Planning Commission Regular Meeting   7/25/2023

The opportunities for the public to access and participate in the hybrid meeting are posted on the Albemarle County website, on the Planning Commission homepage, and on the Albemarle County calendar.

Participation will include the opportunity to comment on those matters, which comments from the public will be received.

And so with that, I'll call this meeting to order and establish a quorum.

Madam Clerk, welcome back.

It'll be good to hear your voice.

Can you see me?

I just want to say hello.

I'm calling on my iPad now, I'm going to turn it off and then I'll take the roll.

Thank you all for all your prayers and everything.

Yes, you are missed.

Thank you.

OK, good.

I'll take roll first.

Ms.

Firehock?

Here.

Present.

Thank you.

All right, as we move on to item number two on the agenda, other matters not listed on the agenda from the public, I have two individuals present that have signed up to speak.

My name's Neil Williamson, and I serve as the president of the Free Enterprise Forum, a privately funded public policy organization focused on central Virginia's local governments.

Welcome, Commissioner Moore.

Haven't had the opportunity to speak to this group in person since your ascension to the dais.

In one of his most famous Cold War speeches, President Ronald Reagan challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the repressive communist era in a divided Germany.

Just as the Berlin Wall separated the German people, the government mandated zoning code wall between commercial office space and residential uses is keeping families from their potential homes.

No, it is not nearly as internationally significant, but it's terribly significant to those Albemarle families who need homes in our community.

Tonight, the Free Enterprise Forum is calling on the Albemarle County Planning Commission to tear down that wall.

that currently precludes residential uses in commercial office zoning.

Such a change may significantly increase housing supply.

The Free Enterprise Forum believes the wall between office, commercial, and residential can be torn down by simply adding five or 10 words to the Albemarle County zoning code to allow residential uses in commercial office zone properties.

Hopefully, tonight's discussion of the zoning code modernization will explain the, somehow you'll explain the benefit to me of the government restricting residential uses on commercial office property, especially existing commercial office property that today sits empty.

I have yet to hear a sound argument that this is good government policy, considering the way the world has changed in the last five years.

Since first proposing this concept earlier this month, the Free Enterprise Forum has heard how expensive such adaptive reuse could be.

Changing an office use to a commercial use will require electrical plumbing and, in some cases, structural changes, all true.

Not every office commercial property is ripe for this.

The question is, should governments red tape add two plus years to any possible conversion and who benefits from such delay?

Just last week, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu indicated her city is moving forward with a tax incentive plan to encourage such conversions.

Consider the primary neighborhood concerns you hear regarding any new residential development, traffic parking schools.

Two of the three are alleviated by utilizing existing commercial office buildings that currently sit surrounded by asphalt, empty.

The time is right to ask your consultants to consider what language changes would be required.

rather than requiring a commercial owner to rezone an entire property, such as zoning ordinance change would allow a portion of the parcel to develop residentially, not the entire parcel.

Many details to consider.

If not now, when?

If not you, who?

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Williamson.

Next up, I have Mr. Tom Olivere.

That was pretty close.

Thank you.

I'm Tom Olivier from the Samuel Miller district.

I've come to thank you for the resolve you showed last month when you determined that the remainder of the comprehensive plan would be more open and deliberative with multiple work sessions for examining complex topics.

Our best comp plans have come from such processes.

In this age of multiple ecological crises, we need a plan that makes ecosystem protection a chief priority.

Until now, the comprehensive plan update has pushed natural resources to the periphery.

It's no accident that Albemarle County is cherished by so many residents and often rated as one of the best places in the country to live.

This community is a good place to live, one in which biologically rich open spaces still exist next to an urban center, largely because of the thought and work and collaborations and difficult public decisions that have gone into the development of recent comprehensive plans.

If we're sensible,

As we work to deal with projected climatic and other disruptions, we will choose to build on the foundation provided by our current comprehensive plan.

Bafflingly, the update process so far has seemed committed to cast aside current plan thinking and replacing it with a new plan organization that has nothing to recommend it so far, other than a promise that it will be easy to read.

I look forward to more open and deliberative rest of the comprehensive plan update process.

All right, thank you.

All right, thank you.

Moving to the next item, item number three, consent agenda.

You'll see that we have two items on here.

We have one is the approval of the draft minutes dated June 27, 2023, regular meeting.

And then we have CCP 2023-00001, Ragon Mountain Raw Water Pump Station.

All right.

So what would happen Mr. Chair is that you would take a motion or I guess Mr. Missel has moved to remove that item from the consent agenda.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

And I was heading there.

Thank you, sir.

Keeping me out of trouble.

Is there a motion to adopt this new consent agenda with one remaining item, approval of the draft in minutes, June 27, 2023?

So is it proper for me to... So Mr. Missel has moved to remove that item and so there should now be a second to remove that item and then there will be a vote on removing that item from the consent agenda.

All right.

Any further discussion?

All right.

Mr. Moore?

Sure.

Mr. Missel?

Aye.

Ms.

Firehock?

Yes.

Mr. Carrazana?

Aye.

Mr. Bivins?

Aye.

A motion to approve the consent agenda as amended.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

That's okay.

Mr. Murray.

Aye.

All right.

So moved.

Second.

All right.

Any further discussion?

Aye.

Ms.

Firehock.

Aye.

All right, so now we have that item, CCP-2023-00001, Reagan Mountain Broadwater Pump Station.

Second.

Second.

Any further discussion?

You didn't tell me you seconded it.

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Murray?

Aye.

Ms.

Firehock?

Aye.

All right.

Thank you, Council, for keeping me out of trouble again.

As we move into the work session, we have ZTA-2022-00002, zoning modernization phase one.

My name is Leah Rumfield.

I am a senior planner in zoning.

And I want to thank you all for your time this evening.

And reorganize my papers, because they were printed out of order.

Little printers.

There we go.

Okay.

So we do have a short presentation, a little bit less of a work session and more of a presentation about the progress of phase one, the zoning modernization project.

We are still in the administrative and

applications stage of the zoning modernization drafting process.

We're trying to lay kind of a foundational groundwork of the zoning ordinance, the sections that are going to allow interpretation and understanding and requirements for all the other sections as they move forward and get a little more exciting when we go into districts and uses.

So we will go a little over some of the sections and speed through on some other ones, but I will give you a brief overview.

We will go into our current work, some examples of the ordinance changes we're looking at, and then we will look at some of the best practices as we've continued to learn throughout this process and some of our kind of guidelines as we're looking to the future phases.

The initial reset and kickoff meeting was August 22, 2022.

That was discussing phasing for the new project, the intended schedule, when we realized this was a much bigger beast than we had originally intended.

The next following stages focused on interviews, gathering more stakeholder information,

We did have two on two interviews with the PC and then we also had staff interviews as well, figuring out what do we need to do for this ordinance, particularly the administrative section, which is where we're focusing right now.

We did have a focus group with listening session with Cadre, the Charlottesville area development roundtable in November.

Cadre, especially in the application process, is one of our key stakeholders as they do work with a lot of applications.

Work session one with the Planning Commission was December 2022.

This section was focusing on the initial findings of our first round of public engagement, why we're doing this, what kind of the best practices are, what the biggest complaints were, and present the work that we had done with the Berkeley group,

which was a complete evaluation and a plan moving forward.

In January of 2023, we had the public open house.

When we had standing room only, we needed a much bigger room than we had anticipated.

