Planning Commission Work Session Meeting   3/28/2023

Thank you, Carolyn.

Is there a plug down there?

There is another one up there.

It just fills you up with the chairs.

Thank you so much and have a good session.

I will call this meeting to order and we will establish a quorum by having a roll call.

Madam Clerk, could you call the roll?

Mr. Clayborne?

Here.

Mr. Missel?

Here.

Mr. Murray?

Here.

Thank you.

Second.

Hearing none, Madam Clerk, would you call the roll?

Firehock?

Yep.

I'm sorry, Mr. Clayborne?

Yes.

Mr. Bivins?

Yes, please.

Thank you.

So with that, I'll turn it over to the staff.

We'll be going into

and those are folks who were willing to put significant budget dollars to make their projects move.

The thing I like about that is it's tied to economic development in a sense, right?

Yeah, definitely.

I think we could definitely reach out to them.

That would strengthen, I think, your hand as you talk, as you have some of those conversations.

And so I'm suggesting, and they've been writing to the county diligently every couple of months.

Dark sky?

That's it.

I'll follow up with you on getting those contacts.

This is a mission, there's a department, astronomy.

Yeah, that's some of the retired professor emeritus and others from that offered their help.

I'm just curious how they're built into that document.

And so we'll have to have a mindset and an eye to those types of things when we're writing those use standards when we get to that phase.

Can we get a copy of this presentation when

That's just a question we can plant for later.

We can give you a summary of that and send it out.

Whenever we get together, I know you've always and always shared something you have, but we're getting older, and last time we can't remember, it's months in between meetings.

Sometimes it's hard to remember all those little- And multiple projects, so it's like, did you tell me that or did somebody else tell me that?

Because the parts of your

Some of that and yeah, we do need to be somewhat flexible, but stay on target and stay on task at the same time.

I've been looking at what they're putting out in terms of their ordinance as just kind of a first step of seeing and then when we get closer to those

instances, and we're looking at the map and seeing where things bleed over, we will have conversations as needed about that.

Thank you.

Good to live in the city.

I should say that is probably more appropriate.

It's a piece of the puzzle that needs to be considered.

that I would not, as in any kind of affair, since we were not involved in that affair, I'm not going to adopt that.

I am cautious about their process.

I just thought we'd be looking for dental conflicts or concerns or whatever.

You got this and hopefully you opened it up and started reading and was like, man, this is easy because this is the two easiest articles.

Right.

There will still be an official county attorney review as well before this gets adopted.

And our council, the PC's council is intimately involved in that.

I see a shake no.

I said, nah, there's some wordsmithing that could take place.

That's the complete applications.

That's just sort of some context questions.

Did anyone else have anything related to the text that they would like us to revisit in terms of rootsmithing or anything missing?

And I got to that point, it's like, oh, I have to pay attention to my lead.

And I didn't feel like I could start marking that out because it could be much plainer, plain, straightforward English, less passive voice.

I would just encourage you to look through, you've already done that, just thinking about those types of things.

And what I'm hearing, the portions that each of you have pointed out are things that are in your existing that I kind of looked at and I thought, well, maybe this is what they like, maybe this is what they want.

And so now I can say- Inhumitably, we love to speak in long-winded sentences hereforewith.

I think those were kind of big questions.

15.2-2283.

It does, exactly.

I think, yeah, I'll be quiet for the rest because somebody else might have something.

It's probably in a different order just because we grabbed some from existing, added in what was missing at the bottom.

It's section 1.4 of the zoning ordinance.

I can't find anything.

Maybe that's worth smithing, but I feel like this list could easily be twenty five things and not thirteen.

which that could have a bit more in it that might expand on if we're allowed to do that.

So how do you decide these are the extra things that we value and we think are important enough to add in here versus something that's not?

So if there are specific goals or aspirations that come out of the comp plan they should somehow link back here.

What does your complaint say you want your community to look like?

and how we craft that language in the comp plan.

Yeah, one is aspirational and then the other is functional.

And to the extent that Albemarle says the purpose of our zoning ordinance differs from what the state has enabled, I think we need to stay with what the state has enabled.

I would not suggest adding to it.

No, we would not.

So things like climate or historical resources or equity, those types of things.

I mean, I think, I'm sorry, I think that all of those considerations can probably fit within one of the 13 enabled purposes.

