate that we'll have people in the group who might not have a background in planning and development concepts.

So we would provide training to make sure everyone kind of has a shared understanding of the processes that they can engage with the content.

And then just to review materials as we go along and actively encourage participation among their networks, and then participate and observe other public meetings related to the project.

Next slide, Tori.

So we anticipate the time commitment for working group members to be about 10 hours a month.

And what we're looking for would be folks from a wide variety of different fields and backgrounds.

No prior volunteer education work experience would be needed in community development.

And as I shared, we would provide staff-led trainings for people to understand kind of what comprehensive planning is and how the development process works in the county.

Next slide, Tori.

And so we'll have an open application process that we're hoping to have it open for a month, so starting yesterday and through the end of February.

And then we'll have a project team that will both conduct outreach to try and spread the word to different groups across the county, use our usual media outlets and social media, and we're also gonna be doing some pop-ups at various locations throughout the county to help spread the word.

And then in early March, we'll have a team of staff who will be selecting the working group and we'll have a scoring framework for that team of staff to use to select working group members with the goal of providing a diversity of lived perspective and experiences in Albemarle County, including groups who haven't been historically engaged in our processes.

Next slide.

And then the last piece I'll say about the working group is that we had a discussion earlier this month with the Board of Supervisors and the board supported the concept of compensating the working group.

So working group members will be compensated for their time and expertise at a rate of the county's equivalent to the county's minimum wage, which is approximately $15 an hour.

And the rationale for doing this is going to summarize on this slide.

We had a lengthier discussion with the board where we kind of talked through why we why we were recommending compensation.

First is integrating equity and inclusion into the planning process.

We want to make sure we can reach and have people participate who traditionally don't have time to volunteer.

And so compensating is one way to account for that, especially those who might have to take off work to participate.

So we want to make sure we hear from those folks.

The expected labor and time commitment is high for this, as I shared.

It's about 10 hours a month, so it's a little bit more than our typical volunteer committees.

Also, we're seeing this as a best practice locally and across the nation.

There are groups associated with UVA and the health department who compensate community members who participate in our processes, and we're seeing it also broadly in the planning field.

be used more readily.

So this is an opportunity, we think, for the county to pilot a new approach.

We'll see how it goes.

That was the direction from the board.

They like the idea of piloting it with the comp plan and seeing if this is a good way to improve our engagement processes.

Next slide, Tori.

So one thing I'll leave with you all tonight for you all to think about, open to hearing your feedback this evening, but certainly a decision tonight is not required.

We think the working group won't start meeting until end of March, but one thing we thought that could be beneficial to the planning commission might be interested would be having a liaison role on our working group.

similar to how you all do on other committees and groups across the county and it would be really that liaison role to communicate back and forth between two groups.

The planning commission member could be there to hear the working group discussion and report back to the planning commission and then kind of vice versa if the working group wanted to hear the planning commission's discussion on a topic the liaison could provide that to the working group.

I'll share there, we'll also do monthly summaries where we'll summarize, staff will summarize kind of the discussion of the working group.

So the liaison would have that kind of written summary to work from if that was helpful.

Next slide Tori.

Thank you, Rachel, and good evening, everyone.

So I'm going to walk us through phase one now in a little bit more detail.

So phase one is called Planning for Growth.

And in this phase, we will review, evaluate, and update the current growth management policy through the lenses of equity and climate action, and identify options for updating the policy based on best practices and on capacity projections for residential and business growth in the county.

This phase will also align the vision and values in the comp plan with the county's updated values and we will identify the level of detail that should be included throughout the comp plan.

A capacity analysis is in progress for residential and economic development in the county's development areas.

And the purpose of this capacity analysis is to estimate how much capacity our current development areas have compared with the expected demand and future growth, looking at the 20-year comp plan horizon.

This will be done by reviewing existing land uses and conducting a land use build-out analysis for residential, retail, office,

and industrial uses in the current development areas and also by factoring in market absorption forecasts to estimate the market supported annual absorption rates for those land uses.

This is a schedule for phase one and as Rachel highlighted earlier in the presentation,

The engagement approach includes county staff, the working group, public engagement, and legislative review, which includes both the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors.

The schedule is intended to show the main engagement opportunities for each group.

Our working group application went live today and will be available until February 28th, and after the application closes, we will begin the selection process.

We are currently drafting the background report for phase one, which is focused on growth management.

And once the working group is selected and the background report is completed, we will move into community workshops and working group meetings focused on growth management and policy options.

Then we will have two work sessions with the planning commission on these policy options and a final work session with the board of supervisors and staff will be providing monthly written updates to the planning commission and the board.

So our new website for the Conference of Plan update launched today and can be accessed at engage.albemarle.org slash ac44.

The website provides an overview of the comp plan update and has a signup option to receive project updates.

Community members can apply to the working group on this website and engagement opportunities will be continually added to the website, such as pop-ups, meetings, surveys, and other activities.

So that concludes our presentation for this evening.

And we have this question for the commission to discuss.

And it is, is the planning commission interested in appointing a planning commission liaison to serve on the AC44 working group?

And as Rachel mentioned, please note that if a decision is made, the actual appointment could occur at a later commission date.

So this is really just up for the commission to discuss, and we can always go back and pull up the

slide that showed the role that this liaison would have.

Thanks very much.

That's very helpful.

Just I think in terms of a planning commission liaison, I think that is a great idea.

but I would also think that since, for many of us are just hearing about that so we'll, I think we'll probably defer deciding who would like to do that until the next commission meeting.

I'm just wondering, just for people's consideration, what's your anticipation of kind of when this group would meet?

Do you have a sense of that?

Like, would it be some, you know, weeknight evenings or trying to, you know, engage diverse people?

So I'm assuming it's not during, you know, workdays.

We really want to wait to see until the committee is selected and kind of poll the group to see what time works best for them.

We want to remain flexible and do what kind of works best for people.