And that was really more for information sharing, getting people thinking about the project, letting them know something is coming down the pipeline, and then very, very generalized informal question and answer about what this process would look like.

Work Session 2 was the most recent time we were before the Planning Commission in March of this year.

And that one, remember, we looked at Article 1 and Article 2 of the proposed zoning ordinance.

Article 1 was the general provisions, the establishment of how we have a zoning ordinance, how we have a zoning map, enabling legislation,

Interpretations, and then Article 2 was Powers and Responsibilities of the Zoning Administrator, Board of Zoning Appeals, Architectural Review Board, and then referring to the establishment and responsibility of the Planning Commission in Chapter 2, which is not changing.

So today, and then kind of moving forward, currently we are working on Article 3, which is Procedures and Requirements for Applications, and Article 10, which describes how to handle nonconformities,

these seem like they should be very simple straightforward sections and yet throughout the process we have been taking all of the unwieldy ordinance that we have currently and kind of winnowing it down realizing that this isn't winnowed enough and then winnowing it further and as a result we are focusing on these drafting guidelines

Number one is simplifying language and layout of the ordinance.

I'll show you in the next kind of slides what that will look like.

We're moving the overly verbose language and reducing the vocabulary words to make it as easy to read as possible.

This increases the amount of white space on the page and combining that with the graphical references wherever possible, we're going to be putting information into tables, just making it a lot easier to read.

Here on this slide, I do have two examples of the kind of graphical references we're looking at.

The one on the left, which is blue, is a

It's a process graphic from the Henrico County Adopted Zoning Ordinance.

The more colorful graphic on the right is from the proposed City of Charlottesville Zoning Ordinance, which has not yet been adopted.

But these are the kind of process things that make people, that just give people an idea of what the process looks like.

Flow charts are very easy to read.

They're easy, instinctive to understand.

And then these kind of just accompany the text to make it easier to read.

Also, we are standardizing the processes across application types.

And I'll show you an example of that in a minute.

And then also removing application requirements from the ordinance.

And I think that you'll probably have some questions about that, but we will, again, get to that in just a second.

So currently, a ZMA or a special use permit application requirement in the ordinance looks like this.

It's very wordy.

It's just a bunch of long typed out paragraphs.

And each different application type has its own standards in the ordinance that look basically like this.

Anytime a requirement is updated, reworded, thought better of, the ordinance has to go through a zoning text amendment process, which is I think legally a minimum of like four months with the advertisement requirements.

I think that you can possibly get it shorter but it's very, very difficult.

Our new, sorry, so these are the requirements that go in each application and this is kind of a table to show which things go into each application and this is actually only half of the table that's in the ordinance right now.

So the new minimum submission standards are

I did choose this example of text for effect.

These standards aren't going away, but this would be what was in the ordinance.

All of those kinds of standards will be on the individual applications, which is actually our current process right now.

Each application has the list of what needs to be in the application when it's submitted, but it's also in the ordinance.

So this kind of

This kind of ordinance-based application makes it very unwieldy to make any changes.

Right.

And keeping it just saying applications must include a completed application form.

Whatever you put on the application form is what's required.

So for example, if we have

civic standards that need to be, we need specifics for specific standards in a form-based code application.

We can just have that on the form that say, these are the things you need for a form-based code civic standards.

That's not currently in this submission.

So also we are looking at taking some of the ordinance.

So again, the left is the current ordinance and the right is the proposed ordinance and the left

As you can see, it's not very easy to read.

It's literally a wall of text.

Not literally, it is visually a wall of text.

And on the right, it is significantly easier to read.

So what we're looking at here, we take a list of things.

zoning map amendment for special use permit application, which is not a complete list, in fact, and then turn it into pre-application meeting is required for these things.

Additionally, we are removing unnecessary jargon and just the overly wordiness.

Each prospective applicant in parentheses, the applicant, we can just say the applicant, we don't need to specify.

and then again, updating current procedure.

So in this particular example, we do request that all pre-application meetings submit information five days ahead of time.

Currently, the ordinance says you can provide it if you want.

or not, before or during, whenever, this process update gives us more focus on what we're actually doing and allows staff to better prepare.

And this is just kind of the smaller kind of updates that we're doing in this process.

There are a few changes that I want everyone to kind of like be aware of as we're moving forward.

Again, as we mentioned, we are taking submission requirements out of the ordinance and putting it into the process.

So as shown on application forms will be kind of the watchword.

It will allow future updates to requirements, make it much faster and much easier to understand.

One of the big things that sounds big but is actually less so is we have been recommended to change what we call a special exception, because it is confusing from the Code of Virginia standpoint, where a special exception of the Code of Virginia is actually a special use permit.

And in other municipalities, they have that same naming convention, or they do one or the other.

We're the only ones I think that have both a special exception and a special use permit in our ordinance.

So we are proposing the name, just legislative modifications.

That's essentially what it is.

It's clear.

And we're trying to look forward even further into the ordinance to reduce the number of special exceptions and just make standards codified instead of requiring conditions on every single application.

Right now we have a very large number of special exceptions that go before the board and the conditions that are applied on each one are pretty standardized and they could very easily be codified.

Additionally, on the modifications side of things, we are calling out minor modifications

that are not rising to the level of a legislative modification.

And we're calling those administrative modifications.

These are things like substituting shared parking for the number of parking spaces that the ordinance currently requires.

These are going to be called out in the ordinance as sections where there can be modifications made to the requirements.

We do want to avoid trying to overstep the bounds of the zoning administrator's powers, definitely.

But we do want to call them out as a type of application so that this is a standardized format when you're requesting these applications as a developer or as any kind of applicant.

So then people will know what the process is.

The process is not, at the last minute, asks for a

administrative modification.

It's going to be upfront as part of the application process.

And then finally, one other, the last change that I kind of want to bring to everyone's attention is

a really more of a naming convention and calling out the process, which is a zoning map amendment with proffers.

We are calling that out in its own separate section, conditional zoning and proffers.

This is again, a pretty statewide convention.

A zoning map amendment in most zoning ordinances is generally when the board rezones something.

by themselves and of themselves.

A request for a zoning app amendment with a proffer to avoid offsets of impacts that is called conditional zoning and proffers.

And so it is still a zoning map amendment.

The application types probably won't change, but it does bring in the separate processes for when the board initiates versus when an applicant initiates.

So looking to future work, we do need to pull some staff resources for graphic design.

We do fortunately have very talented staffers in our zoning and planning divisions.

They just need a few extra hours in the day to get these things on their calendars.

We are looking at additional questions for some of the recommendations that we had from our consultants to make sure that these things are going to meet

legal requirements and won't be challenged that we can be upheld as the shining exemplary ordinance that we are currently referred to.

There are some questions on wordings for those questions and then some things that we're trying to figure out if we can put on our wish list or if we need to back away from.

And additionally, we do have additional

drafting and stakeholder work for specifically site plan ordinance and the entrance corridor standards, because these are very high touch kind of applications and there is there's a lot of feedback that is coming in and needs to continue that dialogue.

So up next, we're looking at a work session on Article 3 and 4, which is the applications that we just discussed and then nonconformities.

And we're trying to bring that into Q4 of this calendar year 2023.

And I also want to get everyone kind of thinking about the next phase, which is something that I think is a little bit more

exciting.

It's the kind of things that people have groups to talk about, dark skies ordinance people, master gardeners have talked to us.

And this is the phase two.

This is all of the community design standards, and that includes the screening, the lighting, the landscaping,

It also includes the more boring things like curb and gutter, but I don't think that people have a ton of input on that.