Yeah, gotcha.

Yeah, like the conflict goes in a lot more depth on all of these topics.

Maybe not in as many words, but I think that it already fits in and ties in and that's why it's appropriate for the Planning Commission to make those evaluations.

says other lands of significance.

Our comprehensive plan is designed to facilitate the creation of a convenient, attractive, harmonious community.

There's a lot more about that.

My only suggestion would be that we reorder it in the same order as it exists in the state law or alternatively just cross-reference state laws.

as best to adhere as closely to the state code as possible.

If we're throwing out comments that counsel's like, why are we even touching that then?

We're not at liberty to just freelance and make this a declaration of

Is there a point where you ever hit the reset button?

1980.

Was there never another reset?

That was when we established the rural area.

Oh, I see.

So that was a big change and that was when they did a massive rezoning, a forced rezoning of a lot of different properties across the county.

That's the most recent comprehensive rezoning.

Every time we do a ZMA, that's just an A.

Yeah, I just wasn't sure why.

That's very helpful for you.

I would say go ahead and reference state code.

For what it's worth, the drafting preference in our office is just do the cross-reference and we do have the ability on the online code to cross-reference the state code so that users can just click on the county code and it is designed to allow them to jump over to the relevant state code section.

I'm not going to go stop and go do a Google for state code section.

And if you want some more detail, you can go and find it.

Any other questions before we move to Article 2?

or then what is substantially defined as.

It just has the ability to interpret the boundaries as they currently exist, or it has a role in that process.

It has a role in the process because it does have the ability to review a ZMN.

It's just declarative of existing law.

But is there any technologies or anything like that that's helping with that?

This is saying that if you need to, you can go to the Office of Community Development and they'll print you out a map.

So that type of thing can be utilized on your website probably already is.

Am I going to do that as of when it happened or do, since I haven't done anything except for come before this Planning Commission and Supervisors, do I have to come back?

It depends.

I knew you'd say that.

That's going to be a case specific determination.

At what point would they, or would they, be required to put that buffer in?

And again, that does also affect specific determination in terms of how much have they relied on that, how much have they, have they, um, detrimentally relied on?

They relied on making investments and doing good.

That's that section.

1.4.5.

It's basically saying that anything that was approved prior to the adoption of this new

And so if I sell my right, am I also selling the fact that I've just sort of buffered it from the county being able to come and do something with it?

And then that's what that's that's why courts also protect vested rights is because they realize that they have a financial value to the owners of the property.

I'm just wrestling, you know, asking you to consider.

In the conference, you'll check.

I think there's a certain period at which we say, listen, you need to come back and make this compliant with our organizations.

I think, I mean, I will share with you that I think there's been some conversation above us about going to the people in Richmond to see, but right now, right now, we don't have that ability, that has to be given to us by the people.

It is beyond our ability to alter in the zoning ordinance.

Have you picked Article 1 up enough for you?

kind of force you into something where you might end up legally in trouble if one of those dots is not dotted or is not dotted.

In the case where the county is understaffed or doesn't have the, the department question doesn't have the money to enforce the ordinance, how does that play out?

It is complaint based and you get to those complaints and you feel them the best that you are able.

Someone finally complained.

Staff has reviewed, so hopefully we've caught all those things, but do you all have anything related to Article II?

This is why it doesn't have two pages of detail because you can find the detail here.

Okay.

Unless that's already in there.

Check to Article 4 of the Albemarle County Code.

I would say either put it in here or just make sure there's a clear reference back to it.

What's more words upon here?

We'll get you more words.

They're coming.

and then next have Powers and Duties, C-section.

And to leave one out and cause me to have to go to another, it just seems like it may

I just want to make sure.

It's like the cliff notes for all these groups.

doesn't have its own section under Chapter 2.

In a way, the Planning Commission is more important because it does have its own article in Chapter 2.

I didn't understand why I said we used to.

I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

And then we get down to seven and says, well, you know, even though we said everything above nothing, that was nothing anywhere else constrains the constraints.

As being the sole grant.

Okay, I see what you're saying.

They don't challenge the authority of the zoning administrator just because it didn't appear in one through six.

So why would I even begin to think that there was a constraint?

It might seem like the waterfront, but there may be other powers out there.

Oh, I see what you're doing.

Me.

and the rest of the panel.

