Board of Supervisors Adjourned Meeting - Work Session   7/9/2018

Oh, shall I start again?

We will begin, first item on our agenda is a discussion of SP 2017-20.

And Greg Kamner, County Attorney, and Bill Fritz, Development Process Manager, will help us.

Which one of you folks would like to go first?

Madam Chair, we have brought this back to consider the final action on this application for the special use permit.

As the board will recall, there were two conditions that the applicant had requested.

Revisions.

The consensus last Thursday night was for condition six, which dealt with the number of fuel pumps.

There was board support for the amendment to condition six.

So today's discussion is really focused on

Condition 5.

And just to refresh the board's recollection, the current condition limits the hours of operation to 16 hours per day.

The request by the applicant was to extend the convenience store hours so that their only period of closure would be between

except that all of the fuel pumps would be allowed to remain operational 24 hours a day at the end of the meeting on Thursday.

Ms. Higgins presented a proposed revised compromise condition five which would have extended the hours for the convenience store and for the the front fuel pump stations but would

put a limit on the fuel pumps at the rear canopy to be subject to the same closure between 1230 a.m. and 430 a.m.

The consensus that I noted and I re-listened to the

The agenda matter yesterday was that the board wanted condition five to remain as it is with keeping the hours of operation to 16 hours per day.

And so I do have a resolution that revises condition six and retains condition five as stated on this slide.

Ms. Higgins did send out that other condition and there was a brief discussion Thursday.

I did not hear consensus supporting the amendment as proposed in that compromise condition.

So that's the first point of consideration for today.

Whether or not condition five should remain as it is or whether or not there should be some modification to its terms.

What I remember is that there were three people who were not in favor of expanding the hours.

That was what I had written down on my sheet, which I did not bring with me today, unfortunately, because I didn't know we were going to talk about this.

That is my memory.

So I'm not prepared.

We should have taken a bona fide vote at the time, but we were still waiting for proper wording, I guess.

Well, that is expanding hours.

Well, I mean, I do separate in my mind the extending of the convenience store and the gas, the extra time, and then the pumps being available 24 hours.

Okay, so one is the expanding the store hours.

My memory was the only thing that we changed was the number of pump nozzle head nozzles.

Pumps.

Pump stations.

That is the only thing in my memory that we changed.

I don't really want to go into that whole discussion today again.

I'll be clear and I was

and I've still been pondering the credit card usage piece, which I don't know if it'll end up mattering which way I vote on it because I think it's split even if I'm in favor.

But even if the store hours stay current, you could still allow the credit card hours beyond that time.

I don't know how that's getting... And I think that gets at any other pump station may operate at any time each day.

Yeah, and that lets the credit cards happen.

I think it's that at the very bottom here it says the convenience store and fuel pumps at the rear canopy station shall not operate between 1230 and 430.

And this is the applicant's extra email this is not what we had to discuss at the board meeting but it's the concept of it and I think at the board meeting we did discuss the original conditions which were directed at limiting the impact of the activity on the neighbors.

which is cars with credit cards all night long, stopping, starting, headlights, all that stuff, and just as much or more than it is the operation of the store.

So I personally would not be in favor of having the 24 hours and we certainly did not leave it that way at the end of the public hearing the other night when people were here.

When they left they understood it was going to be the same hours.

The expansion of the two pump stations which allows

either today and realize that there was some confusion as to whether or not the board would be acting today or on Wednesday.

So either date is possible because the board is taking action, the public hearing is closed.

So it's really at the board's discretion, although I think the, I know hearing from a couple of board members and

applicants, representatives, email, thought that the board would be taking action on Wednesday.

On Wednesday.

Well, and I'd like to be able to read what I'm taking action on.

Sure.

Maybe I have.

You heard from me last week.

Okay.

I would not change my feeling.

And just to be clear, I'm supportive of the compromise, because I see this as a compromise that's offered.

So I would be supportive of this.

This last down here, a compromise.

Because I think that keeps the noise away from that neighborhood as much as possible.

And it limits the times between 1230 and 430.

and the other issue is whether or not for those who support keeping condition five as it is to tie it directly to the Crozet master plan.

And when it was discussed on Thursday, Liz spoke to that and I heard some agreement from Ann.

And Rick had introduced the original conditions from the 2016, which all also directly related to the master plan, the comp plan, the impact on the neighborhood and the rural area that we were using.

Yes.

Yes.

I think we all agree on that one.

I just want to make that clear.

Greg, you know that.

On condition six?

I think when there's a confusion I feel more comfortable if that works for everybody.

Well when half the people know and the other half don't that always makes me worried.

All right, so if that concludes that issue, then we will move on to the work session on ZTA 2017-01 transient lodging, aka homestays.

Hopefully today's the last day we have to use the term transient lodging, right?

We will bury it.

Are you ready?

Good afternoon.

Thank you for giving us this opportunity to go over what we want to do with you today in the work session.

You're right, we would like to dispense with the term residential tourist lodging and make it a little bit clearer and easier to use, but that's a discussion that you all will also have.

What we want to do today is to step back from the June 13th work session that occurred and you all had a lot of questions and a lot of comments at that meeting and we want to take you step by step through some questions that are really yes no questions to get to a place where we can then go to the next step.

As a matter of just a little bit of background, you all asked the Planning Commission two questions.

You said, could you look into whether or not we should expand opportunities for whole house rentals with limitations and or other units that would be available?

And you've already received the Planning Commission's recommendations on that.

When you all had your discussion, it was very similar to what the Planning Commission's discussion was, and that was a lot of questions, a lot of comments, and a lot of variety, in truth, in terms of your different perspectives on this use.

Some of you all said that we should further restrict our existing use, i.e.

reduce the number of rooms.

Some of you all said make no changes, and especially from the Planning Commission, we got the question, what is broken?

What is it that needs to be fixed?

Some of you all believe that we should loosen some of the restrictions and that's the question of whole house rental or townhouses.

And then some of you also believe we need to do something about our requirements, notification, inspections, and parking.

And because there were a lot of different perspectives, we want to get down to the key questions today to get answers so that we can then go to the next step.

How we're going to do this is to go over key features of the current regulations.

We want to get agreement on high level topics.

We'll get into details next time, and we'll get into enforcement next time, and we'll also talk about when we want to set a public hearing.

It will be whenever you're ready to do that.

We don't want to force it.

We didn't mean to imply we were forcing it last time.

We had a feeling you might be further along than you were, and so we need to step back.

So the current regulations are what you see up on the screen and this is important because some of you all talked about making changes to the current regulations and you will note that in our staff report we said if you want to be further restrictive we're going to have to have another resolution of intent.

Right.

And actually let me go ahead and go through the whole thing and we'll come back and start with this one for your questions.

So the current regulations, you'll see some similarity, a lot of similarity in the current regulations.

And these are the residential zoning districts, including Village Residential, which is in the designated rural area, not the development areas.

I could go to a map.

and highlight where the village residential zoning is.

And I could show you that, but it's mostly in the old villages.

So it's in Ivy.

Yeah, we just wanted to clarify that that village residential out there in the rural area of the comp plan is subject to the residential tourist lodging.

We've got a map, we can show it to you.

We don't have it set up with this, but we'll come back to that and I'll show you exactly where they are.

Thank you.

So the less restrictive of the zoning regulations are in the rural area zoning district.

Both of them allow up to five guest rooms.

In the residential zoning districts, it's inside the house.