And if a planning commissioner were on that group, we would certainly work around the planning commission schedules and other committees that the planning commission serves on.

So I don't know for sure, we would have to just figure that out.

Okay, and I know other commissioners may have questions and I don't mean to hog the floor, but could you just, one more quick one, could you just say a little bit more about how you see the relationship between the working group and the planning commission?

So the working group will come up with ideas and feed them to the planning commission, or would the planning, would you imagine a two-way street where the planning commission might say to the working group, here's an idea,

We'd like you to kick around and give us your thoughts on, in other words, not just going in one direction.

So our initial thinking is they're kind of a sounding board for staff's recommendations and then we kind of pulled that feedback into the recommendation we bring forward to the Planning Commission.

So they're advising staff and then staff is carrying forward our recommendation based on input.

Now we, I would certainly be open to commission feedback if there's a back and forth

desire for you to throw ideas to the working group.

I think that's something you could try out and see how it works.

Okay, I think it'll be really important to make sure that the working group understands their role because I know sometimes in the county there's been, you know, various committees that where there's been some confusion on, you know, who's making what recommendations, who's in charge.

You know, we've established quite a few committees, and we don't always do.

a perfect job of having people understand that this is a brand new group.

There is no precedent.

So I think just, you know, being really clear with them what their role is.

And because we I wouldn't want to see a scenario where the the working group was, say, disappointed because the Planning Commission didn't take up their idea or, you know, so just want to manage expectations, I guess.

But with that, as I said, I don't want to take up all the time and all the air in the room.

So do other commissioners have questions or comments for staff on this or if anyone wants to flag their desire to be the liaison?

So commissioners, questions for staff on the proposed process for the comp plan?

So thank you, Rachel.

Hi, Rachel.

Hi, Torres.

Good to see you again.

We haven't seen you in a while.

So I'm really glad that you're talking about doing a streamlined process.

I think that would be helpful to everybody involved if it's not a forced march for you all, the fact that it can be done at a pace that works, but also that you can get it accomplished in a reasonable amount of time.

But one thing I would also ask and hope that you're considering is that we use as much what I would call, in quotes, plain language as possible.

So in fact, the plan is accessible to people if that's one of the things that's one of the goals that I understand.

And then as a selfish motive, it would be really nice if you could help at least me as in what I do to sort of have a place

I'd just like to have something or some guidance so that as you're creating these documents, for instance, the presentation you have tonight, what's on the website, that I have a place that I can go to to see them for us, you know, so if they're working documents or a place that you can just pop deposit those that we can

legal size paper, which I do have on my printer.

But so I'm not having to decide whether or not I'm doing legal or if I'm doing eight and a half by 11, or I'm doing envelopes.

That would be I would ask as you're thinking about how you construct the depository for for this process, and it'd be something that the commission can easily get into.

I'm glad it's you all.

And so I'm excited about that.

And I'm glad it's going to be a, if not an expedited process, it'll be a process that will move at a nice pace.

And again, I would ask that it be language that the lay among us can easily have access to.

I think that would be helpful as we, after the comp plan, one of the things that I've noticed during my four years is that people

use the language of the comp plan to create different narratives.

And while that's never going to go away, our ability to create language that helps to limit the range of possible narratives, I think would be helpful to the community.

Well said and diplomatic as well.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and good afternoon, everyone, or good evening, I should say.

I have a question and a comment.

I really do like the approach and where it's going.

How many folks are we looking for on the working group?

I was taking notes and I might have missed that.

Great question.

I did not cover that.

So we're thinking a range between 8 and 12 people, though I will stress again, we want to be flexible.

If we have 13 really great people and we think it would be a good mix of folks, we would consider that.

That makes sense and thank you.

And I think that also with that number, that 8 to 12 number, I think it also magnifies how important the other arm of that community engagement is.

And so I would just encourage you as you're starting to develop that concept or that plan to move forward.

to meet people where they are, where people congregate, whether that's at the grocery store, setting up there or ACAC or PVCC, like to get those diverse voices that you're looking for.

Don't be afraid to go out to them because a lot of folks who are, I would say, maybe in the disadvantaged category may not have dependable internet or have the time, availability to come here in person or whatever it may be.

Don't be afraid to meet them where they are.

Thank you, Fred.

Thanks.

Tory, Rachel, it's great to see you as always.

Thanks for the presentation.

It was really, really helpful.

And I look forward to taking a look at it more carefully.

Just had a couple of quick questions for you.

I just want to echo Commissioner Bivins' comments about streamlining the process.

I'm curious,

And maybe this isn't an answer you can give now, but when you identify the fact that the comprehensive plan process needs to be streamlined, what about it?

I think staff have a couple of ideas of things just from working with it, but we don't have like a list where we say, well, we definitely know these things.

I think that's part of what we want to tackle with phase one.

With phase one, we really want to think about what level of detail should be in the plan.

Should it be really, really detailed down to the very specific stream and what should be done on that stream or more high level and then we have a policy specific to stream health.

That's kind of the direction we've been going the past couple years.

We want to really hone in on that in phase one and that can guide our future work.

That's great.

Thanks.

And I know you mentioned staff.

I know you'll also look at the applicants and ask what aspects of the plan could be streamlined from the viewpoint of an applicant.

I think that's important.

Under the heading of capacity analysis, you mentioned a couple of things.

I'm curious, will this comprehensive plan take into consideration, for example, RWSA collaboration and other infrastructure needs and aspects as part of that capacity analysis?

Yes, we are planning to work with all of those groups.

We'll have our kind of internal focus group, the interdepartmental leaders, but then also include those external groups like ACSA and RWSA.

Great, thank you.

Last quick question is, did you have any lessons learned that you talked about from the process from 2015 that you want to carry into this process?

That's a great question and probably one that I'm not best suited to answer, but I think we should do some, I should do some asking around and maybe commissioners have thoughts.

I was not, I wasn't here during the 2015 process, I started right as it was being adopted.

So certainly something we can look into and ask, ask folks for their input.