Parking requirements, and we don't have these engagement processes scheduled yet, but these are going to be going up on the calendar and we want to start

Reaching out to people and talking about that and thinking about the things that we want to be design standards all across the entire development area of the county.

So that did not take an hour.

We do have a couple of best practices just in general to keep in mind for county wide design standards.

We do want to keep things as

kind of streamlined and broadly applicable as possible.

This is something that we hear a lot of is that when people are going through their application processes, they get kind of bogged down in requirements that aren't necessarily in the ordinance and they end up with conditions of approval that are the same as are in the ordinance or slightly more stringent.

And so we really want those things to be in the design standards so that they're applicable to everybody

The applications can go through faster.

We can get more interesting buildings.

We can get more interesting projects and then have people want to build things here.

We do obviously have lots of time for questions.

Bart, did you want to, no, okay.

Yeah, so that's kind of,

All right, great.

Thank you for the update.

I'll work from starting at my far left with Commissioner Bivins if there's any questions or comments.

We're just going to work our way around the horn.

Thank you, Chair.

And as usual, thank you, Ms.

Brownfield for

One of the most concise presentations that we receive and it's always a pleasure.

So I've got just a couple questions really and they're not even comments just sort of questions so

If I'm understanding the processes that are under Article III that are going to be reviewed and potentially modified, is really trying to align the county's process for the built environment

Yeah, a lot of the goals of the entire zoning modernization project.

So this section, which is article three, and then the future ordinance phases.

So phase two, which will look at all the community design standards, all of those are to make things more predictable, and get things that are coming in the way that we want them.

And that's what I was hoping that I heard, and so I did.

And so you just confirmed that.

So I have two more items, please.

So on the special exceptions, that whole section that you spoke about, that really aren't legislative issues for us.

They are for the BOS, for the supervisors.

So at some point, do you think there will be a discussion on whether or not those even need to come to us?

Because there's this point where we always go to, and it's usually,

It's really Commissioner Firehock that says, and everyone knows, we're not going to vote on these.

And so my point is, well, would it speed the process if we didn't know about it?

Because we're not going to deal with it.

And so while I'm not sort of saying that it's not an interesting process, but it would seem when we're talking about process simplification, that might be one of the things that you bring, that things come to us which we can actually

have some lift to and weigh in.

Some to us, but that we don't actually have authority over.

And then we always waffle like, OK, well, should we vote?

And I'm always like, I'm a by the book person.

So I'm just like, we don't have any say.

There's a little bit of a backstory there in that the former county zoning ordinance did have those routed to the Planning Commission but as you all may know there was this Sinclair decision by the Virginia Supreme Court that specified that those sorts of legislative decisions should not be delegated or could not be delegated to the Planning Commission.

There was recently a zoning text amendment about a year or two ago

that moved those out so that that's no longer in the ordinance.

So the current county ordinance doesn't call for those to go through the Planning Commission either.

I think we just did that recently.

We volunteered ourselves back off of that one.

And so the only other thing I have to ask about when we get to phase two, on the items that you had on phase two, we have, I think this is sort of somewhat of it.

Are we going to, because I think we had

Oh, you can probably go to the faster than I can remember.

I think you had traffic and parking and other yard.

So you had entrance corridors, parking, landscaping, signs, lighting.

So all the things about how do we get around places?

How do I get from place A to B?

And so what we also be talking about there, while many of us may not be passionate about gutters, many of us are passionate about sidewalks.

and multimodal conditions that allow people to move across particularly the heavily built environment.

And so if we're gonna be talking about lighting signs, parking and entrance corridors, I would hope that there would be some consideration that we talk about in either broad or specific terms, how we move nonvehicular traffic or activities.

through that.

So how do we do that?

Yeah, I think that's a really, really important thing to talk about.

And I think that one of the things that we struggle with and the reason that it's on that list right now is that currently the county cannot own its own roads.

And so we can't and most sidewalks are in the right of way.

So the sidewalks are what VDOT requires.

So that's definitely something that should be part of the conversation, I think.

And I don't have the answer either.

I think that, so some of the, I would imagine, at least listening to some of my colleagues, part of what might be in the comp plan, and I don't know how this will link over to the ordinance, is aspirational pieces.

And so there is a way, I believe, with the language which you're creative crafting there, wordsmithing there, to talk about the sort of overall sort of expectation or hope

that the county has when people bring new projects or redevelopment projects to our attention.

I'm thinking, for instance, as we heard earlier this evening, if the built commercial environment were to in fact become more residential,

How would we do that in a way that in our community, which is still basically a suburban community and some aspects of it, how would we do those conversions in a way that would facilitate sort of those dual uses, which would mean that you'd have dual uses both on the property and how people might get back and forth to those properties.

And so that's really where my mind is sort of spinning to.

Is that OK?

Yeah.

If I could tag onto that.

I'm not trying to go out of order.

But we can exceed VDOT standards, can't we?

So I mean, I understand, like you're maybe saying, we can only require what VDOT requires.

But to his aspirational point.

We could say we would like to see, for example, wider medians between traffic and the sidewalk.

Yeah, so I take this with a grain of salt because I am not a VDAP representative, but I believe the issue that we're coming across when we went through this reform-based code for the first go-round was that anything that exceeds their standards, someone else has to maintain.

They will not maintain sidewalks that are wider than five feet.

or I think it's like eight feet inside.

So I don't know what that is.

There's gotta be ways around it.

But the plating strip is this big, they'll only do this much.

I think if I could I think I'm right on this because we've done this with signage where we've asked for above standard signage and we have a maintenance agreement with VDOT that requires us to maintain the signs and the same with any other above standard like wider medians things like that.

I think there's a way to enter into an agreement.

I think the trick is that you

Your employer, my employer can pay for maintenance of those.

That's right.

We have exceeded VDOT standards in a number of areas, but it's on us.

But UVA can certainly do that.

Yeah, I would definitely.

I just like to thank you for a very concise and clear presentation.

I don't actually have any questions.

I have a comment if you can go to your best practices slide.

Thank you.

So this is part of your next steps.

I'm assuming that you're gonna look into the best practices into these areas.

And so this is a comment I made probably several years ago in terms of when we first started a conversation about design standards or base codes and others that we were talking about a few years ago.

And what I would caution is not getting too prescriptive.

And when I see the term predictive development patterns,

I'm a little concerned about that and what exactly does that mean and how does that unfold.

So, you know, you said that we want to encourage people to build and build, you know, exciting buildings where people like to work and live in.

And so we just want to make sure that they're not getting too prescriptive in how we apply our design standards.

So certainly obviously look at best practice, and I'm sure there's going to be some that are very prescriptive, some that maybe are less so.

But anyway, again, thank you very much for the presentation.

Yeah.

Could you go back to that list?

It was a few slides ago, like the five things.

Yeah.

My question is really a process question, not to dig into all those things.

I'm just curious, is the process that our consultant is going to create something that's then going to go to some kind of stakeholder roundtable and then it's going to

So let me, so we have, we do have that.

Let me give you a little more background on where my head's at.

So in speaking,

In speaking to our prior staffer, Mr. Rapp, we had long conversations about landscaping standards.

And that's like something I do in my day job is read people's ordinances and fix their standards.