In the rural area zoning district, accessory buildings can also be used.

the parking requirement is the same except that in the in the residential districts you could have on street or off street parking that will count towards your one parking space per guest room and that is something the Planning Commission recommended a change to and we agree there's the inspection the initial inspection for safety and the requirement for a permanent on-site resident who who may be the owner or the renter who acts as the host for that residential homestay

So as you can see, it's really about how many rooms you can have in what form in the rural area.

One of the things that we want to talk to you about is those

Rural area properties that are zoned are a, but act like, development area properties.

What we refer to as neighborhoods.

All close to each other.

Yes.

And we may have different perspectives on what that is, but I have an illustration that we can at least start from.

So these are the questions, we have four questions that we want to ask you.

And they're yes, no questions, and we recognize that they may be yes, but.

It has to be this way, this way, this way.

But right now, if we can just get the answer, the yes or no answer to no, if you all are all in agreement, and if you're not in agreement, how many of you are in agreement, so we can go to the next step.

The first question will be about whole house rental.

Should it be available in residential zoning districts?

The Planning Commission said no.

But you all asked the question, should whole house rental be allowed in the rural area zoning district?

And the Planning Commission said, maybe.

You could do this under certain circumstances.

I want to point out that there is some whole house rental that's already allowed.

If you have an accessory unit, and that may be a second house, all of those, all the guest rooms up to five in that second house can all be rented out.

On the same property?

On the same property, right.

So that's, it's sort of allowed now, but it has a lot of conditions to it.

And then there is the R.A. Zoning District for small lot subdivisions.

And this is my illustration.

So you can see the Rivanna River.

This is in Pantops and in Neighborhood 2.

This is the Rivanna River right here.

and on the western side of the Rivanna River is the Dunlor subdivision, which you can see is zoned R4.

This is open space, but look at the size of these lots right here.

River Run, zoned R6, much smaller lots.

On the other side of the river, we have a neighborhood such as the Key West subdivision.

It might be something we would call a small lot subdivision zoned RA.

But then we also have larger lots in the rural area, such as these next to Stony Point Road.

23 acres, 31 acres, 43 acres.

Could be hundreds of acres.

could be five acres.

But what we heard from you was some concern for these kinds of subdivisions and wanting some of you all talked about having different regulations for that group.

The next question had to do, question number two is should different unit types be allowed with restrictions?

Planning Commission recommended townhouses.

We're wondering if you had, if you agreed, disagreed, thought about other types.

Question number three is the owner versus resident manager question.

As we'll review again with the current regulations, we allow a resident manager under the current regulations to operate residential transient lodging, a home stay.

Some of you all talked about wanting to only allow homeowners to do that.

The current regulations allow for a resident manager.

And one just clarification question at this point bed and breakfast.

Yes, that's our proposal.

OK, so there's plenty of bed and breakfast now that have resident managers.

and Greg will have to weigh in on what we can legally do with those that are currently under operation.

But we'll get to that.

We'll get to that.

And then question number four is whether to reduce the number of guest rooms.

We heard some of you all last time saying we need to reduce the number of guest rooms down to two.

That's what one group of people, Residents Association, ask that you do.

Some of you all said no, five is what we've been doing.

Maybe you want to do that just in residential zoning districts.

You may want to do it in a rural area zoning district.

You may want to have it for small lot subdivisions.

We just need to find out yes and no from the group of you, understanding that you all may not be in agreement.

We'll recap what we heard at the end of the session, and then we want to talk to you about additional public input.

when you might want to have that.

We think sooner would be better than later because it's been a long time since the public's said anything to anybody about this.

And you could do that at a work session, a future meeting, wait until the public hearing, but we want you to talk a little bit about that and advise us.

Finally, if you want to further restrict what's going on now, we'll need to bring you a new resolution of intent for you to adopt.

So, going back to the beginning.

So don't look at this while I go back.

it's a yes no and we don't have to have votes but we kind of need to see if there are three of you nodding.

Raise hands.

You're counting heads.

Okay.

OK, so now we're going to go over again in detail this slide, right?

The column on the left is all the growth area residential districts and then this little village residential which I'm sorry to say I never heard of before.

Yes.

No, I want you all to, we're not even going to get to that just yet.

I want to know, do you understand the current regulations?

I do.

Okay.

One of those questions is, I'd like to see what those village residentials are, because I want to understand how expansive they are.

Okay, I'm sorry, Rebecca's telling me that she's got, I threw together a map real quick since, you know, we got the email that you were very interested in seeing where these are.

I apologize for the late evening.

It's good for us to know this too for consistency if we're trying to be, make an attempt to be consistent here.

I'm sorry we're having just a little.

It's, we need to move up some.

You had it in an earlier screen before this one.

If you do your, you'll go back one arrow here I think up on the upper left in the orange.

And then the very next thing after this you had a screen on top that had a

There, third one down.

There's D. Oh no, that's the wrong D, never mind, sorry.

Wrong D, okay.

Okay.

Working by committee here, we're all, I'm not being very helpful, I'm gonna be quiet.

I'm gonna read my chart.

Can, while they're looking for that, can I ask a question that's been on my mind that's for Craig?

Please.

I just know that we could have something on the county books that's less restrictive than what an HOA has, per se, and I just want to understand the legal... Any HOA restrictions that are more restrictive than the zoning ordinance are going to control that particular subdivision.

And if the reverse happens?

So whatever is the most restrictive kind of trumps the other one?

Are you ready now?

The other day we were talking about this and wondered whether we had the authority to require people to use a certain form of contract that would have enforceability versus leasing and stuff.

Yeah, it's a zoning regulation that really does not have the connection to land use.

I looked at the business license regulations and I haven't found anything that expands our ability.

I'll keep looking as we work through this, but I have not found anything like that.

Homestay type regulations from other states.

I do see the insurance requirements but not here.

Okay.

We ought to make a list of some of these things that we might want to have as part of our legislative packet so that when we're talking about as a board what we would like to support we have a list to go back and say well maybe this is something we want to support but maybe not.

One of the current regulations, if you've got one person looking for this and maybe Elaine you can talk about current regulations that you want.

Now we're going to call everything home stay.

The idea is to get everything even so we don't have all these different things.

So let's say I wanted to start a homestay business.

It wouldn't matter whether I was doing a B&B or an Airbnb type of thing, and I'm in the rural areas.

If you want to operate one, you need to come in and ask for a zoning clearance, make an application.

and then you have to fill out a form.

Rebecca may want to jump in here since she actually processes these but you stop me when I get to a point where you need to.

You fill out a form and then you pay your fee, there is an inspection and you need to also ask, go to the health department and ask them to do an inspection.

They send us the results of that inspection.

Our building official or fire officer goes out to inspect for fire safety.

Once we hear back from everybody, then Rebecca goes out and does an inspection.

Okay, so let's say I live in Whippoorwill and I'm on a two-acre lot and I've decided I want to open up a classic bed and breakfast.

So, I mean, it's the same process.

Right now, you can run up to five guest rooms in the home or in the accessory structures like we talked about.

So right now, it does not matter the lot size, you know, if you comply with those regulations.

And we have sort of a step-by-step guide online.

but you have to be in the house.

But you have to have a resident, an owner or resident manager present now, correct?

Yes.

Okay.

So I guess, you know, when we're sitting here trying to thread this needle of how we let the good actors continue to act and the bad actors somehow stop them from getting started,

Is there a process in there that somebody would...

Okay, let's put it this way.

If we decided as a board that we wanted to make this different so that people didn't have to stay in their home, we didn't have to have a resident manager.

I'm talking just rural areas right now to make this, you know, just for clarity.

which is the more restrictive and requires off-street parking and all those kinds of things that would give more protection to the neighbors.