That's a great question.

Yes, thank you, Tori and Rachel.

I enjoyed that presentation.

And so actually, Commissioner Missel took the question right out of my mouth.

Lessons learned from 2015.

So as looking around, I would say that probably there's not many of you that were here in 2015.

However, we do have, whether it's people from the community that were involved prior

planning commissioners that were involved that I would recommend early on in the process to reach out and ask that very question.

What are the lessons learned?

What are the things that we should do differently?

I was not involved.

I wasn't in the planning commission, but I came in in the heels of it.

And I know that one of the issues, again, is something that Commissioner Missel brought up is

Even though it was a comprehensive plan, I'm not sure that it was a well integrated plan.

And what I mean by that is looking at traffic, looking at infrastructure, looking at schools.

When we plan these development areas and growth areas,

how well did we anticipate all these other needs to supply that growth in those designated areas that we were, well, the areas that were designated for growth, how well did we anticipate the infrastructure needs and factor that in?

So I know I heard that quite a bit when I first got here and I would say that that's certainly an area to look at in terms of a lessons learned.

So certainly I would,

I think that that would be a great first step, particularly with all the new planners that we have now and staff so that you can learn from others' experiences.

The other point I wanted to make was to maybe circle back to Chair Firehock's comments about the Planning Commission and how it would potentially fold into this process.

I agree that, well, having a commissioner would be great involved.

I think that's, that would be fantastic.

But I also think that waiting to the last moment, or once you have these recommendations,

isn't the only time to engage the Planning Commission and to think about where are there good opportunities along the process to get feedback and just to make sure that there is that back and forth and that the Planning Commission isn't coming in and perhaps just either suggesting that you take a different path that you already have

And then there's voices in the community that feel like, well, why are we here if the Planning Commission is, you know, recommending or suggesting that it takes a different path.

Yes, Julian.

And I don't know if staff also want to react to that or just are just in listening mode.

I did.

There was something there that our colleagues said that I think might be helpful, but I don't necessarily know how much we generally know.

But and so this is to Charles and to Andy and perhaps right now at this moment to sort of take something off of Rachel and Tori's plate.

It may be helpful if we could have perhaps a work session talking about what are the functional and budgetary elements of the county and who has authority.

Because our authority, the county's authority, is very different from the city's authority.

And sometimes in some of the conversations we've had, I have a sense that there isn't clarity in what

versus the other jurisdiction.

And this goes a little bit to the integration of services that Luis was getting at.

We have a different set of levers that we can pull that doesn't look like the city's set of levers when it comes to transportation.

And so I think it might be helpful, and to have perhaps a primer on just what's the scope and role

of county jurisdiction versus a city jurisdiction.

Having sat on the MPO Tech, I've heard, and I think Luis, you're on the MPO Tech now, I've heard approaches that are clearly city-based and perhaps university-based that I actually don't even know how the county could achieve some of those things without having to go down to Richmond on an island the next year and get permission to do it.

and then maybe not get permission to do it.

I'm happy to respond to that, Commissioner Bivins.

You certainly raise a good point that there are different land use authorities that counties and cities are unable to have.

It's probably less different than the taxing authority in other areas of the law.

But that's certainly something that we can go over with the commission if the commission would like more information about that.

Fred.

Just a quick comment.

I was really glad to hear the integration of the new plans.

You know, not only affordable housing, but really, you know, the climate action plan, I think is a huge new plan that can really be expanded upon and just encourage you and I'm sure you'll do this, you know, with the consideration that clean air doesn't know jurisdictional boundaries, right?

Be thinking about

Thank you.

I had one or two other quick comments.

Did staff want to react to anything that was just said?

I'd like to react to the comment about the commission involvement because I meant to say this during the presentation.

So our plan for the commission would be at least two work sessions for each phase, one toward the beginning and one for the end.

And so hopefully that would

solve for that dynamic where the planning commission is not saying yes or no to something that the committee or the public has spent a lot of time wrestling with.

So for phase one, for example, what that would look like will probably be some information about best practices and our capacity analysis, best practices for growth management, our capacity analysis, and then some potential options to consider for growth management to get your feedback,

go back out to the working group and the public with a recommendation, get their feedback, and then come back to you all with the recommendation.

So you get that early check-in before the policy is drafted and in kind of a final recommendation form.

Thanks that was that was very helpful because that was also going to be part of my next question because I was really trying to understand you know the feedback loop and and like you said I wouldn't want the the committee and staff to get really invested in something and then the Planning Commission wishes they could have given input sooner and maybe you know steer it a slightly different direction.

I guess the other thing then that I you don't have to answer this tonight but I just want to express my confusion I guess and if you have an answer great but I've been told not necessarily this evening but in prior conversations with staff that you know the current comprehensive plan it's been said it's too big you know it's a kitchen sink we don't want to just keep making it ever bigger I know it shrank at one point it used to be quite large but

I've tried to get, and I've also been told it's not going to be organized in the same way that it is now.

So, you know, like I understand it's going to be smaller, it's going to be more streamlined, it's going to be concise, etc.

But I'm still having a hard time getting my head around how it will be structured.

And so for me, it would be really helpful if, and maybe this is, you know, part of your early work and you just, you know, need to wait to have something to react to, but

If I knew more on how it was going to be structured and what's intended to go in it, then I'd feel a little more comfortable saying things like, oh, well, what about this?

It's just hard to react to the, we're reacting to a process, I guess.

And I'm trying to understand when we're going to get to that envisioning of the structure.

Is that later?

Yes, Chair Firehock, if I could speak to that.

I think that's one of the things that is really

beneficial to the process that Rachel and her team have outlined of starting with just some capacity analysis, which will address some of Commissioner Missel's concerns about infrastructure and our water and sewer capacity in schools and what is our capacity here based on our land use decisions and how we're going to grow as a community, factoring in economics in the market.

And then that phase two is where we would get into what you're talking about, where we're looking at a framework for the plan.