I think that is lifted almost verbatim from the state code.

And I stopped and said, huh?

We can.

We can.

Why can't nobody come and talk to us?

I mean, if the planning commission is seriously

And that would solve a lot of conversations on the telephone.

What was yours?

2.42.

Demonstrated interest.

Particularly when, this is about entrance corridors.

I took that as if you're applying for the position, you must have a demonstrated interest.

But it's about entrance corridors, of which there's nothing about our entrance corridors that have any unifying, there are very few places in our entrance corridors that have a unifying approach to design.

I would say that, again, this is just my interpretation.

I would say that

And that would be things like pedestrian scale, density, massing, those kinds of things, as opposed to a specific architectural typology or material.

There's nothing in here that says that I couldn't be Francois Gluffinet.

Yeah.

It's like, you know, there are these codes in here that sort of let people come in, but I'm not quite sure that the person is qualified to do what you just said.

This person doesn't have the skill set that we're looking for.

But this was pulled from your existing code section.

Does this come from the state?

We're going to do that anyhow, but I think what Fred said helps to sort of give someone, give an outsider so it doesn't look so

Right.

That's all I, I just kind of went like, what does that mean?

We're developers, we're contractors, we're everybody who plays in that field, and everybody brings a different viewpoint.

I like what Fred said at the beginning, when you were talking about... Oh, that one?

pedestrian, pedestrian, transportation, materiality, all those good words.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

I think the new language leaves open enough.

I did not catch this, but actually our ARB staff member did actually request that we add historic preservation into that.

Who has jurisdiction over what part of this process?

You made me think of context.

That's it.

I'm just pointing that out.

And the woman was passionate about that and trying to put something to the ARB and the person just barely

So I'm not here trying to do the ARB thing.

What's the economic piece of it, and then what's that?

Is there anything else that we can touch on in section two, or article two?

Thank you guys.

Great job.

So moving on, we will have many reports.

Hearing none, we'll move on to item six, and that's the review of the Board of Supervisors meeting.

They changed the 22nd of March.

You'll hear more about that at the end of April when we come to you.

Just curious, does the county have a marketing and media team that's kind of following what's happening?

I knew they were involved.

We have the community involved.

And I don't know if that's publicly available now, but we are trying to make that so you can follow along and see what all we've done in the past and what all we're planning to do in the upcoming weeks or so.

You guys see like these different snippets of the counting in action.

We're getting a lot out to a lot of people right now.

So I did notice, I went to one of the ones in Crozet and I noticed they had the pop-up in front of the library and at that time of day, there was just a handful of people coming in and out of the library but if you walk just down the block to where the pharmacy and the coffee shop was, that parking lot was packed and so there's a lot more people and then maybe it's just like the difficulty of finding a way to get a pop-up in that

I guess they thought library might have a lot of people at that time of day.

So it's not that the place wasn't a good place, it's just I'm not sure that was like the piece

Yeah.

Wegmans and ACAC, there you go.

And so this was in their budget presentation.

It's five years out.

And the top bits, the green bits are funded.

Got you.

probably all know this already, with us backing out of ownership in KTAG, the school system's also thinking about how they're going to do that.

You know, that capacity sheet that you have there, I actually think that'd be interesting if someone did that as a map, so you could see which districts are over capacity, because when you get new, large projects occurring in an over-capacity district, that'd be helpful to know.

I'll reach out to them and see if there's some way we can maybe get them later this year on an agenda for an informational presentation on how they do this.

I will say that

that particular bridge was somehow emitted from that and we are having discussions with VDOT right now as to what might have gone wrong, why they did not provide information about that.

I'm sick of them.

I understand that, but we have a good story to tell.

Right now they only come to us when the story smells like day old cabbage, but we have a really good story to tell.

Big planning implications to all of these transportation infrastructure things that are happening.

There's a big thing.

It's not a regular feature.

I think that would be really helpful if there's time on our agenda.

Any old business or items for follow up?

And the Spring Hill development rights amendment.

Was that Thomas Jefferson Parkway or something like that?

It was the large parcel that who's developed and writes about it.

Kevin, can you please talk to them about canceling the meeting on the 11th?

We've got that.

So if we were your chairman.

Sorry.

April the 25th, so.

And then the meeting on the 11th is canceled, and then this meeting will adjourn to April 25th.

and Jeremy Bausch.