Well I think the difference would be if you made them the same in terms of what we have in the current ordinance then they couldn't use accessory structures and then they couldn't have a second bed and breakfast use on the property.

It's a small lot, but the residential neighborhoods can still run up to five guest rooms now, no matter their zoning district, if they're in the same house where someone lives.

Ordinances in a single-family dwelling used as such.

The rural areas have that additional flexibility and we didn't specify whether that would be for smaller parcels or not.

So Elaine just pulled up the zoning map so we can look at where Village Residential properties are.

So the first place is North Garden and I'm going to, and you all know where that is, and that peach color right here is the Village Residential.

So that's what it looks like a little closer.

And then going west, I think we've got, well certainly we've got ivy.

You can see the pink right in through here.

I mean it's sort of the peach right in through here.

Is that at the exit 110?

I mean, is that in Ivy?

I don't even, it's not in the Ivy Depot area.

And yes, the Ivy Depot.

Okay, so the old Lewis Hill neighborhood there on Owensville.

Then I believe the next place we have is...

I think those are half acre, one acre lots.

There you go, down here.

Very small there.

It's right under the Stony Point

name there.

So this is your Sony point.

Relatively speaking, it's not a whole lot, but there are places in the rural area that have that.

It is old zoning from when those were development areas.

Those used to be development areas.

They were village, they were identified as villages, and when they got full, if you will, and in most of them there isn't public water and sewer, there was a decision a previous board made to say, okay, this is going to be in the designated rural area where we don't want more at these locations.

Okay, so did that answer your question about where the villager is?

It's a lot more properties than you think.

Those little patches are small, but like the earliest one is 100 houses, 100 units at least.

So we went back.

So we were talking about the number of rooms.

I wanted to address that.

Have we moved on from there already and agreed to five?

No, no, we haven't gotten.

We have not.

We're just understanding.

We're understanding the regs.

Does everybody know what the regs are?

I had some strange things happen to my slide.

So let's, for an example, let's again take a Whippoorwill.

And I wanted to open up a bed and breakfast in Whippoorwill and I went through the, which is now called a homestay,

The parking requirement's the same.

They have to be.

It's zoned rural areas, so right now it doesn't, we don't have a regulation that gets at, you know, what we're calling the rural area neighborhoods or

small lot subdivisions there is not the distinction in the regulations and then what we have proposed in the draft ordinance was that we would specify in the development areas that the parking must also be on the lot because right now you could allow spaces that abut the lot one street parking that abuts the lot right in front of the lot to count towards that required parking and we heard that

It can't be on the street.

You'd have to have seven parking spaces on the now.

Ready to move on?

So, I haven't agreed to this.

These are the current regulations.

We're not asking for any agreement.

We're just asking for understanding.

Just please understand.

I'm just ready to talk about them.

I know.

I know just okay.

All right.

So, do you want us to go to the rooms first?

I thought we'd gone through the whole presentation and now we've come back.

It's okay.

Slide number one.

With your indulgence, we will get two rooms, but we need to find out what you all want about whole house rental.

Do you want to allow whole house rental in residential zoning districts and village residential?

Yes or no?

No resident manager.

So there are ways it can be done, and so the limitations that the Planning Commission talked about were in the rural area a certain number of days per year so that there is a permanent resident.

That's all development and village.

That's the last one.

I mean, we're still not, this is not Whippoorwill.

This is not Whippoorwill.

This is Fontana.

This is not Key West.

The pink map.

What Whole House says to me is that there is nobody there.

There's no caretaker.

No one is there during the stay.

To what extent is the whole house rental in the development area an issue right now?

We've had a few in our townhouse developments, which of course right now they're not supposed to be having any form of transient lodging.

I think during the public meetings that was one of the things where people would like that as an opportunity.

We've heard people say well we would only want to do it for a few weeks a year like graduations and when we're on vacation.

But in terms of the complaint data,

They're not allowed.

Yeah, that's a different issue I'll bring up.

So yeah, I'm not generally in favor of whole house rental and the residential.

Yes, yes.

I am in a development area.

I am not in favor of that.

My only caveat is that I'm...

I am concerned that if so many people are doing it and doing it okay, what kind of burden is that going to be on county government or the community if, you

If we're going to try to keep this from happening and should there be a way to do it if you have the unusual property that wouldn't have an impact.

But that's just a side question for another time.

But in the development area, I would say no.

I'd like the owner present.

Okay.

All right.

We've got that one out of the way.

Rural Area Zoning District.

Let me go to the Rural Area Zoning District for small lot subdivisions because that's closest to the development area types of uses.

We would have to figure out how we wanted to define that.

Yeah, I mean, people that buy a home in this kind of area are not expecting to have a commercial operation across the street.

That's right, next door or across the street.

And that is, that's what concerns me about this.

As the growth area, no.

but we at least know where you are on that one and the rural area zoning district.

Whole house rental meaning there's a permanent resident there all the time during the year but up to 45 days during the year they could leave their house in the rural area and not have a anybody on site and they could rent out their house

So let me ask some clarifying questions on that.

So we have good actors out there.

And we've talked about this where the people, you know, maybe the parents die and the people inherit a house.

It's not their permanent resident.

They want to keep it with the family.

And they want to rent that house out.

Or maybe they live close by.

Maybe they don't.

But they're operating now and operating without issues to our knowledge.

And it's a large size lot, whatever that distinction is.

I'm not sure how you make that distinction.

One of the things that's been suggested and talked about is that this could, allowing this in the rural areas could cause people to build houses for this purpose.

One of the things that was suggested to try to deal with that consequence if it should occur, and I believe that that's a

I'm not debating that.

I think it's probably something that will be expected, and certainly if we manage to get broadband out in the rural area, we'll probably see it more often.

what this idea of saying you have to live in the house for two years or something, four years or whatever it is, before you can do this.

And I know staff was not in favor of that, particularly in the materials, but it would be for new houses only, my assumption would be.

And that's the distinction.

The General Assembly has expressly allowed that kind of restriction to be in place for family subdivisions, but

to have a similar type of ownership, durational requirement for somebody to be allowed to engage in a particular use.

The way that it's set up in the ordinance now and supposed to be an accessory used to a residential use, right?

So when we're getting into with the whole house rental is

Do you want to allow it, yes, but it must remain a primary residence and we have limitations on it?

My only concern about your wonderful proposal for 45 days is how in the world would we ever make it stick?

I'd like to take the days out completely.

I agree.

We have, we believe that it can be implemented and otherwise it's an unlimited kind of thing.

Where someone... Well, you have it in the right places and you... Well, the question is, and what Rebecca was saying is, it's either

residential tourist lodging, meaning somebody's primary residence or it's not.

And if it's not, then it is commercial tourist lodging.

But I think that the question we're asking is what the Planning Commission recommended, and it kept it in the residential accessory category, not commercial category.

On a limited basis or not, is that correct?

Yeah, right.

Because I think we have gotten consensus not to open it up to complete commercial operations.

There's always going to be people that cheat.

It sounds like I'm in the minority here, but I am in favor of allowing whole house rentals in the rural areas defined by a property size and I'll go with your days.

I'm a little concerned because I don't

I'd like to figure out how to broaden it a bit for folks who have inherited properties and want to keep them in the family and have people coming in and out from the family, but I see the hard part of drawing the line and I understand now a little bit better that you're really trying to make these different categories either residential accessory use, primary resident accessory use versus commercial.

and I do get that, I mean that logic's pretty clear.

So I guess what, I'm thinking I'm in the minority here, but anyway for me.