How is the plan composed?

What is the level of detail that goes into it?

What type of things do we look at within each chapter?

And that's not getting down to the detail.

That's kind of laying out that overall framework for what each component of the plan is going to contain, what different topics are, and kind of how those policies will then

work to formulate phase three, which is the actual body, the detailed materials, the land use maps, the stuff like that, the more detailed transportation plans, the more stuff that we will actually update.

So it's a step by step process and that'll also help us to not get ahead.

as some of the current concerns which are certainly valid tonight are that the working group or some of these other things might get ahead of themselves and then have to be reined in.

By staying in this high up down to a more detailed kind of approach of capacity analysis, growth policy, the framework to more detailed policies and then the more detailed material, we'll hopefully get there all in unison together.

and that'll help to guide us.

Okay, that was very helpful.

And I would say that, you know, just looking at our commission now, I don't think any of us were involved in the comp plan last time.

I came on the commission, it was already finished and it was,

adopting it.

I didn't get work on it, but my impression was that there were a number of work groups working on different chapters, and I think that gets to why there might be feelings that some parts of the comp plan are in conflict with each other.

Of course, you can't optimize for everything all at once all the time anyway, but it sounds like we won't have things where a transportation chapter is going in one direction and

and it needs to be considered in a section on housing or something and therefore they need to come back together.

So all of these pieces reinforce each other and they're not just separate concepts.

So it sounds like a good process.

I think we're just all very excited to get started.

I know I for one is the reason I

re-upped my application to remain on the Planning Commission because I actually like comprehensive planning and think it's fun.

But anyway, it's one of the most important roles of this commission.

And so I think you're hearing a lot of interest, which is a good thing.

So please take any concerns that we've expressed in the right way, which is wanting the process to turn out super well.

and I'll look forward to seeing some of your creative ways that you're going to get out to the community.

I can remember going like to the Dogwood Festival and getting comments for chocolates.

I'm not saying you have to buy chocolate, but comments for cookies.

I've tried all kinds of crazy ways to get people to come talk to me about a map.

So with that, is there anything else that we want to

Send staff away with direction-wise at this early phase or any last comment anyone wants to make on this.

Okay, hearing none, thank you guys for that effort and I know you've had to keep retooling this process and trying to do the most you can with the least resources that you can.

So we really appreciate your creativity in that and we'll bid you good night unless there's anything else on our agenda that you have to stick around for.

Okay, so with that, bye for now comp planners.

And the next item on our agenda, we've moved new business to the front of the agenda this evening, we have additional items from commission members.

I do have one additional item I would like to bring up at this time.

So with that, I have written a statement I'd like to read just so that I make sure that I'm precise in my words.

A member of the public has sent a complaint to the planning commission and the board concerning interactions with a member of this body.

This interaction was conducted outside of the planning commission and did not concern any planning commission business.

Although this exchange was not part of any PC forum, our conduct as appointed officials can have repercussions both on and off this virtual dais.

While an apology has already been offered by our PC member, and it was accepted by the complainant, I am recommending that we consider censoring this member.

We all need to be mindful of our conduct and how we interact with the public, even in our private lives, on various social media platforms, at public events, or any other public interactions.

Therefore, I move to recommend a censure of Commissioner Moore for speech that was unprofessional and not in keeping with conduct expected of members of this body.

Okay, so we have a motion and a second.

We now have time for discussion.

That was Corey.

OK, thank you.

OK, so my additional comment is that, as you probably know, the commissioners, we don't really have in place a process for either reviewing a code of conduct of a member or for offering a censure.

With that, I have recommended that Board Chair Price engage Board of Supervisor Chair Price engage in a process to create and adopt a code of conduct for members of appointed and elected positions within Albemarle County.

so that we may have both a written and agreed upon standard for communications and conduct and a process in place for when that code has been violated.

Our challenge at this time is that we do not have a specific code that I can refer to in offering the center.

Nevertheless, we thought it was important to bring this forward for a public vote.

So if unless anyone else has any other comments, I'll pause for a moment to see if that's the case.

And if not, we'll call the question.

Not seeing any hands raised, I'll ask for the roll call of votes.

Ms.

Firehock?

Aye.

Ms.

Moore?

Aye, Abstain.

Okay, so the motion passes unanimously.

We regret having to have had to take this action, but I think it is for the best.

And I think that we all move forward in the spirit of better communications interactions for everyone.

So with that, I'm going to move on to the next item.

which is a follow-up discussion, I guess as we're going to the old business, a follow-up discussion regarding revised meeting dates for the 2022 calendar year.

To refresh us, these were the new dates that were proposed as a result of a suggestion by staff that we go to twice a month meetings with the understanding that the second meeting would involve potentially a work session if we had a topic.

So I think it's envisioned as a one hour work session from four to five with the break from five to six to get your crackers, move on to the meeting in the evening.

I think you did a great job.

It's as we discussed last month, so if you all could see how this would play out.

We went ahead and laid out dates starting in April if this were to be adopted.

Okay, and as we said last time, this is not the Planning Commission slowing down our work.

We'll still do the same number of public hearings and such as before, and we'll still have lots of other fun meetings to attend during the weeks when we're not in Planning Commission session.

So with that, I would like to see if members are willing to adopt the revised schedule as presented, which begins in April.

A point of clarification, and as you were explaining that to us, it sounded as if there would be a plan, there would be a public, there would be a work session for some period of time, a break, and then a public hearing as opposed to as it is now, it looks like we have separate work session dates.

Okay.

So my one sort of just reminder on that is that while today, and perhaps for an extended period, we're going to be doing it via Zoom, which facilitates people's ability to sort of shift from one place to another, at some point that's not gonna be the case and we're gonna be back and live and seeing one another.

And so I would caution us about having meetings at four o'clock.

because I can tell you until we get that tremendous sort of transportation plan that everybody's hoping about, it is still pretty difficult to sort of navigate our community to get to the O'Connor office building at four o'clock in the afternoon.