And the fact that we don't have any standards in Albemarle County for tree planting, like just what are the specs?

we have shopping malls here where the trees are dying because they're planted improperly but because we have no standards there's nothing to hold them to so like for example like I knew he knew that I was concerned about that and that he assured me that when they got to that in the zoning code he was going to make sure to to address that but he's left so like I don't know what the process is for the commission to ahead of time tell you there's some things we'd like you to look at as part of these topics

before you go to the roundtable so that they're included in that public process.

And then we don't, that doesn't come to us and we're like, hey, but what about this?

So yeah, that's that's kind of what I was hoping for with this slide with next steps is starting that conversation.

And if there's specific things that you would like to request that we look into, and I know that we had some contacts that were recommended for some of these processes, I think at this point, we are just specifically asking you to email them to us.

Okay.

And they will become part of that process.

I mean,

Definitely copy Kevin and Jody and Bart and forward that on.

Okay.

I just want to make sure I get this list down.

We can send it out.

And also I can attach the engagement plan again.

That'd be great.

Thanks.

Yeah, thanks.

Thanks, Leah.

Very, very helpful.

Great presentation.

I have just a couple minor things.

One, when you shared the examples of the simplified language,

What I found to be really helpful, I'm sure you're going to do this, is embedded links in that simplified language because you're going to lose some of the wording that some other people may want to see, but also you're losing wording some people don't care about.

But if there's a way to just click a link on that, it's really helpful if you want to get that next layer down.

Second thing is I'm glad you mentioned, maybe it was on the previous slide, the rock star graphics people that we have at the county because I think any time like there was an example where you were talking about

Well, it was a timeline related note on one of the slides, seeing the timelines, the way they're sort of just drawn out in a simple way.

This is one example of something that we received, but those are immensely helpful, I find anyway.

And they're also a good way to keep people accountable to the process, which sometimes you lose track of.

And then this is just something I'm sure I'm missing, but you mentioned on this slide, draft of articles three and 10,

It's three and 10.

Totally cool.

Yeah.

Yes.

Thank you.

That was it.

Mr. Murray.

So first, I'd like to know a little bit more about the administrative modifications.

I assume there's going to be an enumerated list of what things qualify for administrative modifications and what things don't.

And then I hope there's an opportunity for the public to know what things were changed administratively so that's transparent to the public because if we're taking that out of you know out of that process and we're putting it to an administrative process then that suddenly becomes invisible to the public.

So I think that's a very important thing.

And I think, you know, speaking of that on page 11, it talks about faster approvals.

And as we mentioned in a previous meeting, faster is not always better if it's a bad application.

I'm sorry, continue?

No, so I mean, if

There are things you want to expedite because they're good projects and because they go above and beyond the requirements the county has set forth.

And there are things that barely meet standards or don't meet standards at all.

And we certainly don't want to expedite those.

So I think when we're talking about expediting, I had a conversation years ago, I don't know if it's still a thing, but a comment that I heard in the past was that

Applications would come through incomplete and then staff would kick them back to the applicant.

They would make a couple more changes, kick them back to the applicant.

I mean to staff, there's this like ping pong going back and forth until finally the applicant had reached the bare minimum requirements to get it through and then that went through.

And I think that's expensive for the applicant and that would be, if that's still true, it's expensive for the applicant and expensive for the county.

I prefer to see the requirements set up up front.

An ideal world, you know, we talked about, perhaps jokingly so, putting a letter grade on applications.

I still like that idea of making that letter grade public so that people have a built-in incentive from the very get-go to get their applications right the first time.

and I think there should be some minimum bar if you submit an application below a certain standard, like it's just flat out rejected.

We're not gonna keep doing it over and over again.

So that's a thought on that.

Also, in phase two, that whole cluster where you have lighting, signs, landscaping, parking, it seems like a natural conversation to go along with those.

We've talked a lot about low impact development standards.

and that's a very related conversation about, you know, right now, the way we're doing parking lots and the way we're doing landscaping doesn't necessarily do anything for stormwater and can make it considerably worse.

Let's see.

That's all I have right now.

Commissioner Moore?

Thanks again, yeah, for the presentation.

Just echoing what others said about how it was concise and clear and got to the points.

I also very much appreciate the graphic and visual simplification and the use of white space and better font bullet lists and all the rest.

Just taking it up makes it more understandable, you know, educated lay audience.

So well done there.

and then yeah also appreciate moving toward best practices including faster processing if not approvals and countywide design standards.

I had a question about countywide design standards as well and I know there'll be a lot more as we look ahead to phase two on what that means and what that looks like but I'm thinking about how so often things are very bifurcated and what we do in the rural areas is what we do in the growth areas and so like if we have a countywide is that addressed in the countywide design standards just in terms of lighting and signage that

people might be fine with on Rio or 29, but not so much in a place like Batesville or Stony Point.

Sure.

So that I can answer pretty quickly.

The current design standards are for commercial developments.

So most of those, especially the lighting standards, these only apply to commercial and industrial developments.

For non-commercial, for residential and rural, they have separate, which is basically no spillover.

and the design standards for things like parking.

You're not going to get much parking in the grill area and signs are the same across the way.

A lot of our standards are kind of contained in our entrance corridor requirements.

Thank you.

Also, I'm learning so many things about how we don't own our own sidewalks, for the most part.

All right, go ahead.

This might be one for your boss.

This is more of a specific example, and I apologize, but I can't help myself.

What do we do in a situation where there's like a rural store, and I'm thinking of some actual stores, where some of them are sold, they may predate the zoning ordinance or whatever, but they've been there a long time, and then they suddenly decide they're going to put up all new lighting, and it doesn't comport with our lighting standards.

and the county doesn't notice.

So I guess that's my question.

Like what is the procedure there?

Somebody like tells the owner that they are not in compliance or we report it to the county or the county goes out and says, hey, by the way, because they're not coming through the zoning process, but there's a lot of people just putting up lighting or deciding to light their second story.

And these are at commercial enterprises.

I notice a lot of things but I'm just debating which things to bring to your attention.

Sometimes I bring things in like this terrible billboard and they say that predates the zoning ordinance and so they can light up the sky all they want.

That's not exactly how staff said it to me, but that was the basic gist I got.

Yeah.

So the the distinction kind of here is between

newer things versus non-conforming, or sorry, versus things that are non-conforming and may have vested rights.

If they are already there, that is correct.

We can't really change things.

There are some ugly things in the county that have been there since 1960.

And that's just, until it falls down, it's gonna be there.

But we do have specific standards for country stores.

which I think is what you're talking about there.

Because I'm talking about people who may have even been someone in compliance but have put up a whole lot more lighting.

Two story tall, lighting, flooding everywhere kind of stuff.

I'm just trying to, multiples of these, not just one light.

So I'm just trying to understand like, would you like to report us on a violation?

Perhaps.

But I would like, I just trying to understand like how you guys handle that.

Yeah, I can give you

Parts of Bota zoning administrator.

I can give you kind of the short course.

We would investigate each one kind of case by case.

And if there are things, because there are certain maintenance things you can do with existing lighting fixtures to match fixture for fixture.

There's other things when you do wholesale changes that would have to comply.

So we'd have to look at each situation.

We do not have a proactive enforcement program, as you know.

But if we receive that complaint, then we investigate.

And if you ended up putting up the wrong stuff, you got to put up the right stuff.

And that's how it works.

So we hope that folks contact us.

A lot of the newer country stores have been in communications with us.

They're investing a lot of money and resources in these uses.

and they want to make sure that they're doing things that are compliant with the ordinance because it's really hard if you don't do it right the first time to find time to do it again.

And so we're kind of in tune to that.