So that's where I am, I'd like to figure out a way to allow that.

Okay, so yes maybe for Liz.

So it's permanent resident and no more than seven days in a month and no more than 45 days in a year and they would be allowed to do this.

I'm maybe on the point of 21 acres and larger or something, some way to be able to get these things off the road and have lots of space for all the vehicles and things that might be coming.

And I'm very concerned about trying to make distinctions of ownership.

I think we need to stay far, far away from those kinds of things of people who inherit stuff and whatever.

Yes, it's a great story.

However, I don't think it would stand up for a second in Greg's analysis about fairness.

and Equal Opportunity under the law, et cetera.

And I'm no lawyer, but I want to stay away from that.

There are lots of family cabins.

I just saw one that belongs to the Stevens family out in Keswick the other day, and they don't have, they don't rent it out.

They just use it for the right purpose of having their family people going there.

I'm not suggesting that that be a special category.

I'm just using it as an example of some folks who have, you know,

have that desire and are trying to keep it.

But I'm not suggesting in any way there's a special category for that.

I would be in favor of it on the proper lot size.

I would take the days out completely.

I mean, if it's on the proper lot size and allows for parking and is in the right area, is not in a neighborhood,

How do we prove that it's residential still?

That there's somebody there who votes or something?

There has to be some way to prove that it's somebody's residence.

Okay, but you would still, what you're talking about is that someone's permanent residence up to, in a permanent resident, they'd have to be there at least half the year, 180 days.

Yeah, and I get that.

Yeah.

I'm not happy at all having rural transient housing whole house without having somebody present.

I can flip to that in a second.

And I'll follow with Rick too.

I think we got, for rural area zoning district, yes but.

And that's also if there are other abilities to

Why should the neighbors, because all of these properties have neighboring properties, there's always an adjoining property, no man is an island, and therefore why should the neighbors incur the inconvenience potentially?

There are good actors out there, but as many good actors as there are,

they're bad actors and we live in a university community and this is a ground zero for fraternity parties being able to get hold of whole houses and go in there.

So why would we want to permit those kinds of problems because I don't buy the argument that financially this is a necessity.

This is a convenience.

It's not a necessity.

There are options available out there in the marketplace for somebody to earn income off of their rental property.

And that should be the first option.

And Liz, I think you're absolutely right.

Not only would new houses be constructed, but houses are going to be bought up in the rural area and turned over.

expressly to be utilized for Airbnb to generate income.

And I don't want staff to be responsible to count days on an annual basis.

And we don't have the adequacy of staff to be out there to do that.

and we know that yes, there will be good actors, there will be other actors that are going to push the envelope.

I think we have rural areas that where we have larger homes that used to be sought after and now they're not.

Maybe they don't have internet service.

Maybe their school is closed.

Maybe their aging population and everybody's moving to the city.

Okay, good.

So different unit types.

The Planning Commission recommended townhouses.

You all asked the Commission to consider other unit types and that should say different unit types with restrictions because those were the conditions under which you all asked them to consider it.

We're talking about with an owner present.

Is it whole townhouse?

Because that's where I've heard a lot of my complaints, probably not most, but are in some of these

Yes, the Planning Commission recommended two rooms with the owner present.

And we can restrict this conversation to that if you want to.

I'm going to come back to the fact that there are communities that have gone in like Avinia where there isn't adequate parking right now for residents there and you mix in Airbnb into Avinia and I don't know what would happen for parking for residents.

I go over there for community meetings as well as last year about this time a social event and

I had to park all the way down where all the new development, Vinnia II, was going to be going in because there was nowhere else to park.

And the problem I have is there are certain localities where there may be adequacy of parking.

but there are other localities such as Avinia where it's problematic and yet we're going to create a blanket rule that applies to both sets and it doesn't work for me in certain contexts where it's very tight.

It's very tight on duplexes, for example, on Avon Court.

they are right off of Avon Street extended where my stepdaughter lived.

Very, very difficult because they've built in to the side there for people to be able to park where and but in the road is very narrow and if you have cars parked on either side I don't know how you get a fire truck through there.

if you had to.

So you know this is where there are localities where this really doesn't work and there are other localities where it does.

I can't favor that overall for townhouses for that reason because I know situations where it's too problematic.

So yeah.

To me, my planning commissioner brought this point up when he and I discussed it.

It's almost the parking is a more effective tool to regulate than room numbers.

Because if I have a townhouse and I'm allotted a spot, whether that's on site or off site, on the street or off the street, and I as an owner get two spots.

and if I have two cars and I want to rent a room out and if the regulation says I have to provide my rent or a spot, then you got to find something to do with your personal car.

So to your point, I mean I get what you're saying Rick, but to me that means well okay then the resident has got to sacrifice their spot while they're there.

When I visit people when I'm not even going Airbnb and live in places, they sacrifice their spot so that I can get their parking garage in some way.

So that, to me, that helps regulate the use, which is why I'm okay with townhomes.

And I'm not as concerned about the rooms because the parking is, you know, if I have somebody that shows up and they're all doing Uber to get back and forth, then okay, then I'm not as concerned about if they have two rooms or four rooms.

But if it's parking, then I can't, if I can only provide two spots, even though I have the ability to rent five rooms, it's going to be difficult for me to do that.

So there's an inherent regulation in the parking that I'll be focusing on.

So I'm okay with town homes and the rooms.

And I guess to that point, I've never tried to get an Airbnb in Albemarle County, but generally speaking, when you rent someplace, it's going to mention something about the parking, whether there's parking or not, or if you have a car, you ask them, is there parking?

So I'm with Ned on this one.

I think it's a

The only thing I would caution about, and this is anecdotal and I don't know where this comes into the conversation, but I was invited to something a couple of years ago in the city

that was a house built as an Airbnb.

During the week, over 100 people were invited and shuttle buses were being run from Charlottesville High School to get people to it.

The people that lived there were beside themselves because this was happening a lot.

there was a security guard stopping people who were trying to avoid the shuttles it was the biggest mess I have seen and if I'd lived on that cul-de-sac

But they were doing 100 people sleeping there.

So when we you know during the application review process we're very much confirming parking and we have not approved any sort of sharing the expectation is you have the two spaces plus one per guest room so that would have to be a townhouse development or duplex that could accommodate four spaces maybe two in the garage two in the driveway

Question.

So here's a question for Greg, probably.

As part of our homestay regulations, is there a possibility of describing these permissions as residential only and not for parties, for people who aren't staying there?

Or is that something the landowner has to do?

And if that's the case, can we require them to have certain language in their contract to make sure this doesn't happen?

And that's probably a way out there question, but it just came to mind when I was hearing this discussion.

And what comes to mind would be some kind of performance standard that might just put a, not speaking in terms of parties or things like that, but

just puts an absolute limit on the number of people who can be in the house at any time.

We would not get into the specific terms of the short term rental agreement, but

It's something to think about because this was like a five bedroom house.

Which is a real pain in the neck.

And do we have the ability, is there any bonding or anything like that that

We can extract from people to require to help them to understand how important it is that they pay attention to these things.

I mean, especially for out of town owners who probably have somebody who

is struggling to try to maintain order with a bunch of renters who are half partying.

The short-term registry enabling authority, I don't think it has a bonding provision, but it does have a frequent violators provision.

Oh, that three strikes.

I think in this situation if that were if someone were to call in and say there there's a B&B on the weekends but this house is being used commercially as a venue during the week that would be a zoning violation.

Is this the category where the ticket process would be allowed instead of the civil court process where you have to get to $10,000 before you get anywhere?