That is not, that is not, that

Okay.

Charles, I mean, I know that I encountered extreme traffic trying to make six o'clock meetings.

So it's hard to imagine it being worse.

No, I was going to say, the other option we could also do, I just think the second and fourth Tuesdays certainly would work ideally for public hearings.

We could also, you know, always go back to a first Tuesday or a third Tuesday for a work session, that would be better.

Let me be clear, I like how the schedule has been set off.

I also like the fact that it doesn't push our staff to be right up against a PC meeting and then a supervisors meeting.

I think there's some value to everyone having that managed in a way that works.

My only concern is that I don't see, once the

The health conditions improve to a point that we can come back.

I imagine that it will have improved to a degree that lots of people can come back.

And so we will then be engaged in the kind of traffic that we typically see when it comes to that type of traffic.

and for me to get to a meeting at four o'clock, I will probably need to leave somewhere around 2.30 because the school buses start blocking up my road.

Now, I have the liberty of doing that, but I don't necessarily know that everyone has the liberty of doing that and I can't imagine what it's like to try and get off the central grounds.

Having lived in the central grounds world for a while, I can't imagine what it's like to try and get

get from there to where we'll be at that time.

So while I'm not in any way saying I'm trying to be difficult around the schedule, I just think that at some point we're going to be together and that the facility that we've had over the last two and a half years won't exist any longer.

Yes, I think perhaps we try it and see how it goes.

And I'm also not totally sure that one hour is enough for the work session itself anyway.

That's, you know, the sort of indigenous one hour get togethers, and it may be that that's not enough time.

But unfortunately, or fortunately, however you look at it, we have to adopt a schedule of some such, even if we come back later and vote that we would like to move our work session to a different time.

So I guess what I'm saying is maybe we try it.

Or the other option is to move it even earlier.

It's not about me.

I was just using it as an extreme example of what one of us has to deal with to get there.

And I usually don't even use myself as an example.

but I also know how difficult it is sometimes to navigate even just around grounds.

It's not easy to get in and out of grounds with a facility.

So that's all.

I'm fine with it.

I just realized that let's be aware that we're in this really sort of special time where we can actually move back and forth in a space and at that time, hopefully, and I'm truly hopeful for that, it's going to dissolve.

It's going to resolve.

Yeah, and I certainly appreciate that.

I mean, being in Central Grounds, it can be challenging.

And I think just to reiterate the point that I think several of us made last time is, you know, as long as we have enough

Time, and certainly as we schedule these meetings, you know, okay, well, on such, such Tuesday, we have a four o'clock meeting with really what it means, you know, similar to what Commissioner Bivins was saying is, is that, you know, I need a certain amount of travel time, right?

Most of us will need a certain amount of travel time and know that

You know, meetings have to stop being scheduled at X, so we can walk to the car and into the parking lot and get the car and then drive to.

So, you know, it does take time and it's why they're just making sure that we have, you know, AMP.

My understanding is that this won't start until April, right?

Yes, I've already tried plugging it into my calendar and I have to leave by about 10 minutes of three to get there from Scottsville and wind up that road and get through the traffic.

And yeah, so we'll try.

Give special dispensation for school bus people.

All right.

So are we able to recommend adopting this schedule?

Try it out?

Okay.

All right.

So moved.

Carolyn, would you call the question?

Oh, sorry.

Does anyone want to discuss it anymore?

All right.

Yes.

Ms.

Moore?

Aye Mr. Bivins Aye Mr. Missel Aye Ms.

Okay, thanks.

The motion passes unanimously.

I did also ask you all to send me dates that you might be away.

And now that we've adopted a new calendar, I find that most of my conflicts disappeared magically.

So that was wonderful.

So if anyone does still have any date conflicts, just let us know, please, this week.

I know that everyone's still wondering if conferences are happening.

Will this pandemic ever, ever end?

But if you do know of something, just let us know so we can make sure we don't fall short of the forum.

or Corey and I both think the other one is chairing the meeting and neither is, so that's good to know ahead of time.

All right, so with that, we'll move on to the next item on our agenda, which is ZMA-2021-00012, Skyline Ridge Apartments.

The applicant has requested a deferral to March 1st to do some additional work on our site plan to address staff concerns.

So do we have a motion to move this, accept this deferral to March the 1st?

Yes, I move.

Yep, and a second by Fred Missel.

Okay, great.

All right, any discussion on this application?

Ms.

Firehock?

Aye.

Ms.

Moore?

Aye.

I think he said aye, but his sound was muted.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Okay, the motion passes unanimously.

That item is now deferred to March 1, 2022.

With that, we will now actually go to our next public hearing, ZTA-2021-10004, zoning text amendments to homestay regulations.

Thank you, Chair Firehock, and I will go ahead and share my screen.

Everybody see that?

Great.

So good evening, members of the commission.

My name is Leah Bromfield, senior planner two in zoning.

And tonight I will be presenting staff analysis and recommendations for zoning text amendment 2021-04 homestay updates.

So we start with a little bit of background.

We did adopt new regulations creating the use homestay, which combined accessory tourist lodging and the rural area bed and breakfasts under the term homestay and created regulations to keep the impacts of homestays to negligible amounts to the neighboring properties and other areas.

In June 2020, staff came back to the board and presented those changes to the regulations.

and gave an update on the compliance program, bringing all of the home stays that were previously unregistered with no zoning permits into compliance and made recommendations for bringing additional properties into compliance and also potentially changing the regulations at that time.

We were directed to make additional changes to continue compliance work, but not make any changes at that time.

In August of 2021, we came back again and the board directed us to begin work on updates to the homestay regulations.

This included staff suggestions for reducing the staff time and board time spent on special exceptions.

and looking at potential changes to the ordinance to generally improve and adjust as we have seen how the regulations have gone and how they've been applied.

And we're trying to address some of the issues that have come up in the past two years.

So in August, sorry, October of 2021, we were approved for the resolution of intent to bring this zoning text amendment forward.