Yeah, I mean, it just comes up because people are asking me, like, well, if we're going to do the lighting ordinance, because this is out there in the public, people are calling me, coming to my office to visit me in the morning.

And I guess they're asking, but what about those guys?

And it's not always a case where it was just predated, the ordinance.

It's like somebody has stuck something new on their building.

Maybe they put up a new sign.

They didn't get any permission.

So as we tighten things down, it's not unexpected that we would get more.

Yeah.

All right.

With four inspectors, uh, for code compliance officers.

And it's everything from cars to lighting.

We've had folks replace wall packs specifically.

Um, you say over 400 with 400.

Yeah.

Over 400 complaints a year.

Wow.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Right.

Yeah, thanks.

Thanks, Chair.

Just one, if I could put a respectful tweak on Commissioner Murray's comment about grading applications.

I would say that

You know, many applicants that there's and this gets back to Commissioner Carrazana's comment too about unequal resources that not all applicants have the resources to be able to bring a grade A or B application, but they may be fighting to get a

project done and they're pulling whatever they can together and they create a passing grade so I think it also puts the county in a position of having to make a judgment or a value call which I would say is probably not your jobs or nor would I would say who they want that

It's more about are the regulations being followed yes or no.

Can I just add something to that?

And I absolutely agree that we need to be mindful of not everybody having the same level of resource.

However, I think one of the best applications that we had was a small residential application.

They did hire somebody, but it was very simple, very straightforward, but it had everything we needed.

And so, I mean, we actually complimented them because here's somebody that doesn't have a lot of resources for this, not a developer.

They're not making money off of what they were doing.

It was not a commercial venture in any way, but it was a very thoughtful application.

It had everything that we needed.

So I think that's the key is making sure that what we need to see based on the type of application that it is, is in there.

I think there was some hand sketches but it had everything we needed.

I don't think we had practically any questions.

And then we get some developers, they're probably spending tens of thousands of dollars or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases.

There's not always about money.

Good point.

I did have one question.

It may not be worth much of anything, but did you say the city of Charlottesville is undertaking the same process right now?

No.

I'm not sure who their consultants are, but we're kind of all kind of learning together.

Yeah, and I think that we have also been talking with Roanoke County.

We actually have a meeting set up with them next week about their form-based code.

And just like learning, talking to people, the very nice gentleman at Henrico as well.

And just kind of sharing information and not necessarily coordinating our ordinances because we do have different populations, we have different needs.

We have UVA, they don't.

We have very different things that we're working with.

Well said, and understand that we certainly are different.

I'd hate to bring this up from an owner's perspective, for example.

I would hate for it to be more arduous in one place than the other when you're literally one mile away, right?

So I don't want to miss out on opportunities when we're looking for more housing, more whatever.

You can fill in the blank because of something like that.

So that's why I bring that up.

Any other questions or comments from the commission?

I do have one thing.

There has been some discussion about allowing residential development and commercial zoning.

I would just like to make my own comment that I think affordable commercial and office space is just as important as affordable housing and in some ways more important because it's revenue positive as opposed to revenue negative.

As we saw in the housing market collapse, it actually benefited affordable housing in our area because after the housing market tanked, a lot of people could then afford housing.

And a lot of houses had to sit empty for a while before that housing could be affordable.

However, that said, we have a lot of areas in the county that are underutilized with excessively large empty parking lots.

I do think so parking, yes.

I do want to just clarify districts are going to be in a further phase beyond phase two.

I think it's actually phase three.

districts and the uses that will be in them.

I think that's going to be really where we take the information that is coming out of this comp plan process and really put that into the ordinance because the districts and their uses are really what shapes the individual areas.

So that is, I mean, we're basically trying to do that with form-based code.

Understood.

Here, can I come back on that?

So I want to be real clear here.

The model of having sort of mixed use structures is as old as Switzerland, where I had my cows downstairs, and then I lived upstairs.

And then right next door, I had the place I made some cheese.

And so we've come to this place where we specialize.

We are a country that loves to specialize in things, to which I think is fine.

I think there's some value to that.

But I also believe we're also seeing that the specialization puts up unfortunate barriers to things.

And so part of what I'm hoping is that we're in a period now that we can rethink how we do zoning that mitigates barriers.

And to come to your conversation about the affordability of that, if we can also at the same time, and this is not the county's business, but if we can also as a culture come for the fact that what does it mean to be housed?

and that may in fact evolve as I think we're seeing in our community, the migration to more apartments type living and away from what I would consider as more single family detached living.

So what does that mean as far as providing interesting and healthy and safe places to live, but does not necessarily follow the June Cleaver model?

that some of us may have in our head.

I say that, so I saw something, I had to go and look at the street that I grew up on today on Google Maps.

And I realized our house was probably the biggest, and this is not me bragging, but our house was the biggest house on the block.

But I didn't realize that as a little kid.

Now I look at it and say, why did we need a house that big?

One of the reasons we need a house that big, because we had bought into the American way.

And so I want to say that as we think about the reallocation of resources, maybe the zone helps us rethink how do we present zoning and comp plans to be able to encourage that diversity of ideas and the diversity of culture.

That's all.

I'll take one more and then I'm going to move us along in the agenda.

Okay.

I was going to make one comment, but now I have two.

I'll blame these other gentlemen.

I just say that if we want to be thinking about adaptive, we don't have time to get into this tonight, but if we want to be thinking about buildings that are more adaptive, we have to change some of our standards potentially.

I'm not looking at our standards at the moment.

But for example, city of West Palm Beach,

they wanted to have buildings that could be converted so like now everyone wanted to put up hotels but maybe in the future we won't need so many hotels because they'll have too many and maybe they should be apartment buildings in order to make that work they had to change the standards for the height of hotel rooms to be taller because hotel rooms have lower ceilings so you could never adapt those hotels into residences if they kept their old standards so they changed it they also changed their parking garages they changed the design of them so that

When you build them, they could be converted into residential or commercial structures.

I even purchased with UVA 20 years ago, and they said, well, we could do that, but we're not going to.

Because I was trying to think of the future when we're all levitating to class in our little backpack or whatever.

The more serious comment, though, so just to keep that in mind, if we want to be thinking about converting of structures and adaptive reuse,

was I really want to just plus one the concept of making people bring to the planning commission things that have been already in the application five days ahead.

In other localities that I work for, I have to submit all my materials usually like 10 days ahead.

But it's very common in this commission.

I don't see it other places so much.

We get a brand new slide show with brand new renderings that no one has seen that's being presented by the applicant but is not in the packet.

It's not in any attachments.

And they're like, well, we just came up with this today.

Or here's a new sketch.

Or in the back of their PowerPoint they say, oh, I'm glad you asked that.

And then they start showing us all these other drawings.

And it's really hard, sometimes I see things that I think I don't have time to digest.

This entirely new building design and whether it's conceptual or it's really proffered or whether it's really what they're going to do, I can't even tell.

So I would like to push that everything they're going to show us has to be ahead of time in the packet or

or they should delay until they have time to do these other things because we're just put in a very uncomfortable position.

I can't go and compare that.

Yeah, I think we've got some great stuff and I think that we're going to be

looking for everybody's suggestions with future phases.

Okay, sounds great.

The next presentation we have is CPA 2021-00002 AC44 updates.

Thank you, Kevin McDermott.

I'm the Acting Planning Director.

Ms.

Brumfield did a great job of being brief and I hope to match that as well.