Right now we use the ticket process just for sign violations.

I see Amelia out there, is that correct?

But $40 might not work.

Good afternoon, Amelia McCully, Zoning Administrator.

We've expanded the ticket system, started with temporary legal signs, and applied to other zoning violations.

So something like this type of violation, we could apply it to.

I do want to make a couple of distinctions.

One is that

renting it for the purpose of an event is very clearly not allowed.

That's right.

So that becomes a little more problematic and that's where the performance standards and noise and parking restrictions and shuttles, things like that apply.

Well, in that, putting a cap on the number of people addresses this special event party type situation.

Two guest rooms up to four adults in the development area and no more than five guest rooms up to ten adults.

in the rural area.

Last time we asked you all that question and you all said you wanted it to be rooms and not guests.

I've learned since, if I said that before, I've learned a lot since then.

I don't think I said that.

Well would people object to having it be people instead of rooms?

We'll come back around.

We'll come back around.

I wanted to get us through the different unit types of everybody.

So I'm not sure did we get through everybody?

Okay.

Okay but we're talking about

because I don't have as much of a problem with it if there's an owner that's living there.

You're talking about something that's not owner or present.

I don't count on renters.

Right now it's resident manager, but we'll get to that one.

That's the next question.

We'll get to that next one.

So you're a yes, but.

I would take that out.

Go ahead.

And I would say no too if a manager is allowed.

Okay.

No, it never works.

It's not really the tenant that would be conducting it.

Okay, I have a different story on this one because there are several wineries in my district where they have homestays, bed and breakfasts, and there is one person who lives in the homestay house and is the innkeeper and has not the skills in the winery and the owners are the skills in the winery and that is fine for me.

So I don't know how you put all of that together in one category.

And I agree with you, that's fine.

Okay, that's different.

So that may be location specific.

So, the question here is owner only, resident manager okay, or is it location specific?

So if I can get the answer to that question, I'll come back and then we'll talk about the location.

So we're asking if it's location specific first?

Owner only and location specific I could agree to depending on the circumstances.

Does that make sense?

What I thought I heard from some of you all was that you don't believe a resident manager should be able to operate a homestay.

So if you have somebody who is leasing their home and it says in their contract that they can sublet, let's just, I'm just trying to make something up here.

One of the things that

I struggle with this one because I've had rentals before where the renter ended up subletting and didn't tell me and I found out six months later.

But is that up to the county to regulate or is that my relationship with the person who I have a contract with and my contract says you're not supposed to sublet it.

And so I kind of, I get a little bit uncomfortable if the county government is getting involved in that.

relationship.

And so I'm curious just to maybe have a comment, maybe from Greg, as to how that would work.

I mean, if you are leasing, let's say it was OK with me, because generally speaking, a resident manager or the person who is renting it and is renting the home and has a lease that spells out specifics of that lease agreement

where that kind of comes into play here with us saying that they can't do it unless the owner is present.

I think the rationale when the current regulations were adopted was that if you want to engage, play this game, you need to either be the owner or be the resident manager.

But we don't define how somebody qualifies as a resident manager, do we?

they have to live there other than that but I mean as far as their relationship with the owner I don't think we get into that so we can look at taking it one step further and say that they have to be have a lease arrangement with the owner of the property that might provide some stability that at least theoretically might not otherwise exist where you have the the tenant who is sub subleasing their interest

Remember that when these regulations were adopted where we did start to allow resident managers, it was the recognizing the importance of having somebody on site who was responsible for controlling and managing what was going on on the property.

and providing safety.

Right, so it's in the supplemental regs for the bed and breakfast.

It says that the owner or manager

of the Bed and Breakfast shall reside on the parcel.

And that's as far as we go.

And then we have the tourist lodging language that we use for the development areas that the single family dwelling is used as such.

If someone could give me the, I mean I just heard an example where resident manager would be okay.

Give me what the scary version is.

I mean somebody buys a townhome and employs somebody to live there just to rent out the other rooms.

Is that what we're worried about?

My problem is trying to set anything up that is a different set of expectations than under B&Bs with less presence, less supervision, less accountability, and I don't think that that's a recipe that's workable.

I also don't think it's fair to the B&Bs that have been established and been long in the community.

They have built a business.

They network with an association.

nationally.

They spend a lot of time marketing themselves.

They give back to the community because they have local knowledge, which is one of the reasons people stay at B&Bs because you can ask them, well, what's the best place to go for Hispanic food in this community?

Well, I would recommend eating here.

If you don't have somebody like that on site,

You know, we're losing part of our hospitality advantage here.

Well, right now they are and I think that we have been discussing throughout this process and we clarified, wanted to clarify what the current regulations is.

It can be a traditional bed and breakfast.

We use that term that's caused confusion.

That's why we want to go to the home state term.

Actually I think maybe I have heard from all from all of you

with all the questions, that resident manager is okay.

As long as somebody resides there permanently, it's okay.

Where a resident manager wouldn't be allowed?

Or you'd only want the owner there.

Only the owner.

Okay, I think I've got the answer to that.

And this is the question about the number of guest rooms.

And it's a little complicated now that we're talking about maybe guests, but instead of guest rooms, but pretending like, for the moment, that we're not changing to number of guests and we're talking about guest rooms,

In the residential districts right now, and in the residential districts, you can have up to five guest rooms.

Those are the areas with small lots.

Small neighborhoods.

Yes.

This is where the parking comes into play for me.

This is no different.

And my problem is that that's where you end up with all the conflict because then that's where

If the parking's not there then they can't run it successfully.

So what I'm saying is that the parking is an impact to me so if you regulate the impact and then that's what has to be followed then that should help take care of more so than if I say two rooms or five rooms or ten people or whatever

So the other day we had a person from Whippoorwill come in and talk about the people who came in the Uber at two o'clock in the morning and came up his driveway and woke him up and then started the partying going on again.

I think the parking needs to be regulated, but I wouldn't depend on that alone.

And I don't think that's what Ned is saying.

Okay, so here we go with a question.

Right now, in Whippoorwill, you can have a bed and breakfast operating with the owner on site or a residential manager with five rooms in it.

Right.

But we're just talking about the development area, residential and village only right now.

We'll get to Whippoorwill.

We'll get to Whippoorwill.

I'm just going through my little process in my head to make sure I'm right on there with you, what you're asking.

So the number of guest rooms.

I would be okay with the owner present with the number of rooms given that proxy to people per room.

I'd like to jump in and say what I think we should consider is four adults and no more than two children four and under because most B&Bs are set up that a couple could arrive with a child

and be able to have the child for and under stay in the room with them.

It's not appropriate to put a child alone in another room.

So that would mean six people, four adults and two children.

I think when we're talking about number of guest rooms and number of guests, I think most people have regulated it as far as adults.

But children, Rebecca, you can argue that a minor is up to 18 years of age.

So you can have somebody with a near adult

I think we're starting with the number of guests question, I mean the number of rooms question and then

We thought we heard before that you didn't want to get into regulating people.

So we're not really prepared to discuss that fully today.

We can come back with that.

Yes.

So I think in the development area most of the time the two is fine and is it possible to have some kind of secondary process where on the rare occasion where it's a big house on Park Street or somewhere that would be suitable for

Okay.

And so, as Palmer says, no.

Well, I mean, I get that we are concerned about a lot of negative behavior and negative impact, but we can't, nothing that we do is going to solve that.