And the public purpose of this is going to be to provide consistency of the ordinance.

We're trying to create more consistency across homeowner ownership eligibility, regardless of the district you're located in.

We're also trying to create consistency and clarity through rewording, reorganizing the ordinance, making it easier to administer and easier to understand.

And finally, reducing staff time and board time expended on special exceptions.

specifically for reducing setbacks for home stays.

This is in keeping with our overall goals of reducing county resources on unnecessary projects, providing clarity to members of the public and furthering goals of the comp plan that encourage preservation of undeveloped rural land.

So the resolution of intent, which a snippet of that is up on the screen right now,

was adopted October 6th.

And the aims of that were specified that we did want to reduce setbacks in the rural area for home stay requirements, but that we would also want to accompany that reduction with codification of the now standard conditions of approval requiring screening for those parcels.

So I'm going to start on the easy side.

The first change

in the proposed ordinance is just clarity rewording.

And it is literally on the first page of the new proposed ordinance.

So we'll start there.

These changes are not substantive.

They generally just create better application of the existing regulations.

The first page of the proposed ordinance has two terms.

There is a hosted stay and an un-hosted stay.

And this replaces the previously used term whole house rental, meaning that the owner or approved resident manager was not on the parcel during the homestay.

So not on the parcel at all, possibly out of town and not necessarily immediately responsive.

In contrast to that, a hosted stay would be one where the owner or the property manager is present on the parcel, available as a host to the guests.

These particular terms are increasingly standard in the field of transient lodging.

They're used by the American Planning Association and numerous other municipalities use these same terms as well.

So we're recommending adoption of those in lieu of full house rental, which is what we had previously used as a term for unhosted stays.

which has been confusing for some members of the public.

We've also reorganized the ordinance, moving the format to a more user-friendly organization, making clear which regulations apply to all the properties which are personal size based and which regulations may potentially waived or modified by special exception by including the special exceptions in the regulations instead of a separate section.

And finally, the last clarification change is proposed ordinance clarifying points that have caused confusion.

For example, how and when to present documents for residency verification, what kinds of documents are actually appropriate for that, whether a homestay host can leave the property to go to the grocery store when they realize they're out of half and half.

They can, we understand how important morning coffee is.

It's very important to everybody.

and also what kind of owner can reside on a parcel.

In specifically addressing the last question, we have recommended specifying that one individual owner of a homestay parcel must reside on a parcel unless a resident manager is approved instead.

Again, this is not a substantive change.

This is how we have interpreted the regulations, but the way they are written right now, it is unclear.

And so this is a change that specifies one individual owner as opposed to just the owner.

The second type of change proposed in this study amendment is reducing minimum yards for homestays on rural area parcels that are five or more acres.

Currently the minimum yard setback is 125 feet from all sides.

We are recommending reducing that to primary structure setbacks, which is in the rural area, 75 feet from the front, 25 from the sides, and 35 from the rear.

And this proposed ordinance would also require screening for all parcels that have

would have previously required a special exception.

So any parcel that the setback is less than 125 feet in the rural area over five acres, that would require screening as if we were having the special exception, but without having to go through the entire special exception process.

The screening is not codified right now.

It's not a requirement, but it has been consistently applied on every special exception that has been approved

for reducing setbacks for homestays in large rural area parcels.

So the screening is recommended to be consistent with that described in section 32.7.9.7, which regulates site plans for commercial use.

And that language is what's currently used in the conditions of approval for all of these special exceptions that are being approved under current regulations.

So this particular change is expected to greatly reduce staff and board review time.

We are estimating between 20 to 30 hours per special exception for those.

I think for the very, very straightforward ones, we might get down to 15 hours, but that's still a lot of staff time.

And especially when we have to do legal review and the county executive's review of this as well.

So additionally, one further point on this primary structure setbacks is what's required in the smaller parcels and the residential district parcels.

And it is also consistent with regulations for major home occupations and major home occupations have a lot more leeway in the use of the structures that are subject to the actual setbacks.

But they are actually permitted by right and they are staff approved.

So this would be consistent with the way we were treating those uses as well.

And finally, the last type of change in this post ordinance is creating consistency throughout the districts in the potential of who may apply for a special exception for resident manager.

While all resident managers must be approved by the Board of Supervisors for home stays, currently only property owners of smaller rural area parcels and residential district parcels

can even apply for a special exception for resident manager.

Larger rural area parcels are not eligible to even apply for the special exception.

One of the unintended consequences of this current regulation is that larger farms in the states, which are often preserving large amounts of undeveloped land, are often made up of multiple parcels.

They have hundreds of acres and they're all not necessarily going to be under the same single parcel.

but they're often held by business entities for tax reliability parcels and we have also seen that there are parcels that may be occupied by a farm manager or a caretaker and those are again not eligible to apply for a homestay use or even a special exception to allow them to apply for a homestay use.

One example, we had an inquiry about a potential homestay on two adjacent large parcels in the rural area

One parcel was occupied full-time by the property owners, the other parcel was occupied full-time by the farm manager, and the parcel occupied by the farm manager also contained a historic cottage that the owner would like to use as a home say.

Due to the current regulations, the owner could not do that because the farm manager could not serve as a resident manager, even though they were, I don't know, a thousand feet away from the main structure that the owner lived in.

So that was just an example of one of the unintended consequences that we've had in addition to the numerous inquiries about potential home stays on their parcels that are owned by families who hold the property in LLCs.

In those situations, multiple generations will hold the LLC ownership, and maybe not all of the owners will live on that parcel, but one family member usually does.

and so we are suggesting this change to allow that property manager, I'm sorry, the property owners of the LLC to apply for resident manager that one person who lives on the actual parcel who is still an owner would then be the resident manager for the LLC.

So as these properties are often most distant from their neighbors because they are larger parcels, they often contain many existing cottages or guest

guest houses.