This is going to be just a slightly expanded version of my typical AC44 update and sort of in preparation for our next meeting, our next PC meeting, where we'll be given a pretty in-depth review.

So today I'm just going to quickly go over what we're going to talk about at the August 8 work session on the planning toolkits.

We'll be looking for input on the topic areas that we have been evaluating and have been talking about to the public for a while now.

Those include activity centers in the development area, criteria for future development area expansion, rural crossroad communities, and rural interstate interchanges.

And I'll get into a little bit more description on that work session in a minute.

and then also quickly go over the fall engagement and PC work sessions, including the timeline on the draft goals and objectives and how we're gonna go about doing PC work sessions for those.

So this graphic was in your packet and this was sort of after our last meeting, we were trying to,

give a better picture to the Planning Commission as to where we are in this process.

And so we put this sort of guide together to help clarify that.

It looks like you can see my cursor, so I'll just quickly show you what we're looking at here.

So the top line is the overall AC44 process.

We've got four phases for this, including phase one, which was planned for growth,

You can see some of the things we covered in that.

Phase two, the goals, objectives, and planning toolkits.

This is the phase we are in now.

Starting early in 2024, we will be getting into prioritizing the action steps.

That's really the sort of strategies that we are going to be recommending in the comp plan.

And then finally, phase four, late next year, we'll be finalizing and adopting the plan.

So as going from that second phase, a little more detail there you can see is broken down in this next timeline right here.

It was sort of broken up into three different steps.

Step one is what we termed discovering challenges and opportunities.

This is when we were really looking at all those different topic areas that we are covering in the comprehensive plan, including land use, transportation,

Parks and Recreation, Natural Resources, et cetera, et cetera.

And you can see what we were doing with there.

There was an engagement plan that we presented to the board at that time.

And we had some community engagement going on, including going out to the community, some online activity.

And then that brought us up to step two, or we had a PC meeting on that as well.

That brought us up into the developing planning toolkits, and you can see right here, this is where we are.

We're finishing up this phase right here.

We will be coming to you, as I said, on August 8th with those planning toolkits.

Following that, we'll go on to the Board of Supervisors with the planning toolkits, and then that'll close off step two, and then we'll begin step three, which is defining the goals and objectives.

And you can see the timeline down here, and I'm going to get into that in more detail in just a second.

So the August 8th work session on planning toolkits.

What we're looking for here is for planning commission input and direction on how to update those recommendations for the topic areas.

As I said, that's activity centers, future development area expansion, crossroad communities, and rural interstate interchanges.

The format we're going to have, and this is going to be held over in room 241, and it's going to be the only item on the agenda that day.

So we can take as much time as we need.

Our thought is that it would be about a 10 minute presentation on the topic where we'd go over what we presented and what we heard when we went out to the public.

And then that'll be followed by about 20 minutes or so of PC discussion.

We're going to have that professionally facilitated by Cozart Consulting who is one of our consultants on that comprehensive plan team that we have.

She does a really great job of this and we just thought that would be better so that we can help manage time and make sure that we're getting the input that we want to hear from you all and you have that opportunity to do that.

So with each one of those topics we're going to have two to three options for how we could update that element and then we'll ask you all for feedback including which of those options you think we should pursue.

And then once we get all that information, we will take that, take your input and feedback to the board.

And I believe that's approximately a month later in the September, one of the September meetings that we're going to go to the board.

So that's what we're looking at for the August 8th work session.

and then moving on to step three.

I just wanted to give a preview of what we're going to be doing for that fall engagement timeline and how we're going to be working with you all on that.

So you can see what we've done here.

Initially, we had proposed having one work session that would cover the goals and objectives for all of the topic areas in the COP plan.

We realized that was going to be way too much information to present at one time.

So what we've done

is we've broken this up into three different work sessions with the Planning Commission, each one focusing on about two or two chapters of the COP plan.

So you can see here what we're planning is that this is the end right here of step two, as you can see.

We will go out and we will do some

community engagement on those goals and objectives for natural resources, historic resources and parks and recreation, then we will come to you all, present what we heard, present what we've gathered, the information.

I'd like to point out that we have been working on goals and objectives for a while now, going out and talking to subject matter experts in the different departments of the county,

in committees with the county, things like that.

You've probably seen it in the Natural Heritage Committee.

I know we've been to them, a few Historic Preservation Committee as well, that kind of thing.

So we will then come to you all, present what we heard, and get feedback from you as to what you think about how those goals and objectives will be done.

We finish that one.

Then we move on and do our public engagement or our community engagement on housing and economic development.

We come back to you.

And we, once again, present what we heard and get your feedback.

Do the same thing with land use, transportation, community facilities.

And then after we do all of those, all of those topic areas, that's when we'll go to the board with all the recommendations for goals and objectives.

So it's still within the timeline that we presented to the board, but it does allow us to not overwhelm the PC with a lot of information at once kind of breaks that up and it helps staff kind of organize that a little bit better.

So just a quick piece on the next steps on this.

We'll be continuing to draft those Complan goals and objectives.

And you can see the list of the different groups that we have been coordinating with.

As I was mentioning, things like the Natural Heritage Committee.

We've had meetings with everyone on this and oftentimes multiple meetings with everyone on this list you can see here.

So that's the work that we've been doing on the comp plan goals and objectives.

We continue to do that over the next few months.

Then the planning toolkits, as I said, that's the August 8th work session.

And finally the fall engagement on the goals and objectives through September and December or September through December.

There will be in-person and online opportunities to provide input on those things.

We are looking at a variety of methods to do outreach.

including AC44 office hours, online polls, things like that.

And also going out into the community for pop-ups, things like that.

So I think that covers, oh, and then following that, we'll be getting into updated land use designations.

These are things that I think we've mentioned before to you all.

Updated land use designations is recognizing that right now,

All our master plans have different land use types and we're trying to standardize that across those plans.

Also the neighborhood model principles, which is in the current comp plan.

how we might be able to adjust that to make it more usable for staff and applicants, developers, and you all.

And then look at things like density calculations for the land use, how those are done.

So that's really my update, but I'm happy to take questions, recognizing that we will have a really good meeting, a thorough meeting on this on October 8th.

Thank you for this.

This is very helpful and the graphics are very clear and concise to show where we are now.

One thing I might add is as we are advancing through this process, we're starting to look at how the schedule allows us to bring in county SMEs to present on certain topics to help inform

deeper and richer conversation on those topical areas as we get there in Q3, Q4.

I like the presentation very much.

I'm looking forward to the multiple sessions that kind of break out the topics and I think that'll be a smart way to

I have a robust discussion several times running.

I did have some questions looking at the engagement tools that we might be using.

The community engagement work, the questionnaires, the in-person chats.

I'm struck in the numbers that the engagement has led to the same sorts of people who are always vocal being vocal again.

You know, fewer than one in 10 respondents rent their homes.

Fewer than one in 20 live in an apartment.

And I realize that decisions like these, government bodies like these, the decisions are most informed by people who show up.

Yeah, you know, I think that our best opportunity for that is having a diversity of opportunities.

So, as I said, we do some online things.

We do some structured meetings.

In the last round, we did open houses.

and we try and locate those in different places all around the county.

And then also the things like, I think one important one are these pop-ups.

I don't know if you've ever been to a pop-up, but what we try and do is we go to a place where there are people that we don't typically talk to, people that don't typically engage.

And we set up a table, we set up a van or something, and we're there available to answer questions,

present ideas and try and get people more engaged.