There's not a silver bullet to this.

so you know I would love to hear from that person who where the neighbors would love the tourists to be there than the current owner because it quieted down and the parking was better because if it's possible for all these other things it's possible for that too but what I'm getting at is that you know five rooms you know if I think of my home and I have to be present and I want to rent it out and I have a parking restriction I don't have five rooms to do if I have to be present so there's a piece of this where

When you set aside the percentage of the negative, and I'm going to presume that that's not a huge chunk, because most of these to be efficient or effective operating businesses, it has to work in a way that's positive for the business owner and for the people using it.

And okay, are there people out there that would take two rooms or four rooms and just jam as many people in there as they can?

I guess that's the case.

But most often I would think that wouldn't be the case.

If I'm a person looking for and need five rooms, then I'll target the structure that provides that.

If I'm the person that needs two, then I go find something that does that.

But I can't offer five rooms in my house if I'm there living and want to offer an Airbnb type of situation.

So because of the parking and because of the people that live in my house, I'd have to kick a kid out of a room, I guess, to do this.

To take this to public comment and want to listen to folks, I'm fine with keeping it at five and then let the people that are concerned about wanting that number to be reduced can come forward and speak to us in public comment.

And hopefully those that would, you know, if this is not a big deal for people to want to keep it at five, then they'll have to come out and talk to us if it is a big deal for them as the business owner or the Airbnb operator.

Okay.

Okay.

So, to recap where we've been.

In the whole house rentals, we got no in the residential zoning districts and village residential, no in the zoning districts with small lot subdivisions, but we still have to define what a small lot subdivision is.

I think that's true, because I think I may have been one of those people.

I have no problem with whole house rentals in the appropriate places.

But in these small areas, no.

If I remember right, most of you all were about having a limitation on the number of days, but there was some worry about how we would enforce that.

Okay?

Y'all correct me if I'm wrong.

Alright, so then there was the different types of unit types, different unit types and I think, ooh I didn't take good notes there, there were

I think most of you all said no to townhouses.

Is that what I heard?

I think I heard three of you say no to townhouses and two, it was okay because parking was really the key issue.

It didn't matter.

Literally in the development area where these roads are closed.

and they were parking in your neighborhood and they lived in the townhome, then what's the solution for that?

See, that's why I have a problem trying to regulate some behavior and activity through this transient lodging piece because it's an issue, it's a bigger issue than that.

so there's nothing to stop an owner from coming over and doing that same thing so how do you solve that issue would solve both so that's a different thing to tackle but i don't want to try to start regulating behavior that's just a subset now when it could be a could be a big look if i host a party and i'm breaking a noise ordinance it doesn't matter if i'm a tourist or the owner you have to come out and do it

So I want this to support the spirit of what it's supposed to be.

People like to do Airbnb.

It's supposed to be an attractor for us.

And those who are running them, it should be a way for them to be able to earn extra income.

And we should, as a policy, try to figure out the smoothest path forward to make that work.

I don't want to make it sound like to me that is the single piece.

I'm saying that with knowing how, it's a mix, right?

If I have five houses but my property, if I'm allowed to do five houses but I'm only physically possible to provide two parking spots, there's no way

that I can necessarily rent out to more than what, eight, if you bring an SUV in, maybe, I don't know, 16 people.

But you know what I mean?

That brings up another question that I've heard in a different discussion with people just sitting over coffee.

Okay, we'll take over that one.

You're in townhomes right now.

Okay, we're in townhomes and I think there were three that said no, two that said yes.

We'll figure out what we want to do with that.

An owner versus resident manager.

There was total agreement that the resident manager is okay.

Yeah, because I'm perfectly comfortable with five in the rural area.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I didn't write it down correctly.

I'm sorry.

So, in the development area, reduce in the small lot subdivisions, reduce in the rural area?

Leave it at five.

What we want to do with this information then is to come back to you all with it refined and for the details, now that we know your big picture issues, bring you back some details to talk to you about at our next work session.

Before we talk about when that might be, I would like to ask you all about whether or not you want some additional public input, and if so, when?

You could do it at the next work session.

Sometimes you all will offer an opportunity for public input at a work session.

You could do it, you could have a meeting where you just had wanted to get public comment on that and not really discuss anything else.

You could wait until the public hearing.

when we

I think we'll be ready one more time.

I have to understand what I just said.

Oh, that's right.

Because I don't want, I don't want something, and I don't know if this falls under current or future or whatever, but, and I don't even know if the association would, if it's a homeowner's association, they can deal with this on their own.

So they do have a way to limit things if they want to.

In Belvedere you are, because it's in the code of development.

No.

I thought that was the one we went back to fix.

That's just a very clean, defined use.

Well, yeah, the carriage houses are not allowed

to be used as transient lodging.

So they're long term rentals, not short term.

But the carriage houses are sort of a unique animal.

We don't allow them in the residential zoning districts.

They are created in the individual neighborhood model districts in the neighborhood model code of development.

In general, we don't allow guest rooms to be in accessory structures in the other zoning districts.

So if someone has space above their detached garage, then that's not allowed and that hasn't been opened up as part of this discussion.

It was part of the planning commission discussion and

they didn't recommend it.

But we don't really allow those detached accessory apartments in our other zoning districts.

Well here's the and that's fine and that that's a specific type of instance but let's say they were not used for that purpose and you have a development area where in the development area of a home with an accessory dwelling and they are not able to do the Airbnb in it but somebody with a finished basement in their single-family development could.

And that's where I hope moving forward, because I suspect more places are going to go to these type of cottage house pieces.

That hopefully the HOA will get in there and clean that up and how they want it, how that community wants it and defines it.

I don't think this necessarily exists anywhere in developments where an HOA wouldn't be present.

but it just seems to me that an accessory unit like that with the same resident manager on-site pieces would make sense because in a lot of cases there's off-site, the off-site parking's there because of the unit exists.

Can I just bring up one other dimension of this?

Following this logic, I agree with you, the only thing we have to look at is when we do that we reduce the supply of affordable housing in the community.

So we become an accessory

Understood, and I would love to have the conversation about how the affordable units in Belvidere, who's populating them.

and then versus the bigger philosophical picture of who we want populating affordable housing units.

But if we just want to go, it's a unit and it's more affordable than some other ones out there, then understood.

And you know, Ned, for me, I have what gives me pause is the people that live in Belvedere bought into Belvedere understanding that those were going to be rental units and they accepted that.

and again that's up to the association to turn and that's why my earlier question of who trumps who is important but there are and there seems to be another layer there with with that specific section so that I'm not even trying to get into

But I don't know if HOAs, there's a lot of HOAs that are not yet getting into this and figuring out what they want their community piece to be.

You bring up an interesting question about the accessory unit and that is a type of affordable housing that we have been advocating for for some time.

It has never materialized into a zoning text amendment and that is something in our future work program we want to talk about is can we allow

the accessory unit to be used as an accessory apartment.

And I think when we get to that conversation, then we can also ask the question, should it be available?

Should an accessory unit be available for a home stay also?

And is that part of this or no?

No, it is not part of this right now.

So when we did the couple years ago, the Hungarian Bakery, and we talked about the being able to do the things in the accessory buildings in the rural area, that left the development area completely out.

That is correct.

That is correct.

If you all want to elevate it in our work program, advise us to that, then we'll move it up.

Well, and it's just to make the point that, you know, we talk about affordable housing.

And when you, one element of it, because we focus on what the unit is, and if the dwelling over the garage is the affordable unit, then that's one way to think about it.

But the alternative is somebody might be able to take on a home and feel more comfortable paying for the mortgage if they knew they had a income unit on the property.

That makes it affordable for them to live in the main house.