And so it's interesting that these properties may be the least likely to impact neighbors or cause additional development in the rural area, but they are not permitted to apply for special exceptions for resident managers.

But I do want to stress really quickly that this does not open eligibility for resident managers to be by right.

Each resident manager request would still require a special exception, including notice to neighbors, staff review of the application for proof of residency, and a board decision on the matter.

And we would take into account factors such as

prior zoning violations, neighbor concerns, any other red flags that come up in the review process.

So a resident manager would still be required to legitimately reside on the parcel.

We are not opening this up to a situation where vacation rentals are occupied by a resident manager during the weekend and not for the rest of the year.

So that I just wanted to make clear.

And in summary, staff recommends approval of the draft zoning ordinance as shown in the staff report.

And this concludes staff presentation.

Thank you very much.

That's very thorough.

Good evening.

How are you this evening, Madam?

So I have just a couple of questions.

And then I have a question that I'd like to put a flag in for your complaint.

So could you help me understand or help us understand

What's the difference when we have use of an accessory structure, and that's in a residential plan development district, and then use of an accessory structure built prior to 2019?

Sure, so that is intended to reduce the amount of development, new development in the rural area.

And that's, again, also consistent with actually the home occupation regulations.

where a residential district parcel has to go through additional steps to get accessory structure use.

Whereas, if an accessory structure is already in existence in the rural area, it can be used for home occupations or in this case, home stays.

Thank you.

And then sort of my piece for,

Let me move further along in here that has to sort of link to the resident manager.

But on page, oh, here's my big photo, one, two, three.

On the third page of Ms.

Brumfield's report, where we have resident manager special exceptions.

So we have these, the second paragraph in there says large commercial transit lodging operations are contrary to the comprehensive plan goals for the rural area.

and then we skip down to the comprehensive plan at the bottom of the page where we have two, but we're also, the comp plan recommends supporting use for agriculture, tourism and crossroad communities.

So it seems what we've done, and I don't, I think this is just the, I hope we'll be able to look at this in the future about what really we, what kinds of activities or shall I say hotel or resort style lodging could possibly be permitted.

Right now it looks like we've got Clifton, Keswick Hall, Horsehead Inn, and I just remembered Albemarle House.

That seems to have sort of a, I thought it was a triopoly, but since you have four, it can't be a triopoly.

So it's a triopoly plus one, I'll say that.

That the county is allowing, is sort of encouraging that.

And so that constricts entry to those properties

I would say I don't know why I would like us to have a conversation if that's really what the county wants to do, if it wants to limit that type of economic development to those four types of properties.

Or, and I know I'll get in trouble, but I'm going to say this, there's so much activity going on west of town with tourism at some point, would it not make sense to have some areas where we would encourage

perhaps a hotel or resort style lodging in areas that we have this kind of agricultural, tourism, and crossroad communities.

But it seems that we've got these, we're asking for this activity to take place over there, but then we're not giving people a place

or they'll go to Nelson County, which is a lot looser in allowing people to have those kinds of structures there.

So as we think about how we move forward, I'd like to put a pin into that.

Then the other thing I have a question, is that okay, sir, Mr. Rapp, is to put a pin in that.

The other question that I have, and so this is for, she's gonna yell at me, but this is a question I have.

Why wouldn't I just go wanna go and get licensed as a B&B?

and say, you know, forget all you.

I'm just going to be a B&B.

Would you like me to address that, Mr. Bivins?

It does not.

A B&B is not a permitted use in the rural area in and of itself.

There are state regulations that have to do with registry

enrollment, but that does not permit the use in and of itself.

The registry that I think maybe what you're thinking of is in a separate section of the ordinance.

And that directly refers to the state code, which I can pull up if we need to.

And that is exempted from the registry requirements if they are registered as a BNB with the health department.

But they can't be registered as a BNB with the health department unless they have an approved use.

So there are existing B&Bs in the county that have this approval, larger ones with that were approved under prior regulations that have 10 rooms.

Right.

And those ones are registered as B&Bs.

And so they are exempt from the registry.

OK, that's what I thought you would say.

because I went and read the state statute and said, there's a little bit of wiggle room in here and let's see if we can wiggle around in that.

But again, so that would be the thing again, Mr. Rapp, that I would like us to sort of wrestle with at some point.

We are pulling all these people to our county with all these sort of activities that happen primarily to the west of town in Commissioner Moore's area.

But yeah, we don't give them any so we don't facilitate to have those dollars stay here.

Oh, I know I'm going to get in trouble because I haven't.

So the report we had today helped me just advance that effort to linking together our policies, our land use policies with economic development.

And that's not building more houses, as I'm sure somebody will quote me and say, I'm saying I want to build more houses.

No, what I'm trying to figure out is how do we keep those dollars in our community?

I was going to say, Commissioner Bivins, with our comp plan coming up, you know, we plan to work.

We've already started working and will continue to with our economic development department quite a bit on that.

Well, I'll just say plus one to Commissioner Bivins.

I couldn't agree more with what you just stated.

Anyone else have a question or comment for staff before we open it up to the public?

Okay, none at this time.

All right, do we have anyone signed up to speak?

I know I wasn't sending names ahead of time, but in case someone has popped on and is chomping at the bit to share their thoughts with us.

No ma'am, nobody.

Okay, no digital people, so back to us.

Bang the pretend gavel.

So I'll just want to say really quickly, if anyone wanted to be really filling the lonely hours at home, they could go back and listen to my original comments from when we adopted these regulations.

I was pushing for them to be much more liberal

I was actually pushing for some of the changes that are being recommended today and I would probably even go farther.

But I'm not going to get on that high horse again.

I also agree that we want to have agritourism, we want to have winery tourism, distillery tourism, and polo races and all these things.

and yet even the sort of boutique size hotel that was proposed for Crozet several years ago was put down by the board at that time and is not appropriate.

And I just really scratched my head because we're already attracting all these people to go out to Western Albemarle and Southern Albemarle and various places and spend the day and we complain about traffic.