That was one of our efforts to do different outreach.

One thing that we are working on that maybe I can try and find a copy of, I'm not sure if it's on our plan, is to show all the places that we're going for these engagement opportunities.

So that would include where we go to pop-ups, where we go to specific meetings of groups, which we have done that as well.

and then also where we're holding our structured meetings like the ones we held in step two where we went to the open houses at different schools all around the county purposely trying to not do them right here in this building and get to places we actually looked for places in rural in the rural areas because we were like that's a place where it's a little more difficult to get feedback from from the community so

You know, it's a struggle every time to try and get to the people that you don't typically hear from.

But we're making any effort.

I'm happy to take any suggestions.

Yeah.

We could sit and chat about that for different brainstorm ideas.

And I do recall going to one of the engagement sessions at Journey Middle School and saw you there.

And that was also one that was, I think there were more residents than, rather more staff than residents maybe that day.

Sometimes it's hard to get the word out.

I recognize that and whatever budget we can throw behind it or different kind of

And you know what?

I actually did forget to mention one other thing that I think is a really creative idea that we've had is using the working group.

We have a working group set up and it's been a different group for the different phases, but these are people that we bring in and you can see that we have a working group meeting that would be scheduled sometime in September.

So the working group are citizens that were interested in this.

And what we do is we equip them with information that they can then go out and share with their networks.

And it's a pretty large group.

I think we ended up with about 30 people in the phase two work group.

And so we tell them, here's what we're sharing.

Why don't you take this information to your communities?

and send them out.

And they're going out to people that we often don't reach.

And we've had a lot of success with getting some feedback from people from there.

Thanks, Gibbon.

Commissioner Murray?

So you've seen, looking through here first, I agree.

I love the way this is laid out, very clear, very helpful.

Where you have the setup where we're reviewing the planning toolkits and then after that it goes to the Board of Supervisors.

I would strongly encourage, I'd love to see that the toolkits that the Board of Supervisors receive don't look identical to the ones that we received, that actually our input is revised into that new toolkit.

And likewise, the toolkit that we're receiving, I would certainly hope doesn't look... I totally agree.

Thanks.

I will say that our intent is to go to the board with recommendations that we get from the PC.

So what you say, like we're going to have these options, as I said, for the different items and two to three options for how we can update the comp plan.

And we're going to ask you,

Anything else?

Commissioner Murray?

Not at this time.

Great, thank you, Chair.

Just a couple, one quick question for you.

We have a detailed report that we are working on that we're going to get out at a minimum that full week in advance that goes over all of this information in those planning toolkits and it'll give you time to review and think through the different options that we'll be presenting.

That's great.

And I assume, I don't know why I'm on this links thing tonight, but I'm assuming there'll be links to, or information that was feedback received from the working group and from the community engagement process as well.

Yes, I can, I can make sure there's links in the report.

Thank you.

And keep that slide up.

That's what I wanted to talk about, the near term.

So I just want to make sure we're understanding this.

Is this slide saying that we're going to have a 20 minute conversation about expanding, potentially changing the growth area, the criteria for that?

20 minutes on which should be crossroad communities and 20 minutes on how we should develop rural interchange.

So is that because I could see each one of those as its own work session almost.

This assumes about a two hour work session that evening.

As I said, we don't have anything else on the agenda.

If we need to take additional time, we can.

That is also why we're providing this report ahead of time so that we're hoping that you all can have some idea of what direction you want to take it and have some thoughts going in so it's not just like reacting to what you're hearing.

Yeah, I mean, I could just sit down, you know, by myself talking to myself and make up what I think after I received my planning packet.

But I'm going to want to really hear a robust discussion from my fellow commissioners and have enough time in the meeting to change my mind.

or become enlightened in some new way that now makes me want to go in a different direction.

And I'm just suggesting to you that I just don't think 20 minutes, all joking aside, 27 minutes isn't, I'm really, I'll play the game, but I just, I don't think that we are giving enough time to these important topics.

For example, even just the,

the centers, the sort of crossroads communities or whatever.

I shouldn't say centers, I know we're messing around with our vocabulary.

The crossroads communities, I've heard feedback from some are like, we don't want to be one.

And others are like, but we are the one and they didn't mention us.

And so that's not a light topic.

And what does that even mean when we say that they are those?

Anyway, so I guess I would just ask, turn to my chair and vice chair and say that I would hope that

that we don't give short shrift because, well, that's in the schedule and that's the time we had.

So we've dispensed with that topic and onto the next, because we may not be able to complete a thorough and thoughtful enough conversation in the time that's been allotted for these three topics.

That's how I'm reading it.

I'll also say that this isn't the end of this discussion because what the recommendations that we come out of this, and you'll see those two or three options, that's the direction we're going in.

How we get there is going to be further clarified in the goals and objectives discussions and in the strategies or the action steps that we include in the plan.

So while this is setting the direction, there is detailed work that needs to be done that will come

At least on how we do that.

This is the direction we get from you.

This is the direction you want to go in.

How do we want to go there?

I think that's what's going to be part of those goals and objectives and action steps.

So, and you know, keep in mind that

We're not, you're not approving it at that time.

Sure.

And again, just to emphasize the reason that we have a consultant helping us with the facilitation is so that it focuses the conversation because we also can be a body that kind of just goes out into the ecosystem and you can spend three hours maybe unnecessarily talking about things.

So we hear you loud and clear on that, as we talked about it not too long ago.

There is some flex in that schedule, but I also want to make sure we stay focused.

And again, this is not the last time we'll talk about that topic, but we hear you loud and clear.

Commissioner Missel actually took my question, but Commissioner Firehock gave me another one taking reference to this topic.

So the materials that we're going to get, and you went to some detail on what those would look like.

Can I ask that

that they begin to focus us, just to the point that Chair Clayborne just mentioned, focus us and focus our conversation.

So what is this piece is about?

And the next meeting, we could cover some other topics.

So what are we going to be talking about the crossroads?

Or, because I agree with Commissioner Firehock, if it's, let's talk about crossroads every four hours.

And yes, you know, we'll need a lot of snacks and water.

You know, we may, if you keep us focused and if we start to see that in the package.

So I think that's also, it will be important how robust that package is.

Thank you.

Hi there.

So I have to say, I'm pleased that I will be receiving comments about issues from the public as opposed to the public receiving comments from me.

And the reason I'm saying that is that I struggle with what happened in Crozet and the sort of firestorm of tension that the people in Crozet thought that their way was the platinum way.

I'm not calling it, but I just remember the tension that was there, that when we tried to shape the Crozet plan, there was just, they felt like somehow they'd been disrespected.

But that was never my intention.

My intention was that they were offering us

comments and then we were considering the comments and then moving the comments up to the to the board of supervisors so that when you do speak in public remember if you could to remind people that this is that you're gathering information that's going to go through us and eventually is going to go to the board of supervisors and that what they offer is not the definitive it

but it is their voice that needs to be, that is helping us to consider things so the supervisors can create the definitive it.

That's one thing that I don't want to go through what some of our former colleagues went through over the Crozet small area plan because I don't think people felt

I don't think the process was healthy for a bunch of people.

And I want to enjoy my health at this particular point in time.

And so the other thing that I think some of us are talking about here is that as a commission, we rarely get the chance to wrestle with an exchange or a dialogue among ourselves.

It's more like Albemarle's got talent.

So, Judge from Rio, what did you think about conditional number 1433?