And that's happened in urban areas where you've got the town home on three floors and the apartments at the bottom floor.

And of course, for that to work for the homeowner, long term rental is the key.

Thank you.

Okay, so I think the next work session we need to bring you all a new resolution of intent that includes changing some of the regulations that we have right now, not just expanding opportunities.

but potentially reducing opportunities or restricting opportunities so that then you can advance forward on this.

And that was primarily reducing the number of rooms in the growth area?

Just a point.

We've got that and we'll figure out how we want to deal with that and bring it back to you.

The next steps would be to have another work session in September.

We don't believe that we have an opportunity to get everything together for you for next month.

You can come and join us in the audience.

I will be in Scotland.

That's why I couldn't come in September.

That's wonderful.

September is the next work session and then we will talk at that time about when we want to get additional public input and if we're ready for a public hearing my guess is we won't be but we'll take it one step at a time.

It was necessary.

That's really great and before you escape I want to be sure to in the public record congratulate you on the American Planning Association annual report award and thank you for leading our group into this wonderful accomplishments and thank you so much.

and I guess for the to-do list for our county attorney to find out if we're air think about whether we're able to require posting of things like our own business license or something like that on their advertising if we're not able to do a tax ID number if we're able to do things that we can control inside our

our wheelhouse here so that we'll be able to easily determine if advertising is for a place which has their licenses or it might save that rigmarole that the staff have to go through right now trying to determine location and finding out what's what.

So any of those little webs that we can do that will ease the burden on staff and bring people into compliance is something I'm always interested in doing.

And I'm sorry, Anne, but I missed, did you mention the insurance?

I'll give you a quick update as the conversation is going.

I've been doing research here and I'm looking across the nation.

requiring liability insurance under zoning.

I didn't find a single case.

And under business licenses, I found there's a New York case that said no unless it's expressly enabled.

I think that was New York, which I don't believe is a Dillon rule state.

So under Virginia law, the courts would conclude that we do not have that authority.

requiring bonding to ensure compliance.

When you go through the state planning and zoning law, there are certain circumstances when we are authorized to bond.

And in fact, the BZA has the authority to require a bond.

to ensure compliance with conditions when they approve a variance.

But what that means is that we cannot imply that authority in this situation because the General Assembly has spoken and said you can do it here but they haven't said we can do it there.

But I will look at the advertising their license issue as part of it so that we can track.

So Greg, you're the keeper of our parking lot for legislative packets for next year.

Yes.

You're keeping the list.

Great.

Just to jump in, we've already had a first meeting with David Blount.

I think it was last week or maybe the week before.

And I'll be sharing with you another new strategy which we hope will be more successful in working with our delegation.

It's getting more interesting.

Well, I'll give you my scribbles in just a minute then.

That's good.

Phew.

All right.

Well, thank you.

We did well on that.

Can we jump up and down for five minutes and come back?

Is that enough?

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Our back in action and our next item on the agenda is our Board of Supervisors operating guidelines for high quality governance and Jeff will lead us in this and it is on your screens in front of you and is basically the compilation, the minutes that we brought out of our retreat that we are soon to proof and adopt and then they will be posted as our minutes.

That's an excellent lead-in and overview Madam Chair and if you will recall

you devoted two half days, May the 2nd and May the 3rd, afternoon of the 2nd and the morning of the 3rd here in town with staff and you worked very hard on revisiting your operating guidelines for high quality governance.

You worked through a draft set of guidelines that as the chair suggested is in front of you.

and so we have several things we'd like to ask the board to review the draft operating guidelines we discussed at the retreat bringing this back before the board in a work session giving you a little more time to look at it those operating guidelines are before you today so I would encourage you we've sent this out several times with your minutes from the second and the third

and this is the part of the guidelines of where the board would look at this, take a formal vote.

It was suggested at the retreat that there would be a signed copy posted in the board of supervisors work area in the office and that we would also come back and formally revisit this.

In the October timeframe, November timeframe, that's about six months after the initial discussion from your retreat to check in on these guidelines to make sure that you feel as a governing board that this is giving you the guidance.

and the parameters that you need as well as it will be helpful for staff also to be involved in that discussion in case there's things that we need clarified that we may have that we may not understand.

So Madam Chair I would suggest that the board take a look at it at the one page to take a look at the nine draft guidelines and

Okay.

What I would propose is that we go down the list and if people have any comments or explanations or whatever that they'd like to make as we go down the list that we would have a chance to do that before we vote.

Is that alright with everyone?

And so are there any comments about number one?

The county's strategic priorities will guide the work of the board and staff and will be supported by a thoughtful priority setting process and cycle.

Right, and probably have to be, maybe.

But representing the strategic priorities is another way of saying the strategic plan which we formally adopt after lots of discussion.

Which come right out of the comp plan and everything else.

That's exactly right, lots of discussions.

Because about a third of the comp plan is all implementation of things and that becomes our strategic plan.

To be a difficult person, I mentioned this when we were talking about our old vision statement.

I have no idea what honor the will, honor means in these cases.

It sounds like it says be nice to others and do unto others as they would do unto you kind of thing.

That's a really good thing to put in our behavior guidelines.

I think honor here means more than accept, as you've just referenced.

We're expected to not only accept it, but to respect it, the will of the majority, the majority rules.

So that's honoring the will of the majority.

I think honor implies something greater than acceptance, it implies respecting the will of the majority.

That's fine as long as there's no expectation.

The only thing that I would add, Madam Chair, to number two is, as it relates to the staff, is that whatever the majority of the board votes and directs us to do, we're going to execute on that.

I think also here what this gets at is recognizing that when the majority makes a decision the responsibility for the minority you can object to the decision of the majority and you can express it but

I don't know what that exactly means.

Yeah, I think that's the public stuff.

I don't think there's censorship that's implied in this at all.

That's why we're discussing it.

I really think it's important that people who are listening understand what we're talking about.

Number three, we ensure that policy decisions and directions to the county executive are communicated by the entire board, which means when we get to four, basically.

Where this is unclear, the county executive will seek clarification.

and no single one of us should provide direction on policy implementation to the county executive.

And this is really important for staff to be able to function and work with on that.

All the work we give them is that we're not sending them off on wild goose chases for one of us who has a pet project.

And all of us have them at last.

There we go.

So I try to bridle myself there as well.

Where are we?

That was number three.

Nothing controversial there.

Okay.

Number four, board members do not want their interactions with and requests to staff members to negatively impact their productivity, meaning on all the other work they have to do.

First bullet, staff members should use judgment and explain the resources that would be required to respond to board requests.

Second, if a policy issue is going to affect workload or a policy decision, it should come through the county executive's office.

So for clarity, board members do not want their interactions with and requests to staff members to negatively impact their productivity.

The theirs get pretty confusing.

People could read that differently.

I should be staff productivity, I think, in the second line.

Perhaps we can make that second line before we post it.

Get rid of the pronouns and clarify that.

That'd be great.

Thank you.

Yeah, that's an important one.

I don't want to make it sound like it limits us and our ability to ask for things.

We have these discussions frequently, you know, that we can only have so much time in the day.

I'm obviously responding to a Rio district constituents email in this regard but I also like the fact that we're using resources instead of specific any other specific metric.

Something may take

Now in the spirit of probably where the originating email came from that it can't be necessary, the other side of it is staff can't use that as maybe something that they don't want the board getting into.

I mean, you have to think about it as that too.

You don't want to just say, well, that's going to take too much resources to try to manage the board.

That's very good to know, very good to clarify.

Number five, when a board member sends a communication to a staff member, it should be copied to the department director and the appropriate member of the county executive's office.