We make it hard for them to not drive all the way back to Charlottesville

I haven't forbid, you know, going over to other counties.

So yeah, I'm all for regional tourism, but I feel like we're really missing an opportunity, you know, to let people safely stay closer to where they're recreating.

So I guess that's where I come down on it.

I would definitely like to see even a more liberal application.

And I think it could be done safely as it is in other places.

But with that, are there any other comments from commissioners

about this regulation, sort of loosening, I guess, flexibility that's being given.

Just briefly, I think it makes a lot of sense.

I think it was really well presented.

Thanks, Lea.

I guess the only comment that I would make in support of what Chair Firehock and Commissioner Bivins mentioned is

and Chair Firehock, you mentioned this as well, it's just traffic.

Anything that goes along with bringing regional tourism or a small boutique hotel or even larger boutique hotel, it's helpful because it can help to absorb traffic in a smaller area and keep trips off of Route 250, for example, from 151, which is a crazy intersection.

But I think just thinking out like that needs to go along with the traffic plan as well.

Okay.

So with that, I believe the correct action and please correct me if I'm wrong is that the staff is asking for adoption of the Resolution of Intent.

Is that correct?

No.

We're recommending adopting of the regulation proposals.

I can't use my words this evening.

Sorry.

I can't make sense anymore.

All right.

It's only 7 26.

So do we have a motion from someone for this?

Thank you.

All right, Mr. Missel seconded.

Any further discussion?

Seeing no hands raised or comments, we'll go ahead and call the question.

Okay.

Ms.

She might, it was froze for a second.

Give her another chance.

Thank you.

Mr. Bivins?

Aye.

Mr. Missel?

Aye.

Ms.

Firehock.

Aye.

Okay, the motion passes unanimously and moves on to the Board of Supervisors for their consideration.

Do we have any committee reports this evening?

We're not that far into 2022 yet.

Anyone have any committee meetings so far?

Not seeing any heads bobbing up and down, just left and right.

Yeah, thank you.

I just have one.

The 5th and Avon Street Community Advisory Committee met on the 20th of January.

So I'm told because I was able to attend, unfortunately.

But from what I'm told, the limit of the conversation was really just sort of onboarding and kind of starting the year off with FOIA comments and introductions and so on.

So nothing of real substance that I'm aware of.

Okay, thank you.

I did attend that CIC, I'll just briefly reply for 5th and Avon and I will just report that yes, they had the election of officers to start off the year and the conversation, I guess the most substantive thing we discussed was they wanted to just hear about the importance of whether or not CIC should

adopt positions.

In other words, if there was a site plan that came before or a application that they reviewed, was it helpful to the Planning Commission if they felt strongly one way or the other that they made a vote to recommend that the Planning Commission approve it or deny it or carefully consider something?

And I said, yes, we

We definitely have a copy of your conversation in our packet, but if you feel so strongly that you actually want to vote on something that is helpful because while not binding, it's sometimes a little easier to interpret than Fred said this and Sam said that and so-and-so, you know, because we can't tell from that if everyone was in agreement with, I'm just making up people's names by the way,

You know, if everyone agreed with Sam or actually it was only Sam that thought that.

So, you know, told them they don't need to do that every time.

But if there's an issue where it would help clarify it for us, that we did appreciate that.

And then they also wanted to know how we use their information in our deliberations.

I told them it's a great way to get the pulse of the to understand other concerns that staff might not be aware of, except for it being brought up in the

So that was a little longer than I apologize.

Like we said, it is early in the year still.

So with that, we have a review of the Board of Supervisors meeting for January 19, 2022.

I assume our Secretary Rapp will be giving that presentation.

Sure.

Fairly brief.

We had a public hearing that evening for the special use permit for the S.L.

Williamson replacement asphalt plant.

Came before this commission a couple months ago.

The board unanimously voted to approve that.

So that's all we had.

One other item that was not from that meeting that we should bring up tonight is our

We had a work session on our schedule for next Tuesday.

At this time, I don't have any specific topic for you.

As you saw, we'll have some work sessions coming up with a comp plan as we get that into gear in the next couple months.

But this is a question for our legal counsel.

Thank you.

And thanks for getting a clarification of like, I'm always asking those questions.

All right.

I'll figure it out by December 31st.

So, Chair, how do you want us to think about the idea that PC members would be part of the working groups?

Thank you very much for bringing that up.

I think that, first of all, like I said, I think it is a good idea, because I think it could, there might be things that come up like, what would the Commission think of this?

Or how has the Commission ever dealt with that?

Or was that, is this something that belongs in the comp plan?

Would you be open to an idea that there may be that some commissioners would want to be part of one part but not necessarily all of it because there may be subject matters that

I actually like that idea.

That's my gut reaction to what you just said.

Let me revise my request to be that you let me know that yes, I would like to do this and this is a topic of special interest to me.

Not that we're going to overwhelm their meetings, we'll try to do it one at a time.

Yeah, I think that's a great idea, especially if it's something you've been really working on in schools or you're more concerned with transportation because you're on the MPO and you can bring that perspective.

I think that's really a great idea, so thank you.

Thank you for that creative thinking, as always.

So yeah, just shoot me a note and then we can try to figure out this list.

It's a little challenging because we don't really know what they're

what their topics are.

But I just use your imagination and we'll figure it out.

How's that?

Like, I like transportation and rural areas or whatever it is.

I will be happy to send out an email of what the current top chapters all are.

Okay.

Yeah, that Yeah, that would be helpful.

All right, great.

All right, thank you for that.

So yeah, try to get that sometime this week so we can have it fresh in our minds.

So it sounds like we are adjourning to February the 15th, seeing that there's nothing on the agenda for the work session originally scheduled for the 8th.

So I move to adjourn the Planning Commission to February 15th, 2022.

So moved.

So moved.

Okay.

Second.

All right.

So with that, yay.

You don't have to do anything else.

All right.

Good job, everyone.

Thank you so much.

Thanks.