And so I think what we're missing sometimes is the ability for us to engage amongst ourselves with you there.

We're not going to put you there.

We're going to put you next to us.

To have that conversation about what are we trying to do here?

What are we testing?

What are we seeing?

I think that's the bit that I hope that we get to do in our small group presentations over there in 241 or whatever that place is over there.

Because I think the more we can get away from Albemarle's Got Talent,

to an exchange among us, I think you're going to see we're going to feel comfortable about the process.

Any other feedback for staff?

I think that that's one of the things I've talked to Commissioner Firehock about before.

A lot of the other committees that I'm on have subcommittees.

I believe that's something that we could do.

I don't think it's been done in a very long time, but I would personally appreciate the ability to form a subcommittee with some interested commissioners and talk in depth about some of these topics so that we could bring something a little bit more prepared to some of these discussions.

Right.

Things that we can look into.

What do you want to tell us?

I've said it.

Good stuff.

I'm good.

All right.

All right.

There's no further comments on that.

Yes, thank you.

Actually, there were no public hearings on the meeting from the previous Board of Supervisors.

A lot of general items were covered, the one that I think

maybe of some interest is that we did get a presentation, did have a presentation from planning on a potential bike pedestrian connection on Route 20.

This was something that we had looked at a number of years ago, trying to find a way to connect from the city, city line on Route 20, down to,

the PVCC and the Monticello, the Monticello trailhead area.

As you might know, we have a funded project, but a roundabout right there at Route 53 and Route 20.

I believe that's going to be starting construction in just a couple of years now.

and we were thinking that there's still a gap in the pedestrian connections there.

The roundabout will include some pedestrian facilities, but we want to get people safely from the city to the Monticello trailhead, to some of the housing developments down there and a PVCC.

So there was a presentation on design and took feedback from the board of supervisors on that.

Thank you.

So we did get a quorum and the Star Prison Research Committee met.

And basically what they worked on this week was, this was yesterday, was a little more work on the

process for submitting awards for historic preservation in different categories like commercial

small residential, large garden, landscapes, et cetera.

And we were advised by staff that we should not just launch an awards program, that we should wait for the comprehensive plan to be finished.

I was like, let's just launch an awards program.

But anyway, apparently we should have the importance of recognizing a laudatory historic preservation in our comp plan and then we can have an awards program.

Who knows, maybe even it would have a budget.

I don't know.

And, and then we also talked about the historic markers, as well, that we do have some funds I still not clear how much we have but that we could have some additional historic markers that the county's ones that are the green sign.

I look different than the black and white signs that you see that the state puts up.

So anyway, that sort of the process for nominating those centers is being clarified.

I'm not clear if we also have to wait for the comp plan to be reauthorized.

to do that.

But anyway, that's in process.

We're a little bit behind just because of all the missed meetings during COVID, but we are making progress on that.

I do have a question with the Historic Resources Committee.

It didn't get that far, but I could certainly bring that to the group.

Oh, I think that because we don't have an ordinance right now, we're trying to find ways to congratulate and showcase people who've done extraordinary things.

And we also made a strong emphasis on not just like, I'm a multimillionaire and I was able to restore my historic plantation house, but actually, you know, like I'm just an average Joe and by

putting in some elbow grease and talking to the right people, I actually restored something really important culturally in our county.

So I think because we lack a lot of tools that we wish we had, we really wanted to have something local to try to push it.

So really the main purpose of it would be to educate.

and make people aware of all, there's a lot of talent in this community.

There's a tremendous amount of knowledge, but to just highlight that and bring it to the surface and also have something a little more dynamic.

And we sort of jokingly at the end of the meeting, I said at the end of every meeting, we talk about requests for demolition.

and it's then we're like, okay, this is being demolished, that's sad, this is being, you know, we have no authority and it's kind of a depressing way to end the meeting and I suggested that should be at the beginning and then we get that out of the way and then we can talk about all the great things we wanna get done and all the things we wanna incentivize.

Got it.

Thank you.

I'll take the segue opportunity there and say I also attended the 5th and Avon Community Advisory Committee last Thursday and really we focused on two subjects.

One, we had a presentation by staff about a parcel along the east side of Stony Ridge Road.

I think

We, as a Planning Commission body, will be seeing it sometime later this month.

I think they said, no, sorry, next month, 8-22.

And it's a relatively straightforward project.

It is about 1.35 acres.

And it's a request for a special use permit to allow the construction of an independent office within a structure.

It actually, I think, is a music recording studio and an office.

So the applicant also presented to us and didn't seem like there was any issue with that.

Yeah, I think it was a strange example, if I may have, where they want to have this recording studio to record things, but they also want to have offices.

And you weren't allowed to have both things in this industrial zoning.

Like, you could record music, but you'd have to go somewhere else to work on your books or have a client meeting.

I'd have to go somewhere else to do the live.

Yeah, so it was just so weird.

The zoning was overly restrictive.

And it actually almost seemed a little silly.

There was a second subject that was raised and presented by staff which was about the broadband focus group and it was really more of a questionnaire for us.

Allison with the county actually served the role of presenting that on behalf of Jason Infuentes, who was not there.

And there were questions like, what are you finding are your greatest barriers to broadband?

What devices do you use the internet with?

Things like that.

And I think they're collecting data.

looking into that further.

Yeah, it was surprising how many problems there were in the urban ring.

with people not being able to get access.

It fits in Avon.

I mean, Julian, we know about your problems.

You know about my problems.

I'm just going to keep raising it.

We've heard those.

But I just was surprised to hear how many people have terrible problems.

They're talking about 25.

And the hindrance is small but impactful in the county, like for example, where you have firefly that's being run along a road and they get to a railroad track and they have to stop it because there's no agreement with the railroad to go over top of the tracks.

I remember when they had the same questions coming before the CCAC and they asked the question, how many of you work from home?

Yeah.

That's it, sir.

All right.

Any other committee reports?

I just knew business.

I just mentioned I went to the APA meeting.

Virginia American Planning Association conference last week and taking advantage of our planning commissioner benefit for you can go to that conference for 50 bucks.

All right, so 50 bucks, everybody.

I mean, the lunch alone was worth it, although they took an hour to bring mine because I had a special diet and whatever.

But that's what I want to talk about.

I attended a really excellent session on solar ordinances, utility scale solar.

It was really well done.

I forwarded that to some staff, the Albemarle County staff to say really take a look at that and especially Luisa County has a really robust ordinance that's really thoughtful and a really great webpage where they have all this information

and instructions and what to consider and how to apply and suggest.

I'm not I haven't read every detail of their ordinance, but they've really thought it through.

And I think it would behoove us to take a look at that as we update our own ordinance, because they've already gone through that.

And I think that they and they spoke to me after the session.

So they a number of examples of how they had learned.

We thought this was a great idea, but now it had an unintended consequence.

So we're doing it a different way.

But definitely check it out.

Thanks for sharing that and representing us at the conference.

So we're taking advantage of the rate, that's what you're saying.

Any other new business or old business?

The one thing I would add is as you look at your availability for the rest of the year, I know we did this in January, but sometimes calendars shift.

We just kind of revisit that and let us know if there's any sessions that you won't be at between now and the end of the year in December.

That would be helpful as we're trying to coordinate schedules and so forth.

So any items for follow up?

So last thing on the docket.

All right, well, with that, is there a motion to adjourn until the next Planning Commission meeting, which would be our work session on August the 8th, 2023?

All right.

Any opposed?

Anyone want to change their vote?

All right.