Urgent matters will be clearly labeled in the subject line.

And I think that's really important so that we can

keep people in the loop.

If you remember our discussion, this urgent manager came from a discussion of many of us answer our emails, a lot of them on weekends.

and we did not want necessarily staff having to respond to us on the weekends, Jeff.

If I remember correctly, that was where this came from.

So if something was urgent, it was going to be marked urgent.

I think the reply to all two that we do a lot of times is kind of unnecessary.

So on the other end, you know, I think we have to be careful about

about the reply alls because there's a lot of things we don't, you know, affects our productivity if we have to open everything.

Something to think about.

And in the email, this in no way limits us as a board member.

It's not saying dictated that we have to do something by email.

I mean, you can go in person.

But the idea is you don't want to go to a staff person and copy the appropriate people so their departments aren't blindsided.

And that helps for transparency.

Yeah, absolutely.

It does get a little bit, you know, it's funny because I was just thinking that earlier today when I came in here, I emailed Siri on something really quick.

You know, we had already talked about it.

I didn't copy everybody.

I thought she had already done it for another thing and she said, well, I didn't write anything up.

Correct, I mean the board since the retreat I've noticed going back to Diantha's point about urgency and you do get a ton of emails and there is usually a lot of board activity on the weekend because I sense that you're trying to catch up if you've been working or been away from your computer for a period of time.

And the other side of it is I want you to reassure staff that they should ask you what should I do about this if you are not included and we forget.

This is not a secret message here.

Especially when you have a lot of young staff, new staff coming on, this is, you know, Elaine would have no trouble saying to me, you know, or Trevor, what are you talking about?

But a new person who doesn't know me from Adam is going to go, oh my god, what am I supposed to do about this?

I would only add this comment.

If it's something that the board is dealing with and it's a priority and everyone's working on it and you're having clarifying conversations back and forth, I don't see that as necessarily important to have to copy everybody.

But if it's something that's not necessarily on an agenda or an upcoming agenda and you're introducing it,

then I think it is important to make sure that everybody's copied on.

And then the other point is that if we're asking those questions of people, the heads of the departments to help understand if their staff is doing their proper work, if they're not copied, they can't gauge how their employees are doing.

And also if we ask a question

then the answer could certainly be shared with all of us.

So if Greg researches something I do hope you would share it with all of us just so that we don't all ask you the same question over again rather than relying on me to forward the answer.

Eventually everything does get shared.

There's some background research that I'll do that's still at the preliminary stage.

Thank you.

work on things with some detail just to have that knowledge.

I certainly wouldn't look at this and say I wouldn't do that all over again.

in that position

I guarantee you I'm getting my own information on the outside all the time from people who come to see us and our constituents and that kind of thing.

Well, as an example, I went and talked to the DEQ about something, and I was criticized for that.

And so I'm just trying to make sure that when I vote on this, I am not.

So I would have considered that research.

and I want to, you know, I don't know if that, I would appreciate a word of clarification on that, on what that means.

What is board work and what is staff work?

No.

I don't remember.

Probably yes.

You know, I honestly don't remember.

It's a couple years ago.

But I was trying to find out something very specific and I went and talked to them.

It wasn't about something that the county was doing.

No.

So it was before you were board chair?

Okay.

I mean, I think one of the things that this speaks to in number six, in doing board work, if an occasion like that rose up again, presented itself, I think perhaps the appropriate way to handle it would be to let the board chair at a minimum know that you felt a need to talk with somebody at DEQ and then also clear that

It wasn't really on staff level but see then that would need clarification because I I can't remember if I talked to the board chair I'm pretty sure I did but I don't remember.

But I was researching how the state worked on a specific item, not specifically for this county.

I mean, short of something that's got an ethical issue or it's illegal, this is not restricting a board member's ability.

If I go in and push Doug out of his desk and start doing his work for him, that's what I feel like this is.

Well I thought so, but I'm just trying to bring that up as an example of where I got direct criticism because of that and so I'm just trying to make sure that that's something that

Future board members or I guess other board members, new boards will have to look at this again.

Well, let me attack this at a different angle.

We have a pretty straight obligation when we ran for this office what our responsibilities were and what our rights were.

And if you're within that, then you're able to operate freely.

I'm sorry to jump in but it also might be helpful because at the retreat the board did a really good job of talking through board member responsibilities and we then talked about the county executive's office responsibilities

and we, you know, the line is not a clear black demarcation but in general terms we talked about your role as policy makers and as the governing board and we talked about the county executive's office and the staff related to day to day operations.

Can we add that to it?

Sure.

And so if we could add clarifying language to number six, the board should do policy making.

I hate to wordsmith on the spot, I won't do a good job, but the board should focus primarily on policy making as board work and the staff to do staff work

The reason for this also was the perception by staff that some board members were overstepping their role as board members in getting down into the weeds of staff related issues and trying to push certain options to be recommended and that's overstepping the board work and the board role.

I'm not uncomfortable with the language here, but if we want to move it into your suggested changes, I'm comfortable with that as well.

Very good.

All right, number seven.

We ensure that we work with a careful and unified voice when we are dealing with other jurisdictions or units of government, including both the board and the county executive.

I just want to say one thing about this.

This really troubled me, and this was at the end of the day, and I remember thinking to myself, gosh, I'd like to talk about this more, but we were running over time.

again I have I have a hard time I don't really know what that means I do not want to give up my ability to vote on a vote on the board the way that I feel is appropriate to vote for my constituents and given my

and you know given my ethics and so I just I don't know how to word that but I looked at it last night and I thought gee that and I did want to bring it up before and I guess I brought it up with Ann that you know I

When it comes to a vote on an issue, I feel as though you have to be able to vote your conscience.

I don't think anybody does.

Would it be helpful to put in negotiating instead of dealing?

Because that is a much more limited focus and probably where it's most important.

I'm sorry Liz, I just don't understand.

In trying to respond to what I think I'm hearing, I feel like this falls under where else we're at.

Your vote dictates the majority or the will of the board.

This isn't trying to step in front of that this is trying to say now when you're going and doing the business after the vote that there is that one kind of the chair speaks for the board kind of voice type of thing going on and there's no misrepresenting for maybe the minority doing negotiations or dealing or what have you so it's just that while you don't never lose your ability to state your opinion

And I would agree with that.

I have no problem with that.

I think that's what this says.

I would go back though to a time when a couple of board members, myself included, voted in a situation on the courts that was criticized because it was thought to influence a negotiating position and

I would, if I had to do that again, I would vote the same way.

And so if it's a vote, and then you go from there, that's fine, but I don't want this to be constricting people's ability to vote there, vote the way they feel like they need to.

It's a yes or a no and you get your choice.

or leave it alone.

I'd leave it alone.

I'd leave it general.

All right.

All right.

That's fine.

Number nine, when a board member has a concern regarding staff performance, we go directly to the county executive in a timely manner so that it can be addressed.

That's incredibly important.

It doesn't relate directly to this but this is a point that I would agree with our constituent that emailed.

If we are going to advertise something as a work session and if we're going to take action in it, then at the very least public comment should be allowed.

or taken at that.

That's just a bigger, if you're willing to do it on something, I could get myself into trouble trying to differentiate between something that would be maybe minor or guidance or whatever.

But if we're going to take action on something, regardless of what that something is, then public comment should be allowed.

So this is just, I would have felt the same way on the restoring station had this been for action today, if that didn't get delayed to Wednesday.

And I'm just talking a general public comment.

I wouldn't suggest that everything has to go to public hearing on individual pieces.